To Win Her Love (34 page)

Max crossed his arms. “What about Jake? If you try to deny you’re in love with him, I’ll call you a liar.”

She shook her head and sighed. “No. I can’t deny I love him. I’ve loved him since long before I finally met him, but this isn’t about me. This is about the twins and Jake. They love him, and he loves them. They belong together.” She glanced briefly at Tuck and smiled sadly. “The little boy who grew up dirt poor and alone on a Texas ranch deserves the family he was denied.”

“What about what
you
deserve?”

She turned back to Max, and the frustrated love in his eyes eased the sting of her broken heart. “No matter what, the twins will always be in my life in some way, but don’t you see? I couldn’t live with myself if I claimed my happiness at the expense of his.”

Jake pushed by Max the moment the door opened. Gracie’s friend didn’t object. Jake wished he would. Spoiling for a fight, his temper simmered close to boiling. He spun on him. “Where is she?”

Max shut the door. His normally congenial smile held a sharp edge. “Good morning to you, too.” Wearing only a pair of black silk drawstring slacks, he padded barefoot into the galley kitchen.

“I spoke to Tuck. He said he left her here.”

Max slid a mug onto the tray of a large black coffeemaker, punched a button, and turned to lean against the edge of the counter. “Did he?”

Frustration flared in Jake’s gut. “Is she here or isn’t she?”

“Do you see her?”

“Answer the fucking question.”

A dark eyebrow arched above the searing gleam in Max’s eyes. “Be careful, my friend. I may like you, but after the way you treated her last night, I wouldn’t turn down the chance to rearrange your face.”

The warning did nothing to lessen his frustration, but his shoulders stiffened with guilt. “I’ll hold still and let you, if you’ll tell me where she is.”

Max propped his hands beside his hips on the countertop. “I’d take you up on that, if I knew. She took off during the night and isn’t answering my texts.”

Jake dragged the Stetson from his head. “She forfeited custody.”

“I know.” Max nodded, his tone calm.

Panic hit Jake low in the gut. He jammed stiff fingers through his hair. “Why the hell would she do that? She had less than forty-eight hours to go.”

Max twisted his upper body to retrieve his full coffee mug. He shrugged and sipped. “Women. Who knows how their minds work?”

True, but Jake didn’t need the mischievous gleam in Max’s eyes to know he was being played. He and Gracie shared everything, the exact reason Jake was here at six a.m. instead of resting up for this afternoon’s practice. He cocked his head and met Max’s waiting gaze with an intent stare. “I have the feeling you do in this case.”

One corner of Max’s mouth hitched up in a taunting smile. “Yeah. I do.”

He ground his teeth, too jacked up to play games. “Are you going to tell me or stand there grinning like an asshole?”

Max laughed. “Grinning like an asshole works for me.”

“
Please
.” The desperate plea, bursting from his lips, shocked the hell out of Jake and knocked the grin from Max’s face. Jake shook his head. “Please. Tom’s like a father to me. You’re right. I freaked out when I learned he’s her father and took my panic out on her, but damn it. She’s the ballsiest women I’ve ever met. Why isn’t she at the farm, fighting mad and making me pay for every cruel word I tossed at her? What the hell is she thinking, walking away from the girls? Walking away from her dream?”

“She’s thinking with her heart.”

Jake sighed heavily. “I’m too fucking tired and too short of time for riddles. Are you going to help me, or not?”

Max stroked his chin thoughtfully. “That depends.”

“On?”

“You.” Max pushed away from the counter. “Coffee?”

Hell, yes
. He nodded.

Max turned his back to set another mug in the single brew machine. “Do you love her?”

Though Jake bristled at the question, the blatant demand didn’t surprise him. If not exactly pushing them together, Gracie’s brash and bold friend made clear from the beginning the idea of Jake and Gracie together was fine by him.

Saying the words aloud, with only Max present, rankled. Since Gracie was solely responsible for the momentous step Jake was about to take, she should at least be a witness but, what the hell? He’d come this far. Might as well go all the way. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, I do.”

He expected smug laughter. Max surprised him by spreading his hands wide to lean on the countertop. He briefly dropped his chin to his chest with a drawn out sigh. He straightened again and pulled the filled mug from the coffeemaker. When he turned around, he wore a relieved smile. Jake took the offered mug.

“She loves you, too.” Max dropped his hips against the edge of the counter and crossed his feet.

Jake sucked in a gasping breath. To have his hopes confirmed…. Pure, unadulterated joy pulsed in his chest and made breathing difficult. Confusion left him floundering. “Then, why? I don’t understand.”

Max reached behind him for his mug. “Not long ago, she described watching the twins and you together. She said it was magical.”

He swallowed as his chest expanded on a warm glow. Her description pleased and humbled him. Magic perfectly described what he’d found with Gracie and the girls.

Max studied him over the rim of his coffee. He lowered the mug and dipped his head in a knowing nod. “She left the farm because she couldn’t live with the idea of claiming her happiness at the expense of yours.”

Without moving a muscle, Jake staggered under the blow. She’d given up her lifelong dream to give him a chance at building a life he’d never thought to have. Didn’t she understand, without her in his life, any dream he might desire would soon turn to ashes?

The need to find her and set her straight, on a number of things, became a raging fire. Unfortunately, Max didn’t know where she was. Over the next six hours, Jake grew increasingly desperate until Max called to say he’d received a text from her saying she was all right but needed some time to herself. As one day passed, then the next, desperation became fury. Where the hell was she?

Other than for practice, he refused to leave the farm. She had to return sometime. Her things were there and she wouldn’t leave Murphy behind, not permanently. As the time approached to head to the stadium Sunday morning, frustration left him prowling the farmhouse like a caged animal.

Max had suggested game time would be the logical opportunity for her to return to the farm and move out her stuff—if she didn’t want to run into anyone in particular. Instinct raged at Jake to remain where he was and pounce on her the moment she arrived. Reality made different claims on his time.

He punched a button on the dash as he drove his SUV to the end of the drive.

Tom picked up on the third ring. “Have you found her?”

“No.”

“Damn. What are we going to do?”

“I’m going to the sports complex. How soon can you get to the farm?”

Gracie shut the door behind her with a gentle snick. The soft gong of the grandfather clock at the far end of the hall broke the absolute quiet. Only three days had passed since she’d left the farm, but it might as well have been three years. Everything had changed.

She’d begun to think of the farmhouse as home in the nearly three months she lived there with the girls and Jake. This morning, she felt like a stranger. A
sneaky
stranger. Guilt ducked its head, doing a perp walk down her spine.

Stealing into Jake’s home while he was safely away at the stadium rubbed her the wrong way on several levels. First, because the move could backfire. With her departure from the farm, he became the girls’ guardian. From here on in, he called the shots with them. If he wanted, he could make things difficult for her. He could stand in the way of her seeing the girls and the many voicemails in her inbox proved he was already majorly pissed. Second, slipping into the house behind his back smacked of cowardice, and she was already guilty of too much of
that
.

Still, considering his threat to introduce her butt to the flat of his hand when he finally found her, avoiding a face-to-face confrontation seemed the wisest choice at the moment. The time would come for a confrontation later because, whether he liked it or not, she
would
be in the girls’ lives, but she preferred waiting to have that conversation until he’d calm down a bit.

“Mary? Murphy?” She headed toward the back of the house and the kitchen.

Max wasn’t exactly happy with her either. She shrugged mentally. Nothing she could do about that. She’d made the right call by sneaking out of his place the night of the fund-raiser not long after Tuck left and Max fell asleep. Sure enough, Max’s apartment was the first place Jake checked the next morning when he discovered she hadn’t come back to the farm.

Jake left at least a dozen messages the first day. They’d started out pleasantly enough. In his first, he calmly apologized for acting like a prick in the ladies’ room. In his second, laughter thickened his voice as he complimented her right hook and asked if she’d seen the picture of Dina and her shiner in the morning paper.

The sight of Dina’s swollen and bruised eye, when Gracie picked up a copy of the paper in the hotel lobby where she was hiding out, made her wince—after grunting in satisfaction, of course.

Next, he’d dropped his voice to the crooning, love me, baby, Texas drawl that melted her circuits, and urged her to tell him where she was. Things deteriorated from there. Several hours later he regressed to calling her a stubborn fool and claiming it didn’t matter she’d broken the custody rules, since he wouldn’t be notifying Anthony Spinoza of her absence.

She’d called Pete’s lawyer immediately.

Jake blew a gasket when Anthony called to congratulate him on winning custody of the girls. Another half dozen nasty voicemails joined the previous ones before she finally shut off her phone. She spent the next day and a half feeling sorry for herself and wishing she’d booked a quick flight to somewhere warm with sand and palm trees, instead of checking into the tiny hotel room around the corner from Times Square.

By the time she turned her phone back on this morning, there were thirty-six messages waiting for her. The bulk were from Jake. Max had left two and there was one from Tom Walden.

Her heart repeated the slow roll it performed this morning upon hearing his message. The last three days had been completely shitty. On the one hand, coming to terms with the knowledge she wasn’t ever going to have her dream family sucked. On the other, her father called. Her! Talk about a silver lining.

After the fiasco at The Met and the nasty headlines in the papers the last couple of days, she wouldn’t blame her father for wanting nothing to do with her, yet he called. That had to mean something and, though it was impossible to gauge his mood via the brief voicemail, he hadn’t sounded angry.

A subtle gush of hope pulsed in her heart and soothed some of the pain of giving up the girls. The first smile in days tugged at her lips as she pushed open the kitchen door—and screamed.

Tom Walden jumped from one of the kitchen chairs. He held up both hands and spread them wide. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Mary let me in.”

“Oh. Mary.” She blinked and looked around. The kitchen was empty but for him. “Where is she? And the girls? You didn’t, by the way. Scare me, I mean. Okay, maybe you did a little, but….” Her shoulders stiffened in embarrassment when his lips jerked up on one side as if he was fighting a smile. “Okay, I’m going to shut up.”

He quit fighting. His eyes twinkled with humor and perfect, white teeth flashed within the frame of cleanly cut lips. The slightest hint of matching dimples bracketed the wide smile splitting his face. A painful pressure expanded in her chest. She held her breath, recalling a rare comment of her mother’s about the man who fathered her then disappeared.
Your father had the most beautiful smile.

Gracie
couldn’t agree more, but as his smile dissolved into a sober study of her face, a ball of nerves expanded in her belly. Time slowed and the moment stretched out until her skin crawled with jittery nerves. What did he see when he looked at her? What was he thinking? Was the idea of a surprise daughter an intriguing one or did he see her as a nasty burden to be handled? Did his unexpected presence represent a desire to learn more about her, or was he here simply to do spin control?

Raw yearning, painful and intense, slithered through her, wrapping around her heart and lungs, and threatened to smother her. She sucked in a ragged breath. Like every other relationship in her life, the path this one would take was out of her hands. He’d either care or he wouldn’t, but the story was out. She had nothing left to hide. The only way to find out what he was thinking was to ask.

With a false show of bravado, she lifted her chin—and yelped when Murphy burst through the door. On scrambling feet, he headed straight for Tom.

“Look out!” She dove for his collar, missed and blinked upon discovering her warning wasn’t necessary.

Tom twisted sideways and stepped back. He held out a hand palm forward. “Murphy, sit!”

To her utter surprise, her head butting dog dropped his ass to the floor. His tail swished the wooden planks as he offered Tom a doggy grin. She shifted her stunned gaze to her father.

He grinned. “Jake, V,
and
Tuck warned me about your dog.” Bending at the waist, he scrubbed a big hand over Murphy’s back.

She stiffened. Jake and his friends had spoken to Tom about her dog, but in what context? Had they discussed her in particular or simply in passing about Murphy’s penchant for head butting? The suspense was killing her.

Ask already! The worst he can say is he doesn’t want anything to do with you. He’s had nothing to do with you your whole life and you’ve survived. You’ll continue to survive. Stop being a weenie and ask!

She had to clear her throat against the lump lodged there. “Why are you here?”