Page 81

“Get away from her,” Brig shouted, pushing Becca away from the terrified horse.

“I can’t . . . oh, Lady . . . Lady,” Becca called as she backed away. “Calm down, girl, for your own sake . . .”

The veterinarian looked grimly at Brig. He nodded toward Becca. “Get her out of here.” He spoke rapidly as he placed a clear, inflatable cast over the horse’s damaged leg. It quickly turned scarlet with blood.

“It’s all my fault,” Becca screamed as Brig put his arms around her shaking shoulders and led her away from her horse.

“Don’t blame yourself.”

“It’s all my fault!” she cried over and over again, hysterical. “She should never have run. I knew it—I knew it. Damn it, Brig, it’s all my fault!”

Brig hadn’t understood her overwhelming sense of guilt. He dismissed it as an overreaction to a tragic event, until twelve hours later Sentimental Lady was dead and the results of the autopsy proved Becca right. Only then did he understand that she was, indeed, responsible for the courageous horse’s death.

* * *

Brig rubbed his hands over his eyes and tried to dispel the brutal apparition that destroyed his sleep. How many nights had he lain awake and wondered how he could have prevented the gruesome tragedy; how many days had he tried to find a way to absolve Rebecca of the guilt? How much of the guilt was his? He should never have agreed to the match race; it was a devil’s folly. Even if the tragedy hadn’t occurred, there was the chance that the beaten horse would never have been the same.

As it was, a beautiful animal had been ruined unnecessarily, a waste due to the poor judgment of humans. If that wasn’t enough to torture him, the truth he had learned after Sentimental Lady’s death should have kept him away from Rebecca Peters forever. And yet, last night, without thinking of any of the horrors of the past, Brig had made love to her as if the deception had never existed.

Brig wanted to hate her. He wanted to curse her in the darkness and throw her out of his life forever, but he couldn’t. As he watched her staring vacantly out the window, the sadness in her eyes touched his soul. How had she ever been caught in such an evil trap? Why had she drugged her own horse in an expensive attempt to quicken Sentimental Lady’s speed? His stomach soured at the thought. Why did she seem so innocent and honest, when he knew her to be a liar? She was a dichotomy of a woman, beguiling and treacherous.

“Rebecca?”

Brig’s voice called to her from somewhere in the distance.

“Rebecca, are you all right?”

Becca cleared her mind and found herself staring out the bay window of Jason Chambers’ mountain cabin. Brig’s concerned voice had brought her crashing back to the present. How long had she been daydreaming about a past that was so distant? She cast a quick glance at Brig. He was still in bed, propped up on one elbow and staring intently at her. He seemed anxious and didn’t appear to notice that the navy blue comforter had slid to the floor. How long he had been watching her, Becca couldn’t guess.

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, to build her courage rather than create warmth. “I guess I was just thinking,” she replied evasively. She turned her head away from him and hid behind the thick curtain of her hair, where she brushed aside a lingering tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. She had loved him so desperately and the bittersweet memories of their past caught her unprepared to meet his inquisitive gaze.

His dark hair was rumpled and a look of genuine concern rested in his unguarded stare. “What were you thinking about?” he asked. He didn’t attempt to hide the worry he felt for her.

Her lips trembled as she attempted a smile. “Us.”

“What aboutus?”

Her voice was frail, but she forced her eyes to remain dry as she found his gaze and held it. “I . . . I was thinking about how much love we had, once,” she admitted.

“Does that make you sad?”

She had to swallow to keep her tears at bay. He couldn’t understand, he never had. She averted her gaze and stared sightlessly out the window. “It’s just that I loved you so much,” she admitted raggedly.

His brows knit in concentration as he drew his knees beneath his chin and studied her. Why was she here, opening all the old wounds? What did she want? “I loved you too,” he said.

“Not the same way.” It was a simple statement of fact.

“You’re wrong.”

“You still don’t understand, do you?” she charged, as she whirled to imprison him with her damning green stare. “I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. I wanted to share all of the expectations, the joys, even the disappointments with you.” Her voice caught in the depth of her final admission. “I wanted to bear your children, Brig. I wanted to love them, to teach them, to comfort them when they cried.... Dear God, Brig, don’t you see? I wanted to be with you forever!”

“And I let you down?”

“I . . . I didn’t say that . . .”

His gray eyes challenged her from across the room. The silence was heavy with unspoken accusations from a distant past. With an utter of vexation, Brig fell back against the bed and stared, unseeing, at the exposed beams in the ceiling. “I wanted those things, too,” he conceded.

“Just not enough to trust me.”