Twin Cowboys for Tamara (29 page)

I just thought that we could talk things out, get our differences out on the table and move forward. But since you want to stay stuck in the past, I suppose I’ll stop wasting my time and just go.”

Tamara made it halfway out the kitchen when she heard his voice call out behind her.

“Don’t go.”

She froze on the threshold, swallowing down her tears before she turned to see him standing beside the table, leaning his weight on one crutch.

Tamara held her place on the threshold, refusing to come back into the kitchen any farther before he asked her. She watched his Adam’s apple jump up and down as if he had a hard time getting the words out, but she refused to help him. She had come more than halfway across the country to reconcile. At least he could meet her halfway.

“Everything I’ve ever done, Tam, I’ve done to keep you from getting hurt.”

“Are you talking about Noah or Jess and Jax?”

He closed his eyes and sighed before collapsing back into one of the chairs at the table. When he opened his eyes to look at her, they appeared full of pain—pain and hopelessness. “I hoped it wasn’t so.”

“Jess and Jax?”

“Tamara, don’t you have any respect for yourself?”

“I’m not going to stand here while you insult me.” She turned to go before his voice stopped her again.

“Tamara, I’m sorry. Please stay.”

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Her father wasn’t big on apologizing, mainly because he always thought himself right. Maybe ninety-five percent of the time he was, but
not
when it came to her love life. His opinion didn’t equate to law.

She needed to be allowed to make her own mistakes,
if
being with Jess and Jax indeed equated to a mistake.

“Why?”

“Why stay or why do I keep insulting you?”

“Both.”

“I don’t want to see you hurt, honey. I’m sorry if I come off as a mean-tempered old coot. Old habits die hard, and after your mother I just…” He shrugged, unable or unwilling to finish.

Tamara crossed the floor to take a seat across from him. “Do you have any specific problems with Jess and Jax?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

“I can think of a few right off the back, but since I’m all right with them, then I don’t see why everyone else shouldn’t be.”

“You’re either being incredibly dense or wearing some rose-colored glasses.”

“Maybe I’m being a little bit of both.”

Her dad shook his head, a sad look on his face.

Tamara reached across the table to take his hand and squeeze.

“Don’t look so miserable. It’s not that bad.”

“Ain’t it?”

“Why don’t you come right out and tell me what exactly it is that’s bothering you about them so we’re under no illusions.”

“Don’t you realize how all-fired hard it’s going to be for you being with a white man, much less two?”

“Not to mention they’re almost ten years younger than me.”

“Compared to the rest, that’s small potatoes.”

“I’m glad you think so.” She stared at him for a long moment then said, “Tell me you don’t really have a problem with them being white.”

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“Of course I don’t have a problem with them boys being white. If I tried to pick a man for you, I probably couldn’t do much better than Jess or Jax—just not
both
of ‘em.”

Tamara fought a smile and couldn’t believe she sat here talking to her father about her threesome. When she didn’t say anything else, Dad threw up his hands as if in frustration.

“
Why
does it have to be both of ‘em?”

“The heart wants what it wants.”

“That’s simplistic bull crap and you know it.”

“But isn’t that the way you felt about Mom? Your heart wanted her, wanted to be with her and couldn’t anyone tell you different?”

“Your mother doesn’t have anything to do with this here discussion.”

“She has everything to do with it!” Now Tamara threw her hands up and stood from the table to glare down at him. “Was it difficult for you being with my mother? Did the pressure of being married to a white man turn out to be too much for her and that’s why she went away?”

“That was a piece of it.”

He’d said it so quietly, as if saying the words hurt.

Tamara barely heard him and came closer but didn’t sit back down, didn’t want to get comfortable again in case she had to make a quick escape from his honesty.

“What else made her leave? Did she leave because of me?”

“Oh, baby, no. It weren’t you. It weren’t never you.”

She sat down, couldn’t hold out any longer, unconsciously leaning close, toward him, as if searching for reassurance. “Why? Why did she leave?”

“Tamara, don’t do this to yourself.”

“Don’t do it to myself, or don’t do it to you?” He held out on her.

He didn’t want to just not hurt her. He tried to protect himself. Well, Tamara was tired of the half-truths and lies, and as much as she feared knowing exactly what had driven her mother away, she feared not Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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knowing more. “I
need
to know, Dad. What happened between you and Mom?”

Dad closed his eyes and wiped a hand down his face as if trying to wipe away the memories or his past, or at the very least, wipe away the ones involving Tamara’s mother.

“Was it that bad?” she croaked. She couldn’t imagine it easy to talk about the woman that left him more than three decades ago without a backwards glance. But did he think it any easier for her to ask and hear? “Please don’t try to censure what you want to say to make it easy on me. Just tell me the truth. I can take it.”

“Yeah, but can I?” he mumbled.

Tamara reached across to take his hand on the table and squeezed.

“Dad?”

“This is hard for me, Tamara. I ain’t thought about the hows and whys of what happened between you and me and me and your mother in a long time. I ain’t needed to ’cause I knew I was in the right on both counts. But in the last few weeks I been thinking that I made some mistakes in my past I need to rectify.”

Tamara’s heart sped, pounding against her chest so hard until it shook her entire body. “Did you send her away?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that. But I guess I didn’t exactly make it easy for her to stay.”

“How hard did you make it?”

“I didn’t fight her when she said she wanted to leave, that she wasn’t ready for married life and a family.”

“Then she did leave because of me.”

“She left ’cause she was a spoiled brat who didn’t want to deal with responsibility.”

“You hate her.”

“No. I hate myself for believing her the right woman for me, for believing her the right woman to bear and take care of my children.”

He shrugged and stared at her, squeezing her hand back. “When we get right down to it, I’m just as much to blame for everything that Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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happened as your mother, probably more so. At eighteen when we met Jasmine had little life experience. I had a sight more at twenty-six. I think that and the glamour of my cowboy life and the rodeo just swept her off her feet.”

Tamara could see a young woman being swept up by her father in his hey day. He could be charismatic as a snake charmer when he wanted to be, and he wasn’t a bad looking man. But that still didn’t excuse her mother for leaving. He hadn’t forced her into marriage, after all. Had he? “Was Mom pregnant when you got married?”

“Not by a long shot. She didn’t get pregnant until after I decided to leave the circuit and settled down to have a family. I didn’t want to be on the road away from her and any kids of ours. She seemed okay with my decision. We even celebrated my
retirement
. We probably made you then.”

Tamara watched as her father’s face softened with love and whimsy, wondered what went wrong between her parents’

irreconcilable differences. What went wrong between her and her father?

“I think what happened between Jasmine and me made me so hard on you and Noah. I saw your mother and me in you and Noah.”

She looked at her father and saw the honesty in his eyes. She also saw realization dawning, as if the root of all their problems had just been revealed to him that minute.

“I’m not my mother.”

“No, but you were young like her when her and me got together.

You needed time to live, get out and see the world, not be tied down to a cowboy with no prospects except the skills in his hands.”

“It was good enough for Mom. And what if that’s what I wanted?”

“That’s just it. It weren’t good enough for Jasmine. At least she didn’t think so. Besides, you
wanted
to be a lawyer. Noah would have been a distraction you didn’t need. You would have never gone away to New York had you gotten tied down to Noah.”

“How do you know that?”

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He just looked at her, unwilling or unable to answer.

Looking at him, Tamara had some realizations of her own. “Is that why the cold shoulder before I left? You didn’t want to be a distraction?”

“That cold shoulder went both ways. I just went with the flow and let you shut me out. It was easier than trying to fight you and convince you that I hadn’t made a mistake.”

“So you just gave up and let me go thinking you hated me.”

“You know I didn’t hate you.”

“I didn’t know anything of the sort. All I did know was that my love for Noah put me on your shit list when I used to be the apple of your eye.”

“You weren’t never on my shit list.”

“It certainly didn’t feel like it.” She stared at him, waiting for him to respond. When he said nothing she asked, “What was so wrong with Noah? And why did you have to
fire
him? He didn’t deserve that.”

“There weren’t nothing wrong with him. He was a good enough fella. He just wasn’t the right man for you. And we didn’t fire him.”

“You didn’t?”

Her father shook his head, averting his eyes with a sheepish look on his face before he raised his eyes to look at her again. “We gave him a healthy severance package and references for him to work at another ranch.”

“You bought him off?” And Noah had
let
them? So she guessed her father was right after all. He didn’t love her.

“That’s not exactly how I would put it. We just made him see things our way, and he agreed that the best course of action would be to leave and let you get on with your life.”

He’d still let her father and Jeremiah buy him off. But she guessed she couldn’t blame him. Stay with her and suffer the self-righteous wrath of her father and his best friend. Or take the money, run and live in relative peace to fight another day and be with another woman Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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who didn’t have as many headaches attached as she did. She couldn’t blame him, wasn’t exactly sure that she wouldn’t have done the same thing. But Noah’s defection still hurt.

Maybe her father had done her a favor, but it still didn’t make him right to interfere with her life the way he did.

Dad took her other hand in his and held them both. “Don’t you see, Tamara? He wasn’t good enough for you, not nearly good enough.”

“That was my decision to make.”

“I couldn’t let you make a mistake that could ruin your whole life.

I…I did it with your mother, and I didn’t want to do it again if I could avoid it.”

“Are you saying you ruined my mother’s life when you married her?”

“I’m saying she and her kin felt that way.”

Tamara shook her head, couldn’t help thinking that this conversation should have taken place a long time ago.

She knew next to nothing about her mother or her mother’s family. And she had been okay with that through most of her life. She figured if the woman didn’t want anything to do with her then fine, she didn’t want anything to do with her mother. Talking to her father now, however, made her curiosity grow, made her hungry to know the woman who bore her.

“Do you know where she is?”

He hesitated, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer her at all before he finally said, “Once she left, I ain’t never kept in touch with her.”

He’d worded that very deliberately, and Tamara had a bad feeling about why. Maybe he hadn’t kept in touch with her, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t tried to keep in touch with him.

She decided on another tactic to drop the subject for the moment and come at him again from another angle. Her father gave her the Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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perfect opening when he asked, “We need to move on and leave the past in the past and deal with your current hitch.”

“If you mean Jess and Jax, I don’t exactly see them as a problem or a
hitch
.”

“You don’t see being with two men a hitch?”

“No more than I see being with a younger, older or white man a hitch.”

“Do you love ’em?”

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t mean it like that, like because you grew up with them like family love. Do you
love
’em?”

“What difference does it make?” She didn’t like being on the defensive and decided now would be a good time to turn the tables back. “Did you love my mother?”

“We’ve already covered this ground. Jasmine has nothing to do with this heart-to-heart.”