Grace took a tiny bite of cookie and shook her head. “It’s different with Rand and me. You and Lucas obviously love each other very much.”
Julianna absently stroked her stomach, a dreamy, soft expression on her face. “When I don’t want to strangle the man for being so pigheaded, I love him so much it hurts.”
“So pigheaded runs in the Blackhawk genes, too, huh?” Grace said with a smile.
“Lordy, yes. Prepare yourself. The Blackhawk men give new dimension to the word.”
It was too late to prepare herself, Grace thought as she stared at her cookie. Rand was already in her head and in her heart. She’d asked him once how he’d managed after he’d lost his family. He’d told her that life went on. She wasn’t sure how it did after you lost someone you love, but she did know she had to believe that was true. Otherwise, she’d end up begging him to at least give them a chance together, to try to love her.
As much as she wanted to do just that, she knew she couldn’t. For these past few days she believed that he had truly needed her. She’d been with him as he’d faced the shock of learning his sister and brother were alive, then finding out what had really happened that night, and now, meeting his cousin.
But he didn’t need her anymore. He had Lucas and Julianna to help him put the pieces together. And soon he’d have Seth and Lizzie. He’d have his family.
She might have been Rand’s lover, but she wasn’t his love. He’d made it clear he wasn’t looking to settle down. And as she looked at Julianna and Lucas and at their children, Grace knew she couldn’t settle for less than that.
It was time for her to go, she realized. Time for her to walk out of Rand’s life as abruptly as she’d walked in. In the long run, it would be easier this way for both of them. He might be upset for a little while that she would leave without saying goodbye, but he would probably be relieved, as well. Goodbyes were always awkward. This way there’d be no pretenses that they would stay in touch, no dramatic exits.
And the truth be told, she knew she wasn’t brave enough to do it any other way. If she said goodbye to him, to his face, she’d end up in a puddle of tears at his feet. That would only embarrass them both.
Grace forced her attention back to Julianna, but quickly changed the subject back to the twins and the Blackhawk Ranch.
Two cookies and six games of hide-and-seek later, Rand and Lucas still hadn’t come back from outside, and Grace knew it was now or never. She swore she felt a migraine coming on and begged off dinner, then asked if Lucas would mind taking Rand back to the hotel later on that evening.
Grace returned Julianna’s hug goodbye, then drove back to the hotel in Rand’s truck. She packed her bags, left a cheerful note, then on legs that felt like rubber bands, she walked out of the hotel and Rand Blackhawk’s life.
Eleven
The town of Wolf River looked different than Rand remembered from his childhood. A glass and brick official U.S. Post Office was now on the corner of Gibson and Main instead of in the back corner of the Rexall drugstore. A multiplex theater showing all the current movies was on Third Street where Drexler’s Ice Cream used to be. A popular drive-through hamburger stand with the golden arches was now located directly across from another popular hamburger stand who made eating messy their motto.
Since when did Wolf River need two hamburger drive-throughs? Rand thought as he drove down Main Street. He felt a sense of relief when he spotted Papa Pete’s Diner on the corner of Main and Sixth. Pappa Pete’s made the best food in Wolf River, and on special occasions Rand’s family had gone there to eat. On his eighth birthday, Rand remembered, he ordered a hamburger, French fries and a chocolate shake with whipped cream and a bright red cherry on top.
That was the best birthday he’d ever had, he thought with a smile.
There were a few other stores that looked familiar, too. Joe’s Barbershop, Peterson’s Hay and Feed, King’s Hardware. All places Rand’s dad had taken him when he was a kid. Places that Rand had forgotten about until now.
He stopped at a red light—something else the town hadn’t had twenty-three years ago—and watched as an elderly woman crossed the street and waved at him. Like most small towns, people did that sort of thing. Waved at strangers, held doors for each other, smiled and actually looked you in the eye.
All these years he’d stayed away from Wolf River intentionally. He hadn’t wanted to remember the town, the places he’d gone with his family or the people who lived here. Remembering those things couldn’t bring his family back to him. Why would he come back?
In all these years he’d never called one place home. Never stayed in one place long enough to “let grass grow under his feet,” as the saying went. The minute he started to feel settled somewhere was when he knew it was time to pack up his truck again and hit the road. There was always another ranch, always another horse to train.
Rand turned off Main Street and headed south out of town. The sky was deep blue, the day hot, but he kept his window down and let the wind blow through the cab of his truck as he took in the scenery. There were farmhouses and ranches that he remembered, though he couldn’t recall the owners’ names. But the names didn’t matter. What mattered was that he needed something to hold on to, something with substance to keep him steady when it felt as if his world had been turned upside down.
And now, on top of everything else, Grace was gone, too.
She’d been his touchstone for these past few days. He hadn’t realized how much he’d relied on her until she had left. He didn’t know he could rely on anyone.
His first reaction when he’d come back to the hotel last night and found her gone was astonishment. Had he or someone else said something to her to make her leave without saying goodbye? Had something happened in Dallas and she’d had to get home right away? But her note had been cheery and simple. “I’m sorry I had to leave so quickly, but I really do need to get home and I hate goodbyes.”
He’d stood there, staring at the words she’d written, and then the anger had come. He’d sworn, kicked his suitcase and the bed, then he’d slammed around his room and sworn some more. Enough time had passed that she might be home by now, he’d thought, and stomped to the phone to call her, to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing leaving like that.
He slammed the phone back down. He didn’t even know her home phone number. He had an office phone number for the foundation, but that was it.
How could that be, he’d asked himself as he’d dragged both hands through his hair. How could they have shared what they had, and he didn’t even know her damn telephone number?
He still swore, but there’d been no heat in his words when he’d sunk down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t blame her for leaving. She’d given herself completely to him, but he’d given her nothing in return, offered her nothing. Why the hell wouldn’t she leave?
He’d gone down to the hotel bar after that. The room was too quiet. Too empty. He thought he needed the company of Jack Daniel’s, but two hours and half a bottle later, he knew he’d been wrong.
What he needed was something else entirely.
Rand slammed on the brakes. He’d been so lost in thought he’d nearly missed the turnoff he’d been looking for.
Cold Springs Road.
Hands tight on the wheel, he made a sharp right off the main highway. Oak trees and coyote bush lined the two-lane road. There were no houses out here, the creek bed flooded during storms and the land was too rocky, too unstable to build.
He realized he was driving too fast and he slowed down, forced himself to relax and pay attention to the landscape. It had been so many years, he wasn’t certain he would remember.
Soon as the road widens around this turn…
His mother’s voice came to him. The sound of thunder and rain on the roof of his parents’ car pounded in Rand’s head.
We’ll be fine…don’t be afraid…
There it was. Maybe twenty yards ahead of him. The turn where the road widened.
The turn his father never made that night.
Heart racing, Rand eased his truck off the road and cut the engine. His palms were sweating when he stepped out of his cab and looked down into the ravine.
This is where they’d gone over, he knew. This is where his life had changed twenty-three years ago.
Rand closed his eyes, saw everything again as it had happened that night, the flash of lightning, the car swerving off the road, that horrible sound of silence.
Breathing hard, he opened his eyes and looked around. Overhead, the hot August sun burned through his denim shirt and jeans, and a lazy hawk circled overhead. Puffy white clouds floated on the horizon.
And silence. Absolute, complete silence.
Only, this time the silence didn’t frighten him. This silence relaxed and comforted.
Rand turned sideways and dug his boots into the side of the ravine. He slid down standing up; rocks and gravel tumbled ahead of him. A cloud of dust rose from the loosened dirt. At the bottom of the ravine, he looked around again, waited for his heart to slow, then pulled the photograph Lucas had given him from his back pocket.
His family. His only tangible link to the past, he realized. The impact of that knowledge and the importance of what he held in his hand overwhelmed him.
He remembered the day it was taken. Waiting for hours in a small room with his dad and Seth, watching TV and playing games, complaining because he was bored and why couldn’t the baby just hurry up and be born?
And then, after she was finally born, they all got to see her, though just long enough for that picture to be taken by one of the nurses. He remembered everything now. The antiseptic smell of the hospital, the squeak of the nurse’s shoes on the linoleum, the touch of his mother’s lips on his cheek and her words, Isn’t she beautiful, Rand? Do you think you can help me take care of her?
He’d promised he would. Always and forever, he’d told his mother.
He’d let his mother down. He’d let Lizzie down.
His hand tightened on the photo.
Mary and Matt and Sam had been an important part of his life. Rand was thankful that he’d had them, that he still had them. They were family to him just as much as if they’d shared the same blood.
But his first family needed him now, he knew. And he needed them. Rand had a second chance, a chance to make things right. This time he wouldn’t let them down.
They had an address for Seth but not Lizzie. Yesterday the lawyer had asked Rand if he wanted to hire a private investigator to find Lizzie. Rand hadn’t given Henry an answer. Lizzie had only been two at the time. What if his sister was happy where she was, with who she was? Would it only complicate her life to suddenly have two brothers she probably didn’t remember show up at her doorstep?
But Rand knew that the decision had already been made, that there’d never really been a decision. Lizzie would be contacted by the P.I. who would tell her everything that had happened. Rand wouldn’t force himself into her life, or Seth’s, either. They’d both be given a choice if they wanted to meet. After that…well, they’d just have to take it one step at a time.
The silence in the ravine surrounded him. In the midst of the stillness, a soft breeze rose, whispered to him. You’ll be fine…don’t be afraid…
Rand listened to the breeze, felt it float over him like a velvet hand. He smiled, then slipped the photo back into his pocket and hurried up the ravine.
What he needed to do now had nothing to do with Seth and Lizzie. What he needed to do now was for himself.
Wearing a black velvet slip dress with V-neckline, spaghetti straps and a slit halfway up her leg, Grace stood outside the open French doors on her parents’ brick patio and sipped her glass of champagne. Inside the house, the fund-raising party for the foundation was already in full swing.
By Texas standards, it was a pleasant evening, and Grace had stepped outside for a moment to take a few deep breaths of the warm night air and prepare herself for a very busy night ahead of her.
Normally she thrived on these affairs, knowing that the money raised would help care for and find homes for so many horses. But nothing seemed normal to her since she’d come back to Dallas. Everything felt different. She felt different.
With a sigh Grace glanced across the patio and stared at the wavering pale-blue water in her parents’ lit swimming pool.
She felt empty.
“Gracie, darlin’, for heaven’s sake,” Roanna Sullivan said from the open doorway, “if that face of yours hangs any lower, y’all will be kissing your own behind.”
It was her mother’s favorite reprimand when Grace had been growing up, and, as a child, the silly expression had made her laugh. At the moment, however, Grace did not feel like laughing. However, to please her mother and the 150 guests laughing and talking and eating hors d’oeuvres inside the house, she did plaster a smile on her face.
Roanna—Ronnie to her husband and friends—cocked her head and looked at Grace thoughtfully. “Hmm. Can’t decide which I prefer—the tick-fevered bloodhound expression or the I-just-ate-a-sour-apple look.”
“You look beautiful tonight, Mom,” Grace said, not only to change the conversation, but because it was true. She wore a long, silvery-green off-the-shoulder gown that complemented her short, pale-blond hair, sea-green eyes and slender figure. Even at fifty, the woman still turned heads and made men trip over their tongues and feet.
“Thank you,” her mother said. “You look stunning yourself. Now tell me why you haven’t smiled once since you got back from your trip.”
So much for changing the subject.
Grace sipped from the glass of Dom Pérignon in her hand, though it might as well have been apple juice for all she noticed. “Don’t you have to check on the pâté? I heard that you were almost out of it.”
Normally a comment like that would have Roanna—a born-and-bred Georgia debutante—dashing away in horror at the mere possibility of such a social faux pas. Tonight she wasn’t buying it.
“Gracie.” The teasing tone in her mother’s voice was gone now. “You’ve been back five days. When are you going to tell me what happened?”
Five days. God, had it really only been five days? Grace thought. It felt more like five years.
Glancing away from her mother, Grace looked over the sea of shimmering gowns and broad-shouldered tuxedos in her parents’ football-field-size living room. From a quartet in one corner of the room, strains of Mozart drifted over the buzz of conversation. Huge bouquets of red and yellow roses and white lilies scented the room and white-gloved servers with silver trays offered mushroom-cheese pastry puffs and salmon mousse toast squares.
A beautiful sight of elegance and wealth and privilege.
And Grace would trade it all in a heartbeat for canned chili over a campfire and one more night on a mountaintop with Rand Blackhawk.
She still felt that leaving the way she did was for the best. It would have been humiliating to burst into tears in the middle of saying goodbye, and would have only made Rand uncomfortable. So she’d made it easier for both of them.
She took another sip of champagne at the thought. Easy. Yeah, right. Leaving had been anything but easy. It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.
All the way from Wolf River back to Dallas, in the back seat of the car she’d hired through the hotel to drive her home, Grace had alternated between tears and rousing pep talks. I’m still young, she’d told herself. I’ll meet someone else. We were too different, I’m better off without him.
Oh, and her favorite, It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
That was a big, fat crock. It hurt like hell, dammit.
And, fool that she was, she’d held on to the tiniest sliver of hope. Prayed that he might miss her even a little, that he might call, even to just say hello.
But he hadn’t, and she knew she did have to move on. She hoped that everything went well for him, that he would reunite with his fami
ly and be happy. Because she loved him, she wanted him to be happy.
Grace felt her mother’s gaze still on her, watching her, still waiting for an answer to her question about what had happened. Suddenly thankful that she had her family, her mother and father and brother, she gave her mother a hug.
“Later, Mom,” Grace said. “Just you and me, in the den, pj’s and hot cocoa. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
“Hot cocoa, huh?” Concern narrowed Roanna’s eyes as she touched her daughter’s cheek. “Must be serious.”
Inside the house, it seemed as if the room had quieted. A low hum, like bees in a hive, filled the house. Both Roanna and Grace turned to see what the buzz was about. A handsome dark-haired man at least two inches taller than anyone else in the room, wearing a black Stetson with a black tuxedo, was in the center of all that attention.
“Heavens.” Roanna lifted one brow. “Who is that?”
Grace stared, dumbstruck. Though she’d never met the man, she knew exactly who it was.
“I’ll be damned,” Grace said out loud. “He did it. He actually did it.”
“Who did what, dear?” her mother asked, her attention still on the man.
“Never mind.” Grace turned toward her mother and kissed her cheek. “Go say hello to Mr. Dylan Bradshaw, Mom.”
Roanna’s eyes widened, then she smiled that devastating smile of hers and squared her shoulders. “Let’s see if the man’s checkbook is as big as he is, shall we?”
“You go ahead,” Grace said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
So Rand had called the man, Grace thought in wonder, as she watched her mother move through the crowded room in Bradshaw’s direction. Even with everything Rand had going on in Wolf River with the lawyer and Lucas and his family, he’d still remembered to make that call. Maybe he’d thought it was the least he could do for her. Sort of a final goodbye gift.
Odd, how a person could feel happy yet so miserable at the same time.
With a sigh she stared at her glass of champagne and knew that as corny as it sounded, it was also true. It was better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Taming Blackhawk Page 13