Feeling oddly bouyed by the unexpected man-to-man chat, Jake signed the papers. Even as Logan notarized them and gave him his copy, he had to keep repeating to himself that Three-Stars was finally his. He still couldn’t quite believe it.
He hadn’t dared to let himself dwell too long on this moment. Until just this second, when he’d tucked the signed papers in his pocket, he’d feared that something would go terribly wrong and all of his plans and dreams would go up in smoke.
Trent clapped him on the back and shook his hand. “Congratulations, son! I hope you’ll be half as happy at Three-Stars as I’ve been. I know you’ll turn it into the biggest, most modern cattle operation in the state.”
Logan Marshall looked about as stunned as Jake felt. It was as if the banker couldn’t quite believe that Jake had actually had the financial capacity to buy the ranching operation. Then he, too, held out his hand. There was a new measure of respect in his voice when he congratulated Jake.
“We’ll look forward to doing business with you,” he said with practiced sincerity.
Jake bit back a sharp retort about the amazing turnaround from the lack of welcome he’d gotten when he’d first walked through the bank’s doors ten years before. Back then he’d been a scruffy, broken-down cowboy, with a small stash of money in his pocket and a dream in his heart. He supposed he could understand why no one then had taken him too seriously. Besides, it was time to put old insults behind him and move into the future.
He couldn’t help wondering if Sara would be a part of that future, if he really wanted her to be. He tried to imagine Three-Stars without her strength and enthusiasm and commitment and came up blank. But then he wasn’t sure he could imagine it without Trent Wilde bossing him around, either.
“I think a drink is in order,” Trent declared magnanimously. “We’ll have dinner at the Old West Grill. My treat.”
Jake wanted to get back to the ranch. Back home. He had trouble even thinking of it in those terms. It was the very first place on earth that had ever felt like a real home to him and now it was officially his. Damn, but that felt good.
At some point during dinner, though, his satisfaction began to fade. He kept coming back to Sara and wondering what her reaction was going to be. She wouldn’t be happy, no doubt about that.
Suddenly, he knew he had to be the one to tell her. He had to make her see that his fresh start didn’t have to be her ending. Forget the certain outcome of the stupid contest looming before them, he had to persuade her that he wanted her at Three-Stars, by his side, sharing his vision of what the ranch could be. That was something they had always agreed on.
But in what capacity did he want her there, he asked himself over and over on the long drive back to the ranch? As a business partner? As a wife? Until he could answer that, did he have any right to intrude on the pain she must be feeling right now over the loss of her home?
Even though it was close to midnight, there was a light shining in her window when he drove up the long, curving driveway. Something deep inside him brightened at the sight. That light was like a beacon, welcoming him home.
Then reality intruded as he admitted that it only meant that Sara was awake and restless and probably fit to be tied. Unable to let the moment pass without some sort of peace offering, he walked over to the window, picked up a handful of small stones and tossed them lightly at the panes of glass. It only took three before the window flew up.
“What the dickens do you want?” she demanded, when she spotted him in the shadows.
Standing silhouetted against the light, her hair curling wildly to her shoulders, a robe clutched tightly to her chest, she took his breath away. He couldn’t see her face, but there was no mistaking the fury in her voice. He watched her uneasily.
“I thought maybe we could talk,” he ventured.
“It’s late.”
“But you’re awake and so am I,” he stated matter-of-factly. “And it’s doubtful either one of us will get any rest until we settle this.”
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”
Jake had no doubt that Sara knew by now about the closing. Annie surely would have told her, if no one else had. Though the deal had been kept secret up until the papers were signed, the veil of silence vanished almost immediately afterward. Word had spread through town by the time he and Trent had reached the Old West Grill. Someone would surely have spoken to Sara or Danielle by now, hoping for a reaction to pass along on the grapevine.
“Come down and I’ll fill you in,” he said, going along with her pretended ignorance. “I’ll meet you in my office.”
“Your old one or your new one?” she inquired sarcastically.
So much for the pretense, Jake thought. “The only one I have,” he insisted.
He could practically feel her internal struggle. She didn’t want to see him while her emotions were still so raw and yet she clearly felt she couldn’t ignore his request.
“Give me five minutes,” she said eventually.
“I’ll make us a fresh pot of coffee.”
“Planning on a long night?”
“We have a lot to discuss.” He let it go at that and went on to the kitchen door. Inside, he fixed the coffee and carried the pot through the house to his office. He’d just poured himself a cup when Sara entered.
She’d changed into faded jeans and a cheerful green shirt, but she looked drained. Her eyes were dry, but a little too bright, as if she’d forced herself to hold back tears. Her lips were pinched. He wanted desperately to take her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right, but he didn’t know that. Not for certain.
“I’m surprised you didn’t chill one of Daddy’s best bottles of champagne for the occasion,” she said, standing stiff and straight in the doorway.
“The coffee’s more my style. Yours, too, as I recall.”
She nodded reluctantly and accepted the cup he held out. When she’d taken it and perched awkwardly on the edge of the chair in front of his fireplace, he put his own coffee aside and hunkered down in front of her.
Once there, though, he was suddenly at a loss for words. Sympathy wouldn’t be welcome, that’s for sure. She’d find it hypocritical anyway.
“Nothing has to change,” he swore to her solemnly.
Her eyes filled with a terrible, aching sorrow then. “Don’t you see, Jake? It already has.—
Chapter Twelve
Sara had promised herself that she wouldn’t let Jake see how utterly defeated she felt, but the pitying look in his eyes just now told her she’d failed. She had never wanted him to feel sorry for her. She’d wanted to fight him fair and square, with every bit of ingenuity she possessed. She’d wanted to snatch Three-Stars from him in her own way.
But even though that was still a distant possibility, something inside her had died tonight while she’d awaited her father’s return. She had never felt more lost, more at sea about who she was or her place in the universe.
Damn her father for doing this to her, she thought bitterly. He still hadn’t had the courage to confront her. He’d slipped into the house just minutes before Jake’s arrival. She’d heard him climb the steps, then pause outside her door. Her breath had caught in her throat as she’d anticipated him coming to her, admitting to her what he’d done, explaining his decision to her, maybe even apologizing to her for it.
The last was a laugh, of course. Trent Wilde saw no need to make excuses or apologies to anyone for his decisions, least of all his own family. He’d ruled Three-Stars like a benevolent dictator, generous at times, but asking no opinions and explaining nothing.
Her sweet, docile mother, who’d loved her husband to distraction, hadn’t been bothered by his single-minded dominance. It had always driven Sara and her sisters crazy. Their constant struggle for a voice and, eventually, for independence had kept the household in a state of uproar that had thoroughly bemused their mother.
Tonight, even as she had waited with bated breath for her fath
er to enter her room, she had heard him sigh and then move on. If he had struggled with his conscience at all, his conscience had clearly lost.
Given what she knew about his plans to take off for Arizona as soon as the deal was wrapped up, she wondered if she’d even see him in the morning or if he’d steal away before she awoke. She wondered if he felt any regrets at all, not over what he’d done to his daughters by selling off their heritage, but by walking away from his own.
She’d been about to rush down the hall and confront him, tell him face-to-face what a low-down, sneaky, conniving son of a gun he was, when Jake had appeared outside her window. All the heat and anger she’d churned up to take out on her father was now directed straight at the man hunkered down in front of her. She felt like slapping that sympathetic expression off his face, but she settled for sharp words instead.
“How does it feel to be a big, important man now? You must be feeling very smug,” she accused.
“Believe me, sweetheart, smug is the very last thing I feel.”
She deliberately ignored the compassionate note in his voice. “Don’t try to convince me you feel anything like remorse, because I won’t buy it. You wanted the ranch and to hell with anyone else who deserved it more.”
He took the verbal slap without flinching. “An interesting choice of words,” he noted. “Who gets to decide who deserves the ranch? Your father? He took what his father had built and turned it into a thriving operation five times as big. Are you suggesting he didn’t have any right to decide what to do with it?”
“Legally?” she asked. “Of course, he did. Morally and ethically? That’s a whole other ball game. Obviously neither of you understand those rules.”
“Sniping at me won’t change things,” Jake replied. “At least with me as the new owner, you’ve got a chance to stake some sort of claim here.”
Sara’s response to that was a single expletive. Jake’s eyebrows rose, but he kept on doggedly trying to make her see reason. She could have told him to save his breath, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He clearly had some point he wanted to make.
“What if your father had made a better deal with a total stranger?” he asked. “He could have, you know. He had offers over the years, some of them far more lucrative than what he and I had agreed to. You would have been out in the cold, if he’d taken one of those. Your bags would already be sitting on the front porch and the moving van would be in the driveway.”
Sara stared at him, openmouthed. This was a new wrinkle she’d never anticipated. “He’d had other offers?”
“A half dozen that I know of,” Jake confirmed. “One so sweet even I thought he was a fool for not accepting it.”
“Then why did he sell to you?”
“For one thing because he’s an honorable man. He’d made a commitment to me when I came here.” He leveled a look straight into her eyes. “For another he knew that you and your sisters would always be welcome here as long as I owned it. He trusted me to make sure of that.”
“How generous,” she said bitterly. “Will you give us a discount on our room rates?”
An immediate and infuriating smile tugged at Jake’s lips. “I’m not turning it into a bed-and-breakfast or a dude ranch, darlin’. And there are very few people I’d ever welcome here as guests.” His expression sobered. “Even fewer I’d consider hiring on to work with me.”
Shock spread across her face when she guessed his meaning. “You want me to work for you?” she asked incredulously.
“With me,” he corrected.
“When you get right down to it, that’s not much of a distinction.”
“It is to me,” he said.
He said it so softly that it made Sara’s nerves tingle with sudden awareness.
“I know this is difficult for you,” he said. “I know this is the last thing you expected your father to do, but it’s done now. There’s no going back. Let’s figure out some way to make it work for both of us.”
The sincerity and genuine compassion in his voice touched something very cold deep inside her, but it wasn’t enough to take away the chill that came with knowing that this was no longer her home.
She had one last chance to change that and she intended to take it. She met Jake’s gaze evenly, her shoulders stiff with determination.
“You’re forgetting something,” she reminded him. “In a week we’re competing to see who will really keep Three-Stars. This conversation is premature.”
Jake sighed heavily and stood up. “Right now you have a choice, Sara, one you can make of your own free will. How are you going to feel next week when you’ve lost and I’m holding all the cards?”
The prospect of that made her shudder, but she couldn’t allow herself to think about the possibility of losing. “I’m going to win,” she insisted. “How are you going to feel when I kick your butt out of here?”
He grinned at her defiance, a reaction she found both insulting and irritating.
“I am going to win, Jake Dawson,” she insisted with pure bravado. “Just you wait and see.”
* * *
Was she an absolute and utter idiot for not taking the deal Jake had offered her? Sara debated the question the rest of the night.
She was wide awake at dawn when she heard her father creep downstairs. Still dressed after her confrontation with Jake, she raced down after him. She caught him in the front hallway, a suitcase at his feet, a guilty expression on his face.
“Going somewhere, Daddy?” she inquired mildly. “Not without breakfast, I hope. You’ve always told us it’s the most important meal of the day.”
He regarded her warily, clearly uncertain what to make of her attitude. With obvious reluctance, he followed her into the dining room. Halfheartedly, he scooped up some fruit and poured himself a bowl of cereal, then sat down across from Sara. She waited patiently for the silence to start to weigh on him. It didn’t take all that long.
“Go ahead,” he said finally. “Get it off your chest. I can tell you’re dying to tell me what a rat I am.”
“Oh?” she said innocently. “Have you done something you’re ashamed of?”
“You know damned well I sold the ranch to Jake. I’m sure Annie couldn’t wait to break the news to you yesterday. She had enough to say to me on the subject when I got home.”
“Apparently none of it registered.”
“I did what I thought was best for all of us,” her father insisted. “You included. There’s money in the bank for each of you, enough so that you’re free to do anything you want, though you obviously don’t see it that way right now.”
Sara fought to keep from bursting into tears. “Nope, I can’t say that I do,” she agreed. “But then you never cared much about my opinion, did you? Or Dani’s? Or Ashley’s? Who’s going to break the news to them or were you planning to have your lawyer send them a clipping from the paper announcing the transaction? Or maybe the passbooks for their new savings accounts?”
He winced at that. “Okay, I deserved that. I suppose I just wasn’t up to the three of you ganging up on me. I needed to get away and I knew if I admitted that, you’d all start fussing and hovering.”
“Couldn’t you have just taken a vacation?” she asked, unable to keep the plaintive note out of her voice.
“I needed to make a clean break. There are too many memories here for me.” He sighed. “I’m lonely, Sara. And you know as well as I do that I’d never be able to bring another woman here after the life your mother and I shared. I need a fresh start and I’m fortunate enough to be able to make that happen.”
As badly as it hurt, Sara forced herself to try to see things from his perspective. She’d never given a thought to why he wanted so badly to sell. How could she have been so blind to his pain? She saw him every single day. She should have known.
She reached for his hand. “I’m sorry. I should have realized.”
“No,” he said forcefully. “It’s not your job to figure out what’s going on in my head. Maybe
I should have spelled it out, but I’ve never been much good at talking about how I feel. That’s why your mama and I were so good together. She didn’t need the words. She always knew what was in my heart.”
“And you think you’re going to find her replacement sitting around some swimming pool at a retirement center in Arizona?” Sara teased gently.
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But at least these old bones of mine will be warm.”
“You’re not old, Daddy.”
“Maybe not in years, but since your mama died, my soul feels ancient.”
“Then go on and find the fountain of youth,” Sara told him.
Since there was no turning back anyway, there seemed little point in belaboring her hurt. She’d always been quick to anger, but just as quick to forgive. She was surprised to discover that the trait held, even for something as devastating as the sale of Three-Stars. Now that she understood what had motivated her father to sell, the betrayal didn’t cut quite so deep.
“You’ll be okay?” he asked worriedly.
Her lips curved briefly. “It’s a little late to concern yourself with that now.”
“You need anything, anything at all, you can go to Jake,” he told her. “He’ll always look out for you. I have his word on that.”
If only he knew, Sara thought. Jake was far more of a danger to her than anything that might be lurking around the corner.
When her father drove off a half hour later, just as the sun was creeping over the horizon in a blaze of orange, Sara waved goodbye until he was out of sight.
The effort to be cheerful, to ease her father’s guilt had cost her. Suddenly feeling all too alone and desolate, she couldn’t bear the thought of going back into that huge, empty house…the home that no longer belonged to her.
She hurried to the barn, saddled up her favorite mare and rode out with no particular destination in mind. As usual, though, she was drawn to the ridge above the creek.
From that distant point she could look out across Wilde land and see the home she loved so dearly nestled in the stand of shade trees that were just now filling in with leaves. With snowcapped mountains in the distance, the view was stark and rugged, warmed only by that glowing sunrise that bathed it in golden light.
The Bridal Path: Sara Page 14