A Daddy for Dillon (22 page)

“So it wasn’t something caused by one of those mysterious accidents?”

“No, thank God,” he answered. “Just a work injury out on the range.”

Her sigh was full of relief. “That’s good,” she said, then after nervously rubbing her hands down the skirt of her dress, she suddenly rose to her feet. “I have coffee in the kitchen. I’ll get you a cup.”

His hand shot out and caught her wrist before she could move away. “No. Maccoy made a pot in Russ’s office. I drank some there. Besides, I want us to talk before something else interrupts us.”

She slowly eased back onto the couch. “I’m not sure there’s anything else left for us to say, Laramie. I’ve been thinking and—”

“That’s just it,” he interrupted, “you’ve been thinking too much with your head instead of your heart.”

She closed her eyes and, as he watched her swallow, it was clear she was torn and confused. Maybe she wasn’t even sure that she loved him.

Hell, Laramie, if she really loved you, nothing else would matter. Not a house or property. Not her ailing aunt or anything else. She’d wrap her arms around you and never let go. And if you loved her you’d let her know that this ranch and your job mean nothing compared to having her in your life.

Releasing his hold on her wrist, he went on, “And I’m beginning to think I’ve asked too much of you. I’ve expected you to do all the sacrificing. I’ve been thinking about everything I want when I should’ve been listening more to what you want.”

She stared at him in wonder. “What do you mean?”

As he gazed at her lovely face, everything inside him wanted to pull her into his arms and make love to her, but his head was telling him that taking her to bed wouldn’t fix anything.

“I’m trying to tell you, Leyla, that if living here on the ranch is that much of a problem for you, then I’ll leave it behind.”

Her lips parted with disbelief. “Leave the ranch,” she echoed in a stunned voice. “Laramie, that’s not a solution. It’s crazy!”

“There’s nothing crazy in wanting us to be together,” he gently reasoned.

She swallowed hard and pain skewered the middle of his chest as he watched moisture flood her brown eyes.

“No. But the idea of you leaving this ranch is. The Chaparral is your home. Where would you go? What would you do?”

“We could move to Las Cruces or Albuquerque. Some city where you can become an RN.”

Her head moved ever so slightly back and forth. “But what would you do in a city? You’d be stifled and unhappy,” she argued.

“There would be ranches in the nearby countryside. I could take a job on one of them and commute back and forth to work,” he reasoned. “What would be wrong with that?”

She jumped to her feet as though she desperately needed to put space between them. By the time she reached the far end of the room, Laramie was standing in front of her, cutting off her path to nowhere.

“Answer me, Leyla,” he challenged.

Lifting her chin, she met his gaze. “Okay. You want an answer, so I’ll tell you. Everything would be wrong with it,” she said in a strained voice. “You and I both know that to manage a ranch you have to be on that ranch.”

He heaved out a heavy breath. “Well, I don’t have to work as a manager. I—”

“No!” she swiftly interrupted. “You’re not going to lower yourself to working as a day hand! Not any more than I would let you give up your home. Do you honestly think I could be happy knowing that you gave up everything just to please me?”

Sheer frustration pulled a groan from deep within him. “I don’t know what you want or expect from me, Leyla. You don’t want me here. You don’t want me there. Maybe that’s it. Maybe you just don’t want me as your husband under any circumstances.”

A tiny sob passed her lips and she lifted her hands to cover her face but not before he saw her features crumple with anguish. “That’s not true. I love you. I would love to be your wife.” Dropping her hands, she looked up at him. “But I’m afraid, Laramie. Nothing has ever lasted for me. And you loving me seems just too good to be true—too good to last.”

His hands settled on her shoulders. “Oh, Leyla, good things can happen to you. All you have to do is let them and believe that we can make it together.”

Tears continued to cloud her eyes. “My mother always told me and my sisters that we shouldn’t expect to have a wonderful life. She said that we needed to be realistic and remember our limitations and settle for comfortable.”

Laramie didn’t understand how he could feel sadness for Mrs. Chee. He’d never met the woman. Never even seen a picture of her. But clearly she was a woman who’d been used and had passed her failings and weaknesses on to her daughters. Perhaps his own mother had been in that same category, he thought. Maybe Peggy had run from him and her life in Lincoln County because no one had ever told her she could do better, be better. It was a sobering thought.

“She wants her daughters to be like her,” Laramie softly stated.

Nodding, Leyla dropped her head. “My mother has always been too weak to stand up for herself. And I don’t want to be like her. I do have pride and I don’t intend to let anyone squash me like my father has stomped my mother.”

He shook his head. “Leyla, I wouldn’t use marriage to take away your independence. You can still be a nurse or whatever you want to be. Just as long as we’re together.”

Her head lifted and her eyes were full of torment. “Sassy spoke to Reena this morning. Jim’s cast is off and he’s starting therapy. She doesn’t believe Reena will be coming back here to the ranch anytime soon. But I do.”

Quint hadn’t mentioned this news about Jim to Laramie, and hearing it now hit him in the gut. He had to convince Leyla to marry him soon; otherwise, he was certain that if she left the ranch, he would lose her forever.

Studying her closely, he asked in a strained voice, “Is that what you want? To go back to the reservation?”

Her eyes blinked as though his question had jolted her awake. “No. But I’m thinking it might be best.”

Lifting one hand from her shoulders, he touched her hair, then trailed his fingertips over her cheek and underneath her jaw. “Why?”

Her hands rested on his chest, then slid slowly, wantonly up to where his shirt parted and her fingers could touch his bared skin. “Because when you’re near me, I can’t think straight. Because all I want to do is make love to you. To say yes to anything you want.”

The war inside him was raging now as the choice to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom battled with his plans for their future.

Catching her hands, he pressed them firmly between his. “You don’t have to worry about that, Leyla.”

Her brows drew together. “You mean you don’t want us to—”

She couldn’t finish the words and Laramie spared her by swiftly bending his head and fastening a hot, hungry kiss on her lips. “Hell, yes, I want us to make love!” he muttered once he eased his mouth from hers. “But not like this. The next time I take you to bed, it will be as my wife or I won’t take you at all.”

Anger suddenly flared in her eyes, and in his arms he could feel her body stiffen. “What are you doing? Trying to blackmail me into marrying you by withholding sex? What kind of arrogant bastard are you?”

She flung the questions at him at the same time she twisted out of his embrace. Laramie reacted by catching her wrist and drawing her back to him.

“Blackmail, coercing, forcing. None of those things have anything to do with this,” he said gruffly. “Earlier you told me you had pride. Well, so do I, Leyla. And men are no different than women. They don’t want to be used.”

She gasped and from the expression in her eyes, he could see her mind was whirling with thoughts she’d never encountered before.

“Using you? I would never use you, Laramie! How could you think such a thing?”

With a muffled groan, he caught her by the shoulders and tugged her back into his arms. “Listen, Leyla, yesterday I wasn’t just having sex with you. I was giving you a part of my heart. I can’t keep giving that much of myself to you if you’re just going to walk away and take everything with you. I like to believe I’m a strong man, but I’m not that strong.”

He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then for a second time in two nights, he strode purposely out of the apartment.

* * *

The next week passed in a tortured daze for Leyla. Even though Laramie treated her with polite respect, nothing felt the same between them. And she doubted their relationship could ever go back to the way it had felt that wonderful day they’d made love in the stucco.

When she’d told him she was afraid, she’d been admitting her fears to herself just as much as she’d been confessing it to him. But admitting it hadn’t taken the fears away or given her the courage to go to Laramie and tell him she was ready to be his wife.

But why was she still afraid? Laramie was willing to give up his job and this beautiful home just for her. That alone proved he loved her very much. Wasn’t it time she proved that she loved him just as much?

Four days ago she’d gone to visit her aunt Oneida, and though she’d desperately wanted to talk with the older woman about her feelings for Laramie and his proposal of marriage, Leyla had kept it all to herself. She didn’t want the woman worrying for any reason. And she especially didn’t want Oneida to fret that her niece was going to get married and forget her.

Other than Oneida, Leyla had no family to confide in. Oh, if she really wanted, she could get in touch with her mother. But if her father found out, he’d only cause Juanita Chee more grief. She had her sister Zita’s phone number, too. But ever since Leyla had left home, Zita hadn’t made much effort to remain in close contact with her younger sister. In fact, the few times she had talked with Zita, she’d gotten the impression she blamed Leyla for their mother’s misery. And that hurt. For as long as she could remember, Juanita had been miserable. Leyla getting pregnant and leaving home had just been one of many disappointments Juanita had endured in her life.

But that was in the past, and for four years she’d been strong enough to care for herself and Dillon. She was strong enough to make a life with Laramie and deal with the complications that came with having a family. But would he believe that she’d finally recognized what their love for each other meant to her? She’d been so obstinate he might have already decided she wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Mommy, let’s go see Tommy. He wants to see us.”

At the sound of her son’s voice, Leyla glanced up from the cabbage she was chopping to see Dillon standing in the middle of the kitchen floor. The day was very warm, so she’d dressed him in shorts and a T-shirt, but he’d insisted on wearing his boots and hat. For the past fifteen minutes he’d been riding a broom around the room.

“I’m busy right now,” she told him. Leyla had long ago given up on convincing her son that the cat in the vet barn wasn’t Tommy. She’d actually decided it was probably easier on him to believe his first pet was still living close by. “And Tommy is probably out hunting a mouse to feed to his kittens.”

Dillon tilted his head to one side. “Then we see Cocoa. I wanna give him a carrot and ride him.”

“Laramie has to be with you whenever you ride Cocoa. And he’s at work.”

Dillon galloped his make-believe horse over to his mother. “Let’s go find Larmee. He let me ride Cocoa.”

Yes, she thought, her heart swelling with emotion, Laramie had patiently and lovingly allowed Dillon to do so many special things. He’d changed her son’s life and, along the way, he’d changed Leyla’s life, too. Waiting to tell him how she felt about him was senseless when her heart was telling her to run to him as fast as her legs could take her.

Dropping her knife onto the cutting board, she looked down at her son. “Okay, Dillon, let Mommy change her shoes and we’ll go find Laramie.”

Dillon was squealing with joy just as Sassy hurried into the kitchen with an odd look on her pale face.

“Leyla, there’s someone out on the front porch who wants to see you. I tried to get him to come into the house, but he refused.”

Sensing that something was amiss, Leyla’s heart kicked to high gear. “He? What’s his name?”

“Tanno or something like that? Do you know him, or should I send him away?”

Shock caused Leyla to grip the edge of the counter.
What had happened to send Tanno here? Had someone in her family been hurt or, God forbid, died?
“Yes. I know him. He’s my brother.”

With dazed movements, she wiped her hands on a dish towel, then headed to the front of the house.

* * *

A few years back, Quint had built a separate building to house a staff of secretaries and filing clerks to deal with all the paperwork required to keep a ranch of this magnitude going. As a result Laramie rarely had to deal with paperwork, and his office, which was located at one end of the horse barn, was rarely used, except to meet certain visitors or carry on a private, sit-down phone call.

As the owner of the ranch, Quint certainly didn’t regard himself as a visitor, but after a quick look around the ranch this afternoon, he’d herded Laramie into the dusty little office and ordered him to sit.

“Why don’t we go to the house and talk in the study?” Laramie suggested. “I’m sure Leyla would make coffee and she always has some kind of dessert sitting around.”

“Forget that. She’s the reason I wanted to talk to you out here. I don’t want to take a chance on her overhearing us.”

Suspicious now, Laramie eased down in a chair that afforded him a view to the east. If not for a long feed barn standing in the way, he could have seen the rear of the ranch house and the fenced backyard where Dillon often played.

“Why would you want to talk about Leyla? Has she done something wrong? Gone over her grocery budget?”

“Not hardly. She doesn’t even use what we allot her for each week. What does she feed you anyway—bologna or ramen noodles?”

“No! She cooks wonderful things.” He patted his flat midsection. “I’m surprised I haven’t gained weight.”

Quint leveled a serious look at him. “Well, I don’t have any complaints about the job Leyla’s doing.”

Laramie’s mind began to go in all sorts of directions. “Then you’re wanting to tell me about Jim. But Leyla’s already told me that he got his cast off. So Reena must be packing to come home. Is that it?”