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“You’re lying.”
“Ask her.”
“Why would she sneak around behind Dad’s back and—Oh!”
Quick as a rattler he struck, grabbing hold of her arm and yanking her toward him. “It was her idea.”
“I don’t believe—”
“Because you don’t want to. Brynnie’s a grown woman. She knew I was looking for a place and offered hers. We struck a deal.” His face was so close to hers Bliss could see the striations of brown in his gold eyes and watched as sweat dotted his forehead, darkening his hair. His nostrils flared and his lips barely moved. “I’m not going to deceive you, Bliss. There’s no love lost between me and your old man. Never has been. But I didn’t have to coerce Brynnie into selling out. She was more than willing.”
“Was she?”
“Absolutely.”
“You are a bastard, Lafferty.”
His smile was cold and cruel, and his hand, rough with calluses, clamped in a viselike grip over her wrist. But the scent of him, all male and musk and leather, filled the mere inches that separated his face from hers. “I wouldn’t be throwing that particular word too loosely around here, if I were you,” he warned. “It might hit a little close to home.”
Frustration pounded in her pulse. Blast the man, he was right. Her father had sired two children out of wedlock. Two that she knew about. “Let go of me.”
“If I only could,” he said. Then, as if her words had finally registered, he dropped her arm and backed off a step. “Hell.” With both hands, he plowed stiff fingers through his hair.
Idiot, she silently berated herself. How did it come to this—that she was alone with the one man she wanted to avoid, the one man who could make her see red with only a calculated lift of his eyebrow, the solitary man who had touched her unguarded soul?
“Look, I didn’t come back to Bittersweet to stir up trouble,” he said.
“Too late,” she retorted but decided, though her heart was thudding with dread, that there was no time like the present to sort out a few things with this man who seemed to be, ever since she’d glided into this part of Oregon, forever underfoot. “Just because you dumped me ten years ago and—”
“I didn’t dump you.”
“Ha.” She shook her head and started gathering her purse. Coming here had been a mistake, and really, what had she expected—some kind of rationale for his need to buy the ranch? Or was it something more?
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“But you married another woman,” she said, the words, having been pent up for ten years, tumbling out of her mouth. “What do you call that?”
“A mistake.”
The word echoed over and over again in her heart. But it was too late to hear it, far too late for apologies or explanations. “Listen, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“But you did.”
“Never mind, I really don’t need to know,” she said, starting for the door.
“I should have called you. Shouldn’t have been bullied into… Oh, hell, what does it matter?”
She swallowed hard and turned to face him again. Maybe this was the time to sort things out. “When…when I got out of the hospital ten years ago, you were already gone,” she said and saw a shadow of pain pass behind his eyes. “Dad said you’d had some surgery yourself, then eloped to Reno.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “That’s not exactly what happened.”
“No?” She stood straight and met his gaze with her own. “The way I see it, you were two-timing me.”
“Never.”
Oh, God, how she wanted to believe him, to trust the honesty reflected in his eyes; to think, even for a minute, that he’d cared about her. But she couldn’t. He’d been a liar then and was a liar now. She was shaking inside and realized that the conversation was getting too personal. Way too personal, and Mason, blast his sorry good-looking hide, didn’t seem afraid to open doors that had been locked for a decade. “I think you should back off with Dad.”
“I thought we were talking about us.”
