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“Oh, there are a few people.”
“They’re idiots then.” She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “Mmmm, that sun is wonderful.”
Not just the sun. She is too.
Finn found himself staring at her, unable to tear his gaze from her face. She looked so peaceful, wholly in this moment, enjoying the sun and the view and the animal beneath her.
But that was Beth, wasn’t it? She’d told him she was here to leave behind the Beth she’d been in Deep River. To be someone different, happy, and positive. Which implied that back in Deep River she hadn’t been that person. And it was true that when she’d arrived here, he’d thought her relentless cheerfulness a put-on. Perhaps sometimes it had been.
It wasn’t now though.
Beth Grant didn’t need to force herself to be happy and positive in order to be a different person. She already was that person.
She didn’t have to try. She was made of sunshine, and she radiated it simply by existing.
A deep, heavy feeling shifted in his chest, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.
“I need to go check up on the tourists,” he muttered.
And he turned Jeff around and rode back along the trail.
Chapter 15
Beth watched Finn ride away with some puzzlement. What on earth had prompted him to be so abrupt? Had it been the mention of his wife? When she’d asked him about why he’d bought Clint’s horse ranch, she’d just been interested to know. She hadn’t realized it had been linked to Sheri’s death; if she had, she wouldn’t have asked.
So is this what your marriage is going to be like? Everything’s good until you say the wrong thing?
She swallowed and glanced away from Finn, who was checking in with each of his charges. Carol clopped peacefully along the trail, obviously knowing where she was going and requiring no input from Beth.
The ridgeline was clear and open, providing the most magnificent views of the jagged, snow-capped mountains and the glitter of the lake. A warm breeze ruffled the ends of her braid, bringing with it the by-now-familiar scents of the bush and the fields—spicy dry grass and sun-warmed earth.
Much farther along, the trail finally dipped down into the bush—mainly silver and black beech, with a couple of red beeches thrown in—before coming out again into the sunlight.
A weird thought caught at her. That would be their marriage, wouldn’t it? Sunlit spaces and moments of happiness. The scent of his skin when she kissed him. The warmth of his arms around her. Then the darkness of the bush as she said something that hurt him without meaning to, that would cause him to close up and pull away from her.
She’d never know which thing it would be. She’d be walking in darkness, surrounded by quicksand and thorns, trying desperately to stay on the path and not blunder into disaster.
Growing up in her parents’ house had felt like that, with her father constantly seething about things she didn’t understand and exploding at the most innocuous things. Then there were her mother’s emotional outbursts that would come out of nowhere and end up with her mother lying in bed for days on end.
Was that what she and Finn were destined for? Was that what their child would grow up with?
Despite the sun, an icy shiver went down her back. She didn’t want that for their baby. She couldn’t bear for them to grow up in the glass house she’d grown up in, where the slightest wrong move could cause something to break and then the whole thing would shatter.
But isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past two weeks? Tiptoeing around Finn? Letting him direct all the conversations? Not pushing him, not demanding anything of him? Feeling lonely…
Beth blinked at the trail ahead, unseeing, a cold sensation prickling all over her.
Yeah, that’s exactly what she’d been doing. She’d been keeping the peace, not wanting to rock the boat. Happy to take the moments as they came and exist in them while they were there, thinking that this could be the happy life she’d wanted, the bright, positive future she’d hoped for.
But was it really? Avoiding the past, avoiding all those thorns and briars and quicksand worked for a while, but she was always surrounded by it—always having to watch her footing in case she fell in.
That wasn’t the path to happiness, and it wasn’t the path she wanted their child to take either.
She swallowed because she knew what the alternative was, and that was uprooting the thorns, razing the briars, and filling in the quicksand. That was confronting those painful subjects and talking about them.
If you want happiness, you have to choose it. And then you have to work for it.
“Damn,” she whispered under her breath.
