The Manning Sisters (13 page)

The sobs came in earnest then. Huge heaving sobs that humiliated and humbled her. She wasn't crying for Mark; she was over him. Yet the tears fell and the pain gushed forth in an absolution she hadn't expected. Pain she'd incarcerated behind a wall of smiles, and then lugged across three states.

Russ obviously didn't know what to think. He stroked her hair, but he didn't say anything, and she knew her timing couldn't have been worse. Bringing up the subject of Mark now, tonight, was insane, but she'd had to stop Russ. Stop them both. She'd had to do
something.

Still sobbing, she rolled off the bed. Finding her footing, she gestured in his direction, miming an apology and at the same time pleading with him to go. She needed to be alone.

“I'm not leaving you.”

Unable to find the strength to go on standing, Taylor lowered herself to the edge of the bed. “Do you always have to argue with me? Just for once couldn't you do what I want?”

“No.” He eased himself behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, holding her carefully. “I love you,” he told her again.

“Please don't.”

“The choice was taken from me long ago.”

“No…don't even say it. I can't bear it if you love me—I can't deal with it now. Please, try to understand.”

His arms tightened slightly, pulling her back against him. “I wish it wasn't so, for your sake, but my heart decided otherwise. I can't change the way I feel.”

“I refuse to love you! Do you understand?” Taylor cried. “Look at us! We're a pair of fools. It won't work, so why should we put each other through this? It doesn't make sense! Oh, Russ, please, won't you just leave me alone?”

“Loving you makes sense. We make sense. I love you, Taylor. Nothing will change that.”

“Don't tell me that. I refuse to love you,” she repeated. “Do you understand? Nothing has changed. Nothing!”

“It doesn't matter.”

If Russ had been angry or unreasonable, it would've helped her. Instead he was gentle. Loving. Concerned.

While she was angry. Angrier than she'd ever been.

“Leave me alone. Go!” She pointed to the door in case he wasn't convinced that she meant what she said. “Stay away from me. I don't want to get involved with you.”

Russ studied her for several nerve-racking minutes, then sighed and stalked out of the room.

The whole house went quiet, and it reminded her of the hush before a storm. Russ had left; he'd done exactly what she'd asked. She should be glad. Instead, the ache inside her increased a hundredfold and the emptiness widened.

Clutching her stomach, Taylor sobbed while she sat on the bed and rocked. Back and forth. Side to side. She wept because of one man she no longer loved. She wept for another she was afraid of loving too much.

She lost track of time. Five minutes could have been fifty-five; she had no way of telling.

A noise in her kitchen alerted her to the fact that she wasn't alone. Curious, she righted her clothes, wiped her face with a corner of the sheet and walked out of the bedroom.

Russ was sitting in the kitchen, his feet balanced on a chair, ankles crossed. He was drinking a cup of coffee. Apparently he'd made it himself.

“You didn't leave?”

“Not yet.”

“What about Mandy?”

“I called the bowling alley and told her to kill another hour.” Dropping his legs, he stood and poured Taylor a mug, then set it down for her. “Feeling any better?”

Embarrassed, she looked away and nodded. She would rather he'd left when she'd asked, but that would have created other problems. Eventually she'd need to explain, and the sooner the better. “I'm…sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really, but…” She shrugged, then pulled out a chair, sat down and reached for the coffee. Cradling the mug, she warmed her hands with it.

“I suppose I should've suspected something,” Russ said after a moment. “Someone like you wouldn't accept a teaching position in this part of the country without a reason. You didn't come to Montana out of a burning desire to learn about life in the backwoods of America.”

Her gaze continued to avoid his, but she did manage a weak smile.

“So you were in love with Mark. Tell me what happened.”

She sighed. “How much do you want to know?”

“Everything. Start at the beginning, the day you met him, and work through to the day you moved to Cougar Point. Tell me everything—don't hold back a single detail.”

Taylor closed her eyes. He wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than the truth, the whole truth. He wanted names, places, dates, details. Gory, painful details. The man was wasted on a cattle ranch, she thought wryly; he should've been working for the Internal Revenue Service. Or the FBI.

“I can't,” she whispered as the ache in her heart increased with the memories. “I'm sorry, Russ. If I talked to anyone about Mark, it would be you, but he's behind me now and I'm not about to dredge up all that pain.”

“You wouldn't be dredging it up,” he told her. “You've been carrying it with you like a heavy suitcase all the way to Cougar Point. Get rid of it, Taylor.”

“You think it's that easy?” she responded tartly. “You're suggesting I casually take what little remains of my pride and my dignity and lay it out on the table for you to examine. I can't do it.”

The heat in the kitchen felt stifling all of a sudden. Taylor stood abruptly and started pacing. “I wanted to get away—that's understandable, isn't it? I read everything I could find about Montana, and the idea of living here for a year or so appealed to me. I thought…I hoped I could use these months to recharge my emotions, to mend.”

“It hasn't worked, has it?”

She hung her head. “No.”

“Do you know why?”

“Of course I know why!” she cried. “Meeting you has messed up everything. I wasn't in town a week and you were harassing me. Goading me. I'd be a thousand times better off if we'd never met. Now here you are, talking about loving me, and I'm so afraid I can't think straight anymore.”

“Are you looking for an apology?”

“Yes,” she cried, then reconsidered and slowly shook her head. “No.”

“That's what I thought.”

She reached for her coffee, downed a sip and set the mug back on the table. The hot liquid burned her lips and seared its way down the back of her throat. “I met Mark while I was student-teaching.” She folded her arms around her waist and resumed pacing. “Between working and school I didn't have a lot of time for relationships. For the first four years of my college education, I might as well have been living in a convent.”

“Why was Mark different?”

“I…don't know. I've asked myself the same question a hundred times. He was incredibly good-looking.”

“Better-looking than me?” Russ challenged.

“Oh, Russ, honestly, I don't know. It isn't as if I have a barometer to gauge the level of cute.”

“Okay, go on.”

“There isn't much more to tell you,” she said, gesturing with her hands. “We became…involved, and after a couple of months Mark brought up the idea of us living together.”

Russ frowned. “I see.”

Taylor was sure he didn't; nevertheless she continued. “I loved him. I truly loved him, but I couldn't seem to bring myself to move in with him. My parents are very traditional, and I'd never come face-to-face with something that contradicted my upbringing to such an extent.”

“Mark wanted you to be his ‘significant other'?”

“Yes. He wasn't ruling out the idea of marriage, but he wasn't willing to make a commitment to me, either, at least not then.”

“Did you agree to this?”

It took Taylor a long moment to answer, and when she did, her voice was low and husky. “No. I needed time to think over the decision, and Mark agreed it was a good idea. He suggested we not see each other for a week.”

“So what did you decide?”

Russ's question seemed to echo through the room. “Yes…I reached an intelligent, well-thought-out decision, but it didn't take me a week. In fact, five days was all the time I required. Having made my choice, I planned to contact Mark. I'd missed him so much that I went over to his apartment the following evening after work….” The floor seemed to buckle, and she reached out and grabbed the back of a chair. “Except that Mark wasn't alone—he was making love with a girl from the office.” The pain, the humiliation of that moment, was as sharp now as it had been several months earlier. “Correction,” she said in a breathy whisper. “In his words, he was ‘screwing' the girl from the office. But when he was with me, he was making love.”

Russ stood and walked over to her side, then drew her into his arms.

Clenching her hands in tight fists, Taylor resisted his comfort. The burning tears returned. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat and released itself with a moan. “You don't understand,” she sobbed. “You don't know…no one does. No one ever asked.”

“I do,” Russ whispered, brushing the tendrils from her face. “You'd decided to move in with him, hadn't you?”

Sobbing and nearly hysterical, Taylor nodded.

E
very part of Russ longed to comfort Taylor. He wasn't immune to pain himself. His mother had run off and abandoned him when he was still a child. He'd been unable to understand what had driven her away, unable to understand why she hadn't taken him with her. Then, several years later, his father met and married Betty. Mandy was born and Russ was just beginning to feel secure and happy when Betty had died. His father had buried himself in his grief and followed not long afterward. Russ had been left to deal with his own anguish, plus that of his young sister, who was equally lost and miserable.

Emotional pain, Russ had learned during the next few years, was a school of higher learning, a place beyond the instruction of ordinary teachers. It was where heaven sagged and earth reached up, leaving a man to find meaning, reconciliation and peace all on his own.

Taylor sobbed softly, holding him close. Russ shut his eyes. The ache he felt for this woman cut clear through his heart. Taylor had loved another man, loved him still. Someone who didn't deserve her, someone who didn't appreciate the kind of woman she was. The overwhelming need to protect her consumed him.

Lifting her head, Taylor brushed the confusion of hair from her face. “I think you should go now,” she said in a voice thick with tears.

“No,” he answered, his hands busy stroking her back. He couldn't leave her. Not now. Not like this.

“Please, Russ, I want to be alone. I need to be alone.”

“You'll never be alone again,” he promised her.

Her head drooped, and her long hair fell forward. “You don't understand, do you? I can't…I
won't
become involved with you. I'm here to teach, and at the end of my contract I'm leaving. And when I do, I don't want there to be any regrets.”

“There won't be. I promise you.” Russ tried to reassure her, but when he bent to kiss her, she broke away from him and skittered over to the other side of the kitchen, as if that distance would keep her safe.

“It would be so easy to let myself fall in love with you,” she whispered. “So easy…”

Witnessing her pain was nearly Russ's undoing. He moved toward her, but for every step he advanced, she retreated two. He hesitated. “All I want to do is love you.”

“No,” she said firmly, holding out her arm as if that should stop him. Russ found little humor in her pathetic attempt.
He
wasn't the one who'd cheated on her. He wasn't the one who'd abused her love and her trust. And he damn well refused to be punished for the sins of another.

“Taylor, listen to me.”

“No,” she said with surprising strength. “There isn't anyone to blame but me. From the moment you and I met I realized we were in trouble, and we've both behaved like fools ever since. Me more than you. I've said it once, and apparently you didn't believe me, so I'm saying it again. I don't
want
to become involved with you.”

“You're already involved.”

“I'm not—not yet, anyway. Please, don't make this any more difficult than it already is. I'm not asking you this time. I'm telling you. If you care about me, if you have any feelings toward me whatsoever, you'll forget you ever knew me, forget we ever met.”

Her words seemed to encircle his heart and then tighten like barbed wire. If he cared for her? He was crazy in love with her! His breath felt frozen in his chest.

“Am I supposed to forget I held you and kissed you, too?”

She nodded wildly. “Yes!”

Russ rubbed the back of his neck while he contemplated her words. “I don't think I can forget.”

“You've got to,” she said, and her shoulders heaved with each pleading syllable. “You have to.”

Walking out on her then would have been like taking a branding iron and burning his own flesh. Despite everything she'd claimed, and asked for, Russ walked to her side, took her by the shoulders and pulled her against him. She fought him as though he was the one responsible for hurting her so terribly. As if he was the one who'd betrayed her.

Her fists beat against him, but he felt no pain. None. Nothing could hurt him as much as her words.

Gripping her by the wrists, he pinned her hands behind her back. She glared up at him, her eyes spitting fire. “Why do you have to make this so difficult? Why?”

“Because I don't give up easily. I never have.” He raised his hand and glided his fingertips over the soft contours of her face. He traced her stern, unyielding mouth, and with his hand at the small of her back, pressed her forward until her body was perfectly molded to his. Then he buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair and inhaled deeply.

“Russ,” she pleaded, bending her head to one side, “don't do this.”

He answered by sliding his mouth over hers. His hand freed her wrists as he held her against him. The fight had gone out of her, and her arms crept up his chest, pausing at his shoulders, her nails digging hard into his muscles. But Russ still felt no pain.

A moment later, she pulled away from him, looking into his eyes. “Do I have to walk out on my contract, pack my bags and leave town to convince you I mean it?” she asked. “Is that what it's going to take?”

“If you want me out of your life, just say so,” Russ said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“What do you think I've been trying to do for the past weeks? Stay away from me, Russ! I've got to get my head straightened out. I'm not ready to fall in love again, not with you, not with anyone. I can't deal with this—with you—right now. I may not be able to for a long time.”

“All right,” he said gruffly. “I get the message. Loud and clear.” He stalked out of the kitchen, paused long enough in the living room to reach for his hat, and then he was gone.

But as he closed the door, he heard Taylor's sobs. He forced himself to walk away from her, but he hesitated on the porch and sagged against the pillar. Regret and pain worked through him before he was able to move.

Once more he had to find meaning, reconciliation and peace in the aftermath of pain.

 

“Cody Franklin just pulled in to the yard,” Mandy told Russ as though that was earth-shattering news.

Russ grumbled something in reply, and his muscles tensed involuntarily. If Cody was stopping by to talk, Russ knew what—who—the subject was bound to be.

Taylor.

“I don't understand you,” Mandy said, clearly at the end of her wits. “Why don't you just call Taylor and put an end to this nonsense? You've been walking around like a wounded bear all week.”

“When I need your advice, I'll ask for it,” Russ bit out, and stood up so fast, he nearly toppled the kitchen chair. “Stay out of it, Amanda. This is between me and Taylor.”

“She obviously isn't doing any better. She called in sick twice this week.”

“How many times are you going to tell me that?” Russ muttered. “It doesn't change the situation. She doesn't want anything to do with me. If and when she does, she'll contact me. Until then it's as if we never met.”

“Oh, that's real smart,” Mandy said, her fists digging into her hips. “You're so miserable, it's like having a thundercloud hanging over our lives. You love Taylor and she loves you, so what's the problem?”

“If Taylor feels anything for me, which I sincerely doubt, she'll let
me
know. Until then I have nothing to say to her.” It gnawed at him to admit it, but the truth was the truth, no matter how many different ways he chose to examine it. Taylor had claimed she wanted nothing to do with him often enough for him to believe her. He had no other choice.

“Save me from stubborn men,” Mandy groaned, as she headed for the door, pulling it open for Russ's friend.

“Howdy, Amanda,” Cody Franklin said as he walked into the kitchen. He removed his cap and tucked it under his arm. He was dressed in his uniform—green shirt and coat and tan slacks. His gunbelt rode low on his hips.

“Hello, Cody.” Mandy craned her neck toward Russ. “I hope you've come to talk some sense into my bullheaded brother.”

Cody seemed uneasy. “I'll try.”

Mandy left the two of them alone, a fact for which Russ was grateful. He didn't need a letter of introduction to deduce the reason for his friend's latest visit. One look at Cody confirmed what Russ had already guessed. The deputy had stopped by as a courtesy before going out with Taylor himself.

“So you intend to ask her for a date?” Russ forestalled the exchange of chitchat that would eventually lead to the subject of Taylor.

Cody's eyes just managed to avoid Russ's.

“Frankly, Cody, you don't need my permission. Taylor is her own woman, and if she wants to date you that's her business, not mine.”

Having said as much, Russ should have felt relieved, but he didn't. He'd been in a rotten mood from the moment he'd left Taylor's nearly a week before, and Cody's coming by unannounced hadn't improved his disposition any.

Cody must have sensed his mood, because he gave Russ a wide berth. He walked over to the cupboard, brought down a mug and poured himself coffee before he turned to face Russ.

“Sit down,” Russ snarled. “I'm not going to bite your head off.”

Cody grinned at that, and it occurred to Russ that Cougar Point's deputy sheriff wasn't bad-looking. Handsome enough to stir any woman's fickle heart. Plenty of women were interested in him, but he took his duties so seriously that no romantic relationship lasted more than a couple of months. Cody Franklin didn't smile very often, and Russ thought he knew why.

The two men went back a long way, and Russ didn't want their friendship to end because of one stubborn woman. “You're planning on asking Taylor out, aren't you?” he demanded when Cody didn't immediately respond.

Cody joined Russ at the table. “Actually, I wasn't going to do anything of the kind. I asked her once already, and she turned me down. I figured she wasn't interested, so I was willing to leave it at that.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because she phoned the other day and asked
me
to dinner Friday night.” He paused to rub the side of his jaw. “I don't mind telling you, I was taken aback by that. I've never had a woman ask me for a date.”

“What did you tell her?”

Cody looked uncomfortable. “I said I needed some time to think it over.”

“So Taylor's the one who called you?” Russ was surprised his voice sounded so normal.

“I've never had a woman approach me like this,” Cody went on to say a second time. “I'm not sure I like it, either. It puts me in one hell of a position.” He twisted the mug around in his hands, as though he couldn't locate the handle. “From what she said, I assume she intends to pay, too. I've never had a woman pay for my meal yet, and I'm not about to start now.”

“Don't blame you for that,” Russ felt obliged to say, although he couldn't help being slightly amused. He didn't need a script to realize what Taylor was doing. She'd asked Cody Franklin to dinner to prove something to herself and possibly to him.

“You've got feelings for her, haven't you?” Cody asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

“You could say that,” Russ confirmed, understating his emotions by a country mile. He had feelings, all right, but he wasn't willing to discuss them with his friend.

Cody grinned, revealing even white teeth. Crow's-feet crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “So, what do you want me to say to her?”

“That you'll be happy to let her buy you dinner.”

Cody hesitated before taking a sip of his coffee. “You don't mean that,” he finally said.

“Yes, I do. In fact, I've never been more serious in my life.”

“But—”

“Taylor Manning doesn't want anything to do with me.”

“And you believe her?”

Russ shrugged. “The way I see it, I don't have any choice. If she wants to go out with you, fine. That's her decision.”

Cody shook his head. “I can't believe I heard you right.”

“You did. Trust me, dealing with this woman isn't easy.”

Cody set his half-finished coffee on the table and stood. “Okay, but I have the feeling you're going to regret this.”

 

Cody Franklin was as nice a man as Taylor had ever met. And a gentleman to boot. He arrived promptly at seven, dressed in a suit and tie. He really was handsome. Considerate. And Taylor was badly in need of some tender loving care. She'd just spent the most miserable week of her life, and an evening with a man who didn't pose the slightest emotional threat was exactly what she needed to pull herself out of this slump. At least that was what she kept telling herself.

“I hope I'm not too early,” Cody said, stepping inside and glancing around. Apparently he approved of what he saw, because he gave her a smile.