Cinderella and the Playboy / The Texan's Happily-Ever-After

by Lois Faye Dyer

  After she took the catalogue from him and paged through it, her eyes grew moist. “Oh, Shep. I don’t know when I’ll be comfortable ordering furniture, after what just happened.”

  He clasped her shoulders. “Hey, no pressure here. I just thought you could make a wish list.”

  That suggestion seemed to bring even more glistening anguish to her eyes. She murmured, “We have to talk.”

  “About?”

  After a deep, shaky breath, she glanced toward the stairs.

  “I don’t even know how to begin,” she said in a low voice. “Ryder stopped by. He brought me some…information. Information about you.”

  Shep’s body was strung tight, every nerve in it firing warning signals. “Did you ask him to get information?”

  “No! In fact, after I told him I was pregnant he wanted to, and I told him not to.”

  “You knew this and you didn’t tell me?”

  “At that point, you and I hadn’t made any decisions. I just told Ryder to forget it.”

  “And you really thought he’d do that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t think he’d find anything. I trusted that you were who you seemed to be.”

  “And who was that, Raina?” Anger was starting to build, but he held it in, kept it locked up tight.

  “You’re a wonderful father, a business owner, and you seem to be a good person.”

  “Seem to be?” He must have let something escape in his voice, because she took a step away from him.

  He dropped his hands to his sides. Damn it! Didn’t he have a right to be angry? Didn’t he have the right to believe she’d stand by him, not believe the first rumor that came along? Hadn’t they said vows and made a commitment? Was she going to use this as an excuse to walk away?

  “He’s trying to protect me, Shep.”

  “Do you feel you need to be protected?”

  The question seemed to sway between them, until she took hold of it and answered it. “He brought me an envelope. He gave me his notes concerning the people he’d talked to in Sandy Cove.”

  He could already feel her withdrawal and doubts. “And just what did they have to say?” His tone was sarcastic, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Shep, this isn’t easy for me. Ryder just called, came over and set it all down in front of me.”

  “What did he say, Raina?” Shep was having a difficult time pushing away a sense of betrayal.

  “He told me you’d stolen a truck when you were fourteen, got thrown in jail and got kicked out of your foster home. He said you were sent to stay with someone who took in juveniles who got into trouble.”

  “And who did he get this information from?”

  “A deputy. Burt Conroy. Are you saying it isn’t true?”

  Shep always tried to speak the truth. But sometimes the circumstances around it weren’t black or white. “You know what, Raina? I’m not sure it matters if it’s true or not. You’ve known me for months. You’ve watched me with my boys.” He saw her wince when he called them his, but right now, they felt like his, not theirs. “You married me, said vows, said you’d be committed for a lifetime. So I have a question for you. Don’t you trust your own judgment, even if you don’t trust me?”

  “Shep…” She reached out a hand to him, but he turned away, walked to the other side of the room, ran a hand through his hair and turned to face her once more.

  “You want to know the truth? The truth is, I did steal a truck and I spent the night in jail. That’s the truth.”

  Joey and Roy’s laughter drifted down from upstairs. Shep ached so bad he couldn’t stand here right now and watch the family he’d wanted to put together fall apart. Raina looked as if she was shocked at his blunt statement, as if she’d expected him to deny all of it. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her in just that way, but after all, that was the bottom line.

  He had to get out of here so he could think straight, so he could put it all in perspective. So he could decide what to do next.

  “Will you be okay with Joey and Roy for a while? I think I need a little breathing space.”

  She looked as if she were about to burst into tears, and he wanted to do something about that, but he didn’t know what. He couldn’t change the past. He couldn’t be somebody he wasn’t. He certainly couldn’t be the hero her first husband was, and that was probably the crux of the whole matter. That was probably the reason his marriage was going to fall apart.

  “I’ll be fine,” she responded, pulling herself together. Shep could see she was hurting, too.

  Yet he couldn’t take on her pain. He was feeling too much of his own. When he went to the door, he called over his shoulder, “You have my cell phone number in case the boys need me.”

  Then he walked out and let the screen door slam behind him. Anger seemed to scald the back of his throat as he tried to figure out what hurt so bad. He was halfway into town when he realized the pain centered in his heart.

  “I don’t know if Shep’s going to come home tonight,” Raina said, confiding in Lily as she stood in the upstairs bathroom using her cell phone. Roy and Joey were downstairs in the playroom, with blankets covering the furniture as they played in their make-believe cave. They’d had a quiet supper without Shep. Roy and Joey asked where he’d gone, and she told them he had business to take care of. Even they knew that that was unusual on a Saturday night.

  “Of course he’ll come home,” Lily reassured her. “Where’s he going to go?”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Then call him.”

  “He said he needed some space. Lily, what have I done? I doubted him.”

  “He told you he did steal the truck,” her friend reminded her. Lily had pulled the whole story from her when Raina had called, looking for some support.

  “Yes, he said he stole a truck. But something in the way he said it—I think there’s a bigger story there. I don’t think Ryder has it right, and I don’t think he has all the information about it. I do know Shep. For just that little while this afternoon, Ryder put doubts in my head. With almost losing the baby, not knowing exactly how Shep feels about me, I’m in a rocky place. But I’ve known Shep ever since he started bringing his boys to me. I’ve watched him. He’s gentle and caring with them. That can’t be learned. It’s innate. I just can’t imagine a man with his nature being a wild, uncaring teenager. I’ve made a mess, Lily, and I don’t know if he can ever forgive me. Maybe our marriage can’t survive, even with the baby. Shep has good reason not to trust women, and I just gave him a reason not to trust me. He’s been burned, and I burned him again.”

  “Raina, I want you to sit down and breathe. If you get totally stressed out it won’t be good for you or the baby. Now come on. This is one argument. One bump. You can get over a bump.”

  “I don’t know if Shep can.”

  “Have a little faith, will you?”

  “I love him, Lily, but I don’t know if he loves me.”

  “Have you told him?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should. Maybe he needs to know just how much you have to lose, too. Do you want me to come over?”

  Lily’s presence would be comforting. They understood each other so well. But Raina wanted to be here alone when Shep came home…if Shep came home.

  “Thanks so much for offering, but I need to wait for Shep and figure out what I’m going to say to him. I have to apologize in a way he understands—”

  “If he loves you, ‘I’m sorry’ might be enough.”

  If he loves you.

  Raina was almost afraid to hope.

  Shep had switched on the lights in the outside, fenced-in area of the lumberyard. For the past hour he’d been moving two-by-fours from the supply area to a flatbed trailer to fill an order. He thought the activity would help. But like a broken wagon wheel thumping around and around and around, he couldn’t get past his disappointment in Raina, or his anger at himself for giving in to the hope that t
hings could be different.

  He’d just hauled a few more boards onto his shoulder when the cell phone in his pocket rang. Could it be Raina? Did he want to talk to her now?

  Setting down the lumber, he plucked the phone from his pocket and checked the caller ID. It was not Raina’s number. It was a California number, a name he hadn’t seen for a very long time—not since the night he’d spent in jail. Back then he’d spotted the name painted in black block letters on the door to the police station.

  He answered, preparing himself for almost anything. “McGraw here.”

  “Hi, Shep, it’s Chief Winston from Sandy Cove. Remember me?”

  “You were definitely a memorable man in my life. I never forgot that night in jail.”

  “And you’ve held it against me ever since.”

  Shep sighed. “No, I let it go a long time back.”

  “That’s good to hear. I’m calling to find out why Detective Ryder Greystone keeps calling me. I’m retired now. I took a vacation for a few weeks and didn’t want to be bothered. But I had five messages from Detective Greystone. It seems he wants to know all about you and the night you spent in my jail. I have to ask, Shep. Are you in trouble of some kind?”

  This man had seen Shep at his worst, when he was worried sick about Cruz and rebellious about everything that had happened with the Willets. There was no reason not to tell him the truth now.

  “Greystone is investigating me because I married his sister fairly quickly. She’s pregnant.”

  After an awkward silence, the former chief of police cleared his throat. “That’s personal business. What’s he trying to do, break you up?”

  “Could be,” Shep conceded.

  After another pause, the chief finally said, “Even you don’t know the real truth.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  After a momentary pause, the retired lawman continued. “The truth is, I had no choice but to put you in jail that night. If I hadn’t done that, we would have had to officially give you a juvenile record, and I didn’t want to. I knew the situation you were in with the Willets. I knew how careless they’d been with kids before you. I even reported them, but nothing got done. I was the one who called Matt Forester. We grew up together and I knew he had a good heart.”

  Matt had had more than a good heart. He’d taught Shep and Cruz about hard work, responsibility and getting a start in life. When he’d died, he’d left Cruz and Shep the ranch. Cruz had sold off some of it to give Shep his share. That ranch had gone a long way to making them both successful adults. Shep realized now that he’d had the wrong opinion of Chief Winston all these years. He’d thought the man had reveled in his position, that he’d thrown Shep in jail because he could. But now Shep recognized how the man had protected him, not just then, but for the future.

  “You’d think a man would get smarter as he got older,” Shep muttered.

  “Are you talking about yourself or someone else?” the chief asked, joking.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you and Matt Forester were friends? Why did you let me think you just wanted to…punish me? I hated you when I was in that jail that night.”

  “I know you did. But I also knew you were a good kid, driving Cruz to the hospital the way you did. I guess I wanted to scare you a little, to make you see that there were rules and regulations, and you couldn’t always go outside of them. I think it worked, for the most part. Matt kept me up-to-date on what was going on with you. After you moved to Texas, well, I have contacts there, too. So that’s why, when a detective from Lubbock is trying to get in touch with me, I’m just not too eager to call him back. But I can, if you want me to set him straight.”

  Shep had grown up handling his own affairs, and that was exactly what he was going to do now. “I’m going to settle this from my end. Give me a couple of days. If he calls after that, tell him whatever you’d like.”

  “So what about his sister? Are you going to stay married to her?”

  Shep had been sorely mistaken about the chief and his intentions. Because he’d misunderstood, his muleheadedness had categorized the chief in the wrong way. Now he realized he’d been just as mule-headed about Raina. Knowing who her first husband was, Shep had felt…unworthy.

  Unworthy.

  Because he’d been abandoned as a child? Overlooked for adoption? Been deserted by a selfish fiancée?

  Looking at everything now, he saw clearly how unworthy he’d felt of Raina’s love…as if he didn’t deserve to be loved. He’d felt he had to compete with Clark Gibson.

  Of course, he couldn’t. He’d been so wrong not to pour out his past to her so she could look at it and maybe understand it. He hadn’t told Raina about his troubled teenage years because of sheer pride. He didn’t want her to think less of him because.

  Because he loved her. His walls had broken down when he’d met her and she’d slipped inside his heart.

  He’d tried to protect himself from loving her, but that hadn’t worked, not one bit. He thought their physical attraction was why he wanted to be close to her, spend time with her, kiss her. Oh, sure, that might have started it all. But when he felt they might lose their baby, that she as well as the baby might be in some kind of danger, he should have admitted to himself that he loved her. He loved her with all his heart. If he’d admitted that, maybe she wouldn’t have doubted him.

  “Staying married to her is going to become my life’s ambition. But I acted like an ass today, so I have some ground to cover first.”

  “Keep me informed,” the chief said seriously.

  Shep replied, just as seriously, “I will.”

  Then he went to work formulating a plan.

  Raina had received the call from Shep around seven-thirty. He’d said, “We have to talk. Alone. I called Eva and she’s going to bring Manuel home and stay with the boys. She should be there in about ten minutes. I’ll pick you up in about fifteen, okay?”

  Raina’s mind had been racing. Her thoughts had screamed, Don’t decide anything without me. Give me time to let me tell you I love you. But she hadn’t wanted to say it over the phone. She wanted to look into those blue eyes of his and declare it with all the feeling in her heart.

  So she simply said, “I’ll be ready.”

  So now here they were, driving down the main street of Sagebrush, her husband tall and silent and looking troubled in the driver’s seat.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I don’t want anything to happen—”

  “With the baby,” she finished for him in a low voice, not knowing if he was going to tell her they were finished, or if there was some way they could work through this together.

  “The baby is one of the things we have to talk about,” he said solemnly. “I reserved a room at the bed-and-breakfast over on Alamo Road. That way we can talk as long as we need to.”

  Talk about how to break up their marriage? Talk about how to explain to the kids? Talk about custody agreements and visitation arrangements? Stop! she warned herself, before she could make herself crazy.

  The bed-and-breakfast was as old as Sagebrush. It had once housed dancing girls for the saloon down the street that had now been upgraded to a sports bar. The outside was stone and timber, refurbished as the inside had been. But Raina hardly paid attention to the tin roof covering the doorway, to the brass lamp and milk-glass shades in the foyer, to the mahogany desk where the hostess stood ready to check them in. Raina almost felt like telling her they had a whole lot of baggage that she just couldn’t see.

  They followed her up the staircase to a room on the second floor that was set apart from the others. Once she’d left and they were alone in the room, neither of them seemed to know what to do or say.

  “Shep, I need to tell you—”

  He took her hand and tugged her to the love seat. “Don’t. Don’t say anything yet, okay? I need to tell you some things. I should have done it long before now.”

  “The past doesn’t matter to me, Shep.”

  “W
ell, it should.” He sandwiched her hand between both of his. “My dad and I were close. I followed him around everywhere he went and wanted to do anything he did. When he died, I sure didn’t understand what had happened. My mother said something about heaven, and that that’s where Dad was. That made about as much sense to me at four as when she told me we couldn’t live in Texas anymore, and we ended up in California. California. Heaven. Maybe they were the same place. I was a mixed-up kid, and that didn’t get any better when she left me in a shopping center and didn’t come back. I was six.”

  Raina wanted to hold him. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to love him. But he wasn’t going to let her do that yet. He had to get this all out, and the only thing she could do was listen. She squeezed his hand.

  “I became one of those kids who always had to be doing something, couldn’t sit still for a minute. The foster homes I fell into just wanted a kid who would listen, not ask questions and not mouth back. So I got kicked from one to another, got angrier at the system and the adults who ran it.”

  It was easy for Raina to see that rebellious little boy who just wanted to be loved, but didn’t know how to go about getting the love he wanted.

  Shep continued, “When I was thirteen, I landed at the Willets’ in Sandy Cove. But this time I lucked out. They already had taken in another foster child named Cruz, who was two years younger than me. It was as if no age difference even existed. We became brothers, in part because we knew the Willets didn’t care about us. So we had to care about each other. They just wanted the money we brought in. They just wanted kids to do chores so they didn’t have to. They liked to party, and they often went away and left us there alone. There wasn’t anything unusual about it.”

  “But you were just kids. Didn’t anybody check up on them?”

  “They knew how to put on a good front. They knew caseworkers were overburdened. They knew we wouldn’t say anything, because we had been kicked around often enough.”

  “Tell me the rest,” she requested.

  Shep stared across the room at a sepia-tinted painting of an old homestead. Finally, he shifted on the love seat and looked directly into her eyes. “They left us alone one weekend. I was fourteen and Cruz was twelve. He got sick. He had a fever before they left, but the day after they were gone, it spiked up to one hundred and four. I didn’t know what to do. There was no one I could call, no hospital nearby. It was ten miles down the road in the next town. So I did what I knew how to do. I hot-wired the old truck they’d left behind and drove Cruz to the emergency room. I took him inside and told him to wait his turn and I’d be back for him later. He was scared, but he knew I couldn’t stay or we’d both be in big trouble. The thing was, we never counted on one of the nurses getting the license plate number as I drove away. The authorities picked me up, waited for the Willets to get home, then all hell broke loose. The Willets claimed I was a troublemaker and it wasn’t the first time I’d hot-wired the truck, so the chief of police put me in jail for the night.”