Bound By Marriage, page 13
He was also a man, no matter what he said, who had the potential to both feel, and give, the deepest, most rare kind of love. The kind that came from the soul and left devastation behind when it was stolen away. She’d found her evidence in an acorn, a bunch of wild daisies and a smooth river-stone.
She wasn’t so naive as to think he loved her, but Gabe could love, and love as women dreamed of being loved. If only he’d unlock that potential…but no, her husband was determined to dam up his emotions behind a barricade so thick, she was starting to lose hope of ever penetrating it.
The door closed with a click.
Giving a small start, she moved to stand in front of the uncurtained window.
“I’m sorry about that.” Gabriel was a proud man, one who wouldn’t have appreciated passersby being privy to his private business.
“I think you broke his heart.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. “He’ll recover. He always does.” In many ways, her childhood friend was still that—a child. It was why she’d found it so difficult to break from him. Because so long as Damon was in her life, she could pretend that nothing had changed, when the truth was…everything had. “And if he has any sense, he’ll try to make his marriage work.”
“Hard words.” His hands closed over her shoulders.
“What do you want, Gabe?” Placing her palms against the glass, she stared out at the glittering city lights. “I admitted I don’t love him. Isn’t that enough?”
He massaged away her tension with fingers grown strong from a lifetime of physical work. “I’d never touch you in violence.”
Jolted by the unexpected reference to Damon’s accusation, she tried to meet his reflected gaze, but he was hidden in shadow. “What did he mean about your parents?”
“My father loved my mother,” he said, his tone holding nothing of happiness.
“Loved her so much he wanted her to be completely his. Even if he had to lock her in the basement to achieve that.”
She put a hand over his, wanting to cry. Because she knew he never would. “Did he hurt you and your brothers and sister as well?”
“Angelica was too young,” was his oblique answer. “He should’ve never tried to lay a finger on her.”
“You were all too young.”
“I don’t talk about the past. It’s dead and buried.”
“But it has a way of rising up as we saw today,” she said quietly, conscious that she couldn’t force him to speak. “I’m your wife. Treat me like that matters.”
Releasing her shoulders, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. When she closed her hands over his, she brushed the raw skin of his knuckles. “I never thought you’d be the type to punch another man.” It seemed so emotional an act when control was everything to him.
“Violence runs in the family.”
“You’re too smart to accept such a facile explanation.” She leaned fully into him, no longer fighting the effect he’d always had on her. Her body accepted him, knew him, needed him—sensuality was simply one aspect of that craving.
“Anyone would have lashed out after what he said.”
“Defending me, Jess?”
“I’m only telling the truth.”
“So was Damon,” he said after a long silence. “Though I suppose you could argue my father rarely ever actually beat my mother. He preferred to break her spirit in ways that didn’t leave a mark. I think he’d nearly succeeded until that day when he tried to drag Angelica into the basement.”
She was so worried about disrupting the moment she barely dared to breathe.
“My mother snapped, though I didn’t know it then. That night, after my father passed out drunk on the couch, she gave us all a glass of milk.”
“You hate milk,” she said without thinking.
He hugged her tighter. “I didn’t realize you knew.”
“I told you, I’m your wife.” And she’d keep fighting for that to mean what it should.
“My mother knew, too, and she didn’t usually force any on me.” His voice was calm but she read the emotional truth in the merciless discipline with which he held his body. “That day, I threw it into a planter when she wasn’t looking.
“Then, after everyone else had fallen asleep, I snuck out to go exploring at a pond about a mile from the house. By the time I came back, the house was in flames and when I tried to run inside, the people who’d come to help dragged me out.”
She ran a hand gently up his arm. “But you were burned.”
“I was faster than they expected. Got into the hallway seconds before a beam collapsed.”
“The fire,” she whispered, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “It was your mother.”
Chapter 16
“I’ m pretty certain the milk was drugged. It was verified that none of the others had even tried to get out. And there was incontrovertible proof of the fire having been deliberately set.” His voice didn’t shake, didn’t fracture under a load which would have crippled many men. “They assumed it was my father but I knew it couldn’t have been. Once he passed out, he stayed that way for eight hours or more.”
All she wanted to do was hold him. But would he accept the tenderness? “It was ruled an accident.”
“It’s a small town and the men in power at the time were good friends of my father’s. They decided the truth would serve no purpose other than to make my life hell, so they buried it. It wasn’t until I was sixteen that I pushed them to confirm what I already knew.”
Stunned at what she’d learned and what it told her about the man who was her husband, she tried to find the right words. “You’re nothing like him.”
“Enough, Jess.” He brushed back her hair and kissed the soft skin of her nape.
“I don’t want to talk about this ever again.”
It wasn’t in her nature to give up, but they’d come so far today. Turning in his arms, she let him sweep her under in a dark wave of masculine heat. And for the first time, she didn’t fight the surrender. In any way.
The next week passed by in a blur of happiness. Gabriel was no Prince Charming, but the man did have a way of melting a woman’s insides when he decided to smile. And he’d been smiling a lot more often of late.
So when Jess ran into Corey at the grocery store, she felt terrible at being so happy that she’d forgotten the hardship he had to be going through…forgotten this aspect of Gabe’s personality. Ruthless practicality might be part of her husband’s nature, but it hurt her to think of him as callously unforgiving.
About to take the coward’s way out and leave, she was caught off-guard by Corey’s shouted greeting. Walking over, she smiled at both him and the little girl in his arms. “Hello.”
“This here’s Christy. My daughter,” he explained, as if afraid she wouldn’t remember.
“Nice to meet you, Christy. Your daddy’s told me all about you.”
The shy child half hid her face in her father’s neck but Jess could see her smile. She felt even worse. “Corey, I’m so sorry about what happened.”
Corey shook his head. “It was my fault. Mr. Dumont was right to be piss—I mean angry,” he substituted, glancing down at his daughter. “I would have been mad as anything, too, if that had been my wife and all. I wanted to tell you I quit.
Smoking, I mean. For good.”
“That’s great.” She was stunned by his lack of bitterness. “Do you still want me to do the sketch?”
“Would you?” At her nod, he grinned. “Could you do it from a photo?”
“Sure. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s just that we won’t be in town for long. I came back to pick up my mom and Christy. Needed time to set up things.” His smile was very young. “The work’s a little different with the vines and everything, but I think I like it even better than station stuff.”
Relief rushed through her as she realized he must’ve found employment in a wine-making region. “Oh, I’m so glad for you.”
“Anyway, we’d better be getting on home. It was nice talking to you Mrs.
Dumont.”
“You too, Corey. Good luck with your new job.” She was about to move on when he slapped his forehead and stopped.
“I’m such a dolt.” He made a face. “I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For talking to Mr. Dumont. I figured it must’ve been you.” His expression was so sincere she felt her world rock on its axis. “If he hadn’t called his friend in Marlborough, I might’ve been looking for work forever.”
Jess somehow managed to nod. “Have a safe trip.”
“Thanks. And don’t worry, I won’t stuff up this chance.”
Watching him leave, she put her hand on one of the shelves and tried to steady her mind. Gabe had not only listened to what she’d had to say, he’d acted on it.
Then why hadn’t the dratted man told her?
Because he wanted to keep her at a distance.
So long as she thought of him as unnecessarily harsh, she’d never fully trust him, which played right into his hands. For her husband, a man who’d loved and lost everyone who mattered, her mistrust was far easier to accept than either her love or her care.
Jess’s face cracked into a slow smile. Too damn bad for Gabe that she’d just found him out.
Buoyant after what she’d learned, she was almost ready to tell Gabe everything about her own feelings, willing to take a chance on the man she knew him to be.
Perhaps she’d whisper it to him in bed, she thought, knowing she had to choose her moment.
“So,” she asked after dinner that day, curled up on the sofa in his study, “do you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl when I’m far enough along for them to tell, or do you want it to be a surprise?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Really? I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stand the suspense.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He put down the fax he’d been examining. “I told you, I don’t want to be a father. Don’t involve me in anything where my participation isn’t strictly necessary.”
Staring at the implacable mask of his face, she tried to find some hint of softness. Of hope. “But Gabe, now that we’ve talked…You’re nothing like him. You don’t have to worry about hurting your child.”
He circled his desk to face her. “Don’t try and psychoanalyze me on the basis of something you know less than nothing about. I’ve made my decision.”
Feeling dread chill her blood, she unfolded her legs and stood. “You can’t mean that.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I won’t ignore the kid if that’s what you’re worried about. I just want him or her around as little as possible.”
“And how will being shipped off to boarding school and summer camps from such a young age make our child feel loved?”
His cheekbones stood out against skin stretched taut. “I’ll take care of everything the baby needs.”
“I see.” And she did, far too clearly. “Love isn’t part of the bargain?”
“It never was.”
She flinched at the brutal execution of all her silent hopes and dreams. “I made that bargain for me. You’re not going to cheat our child out of it!”
“I never lied to you about who I was.”
“I thought—” She shook her head, furious at herself for having once again fallen for a man who’d only ever existed in her imagination. And this time, she’d gone far beyond girlish infatuation.
Horror drenched her at the thought of how close she’d come to declaring her love to someone who didn’t want it and would throw it back in her face if she gave it to him. Wrapping her arms around her body, she told herself not to break down, not here, not now. “But men like you don’t change, do they?”
“Why would you expect me to?”
Gabe’s question from the night before echoed in Jess’s mind as she sat on the steps to what had once been her home. However Randall Station no longer occupied that place in her heart. She’d accepted Angel in a way not even Gabe realized.
But it wasn’t enough.
Touching the wood of the beloved home she’d thought she’d sacrifice anything to save, she shook her head. “Not my baby.” Her child would not be held hostage to this place as she’d been, would not be forced to grow up alone and isolated in order to keep the Randall heritage safe.
And who had she been keeping it safe for but the life in her womb? Yes, it would break her heart to walk away, leaving her parents’ legacy to the mercy of the developers. But that she could survive. What she’d never survive, what she’d never forgive herself for, was if she stood by and allowed her child to be torn from her arms in order to fulfill Gabe’s inexplicable change of heart on being a father.
“I’m sorry, Daddy.” She put a hand over her abdomen. “I’m sorry for not keeping my promise but I know you’ll understand.” A breeze whispered through the air to trail across her face, flicking away the single tear that had escaped her determination to be strong.
She’d been such a fool, first in thinking that she could survive a marriage based on nothing but business, and second, in seeing Gabriel Dumont as her very own knight in shining armor. He was no knight, not a man who’d ever be willing to give her what she most needed.
Perhaps the ability to love had been cut out of him long before the fire, his heart permanently damaged by witnessing his father’s brutalization of his mother. Perhaps he’d lost it that night when Angel became an inferno that swallowed everything he’d ever loved. Or perhaps it was her he couldn’t love.
She didn’t know the answer, but she did know that her child wasn’t going to suffer for her stupidity.
Rising she walked down to the SUV and started it up. As she drove away, she allowed herself only a single backward look in the rearview mirror. Tears threatened to burst the banks of her control, but she resisted pulling over until she was out of sight of the house. Then she stopped. And let the tears come.
She was calm again by the time she reached the place that had become her new home. If there was one thing she didn’t want, it was for Gabriel to see her as weak or pitiful. She was no longer that broken girl who’d begged him to save her home. Finally, she’d grown up.
Still, she was glad he hadn’t yet come in when she entered the house. Going up to her bedroom, she packed a suitcase and carried it to the bottom of the stairs before heading to her studio. There, she began putting the bare essentials into a small bag. She’d get Mrs. C. to ship her her paintings after she found somewhere permanent to stay.
“What the hell are you doing, Jess?”
Closing the bag, she looked up at the man who’d become the center of her life in a few short months. “I’m leaving you.” The pronouncement sounded shockingly blunt, but she knew no other way to make it without betraying the depth of her pain.
Green eyes glittered beneath the shadow thrown by the brim of his hat. “If you think this stunt will make me chase after you, you don’t know me.”
She drew in a ragged breath. “I don’t expect that. We had a deal. I’m reneging with full awareness of the consequences.” Tucking her hair behind her ears, she folded her arms and met his gaze without flinching. “I know you’ll sell Randall Station. I’m not going to ask you to stop. It’s legally yours.”
“Your first payment under the pre-nup doesn’t come due until we’ve been married two years.”
She should have expected the cold-blooded response but there remained a foolish emotional softness in her, something that insisted on seeing the invisible scars on his heart, and that bled at his lack of feeling for her and their child. “I don’t want your money.” It inadvertently came out like the most severe kind of rejection.
“It’ll take me a while but now that I have a source of income, I’ll pay you back for L.A. Don’t worry about maintenance for the baby, either. It hardly seems fair when you’d rather I wasn’t pregnant.”
“Don’t be absurd, Jess.” White lines bracketed his mouth. “I’m not having it said I threw my pregnant wife out on the street.”
She picked up the bag with her art supplies. “Fine. Support the child, that’s your right, but I don’t want anything else from you.”
He blocked the doorway. “Why the sudden about-face? You were perfectly happy with this arrangement a year ago.”
She could have lied, but that no longer seemed an option. Maybe she’d had enough of hiding things, or maybe she was hoping for a last minute reprieve from a man who knew no such thing as mercy. Whatever it was, she told him the absolute truth. “A year ago, I didn’t love you.”
Chapter 17
There was no reprieve.
Gabriel went silent after her confession and it took everything she had not to give voice to the anguish inside of her. Instead, she let him put her suitcase into the trunk of the SUV and when he asked where she was going, said, “I’ll call you when I get there.”
In truth, she had no idea of her destination. All she knew was that she had to leave. Driving aimlessly toward Kowhai, she thought about going to Merri Tanner, but disregarded the idea a second later. Merri was her good friend, but Mr.
Tanner was Gabe’s. It wasn’t fair to put them in the middle of her and Gabe’s problems.
In the end, she simply kept driving until night fell and tiredness forced her to check into a motel. Sleep was a long time coming. It was during those dark, lonely hours that she finally accepted the inescapable fact—she could no longer live in or around the Mackenzie Country.
Because in spite of its wide open sky, it was too small a community. She’d be unable to avoid hearing news about Gabe, unable to avoid running into him at area events. And she needed to forget him, needed to find a way to live without her heart.
