A Rancher To Trust. Laurel Blount

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      When Dan didn’t respond, Bailey glanced at him. His expression had changed. The sun creases in the corners of his eyes had deepened, and his jaw was set. He looked tired.

      And a little sad.

      He caught her eye. “I get what you’re saying about leaving the past behind. No man who’s made the kind of mistakes I’ve made would argue with you. But before we do, I’d like to give you an overdue apology. If you’ll let me.”

      He was holding his hat in his hands, running the brim slowly around in a circle. He watched her face, waiting to see if she was willing to hear him out.

      She wasn’t. She was holding herself together by a thread, and this wasn’t a road she wanted to go down right now.

      “You don’t need to apologize, Dan. I’ll admit it hurt when you walked out on me, but in time I realized that even if you’d come back that night, things couldn’t have worked out any differently in the long run. We never should have gotten married in the first place.”

      “And that’s completely on me. I never should have talked you into it. But, Bailey, back then I was so in love with you. I was scared to death I was going to lose you, and—”

      “Please. Just stop.” Bailey stood. She’d had just about all she could take. “This isn’t all on you, Dan. It’s not like you kidnapped me. I let you talk me into eloping. And honestly, I was such a pushover, you could’ve talked me into just about anything. The way I see it, I’m just as much to blame as you are, and I take full responsibility for my own mistake. Now, I appreciate you driving all this way, but it really wasn’t necessary. Once the divorce papers are drawn up, I’ll just need your notarized signature, and it’ll be a done deal.”

      “All right.” He had stayed seated and was looking up at her, his expression carefully blank. “I’ll make sure you get it.”

      “Thanks.” Bailey reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper and a pen. “Write down your email address, and I’ll be in touch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get back to work.” She hesitated awkwardly, unsure what she should say or do next. How exactly did you end a conversation like this with some kind of dignity? She had no idea.

      Finally, she reached out a hand and laid it gently on his bicep. It felt like touching a sun-warmed rock. “Goodbye, Dan.”

      She turned away and headed across the yard to the unfinished fence. Leaning over, she snagged the work gloves she’d dropped on the ground...what? Twenty minutes ago, maybe?

      It felt like a lifetime.

      Her hands were shaking so much that she had a hard time getting her fingers into the right slots. When the gloves were finally on, she reached for the post-hole diggers. As she jammed them back into the hole she’d begun, she heard the boards of the porch steps creak.

      Okay, good. Dan was leaving. She held her breath, waiting to hear his truck door open and close.

      “Bailey.” He spoke from so close behind her that she jumped like a startled deer. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to spook you. But...what you said back there. You were wrong. I did come back.”

      She flashed him an irritated glance. “What are you talking about?”

      “I drove around for a few hours. Did some drinking.” His fingers were clenched down so hard on the weathered brim of his hat that his knuckles were white. “But then I came back to the motel room. It was about three thirty in the morning, and you were curled up asleep on the bed with wadded-up tissues all around you. You’d been crying—hard—and you almost never cried. I’d done that to you on our wedding day, because I’d fought with you about driving back to Pine Valley and facing up to your parents.”

      “Dan, like I said, there’s no point in—”

      He cut her off. “I told you I wanted to go west, start fresh someplace new, just the two of us. But the truth was, I was just a coward. I was scared if we went back to Georgia, your parents СКАЧАТЬ