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“Angie, please.”
“The girl’s right, Mia.” Jeff tried to defuse his rage. “What you did was wrong on so many levels.”
Maria sighed. “I’m not arguing that point.”
“Christ, Mia. I loved you. I would have done anything for you. For our child.”
“You couldn’t escape a prison sentence.”
“But I would have fought. I could have turned state’s evidence. I could have gotten a better lawyer. I could have…” Could have done so many things…
“I had to make a decision quickly. A decision that I thought was best for my child. You’ll be happy to know, Jeff, that Angie never wanted for anything. She had everything a little girl could want.”
“Except her real father,” Jeff said.
“You can’t take her inheritance. You can’t do this to your own daughter.”
“She’s not my daughter.” Jeff stalked forward. “You took her from me and gave her to my brother. My sainted brother. He had everything. He was the older. He had Grandpa’s love and devotion. He had everything I could never have, except you. I had you. But you took that away and gave yourself to him. You gave my child to him!”
“He wasn’t the one I loved, Jeff. You were.”
No, her words would not sway him. They were nothing but lies. “You think that matters now?”
“Yes, it should matter. The fact that she’s yours should matter. Please don’t take her ranch away from her.”
“The ranch is mine. She can have it when I’m dead. Now the two of you get the hell out of my hotel room.” He stormed across the carpet and opened the door.
Chapter Two
A Year and a Half Later
“How many more times”—Maria Bay shook her head—“are we going to have this same damned argument, Jeff? I don’t know what you want me to say anymore. I’ve apologized. I’ve explained. I’ve done the best I can for the last year to make this up to you. Yet you still stay in that tiny house. You won’t even let me cook you dinner.”
Jefferson Bay regarded the beautiful woman who was his sister-in-law and the mother of his only child. Her onyx hair still fell past her shoulders in bouncing waves—just like it always had. Her warm brown eyes gazed up at him with searching innocence—just as they had thirty-three years ago.
He inhaled to clear his mind. Maria was no innocent.
Still, his heart roared at him to grab her and kiss her the way he used to—the way he had when he was a young man in love for the first time.
The only time.
He’d made a sort of nervous peace with his daughter, Angelina. She hadn’t even known he’d existed until a year ago when her father—Jeff’s brother—had passed on. Wayne Bay had died never knowing that his younger brother had fathered his oldest child. Now, Jeff and Angie were building a relationship as father-uncle and daughter. It wasn’t strong yet, by any means. Angie called him Jeff. She said Dad or Uncle Jeff didn’t feel right to her. Understandable. Wayne and Maria hadn’t ever told the kids they had an uncle, let alone that he was Angie’s real father. Nope, Jeff had been a convicted felon serving time. A true skeleton in the closet.
With Angie, Jeff had patience. She and her husband were expecting their first child. Jeff was going to be a grandfather—a pretty daunting concept to a man who’d only been a father for the past year. He was treading carefully with Angie. He was lucky she spoke to him at all after he’d threatened to take her inheritance when Wayne had died. Not one of his finer moments. She was innocent in all this, after all. She wasn’t the one who’d betrayed him and lied to him for three decades.
Nope. That honor went to her mother.
Maria. Not so innocent.
His first and only love still captivated him, though. He couldn’t take his eyes from her when she was near. Even as he worked on the ranch, when she came near he found his gaze drawn to her flowing hair, her curvy body that looked sumptuous in simple jeans and a western shirt. All those years in prison he’d never forgotten her, no matter how hard he tried. He’d taught himself not to think of her during the daylight hours. And even at night, as he fell into slumber on his cot, listening to the muffled sounds of inmates snoring and crying, he’d forced his mind to other things. Much better than imagining what they’d had, or rather, what he’d thought they had.
Or worse yet, imagining her in his brother’s bed.
But sleep… That was a different story. She’d haunted him in his dreams. She stormed in and took possession of him, as if to say, “You can’t shut me out, no matter how hard you try, Jeff. I’m here in your head and your heart. I’m part of your very soul, and I’ll never leave. Never.”
He feared he’d never be free of her. Much as he tried, he couldn’t harden his heart.
And now here she stood, hands on her hips, fire darting from her dark brown eyes.
