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“That wasn’t your fault,” he said quickly.
“Wasn’t it?” Her gaze locked with his. “I was his nurse. Supposed to guard his failing health, not give in to him when I knew it was dangerous.” She reached up and pushed her hair back from her face, and suddenly Sage thought of how it had felt to have his own hands in that thick, silky mass.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed that thought aside and only said, “J.D. had a way of getting just what he wanted from folks. You shouldn’t feel guilty about being one of them.”
“He was a lovely man,” she whispered. “Hard, but fair. Tough, but he loved his family. All of you. He talked about you all so much...”
Sage’s ears perked up. “Did he?”
“Oh, yes.” She walked closer to him, running her fingertips along the edge of the workbench. “He was so proud of Dylan’s work with the grill. And he talked about Angie all the time—”
She broke off, as if remembering that J.D.’s will sort of belied that last statement.
“And you.” She moved even closer and he caught her scent on the still, cool air. The scent that had haunted him all night long. Her eyes shone up at him with innocence and pleasure, as if she was really enjoying being able to share all of this with him. “He took so much pride in what you’ve built. He used to go on and on about how you made your first million while you were in school, and how he’d had to go to great lengths to convince you to stay at college when all you really wanted to do was build your own ranch—”
Sage’s vision went red. And just like that, the seductive, sensual air between him and Colleen sizzled into an inferno that apparently only he could sense. His mind burned and thoughts chased each other through the darkness spreading through him. Years-old fury reawakened as if it had never gone to sleep, and he trembled with the force of the control required to keep from shouting out his rage.
Her voice was just a buzz of sound now, but even through the anger churning within, he could see that Colleen clearly believed that she’d scored a point. That she’d made Sage see his father as the caring, thoughtful, generous man she thought he was. That she’d found a way past the old angers and hurts. But instead, all she had done was relight the fuse that had been smoldering for years.
He took a breath and interrupted her stream of conversation. “Yeah. He was proud. Too damn proud. And he wasn’t the kindhearted, feeble old gentleman you think you knew.”
“What are you talking about?”
He threw a glance at the open shed door and the ranch yard beyond. Golden sunlight washed over his ranch, making the inside of the shed seem even darker in comparison. But damned if he’d have this talk out in public so that anyone could overhear. He strode across the straw-littered floor, slammed the door and threw the lock. Only then did he turn around to face Colleen again, and in the back of his mind, he noted that her eyes were wary.
“You met J.D. when he was old and tired and looking to find the fast track into heaven,” Sage finally said and had the small satisfaction of seeing her blink in surprise. “I knew him back in the day and trust me, he wasn’t a sweetheart. He was domineering, a know-it-all and damned arrogant with it.”
One dark blond eyebrow lifted. “Remind you of anyone?”
He snorted in spite of the anger bubbling into an ugly brew in the pit of his stomach. “Okay, I can accept that maybe I picked up a few of his less pleasant traits along the way. But I never—” Damn. The words were stuck in his throat like bitter bile. He hadn’t talked about this in years. And he’d never told anyone else about this. Not Dylan. Not Angie. The only person he had ever been open with about it was J.D. Because the old man himself was at the heart of it.
Shaking his head fiercely, as if he could dislodge the blackness wrapped around his memories, he muttered, “You said he wanted me to stay in college. That he told you he talked me into it.”
“That’s what he said, yes.”
“Well, then, he had a really selective memory,” Sage said flatly. “Because he didn’t talk me into anything. He maneuvered me until he got his way. Just like he did everything else in his life.”
“What do you mean, maneuvered?”
He hadn’t meant to allow old memories to nearly choke him as they rushed up from the black bottom of his heart to spill through his mind like tar. But there they were, and he’d come too far to stop now.
“Unlike J.D., I never figured that I knew best how another man should live his life. I never made it my business to take something from a person just because I could.”
