Leaving Liberty, a Western Romance (Book 5) (Texas Hearts) (11 page)

“Cody is a few years younger than me,” Jackson told Libby. “He got married just a few months ago.”

“He’s the one who trains cutting horses?”

“Yeah. So I guess it’s just the four of us.”

They settled on a Mexican restaurant on the River Walk because the day was so nice. Brock and Jackson exchanged near non-stop chatter, clearly making up for lost time between them. Despite the time apart, it was clear the brothers were close.

As Brock and Jackson talked, Josie turned to Libby and asked, “So how long have you known Jackson?”

“Just a few weeks.”

“You’ve only been together a few weeks?”

“Oh, we’re not together.”

Josie raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Why?”

“He spent an awful lot of time talking with Brock about you on the phone. I thought for sure the two of you were…”

“A couple?” Libby played with the napkin on the table. “We’re just…friends.”

She didn’t know why stating their relationship that way bothered her so much. And even friend was a stretch that she hadn’t given much thought to until this week.

“He is in town on business. But…he won’t be staying.”

Josie leaned forward and said quietly, “I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Libby. Maybe it’s time to give him a reason to stay.”

# # #

The drive back home after the concert seemed longer. Libby had enjoyed dinner and the concert more than she thought she would. It only drove home the fact that she’d been so isolated this past year.

She glanced over at Jackson as he drove. His arm was draped over the steering wheel. Every so often a highway light would illuminate the cab of the truck and she could see the strong features of his profile. A small smile played on his lips.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“He liked you.”

“Who?”

Jackson gave her a quick glance before returning his attention to the road ahead. “My brother. I like Josie, too.”

“They complement each other.”

“He seemed different tonight. Much more comfortable in his own skin.”

“Is that big brother talking?”

Jackson shrugged. “He’s a lot younger than me, Beau and Cody. It’s almost as if Brock grew up on his own. I don’t care how old or how famous he gets. He’s always going to be my kid brother.”

“And you’ll always look out for him?”

With a shrug, he said, “I don’t need to anymore. Josie’s got that all covered.”

Her stomach squeezed with envy. “Yeah, I guess she does. They make a nice couple. Looks like you’ll have another family wedding to look forward to when his tour is over.”

Jackson glanced at her without saying anything. He reached his hand across the seat and covered hers with his. That only added to the heaviness of her heart. She pulled her hand away from his comfort.

“It won’t always be like this,” he said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“That feeling that you’re all alone.”

“But I am all alone.”

“I’m here.”

Tears burned her eyes so she turned her face toward the window. For weeks she’d been battling reality. Jackson investigation had threatened the one person she still had left. Cole. And yet, he was telling her he was here.

“Today you are. You’ll be leaving Liberty soon.”

He sighed slowly. “I heard what Josie said to you. You could give me a reason to stay, Libby.”

Libby closed her eyes, wanting to believe that there was hope for something more than the hand DNA had dealt her.

“Your family is important to you.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You want to have a family of your own someday.”

“Of course. A whole big brood of Gentrys. Doesn’t every man want that?”

She swallowed. “I guess.”

“You guess? Don’t you want a family?”

“Of course.”

What shocked Libby, was that for the first time in her life, she actually had a face to go with that elusive person she’d dreamed about one day having a child with. And that thought terrified her to the core.

It was well after midnight when they arrived back at the ranch. Rather than have Jackson drive back to the motel, she’d offered him the bed in the spare room that used to be John’s bedroom.

Knowing that he was sleeping just a few feet away from her bedroom made her restless. As she tossed in bed, a war she couldn’t avoid continued to rage inside her. She was falling in love with Jackson.

She recalled a saying her mother had said once when she was working in the yard. It was only days before she’d finally succumbed to cancer. The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel.

All Libby could think was that the closer she got to falling in love with Jackson, the more terrified she felt. Alive, yes. But terrified just the same. Unable to just stay in bed any longer, she tossed the blanket off her body, grabbed her bathrobe and went downstairs.

* * *

The breeze coming up the stairway from the open front door was alarming. Jackson had heard Libby’s bedroom door open and then heard her feet on the floor. But what was she doing outside at this time of the night?

He stepped outside, careful to shut the screen to keep out the bugs, and then glanced around the porch in the dark.

“Libby?”

She moved only slightly. Her white cotton bathrobe moved enough so he could make it out in the dark. Her body was leaned against the porch rail as she looked up at the stars. His eyes were drawn to where she was looking. Without the moon, the stars were brilliant and mesmerizing.

“It’s beautiful,” she finally said.

“Yes, it is.”

“Sometimes when there’s a new moon like this, I come out here for hours. I love the sounds of the night. It’s like these stars are watching over all creatures, keeping them safe.”

Jackson walked over and stood beside her, feeling the heat of her body stronger than the heat of the Texas night. When he bent his head to look at her, he saw her cheeks were wet.

His heart ached for her. She’d gone through so many losses and his investigation had only made matters worse. It took every bit of strength he had not reach out and pull her into his arms. He wanted to comfort her. But he wanted her to feel what she had to feel.

“It’ll get easier. Not better, but easier,” he finally said.

“What? Oh, you mean my dad.” She sighed. “I keep wondering what he’d be saying if he saw me right now.”

As she began to sob, something took hold of Jackson that made him throw all caution out the door. He dragged Libby to his chest and held her tight. To his surprise, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she stayed comfortable against his body as if she’d been molded to him, as if they’d been made for each other to fit this way. He was in no hurry to change it.

“It’s going to get better. It won’t always hurt as much as it does now.”

“It’s not that,” she said.

“You’re not missing your father?”

“I am, but…”

She pulled away from his arms and though the night air was still warm, it left him cold.

“I…like you. And I don’t want to.”

He chuckled, feeling his heart swell at the same time.

“I guess Texas Rangers have that effect on some people.”

“That’s not what I mean. I like you. And pretty soon, you’ll be leaving. And I’ll… Why the hell did you stay this long anyway? It would have been so much easier if you’d have just filed that damned report and left already. You have no business here. No reason to stay.”

“That may be true if you weren’t in the picture. I keep picturing you like you were down at the creek and thinking—“

She pulled further away from him and turned away.

“You’ve got so much fire in you and yet you’re so modest. That’s pretty intoxicating. Don’t worry. I didn’t see anything—”

“No, you didn’t. I…almost wish you had.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “What? Lady, you’ve got my head spinning. One minute you’re as shy as a school girl on Sunday. Then next… Well, not every woman would strip down to nothing in the middle of a hot day and take a bath in a cold creek. You must have been freezing.”

“I was,” she said quietly. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything?”

He was in deep trouble. He wasn’t a man to lie and the truth was, what he had seen had set his whole body on fire and left him with thoughts of the two of them naked in the creek, the bath and the bed. He found his imagination was healthy and fertile where Libby was concerned. Nothing would make him happier than to share that with her.

“I told you that day. I saw the shape of your bare back. Smooth skin glowing under the sunlight. It made me want to touch you.”

He touched her hair, sending shivers through her body, electrifying every sense. Then his fingers caressed the tender skin below her earlobe.

“I wanted to kiss you here,” he said. He bent his head to kiss her neck. But Libby backed away, once again confusing him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s okay. If you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t.”

She inhaled a ragged breath and exhaled on a sob. “It’s not that at all. I want you to.”

* * *

The smile Jackson gave Libby broke her heart. Even in the dark she could read his expression, feel his reaction to her words. If she were whole and completely healthy and could give him the life he wanted, that smile would mean hope.

Fear coursed through her at a mind-numbing speed. She’d always known a moment like this would come. She’d played it out in her mind a hundred times. But it had always been with a faceless man. It had never been someone special. It wasn’t Jackson.

And now she didn’t know if she could go through with it. Mustering up more courage than she thought she possessed, Libby walked to the front door, opened the screen and turned on the porch light. Then she walked back to where she’d been standing with Jackson.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Now that he could fully see her fear and the tears she’d been shedding. She couldn’t hide any of it from him anymore. “Tell me what’s wrong?”

Beginning was the hardest. Finding the right way to say what she wanted to say without running away.

Jackson tipped her chin up with his fingers, making her look at him. But she couldn’t get through this and look at his face. She couldn’t bear it.

“You know my mother died of breast cancer,” she started. “But what you don’t know is that my aunt and my grandmother also died of cancer. They had something called a BRCA mutation.”

She glanced at him quickly to see his reaction and found only concern. Taking a deep breath, she continued.

“Before my mother died, she urged me to get tested to see if I had the same mutation. My aunt was just twenty-eight years old when she developed breast cancer. The same age I am. She died three years later.” She took another deep breath. “My mother was thirty-one when she was first diagnosed. She fought it for ten years and then developed ovarian cancer as well. So did my grandmother.”

Her body suddenly felt cold. The closer she got, the harder it was to continue. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She glanced at Jackson, but couldn’t see his face through her tears.

“After my brother, John, was killed in Iraq, I saw how devastated my father was. I didn’t want him to lose me to cancer, too. So when I got tested and found I had the same BRCA mutation as my mother…”

She bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. She fumbled with her bathrobe, wanting to stay in that make-believe world where she could tell herself that her body didn’t matter.

“Do you have cancer? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Is that why you’ve been so tired?”

“No. I’ve been told I’m cancer free right now.”

She couldn’t look at him. She wanted to run into the house and lock herself in her bedroom.

She heard him breathing steadily, as if it were taking every bit of his control to keep from reacting. Libby grabbed the front of her robe and held it tightly in place.

“You said scars told a story. Well, that’s true enough and I have my battle scars to prove it. I just don’t know what the rest of my story is going to be.”

She closed her eyes to shut out her fear. But the tears continued to flow heavy. “This is harder than I thought it would be. If you were just anyone…but you’re not.”

“You don’t have to do this, Libby.”

She sniffed back a few sobs, and said, “I elected to have a double mastectomy to lower my risk of developing breast cancer like my mother and other family members did. I had reconstructive surgery right before my father was killed. All this time I’ve been recovering. But it’s been a slow process.”

“But you’re healthy, right?”

“Right now, yes.”

“You’re amazing,” he said.

“What?”

“To have gone what you’ve gone through, that’s amazing.”

“I don’t feel very amazing. I feel…broken.”

“Libby, were you afraid I’d reject you?”

She nodded. “I know I made the right decision. The weight of developing breast cancer has been lifted from me. But all this time I never thought beyond surviving. I didn’t have someone in my life who made me care about what I was giving up, about not being able to share the things that everyone else can. Jackson, I’m not going to have a white picket fence life. With me, there is a very real possibility you may never have children. I may have to have a hysterectomy because ovarian cancer is the other risk I face.”

He looked at her for a moment. “You’ve given up.”

“I have not. I took what life gave me and I made the best of it. Do you know what a woman looks like when she’s had a mastectomy, even after reconstructive surgery?”

“No,” he said honestly. “But it doesn’t—“

“It doesn’t matter?” Anger surged through her. “Don’t you say that. That’s the worst thing you can say to me. It does matter.”

“Not in the way you think.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes.”

His voice was resolute, but how could she possibly be sure.

“I’m scarred forever. Not like that little scar on your forehead. My whole body is scarred from my stomach where they took muscle and on both breasts. I don’t even have nipples anymore.”