Heartstrings (15 page)

She straightened and squared her shoulders. “Why, Mike?”

“Seth walked out of here and hasn’t been back once in fourteen years. If he’d wanted to be a father, he wouldn’t have stayed away.”

Mike wouldn’t even let me see my daughter. I was a fool when I let him talk me out of being in her life after she was born.
Seth’s words echoed in her mind.

“What exactly did you say to him that day he came back after her birth?”

Mike shrugged and turned away. “How the hell am I supposed to remember?”

A cold lump formed in her belly. He was lying. “Did you tell Seth to stay away from here? I know you said something.”

He faced her again and fisted his hands by his side. “Yes. If you want to know the truth. I told him he’d end up just like his parents. He didn’t want Emily.” His voice softened. “He never loved you, Abby. All that night was to him was sex, and he regretted that you got pregnant.”

A piece of her shattered. She didn’t want to believe him, even though she’d said those very same words. “Why did you marry me?”

He touched the back of his fingers to her cheek and smiled. “You and Seth were my best friends. I knew what your having an illegitimate child would do to your already shaky reputation. I couldn’t let that happen to you.”

She stepped away and busied herself with rearranging the fruit in the bowl on the counter. Oh, yes, her reputation–the daughter of a disgraced preacher and an Indian prostitute. It didn’t matter her mother gave up that life when she met her father. She’d never fit into the idyllic community of McAllister. And Charles Crawford had never been allowed on the pulpit again because he’d fallen in love with a hooker instead of just saving her soul.

Maybe if her mother hadn’t shown up five months pregnant on their wedding day, things might have been different.

But that wasn’t the real reason Mike had married her. She had to know the truth–the real reason. Not his standard answer. “Mike...” She turned and leaned against the counter. “That isn’t what I asked. You’ve told me this for years. What did you get out of marrying me? It’s not like you were in love with me. You’ve always loved Tammy Jo.”

He looked down at his hands and turned away from her. “Your money helped pay the back taxes and the mortgage on the Circle R.”

She should have been surprised, but she wasn’t. Maybe she’d always known. “You married me for my money?”

He faced her again and reached for her. Holding her by her upper arms, he gazed into her eyes. “You make it sound like you didn’t get anything out of our marriage. I became the father of your baby. I learned to love her as my own. And I won’t allow you or anyone else to take her away from me.”

She laid her hand on the roughness of his cheek. He hadn’t shaved that morning. “I’ve made such a mess of everything. I have to try to make things right. All Seth wants is to get to know her. I think that’s best.”

He backed away as if she’d slapped him. “What if she finds out we lied to her? How do you think that will affect her? My mother and father? My position as sheriff?”

“I can’t predict how she’ll react, but I do know we better talk to her soon. When Emily’s eighteen, it’ll be too late.” Her voice shook and she wrapped her arms around her middle against the sudden chill.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Both Seth and John have trust funds for her. When she turns eighteen, she’ll be one very rich young woman.”

His face lost some of its deep tan. “Seth told his father?”

She shook her head. “John and Johanna figured it out on their own.” She shivered again and tightened the hug around her middle. “Don’t you think it’s time we face the truth ourselves? Seth is Emily’s father, and it’s time they were allowed to have a relationship.”

* * * *

As Seth drove up the driveway, Abby stood in the doorway of the barn. She’d already saddled her pinto mare and chosen a gelding for Seth from her other horses. She’d informed Judd, her foreman, she’d be going riding and wouldn’t be back until later that afternoon.

Seth stopped his Escalade in front of the barn, and he and Emily got out.

Emily ran around the front of the SUV and literally bounced on her toes with excitement. “Mom! Is it true? Seth said we’re going riding over on the Double K today.”

Abby laid her hand on her shoulder and glanced at Seth. He took her breath away, standing silhouetted against the late morning sun. “Yep. It’s true. Go change and I’ll saddle your horse.”

Emily beamed at her, then at him before running into the house.

He watched her before turning his bright smile on Abby. “Thank you for today.”

She nodded and turned to go back inside the barn. “I’ve decided you should get to know her. It’ll make things easier when she turns eighteen and learns the truth.”

When he sucked in a breath, she looked over her shoulder at him. He stood behind her and she turned.

“What changed your mind?”

She looked past him toward the house to make sure Emily had gone inside, then met his gaze. “A lot of little things, I guess. Your persistence. The fact you didn’t drive away the day after the funeral. The trust funds. The story about you buying her a big teddy bear and still having it. I think she needs to get to know you. And I need to get to know you again.” She shrugged and cleared her throat, but the lump wouldn’t budge. “When the time comes, the three of us–you, me and Mike–will tell her the truth.”

He stepped toward her. The clean, masculine scent of his musky cologne and something entirely Seth enveloped her. His warmth surrounded her. She trembled from the heat in his deep mossy green eyes.

His breaths came faster, making that wonderful chest rise and fall, and she had to touch him. She laid her hand on the great expanse of toned muscle and curled her fingers in the soft cotton of his shirt. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed her against the stall door. The horse’s snort seemed to come to her ears from a great distance as he tilted his head toward hers. His breath warmed her face as electricity coursed between them. Then he brushed his lips against hers.

She fisted her free hand into the hair at his nape, pulling him closer, as he deepened the kiss. His tongue was sweet and hot, a velvety reminder of the passion she’d only ever felt in his touch. He rubbed down her sides to her behind and lifted her up against him. She wrapped her legs around his thighs, pulling him closer.

She moaned when the hard length of his arousal pressed against her center. She chased his tongue, and as he tried to retreat, she sucked on it, eliciting a lusty groan from deep in his chest. She let her other hand roam over his shoulders, up into his hair, pushing off his hat.

“Momma?”

They both froze at the softly spoken word. When she looked past his shoulder toward the door, Emily stood there peering at them with her mouth hanging slightly open, eyes wide.

Abby immediately untangled herself from him and tried to shove him away. “Seth is helping me with the horses.”

Seth and Emily gawked at her with nearly identical expressions of bemusement, and she shoved at him harder. He let her down, but positioned himself behind her and held her close. She glanced questioningly at him. He raised an eyebrow, grinned, and leaned in to whisper in her ear, “I don’t think you want me to move right now.” She closed her eyes and trembled at the low rumble of his voice. “I’m hard as a rock.”

“Oh. Don’t move,” she whispered and made sure she was directly in front of him. Swallowing hard, she turned to face her daughter, feeling very much like a teenager caught by a parent. Who would have thought the same embarrassment could be inspired with the reversed situation?

Seth chuckled, leaned over to pick his hat off the floor, and slapped it on his thigh before putting it on his head.

As if she’d figured something out that had stumped her for a long time, Emily tapped her forehead and said, “Crap, I always knew I was doing something wrong when I saddle my horse. Now I know. I gotta get myself a cute guy and swap spit and play tonsil hockey with him to get the job done.”

She and Seth said at the same time, “I don’t think so.”

As soon as the words had left their mouths, Abby turned to meet his startled expression. Seth shrugged and rubbed his goatee. “She’s too young to even be considering if a guy is...uh...well, you know.”

“Yeah, I do know.” She met Emily’s intense gaze. What was she thinking? Was Emily happy about her kissing Seth? Or was she resentful because he wasn’t Mike? “What took you so long to change?”

Emily laughed and rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t come out sooner. Trevor Marshall called.” She slyly smiled and looked down as she clasped her hands together. “He invited me to the movies tonight, but I told him I’d have to pass it by you first.”

“We’ll discuss it later.”

“Momma, you never let me–”

“Who’s Trevor?” The edge on Seth’s voice zapped through her. Emily must have been taken aback too, judging by the startled expression on her face.

Abby glanced over her shoulder to find his usually playful mouth compressed into a thin line and his jaw tight.

Was it just her fogged mind or had she just seen a flash of him as a father? For the first time, she pictured him as Emily’s father. With all the wild oats he’d sown, no doubt, he’d be over-protective of his daughter.

Mike had been as protective of Emily as any other father was of his daughter, but he was too concerned these days with his new wife and unborn son to be worried about the boys who wanted to date Emily. Wannabe cowboys with vehicles and ideas that could land them both in trouble.

Emily bristled, putting her hands on her hips and jutting her chin. “He’s one of my best friends and lives near Dad. He let me go with Trevor the last time I stayed with him and the witch.”

“How old is this guy?”

She glared at Seth, her tone turning caustic. “Sixteen. But we really are just friends. So, Seth, what are your intentions with my mother, since my friends don’t go around lip-locking with me?”

Abby was too surprised by Emily’s question to even reprimand her for rudeness.

If her question affected him, he didn’t show it. He simply shrugged and tightened his hold on her waist where he still held her against him. She gazed up at him, and he smiled a sexy lopsided grin. “I actually hoped your momma would go out with me and maybe help me decide what to do with the house on the Double K.”

“You’re moving onto the Double K?” Emily asked the question Abby was too stunned to ask.

“It would seem so,” he answered Emily, but never looked away from Abby.

“You’re buying the Double K?” She shivered, and her voice shook.

“Yeah. I think that’s best, don’t you?”

She nodded and turned toward him. Her heart filled to overflowing. The two deep seas of his eyes swept her away. She was drowning in them, but she didn’t want to be saved. “What about this date?”

“Well, I figured we could go to the movies. Sit a few rows behind Emily and her friend.”

Emily groaned, and Abby laid her head on his shoulder and laughed. He pressed up close. She relaxed against him and felt his lingering passion. She was too tired of being alone and pretending her life was perfect. She was too tired of fighting what she felt for him. And in giving up the fight, she lost another chunk of her heart to him.

“I think that’s a perfect date,” she whispered.

The passion of his kiss drowned out Emily’s fading, “Holy crap!”

* * * *

Seth reined in his horse in front of the old single-room hunting cabin his grandfather Kendall built in a grove of ponderosa pines and hackberry trees near a stream that cut across the ranch. He glanced over his shoulder as Abby and Emily halted their mounts.

Emily looked around and pushed her hat back. “Wow. I never knew this place was even here. What a great cabin. Wish I’d found it before now.”

He glanced at Abby as he dismounted his borrowed horse. “Did you explore the Double K a lot?”

“Oh, yeah. I love this place. Sometimes your dad would ride with me,” Emily explained as she dismounted. She slipped the bridle from her mare’s head.

“Your father let her have free range of the ranch.” Abby slid out of her saddle, and his heart raced with the sight of her ass moving in the worn jeans. The blood rushing south fogged his brain so much he nearly missed what she’d said.