He was clearly startled by her embrace. She felt his body snap taut. Then the starch suddenly went out of him, and he tightened his arms around her. A hundred times, Molly had tried to imagine how it might feel to seek sanctuary in his strong arms. He’d held her twice, once out in the woods and another time in the kitchen, but both those times, her thoughts had been fragmented by other emotions, not allowing her to really absorb the essence of him.
Such was not the case now. All her senses were focused on how he felt. The breadth of his chest—the steely strength of his arms—the gentle brush of his big hand over her back. Molly closed her eyes and pressed closer to him, heedless of the gearshift that jabbed her thigh, heedless of everything but him. Jake. This was how it was supposed to be, she thought nonsensically. Two people, holding each other, with nothing but feelings between them.
“I can’t let you lose your ranch,” she murmured against his neck.
“Did I ask your permission? Done deal, lady. It’s the only way I can think of to help you.”
“No. Just marry me. I’ve resolved all my conflicts. Really. Getting married is the simplest way.”
She felt his lips curve in a smile. “That was a mighty fast turnaround.”
“If I can’t trust you, who can I trust?”
He ran his big hand slowly up her spine. “No one,” he admitted huskily. “As much as I love you, Molly, if you can’t trust me, you’re sunk.”
She laughed, the sound shrill and a little hysterical. “So marry me. I’d rather do that than gamble with the Lazy J.”
She could feel his hesitance. “Such unbridled enthusiasm.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He fell silent for a moment. “I just don’t feel right about it now. I’m afraid you’re getting pushed into something you’ll regret later, and I don’t want to be one of your regrets. You know?” He ran a hand into her hair. “You’re not ready for a real marriage. Not yet.”
Molly wished with all her heart that she could deny that charge. But the truth was, she wasn’t ready. She’d come a very long way since that fateful morning when she’d awakened at the clinic. With Sam’s help, she’d been going through a healing process ever since, taking giant strides toward emotional wellness. But she hadn’t made it to the finish line yet. She felt that she was nearly there—that she was poised on an edge and about to take that last, freeing leap. But until she did, she wouldn’t be whole.
She was functional. She could take care of herself and get by. But a healthy relationship demanded more than that from a person. She wasn’t the only one with needs. Jake had them, too—needs she wasn’t yet ready to fulfill. And, like it or not, she had fears he couldn’t dispel. She wished that he could. Oh, how she wished that he could. But that wasn’t the way of things in real life. Knights in shining armor existed only in fairy tales, and to slay her dragons, she needed to deal the killing blows herself.
“I guess we could go for a marriage in name only,” he whispered. “Unless we go ahead and have sex, it won’t be valid.”
She stirred to look up at him. “I thought you wanted this to be a real marriage. No stopgap measure, you said.”
He tucked in his chin to smile ruefully down at her. “Yeah, well, I don’t always get my druthers.” He smoothed a hand over her hair. “Maybe in time, huh? For now, the important thing is to stonewall Rodney. We can deal with the other stuff later. Preferably sooner than later.” He bent to kiss her forehead. “Hope springs eternal, and all that. I’ll keep a positive outlook and work on you every chance I get.”
Molly searched his expression. “You’ll be happy with that arrangement?”
“Hell, no. I want more, Molly. A lot more. I love you.”
She knew he did. After his willingness to sacrifice his ranch for her, how could she doubt it? Sadly, though, love wasn’t always enough. Molly had learned that bitter lesson the hard way.
He waited a beat, his gaze still holding hers. “So, what do you say, Stir-Houston? You willing to take on a cowboy for a while?”
Molly stared hard at his chin. “I feel uncomfortable, making vows I’m not sure I can keep. To me, it’s the worst kind of sin.”
A twinkle slipped into his eyes. “We’ll make up our own vows then. You can promise to stay with me as long as you can stand me. I’ll promise to stay with you until your tread starts to wear and you need an oil change.”
Molly gave a startled laugh. “Surely we can’t be legally married, saying stuff like that.”
He assumed a mock frown. “Why not? This is Reno, darlin’. Anything goes.”
Chapter Nineteen
Two hours later, they were headed back to Crystal Falls. For the first half hour, Jake left Molly to her thoughts. Except for the engine noise and the occasional rattling sound, the inside of the truck was as silent as a sepulcher. Arms folded at her waist, eyes straight ahead, Molly huddled against her door. Every once in a while, he saw her thumb the wedding band that he’d placed on her finger.
As rings went, it wasn’t much. Using his charge card, he had purchased it at a jewelry store near the chapel where they’d gotten married. Chances were good that the gold would flake off later. Someday soon, he would buy her a nicer band and a pretty diamond to boot, he promised himself. For now, though, chintzy was all he could afford.
Not that Molly seemed to notice the quality of the ring. He had a feeling it was the meaning behind it that had her worried. He’d done his best to modify the set of vows they’d chosen from the chapel’s selection of canned ceremonies. Unfortunately, he and the JP had been working at cross-purposes. Toward the end of the ceremony, the man had thrown in, “Do you, Molly Sterling, take this man to be your lawful husband, to love, honor, and cherish him, keeping yourself only unto him, until death do you part?” Molly had flashed Jake a panicked look. Then, before he could intervene, she’d said, “I do,” in a thin, tremulous voice. After that, Jake had followed her lead. What else could he do without embarrassing her half to death?
Now they were hitched, with a string of promises behind them that Molly hadn’t wanted to make. On the one hand, Jake wished she wouldn’t take it all so seriously, but in another way, he was damned glad she did. Who wanted to be married to a woman who took her vows lightly? He sure as hell didn’t.
His hands were slick with sweat on the steering wheel. His guts felt tied in knots. He found himself wanting to talk to her, about anything and everything. He loved the sound of her voice. He loved the way she wrinkled her nose in thought before she said something.
Damn. He just loved her, he guessed. Even when she grew difficult and unreasonable as she had in the café, he found himself stepping back to analyze the situation, rather than getting mad. He grinned to himself, remembering the scene she’d caused. That was a meal a number of people would never forget, himself included. In twenty years, he had a hunch it would be one of his fondest memories. Someday, he and Molly would tell their kids the tale, and they’d all laugh together about it.
That she might not be a part of his life in twenty years was a possibility Jake refused to contemplate. Somehow, some way, he would work past all her reservations, he assured himself. He had to. Otherwise he would lose her, and that simply couldn’t happen.
He glanced over at her. “You okay?”
She pushed at her hair and nodded. “Yes, fine. Just tired.”
Jake swallowed and tightened his grip on the wheel. “Can you tell me about it, Molly? I’m not real keen on walking into this blind.”
She might have asked him to elaborate on his question. He’d left her that room. But, instead, she proved herself to be as courageous as he’d judged her to be from the start and began telling him about her marriage—about what she termed her foolish girlhood fantasies, which had died a sudden death after the marriage—about the endless string of other women in Rodney’s life from the very beginning.
“I wasn’t enough,” she admitted hollowly. “No matter what I did, I wasn’t enough.?
??
That statement made Jake’s heart twist. She was so damned pretty, so sweet and pure of heart. How could any man think she wasn’t enough?
He took his gaze from the road for a moment to look at her. “Some people should never get married. That’s the truth of it. Nothing is enough. No one is enough.”
“I wanted to be,” she said shakily. “I tried so hard to be.”
Jake had already guessed that much. In fact, he believed her sense of commitment and loyalty had nearly destroyed her. “And nothing you did pleased him.”
“Nothing,” she admitted.
“It wasn’t you, Molly. Never you.”
“Yes. I think there’s something lacking in me, Jake.”
“Is there something lacking in Sunset?”
She closed her eyes. “That’s different.”
“Bullshit. That horse gave Rodney everything he had, and it wasn’t enough. Your words, not mine. I heard you talking to him that afternoon. What applies to him applies to you. He’s a beautiful animal, and I’ll wager he’s pure magic on the track. He’s also got a heart as big as Texas, and then some. How is he lacking, Molly?”
She shook her head. “He isn’t. He’s perfect.”
“Damned straight, and so are you.” He reached up to adjust his visor to block out the setting sun. “That’s a subject for later, though. Your marriage—or more specifically, what wasn’t a marriage—is past history. Let’s move on to the more pertinent details, namely what landed you in this mess.”
“I’m almost afraid to tell you.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“No, really. I’m terrified I’m doing the wrong thing by getting you mixed up in it.”
Jake patted his shirt pocket, wishing to hell he still smoked. At times like this, he always craved a cigarette. “I can handle Rodney. Don’t worry about it.”
“You could handle Rodney in a confrontation. Unfortunately, Rodney won’t be confrontational. He’ll get you when your back is turned.”
“I’m not afraid of him, and I don’t want you to be. He can’t hurt you now. You’re my wife. If he lays a hand on you, I’ll kill him.”
“Rodney is treacherous, Jake. He lets nothing stand in the way of what he wants. Nothing. Now that you’ve married me, you’ll be in his way.”
“Short of murder, what the hell can he do about it?”
“That’s just it,” she said tremulously. “He may not stop at murder.”
Jake was so shocked that he almost had to pull off the road. Surely he hadn’t heard her right. “Say what?”
“I think Rodney may have killed my father.”
“Dear God. Why?“
“I’m not sure. Rodney was gambling heavily, and Sonora Sunset was losing more races than he won. Maybe he was embezzling funds to cover his losses. I don’t know. But I think Dad found out about it, and Rodney killed him to shut him up.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jake whispered. He seldom took the Lord’s name in vain, but right now, he wasn’t sure if he was cursing or praying. Murder? He’d known the instant he looked into Rodney Wells’s eyes that the guy was a snake, but murder was beyond his comprehension. “What makes you think he killed him?”
“My dad was very upset about something the last few days before his death, and uncharacteristically of him, he refused to discuss it with anyone, not even Claudia. They were always very close, so that was strange. It was doubly strange that he refused to talk to me.” She lifted her hands. “My dad was an honorable man and didn’t make accusations lightly. If he found something suspicious, he would have kept it to himself until he had absolute proof. I think he may have been checking into it, trying to get the goods on Rodney, and Rodney found out.”
“And your father ended up dead? How did he die?”
“A gunshot wound to the head. I’d gone in early that morning to try to talk to him and see if I could find out what was wrong. I was the one who found him.”
Jake’s heart caught at the expression on her face, which told him how desperately she was hanging on to her self-control. “Oh, honey. That must have been a nightmare.”
“A nightmare, yes.” She fixed her gaze on the dash. “It was especially hard because that was the second time for me. In college, my best friend Sarah slashed her wrists. We roomed together, and I was the one who discovered her body. You can’t imagine how I felt when I found my father. It was like a replay of my worst memories, only worse because I loved him so much. I’d failed Sarah, and then I failed my dad. You just can’t fathom how I felt. Right before both of them died, I knew something was horribly wrong, and I didn’t do anything. After finding Dad, I grew completely hysterical.”
“Of course, you did.”
I She hauled in a shaky breath and tidied her hair with nervous fingers. Then she dropped her hands to her lap and went back to staring out the glass. “The police said it was suicide. My dad had been acting strangely for about a week. They found evidence that the gun had been purchased in his name only a few days before.” She shot him a meaningful look. “It was purchased with ID, but Rodney is so clever with computers, he could whip up a picture ID in thirty minutes. The police didn’t think of that, of course, and neither did I at the time. The investigating officers told me that older men often get depressed for no apparent reason. A chemical imbalance, possibly. Or maybe just feeling that life is essentially over, and their dreams haven’t been realized. They said suicide wasn’t uncommon in men his age.”
“But you didn’t believe that.”
“My father was a noble man, not the type to take the coward’s way out unless there were some horrific, extenuating circumstances. No, I couldn’t accept it. At that point, of course, I was still in shock, so I wasn’t thinking in terms of murder. I thought maybe he’d lost a bunch of money on the stock market, or that he’d made a string of bad investments for his clients. I needed—” She broke off and passed a hand over her eyes. “I don’t know. I needed an explanation, I guess. A reason. Before I could lay him to rest, I had to know why he’d taken his life.”
“If that happened to my father, I’d feel exactly the same way,” Jake assured her.
“Anyway, Jared and Rodney—”
“Jared?”
“He was the man with Claudia this morning. He’s Rodney’s father.”
“Ah, the plot thickens.”
She nodded. “He was my dad’s partner and best friend. They went through college together, worked at the same firm to get their licenses after they graduated, and then opened Sterling and Wells. Until recently, I always called him Uncle Jared. My dad had no siblings, and I always thought of Jared as my only other male relative.” She grabbed for breath again, giving Jake the impression she was feeling oxygen deprived. “Anyway, right after the funeral, Jared and Rodney removed all my dad’s personal effects from our family home. I was afraid they’d clear out his office next, and I wanted to go through his business records before anyone tampered with them.”
“So you went to the firm to do that?”
“It seemed like a perfectly natural thing to me. My dad was dead, and I needed to know why. Rodney didn’t see it that way. When he found me in my father’s office, he got upset. He said he would go through Dad’s files, but he didn’t want me doing it myself because it was too stressful. He was afraid I’d have another nervous breakdown.”
Jake shot her a questioning look. “You’d had a nervous breakdown before that?”
Her face had gone deathly pale. “No, that’s the whole point. When my friend Sarah killed herself, I had a rough time handling her death. I knew she was depressed, and I encouraged her to seek counseling. But when she refused, I didn’t insist upon it. I should have, and she paid for that with her life.”
“Ah, honey. You can’t blame yourself for that. You were only eighteen.”
“Seventeen, actually. I entered grade school when I was five, so I was only seventeen my freshman year. I realize now that I was simply too young to recognize how deeply trouble
d Sarah was, but at the time, I blamed myself. My dad had me moved to a new dorm, but you can’t escape something like that. The memories followed me. I started having nightmares. Worry over my grades added to the stress. Pretty soon, between dread of the dreams and concerns about school, I could scarcely sleep at all, and when exhaustion did win out, I began sleepwalking.”
The puzzle pieces began to fall together for Jake.
“The episodes were bizarre and alarming, but never violent. When my parents got wind of them, they insisted I drop out of school and come home for grief counseling. At about that time, Rodney had just returned to Portland after working for several years in Silicon Valley. He and his dad, who was recently divorced, were frequent dinner guests at our house. Rodney was privy to the problems I had over Sarah’s death.”
“And he called that a nervous breakdown?”
Her mouth tightened, and she flashed him a dark look. Jake returned his attention to the road, waiting for her answer.
“Until that morning at the firm, he had never called it a nervous breakdown. I think he only did so then because other people were within earshot.”
Jake flipped on the turn signal to pass a slow-moving vehicle. “My God, he was setting you up.”
He heard her release a pent-up breath and realized he was parroting her thoughts. “At the time, I was just incredulous and horribly embarrassed that he’d say such a thing in front of other people. Suddenly I was, in his words, ‘emotionally fragile.’ I refuted the statement. He patted me on the head and mollified me, playing the concerned husband. In my opinion, it was a performance deserving of an Oscar.”
Jake mulled that over. “He was running scared. There was something in those files he didn’t want you to see, and on the off chance that you had, he needed a backup plan to cast doubt on your credibility.”
Silence. Jake glanced over and saw that she had bent her head and closed her eyes. When seconds passed, he grew concerned. “Are you okay?”