The Loner (4 page)

“I did,” she said.
As much as I’ve been able to love any man
. She’d decided there must be something wrong with her, since she couldn’t seem to care deeply for any of the men who’d proposed marriage to her over the years. The man she’d liked best was Billy, and she’d refused his offer of marriage two years ago because she had been too surprised by his proposal to consider her best friend in terms of a husband.

There was something wrong with her, all right. She just had no idea how to fix it.

Blackjack eyed her speculatively. “Are you telling me that two weeks before the wedding you’ve suddenly changed your mind?”

Her stomach churned and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. Was she really going to end her engagement two weeks before her wedding? Was she really going to hurt Geoffrey like that? What had changed, really? Geoffrey’s conduct tonight hadn’t been the best, but jealous men weren’t known for their rational behavior.

She’d known from the beginning that Geoffrey’s feelings for her were considerably stronger than hers for him. But she’d thought she could make the marriage work. Why did the thought of a life with him now seem like a prison sentence?

It made her ashamed to realize how abominably she’d been using Geoffrey. When was she ever going to grow up and act like an adult? When was she going to start exhibiting the responsible, trustworthy behavior she wanted her father to see in her? She wanted his respect. She wanted his approval. And she didn’t know what else she could do to earn it, except marry Geoffrey.

She just couldn’t do it.

She supposed she was as spoiled as Billy had accused her of being. Sacrifices had never been necessary, because someone else had always been willing to make the sacrifice for her. First Billy by leaving and taking his secret with him. Then her father, by staying married to her mother to keep Summer ignorant of the truth.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said, meeting his gaze and feeling the weight of his disappointment fall on her shoulders.

“I don’t know what your mother’s going to say about this,” he said. “You know how many plans she’s made.”

Summer nodded dumbly. Her mother had planned everything. Summer’s wedding was going to be the social event of the season, with everyone from the Texas governor on down invited to the ceremony at the Bitter Creek First Baptist Church and the reception afterward in the Castle, the thirty-thousand-square-foot wood-frame house which generations of Blackthornes had called home.

Geoffrey moaned.

“We’d better get him back to the Castle,” Blackjack said.

Her father pulled Geoffrey upright and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of horse feed, as though he’d never had a life-threatening heart attack four years before.

“Momma would have a heart attack herself if she saw you doing something this strenuous.”

“What your mother wants won’t be an issue much longer,” Blackjack said.

Her father laid Geoffrey in the back seat of the
extended-cab pickup and Summer got in beside him, cradling his head in her lap. As her father drove them home, she used the hanky he’d given her to dab at the blood that oozed from the cut in Geoffrey’s chin, where Billy had struck him.

“Oh, Geoffrey,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

She became aware that he was awake when she felt his hand on her cheek. “Some knight in shining armor I turned out to be,” he said. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

She pressed his hand to her cheek, then removed it and held it in her own as she stared down into his shadowed face. “Billy and I…”

“I’m listening.”

That was the problem with Geoffrey, Summer thought. He was a really good man. Someone who listened. Someone who loved her. She’d be a fool to let him go. She’d tried to love him. Really, she had. But the most she’d ever felt for him was… affection. She wasn’t sure precisely what she ought to feel when she was with him, but the deep respect and liking she felt no longer seemed like enough to plan a lifetime together.

She glanced at her father in the front seat and realized she didn’t want to break it off with Geoffrey here, where her father would hear every word they said. The least Geoffrey deserved was the chance to vent his feelings in private. She absently brushed his chestnut hair away from his forehead. “We need to talk,” she said softly.

She put her fingertips across his lips and added, “When we get home.”

Geoffrey was staying in one of the guest rooms at the Castle, and when they arrived home, Summer stood on tiptoe to kiss her father’s cheek and said, “Good night,
Daddy. Geoffrey and I are going to have a nightcap in the library.”

Her father lifted a brow but said nothing. She waited at the foot of the stairs until he made it to the top and turned in the direction of her mother’s bedroom.

Geoffrey resisted when she led him toward the library. Instead, he pulled her into his arms. When he tried to kiss her, she turned her face away, so his lips only brushed her cheek. He lifted his head and looked down at her, confusion rife in his eyes. He didn’t force himself on her, like some other man might. Geoffrey was much too nice to do something like that.

I must be an idiot even to think about letting a good man like this get away
.

“What’s wrong, Summer?”

“Please, Geoffrey, let’s go into the library, where we can talk,” Summer pleaded, taking his hand and leading him in the direction she wanted him to go.

“Are you sure this couldn’t wait until tomorrow?” he said, gingerly working his chin. “I might be able to talk a little easier by then.”

“This isn’t going to be easier tomorrow.”

“All right, Summer. You know all you have to do is ask.”

Summer smiled wanly. Geoffrey was such a
nice
man. She hated doing this to him. He followed her into the library, innocent as a lamb being led to the slaughter.

Once Geoffrey was seated in one of the wing chairs in front of the stone fireplace, Summer began pacing restlessly from one end of a wall of ancient, leather-bound tomes to the other.

“Come here and sit on my lap,” Geoffrey encouraged,
patting his knee. “Whatever the problem is, I’ll kiss it and make it better.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Summer snapped. “I’m not a child.”

He lifted a brow in contradiction.

Summer stopped pacing and marched over to stand in front of him. “Look, Geoffrey,” she began, her hands shoved deep in her back pockets. “The truth is…” She couldn’t tell him she didn’t love him. That seemed cruel. But what other reason could she give him for calling off their wedding?

She pulled her hands out of her pockets and shoved them through her hair. “Oh, God. I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Try putting one word after the other.”

She glared at him. Anger was good. Anger would get her through this. “All right. Since you want it in plain words, here it is. I can’t marry you.”

Summer was watching his face, so she saw him flinch, saw the muscle work in his jaw, and the way his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he clamped his teeth and swallowed back the impulsive retort on the tip of his tongue.

The fire popped and crackled in the silence.

“Say something. Please,” she whispered.

He eyed her keenly and said, “What about this Bad Billy character? Your father seemed to think—”

“Billy’s a friend. We’re just friends,” she said quickly, perhaps too quickly. She meant it, but she could see that Geoffrey believed they were way more than friends.

He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his
widespread knees. “I kind of thought something like this might happen.”

Summer’s eyes went wide as she sank into the wing chair across from him. “What?”

He looked down at his soft lawyer’s hands, then back up at her. “I could feel you pulling away, the closer we got to the wedding.”

She shook her head. “No, I just—”

“Don’t bother denying it,” he said, his voice more sad than upset. “I kept hoping. I figured once we were married, you’d let down your guard, and I could make you fall in love with me.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” Summer said, swallowing over the painful knot of guilt in her throat.

He took a hitching breath and let it out. “I know.”

She rose to comfort him, but the instant she did, he lurched from his chair and said, “Don’t.”

He headed for the door to the library but stopped when he got there, looked back at her, and said, “Will you take care of letting everyone know?”

She nodded. A few moments later, she heard one of the immense double doors to the Castle open and close.

And he was gone.

Summer could hardly believe Geoffrey had left without a fight. Without once raising his voice. With hardly a word of protest. She sank into the wing chair, waiting to feel relief at her narrow escape.

What she felt instead was that awful ache in the center of her chest. If he’d loved her so much, why hadn’t he fought harder to keep her? If he’d loved her so much, why hadn’t he said something sooner about her apparent
defection? If he’d loved her so much, why wasn’t he here holding her in his arms, demanding she love him in return? Why had he simply given up? Wasn’t she worth fighting for?

Summer hated her conflicting emotions. She had no right to demand Geoffrey release her from her promise and then blame him because he was gentleman enough to do so without making a fuss. But dammit! What kind of man walked away from the woman he loved?

Billy had done it two years ago. Asked her to marry him, and then walked away without a backward look when she’d refused. Now Geoffrey had done the same thing. Was she so unlovable? So little worth fighting for?

Summer could hear her parents shouting at one another. At least they were willing to fight. She wondered if her mother realized the futility of her efforts. Her father loved another woman and apparently always had. Sadly, her mother just as clearly loved her father and apparently always had.

It was a tragedy that had resulted in awful consequences.

Her “real” father, whose name was Russell Handy, had arranged the murder of Lauren Creed at her mother’s instigation, in an attempt to get rid of the woman Blackjack had always loved. But the bullet had missed its target, and Lauren’s husband Jesse had been killed instead. Handy, who loved her mother, had taken all the blame for the murder and was serving a life sentence in Huntsville.

Since there was no evidence against Summer’s mother that would hold up in court, she’d spent eighteen months locked up in a sanitarium. But the “cure” hadn’t worked.
She’d come out with her jealousy and hatred of Lauren Creed intact.

Summer could hear her mother’s shrill voice getting louder as she descended the stairs, with Blackjack right behind her.

“I will not have her doing anything as stupid as canceling this wedding at the last minute,” her mother shouted.

“She’s entitled to make up her own mind,” her father yelled back. “Besides, she’s not the one you’re mad at. I am.”

At the foot of the stairs her mother whirled, her elegant cream silk peignoir flying around her ankles like a dancer’s costume. “And why shouldn’t I be mad at you?” she shot back. “It is ridiculous for you to be thinking of divorce at your age. You’re too old—”

“I’m still a man,” her father raged.

“Who hasn’t touched me in two years!”

“I don’t want you,” he said cruelly. “I want Ren.”

“Momma, Daddy, please,” Summer begged, crossing into the hall to let them know she was there. She’d overheard them fighting from behind closed doors, but she’d never before seen the naked fury on her mother’s face or the loathing that contorted her father’s features.

“There’s nothing you can do, nothing you can say, to keep me here any longer,” her father said.

Her mother stood at the foot of the stairs, Blackjack two or three steps above her. Any second, Summer expected to see her mother spread her arms across the open space, as though she could physically keep Blackjack from leaving.

“Get out of my way, Eve,” her father said.

“You’d go to another woman at this hour of the night?” her mother said.

“I’m finally free, Eve. Free. I don’t want to spend even one more night under the same roof with you. And now that the truth is out, I don’t have to. There’s nothing you can do to hurt Summer any more than she’s already been hurt.”

“I can break this ranch into tiny pieces and sell it to a hundred buyers,” her mother threatened.

Summer gasped. “Momma, you wouldn’t! She can’t do that, can she, Daddy?”

“Watch me!” her mother snarled. “I can and I will.”

“You can try,” her father snarled back. “Much good it’ll do you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” her mother said.

“Just try breaking up Bitter Creek and you’ll see,” her father threatened. “Now get out of my way.”

Instead of stepping back, her mother stayed where she was, forcing her father to take her mother by the shoulders and set her aside. She clung to him as he moved past, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

“Please don’t do this, Jackson. You’re my husband. I love you. I always have. I’ll never give you up.”

Summer watched, her face pale, her heart skittering, as her father reached up and yanked her mother’s arms from around his neck.

“It’s over, Eve. You can stop fighting now. I’m leaving. And I’m not coming back.”

“We’re still married,” she said. “If you go to that woman you’ll be an adulterer. That won’t help your case in court.”

Her father glanced significantly at Summer, and then
at her mother. “I think I’ve got enough evidence of my own to counter whatever charges of adultery you lay against me.”

Summer choked back a moan.

Eve glanced at her, then turned to Blackjack and said in a soft, silky voice, “You’d tell the world that your daughter’s a bastard?”

“The only person I was ever worried might find out the truth already has,” he said. “Summer knows she’s my daughter in every way that matters.”

That silenced her mother. And filled an empty place inside Summer that she hadn’t acknowledged was there.

In the tense quiet, Blackjack walked to the double doors, opened one, and closed it behind him.