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He heard the determination in her voice and a hint of something more. Desperation?
Refusing to be moved by it, he shook his head and continued to brush down the horse. “I’ve got a list a mile long of people waiting for me to train their horses. I haven’t got time to take on any more.”
“I’ll pay you your standard fee, plus a percentage of the horse’s sale price.”
Startled by the unusual offer, he glanced her way…and immediately wished he hadn’t. Seeing her again brought every memory, every heartbreak, winging back. Eyes the color of aged whiskey; long, honey-blond hair that tumbled over her shoulders in soft waves; delicate features that had haunted his nights for seven long years.
Tearing his gaze away, he tossed the brush into the tack box and plucked out a currycomb. “Like I said. I don’t need any more business.”
“Whit, please—”
“No,” he snapped, then spun to glare at her. “Now, if you want me to recommend someone, I will. Otherwise I’d appreciate it if you’d get off my land.”
Melissa sat parked in front of the school, her SUV at the head of the car pool line. A soft breeze blew through the open window on her left, ruffling her hair, but it didn’t come close to cooling the heat in her cheeks. She was embarrassed. Humiliated. Furious. Panic-stricken. It had taken her weeks to work up the nerve to approach Whit about breaking Matt’s horse. Weeks spent searching for another option, anything, so long as it didn’t include Whit. In the end, she was forced to admit he was her only option.
And he’d turned her down flat.
Not that she had expected him to leap at her offer. She’d known going in that there was a strong chance he would refuse. What she hadn’t known was how much it would hurt when he did.
The doors to the school flew open and children spilled out, shrieking and laughing as they raced for the cars that lined the narrow lane. Melissa quickly unfastened her seat belt and pushed open her door. Before she could step down, a pair of arms vised around her legs.
“Hi, Mom!”
Chuckling, she scrubbed her knuckles over her son’s blond hair. “Hi, yourself, kiddo.” She reached down and lifted him up and over her, then plopped him into the passenger seat beside her.
“And how was your day?” she asked as she fastened the seat belt around him.
“Joey Matthews threw up all over his art paper and Shane Ragsdale’s dog had thirteen puppies. Can I have one? Please? Can I?”
She turned the key, starting the engine. “We already have a dog,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but Champ’s not mine. He’s yours. I want a puppy that’s all mine.”
She checked for traffic, then pulled out onto the street. “One dog is all we can handle right now.”
“Please, Mom?” he begged, straining against the seat belt. “I’ll feed him and take care of him. You won’t have to do nothin’, I promise.”
“Anything,” she corrected automatically, then sighed, feeling as if she was always saying no to her son. “We can’t afford to feed another animal right now,” she explained gently. “You know that.”
He slumped against the seat in a sulk. “Being poor sucks,” he mumbled.
“Grady Jacobs!” she cried. “We are not poor.”
“Then how come you have to sell Dad’s horse?”
“Because we need money more than we need a horse,” she replied, then gave him a stern look. “But that does not mean we are poor.” Jutting her chin, she faced the windshield again. “We’re just experiencing a temporary cash flow problem.”
“Angela Hanes’s mom said we don’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out.”
It was all she could do to keep the vehicle on the road. “Angela’s mother said that to you?” she asked in amazement.
“No, Angela did. She heard her mom talking to Mrs. Henley on the phone. I asked Angela what it meant and she said it meant we’re poor. That when Dad died he left us broke.”
She narrowed her eyes, furious to know that her friends and neighbors were talking about her behind her back. “Well, Mrs. Hanes is wrong,” she informed him. “We are not broke.”
“Then why can’t I have a puppy?”
She closed her eyes a moment, praying for patience, for just the right words to make her son understand their financial situation without letting him know how desperate it really was.
“Before Matt died,” she said carefully, “we had two incomes to pay our bills. With him gone now, we only have the money I make.”
“I could help you so you could earn more money.”
Her heart melting at the offer, she reached to smooth the hair back from his brow. “Thanks, sweet heart. But I don’t want you worrying about our financial situation, okay? Once we sell Matt’s horse, everything will be fine.”
And everything would be fine, she told herself as she turned her gaze to the road again.
Just as soon as she found someone to break Matt’s horse.
After the unexpected visit from Melissa on Monday, Whit’s week went downhill in a hurry. Tuesday, one of the studs in his care cut his foreleg while fighting with another stud through the fence that separated them. It required a call to the vet and another to inform the stud’s owner, which cost him almost a full day’s work. To make matters worse, Wednesday night a raccoon got into the feed room and tore into the sacks of oats stored there, ruining three perfectly good sacks of feed and creating a hell of a mess for Whit to clean up on Thursday. Then on Sunday, a gelding Whit was working with bucked him off, conveniently dumping him in a fresh pile of manure. By the time he returned the horse to its stall and limped back to the house for a shower and a change of clothes, it was pushing noon.
He considered blowing off going to the Bar-T, where his stepbrothers and their families gathered for Sunday lunch, and kicking back with a beer and an afternoon of ESPN instead. But he knew, if he did, the entire Tanner clan would probably show up at his house, looking for him.
Shuddering at the thought of having all those people crammed into his small house, he climbed into his truck and made the drive to the Bar-T. Thanks to the gelding and the landing spot he’d chosen for Whit, he was the last to arrive.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he slid into the empty chair beside Rory.
Rory glanced his way, then pulled back, with a frown. “What happened to you?”
Grimacing, Whit rubbed a self-conscious hand over the bruise the fall had left on his cheek. “Horse pitched me off.”
Ry passed Whit a platter stacked high with chicken-fried steak. “If you want, I can take a look at that for you later,” he offered. “Make sure there aren’t any broken bones.”
Whit forked up a steak and dropped it onto his plate before passing the platter on. “It’s nothing. Just a bruise.”
Maggie gave her husband, Ace, a pointed look. “I’ve heard that one before,” she said dryly.
Familiar with the story of Ace’s fall from a horse and his refusal to allow Maggie to take him to the doctor, everyone shared a laugh at Ace’s expense.
“Laugh all you want,” Ace said grumpily. “But a man who can’t take a tumble from a horse, without running to some sawbones to get patched up, isn’t much of a man. Right, Whit?”
Whit glanced around the table. With two doctors and two nurses waiting expectantly for his answer, he decided discretion was the better part of valor. “Whatever you say, Ace.”
“Coward,” Rory said out of the corner of his mouth.
“I’ve already got one bruise,” Whit told him. “I’m not looking for another.”
With a rueful shake of his head, Rory returned to his meal.
“Looks like the lawyers are going to have the old man’s estate ready to settle in a couple of weeks,” Ace said. “We’ll need to pick a time we can all meet to sign the necessary papers.”
A discussion followed, but Whit tuned it out and focused on his meal. Although Ace had told him he would inherit a fifth of the old man’s estate, the same as the rest of his stepbrothers, Whit had informed Ace that he wanted no part of anything that was Buck’s.
“What about you, Whit?” Ace asked. “Is May 29 at two all right with you?”
Caught with his fork halfway to his mouth, Whit glanced around the table and found everyone looking at him expectantly. He slowly lowered the fork to his plate. “I already told y’all I don’t want any part of Buck’s estate.”
“And we understand your reasons for feeling that way,” Ace assured him. “But you’re getting an equal share the same as the rest of us, whether you want it or not.”
“You know damned good and well that if Buck had left a will, he wouldn’t have named me in it,” Whit said.
“That may be true,” Ace conceded. “But there’s a strong chance he wouldn’t have named us, either, since he wasn’t on speaking terms with any of his offspring at the time of his death. Since he didn’t leave a will, the law requires that his estate be divided equally among his children.”
“I’m not one of his children,” Whit reminded him.
“By law you are. I have the adoption papers to prove it.”
Whit slumped back in his chair. “Come on, Ace,” he said in frustration. “Can’t you just tell the lawyers to cut me out?”
Ace opened his hands in a helpless gesture. “Sorry, the law is the law. And without your signature,” he added, “the estate can’t be settled, nor can the assets be awarded.” Knowing he’d put Whit on the spot, he reared back smugly in his chair. “So, how does May 29 at two work for you to meet and sign the papers?”
Scowling, Whit stabbed his fork into his steak. “I’ll sign whatever papers are necessary, but I’ll never touch a cent of Buck’s money.”
“That’s your prerogative,” Rory said, then quickly changed the subject. “So what was Melissa doing over at your house the other day?”
His frown deepening, Whit cut into his steak. “She wanted me to break a horse for her.”
“Melissa Jacobs?” Elizabeth, Woodrow’s wife, asked curiously.
“One and the same,” Rory replied, then gave Whit a speculative look. “Didn’t the two of you use to date?”
Whit stiffened, unaware that Rory—or anyone else, for that matter—had known that he’d dated Melissa. Breaking open a roll, he lifted his shoulder in what he hoped came across as an indifferent shrug. “We went out for a while.”
“Really?” Ace said. “I didn’t know Melissa ever dated anyone other than Matt.”
And you could’ve gone on thinking that, Whit thought resentfully, if Rory had kept his dang mouth shut.
Avoiding Ace’s gaze, he slathered his roll with butter. “Like I said, it was only for a while.”
Elizabeth shook her head sadly. “I don’t know Melissa all that well, but I feel so sorry for her. Losing a husband in such a tragic accident is bad enough, but to discover that he has left you penniless must be awful.”
Whit slowly lowered his knife to his plate and stared at Elizabeth. “Matt left Melissa broke?”
Elizabeth glanced uneasily at the others at the table. “Well, yes. At least, that’s what I heard. I assumed it was true.”
“It’s true enough,” Woodrow confirmed. “Dillon Phillips bought a plow from her last week. Said he got it for a good price as she needed the money to make her mortgage.”
Whit snorted a breath and picked up his fork. “If that’s the story she gave him, she was feeding him a line of bull. There’s no mortgage on that property. I know for a fact that Matt inherited the farm free and clear from his granddaddy.” He scooped up a forkful of potatoes, then added, “But even if it was true she was broke, Melissa wouldn’t have to sell off assets to make her note. Mike would give her whatever she needed.”
Macy held up a hand. “Wait a minute. You’ve lost me. Who is Mike and what does he have to do with Melissa?”
“Mike’s Melissa’s father,” Rory explained. “Lives over in Lampasas. He and Buck were old running buddies. With Buck gone now, Mike’s probably the single most wealthy man around these parts.”
“If that’s the case,” Macy said, “then it would seem that she’d ask her father for money, if she truly needed it.”
“Not necessarily.”
When everyone turned to look at Kayla, she lifted her hands. “Heck, I wouldn’t. It’s a matter of pride.”
Ry gave his wife’s arm an indulgent pat. “Yes, dear. We’re all familiar with your pride.”
“Kayla may have a point,” Rory said in his sister-in-law’s defense. “If you think about it, it’s the only explanation that makes any sense. As I recall, Melissa and Mike butted heads a lot while she was growing up.”
“I can vouch for that,” Ace agreed. “I remember more than once hearing Mike complain to Buck about Melissa being stubborn as a mule.”
“Then it’s unlikely that she would go to her father for help,” Elizabeth said, then shook her head sadly. “And that makes me feel even more sorry for her. At a time like this, a woman needs the support of her family.”
Whit swallowed hard. He knew from personal experience that Rory’s and Ace’s comments about Mike and Melissa butting heads were true. Mike was a hard man to get along with under any circumstances, but the level of control he’d tried to wield over his only daughter would have made even the most docile of individuals fight at the chains he kept her bound with.
And Elizabeth was right, as well. Considering Melissa’s past relationship with her father, it seemed unlikely that she would turn to him in her time of need.
But if she couldn’t go to her father for help, he wondered, who could she go to?
He wiped a shaky hand down his mouth, remembering her visit to his place and the desperation in her voice, when she’d asked him to train the horse.
And how had he responded to her plea for help?
He’d not only refused, he’d ordered her off his land.
He quickly shook off the guilt that tried to settle on his shoulders. He wouldn’t feel badly about the way he’d treated Melissa. Hell, why should he? he thought defensively. She’d certainly never concerned herself with his feelings. He’d given her his heart and what had she done in return?
She’d eloped with his best friend.
Two
Though Whit continued to fight the guilt, it dogged his steps for a week, distracting him from his work and robbing him of much-needed sleep at night. He didn’t want to feel badly for the way he’d treated Melissa. And he sure as hell didn’t want to feel sorry for her. But that’s exactly what he found himself doing throughout the week.
By Saturday he was willing to do just about anything to shake loose from the guilt, and the grand opening for Nature’s Way, Macy’s landscape and nursery business, offered him the perfect escape. He wasn’t much on socializing, but he figured going to the grand opening was better than spending another evening at home alone with his conscience.
Even if he did have to wear a suit.
In spite of his anxiousness to attend the party, he was one of the last to arrive and had to park two blocks away and walk to the greenhouse where the opening was to take place.
One step inside the cavernous building reminded him why he normally avoided social gatherings. The noise level alone would have made a deaf man clap his hands over his ears. The music itself wasn’t too bad—or at least what he could hear of it sounded pleasant enough. It was the hundred or so conversations going on at the same time that made his head ache.
A waiter rushed by, balancing a tray filled with flutes of champagne on his shoulder, and Whit quickly stepped out of the way to avoid a collision. Easing back to stand against the wall and out of harm’s way, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked around.
The last time he’d visited the nursery, the greenhouse had looked like…well, a greenhouse, with long wooden tables laden with plants running the length of the room and tangled hoses trailing over the floor. Now the place looked more like one of those fancy solariums he’d seen featured in the home and garden magazines his sisters-in-law were always drooling over—a fete he figured only Macy could pull off with such style.
