Taming Rafe (27 page)

Kat closed her eyes. And that’s when she felt Lolly’s hand on hers, warm against ice-cold.

“I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you years ago but definitely when you came to Phillips. I just didn’t want . . . I didn’t want you to hate me.”

Kat opened her eyes. Hate her? A tear dripped off her chin as she saw for the first time Lolly’s hazel eyes, the full lips, the face shaped so much like her own. Except for the blonde hair, she felt as if she might be looking into a mirror. A reflection that made her feel whole and perfect and . . . found.

“You . . . you’re my . . . my
mother
.”

Lolly put a hand over her heart. “I’m your mother, Kat.”

That woman could destroy everything he’d worked for. Bradley stood beside the French doors, listening to Katherine and Lolly’s conversation, feeling his world shake.

Did Walter Breckenridge know that Katherine wasn’t a blood heir but the daughter of a convict and a line cook? What would the old man do if he found out?

He rubbed his eyes, thinking fast as he crept out of the penthouse. He’d have to accelerate his plans even more. Their marriage. Katherine’s devastating suicide.

Smoothing his shirt, Bradley surveyed his appearance in the elevator mirror, confident he’d obliterated all traces of the fight with Noble. And a profitable fight it had been, just as he’d hoped. He nodded to the bellboy who greeted him as he exited, remembering the look on Noble’s face when Katherine turned on him. Perfect.

Now he needed to finish what he’d started.

But first he had to shut up that waitress.

John stepped out of his Cessna, where he’d landed it at his deserted ranch. The new owners hadn’t taken possession yet, but it looked
as if it had been abandoned for centuries. Tumbleweeds filled the yard; a fence hung open; a windmill squeaked in the wind. His ranch hand Crockett had left a month ago after loading the last of the cattle to market, and Cole St. John had purchased his stock horses.

John walked to the house, opened the door. It swung wide and bumped against the wall where the coatrack used to be. The sound echoed in the empty kitchen, through the family room with the overstuffed cattleman print sofa he’d left behind, down the worn carpeted hallway to the vacant bedrooms, and back to his soul.

The movers had forgotten to grab the aerial shot of the Big K off the family room wall. A legacy abandoned.

Only, not abandoned. Purged. If John listened hard enough, he could hear the old voices. But why do that? This land, this life was a part of him. However, he no longer felt bound by it. No longer bound by the fear or his father’s prophecies. This land no longer belonged to the man who had to confine his heart to the written page.

“I am leaving. I am gone.” His voice sounded bold, filling the room, and he smiled. “I am free.” It sounded silly for him to say it like that, but he felt this unshackling of himself from the past and from the memories that had told him who he’d been.

And this unshackled Big John Kincaid would go after the woman he loved. He would simply tell her, “Lolly, I love you and I want to marry you. Still.” Just like that. After all, nothing else had worked. Not years of waiting patiently, his listening ear, the friendship, the way he supported her dreams. Nothing.

Please, God, give me the right words.

He closed the door behind him when he left and didn’t look back as he uncovered his truck and backed it out of the barn. Even
his hired man hadn’t wanted the beater, so John planned to drop it off at Egger’s junkyard. He drove past his empty fields, smelling the arid prairie grasses, the scent of animal on the breeze. Feeling the dust and wind on his face. Funny, he’d already forgotten the scent of the ocean.

He pulled up to Lolly’s. Her trailer door was locked tight, the geraniums on the porch needing water. Going around the front, he entered the diner.

Quint and Egger sat at the counter. Libby stood behind it, a coffeepot in hand.

The smells of french fries and burgers greeted him like an embrace. He tipped his hat to Libby and slid onto a stool beside Quint.

Quint nodded to him.

John smiled.

Libby plunked down a cup in front of him. “Loved the book.” She waggled her eyebrows at him. “Especially the ending.”

Heat rushed into his face.

“Order up!” Cody’s voice from the kitchen accompanied a bell.

Libby turned away and retrieved a plate of meat loaf and potatoes.

“So, when we have lady problems, I guess we should give you a jingle?” Egger stuffed a bite of pie into his mouth. He glanced at John with a small smile. “Reckon we should call you the King of Love.”

“Hey—”

“Just messing with ya.” Egger forked another piece of pie. “Hey, Libby, this ain’t Lolly’s, but it’s close.”

Libby refilled the coffee cups. “Thanks. She gave my sister her
recipes before she left. Missy’s planning on overhauling the entire menu, with the exception of the pies.”

“Where’s Lolly?” John barely kept the panic from his voice. When Cash said she’d be joining him soon, he didn’t expect—

“She went to New York. Some fancy event Kat was hosting.”

John sipped his coffee, trying to wrap his brain around the news. Did Kat know about Lolly? Why would Lolly give up her secret now? Unless she too was breaking free of the shackles in her life.
Finally.
“When did she leave?”

“Yesterday. Took a flight outta Sheridan,” Libby said.

“When’s she coming back?” John asked, pointing to the meat loaf special on the board.

Libby wrote down the order. “She’s not. She’s selling Missy her place and her trailer. I’m not sure where she’s going.”

John stared at his coffee, then looked at Libby. “Hold that order. I’m not staying.”

The house echoed with silence when Mary closed the door. Shadows darkened the room as the last flickering of sunlight disappeared beyond the hills. Loss swept through her.

Closing the door with her heel, she walked into the kitchen, filled a vase with water, and put the bouquet in it, hoping it wouldn’t die before Rosie returned.

“Thank you, Mama,” Rosie had said today as she hugged her good-bye outside the church, climbing into a Hudson Hornet with her new husband.

Mary had searched Franklin’s eyes, watched him over the weeks he worked on their ranch, and finally given her bless
ing. Having seen love, she could now recognize it on the face of others.

Perhaps that was why she’d stared at Erland years ago on that awful day and said no. No, she couldn’t marry him. She wouldn’t give away her heart for second best, because she had known what it was to love someone, and Erland deserved better.

She set her hat on the table and climbed the stairs to her room.

Now, better than anyone, Mary knew the different sides of love.

Charlie had been the love of her youth, passionate, hopeful. A love that had taken her by the hand and set her dreams afire.

Rosie had been unconditional love. Love that depended without shame. Love that hoped without reserve. Love that shared her pain without condemnation.

Even Erland’s love—the kind of love that made her look at herself with new eyes. Eyes of compassion.

But perhaps the love that had changed her the most had been the love unspoken. The love she’d had for Jonas. The love that had set her free one day at a time. Loving Jonas, even unrequited, had allowed her to dream. To survive. To build. It was only the power of hope that kept her love alive, the places in her heart still left untended, yearning for more. But that power made her believe that even after all these years, despite the fact that she’d never written, Jonas would keep his word and appear on her doorstep at the right time.

She picked up her Bible from the bedside table and flipped it open to the letter inside. The one that began “Dear Jonas,
. . .” Slipping the letter inside her dress pocket, she put the Bible back on the table.

The moon had begun to rise as she hiked out onto the prairie, across her land, into Charlie’s land. Oddly, it bathed the mound she’d tended with care, as if illuminating her destination.

She knelt before the grave. Put her hand on the mound. The grass wove through her fingers, light and cool, and she dug her fingers into the dirt.

“She’s married, Charlie. Our little girl got married today. I wish you could have seen her—she was so beautiful.” Mary drew up her knees under her dress. “I saw Erland there with his new wife, Esther. They look happy.”

She sat there in silence, listening to her memories. “I miss you,” she said finally. “I know you always wanted me to be happy, Charlie. And . . . I am.”

She got up and moved away from the grave, taking out the letter.

Dear Jonas,

I know I should have written years ago, probably a week after you left, begging you to return to me. But I simply couldn’t, and I think you know why. I said I was afraid for you and what would happen, but in the end, I was afraid for me. Afraid to lose myself yet again in hopes of finding a life. Afraid that for all you would be to me, there would always be the fear inside, that wounded place that someday I’d end up exactly where I was when Charlie died. Alone and without hope.

Somehow, just holding on to your promise, I began to live again. To break free of my mistakes. To live each day just a little more free than the day before. Your love gave me the courage to learn to live, to dream, because I believed that you’d return. And now I am hoping you will. I am ready.

Yours,

Mary

Folding the letter, Mary ripped it slowly. Then she cupped the pieces in her hands and let the wind take them.

A knock at her hotel room door yanked Lolly from the book. Lincoln. He’d left a voice mail for her, asking her to meet him in her room, but he had yet to show up, and it was getting late. She much rather wanted to be with Piper and Stefanie, convincing Kat not to marry Bradley. But she supposed this was how her new life would look.

She yanked open the door to find a room service cart topped with a dozen red roses in a crystal vase. A card tucked inside had her name scrawled on the front. Strange. “Lincoln?” Or maybe it should be “Mr. Cash?”

Lolly took out the card to read it.
To my best gal.
She looked out into the hall again, puzzled. To her recollection, she was nobody’s best gal. Or at least, not of the man she hoped to be. She brought the roses inside and set them on the table, then touched one of the velvet petals, Mary’s actions still heavy in her mind.

Lolly understood, probably better than anyone, why Mary had torn up the letter. How the friendship and gentle presence of a constant love might set someone free even from afar. She pulled out one of the roses and smelled it.

Oh, she might as well admit it—she harbored the crazy hope that John had sent these. That he missed her as desperately as she missed him.

If only she, like Mary, hadn’t been too afraid, too broken to accept John’s proposal. But like Mary, she’d needed to find her footing and learn to live again.

Yet John had never left. In fact, if she were to take a good look at their friendship, he’d been all the faces of love to her—the one that believed in her dreams, the unconditional love that hoped despite her coldness to him. He made her see herself through his eyes. Capable. Even beautiful. Deep inside, she wanted to believe he’d always be there, waiting.