The SEAL's Secret Heirs (13 page)

“Listen.” Liam cleared his throat. “If we're all done crying about your girlfriend, I've got something to tell you that's been rubbing me the wrong way.”

“You need me to go underwear shopping with you so we can get you the right size?” When Liam elbowed him, Kyle knew they were on the way back to being brothers again instead of strangers. “Because you have a wife for that now.”

“Shut up. This is for serious. There's an outfit called Samson Oil making noises around Royal and I don't like it. They're buying up properties. Even offered me a pretty penny for Wade Ranch. Wanted to make sure you're on the same—”

“You said no, right?” Kyle shot back instantly. This was his home now. The place he planned to raise his daughters. No amount of money could compensate for a stable home life for his family.

“Well, I wanted to talk to you first. But yeah. The right answer is no.”

Relief squeezed his chest. And wasn't that something? Kyle had never thought he'd consider the ranch home. But there you go. The threat of losing it—well, he didn't have to worry about that, obviously.

“So it's a no. What's the big deal then?”

Liam shrugged. “I dunno. It just doesn't sit well. The guy from Sampson, he didn't even look around. Just handed me some paperwork with an offer that was fifteen million above fair market value. How's that for a big deal?”

It ruffled the back of Kyle's neck, too. “There's no oil around here. What little there is has a pump on it already.”

“Yeah, so now you're where I'm at. It's weird, right?”

Kyle nodded because his throat was tight again. It was nice to be consulted. As if he really was half owner of the ranch, and he and Liam were going to do this thing called family. He hadn't left this time and it might have made a huge difference.

It gave Kyle hope he might actually become the father his girls deserved. Grace, however, was a whole other story with an ending he couldn't quite figure out.

Ten

G
race kicked the oven. It didn't magically turn on. It hadn't the first time she'd hauled off and whacked it a minute ago, either.

But kicking something felt good. Her foot throbbed, which was better than the numbness she'd felt since climbing from Kyle's bed, well loved and then brokenhearted in the space of an hour. The physical pain was a far sight better than the mental pain.

Because she didn't understand what had happened. She'd opened her heart to Kyle again, only to be destroyed more thoroughly the second time than she had been the first time. This was a grown woman's pain. And the difference was breathtaking. Literally, as in she couldn't make her lungs expand enough to get a good, solid full breath.

Determined to fix something, Grace spent twenty minutes unscrewing every bolt she could budge on the oven, hoping something would jump out at her as the culprit. Which failed miserably because she didn't know what it was supposed to look like—how would she know if something was out of place? The oven was just broken. No matter. She wasn't hungry anyway.

She wandered around her small house two blocks off the main street of Royal. She'd bought the house three years ago when she'd claimed her Professional Single Girl status, and set about finding a way to be happy with the idea of building a life with herself and herself only in it. She had, to a degree. No one argued with her if she wanted to change the drapes four times a year, and she never had to share the bathroom.

The empty rooms hadn't seemed so empty until now. Spending the weekend with Kyle had stomped her fantasy of being single and happy to pieces. She wanted a husband to fill the space in her bed, in her heart. Children who laughed around the kitchen table. A dog the kids named something silly, like Princess Spaghetti.

A fierce knock sounded at the door, echoing through the whole house. She almost didn't answer it because who else would knock like that except a man who had a lot of built-up anger? At her, apparently. After ten years of turning over every aspect of her relationship with Kyle, analyzing it to death while looking for the slightest nuance of where it had all gone wrong, never once had she turned that inspection back on herself.

But she'd made mistakes, that much was apparent. Then and now. Somehow.

Only she didn't quite buy that what happened ten years ago was all her fault.

And all at once, she wanted that reckoning. Wanted to ask a few pointed questions of Kyle Wade that she hadn't gotten to ask before being thrown out of his bed two long and miserable days ago.

She yanked open the door and the mad she'd worked up faltered.

Kyle stood there on her doorstep in crisp jeans, boots and a work shirt, dressed like every other man in Royal and probably a hundred other towns dotting the Texas prairie. But he wasn't anything close to any other man the world over, because he was Kyle. Her stupid heart would probably never get the message that they were doomed as a couple.

He was holding a bouquet of beautiful flowers, so full it spilled over his hand in a riot of colors and shapes. Her vision blurred as she focused on the flowers and the solemn expression on Kyle's face.

“Hey, Grace.”

No
. He wasn't allowed to be here all apologetic and carrying conciliatory flowers. It wasn't fair. She couldn't let him into her head again, and she certainly wasn't offering up her heart again to be flattened. He didn't have to know she'd given up on getting over him.

“What do you want, Kyle?” She didn't even wince at her own rudeness. She got a pass after being shown the door while still undressed and warm from the man's arms.

“I brought you these,” he said simply without blinking at her harsh tone. He held out the bouquet. “Thank-you flowers. Because I owed you.”

Wasn't
that
romantic? She didn't take the bouquet. “You
owed
me? You definitely owe me, but not flowers. An explanation would be better.”

Kyle dropped the bouquet, his expression hardening. “May I come in then? Your next-door neighbor is out on the porch with popcorn, watching the show.”

“Mrs. Putter is seventy-two.” Grace crossed her arms and propped a hip against the doorjamb. “This is all the fun she gets for the year.”

“Fine.” Kyle sighed. “I came to apologize. I shot first and asked questions later. It's the way I do things, mostly because people are usually shooting at me, too.”

Not an auspicious start, other than the apology part. “And yet I still haven't heard any questions.”

“Grace.” Kyle caught her gaze, and something warm spilled from his green eyes that she couldn't look away from. “You meant something to me. Back then. You have to understand that I had a lot of stuff going on in my head that I didn't want to deal with, so I didn't. I shut down instead. That wasn't fair to you. But you were the best thing in my life, and then you were gone. I was a wreck. Seeing you with Liam was the last straw, so I left Royal because I couldn't stand it, assuming that you'd found the Wade brother you preferred. There was never a point when I would have confronted you about it.”

Openmouthed, she stared at him. That was the longest speech she'd ever heard him give and it loosened her tongue in kind. “I get that I messed up with Liam. I was young and stupid. I should have been more up-front about my feelings, too.”

Kyle nodded. “Goes for both of us. But I still owe you a thank-you. I joined the military because I wanted to be gone. I figured, what better way to forget Royal and the girl there than to go to the other side of the world in defense of my country? But instead of just a place to nurse my shattered ego, I found something I didn't expect. Something great. Being a SEAL changed me.”

Yes, she'd seen that. He'd grown up, into a responsible, solid man who cared about his daughters. “You seem to have flourished.”

“I did,” he agreed enthusiastically. “It was the team I'd been looking for. I never fit in at the ranch. That's part of what was weighing me down back then. The stuff inside. I was contemplating my future and not seeing a clear picture of what I should do going forward. If you hadn't staged that ploy with Liam, I might never have found my unit. Those guys were my family.”

The sheer emotion on his face as he talked about his fellow team members—it was overwhelming. He'd clearly loved being in the military. It had shaped him, and he'd soaked it up.

Her heart twisted anew. If he didn't fit in at the ranch, why had he taken over the cattle side? During one of her site visits, he'd told her that was his job now—he hoped to create a stable home for his daughters. He planned to stick around this time. Was that all a lie? Or was he just doing it because she'd forced him into it, despite hating that life?

“I don't understand,” she whispered. “If you liked being in the military so much, why did you come home?”

“My leg.” His expression caved in on itself, and it might have been the most vulnerable she'd ever seen him. She almost reached out to comfort him, was almost physically unable to prevent her heart from crying in sympathy at what he'd lost. He was hurting, and that was so hard for her to take.

But she didn't reach out. “You came home because you were injured,” she recounted flatly.

That was the only reason. Not because he missed Grace and regretted splitting up. Not because he wanted his daughters, or the simple life on a ranch with his family. He'd been forced to.

And what would he do when he got tired of an ill-fitting career? What would happen when the allure of the great wide open called to him again?

He'd leave. Just as he'd done the first time, only he'd take his babies with him—there was no law that said he had to stay in Royal to retain custody. He'd go and crush her anew, once she'd fallen in love with three people instead of just one.

He hadn't confronted her about Liam ten years ago because he hadn't wanted to stay in the first place. Not for her, not for anything. If he had, he'd have fought for their love; she had no doubt.

Kyle could pretend all he wanted that he'd enlisted because he'd caught her with Liam, but that had been—by his own admission—the last straw. Not the first.

“Yeah.” He jerked his head in acknowledgment. “I was honorably discharged due to my busted leg. I didn't have anyplace else to go. But when I saw Maddie and Maggie for the first time...and then you came back into my life... Well, things are different now. I want to do things different. Starting with you.”

“No.” Her heart nearly split in two as she shook her head. “We've already had one too many do-overs. You shot first and asked questions too late.”

She'd begun to trust him again, only to have the carpet ripped out from under her feet. She couldn't do that again. She could be single and happy. It was a choice; she just had to make it.

“Don't say that, Grace.” Kyle threw the bouquet on the wicker chair closest to the door and captured her hand, squeezing it tight so she couldn't pull away. His green eyes beseeched her to reconsider, hollowing her out inside. “I lie awake at night and think about how great it would be if you were there. I think about what it's going to be like for the girls growing up without a mom. It's not a picture I like. We need someone to keep us sane.”

This was delivered with a lopsided smile that she ached to return. If only he'd mentioned the condition of his heart in that speech and how it was breaking to be away from her. How he couldn't consider his life complete without her. Anything other than a string of sentences which sounded suspiciously like an invitation to make sure Maddie and Maggie had a mother figure.

And she wanted a family so badly she could picture easily falling into the role of Mama to those precious babies. At what cost, though?

“You have Hadley for that,” she said woodenly. “I'm unnecessary.”

“You're not listening to what I'm saying.” He held her hand against his chest, and she wanted to uncurl her palm so she could feel his heartbeat. “Hadley is Liam's wife. I want one of my own.”

It was the closest thing to a proposal she'd ever gotten. She was certifiably insane for not saying yes. Except he hadn't actually asked her. As always, he couldn't just come right out and say what he meant. That's what had led to the Liam fiasco in the first place, and nothing had changed.

None of this was what she'd envisioned. Kyle was nothing like her father. What about her standards? Her grand romance and fairy-tale life? How in the world would their relationship ever stand the test of time with staged jealousy-inducing ploys and the inability to just talk to each other as their starting point?

“I can't do this, Kyle. I can't—” Her voice broke but she made herself finish. “I thought we were starting something and the moment things get a little rough, you bail. Just like before.”

“That's an excuse, Grace.” He firmed his mouth, and then pointed out, “I'm here now, aren't I?”

“It's too late,” she retorted, desperate to get this horrific conversation over with. “We have too many trust issues. We don't even want the same things.”

His green eyes sharpened as he absorbed her words. “How can you say that? I want to be together. That's the same.”

“Except that's not what I want,” she whispered, and forced herself to watch as his beautiful face blanked, becoming as desolate as a West Texas ravine in a drought. “Goodbye, Kyle.”

And before she took it all back in a moment of weakness, she shut the door, dry-eyed. The tears would come later.

* * *

Now that Johnny and Slim had a grudging respect for Kyle as the boss, they got on okay.

Which was fortunate, because Kyle drove them all relentlessly. Himself included, and probably the hardest. Spring calving season was in full swing and eighteen-hour days fit with Kyle's determination to never think, never lie awake at night and never miss Grace.

At this point, he'd take two out of three, but the hole where Grace was supposed to be ached too badly to be ignored, which in turn guaranteed he wouldn't sleep. And as he lay there not sleeping, his brain did nothing but think, turning over her words again and again, forcing him to relive them because he deserved to be unhappy. He couldn't be with Grace because she didn't want to be with him. Because she didn't trust him.

All the work he'd done to get over his trust issues, and she'd blindsided him with her own. Because he'd left when life got too difficult. When all he'd wanted was to find his place in the world. And when that place spat him back out, he came back. To forge a new place, put down roots. It had been hard, one of the toughest challenges of his life, and yeah, when it got rough, he dreamed of leaving. But he hadn't. Only to have that thrown back in his face.

If it didn't hurt so bad he'd laugh at the irony.

A week after Operation: Grace had gone down in flames, Liam invited him to the Texas Cattlemen's Club for an afternoon of “getting away from it all” as Liam put it. Curious about the club his grandfather had belonged to, and now Liam, too, apparently, Kyle agreed, with the caveat that they'd only stay a couple of hours tops. The cattle weren't going to tend themselves, after all.

The moment Kyle walked into the formerly men-only club, the outside world ceased to exist. Dark hardwood floors stretched from wall to wall, reflecting the pale gold wallpaper that warmed the place. It was welcoming and hushed, as if the room was waiting for something important to happen. The sense of anticipation was compelling.

Kyle followed Liam to the bar, where some other men sat nursing beers. Kyle recognized Mac McCallum, who'd been Liam's buddy for a long time, and Case Baxter.

“Case is the president of the Texas Cattlemen's Club,” Liam said as he introduced everyone around. “And this is Nolan Dane.”

“Right.” Kyle shook the man's hand. “Haven't seen you in ages.”