Cattleman's Courtship (19 page)

“We never had much of a chance to talk the last time we were together.”

Cara wasn’t sure where he was going, but he guessed he referred to the conversation that had initiated the breakup.

Nicholas moved his thumb over her lips again, then gave her a careful smile. “When I found out that you had actually made wedding plans, it made me rethink all the questions I’d had when you left the first time. Why couldn’t you wait for me to come back so we could make our own wedding plans?”

The whisper of the leaves around them filled the silence following his simple question as she struggled to find the right response—to find the right words to articulate her hurt and betrayal.

Cara leaned away from him to give herself what space she could. “Why did you leave even though I asked you to stay?” Begged him to stay, but she wasn’t bringing up that humiliation again.

Nicholas sighed and lowered his hand. “I told you then and I’m telling you now. The ranch needed the money.”

“And now? Does the ranch still need the money?” The words fell between them like a glove being thrown down.

I need to know,
Cara thought, justifying her repeat of the question she’d asked him a few moments ago.
I need to know where things are going before I follow him down that path again.

Nicholas looked away and Cara followed his gaze, her eyes tracing the lines of the hills and valleys. She let herself get drawn into the vast, open spaces stretching out and away from where they sat.

“This ranch is part of my identity. Part of who I am and where I came from. Some Chapman sweat and even some Chapman blood is in every square inch of this place. Those are my roots, my heritage and I have to protect that.”

His passion resonated with the very thing she had been looking for in her life. Yet she heard an underlying tone that disconcerted her.

“Because of your mother?” Cara spoke the question cautiously. Nicholas seldom spoke of his mother. The other time they went riding, she thought he hovered on the verge of telling her more.

Nicholas got up, walking toward the cliff overlooking the valley. “This is all Chapman land, slowly built up over the years. When my mother left my father she got enough of the ranch in the divorce settlement that it bordered on being broke. She had no right to this land. She had no right to not only break my father’s heart, but to almost break this ranch.”

“And now she’s gone,” Cara said quietly.

When she and Nicholas were first dating, the only information she got from him was that Barb had left his father and that she had died shortly after remarrying.

“And the money with her. So I keep working,” Nicholas said. “And my work on the rigs is bringing this ranch back to where it should be.” He turned back to her. “I’m not doing this just for myself,” he added. “I’m also doing this for my father.”

Cara held his gaze and she heard it again. The faint note of urgency. As if something else was going on. And then it became clear.

“Why are you doing this for him?”

“Because he’s had a hard life. Because he doesn’t deserve what my mother did to him. I need to protect him.”

“From what?” Cara’s frustration with Dale Chapman and Nicholas merged. “He’s a grown man, he doesn’t need your protection.”

“What are you trying to say?” His voice grew quiet, but carried a weight that made Cara want to back down.

But she wasn’t the quiet, soft-spoken person she’d been before. She’d found her own way, lived on her own and made her own decisions. Nicholas had to see what was going on because it seemed no one else dared tell him.

“All the work you do, all the money you make, is poured into this ranch. And that is admirable. But did your father do the same with what was given to him?” She paused, wondering if she dared venture into the place she was heading. But if anything was going to happen between them, if anything was to be rebuilt, it had to be on a different foundation than before. Or else it would fall as easily as before.

“He worked for this place, too,” Nicholas said, turning away from her. But he didn’t sound as confident as he had before. As if her comment had seeded the tiniest bit of doubt in his view of his father.

“Did he?” A tiny voice cautioned Cara as she struggled to find the right words. Her intention was not to put his father down, but to give him the viewpoint of an outsider looking in. “He spent a lot of time on the road going to his rodeos, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. He loved doing it.”

“Don’t you think you made it easy for him to continue doing that?”

“How so?” His question sounded defensive and Cara fought the urge to change the subject.

“I wonder if, by working, you enable him to keep doing something that doesn’t benefit the ranch. He doesn’t spend as much time on this ranch as you do and it seems to me the bulk of the work gets done when you’re home.”

Nicholas shot her a look that would have pierced her any other time, but they had come to an important crossroads in their relationship and she had to forge on. She stood and walked closer to him.

“When I broke our engagement, I felt as if you chose working the rigs over me. And when you made that choice, in my eyes, it also seemed that you chose your father over me. You were choosing to make the ranch viable and easy to work for him. Your priority was him. So if you think I’m attacking your father, you’re wrong. I’m just bringing up my view of the situation.”

“I told you, I work because the ranch needs the money,” Nicholas said with a weary sigh. “I got tired of watching my father fight with bills and bill collectors. Got tired of fixing fences with baler twine instead of being able to afford new boards. I promised myself I would do what I could to help him out. And there was no way I was bringing another woman, my future wife, onto the ranch until I was set up to give her the support my mother didn’t get.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know my mother left because money was always so tight. I didn’t want to run that risk again. My dangerous work allows me to put money into the ranch and spend time here, as well.”

“But not as much as you like.”

Nicholas blew out a sigh. “This is reality, Cara. My work brings in much-needed money. I refuse to constantly worry about which bill to pay and which one to let ride. I don’t want to live like that, Cara. And I know you don’t either.”

“What are you trying to say?” A chill feathered down her spine as the old shame slipped back into her life.

He knew little from her past because shame had kept her tight-lipped about her life before moving in with her wealthy aunt and uncle.

“I remember that brand-new car you tooled around town with when you were in high school. You always wore the best clothes and could afford to do what you wanted. I know Alan paid for your education. You’ve had it pretty easy living with your aunt and uncle.”

Anger sparked at his easy assumption. “But you don’t know what my life was like before that.”

Nicholas turned to face her square on. “No. I don’t. You never say much about that.”

She heard the challenge in his voice and before she could stop herself, her anger made her spill the words out.

“You think I don’t know what doing without is like? You think I’ve had it so incredibly easy? My mother was so intent on living the way she wanted that it didn’t matter to her what I wore or what I ate.” Cara took a breath to stop herself but it was as if the words, so long suppressed, were drawn out by the way Nicholas looked at her. “While I lived with my mother I missed meals. I had to pack my stuff in garbage bags because we were getting evicted from a motel. I learned how to make a pound of hamburger stretch over four meals for two. I lived in a motel. I lived in a trailer park and even a tent on a campground. An adventure, my mother told me—” Her voice broke and she pressed a hand on her lips, halting the flow of memories.

She shouldn’t have let him get her so angry. She was telling him things she’d never told Aunt Lori and Uncle Alan.

Though she loved her mother, she struggled with guilt as she tried putting the shame of that part of her life behind her.

And when her mother died, her disloyalty and guilt were compounded.

“Cara, I’m sorry—”

Cara held her hand up to stop him. “The last thing I want is your pity. It’s just that you made me angry. Thinking you have the monopoly on struggling and doing without. Thinking that money will fix all that’s wrong in your life.”

The only sound in the ensuing silence was the riffling of a benevolent breeze through the leaves of the trees and the sigh of her horse as she shifted her weight to another foot.

After a few minutes Nicholas spoke.

“I never knew, Cara. And though you don’t want my pity, I want to tell you that I’m sorry for assuming your life was easy. I wish you would have told me sooner.”

Cara ran her hand up and down one arm, staring over the hills lying below them. The hills belonging to Nicholas and his father. The land that had been in their family for five generations.

She wondered if he realized how much she envied him his roots and his stability. His history.

“Money was never that important to me,” she continued. “Even though I grew up without it. I never wanted a fancy car or nice clothes, though I did enjoy them.” She turned to him and caught his hands in hers. “I’ve lived with and I’ve lived without. And what made the times in my life when I had money more significant was the fact that I was cared for. The money was one of my aunt and uncle’s expressions of love and sacrifice.” She held his gaze, willing him to understand. “I would gladly have traded that car in, lost all the clothes, given up the paid-for education, just to have my mother back. Just to have her spend some time with me and see her eyes shine when she saw me.”

Nicholas’s gaze softened and he squeezed her hands back. “I’m sorry, Cara. I never knew.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Just for the record, you’re the only person I’ve ever told this to. Neither Trista nor my aunt and uncle know how poorly we lived all those years.” Cara’s knees wobbled and she lowered herself to the grass once again.

“Why haven’t you told them?” Nicholas moved and sat down beside her.

Cara wrapped her arms around her knees and drew in a long, slow breath as if preparing herself. “I knew what they thought of my mother. Uncle Alan didn’t particularly care for her and I also knew he was ashamed of her.” She paused, the old guilt and the old confusion returning. “But she was my mother and I loved her. And yet…”

“You didn’t know how to love her.”

Cara rocked slowly back and forth as her emotions returned to the old, endless circling between disloyalty and love. “Yeah. I guess you would know about that.”

“I used to think God would punish me for hating my mother. For wishing she was dead. Then when she did die…” His voice trailed off and Cara placed her hand on his arm. “When she did die, I thought God was punishing me for sure.”

“I don’t know if God operates that way,” Cara said. “I’ve had my own grievances with Him, but I’m slowly finding out not everything is about me. Sometimes it’s simply about the choices that people make and their consequences.”

“And what about your choices, Cara?”

“Now it’s my turn to wonder what you mean.”

Nicholas reached out and ran a callused finger down her cheek. “What choices are you going to make in the next week? What about your job?”

Did she dare pin all her hopes and dreams on the man standing in front of her?

“I don’t know what to do,” she said finally. “Especially when it seems like things are changing between us.”

Nicholas raised his finger to her lips and as he traced their outline, he gave her a rueful smile. “I don’t know what’s happening either, Cara. I feel like we’re the same people and yet not. I feel like we’re both in different places making decisions with new information. I don’t think we’re heading in the same direction as we were before. But I like to think we can go in that direction together.”

Cara held his gaze, her own heart lifting in response to his comment. Had things truly changed to bring them both to the same place in this relationship? Was Nicholas really willing to make different choices? Was she?

Even as she wanted to let go of her worries and concerns, a question still hovered. A fear she couldn’t articulate.

Please, Lord,
she prayed,
help us through this uncertainty.
Then she gave Nicholas a cautious smile. Reached out and caressed his face, tracing his own smile.

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see then, won’t we?”

Then he leaned closer and caught her lips in a warm, satisfying kiss.

Nicholas held the phone, his boss’s phone number up on the screen. Did he dare make this phone call? Could he quit now?

One more year of work would pay off the tractor and give them a partial down payment on a parcel of land coming up for sale.

Stick with the plan,
his father had urged.

But the thought of being gone again cut him to the core. Because he wouldn’t just be leaving the ranch, he’d be leaving Cara.

He thought back to their moment on the hill. The things they had talked about. The honesty they’d both displayed, so unlike the first time they were together.