Slow Hand (Hot Cowboy Nights, #1)(51)

Nikki studied the planes of his face, grown harsh in the shadows. As hard as it was for her to hear all this it was much harder on him. “Did you love her?” she asked softly.

“Thought I did, but it was really a mixed bag of infatuation and ego.”

She was almost afraid to ask but still had to know. “What about her?”

“She wanted him.”

“So she only used you to get back at your brother?”

“Damn right she did. She was hurt and resentful and wanted to hurt him back. I should have known better, maybe deep down I did, but dumb-ass that I was…I married her anyway.”

“But if he left without any promises, did he really want her? Did he love her?” Nikki asked.

He shook his head with a dry laugh. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

“He didn’t try to stop it, did he?”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “Not a word. I think that’s what Rae was secretly hoping for—that he’d show up and put an end to her and me, but he didn’t.”

“So he didn’t come home for your wedding?”

“No. When he heard the news he re-upped for another three years.” Wade stared straight ahead at the road. “And then got half his leg blown off in Afghanistan.”

“I begin to understand the rift,” she said. “But it was his decision, Wade.”

“But would it have happened if I hadn’t done what I did?”

“You can’t know either way and it’s not worth torturing yourself over. So what happened after you and Rachel married?”

“We lived in Denver for a couple of years until after I passed the bar. I was still clerking for Evans then—that’s Allie’s father,” he explained. “After that, I got a good job offer back East. I probably would have accepted it if the economy hadn’t taken a major nosedive. That was in 2008 when everything went to shit and the ranch had to turn most of the help loose. Dirk was still in Iraq and the ol’ man was on the verge of losing everything, so I came back home to do what I could. The marriage was already shaky before I started doing double duty, trying to get established in Bozeman while still helping at the ranch on the weekends. Maybe it could have worked out between us had we gone away, but family loyalty rooted me here.”

“It obviously made a difference,” she said. “You still have the ranch.”

“Yeah. The ranch,” he said bitterly. “It’s always been all about the ranch. I saved the place and I resent the hell out of the price I paid. Between the practice and the ranch, I didn’t have any time at all for Rachel. She’d set her sights on finding a PR job in the city. Had we gone east, she probably could have found something to make her feel more fulfilled, but there was nothing for her back here.

“She was bored and lonely, and started pressing me to start a family. I wasn’t ready for that. I already carried such a load and I resented her for pressuring me. When my hours in Bozeman got even longer I suggested she spend more time at the ranch. It kept her busy and seemed like a good solution…until Dirk came home, a situation that had trouble written all over it.”

“Yeah. I can see why.”

“Dirk was a real train wreck. Pushed us all away and spent a lot of time alone in that little shack up on the mountain. Maybe I thought his injuries and pissy attitude would put her off, but the harder Dirk pushed Rae away, the more I think she wanted him. I should have seen it coming.”

Nikki felt his pain. “They betrayed you?”

“I’ve got no proof,” he replied. “And Dirk still denies it, but Rachel wanted out of the marriage within a couple months of his coming back. What was I to make of that?”

“But you said she was already unhappy before. Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions. She and Dirk aren’t together, right? So what happened? Where is she now?”

“She’s gone,” he answered woodenly.

“Gone? She left you both?”

“You might say that… She’s dead.”

A cold shiver ran up Nikki’s spine. “Dead?”

“It was an accident.”

Nikki suddenly remembered Iris’s reference to an accident and the warning look Wade had given her. “How?” Nikki asked. “She didn’t…”

“I don’t think it was suicide…but we’ll never know for certain. She showed up at my office late one afternoon. Said she wanted a divorce. There was an ugly scene. I didn’t go home that night, but neither did she. Next morning the cops knocked on my door saying they pulled her car out of the river.”

“Dear God, I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for you.”

“Hell, I barely even remember it now. That’s how hard and fast I hit the bottle. But the worst part was getting the autopsy report a week later showing elevated levels of HCG.”

Nikki lips suddenly went dry. “HCG? She was pregnant?”

“Yeah…she hadn’t told me that part. It was early enough that maybe she didn’t even know. To this day I don’t know if it was mine or not. We hadn’t had much of a love life for months, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask for a DNA test. The whole thing—Dirk’s leg, her death, and the baby… It was all too much. The guilt hit me. Hard. I didn’t know how to deal with any of it. I went on an eighteen-month bender that nearly killed me.”