Tender Triumph by Judith McNaught

Author:Judith McNaught
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-08-25T09:59:12+00:00

With a stab of compassion Katie realized how much he must have been dreading the moment when she would see this place. No wonder he had seemed so tense when they drove up the lane. Now he was angry because he was embarrassed and ashamed that this run-down cottage was the best he could offer her. She spoke to break the uneasy silence. "You—you said you were born here."

Ramon slowly turned and stared through her as if she didn't exist.

Braving his mood, Katie continued. "I assumed that you meant you had lived here since you were born, but no one has lived here for years, have they?"

"No," he snapped.

Katie winced at his tone. "Has it been long since you were here last?"

"Yes," he bit out.

"Places—houses that haven't been lived in for a while always seem dreary and ugly, even when they're really nice." She was trying desperately to console him, even though she knew he really ought to be consoling her. "It probably doesn't look the way you remember it."

"It looks exactly the way I remember it!"

His scathing sarcasm sliced into Katie's highly sensitized emotions like a razor blade, but still she tried. "If—if it looks exactly as you remember it, why, are you so furio.. .so upset," she amended hastily.

"Because," he said in a terrible voice, "I sent a telegram four days ago asking that as many men as necessary be sent to clean and make repairs to this place."

"Oh," Katie breathed in relieved surprise. Her evident relief made Ramon's whole body go rigid. His eyes became twin black daggers that impaled her. "Do you have such a low opinion of me that you think I would bring you to live in this—this filthy shack? Now that you have seen it like this, I would not permit you to live here. You would never be able to forget the way it looks now."

Katie stared at him in anger and bewilderment. Only minutes ago she'd been certain of her future and that she was wanted, secure and loved. Now she was certain of nothing, and she was furious with Ramon for unfairly venting his frustration on her.

A dozen indignant rejoinders sprang to mind, only to lodge in her throat behind a lump of sympathetic tenderness that swelled unbearably as she regarded him. Standing there in the middle of the shabby empty house where he was born, Ramon seemed so utterly defeated, and so proudly determined not to show it, that her heart twisted. "I think you have a low opinion of me if you believe that," she said into the charged silence.

Turning away from his narrowed gaze, Katie walked to the two arched doorways leading off the right side of the living room and peeked inside—two bedrooms, one large one at the front of the house, and a smaller one at the rear. "There's a lovely view from both bedroom windows," she announced.

"Neither of which have glass in the frames," Ramon responded tersely.

Katie ignored him and went to another doorway. A bathroom, she surmised with a mental grimace at the rusted sink and tub.

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