CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Come sit on the blanket with me, and we’ll talk while we eat the lunch my mom made for us.”
“Aww, she made lunch for us? That’s so cute.” I never used that word for moms, but there was something about Maeve that made it the only word that would fit.
“She likes you a lot.”
I felt ashamed about that . . . having her like me when I was just going to break her son’s heart. “How could she like me? She doesn’t even know me.”
“I think she can tell how much I care about you, and that means something to her.”
I had no response for that, so I kept my mouth shut. I wanted it to be true, as implausible as it seemed.
I settled onto the blanket, and Mack did something to tie the horses up so they could eat too. He joined me, lying down on his side next to me as I sat up with my legs crossed. I took a long blade of grass from nearby and played with it as he told me his story, keeping my eyes on my task so he could recount our shared past without feeling embarrassed.
“Okay, so here’s how I remember it. I was sitting there minding my own business at the blackjack tables, trying to win a little money to give to my brother for his wedding gift. He and Ginny were planning to go to Hawaii, and it was taking a pretty big chunk of change from his savings.”
“Your mom told me.”
“I was up about a grand when a pretty little girl in a tight dress came over and threw a drink on me.”
“Guilty.” I raised a finger for a few seconds before letting it drop. I found that I liked being called the pretty little girl in a tight dress, for some reason.
“After spending a little time with her and thinking about nothing but wanting to know her better in every way, we went up to her room, where I did just that. I got to know her, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was with someone I could really relax with. Be with.” He rolled over onto his back, lacing his hands behind his head. “It sounds crazy to say it out loud, but I distinctly remember thinking when I saw you sitting at that blackjack table that you were the girl for me.” He shifted his head to look in my direction, so I lifted my face to look at him too. “Maybe even before that. When you threw the drink on me . . . I think I knew it then.” His piercing blue eyes slayed me, sending a heat right into my veins to warm up my whole body.
“That’s crazy,” I said in a slightly breathless voice. “That doesn’t happen in real life.”
“It does in mine.” He looked back at the sky. “Anyway, I fell for you like a ton of bricks, and we made love, which only sealed the deal for me.” He got a weird grin on his face. “And then we lay there and talked.” He sounded like he didn’t believe it himself. “Everything you said just spoke to me on a really deep level.” He looked at me again. “You might find this hard to believe, but I generally don’t have conversations like that with people.”
I smiled sadly. “I got that impression.” I loved knowing I was special in his life, but I hated knowing it was only temporary. It sucks more than anything in the world to see a dream of who you could be and know you have to walk away from it to be something less. Living up to the expectations of others was beginning to feel like it was the path to destroying my soul.
“So I got this wild hair up my . . . hat . . . and asked you to come on an adventure with me. We went to a bar where I flirted outrageously with you and then asked you to marry me.”
I swallowed with difficulty. “You did? You actually asked me?”
“Yeah. Got on bended knee with a flower that some guy sold me and everything.”
“Oh, God, I wish I could remember that part.” I felt like crying.
“Yeah, it was pretty bad. But I somehow managed to convince you it was a great plan, and off we went to the chapel. We had to wait in line for a while. I had to keep reminding you we weren’t in a hotel room anymore.”
I dropped my head into my hands. “I’m not sure I want to hear this part.”
“Why not? It’s the best part.” He was grinning again—I could tell by the tone of his voice, but I refused to look at him.
“What did I do?”
“You couldn’t keep your hands off me. I had to take your hands out of my pants about ten times.”
“Oh, Jesus . . . no wonder you wanted to marry me!” I tried to keep the images from entering my head, but it wasn’t working.
He reached over and pulled one of my hands away from my face. “Come over here. You’re too far away.”
I yanked my hand back. “No. Stay away. I’m too embarrassed.”
He sat up and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me down with him until I was lying partly next to him and partly on top of him. I didn’t fight him at all, I just let myself be force-cuddled.
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about. It was the best night of my life and not just because you kept calling me King Dong.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Oh, how far I’ve fallen.”
“Shush, I still haven’t told you the whole story.”
“So tell it. And try to skip over the parts where I humiliate myself time and again.”
“I’ll try, but those were the fun parts. The other parts that came later are the sad part of the story.”
My heart clenched up in my chest. “Tell me.”
He remained silent for a while, but I didn’t push him. I was busy enough with imagining our night together that I didn’t need him to continue right away.
“Where was I?” he finally said.
“We were in line at the chapel.”
“Yeah, okay. So we got to our turn, and we didn’t have rings. They offered to sell us one, but you said you didn’t need one. We said the vows, which you made up, and then we signed the documents.”
“Do I want to know the vows?”
“They were very creative.”
“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” I was trying to keep my humiliation from becoming complete.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Tell me the rest of the story.”
“Alright, so after the deed was done, I finally took a look at my phone and saw about fifty texts from my brother and his friends. While we were waiting for them to come, we talked about what we were going to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“We talked about our future.”
“Oh.”
“You were going to go back to your room and stay with your friends and call me in the morning. You wanted to get pretty or something, you said. Letting your boobs breathe, I think was another concern. I was just going to hook back up with my brother for a few hours before we had to leave and then reconnect with you by phone first.”
“And then what? We were going to live apart as a married couple? This doesn’t sound like a very smart plan or anything I would have been a part of, even drunk out of my gourd.”
“Me neither. But at the time, it made perfect sense. We’d both been drinking, so even though I knew what I was doing, I might have suffered a little bit of fantasy thinking at the time.”
“Fantasy thinking. Hmmm.”
“Yeah. Anyway, we got to the hotel, and I left you at your room, telling you to meet me downstairs later. When I went back down to the lobby, my brother was already there, fuming. He was pissed I’d missed the whole night with him and his buddies, and it didn’t help that he’d lost all his money gambling. We got our bags from the desk, and he went to the airport, but I stayed there in the hotel, waiting for your call.”
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t call you.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You didn’t call me.” His arms went tighter around my body.
“How long did you wait?”
“Until lunchtime. Several hours. I called the number you gave me eventually, but it wasn’t your number.”
“What number was it?” I asked, confused.
“I have no idea. Some guy named Deacon kept answering.”
“Luke Deacon?” I asked in a small voice.
“Yeah. Something like that. Do you know him?”
“He was my ex.” I looked up at the sky, my face flaming red again. “Oh, man. I am such a loser. I gave you my ex’s phone number by mistake.”
“You sure it was a mistake?” he asked. He was looking at me again, his expression unreadable.
“Of course it was,” I said, not sure I believed myself. Maybe some part of me had gotten married to him because of Luke’s recent and overly cold rejection. There was nothing more opposite to rejection than a marriage proposal, after all. Talk about a rebound.
“The last plane was leaving, so I had to go. I went up to your room to see what was going on, and the maid was there cleaning up. You’d already gone.”
“You thought I just ditched you, didn’t you?”
“Pretty much. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but you weren’t in your room, you’d given me a bum phone number, and finally when I went to the front desk, they confirmed you’d checked out. And I never heard from you again. You never called me once. Believe me, I watched my phone like a hawk for weeks. Months.”
I reached out and took his hand. “Candice, the girl who I was staying with that you met, knocked my phone into the toilet that morning when I was in the shower. My SIM card was destroyed. I had to get a new phone and a new card and load everything on it from my computer backup. That’s why I didn’t call.”
He lifted my hand up to where he could see it and played with my fingers. “Would you have called me when you got back . . . if you hadn’t dropped your phone in the toilet?”
“Yes. Maybe.” I had to think about it for a few more seconds. “I’m not sure. I didn’t remember we were married. And when I got back . . . I guess I just tried to start my life over. Get it back on track.”
“You had a plan, you said. You talked about it a lot that night.”
“Yeah.” I smiled bitterly. “My lifeplan. I thought it was the answer to everything, but now I’m starting to think it destroyed any chance I had at being happy.”
“You’re only twenty-seven.”
I pushed on his hand with mine a little. “How do you know how old I am?”
“I know you were born on the Fourth of July and consider all fireworks being set off to be in your honor. You are an only child. Your mother lives in Seattle and at some point spent a lot of time with men who made you a very unhappy person. And I know you used that lifeplan to get your life on track and headed in a direction that made you feel good about yourself.”
My stomach clenched with fear. Having someone know me this well was nothing short of terrifying. Why was he still with me? Why hadn’t he told me to get the hell out of his life? “You know a lot. You remember a lot. I know this sounds terrible, but the only things I remembered about you were your eyes, your face, and your hat. Oh, and that belt buckle you wore.”
“Well, that’s better than nothing, I guess.” He smiled sadly, making me want to punch myself.
“Luceo non uro,” I said, struggling to find something to make him feel better. To lessen the hurt I’d caused. “I remembered those words. And then when I saw them on your ranch gate out there, I remembered waking up in my room that morning without you. I thought you’d left me.”
“Shine not burn. Ain’t that the truth.”
“How so? What does it mean?”
“Literally? Luceo non uro means ‘I shine, not burn.’ To me, though, it means that I have a choice. I need to balance the good with the bad, make sure to avoid the things that could burn or scar me but get close enough to the heat that I feel life and really experience it. Until I met you, I’d never really embraced that idea. I walked around my life just being there, but not really feeling it or being actively involved in making it worthwhile. Then there was you, and suddenly it all made sense. I grabbed onto what Fortune was offering me that night and ran with it. I was shining that night, for sure. Brighter than the Vegas strip.”
“And look where it got you.” I was so sad that I’d somehow been involved in him getting eventually burned by my carelessness. “Burned.” I stroked my thumb over his hand, wishing I could undo the pain for him.
“I don’t regret it,” he said, lifting my hand and kissing my fingers. “It might have felt like getting burned for a while, but you’re here now. If I hadn’t done what I did, we wouldn’t be getting this second chance. It feels like shining to me, not burning.”
I pulled my hand away and sat up, tears close to the surface. “It’s not a second chance, Mack. It can’t be.”
He sat up next to me and pulled me to his side with his arm across my shoulders. Touching his head to mine, he spoke in a low voice. “Yes, it can. We’re still married. Why can’t we just take a shot at making it work like a real marriage?”
I felt and sounded desperately freaked out. “Maybe because we live across the country from each other?”
“That’s just geography.”
“But I have work and a life.”
“So, I’ll come live with you.”
I pulled my head away and stared at him, my heart slamming in my chest. “You’d give up all this for me?” I looked around the meadow and up at the mountains in the distance. Heaven on earth.
“Sure. In a heartbeat.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. This was such an impossible situation. “I couldn’t let you do that.”
“The hell you couldn’t.” He stood and took me by the hands, leveraging me up to stand. Once I was in front of him, he took me into his arms. “I’d go live in a trailer park in the middle of the Mississippi swamps if it meant I could be with you and give this a shot.”
“That sounds miserable,” I said, laughing sadly into his chest.
“You’re right. But I was just trying to make a point. I don’t care where I am, as long as I’m with you.”
My mind shifted to practical matters so I could keep the reins tight on my runaway heart. “But where would you work? There aren’t any ranches around where I live.”
“I have an MBA in finance. I could get a job without much of a problem, I’m sure. I’ve been managing the business of this ranch for years, and it’s a big operation. That translates into all kinds of other work.”
My tears went on pause and I pulled my upper body back a little so I could look up at him. “You have an MBA? From where?”
He gave me a sad grin. “Does it matter?”
“No.” I answered automatically without thinking because that was the polite thing to say, but on further reflection I realized it didn’t matter because we couldn’t be together anyway. Him having an MBA didn’t change anything.
“What about your brother? You haven’t told me how his wedding figured into this whole thing.”
Mack released me and turned to stand side by side, lacing our fingers together and tucking my arm up under his. “Okay, sorry . . . got sidetracked there. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Getting back . . . I came back from Vegas after swearing Ian and his friends to secrecy. But the story got around somehow that one of us was off with some girl all night, ruining the party.”
“Who told?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think Boog was somehow involved. He wasn’t there, but he was on the phone with everyone before and after. He’s kind of the town gossip.”
“Boog?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah. Boog. The guy’s a granny gossiper. Makes my mom crazy.”
“But the story wasn’t complete. Why didn’t the gossipers say it was you?”
“Oh, they did eventually. But whoever Ginny was eavesdropping on didn’t specify, or she missed that part, so she flipped out thinking Ian had cheated on her and came after me.”
“You? Why you?”
“I don’t know. I guess she expected me to be supervising or something since he’s my little brother. She confronted me at my house in town. I brought her inside because she was making a scene on the front porch. She was hysterical, and when I tried to tell her it wasn’t Ian, it was me, she didn’t believe me. She must have thought I was just covering for him.”
“Couldn’t she just have asked him? Why was it all on you to take care of things?”
“I guess when she first found out, she tried to call Ian and discuss it, but he wouldn’t talk to her about it. He got defensive when she came right out and accused him of messing around on the trip, and refused to talk to her. They used to fight a lot like that—she’d go off the handle on him, and then he’d shut down and give her the silent treatment. He doesn’t do well with shouting, and she’s definitely a shouter. Then he wouldn’t answer his phone. By the time she got to my place, she’d decided he’d slept with some other woman and we were all in on the plan to keep it hush-hush. I think she had revenge on her mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“She came after me. Like trying to come-on to me.”
“Oh. Wow. Ick. What’d you do?”
“Tried to get her off me and get away.”
“Did you succeed?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer.
“Yes, I succeeded.” He frowned at me. “Do you really think I’m the kind of guy to sleep with my brother’s fiancée?”
I shook my head. “No. I never would have thought that about you.” I was so relieved he wasn’t that kind of guy, I was giddy.
He sighed, looking off into the distance again. “Anyway, people saw her coming in all hysterical and being in my house for a while and let Ian know. He asked me what happened, and I told him. Small towns love the gossip.” He sighed heavily. “That’s one thing I wouldn’t miss leaving here.”
“You told him?”
He nodded, his jaw set in a hard line. “Yeah. I told him. I’ve wondered many times if I should have just kept it all a secret, but I’m glad I didn’t. Even though Ian got hurt, it doesn’t change the fact that lies are like acid. They eat everything away eventually—your integrity, your heart . . . your soul. It’s not worth it.”
I nodded. “What does your brother think about all of it?”
“He was really angry at me for a long time. He didn’t speak to me for months.”
“But it wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m the one who disappeared that night in Vegas and started the rumors. Ginny made a mistake overhearing only part of a conversation and letting it get the best of her, but if I hadn’t done all that, it never would have happened.”
“But she was totally wrong for coming on to you. I mean, really. She doesn’t deserve that much of a break.”
“Let’s just say she showed her true colors that day. Ian never forgave her. He canceled the wedding, tore up the honeymoon tickets, and mailed her the pieces.”
“Is he okay with everything now?”
“No. He’s just surviving day to day, drinking too much, partying way too much in town. He hates it here. He had a job all lined up in Portland, working as an architect in this new firm. His first job out of school. But after the Ginny thing, he just couldn’t deal. He blew them off, blew off all his plans for the future . . . he’s just been riding out his time at the ranch, drinking almost every night with his buddies. He’s in a bad way, but right now he’s not really accepting any help from anyone. Boog keeps an eye on him for us, but that’s about all we can do.”
“I feel terrible.” My heart ached for both of them and their parents. I could tell they were all suffering for it. It made me so sad to know that I had something to do with it.
“Why do you feel terrible? It’s not your fault.”
“It is too. If it hadn’t been for me, you would have been with them all night, and then there wouldn’t have been a rumor. No rumor, no upset fiancée, no funny business in the back room.”
He turned to face me, pulling my shoulder around so I was facing him. “Oh, so you’re like a spider who lured me into her web, and I had no choice in the matter? I can tell everyone I was just an innocent victim?”
When he said it that way, it made me feel silly, but I still wasn’t ready to walk away without taking any of the blame. “Yes, that’s what happened. I lured you into my web.” I stepped closer and hugged him to me. “I wore booby pusher-uppers that night and that tight dress and heels. You fell right into my trap. You had no choice.”
He hugged me back tightly and leaned down to inhale the skin of my neck. “You’re right about that. Once I saw you, I had no choice. I was done for good. You’re the last woman I ever want to be with.” His hands slid down my back and squeezed my rear end as we lifted our faces to gaze at each other.
The combination of his touch, his words, and the way he was staring at me with love shining out of his eyes made my whole system go haywire.
“We’re going to have sex again, aren’t we?” I asked softly, the wetness building in an instant.
He gave me a wicked smile. “Hell yes, we are.” And then he lowered me to the ground.