Lone Star Lonely (13 page)

Kirsten sat on the ground and watched the
horses drink. Adam hadn’t followed. She’d half expected him to. He
had a determined, stubborn look in his eyes tonight, and she didn’t
like it. She knew that look. He could be so damned persistent when
he made up his mind about something.

She closed her eyes, sat and rehearsed in her
mind the words she would say. The way she would tell him. The truth
she had to speak. Had to. Because she’d figured something out back
there at Sky Dancer Ranch when they’d “borrowed” the horses. When
Adam had kissed her. She’d suspected it before, but now she was
certain. He still cared. Maybe he’d never stopped. And while his
love for her had never been the soul-shattering, gut-wrenching kind
she’d felt for him, it had been real. And, fool that he was, he
still felt it. He deserved the truth. He deserved to hate her for
what she’d done. He deserved to be let off the hook.

Oh, but what might have happened between them
tonight if she didn’t have to confess?

Tears burned. She blinked at them, but they
pooled anyway. Damn Adam for being so beautiful, and so strong, and
so…so Adam.

“Kirsty?”

Sniffling, she lifted her head, wiped her
eyes. He stood behind her. She didn’t turn to face him.

“You’ve been out here awhile. The horses came
back without you.”

Licking dry lips, she glanced at the water
hole where the animals had been, then at the sun resting low on the
horizon, halfway to setting already. “I was… thinking.”

“Yeah. A lot on your mind, I imagine.”

“Yeah.”

“Think you can eat? You haven’t had a damned
thing since breakfast.”

A tight smile tugged at her lips. It was just
like him to keep track of what she was eating, and how often. To
worry. To care. “I could probably manage a few bites. What have you
got? Hardtack and beans?” Another brush at her eyes with the heels
of her hands. The tears didn’t show anymore. Did they?

She looked at him. The smile pulled his lips
tight, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He stood with his hands in his
pockets, looking down at her, hat cocked back on his head. Sun
painting his face bronze and gleaming in his eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Sure I am. I’m tougher than I look, you
know.”

“Yeah. Well….” He sounded doubtful but didn’t
elaborate. Instead, he held out a hand. She took it and let Adam
pull her to her feet. Then she went still, because he held on, his
eyes probing hers. “There didn’t used to be so many secrets in
those brown eyes of yours, Kirsten. They used to sparkle. Now
they’re dull with worry and…I don’t know. Pain.”

“Chalk it up to looking down the business end
of a murder charge, Adam.”

“That’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

He pursed his lips. Said nothing.

“I smell coffee.”

With a sigh and a slight lowering of his
chin, he let it go. All of it. His unspoken questions, his
suspicions, his need to know. For now. He let it go for the moment,
for her, as she’d known he would. Not for anything would he push
too hard when he could see pain in her eyes. But she knew him too
well to think he wouldn’t come back to it later. And keep coming
back until he had the answers he wanted. And even if he didn’t, she
would have to tell him…all of it. And soon.

Adam turned, tucking her hand to his side and
heading back toward the fire. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s been a
while since I’ve brewed coffee in a tin pot over an open fire.”

“Damn. And here I was hoping for
cappuccino.”

She chose a spot near the fire and sat down.
Adam set a small cooler beside her, then used his shirtsleeve as a
pot holder and poured coffee into two tin cups. Kirsten opened the
cooler and peered inside. Cold fried chicken, a pair of large ice
packs, assorted fruit and small covered dishes in varying shapes,
sizes and colors were wedged into the thing.

“Elliot tends to be of the belief that so
long as there’s plenty to eat, all is right with the world,” Adam
said.

“I remember that about him. And the idea does
have merit.” She hauled out a golden brown drumstick and bit into
it. Flavor exploded in her mouth, and her stomach growled for
more.

“He stuffed bread and canned goods into the
other pack,” Adam said. “Even remembered to include a can
opener.”

“If I ever see your kid brother again, remind
me to thank him.”

She took another bite, chewed, swallowed.
Reached for the coffee cup and burned her fingers. When she drew
her hand away fast, Adam was there, gripping her hand, turning
it.

“It’s okay.”

“Let me see,” he insisted, when she would
have pulled away. He examined her hand by the fading blaze of the
orange sunset, ran his fingertips over hers. Electric contact. It
burned more than the hot tin had.

Kirsten closed her eyes. She wanted him.
Damn, how she wanted him.

Satisfied she was okay, he brought her
fingers to his lips, kissed them softly.

She drew her hand away so fast she hurt her
wrist. “Why did you do that?”

Adam shrugged, but there was fire in his
eyes, a spark she knew well. “Old habits…you know.” He held her
gaze for a long moment, then finally broke eye contact and sighed.
He sat down beside her, reaching into the cooler for a piece of
chicken. “Sorry. Kissing singed fingers doesn’t help much, I
imagine. It was something my mother….” He cut himself off there,
not finishing the sentence.

Kirsten’s stomach turned over. Her appetite
fled. “Something…your mother used to do?”

He nodded without looking at her and bit into
his chicken.

“You never talked about her. Your mother,”
she said, very slowly, not even sure why she wanted to torture
herself this way. “Not even to me.”

He didn’t reply. Not until he’d cleaned the
meat to the bone and started on a second piece. Then he paused, saw
she was still looking at him, awaiting a reply, and shrugged. “Some
things…a man just doesn’t want to discuss.”

“Not even with a woman he claimed to
love?”

Adam stilled. “I never claimed to love you,
Kirsty. It was real, not alleged. Hell, never mind. How did we get
on this subject, anyway?”

“I asked you about your mother. How old were
you, Adam, when your parents were killed? Sixteen?”

His lips thinned, but he answered.
“Fourteen.”

“You must have been…crushed.”

“That’d be one word for it.” He sipped his
coffee, looked back toward town, in search, she thought, of another
subject. A safer one. But there was an old pain in his eyes. One
she had put there.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Adam got an odd, squinty look. “Nothing for
you to apologize for, Kirsty. It wasn’t your fault”

Oh, but it was. “Adam…” She drew a breath,
squeezed her hands together. It was time. “Adam, I—”

“I should be the one apologizing,” he
said.

Kirsten’s brows drew together. “What—”

“For never talking about…about that. To you.
I mean, it was the worst time of my life, and, hell, let’s face it.
It changed me. You had a right to know about that. To understand
why I was…the way I was.”

She had understood. Or she’d thought she had.
But he was right, they’d never discussed it. And she wasn’t sure
she wanted to now. Why the hell had she started this?

“The truth is, it damn near killed me, losing
them.”

She closed her eyes. Felt his pain. Heard it
in his voice and sensed it emanating in waves from his soul.

“I knew the second Garrett came to me that
something terrible had happened. I’d never seen that big lug cry
before. Never in my life. It scared the hell out of me. He…gathered
all of us together in the parlor. Me, Ben, Elliot, Wes…even little
Jessi, though she was so damned young she didn’t really know what
was going on. Thank God for that.”

Kirsten’s mind told her to look away, not
into his eyes, into his pain-racked face as he remembered. Change
the subject, shut him out.

But her heart cried more loudly. Heal him.
Hold him. Make his horrible pain go away. But how could she, when
she was the one who’d put it there?

“He made us all hold hands, and then he told
us. Mama and Dad wouldn’t be coming home to the Texas Brand again.
He said they’d gone to heaven, that they were safe with the angels
now, and watching over us just the way they always had. But from
above.”

Her heart broke. It just shattered. He was
opening up to her in a way he’d never done before.

“The others cried. All of them. Even Jessi,
when she saw her big brothers all reduced to tears like that. But
not me. I didn’t shed a tear. I got mad,” he confessed, lowering
his head, sweeping his hat off and holding it between his knees by
the brim. “Furious. I kept asking myself how my parents could do
something like that, how they could go off to live with the angels
while the six of us stayed behind to fend for ourselves.”

Kirsten touched his face. “It wasn’t really
anger, Adam. It was pain. You just had to direct it somehow. You
were a child.”

“Oh, it was anger. I blamed them. Both of
them, for abandoning us. Abandoning me. I vowed then and there that
I’d never love anyone that much again. Never give anyone the chance
to leave me that way again.”

“It was,” she whispered, searching for words,
“it was a natural reaction.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If it was, it should have
passed. I should have been able to work through it, do my mourning,
make my peace. I didn’t, Kirsten. To tell you the truth, I’m still
angry.” He lowered his head, shook it slowly. “But then you came
along.”

She nodded. “I know. And you wouldn’t let
yourself fall all the way in love with me. Because you were half
convinced I’d leave you the same way they did.”

“I was
fully
convinced you’d leave me
the way they did,” he said very slowly. “And totally determined not
to fall all the way in love with you. I told myself I wouldn’t. I
even convinced you of it, didn’t I?”

Studying his face, she nodded.

Adam looked into her eyes. Lifting one hand
to cup her cheek, he let his gaze move from her forehead to her
chin and back to her eyes again. “Fooled everybody, then. Because I
did fall all the way. I did, Kirsty. And when you walked out on me,
I didn’t think I’d survive. Wasn’t even sure I wanted to.”

She closed her eyes. She’d wanted so badly to
hear him speak to her this way, once. A long time ago. But not now.
Sweet God, not now.

“And I never really fell out again, either,”
he went on.

“Don’t, Adam—”

“That’s my deep dark secret, Kirsty. The one
I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to keep, even from myself. That’s
it. And I thought it was about time I told you.”

Tears streaming down both cheeks now, she
opened her eyes and stared through hazy pools at him. “Why, Adam?
Why now?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “it’s only fair.
It’s your turn now, Kirsten. Tell me the dark secrets you’ve been
keeping. Tell me the truth.”

Sniffling, she shook her head. “I…I
can’t….”

“Yeah, you can,” he told her. “‘Cause neither
one of us is leaving here until you do.”

Sitting up straighter, Kirsten drew her knees
to her chest, hugged them, stared into the flames. What was she
waiting for? Why didn’t she just blurt it all out? Her throat hurt.
Her head ached. The fire danced. She licked her lips. Where the
hell was she supposed to begin? Her voice hoarse, she closed her
eyes and forced words through the narrow space in her throat. “What
do you want to know?”

Adam sat very still beside her. “Did you ever
love me?”

She nodded without hesitation. “I’ve never
loved anyone else.” And even to her own ears, her voice sounded
desolate, hopeless.

She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. She
just listened. The night was slowly coming to life now. A distant
bird called. A coyote cried the way her heart was doing—a mourning,
warbling, broken sound that said better than words could what her
life had become. The fire hissed and snapped.

“Then you never loved Cowan.”

“I never even liked him.”

“He forced you to marry him,” Adam said
softly. Leading her by the hand with his words, trying to make it
easier for her to get to the truth. “He had something on you,
something he held over your head. And you married him to keep him
quiet.”

Kirsten nodded.

“What was it, Kirsten?”

Silence. She tried to part her lips, to
speak, but her jaws seemed to have locked up. He waited a long
time. She tried to make herself say the words.
I killed your
parents. I orphaned your little sister and your brothers. I took
away your life and changed it forever
.

“Tell me.”

“Please, Adam, don’t make me do this.”

“It’s time, Kirsten.”

She shook her head hard. “I…I can’t!”

He was silent for a long moment. Brooding.
“Maybe I can help get you started. Whatever he had on you, it had
to have been pretty bad.” Less patience in his tone now. A hint
that maybe he couldn’t quite conceive of anything that bad. “Bad
enough that you were willing to become his wife—not just on paper,
but in every way. Willing to lie in his bed.”

Her head came up, eyes wide.

“You talk more than you should when you’re
drunk,” he told her. “You talked about him trying to get you
pregnant. About him grunting and sweating on top of you night after
night….” He closed his eyes as some emotion rushed through them—an
emotion that looked to her like disgust.

She felt Adam’s anger, understood it.
Jealousy. It enraged him to think of her making love to another
man. Of course it did. But it enraged her to hear him talk to her
this way. “I was never willing. I had no choice.”

“You had a choice!” His temper long gone, he
shouted the words, lost now to reason. “The choice was to come to
me, Kirsty. To tell me the truth. You think I wouldn’t have stopped
him? You think I’d have let him make you his—” He bit his lip,
slammed his hat to the ground and kicked it viciously.