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He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts, it startled him when a voice came on the line and said, “She doesn’t want to speak to you.”
“What?” Wes yanked the phone from his ear and glanced at the number he’d dialed, making sure it was Belle’s. But there was no mistake.
“Edna?” he asked, realizing Belle’s housekeeper was running interference for her. She couldn’t even talk to him on the phone? “Where’s Belle?”
“She’s here at home where she belongs,” Belle’s housekeeper informed him. “And she asked me to tell you she’s got nothing more to say to you. She says that everything that needed saying was said this morning.”
He held the phone so tight, it should have shattered in his grasp. Taking one long, deep breath, Wes reached down deep for patience and came up empty-handed. He couldn’t believe that she was going to such lengths to avoid him.
“So her answer is to run away?” he countered.
“She didn’t run. She flew.”
Was he paying off some terrible karma from a past life? Why else would every woman he knew be giving him such a hard time? Couldn’t they all see that there were two sides to this?
“Damn it, Edna, put her on the phone.”
“Don’t you curse at me. And I don’t take orders from you.”
He was beginning to wonder if anyone did. Taking another deep breath, he held it for a second, then released it to calmly ask, “Can I speak to my daughter then?”
“Nope.”
A fresh rush of anger surged through him at the nonchalant attitude. He’d never been more frustrated in his life. Separated from his family by hundreds of miles and an emotional chasm that appeared too deep to cross. “You can’t keep her from me.”
“I can’t, no,” she said flatly. “But Isabelle can, and good for her, I say. You had a chance at something wonderful and you threw it away. You threw them away. I know what you did, so if you’re looking for understanding, you dialed the wrong damn number.”
Then she hung up.
Stunned, Wes stared at his phone for a long second. Nobody hung up on him! “What the hell is wrong with everybody?”
There was no answer to his strangled question. His cell didn’t ring; the blank screen taunted him. So he threw his window open, pitched the phone into the yard, then slammed the sash down again.
And he still didn’t feel better.
* * *
“What did he say?” Isabelle looked at Edna.
“I think it’s fair to say that his cookies are completely frosted.” Handing the phone back, Edna picked up a plate of brownies and set it in front of Isabelle. “He’s mad, of course, and I think a little hurt.”
“I doubt it.” Edna was too nice, too optimistic. Wes wasn’t hurt—just frustrated that she hadn’t fallen in line with his plan. You couldn’t hurt Wes Jackson with a sledgehammer. A person had to care to be hurt.
Like her daughter cared. Just as Isabelle had feared, leaving Texas had been a misery for Caroline. The drama from earlier that day was still playing through her mind.
“But I don’t want to go,” the little girl had wailed, bottom lip jutting out in a warning sign of a meltdown approaching.
“I know you don’t,” Isabelle told her. “But it’s time we left. We have things to do at home, baby girl.”
She sniffled dramatically. “Like what?”
“School.”
“I can go to school here. Wes says so.”
Oh, thanks so much for that, Isabelle thought with a new burst of anger at the infuriating man. “You already have a school. And Edna and Marco and your uncles miss us.”
