Cattail Ridge (27 page)

“Blaming herself, just like always.” She let him hug her briefly, then straightened away. “I’m not going to think about it right now. I can’t. Not on Daddy’s birthday. Let’s get everything and head up top.”

They watched her go back across the road.

“Who’s Lori?” Logan asked.

“Her best friend since grade school. Her husband’s a piece of shit who gets violent when he drinks. Which he does regularly.”

Logan’s hand went to his face, where the beard covered the long scar that bisected his left cheek. The scar was courtesy of their father, something he’d done while drunk. “And Amelia tries to help?”

“For all the good it does. Come on.”

For the second time that day, his brother’s hand on his arm stopped him. “If this guy was the one who pulled her power and tossed the shoes up there, what does that mean for Amelia?”

Archer’s fury burned like a hot coal in his chest, mingling with a healthy dose of concern. “Nothing good. He resents that she tries to help. He isn’t like Dad, Lo. The old man only hit there at the last, when the pain was too much for him to hold inside. This little bastard? He’s evil all the way through. If he gets it in his head to focus in on Pip, things could get real ugly, real fast.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

E
mma didn’t get a chance to speak to Archer in more than passing until after the festivities from the party had died down. She felt like he was avoiding her, especially now that Sydney was almost back to normal. After turning her clean-up duties over to Ben, she finally cornered him on the porch where he was talking to her father, Jack, and Logan.

“Hey, do you have a few minutes?” She tried to act casual, even though her heart was pounding. Her stomach was threatening to send everything she’d eaten for dinner back up.

He eyed her warily. “Sure. What do you need?”

She sucked in a deep breath. “It’s time we talked. Please?”

It wasn’t until Logan nudged him in the ribs that he moved from where he was leaning against the porch railing. “The lady’s asking nicely. Don’t be a horse’s ass.”

“After you,” Archer said.

“I thought we’d use the barn. Zanny’s going to keep an eye on Miss Curiosity so she doesn’t follow us,” she told him as they walked across the meadow.

He didn’t say a word.

When they reached the barn, Emma paced the center aisle to the tractor Owen used to mow the meadow. She worried the watch she wore on her left wrist as she tried to figure out where to start. Archer didn’t help, just crossed his arms over his chest and stood next to a stall, waiting.

“I’m sorry.”

The corners of his mouth were tight, pinched. “Okay. Do you want to be more specific?”

No, he certainly wasn’t going to make this easy. Emma could hardly blame him.

“For the things I said, for the way I treated you. If I could take it back, I would.”

He moved his gaze from her face to his feet. “But you can’t take it back. You can’t unring that bell.”

“No, but I’d like to explain… that isn’t true. I don’t want to explain why I acted the way I did. It’s humiliating, and painful to even think about. I didn’t expect to ever have to relive that time in my life, but as someone very wise pointed out to me recently, if I want to go forward I have to. And you deserve to know the truth. That it wasn’t you. That it was me and my own personal shortcomings. What you didn’t deserve was the way I acted in the first place.”

Archer had gone very still as she spoke and she realized she was ripping open wounds that had barely had time to scab over, much less heal.

“Do you want to go forward?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I do.” Taking in a deep breath, she started at the beginning. “I met Ted at a showing at an art gallery. He was charming, funny, smooth. A little older than me. I was very flattered by the attention.”

The muscle in his jaw had tightened to almost painful levels but when she paused, he gestured for her to continue.

“I was stupid and green. I thought I was so smart. After all, I was twenty-four years old. I had a good job with a successful photographer and I was quickly rising through the ranks. I’d had a bad breakup the year before and that had left some scars. I thought I was too smart to fall for some line.” She smiled sadly as she remembered the girl she’d been. “I was ripe for the picking. See, it turns out that Ted frequently went to art galleries and picked up artists. Something about the type that he liked. Artists tend to be more free-spirited and depending on the artist, well… uninhibited. His fiancée was apparently an uptight debutant—in the truest sense of the word—she had a coming-out ball and everything.”

When Archer shot her a look, she nodded. “I did my research after I found out about her. Just to see how stupid I’d been.”

“Emma…”

She held up a hand. “No. I really was stupid. He was too perfect, too charming. It was too easy. But I wanted it to be real, so I ignored any misgivings I might have had and jumped blindly.”

Of all the parts of the story, the next part was going to be the hardest. She had to fight to keep her voice steady as she told him about the engagement, finding out she was pregnant. The fight. The money.

By the time she finished Archer looked carved from stone. If his breathing wasn’t so rough, his cheeks flushed, she would have thought he’d turned to granite.

“Never in my life, not once, have I felt like I was less important or a lower class than the rest of the world. Never. But when I found out the truth, and especially when I took that check and cashed it, I felt like the lowest person on earth. I was a dumb mountain girl who’d been some playboy’s fuck toy, and I’d been stupid enough to believe what we shared was real.”

Her throat was so tight, she couldn’t continue. Archer wasn’t looking at her and his fists were clenched so tightly, if he’d been anyone else she would have been afraid. When he started toward her, she couldn’t prevent a small flinch. The look on his face when he saw that sent a spike through her heart.

“You still don’t trust me to not hurt you, do you?” His voice was low, painful to listen to.

“I do trust you. I want to trust you. I just… I’ve not trusted anyone for so long, Archer. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m safe with you. It isn’t a reflection of you, though. It’s me.”

He turned his back on her, bracing his hands on the wood door of the stall. “That’s a difficult thing for me to believe, especially when you react like I’m going to hit you. And as much as I do understand how bad it must have been for you to go through what you did, it’s hard to not take personally. Emma, you know me. You’ve known me for five years. If you don’t trust me now, I can’t see how you ever will.”

“I’ve known you for five years, yes. But Archer, until the day the boys pulled the pirate stunt the idea of you and me having a relationship beyond friendship had never occurred to me.”

“Never? Not once? Not in all the time we spent together? Not during the birthday parties, the holidays, the regular Sunday dinners? You didn’t think maybe there was a reason I was here every chance I got?”

“I thought you were here for Amelia,” she growled, exasperated to the point of almost being angry. “Not for me.”

“I’ve loved you for five years!” he roared as he turned around, his face full of anguish. “Five fucking, goddamned years, Emma. I’ve watched you go on with your life, spend time with Burke, date other men. And I’ve known for five years that any day, someone could walk into that shop of yours and take you and Sydney away from me, that every dream I had would vanish like a puff of smoke.”

Her hands came up to his chest as he stalked her, pressing her against the big wheel on the tractor. “Archer…”

He wasn’t finished. “Five years. I couldn’t so much as look at another woman without feeling so damned guilty, like I’d cheated on you. The one time I was able to shove that guilt aside and actually be intimate with someone? It made me sick afterward. So I shoved that part of me aside and for four years, I’ve been celibate except when I’d dream about you or use my own hand. How could you not know that? At least on some deeper level.”

Emma was stunned speechless. She truly couldn’t comprehend what he’d said. Archer was a sensual, sexual man. And he’d suppressed that for four years, all because of her? That wasn’t simply lust.

Before she could find words he went back to the stall and slammed his hand into the wood post beside it. Dust rained down from above, peppering his shoulders and hair.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to be Sydney’s father. I want to wake up with you every morning and be there for you when your day is awful, just to make you smile. I want you to be there for me. I want it so much, Emma. So much. But until you figure that out and believe it, we’ll tear each other apart. And worse, we’ll tear Sydney apart. I can’t do that to her.”

“I’m afraid.”

He laughed, the sound harsh and grating. “And do you think I’m not? For fuck’s sake I was married. I swore ‘til death do us part, forsaking all others,’ Emma, and I meant it. Do you know what that got me? Shot two times in the chest.” He thumped the area for emphasis. “I died three times on the table. I lost the ability to shift into the cat that I was born with. But I’m willing to open myself up to you, knowing that you’ll probably break my heart. So don’t tell me you’re the only one taking the risks here. I am, too.”

Emma didn’t know what to say. When he saw that, he straightened. “I’m going to go. I can’t be here right now.”

She stopped him with a question when he reached the door. “Are you disgusted? By what I did?”

“What?”

“The money. Taking the money from Ted.”

He turned to her and shook his head. “Why in God’s name would I be disgusted by that?”

She didn’t think he was lying. He seemed too puzzled. “Taking the money wasn’t the most noble action I could have done.”

“That’s debatable. I think most people would say you did exactly what you had to do to protect your daughter. Screw anyone else who says otherwise.” He sighed. “I’m not leaving because of that, Em. I’m leaving right now because it hurts too much to be here. It hurts to know that we might not be able to work this thing out. Do you believe that?”

Slowly, she nodded. “I hurt, too. Please don’t think this is easy for me. It isn’t.”

“I know. But that doesn’t really make it much better. I’ll say goodbye to Sydney on my way out.”

And he was gone.

Logan was still on the porch with Owen and Jack when Archer got back to the house. All three men studied him with an intensity that was uncomfortable.

“We heard shouting. Everything okay?” Logan asked.

“I don’t know how everything is,” he admitted. “I need to go, though. I’m going to say goodbye to Sydney.”

Sarah met him in the foyer, taking in his posture in one glance. “Oh, honey.”

“Where’s Sydney?”

“Living room. Can I do anything?”

Archer pulled her in for a hug. “Check on Emma. She’s hurting, too. I’m going to check on Sydney and go.”

“How bad was it?”

“We’re still at an impasse, I think.”

Sarah touched his face. “So it isn’t irretrievably broken?”

“I hope not. But the rest is up to Emma. I have to go.”

In the living room he got Sydney’s attention. “Little Miss, I have to go. But I wanted to say goodbye first.” He picked her up for a hug, settling her on his hip.

“Do you have to?”

“I’m afraid so. But I’ll see you soon. Okay?”

From the sympathetic looks he was getting from the adults in the room, he figured they knew things hadn’t gone well. After a couple of minutes, he gave Sydney one last hug and sat her back on her feet.

He handed Logan his keys when he went back out on the porch. “I don’t feel like driving. Can you get us home?”

“Sure.”

They said their farewells and left. When they got to town, Archer directed Logan downtown. “I can’t go home. And honest to God if I don’t get something to drink, I may go to Lexington and catch the next plane to Georgia so I can kill the son of a bitch who hurt her.”

His stomach was churning. The thought of Emma being punched in the stomach, pregnant with Sydney, with the obvious purpose of causing a miscarriage… How close she’d come to not even having that precious little girl. He couldn’t bear the thought.

To his relief, Logan didn’t try to talk him out of it. He just asked for directions.

Archer knew getting drunk wasn’t the answer. But it was the only thing he could think of at the moment that might ease the pain.