Home To Texas - Ransom My Heart Part 20

"I guess I'm just a little ... confused, maybe, about why n.o.body felt I had a right to know. Especially you."

Samantha said you never called her. Not after ... that night. The night Mandy was conceived."

"You couldn't figure out why?" he asked. The bitterness was there again in his voice. He had done what he thought he had to do at the time. He had made those decisions based on the information available to him then. All Samantha had had to do was to tell him, and he'd have done what needed to be done there, too.

"Because of Mac," she agreed.

"Because of Rio, maybe. But how did you think Samantha was going to react?"

"d.a.m.n it, I didn't know she was pregnant."

"If you had known, you'd have called her?"

"Of course," he said.

"What the h.e.l.l do you think I am, Jenny?"

She didn't say anything for a moment, but he saw the depth of the breath she took, and then her eyes lifted to his, and he was surprised to see anger there.

"What do I think you are, Chase McCullar? How about stupid? Is that simple enough language for you? Simple enough for even you to understand?" She pushed her own chair away from the table and went back to the sink, turning her back on him.

He had had it all fixed in his mind. He was the injured party. They had hidden his daughter's existence from him because they thought he wasn't good enough to be her father. But instead of being on his side, Jenny was raking him over the coals.

"If I had known--" he began again.

"Oh, I don't doubt that you'd have shown up if you'd known about the baby. I know you well enough not to have any question about that. Everybody, Samantha included, knows about that famous McCullar sense of responsibility.

Always doing your d.a.m.n duty. You all just have to do what's right, no matter the cost." There was bitterness in that and sarcasm, and it wasn't like Jenny to be sarcastic.

"What the h.e.l.l's that supposed to mean?" Chase asked, finally feeling

his own temper beginning to flare.

"It means that when a woman goes to bed with a man, she doesn't want the next time he shows up to be because he felt obligated to," Jenny said.

Finally she turned around to face him, and the anger he could hear in

her voice was in her face, as well.

"Just plain stupid," she said again. She threw the dishcloth she'd picked up back on the countertop.

"She told me she was protected."

"So if there's no possibility of a baby, you just don't see her again,"Jenny jeered."What's that called, Chase?One-night stand, maybe?" she suggested."That's not what I meant. You know what was going on. You, of all people, know what was going on then."

"That's no excuse. Not for what you did."

"What I did was take care of the things that had to be taken care of. I

did what I had to do."

"And later?" "You're the one who told me she was married. You made a point of telling me." "Not until months after that night. Months after Mac's death," she challenged."What about all that time in between?No phone call? No nothing? How do you explain that, Chase?""d.a.m.n it, Jenny, you know what I was doing. You, of all people--" He stopped the words, the accusation they contained. If Jenny couldn't understand, if he couldn't make Jenny understand what it had been like for him, then... "It must get awfully crowded in there," she said into the silence.

"Crowded?" he repeated. He couldn't make any sense of that, not in the context of what they'd been discussing.

"Down in that grave with Mac," she said.

"There must be barely enough room for the two of you, big as you are.

Or maybe you've been there so long you just don't notice the lack of room anymore."

"Jenny." He whispered her name, too shocked and hurt to voice the aching protest. It wasn't fair. She didn't understand.

Of all people... "And the saddest thing is that Mac wouldn't want you there, Chase. You know that. Not you and not me. Mac wouldn't want it. Not any of it. He wouldn't have wanted you going after Rio. Or whatever happened between you and Samantha. He wouldn't have wanted you to lose Mandy. Not because of him. You can't use Mac as an excuse.

It's not fair to the man he was."

Fair, he thought, despairing. Did she really still believe life was supposed to be fair? When had any of it been fair?

Not what had happened to Mac. Not what the Kincaids had done.

"At least take responsibility for what you did. And for what you just plain failed to do," she finished and walked out the back door, letting the screen slam behind her.

Responsibility. That hurt, too, because that was exactly what he had thought he was doing five years ago. Taking responsibility, a responsibility he truly had never wanted.

Chase left through the front door, slamming it behind him. He got into Sam's truck and slammed its door, too.

He stuck the key in the ignition and then found that he couldn't turn it, couldn't make his trembling fingers obey the command of his brain.

"It must get awfully crowded in there," Jenny had said.

In the grave with Mac. He supposed there might be some truth in the accusation, except... "d.a.m.n it, Jenny," he said aloud.

"d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l." He put his good arm across the steering wheel and laid his forehead against it. He could feel the tears threatening again, and disgusted, he fought them. Who the h.e.l.l did he think he was crying for? For Mac or Jenny or for himself?.

Or maybe for all three of them.

"Chase?" Jenny called.

He looked up and saw that she was standing on the porch, watching him.

Compa.s.sion had replaced the anger that had been in her dark eyes.

Seeing that released him.

His fingers turned the key, even as he heard the endless echo of the explosion, saw again in his mind's eye the fireball reaching into the cold December night.

The engine roared to life as Jenny stepped off the porch.

He threw the truck into reverse and pushed the gas pedal to the floor.The pickup skewed sideways as he spun the wheel, and then heaccelerated, fires squealing and dust flying. Driving like a teenager,he thought in disgust. Only, when he was a teenager, he would neverhave pulled a stunt like that. His daddy wouldn't have put up withit.

By the time he'd calmed down enough to slow the truck to a reasonable speed, he was almost to the other McCullar house, almost to his place.

Hurt dog, he thought again as the small house appeared out of the shimmer of late-afternoon heat. Coming home again, tail between his legs.

Only, this wasn't home anymore. What had once been his, created by his own hands, now belonged to someone else.

The place looked almost deserted. It wasn't that things wereneglected, but it seemed to be more than just hot-afternoon stillness,too. He stopped the truck under the old cottonwood tree in the yardand sat for a moment, looking it all over, letting the memories driftthrough his head, no longer trying to fight them.

There didn't seem to be anyone here that he might bother by taking a last look around, so he opened the door and crawled out, awkward because he was operating one-handed.

Someone had hung a rope swing from the lowest branch of the cottonwood.

He pulled back one side of the swing and then released it, watching the wooden seat sway crookedly back and forth over the bare patch of dirt beneath it. Finally he raised his eyes to the house.

There was a calico cat sitting on the porch railing, yellow eyeswatching as he walked up to the steps. She was wary of him, but shedidn't give ground. This was her place, her eyes seemed to say. She had the right to be here and he didn't. Right of ownership, he thought, stopping at the bottom of the two low wooden steps.

There was nowhere he could go, he realized, and be welcomed.

Not back to Jenny's, not after what had been said, and not here. It seemed there was nothing left of what had once been home.

The screen door eased open.

"Hi," Mandy said softly.

"I'm not supposed to come outside, but when I saw it was you..." She paused, seeming to be uncertain about exactly what she thought about his unexpected arrival.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. He found a smile for her from somewhere in the rubble Jenny had left of his soul. Her answering grin was quick, wide, and spontaneous, and he realized with a jolt around the region of his heart that she was glad to see him.

"Did you hurt your arm?" she asked, and then she pulled those big blue eyes away from their fascination with the harness Doc had fashioned and back to his face.

"A little bit," he said.

"Mama's asleep. I'm supposed to be, but I heard the truck."

"So you came out to investigate?" he suggested, squatting down until he was at eye level with her.

"Mama's asleep." Inside? he wondered. What the h.e.l.l was Samantha Kincaid doing asleep inside his house? Only ... it wasn't his house, he reminded himself. He had sold it almost five years ago and now somebody else owned what had once been his. Somebody... His eyes left his daughter's and made a quick inventory.

Paddocks and stables. Horses. Kincaid. The natural progression of those words battered at his brain until he was forced to acknowledge what they all meant.

"Stupid," Jenny had said. He guessed she was right.

Chapter Eleven.

"You live here?" he asked, his gaze focusing again on the little girl. The tone of the question was too sharp, but he realized that only when he saw the shock in her face. One small bare foot twisted inward and then settled over the arch of the other. Both feet were a little dirty, Chase no-riced.

Playing-out-in-the-yard dirty. Just like his and Mac's used to be. Except there was a touch of pink polish on each of the tiny toenails. Little-girl toes.

"Yes, sir," she said softly, nervous now, maybe because his tone had seemed to imply that she had done something wrong.

"I used to live here," he said working at making his voice calm and rea.s.suring.

"A long time ago."

She moved then, easing the screen door closed and walking across the porch on those small bare feet. She was wearing pink shorts and a sleeveless, flowered knit top. Her hair had been collected again into two ponytails, the soft blond curls almost touching her shoulders.

"Did you havea cat when you lived here?" she asked.