ROMANCE: Badass Boss (Billionaire Alpha Bad Boy Romance) (Western Mail Order Bride Calendar Contemporary) (74 page)

There were many times when she had wanted to bring it up but there as always something that stopped her, usually her own fear. However, she then received a letter from Luke where he accepted her invitation and was on his way. He had arranged for someone in the nearest town to look after Eli while he was gone, and he was looking forward to meeting her. Since she didn't want the embarrassment of Luke turning up to her home and her parents not expecting him, she knew that she had to reveal the truth.

So it was that one evening, while her parents were sitting in the lounge, she came in, cleared her throat, and stood with her hands behind her back.

“Is there anything the matter dear?” her mother asked.

“Actually, there is, I need to speak with you about something,” she said. Her parents looked at her expectantly and at first nothing would come out. But when it did it came in a torrent. She told them all about how she had bought the newspaper and had written to Luke, and how the two of them had formed a real connection. She spoke rapidly and her parents had no chance to interject. Everything came out in one breath and it wasn't until the end that Mary-Jane realized she had to breathe. She was sure that her father would explode with rage, but instead he remained sitting quietly. Somehow that seemed worse.

“Well... that's interesting Mary-Jane, but you know that your father was going to find you a husband,” Annabelle said.

“I grew tired of waiting,” Mary-Jane replied. The two women waited for Wayne's reply, and when it came it was in a low, terse voice.

“Get out,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Mary-Jane replied, not quite believing what she heard.

“You know what I said. Get out. If you can’t respect my rules, then you don't deserve to live in this house. I have cared for you all of your life and this is how you repay me? You go behind my back and start exchanging letters with some ranch hand. You could do so much better than that, Mary-Jane. And what kind of man is he to speak with a woman without her father's consent? Do you really think that is an honorable man? Goodness knows what he'd do to you if you actually went off with him.”

“You don't know him at all!”

“What are you still doing here? Get out!” This time he yelled, and the shock of it prompted tears to flow from Mary-Jane's eyes. Annabelle tried to placate Wayne, but the anger had seized him and his eyes were glowing red with rage. Mary-Jane didn't know what to do, but she knew that she was not going to leave.

“No!” she said defiantly.

“How dare you speak that way to me. You have two choices here, young lady. Either you go away and wait for your new husband or you stay here like you're supposed to. Those are your choices but you need to choose now, and make sure you make the right one because you're not going to be able to undo it.”

“You think I wanted things to end like this? Don't you see what you're doing to me? You say you're keeping me here for my own good but you're suffocating me. I'm doing the same things I was as a teenager. I'm supposed to be a woman, to have a husband and bear him children but you're so afraid of me growing up and I want to know why. Can you blame me for going behind your back? If I stayed here I would never leave, and maybe that's good enough for you but it isn't good enough for me. I don't want to be a spinster. I want to have a life of my own. Why won't you let me?  Why?”

“Because it's not safe! The world is a dangerous place.”

“You say that all the time. Tell me the truth. I want the truth, and maybe I'll change my mind. Maybe I won't. But I need to know why you want to keep me here all the time. I know it has something to do with uncle Lee. You've never told me anything but anytime his name comes up you get these strange looks on your faces, like there's something you're keeping from me, and it's not fair. It's part of my life, too. I should have those memories. Even people in town know and they're too afraid to say anything. What have you been hiding from me all these years? Please, just tell me, I'm begging you, please,” she said, her words faltering under the strain of the emotion. Everything had poured out of her, leaving her empty and drained.

She sank to the floor, unable to summon the strength to hold up her own body. Her voice had cracked and was more of a rasp, and the years of emotional turmoil finally spilled out, and her parents saw the results of what they had done.

The change was instantaneous. Her father's anger vanished and was replaced by worry for his daughter. Both parents rushed to her side and helped her into a chair. Annabelle ran to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water and held it to her lips, while Wayne paced back and forth. When Mary-Jane recovered some semblance of sanity she breathed in deeply and begged them to tell her the truth one more time. Annabelle and Wayne glanced at each other helplessly, knowing that finally the secret they had worked so hard to keep hidden was going to be revealed.

“It was a long time ago, when you were very little,” Annabelle began, and Mary-Jane listened intently to her mother, for finally all the secrets were going to be revealed. “Life was much the same back then as it is now, aside from the savages. They used to come in the dead of the night and there was nothing any of us could do to protect against them. Now, some people think they're a myth, but I can assure you they were real, and it filled my heart with terror. They only ever went after young woman and girls, preying on them, and we were so worried about you that we made sure you were never left alone. There was me, your father, and your uncle. Being an artist, he had a lot of free time, so he spent a lot of time looking after you and escorting you to the edges of the village while you did your chores. Of course, your father was working, but when he wasn't he was making sure you were safe as well.”

“What happened to uncle Lee? Did the savages attack him?” Mary-Jane asked, her voice still strained with emotion. Again her parents glanced fretfully at each other. Annabelle paced across the floor and took a sip of water. Bringing up the past like this was evidently a difficult thing to do, and it was the first time that Mary-Jane had realized that part of the reason why her parents may have hidden this from her was because it was too painful for them to recount. Annabelle moved to the wall where she held out a hand and touched the edge of one of uncle Lee's pictures.

“He never belonged here, you know. Even when we were little he looked at the world differently. He was just... he was a man out of place and it was the only thing he could do I suppose. The only thing that made sense to him.” She was talking in a faraway voice, and it was as though she wasn't addressing Mary-Jane at all. Annabelle fell silent and although Mary-Jane couldn't see it she could almost feel that a tear was rolling down her mother's cheek.

Her eyes turned to her father. He looked stern and his jaw was clenched, but there was a sadness in his eyes as well. He cast a sorrowful glance at Annabelle and it was clear that her suffering was his suffering too.

“Lee was a good man and we trusted him... but over time he changed. The savages were attacking us and we knew we had to do something to stop them, so one day all the man gathered in town to form a plan. Lee was there as well. I remember it clearly. Everyone was hollering and red-faced and angry, vying for blood, but he just sat there with this thin smile and a blank look on his face like nothing at all mattered. He got that way sometimes, you know? He'd just... disappear for a while, in his mind I mean. Anyway, everyone was set on going on a rampage against these wild people when he started speaking and I don't even know how anyone could hear him because he spoke so quietly, but everyone stopped to listen to him.

I should have known it then. When he said that maybe they weren't savages, that they were just people like us and we should have tried to speak with them and find out why they were taking our people. He was adamant that we should have sought a peaceful solution, and of course everybody jeered. But then he said that he had actually spoken with one of them and he claimed that they were just people who liked living in nature without the shackles of civilization. Now that I think back on it I can hear the wanderlust in his voice, but I never believed...”

“Never believed what?” Mary-Jane asked, prompting her father, who had fallen silent as the memories of that time overwhelmed him.

“That your uncle would leave to live with them,” Annabelle said. Her tears had dried and she now walked to her husband's side, and they leaned against each other for support. For the first time they looked old to her, wearing all of life's scars, and now showing them to their daughter.

“What do you mean he went with them? They kidnapped people. Why would he do that?”

“We wondered the same thing. But one day he was gone... and so were you.”

This revelation made Mary-Jane sick to her stomach. The color drained from her face and her mind cracked open. Forgotten memories bubbled to the surface although they were still incoherent and elusive, but they were there all the same.

“He doted on you as though you were his own daughter,” Annabelle continued, “you both made each other so happy. But you were my daughter. And he took you.”

“I followed his tracks out to the desert. Your uncle was many things, but he wasn't good at hiding. I found the two of you in the middle of the desert. He was heading to their caves, where they lived. But I caught him when he was alone.”

“Did you...” Mary-Jane began, but the words froze in her mouth for she couldn't bring herself to ask the question that was playing on her mind.

“No, I didn't kill him. I demanded that he give you back to me. He told me that this was the right thing for you, that you deserved to grow up without the responsibilities that society dictated. He said you should be free, that you were like him and you wouldn't fit in. He said that he knew you better than I did. That he would be a better father than me,” at this tears began to well in Wayne's eyes. Mary-Jane had never seen him get so emotional before, and it touched her deeply.

“That's when I drew my gun and pointed it straight at his head. I would have pulled the trigger there and then if you hadn't been sitting beside him. It was the look in your eyes, like you were trying to tell me something. I lowered my weapon but I told him to bring you back to me. He tried to argue, tried to tell me to open my mind and that these weren't bad people, they were just different. He betrayed us, and I could never understand why he wanted so badly to escape this life. I wasn't going to leave without you, though. There was no way I was going to let you go with him. He told me that I was making a mistake.  But I took you in my arms and I knew then that I was never going to let you go, never going to let anyone take you away from me.”

Mary-Jane was so overwhelmed with love for her father that she leaped up and wrapped him in a tight embrace. The tears flowed freely between them and now that the secret was out everything felt released, all the tension of the years had vanished and Mary-Jane felt closer to her father than she ever had before.

“What happened then?” she asked once they had calmed down a little.

“I told him to come back with us and think about this more, that his place was with his family, but he laughed and shook his head. I think even then I knew that the words I was speaking were wrong. He told me that this was the first time he ever felt like he was doing the right thing, and that the only thing he was going to miss was you, but he had his paintings of you to remind him of that life. He turned and rode away to live with them, and then we never heard anything from him again.”

“Did the town go and attack the savages?”

“No. We were ready to, especially once they found out that one of our own betrayed them, but a hunting party went out and couldn't find any trace of them. We figured they moved on, but maybe Lee managed to convince them not to take any more of us. We'll never know. But we decided not to tell you about it. Maybe that was wrong of us. I know I'm not the perfect father. We're only human after all, but we thought it was a memory you wouldn't want to have. We liked to think of Lee as the man we knew, not the one who tried to take our daughter away from us.”

Now that she knew the truth everything made sense to her, and Mary-Jane felt as though a weight had been lifted from her soul.

“But you know that still doesn't mean I can stay,” she said softly.

“I know. I've known for a long time I just... I didn't want to deal with it. The thought of you, out there in the world, it was too much for me to bear.”

“I'll be fine, Pa. You've raised me well. You really think the daughter of sheriff Parker is going to be easy to deal with?”