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In what struck him as another avoidance tactic, she leaned forward to slide her feet out of her high-heel shoes. Except, it worked this time. The movement caused her neckline to gap and exposed the upper swell of her full breasts.
And abruptly plunged Deke headfirst into another memory—of holding her in his arms, his lips pressed to that very spot. Then, however, Addie had been skinny as a fence rail. At considerable peril to himself, he’d called her Boney Gentry—when he wasn’t teasing her with his other nickname for her. Wasn’t whispering it while he made love to her that first and last time, before reality thundered down on top of him in a suffocating avalanche, just as it was doing now.
Because somehow he’d been able to convince himself over the past half-dozen years that the passion he’d known with her hadn’t been as powerful as he remembered. He saw now, however, how he’d methodically bleached all the intensity out of those feelings, allowing him control over them.
You are in control, he told himself. But he needed to keep his distance if he was to hang on to that control.
His jaw clamped reflexively, and Deke scrutinized one of the gazebo’s peeling posts, blue faded to gray. “And that’s all you told Jace?”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Addie examine her muddy shoes as she held them before her, elbows on her knees.
“No, it wasn’t—”
Her voice had turned businesslike, he noticed, as if she, too, needed distance.
“I told him his father had chosen not to be a part of his life.”
“You what?” he asked, deadly low.
“I had to, Deke. I couldn’t have him pining his heart out over a man I had no appreciation would ever return, much less be able to give us—Jace, I mean—what he needed.”
“So he’s grown up believin’ his daddy never cared enough about him to stick around.” He noticed his own voice sounded calm. “But that was obviously not true, because I didn’t know, Addie. About Jace.”
Idly, he slid the pad of his thumb across the husked surface of the railing. “You could have found me and told me about him. I’d’ve come back and lived up to my responsibility to him.”
Now, that got a reaction, for Addie sprung from her seat and in an instant was across the plank floor and hovering over him.
“You don’t think we tried?” she asked, shoes clenched in either hand, her blue eyes blazing down at him. “Daddy had just about every rancher in the Southwest keepin’ their eye out for you for nine solid months! If we couldn’t find you, Deke, it was because you didn’t want to be found!”
No, it hadn’t taken long for her indifference to dissolve. For some reason, he was relieved that at least that aspect about her hadn’t changed. Yet something else had changed about Addie, something he wasn’t able to pin down yet.
So deal with it, Larrabie. Deal with just that one comment.
He drew in a deep breath and blew it out through loosely pursed lips. “All right. I deserved that.”
“You deserve a hell of a lot more, and you know it,” she said with a chilliness that rivaled a blue norther.
That’s when he was able to put a label to the real change in her. It was there in her features—not an icy coolness so much as just the opposite. A hardness, to be sure, but more like that of something left too long in the sun.
In his years on the range, he’d seen many people who had, by design or necessity, let the relentless sun cook their skin to a leathery brown. It was leather, tanned and oiled as any cowhide stitched together to make a pair of chaps.
Not that Addie’s skin had weathered the same way. Indeed, it was still as white and smooth as ever, with only that sprinkling of freckles to mar its creamy surface. Rather, it was the particular look of being over-exposed to the harsh glare of life’s disappointments that had baked anything tender or flexible or trustful right out of her expression.
That, it occurred to Deke in another bolt of realization, was the real legacy he’d left to her. And the one he had most desired to spare her of.
The enormity of his failure sliced into him, razor-edged as the blade of a newly whetted knife. Somehow, though, wasn’t a sharp, clean cut better than being on the jagged side of such pain? Sure, a rough cut wasn’t as deep, but it caused a lot more damage, a more painful wound and an uglier scar as each shark’s tooth made its notch in tender flesh.
But God, how to explain that to Addie?
Grasping the post, Deke swung himself up on a level with her so he could look her square in the eye. “That’s what I’d been thinking about you when I left. That you deserved a hell of a lot more, a hell of a lot better, than what I’d be able to give you.”
She took a step back even as she retorted, “Oh, what a crock of bull! You obviously wanted to leave!”
“It’s the truth,” he persisted. “It wouldn’t have been good for either of us for me to stay, not after what happened…”
Say it, damn it! I didn’t want to leave at all! I had to, though, because I knew if I didn’t I’d end up like my father, maybe not in the same way, but just as completely, totally lost.
He tried again. “There’re things you don’t know about what happened that night. That’s why I’m here. You’ve got to believe me. This wasn’t the situation I meant to leave you in—”
“Oh? And what would have been a suitable situation to leave me in?” She gazed at him, the pain he knew now that she’d only been hiding from him stark in her eyes. “You gave me your promise, and when you did, I gave you my trust in return. My innocence. And you took it and left without a word. So now you’re wonderin’ why I kept to myself the one thing you did leave me?”
Eyelashes batting, she made a half turn away from him, a bid, he could see, for control. Even so, her voice shook as she went on. “Well, you can just go to hell, Deke Larrabie. You gave up any say about anything having to do with my life when you left me and the Bar G seven years ago without a backward glance. I had to protect my son, and I’ve got no regrets for doing so.”
“He’s my son, too.” Deke fixed her with a resolute look. “Neither of us has said it straight out like that, have we? But yes, Addie—he’s my son, too. Now that I know about him, you’ve gotta see there’s no way I’ll shirk my responsibility to him.”
“And there’s no way I’ll let you just blow into his life, announce you’re his father, then leave again!”
She graced him with as cynical a look as he’d ever seen in his own mirror. “I don’t know why you’ve come, anyway. Surely no one’s got a gun to your head, makin’ you stay. Besides, why do anything different? That’s the Larrabie way, isn’t it? Always lookin’ for the exit sign.”
Oh, but that cut him! Like the jagged rasp of a hacksaw. The hell of it was, her barbed words almost had him turning on his heel and hitting the highway.
And that’s exactly what she wants, he realized. Addie didn’t want him to know his son, didn’t want Jace to know who he was. And he couldn’t help concluding that it was for the same reason she had told Jace his father was never coming back. Because she saw Deke as being made in the image of his own father—an irresponsible cowboy rambler and rover.
Or, in Deke’s case, a card-carrying cowboy leaver.
Which caused that timer inside him to speed up again in that dangerous tick-tick-tick, of the second hand edging ever closer to…to what?
To nothing! Deke told himself. He was Jace’s father, damn it! No matter what had happened between the two of them, he deserved to know his son, deserved a chance to be a father to him!
Maybe that had been Jud’s plan: to bring Deke on to do some troubleshooting and give him the opportunity to know Jace while he was here. But if so, there was still a puzzle piece missing, because Addie had just said she didn’t know why he’d come to the Bar G, and it had obviously been a surprise when he showed up.
“Jud didn’t tell you, did he,” Deke said abruptly.
She went as wary as a cat. “Tell me what?”
And God help him, he couldn’t help taking some satisfaction in informing her. “He hired me as a ranching consultant to put the Bar G back on solid ground. Which means I’m here to stay, Addie.”
Chapter Two
A ddie felt as if she would be sick right there in the ranch yard, her thoughts were whirling around her head so fast, while hurt and betrayal flip-flopped in her stomach.
“Daddy hired you?” she asked through numbed lips. “That’s why you came back, to be a ranch consultant?”
“That’s right—me, Deke Larrabie.” His gaze had gone back to that stoniness that was frightening, so different was he from the emotionally charged twenty-two-year-old she’d last known. Just a split second before, though, she’d seen the spark, hot and fiery, leap to his eyes.
Yet make no mistake: The endearing rough edges of the half-boy, half-man she’d fallen in love with had been whittled away and sanded down, so that little showed that wasn’t meant to be seen.
Yes, that boy was gone. But she’d come to terms with that fact seven years ago. Hadn’t she?
“I don’t know what Daddy was thinkin’, telling you there was a job for you to do here,” Addie said desperately, trying to come up with some valid arguments while not knowing the terms Deke and her father had discussed. It was difficult to concentrate for just that reason. What had her father been thinking? Why would he take such a step behind her back? Sure, they’d discussed whether a ranching consultant would be able to do anything for the Bar G that she couldn’t do herself, given the time and the money. Which of course they’d have once she’d married…
Connor.
Sheer panic hit her like a tornado. She had to get Deke out of here before—
But it was too late. In the distance, a fire-engine red dual-wheeled pickup sped along the blacktop toward the Bar G.
Addie stepped closer to Deke, hoping to keep him from turning to see what had caught her eye.
“First of all,” she said quickly, “the Bar G’s already got someone capable of revamping its operations—me. I’ve been practically runnin’ the ranch since I was eighteen.”
“Then, why would Jud think it necessary to bring me in?” Deke asked with all reasonableness.
“I don’t know!” Oh, but she intended to find out the next time she saw her father! “Second, we’re just breaking even right now, which means there’s no room in the budget to put anyone else on the payroll.”
It near to killed her to admit such a thing, but she was desperate. The dually was turning under the lintel sign at the end of the lane.
Deke had an argument for that one, too. “Jud and I agreed I’d be workin’ without pay for the time being,” he said, adding quietly, “I thought it the least I could do to make up for the damage my daddy caused seven years ago.”
For the moment, Addie forgot all about the red pickup. “We don’t need your charity, Deke Larrabie!”
“Then, you’ll understand real well why I couldn’t hang around here those years ago and take yours without raisin’ a word of protest,” he replied with that maddening calm.
No way would she let him turn the fault back on her!
Yet Addie closed her eyes against the tide of emotion that rose in her at his words, for even now the memory of that night could make her weep with unconditional sympathy. She’d never forget Deke’s face, streaked with sweat and soot, as he stared at the smoldering wreckage containing his father’s remains, in his hand the empty bottle of Jim Beam that moments before Mick Brody had shoved at him in disgust. Still filled with the power of the bond she and Deke had just forged between them, Addie had felt the last particle of her heart that hadn’t already been his go out to him.
Yet, then came the other memory, just as heart-wrenching, of when she’d laid her hand upon Deke’s arm in silent comfort, and he’d bent upon her that sightless gaze—in which she’d seen the kind of devastation she could only imagine—before turning away from her, shutting her out like the door of a vault slamming shut.
Addie pressed the back of one hand against her lips. Suddenly, it all seemed too much to handle. She didn’t care that the damp had crept through her clothing to her skin, had invaded her very bones. Didn’t care that in her fervor she’d gotten a swipe of mud on her skirt from her shoes, still clutched in her hands. Didn’t care that she looked like anything but a woman on her way to pick out her wedding ring with the man who would place it on her finger and give her the security, if not the all-encompassing emotional connection, that she so craved.
It was a choice she made gladly, because she’d had the other—and while it had been as wild and exhilarating as a Texas thunderstorm sweeping through her heart, it had left just as quickly, with nothing for her to do but pick up the pieces alone.
Yes, she must remember: such emotion wasn’t worth the heartache.
Addie opened her eyes and gazed at the man who’d caused that heartache. “Maybe you did think you were doing what was best for me by leaving, Deke. And maybe you’re hoping that by coming back you can make up for…oh, for a lot of things. Like helpin’ out the Bar G to make up for your daddy’s accident. The problem is, there’re some things you can’t make up for. Because the thing I can’t forgive you for is that you never let me decide what was best for me. You took that choice with you when you went away. And when you did, you took away Jace’s choice, too.”
Addie spread her arms in front of her in a simple gesture. “This time I have a choice, and I mean to use it by doing what’s best not only for me, but for my son.”
Gripping her shoes in her hands, she pointed them both straight at her heart. “Yes, my son, Deke. I will not let you turn Jace’s world on end.”
She almost believed he hadn’t heard her, he seemed so caught up in his thoughts, those amber-green eyes boring into her, yet looking at a place only he could see. When their focus clouded, then came back to her, the expression in them was haunted.
“I’ve got no intention of upsetting Jace,” he finally said. “But I’m not leavin’, either.”
She saw he was dead serious. Deke Larrabie, the man who’d left her then so easily, now wouldn’t budge an inch. She’d find the irony amusing if it didn’t make her want to cry.
Because she saw, too, how very, very difficult it was for him to stay.
“Look, Deke,” she said, trying one more time. “If you’re truly serious about wanting to make up for some of the pain you’ve caused us, then leave.”
The shiny red dually pulled up a few yards behind Deke. “Now. Please.” She couldn’t keep the urgency from her voice.
“No, Addie.” Shaded by the brim of his hat, his face looked carved in stone. Yet set within the stone, those eyes glittered like gems. “This time, I’ve got a choice, too—and I’m choosing to stay.”
“Then, I can’t let you reveal who you are to Jace, Deke,” Addie said fiercely. “I can’t let you do him that way! Promise me right here, right now, that you won’t, not without my say-so. You owe me that much.”
He looked about to argue, and her heart stopped. Then he gave a nod, making the promise. “I won’t tell him.”
Deke seemed to realize at the exact moment she did, what had just transpired: Once again, he’d given her his word. And once again, she would have to give him her trust.
And where was the choice in that? she almost asked him but didn’t. There was no time, for just then the door of the truck opened and out stepped Connor Brody—the man who would be her husband.
And Jace’s dad.
Deke turned at the sound of a vehicle door slamming to see a man in a Western-cut sport coat, stand-up stiff blue jeans and spit-shined ostrich-skinned boots. When he doffed his white Stetson, the sunlight glanced off the shine on his dark hair and clean-shaven face, while at the same time carving out the Clint Black-deep dimple in his cheek.
There was something familiar-looking about the guy, but Deke couldn’t put a finger on it.
“Mornin’, darlin’,” he said, sparing not a glance toward Deke, the smile on his face all for Addie.
Deke’s antennae sprung to full alert. He shifted an assessing eye toward Addie, who was pushing her hair back from her suddenly flushed face. What was going on here?
“Mornin’,” she answered. Obviously not wanting to make introductions, she went on briskly. “I’m all set to go.”
The man glanced toward the house. “What about Jace? Isn’t he—”
“No! No, he’s not fit company this morning.”
She wouldn’t look at Deke, which made him even more suspicious. Who was this city slicker to Jace, anyway?
He sure looked disappointed, some aspect in his downcast face making Deke wonder again where he’d seen him before.
“Well, shoot. He ought to be with us, y’know, when we make our decision, if we’re going to start out like a real fam—”
“No!” Addie interrupted again. “Believe me, we’re better off lettin’ him get out whatever burr’s under his saddle on his own. So! We’d better get on the road. Don’t want to be late for our appointment.”
It was pretty apparent to Deke that Addie wanted to be shed of him as quickly as possible. Hopping from one foot to the other, she shoved her toes into her high heels while trying to get past him without so much as a by-your-leave.
The man gave a huff, which distracted Deke again with that sense of familiarity he’d be damned if he could place.
“Well, sure, but how about a hello kiss from my fiancée first?”
That sure enough came through loud and clear. His fiancée?
As luck would have it, Addie’s heel caught in a crack in the plank floor, and she stumbled beside Deke.
He bent down to pull the heel out, just as Addie stooped to do the same, his gaze seeking hers, hoping he was wrong.
Her face was even more flushed than before. She refused to meet his eyes.
Damn her! he thought as the reason for her guilt became abruptly clear to him: she intended to slot this guy into place as a father for Jace—and just seconds ago she’d extracted his promise that he wouldn’t tell Jace he was the boy’s father!
“I guess I’m not used to wearin’ these shoes,” she mumbled by way of an excuse.
He wasn’t going to let her get away with it. Even knowing he shared some blame for her situation, that he hadn’t the least right to be anything approaching angry, Deke still was. Deathly so.
“But somehow you seem to think you can fill mine for Jace pretty well, don’tcha?” he said.
That brought those blue eyes flashing up at him in defiance. Straightening, she lifted her chin before descending the steps to reach her boyfriend’s side.
“Of course you get a hello kiss—darlin’,” she said sweetly, offering him her lips.
Obviously about as mashed for a woman as a man could get, the fellow wrapped his arms around Addie and enthusiastically pressed his mouth to hers.
Sure, Deke could have made as big a show of not watching. He wanted nothing less than to give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d gotten to him in this instance.
But the truth was, he couldn’t have looked away if his life depended upon it, and so he stood there in a hell of his own making, as this man with his shiny boots and country-singing-star looks kissed the stuffing out of Addie Gentry.
Finally, she broke the kiss and turned toward him, the other man’s arm lingering at her waist. It did Deke some good to see in her eyes the defiance, and not the look of a woman who’d been thoroughly and satisfyingly kissed.
He held her gaze without a flicker of emotion.
Her intended finally seemed to notice the silent byplay between them, for he spoke up. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Connor Brody’s the name.”
If he’d been stunned before, now Deke felt his blood stop dead in his veins. “Brody? Any relation to—”
“Mick Brody? He’s my dad.”
Of course. Of course. If Addie had wanted to put a fine point on just how unsuited the two of them had been for each other, she couldn’t have done a better job than to pick a Brody. He’d never met this particular Brody before, but he’d once had more acquaintanceship than he wanted with Connor’s father, Mick. And from the looks of it, Connor had all the qualities his father had been swift to point out as lacking in Deke’s father and Deke, foremost among them responsibility.
No! He had been responsible—if not in those hours leading up to D.K. Larrabie’s fatal mistake, then every single day after that. And if Addie would just give him the chance, she’d find that out!
Except, from what she had just said, he had no chance of gaining her regard or her forgiveness. The very thought that he couldn’t, nearly sent him back down the road again, in spite of everything.
But he couldn’t go. Whatever his failings before, that didn’t excuse him from doing his best by Jace from here on out.
And that meant he’d be damned if he’d stand by while she handed any man the right to be a father to his son.
“And you would be…?” Brody asked after the lengthy pause.
Deke couldn’t have invited a better opening if he’d laid it out himself.
“Well, seein’ as how you asked,” he drawled, “I’d be—”
“Don’t, Deke,” Addie said in a warning that had just enough pleading in it to stir his conscience.
The problem was, she should have stopped there. But in her urgency to keep him from spilling the beans, she stepped forward as she said it. She stumbled again, this time as she caught the toe of her shoe on the gazebo step, which propelled her straight into Deke’s arms.
Her breasts came flush up against his chest as she grabbed his shoulders for balance and his fingers grasped her waist. He just barely heard her gasp over his own stifled groan.
Holding Addie the woman as opposed to Addie the girl was as different as night and day—and yet as familiar to Deke as the fit of his leather work gloves. Because every time he’d ever stroked the back of his fingers across her cheek, every time he’d pressed his palm to the small of her back, every time he’d trailed his mouth down her throat and beyond—all came rushing back to him like the wind across the plain. He had no time to set his defenses against the familiar yearning that quickly followed.
Their gazes collided as surely as their bodies had, and Deke saw in Addie’s blue eyes what he hadn’t minutes before: desire, as strong and stormy—and undeniable—as ever.
He’d have felt some satisfaction if the sight hadn’t pushed his own desire even higher.
Deke gritted his teeth.
“Deke, please, don’t,” Addie whispered, still clinging to him. “Don’t stir up any more trouble.”
“I stirred up trouble?” How could he have imagined her being hardened? She was anything but, as soft as a down pillow and as pleasurable to sink into. “Damn it, Addie, you’re marryin’ a Brody?”
“Addie?” Brody said from a few feet behind her. “What’s goin’ on here?”
“Let me explain things to him myself, please,” she begged Deke. “Remember, you made me a promise. You wouldn’t break it again so soon, would you?”
“That promise was for Jace’s sake and you know it!” Deke said, in a low voice.
She had no response for him, only staring up at him in mute appeal, blue eyes shimmering.
“Why only nine months, Addie?” Deke demanded out of the blue, as would a man grasping at straws. But he had to know. “Why’d you give up lookin’ for me after just nine months?”
“Why seven years, Deke?” she whispered as insistently. “Why has it taken you seven whole years to come back?”
Damn but it was quick, that wicked sharp blade of guilt slipping between his ribs, cutting through nearly a decade’s worth of defenses, so that he’d have done anything to rid himself of the pain.
Then Deke’s gaze fell to Addie’s lips, still glistening from the kiss of that Roy Rogers wannabe—and a Brody to boot. The sight sure enough bought him a measure of reason.
“What’s that sayin’, Addie?” Deke murmured. “Somethin’ like, Those that can’t run with the big dogs shouldn’t come off the porch.”
He didn’t voice the other bromide that had sprung to mind: All’s fair in love and war.