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“Sure it does.”
“Alaska, then. Or Brazil. Or Singapore. I really don’t know, and I sure as hell don’t care!” she lied.
He sat heavily on the edge of the bed. It groaned beneath his weight. “It’s not like you to quit.”
“I’m not quitting, Dad. I was defeated.” She held her palms out, silently pleading with him. “Don’t try to talk me out of this.”
“That’s exactly what I’m gonna do.” Offering her a gentle smile that would have broken her heart if it hadn’t been broken already, he said, “You didn’t give up on me, did you?”
“Of course not. But what—”
“I haven’t had a drink in three days.” He frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. “Though, I got to admit, it feels more like three hundred. I’m goin’ to my first A.A. meeting on Tuesday.”
She swallowed hard and blinked against fresh tears. Would she ever stop crying? “Good for you,” she murmured. “I knew you could do it.”
“Not without you I couldn’t.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
He stared at her old suitcase. “You know, if you leave, I might just reach for the nearest bottle.”
“Nah.” She shook her head, sniffing. “Not you. Not when you set your mind to something.”
“That’s what I thought about you.”
“Oh, Dad, I’m just so tired of fighting.” Her throat clogged even tighter when she witnessed the naked pain in her father’s eyes. She had promised herself she would never cry for Denver again, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Denver bought the horses, Dad. He bought Brigadier and Ebony and even Red Wing. Right out from under my nose! He plans to use them here, on this ranch, for his own profit. You were right. Denver never intended to sell this place to me. Never. I was stupid and crazy and just plain dumb to have listened to him.”
She heard the screen door slam downstairs. Yanking her bag from the bed, she said, “I don’t want to explain this all to Mitch, all right? He wouldn’t understand.” She started for the door, but her father caught her wrist in his gnarled fingers.
“You can’t just run, Tess.”
“Watch me.”
“At least stay at my place for the night. You’re upset. You need time to think things through. Sometimes things are a lot clearer in the morning.”
“That’s the problem, Dad. Things are too clear already.” She heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and yanked her hand from her father’s grasp. She had to get out now, before she changed her mind.
She took two steps just as he strode in.
“Look, Mitch, I’ve got to—” Her eyes clashed with Denver McLean’s curious blue gaze. Big as life, his expression guarded, he blocked the door. “Oh, no,” she whispered, wanting to shrink away from the magnetism in his blue eyes, from the handsome angles of his face. He looked tired and drawn, his hair long against his collar, his features more gaunt than she remembered. Despite the pain, despite the anger, despite the fact that he’d wounded her shamelessly and she was still bleeding deep inside, she felt an overwhelming urge to run to him, to suffer any ridicule, to feel his arms wrap around her again.
Denver’s gaze darted from Tessa to Curtis and back again.
“What’re you doing here?” she whispered, her pride surfacing. “Don’t you have some horses to steal, some old men to beat down or a woman to stomp on?”
His gaze fastened to the fury in hers. “What’s going on here?” he asked, his voice so low, she barely heard it.
“You tell me.”
“It looks like you’re leaving.”
“I am.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so.” Dressed in a wrinkled shirt and slacks, his jaw dark with three days’ growth of beard, his eyes sunken, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. Tessa told herself she didn’t care. It didn’t matter what he’d been through. He’d betrayed her, and any pain or remorse he might have suffered wasn’t enough. It couldn’t match the wretchedness slicing wickedly through her own heart.
