His Texas Bride (14 page)

Now Buck could definitely see Tyler’s shoulders shaking, and he wondered what he could possibly say to ease the situation, to rub away the hurt.

Were there words?

Buck had never been good speaking his feelings aloud, and this was no exception. Clearly this was not the best approach, but he couldn’t think of a single other thing to say that wouldn’t make things worse.

“Tyler?” he called again.

“Just. Leave. Me. Alone,” Tyler hissed, without turning around to face his father.

Buck shook his head, only belatedly aware that Tyler couldn’t see the movement.

“No, son,” he said at last and then cleared his throat against his smoky voice. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

Tyler turned then, swiveling so quickly Buck barely saw him move. Buck’s gaze was fixed on his son’s face. He had expected pain. Grief. Sadness.

He was taken aback, for all he saw in his son’s narrowed, piercing gaze was anger.

Ellie had no idea what to do with Julie while Buck was talking to Tyler. She was so uncomfortable, she almost wanted to jump out of her own skin. She could think of nothing to say to Buck’s ex-wife—at least nothing kind.

Besides, her mind was on Tyler. It was heart-wrenching enough just to have been in the room with Buck, especially when Tyler had come in. What must the boy have thought, having such colossal information just flung at him out of the blue?

It certainly wasn’t the way Ellie would have done it, though, truth be told, she couldn’t think of a single way that
would
have saved Tyler the angst he was now facing.

It was obvious Julie was pondering the same thing. Her mouth was twisted, and she was clasping her hands in a repetitive, though not rhythmic, motion. Julie’s blond hair had fallen into her face, but she didn’t brush it back.

Not wanting to sit and stare at the woman, Ellie got up and reached for the coffeepot, refilling both their mugs with the steaming liquid. At least that gave her something to do with her hands, however small. She contemplated cleaning the oven—from top to bottom.

Now.

She would have laughed at the picture that made if the circumstances weren’t so serious. Ellie thought she should say something to Julie, but she didn’t know what.

“The last thing I meant to do was to hurt him,” Julie said, still wringing her hands.

“Tyler?” Ellie asked.

Julie lifted her gaze. “Tyler,” she agreed, her lips still pinched. “And Buck.”

Ellie blinked a couple of times. In her head she knew Julie wasn’t being possessive—she was just stating facts. But Ellie’s heart didn’t want to agree.

“How long do you think they’ll be?” Julie asked, furtively glancing at her watch.

Ellie shrugged, not bothering to look at the clock. “I don’t know. A while, probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if Buck has to chase Tyler all around the ranch to get him to listen. Tyler’s a bit stubborn that way.”

“Just like his father,” Julie noted. She chuckled, but it was a dry sound.

Ellie nodded. Yes, Tyler was like Buck, in more ways than she could count. What would happen if they couldn’t work through this situation? She might lose them both.

“And his age,” Ellie said belatedly. “Teenagers definitely have minds of their own.”

“Thirteen,” Julie murmured. “The years seem like they are getting shorter and shorter.”

“They do, don’t they?” Ellie said contemplatively. “I remember when I was a teenager. It seemed to me as if a year would last forever.”

At least until Buck had left.

The first few years, Ellie remembered with a dull stab of pain in the general area of her heart, had
stretched on interminably. She had thrown herself wholeheartedly into her college studies and then, with God’s grace, she’d found her therapy ranch ministry.

And now she had found Buck again and had fallen in love with both him and his son.

Julie pushed her hair back and looked at her watch again, impatience lining her brow.

“This is going to take some time,” Ellie reiterated, not so much to remind Julie as to soothe her own fears. “I’d better brew another pot of coffee.”

A
nger.

Tyler was staring at Buck with pure, unadulterated rage. Buck would go so far as to say there was downright
hatred
in his son’s expression. Buck assumed that particular emotion was aimed at him as much as at Julie.

And who could blame the kid?

Buck was angry at himself. While it was true that Julie had deserted him and Tyler, Buck had been the one to carry a grudge all these years. A grudge that ultimately had hurt his son.

He couldn’t change the past. But he could do his best to make amends now.

“I’m sorry you had to meet her this way,” Buck said, reaching over the fence to grab the mare’s lead away from Tyler and slow the horse to a skittering halt. “I didn’t mean for you to meet her this way.”

“Whatever.” Tyler sniffed and pulled his hat even lower over his eyes.

They were back to that, then.

“No, not
whatever,
son. You can’t just walk away from this.
We
can’t walk away from this.”

“Why not?” Tyler challenged.

Buck kicked himself over the fence in one leap and then strode to Tyler’s side, wrapping his arms around the boy before he could scamper away. He held on tightly until Tyler stopped squirming in his grip.

“Julie is your mother, champ.”

“That woman is
not
my mother.” Tyler had frozen rock solid in Buck’s grip.

“Yes, she is,” Buck maintained in a monotone voice. “Well, your biological mother, anyway.”

Tyler jerked his shoulder, breaking Buck’s grip. The boy beelined for the stable. Buck regained the mare’s halter and led her and the foal into the stable at a slower pace, purposefully giving Tyler a moment to compose himself.

As Buck expected, Tyler was slumped in the hay in a back corner of the birthing stall, his arms locked around his knees, his hands gripping his wrists. His head was down, hiding his expression, but Buck could hear that Tyler was crying.

It broke his heart. Again.

“I’m sorry, son,” Buck said on a sigh. Absently he removed the halter from the mare and rubbed her down.

“You’re
sorry?
” Tyler accused.

“I have a lot of regrets in my life,” Buck admitted quietly, crouching before Tyler.

“Like me?” Tyler mumbled under his breath, so softly Buck barely heard the words.

“No!” Buck exclaimed. He lifted his hands to cup Tyler’s face, forcing the boy to look at him. “Never.”

He could tell Tyler didn’t believe him, as pain overshadowed the anger in the boy’s shiny blue eyes. Tyler’s pain echoed in the deepest recesses of Buck’s heart, like his insides were being cut out with a dull knife.

“Never,” Buck repeated, stronger this time. “Never, ever. Not one single day, Tyler. There’s nothing in my life more important to me than you.”

Tyler blinked in rapid succession, but tears still slipped through his eyelids. Buck brushed the wetness away with the pads of his thumbs.

“What I regret,” Buck continued, “is not telling you the whole truth about your mother. I thought it would be easier for you if I let you think whatever you wanted about her. Now I see I gave you ample space to create your own reality, one that was even worse than the truth.”

“That my
mother
left because of me,” Tyler hissed, his tone bitter.

“No!” Buck exclaimed again. “None of this was your fault. You have to believe that.”

Tyler didn’t answer.

Buck took a deep breath and plunged forward. “You should know that Julie came here with the intention of making amends—to tell you she’s sorry for not being there for you when you were growing up.”

“Why
now?
”

“She became a Christian, Tyler,” Buck explained quietly. “She didn’t want to go through the rest of her life without asking for your forgiveness.”

“It’s not
fair,
” Tyler insisted. “I hate her. Julie has ruined
everything!
”

Buck cringed. It wouldn’t do for Tyler to carry his hatred like a beacon around his neck. Buck should
know. Wasn’t that exactly what
he
had done, not only in the past ten years with Julie, but before that, with the quarrel with his own mother? And he had blamed God, he realized, for everything that went wrong in his life.

“It won’t do you any good,” he said aloud, his voice raspy. “Hating your mother will only make you miserable.”

“It won’t do any
good?
” Tyler echoed, his voice becoming more high-pitched by the moment. He brushed Buck’s hands away. “You won’t even
try,
Dad. How fair is that?”

Buck’s brow creased as he considered his son’s words. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

Tyler glared at Buck and then rolled his eyes, as if his father was the stupidest man alive. Maybe he was.

“Make her go away,” Tyler snapped.

Buck sat down by his son, groaning as he leaned his back against the wall. He stared at Tyler for a good minute without speaking.

“Okay, I will,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “If that’s what you really want.”

“You will?” Tyler asked, relief flooding into his shaky voice. He actually sounded hopeful, which immediately played on Buck’s heartstrings. “Really?”

Buck nodded solemnly. “Of course I will. But I think you should think about this first. Your mother…”

Tyler leveled him with a glare.

“
Julie
has come a long way to see you. She lives in California now.”

“So?”

“She might not deserve our forgiveness,” Buck admitted, patting his son’s arm. “But look at it from
another perspective. Jesus saved us—
forgave
us—knowing every misdeed in our past and all the wrong things we have yet to do. If God is willing to do that for us, can we do any less?”

Tyler laughed bitterly. “Did Ellie tell you that? Since when did you become a preacher?”

One corner of Buck’s lips rose just slightly. It was the first time since Julie had arrived at the door that he really felt any relief from the black storm clouds that seemed to have descended on him. “I’m no preacher.”

Tyler scoffed. “No kidding.”

“But I remember the Lord’s Prayer. You know, ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’? Sound familiar?”

Tyler shrugged. “I guess.”

“Look, son. I know I’m not the best role model. I was mad at your grandma for a long time for something she did—for so long I practically forgot why I was mad at her in the first place. For the longest time I refused to speak to her, though she tried over and over to contact me.”

Tyler sniffed and wiped his eyes, his attention clearly focused on Buck.

“Then what happened?”

“When your mother…when
Julie
left, I felt betrayed all over again. This time it was Julie who wouldn’t talk to me. I guess I eventually got it through my thick skull that I had done the same thing to my mother—your grandmother.”

“Yeah,” Tyler agreed. “At least you worked it out with Grandma.”

Buck nodded. “I did. But it wasn’t easy. And if I
hadn’t been so bullheaded, I wouldn’t have wasted so many years hating when there’s so much room to love.”

“But, Dad, I—I don’t love Julie,” Tyler stammered and then cleared his throat.

“No one expects you to,” Buck assured him. “I certainly don’t, and Julie doesn’t love me, either.”

“What, then?”

“She just wants to talk to you. Apologize for her past behavior. Get to know the great son she has, you know, before you’re all grown up on us.”

“What about Ellie?” Tyler challenged.

“What about Ellie?” Buck repeated softly, the very mention of her name making his heart start skittering like the newborn colt.

Tyler groaned. “Aw, Dad, don’t make me say it.”

“I wouldn’t if I had the slightest idea what you were talking about,” Buck said with a laugh.

“
You
and Ellie.”

A new understanding washed over Buck. So that was what this was all about.

“You don’t think Julie being here is going to affect the way I feel about Ellie or how she feels about you, do you?” Buck asked, honestly perplexed.

Tyler shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Not in this lifetime,” Buck assured his son. He stood to his feet, brushed the hay off his jeans and offered a hand to Tyler. “You think I’m going to let a woman like Ellie off the hook?”

“You did once,” Tyler reminded him, accepting the hand Buck offered and pulling himself to his feet, then, following his father’s lead, brushing the hay off his jeans.

“And I learned from that experience. I may be slow, but I’m not stupid.”

Tyler laughed. “So what are we going to do, then?”

Surprisingly, Buck knew the answer to that question. It was all about trust, wasn’t it? Ellie needed to know he wasn’t going to walk out on her again, that he was here for good this time.

And he knew just how to do that. He grinned at Tyler. “I have an idea.”

Would this day never end?

Would this tension ever slacken?

Would this pain never cease?

Ellie glanced at the clock over the sink for the tenth time in as many minutes. At first, it had only been Julie staring at her watch.

Now they were both clock watching, waiting with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation so thick in the air, Ellie thought she could almost slice it. It was definitely difficult for her to breathe. Getting air to her lungs was no longer an involuntary act. She had to coach herself.

In, two, three. Out, two, three.

A movement at the doorway had Ellie on her feet even before Julie. Both women stared at the door as Tyler entered, followed by Buck, who swept his hat off his head and sighed loudly, his expression giving nothing away.

Tyler mimicked his father’s movement, but the young man didn’t have the same ability to mask his features that his father did. Ellie recognized the joy streaming from Tyler’s gaze before the excited grin on his face even registered with her.

Her heart sank, and a weight grew painfully heavy on her shoulders.

What did it mean, that joy in Tyler’s eyes? Ellie wondered. That he was glad to meet his birth mother? Ellie would have thought Buck would have had to drag the boy kicking and screaming back to the house.

Apparently Tyler was much more resilient than Ellie had previously determined him to be. She had hoped for the best, but now that it was here, she wasn’t sure that was really what she wanted. She had basked in the new love she’d found with Buck and Tyler. Now she would have to learn to share that love. It might be the right thing to do, but it wasn’t easy. She slid her glance to Julie, who was flushed and beaming at her son.

Ellie moved her gaze to Buck, who pulled up one side of his mouth in what could have passed for a half smile, or maybe a grimace. His eyes flittered from hers, but not before she’d read his expression.

Guilty as charged.

“Tyler,” Buck pressed when the young man didn’t immediately speak.

Ellie purposefully avoided looking at Tyler again, afraid she might burst into tears. Never in a million years would she have expected things to go this way.

Tyler stepped forward into Ellie’s view. Despite her reticence, Ellie found herself drawn to the scene of the young man approaching the mother he barely remembered. His intent, Ellie surmised, was clear enough from the grin on his face.

Obviously Julie thought so, too, for she stepped closer to the boy and held out her hand to him. His expression turning suddenly serious, Tyler took Julie’s
proffered hand and shook it solemnly, looking every inch the young man he was.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said and then glanced at Ellie, as if requesting confirmation for his actions.

Ellie thought her heart might rip in two, but she forced herself to smile and nod at the boy, hoping her expression was encouraging and did not reveal her true state of mind.

“I’m glad to…” Julie paused and tripped over her words. “To meet you, too, Tyler.”

“Yeah,” the boy agreed, but his smile was wavering.

Buck stepped forward and laid a reassuring hand on Tyler’s shoulder.

“Tyler has agreed to speak with you,” he said, addressing Julie.

“I’m so glad,” Julie gushed.

“However,” Buck continued. Ellie noted how he squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I know you’ve been waiting a long time, but I hope you will be willing to postpone this, er, reunion, until later. Tyler and I have something important to discuss with Ellie.”

“Of course,” said Julie, standing. “I have some phone calls to make.”

Julie’s exit was more graceful than Ellie imagined her own would have been.

She wanted to dash out of the house as quickly as she could. She didn’t have any desire whatsoever to hear what Tyler and Buck had to say. Given the way things were going, it could only be bad news for her.

She couldn’t handle it. She wasn’t ready.

If only she’d acknowledged the depth of her feelings
for Buck before Julie had arrived. If only she’d told him she loved him. If only she knew he loved her, too.

There were a lot of
if onlys,
but only one reality, and she was facing that now. She wanted to bolt like a frightened filly.

As if Buck sensed her thoughts, he shifted toward the back door, casually leaning an elbow on the door frame, with what was definitely a half smile on his lips. Ellie glanced toward the living room, but Buck shook his head, cautioning her against that escape.

Resigned, Ellie shifted her gaze to Tyler. The boy was rocking on his feet in his excitement.

“You’re glad to meet your mother, huh?” she asked gently, forcing an upward tilt to her lips, though she was under no illusion that it remotely resembled a smile.

Tyler’s grin faltered, and he glanced anxiously at his father. “Dad?”

“It’s okay, son,” Buck reassured the boy. “Go ahead and tell her what you want to say.”

Tyler was smiling again. “I’m—I’m not really all that happy to meet her,” he said, but it was what he didn’t say that gave Ellie her first tiny ray of hope.

Tyler hadn’t called Julie his mother. At least not yet.