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She did, of course. She needed to see him, to talk to him, to make sure he hadn’t fallen apart.
Alana got out of her car, went to stand under one of the shade trees, and while he made his way to her, she studied his face. Not for the hotness, though it was impossible not to notice that, but to try to determine just how much all of this was eating away at him. It was eating away all right, and she wished she had a magic wand to make this better.
Gray came to her, and he kissed her. Not a scorcher lover’s kiss but rather a brush of his mouth on her cheek. Maybe he’d done that because he, too, was wishing for something to make this better, and for them, a kiss—even a slightly chaste one—was a way to make that happen.
“Are you okay-ish?” she asked, knowing theishwas about the most she could hope for here.
He shrugged and leaned his back against the tree. “I’ve been having some conversations with my dad, and I visited my mom’s grave before I came here,” he said. “I think I get why it gives some people comfort to do that. Even though she’s not actually there, seeing her name carved on the marble made it easier for me to talk to her.” He shook his head. “She got a raw deal.”
Alana wasn’t sure if Gray was talking about her dying from cancer or her husband’s cheating. “She got you. So not a total raw deal. A really good deal.”
Gray made one of those sounds that could have meant anything. “I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions over the past couple of days,” he said. “Like was my father lying when he said my mom was able to look at me and not see Sadie Jo?”
She jumped right on that. “Well, that’s an easy one to answer. I saw the love in her eyes when your mom looked at you. She definitely wasn’t seeing her husband’s one-off. She was seeing her own son.Her son,” Alana emphasized.
Gray shifted his attention to her, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile. “That’s the conclusion I came to when I was talking to her at the cemetery. My mom loved me. I have no doubts about that. None. She loved me, and she was my mother in every way that mattered.”
Alana smiled, too, because that was a darn good, and accurate, conclusion for him to reach. “What other questions have you been asking yourself?”
“The ranch,” he quickly named off. “Isn’t it like a bribe if Sadie Jo bought it for me?”
Alana considered that a moment. “Maybe, but Sadie Jo could have just done it out of love. It’s not unheard-of for two women, Sadie Jo and your mom, to love the same guy.”
Or in this case, three since she was in on that “loving Gray” club. However, she wasin lovewith him so that was a big difference.
“Maybe,” Gray repeated several moments later. “But I’ve considered that if I accept the ranch, then it might be some kind of acceptance of what went on between Sadie Jo and my father.”
“No way,” Alana disagreed. “Though I understand what you’re saying. On the one hand, you hate the one-off they had, but on the other, if they hadn’t gotten together, you wouldn’t be here. Your mother wouldn’t have gotten the son she’d always wanted.”
He looked down at her and managed another of those thin smiles. “That’s a pretty wise assessment.”
She shrugged. “Must be all those weeks I spent in the support group.”
“Yeah.” He winced a little. “I caused you to break your vow.”
“No.” Alana stretched out that word. “I chose to break a vow that in hindsight I shouldn’t have made in the first place. My relationships didn’t fail because I leaped before I looked. They failed because they weren’t what I needed or wanted. They weren’t you.”
There. Judging from his reaction, she’d spelled out something that Gray probably would have preferred she kept to herself because he groaned softly and scrubbed his hand over his face. Since talking about them seemed to only add to his worries, she went back to what had prompted that confession.
“So, will you keep the ranch and use it for your business?” she asked.
Again, he took his time answering. “Will you be all right with your parents’ reaction to having me here right under their noses?”
Alana didn’t even have to think about that. “Absolutely.” She came up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “It’ll give them something other than my career choice to whine about.”
Gray smiled, and this time it was a full-blown one. “Then, I’ll keep Nightfall Ranch.”
Alana did a mental happy dance and followed it up with a real one. She bobbled around and lifted her arms in celebration. And it was, indeed, a celebration all right.
Well, hopefully.
Gray was staying in Last Ride, but that didn’t mean all was well with them. Or other things in his life. And one of those things was huge since it involved the only living member of his family.
“Going back to those questions you’ve been asking yourself,” she said. “Will you be able to forgive your father?”
He nodded. “I’m already working on that. It might take a while to get past being lied to all these years, but being here, close to him, will be a start. Hard to mend fences with someone if I’m not around to do the mending.”
She was glad about that. Yes, his father had screwed up big-time, and he’d been wrong not to tell Gray the truth, but Alana had no doubts that the man loved his son.
