A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances) (31 page)

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Patsy said. “That’s a
tough break.”

“Don’t know why . . . you
agreed.” Her mother’s words came out slowly but clearly. “Rodeo. Bad business.
Taught you that.”

Georgia bit back a put-upon sigh. “Eden
wanted to try it.”

Her mother made a noise. Over the summer,
Georgia had become an expert at interpreting her mother’s noises. They were as
clear as words. This noise meant she thought Georgia was a fool and, given the
topic of conversation, probably a bad mother to boot.

“What?” Georgia said sharply, all but
daring her mother to say it out loud.

“Don’t let Eden . . . play
in the street . . . do you?”

“This isn’t a busy street we’re talking
about, Mama. Barrel racing isn’t that dangerous, but it takes a lot of
commitment. I decided it would be a good experience for Eden.” The kicking and
screaming she’d done on the way to that decision wasn’t something her mother
needed to know about.

“Rodeo,” her mother harrumphed. “Asso—Asso—”
She set her jaw then tried again. “Surrounded by . . .
riff-raff.”

For a moment, Georgia was speechless.
Riff-raff?

“Your daddy wasn’t riff-raff,” Grams’
voice was laced with cold steel, a tone Georgia rarely heard from her.

“Daddy left,” Georgia’s mother words were
hot and hard, a counterpoint to Grams’ steely tone. Her finger pointed
accusingly at Grams before swinging to Georgia. “Sol left.” She gave a
disparaging snort. “Cowboys.” She scowled and shook her head. “No good.”

Her mother’s views weren’t news to Georgia,
but on the rare occasion when the topic came up, she wasn’t usually so blatant
in her disregard. The therapist had warned her that a patient’s tact was
sometimes a casualty of a stroke. That made this a discussion she couldn’t win,
so Georgia choked down her resentment and bit her tongue.

Across the table, Eden looked hurt and
confused. Her grandmother, who she didn’t always like but who she trusted to
love her and protect her, was saying her father wasn’t any good. That betrayed
look on her daughter’s face sliced into Georgia’s heart.

“Sol didn’t leave me, Mama. I beat him to
it. Remember?”

“Pre—Pre—Preemptive,” her mother choked
out. “Cared more about . . . rodeo than . . .
than his family.”

Eden’s lower lip quivered. Georgia felt
the mama bear in her rear up.

“That’s not true,” she said to Eden then
repeated to her mother. “It’s not true. He loves to rodeo, but he loves Eden
more than anything on earth. And he—he loves—loved me, too. He’d do anything
for Eden. And he’d do anything for me as well.” Her words bubbled up from some
place inside where she’d hidden them away, refusing to look at them because . . .
because if they were true, then twelve years ago, she’d made the biggest
mistake of her life.

Her mother made a loud, disparaging noise
that pushed Georgia right over the edge.

“That’s enough.” She was surprised to
find herself standing. “You’ve done nothing but bad-mouth Sol since the day I
married him. He doesn’t deserve to get roasted because you felt abandoned when
Granddaddy died.”

She clenched her hands, trying to stop
them from shaking. “Sol’s not Daddy either, who in case you didn’t notice,
Mama, came back from playing music on the road almost two decades ago. I think
it’s time you stopped punishing him for leaving.

“But either way, you are
done
blaming Sol in front of Eden or me for how things turned out.” She leveled her
hardest glare at her mama. “Don’t make me choose between you and Sol because,
Mama . . .” She paused, weighing for one brief moment whether
she was ready to draw this line. “You won’t like the results.”

There wasn’t much room to maneuver, but
she managed to step over the plank seat without tripping on it, so she counted
that a dignified exit and stalked out of the backyard. Getting into her car and
leaving sounded so appealing, but she couldn’t, not without Eden, so she sat on
the concrete steps in front of Bethany’s house.

She discovered her napkin balled up in
her fist. With hands still shaking from the adrenaline rush, she smoothed it on
her knee as tears welled in her eyes. Damn. She didn’t want to cry, but the
release of all the summer’s pent-up emotions had to have an outlet, as if
yelling at her mother wasn’t enough.

“It’s about time.” Bethany approached
from the corner of the house.

Georgia sniffed and wiped her eyes with
the napkin. “What’s ‘about time’?”

“About time you grew a backbone and
stopped letting Mama play you.” Bethany sat down beside her, bumping at Georgia
to make room.

She took another swipe at her eyes as she
scooted over. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re not really that blind, are you?
She plays you like a flute. She has since we were little. Ever since Daddy left
to go play his music on the road. Mama was miserable but you took it on
yourself to make her happy. As if you could fix it for her. I mean, good God,
you were what? Twelve? You started getting straight A’s in school. You cooked
when she didn’t feel like it. You kept the house tidy. You even helped me with
my homework. You let her wallow in it.”

Bethany looked at her then dug into her
pocket, produced another napkin, and handed it to Georgia.

“Thanks.” She didn’t know why her eyes
kept leaking tears. Maybe it was because no matter what she did, someone always
found fault.

“It wasn’t your job to make her happy.
And when Daddy came home, you kept doing it. You acted like everything hinged
on you being so flipping good. And then . . .” Bethany took a
deep breath and shook her head, her lips tightening. “Then you married Sol.”

“Yes, I know.” She didn’t think she could
stand to hear her sister say it, so Georgia beat her to it. “That was a
mistake.”

Bethany did the eye-roll she’d perfected
at eight. The year, Georgia realized, their daddy had been gone. “The only
mistake you made with Sol was leaving him.”

Georgia’s mouth gaped. Bethany thought . . .
? It was such a turn-everything-on-its-head revelation, Georgia wasn’t sure she’d
heard her sister right.

“What?”

“You escaped.”

Georgia was stunned by her sister’s
words. “Esca—?”

“But then you went and left him. Mama
really went to work on you then.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bethany gave her an incredulous look. “Are
you really telling me you don’t remember?”

“I had a lot going on at the time.”

“Okay. I’ll give you that. But I can’t
believe you don’t remember her following you around the house, pounding you
with what a mistake you made, and how glad she was you’d come to your senses
before it was too late.”

Georgia hadn’t thought about that time in
her life for years, but now, with her sister’s forceful reminder, she
remembered going to bed early a lot to get away from her mother’s constant
harping.

“She beat you up so bad, it’s amazing you
weren’t covered in bruises,” Bethany said. “When you found out you were
pregnant, I was so glad. I thought sure you’d go back to him. Why didn’t you? I
was only fourteen, and even I could see you wanted to. And poor Sol. You
confused that man so bad.”

“Really?” Georgia asked in a tiny voice. “That’s
how you remember it?”

Bethany shook her head as if Georgia were
too dumb for words. “Hell, Georgia, he worshipped the ground you walked on, and
you left him to keep Mama from being unhappy.”

“No. No, that’s not why. He . . .”
She took a deep breath. “He was riding bulls. You know what the rodeo life is
like. He’d have been gone all the time, out there with ‘the boys.’“
And the
buckle bunnies.
“I’d have been home alone, probably with a passel of kids,
and when he got hurt, then . . . then . . .” She
wanted to keep going, to explain to Bethany, but her breath was doing something
funny, coming in sharp, fast intakes with little half-sobby noises.

Bethany wrapped her arms around Georgia’s
shoulders. “I know. I was there. I heard Mama.”

Georgia’s throat closed on a hard lump.

“He was either going to go off with some
sleazy buckle bunny, or he was going to get himself killed in the arena,
leaving you alone with half a dozen kids.” Bethany rocked Georgia in her arms,
trying to soothe away the pain, but it only made Georgia’s throat hurt worse. “All
because he didn’t love you enough. You were so afraid she was right, you deserted
the ship before it even started sinking.”

“You don’t know,” Georgia said between
breaths, “how hard it was to hear that . . . and not believe it.”

Bethany snorted. “Really? You think Mama
didn’t try that with me?”

Georgia pulled back to look at her sister.
She wiped at her wet cheeks. “Why would she? Carl’s devoted to you.”

“Of course he is. But before me, Carl got
around. You probably never paid attention because we were so much younger than
you and, well”—Bethany grinned—”you had a lot on your plate even then. But he
dated nearly every pretty girl in the county before we got together. Mama said
he’d be floozing around before our second anniversary.”

A laugh burst out of Georgia. Carl was so
devoted to his family that picturing him running around on Bethany was beyond
Georgia’s imaginative powers. Still, she knew her mama. The woman’s ability to
pinpoint the chink in someone’s armor was uncanny, so there must have been
cause for doubt at the time. “How did you know she was wrong?”

“Because I made him work for me. I didn’t
say yes the first time he asked me out, but he kept coming back and asking
again. He went through a lot of girls before I said yes. And by then, I’d made
him jump through so many hoops, I knew I could trust him.” Bethany’s lips turned
up in a smile. “He’s never let me down.”

“And Mama quit hounding you? Just like
that?”

“Are you kidding? She’s got that locking
jaw like a pit bull. But I told her I wasn’t going to let her do to me what she
did to you and Sol. And then I told her, if she wanted to see her future
grandbabies, she had to play nice. I maybe wasn’t as in her face as you just
were, but she got the message.”

“When did you get to be so smart?”
Georgia asked. And so strong.

Bethany smiled. “I’m not that smart, but
I pay attention. If I hadn’t seen what Mama did to you, I’d probably have
fallen for it, too. I love Mama but she’s damaged, and I don’t want to be like
her.”

Georgia looked at her sister in awe.
Bethany had beaten the family curse.
Teach me,
she wanted to beg her
sister.
Teach me how to do that, too.

“You know what?” Bethany put an arm
around Georgia’s shoulder and gave her a sideways hug. “You’re not Mama either
or even Grams. And you were right that Sol isn’t Daddy or Grampa. Just because
things didn’t work out so well for them, that doesn’t have anything to do with
you.”

Except it did. She’d made sure of that
twelve years ago, not when she’d married the man she loved, but when she’d left
him.

Georgia barely heard Bethany say she’d
get Eden together and send her around the house, so Georgia wouldn’t have to
face their mama again so soon.

Her hands folded in front of her, index
fingers steepled, Georgia thought about how she’d let her mother convince her
that her marriage was the problem, but it wasn’t. Repetition compulsion. The
sins of the father. Or in this case, the mother. Georgia’s sin had been
allowing her mother to convince her that her marriage was a mistake. That she’d
chosen the kind of man who would put her second to his true passion, who would
crush her heart. But when had Sol actually done that? She couldn’t blame him
for continuing to ride when she hadn’t shared how much it frightened her. And
even though the danger was real, well, lots of things were dangerous. Didn’t
they say that most accidents in the home happened in the shower? She wasn’t
going to give up bathing.

So why had she given Sol up so readily?

She buried her face in her hands.

They’d been apart for twelve years, and
while he might be a bit bruised and battered, he was still alive, still
walking, still whole. Was she? Every time he rodeoed, the fear nearly
overwhelmed her.

What was that saying? A brave man died
but once; a coward died a thousand deaths. She’d been a coward, envisioning Sol’s
death every time she’d watched him ride, feeling it in her soul each time.

But Sol hadn’t died.

What if she’d trusted he would be safe?

It was easy to see now with that infamous
20/20 hindsight that she’d worried for nothing, but even if it hadn’t worked
out that way and she’d lost him . . . For a moment, she
envisioned how losing Sol would feel.

Pain, sharp as a butcher’s blade, sliced
through her, taking her breath away. Still. Even though it hadn’t happened.
Even though she’d left him to save herself the pain. That clearly hadn’t worked
so well.

Georgia caught her breath. Oh, Lord. It
was true. Everyone was right.

She was still in love with Sol.

How had she missed seeing that? It was so
obvious.

She’d let fear keep her from being with
him. This fear she’d learned from the women of her family.

No. That wasn’t true. Her Grams might
have been widowed young, but she’d never shown any regrets. This had started
with her mother. Another lightning bolt of clarity struck her. Her mother had
abandonment issues so severe, she’d passed them on to Georgia. And was she, in
her turn, passing them on to Eden? Was that why Eden wouldn’t go near Spitfire
or any of the other horses?

Spitfire hadn’t abandoned Eden any more
than Sol had abandoned Georgia, but maybe the issue wasn’t abandonment so much
as it was the fear of abandonment.

Eden was so tender hearted. She was also
nearly the same age Georgia had been when her daddy had gone off to play music.

So now what? She didn’t want to screw
this up and reinforce Eden’s fears. Before she could even start to piece
together an answer, Eden came around the corner of the house. Bethany walked
with her, her hand on Eden’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about Mama and Daddy. I’ll
make sure they get home. Grams, too,” Bethany said with a smile, “though I
wouldn’t mind keeping her.”

“She’d drive you crazy in a week,”
Georgia said.

Bethany laughed. “Yeah. I tend to forget
that when I haven’t been around her for a while. Don’t worry about what time
you get home. I’ll stay with the folks until you get there or until they’re in
bed, whichever comes first.”

Georgia hugged her sister. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Georgia brushed her hand over Eden’s
hair. “Ready to go?”

Eden nodded without looking at her, and
Georgia realized she did know what her first step needed to be.

She waited until they were in the car and
on their way to the ranch before she said, “Your gramma’s wrong about your
daddy.”

Eden sat silently, staring out the
passenger window. Georgia thought she’d have to carry the whole conversation,
but just as she was about to continue, Eden said, “Why—?” The sharply bit-off
question made Georgia look at her daughter. Eden lips were rolled together
tight.

“Why what, sugar?”

Eden shook her head, still staring out
the window.

“Come on. You can ask me anything. You
know that, don’t you?” She waited. The things that worried kids could be hard
to predict.

“Did you mean what you said about Daddy
loving us?”

It wasn’t the question Eden had started
to ask before, but maybe she’d work up to that.

“Yes, I did. He loves you.” She steeled
herself to say it out loud. “And me.” It took a real effort not to let her
voice crack as she said, “He loves us both.”

Eden mulled that over for a minute.
Georgia did her best to wait patiently.

“When you and Daddy got married . . .”

“Yes?”

“Did you love Daddy?”

Uh-oh. If this was going where she
thought it was, she had to be careful. “Yes, I did. I was crazy about him.”

“Then why did you leave?”

She took a deep breath. This was not
something she could explain to her daughter, not when she was still struggling to
wrap her own mind around it. And probably not ever. But she had to fix it, and
the first step was answering Eden’s question. “I wish I could tell you love
conquers all, baby, but that’s not how it works.” She paused, thinking about
what else to say. “We were awfully young, and maybe we expected love to be
enough, but it wasn’t. We made mistakes. I think our worst mistake was we didn’t
know how to talk about the important stuff.” Lord knew she sure hadn’t.

“But you do now. Don’t you?”

“I think I’m learning to, sugar. I think
I’m finally learning.”

###

When they got to the ranch, Georgia went
looking for Sol.

She would ask him to give up riding
before she lost her nerve.

So maybe it was unfair that she still
wanted him to quit, but just because she’d figured what her fears had cost her
didn’t mean they’d go away. If he said no, well, maybe she could learn to live
with the fear. But if he said yes . . . Oh, Lord, if said yes,
she’d marry him again in a heartbeat. Even if she had to do the proposing.

That drew her up short. Marrying Sol
would mean giving up her job in Dallas. It would mean moving into his
trailer—both her and Eden. Could she do that? Did she want to? She wasn’t that
attached to Dallas but her job? She loved her job. But as Maddie had pointed out,
she could teach here as easily as she could there. And she wasn’t eighteen any
longer. She could stand up for herself if Sol tried to bully her into quitting.
He would just have to deal with it.

The trailer . . . Well,
that was something they could discuss.

If he said yes.

As it turned out, she didn’t get the
chance to ask him.

“Zach took some bulls to Mesquite for the
rodeo. Sol went with him,” Maddie told her when Georgia found her gathering
eggs in Ruth’s chicken coop.

That was the “stuff” he had to do?
Georgia’s stomach gave a nervous flutter. “Was Sol going to ride?”

“Zach didn’t mention it—at least not to
me.”

Okay. So maybe he wasn’t riding. The
Mesquite Rodeo was a Friday-Saturday affair every weekend through the summer.
Only three hours away in a Dallas suburb, it was bread-and-butter for several
local stock contractors.

When Georgia asked when they were coming
home, Maddie said, “I told him I’d better not see him until Sunday.”

Could Georgia wait until then to talk to
Sol? It would give her time to figure exactly what to say, so maybe it was a
good thing.

Maddie slid her hand into the nest under
a hen and came out with an egg. The red hen clucked softly twice.

“That’s a pretty slick magic trick,”
Georgia said,

“What? Gathering eggs?”

“Swiping it from under the hen. I wouldn’t
try it.”

“And here I thought you were a country
girl.”

“I am,” Georgia said. “A country girl
with a fear of chickens. Comes from being pecked by a mama hen when I was
little. They’re vicious, you know.”

“Not Old Red here.” Maddie rubbed the
side of the bird’s head where the ear was. Red closed her eyes and leaned into
Maddie’s hand. “She’s as sweet as they come.”

“You let her hatch a few eggs, and she
won’t be.”

Maddie grinned. She carefully placed the
stolen treasure in her basket and stood.

As they walked back toward the house,
Georgia asked, “Why did you tell Zach you didn’t want to see him before Sunday?”

“What I actually said was that if he
risks driving tired, I’ll divorce him. I’ve already lost too many people I
love. I’m not losing him to something that stupid.”

Over the past year, Georgia had gotten
Maddie’s story in bits and pieces from Eden and Sol. Before she’d come to
Texas, the man Maddie had been in love with had been murdered along with Maddie’s
younger sister. Beyond question, Maddie knew what it was to have someone she
loved snatched away with the finality only death brought.

That man’s death had touched the
McKnights as well; Maddie’s lover, Vince McMahon, had been Sol’s best friend
since grade school. When Maddie had run from the killer, she’d chosen to hide
out in Galveston because Vince had worked there for a time. She’d even gotten a
job at the hotel Vince had been partial to. The same hotel where Sol’s sister
Rachel worked and where Maddie met Zach.

“Do you regret it?” Georgia asked. “Loving
Vince, I mean.”

“No.” Maddie shook her head. “Love doesn’t
come with guarantees. You can play it safe and do everything right and still
lose him to a drunk driver or cancer.

“I lost both my parents by the time I was
eighteen; my sister and Vince almost two years ago.” Maddie stopped and stared
toward the sunset, though Georgia would bet she didn’t really see it. “You have
no idea how easy it would be to obsess about Zach and the kids. I could drive
myself certifiably bat-shit crazy, worrying about how to keep them safe. I
could have decided loving again was too risky.” She took a deep breath then
blew it out in one long stream before smiling at Georgia. “In fact, I tried to.
God bless him, Zach wouldn’t let me.”

Georgia laughed.

“I still worry, of course,” Maddie
continued as they started again for the house. “There are moments when I teeter
on the edge, when I’d like to roll them up in cotton batting and not let them
out of my sight. Especially the kids.” She shifted the basket to her other
hand. “Just the thought of losing them is so painful, it takes my breath away.
I’m not sure I could live without them.”

“I know. I feel that way about Eden. I
couldn’t bear to lose her.”

“But what choice do you have? If you let
the fear rule, you only lose them sooner rather than later.”

Maddie was right. And how screwed up was
it to say, “I don’t want you because I’m afraid of losing you”? Which very
tidily described what Georgia had done to her marriage.

###

Sol was always a little amazed at how
smooth the cattle hauler rode. The first hours of their trip, he and Zach had
talked about the ranch, Daisy’s plans now that Spitfire was sidelined, and of
course, Zach’s kids, but then the conversation had tapered off.

When they were about a half an hour from
the Mesquite exit, Zach broke the silence. “How many more seasons you figure
you’ll ride.”

Sol bit back a sigh. Was he looking that
long in the tooth? “I hadn’t thought about it. I figure I’ll know when it’s
time to give it up. Why?”

“I wanna build up our herd, but breeding
the kind of bulls that’ll get us supplying the big rodeos is gonna take forever
with the herd we got.”

“If you want to buy better stock, then
buy better stock. Daddy won’t have a problem with that as long as you don’t set
your sights on PBR’s Bull of the Year.”

Zach flicked him an odd look as if he
suspected Sol of taking a dig at him. “Listen, I do okay deciding which bulls
should cover which cows—”

Sol snorted. Zach did better than okay.
The quality of their bull calves had improved significantly since Zach had
taken over the breeding.

“But I don’t ride.” Zach said, ignoring
his brother’s snort. “You do. You understand the finer points of what makes a
bull rank. I could use your advice.”

It still sounded too much like a pity job
to Sol. Give the broken-down cowboy something to do to make him feel useful. He
wondered who all had been in on this decision. “You don’t need my advice. You’ve
got it down cold.”

Zach’s lips pressed together.

He’s annoyed? Does it bug him that the
useless old cowboy doesn’t want his charity?
“What can I offer that you don’t already know how to do?”