This was…well, it was wrong, that’s what it was. He wasn’t supposed to ignore her, and if he did, she certainly wasn’t supposed to ache because of it.
The man was turning her life upside down, making her want him, giving her a child, expecting her to marry him, sending his grandmother to see her. Then, ignoring her?
No, this wasn’t right. Tugging on her cardigan sweater, Blaire marched out of the house and across the parking lot. She was twenty feet away from Justin when he turned and took a step toward her. Only then, after he’d turned and moved in her direction, did he seem to notice her.
“Blaire.”
She stopped about five feet away. “Justin.”
“Hi.” He stuck his hands in his hip pockets. “How are you doing?”
“Just fine.” Not that he’d bothered to call and find out all week long, she thought with an odd mixture of pain and anger and sadness. And maybe just a touch of peevishness, but that was neither here nor there. Then she went and ruined her aloof act. “I thought maybe you would have called this past week.”
He dragged his boot heel through the gravel beneath his feet. “I wanted to.”
She wasn’t going to ask. It would sound too pitiful, too needy. She wouldn’t give him that much of an edge over her. Then she did. “Why didn’t you?”
He glanced out at the cars going past on Main. “You asked me for breathing room. I said I’d give it to you.” He nodded toward her compact parked beside the garage. “I see you got your car back. I thought you were going to call me for a ride back to Stillwater to get it.”
“They called yesterday. Mama took me.”
“Oh.” He stared down at his feet, then glanced back up at her. “Did they fix everything?”
“It looks fine. Now all it needs is painting, but I’m in no hurry for that.”
“I can—”
“No, you can’t,” she told him. “But thank you for offering. I got a cell phone yesterday.”
“That’s…” It did her heart good to see him look both relieved and disappointed. She knew he’d wanted to get it for her himself. “…great.”
“Have you got something to write with? I’ll give you the number,” she offered.
He had a small notebook not much larger than a business card, and a short pencil stub in his shirt pocket. She gave him the number of her new cell phone and he wrote it in his notebook.
They stood there another few minutes, looking everywhere but at each other.
“Justin, what’s wrong?” she finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re acting like we’re strangers or something. Are you angry with me?”
“Why should I be angry with you?”
She shrugged and hugged her arms around her middle. “Because I won’t marry you?”
“Ah,” he said with a slight smile. “There’s where you’re wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“I think you will marry me. You just haven’t realized that’s what you want to do yet.”
“Ah,” she mimicked. “There’s that ego we all know and love. I’d wondered what had happened to it.”
He chuckled. “Just like a woman. Give her what she says she wants and she wonders what’s wrong. Have lunch with me tomorrow. Maybe we can regain our footing with each other.”
“All right.” She didn’t even have to think about her answer. Not with the way her heart lifted at his invitation.
For their lunch date the next day, the weather decided to be their friend. The temperature soared to sixty, the air barely stirred, and the sun shone true and bright. A two-shirt day at the most.
Blaire dressed in jeans, shirt, boots, and an oversized red flannel shirt as a jacket.
To Justin, when he pulled up and she stepped out of her apartment and started down the stairs toward him, she looked adorable. But then, she always looked adorable to him.
He rounded his rig and opened the passenger door for her. Before he could offer her a hand up, she climbed in unaided.
Okay, he thought with reluctance. She’s not ready to be touched yet. That was a shame, because he certainly was, as long as the person doing the touching was her.
All of this obsessing he’d been doing lately, thinking of her, dreaming of her, wanting her. It had to mean something, didn’t it?
“Where are we going?” she asked when he jumped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking lot.
“It’s a surprise.” And a gamble, he thought. A gamble for him.
“Oh? Okay.” But her agreeable tone turned wary a moment later when he took the road out of town. “Justin?”
“Hmm?”
“You did say we were going to lunch, didn’t you?”
“I did, and we are. Just trust me. You’ll like it.” He hoped.
He stayed on the highway for several miles, then turned off onto a secondary road before reaching the main gate to the Cherokee Rose Ranch. He followed the secondary road for a mile and turned to drive along the back side of the ranch until he reached his favorite spot.
He pulled off onto the narrow shoulder and parked.
By this time Blaire had her arms crossed over her chest as if to protect herself, but she was looking around with interest.
“I thought you might enjoy a picnic, since it’s so nice today,” he said.
She studied the landscape outside her window. “This is the place you told me about, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” he confessed, wondering what she thought of it. “Yeah, it is.”
She opened her door and got out. She walked over to the barbed-wire fence and looked around. Justin got out and followed her. The land sloped gently up from the fence to crest about fifty yards away from where they stood. The Bermuda grass was winter brown now, but in the summer it would be a thick green carpet, broken here and there by the occasional scrub oak.
“I guess I don’t know what a persimmon tree looks like,” Blaire confessed. “Or a buffalo wallow, either, for that matter.”
He couldn’t say how pleased he was that she had remembered his description of the place. “Come on, I’ll show you.” He crawled through the fence, then pushed one strand down with his boot and held the one above it up with both hands while Blaire climbed carefully through.
Then, because he had opportunity and a good excuse, he took her hand in his as he led her toward the small grove of tall, rather narrow trees at the far end of the clearing with scarcely a leaf left on them anywhere.
“These,” he said with a wave of his free hand, “are persimmon trees. Although, I can’t prove it because the deer picked them clean months ago.”
“It’s just as well,” she said. “But I’m wondering if a ripe persimmon is as awful as a green one.”
“Ripe ones are sweet,” he told her. “You can try one out next fall.”
He could have kicked himself for referring to the future that way, when they might not have a future together at all. But she didn’t protest, and she had yet to pull her hand from his, so he held on and led her up the slight incline to the crest and over.
“Have you ever seen a buffalo wallow before?” he asked her.
“Not that I know of,” she answered. “If I have I didn’t know what it was.”
He stopped at the lip of a ragged depression in the ground, perhaps two feet deep at its deepest in the center. “It looks pretty much like that.”
“That? That looks like erosion.”
“I guess that’s what it is. Erosion caused by years of big heavy animals rolling around on their backs in the same spot. They wear it down, the rain comes along and helps things along a little more, and there you have it.”
She cocked her head and studied the wallow. “Has anyone ever tried to fill one in?”
Justin shrugged. “I’m sure they have. We haven’t. Haven’t had a need to.” He stepped off the edge, taking Blaire with him, and walked inside the ten-footwide depression. “The ground in here is so hard-packed not much will gr
ow. Besides,” he said looking around at the pasture. “With all the buffalo gone—most of them, anyway—I kinda like leaving this here, a reminder of the huge herds that used to roam here.”
“It’s good,” she said. “That you want to preserve it.”
Justin had never cared much one way or another whether people outside his family approved of him or not, but the approval Blaire had just given him made his chest swell.
Still holding her hand, he led her up and out of the wallow and back along the crest to the center of the hilltop.
“Here,” he told her, “is where I want to build a house.”
“The view would be spectacular,” she observed.
“It will.” He looked out over the countryside and imagined seeing it from his very own porch. With Blaire at his side. And a child at their feet.
The picture in his mind of the three of them on their porch was so powerful it nearly brought him to his knees. He knew, in that instant, that his life, the home he hoped for, his entire future would be sadly lacking without Blaire. He was in love with her.
Why hadn’t he seen it sooner? Why hadn’t he understood his own feelings?
Now what did he do? Blurt it out? By the way, Blaire, I was wrong. I really do love you.
Sure, she would believe that. What woman wouldn’t?
He could give her flowers, but he didn’t have any. This time of year he couldn’t even come up with any wildflowers. The only flowers he’d seen lately were the yellow pansies his grandmother had planted a few days ago. He doubted she would approve of his picking them, and Blaire might not appreciate stolen flowers anyway.
“Justin?”
He pulled himself out of his musings to realize that he’d been crushing her fingers. “Damn. I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, of course not. What could be wrong?”
Blaire didn’t know, but something was going on. She felt a sudden new tension in and around him.
“I think I promised you lunch,” he said.
“I think you’re right. You did.”
“Then lunch it is. I’ll be right back.”
“Back?” she protested as he started down the slope toward the road. “You’re leaving me here?”
“I’m just going to the pickup,” he called back to her.
Blaire watched as he sprinted the last few yards. She flexed her fingers, then folded them against her palm, still feeling the warmth of his hand against hers. Still wondering what had gone through his mind a moment ago when his face had gone blank and his fingers had squeezed hers.
In a way, it was gratifying to realize that something bothered him. He always seemed so sure of himself and positive about what he wanted. He’d brought her here to show her where he planned to build his home one day.
His home. Not theirs. This had been his plan for a long time and had nothing to do with her or the baby.
Why that should disappoint her, she didn’t know. What a stupid thing for her to feel, particularly when she’d been pushing him away for weeks.
Look at him, she thought. He even walks like a man who knows exactly what he wants.
He climbed through the fence and circled around to the driver’s side of the pickup. From behind the seat he pulled what looked to be an old quilt. From the bed he retrieved an ice chest and a gallon sized Thermos.
Blaire met him at the fence and took the quilt and jug so he could use both hands to carry the large ice chest.
After climbing through the fence for the third time that day, Justin eyed it critically. “Need a gate here,” he muttered.
They carried their load up the slope and Justin picked a spot that he hoped would one day be the center of his front yard. There he spread out the quilt.
“Lunch,” he said, placing the ice chest on one corner of the quilt, “is served, m’lady.”
“Why, thank you, kind sir.” She dropped to her knees before the ice chest and opened the top. “What are we having?”
They were having fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, fruit salad, and for dessert, fresh, homemade brownies, with iced tea to wash it down.
“If you tell me you cooked all of this yourself,” she told him as she licked chocolate from her fingers, “I might change my mind and marry you after all.”
She meant it as a joke, but he didn’t laugh. The best he had to offer was a half-smile.
“I can’t even take credit for the ice cubes. We have an ice maker. But I’ll give you a better reason. Last week when you asked me if I loved you I said I didn’t know. Now I know. I do love you, Blaire.”
Blaire’s heart started pounding against her ribs.
“I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he said. “I want us to build a home here on this hill, but if you’d rather live in town, I can go along with that. As long as you marry me, because I really do love you.”
Blaire’s hands were shaking, and so was her head. “You don’t mean that.”
“Of course I mean it,” he claimed.
“No.” She shook her head harder and scooted away from him. She couldn’t let herself believe him. “No one else in my life has ever loved me. I’m supposed to believe you just because you say so?”
“How can I prove it to you?” he asked.
“You can’t. You could take out a sign with two-foot letters and I wouldn’t believe it. All you want to do is control me.”
“Dammit, Blaire, I’m not your father, and you’re not your mother.”
“‘Get a cell phone,’” she mimicked. “I got one. ‘Get a safer car.’ I didn’t. I like my car just fine. ‘Stay out of the cold.’ Ha. You like telling me what to do. I don’t like being told.”
“I don’t want to control your life, dammit, I want to share it. I love you. I want us to become a family. You, me and the baby.”
But Blaire was not hearing him. Her fear had turned his words into a buzzing in her ears.
Chapter Twelve
Blaire scarcely remembered the ride home from her picnic with Justin at the Cherokee Rose, and that was more to her shame than her credit.
For one brief second, when he’d first told her he loved her, Blaire had allowed herself to believe.
Then a sharp picture of her parents had intruded, and reality came crashing in around her head. She could not afford to believe. She couldn’t let herself be rushed or pressured into marriage. No matter what he said, it was all still because of the baby, and that was no reason for them to tie themselves to each other.
As if to prove her correct, that night her parents lit into each other again, over nothing, as far as Blaire could tell. But their argument ended with the usual accusations of whose fault it was that they were stuck with each other.
No, Blaire would not believe Justin. She would not marry him. She would not live her life the way her parents did, and she would not expose her child to such bitterness as theirs. If that left her feeling sad and lonely, as if she might be making the biggest mistake of her life…. No. She couldn’t afford to think like that.
All she had to do now was make Justin believe that she would not change her mind, that he should give up on her and get on with his life. They would work something out regarding the baby, because she had meant it when she’d said she didn’t intend to cut him out of the child’s life. Her child would know its father. She would make sure of that. But her child would never be made to feel responsible for its parents’ problems. Not as long as Blaire had breath in her body.
Justin was not as lucky as Blaire. He remembered every second of the rest of their time together that afternoon. The painful, echoing silence. The terror and anger emanating from her.
He thought he understood the terror, although the strength of it surprised and worried him. But the anger was new and, to him, inexplicable.
She had told him she would not marry a man who didn’t love her. Now he loved her, and her reaction was anger? It didn�
��t make sense.
Maybe it was time for him to face the fact that she didn’t return his feelings. She most especially didn’t share his desire for marriage.
What if he got lucky and was finally able to convince her to marry him? It seemed to him that they ran the risk of making her feel trapped somewhere down the road. Did he want to marry a woman who needed her arm twisted, so to speak? Would she one day turn into her mother and throw it back in his face that getting married had never been her idea?
God help him, he was going crazy. Was it time to push harder, or let go?
Let go, hell. He didn’t think he was capable of that. He was nowhere near ready to give in. Which was why, two days after their picnic, he called her and asked her to lunch.
“Indoors, this time,” he added quickly. “With a waitress and everything. No barbed-wire fences, no buffalo wallows.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she told him. “I didn’t mind the fence, and I liked the buffalo wallow.”
“You did?”
“I did. But as for lunch—”
“Tomorrow, around noon?” he asked.
“I can’t, Justin.”
“How about the day after?”
“No, thank you. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Justin was left listening to a dial tone.
On the other end of the line, Blaire dropped the phone into its cradle. Her hands shook so hard she couldn’t have held the receiver another ten seconds if her life had depended on it.
She had blown it. Justin had presented her with the perfect opportunity to tell him not to ask her out again, not to call her any more. But she had panicked and hung up.
The next time, she promised herself. If he asked her out again, she would be firm and honest and explain that she was never going to change her mind.
But when he pulled into the parking lot two days later, her first instinct was to run so she wouldn’t have to face him.
“When did I get to be such a total coward?” she wondered aloud.
The Chisholm Brothers:Friends, Lovers... Husbands? Page 55