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“Have you talked to your father about this?” Alana asked.
“No.” Gray wasn’t ready to do that just yet, but if anyone alive had answers, it would likely be the man who’d raised him. And lied to him. No, Gray wasn’t ready to talk to him just yet. “But I told Asher he could call him and tell him that I now know the truth.”
“Sweet mercy,” she grumbled. “That won’t be a pleasant conversation.”
No, and once it happened, Gray suspected he’d be getting a call from the man who’d raised him. Heck, maybe even a visit if he could find Gray.
Alana looked up when Gray turned off the road, and she sighed when she saw where they were.
Nightfall Ranch.
He hadn’t actually planned on coming here today, but this was sort of like going to the cemetery. The places where Sadie Jo had lived and was buried. He seriously doubted something cosmic would happen, and he’d get answers for this crap situation he was in, but here he was hoping for that.
Gray stopped on the driveway of the ranch and looked around. No livestock but acres and acres of pastures surrounded by white fences. The posts were shaped like guitars, Sadie Jo’s choice of musical instruments. According to what Asher had told him, the woman had never appeared on stage without one.
“The place makes a statement, doesn’t it?” Alana murmured, her gaze combing over the unique fence posts. The same guitar image was on the roof tiles of the two-story ruby-red house. On the roof of the barn as well. The hedges leading to the house had been trimmed into guitar shapes. “Exactly what statement, though, I’m not sure.”
Heaven help him, that made him smile, too, and Gray looked over, intending to thank her for helping to lift his mood. Alana looked at him, though, at the same moment, and their gazes locked.
That whole gaze-locking was something that had happened way too often. In class when they should have been paying attention to the teacher. At times when he’d run into her in town while she was out with her parents. Other times when he should have been paying more attention to where he was walking. Once, it’d caused him to run smack into one of the lampposts on Main Street. Right now, though, the gaze lock just felt comforting.
Like coming home for Christmas and those other warm and fuzzy things.
Unfortunately, though, there was another side to warm and fuzzy with Alana. The blasted heat. That was the problem with their being each other’s first lovers. The memories and the heat stayed strong. At least it did on his part. Since he’d left Alana, and had therefore stomped on her heart, she might not have such sizzling feelings left for him.
Except she did.
Gray could see that heat in her eyes. Yeah, it was mixed with the sympathy and all, but it was still there. Worse, his stupid body was encouraging him to pick up where he’d left off years ago by kissing her. Maybe testing just how strong that vow of celibacy was. But that would be like playing with fire, running with scissors and a whole bunch of other reckless things. That’s why Gray unlocked his gaze from hers and stared back out at the ranch.
“Did you want to say something to me?” Alana asked.
He frowned. “About what?” Because he had no intentions of getting into this sudden need he had to kiss her, to hold her and try to erase a good chunk of the past.
“About anything,” she threw out there. “Maybe about why I’m here. Or why you keep looking at me as if the last thirteen years didn’t happen?”
The answer to this was easy. No, he didn’t especially want to say anything about that at all. It’d probably been a mistake to drag Alana into this, but since he had, Gray needed to man up.
“No way would your parents have ever accepted me,” Gray reminded her. “And you probably wouldn’t have broken off things with me. That would have set us up for one miserable life, and I didn’t want that for either of us.”
She nodded as if that was exactly what she’d expected him to say and then added aduhsound when he lifted his eyebrow, questioning her reaction. “You always said you wanted what your parents had,” she spelled out. “A perfect marriage.”
He had, indeed, said that. Had believed it, too. Hell, maybe it had been perfect for them all the while they were lying to him.
“After you left, I looked for perfect,” she added. “I obviously didn’t find it.”
That hurt, a quick deep cut. Because he had to take some responsibility on setting her on that self-proclaimed path of the Typhoid Mary of relationships.
“Don’t blame yourself,” she went on as if she’d developed that ESP she’d talked about at the cemetery. “My choices, my mistakes.” She dragged in a quick breath. “Now, enough about me. What are you going to do about what you found out today?”
No easy answer this time. Gray didn’t have a clue. Definitely no cosmic answers from seeing Nightfall Ranch. Added to that, seeing the place was a cue that he had yet something else to deal with.
“Sadie Jo left the ranch to me,” Gray said.
“Wow,” Alana muttered after another pause.
Sounding more than a little surprised, Alana repeated herwowa couple of times, and she was no doubt doing what he was doing—glancing around the acres and acres. Lots of land, a huge house, three ponds and a groundskeeper’s cottage. Complete with the groundskeeper, Teddy Derrick.
In one of those ironic twists that kept popping up, Teddy was friends with Gray’s father. Or rather the man who’d raised Gray. He recalled Teddy visiting many times when Gray had been a kid, but until Asher had told him, Gray hadn’t known he was the groundskeeper at Nightfall. Then again, there were a lot of things he hadn’t known.
