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She lifted her chin. “Thanks. It was hard. Losing him like that. But I was grateful that he hadn’t killed anyone else in that wreck,” she said simply.
“He was a good guy,” Rick said softly.
“He was a good brother, too,” Sadie said, smiling sadly. Her memories of Michael were mostly good ones and she clung to them.
“And,” Rick said, changing the subject, “now you’ve left Houston to come home again. You’re living with your dad?”
“Just temporarily,” she said. “Until I find a place of my own. Ever since Mom died several years ago, Dad spends most of his time on fishing trips. He’s in the Caribbean now, and Brad doesn’t live there anymore, so …”
“You’re not lonely in that big place all by yourself?”
She nearly laughed. “No. It’s fair to say, I haven’t been lonely in a long time.”
Rick frowned. “What’s his name?”
“His? Who his?”
“The guy you’re seeing,” he countered. “The I’m-too-busy-to-be-lonely guy.”
Sadie snorted. “There’s no guy. Too busy for one of those, too.” She left it at that, not bothering to explain what he would find out for himself all too soon.
Silence stretched out between them, the only sounds the crunch of the wheels against the asphalt and the soft sighing of the truck’s air conditioner. Outside, summer sun beat down on Royal, Texas, making even the trees seem to slump with fatigue.
“You know,” he said finally, “I seem to remember you being a hell of a lot friendlier the last time I saw you.”
Oh, boy. She remembered, too. In fact, her memory was so clear and so strong, it was all she could do not to squirm in her seat. A flush of heat spread through her body as images rushed through her mind. His body. Hers. Locked together. Desperate kisses, amazing sensations. Didn’t seem to matter that she was already so nervous she could hardly swallow. In spite of everything, Sadie knew that if he reached over to touch her right now, she would probably go up in flames.
“You okay?” he asked from beside her and that deep voice of his seemed to roll across her skin.
Oh, she really was not okay.
“Sure,” she lied. “Fine.”
The familiar scenery raced past them as he left town behind and drove along the highway toward the Price family mansion in the exclusive development of Pine Valley. Three years ago, Sadie had walked away from the home where she grew up to live in Houston, losing herself in the hustle and the crowds. At the time, she had definitely needed to get away. To find a fresh start where no one really knew her. Where her private life wouldn’t be fodder for local gossips.
Now though, she was back and the past was reaching out to grab her.
She looked at Rick again. Funny, she’d known him most of her life and yet hadn’t connected with him at all until that one, memorable night. He’d changed, she thought. He looked older, more serious, more self-confident somehow. And that was saying something, since Rick had never been lacking in confidence.
His brown hair was trimmed military short, his brown eyes locked on the road in front of them. His hands were wrapped around the steering wheel and she watched as the muscles in his arms flexed.
“You sure you’re okay?” Rick asked, glancing at her briefly before shifting his gaze back to the road.
That was Rick, she thought. He wasn’t the kind to be distracted from what he saw as his duty—which at the moment, was driving. He appreciated rules and order and as far as she knew, always did the “right” thing, whatever that might be at the time.
There was simply no way he would ever accept her version of “right.” This day wasn’t going to end well, yet Sadie couldn’t find a way out of it. Now that she was home in Royal, people were going to talk. And the fact that Rick had only been home for a day was probably the only reason he hadn’t heard whispers already.
Well, she couldn’t let him hear this news secondhand. She owed him the truth. At last.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Just trapped like a rat, she added silently. Oh, she had known that this day was going to arrive, sooner or later. She had just been hoping for later. Much later. Which was ridiculous really, she argued with herself. She had moved back to Royal. She knew that, eventually, Rick would return. And keeping a secret in a small town was just impossible. Wasn’t that one of the reasons she had left in the first place?
Frowning, she focused on the road and tried not to think about what would happen when they got to her family home.
“If you say so,” he said, his tone telling her he wasn’t convinced. “So. Since you’re fine and I’m fine and we’re not talking about anything else, why don’t you tell me what you were doing at the TCC besides making your brother crazy?”
She blew out a disgusted breath at the mention of her brother. “Shoe was on the other foot, actually. Brad is the most stubborn, hardheaded man in the state of Texas.”
“This is news to you?” he asked with a chuckle.
Brad Price had long had the reputation in town of being the most hidebound traditionalist in the known universe. His hard head only added to the fun.
“No,” Sadie said, grateful to have a safe subject to talk to him about. “But I keep hoping that somehow, someday, Brad will wake up in the twenty-first century. Anyway, I went in to talk to him about being a part of designing the new clubhouse.”
“There’s going to be a new clubhouse?” Rick whistled, long and low. “Never would have believed that. The club’s been the same for more than a hundred years.”
Sadie rolled her eyes and shook her head. “So it should always stay the same? Why put in electric lights? Why aren’t they still using oil lamps or candles? Why have a telephone? Is tradition so important that no one wants progress?”
“Whoa!” He laughed, then asked, “Is progress so important you just forget about tradition?”
She glared at him, those warm, sexy feelings she’d been experiencing only moments ago dissolving as surely as sugar in hot coffee. “You sound just like Brad. Is this a guy thing? Is it only women who are willing to look at the future?”
“No, but looking to the future doesn’t mean forgetting the past.”
“Who said anything about forgetting?” Sadie waved her hand in dismissal. “All we’re talking about is an up-to-date, comfortable club that every member can enjoy.”
“Now I know what this is about.” He smiled and nodded sagely. “I heard Abby Langley’s a member now. I suppose that’s what’s got the women in town up in arms?”
She just stared at him. “Is it all men or just Texans?”
“Huh? What?”
“You have that drawling tone to your voice when you say ‘women’ like you’re describing a child throwing a tantrum.”
“Hold on a minute, I wasn’t trying to start a fight.”
“No, you’re just stuck in the same rut every other man in town is in.”
“I’ve been home for a day and suddenly I’m the enemy?”
“No,” she said on a sigh. “You just caught me at a bad moment. Sorry.”
He shrugged. “No problem. I know what it’s like to be up to your eyeballs in something and take it out on someone else.”
“Still not much of an excuse. It’s just that Brad makes me so furious.”
“Isn’t that what brothers are for?”
“I suppose so,” she acknowledged, then she smiled. “Besides, I think Brad having to deal with Abby is going to be payback enough.”
“Who knew you had such a mean streak?” he asked, his grin taking the sting out of his words.
“I’m a Price, too, don’t forget.”
“Wouldn’t dare.” He steered into a left turn lane and stopped for the red light. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about you in the last few years, Sadie.”
“You have?” She tensed up again. What was it about this man that could set every nerve in her body to jangling?
His long fingers tapped against the steering wheel. “Sometimes, thoughts of you were all that kept me sane.”
“Rick …”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that the night we had together has stayed with me.”
“It stayed with me, too,” Sadie said, then turned her head to avoid his gaze.
That single night with him three years ago had changed her life so completely, it was no wonder that she’d thought of him often. But now, knowing that he had been doing the same, made her feel even more of a terrible person than she had been. What could she possibly say to him? How would she ever explain?
She’d spent a lot of time assuring herself that one day, she’d tell him everything. That when he got back she would apologize and do whatever she could to make things right.
Yes, she could have written to him, but she had talked herself out of that. She’d been … worried about him. A career marine, he had been in harm’s way for most of the last few years, and every night, she’d said a prayer for his safety. If she had told him the truth in a letter, it might have distracted him when he could least afford it. Besides, a letter would have been the coward’s way out. Face-to-face was the only honorable way. And like she said, Sadie was a Price, too. Her parents had raised their children to be honest, to keep their word and to never break a promise. Honor meant something to the Price family.
But that didn’t mean that she had room for him in her life. She wasn’t looking for a husband. She didn’t need a man, her life was busy enough at the moment, thank you very much. But she did owe him the truth.
And that was something she wasn’t looking forward to.
He pulled to a stop at a red light, then turned his head to give her a quick grin. Only one corner of his mouth tipped up, and in that instant, Sadie felt a flash of heat wash over her. Just like it had on their one and only night together three years ago.
“So tell me what you did in Houston.”
She eased back into the seat. “I did a lot of charity work. The Price family foundation is based in Houston,” she said with a lift of her shoulders. “And I served on the board of my father’s art museum.”
“You enjoyed that?”
She looked at him. “Yes, but …”
“But?”
“But, I always wanted to go into design. Landscape design, really.” She turned to face him. “Planning out gardens, parks, working with the city to fix the roads along the highways …”
When he just stared at her, Sadie stopped talking and shrugged. “It just appeals to me.”
“You should do it then,” he told her. “Go take classes. Learn. Doing what you love is what makes life worth living.”
The light changed and he drove on.
“Is that why you’re still a marine?”
He laughed. “There’s an old saying—once a marine, always a marine.”
“Yes, but you’re still active duty. Why?” She was watching him closely, so she noticed when his jaw tightened slightly. “You could come back to Royal, run your family ranch. Why stay in the Corps?”
“Duty,” he said simply. “It’s an old-fashioned word, but I was raised to take it seriously. My father was a marine, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We traveled all over the world when I was a kid. Finally settled here when he left the Corps, because my mom had roots here.” He glanced at her. “But when you grow up on bases, when you see what people are willing to give to serve their country … Well, it makes you want to do the same. And by doing my duty, serving my country, I help keep everyone I care about safe.”
She felt a sting of tears in her eyes and frantically blinked them back. Here he was talking about honor and duty and she had been lying to him for nearly three years. She was a rotten human being. She deserved to be flogged.
They drove down her street and suddenly Sadie had to say something. Try to prepare him for what he was about to find out.
“Rick, before we get to the house, there’s something you should know—”
“If it’s about the flamingos, I’ve got to say that maybe you should rethink landscape design.”
“What?”
Grinning, he pulled into the driveway and that’s when Sadie noticed the flock of pink plastic birds on the front lawn. Thank heaven her father was off on his fishing trip. If Robert Price had seen his elegant lawn covered with the tacky pink birds, he—well, Sadie wasn’t sure what he’d have done, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” As soon as Rick parked the car opposite the front door, Sadie hopped out and walked around the hood. She crossed the front yard until she came to the closest flamingo. The birds were staggered across the expertly trimmed lawn and looked so ridiculously out of place, Sadie couldn’t help laughing.
“What’s this about? A new trend in decorating?”
She jolted when Rick came up behind her. As hot as the July sun felt on her skin, his nearness made her temperature inch up just that much higher. There had never been another man in her life who had affected her like Rick Pruitt did. Not even her ex-husband-the-lying-cheating-weasel.
She took a breath, steadied herself, then looked up at him, trying not to fall into those dark brown eyes. It wasn’t easy. He was tall and muscular and even in his jeans and T-shirt, Rick looked like a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
He was the quintessential Texas man. Add the Marine Corps to that and you had an impossible-to-resist combination. As the quickening heat in her body could testify.
Swallowing hard, Sadie fought past the dry mouth to say, “Actually, the flamingos are a fundraising drive for a local women’s shelter.” She tore her gaze from his and scanned the fifty or more pink birds scattered across the yard and sighed. “Summer Franklin runs it.”
“Darius’s wife?”
“Yes. The idea is that whoever receives the pink flamingo flock pays the charity to remove them and pass the birds onto the next ‘victim’. Then that person pays and so on and so on …”
Rick laughed, pulled up one of the flamingos and looked it dead in its beady eye. “Sounds like a fun way to make money for a good cause.”
“I suppose,” she said, and worriedly looked at the hot-pink birds. “But they’re so tacky. I’m just grateful my father’s not here. He’d have a fit, wondering what the neighbors would be thinking.”
Shaking his head, Rick stabbed the flamingo’s metal pole back into the lawn and looked at Sadie. “Now that sounds like the prim and proper Sadie Price I used to know. Not the woman I spent that night with.”
Prim and proper.
That’s how she had lived her entire life. The perfect Price heiress. Always doing and saying the proper thing. But that, she assured herself, was in another life.
“I’m not that girl anymore, believe me.” She looked up at him again and said, “Can you come in for a minute? There’s something you need to see.”
“Okay.” He sounded intrigued but confused.
He wouldn’t be for long.
She headed for the front door, let herself in and almost sighed with relief as the blissfully cool air-conditioned room welcomed her. A graying blonde woman in her fifties hurried over to her. “Miss Sadie, everything’s fine upstairs. They’re sleeping like angels.”
“Thanks, Hannah,” she said with a smile, not bothering to look back at Rick now. It was too late to back out. Her time had come. “I’ll just go up and check on them.”
The housekeeper gave Rick a long look, shifted her gaze to Sadie and smiled. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”
Rick pulled his hat off and waited until Hannah was gone before he spoke. “Who’s asleep? What’s this about?”
“You’ll see.” She still didn’t look at him, just walked across the marble floor toward the wide, sweeping staircase. “Come on upstairs.”
She slid one hand across the polished walnut banister as she climbed the steps. Her heart was racing and a swarm of butterflies were taking flight in the pit of her stomach.
“What’s going on, Sadie? In town, you said we had to talk. Then you say I’ve got to see something.” He stepped around her when they reached the second-floor landing and blocked her way until she looked up at him. “Talk to me.”
“I will,” she promised, finally staring up into his eyes, reading his frustration easily. “As soon as I show you something.”
“All right,” he told her, “but I never did care for surprises.”
The thick, patterned floor runner muffled their footsteps as they walked down the long hallway. Every step was more difficult than the last for her. But finally, she came to the last door on the left. She took a breath, turned the knob and opened it to a sunlit room.
Inside were two beds, two dressers, two toy boxes. And sitting on the floor, clearly not sleeping like angels, were her twin daughters.
Rick’s twin daughters.
The girls looked up. Their brown eyes went wide and bright and they smiled as they spotted their mother. Sadie dropped to her knees to swoop them into her arms. With her girls held tightly to her, she turned her gaze on a stupefied Rick and whispered, “Surprise.”
Three
Rick felt like he’d been kicked in the head.
Twin girls.
With his eyes.
They were jabbering nonstop as they climbed over their mother.
Their mother.
Sadie Price was the mother of his daughters.
Shock slowly gave way to an anger that burned inside him with the heat of a thousand suns. He was blistered by it and forced to contain it all because damned if he’d lose his temper in front of his children.
The girls were wearing matching pink overalls with pink-and-white checked shirts. Tiny pink-and-yellow socks were on their impossibly small feet and they laughed and danced in place as Sadie held on to them.
Sadie’s gaze locked with his and he read her guilt in her eyes. Her regret. Well, it was a damned sight late for regret. She’d kept his daughters from him their whole lives.
There would be payment made.
For now though, he dropped to one knee and looked at the girls. Their brown hair curled around their heads, their cheeks were pink and their brown eyes sparkled with life. Love. His heart clenched hard in his chest. One of the girls looked at him warily, and then slowly gave him a smile that tore up his insides.
“Girls,” Sadie said, laughing as the twins continued to chatter a mile a minute.
“Birds, Mommy.”
“Lots.”
“I know,” Sadie said, giving first one of her daughters then the other a big kiss. “I saw them.”
“Pretty.”
“Yes, they are pretty,” Sadie agreed.
“Who him?”
Who him. Rick swallowed back the tight ball of anger lodged in his throat. His daughters didn’t know him. He was a damn stranger to his own flesh and blood. That knowledge hurt more than he would have thought possible.
“This is your daddy,” Sadie said, watching him as she spoke the words that made all of this a reality.
He sat down, drew one knee up and rested his forearm on it. He wasn’t going to crowd the little girls. But he wanted more than anything to hold them. Instead, he smiled. “You are the prettiest girls I have ever seen.”
The one closest to him gave him a sly smile and looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes that lay like black velvet on her cheeks. Oh, this one was going to be a heartbreaker when she grew up.
“Daddy?” she said and pushed away from Sadie to walk to him.
Rick’s heart stopped as she approached him. He was afraid to move. He worried that anything he did now might shatter the moment. And he didn’t want to risk it. When she was close enough, the little girl reached out and patted his cheek. Her small hand was feather-soft against his skin and she smelled like shampoo and apple juice.
“Daddy?” She leaned in to give him a hug and Rick held her as carefully as he would have a live grenade. This tiny girl, so perfect, so beautiful, had accepted him without reservation and he’d never been more grateful.
“Daddy!” The second twin rushed him, cuddling up to him just as her sister had and Rick closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around them. He held them close, feeling the warmth of their bodies, the fluttering of their heartbeats. And in one all-encompassing instant had his life, his world, altered forever.
Opening his eyes, he looked at Sadie and saw that she was crying. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she watched him with their children and he asked himself what she was crying for. Was she pleased that he was finally meeting his daughters? Or was she regretting telling him at all?
“Story!” One of the girls blurted the word and pushed away from him, running to a bookcase beneath the window. Meanwhile, her twin settled in on Rick’s lap and played with his hat.
“How old are they?” he asked tightly.
“You know exactly how old they are,” Sadie whispered.
“What are their names?” That question cost him. He didn’t know the names of his children. His heart was being ripped into pieces in his chest and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do about it.
Sadie scooted closer to them, reaching out to fix a sliding pink barrette in one of the twins’ soft, wispy hair.
“This one is Wendy,” she said, dropping a kiss on the girl’s nose.
“Wenne!” the toddler repeated with a gleeful shriek. She put her father’s hat on and the Stetson completely swallowed her head. Her giggle was as soft as a summer wind.
“Wendy has freckles on her nose.”
“Nose!”
Smiling, Sadie captured the returning twin and swooped her up into her lap. She kissed the top of the child’s head and met Rick’s eyes when she said, “This one is Gail.”
Another surprise in a morning full of them.
His heart, which he would have sworn had already been ripped in two, shredded even further as he looked down at the smiling child on Sadie’s lap. He actually felt a sharp sting of tears in his eyes and swiped one hand across his face to rid himself of them. Only then did he trust himself to look at Sadie again. “You named her for my mother.”
“Yes,” she said as the little girl opened the storybook and started “reading” to herself.
“Doggie and a bug and running and …”
Her commentary went on, but Rick hardly heard the mumble of disjointed words and phrases. He was caught in the moment. Struggling hard for the rigid self-control he had always been able to count on.
But he would challenge any man to walk into a situation like this one and not be shaken right down to the bone.
“Gail has a dimple in her left cheek that Wendy doesn’t have.” She smoothed one hand over her daughter’s hair. “And Gail’s hair is straighter than Wendy’s. When you get to know them, you’ll see other differences, too. Their personalities are wildly different.”
“Sadie …”
“Wendy is the adventurer. She was getting into things the minute she could crawl,” Sadie said, her words coming faster and faster, as if she didn’t want to give Rick a chance to say anything. “Gail is the cuddler. Nothing she likes better than curling up on your lap with a book. But she’s no pushover, either. She holds her own with her sister and, honestly, the two of them are so stubborn that sometimes …”
“Sadie,” he said, his voice deeper, more commanding.
She blew out a breath and slowly lifted her eyes to his. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Oh, I don’t think you can even guess what I want to say,” he told her, anger rippling just beneath the surface of his voice.
“Let me explain, all right?”
“Can’t wait to hear it,” he assured her, though Rick knew there was absolutely nothing she could say that would make what she had done okay.
He’d been cheated out of his daughter’s lives.
Wendy pushed his hat off her head and left him for her mother. Both girls were in Sadie’s lap as she read them a story. Their laughter filled his heart even as he struggled with the fury he felt toward their mother.
As he watched her with them, he saw a completely different Sadie than the one he knew. He’d always seen her as an untouchable princess. Born and raised to be the perfect southern lady. Until their one night together, he would have been willing to bet that Sadie Price had never done a damn thing that was even remotely undignified.