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I wanted to throw the glass at his head, but I didn’t want to cause a scene in front of Harry. The old man could probably find some way to back out of the contract. “I gave it a shot. She left me. What more do you want me to say?”
Gordon snorted. “You gave it a shot? You blackmailed her into living with you and pretending to be your loving wife so you could get the land, and after you seduced her, you lied to her when you did get the land. Sure. You gave it a shot all right.”
Damn it. Hissing, I looked sharply at Harry. “Sir…”
Harry put up his hand. “No need to explain, Brendan. I may be old and sick, but I’m no idiot. I hired an investigator when you showed up with a wife. I knew what happened all along, and I had my suspicions that you were using her. I planned to call you out on it until I saw the two of you together. Even to a half-blind man like me, it was obvious that the two of you were still very much in love. I thought that maybe going along with this charade would help you see that. I saw the horrible talk show thing that Jillian did. I didn’t know about the miscarriage.”
I didn’t want to talk about that. “Love isn’t enough. It wasn’t then, and it’s not now.”
“No,” Harry said quietly. “Love isn’t enough. You have to put some work into it as well. I couldn’t hold on to the love of my life because I wasn’t willing to yield or compromise. I stood rigid when I should have apologized. I blamed her when I couldn’t find the time for her. And when she left me, I told myself it was for the best.”
Shocked, I stared at him. “But your wife didn’t leave you.”
“Dennis’s mother was not the love of my life. She was the woman that I thought I needed when I wanted to make a name for myself. We both knew it, and I imagine that’s why Dennis has no real love for me or this land. No, I met Mary long before I got married. She knocked the wind right out of me, and before the year was up, I had a diamond ring on her finger. Small, almost pathetic by today’s standards, but she loved it. She loved me.” He cleared his throat, and I saw the brightness in his eyes. Seeing him emotional made me choke up. “But when I started to build this ranch, I told her it was for the two of us. I spent most of my nights here, working, telling her it was for our future, and I never even saw that she was slipping away. I didn’t hear her when she begged me to come home, and when she gave the ring back, it was the second-lowest moment of my life.”
Gordon cocked his head. “What was the first?”
“Realizing that I still hadn’t learned my lesson.” Harry swallowed more of his scotch. “When you showed me exactly what kind of man my son had become. Someone who was so consumed by money that he’d break an old man’s heart.”
“Harry…”
He held up a hand. “You’re already on steadier ground than me, boy. You’ve got your ranch. You’ve achieved your dreams, and now you’re protecting that dream, but if you let that girl walk away from you again, you’re going to end up no better than me.”
“I didn’t betray her,” I snarled. “She’s in the wrong here.”
“Did you tell her that?” Harry’s hands shook as he sat the glass on the floor and grabbed his cane. “Or were you too consumed by anger?”
“What kind of woman thinks that about the man that she loves?”
“One who’s hurting,” Gordon said softly. “Deeply. You lost her once to grief by not doing anything. What do you think is going to happen now?”
His words hit a chord, and I tightened my grip on Silva’s mane. Gordon finished his drink and sat it down. “Going somewhere, Harry?”
“It’s late. Too late for me. I just stopped by for a quick chat.”
“I’ll see you back to your car.” Without looking at me, both men left me and Silva alone.
Sighing, I drained my drink and leaned back to stare at the horse. “What do you think, boy? Are they right?”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. Closing my eyes, I thought back to the day I thought I’d ended our marriage for good. The way my hands had trembled when I signed the papers. The way I’d screamed inside when she gave me a polite smile and walked away.
They were right. I was letting it happen all over again. Jillian may have been in the wrong, but so was I, and I obviously wasn’t learning my lesson quickly enough. “It won’t be easy to get her back here,” I muttered as I bent down and reached into a bag to pull out a carrot. “But she’s worth it, isn’t she?”
