Chapter 23
“What I wonder is this,” Reeves said as the two of them strolled beside the lake, holding their horses’ reins in their hands. “If she isn’t keeping quiet out of fear or mistrust of me, is it possible there’s a reason we haven’t thought about?”
“What do you mean?” Bridget asked.
She was pleased that Reeves had visibly relaxed over the past twenty minutes.
Bringing him out here had clearly been a good idea on her part.
But at the same time, his mind was still working a mile a minute, trying to sort out what was going on with his daughter—she’d done nothing to put a stop to that.
“Well, I would have expected that we’d see more improvement by now,” Reeves said. “I know you keep telling me to be patient, and I’m trying to be, but if there’s something stopping her from talking, I have to consider that too.”
“You think maybe she feels threatened?” Bridget asked.
“I wonder if maybe she feels there’s some sort of threat to me,” Reeves countered. “As if it might be dangerous, somehow, for me to know the truth.”
Bridget pondered for a moment. “That could be,” she said. “I’m sure she realizes that if you knew who was responsible for the kidnapping, you would immediately try to find and get revenge on that person.”
“You’re damn right I would,” Reeves growled.
“Well, whoever it is, it’s someone who showed her they can cause a great deal of harm,” Bridget said.
“I’m sure she’s frightened of putting you in a position like that.
So maybe you’re onto something here. Maybe she isn’t telling you what happened because she doesn’t want you to take action—perhaps she’s frightened of what would happen if you did. ”
“In other words, she’s protecting me.” Reeves dragged a hand across his face in obvious frustration.
“The two of you are all each other has,” Bridget said gently. “It makes perfect sense that she would try to protect you, Reeves. You’re her whole world.”
“But it’s not her job to protect me. It’s my job to look after her,” Reeves groaned.
“This makes matters even worse. Not only did I fail to keep her safe, but I put her in a position to feel like she had to care for me. You can say I’m a better man than your father, Bridget, but I don’t know if I can agree.
I might love my daughter and want the best for her, and maybe your father never did that.
But it doesn’t matter how much I want something for her if I’m so ineffective at providing it! ”
He turned his back on her.
Bridget’s heart ached. She had brought him out here to try to help him look past the flaws he thought he had found in himself, to show him what she saw when she looked at him.
A good father. A man who loved his daughter so deeply that it drove him to distraction.
She saw him very well and knew that was exactly who he was.
But he couldn’t seem to see past his mistakes.
“Reeves,” she said softly.
He didn’t turn back, but she saw his shoulders tense.
“Emma isn’t protecting you because she has to,” she said.
“You and I both know that she isn’t. You and I can both see that you’re capable of looking out for yourself.
That’s not the issue. The problem is that she loves you more than anyone else in the world.
And that isn’t a problem at all. It’s a blessing. ”
“Not if it makes her put herself in harm’s way out of a misguided desire to protect me,” Reeves bit out.
“I know that. You’re right. She should be letting you look after her, not the other way around. But you need to let her figure that out in her own time,” Bridget said. “She’ll get there. She’ll come to realize that she needs to put her trust in you.”
“So, I’m right.” Reeves spun around. “She doesn’t trust me to keep her safe. That’s the problem.”
“No,” Bridget said. “That isn’t what I said.
She doesn’t trust you to keep yourself safe.
I’m sure she believes that if she tells you the name of the guilty party, you’ll go running off with no plan and no concern for your own well-being.
She wants you to stay at home where she knows you’ll be secure, where she won’t have to worry about anything happening to you. ”
“How can you possibly know all this?”
“I don’t know, I’m guessing,” Bridget said.
“But I’m sure I’m right. Just think about it, Reeves.
It all makes too much sense. It explains why we haven’t seen much change in her demeanor since we got her home—her fears haven’t been abated.
It explains why she’s more at ease with me than with you, too.
She doesn’t have the same fear of losing me, both because she senses I wouldn’t run into danger and because I’m not the most important person in her whole world.
She isn’t afraid she’s going to be kidnapped again, necessarily.
She’s afraid something will happen again that’ll turn her life upside down. ”
“So what do we do?” Reeves asked, throwing his hands up. “How can I make her feel safe?”
“She needs to know that you’re going to take care of yourself as well as her,” Bridget said simply. “I think that if you make her feel confident that telling you about what happened won’t have dire repercussions, she might finally be able to open up to you.”
Reeves slumped against the side of his horse.
“This wouldn’t be so difficult if her mother were alive,” he murmured.
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for all you’ve done.
In fact, it’s the opposite of that. You’ve made me see how valuable a woman’s touch is in raising a child—how even having Agnes around has never been able to replace what a mother could have offered my daughter. ”
“You’ve never spoken about Emma’s mother,” Bridget said, schooling her face carefully. She didn’t want Reeves to see the twist of jealousy she had just felt. It would be better if Emma had a mother around. Of course it would. Bridget couldn’t possibly begrudge that wish.
So why did it make her feel this way to think about it?
It’s because I’ve taken pride in being the one to help Emma, that’s all. It makes me feel unnecessary to think of a scenario in which someone else took care of her instead. That’s all this is.
It made sense… but she wasn’t sure it was true. She wanted to believe it, but as she looked at Reeves, she found that all she could think was that she wouldn’t be standing out here having this conversation with him if his wife were alive.
She wanted to be here with him.
Something about talking to him, exchanging ideas, made her heart beat faster.
It was more exciting than any conversation she could recall ever having.
She wanted to hear what he’d say, and she wanted to see how he would respond to the things she said.
It was like reading an exciting book with a new twist on every page, even though the subject of their discussion wasn’t especially thrilling.
It’s him. He’s the thing about all this that excites me so much. And it hurts to think that, even as I’m enjoying this moment, he’s been standing here missing his wife.
But there was nothing wrong with that. Of course he missed his wife. He ought to miss her. She cleared her throat. “You must have loved her a great deal,” she managed.
Reeves pressed his lips together. “It wasn’t exactly like that.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Rosalie was a wonderful woman… but I didn’t know her that well, to tell you the truth.
She was only in my life for a year,” Reeves explained.
“Our marriage was an arrangement, not a love match. It was a good arrangement. We were both happy with it, and we liked one another. And we both loved Emma, of course, though Rosalie hardly got to know her at all.” He closed his eyes briefly.
“That’s the part I grieve over, really. My daughter doesn’t have a mother.
I’m sad to have lost Rosalie, but had it not been for Emma, I think I would have put it behind me by now. ”
“I see,” Bridget murmured, controlling her emotions even more than she had been before.
It certainly wouldn’t do to let Reeves see that what he’d just said had left her feeling relieved.
He couldn’t be allowed to notice the new lightness within her at the realization that he had not been standing there thinking about how much he loved and longed for his late wife.
He wanted Emma to have her mother, but that didn’t mean that he wished Rosalie was the one standing here with him.
Now she was thinking again of the evening he had come to her room and asked her to lift her skirt, of his warm, surprisingly gentle fingertips resting on her ankle.
What had that touch really meant? It had been so deliciously gentle.
And here he was, talking about the woman to whom he had been married—with respect, yes, but with no passion.
It was hard to imagine that he had ever touched her so tenderly.
Is it possible he did feel something that night? Something close to what I’ve been feeling all this time?
There was no way of knowing—but the news that he hadn’t felt that way about his late wife did warm her slightly.
It left room for the possibility that he was having the same experience she was.
That he might be shocked, for the first time, to find himself feeling a new sort of affection for someone.
It’s a very unlikely thing. I shouldn’t allow myself to think it.
But then an even more unlikely thing happened.
Reeves stepped forward, closing the already slight distance between the two of them, reached out, and took her hand.
Bridget’s heart stopped.
What was he doing? What could he be thinking? She ached to ask him, to find out what this gesture meant to him. But she was terrified, too, that any words would break the spell. She held her breath, sure that if she were to let go, he would do the same.
“I owe you thanks,” he told her seriously.
“I owe you gratitude, Bridget. What you’ve done, both for me and for Emma, means the world to me.
And thank you for bringing me out here today, truly.
Thank you for forcing me to abandon my own whirling thoughts and to focus on something else.
Thank you for sharing what you did about your father.
I understand what you want me to hear in that.
I don’t know if I believe it or not, but it means a lot to me that you would try. ”
He tugged her just a bit closer. She went to him willingly.
And then his arms were around her.
She couldn’t move. It was too shocking, being held by him like this. It was warm and secure, and she was filled with the scent of him—manly and unlike anything she’d ever smelled before. She leaned into his chest and took a deep breath, savoring this unexpected and impossibly lovely moment.
And then it was over. He let her go. His gaze lingered on her face for a moment, as if he were trying to assess the impact of what he had done, and Bridget was miles beyond being able to control the response on her face. Whatever he saw, he would just have to see.
“We should get back to the house,” he said gruffly. “Do you need help mounting?”
She was tempted to say yes, to feel his hands on her body one more time.
But she shook off the temptation. Let the last time he had touched her be because he’d wanted to, not because she had needed him to. And if it happened again, let that also be born of desire.
She shook her head and pulled herself up to a seat on her horse’s back. Taking the reins in her hands, she turned the animal’s head toward the house, her thoughts spinning a mile a minute.