Chapter 5 #2
She stared at him in shock, her heart knocking painfully against her ribs.
"Oh God," she whispered huskily. "That was Allan from the firm.
I was so miserable after I got back that I accepted his invitation to have dinner with him.
If you had stayed, you would have realized that he left a few minutes later. Nothing happened."
She shook her head. "After a year, you still did not know me. I could never claim to be in love with you and share what we shared, then turn around and be with another man."
"How the hell was I supposed to know that?
" he demanded angrily. "I saw what I saw, and it was damning.
You broke me into pieces and I reacted. I wanted to kill him," he told her darkly.
"I wanted to rip him apart. That's what I would have done if I had stayed, so I left.
He touched what was mine and I could not think. "
"I'm not yours," she gasped as he clamped his hand on her chin, his eyes glowering.
"You want to rethink that. You also should rethink this asinine idea you have of going back. I won't allow it."
"Let go of me. You don't damn well own me. I'm not one of your livestock or your properties and I already told you that I will not live here knowing that your mother thinks I'm crap."
"Then live somewhere else!" The frustration was rife in his voice. "I will talk to her-"
"And say what?" she cried. "Try and erase the fact that your father made a fool of her with a black woman?
That he humiliated her over and over again for the world to see?
I might not like her, but she has a good reason to hate my kind.
You're her only son and being here is going to continue to rub her face in what happened. I cannot be part of that."
He was silent for so long, she wondered if he was going to address the issue.
"I will talk with her," he reiterated quietly. "She's my mother and despite our differences and the awful things we've been through with him, she loves me and wants nothing more than to see me happy. She does," he added at the skeptical look on her face.
"I don't want to talk anymore," she whispered.
Turning into his arms, she moved on top of him and made sure conversation was useless.
He would have preferred discussing the matter some more and coming to a final decision, but he wanted to brand his body on hers.
Afterwards, when she had drifted off to sleep, he remained awake, his arms wrapped around her as he stared up at the ceiling.
He had often wondered if what Julianne had told him about his mother had been true. He had confronted her a few days after she had left and she had denied everything.
"She told me she was not cut out for ranch life.
It's better you found out now before it's too late.
It's a lonely existence and not a lot of women can endure it.
Ms. Merrywood is from the big town where there is access to restaurants and malls and she's a career woman; she would not have lasted very long here. "
He had accepted it and felt guilty that he expected her to give up her life for his.
Now he was not so certain. He knew the hell his mother had been through.
He had been through his own hell with a man who had been cruel and callous and unloving.
He had cared nothing for his wife and son.
He had asked his mother once why she stayed with him and she had told him that she would have had to give Bryson up if she left.
"Your father was a very powerful man, and being the heir that you were meant he would not have willingly parted with you. So, I stayed."
She had sacrificed everything for him and that's why he loved her. Tipping his chin down, he gazed at the slender beauty in his arms. Now he was torn in two. Well, not really. She was what was important to him, her and the baby she was cradling inside her.
He was going to have to talk to his mother and demand that she put aside her distaste and memories of the past and come to grips with the fact that he was in love with Julianne. It was not something he had planned, but it had happened and he could not see his life without her. Not anymore.
Bryson slapped his dusty hat against his left thigh and wished with all his might that he could avoid this conversation.
After leaving Julianne in the early hours of the morning, he had gone to the ranch where there was a crisis that had to be dealt with.
The morning had quickly melded into the afternoon with one thing after another.
A tour had gone awry when two kids turned up missing, only to be found an hour later hiding out in one of the outbuildings with the faint hope of staying on the ranch because they had dreams of becoming cowboys.
His ranch hands had lost sixty bloody minutes searching for the kids, who fortunately had been unharmed.
Then there was the director and producer of some soap opera series who had, in a moment of insanity, demanded that, according to their contract, they shoot a scene where the female and male characters were in the paddock while the horses were grazing, in a lip lock.
On top of that, the east perimeter fence had been torn apart by vandals, allowing several steers to wander off the property. It had been a day from hell.
Now he was faced with breaking things off with a woman who did not deserve to be hurt.
But that's exactly what he was doing. Hurting her.
And the look on her lovely face made his heart wrench.
He had called and asked for a meeting at the park, somewhere public where she would not cause a scene, or so he hoped.
"I can still see you," Sara-Lee said helplessly, her eyes wide and tearful. "It doesn't have to end. She's not going to stay. Your mother told me Ms. Merrywood does not like the ranch. Things don't have to end between us. She's your past-"
"No," he clipped, damning his mother for interfering. "She's not my past. I-I've been with her." He turned away from the stricken look on her face and felt like an animal.
"I'm sorry as hell, Sara-Lee, but you knew how I felt about Julianne.
I love her, I will always love her, and whether she chooses to stay, which I'm going to do my damnedest to persuade her that she should, I love her.
She's carrying my baby and that makes it even more monumental.
I have to be there for her, for them. I hope you'll understand.
" He looked at his watch and felt like a coward. He wanted desperately to leave.
"I won't stop trying to change your mind." Sara-Lee drew in a tearful breath as she rose with dignity. "I know you think this is going to work out with Ms. Merrywood, but I know better. I would have made you a very good wife, Bryson. I happen to love the ranch."
It was after she had left and he returned to the ranch that he noticed that she had said she loved the ranch and not him.
"Bryson, look-" Her voice stuttered to a stop as she wrenched the door open and saw who was standing there.
"Mrs. McNab." Shock had her rooted to the spot, just inside the doorway as she stared at the impeccably dressed woman wearing a Chanel suit, the color of ripe plums. It also reminded her that she had on only a skimpy blue silk robe that she had donned after her shower and her hair was in a series of twists, ones that she had tied together on top of her head.
She had had a very crappy day with the nausea worsening by the hour. Nothing she ate had stayed down.
"May I come in?" The modulated tone reminded her that she was just standing there.
"Of course." Stepping back, she allowed the woman entrance and closed the door behind her.
"We could use the living room. I was just about to have a cup of tea," she hurried past the woman and led the way into the living room, picking up the folders she had strewn all over the table and the papers she had been making notes on.
The cooling tea was on another table beside the worn sofa. "Please have a seat."
"I've interrupted your work." Barbara perched herself on the edge of the sofa, her disdain for the shabby interior of the cottage noticeable.
"Just some fine-tuning." Julianne felt as if she was before a queen who found her lacking.
Lifting her chin, she met the woman's eyes squarely.
There was nothing Barbara McNab could hand out that she would not be able to take.
She had tried her best before and sent her packing.
This time, she was leaving of her own volition. "What do you want?"
Green eyes so much like her son's swept over the woman's disheveled appearance.
She had obviously expected Bryson to be dropping by, hence the skimpy robe, Barbara thought with distaste.
Women like Julianne were designed to hold a man's attention with sex.
She knew the type. Her husband had been with that type.
"My son tells me you're with child."
"That's right." Picking up her tea, Julianne wrapped her fingers around the cup. "I am and it's not something I planned."
"Are you planning on staying?"
"That's between me and your son and has nothing to do with you."
The woman's expression turned frosty. "It has everything to do with me. I happen to love my son and-"
"If you love your son as you keep saying, you will allow him to make his own decision.
He's not like your husband." Putting down the cup with a snap, Julianne squared her shoulders and faced her enemy.
"You made staying at the ranch intolerable for me and you made him choose.
No loving mother would ever want to put her child in that position. "