Texas Rose Forever (Texas Rose Ranch #1) (24 page)

CHAPTER 24

Cinco didn’t want it to seem like he was waiting at the front door for CanDee, but he was. He looked out the window beside the door, watching for her car.

CanDee had texted that she’d run into Phillip and that her phone battery was about to die and she didn’t have a charger. When she got home, he was supergluing a charger inside her car.

Lefty had also texted him that she’d had a run-in with her ex, but the damned old man wouldn’t give him the specifics. Cinco was going crazy with worry. Something was wrong, he could feel it, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Some small part of him wondered if CanDee still loved Phillip and if she had to choose, would her ex be the one who came out on top? Considering all that Phillip had done to CanDee, it wasn’t logical for her to feel anything but hate for the man, but love wasn’t logical. He shook his head. It seemed that Naomi was still mind-fucking him.

Until he’d met his ex-wife, self-confidence had never been his problem, but the stakes had never been this high before. He loved CanDee and was ashamed to admit to himself that made him vulnerable. He wasn’t sure that CanDee felt the same way about him.

Damn it to hell. He pulled open the front door and walked out onto the porch. He’d just pass the time in the porch swing. People sat in porch swings some of the time. It didn’t mean that he was waiting on her or worried or worriedly waiting on her.

He checked the clock on his phone. She’d left Cranky’s almost an hour ago. She should be here any minute. Using his foot, he pushed the swing back and forth. Just another lazy afternoon spent swinging and watching the road to his house like a hawk. He checked the clock again. It was still the same time. Not even a minute had passed. Screw this.

He got up and paced the length of the porch and back again. After five more rounds, he checked the time again. Two whole minutes had passed. He paced some more and finally, her car turned onto the dirt lane that ran to his house.

Without thinking, he hopped down the stairs. As soon as she parked, he was at her door, opening it for her. He practically pulled her out of the seat and into his arms. He hugged her tight. She was safe now. She was home.

“Sorry about the charger.” She leaned back. “I wish I’d charged my phone before leaving.”

She looked tired and—he squinted—sparkly? He dropped his arms and stepped back. “Why are you covered in gold glitter?”

“Lefty.” She smiled. “He was trying to make up for the Oreo debacle so he glitter-bombed my air conditioning vents. He did a great job too, because he got all of that glitter in the vents without spilling any.”

There was pride, not venom, in her voice.

“Okay.” He had no idea why she wasn’t mad.

Yes, he did. Deep down both CanDee and Lefty liked the challenge. They were a lot alike.

Cinco didn’t ask if she needed any help unloading, he just opened the back door and pulled the Igloo cooler off the seat.

“I got all the stuff for the Marsala and some other things,” she said lamely. “Phillip . . . I didn’t know he was going to be there.”

He wished his hands weren’t full of cooler so he could fill them with her, but he nodded toward the house. “Why don’t you tell me while we put this stuff away.”

She nodded as she walked to the trunk and popped it open. “There’s not much to say. Phillip claims to have seen me turn in to Cranky Frank’s and followed me in so we could chat like old friends. He grabbed my arm and Lefty punched him in the throat. Lefty’s kind of a badass, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him that I said so.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” He followed her to the trunk and looked down. “Why do you have four large rolls of bubble wrap and—is that a crate of tinfoil?” He shook his head. “On second thought, I don’t want to know.”

“That’s probably for the best.” She picked up one roll and stuffed it under her arm, and then another. “Lefty won’t know what hit him.”

“You like him, don’t you?” Some people bonded over drinks or poker, others over practical jokes. Who was he to judge?

“Very much.” She leaned into him. “Again, I’d prefer you didn’t tell him.”

They climbed the porch steps in silence and headed to the kitchen. Along the way, she left the bubble wrap in the parlor. In the kitchen, he set the cooler on the island and opened the top.

There was something he wanted to know badly. He had to ask, even though it cost him some pride. “Do you still have feelings for Phillip?”

His world stopped waiting for the answer.

“Yes and no.”

His heart cracked wide open. At least she was honest, that was something. The hell it was. Now he wished she’d lied. Wait, no, he didn’t.

“I don’t love him . . . I don’t think I ever did, but I wanted to . . . I wanted to love him.” She leaned against the sink. “Do you know what I mean?”

He breathed in and out . . . in and out. His heart rate returned to semi-normal. She didn’t love Phillip. “I know exactly how that feels. I wanted to love Naomi, but she wasn’t the one for me. Wanting to love someone and being in love with them are completely different things.”

He was staring at the woman for him and he wondered when exactly was the right time to tell her. Surely, unloading chicken and—he glanced down—frozen green beans from a cooler wasn’t exactly romantic.

“After seeing him today, I want to bang my head against the wall and ask myself why I didn’t see him for who he really is.” She shook her head and reached into the cooler to pick up a bag of baby spinach. “I’ve never thought of myself as particularly gullible, but clearly I am. I made excuses for his behavior to everyone, including myself.” She put the spinach away in the fridge.

“I’ve never really thought of myself as weak or a victim, but I allowed him to bully me. I can see that now.” She looked up at him, and the heartbreak on her face had him setting the chicken and beans on the counter and wrapping his arms around her. “I’ve never understood the whole domestic-violence thing. You know, every time I saw something about it on TV I’d think to myself, why doesn’t she just leave or buy a baseball bat and defend herself, but I get it now.”

His heart dropped to his stomach. “What did he do to you?” He swallowed down the bile. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. It’s just . . . I just . . . it was the beginning. Now that I look back on things, I can see that. It started with little jabs to my self-confidence and slowly built until I was asking him his opinion on everything I wore and did and said. I went out of my way not to make him mad and if I did, he had me believing that it was all my fault. As bad as it sounds, I always thought that victims of domestic violence were weak or raised in a household where violence is the norm.” She hunched her shoulders. “That may be true in some cases, but not in all. I was raised by a strong female role model who taught me to never take crap from anyone, but I did and I have. I have no idea why. Now that I think about it, Grammie didn’t have the best taste in men. She dated one loser after another, but she never let them push her around. Mooch off of her, yes, but never push her around. I didn’t grow up seeing her victimized, not that I see myself as a victim, but I get it now. I get that victims aren’t born, they’re made. It starts small and snowballs into something ugly and violent.”

He tried to keep his voice steady, neutral. “Was he ever violent with you?”

“No, but looking back on it, I think the control he liked to have over me would have escalated to violence if I hadn’t backed down. I’d like to think that would have been my wake-up call and I wouldn’t have taken it, but honestly, I don’t know. That’s the worst part, I don’t know for sure that I wouldn’t have made an excuse for his behavior.” She sounded so sad and disappointed in herself.

He led her to the table, sat down in a chair, and pulled her onto his lap. “Here’s what I think. You’re a good and strong person so when someone like Phillip entered your life, you only saw the good in him because that’s what you do. It never occurred to you that he could be anything other than kind, because that’s what you grew up seeing. Because you are kind, when he started doing things that made you doubt yourself, you knew there was something wrong and, not being able to see the darkness in someone, you naturally thought it was you. That’s how Naomi got me. Never in a million years did I ever think that she would lie about being pregnant. It was so foreign from the belief system I was raised with, it never entered my mind. Here I was, buying teeny-tiny little cowboy boots for our little one, and not once did I think that she was just using me. And then there were those men she slept with. My parents have been married and I assume faithful to each other for close to forty years. I had no idea she was cheating until it was too late. Because we come from good families with good role models, that’s what we expect in others. It makes us easy targets.”

It hurt to admit it, but he needed her to understand that she wasn’t the only one who’d become someone they didn’t recognize just to please someone else.

She kissed him gently on the cheek. “It must have been awful. Getting ready for a baby and then finding out there wasn’t one. I can’t imagine.”

It had hurt then and he realized that it still hurt. “I can say this now—things worked out for the best. She would have been a terrible mother, and I’m not sure the version of me that she brought out would have made for the best environment to raise a child in. I want you to understand that I know what it feels like to look into the mirror and not recognize the person staring back at you. It’s a terrible thing to hate the person you’ve become.”

“And look at us now. Both able to look back and learn from our mistakes.” She snuggled into him. “Aren’t we the grown-up civil couple?”

He liked that she saw them as a couple. He did too. His love for her doubled.

“Time gives you a clear head. Also, we’re both people who want to understand what went wrong so that we don’t make those same mistakes.” He had a kinship with CanDee that he’d never had with another human being, and something had changed between them tonight. She’d opened up without him prodding.

“You’re right, I’m learning from my mistakes, or at least trying to.” She circled his chest with her arms.

She pressed herself into his chest and he was disposed to believe that all was right in the world.

“You know . . . I don’t think I could look back on Phillip and be this insightful if it wasn’t for you.” She kissed the spot right below his ear. He loved when she did that.

“Why?” He didn’t care why; all he cared about was her lips on his skin.

“Because for once, I’m with a good guy. Well, apart from your hatred of Double Stuf Oreos and the fact that you mistook me for a stripper, you’re a good guy.” She sucked on his earlobe.

“I thought we were over the whole stripper thing.” He buried his face in her hair and got a nose full of glitter. He sneezed. “If you ever do start stripping, the glitter thing could be your in.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She laughed and the deep, rich sound made his chest downright sore with happiness. Would it always be this way? Would she always have this effect on him?

Good God, he hoped so.

“If you weren’t such a good man, I wouldn’t have seen what a shit Phillip is. I’m in a healthy relationship with a smart, caring man with a killer body, and I love him. That’s more than I’d ever hoped for, and I have to say that it’s nice. It’s nice to be happy with you and with myself.”

He took both of her hands in his and kissed the glittery backs of each. “I love you too.”

She got very still and then her eyes turned huge like she’d just figured out what she’d said. “I love you.” She sounded a little shocked. “It’s too soon, but I do.”

She didn’t sound particularly happy about it.

“I’m sorry it’s a bad thing.” He hadn’t meant for that to sound so snippy, but it hurt.

“It’s not bad, only I didn’t . . . I mean . . . I never thought I could be this happy. The negative part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop.” She shook her head. “I wish I could change that . . . One thing at a time.”

“I love that you can acknowledge your faults and are willing to work on them.” He kissed her loudly on the mouth.

“I feel that I must tell you that I’ve loved you longer.” Her voice was smug. Not that she was competitive . . . no, not at all.

He grinned.

“Really? I figured it out last night. How about you?” His hand was slowly inching up her side and was now resting under the curve of her breast.

“You made that up.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to lie, I figured it out at Cranky’s today. But if you need to feel superior and think that you loved me first, I guess I’ll have to let you.”

“It’s the truth.” He would have crossed his heart but he cupped her breast instead. “Let’s go wash off that glitter.”

He glanced down. There was a nice trail of it coming from the hall into the kitchen. As far as he was concerned, Lefty could clean it up. It was his mess. He noticed her rubbing her left upper arm.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Carefully, he rolled up her sleeve. A bruise was blooming on her arm. Actually, it was four small bruises all lined up like the pads of a man’s fingers.