His Wild West Wife by Lauri Robinson

Author:Lauri Robinson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-03-25T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The sky had gone from gray to pink to orange as the sun crested higher with each minute Clara had stood in the barn doorway, not really watching the sunrise, but not looking away, either.

“You’re up early.”

She gave a single head nod when William sauntered near, carrying the milk pail.

“How’s Blake?”

“Sleeping.”

“How are you?”

Unable to answer, for she truly didn’t know, she shook her head and shrugged.

William wrapped an arm around her shoulders, spun her about. “You can talk while I milk.”

“What if I don’t have anything to say?”

He grinned. “Then I’d want to know where my sister went.”

Clara was thankful for that, how he made her grin when she had nothing to smile about. He gestured toward one stool as he took the other and set it down near Belle, patting the cow’s pointed hips after he’d set down the pail.

“I was wrong, William,” she said as her throat burned.

He didn’t look her way, just started milking. “How so?”

The steady swish-swish of milk hitting the pail, pinging loudly against the quiet morning, was comforting, normal, and she wished she didn’t have to interrupt it. Almost. The pressure inside her was too strong not to let out. “I should never have left,” she finally said. “Never went to meet Oscar. Never...” The rest plugged her throat as if she’d eaten wild berries.

“Never married Blake?”

“Yeah. Never married Blake.”

“Why?”

“I had everything I needed right here.”

He looked at her intently. “Did you?”

There was no question he was referring to Blake. “He has no idea who I am. Not really.” The blame inside her was heavy and ugly. “I didn’t deserve to inherit Oscar’s fortune, either.”

“You were his granddaughter.”

Guilt wormed its way into disgust. “Whom he’d never met. Only knew the last few months of his life. He was already so sick and frail anyone could have claimed to be his granddaughter.”

William didn’t slow in his milking. “You weren’t claiming. You were his granddaughter. Are his granddaughter.”

“He never knew the truth, either.” She’d tried to tell Oscar—about her father—but he wouldn’t listen. Instead, he’d insisted he’d waited for years to meet her, spoil her. From the moment she’d arrived, he’d lavished her with clothes and shoes and expensive things she’d never dreamed of owning like pearl-studded hairpins and hats with real flowers. How she’d accepted everything so readily, so selfishly, was eating away at her stomach. Had been for months.

“When he hired a lawyer to put everything in my name, I asked if the lawyer could meet me in the park by the lake so I could tell him that Oscar and I had only been acquainted a short time and that maybe there was someone else he needed to leave his holdings to, but when that lawyer turned out to be Blake, I clammed up. I didn’t want him to know the truth, and then...” Her mind was going in several directions, one being what had happened last night. As beautiful and wonderful as coupling with Blake had been, it had compounded everything. Living without him would be impossible, yet, she knew she had to tell him the truth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.