The Cowboy Wins a Bride (The Cowboys of Chance Creek) (13 page)

He patted the arm of the other folding chair. “I saved this one for you.”

She sat down with a little groan and Jamie chuckled. “Feeling a little sore, greenhorn?”

“I can’t believe it’s been thirteen years since I've done any serious riding. What was I thinking?”

“I don’t know – what were you thinking?” he asked easily. Her warmth made it likelier than usual she’d open up to him, but Claire was like a skittish colt. One wrong move and she’d dance away from him and he’d be back to square one.

“I was thinking I had to put the ranch behind me. Put my family behind me.”

“Your mother?”

After a moment she nodded. “Yeah, Mom. I just couldn’t stand being near her after I knew she was sleeping around. I couldn't stand that my dad put up with it. Their whole marriage was a lie." She shrugged. "Doesn't matter anymore, does it? They're gone."

"I think for all their troubles your parents loved each other."

Claire snorted. "Yeah. Look where that got them. If that's what love looks like, count me out."

"People aren't as simple as you'd like them to be. You don't know what really went on in your parents' marriage."

"I know that my mother slept with Mack."

"You don't know why."

"Sure I do – because my mother needed everything to be about her. She couldn’t share the limelight for a second."

"She never seemed to really belong here," Jamie said. Just like Claire, Aria kept trying to leave the ranch. Her yearly trips lasted two, three, even four months at a time. But she always came back. "I think she loved your dad no matter how she behaved."

"If my husband ever cheated on me, I'd leave him so fast it'd make his head spin. And I'd never, ever come back."

She was on her feet, down the porch steps, and striding along the path to the Big House before he could stop her. So much for a nice, friendly visit.

Jamie remained motionless in the folding chair as darkness settled over him, a new thought keeping him in place.

Is that what was going on here? Did Claire think he was the type to cheat?

He forced himself to stay calm as he thought this through. He considered himself a steady man, but did his actions match that view?

Not really. Not when it came to women. He wasn't a Casanova, but he'd had his share of casual relationships over the years. And he flirted a lot.

Flirting.

He'd be damned. No wonder she'd made that part of the bet – it was the key to the whole puzzle of the way she acted around him. Claire wanted him – he knew she did now that she'd given in to her impulses and made love to him. It wasn't a lack of desire that held her back.

It was a lack of trust.

Shame pierced Jamie like a white-hot knife. Why should she trust him? All she'd ever seen him do was flirt with every woman in reach. He'd behaved just like Mack, hadn't he? Teasing her, touching her, showing her he wanted her, and then sleeping with other women every time she turned around. He'd always told himself he was just filling the time in until she was ready to see him for the man he was and date him seriously, but what if she'd seen the type of man he was all along?

Was he a player in her eyes – the kind of guy who used women and never looked back? He tamped down the flare of anger that twisted his gut. Surely Claire knew he would never give another woman the time of day if she went out with him. But was it fair for him to wait to change his ways until after she'd said yes?

No.

It didn't work like that at all.

He had to prove to her ahead of time that he was a man she could trust. How could he have made such a mistake when he thought he had everything planned out?

Damn, damn, damn. He'd really set himself up for failure. Now all his hopes for future happiness came down to this one week. He had to prove he could ignore five horny female guests all vying for his attention.

Maybe if he succeeded she'd realize he loved only her.

* * * * *

Claire was surprised to find Autumn in the kitchen of the bunkhouse when she got back. She was sitting at the small table, sipping a cup of tea and fiddling with an envelope. It still seemed strange to see the renovations her brother had done to the building. The kitchen was the same as ever, but the large room that used to hold ten old-fashioned iron-framed bunk beds for the hired hands had been turned into a fair-sized living room and two medium-sized bedrooms with walk-in closets. Ethan used the closet off of his and Autumn’s bedroom as an office. She’d hung up a few pairs of jeans and shirts in hers, but they barely made a dent in the empty space.

"Ethan's doing the overnight shift at the Big House," Autumn said.

Claire helped herself to tea and joined her at the table. They'd set up a cot in the small laundry room off the back entrance of the Big House and whoever took the night shift could sleep unless a guest needed them. It didn't seem right for newlyweds to sleep apart, though. Autumn took in her expression and laughed.

"I'm too tired for cuddling, anyway. It's all right. Pretty soon we'll hire someone to do the night shift. We just don't want to spend too much money until we start making some."

Claire nodded. "What's that?" She gestured to the envelope.

Autumn sighed. "I'm not sure, but something told me not to give it to Ethan. I hope I'm not making a mistake giving it to you." She handed it over and Claire examined it.

The paper was cream colored, the handwriting bold and sharp – but still a woman's penmanship. It was addressed to Aria Cruz.

Claire's heart sank. "Ethan must have dealt with plenty of mail addressed to my parents after their deaths. Why not give him this one?"

"All of your parents' business and personal correspondence went to their post office box in town. Mail isn't delivered out here – you know that. Look at the front of the envelope again."

She did so, not understanding at first. Then she saw what Autumn meant. "There's no postmark."

"But the return address says Canada."

"I don't understand." Autumn was right, the return address was Canadian, but there was no name – only a street number and city in British Columbia.

"I don't either, but I think whoever sent the letter hand-delivered it."

"Meaning they're here in town." A shiver traced down her spine, she couldn't say why. "So why don't they know my mother is dead?"

"Maybe they just got here. Maybe they haven't talked to anyone yet. We need to let them know what's happened." Autumn rubbed her forehead. "It isn't fair of me to pass this on to you, but Ethan's had such a hard time of it so far. I couldn't force myself to give it to him."

"I know." Claire looked at the letter grimly. "You think I should open it right now?"

Autumn shrugged. "No time like the present."

She slid a thumb under the flap and tore open the creamy envelope. When she pulled out the pages inside, the same handwriting dashed thick, solid lines across the paper. She unfolded them and turned them over. The letter was signed,
Morgan
. Turning back to the front, she read:

Dear Mom,

Where are you?

She dropped the letter on the table as if she'd been burned.

CHAPTER TWELVE

When the back door opened at five the following morning, Claire was still sitting in the kitchen, the letter in her hand. Autumn had read it, too, of course, but she'd gone to bed hours ago, casting concerned looks back over her shoulder when Claire kept her seat.

Ethan's face registered his surprise when he saw her there, but he crossed to the counter and started the coffee maker. “Morning, Sunshine.”

“Morning.”

“I thought you might be over at Jamie’s.” Ethan grabbed a frying pan, put it on the stove and got a package of bacon out of the refrigerator.

She shook her head dully. “It's not like that between us.”

He grunted. “If it's not like that, then why'd you agree to marry him?” He spread the strips of bacon in the pan, then put some bread in the toaster.

That brought her out of her reverie. She still couldn't fathom why Ethan was still pretending he didn't know their engagement was a farce.

“I'm not in the mood for this.”

"All right, all right. You guys have a spat or something?" When she didn't answer, he moved to the refrigerator and took out the eggs. "I think he'll make you a terrific husband. He sure surprised me when he bought a partnership in the ranch,” he commented. “Who would have thought a cowboy like him saved his pennies like that.”

She played with the envelope, turning it over and over in her hands. “None of us really knows anyone else."

He frowned at her bitter tone. “I wish I knew you better. You're the one who stayed away so long.”

“I can’t stand the ghosts here.”

“Ghosts?”

“Yeah – ghosts,” she said. She flicked the envelope across the table so it slid to a stop in front of his place setting. "Mom wasn't who you thought she was. Hell, she wasn't who I thought she was and I knew far more about her than you did."

"What are you talking about?"

"Mom. Her trips. Spending all that money? You know she had affairs, don't you?"

"What?" Ethan set down his spatula with a clatter on the counter and turned from the sizzling bacon and eggs. "What the hell do you mean?"

"She slept around, Ethan. She slept with Mack and who knows who else. But that's not all she did. All those trips to Europe? They were fake. Turns out she never even went there. All those months she spent away from home every year? She wasn't traveling at all. She was spending time with her other family. Her real family."

She'd never seen her younger brother at such a loss for words. No surprise there. The news was enough to flatten anyone.

"Her real family?" he finally choked out.

"Read the letter. It's from her daughter, Morgan. Her Canadian daughter. Wondering when the hell she's coming home." Claire's voice cracked and tears filled her eyes as the enormity of the letter's message finally sank in. She scraped her chair back, got to her feet and ran blindly from the room.

* * * * *

When the barn door opened, Jamie expected Claire to saunter in. Instead, it was Ethan, hatless, as pale as a ghost, clutching an envelope in his hands.

"What happened?" It had to be something awful, judging by the look on his friend's face.

Ethan leaned against the wall by the door and shook his head. Jamie didn't think he'd ever seen his friend outside without a hat on. It was like seeing him naked.

"My mother," Ethan said. He shook the letter in his hand. "Ah, Jesus, Jamie. She…"

Jamie's heart sank. Aria Cruz had already broken Ethan's heart more than once. By dying, and by drowning the family business in debt. How could she hurt Ethan more from beyond the grave?

"She had another family," Ethan said, looking bewildered. "A daughter. A man, I guess."

"Wait…hold up…another family?" That was the last thing Jamie expected.

"I have an older sister. Another older sister. Half sister. Her name's Morgan."

"How could your mother have another family?"

"Autumn just helped me look Morgan up on the internet. We found her address and her birthdate. We figured out the timing of it all. I checked my dad's notebooks, too. As much as I can piece together, Mom spent a year at the University of Victoria when she was 21. She studied anthropology, if you can believe that. I think she always wanted more excitement than Montana was going to give her. She spent that year at UVic because they have a real top-notch anthropology program – but she was already engaged to my dad at the time. They'd been dating for years. He gave her a ring when they graduated high school."

Jamie grunted. Pretty typical for these parts.

"I think she had a fling with a professor, because a guy with the same last name as Morgan still works there in the Anthropology Department. She must have gotten pregnant right away and had the baby at the end of the school year. She didn't return to Montana until fall. Dad wrote that she was doing field work over the summer. That must have been the story she fed him."

"She came home and left her kid behind?"

"That's the part I can't figure out. Why would she do that? Autumn thinks it's because she loved Dad. She still wanted to marry him."

Jamie thought this over. "This other guy – did he take the kid?"

"Must have."

"Hell."

"All those trips. She wasn't going to Europe, Jamie." Ethan met his gaze. "She was with them."

Jamie whistled silently. What a thing to find out about your mother.

"That's not the worst of it, either."

It got worse?

"Her daughter – this Morgan person. She's here in town. And she doesn't know Mom's dead."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN