Return to Oak Valley (26 page)

Shelly glanced away from the golden fury in his eyes. Her throat felt raw, and all the pain and betrayal she'd felt that terrible night came rushing back. Struggling to keep her emotions under control, she said, “You didn't deserve an explanation. Not after what you did.”

“What the hell did I do except fall in love with you?” he asked, anguish in his tone. “That's all I ever did—love you.”

Her fingers digging into the palms of her hand, she fought against responding to the desperate note in his voice. He was very good at this, very good at turning it all into her fault.

“No, that's not all you did,” she said bitterly. “At the same time you were, ah, loving me, you were also loving Nancy Blackstone.” At his startled look, she demanded fiercely, “Did you think I wouldn't find out?” A mirthless laugh escaped her. “It's really funny when you look at it. I left you that last afternoon, determined to do as you'd been begging me to do for weeks. It was difficult, but I finally gathered up my courage and told Josh all about us—that we were in love and that we wanted to get married.”

Sloan swore under his breath. “I knew his name was going to come into it sooner or later.”

“You wanted me to tell him!” she shouted, fists at her sides. “You'd been badgering me for weeks to tell him.”

“I didn't expect you to face him alone,” he said through gritted teeth. “If you'll remember I was pushing for us to do it together, figuring that if he turned ugly I could take you away right then. I wanted to be with you. I told you that. But did you listen? Oh, no, you had to barge in and confront the bastard all by yourself.”

“Don't you dare call him a bastard! He loved me! And all he ever wanted was to protect me—and he did!”

“How?” Sloan sneered. “By filling your head with lies about me?”

“No. By letting me find out for myself just what a deceiving, double-crossing, cheating, lying son of a bitch you really were.”

Unconsciously Sloan reached for a cigarette, biting back a curse when his fingers found only an empty shirt pocket. He really needed a cigarette—or a drink, a stiff drink at that.

“Double-crossing? You want to explain that?” he finally asked.

“Do you really want me to cross all the t's and dot all the i's?”

His eyes hooded, Sloan said, “Yeah, I think I do. I've waited seventeen years for this, and I don't want to miss one little iota. Please go on.”

He wasn't the only one who had waited, she thought furiously. She had dreamed about this moment. It had haunted her, and in the beginning she had dreamed constantly about tossing his lies right back in that handsome face of his. Of course in her dreams, she did this right after he'd declared his undying love for her—she threw that back in his face, too. The situation didn't quite live up to her dreams, but it was probably as close as she was going to get. She sighed. Reality was like that—it seldom bore close resemblance to dreams.

Taking a deep breath, she said quietly, “When I got home, I found him in his office. Maria was gone for the day, so I knew we wouldn't be interrupted. He was in a relaxed mood—he even teased me about never being home much anymore. It seemed too good of an opportunity to miss. I didn't give myself time to think, I just blurted out that I loved you and that we wanted to marry and leave the valley.” She glanced away, remembering that moment, remembering the stunned expression on Josh's face. It had been hard for him to accept what she was telling him, hard enough for him to accept that she wanted to marry a descendent of the man who had been reviled and hated for generations. She swallowed. It had been harder still for him to accept that his baby sister wasn't a baby anymore. Pushing away memories of Josh's anguished, angry face, she admitted, “He was furious, shocked, and astonished, too—which wasn't surprising, since he'd had no idea we'd ever even met, much less fallen in love. Naturally, he was hurt and disappointed that I'd kept our relationship a secret. But in the end he said he understood why we'd felt the need to hide the truth. He was very kind and sweet about it.”

“I'll bet he was,” Sloan said dryly. “I can see his face even now, all full of compassion and brotherly concern for his baby sister.”

“Look, do you want to hear this or not?”

Sloan grimaced, and with one hand gestured her to continue.

“Anyway, he took it very well. We talked for a long time—he had a lot of questions, and he needed to be convinced that I knew what I was doing.” She smiled faintly. “He wasn't real enthusiastic about any of it to begin with—I won't kid you about that! To be truthful he was furious and dead set against us, but after a while, a
long
while, he finally conceded that even though you weren't the man he'd have chosen for me, if I really loved you and wanted to marry you, he wouldn't stand in our way. After all, he said, our families might have been at each other's throats, but there was no denying that marrying you would give me social prestige, not only here in Oak Valley, but in the county, too. He admitted that while he wasn't thrilled at the notion of a Granger marrying a Ballinger, he could see the advantages and if I loved you…well, he wouldn't argue—he wasn't happy, he thought I was making a mistake, but if that's what I really wanted…We even drank a glass of champagne together and he gave a toast to the new Mrs. Sloan Ballinger. When I left him and went upstairs to my room that afternoon I was floating on air.” She grimaced. “I was such a besotted little ninny—all I could think of was how happy I was and how happy you'd be when you found that I'd told him about us.” She stopped, lost in the past, remembering what it had been like to be eighteen and wildly in love.

“And that's it?” Sloan growled, breaking into her thoughts. “You told him, he was kind about it. Aren't you leaving out a few things?” His face twisted and he gave her a little shake. “One minute I was the happiest guy in the world. I loved you. You swore you loved me. And then poof! You're gone. No explanation. No word.
Nada.
You're just gone. Vanished.” His voice thickened. “Your leaving like that blindsided me, and I went half-mad trying to figure out what I'd done that made you just up and leave—without one damn word. One clue as to what had gone wrong so suddenly between us. What I'd done that was so terrible you couldn't even face me with it. I still don't know. So, I repeat, aren't you leaving out a few things from your explanation? Such as
why
you left me.”

She glared at him. “No, I'm not forgetting anything. I'm just telling you that you were wrong about Josh. You'd thought he'd forbid us to see each other, that he'd try to tear us apart—well he didn't! He had accepted the fact that I was going to marry you…at least at first.”

“Ah, now, we're getting to it, aren't we?”

“Will you stop being so sarcastic?” she snapped. “You never believed that Josh loved me and that all he ever wanted was for me to be happy. I don't blame him for making some telephone calls to his friends to try to find out what they knew about you. He didn't really know that much about you other than what I had told him and the usual valley gossip he'd heard over the years. You'd have done the same thing if your sister had suddenly sprung it on you that she wanted to marry a member of a family that had been at odds with yours for decades. You know you would!”

Sloan's gaze narrowed. “Tell me about the phone calls. Who did he talk to?”

Shelly threw her hands up. “I don't remember. I don't even know if he told me. I only know when I came down that evening for dinner, he said that he wanted to speak with me. He admitted that…that he'd done some checking up on you.” She made a face. “I was furious with him. I couldn't believe that he had done such a thing. I wouldn't listen to him—I tried to get away from him, but he begged me to listen, pleaded with me. I was so angry with him, so hurt, but I finally sat down and listened to what he had to say.” She flashed him a look full of condemnation. “He told me everything, Sloan. Everything.”

“Really?” he said with a raised brow. “Well, I, for one, would be very damned interested in hearing what that ‘everything’ was.”

Staring at him with dislike, she declared angrily, “This is all a big joke to you, isn't it?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “I've been laughing my head off for years.”

“He told me about Nancy Blackstone,” she said quietly, ignoring the stab of pain that even now went through her, remembering another girl, another time when she had been full of dreams and anticipation and that they had all been shattered in an instant. “Apparently, your affair with her was common gossip in the valley. That and the fact that you were still seeing her.” Her lip curled. “When, of course, you weren't sneaking around behind her back screwing me blind.”

Sloan reached for the phantom pack of cigarettes. Cursing his own weakness, he met her accusing eyes and admitted, “Before you showed up that summer, I won't deny that Nancy and I had been seeing each other—and that it was pretty serious for a while. You could say that we were considered quite an item—I'm sure all the busybodies in town, male and female alike, had our wedding all mapped out. They only made one miscalculation—I wasn't planning on marrying Nancy. That was her idea.”

Shelly walked away from him to stand in front of the glass sliding doors. Staring blankly outside, she muttered, “I'm glad you admitted—it wouldn't have done you any good to deny it: I saw you together in the gazebo at her parents' place. She was in your arms, and you were kissing each other like you'd never let each other go. I heard what you told her that night—that you were just passing time with me. That she didn't have a thing to worry about, that I was just a mere fling.” She sighed. “After that there was no reason for me to remain in Oak Valley. Josh had waited in the car for me, and when I returned he knew from the expression on my face that I had discovered for myself just what a lying, cheating bastard you were. He never once said ‘I told you so.’ He helped me pack and got us on a flight to New York that night. Later, after I finished art school, he helped me start again in New Orleans.” She swung around to look at him. “I heard you, Sloan. I saw you kissing her, and I heard you tossing away my love for you as if it were nothing more than last night's garbage.”

“I see,” he said slowly, his expression hard to define. “Let me see if I've got this one point straight—it was dear Josh who arranged for you to be there at the Blackstone place at that particular time, wasn't it?”

“What the hell difference does it make?” she blazed at him. “Oh, never mind. You're just going to take it as one more crime committed by him—but yes, he did arrange for me to be at her parents' place that night.” Painfully, she admitted, “I didn't believe him about your involvement with her—even though he'd told me that numerous people in the valley had confirmed the affair. I told him they were lying or mistaken, but that it just wasn't true.” She laughed bitterly. “You loved me, I told him. You wouldn't treat me that way. I wouldn't listen to him—I, lovesick fool that I was, believed in you. Even when he said that Nancy had told a girlfriend of hers that she was meeting you that night, that Nancy suspected you were seeing someone else and that she was going to have it out with you, I still didn't believe him.”

“Did he happen to mention the name of the girlfriend who just happened to have all this useful information? Or, even more interesting, how he found out about the girlfriend and what inducement he used to get her to tell him about Nancy's plans?”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn't it ever occur to you just how very convenient everything worked out for Josh?” he asked grimly. “You drop a bombshell in his lap and a few hours later he knows all about my affair with Nancy. Hell, he knew about it when it was going on—he and Nancy always had some sort of weird relationship even then—for your information,
they'd
been an item before I showed up—more amazingly, at least to me, they were still friends. When we had our affair, she was always tossing Josh's name in my face. At that time, I could never figure it out, but I'll bet he never called any of his friends to check me out. He knew all he needed to. But more importantly, doesn't it strike you as odd that he just happened to know when and where Nancy was going to meet with me to, er, have it out with me? Doesn't that seem just a little coincidental? Doesn't it smell like a setup to you? A nifty little plan concocted by two people, each with their own interests to serve?”

“Jesus! I don't believe you. Caught red-handed in your own lies, now you're going to try to tell me that it was all Josh and Nancy's plotting. I thought better of you—my mistake.”

Her eyes glittering like emeralds, she walked up to him and poking him in the chest with one finger, she said, “I don't want to hear any more. Just tell me one thing: did I or did I not hear you tell Nancy Blackstone, your future wife, that I was just a mere fling? That it was nothing serious, just a summer romance?”

“That's two things,” he pointed out.

“Goddamn it, Sloan! Did you say it or not?”

He studied her angry face for a long moment. “You said you were there,” he replied coolly. “So you heard what I said as well as anybody.”

Shelly had thought she was immune to the pain, thought he couldn't hurt her any longer, but his words were a knife to her heart. “Get out,” she said softly. “Get out of my house and out of my life.”

He smiled crookedly. “Normally I'd do anything to please a lady, but not this time.” He grabbed her and crushed her lips with a punishing kiss. Lifting his head, his golden eyes dueling with hers, he said softly, “I'll get out of your house for now. But not out of your life. You believe what you want about that night, but just remember this: Sometimes things aren't always what they seem.”

Shelly was so mad she could have spit nails. Why couldn't he, she wondered furiously several minutes later as she stood under the shower, just take defeat gracefully? Would it have hurt him simply to admit that he'd done wrong? She didn't understand how he could still try to blame her brother for what had happened. He was the one who had been at fault, not Josh! He was the one who had been screwing around behind her back. She grimaced. Or was it Nancy's back? At any rate he'd been screwing around behind
someone's
back. Why couldn't he just admit it? It wouldn't change anything, but maybe, she thought wistfully, if he'd admitted he'd been wrong, they could build a new relationship. Her lower lip drooped. Who was she kidding? There wasn't any way she'd ever completely trust him again. She'd believed him once, and look where that had gotten her.