Best of Cowboys Bundle
Page 34
Maybe she’d gone up to the attic for something and hadn’t heard him call. He climbed another set of stairs, stood staring at the dust motes tumbling in the streak of light from a window. Stood worrying at something he’d seen—or hadn’t seen—since he’d come back into the house. Besides Marissa.
A sudden thought sent him down the two flights of stairs, across the hall and into the kitchen, then out the back door.
Sure enough. His pickup sat in the driveway. The spot beside it, where she always parked, sat empty.
He inhaled a breath of cold air.
Maybe she’d run in to town with an order for Delia. To pick up some extra groceries. For a visit with Sarah.
But he shook his head.
It was something more than that. He could feel it in his bones. He could tell by how his gut churned, by the way his hands had started to sweat. Now he recalled what had hit him upstairs, recollected that worry about something being just not right.
A stab of suspicion told him what that something was.
This time, his trip through the house took ten times longer than it’d ever taken in his life. This time, he didn’t want to get where he was going. Didn’t want to find what he knew he would.
He pushed himself through the motions. A slow, reluctant progression from kitchen to hallway. One dragging step after another up the stairs. A loose-limbed stumble along the hall to his bedroom.
As if he’d forgotten how to walk.
As if he’d never known how.
He stood frozen a long time looking into the room, not stepping through the doorway, just watching the light from the west-facing window change as the afternoon wore on.
He felt older than the Texas soil his house stood upon. Worn out by the unwanted memories pressing him down.
Finally, when he could take it no longer, he shuffled across the room to the closet.
Fading daylight trickled into the enclosed space, lighting the bare area in one corner. Showing him what he didn’t want to see. Confirming what he’d known all along would happen.
When she’d learned about Doc’s guests coming to visit, she’d had him cart everything of hers from the guest room up to his bedroom. She’d emptied the suitcases and stacked them neatly in the corner of the closet. Now, that corner was empty. The suitcases were gone.
He didn’t want to believe it.
He’d wanted Marissa to be different.
Vainly, he sought for something to prove his certainty wrong.
Instead, everywhere he looked, he found something to taunt him. Clothes hangers dangling. Shoe racks gaping. Dresser top gleaming, her hairbrush and comb gone.
He stumbled across to the bathroom. No pink toothbrush in the plastic holder. No toothpaste tube on the shelf. No soft bathrobe hanging from the hook on the door.
There it was. More proof than any man could ever need. More proof than he ever wanted.
And no way to escape the truth.
Marissa had left him.
Chapter Seventeen
As Marissa pulled into the ranch yard, the sun again slipped behind a dark cloud. She shivered, fighting both a sudden chill and an overwhelming sense of fatigue and hopelessness.
The nap she had pretended to take earlier in an attempt to avoid Gabe had turned into a genuine, if fitful, sleep. Yet the short rest hadn’t helped her, not her body or her mind or her emotions, one bit.
How could it, when her own body and mind, her own ragged emotions, had caused her to betray herself?
She still felt shamed by her actions of the evening before.
Still felt shaken by that afternoon’s visit to Doc.
A tremor had coursed through her when she first saw the baby. Their son. The same tremor had shot through Gabe, too, in a rush of unbridled emotion she felt in his hand clamped tight around hers. Saw in his awestruck expression. Heard in his gasped breath. All undeniable signs of something he would steadfastly refuse to share. Probably even refuse to admit.
She hadn’t bothered trying to ask him anything.
Shivering again, she climbed from the car. After a long, deep breath of cold air, she trudged up the back steps and opened the door to the kitchen.
A glance at the clock over the stove told her she had plenty of time to get supper ready for Gabe and Warren and the boys.
Funny, how easily she had slipped into the language of the ranch this time around, as she never had before. Her formal Chicago evening dinner had become “supper.” Gabe’s men had become “the boys.” She felt a part of life on the ranch now, a part of Dillon.
A part of everything except Gabe’s heart.
As she closed the door behind her, he burst into the room.
“Where the hell are you going?”
Shock froze her fingers on the top button of her coat.
He stood staring at her, his eyes wide, his hands fisted, his chest heaving.
She forced her fingers to move. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, as calmly as she could.
“Sure.” He curled his lip in disbelief. Or disgust.
“What’s wrong, Gabe?”
“Everything’s fine. The way I expected. Just took longer than I thought for you to decide to get the hell out of here.”
The pain behind his words gave her a sad kind of comfort. It made a difference to him, whether or not she was around, no matter how hard he fought to deny it.
“So that’s it. You noticed I moved my clothes from the bedroom.”
“Clothes and suitcases, too.”
“Yes. The Josephsons left. Yesterday, as a matter of fact. So I brought everything of mine back to the guest bedroom.”
“Yeah, right. You weren’t in the house at all. What happened, get halfway to town and realize you forgot something?”
She winced at the accusing tone, wanted to snap back at him, but stopped herself. Though this wasn’t the emotion she had hoped to see, at least he was sharing something. And there was more than just anger behind his tirade. “I went to visit Sarah.”
“Where’s the Mustang—out front where I wouldn’t see it, coming in the back trail?”
“It’s right next to your truck.”
“All ready for a quick getaway?”
Against the steady stream of his sarcasm, her patience began to wear thin. “You’re not listening to me, Gabe. Or you’re not hearing me, one or the other.” She threw the back door open again. “Look. The car is right there.”
His focus slid past her to the door, but he refused to move.
She shook her head. “This isn’t just about my leaving the bedroom, is it? You thought I’d left for good.”
He stayed silent.
“You should know I wouldn’t do that, at least not without telling you first.”
“Like last time?”
She thought of when she had left, of the things she had tried before leaving. Those few short months ago, she’d seen how obstinate Gabe could be. She’d broken her heart in the struggle to break down the wall that stood between them. An impossible task back then.
Now, she didn’t know if she could muster the strength to try again, when Gabe obviously hadn’t changed at all. But this could be the last chance she would have to fight for what she wanted. She had to try. For the baby’s sake. And for her own.
“Things were different last time,” she began. “We didn’t have a child to consider. And even then, I left you a note.”
“Note or not, doesn’t matter. You’re all the same.”
All?
That one word pierced her heart.
How many people had hurt Gabe in the past, leaving him so wary of forming a commitment? Leaving him so resistant to accepting love?
Slowly, she closed the door and hung her coat on its usual peg. She took the very seat she had occupied the morning of her return to the ranch. So much had gone on in these few short weeks.
And, clearly, so much had yet to happen.
She thought back to those bits of personal information Gabe had seen fit to
reveal to her. Another drawback to marrying quickly, without getting to know him first.
“You said to me once that women don’t stay on this ranch. I thought you meant your mother, and then me. The two of us. But, just now, you said ‘all.’”
He remained silent.
Tears of frustration prickled behind her eyelids. “We’re back where we started months ago. How can I understand, if you won’t open up to me?”
He looked away.
“You just said ‘You’re all the same.’” She forced a teasing note into her tone. “Just how many wives have you had, anyway?”
“The grapevine didn’t tell you that, too?”
Her patience snapped. So did she. “If it did, would I be asking?” A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach made her wish she’d held back the words. She’d never thought about other women in Gabe’s life. She had wanted to be the only one.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I was engaged once before. Girl grew up here. You’d think she’d stick around a small town, wouldn’t you?”
“What happened?”
“She got bored. Wanted more. Took off for the big city. Here one day, gone the next. Just like my mother.”
“And just like me?”
He said nothing.
“They were behind all your references to the big city, weren’t they? And all those times you called me a ‘city gal’?” She took a deep breath, hoping to control her dismay. It didn’t work. “How could you still compare me to them, Gabe, with what I told you last night about always wanting to live in a small town?”
“You lived here. And left.”
“It’s not the same.” She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the table. “They left and never came back. But I did. You can’t hold me up against them.”
He didn’t answer.
“When I left, it wasn’t because I wanted to live in a big city. It was because we weren’t working together, we weren’t a team.” She sighed. “If you would just give me the tiniest encouragement—”
“That courting stuff again? Is that all you want from me?”
Her breath caught so sharply, her chest ached. “That’s so unfair, Gabe. That’s not what I asked from you, not before I left and not when I first came back again. And you know it.” She paused, waited and went on. “I wanted you to open up to me. To be equal partners. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
A sudden thought hit her. She raised her hand to her mouth, holding back a cry of anguish, steadying herself for what she needed to say.
“You don’t trust me, do you?” This time, she didn’t wait for a reply that would never come. “The first day I went shopping in town, you insisted on going with me. When I did the talk at Sarah’s bookstore, you showed up unannounced. Even this afternoon, coming to town for my appointment with Doc…”
He said nothing.
She laughed, a strangled sound without humor. “I could understand if only you’d done all that to play your part of my loving husband. To stick to our agreement. Instead, you were keeping an eye on me, making sure I wouldn’t run away. Or maybe you were sure I would and just wanted to confirm it.”
Again, he refused to respond.
She pushed herself to her feet and had to brace her hands on the table for a moment to stop her trembling. Then she slowly crossed the room to stand in front of him. Waited until his gaze met hers.
“I thought you did all that out of concern for me and the baby.” Her voice broke. She fought a rush of tears. “I wanted to believe it, Gabe. I wanted to think you love me. Because I love you.”
She rested her hand on his arm, needing to touch him. Desperate to reach him.
He stared at her, unblinking, his jaw set and his body rigid. He didn’t respond, but his body spoke for him. Corded muscle tensed beneath her palm.
She had done her best to get through to him and, again, she had failed.
She had declared her love for him and been rejected.
Dropping her hand, she stepped back.
“I think it would be best if I move into town until we sort things out.”
MARISSA TOOK one last look around the guest room.
No, she hadn’t forgotten anything. In fact, she hadn’t had much to pack. Most of her suitcases were already filled—untidily, because she had flung things into the bags earlier that day in her haste to clear every trace of herself from Gabe’s bedroom.
She wanted no reminders of giving herself, eagerly and willingly, to a man who didn’t love her.
Who would never love her.
Not because he was cold or hard inside, but because he had been hurt before and would do whatever he could to protect his heart.
She, knowing nothing of this, had done exactly the wrong thing and had lost any chance she might have had with him, when she left so soon after their honeymoon.
Today, the partially packed bags had made it easier for her to move back to the guest room.
But when it came to moving out, to leaving Gabe completely, nothing could make things easier. Nothing could take away the pain she’d felt as she stood in the kitchen, her heart breaking, faced with his accusations. His silences. His stony refusals to communicate.
Nothing could ease her sorrow as, at last, she understood.
All along, she had been fooling herself, believing she was willing to endure the lonely ranch life for her baby’s sake. Convinced she’d given in to lust. Now, alone in the room she was about to leave, maybe forever, she had to admit the truth.
She had loved Gabe from the beginning and loved him even more now. She truly wanted to be his wife.
Unfortunately, all these realizations had come too late.
He might want to be a real father, but he would never be able to trust her—or any woman—enough to become a real husband.
And that’s what she wanted and needed in her life.
She lifted her smallest suitcase, wrapped her arms around it, as if it could shield her breaking heart.
Though she ached to make her life with him, it would hurt so much worse to stay when he didn’t want her—and when she had brought it all on herself.
She picked up her suitcases and went out into the hall, hoping she could leave the house without having to face Gabe again. The coward’s way out, maybe, but she would take it.
He didn’t give her that option.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets. “Running away again, Marissa?”
He’d said that to her before, and this time, she didn’t have the strength to argue. “Only as far as town, as I told you,” she said as steadily as she could. She eased down the stairs as steadily as possible, too, refusing to let him see any sign of weakness from her. Her head held high, she walked past him.
“You can stay here, if you want to.”
The words jerked her to a halt. Her body trembled in a rush of hopefulness and anticipation. She stood unmoving, praying, as Gabe went on.
“You can move back into the guest room. And stay there. We can raise the child together. Keep our lives apart.”
She remained still, barely breathing, needing a moment to find her voice. Wanting to weep at his dry, unemotional offer, when she craved so much more.
Finally, she found the strength to turn back to him. “The situation hasn’t changed from what it was when I first left, Gabe. You haven’t changed. But I have. For me, our original agreement isn’t enough.” Her voice sounded much steadier, her words much more determined than she had expected. Both rang with the conviction of what she now truly believed.
Despite that, she couldn’t leave without giving him one last chance. Giving herself one more try to see if he had really hardened his heart to her.
“I’m not going to accept a one-way commitment, Gabe. I want a real marriage, in every respect. You can be a father to our child. You are our baby’s father. But I can’t accept what you’re offering. Because what I need—what we both need—is a full, loving relationship. And I won’t ch
eat either of us out of it.”
He didn’t respond.
She tightened her grip on her suitcases and blinked away tears. This time, she couldn’t keep her voice from trembling. “I have to go now, Gabe.”
He looked at her, his eyes dark and intense, filled with an emotion she couldn’t name. An emotion he wouldn’t acknowledge.
And she knew their relationship, such as it was, such as it ever had been, was over.
NOT KNOWING where else to go, Marissa had fled to The Book Cellar.
Sarah had taken one look at her face and gone to put the Closed sign on the front door.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Marissa confessed as she accepted the cup of tea Sarah held out to her.
In all the years of moving from city to city with her mother, she had learned not to get too close to people, because she wouldn’t be around very long. In the years since, with her father, she had spent more time studying than socializing.
Sarah Jones was the closest thing to a best friend Marissa had ever had.
She unburdened herself, telling Sarah about her history and her heartbreak, all in a torrent of jumbled words.
Finally, exhausted mentally, physically and emotionally, she took a sip of her tea. Oddly enough, the still-hot brew seemed to calm her. Or maybe it was Sarah’s soothing presence.
“I know he cares about me and the baby, Sarah. He offered to paint the baby’s room—insisted on it, really, even though he could have kept away. And when we were at Doc’s office, and he saw the ultrasound…” She swallowed hard and repeated fiercely, “I know he cares. But he won’t let himself love us, because of what I did.” She shook her head. “Maybe the next woman he meets won’t make the same mistakes. Maybe he’ll be able to love her and trust her.”
“Marissa, that man’s issues with trust won’t be resolved in the next minute. And they began long before you met him.”
“I know, but I’m to blame for how he feels now.”
“No. He’s to blame, for being pigheaded enough not to see what he’s got right in front of him. And I’m not meaning that just about you.”
“His fiancée?”
Brows raised in surprise, Sarah nodded.