The Bridal Path: Sara (21 page)

“Now, Sara,” Trent placated.

Jake noted that he appeared a little bemused by his daughter’s increasing defiance, though he certainly should have been used to it by now. If so much weren’t riding on this current battle of wills, Jake might have enjoyed the fireworks.

“Don’t you dare take that condescending tone with me, Daddy,” Sara commanded, poking a finger into her father’s chest. “You’ve never taken any of us seriously. Not me. Not Ashley. Not Dani. We’re your daughters and I’m sure you love us in your way, but we’re disappointments to you because we’re not the sons you wanted.”

She waved off her father’s shocked denial. “It’s true. If you’d ever listened to me, really listened, you never would have offered to sell Jake the ranch in the first place. I know you wanted to get away, but you didn’t need the money from selling the ranch to do that. You have more than enough salted away to live like a king for the rest of your life.”

Trent winced at that and opened his mouth, probably to offer some sort of excuse, but Sara didn’t give him time to gather his thoughts. She had plenty more to say and Jake gathered she intended to get every bit of it off her chest.

“As for giving me some little, suitable ranch, do you have any idea how patronizing that is?” she demanded. “I know as much about ranching as you or Jake, but I’ve had to learn it the hard way, because you never saw fit to teach me a darned thing about what you always called
men’s
work. You brushed off every serious question I ever asked.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes as she declared, “Do you know how many credits I took in college on ranching? Enough for a second major. I’ve read every book in your library. I’ve plagued the ranch hands and the neighbors for lessons. There’s not a chore at Three-Stars that I can’t do as well as any man.” She turned on Jake. “That’s true, isn’t it? Tell him.”

Even as he nodded his agreement, Jake winced at the bitterness in her voice. She was practically quivering with rage and years of hurt.

He wanted desperately to go to her, to stand beside her the way a husband would have a right to, but he knew she wouldn’t thank him for it. Dani and Ashley would have jumped to her defense just as quickly, but they too had apparently decided to let the scene play itself out. This was Sara’s battle with her father and she had to see it through on her own.

In dragging Trent back here, Jake had set all of this emotional upheaval in motion and now he was helpless to stop the raw wounds being opened up.

“No more,” she vowed.

She drew herself up. She wasn’t as tall as Dani, but she was just as impressive in her determination.

“Back off, Daddy,” she said as she brushed past him. “I have a bronco to ride.”

Now there were two men watching with hearts in their throats as she climbed onto the horse and listened intently to Mary Lou’s whispered, last minute instructions.

Jake warily eyed the horse she was about to ride, wishing he’d had a chance to test it for himself, wondering if Zeke had seen to it that she’d drawn one that would give her a flat, less dangerous ride.

Trent moved to stand beside Jake at the rail. Jake glanced over into his ashen face. “What the devil took you so long to get back here?” Jake asked.

“The damned car broke down in the middle of nowhere. It was two days before the blasted mechanic conceded he couldn’t fix it. I had to buy a used pickup out from under some down-and-out cowboy to get back here at all.” His worried gaze met Jake’s. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said honestly. “Zeke and Mary Lou are the best instructors on the face of the earth. Sara knows the mechanics of what to do. The only question is whether she’s got any natural talent at all.” He studied the big bay horse again. “And just how mean-spirited that horse is.”

With his eyes pinned on the chute, he waited, fists clenched at his sides, his pulse hammering. Despite the eventual cost to himself, he found himself rooting for her to win. He’d find another ranch. He wondered, though, if he’d ever find a woman who was Sara’s equal.

The gate opened and the outraged horse charged into the ring. The bronco wasn’t nearly so concerned with Sara’s dream. He pitched and bucked and shook her as if she were no more than a nuisance rag doll to be tossed carelessly aside at the first opportunity.

Jake was clinging to the railing of the ring with white-knuckled intensity, his gaze locked on that furious beast which held not only Jake’s fate, but Sara’s in the wild thrust of his powerful legs. The muscles in her arm strained as Sara held on for dear life and tried to keep her seat in the saddle.

Each critical second ticked by with excruciating slowness. Three. Four. Dear heaven, six. Two seconds short of the ride’s necessary length. Her style might not be professional caliber, but her staying power seemed to be.

She could be a champ one day, he thought with a sudden burst of pride so fierce it took him by surprise. What she lacked in natural ability, she made up for with heart. Sheer determination was going to pull her through.

Just when he was exalting in her near-triumph, in a terrible sort of slow motion, she was in the air, tumbling toward the rock-hard ground, straight into the path of the horse’s thundering hooves.

A half dozen men leapt over the rail in a split second, preventing disaster with heart-stopping inches to spare as they distracted the horse, then led him away.

Jake dived between the rails and reached Sara first. Oblivious to the bronco’s fate and Trent’s obscenities, oblivious to everything except the woman lying breathless and oh-so-still on the ground, he expertly and gently slid his hands over her. He checked fearfully for broken bones, shuddered at every scrape on delicate skin, waited with dread for those blue eyes to open and fill with tears of pain.

Instead, when her eyes snapped open, she searched his face anxiously. “Who won?” she demanded with the kind of single-minded concentration that made a champion.

Before he could reconsider, before he could curse himself for being a sentimental fool, Jake pushed his own dream aside.

“You did,” he whispered, his thumb skimming along her cheek. “Three-Stars is yours.”

He glanced slowly around at the stunned faces surrounding them, daring any of them to contradict him. When he was absolutely certain that none would, when he was sure that Sara was going to be just fine except for some cuts and bruises, he left her in Dani’s capable hands.

And then he walked away without looking back.

Chapter Fifteen

J
ake swore to himself that he’d be gone before Sara ever discovered the truth about what had happened in the ring that day. He knew that the secret wouldn’t be kept forever. Someone was bound to blab that his heart had overcome his good sense.

It was too good a story, for one thing. The dedicated bachelor, the most commitment-phobic man in all of Wyoming, had fallen in love and given up everything. Romantics and cynics alike were going to have a field day.

He didn’t want to be around to hear the guffaws of laughter. More importantly, he didn’t want to be around when Sara got wind of what he’d done. Her integrity and sense of justice would force her to give up the ranch and the single noble gesture of his life would have been for nothing.

Whatever this thing was between them—love or something less mystical, such as unbridled passion, for example—it couldn’t weather the kind of strain the fight to claim Three-Stars had created. Hell, his parents’ marriage hadn’t even been able to weather arguments over which brand of whiskey to buy. And that was the only example of so-called love he had firsthand experience with, unless he counted the rare, lasting passion he’d witnessed between Zeke and Mary Lou or the sweeter devotion between Trent and his wife.

He’d met privately with Trent that morning and arranged for the transfer of Three-Stars ownership back to the Wildes. He planned to take the money and move on, maybe to Montana, or even down to Texas, though he loathed the prospect of going back to the state where he’d been born. Maybe he’d just roam for a bit until he found a place that felt right, a place that felt like home.

Something in his gut told him, though, that without Sara, no place would ever again feel like home.

Well, that was just too bad. He’d lived on his own for years and he could do it again. One woman’s touch was pretty much like another and he’d never had any difficulty finding women who wanted the no-strings kind of passion he was more comfortable giving.

Or so he told himself as he fought the gut-deep emptiness that had plagued him ever since he’d walked away from Zeke’s the day before.

He saddled up his horse for one last ride over the rugged terrain that had belonged to him all too briefly. In the morning, he would be on his way.

Though he set out to cover a wide expanse, he found himself heading straight for the ridge where he and Sara had made love. Sitting there, surrounded by so much raw beauty, memories crowded in and his heart ached for what might have been.

When he spotted the horse galloping his way, for just a moment his heart seemed to stop in his chest. Then he saw that the rider’s hair was blonde, not red. Ashley, not Sara, he realized with something that felt an awful lot like disappointment.

She rode up beside him and sat for the longest time, silently absorbing the view. Then, a rueful expression on her face, she shook her head.

“I just don’t see it,” she said.

Jake regarded her with curiosity. “See what?”

“The same thing you and Sara do, when you look out at the land. To me it just looks like acres and acres of dirt.”

Jake grinned despite himself. “You’re a tough critic.”

“At least you didn’t offer up some cliché, like ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’”

“Isn’t it, though? You see beauty in all that concrete in New York, don’t you?”

“I did,” she said in a way that sounded suspiciously as if she’d recently changed her mind.

“Trouble in paradise?” Jake asked.

Her answering smile struck him as forced, maybe a little too bright.

“I’m successful. I’m earning more money than I ever imagined. What could possibly be wrong?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

For an instant, he thought she might, but Ashley had always been more tight-lipped about her feelings than either of her sisters. She waved off his questions.

“I didn’t come up here to talk about my life. I wanted to thank you. What you did for Sara yesterday was the most wonderful, heroic act imaginable.”

He regarded her intently. “You didn’t tell her what I did, did you?”

She held up her hands. “Not a chance. I got the message loud and clear. Besides, I’ve always been a sucker for romance.”

“Romance?” Jake repeated, his tone deadly. He might know in his heart what he felt for Sara, but he would deny it with his dying breath. For good measure he added, “What the hell does romance have to do with it?”

Ashley didn’t appear fooled by his attitude.

“You’re in love with her,” she said matter-of-factly. “You gave her the one thing on earth she wanted. I think that’s sweet. A grand, romantic gesture.”

Sweet? Heroic? Where did women come up with this stuff, Jake wondered. He’d done the only thing he could do under the circumstances. He told Ashley exactly that.

“The ranch should have been hers in the first place,” he concluded.

“Well, of course it should,” Ashley said. “That’s beside the point. When are you going to admit you love her?”

Jake’s insides quaked at the thought of making such an admission, at the prospect of making himself so vulnerable to another human being.

“I’m leaving in the morning,” he said flatly. “Does that answer your question?”

“No, that tells me you’re a fool.”

“Not a hero anymore?” he inquired dryly.

“Jake, I know a little about your past.” She glowered at him. “Oh, don’t get that betrayed look on your face. It wasn’t Sara who told me. I just heard bits and pieces when you first came. At any rate, I know you don’t believe in love. I’m not sure I do either, for that matter.”

Her expression turned suddenly wistful, but she shook it off and went on.

“The truth is, though, when you look at Sara, there’s a light in your eyes that looks an awful lot like the love I used to see shining in Daddy’s eyes when he looked at my mother. It’s in Sara’s eyes when she looks at you. How can you walk away from that?”

He sighed heavily. “How can I not? She’ll never trust my motives, if I stay. She’ll always wonder if I’m saying I care about her, just so I can keep the ranch.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s just a bunch of dirt,” she declared vehemently. “Stop letting it get in the way of the only thing that really matters, how you feel about each other.”

“For someone who claims not to believe in love, you use a lot of pretty words to describe it,” he said, then deliberately dismissed her. “Thanks for coming back here when Sara needed you. Will you be staying?”

“Only if there’s going to be a wedding,” she declared flatly, fixing him with a challenging look.

“Then I suppose you ought to be getting on back to the house so you can book your flight.”

Ashley scowled at the response. “Men!” she said scathingly. “You are the densest critters God ever put on earth.”

Jake hid a smile. “You may be right about that, darlin’. You may be right.”

He figured he’d have a lot of lonely years ahead to contemplate the truth of her assessment.

* * *

It was several miserable, lonely days before Sara was finally allowed out of bed again. People had been tiptoeing in and out of her room and talking in whispers until she was certain she would scream if it didn’t stop.

“Enough,” she finally declared and swung her bruised and aching legs over the side of the bed. “I’m getting up.”

Dani jumped up and rushed to her side. Her hand, firmly placed on Sara’s shoulder, held her down.

“Maybe you should wait until the doctor comes,” she said.

“I didn’t break anything,” Sara argued. “I didn’t damage any internal organs. You said so yourself. If I stay in this bed one minute longer, my muscles will probably start to atrophy.” She scowled at her sister. “And why has everybody been whispering? Even Daddy’s stopped blustering. Every time I look up he and Annie are huddled in the corner. What’s the big secret?”