“LET me get this straight,” Nate said, brows furrowed as he gave Sam a hard stare. “You walked out on her and yet you’re the one all fucked up over it? What the hell did she do to you?”
Sam glowered. He didn’t want to be having this conversation. Faith had been at him, unrelenting, and now she’d officially released her attack dog on him. Nate was going to be like a dog with a goddamn bone.
“I’ve told Faith and now I’ll tell you, I don’t want to talk about it. What’s with you two tag-teaming me to try to get me to open up?”
Nate had the nerve to laugh. “No one likes admitting they’re a dickhead, but sometimes it has to be done. That’s why I’m here.”
Sam got up and walked away, not about to listen to Nate carrying on like he could walk the moral high ground.
“Hey, wait up!”
Sam didn’t. He walked fast, storming away from Nate, knowing he was so close to exploding and losing his temper, and his friend didn’t need to be on the other side of that.
“Sam!” He heard Nate breathing heavily, knew that even if he started to run he’d never manage to get away from him.
“Look,” Sam said, spinning around. “Do you have a horse you need me to look at, or was it all a ruse to get me here?”
He could tell from the way Nate hesitated that he was right, and of all the things Nate had done to him over the years, lying wasn’t one of them. He knew why his friend was staying silent.
“I goddamn knew it.”
“Hey, hold up,” Nate said, hand landing on his shoulder, his grip firm. Sam lashed out when Nate’s fingers dug into him, slamming his arm away and backing up a step. He didn’t want to fight him, but he’d goddamn punch him if he had to.
“Let me go, Nate,” Sam growled.
“You haven’t seen your sister since she stayed over, and the girls are missing you,” Nate said, holding up his hands, showing that he didn’t want to fight. Sam felt some of his tension drain away, the moment his sister and nieces were mentioned. “We just wanted to see you.”
“They’re not old enough to miss me and you know it,” Sam shot back.
Nate shrugged. “So what. Hell, I miss you, and if I have to pretend like there’s an out of control mustang on the property just to get you here, then I’ll do it.”
Sam stared back at Nate, knew that he was just trying to help him. He was starting to get good at pushing away people that cared about him.
“I don’t want to talk about her, Nate. I can’t,” Sam said, forcing the words out. “So stop asking me, alright?”
Nate indicated with his head and started to walk, and Sam followed, falling into step beside him.
“Something I never told you, hell, I can’t even believe I am now, but,” Nate said, his voice low and gravelly as he paused, “when I was falling for Faith, the hardest part was knowing I couldn’t talk to you about it, that I had to deal with it on my own.”
Sam grunted. “Yeah, I just about ripped your head off for looking at her, huh?” He’d never meant to be so protective of his sister, but he’d also never believed Nate could change so much, had been so certain that he’d hurt her and leave her crushed.
“My brothers gave me so much shit about her, but you wouldn’t have, not if it had been any other girl I’d fallen for,” Nate said. “You would have listened to me and made me see reason.”
“You’re telling me I need to talk to you?” Sam asked. “Because you haven’t exactly convinced me with your sob story.”
“Look, I was there, Sam. I was there for you when you came back from Iraq, I lived under the same roof as you and listened to the nights you woke up howling in your sleep from whatever the hell you were still dealing with,” Nate said, stopping, hands shoved into his pockets as he leveled his gaze on him. Sam stood tall, stared straight back at his friend. “And I was there for you when Kelly ripped your damn heart out and you know it.”
Sam felt his jaw tighten, the familiar tick plaguing him when he clenched his teeth together.
“Look, she did something terrible to you, and I get that. But I did terrible things, too. I slept with married women and I broke hearts, but when I met Faith?”
Sam hated talking about his sister like that with Nate, but he was right. He had changed. “Yeah, I know, you changed,” Sam admitted. “But I can’t forget what she did to me,” he said, talking about his ex.
“You can and you will,” Nate insisted.
Sam stared into the distance, wished to hell he wasn’t about to say what he had to say. “Kelly was pregnant.” He spoke so low he wondered if Nate even heard him. “We’d talked about kids, and we found out she was pregnant. I was going to tell you, but she wanted to wait until three months or something, and then I found her in bed with him.”
He looked at Nate, saw the unflinching look on his face. “Hold up, she was…”
Sam swallowed as Nate’s words trailed off. “She had an abortion without telling me. I was all excited about becoming a dad, and she’d already terminated it, pretended like she’d lost the baby until my lawyer pressed for information and she laughed at the mediation and told us she’d gotten rid of it. Like it didn’t mean a fucking thing to her.”
This time when Nate’s hand closed over his shoulder, he didn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” Nate said.
“Yeah, well, so am I.” Sam breathed deep, knowing he’d done the right thing in finally sharing what had happened instead of holding it deep inside and letting it fester. “It hurt like hell back then and it still does now. I’ll never forget her laughing like it was nothing.”
“Come on, let’s get a beer.”
Sam walked alongside Nate and when they finally reached his place, he settled into an outside chair and waited for Nate to bring out their drinks. He knew Faith was out and he was grateful for some time to process before having to pretend like everything was fine.
“You want to know what I think?” Nate asked, passing him a beer and settling across from him, legs stretched out in front of him.
“I get the feeling you’re gonna tell me anyway,” Sam muttered, taking a long pull of the ice-cold beer.
“If you can’t see that Mia is different from Kelly, then you’ve got rocks for brains. What that girl did was low, but I don’t believe Mia is cut from the same cloth, not for a second.”
Sam laughed. “I bare my soul to you and you straight out tell me I’ve got rocks for brains?”
Nate shrugged. “You need to let it go, or you’re going to end up a miserable old bastard still holding on to the past when everyone else moved on.”
“Easy for you to say.” But Nate had a point. He knew he needed to let go, but it wasn’t something he found easy. “It’s like I’ve tried so hard to be the opposite man my father was, and I’ve ended up in the same position, with a woman screwing me over and turning me into a bitter bastard.”
“You’re nothing like your father.” Nate’s voice was deep, his eyes glowering. “Don’t you dare say that.”
Sam leaned back, sipping his beer, staring at his boots. “So what do you suggest?”
“I suggest you stay here and get good and drunk tonight, lick your wounds and think about how miserable you are,” Nate said with a smile. “Then you pick yourself up and have a good hard think about what you’ve walked away from. It’s better to plead for forgiveness and you know it.”
Sam nodded. It wasn’t that Nate was wrong, Sam just wasn’t convinced he was capable of moving on, of ever licking his wounds enough that they’d heal.
They sat longer, moving on to another beer as the sun started to disappear. As the bang of a car door signaled that Faith and the girls hard arrived home, Nate stood, but not before pausing and looking down at him, a curious look on his face.
“What did she do to scare you off anyway? Was it that bad?”
Sam took a long, slow sip of beer. “She told me she loved me.”
Nate shook his head. “You fucking idiot. Change of plan: stop drinking and get your ass over to her place, now.”
Sam ducked to avoid the play-fight fist coming in his direction, watching Nate jog off to meet his girls. Maybe he was right, but it was easy for him to say. But Sam was the one who’d seen the look in Mia’s eyes, heard the soft words as they’d passed her lips. And they’d been the scariest goddamn words he’d ever heard in his life.
* * *
Sam parked his vehicle near the stable block at the Ford ranch, where he had every day when he’d been working there. Out of habit he glanced down to where Tex was usually kept, but he didn’t see the stallion. Depending on how things went with Mia, he might ask if he could head down and see him.
He walked past the stables and down the path toward Mia’s place, wondering what the hell he was even doing. Was Nate right? Was he stupid to turn his back on someone like her and not at least try to move past what had happened? Or had he been right that he didn’t have enough to give her, that he’d never be able to trust her and commit to her after what he’d been through? Maybe he’d left it too long to plead forgiveness anyway, she might have already moved on.
He’d been staring at his feet as he walked but he looked up then, smiling when he saw the familiar glass house ahead of him, feeling a pull toward it that he’d tried to ignore for too long. The thought of seeing Mia again, of trying to open up to her and explain himself, it terrified him, but he owed it to himself and her to try.
“You’ve got a goddamn nerve.”
Sam stopped walking and found himself face to face with Mia’s brother.
“Tanner,” he said, nodding and looking past him, wondering where Mia was.
“I’m gonna give you five minutes to get off this property before I shoot you for trespassing,” Tanner snarled, his fists bunched at his sides, face like thunder.
“I just came to see Mia,” Sam said, backing up and holding his hands up in surrender.
“Yeah? Well, you mess with my sister, you have me to deal with.” Tanner edged closer. “I’m counting,” he said.
Sam looked at Tanner and nodded. “I get it. I have a sister and I’d protect her with my life. But—”
“What part of me wanting to kill you don’t you get?” Tanner demanded, stepping in and moving so fast that Sam didn’t have time to fully evade the knuckles skimming past his jaw. The blow sent him staggering but he didn’t swing back, wasn’t about to have a fistfight with the guy.
“Tanner!” Mia’s scream was piercing as she ran from the house, barefoot in jeans and a t-shirt, her eyes wide as she stared at them.
“Mia, please, I just want to talk to you,” Sam said, ignoring the fact her brother looked even more enraged now. But she had her hand on his arm, and Sam was certain he wasn’t about to pull anything violent again with Mia looking on.
He could have fought back, it wasn’t that he was a coward, he’d learned more than his fair share of physical hand-to-hand combat skills when he’d been serving, but he wasn’t about to get into a fight with Tanner. The guy was protecting his sister, and that was one of the few things in life Sam understood implicitly.
“Move,” Tanner said. “She doesn’t want to see you, she’s not talking to you, she wants you the hell away from her. We both do.”
Mia stepped forward and Sam took his chance, deciding to say what he’d come to say before following orders and leaving.
“Mia, if we can just go inside and talk for a few minutes,” Sam said, staring into eyes that had always reminded him of the ocean. He’d almost forgotten how beautiful she was, how effortless she was with her hair in a ponytail and her lack of airs and graces. What the hell had he been thinking running out on her like that? The hurt in her gaze right now told him that she was nothing like Kelly; there was no possible way she could deceive him, no way a woman as sweet and kind as Mia could have ever done to him what his ex-girlfriend had.
“No,” she said, moving closer to her brother, like she was scared. “Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Tanner.”
Sam nodded. He deserved that. “What I did to you, it was wrong. You scared me and instead of leaving you that night, I should have been honest with you,” he said, struggling to explain how he was feeling. “I never meant to deceive you, but, damn it, I fell for you, Mia. I fell for you even though I tried to pretend like I hadn’t, and when you said that I…”
“That’s enough,” Mia said, cutting him off before he’d even finished. She had tears in her eyes and she was clutching her brother’s arm. “I will never forgive you, Sam. What you did? I don’t even know where to begin. Have you even been honest with your wife or did you just want to come here to make yourself feel better?”
“My wife?” Sam asked, perplexed. “I don’t know…”
“Don’t act stupid, Romeo,” Tanner interjected. “She knows all about it, there’s no point sticking to a story now.”
Sam went to answer but Mia spoke before he could. “I came face to face with her, Sam,” she hissed. “How could you do that?”
“Mia, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I don’t have a wife.”
“Sam, I saw her with my own eyes! I went to your house and…”
He relaxed a little, relief pulsing through him. “You met Faith,” he said, realizing what had happened. “Faith’s my sister,” he explained, “she was staying at my place while I was away.”
Mia was ghostly white, like all the blood had drained from her face. “So you don’t have a child either?” she asked.
“No, Mia, I don’t have a wife or a child. All I have is a seriously screwed up past and a lot of shit to work through,” he said, wishing they weren’t standing outside, and that Tanner wasn’t there between them like a guard dog. “I would never intentionally hurt you like that, it was why I insisted on our arrangement in the first place, but it didn’t work, did it? Because I care for you, and I want to ask you for a second chance. I miss you and it’s taken all this time apart and me acting like a stubborn jackass for me to realize how wrong I was.”
Mia shook her head. “I need you to leave, Sam. It was good of you to come by, but things have changed,” she said, giving him a sad smile. “I’ll be forever thankful that you came into our lives to help Tex, but what we had is over.”
She turned and walked away, and Sam tracked her with his eyes all the way into the house. When she disappeared from sight, he turned to Tanner.
“It’s time for you to go,” he said, but this time he was less aggressive. Sam got it; up until a few moments ago Tanner had thought he’d been a married man deceptively sleeping with his sister. Now he was just a regular kind of jerk.
“Yeah, I’m going,” Sam said, backing away then stopping, forcing himself to get out of his comfort zone and admit his damn feelings for once. “I fell for her, Tanner. I want you to know that I never meant to hurt her and if there was anything I could do to change the way I reacted that night, I’d do it.”
Tanner nodded. It was barely noticeable but he did and Sam turned and walked away. He’d been a fool. He’d already had to leave his past behind once, when he’d returned from active duty, and he needed to put it behind him again now or he was going to end up miserable for the rest of his life, too fearful of being hurt to ever learn to love and trust again.
Trouble was, he’d left it too late to apologize to Mia. The damage was already done, the hurt was already inflicted. The fact she’d thought Faith was his wife? That was the icing on the cake. But he deserved it. All of it. He knew Mia had been to visit and he’d been too pig-headed to man up and admit his mistake then, to call her the moment he’d known she’d come looking for him. If he had? Then she at least wouldn’t have had to spend the last four weeks thinking he was an even bigger jackass than he was.
* * *
Mia sat on the edge of the pool, toes dipped in, jeans rolled up to mid-calf so they didn’t get wet. She’d known that one day she’d end up crossing paths with Sam, but after a while she hadn’t expected him to just turn up on her doorstep ready to apologize.
He wasn’t married. The words kept circling her mind, torturing her, making her question everything. She’d spent all this time despising what he’d done, determined not to tell him about the baby, but if he wasn’t married, if it wasn’t going to cause hurt and pain to anyone else … she placed her palm flat to her stomach. She knew the right thing to do, she just wasn’t ready to tell her secret to anyone else, not yet.
“I feel really bad for leaving you.” Tanner appeared, crouching beside her, blocking the sun from her eyes.
“It’s fine,” she said, smiling over at him. “You’ve been my rock, Tan.”
He made a grunting noise. “Yeah, well, someone has to look after you.”
Tanner kissed the top of her head and rose, looking worried.
“I’ll be fine. Go ride bulls and forget all about me, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay. But you call me if you need me.”
“I won’t,” she assured him. It had been nice having him stay a few days, but she was ready to have her house back to herself and she bet he was ready to break free, no matter how much he cared about her. “And anyway, Kat’s coming over soon. She’s back from her conference and I told her I needed to see her.” She wasn’t looking forward to telling her because actually telling someone other than Tanner was making it real, but she needed to talk to her. And then once she’d told Kat, she was going to FaceTime her sister. She slowly needed to let her entire family know that the youngest Ford had officially gotten herself knocked up.
“Guess it’s just you and me,” she whispered to her stomach, pulling her feet up and wriggling her toes to shake off the droplets of water clinging to her skin. Mia walked inside, flicked on the television and sunk down into the sofa. She’d already fed all the horses, and she was exhausted from her rides earlier in the day, so some time flopped in front of the TV was exactly what she needed until Kat arrived. And perhaps some brainless reality shows would stop her second-guessing herself or wondering what else Sam might have said if she’d been brave enough to ask him in.
What if. That was the question circling her mind over and over. What if she’d talked to him? What if she’d told him? What if he’d changed his mind and wanted to be with her, wanted something real instead of the stupid agreement they’d had at the start? What if she’d been wrong not to let him say whatever he’d wanted to say to her in private?
What if. It was a dangerous question and she knew it, but it was one she couldn’t have put out of her mind even if she’d wanted to.
A knock echoed out and made her jump. She quickly stood and by the time she reached her door, Kat was already standing in the hall.
“Hey!” Kat said, leaning in for a hug and holding a bottle of wine in her other hand. “Hope you’re ready for a drink because after the week from hell that I’ve had…”
Mia burst into tears and couldn’t stop. A big sob erupted from deep inside of her and she fought to catch her breath.
“Hey, what’s wrong? Did I buy the wrong kind of wine? I can go back for something else?”
Mia laughed through her tears. Trust Kat to make a joke when she was in the middle of a breakdown.
“I’m pregnant,” she managed to blurt out, wiping her cheeks and slowly catching her breath.
“Pregnant?” Kat whispered back, her eyes wide as she stared back at her. “By who?”
“Sam, you idiot!” She shook her head. “Your cousin was way too interested in work to even get me to first base, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Kat slung an arm around her and walked them both into the kitchen. “Come on, let’s get you a lemonade and me a big glass of wine. I think I need it.”
Mia got out a glass while Kat opened the bottle and she found herself a soda. Then she tucked up on the sofa and watched as Kat settled across from her.
“So Sam’s the daddy,” Kat said.
Mia nodded. “Yup. Only he doesn’t know it yet.”
“So let me get this straight, you haven’t told him yet because you don’t want to ruin his marriage, or because you don’t want him to know period?” Kat asked. “Because I’m guessing that termination isn’t an option.”
Mia shuddered just hearing the word and placed a hand on her stomach. “Just so happens he’s not married. It was his sister and her kids.” She felt stupid about even confessing how wrong she’d been.
Kat took a big gulp of wine. “So does that change the way you feel about him?”
Mia sighed. “Honestly? I don’t know. I mean, deep down I can’t shut off my feelings for him, but the way he ended things…” She met Kat’s warm gaze. “He came by today but Tanner was ready to shoot him and there were some things left unsaid.”
“Can I touch your stomach?” Kat asked, setting down her glass and coming over to sit beside Mia.
Mia nodded. “Of course. There’s nothing to feel though.”
“I know that,” Kat said, her palm warm through the thin fabric of Mia’s shirt. “Hey, little baby,” she whispered, “this is Auntie Kat here.”
They both laughed and Mia felt tears prickle her eyes again.
“You don’t need a daddy around to be loved, because you’ve got a whole team of aunties and uncles who’ll spoil you rotten. Isn’t that right, Momma?”
Mia grinned. Momma. She’d expected that title to be a long way off in her future.
“Yeah, that’s right,” she replied.
Kat tucked up tight to her and gave her a big hug, and Mia shut her eyes. Her baby didn’t need a father, but she sure would have done anything for things to be different between her and Sam.