The Cowboy's Little Girl. Kat Brookes

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the glower he was sending her way, she met his gaze head-on. “I thought it would be best if you heard what I have to say in person, instead of over the phone.”

      “Now you want to talk?” he said, anger writhing though him. “Well, this might come as a surprise to you, but I no longer have any interest in anything you have to say.”

      “I can’t blame you for feeling the way you do,” she said softly, “but if you’ll just give me a chance to explain...”

      “What are you doing here, Summer?” he cut in gruffly, not bothering to suppress the ire he felt toward her. He didn’t want explanations. It was far too late for that. In fact, he wanted nothing at all from his wife.

      “I’m not Summer.” She looked away for a second as her voice filled with emotion. Then, looking up at him with those same silver-blue eyes he’d worked so hard to forget, she said, “I’m her sister Autumn.”

      What? Tucker blinked back his surprise. First, his wife shows up out of the blue, with no warning whatsoever of her impending arrival, and then she starts spouting nonsense? Who was Summer going to pretend to be next? A sister named Spring, or maybe Fall since it was mid-October? If his wife had a sister, he surely would have known about it.

      Dear Lord, give me strength, he prayed.

      “I know it’s been a few years since we’ve crossed paths,” Tucker grumbled in irritation, “but I’m pretty sure I haven’t forgotten what my own wife looks like. Even with all that fancy polishing you’ve done to change your appearance.” Which he begrudgingly had to admit looked really good on her.

      She stiffened. “It’s not polish. This is who I am.”

      He gave a derisive snort. “You forget who it is you’re talking to. This,” he said, waving a hand from her designer heels to her pretty little head, “is who you are until you decide the life you’re living right now isn’t really what you want. Then you’ll just up and leave whoever it is who’s fool enough to care about you at that time, without so much as a goodbye, and start a whole new life for yourself somewhere else.” The jagged edge of the memory of what she’d done to him leaving the way she had all those years ago still cut deep.

      She shifted uneasily. “She said you could be stubborn, but if you’ll just hear me out...”

      He had no idea why his wife had to be told by someone else, whoever “she” was, about his stubbornness. Especially when she used to tease him about it when they were dating. Or had she blocked everything about him and their marriage from her mind?

      “I don’t want your explanations,” he said through tightly gritted teeth. It was five years too late for that. “Go back to wherever it is you came from, Summer. You don’t have a place in my life anymore.”

      To his surprise, his clipped words brought a swell of tears to his wife’s eyes. Her emotional response had him shifting uncomfortably where he stood. Maybe he had spoken a little harsher than he ought to have, but she’d done far worse to him all those years ago.

      “I’m not Summer,” she insisted once more. “And she won’t be starting her life over,” she added, her lower lip quivering slightly with that announcement. “At least not here on earth. My sister’s gone.”

      Had his wife suffered a head injury of some sort? Was that why she was claiming to be someone else? “Sweetheart,” he said, trying not to let the flood of emotions he felt at seeing her again show in his voice, “you’re standing right here.”

      “Summer never told you about me, did she?” she asked as if she’d somehow been wronged. Then she shook her head and cast her gaze out across the yard. “No,” she said sadly, “of course she didn’t.” Turning her attention back to him, she said, “I’m Autumn Myers. Summer’s twin.”

      He raised a skeptical brow. “Her twin?”

      She gave a slight nod. “Yes.”

      Tucker’s gaze zeroed in on her slender perfectly arched brows, to where they disappeared just beneath the much shorter strands of hair that now framed his wife’s heart-shaped face. “You have a scar,” he heard himself saying.

      “What?”

      “The scar above your brow,” he prompted with impatience.

      “No,” she said, “I don’t.” Reaching up, she pushed the hair away from her face.

      “Other side,” he muttered with a deepening frown. What kind of fool did she take him for? He’d been there when she’d gotten stitched up after her fall during one of her barrel races.

      Without another word, she showed him her other brow. Even in the fading light of day, there was no denying the smooth expanse of skin where the scar had been.

      Tucker struggled to drag in even the slightest of breaths. This woman standing before him was not his long-lost wife, no matter how much she resembled her. “Summer’s dead?” he said, the words soft and gritty as he tried to process that something like that could even be true. She was so young. And while he had harbored a ton of resentment toward his wife after she’d walked away from the life they’d started together, to the point where he never ever wanted to see her again, this was not the way he’d wanted that to happen. Tucker’s heart squeezed.

      “Yes,” Summer’s twin replied. Never had one word been so filled with emotion.

      “What happened?” he rasped out, finally accepting the truth for what it was. The woman that he’d once fancied himself in love with was dead. May she rest in peace.

      “Summer took her horse out for a ride near our home in Cheyenne,” she began, tears shimmering in her eyes.

      “Summer was living in Cheyenne?” he muttered in disbelief. That was where his wife had chosen to put down roots? Not back home in Texas, in whatever town it was she had grown up in, but in Cheyenne. In the very place they had exchanged their wedding vows. How had they never crossed paths? Not that he’d stuck around very long once things ended.

      “Yes,” she began, the words catching as she looked up at him. “And if I had known about you...” She paused, shaking her head. “I’m afraid my sister didn’t always think things out the way she ought to.”

      That was the Summer he remembered. But then that was another thing that had drawn him to her back then. They’d met at a rodeo, him a tough-as-grit bareback rider and her, a highly competitive barrel racer. They’d been young and reckless, looking to grab life by the horns and then hold on for wherever the ride might take them.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Knowing she’d lived so close just took me by surprise.”

      She nodded in understanding. “Summer was on her way back to the house when a rattlesnake spooked her horse and she was thrown.” A sob caught in her throat with the last of her explanation.

      “You don’t have to say anything more,” he told her, regretting the pain his question had caused her. While he no longer felt what he once had for his wife, Autumn Myers was still dealing with the grief brought about by the loss of her sister. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how he would feel if he lost one of his brothers.

      “It’s all right,” she assured him as she СКАЧАТЬ