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Colton strode out of the house, and Cassie was right on his heels. Too many buried emotions kept churning to the surface, and she couldn’t just watch him leave.
“Your father knows more than he’s willing to tell,” Colton muttered.
“No way.”
“Why not?” He reached the Jeep but didn’t climb inside. Instead he faced her, his expression blank, his eyes guarded.
“My father has nothing to hide, Colton. He’s just an old rancher trying to scratch out a living. He doesn’t have time for junior high pranks.”
“Taking a valuable stallion isn’t a prank! It’s a crime.”
“Go home, Colt.”
But he didn’t move, and his eyes raked over her. “You’ve changed, Cass,” he observed.
“So have you. What happened to you, Colton? Just what happened to you? For months you’ve been holed up in the McLean house like some kind of recluse, and now, now when it looks like you’re finally getting well, you come over here with accusations that just don’t make any sense!”
Colton’s jaw slid to one side. “Maybe I’ve just gotten smarter.”
“Smarter or more bitter?”
“Probably a little of both. But then I have learned a few things in the last eight years.”
“Such as baiting old men and accusing them of lies?” she lashed out.
He gritted his teeth. “I just wanted to hear what Ivan had to say for himself.”
“But you don’t believe him.”
“I’ve heard lies before.”
The vicious words stung like the bite of a snake. “I never
lied to you, Colton, but then you didn’t stick around long enough to find out, did you? You believed what you wanted to believe! That way your conscience was clear!”
“My conscience?” he repeated incredulously as he reached for the door of his Jeep. “My conscience? I was just along for the ride—remember?”
Cassie wished the tears behind her eyes would go away. “What I remember, McLean, is that you ran—away from me, away from any responsibility, away from any ties. For that, I suppose, I should thank you!”
He whirled, and the hand that had been poised over the handle of the Jeep’s door clamped around hers. “I was going to do my duty, Cassie,” he growled, his gray eyes flaring dangerously. “But I wasn’t about to be conned, just like I’m not going to be conned again.”
“I loved you, Colton.”
“You didn’t know the meaning of the word.”
Inside she ached, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how deep her scars ran. Her throat was thick, her eyes moist, but she held back her tears and tossed her hair out of her face to glare furiously at him. “At least I was with you because I wanted to be—not because of some warped sense of ‘duty’ as you called it!” Her heart was pounding, but she kept her voice cold. “I wanted you and I wanted your child. I cried myself to sleep so many nights, I can’t even remember how many there were, but it’s over. It’s been over a long, long time. So let go of me and go back to your house where you can brood and plot and try to think up paranoid schemes where my father is out to get you!”
He dropped her hand as if it were hot. Some of the color seeped from his face. “That’s twisted.”
She knew he was right, but didn’t let up. She couldn’t. Afraid that he might see through her defenses, she said, “Probably. But then, I had a good teacher.”
His breath hissed between his teeth, and his jaw slackened. “Did I hurt you that much, Cass?”
Her heart turned over, and for an insane instant she wanted to throw her arms around him. Instead, she bit out, “You only hurt me as much as I let you. That was my mistake, not yours.” Then, before she said anything that might betray her true feelings, she stepped back and folded her arms over her chest and didn’t move until he’d driven down the lane and the sound of the Jeep’s engine had faded into the dusky twilight.
* * *
Colton sank into the blackest mood he’d been in since he’d awoken in that hospital room in Belfast with tubes attached to his wrist and the pain in his shoulder racking his body. He tried and failed at shoving thoughts of Cassie and her father from his mind. He drank more than he should have, wandered around the empty farmhouse and spent too many hours near the roaring Sage River, staring at the damned Aldridge property beyond.
