His Heart for the Trusting (6 page)

She sighed, her
eyes drifting back to the squares in her lap.  “That's something you'll have to
do without, Mr. Broader.”

He quirked an
eyebrow and straddled the chair next to where she sat at the table.  “Now who's
backpedaling?  'Mr. Broader' is awfully formal.”

“You're my
employer.”

He chuckled. 
“Since when?  You've been speaking your mind with me ever since you stepped
foot on this ranch.  Why put up a wall of etiquette now?”

She was silent
for a few seconds.  When she spoke, her voice was very quiet.

“It's easier
that way.”

“In some ways,
maybe.  When two people are strangers.”

“We're
strangers.” 

She looked at
him then and he saw a glimpse of the fire in her he'd come to enjoy.  He couldn’t
help but laugh.

“Not anymore. 
Everywhere I look I see you in this house.  I've come to rely on you being
here.”  More than he'd ever relied on anyone, he realized.

Sara lifted her
chin just a bit.  “Living under the same roof doesn't mean we know the intimate
details of each other's life.  We hardly know each other at all.”

He nodded his
agreement.  Sara was quiet when she spoke.  But her words were always
deliberate.  Like nothing could ever really ruffle her feathers.  He had the
delicious feeling he'd like to do a little ruffling with her, just to see a
little spark ignite, to see those dark brown eyes flash with some fire.  But he
suspected that was a rarity with a woman like her.

He quickly got
up from the table to the sound of the whistle from the kettle.  He grabbed it
off the burner to quiet it before it woke Jonathan.  The baby would be waking
soon enough without helping things along with extra noise.  Besides, Mitch was
enjoying the quiet conversation. 

Sara had set
two mugs with tea bags on the counter before setting the kettle to boil.  Mitch
didn't drink tea, but to him it was an invitation.  And he was going to accept
it rather than put his foot in his mouth again.  They'd spent nearly two weeks
together in his house and knew as much about each other as the day she'd
arrived.

He poured the
cups of tea, dropped two spoons into the mugs and carried them over to the
table.

“So why did you
come back?”

Her expression
pinched into a frown.  “Out of everything you could ask about me, that is what
you want to know?”

Mitch
shrugged.  “It's a place to start.  I figure I have a good idea about why you
left.”

“You do?”

“Sure.  I may
not have known you from talking to you, but I've been here over ten years. 
I've known your mom the whole time.”

“And mother's
talk,” she said with a soft groan.

“Did you think
it was a secret?”

“I guess not.”

“You don't have
to tell me anything you don't want.”

“I don't really
like to talk about myself all that much.”  Sara carefully folded the pieces of
fabric she'd just cut and placed them in a basket on the table.  She stared
down at her tea and bobbed the tea bag up and down in silence.

“Lillian wanted
something you weren't prepared to give?”

“How did this
all of the sudden turn to Lillian?”

Sara eyed him
wryly.  “You didn't think you'd be the only one doing the discovering, did
you?”

“Touché.”

“It's natural
for me to want to know about Jonathan's mother.  When I look at him, all I can
think about was how hard it must have been for her to leave him here.  I can’t
imagine what she must be thinking right now without him.”

“You don't know
Lillian.  I'm surprised she even chose to have Jonathan.”

Sara snapped
her head toward him in surprise.  “And that would have been easier on you,
right?”

Mitch sighed. 
“That's not what I meant.  I'm not doing very well at all explaining myself
tonight.  All I meant is that I know Lillian. I can't see her saddling herself
with a kid.  It doesn't really surprise me that she chose to leave him with
me.  And I keep thinking of what he'll feel about all this when he grows up
wondering why she left him.  I mean, what do I say?”

“You tell him
the truth.”

Mitch took a
sip of the tea and grimaced at the bitter flavor.  “The truth isn't pretty.”

“Do you even
know the truth?”

As he reached
for the sugar bowl on the table and started spooning sugar into his cup, he
said, “I know enough.”

Sara chuckled
softly.  “Mitch Broader, you're so all-fired sure of yourself.”

“No, I'm not. 
You've seen firsthand how very unsure I am with Jonathan.  I don't know how
people have kids without feeling like complete imbeciles.  How do these kids
ever survive to adulthood with parents like me who don't have a clue?  I mean,
you need a license to drive a car, but you can have a kid without any
instruction at all.  All kids should come with manuals.”

“No one is born
a parent.  It's a learning process.”  She gave him a crooked smile before
sipping her tea.  Then she said, “It's nice to hear you talking about him like
that.”

“Like what?”

“Your son. 
You're his father.  You've accepted it.  I thought that wall you had up was
going to stay there forever.”

Mitch
shrugged.  What could he say?  “It's not like I have a choice.  He looks just
like me.”

“It's more than
that, and you know it.  You're already falling in love.”

Yeah, he was,
Mitch realized.  But Jonathan wasn't the only one who was stirring his feelings
and twisting him into knots.  Sara was doing a pretty good job of it herself.

“We were
married.  Lillian and I,” Mitch said quietly.  He didn't know why, but it was
important for Sara to know this, even though it was something Mitch had vowed
to strike from his memory.  Some lessons were learned the hard way and his
whirlwind relationship with Lillian definitely qualified as hard.

Sara seemed to
shrink in her chair.  “Oh.  I just assumed.”

“Yeah, I
figured.  It's not something I like to talk about much.”  He stole a glance at
her, trying to read her expression, but came up empty.

“And Lillian
didn't tell you she was pregnant?”

“There wasn't
much time for that.  The marriage lasted all of two weeks.”

“Two whole
weeks?  You're not much for longevity, are you?”

Mitch winced
and then rubbed his neck with his hand.  “Ouch.  I had the marriage annulled. 
It was a crazy time.  I came home early with roses in my hand after meeting
with my grandfather's attorney.  I expected to find my wife waiting.  Instead,
I was broadsided after finding another man's shoes parked where my boots should
have been.”  He'd known Lillian since they were both kids, having grown up on
the same street block in Baltimore.  They’d hung out together with the rest of
the crowd from the neighborhood and he’d even had his first real kiss with
Lillian.  He was a long way from those days now.

Sara's eyes
drifted closed.  “I'm sorry,” she said quietly.

He gave an idle
shrug.  “I'm okay with it now.”

“No, I mean I'm
really sorry.  For the...terrible things I was thinking about you.  It wasn't
my place to judge.”

He sighed, his
voice tight when he spoke.  “You thought I ran out on Lillian, didn't you?”

She nodded
apologetically.  “It's so cliché, and I shouldn't have assumed.  Mandy never
mentioned you were married.”

“You talked to
Mandy about me, huh?”

She tossed a
baby bib at him and said dryly, “Don't go getting a big head.  I told you I was
curious about Jonathan's mother.”

“Yeah,” Mitch
said, although he was unconvinced it was as simple as Sara was making it out.

“Her betrayal
must have been quite a blow.”

“It was a hard
time for me with my grandfather sick and all.  I'd know Lillian since I was a
kid and well, I don't know, I needed a friend.  Like me, she didn't have much
growing up, but she had her dreams.  I don't think I would have been so blind
to how Lillian had changed if I hadn't been so torn up with grief, knowing my
grandfather was going die.  She's not the woman I knew growing up.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Thanks.  It
all happened way too fast,” Mitch continued. “It shouldn’t have happened at
all.”

He couldn't
believe he was talking about his marriage to Lillian, something he'd never
really done since the annulment.  But Sara made it easy.  Those warm, dark
brown eyes wrapped around him, not in sympathy, but understanding.

“I'd gone back
East when Grandpa was dying and met up with Lillian again.  It was stupid of me
to get into a relationship at such a bad time in my life, but I let the fact
that we'd known each other for so long cloud my judgment.  I needed something
familiar.  And after two weeks, we were talking marriage and making plans to
head back to Texas.”

“So Lillian has
never lived on the ranch then.”

He shook his
head just thinking about it.  “We never got that far.  It's probably why Mandy
doesn't know anything about it.  I told Hank.  I figured he might have told Corrine,
but I don't think it is common knowledge.  It was one of those mistakes I
figured was better left in the past.”

He picked up
the bib she'd tossed at him, thinking of the irony.  He'd been crushed by
Lillian’s betrayal, but he thought at least she'd come to him, try to explain
something.  She'd let him go as easily as he'd walked away.

“When Lillian
found out I wasn't going to inherit any of my grandfather's money, she decided
‘til' death do us part’ was just a little too long for her.  I didn't know
anything about Jonathan until I walked into the house and found Corrine holding
him.  And you arrived soon after that.”

He drained his
tea, got up from the chair, scraping it against the floor as he pushed it back
against the table.  As he set the empty mug in the sink, he tried to push away
the pain of that period in his life.

“My grandfather
was pretty much the one to save me from my parents.”

“Saved you? 
How?”

“I didn't have
the easiest childhood.  As marriages go, my parents' was pretty bad.  Lots of
yelling, lots of drinking and slamming of doors.  And Dad wasn't always around.

“My parents
were divorced when I was five or six, but neither one could let go of the
other.  My dad would run off for months at a time and mom always welcomed him
back in.  In between, she'd cry and when he was home...  Well, let's just say I
raised myself in a lot of ways.  It wasn't the perfect environment for a kid.” 

He'd learned to
take care of himself, hide if it meant escaping one of his old man's rampages. 
Sometimes Mrs. Santini, his next-door neighbor, would hear the fighting and
sneak Mitch out of the house, give him a good meal and tuck him into bed at her
house.  His parents were never the wiser. 

Mitch could
still remember the way she rubbed his back as his tears fell.  No child should
grow up this way, she'd say. 

Trust hadn't
come easy for Mitch.  That's why Lillian's betrayal stung as bad as it did,
especially in light of Jonathan.  He should have known about his son.  She
should have told him long before she’d shown up on the ranch.

“Were your
parents always like that?”

“As far back as
I can remember.”  He thought about it a minute.  He never liked talking about
his past much.  The happy times were too few mixed in with all the bad. 
Alcohol and drugs had overshadowed most of the good memories he’d had.

And too
quickly, his own marriage spiraled into something too frighteningly close to
what he'd known as a kid.  No, alcohol and drugs weren’t to blame.  But the
honeymoon was over before it even began, and instead of loving each other, he
and Lillian spent those weeks fighting, mostly over money.  When he'd walked
through the door that day and found Lillian with her “company”, he boiled over
so strong that he’d actually seen his father in himself.  And it scared the
hell out of him. 

But instead of
unleashing his anger the way he knew his old man would, Mitch had simply walked
away, not even giving Lillian the opportunity to come to him and explain.  She
didn't protest either, which said a lot for the love they supposedly shared. 
He pushed those recent memories aside and thought of his childhood.

“My grandfather
really tried to help my father but Dad was too concerned with a quick buck, an
easy card game and the booze.  He lost more than he won and spent whatever he
did make on everything but his family.  If I wanted something, my grandfather
made me earn it.  Even though he had some money, there were no free rides.  He
taught me a lot.”

“Was he a
rancher, too?”

“No, I never
really knew what he did.  He invested his money mostly.”

She chuckled
softly and he felt his heart swell with the musical sound.  “Then how on earth
did an Irish city boy from Baltimore become a cowboy?”

Mitch grinned
and shrugged.  “Fate, I guess.  I was at the critical crossroads age where I
could have easily slipped down the wrong path.  I didn't trust anyone and was
good at picking a fight for no reason, because that's all I knew.  When I was
about thirteen, Grandpa took me to a dude ranch the first few weeks I was here
in Texas.  And as miserable as I was to be away from home, he saw how much I
loved being on that ranch.  The work was good.  It let me get out that teenage
frustration eating me up.  Something took hold of me.  Grandpa told me if I
worked hard, I could have a ranch for my own one day.  I could do anything I
wanted to do as long as I didn't follow in my old man's footsteps.”

“And you
haven't.”

It almost
looked like pride shining in her eyes, Mitch thought.  Warmth spread from deep
in his chest outward until emotion lodged in his throat.  He'd convinced
himself early on in life he didn't need anyone.  His grandfather had taught
him, even before he'd come to Texas to live with him, that he was strong and
could accomplish anything he put his mind to.  He needed to rely on himself to
survive.