Fortune's Cinderella (23 page)

But still the memories jeered, sending tears streaming down her cheeks. She’d really, truly believed she’d loved Chris, that he’d loved her, had suffered mightily when it all fell apart between them. Compared with what she felt for Scott, however…

Like comparing “Chopsticks” to a Beethoven symphony.

Christina knew he thought she was Looney Tunes, that he didn’t fully understand why she had to reject his offer. His love. But being in that house…it only proved what she’d been saying all along—that she wasn’t enough for him. Heck, she wasn’t even enough for the house. For herself, yes. Even for some other man, at least in theory. Because it would always be so…one-sided, wouldn’t it? Scott had so much to offer her, but what did she have to offer him in return? And how soon would that be used up—?

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, her thoughts scattering like roaches when she saw her mother’s car pull up, wondering what truly terrible things she’d done in a past life to deserve this.

Christina watched helplessly as Sandra got out of the car, glared at the roiling clouds, then marched toward the front door, which Christina had opened by the time her mother hit the porch.

“Oh!” Sandra’s hand flew to her chest. “You startled me!”

“Wasn’t exactly expecting you, either.”

“Is it…okay if I come in?”

“Um…of course.” From where he lay beside the heating vent, Gumbo lifted his head, took in the situation, decided it wasn’t worth his time or energy to investigate and flopped back down again.

“Can I get you anything?” Christina asked as her mother removed the same red wool three-quarter-length coat she’d had for years.

“No, I’m fine. And listen to you, acting like I’m a church lady paying a call.” She looked…subdued, Christina thought. Less makeup, smaller hair. Like she’d lost some weight, judging from the way her hostess dress—a black sheath, adorned with a print scarf—hung on her frame. She carefully lowered herself to the edge of the sofa, her hands on her knees. “Your young man came to see me,” she said, and Christina nearly fell over.

“Scott?”

“You got more than one?”

“No.” Although she didn’t exactly have that one, either. “Why?”

“I’m still not entirely sure, to tell you the truth. Although…” Sandra stretched out her fingers, then covered her left hand with her right. “He says he asked you to marry him.”

“Not in so many words, but…he gave me a ring, yes. I didn’t keep it.”

Her mother frowned. “How come?”

“Because it didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel right.”

“You’re sure? I mean, it was entirely your decision?”

“Well, yes.” Wondering what the heck was going on, Christina slowly sat on the ratty old recliner. “What’s this all about?”

“He seems pretty convinced I had something to do with it. That I’ve…unduly influenced you. Or something.”

“Oh. Well…you haven’t exactly been encouraging—”

“Because I couldn’t bear for you to go through again what you did with Chris.” She reached up to fidget with the Hermes knockoff. “Like I did with your daddy when he left us high and dry, without hardly two quarters to rub together.”

Color flooded her mother’s pale cheeks as she leaned forward, becoming more and more agitated. “You and I, we’re cut from the same cloth, you know? Attracted to the same kind of man. Only it never works out, does it? Not for me, and not for you. So I had to make sure you wouldn’t make the same mistake, didn’t I? To protect you, baby. That’s all. That Scott Fortune…don’t you believe all his pretty talk, Christina, you hear me? Because he can promise you the moon and stars and everything in between, but that doesn’t mean he’ll deliver. You know that, right? That we’re both better off alone than having our hearts broken again by some rich SOB who thinks he can toss us away like old garbage—”

At that, Sandra burst into tears.

Tears Christina realized weren’t for her.

“Ohmigod…” She looked at her mother as though seeing her for the first time. “This isn’t about protecting me at all, is it? Which should come as no surprise since you never really have. This is about not wanting me to be happy because you never were!”

A tissue plucked from the box on the table beside the sofa, Sandra gaped at Christina. “What an awful thing to say!”

“But it’s true!” Bolting to her feet, Christina clamped one hand to her mouth as one by one, the pieces fell into place. “Because it’s always, always been about you!” When her mother pulled a face, Christina shook her head. “Was this supposed to be some sort of pact between us? That if you were miserable I was supposed to be, too?”

Her mother seemed to crumple in front of her. “Do you have any idea how I felt when you and Christopher started going together?” she whined. “That after everything that’d happened you took up with a rich boy?”

“And what did that have to do with you?”

Fresh tears leaked from her eyes. “I felt like I’d been betrayed!”

Christina wheeled around and crossed to the window, her arms tightly folded over her middle. “And you wonder why we don’t get along.”

After a long silence, her mother said, “No, I don’t.”

Frowning, Christina faced her again. “Come again?”

Her mother blew her nose again, then gave her head a little shake before lifting her gaze to Christina’s. “Even then, I suppose I knew what I was thinking was wrong, even if I didn’t know how to fix it. But the green-eyed monster had me by the throat so bad I couldn’t think straight. And it only got worse, after you two got married. I was so lonely. And mad. At your daddy, at myself…”

Her sigh was shaky. “And I was so busy wallowing in the mad and the hurt it never occurred to me there might be something past it.”“So, what? You cheered when my marriage fell apart?”

“No, of course not. I’m not that far gone. But…” She pressed her lips together. “But I guess I did feel vindicated, somehow.”

“And you’re still holding on to all this crazy, even though you’re remarried?”

On a humorless laugh, Sandra stretched out what Christina realized with a start was her ringless left hand. “Harry left me,” she whispered. “Two days after New Year’s.”

Christina bit her lip, feeling all those years of bitterness and frustration and anger dissolve in the face of her mother’s obvious, and genuine, misery. The woman looked absolutely defeated.

“Oh, Mama…I’m so sorry.” And she truly was. For so many reasons. “But why didn’t you say something when you were here?”

“I was ashamed, okay? Didn’t want to admit I’d messed up again.”

Despite everything, sympathy tugged at Christina’s heart. “It takes two to mess up, Mama.”

But Sandra didn’t appear to have heard her. “I was barely holding it together as it was, and then I saw you and Scott together that day, saw the way he looked at you, and that monster reared its ugly head all over again. I’m sorry, too, baby,” she whispered. “More than I can say. If I think about it for more than five seconds, of course I want you to be happy. And much as it pains me to say this…

I think Scott might be the one to do that for you. Because for sure I never saw in Chris’s eyes, or your daddy’s, what I saw in Scott’s. B-but is it so wrong for me to be h-happy, too?”

And if she truly believed the Good Lord put people where He needed them to be…

Sighing, Christina sat beside her mother and took her hand. The woman grabbed on like she’d drown if she let go. Which Christina supposed wasn’t that far from the truth. “Of course it isn’t. But you need to talk to somebody. A professional, I mean.

You’ve got some heavy-duty issues to work through.”

“Like I can afford a therapist—”

“We’ll work it out. I promise,” she said. “Maybe we can find one of those two-for-one deals on Groupon or something.”

Sandra pushed out a soft laugh. “You’re probably right. But I have no idea where to even begin…”

“I’ll take care of it.” Not that she had any idea where to begin, either, but the prospect of venturing into hitherto-unexplored territory didn’t hold nearly the terror for her that it obviously did for her mother.

Um, hello? Are you listening to yourself?

Christina sucked in a quick breath at the promise behind that revelation. She could practically feel her thoughts shifting, realigning themselves in her brain. Letting in the light. Holy cow—nobody had ever done for her what Scott had. Taken that kind of risk…for her. Put his butt on the line…for her.

But first things first. Like tending to the relationship in front of her, whether she wanted to or not. Except…she did, she supposed.

After all, it wasn’t like she could trade out this mother for a new one.

Besides, as tempting as it was to hold on to the bad feelings, not only had they not proved all that useful, when you got right down to it, but Christina knew it had also taken guts for her mother to show up here. Even if her original intent had been to cover her own patoot, the truth had worked its way to the surface anyway, hadn’t it? So now maybe they could both work on healing.

“Mama? Do you suppose we could, I don’t know. Start over?”

Sandra blew her nose. “You think that’s even possible?”

“I have no idea. But I’m willing to try. If you are.”

“Then…I think I’d like that. Very much.”

“Okay, then.” Her hands knotted on her knees, Christina shut her eyes, took a deep breath, then said, “I never told you why Chris and I broke up.”

“I assumed it was because the two of you weren’t suited.”

“That’s certainly part of it. But not all,” she said over the rapidly rising lump in her throat. “I got pregnant.”

“Pregnant? But…” When Christina’s eyes flooded, her mother let out a soft moan. “Oh, honey…come here.”

And she wrapped her arms around her daughter and stroked her hair as she cried, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

So they started talking. And kept talking, and sometimes crying, not only long into the night, but well into the next day—after Christina spent the rest of the night wide awake, praying her little heart out. So it was the middle of the afternoon, after Sandra finally headed back to Houston, before Christina brought up Scott’s cell number into her phone, holding her breath for a moment before hitting Send.

“I need to talk to you,” she said when he answered.

“Christina?”

“You were expecting Gumbo?”

After that soft, caressing, sending-shivers-up-her-back chuckle, he said, “I’m at the ranch. Out by the stables. Where are you?”

“On my way.”

“I’ll wait.”

At the entrance to the long drive leading to the property, Christina pulled the Jetta onto the soft, weed-choked shoulder. Gumbo wriggled between the seats to nose her arm; she smiled down at that goofy face fixed so steadily on hers while the rest of his body shimmied. Then, looking back out the windshield, she sighed.

“Do I dare to do this?”

Still wagging, Gumbo cocked his head, the skin all pleated between his ears. Then he barked—it did take him a while to process information—and stretched his neck to give her forearm a slurpy kiss.

Admitting she was wrong meant chucking everything she’d believed about herself for more than five years…a burden she was only too glad to jettison. And small potatoes compared with what Scott had chucked for her. On another sigh, she started driving down the dirt road toward the house, rolling her eyes at the sight of the big-ass pickup parked in the driveway. It suited him, though, substantial but not flashy. Sort of a pewter color. Dignified. At least, as dignified as a truck the size of a small house could be.

She pulled up alongside it and got out, shielding her eyes from the sun as she and the dog walked—well, she walked, Gumbo bounced—around the house toward the stables. As she approached, a horse’s whinny caught her attention. Her gaze veered to the right, to a magnificent black beast with a jagged white blaze, clearly entranced by whatever Scott was saying to him as he stroked the horse’s neck. And oh, my, if he didn’t look almost like a real horseman in his jeans and boots and black shirt underneath a denim jacket, and Christina’s breath caught in her throat as she finally gave her heart its head, letting her love for this man flood her very being until it became so vast, so…all, it simply, finally, completely obliterated the fear.

Home, she thought, the single word as comforting as an angel’s kiss—

“Gumbo, no!” she called when he made a beeline for the animal—dumb cluck probably thought the horse was a big dog. But when he reached the fence, he stood on his hind paws to brace his front ones on the middle rail, and the horse slowly lowered his head, making soft whuffing noises as he inspected this silly, stubby creature with the big ears and no sense whatsoever. Then he seemed to nod as if in approval before cantering across the paddock to the other side, tossing his shiny black mane.

“Took you long enough,” Scott said softly, and she thought, You ain’t whistling Dixie, Bucko.

Scott’s chest constricted at how beautiful she was, the breeze messing with her hair, her long skirt gently molding to her thighs as she walked toward him.

“He’s gorgeous,” she said when she got close enough for Scott to hear her, to see the smile in her eyes a moment before he reached for her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. And she tugged him even closer and gave him everything she had. Everything he wanted. At least, as much as she could, he imagined, considering they were out in the open.

“So’re you,” Scott whispered, brushing her hair out of her eyes and making her blush.

“You don’t seem all that surprised I’m here.”

“You did call.”

“No, I meant—”

“I know what you meant. And what I am, is damn happy.”

She kissed him again, then pulled free to fold her arms across the top of the fence. But not as she might have before—nervously, in retreat. If anything she seemed completely at ease.

Content.

“When did you get him?” she said as the horse calmly plodded back over to check her out, too. Scott dug in his pocket for a piece of apple, which he handed to her. She held it out to the horse flat-palmed, giggling a little when his lips tickled.

“Yesterday. One of my cousins here told me about this couple who rescues abused horses and rehabilitates them.”