Sweet Talking Cowboy (20 page)

“It….it was…Pete,” Briann could barely get the words out.

Poog’s hand tightened around Briann’s icy fingers.  “No! 
Tha…I can’t believe that.”

“That’s what I said to him, but Captain Richardson said that
Pete has confessed.”  Her eyes filled with tears.  “Poor Evan.  The last thing
he saw was the person he had loved for years, pointing a gun at his head and
pulling the trigger.”

The three of them sat in silence for several minutes,
digesting the news Briann had shared.  Finally Poog patted the delicately
feminine she’d been holding.  “At least there will be some justice for Evan
now.  It should give his family some comfort.”

“And at least there’s no worry about him contacting you or
Tris again,” Slade added.

Briann nodded.  “I wonder if he called to tell me what he’d
decided to do.  Capitan Richardson said he just walked into the precinct and
turned himself in.”

Poog shrugged.  “Maybe his conscience was bothering him.”

Briann nodded.  “I certainly hope so.  I’ll never understand
how he could have done something like that.  Even when things were at the worst
between them, Evan wanted only to be happy and he wanted that for Pete, too.”

They grew quiet again.

“Well,” Slade’s drawl broke the silence that followed her
statement.  “I know this isn’t the way you would have wanted it to work out,
but at least you can have closure and know that the murderer is going to pay
for what he did.”

Briann’s head lifted and she looked at him.  “Yes, so let’s
get back to the problem at hand.  You have my undivided attention and I just
know you’re ready to tell me how I’m going to live my life from this point on.”

She saw the softness he’d been directing toward Poog change
to hardness and his surprising blue eyes turned into shards of ice as he looked
at her.  Then he drew in a deep breath and made a visible show of reining in
his anger and frustration.

“You know things weren’t ever easy for me as kid, Bri, and I
guess I’m just used to fightin’ my way through difficult situations, but Poog
has always been able to help me see things from another viewpoint.”  He dropped
his eyes to the cake in his plate for a second and then looked at her again. 
“I’m not changin’ my mind about anythin’.  I want you to understand that.  But
maybe we all need a little time to just think about this.”

Briann’s eyes still sparked with fire.  “You’re still
forcing me to marry you, but now you’ve decided to just wait longer and I
suppose you expect me to be grateful?”

His anger threatened to break free of his careful hold, but
he won the battle for control.  “I’m afraid neither of us has given Tristen
much thought in this.  I want
and intend
to be her father and I know
that you love her and want what’s best for her.  Maybe if we take some time
together, give her and ourselves a chance, we can find a way to be happy.”

Briann stood up and walked over to look out the window
behind the old fashioned kitchen sink, her hands finding comfort in the cool familiarity
of its hard smoothness.  “But if things don’t work out to
your
satisfaction, we’ll be right back where we are now?”  She turned to face him,
her resentment still flashing in her amber eyes.  “You don’t even understand
that I just don’t see that as any improvement in the situation.  You’re still
forcing me to marry you.”

His anger sparked and he stood up, pushing the chair he’d
been setting in back roughly.  “Maybe in that time, I’ll die!  Then you won’t
have to marry me!  But short of that, or draggin’ this through court, I don’t
see any alternatives!  Do you?”

She glared at him.  “I told you, we can work out an amicable
way to share Tris.  You can be with her every other weekend and during summer,
she can stay with you part of the time.  I think that’s reasonable!”

“You kept her from me for five years and if I hadn’t figured
out she’s mine you wouldn’t have ever told me, would you?”  He demanded, his
voice rough and raised in anger.

They’d both forgotten that Poog was sitting there and she
could have left without their notice, but she decided she might need to be
there to prevent violence, so she just sat quietly, listening to them railing
at each other, the heat of their anger filling the room.

“No, I wouldn’t have!” Briann admitted loudly, her voice
shaking with pent up anger.  “I had already made a mistake thinking I could
trust or love you and if I was wrong in thinking that, if you’d cared about me,
you’d have found me!”

Now Poog stood up, drawing both of their attention. 
“Enough!  You’re both acting like spoiled, angry children!”  She looked at her
niece.  “Briann, Slade
did
try to find you!  He almost drove Mike and me
crazy hanging around here, asking where you were, why you left.  We couldn’t
tell him anything except that you told us you’d made a mistake and then made us
promise not to tell him where you were.  He checked our mail every day for I
don’t know how long, hoping you’d send a letter so he could get your address. 
I had to start picking mail up at the post office.”

Then she turned and looked at him.  “And you aren’t
blameless in this either!  You were a grown man, Slade!  A man who’d been
around long enough to know better, but that didn’t keep you from seducing an
innocent young woman instead of treating her with the respect she should have
received and taking the time to find out if a lifetime commitment was right for
you both!”  Poog took a deep breath.  “The one who now needs the most
consideration is not either one of you, it’s Tristin and I’m not going to put
up with the anger or the shouting at each other.  You both made mistakes in the
past, but now you’ve got to put yourselves and your feeling aside and decide
what’s best for your little girl!”  She lifted the now empty dish that had held
her piece of cake and glared at first one, then the other.  “It’s two hours
before I leave to go pick that baby up from school and you’ve got that long to
sit at this table and make some decisions,…….calmly and peacefully.”  Then Poog
placed her dish on the counter and left the room.

Briann continued to lean back against the sink and Slade
stood between the table and the chair he’d been sitting in.  Neither of them
spoke for several minutes.  Finally Briann pushed away from the sink, went to
the counter where the cake dish was sitting, grabbed a paper towel to lay it
on, then cut herself a piece of the pound cake.  Without looking at Slade, she
took a Coke from the shelf in the refrigerator and placed both on the table
across from where he still stood.

“You might as well set down and finish your cake.  You heard
what she said.”  She broke off a generous portion of the delectable cake and
put it in her mouth.  Just for a second her eyes closed while she savored the
sweet taste as it almost melted on her tongue.  When she opened her eyes again,
Slade was seated across from her, looking down at the unfinished delicacy in
front of him.

His thoughts swirled in his head.  He’d never realized Poog
had been harboring anger at him all this time, because of the night he and
Briann had spent together when Tristin was conceived.  He really
hadn’t
thought about how anyone else felt about it.  He lifted his eyes and looked at
the woman across from him.  She had been young, and yes, still innocent.  He’d
come home from Texas because she was all grown up and he’d never gotten over
the fascination she’d always held for him.  He hadn’t wondered if she really
loved Jeffery and he’d just decided to take her for himself once he discovered
the passionate woman she became in his arms.   He wasn’t sure now, just what
his intentions then had been where she was concerned.  He’d simply wanted her
and wanted her badly enough he hadn’t given anything else much thought at all.

He pushed the cake away and rubbed the stubble on his chin. 
He was an A+ jerk, he decided, but wasn’t sure he’d do things any differently
now.  He still wanted her so badly he could hardly think about anything else
when she was near him.  He’d never experienced that strong an attraction to any
other woman.  Yeah, he’d messed up, but if he backed down from the marriage
now, what would happen?  Yes, he did truly want to be Tristin’s father, but he
wanted to lay claim to Briann just as much.  If he told her that he’d settle
for joint custody of their daughter, how would he react when he saw Briann with
another man?  He felt sick inside at the possibility.  But he wanted to hear
his daughter call him Dad, too.  If he and Briann fought this in court, he was
afraid it might turn his little girl against him before they even had a chance
to get to know one another.

“You know I want to be Tristin’s daddy, not just her biological
father.  I want to tuck her in at night and be here when she wakes up in the
mornin’s.  I want to tease her about losin’ her baby teeth, help her with her
homework, know what her favorite foods are, her favorite television show, her
favorite color, I want to be the tickle monster that makes her laugh until she
almost wets her pants, I want to go to school plays that she’s in, I want to go
to teacher/parent conferences, I want to hear her laugh from a happy dream, I
want to hold her in my arms when she cries, I want to haul her to horse shows
when she starts showing’.  I’ve already missed so much…” his voice dropped to a
near whisper.  “Bri, I can’t ever have what I’ve already missed and I don’t want
to miss anything else.”

“Don’t expect me to apologize for what you’ve missed.  I did
what I had to do.”  Briann lifted the Coke to her lips and drank straight from
the can, allowing no softness into her voice or her eyes.

Slade’s broad shoulders slumped slightly.  “Okay, I’ll give
you that.  You did what you
thought
you had to do and I suppose I could
have hired detectives to find you when you left, so maybe I didn’t do
everything in my power to find you, but you did leave me the message that you
had made a mistake.  What was I supposed to think?”

She shrugged.  “To be really honest, I didn’t care what you
thought.  I was angry and I was hurt and I couldn’t stay here and think about
you being with Tanya.  I repeat, I did what I had to do.”

He raked one hand through his thick black hair.  “I want
more than joint custody.  I want to share Tristin’s
life
, all the time,
not just when you think I should have her.”

Briann swallowed the last bite of her cake.  “Maybe you
could stay here part of the time, in the guest room.  I’m sure that would be
fine with Aunt Poog.”

He frowned.  Could he make that concession?  His eyes rested
briefly on the ring on her finger.  Could he accept that offer and hope to
change things, with time?  He knew it would mean sleepless nights, laying in a
bed that close to Briann, and not being able to be with her.  He didn’t know if
he could do it.  His head shook negatively.  “I don’t know, Bri.”  He lifted
his head and looked at her.  “You know how things are between us.  I can’t seem
to keep my hands off you and admit it or not, you feel exactly what I feel.”

She hesitated, and then nodded.  “I guess we’ll just have to
avoid each other.  That doesn’t mean you can’t be here with Tris.”  She didn’t
want to admit that he was right.  She had seen him looking at the ring and now
she began to work it off her finger.  When it fell in her other hand, she
couldn’t explain the feeling of a fist slowly tightening around her heart. 
Hesitantly she held it out to him.  “It’ll be better this way.  When Tris gets
home, we’ll tell her that you’re her real father and that you’re going to be
spending a lot of time with her.”

He didn’t take the pro-offered ring from her hand, so she
laid it on the table between them.

“Keep the ring.  I’m willin’ to try this scheme of yours,
for a while.  But we’ve already told people we were gettin’ married.  Let’s
just take a few weeks and if this works out, we can let it be known that the
weddin’ is off.”  Slade didn’t look at her as he spoke.  His eyes were on the
ring lying on the table between them.

She saw the rejection he was feeling, but didn’t allow
herself to react to it.  She hated knowing she’d caused him to feel it again
after the rejections he’d lived with for most of his life, but it just couldn’t
be helped.  She would not be forced to marry a man who only wanted to marry her
to be a father to their child.

She felt that Tris was pretty well adjusted and could have
probably gone the rest of her life without going through what lay ahead of them
now, but at least this way, there wouldn’t be a custody battle, or an unhappy
marriage.

He pushed his chair back and stood up, then rested his hands
on top of the table in front of him and leaned over, his chillingly pale eyes
flashing with emotions he was barely controlling as he hovered over the table,
looking down at her.  “It looks like you’re winnin’ this round, Bri, but the
first time you fail to stand up to your end of this deal, you can expect a
court battle or a weddin’ ceremony!  Do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you?”

Refusing to be intimidated, she also stood not wanting to
have to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.  “Yes, Slade.  I think I have a
perfect understanding of it.  But you need to understand that when someone
tries to run roughshod over me, I will fight back.  I’m not some timid,
innocent, young woman anymore.  I’ve been on my own for several years and have
been blessed with enough success to know that I don’t have to lean on anyone
for support.  I’m not afraid to make decisions and I’m not afraid to live with
the decisions that I make.  You and I, in the heat of the moment, conceived a
child.  What happened for the next few years will never change and I,
personally, don’t want to even talk about it anymore.  What happens from this
point on largely depends on you.  Do you understand that?”

Tension filled the room as they glared at each other across
the table until finally he stood up straight.  “I’m goin’ home and unpack my
clothes.  I’ll be back to see Tristin, when I know she and Poog will be here.”