West Texas Nights - Sherryl Woods Page 0,120

to do with what color you decide to paint your house.”

“Why not? I mean, if it were yellow, you’d want to be here more, right?”

Val set her coffee carefully on the table. “Okay, that’s it. We need to talk, young lady.”

“About what?”

“Whatever it is that’s going on in your head. You cannot plot and scheme to get your father and me together.” Never mind that she’d done her own share of plotting. It had all been to no avail.

“Why not?” Annie asked, sounding far more curious than daunted.

“Because that’s not the way human emotions work. Grown-ups either care about each other or they don’t. You can’t make things happen just because you’d like them to.” Val could have attested to that firsthand.

“But Daddy really likes you. I know he does. And you like him. So why can’t it work out? Why should we all be miserable, when it would be so easy to be happy?”

Val had wondered the same thing herself until she’d heard Slade proposing marriage solely for the sake of his daughter. They had made love for most of the night. She had experienced a level of passion she had never even known existed. She had honestly thought Slade had, too. Then she’d discovered that she had only convinced him that they’d be compatible enough if he were to marry her for Annie’s sake. It was a wonder she hadn’t plunged a knife into his heart on the spot.

“It just can’t work out,” she told Annie very firmly, because it was what she’d finally forced herself to accept. She couldn’t spend her whole life with a man who was so insensitive that he didn’t even see how deeply he’d insulted her.

“Well, I don’t buy it,” Annie said stubbornly.

“You don’t have to,” Val told her. “All that matters is that it’s what your father and I both believe.”

“Then you’re both dumb,” Annie proclaimed. She flounced out of her chair and ran to her room.

That was the last Val saw of her until lunchtime. She fixed tuna salad sandwiches, put them on the table and then went to call Annie. She got no response.

Val’s stomach knotted. Surely Annie hadn’t crawled out a window and run away. She knocked and called out again, then opened the door. Annie was curled up in bed, her back to the door.

Val crossed the room and gazed down at her. She was sound asleep, but her cheeks were still damp with tears.

“Oh, baby,” Val whispered and sank onto the edge of the bed. She touched a hand to Annie’s cheek.

“Go away,” Annie muttered, still half-asleep.

“Lunch is ready.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Tuna salad sandwiches and chips,” Val said, trying to tempt her. “And I baked cookies. Your favorites.” Slade’s, too, though she’d sworn as she emptied the bag of chocolate chips into the dough that she was fixing them only for Annie’s sake.

“I don’t care.”

Val bit back a sigh. “Look, sweetie, I know you’re unhappy that things aren’t going the way you’d hoped, but sometimes we all have disappointments in life.”

“Is that all it is to you?” Annie demanded, suddenly quivering with outrage. “A disappointment? Like not getting ice cream for dessert or something? It’s my life! I don’t have anybody who loves me, not really. Daddy tolerates me because he has to. Grandma and Grandpa dumped me. I thought you were my friend, but you don’t care.”

“I do care,” Val insisted.

“Like I believe that.”

“Believe it or not, it’s true. Otherwise why do you think I’d be here today?”

“Because Daddy asked you to. He probably paid you.”

“Your father is not paying me,” she assured the child. “And we both know I’m not very happy with him at the moment, so obviously I’m not doing it for him. So why am I here?”

Annie studied her face. “Because of me,” she whispered hesitantly.

“Because of you,” Val agreed. “You’re a wonderful girl, Annie. You’re bright and funny and unpredictable. If I had a little girl, I’d want her to be exactly like you.”

“Really?” she asked, hope shining in her eyes.

“Absolutely.”

Annie seemed to consider her response for several minutes before her expression brightened. “Okay, then, here’s what we do.”

Something in her voice alerted Val that she’d blundered in some way she had yet to understand. “Do?” she repeated cautiously.

“Yes,” Annie said very firmly. “So you can adopt me and I can be your little girl for real.”

Eleven

For days after Annie’s calm declaration that she wanted Val to adopt her, Val couldn’t shake the storm of emotions that roared through her. At the

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