Conflicted (Everlasting Love)(46)
“What do you mean?” A chill swept through her and she reached for the comforter, her nudity bothering her for the first time that she could remember. “The horse—”
“Was an excuse.” He sighed heavily, ran a hand through his untamed hair. “I knew what was wrong before I got there.”
She studied him with puzzled eyes. “Then why…” Her voice trailed off. She was suddenly too afraid of the answer to ask the question.
“I didn’t want to face you.” He stood abruptly, went to his dresser where he pulled on a pair of sweats with his back to her.
“I love you, Desiree.” The words seemed ripped from him.
“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?” she asked, crossing the room to wrap her arms around him from behind. “I love you, too.”
He turned, his eyes dark and worried as he studied her. Then he was moving away, reaching for a T-shirt and tugging it on as he headed for the door.
She stared at him, bewildered. “Where are you going?”
He shook his head, opened the door. “I can’t do this now.”
“Do what?”
“Go to bed, Desi. I’ll be up later.” He closed the door as he slipped from the room.
She stared after him for a long time, then walked to the bathroom and cleaned herself up before slipping into a nightgown and crawling into bed. Her mind spun with questions but she refused to chase after him. So she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep but too emotionally exhausted to do anything else.
When Jesse finally came to bed, hours later, she was still awake. She wanted to reach for him but couldn’t find a way to span the sudden distance between them. She waited for him to turn to her, to wrap her in his arms and pull her against him as he had every night for twenty-five years.
When morning came she was still waiting.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TEARS LEAKED FROM THE corner of his eye despite himself as he surveyed his daughter in her wedding dress. The fact that Desiree remained dry-eyed next to him only made his lack of control more annoying. The music started—a Spanish guitar version of some love song that sounded familiar but he couldn’t place—and he watched the bridal party get into position.
“Are you ready?” his daughter asked, clutching his arm with one cold hand.
“As ready as I’m going to get,” he answered, watching first his wife, then Willow’s bridesmaids, precede them up the aisle.
When Anna finally got to the front, the melodic strains of the guitar switched to the bridal march. He felt Willow tense next to him.
“We can still duck out the back,” he whispered to her, even as he straightened and prepared to take that first step forward.
“Too late,” she giggled as she took a deep breath. “I love you, Daddy.”
Jesse’s heart clenched, skipping a beat or two before he could steady himself. “I love you, too, baby.” He tried to be surreptitious as he wiped at his eye, but he looked up just in time to see Willow smiling indulgently at him.
“All right, all right,” he muttered. “Let’s do this thing before I change my mind about giving my only daughter away.”
The walk up the aisle was a fusion of faces and memories. He couldn’t help remembering the day his daughter was born. The first time he held her. The first time he put her on a horse. The first time she’d ever had her heart broken. She’d been his for so long—his baby, his little girl—that giving her away now was a lot harder than he’d ever anticipated.
Then they were at the front and all he could do was kiss her cheek as he handed her off to another man. He made a wish for her happiness then took his seat next to Desiree, trying his best to look as if it wasn’t the last place he wanted to be.
Desiree reached out a hand, laid it on his knee. “She looks beautiful, doesn’t she?”
Waves of heat spread through him, radiating from his knee, warming him in a way that made a mockery of his anger. He stared, transfixed for a moment, at the delicate hand that was as familiar to him as his own. She’d done something to her nails—they were long and half-white and seemed out of place on her strong but delicate fingers.
He clasped for her hand, savoring the feel of her soft skin as it rubbed against his tough and callused palm. She had such small hands—palm to palm, her fingers barely reached the knuckles of his own—it amazed him still that she could hold a bucking horse or a crooked businessman in the palm of them. She’d always done a hell of a job of holding him in them, as well—wrapping him around her little finger, keeping him under her thumb.
The familiar fury burned through him and he stiffened, dropping her hand as if it had suddenly burned him. How could she do this to him with just a word, just a touch? How could she make him wish things were different, even after he’d found out how deeply her betrayal ran?
“Jesse?” Her voice was low, her cheeks red as she stared at him with dismayed eyes.
“Yes, Desiree. Willow looks very beautiful.” The words were stilted, almost painful, but he couldn’t do any better. Not with everything that lay between them. Not with that damn newspaper article burning through his brain like a wildfire.
He turned away before she could say more, angling his shoulders so that his back was almost completely toward her. She gasped, but he resisted the temptation to look, just as he resisted the instinctive need to apologize. She was the one who had hurt him, he reminded himself. She was the one who had spent the last five, ten, even fifteen years of their life together giving everything she had to the ranch so that there was nothing left over for him, for them.