Don't Tell Me You Love Me (Destiny Bay Romances~The Ranchers Book 6) (7 page)

“Well, why not?”

“Why not, indeed.” Johnny smiled humorlessly, remembering Cheyenne’s father. “He was a big man around here. He worked hard for it.”

Frank frowned, shaking his head as he thought about Bob himself. Thinking about Bob seemed to be serious business for him. “We all worked hard for it,” he said.
 

But Johnny knew that wasn’t true, at least, not in Frank’s mind. Frank thought, just as Bob had, that Johnny never did pull his weight, that Johnny double dealt behind their backs. Still, Frank had always been decent to him. He stopped and went back and shook the man’s hand again before he left.
 

“Frank, I’ve always regretted the fact that you’re such a nice guy,” he said. “It would be much more satisfying to be able to hate you.”

“Hate me? Why would you want to do that?”

Johnny looked into his eyes and realized the man really didn’t have the passion in him for Cheyenne that Johnny had always had. Still had. Oh yeah. It was still there. Some tension inside him relaxed with the knowledge, and he grinned at the older man.
 

“No reason,” he said as he turned for the door. “And that’s why it’s so hard to do.”

He left the house but he didn’t leave the grounds right away. Instead, he headed for the garage. There were seven bays, most of them filled with late model luxury cars, but in the far bay was the car he was interested in. He walked toward it slowly, mesmerized by it’s twisted devastation. It had once been a meticulously renovated and refurbished 1963 Corvette. Candy apple red. Now, it was a wreck. A nostalgic, destroyed wreck. But heart breaking none the less.

He stood and stared at it, feeling the horror once again, the regret, the tragedy. It had been a dark night in September. He’d been drinking. He’d been angry. He’d been lost and unable to find a way to fix that. And so he’d driven drunk, taken Bob Carrington’s prize possession and destroyed it in a horrific accident. He was lucky he hadn’t died in that crash.
 

“We keep it like that as a reminder.”

He turned. Cheyenne had come up behind him.
 

“We don’t want to forget.”

“You don’t want to forget my crime, my assault on your father’s beloved car. You don’t want to forgive, do you?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then slowly shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “No forgiveness. Sorry.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t expect any.”

She was staring at the wreck as hard as he was. “But is there any regret?” she asked him. “Do you feel guilt for what you did? You took my father’s most prized possession and you smashed it. The way it happened, it felt as though you’d done it on purpose just to hurt him. And you hurt him alright. The next day he had a massive heart attack and died on the spot.” She glared at him. “But you…you live on. Have you made any attempt at restoration, any attempt at healing?”

He met her gaze and held it. “Obviously I haven’t done anything that comes close to making amends as far as you’re concerned,” he said.
 

He was surprised at how bereft she looked. She was searching his gaze as though she hoped to find something there that would make her feel that he really was sorry—and she just hadn’t found it yet.
 

“Do you regret it?” she asked.

“How can you even ask me a question like that?”

“I ask because I don’t know the answer.”

He felt a stirring of the old anger and he turned away. She could ask all she wanted, he wasn’t going to answer that one. The truth was tangled up in bad memories.
 

“So I guess you and Frank are going to be tying the old knot in a few days, huh?” he said instead.

“Yes.”

“And then the honeymoon.” He turned to look at her again. “What do you plan to do with the kid?”

“I…I think Gina…”

He gave her a grin with very little humor attached to it. “Hey, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Forget Gina.”

“What do you mean?”

“Frank thinks it would be a great idea for me to take care of Zachary while you’re on your honeymoon.”

“He what?” She paled visibly. “It’s not up to Frank.”

He shook his head and looked away. She fell right into that one and he almost felt like a jerk for springing the trap on her. But he’d started down this road and he might as well finish the journey.
 

“Oh. I thought husbands and wives usually tried to back each other up on these things.”

She gave a deep sigh of exasperation but didn’t say anything.
 

“Are you telling me, if push came to shove, you’d rather keep Zachary than have Frank?”

She stared at him. It was obvious her answer would have been, in a heartbeat, if she’d been honest. But she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing that for sure. “I am madly in love with Frank,” she told him defiantly. “He’s good and kind and thoughtful…. and… everything….”

“Everything that I am not.” His gaze narrowed. “I know that, darling. And if you’ve decided that Frank is what you want, more power to you. Go ahead and have him.” He shoved his hands down into the pockets of his jeans. “But you can’t keep all of Zachary at the same time. Zach is half mine.”

Her eyes widened. “You can’t take him. He’s scared to death of you. You saw him.”

“I’m his father. I have a right to him.”

“Your rights! Your damn rights! What about his rights?”

“Such as?”
 

“A child has a right to a stable home, to people who love him.”
 

She was off and running now. Something told him this was a rant that had been building up in her for awhile. So he just stood there, listening.
 

“A child has a right not to be scared out of his wits. There are more important things than legal rights on paper. He’s not a possession, he’s not a toy. He’s not a boat, he’s not a car. He’s a thinking, breathing, feeling little person. And he’s not old enough to understand what’s going on. You can probably go to the law and get your rights backed by them. But if you do…” She glared at him.
 

“What’s my alternative? I want my son. While you’re on your honeymoon, snuggling up with good old Frank, I want to be taking care of our son.”

She drew in a gasp of air that sounded like a hiccup. “Then you have to come and make him love you first.”

He shrugged. “He’ll get used to me.”

“No. That’s not good enough.
 

“What if he never loves me?”

“Then you can’t take care of him.”

“What if I take him anyway?”

“No.” She shook her head, looking fierce. “So help me God, I’ll take him to Australia first.”

He shook his head. “You’re bluffing.”

“Try me.”
 

Her eyes flashed. He stared down into them and then his mouth began to quirk at the corners. Reaching out, his hand was quickly lost in her thick dark hair and he pulled her closer. “You win, Cheyenne,” he said. “You know I don’t mean it. There’s no way I’m taking Zachary away from you. Ever.”

She gulped in air. “But…”

“I’m sorry. I was being a jerk. I…I was thinking about you with Frank and it pretty much made me crazy. I had to hit back somehow. Immature, I know.” He sighed. “I’m working on that.”

She closed her eyes in relief, then reached to touch his cheek with the flat of her hand. “Oh Johnny,” she sighed. “You know just how to drive me to the brink.”

He shook his head. Regrets? Now he was feeling them. “That’s not what I want to do. It just seems to turn out that way every time lately.”

“I know.”

He dropped his hand and backed away from her. “I’d better go. And…” He swallowed hard and forced himself to say it. “Maybe it would be better if I didn’t come back.”

Something flared in her eyes, but she didn’t say a word. He turned and walked away.

Chapter Seven

Cheyenne went quickly back into the house, racing up the stairs and going in to check on her baby. He was sleeping fitfully, thrashing a bit, but not quite enough to wake himself. She leaned over the railing of his crib and watched him, tears rimming her eyes.
 

She’d almost made it. She’d been inches away from the finish line. Her main goal for the last eighteen months had been to establish a stable, healthy family for her son. She’d picked Frank. He was solid, dependable, honorable. And he’d been her father’s right hand man. That meant a lot.
 

Her father had been a giant of a man. Strong, fair and compelling, his reputation and character were known throughout the valley. If you had Bob Carrington on your side, you were going to win, no matter what it was you were aiming for.
 

Cheyenne’s mother had died when she was just five years old and after that, her father was the most important figure in her life. No one else came close—until Johnny.
 

The irony was, Johnny was the only thing she ever fought with her father about—and those fights were often horrific.
 

Lately she’d been telling herself that her father had been right. Johnny was poison. She should never have let herself fall so completely under his spell. Before this epiphany, when she’d tried to explain to her father that the way she felt about Johnny was more than love—that it was a magic connection, deeper than pain, stronger than blood, her father had raged at her. Didn’t she understand that it was merely a young girl’s romantic fancy? Didn’t she know that all girls felt that way about their first love?
 

No. She didn’t know that and what’s more, she didn’t believe it. But that last year, it seemed like Johnny was doing his best to prove her father right.
 

And then came the accident and her father’s heart attack and everything went straight to hell.
 

“Oh sweet baby,” she whispered to Zachary. “What am I going to do?”

“Lysette, do you remember that last year?”

Johnny had spent the afternoon driving around the valley, saying hello to some old friends, revisiting some old haunts. Then he and Lysette had gone for fajitas at his favorite restaurant, had a few margueritas, and were now back at her house, hanging out, wasting time, renewing their friendship.
 

“That last year when you were here?”

“Yeah.”

“Sort of. I have to admit to more than my share of intoxicated hazy days back then, but I basically can conjure up the timeline. Why?”

Johnny scowled, thrusting his legs out before him as he sat in the overstuffed chair. “It was a hard year. I did everything wrong. Given a choice, I took the wrong road every time.”

“Yeah. I pretty much agree with that. That was the way I saw it too.” She made a face. “The way I remember it, you did everything you could to make Cheyenne unhappy. It was like an obsession with you. I never did understand that.”

He raised his head and stared at her, remembering that too. “You didn’t?”

She shook her head. “No. So what was the deal, anyway?”

“I’m not completely clear on that myself,” he admitted. He had a few ideas, but they weren’t anything he was ready to discuss with her. “I’m dealing with feelings and emotions here, not logical thought.”

“Gotcha.” She suppressed a smile. “So what’s the verdict?”

He moved restlessly. “The verdict is – I was a jackass. And I ruined something so good.”

Lysette sighed, smiling ruefully. “Do you still love her?”

He looked at her as though he couldn’t believe she could ask such a question. “Sure. I was born to love her. I can’t stop that. No one can.”

“Ah jeez,” she muttered. She closed her eyes and turned away.
 

Johnny sighed, realizing he was fencing himself in with his thoughts and longings. Just a week before he’d had that incident in Kuala Lumpur, where his mind had been full of her and he’d felt her presence there with him. For just a moment, he’d felt that familiar electricity, as though she were thinking of him, too. He’d tried to fight it. He’d told himself to give it up. There was more to life than one woman in one town in California.
 

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t shake her. She was in his blood, and he couldn’t rid himself of that. He knew then that he had to go back and give it one more chance. He couldn’t give up on her so easily. The anger, the pain, the bitterness had faded. After all, it had been almost two years.
 

He turned back to the now and to Lysette, and at that same moment, her phone rang. She took a look and handed it to him.
 

“Hello?”

“Johnny.” It was Cheyenne of course. “I was hoping I would catch you there with Lysette. I…things are crazy here.”

His hand tightened on the phone. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Zachary. I haven’t been able to get him to calm down since you were here this morning. Even when he was asleep, taking his nap, it was like he was fighting something the whole time. And now…”

He could hear the desperation in her voice. “I don’t know what to do. He won’t stop crying. He’s never been like this before. I can’t take anymore of it. Can you come help me?”

He hung up and Lysette stared at him.
 

“And so it begins,” she said softly. “You’re back, and she immediately finds she needs you, with all her heart and soul. Doesn’t she?”

He growled at her. “When did you get so melodramatic?”

“She can’t live without you,” she continued, as though he hadn’t spoken. “Makes you wonder. How did she manage all these months?”

“Lay off,” he said brusquely, grabbing a jacket.

“I don’t know if you two were made for each other, or if you’re the worst enemy the other could possibly have. You come together like two bright sparks, creating heat, creating fire. And then you burn each other down.”

“Lysette…”

She was shaking her head, staring at him. “Saint or sinner, best or worst, a refuge from the storm or certain doom. Either way, you know you’re going to crash and burn. Both of you.”

He grunted. “I already did that, didn’t I?” he said bitterly.

And then he was going through the doorway, heading for Cheyenne.