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He didn’t break a smile. “You don’t get it, Blue. Women are after me all the time, and it’s not in my nature to walk away without at least giving them a smile and telling them I like their hair or their eyes or some other fucking nice thing about them because it makes them feel good, and that makes me feel good, and that’s the way I’m made.”
A natural born charmer. She loved this man.
“I’d never screw around on you.” He gazed down at her. “That’s also the way I’m made. But how can you believe that, when you’ll be waiting for proof that I don’t love you—that I’m like all the others who rejected you? I can’t watch everything I do, censor every word I say because I’m afraid you’ll walk away. You aren’t the only one carrying a few scars around.”
His irrefutable logic scared her. “I’m supposed to earn a spot on Team Robillard? Is that it?”
She expected him to back off, but he didn’t. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”
She’d spent her childhood trying to prove herself worthy of other people’s love, and she’d always failed. Now he was asking her to do the same thing. Resentment choked her. She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but something in his expression stopped her. A bone-deep vulnerability from the man who had ever
ything. In that moment she understood what she needed to do. Maybe it would work, or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe she was about to take heartbreak to a whole new level. “I’m staying here.”
He tilted his head, as if he hadn’t heard her right.
“Team Bailey is staying right here,” she said. “At the farm. Alone.” Her thoughts raced. “You don’t even get to visit. We won’t see each other until”—she searched for some significant point in time—“until Thanksgiving.” If I’m still around. If you still want me. She swallowed hard. “I’ll watch the trees change color, I’ll paint, I’ll definitely torture Nita for what she’s done to me. I might help Syl set up her new gift shop, or—” Her voice broke. “Let’s be honest…I may get panicky and drive away.”
“You’re going to stay at the farm?”
Was she? She managed a jerky nod. She had to do this for them, but mainly she had to do it for herself. She was tired of her aimlessness, scared of the person she might become if she kept on like this—a woman with a life so small it could fit into the trunk of a car. “I’ll try.”
“Try?” His voice sliced through her.
“What do you want from me?” she cried.
The man of steel thrust out his jaw. “I want you to be just as tough as you pretend.”
“You think this won’t be tough?”
His mouth tightened. An ominous foreboding crept through her. “Not tough enough,” he said. “Let’s raise the stakes.” He loomed above her. “Team Robillard won’t visit the farm, but Team Robillard also won’t call you, won’t even send a fricking e-mail. Team Bailey will have to live every day on faith.” He dug them in deeper, daring her to fold. “You won’t know where I am or who I’m with. You won’t know whether I’m missing you, or screwing around on you, or trying to figure out how to break it off.” For a moment, he was silent. When he spoke again, his aggression had faded, and his words brushed across her skin. “It’ll feel like I’m walking away from you, just like everyone else.”
She heard his tenderness, but she was too fragile to accept it. “I have to get back to jail.” She turned away.
“Blue…” He touched her shoulder.
She hurried to the door and out into the night. Then she began to run, stumbling through the grass until she got to the chief’s car. Dean wanted everything from her, and he was giving her nothing in return. Nothing except his heart, which was just as fragile as hers.
Chapter Twenty-five
First Blue painted a series of gypsy caravans, some tucked into secret coves, others traveling down country roads toward distant arrays of minarets and gilded onion domes. Then she moved on to bird’s-eye views of magical villages with crooked streets, prancing white horses, and an occasional fairy perched on a chimney pot. She painted like a madwoman, barely finishing one canvas before she began another. She stopped sleeping, barely ate. As she completed each piece, she tucked it away.
“You’re hiding your light under a bushel just like Riley was doing,” Nita declared to Blue over the noise in the Barn Grill on a Sunday morning in mid-September two months after Dean had gone back to Chicago. “Until you’ve got the courage to let people see your work, you’ve lost my respect.”
“That’ll keep me up at night,” Blue retorted. “And don’t act like no one’s seen them. I know you sent Dean copies of those digital photos you made me take.”
“I still can’t believe him and those parents of his sold their private story to that filthy tabloid. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that headline. ‘Football Star Is Jack Patriot’s Love Child.’ They should have had more dignity.”
“That filthy tabloid was the highest bidder,” Blue pointed out. “And you’ve subscribed to it for years.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Nita sniffed.
The print story had broken the second week of August with Dean, Jack, and April’s sole television interview not long after. April told Blue that Dean had decided to give up his secrets the day of Nita’s birthday party. Jack had gotten so choked up he’d barely been able to talk. They’d decided to sell the story to the highest bidder, using the money they received to set up a family foundation supporting organizations that helped hard-to-place children find permanent families. Riley alone had protested. She’d wanted to give the money to puppies.
Blue talked to all of them on the phone—everyone except Dean. April didn’t volunteer much information about him, and Blue couldn’t ask.
Nita tugged on a ruby earring. “The whole world’s gone crazy, you ask me. There were four RVs hogging up the parking spaces in front of that new bookstore yesterday. Next thing you know, we’ll have a McDonald’s on every corner. And why you told the Garrison Women’s Club they could meet at my house from now on, I’ll never know.”
“And I’ll never know why you and that awful Gladys Prader—a woman you used to hate—have struck up a friendship. Although some might call it a coven.”
