Wyoming True - Diana Palmer Page 0,23
miss my own mother. Nobody else is ever as proud of your accomplishments.”
“Or loves you as much,” she agreed. She sighed. “If she’d died in her bed, or in a wreck, maybe it would have been easier to handle. But falling overboard on a ship,” she added sadly. “You never really know.”
“I like what you did,” he said. “Putting her favorite things in an urn and setting it on the mantel. It’s a novel solution.”
“I’d forgotten that I told you that.”
He cocked his head. “What did she look like?”
“She was beautiful,” she said, her eyes bright with memory. “She had pale blue eyes and jet-black hair, wavy and long, down to her waist in back. She was always laughing.”
He frowned. “Then where do your china-blue eyes come from?”
“From my dad,” she said, laughing. “He was blond, believe it or not.”
“Genetics are fascinating.”
“I know. I might have had blond children, if...well, if I’d married someone with a recessive gene for light eyes and hair...” Her voice trailed off.
“You wanted kids.”
She nodded, her eyes on the clouds drifting by the window. “A forlorn hope. One man who didn’t want children, and another who was one step short of homicide.” She sighed. “I can sure pick ’em.”
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he remarked.
She glanced at him. “Even you?”
He averted his eyes. One big, beautiful hand smoothed over the fabric of his jeans, where he had one leg crossed over the other. “I was young and rich, and it never occurred to me that some women would do anything for money. I got mixed up with what I thought was a poor but honest girl who was being tormented by a boyfriend.” He laughed shortly. “It turned out that the boyfriend was actually her husband and partner in crime. He took some incriminating photos and tried to blackmail me.”
Her eyes widened. “What did you do?”
“I gave him the mailing address of one of the better tabloids.”
“What?” she burst out and laughed.
He grinned. “He was shell-shocked. I also asked for copies that I could frame for my wall at home. He was very unsettled. So was she.”
“You should have given their names to that show that does the segments about especially dumb criminals.”
“They were both young and stupid,” he said simply. “My mother’s attorney was able to convince them that it would be safer to forget the whole thing and provide them with the negatives. Which they did.”
She was listening, fascinated. “Did money change hands?”
He shook his head. “They were too relieved not to be going to prison to think about demanding money.”
“Good grief,” she exclaimed.
“I had my attorney recommend counseling, and I paid for it. The young man is now a rising attorney in a Houston law firm, and the young woman graduated with honors and is now teaching history at a high school in San Antonio.”
She whistled.
“My mother always looked for the good in people, not the bad,” he said. “The counseling was her idea. She kept in touch with both of them while they were going to the psychologist. I learned a lot from her about how to deal with people.”
“How did she die?” she asked softly.
His eyes were wounded before he averted them. “She had a horse that she loved dearly. She was an expert rider. But it had been raining the day she went out on her favorite mount. The horse missed its footing on a hill and rolled on her.” He winced. “She loved Clydesdales.”
“One of the biggest breeds of horses,” she realized.
“Yes. I wanted to have the horse put down. I was grieving, raging, drunk as a skunk. My foreman hid the horse until I calmed down enough to listen to reason. He was a lay minister in his spare time.” He smiled. “He sat me down and explained life to me. Things happen for a reason. We all die. Nobody gets out alive. We have a purpose. When it’s our time, it’s our time. Things like that.” He shrugged. “I finally listened. He was a good man.”
“Is he still your foreman?”
He shook his head. “He was like me. Patriotic. We enlisted together. I came home. He didn’t.”
She winced. “I’m so sorry.”
“So was I.”
She frowned, watching him. “You enlisted after you lost your mother,” she guessed.
He nodded.
“Didn’t your father object?”
His face hardened. “I don’t speak of my father. Not ever.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He drew in a long breath. “It was all a long time ago. Except for the war wounds that ache when it rains, I’m pretty much over it.”
She smiled sadly.