Carly nodded. Words were beyond her.
He pushed to his feet. “Just one more thing.”
She glanced up, wondering what else he could possibly say.
“After last night, I understand a little better how uneasy you are about living here with me. I know you may not feel inclined to believe anything I say on that count, but I’ve got to say it, anyway. You don’t need to worry. I refused to lock myself down with promises when you asked me to before. I’ll do that now. No sex, period, ever. If that’s what it takes to make this next two years easier for you, honey, you’ve got my oath on it.”
He grabbed his hat and left the house. Carly gazed after him, still reeling, not quite able to believe he’d apologized in such a heartfelt way, yet convinced he’d been absolutely sincere. It changed nothing, yet, oddly, for Carly it changed everything.
She covered her face with her hands. For the first time since that night, she allowed her thoughts to drift back, remembering little details she had refused to think about since. At first, she recalled things as she wished to recall them, casting herself as the hapless victim. But Hank’s apology, tendered only minutes before, shamed her into taking a closer look at the sequence of events, not as she wanted to remember it, but as it had actually happened. How her whole body had tingled when he drew her up to dance. How they’d laughed together as he tried to teach her the steps. How he’d made light of her clumsiness and put her at ease, even when she stumbled over her own feet. How much she’d enjoyed talking with him at the table, how intently he’d listened.
All this time, she’d been blaming Hank for everything, accepting none of the responsibility herself. But in truth, as drunk as he’d been, he’d also been a gentleman. Maybe, if she were brutally honest with herself, she was even more to blame for what had happened than he was.
More than once during the evening, she’d thought about mentioning her blindness, but at the last second, she’d chickened out, afraid it would spoil things, that he’d drop her like spoiled fish. And she hadn’t protested when he ordered her a mixed drink. She’d known, deep down, that it was unwise to drink anything more when she’d taken pain pills. But she’d thrown caution to the wind and consumed the alcohol anyway.
Her turn. Meeting him, spending time with him. It had all seemed so magical. Was it really Hank’s fault that she’d been walking on clouds? Was it really his fault that she’d been spinning dreams and wishing for a fairy-tale ending? He hadn’t forced her to stay outside with him. She’d willingly kissed him back, and she hadn’t protested when he led her to his truck.
From that moment on, who was really responsible for what happened? Hank hadn’t forced her to do anything. Once again, she’d thrown caution to the wind, wanting to grab hold of the experience and enjoy every delightful second. At any point, she could have told him that she’d never been with a man. Knowing Hank as she did now, Carly believed he would have stopped. He’d certainly stopped quickly enough when she cried out in pain.
She stared at the flashcards where he had dropped them on the table. B, for bastard? She couldn’t leave it at that. He shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for the rest of his life over a mistake that had been as much her doing as his.
Hank had just wrapped a gelding’s foreleg and was exiting the stall when a faint, feminine voice rang out. He glanced over his shoulder to see Carly silhouetted in the wide doorway, surrounded by a nimbus of golden sunlight.
“Hey,” he said, setting the roll of tape on a shelf. “What brings you to the spider’s parlor?”
She laughed and stepped inside. She wasn’t quite as jumpy as she’d been during her first visit, but he saw her cast a nervous glance at the horse to her right. Touching the buttons of her blue blouse with nervous fingertips, she said, “I, um, need to talk to you. Can you spare me a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
Levi emerged from the stable office just then. He bade Carly a friendly hello. She smiled and exchanged brief pleasantries. Then she fixed Hank with a pleading look. “I promise not to keep you long. But I’d like to talk in private.”
Hank grabbed his Stetson from a peg near the office entrance. “No problem. I’m never so busy I can’t spare a few minutes for a pretty lady. Let’s take a turn down by the creek.”
She fell into step beside him as they left the building. Hank couldn’t fail to note the tense way she hugged her waist. After working with troubled horses for so long, he’d grown adept at reading body language. Hers signaled uneasiness.
Hank was worried about what she needed to talk to him about. When they reached the stream, he led her to a grassy knoll and gestured for her to have a seat. Still hugging her waist, she declined and stood instead, her gaze riveted to the ground. Taking his cue from her, he shifted his weight to one leg, folded his arms, and waited for her to spit it out.
“I, um, don’t know how to start,” she said shakily.
Hank’s heart caught. He had a bad feeling she was about to tell him she no longer wanted to live with him. “Just start at the beginning, honey. If your takeoff’s rough, you can back up and have another go.”
She nodded. Then she glanced up. Tears glistened in her eyes, and her mouth quivered at the corners. “It’s really different being a blind teenager.”
Where that had come from, he didn’t know. But he sensed this was something she needed to say.
“In high school, I used to dream that a boy would call and ask me to the prom.” With a humorless little laugh, she quickly added, “The most popular boy in school, of course. If you’re going to dream, why not dream big? It wasn’t about having a crush on someone. I was pretty much bewildered by that sort of thing. While Bess and Cricket were whispering and giggling about how cute boys were, I was struggling just to form an image in my mind of what boys looked like.”
Hank swung his foot in a wide arc, smoothing the grass with his boot.
“What were biceps, I wondered,” she went on tremulously. “And where were they? I could see only by touching, and no boys volunteered their bodies for exploration. Verbal descriptions pretty much left me confused. My only point of reference about relationships were stories, and those mostly fairy tales my mom read to me, thus my dream that the school prince would fall madly in love with me. I was the ugly duckling—the blind girl all the boys avoided.”
Hank still didn’t know where this was going, but he listened quietly, his heart catching at the pain he saw flit across her face.
“I remained apathetic about sex into adulthood. While studying to become a teacher, specializing in visually disabled students, I learned that that’s normal for blind people. When most kids are becoming sexually aware, blind kids—well, they aren’t. There are no visuals to stimulate them that way, and they don’t mature sexually the same way other people do.”
“I understand,” he finally inserted.
She looked relieved. “Do you? It must be so difficult for a sighted person to imagine. I could touch my own body and get a general idea of how I looked, but boys were a mystery. I was so startled that night at Chaps when you came to my table. Aside from all the other physical differences that I’d already noticed while I studied you, I could scarcely believe how tall you were. Much taller than me—and bigger as well.”
Hank grinned in spite of himself. “You studied me?”
“I watched you, yes. I, um—” Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I don’t know why you caught my attention, only that you did. I barely noticed the other men.” She took a huge breath and exhaled with a self-derisive laugh. “Anyway, as you’ve probably guessed, my prince never came along in high school.”
She stared off at nothing for an interminably long while, giving Hank the impression that there’d been at least one frog in her past. He couldn’t erase his impression that she was leaving something very important out. Her eyes reflected a wealth of pain, but he forgot about that when she began talking again.
“In college, it was the same. No prince came along. I stopped hop
ing that he ever would.”
When she looked at Hank again, her eyes were shining. “Then I went to Chaps with Bess,” she said softly, “and suddenly there he was, smiling down at me and asking me to dance. It was just like I had always dreamed, only better, because I could finally see what all the giggling and whispering had been about. He said all the things I always dreamed he might—that I was beautiful, that he’d been waiting all his life for me. He made me feel as if I were the only woman in the room.”
“Ah, Carly, I’m so sorry. I’d give anything to turn back the clock and be the prince you deserved.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. I knew you’d said all those things to countless other women, that they were only pick-up lines. Blind doesn’t equate to stupid, after all, and a woman doesn’t live to be twenty-eight without gaining some insight into the ways of the world. I chose to believe you, Hank. Do you understand? It was my moment—after so many years of waiting, it was finally happening to me. I didn’t want to spoil it by mentioning my blindness. I was afraid you’d look at me differently or possibly walk away. I didn’t want you to know that I’d never been with anyone, either. For that little bit of time, just for that one evening, I wanted to be like everyone else.
“I got my wish,” she whispered. “You treated me no differently than you would have any other woman you met in a bar. You laid on the charm. You said all the things I wanted to hear. You danced with me. You bought me a drink. One thing led to another, and before the evening ended, we got in your truck. At any point, I could have said something. You’ve assumed all the blame for what happened that night, and until now, I’ve been content to let you. But the truth is, I waded in with my eyes wide open, both figuratively and literally. It isn’t your fault that I pretended to be someone I wasn’t—or that I got in over my head.”
“Like everyone else?” he repeated.
For some reason, her saying that disturbed Hank more deeply than anything. Momentarily forgetting the hands-off policy, he drew her into his arms. For an instant, she stiffened. But then she relaxed against him.
Burying his face in her hair, he stood there, absorbing the feel of her softness and sorting through the implications of what she’d said. When he thought of all the women he’d met in bars, their faces blurred in his mind. But he would never forget Carly’s—the look of wonder in her eyes, the sweet curve of her mouth when she smiled, or the way she seemed to glow with goodness.
God forbid that she should become like everyone else. She was a very special person. The more Hank came to know her, the more special he realized she was.
That she would tell him this—he couldn’t think what to say to her. What bothered him most was that he probably would have made polite excuses and walked away if he’d known about her blindness. He’d never preyed on virgins in his life. Yep, sure as rain, he would have walked away. And if he had? Carly might have returned to her table and gone home with Bess, none the worse for the experience. Or some other man might have come along to take up where he had left off.
At that thought, Hank ran his hand through her hair, a fierce surge of possessiveness making him want to lock her in his arms and never let go. Just the thought of someone else touching her made him shake.
As badly as he’d messed up—and as much as he regretted his mistakes—he couldn’t regret that she was there with him now. Maybe, just maybe, she would come to care for him over time—as he had come to care for her—and she’d find it in her heart to give him another chance.
In that moment, Hank knew he’d fallen completely and irrevocably in love with her. What he’d initially decided to do out of a sense of obligation had turned into something far more. He just hadn’t had the sense to recognize his heart’s desire until it had been shoved right under his nose.
Now he couldn’t bear to lose her. He knew it hadn’t been easy for her to reveal her deepest feelings to him—or to admit that she’d deliberately pretended to be something she wasn’t that night at the bar. Her sense of fairness was yet another thing about her to love.
He finally dredged up the will to release her from his embrace. Catching hold of her hand, he gestured at the grassy knoll. “Sit with me for a while,” he urged, his voice so raspy he sounded like a toad.
She glanced at the stable. “I’ve already kept you from your work.”
“Please. I need you to understand a few things, Carly, and it’ll take a few minutes to explain.”
She searched his gaze. Hank had no idea what she read in his eyes, but in hers, he saw nothing but her heart shining. And what a gentle heart it was. They stood there for several seconds, lost in the mire of their emotions, fingers interlaced, palms joined.
Finally she nodded her assent, and Hank led her to the knoll. They sat side by side, she with her arms looped around her knees, he with one leg bent, the other extended.
“My childhood wasn’t as difficult as yours, but it was hard in other ways,” he told her, his vision blurring as his mind traveled back through the years. “Not in the usual sense, with my folks fighting or my dad knocking me around. It was just hard being the son of a rancher. The bottom fell out of the beef market back in the seventies. We were small-time cattle producers compared to the huge conglomerates. When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my dad was hard hit financially and had to lay off all his help. It fell on his shoulders and by extension his family’s to keep this place in the black. I got up with my brothers at dawn and worked until it was time for school, and when I came home, I was back in the fields, busting my ass again.
“Things picked up as I grew older, but Dad had gone into debt to stay afloat, so the surplus income didn’t go for luxuries. It went to pay off loans. Being the youngest boy, I was also the last to leave home, and as my brothers left for college, more and more work fell to me.”
Hank rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. He could feel Carly watching him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her.
“I was so damned excited when I graduated from high school. One more summer of busting my ass, that was all I could think, and then I’d be free.” He smiled humorlessly. “Looking back on it, I feel ashamed for those feelings now. My dad needed me, and I couldn’t wait to jump ship. Right after my graduation, he asked me to postpone college for a year. I remember being so pissed. The folks had put all my brothers through college with the help of financial aid. I’d always figured it’d be the same for me, and there he was, telling me money was tight. I didn’t look at it rationally, from an adult perspective. I just felt put upon. Nevertheless, I stayed on another year, working my ass off for nothing. At least that’s how I saw it. He sure as hell couldn’t afford to pay me, and I didn’t see room and board as fair compensation.”
“If you managed to get a degree, you must have eventually gone to school.”
“Yeah, just a year late. When the following summer rolled around, I was champing at the bit. Couldn’t wait to pack my shit and take off. I thought it’d be so much fun, living on campus—studying just hard enough to get passing grades, but mostly dating pretty girls and going to parties. That isn’t how it went.”
“What happened?”
Hank took off his hat and reshaped the crown. “You met my sister, Bethany. Just three months before I was finally due to leave for college, she was injured in a barrel-racing accident that June and became paralyzed from the waist down. My folks had insurance, but like yours, it didn’t cover everything. And the doctors believed surgery might enable her to walk. My father would have given everything he owned and gone bankrupt to make that happen, and over the next year and a half, that’s exactly what he did. Borrowed money, left the ranch unmanned to be at her bedside in Portland. That June, right after it happened, I was young, focused on what I wanted. I could have said to hell with college and stayed home to help out, but it was finally my turn to leave the nest, and I’d already given him an extra year. I figured one of my brothers could come home and man the fort for a while if it needed man
ning.”
He smiled sadly. “It was my turn. You aren’t the only one who’s ever felt that way, Carly. I loved my folks, and I adored my sister, but I burned to leave, all the same. Being a kid, still wet behind the ears, I didn’t have a mature grasp of the financial problems. All I knew was that it was my turn, and I was a year late getting to go. Fair was fair.” He shrugged and smoothed a hand over his hair. “This ranch was a chain around my neck—a burned out piece of land that had sucked my father dry. I was going to set the world on fire, get a better place, be somebody. At that time, I didn’t think much of my father. Just a poor, struggling rancher with old nags in the barn, worn-out equipment, and bills up his ass.”
Carly could understand how he must have felt. At eighteen, most kids were pretty self-centered.
“After Bethany’s accident, my father slowly got himself into such a bind he had to file bankruptcy.” Hank stared across the pastureland at the forests. “He lost this ranch, lost everything. I had to work two full-time jobs to stay in college. Campus life wasn’t a big party like I thought it’d be, needless to say. And when I finally got my pigskin, there was nothing to come back to. The Lazy J belonged to someone else. My folks didn’t have a pot to piss in.”
Carly followed his gaze, squinting to see into the distance. “If this place belonged to someone else, how on earth did you get it back?”
“Long story, happy ending. I grew up some during college. Had my head on straight. Or at least I thought I did. Jake and I wanted to go in partners and buy our own spread. The minute I graduated from OSU, I came back and went to work on any ranch that’d have me, saving every cent I earned to help kick in on a place. Work, work, and more work. I never had much time for fun. As it happened, the guy who’d bought the Lazy J couldn’t make a go of it, and Jake and I were able to buy the place back for a song.”
Hank smiled, remembering. “We’d both seen our father try to make it as a cattleman. We knew we needed an edge. Both of us were really good with horses, and we decided to raise our own line, plus start a training program for an additional source of income. We originally thought it’d be a secondary enterprise that would make us a little money on the side to stay afloat. As it turned out, the training program took off, and about a year ago, we were making more at that, by far, than we ever could have grossed just raising beef.”