He tried not to wince at her eagerness to have him gone. How could he expect anything otherwise?
“Yes, that’s what it means,” Tess said.
She sounded relieved about it. He should have known that prying the truth from her and sharing it with Nate wouldn’t make a difference to either of them.
“He’s leaving ’cause of you, Mom!” Nate burst out.
Now he heard anguish in her tone. The realization forced him back in his seat in astonishment. Maybe he’d read her wrong.
She raised that strong jaw the way she had the first time he’d seen her, talking to her mama at the Double S, in the way that made her look so much like Tess. “You told him he was making comp—complications for everybody.”
“Nate,” Roselynn said hurriedly, “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is, Gram. I was in the hallway and I listened to them talking.”
Tess sighed. “You know you shouldn’t—”
“I have to listen! If I don’t, nobody tells me anything. Like, about my daddy.” She held such a grip on her fork, her knuckles turned pure white.
Tess’s face paled to nearly the same shade. “Nate—”
“Everything’s your fault!”
“Hold it,” Caleb said. He couldn’t let Tess take the brunt of Nate’s anger. Now it was his place to speak up. “That’s no way to talk to your mama. Let’s try an apology.”
The look Tess gave him would have made a better man turn tail and run.
Roselynn, about to reach for a platter, sat back empty-handed.
Nate looked from him to Tess. Carefully, she set her fork on her plate. “I’m sorry. May I be excused?”
“Yes, you may,” Tess said.
“From the table,” he added. “If you ask me, Nate, your bad manners are another story.”
For a second, he’d have sworn her dark eyes shone with tears. Then she blinked and the image disappeared. “You sound just like Mom.”
No one said a word as she shoved her chair backward, the legs screeching against the wood floor. She stood and pushed the chair up to the table, then looked at him again.
He waited for her to raise her jaw. She didn’t. His hopes took a sudden leap. Maybe sounding like her mama had earned him a mark on the good side of his tally.
“I’m sorry for my bad manners, too,” she said.
He nodded and tried a half smile. “Glad to hear it.”
She smiled slightly in return. After taking one last, quick look at her mama, she turned away from the table.
“Don’t go off too far, sugar,” Roselynn said. “We promised Becky we’d bring over those books of yours, remember? Just give me a bit to get the dishes cleared up.”
Tess rose and took the platter from Roselynn’s hand. “You two go ahead. Caleb and I will take care of things.”
He raised his brows. Helping with repairs around here didn’t bother him. But when had he gotten nominated to do housework?
“Are you sure?” Roselynn asked.
Tess nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “Oh, I’m sure. We’ve got a lot to clear up. Besides dishes.” She grabbed a serving bowl, too, and stalked out of the room.
Roselynn sat wearing her pitying expression again.
“Oh, boy,” Nate mumbled, her eyes wide. “Maybe you shoulda asked to be excused, too.”
THE IMAGE of Caleb sitting at the table smiling at Nate, of Nate smiling back at him, had filled Tess with dismay. But now, as she rinsed dishes in the kitchen sink, her hands shook from a very different reason.
After Roselynn and Nate had left the house a short while ago, she’d gone into the dining room to continue clearing the table, only to discover Caleb had conveniently disappeared, too. If he thought his absence from the kitchen would save him, he’d have to think again.
She couldn’t understand what had led her to behave the way she had these past couple of days. She had given in to his determination to tell Nate the truth. She had felt compassion when she’d seen how much Nate’s rejection had hurt him. And she had kept up appearances as well as she could since then, even though she’d wanted to do nothing but take Nate and run with her as far away as she could.
But now this!
The way he’d stepped between her and Nate enraged her. All through these weeks, he’d seen how rebellious Nate was, how hard to handle at times. Didn’t he know what his involvement would do to Nate? It would only confuse her. Only make it more difficult for her to understand after he’d left her.
After he’d left them both.
Behind her, she heard heavy bootsteps on the kitchen floor. She whirled from the sink, heedless of the water she’d sprayed across the counter, and faced him.
“How could you do that?” she demanded.
“What?”
Gritting her teeth, she grabbed a dish towel to dry her hands. “Don’t give me that. You know what. How could you discipline my daughter in front of me? What makes you think you have that right?”
“I’m her daddy.”
“No, you are not. Not in the ways that count.” To her horror, her voice broke. She clenched her fists and pushed on. “You haven’t been her daddy from day one.”
“And whose fault is that?” He crossed the kitchen and snatched the dish towel from her hands, slammed it down on the counter. “Quit worrying that damn towel, Tess, or you’ll have it in shreds. And start making some sense. You never gave me a chance to be Nate’s daddy. You never even told me you were pregnant.”
“I tried to tell you. When I found you outside Gallup. That day I had to track you down.” Suddenly, she realized her anger was less about his interference with their daughter and more about his indifference to her. About the way he’d tossed her aside. But she couldn’t seem to stop her words, to keep the bitterness from her voice. Or the images from her mind.
“You don’t remember anything about that day, do you?” she demanded. “How you were so eager to leave your one-horse town and the one-horse people in it. So eager to run into that arena to claim your trophy. Or your new belt buckle.” Tears blurred her vision, threatening to spill. “Whatever it was, you got it. I just hope it was worth what you gave up.”
She attempted to rush past him, but he reached out, catching her around the waist and turning her to face him. Her chest heaved with her ragged breaths as she fought for control. She could see him breathing unsteadily, too. Could see his eyes light with an emotion she couldn’t name.
“Yeah, I remember,” he said, his voice low. “I acted like a jackass. But that’s not what all this is about, is it?” he demanded. “I said it to you the first night I came back here. You’ll never let me off the hook for leaving.”
“Well, all right,” she cried, reaching down, intending to push his arm away, “give the man a prize.”
“I’ll take it,” he said.
She froze, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You just offered me a prize. And I know what I want.”
Her hand clamped involuntarily on his forearm. Her heart beat faster.
“You said it yourself, I’m leaving soon.” He tucked his finger under her chin and with gentle pressure tipped her face up to his. He leaned down, leaving her no choice but to make eye contact with him.
In truth, she couldn’t have looked away.
He waited the space of several heartbeats, then to her shock, he dropped his hand and stepped back.
Her hand fell to her side. Her heart raced. The pulse in her neck thudded against her skin. She’d barely regained control of her breath and he’d stolen it away again.
“Before I leave here, I want what you had for ten years and never gave me,” he said, everything—his eyes, his face, his tone—hard and uncompromising
. “I want time with Nate.”
He turned and walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance, as if aware of how thoroughly he’d unsettled her. As if certain she wouldn’t say a word.
As if knowing she couldn’t refuse him.
She reached unseeingly toward a chair at the table and dropped into it.
He had forced the issue with Nate, and the damage had been done. If her daughter were an infant, a toddler, too young to understand, the situation would be different. She could get away with telling Caleb to leave and never come back.
But Nate was a rebellious preteen with a mind and a will of her own. And she now knew Caleb was her daddy.
Tess gulped a mouthful of air, exhaled it on a long, shaky breath. No, she couldn’t refuse Caleb. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she forced him to walk away and break her daughter’s heart.
The question was, would she be able to protect her own heart when he finally went off on his own again?
These past weeks had taught her another truth she wanted to ignore. That kiss they’d shared in his truck had opened her eyes to the possibility. Her compassion for him in the face of Nate’s rejection reinforced the feeling. And the way she’d responded just moments ago, when she thought he was going to kiss her, turned that feeling into fact.
If the time had come for telling truths, she had to be honest about it. Finally. Not with him. She could never share it with Caleb. But she couldn’t keep lying to herself.
She’d never gotten over him.
Worse, that kiss, that compassion, that moment of breathless anticipation, the yearning she couldn’t deny—they all made her hope that, despite everything, Caleb’s determination to get to know their daughter would bring them together again, too.
Chapter Seventeen
Caleb stretched his bad leg sideways on the porch swing and looked over at Nate, who’d already settled into roughly the same position on the top porch step.
Another week had passed. Phone calls from Montana made him feel pressured to get back home. Still, he stayed. He had important business here, too.
He’d tried to prepare Nate for his leaving, but she hadn’t taken it well. He couldn’t walk out on her right away.
Just yesterday, he and Tess had taken care of the paperwork for the property he’d agreed to buy. Knowing how much she and Dana needed the income, he couldn’t resent the purchase. And he would find some way of making the investment pay off.
A good part of his time, he’d helped out with repairs around the inn and painting that room Roselynn needed done.
As the week had gone by, he’d continued to stop in often at the Double S to visit with Dori and Manny. He’d kept in touch with Sam and Ben and with others in town, too. It felt good to know he could talk to them all without that chip on his shoulder.
Resentment weighed him down only when he talked to Tess.
Along with their business discussions, they’d managed to have a few amicable conversations. Somehow, he’d handled the constant temptation to touch her without giving in. But he’d started getting cramps in his fingers from clenching them into fists when she came anywhere close to him.
Better to keep from spending time alone with her, to have Roselynn and Nate around—and Ellamae, when she dropped in. Safety in numbers.
He wouldn’t have to worry about that tonight. Tess had just gone upstairs to get ready for another date with good old Joe. The best thing, all around.
He looked over at Nate again. They’d made peace on Signal Street during the Fourth of July parade. For the price of a double-dip ice-cream cone.
Well, a sort of peace, and probably as close as they could have come then. But he continued to work at it and had felt gratified to see he’d made real progress.
Every day, he managed some time alone with her. Nothing special, just having her help while he made his repairs. Playing cards and checkers after supper. Relaxing with her outside, where he took his usual seat here on the swing and she settled onto her favorite spot on the step.
“You want grape or lime?” she asked, holding up a couple of wrapped candies.
“Lime.” He pretended not to notice her relief. He’d already figured out she liked the grape-flavored best.
She got up to give him his candy, then returned to her seat. “Gram sure has lots of stuff for you to do around here.”
He nodded. “She sure does. Good thing I have a great assistant.”
She gave him a smile. She hadn’t warmed up to him enough to reach her previous level yet. Maybe she never would. Fine by him—he didn’t want the hero worship, the adoration, the crush. What he did want…he had no right to expect.
Plenty of times, he’d found her eyeing him as if she’d been trying to figure out what made him tick. She sat watching him that way now. He waited, knowing that sooner or later she’d come out with whatever she had on her mind.
This porch was the place they did most of their talking.
And the place he did a lot of his thinking whenever he found time hanging heavy. He tried not to let that happen often. Didn’t want to risk getting too deep into his troubled thoughts.
“Before,” Nate said suddenly, “did you ever wish you had kids?”
He froze in the act of rubbing his knee. She hadn’t called him by name since the day he’d told her he was her daddy. But she’d asked a slew of intense questions about his relationship with her mama, his life on the circuit, and what he’d done since he couldn’t ride.
With all those questions this week, she’d never brought up anything like this. He knew where she had to be headed.
“You know,” he said, “I never did wish for kids, Nate. Never thought I’d have a family.” Never wanted one. But he couldn’t be that blunt.
That night around the fire ring at Sam’s place, when she had asked him why he looked so sad, he hadn’t known what to say. So he’d come up with something else. In all the time he’d thought about it since, he still didn’t know how he’d find the right words.
He couldn’t tell a nine-year-old anything he’d thought about while sitting in front of that fire. How his own mama had told him straight out he was nothing but a burden to her. Nothing but deadweight dragging her down.
That’s the kind of family he knew about.
He couldn’t give her an honest answer about that. He didn’t want to talk about his past at all with Nate. With anyone. Yet with the truth he’d revealed to her just a week or so ago, how could he not tell her something about his life, too?
“Growing up,” he began slowly, “I didn’t have much of a family.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. No brothers or sisters. No cousins.”
“Like me.”
He nodded. He’d had no father, either. Like her, too.
Tess had shown him a photo album filled with pictures. Of herself and Roselynn and Ellamae. Of Sam and Paul and Dana and of other folks from town.
And of Nate. Lots of pictures of Nate, showing how she’d grown and changed through the years.
He clenched his jaw so hard, the candy split in two. He should’ve been here for her. He should’ve been her daddy all along.
A movement through the screened door caught his eye. Tess stood in the entrance hall, looking down at Nate’s bent head.
Unaware of her mama’s presence, she tugged at the lace on her sneaker. “I guess I’ll never have brothers and sisters.” Before he could think of what to say, she took a deep breath and added, “Why can’t you stay here?”
His turn for a deep breath, one he let out by degrees. “I told you the other day, Nate,” he said softly. “I have a ranch to run—in Montana. I’ll have to go back there sometime soon. But you’ll get to visit. I promised you that, remember?”
&
nbsp; “Uh-huh.”
She kept fiddling with her sneaker, refusing to meet his eyes. He could feel Tess’s gaze on him now. He kept his focus on Nate.
“So,” she continued, “when you go there, are you ever coming here again?”
“Of course I am.” But no matter how many times he returned, he would never get back all he’d missed.
He couldn’t escape the irony of the situation. Or the parallel between this conversation and those he’d had in past weeks with Tess.
“It’s just a quick plane ride,” he told Nate. “Montana’s not that far away.”
“It’s far. I looked it up on the computer.” She shot to her feet.
He glanced toward the door. Tess no longer stood in the entry.
Nate bolted into the house and yanked the door so roughly, it bounced before slamming shut. The quick slap of her sneakers told him she was running.
“Nate, stop,” Tess said from inside the house.
The sound of running steps continued.
As he reached the door, she spoke again. “Anastasia Lynn La—”
“Don’t call me that!” Nate shrieked. “My name shoulda been Cantrell!”
Her cheeks flushed beet-red, she stood near the stairs and stared back in their direction. Tess had frozen just beside the doorway, her face drained of any color at all.
He stepped into the house, closed the door gently and looked from one to the other of them.
“Nate,” he said, “don’t be in such a hurry to take on my name. Your own’s got a lot more going for it.”
She looked down at the toes of her sneakers.
“And,” he added, “don’t be so quick to sass your mama. She doesn’t deserve that kind of talk from you.”
There was a lot more Tess didn’t deserve.
Roselynn entered the hall from the doorway into the dining room. Her eyes widened when she saw the three of them standing motionless. “What’s all this? Tess, did you let Caleb and Nate know supper’s waiting? Isn’t anyone planning to come eat?”
“I told them,” Tess said. “I’m leaving now. Joe just pulled up.” She slipped past him and through the doorway without a backward glance. In a hurry to go meet the man. Well, she’d be better off with Harley.
The Rodeo Man's Daughter (Harlequin American Romance) Page 17