Promise Canyon

Page 41

"It just had to be you," she said, looking up at him. "Sometimes I think you're always one step ahead of me. I was planning to see you back at the barn."
He pulled off his hat. "I guess Blue dumped you in the earthquake," he said.
"I don't know where she is. We're going to have to find her."
"She went home, Lilly." He went to her. "You're hurt," he said.
She touched her head. "I fell off the horse and down the hill. I'll be fine."
"Once we get you home." He took off his jacket and draped it around her.
"I don't need your jacket," she said with an unmistakable shiver. She tried to wiggle out of it.
"Niwe!" he said in Navajo. Stop! He pulled the jacket tighter around her. He reached for one of her hands, then the other, examining the palms. "Trying to break your fall?"
"It didn't work exactly the way I wanted it to."
He lifted his dark brows and couldn't help but smile at her. "I think you're in a very bitchy mood for someone who's just been rescued."
"I guess getting tossed down a hill made me cranky. Sue me."
He pulled a bottle of water out of his saddlebag, a handkerchief out of his back pocket, and cleaned her palms. He closed up the water and stuffed the bottle in his front shirt pocket. "Isn't it amazing how there's always a bright side? Now we're going to get some things out in the open."
"Well, if you were looking for a captive audience, you managed that. But this isn't how I planned it," she said.
He wrapped the damp handkerchief around the hand that had suffered the most. "I'm sure you didn't. I bet it's been years since you've been tossed. I'm going to get on the horse and pull you up. I'll try not to hurt your hand. When I'm astride, put your boot on my foot for leverage. I have to get you back--Annie and Nathaniel are out on the quads, in the dark, looking for you. The sooner we can call them in, the better. Try to be as little trouble as possible."
She made an insulted sound and looked away. "And you try to be nicer. This may not be ideal circumstances, but I did come out to the clinic to talk to you. And to listen to you." She couldn't deny she felt good in the folds of his coat. Good and warm, and the scent of him rising to her nose was beginning to intoxicate her, just as it always had. "Does my grandfather know people were looking for me?"
"I didn't call him," Clay said. "I was anxious to find you. Now I'm anxious to get you back and call him to be sure there were no injuries at the feed store. That was a big earthquake." He put a foot in the stirrup, pulled himself up into the saddle and reached out a hand to her.
She didn't move.
"Come on," he said. "We need to get back and be sure Yaz is all right."
She sighed and put her hand into his. "Careful, please," she said.
He wrapped his hand around her wrist to avoid the cuts and scrapes on her palm. "Foot on my foot," he said.
She did so and he effortlessly lifted her onto the horse in front of him. He settled her around the horn, sitting sideways.
"There have been aftershocks," she pointed out. "How's Streak handling this?"
"He's a little jittery, but solid. Good, for Streak. I think we're safe along the road." He turned the horse and went back toward the clinic. "Now, here's what I want to explain...
"Isabel and her family were so alien to me when I met them, I had no idea how complex they were. I mean, we have plenty of ordinary old dysfunction in the Tahoma family, but nothing that could prepare me for the Sorensons. I took the job for the exposure to other breeders and for the money, which was excellent. And she seemed a sweet woman with a cruel and domineering father, an absent mother who didn't care about her.... I had been a very long time without a woman in my life and it was natural for me to be attracted to her, to be willing to protect her. She's ten years older than I am, Lilly, and about a hundred times more screwed up. And that's comical--with my history, I should be the one messed up."
"You really don't have to make excuses for falling for her," Lilly said. "I saw her. I saw that horse trailer."
Clay smiled. Dane had suggested that the horse trailer had filled Lilly with envy. Well, small wonder--he had loved that horse trailer himself. He could live in that trailer for the rest of his life and be happy, as long as there wasn't horseshit in it. He laughed at his thought.
"Funny?" Lilly asked.
"Not at all. Damn fine trailer, isn't it? The Sorenson family wipe their asses with hundred dollar bills."
"How delightful," she said.
"Her looks and possessions haven't brought her much comfort. She...Isabel...was always at odds with her parents, especially her father. She was either in ecstasy because he praised her or in a deep depression because he was disappointed in her. This had nothing to do with me for a long time. She liked me, she seduced me, I was pretty easy prey--I was lonely and I worked hard. She asked me to live with her and I wouldn't without her father's permission, which came grudgingly. She was the one who wanted to be married, though she wouldn't visit my family on the reservation or have them at our private wedding. She wouldn't take my name. There was a long history of terrible relationships in her past and I stupidly thought that was the reason she didn't want to make a big deal out of our marriage, but it went deeper. I slowly realized that marrying a Navajo challenged her father. That was the only way she could stand up to him or get his attention. When she wanted a divorce two years later I wasn't surprised at all. But she couldn't let go."
"Ah! And was she the only one who couldn't let go?" Lilly asked.
"Yes," he answered. "Yes, she sought me out sometimes, but I never went to her. That's one of the reasons this job and this move appealed to me so much--I really couldn't deal with Isabel's controlling nature, her sick relationship with her father, her manipulation of me. Lilly, I don't know what has made her the way she is--abuse, certainly. I can't explain why I was so involved with her--sucked right into the craziness, maybe. But I don't love Isabel. Now I'm not sure I ever did."
"But I heard you tell her you'd always love her!"
"Yes, I said that. If you'd just listened a second longer you would have heard the rest. I was telling her I'd always love her, care about her, but we had to move on, move away from the relationship we had, that I couldn't be there for her anymore. I had already told her there was a woman in my life. But she's always had a terrible fear of having love withdrawn from her. I was going to tell her I loved her enough to wish her well." He ground his teeth. "All that has changed now."
"Changed how?"
"I don't feel sorry for her anymore. I didn't realize how petty and selfish she could be. And why didn't I? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Her father is a horrible parent. Whether we like it or not, the people who raise us leave an indelible mark." He pulled Streak to a stop. He lifted Lilly's chin and turned her to face him. "Isabel is a sad and damaged woman, and I did my best to honor my commitment, Lilly. But that is far in my past. I love you."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry for the way she treated you. I can't say how she knew you were the woman in my life--"
Lilly laughed. "Somehow, women can just sense who their competition is."
"I can hear the horses think, but I never figured out women," he said. "I had no idea she was coming and I was telling her to go away in the nicest possible way. Once you ran from me I lost all my patience and told her to just get out of here."
"Why should I believe this, Clay?"
"There's a more urgent question," he said. "What happened to you to make you unwilling to believe me? To be tempted to throw away things that made you so happy, like our love, like Blue, like working with Annie? What the hell happened to you?"
"I just have so much pride--"
"Bullshit," he said. "Take a risk. See what happens when you let me in, tell me the truth. So, you had a rotten romance. You mentioned it once. Is that it?"
"Bad relationship," she said with a shrug. "Painful breakup..."
"So who hasn't? I told you about mine--one when I was a kid, one more recent than that," he said. "Maybe we're both due a break."
"You might find I'm at least as screwed up as Isabel, and where would that leave you?"
"Try me," he begged.
"It was very bad," she said by way of explanation. "I was young."
He laughed lightly. "Younger than sixteen?" he asked.
She turned and looked up at him. "Thirteen," she said.
After a moment of shock, he tightened his arm around her. "Honey. I'm sorry. That's just too young for a girl to go through something like that. At least you weren't made a mother."
"But...but yes, I was. At only thirteen, a virgin who had given it up to a bad boy of eighteen, pregnant, and he ran like a fox."
He was so still that Streak stopped walking. Clay leaned down and nuzzled his cheek against hers. "Your child?" he asked in a whisper.
She looked into her lap. "I lost the baby. Probably a blessing--I wasn't ready to be a mother, obviously."
"I'm sorry, sweetheart."
"And when you came along, I wasn't ready to risk a relationship again. I feel as if I'll never be ready."
"But you were just a girl then. You're a woman now," he reassured her.
"That's what Dane said. But talk about damaged!" she said.
"You'd be surprised how many people survive things like this and go on to make better lives. People have survived so much worse--consider our ancestors."
"God, I felt like a princess, that he'd chosen me, though I had no idea how many he'd chosen before and after me. When I told him I was pregnant, he said it couldn't be his." She laughed hollowly. "As if I'd had lovers! He was the first and only! My grandfather loaded his rifle and my boyfriend ran for his life--but he'd already left me for at least a couple of girls. At only thirteen, my reputation was toast. That's when my grandpa decided we had to move, to start over. There were so many times growing up I felt that I'd lost everything--when I realized my mother left me when I was weeks old, when my grandmother died and was never coming back, when my grandfather took me away from home to try to save me from myself. And the boyfriend, denying he had any feelings for me and running from my grandfather's rifle..." She turned her head and looked up at him. "I just didn't think I could go through all that again. That's why it was so hard for me to trust."
"I'm going to find a way to show you that I'm the exception."
Tears began to roll down her cheeks. "I meant to be strong--I hate weakness. I didn't want to cry in front of you."
He wiped away the tears with the pad of his thumb. "I want you to cry only in front of me."
"I have been so afraid to love anyone..."
"Of course you have, but that part of your life is in the past. And we have more important business. We have to move forward together now."
"What if love just isn't enough? What if we can't make it work?"
"Bull. We've made lots of things work," he said. "You know, one of the many reasons I couldn't be a successful husband to Isabel--she nurtured her pain. Silently. She never threw it out there and told me everything that happened to her and how she wanted to get past it--I was always fighting an invisible demon.
"So--we have our junk," he said to her. "I think one way to handle it--after we make love, when we're soft and vulnerable--we should talk. Hold each other and talk about things that bother us, worry us. I promise to be honest. I promise to be patient." He kissed her lips lightly, tenderly. Then he lifted her chin again so he could look into those haunting blue eyes. "Can you, Lilly? Can you try with me? Because I love you so much."