A Love to Call Her Own (26 page)

“Jessy. It's nice to meet you.” It wasn't the warmest welcome Dalton had ever heard her give, and it didn't include the automatic,
Call me Ramona.
Those were the first words she'd said to Sandra, in a sincere,
yay-I've-got-me-a-daughter!
tone.

Dalton was puzzled. A few minutes ago, his mom had been cheerful as hell, wanting to meet the woman in his bed, shaking with excitement, and now she was…Disappointed? Sad?

Jessy saw it, too, of course, and that vulnerability was back in her eyes, though she tried to subdue it. When he sidled close enough to reach for her hand, she pulled away, folding both hands behind her back. Nails clacking, Oz trotted in from the living room, looked from side to side, then sat down in front of Jessy. Appointing himself her guard for the moment?

“Well, uh, Jessy.” David shoved his glasses back into place. “You live in Tallgrass?”

“Yes.”

End of that conversation.

Dalton didn't know what to say or do. He'd never experienced this kind of discomfort with his parents. His mom had always liked everyone…except maybe Alice, even before she'd run off with Dillon. He'd honestly thought she would love Jessy for saving him, if nothing else.

In a sudden flurry of activity, Ramona put away all the stuff she'd gotten out to cook with, then grabbed her purse from the back of a dining chair. “Well, if we're going to get to Stillwater in time to catch Noah before he goes out clubbing, we'd better get going. Nice to meet you, Jessy. Dalton, I'll talk to you later.” With that, she walked stiffly through the house and out onto the porch.

David hesitated. “Jessy, it
is
nice meeting you, though I'm sorry to surprise you this way. Dalton…” At a loss for words, he shrugged, shook his head, and followed Ramona.

After the screen door closed behind him, the house vibrated with silence. Dalton's breathing seemed excessively loud, while Jessy didn't seem to be breathing at all. She had this pale, stark, insecure thing going on that made his gut knot.

Long after the RV motor had faded into the distance, she finally breathed. “So
that
was delirious with relief. I'm glad you told me. I never would have recognized it if you hadn't.”

He combed his fingers through his hair. “I don't know
what
that was. I don't understand. She
wanted
to meet you—even said she didn't want to overwhelm you.”

“As first meetings go, I think it was pretty underwhelming.” As if her legs would finally move again, Jessy crossed to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water.

Wedding cake notwithstanding, it had been a long time since lunch, and though his stomach was still unsettled, he was hungry. Surely she was, too. “Listen, you want to head back into town—”

Jessy looked sharply at him. “You want me to go home?”

“No,” he said slowly. “I want you to spend the night. I was just thinking about food. Unless you're a better cook than me, our best chance for a good dinner this late is in Tallgrass.”

It took her a long time to break his gaze, then turn back to the refrigerator. “I can't cook much. I can steam fish—”

“Though why would you want to.”

“And I can make egg and grilled cheese sandwiches.” She set a carton of eggs on the counter, found a package of sliced cheese and the butter, then closed the door with her hip and asked, “Bread?”

He was out of his mom's homemade bread, so he got a store-bought loaf from the pantry, then set the griddle pan on the stove. He leaned against the counter, watching her, getting things for her as she needed them, and thought this was something he could get used to. Having her in his bed. Feeling her beside him when he slept. Knowing she would be there when he woke. Sharing that big old bathtub. Living the rest of their lives together…

Damn it, why had his mom reacted that way?

Jessy slathered butter over the hot griddle, then began assembling three sandwiches: slices of bread, butter side down; slices of cheese; hard fried eggs; more cheese; bread, butter side up.

As he watched her watch the cooking, he said, “Jess, I'm sorry about Mom. I don't know—”

A muscle twitched in her jaw, but her pretty, phony smile almost hid it. “Hey, I have a lifetime's experience at disappointing mothers. It's one of my talents.”

“She wasn't disappointed.” But that was exactly how it had seemed.

“Sure she was. Maybe because I'm so obviously not Sandra. Maybe she expected someone more like her. Maybe she knows who I am. She must still have friends in town. She doesn't seem the type who wouldn't keep in touch just because she moved.”

“And what could her friends possibly tell her about you?”

She lifted the first sandwich to check the browning, then carefully flipped it before looking at him. “You are not the only man I've hooked up with since Aaron died.”

Dalton widened his eyes and raised his voice half an octave. “Oh, my God, you mean you've had sex with other men? You've gone out, shared meals, shared drinks, maybe even danced with other men?” After a pause for effect, he kissed the top of her head. “Welcome to the world of being single, sweetheart.”

He couldn't dig up even a hint of jealousy over it. What happened when they weren't together didn't matter. From now on…that was the important stuff.

“You know what? You and me—we're the ones who count here. Mom will come around, or she won't.” Cradling her face in his palms, he brushed his mouth across hers. “Either way”—his tongue stroked between her full lips—“we'll be fine.”

It was the middle of the night, and Jessy couldn't sleep. She'd eased out of bed, pulling on Dalton's discarded dress shirt, and wandered barefoot out of the room. Oz, curled on the floor, lifted his head as she passed, did a stretch that would make any yoga master proud, then got up and trailed along behind her.

Moonlight through the windows lit the way, guiding her down the stairs, down the broad hall, and into the living room, where she did a slow circle around the perimeter. It was a comfortable room, square, big windows and a sandstone fireplace on one inside wall. She could easily imagine the mantel holding family pictures of Dalton, Noah, and the mysterious Dillon, David and Ramona and Sandra, the oh, so much more acceptable daughter-in-law in Ramona's eyes.

But it didn't hold any pictures. Except for a stack of magazines, the mantel was bare. In fact, Jessy hadn't seen any reminders of Sandra anywhere. No tacky but fun Vegas wedding photo, no shots of her in uniform or with the animals, no flag from her coffin, no medals, nothing.

Not that she could blame Dalton for that. All her reminders of Aaron, except for the pictures on her computer, were put away. She couldn't bear to live with them but couldn't bear to get rid of them, so she'd carefully packed them in heavy-duty tubs and moved them to her basement storage room.

Not yet ready to settle, she continued her self-guided tour. Dalton's office was across the hall, every flat surface covered with papers, folders, catalogs, and magazines. Even in the pale light, she could see a layer of dust settled unevenly over the room, as if he came in only to work, then got out again as quickly as he could. She imagined a ranch, like any business, required a lot of paperwork, and she
couldn't
imagine Dalton having nearly as much interest in that as he did in the outside part.

She was very good with paperwork. Organized to perfection. She could find any one of her ten-thousand-some pictures in seconds.

Sandra had probably been incredibly organized, too. And his parents had adored her.

If the fact that Jessy wasn't Sandra was all his mother had against her, Jessy would be relieved. It was the other possibility, that Ramona knew through gossip from old friends what kind of person Jessy was, that made her feel ragged inside. Dalton said it didn't matter, and he'd made love to her again after dinner as if it really didn't, but still…She already had one train wreck of a family. She didn't need another.

She did a quick walk-through of the dining room, as formal as anything in this homey place got, then the laundry room next to the kitchen. There was one door she hadn't opened, across from the bath, so she did and saw a handful of stairs disappearing into the absolute blackness of a basement.

Still restless, she closed the door, padded down the hall, and let herself out. Oz, who'd taken a seat in the recliner, leaped after her before the screen door closed and ran into the yard.

The night was quiet, the air sweet with the scent of flowers, the moonlight gleaming off a lone curious palomino, turning its coat silver, ethereal. The scene should have been peaceful, should have soothed every last raw nerve in her body. How could anyone have a problem that mattered when surrounded by this beauty, by this sense of
all is right with the world
?

Once again, Jessy was the exception to the rule, and not in a good way.

She settled on the porch swing, knees drawn to her chest, catching occasional glimpses of Oz as he wandered the yard sniffing, then peeing. Life was good for the dog. Could it ever be that good for her?

The screen door didn't squeak exactly—more like the hinges rubbed as it swung open—and Dalton stepped out, hair standing on end, jeans hugging his hips, feet and chest bare. Was it odd that she found the first as appealing as the last?

Not odd. She just loved her a cowboy. Would God or karma or destiny let her have a happily ever after this time? Or was she doomed to another broken heart?

He sat on the swing and set it in motion. The swaying tried to lull her into a serene state, but she had too many insecurities to give in easily. He wasn't feeling too complacent, either. The air around him was practically simmering.

She didn't have anything to say, so she didn't. After a while, he broke the silence. “I told you, it's family tradition to give the first two sons names beginning with a D. Mom was okay with that, as long as she got to choose the names. She'd originally picked something normal like Daniel and Douglas, but when we were born, she changed her mind and went with Dillon—like Marshal Dillon on the TV show
Gunsmoke
—and Dalton, from the outlaw gang that operated in Oklahoma when it was still Indian Territory.”

When we were born.
Jessy's breath caught. Dalton was a twin. The brother he never talked about was his
twin
. Identical? Was there another man walking around out there with the same black hair, brown eyes, awesome smile, smoldering good looks, incredible body?
Holy crap.

“Of course, she got it wrong. We each lived up to the other's name. I was the respectable marshal, Dillon the reckless outlaw. We looked exactly alike, but it would have been hard to find two brothers as different as we were.” He glanced at her. “Though I suspect you and your sisters qualify.”

Identical twins who were smokin' hot. They must have left a trail of fluttering teenage hearts everywhere they went.

“We weren't inseparable. We never had that bond people talk about, but still, he was my
twin
. That was supposed to mean something…but apparently not to him. When we were nineteen, he ran off in the middle of the night. Took his clothes, his beat-up old truck, and my girlfriend and just
left
. Turned out, he'd been seeing her behind my back. They'd been planning their great escape from small-town life and family expectations for weeks. The whole thing broke my parents' heart, and…”

He cleared his throat, but it didn't erase the huskiness in his voice. “It kind of…broke mine, too. I mean, it pissed me off that, with all the girls he dated, he couldn't keep his damn hands off the only one I was with. But the fact that he didn't care any more about the family than to just blow us all off…Disappear. Never come back. Never call. Never let us know if he's even still alive. Hell, Noah doesn't even really remember him. Mom and Dad have never gotten over it, and…I guess I haven't, either.”

He and his brother had more of a bond that he was admitting to, Jessy ventured. If they didn't, the hurt and anger would have faded over the years. Dalton would have realized one day that it was a done deal—selfish for Dillon, sad for the family, but the broken hearts would be in the past with their memories, where they belonged.

No, this was Dalton subconsciously trying to keep as much of the hurt as possible deeply buried. With all he'd gone through with Sandra, he didn't need the unanswered questions of Dillon haunting him.

He gave a heavy sigh, the tension leaving his body. “So that's all there is to know about Dillon.”

“Wow.” Jessy hadn't seen or talked to her sisters in longer than she could remember—a lie she told herself; of course, she knew to the month how long it had been—but she hadn't tried in all that time. She knew where they were, she had their e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and they had hers, and she knew they were okay. How would it feel not to know? To have no clue whether they were happy and well? Whether they were alive or dead?

And twins…She could—and did—put her sisters out of her mind, but every time Dalton looked at himself, he saw Dillon, and he must wonder and feel bitter.

“I wonder if my sisters ever felt that I'd betrayed them by leaving. I don't think so. By then, I was such an embarrassment to the family and their great name.”

“Your situation was different. They were trying to force you to be someone you're not. Dillon was just being Dillon.”

Giving him a flirtatious smile, she scooted closer to him. “Lucky for us that I ran. You never would have looked twice at the Jessamine they wanted me to be, and I would never have known what it was like to be happy.”

He lifted her onto his lap, just as she'd hoped he would, and she rested her head against his heated broad shoulder. As his fingers skimmed lightly across her skin, he asked, “Are you happy, Jessy?” Before she could take a breath, he touched his index finger gently to her mouth. “Be grown up. Don't blurt out the first answer that comes to mind.”