Pride (In Wilde Country Book 1) (25 page)

“Be nice,” Mama had said to her.

She’d shut the door, the man had grinned…

Bile rose in Cheyenne’s throat. To this day, she couldn’t think of what had happened without being sick.

That had been the first time, but not the last.

It had happened three times after that, and when she’d refused to do it, Mama had grabbed her and shoved her into that back room. Cheyenne had thought about ending the horror like a girl she’d read about in the paper, cutting her wrists, just letting go of everything…

And then, she’d discovered Baby. Sweet, sad, neglected, abused Baby.

Loving him had saved her.

Losing him had given her the courage to take hold of her life, because what she’d told Luca about that day wasn’t exactly true.

Mama had beaten her, all right, but not because Cheyenne had reported the horse’s brutal death to the police.

She’d beaten her because when they got back to their trailer, Mama had folded her arms over her skinny bosom and said there was only one way Cheyenne could make up for the trouble she’d caused.

There was a man waiting for her in the bedroom.

Cheyenne had thought of her beloved Baby and how he had died because she hadn’t been strong enough to save him.

And she’d thought,
I will never be weak again.

“You hear me, girl?” Mama had said. “Move your skinny ass, right now!

Cheyenne had taken a deep, deep breath. Breathed it out. And said that she would never do what Mama wanted her to do again.

Mama had grabbed her by the arm. “You go on back there and make that man happy or so help me Christ, I’ll beat you black and blue.”

Cheyenne had spat in her mother’s face, just as she had done to the hoodlum the night Luca had found her walking home. Luca had saved her then, but there’d been nobody to save her from Mama that day so long ago, and Mama had done just what she’d threatened. She’d beaten her harder than ever before. A man had come barreling out of the bedroom and thundered past them, and Cheyenne had taken the blows and taken them, and then she’d screamed with pain and rage, balled up her fist and punched her mother in the face.

That night, she’d slept on a bench hidden in a tangle of bushes in the trailer park. The next morning, she went to school and straight to the principal’s office, walked right into that office without knocking and when the woman looked at her and said “Ohmygod, what happened to you, child?” Cheyenne told her.

All of it.

Everything, starting with ‘having fun’ and ending with what had gone down the previous day.

The principal had called Child Services. Cheyenne had gone into foster care, and foster care had been what had saved her.

She knew there were endless stories about how awful foster care was and, no, it hadn’t been wonderful, but she’d been lucky. She’d been sent to a small group home for girls, she’d been helped by good people, she’d gone to New York and made something of her life, she’d put the rest behind her…

Tell all that to Luca?

No.

Never.

He would stop loving her even though he might pretend that he still did, at least for a little while, because he was a good man. He was the best man in the world, and she was—she was—

The back door slammed.

“Cheyenne?”

She froze. It was Luca.

“
Bellissima
, where are you? My sisters said you were making tea.”

Her heart began to pound. She couldn’t let him see her like this. The truth was, she couldn’t let him see her at all. She had to get away, get back to New York, write him a letter, tell him that—that she’d changed her mind, that she was too busy to think of love.

“Cheyenne!” There was an urgent ring to his voice now; she could hear his footsteps in the kitchen.

Think! Think!

There was a big pottery bowl on a table near the door in the front hall. She’d laughed at how people had dropped their keys in it.

“How do you ever find the right ones?” she’d said, and Luca had grinned and said sometimes it was the luck of the draw.

“Cheyenne,” Luca shouted, “
cara
, where are you?”

She dug into the bowl. Luck was with her tonight. Luca had put the keys to the rental car on a keychain hung with a silver L, and it was that silver L around which her fingers closed.

“Cheyenne,” Luca said, from almost right behind her, and she flung open the front door and raced to the car.

Sobbing, she got inside, stabbed the key into the ignition lock and stepped on the gas.

The last thing she saw in the side mirror was her Luca, running down the driveway after her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

L
uca stood half
a mile down the long driveway, panting, bent over with his hands on his knees.

He’d run as fast and hard as he could, but no way could he catch up to a car, especially one doing at least seventy miles an hour.

Now, even its taillights had vanished into the darkness.

What the hell had happened?

One minute, Cheyenne had been snuggled up to him, smiling and laughing. Then she’d gone into the house and—

And now, she was gone.

He heard a vehicle pull up behind him. He swung around, held his hand up against the glare of headlights.

“Luca!”

The lights dimmed, doors opened, and Matteo and Travis stepped down from the cab of a pickup truck.

“What’s going on?” Matteo asked.

“Cheyenne,” Luca gasped. “She’s gone.”

Travis ran his hand through his hair. “Gone where?”

Luca shook his head.

“Jesus. What happened?”

“I don’t know. She took off.” He dragged in another lungful of air. “Something must have gone wrong in the house. With Bianca and Alessandra.”

Matteo shook his head. “I don’t think so. When they came back, they were both smiling. In fact, Alessandra told me what a wonderful woman Cheyenne was, and Bianca said the same—What are you doing?”

“I’m going after her,” Luca said as he slid behind the wheel of the truck.

“We’ll get everybody out looking,” Travis called, but Luca had already floored the gas pedal and the pickup was racing down the driveway.

* * *

He had only been to El Sueño once before, but he knew the roads well enough to know that a left at the end of the mile long driveway would take you further down a narrow country road. A right would eventually take you to the main road.

Which way would Cheyenne go?

Luca thought fast and took the right.

The pickup was responsive, its engine surprisingly powerful, but she’d had a head start. Not even a winking taillight was visible in the darkness ahead.

A few more minutes and he’d have to make another decision. Assuming he’d chosen correctly and she’d headed for the main road and the highway, which way had she gone from there? Dallas lay in one direction. Nothing much of any size lay in the other…

Nothing except Sweetwater Ranch.

The main road was just ahead.

Where would she have gone? Luca took a breath, damn near stood on the brakes, and made the turn that would take him to Sweetwater.

All he could do was hope he had made the right decision.

The pickup ate up the miles.

He was driving faster than was reasonable, but nothing was reasonable tonight.

Why had she run away? She’d been happy. They’d been happy. What had changed?

His headlights cut a swathe through the night. Something ran across the road. He swerved and missed it. The turnoff for Sweetwater had to be coming up soon and he tried to remember something, anything that might serve to let him know that he was coming up on it—

There! A tall tree, long-ago split by lightning. The brakes juddered and protested as Luca skidded into the turn and onto a narrow gravel road.

Long minutes later, Sweetwater Ranch rose on the horizon.

No lights.

Nothing.

Just the dilapidated house rearing up in his headlights and, beyond it, the one functional building.

The barn.

And outside it, the rental car, the driver’s door hanging open.

He drove over the grass towards it, hit the brakes, stopped the engine. The headlights blasted a path through the darkness, but he’d need light inside the barn. He leaned over, yanked open the glove compartment. Back home, at his ranch in Tuscany, he insisted on a flashlight in the glove compartment of every vehicle on the place. He could only hope that Jake kept the same standard at El Sueño

And…yes! Luca’s fingers closed around the flashlight. He turned it on, shut off the truck’s lights, and stepped out into the night.

Silence, except for the tick, tick, tick of the cooling engine, surrounded him.

“Cheyenne?”

Nothing.

He called her name again. This time, a lone katydid answered.

Luca started through the high grass, playing the beam of the flashlight over the dark barn. The door was closed.

“Cheyenne,” he said again, as he pushed it open.

More darkness… What was that?

Something moved in the far corner. An animal? An owl?

“Cheyenne,” he said, “
dolcezza
,
per favore,
you have to be here. You have to be…”

Something moved again…

No. Not ‘something.’ It was she. Cheyenne. She was crying. Sobbing. His heart thudded. Was she ill? Hurt?

He cast the flashlight’s beam on her and rushed forward. “
Cara
. Sweetheart—”

She shook her head, spun away from him. “Go away!”

The anguish in her voice stopped him. Years before, when he was a boy hiking the cliffs in Sicily, he’d found an injured osprey. He’d wanted to save the bird, but his desperate attempts had only driven it closer and closer to the edge. In the end, the osprey had fallen. Luca had never forgotten the terrible sight, nor had he forgiven himself for making a bad situation worse.

He stopped a couple of feet away.

“Are you injured?” he said softly.

She shook her head.

“Are you ill?”

Another shake of her head.

“Will you turn around so we can see each other?”

“There’s nothing to see.”

“There is you,
cara
,” he said. “You are always what I wish to see.”

“Luca. Did you mean what you said? About—about caring for me?”

“About caring for you?” He gave a sad little laugh. “I love you, Cheyenne. With all my heart.”

“If you do… If you really do, then—then please, go back to El Sueño.”

“And leave you here, alone?” His voice roughened. “Do you take me for a crazy man?”

“I know you mean well, but—”

“What?”

“But everything became clear tonight. I—I don’t want what you want out of life.”

“And what is it you think I want?”

“The things your brothers and sisters have. Some of them, anyway. Marriage. Children.” Her voice broke. “A house in the country, a dog, a cat—”

“And?”

“And—and I realized that I—I don’t.”

He wanted to go to her. Grab her. Demand to know what in hell she was talking about. Instead, he did the hardest thing imaginable. He stood still and said, “What do you want, then?”

She drew a ragged breath. This was going to be the tough part. Convincing him that she was telling the truth, but she was good at convincing people of things, that the soap she was selling was the reason her skin was soft, that the shampoo she hawked was why her hair was so lustrous. That was her talent, convincing people that she was someone she wasn’t.

Surely, she could convince Luca, too.

“I want my career.”

“And I have stopped you from having it?”

“A model at the top can’t afford to have any baggage. I have to be able to travel at a second’s notice, to spend time on keeping myself fit and—and—”

“Bullshit!”

Luca covered the couple of feet that separated them, clamped his hands on her shoulders and spun her towards him as the flashlight fell to the oak floor, spilling just enough light so he could see the truth, the real truth, in her eyes.

“I love you,” he said fiercely, “and you love me, and you’re going to tell me what this is all about if I have to shake it out of you.” His eyes darkened. “Or kiss it out of you,” he whispered, and he drew her into his arms, claimed her mouth with his…

She was lost.

How could she not rise on her toes, wind her arms around his neck, sob his name, return his kisses with frantic kisses of her own?

“Tell me you love me,” he said, not as a demand, but as a plea that went from his heart to hers. “Tell me,
bellissima
, or I am nothing.”

“I love you,” she said. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”

Luca cupped her face in his hands. “Then why did you run away from me? If you love me—”

“Your sisters—”

“
Merda
! What did they tell you that upset you so?”

“They told me something I already knew.” Cheyenne smiled, despite her tears. “They told me that you were a fine, wonderful man—and that you had been a sweet, trusting boy.”

“Sweet?” Despite everything, he laughed. “My sisters said that of me?”

“What they said was that when you were all growing up, you were the one who kept believing in your father.”

His mouth twisted. “That was not a sweet thing,
cara
. It was stupid.”

“It was sweet. You trusted him. You believed in him.”

“I suppose that I did, for a very long time. And it was foolish, but I—I loved him. When you love someone, you put your trust in them to be what you believe them to be.”

“I know.” She bit her bottom lip. “And—and that’s what you’ve done with me. You believed me to be one kind of woman But—but I’m not.”

“Sweetheart. Whatever it is you’re trying to tell me—”

“I’m trying to tell you,” she said, “that what I said about the horse I loved, about that day, about my life, were only bits and pieces of the truth. And once you hear the truth, everything will change.”

“Nothing will change,” he said. “How could it?
Cara
…”

“I lost my virginity the day I turned thirteen. Mama said it was—it was my birthday present, although that was hardly the first time a man had touched me.”

She saw the shock in his eyes. Felt the pressure of his arms around her ease. This was the end, she knew, but she loved him too much to hide the truth anymore.

“I was barely twelve,” she said softly, “the first time it happened…”

* * *

She told him everything, and spared herself nothing.

She described her childhood. The trailer. Her mother. She did it dispassionately, and told him all of it because she was determined to hold nothing back.

She stumbled, but only briefly, when she described ‘having fun.’ She thought she saw his mouth tighten, but the light was bad and she couldn’t be sure. Not that it would have surprised her.

What she was describing, after all, was not only ‘having fun,’ but her pathetic attempts at fighting back.

“I know I didn’t try hard enough,” she said.

“Because?”

“Because, if I had,” she said, in a tone of absolute reason, “the men would have stopped doing those things to me.”

Luca was very, very still. In fact, he seemed to hardly breathe. If only the light were better. If only she could see his eyes.

“And how would you have done that? Tried harder, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Grabbed something, maybe. Hit the man. I just should have done better.”

He nodded. Why was he so motionless?

When she got to the part about her thirteenth birthday ‘celebration,’ she was even more ruthless.

“I know, absolutely, that I could have stopped it.”

Luca responded with another one word question.

“How?”

“The same way. By hitting him with something.”

Another nod. And more of that awful stillness. “A lamp? A skillet?”

“Something,” she said, surprised at the irritation in her voice. “I just should have done more than I did.”

“Which was?”

“I kicked him. Between the legs. But not hard enough or he’d have—”

“Stopped.”

“Yes.”

“Did you try to kick him again?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

She shrugged. Looked over his shoulder.

“He was big,” she said, and cleared her throat. “You know. Fat. He lay on top of me and—”

There was a long, terrible silence. “And then,” Luca said, moving closer to her, “you found something to love. A horse you named Baby.”

“This isn’t about—”

“But it is,” he said. “You gave your love to Baby. And he gave his love to you. And then—and then, he died.”

A moan rose in her throat. She clapped her hands to her mouth to silence it, but Luca took her hands and held them tightly in his.

“And on the very day you lost him, your mother took you home to—to be with a man.”

His voice cracked. She knew the reason. Now he understood just how disgusting a creature she was.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“But you refused” He lifted her hands to his chest. “You spat on her. And she beat you.”