“But you never did say why your fiancée broke off the engagement,” she prodded. “Why was there no happily ever after?”
He raised his gaze to hers. “I wasn’t always the good guy, Nikki.”
She felt the color drain from her face. What? Did he beat women? Take steroids? Illegal sports betting?
Did she want to know? And if she did, would she be able to write about it?
She had a feeling her life was about to get a lot more complicated, and not in a good way.
Chapter 23
Brian watched Celeste as she stood in front of the stall. Her back had stiffened. He almost wished he hadn’t asked about her parents.
“I had foster parents,” she finally said.
She glanced over her shoulder, then looked away, but there was something in her eyes-so much pain.
He had a bad feeling in his gut. “Did they abuse you?” He couldn’t imagine anyone hurting Celeste. Just the thought made him furious.
“No, they were very good to me.”
He relaxed a little. At least they hadn’t hurt her.
“I never really felt as if I belonged, you know,” she went on. “I always felt as though I was on the outside looking in. They were nice, but it wasn’t the same as being part of a family. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew if I did something wrong or if circumstances changed, I could be shipped off to another family.”
“What about your parents?” he asked softly.
She was silent.
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it. My parents were killed when I was a baby. I know what it feels like to grow up without a mom and dad, although my grandparents were great, and I had Cal, too.”
She took a deep breath. “My father is in prison. He has been since I was eight.” She faced him and there was such sadness on her face that it tugged at his heart.
“What happened?”
“He murdered my mother.”
Ah, damn. He took a deep breath. “Where were you when it happened?” He clenched his hands. He’d never expected her to tell him that her father had murdered her mom. He couldn’t even imagine how hard that must’ve been.
“At school. When I came home, Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table, the gun beside him, just staring at it. My mother was lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. I rushed over to her. Her eyes were open but I think I already knew she was dead. I ran out of the house crying. The police came and that was the last time I saw my father.”
“You don’t know why he did it?”
She seemed to snap out of the past. “When I was older, I looked up the newspaper articles. We were well off-some said rich-but my father apparently made bad investments, and then he lost his job.” She hugged her middle. “He killed her because he’d lost his job and they were going to lose everything. They say he planned to kill me, then himself. But when I came home, he didn’t make a move toward the gun. He just kept sitting there staring at it.”
Brian walked toward her, then took her into his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“My foster parents gave me a letter from him once. I was nine. He’d apparently tracked me down.” She raised her face. “I remember what he was like, what our life was like, and it had been happy. We lived in a big house and I took music lessons. I even had a dog, but when they took me away, I never saw her again.”
For the first time in his life, Brian felt utterly helpless. All he could do was hold her close.
“I threw the letter in the trash without reading it. My mother was a kind and gentle woman. If I listen hard enough, I can hear her laughter and sometimes I see her smile. He ripped her from me. He took everything away.”
“Not everything,” Brian told her. “You’re still alive and you have heart and spirit. No one can take that from you.”
Celeste laid her head on his shoulder. He wanted to make it all better, but he knew she would always live with her pain. Damn, that’s why she’d only had one suitcase and a junky car. She probably didn’t want possessions to rule her life like it had her father’s.
He kissed the top of her head just before she pulled away. Her expression was mortified.
“I can’t believe I opened up like that. I’ve never just spilled my guts before. I didn’t even talk about my father with my foster families. And I barely know you.”
She started to turn away from him again, but he clasped her arm. “It’s okay to talk about what hurts, and we might have just met, but I feel as though I’ve known you forever. I can’t explain it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I want to get to know you a lot better.”
“Even though my father is in prison?”
“But you had nothing to do with the choices he made. He ruined your life, your mother’s, and his. I don’t care about your past. I don’t think that’s who you are.”
“I think I could like you a lot.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“I don’t know. I don’t stay in one place very long,” she warned.
“You don’t have to run away from here. You’re safe now.”
“Safe. I’m not sure I know the meaning of the word.”
“I’ll teach it to you.”
When she looked up at him, he couldn’t resist pressing his lips to hers. His kiss was gentle, meant to tell her she didn’t have to be afraid around him, but it was all he could do to keep from crushing her to him. Dammit, he had to think about something else.
He pulled away and drew in a deep breath. “Want to see the colt?”
“Yeah.” Just the whisper of a smile touched her lips. She seemed happy that he’d changed the subject.
Brian led her down to the end of the barn. There were six stalls on each side. The barn was open on both ends today, so there was plenty of light inside.
“Does someone take care of all this for you?” she asked.
“My foreman manages the day-to-day operations of the ranch. We cut and bale our own hay-we’re self-sufficient.”
“But what if you had a bad year?”
“We could survive more than one bad year.” He knew why she asked. She was afraid if he went under, he might do what her father had done. “I’m a survivor, Celeste. I would find a way to make it in this world if things took a turn for the worse. Nothing would ever be so bad that I couldn’t find a solution.” He took a deep breath. “And even if I lost all this tomorrow, I could always go to work for someone. Possessions don’t rule me.”
She nodded, then moved closer to the stall. “Oh, look,” she said as she peered over the top rail. She stared at the mother and colt. “It must be wonderful to experience the birth of something so precious.”
He stood next to her. “One of the things I love about the country.”
“I know that you could never do what my father did,” she quietly told him.
He squeezed her arm. Maybe she would stop running away from her past now that she was here. Either that, or he’d look around one day and she’d be gone.
That thought left an emptiness inside him.
They walked back to the ranch in silence.
“Have dinner with me,” he said.
Her hesitation was brief. “Okay.”
“I have some work to take care of first. Is seven okay?”
“That would be fine.”
Once inside, they parted. Celeste went to her room. For a long moment, she stood in the middle of the room. Then she went to her suitcase and pulled out a worn photo album. Her fingers lightly caressed the dark green leather that bound the book.
It had been a long time since she’d looked at the pictures. She sat on the bed, then opened it. Her mother stared up at her from the first picture. She was beautiful and she was smiling.
In the next picture she was holding Celeste’s hand. Sometimes she could close her eyes and feel the softness of her mother’s skin. She turned the page and her father stared back at her. He was pushing her in the swing. She still didn’t know why she’d kept the pictures of him.
She carefully closed the album. The man sitting at the table that day, staring at the gun, hadn’t been her father. He was the man who’d killed her mother. That day her father had died in her heart. She hated him, but she loved him, too. For years she’d felt guilty but then realized it was okay to love the father he’d been and not what he’d become.