AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I wouldn’t presume!”
“Like hell!” He reached for the buttons of the coat holding them together. Who did she think she was kidding? “First, you decided I’d sell my soul for a ranch. Then you decided I needed to be tricked into finishing a marriage. Then you decided I was a cheating sort.” His anger built as each button of the coat popped open. “Next, you assumed I had no control over my needs and you had to bargain against cheating, and now, you’ve come up with the fact that I’m tricking you every time I act less than a monster?” He swung out of the saddle. “Well, I’m tired of being insulted.”
“I didn’t mean—”
He placed her on the ground and pointed her to the house. “You never do, but every time you get thinking, I get insulted, and I’m damned tired of it.”
She ignored his push and turned around. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to settle Shameless and Willoughby for the night.”
She bit her lip. Her expression was barely discernible through the light. “Are you coming up to the house?”
“Where else would I go?” He pulled the horses around. “We have a deal remember?”
“Would you let me explain?”
“I don’t think my sensibilities can take another of your explanations.”
He turned and headed for the barn, seething inside. He’d done nothing but treat the woman with respect, and she persisted in seeing him as vermin. It wasn’t going to change, and he’d best get it through his thick skull, because, dammit, it was beginning to hurt. He could feel her eyes watching him as he entered the barn. Without turning around, he closed the door.
Elizabeth stared at the closed door until a voice from the shadowed end of the porch spun her around.
“He’s right, girl.” There was the creak of the swing, and then two disjointed steps before Old Sam stepped into the light. “You’ve been trying to slip that man into a crevice since he got here.”
“I don’t understand him,” she burst out.
“You probably would if you’d just see he isn’t your Pa.”
“I don’t think he is.”
“If that’s the case, why are you expecting him to change into something else?”
“I’m not.”
Old Sam spat over the side rail. “And I was born yesterday. Ever since your Dad changed after your Mama died, you’ve had this fear of men. Like everything good inside one is just fool’s gold.”
“That’s not true!”
“If it’s not, then you’d better start thinking before you open your mouth.” He came up bedside her, and, for the first time in sixteen years, there wasn’t any sympathy in his faded blue eyes. “‘Cause that’s the picture you’re painting.”
“I’m not…” But she couldn’t finish the denial.
Old Sam laid his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “It’s time to grow up, Elizabeth.”
“I’m scared,” she confessed on a whisper.
He snorted impatience as his hand dropped away. “Who isn’t?”
“What if I tell him and he doesn’t care?”
“What if ya don’t and he does?”
She had no response for that.
“You can make a choice by not opening your mouth as easily as you can by speaking your mind, girl.”
“I know.”
“Then prove it.” He pointed to the barn. “Talk to that man.”
“I will.”
She mustn’t have been too convincing, because Old Sam stared for a long silent moment, his expression as murky as the twilight gloom. His mouth worked. She couldn’t tell if he was chewing or working up to a lecture, but then he sighed, slapped his thigh and said, “If it’ll help, I’ll tell ya I didn’t ever think your Pa had it in him to shoot your Ma. He loved her too much for that.”
She wished she could be so sure. “Thank you.”
He shuffled his feet before settling his weight into his boots and meeting her gaze square on. “I always thought that, if the two of them hadn’t been so dead miserly on protecting their hearts, they might have made a happy marriage.”
That was something she’d never heard before. “I don’t understand.”
“Your Pa ever talk to you after your Mama died?”
“About her?”
“About anything beyond ranching?”
“No.”
“Well, he wasn’t any more chatty before, and assuming your mother knew how he felt, didn’t do much to get ‘em across misunderstandings.”
Elizabeth stared at Old Sam as the truth sunk in. She remembered her mother with her smiles and laughter. She remembered her father with his stern face and total control. “Oh God!”
“You got a choice to make, girl.”
“I don’t want to be my father,” she whispered.
Old Sam slapped his thigh and started to walk away. Three steps into his departure, he stopped and turned around. “Then I guess you’d best be making a new choice.”
* * * * *
From the way the door slammed, Elizabeth was pretty sure that Asa hadn’t calmed down. She sat in her bedroom and fiddled with the lace-edged collar on her nightdress. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. She’d been trying to tell him she’d wanted him to do more than just lie beside her in bed, but how was she going to approach the subject now? The man was convinced everything she did was a scheme to trick him.
