The Next Mrs. Blackthorne (Bitter Creek Book 6) (14 page)

“I don’t know,” Clay said. His other arm joined the one that was on her shoulder, so she was being held in his embrace. They sat silently for a long while, as the sun moved higher in the sky. Libby would have given a great deal to know what was going on in Clay’s head, but she didn’t want to interrupt this moment of truce and solace.

“If North wasn’t busy stealing Bitter Creek from you, we could ask him,” Libby said. “Kate always listens to him.”

She felt Clay’s body tense beneath her cheek before he said, “I don’t think North is going to be much help with Kate. He’s got someone much more interesting to keep him busy. My fiancée. Or should I say former fiancée.”

Libby leaned back abruptly, pulling out of Clay’s embrace. “The choice was Jocelyn’s, wasn’t it?”

“Was it? Don’t tell me you don’t know what your big brother’s been up to,” Clay said.

“I don’t!” Libby protested.

“The same day my family had its powwow and discovered that North was the corporate raider who’d bought up all our stock, Jocelyn decided to move in with your brother.”

Libby frowned. “And you think the timing of their liaison isn’t coincidental.”

“I think it’s entirely intentional. I think Jocelyn went to North’s ranch to talk him out of taking Bitter Creek away from us.”

“Why would he listen to her?”

Clay’s eyes narrowed and his lips flattened before he said, “I think she sold herself to him—in exchange for holding off on doing anything with Bitter Creek.”

Libby stared at Clay, wondering how he’d made such a leap in logic. “What makes you think she’d do something like that? Or that North would accept such an offer?”

“Why else would she call off the wedding so suddenly?” Clay said. “And jump into bed with a man she hardly knows?”

“Maybe Jocelyn wasn’t sure she loved you and—”

“She loves me,” Clay said certainly. “Giselle told me so.”

“Your late
wife
told you her
sister
loves you?” Libby said in disbelief.

Clay rubbed a self-conscious hand across his nape. “Giselle and I talked a lot before she died. She wanted to make sure I’d be happy when she was gone. She knew Jocelyn loved me and wanted to make sure I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of a relationship just because Jocelyn was her sister.”

“And you fell in love with Jocelyn,” Libby said flatly. “Right on cue.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Clay said.

“What was it like?” Libby said, feeling her face flush at the realization that she’d never had a chance with Clay, that his future wife had been selected even before Giselle had died.

“Jocelyn is a wonderful political hostess. She—”

“A role I never would have filled comfortably,” Libby said caustically.

“She’s easy to get along with.”

“And I’m not?” Libby flared.

“She’s beautiful and—”

“Good in bed?” Libby snarled.

“That’s enough,” Clay said quietly.

It infuriated Libby when Clay got calmer as she got angrier. She supposed it was something he’d learned as a politician, but it never failed to make her lose her temper. “I want to hear more about how your
precious
Jocelyn sold herself into sexual slavery to my brother to save your
precious
Bitter Creek,” she flared.

“I don’t know that for certain. It’s just something I suspect,” Clay said.

“And you forgive her, I suppose, for betraying you, because her motives are so self-sacrificing and noble?”

“Yes, I do. If she’d have me, I’d take her back in a heartbeat.”

Libby leapt to her feet, dumping the quilt on the porch, her body flooded with heat, despite the fact she was practically naked. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You can forgive her for leaving you for another man, for lying to you, and ‘understand’ she never meant to hurt you. Yet you’ve never forgiven me for the lies I told. I’m a fallen woman who can never be raised up. I’m a hated Grayhawk who got the better of a Blackthorne, and you’re going to make me pay for it the rest of my life! Is that it?”

Clay was also on his feet, his gray eyes stormy, his hands fisted, his legs spread wide. “There’s a big goddamn difference in the two situations,” he said. “I loved you! You tore out my soul, Libby. How am I supposed to forgive you for that?”

Libby’s eyes were blurred with tears, and her throat so painfully swollen she could hardly speak. But speak she did. “You were supposed to forgive me
because
you loved me. You were supposed to realize that all those things I told you when you came to Kingdom Come were lies! That I only said I hated you because I didn’t want you to be hurt the way my father was threatening to hurt you.”

“You father was powerless to hurt me!”

“How was I supposed to know that? I was sixteen and pregnant—and you’d gotten me that way. My father said it was statutory rape, that you’d go to prison. And he was—is—such a powerful man that—”

“My father was—is—just as powerful,” Clay retorted. “You should have had faith in me!”

Libby moaned and covered her face. “Oh, God.” She forced herself to raise her eyes to Clay. “You should have had faith in me, Clay. That I loved you. That I wanted you. That I
needed
you. But you stalked away like a wounded buffalo—”

“You told me to get out!” he shouted. “Of your house and your life!”

“You should have known I didn’t mean it!”

“How, Libby?” he said, furiously quiet again. “How was I supposed to know?”

“Because,” she sobbed.

“Because.
Right. That’s a hell of a reason,” Clay said, shoving a hand through his hair.

“How can you forgive Jocelyn and not me?” she said, her chest physically painful with the hurt she felt. “How can you believe her motives are virtuous and that mine weren’t?”

His hands uncurled and lay limp at his sides. He shook his head. “Damn it, Libby. Why are you doing this? I thought this was all water under the bridge. Why does it matter—”

“I loved you, too,” she interrupted. “So much that I haven’t been able to have a relationship with another man. I kept hoping that somehow, someday, you’d see the light.”

He stared at her, stricken.

She lifted beleaguered eyes to him, laughed softly, and said, “I’ve just realized that while you’ve always been the love of my life, it’s obvious I’ve never been the love of yours. I can’t believe I’ve been waiting around for you to wake up and realize that anytime these past twenty years, when we were both single, we could have had back what we lost because of a young girl’s foolishness and a young man’s pride.”

Her lips curled in a sneer. “That ends now. Today. You had your chance, Clay. You had a hundred chances, but you blew them all. As of right now, I’m over you. The moment, the
instant,
our daughter is out of the mess she’s in, I never want to see you again!”

At that moment, the screen door was shoved open and Kate stepped onto the porch. She was wearing a man’s terry cloth robe, and Jack was right behind her. “What’s wrong, Mom? Daddy? I heard shouting.”

“Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart,” Libby said with a wobbly smile, as she grabbed for the quilt and awkwardly settled it around her shoulders.

“Then why are you crying?” Kate demanded.

Libby swiped at her eyes with her wrists and said, “I was reminiscing with your father.” She forced her smile wider and said, “How about some breakfast? I need to get back to Austin.”

“I wanted us all to go horseback riding this morning,” Kate said, looking from one parent to the other.

“I’m afraid I have to get back to the city, too,” Clay said.

“Please, Daddy. Please, Mom,” Kate begged. “Just a short ride. I have something I need to discuss with you both.”

Libby reminded herself that their entire purpose in being here was to ensure their daughter didn’t make a mistake that would ruin her life. She exchanged a quick glance with Clay, who nodded slightly. Then she said, “All right, Kate. A quick breakfast and a short ride. Then your dad and I need to head back to Austin.”

Libby was the last to leave the porch. She stared at the door through which Clay had passed, realizing what she’d done. It was hard, so very hard, to let go of a dream. But she’d finally woken up.

Now she just had to figure out how to face the future without the man she loved.

Clay sat in the backseat of Jack’s extended-cab pickup with Libby as they drove to North’s stable from the foreman’s house, but she spoke only to Kate and Jack. When they arrived, she refused his offer to saddle her horse with an abrupt, “I can do it myself.”

Once the four of them were mounted up, they followed an old wagon trail over the rolling hills dotted with mesquite and live oaks, Kate chattering a mile a minute to fill the thundering silence between Clay and Libby.

Clay stared at Libby’s back, which was all she’d shown him all morning, wondering if this would be the extent of their relationship from now on. He blessed his daughter for keeping the stream of conversation going, or this horseback ride would have been more than a little awkward. On the other hand, Kate’s monologue was giving him far too much time to think. And feel.

Clay couldn’t remember the last time he’d been provoked into raising his voice or using profanity. He never shouted and he rarely swore. He was proud of the self-discipline, the absolute control, that had made him such a good politician. But Libby knew all the right buttons to push. This morning, she’d yanked the tight rein he kept on his emotions right out of his hands.

He wondered if Libby had recognized the slip he’d made—the admission that the difference between his willingness to forgive Jocelyn, and his unwillingness to forgive her, was that he
loved
Libby.

Did that mean he didn’t really love Jocelyn? That he’d kept blinders on his eyes, so he wouldn’t realize the truth? And what was the truth?

Clay grimaced. The truth was, he’d been so frightened by his powerful attraction to Libby last year that he’d gotten himself engaged to Jocelyn as fast as he could, to make sure he didn’t do anything about it. The truth was, he’d never stopped loving Libby. And never stopped being furious with her for robbing him of his own “happily ever after.”

He could remember his mother’s reaction when he’d said he would simply wait two years until Libby was eighteen and then marry her, when King couldn’t stop them.

“Do you think no one will notice that you’re marrying a
child
—and one with a babe in arms?” his mother had said. “The tabloids will find out the truth. Count on it. And that will be the end of your political career.”

“I don’t care,” he’d said. “I love her.”

“You can’t afford that luxury,” his mother replied.

“I can live without becoming president,” Clay said.

“It’s been your dream—”

“It’s been
your
dream,” Clay interrupted. “Not mine.”

“Don’t delude yourself,” his mother said. “You’re ambitious. And driven. And determined. What will you do with your life if you give up your dreams for a woman who lied to you, who betrayed you, who only wanted vengeance?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Clay said. But his face was flushed, and his heart was beating hard. He’d tried to convince himself that Libby’s cruel dismissal of him when he’d gone to see her after they’d been discovered by her father had been forced on her by her father. But his stomach rolled when he remembered the scorn on her face as she told him how she’d used him. How she’d always planned to discard him. How her father’s interruption of their interlude had only hastened the inevitable.

“She’s her father’s daughter,” his mother continued. “She used you, Clay. She’s a viper, who’ll poison your life. Let her go.”

“I can’t!” he’d cried. She was his life, the other half of his soul. And she carried his child.

Clay had tried to see Libby, to tell her he didn’t believe her, that he knew she loved him. That she could trust him to take care of her. To tell her he’d fight King, hell, he’d fight the whole world, if he had to, to spend his life with her.

But when she’d finally agreed to see him—so he’d go away and leave her alone—she merely repeated the foul slander he’d heard the first time, her eyes even more heartless, her voice even more venomous.