Homestead

Chapter Twenty-five

“I’m going to take a quick shower,” Tess said, turning from the window.

Clay sat on the side of the bed, waiting to be dismissed. Tess had warned her the night would end at sunrise, but she wasn’t volunteering to leave just yet. Visions of Tess in the shower made it difficult for her to think of what her next step should be, anyhow. The only thing she knew for certain was she didn’t want to say good-bye, and she feared once she walked out Tess’s door, good-bye might be very final.

As if suddenly realizing she was naked, Tess hurriedly gathered up the clothes scattered around on the floor and dumped them on an old-style navy-blue demi-sofa pushed up to the foot of the big mahogany bedstead. Without looking at Clay, Tess sorted through the jumble of their entangled shirts, pants, and underwear. Such a telling activity, with those shed coverings the undeniable testament to their previous intimacy, although Tess looked as if she wanted to avoid thinking of what they meant. Her expression was remote, turned inward, undecipherable.

Clay waited, heart pounding.

“I’d offer to share the water, but to be honest,” Tess said as she straightened and finally looked at Clay again, “I don’t trust myself in there with you, and I have things to do. If there’s a storm coming, I need to check the heifer barn and bring in extra feed for the cows. I have to go.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad to me. The shower part, I mean.” Clay grinned, she couldn’t help it. The frown forming between Tess’s eyes suggested laughter wasn’t a great idea at the moment.

“No, I don’t imagine it does.” Tess pulled on the shirt she’d been wearing the night before. “And part of me thinks it’s a great idea too. But in case you haven’t noticed, we’re really not teenagers anymore, and I’ve got a business to run. I haven’t been doing a great job of that lately.” She shook her head and sighed. “Maybe I haven’t been doing a good job of it ever.”

Clay grabbed her pants from the pile, pulled them on, and stood. “That’s not true, and you know it. This is a great-looking farm and I may not know much about cows, but from the looks of things around here, you’re doing everything right.”

“Yes, so right that I didn’t even know Ray had signed over drilling rights to your company.” Tess scrubbed her face. “God, I must look like an idiot. I am an idiot.”

“Bullshit. You can’t be responsible for what you didn’t know.”

Tess, wearing only her shirt, jammed her hands on her hips and gave Clay a hard stare. “Okay, maybe you’re right about that. But it seems that the things I don’t know keep popping up in my life and redirecting it, and I’m tired of not being the one driving the bus.”

Of all the directions the morning after might have taken, this was the one Clay had hoped to avoid. For a little while longer, at least. She stepped toward Tess and stopped at the cool look Tess gave her. “Do we have to do this now? Last night was—”

“Last night was last night. But great sex doesn’t make the problems go away, and NorthAm is a problem.”

“I’m not NorthAm,” Clay said quietly. She picked up the T-shirt she’d worn under her work shirt and pulled it on.

“No, you’re not. But you walked back into my life and suddenly I discover I may not have any choice but to let you tear up my land.” Tess yanked on her jeans and crossed to the window again, keeping distance between them. Her gaze moved past Clay to the bed and she sighed. “I never seem to have any choice where you’re concerned.”

“You did last night.”

Tess closed her eyes. “Yes, I did. Thank you.”

“Damn it, Tess. I don’t want your thanks.” Clay jerked down her fly and stuffed her T-shirt into her pants. She’d been avoiding this conversation practically half her life, and maybe the time had come to stop. Tess couldn’t seem to look at her without seeing the past, and maybe the only way to put the past to rest was to dig it up first. “I know I didn’t leave you any choice that summer. I don’t have an excuse, but I do have a reason. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You understand I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Tess leaned a shoulder against the window frame and folded her arms across her chest. “How can I, since I still have no idea what happened back then.”

“It’s compli—”

“I don’t want to hear it’s complicated. I know just how complicated it was.” Tess pushed a hand through her hair. “How hard would it have been, Clay, to just call me and tell me you had to leave? Even if you didn’t want to tell me why—just to say good-bye?”

“I was afraid if I did I wouldn’t be able to go,” Clay said, her voice so low Tess could barely hear her.

“I don’t understand.”

Clay sat back down on the bed and gripped the mattress on either side of her hips to keep from pounding it with her fists. She forced herself to meet Tess’s confused, angry, and hurt gaze. “My father made me leave. He didn’t give me any choice.”

“Mine did the same thing, but I tried to call you. Over and over.” Tess fell silent, clearly expecting more.

“My father was wrong. I was wrong. But it happened a long time ago, and—”

“And you’ve forgotten it?”

“No,” Clay snapped. “Never. Jesus, Tess, I wasn’t lying when I told you I loved you.”

Tess’s expression subtly shifted, anger and confusion giving way to sadness like the march of shadows across a still pond. The hurt still lingered as she said, “You know, I don’t hold you to that. How could I? Sometimes we say things we mean in the moment, and then life changes and we change and—”

“No, God damn it, that’s not what happened.” Clay shot to her feet. “My feelings for you didn’t change. They never changed.”

Tess had never seen Clay this upset. She’d expected irritation, defensiveness, maybe even dismissiveness, but not this. Clay was hurting. That, more than even the night before, when she’d doubted she could feel any more for Clay—or anyone—than she did right then, pushed Tess to crack the shell she’d built around herself. She gripped Clay’s shoulders and caressed the tight muscles beneath her fingers. “All right, slow down.”

“I can’t stand you thinking I didn’t care.”

Tess forced herself to remember the way Clay had touched her. She stroked down the outside of Clay’s arms, found her hands, and entwined their fingers. “I know you did. Now slow down and just tell me what happened.”

“I want to, I’ve always wanted to. But it’s not just about me, Tess.” Clay’s dark eyes swam with frustration and unhappiness.

Tess wanted to kiss the misery away, but that wasn’t what they needed. One kiss and they’d be back in bed. The sex between them was too good, too incendiary. Too cleansing in the moment. But when the passion ebbed, the shadows of all that had been and still might be would remain, and sooner or later, they’d reach this impasse again. She squeezed Clay’s fingers, smiled faintly. “I don’t understand. You said your father made you leave. Some family matter—some secret?”

Clay looked away. She couldn’t figure out how to get through this without hurting Tess, and she refused to lie. She had lied by omission all these years, and she wouldn’t keep doing it. “My father wanted me to break up with you. He had his reasons, and I went along with them.”

“Your father? But how did he even know?”

“You don’t know my father.” Clay grimaced. “There isn’t anything he can’t find out if he wants to.”

“Yes, but who? The only ones who ever saw us being friendly were Leslie and Dev, and even they didn’t know we were together.” Tess slowly accepted she’d never known the whole picture, never known all of Clay. How much of her life had been a lie, partly of her own making. “I never saw anyone else with you—a bodyguard or anything. But you had one, didn’t you? Someone like Ella. That’s why you could never be sure when you’d be coming to see me, always told me you might be late. You were sneaking around, weren’t you?”

“I thought of it as stealing my freedom.” Clay stroked Tess’s cheek. “That’s what you always were to me, Tess. Freedom. The only things you knew about me were the things I showed you, the secrets I told you, the dreams we shared. You gave me a place to be myself, to be free.”

“I think that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” Tess feathered her fingers through Clay’s hair, aching to heal the wounds she heard in Clay’s voice, erase the pain she saw in her eyes. “You were my dream, Clay. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but that’s what you were.”

“I’m sorry,” Clay whispered.

“So who told your father about me? That you were consorting with a commoner. Your bodyguard?”

A muscle jumped in Clay’s jaw. “Damn it, Tess, it wasn’t about that.”

“Then what was it about?”

The silence stretched and Tess waited. Clay was hiding something, and she couldn’t for the life of her imagine what it was. Even if Clay was embarrassed that she had given in to her father’s demands, that was no great sin. Most teenagers, no matter how independent and strong they thought themselves to be, had trouble bucking their parents’ wishes. That day Ray showed up out of the blue and told her he wanted her back on the farm, she’d gone, no questions asked. Sure, she’d thought she’d have a chance to see Clay again. Talk to her again. Figure out a way to be together, but she hadn’t fought him when he’d told her she had to lea—

“Ray,” Tess said slowly, something cold and alien slithering through her mind. Something she didn’t want to look at but knew she must. “Ray showed up the same day you left. He never did tell me why I had to come home in such a big hurry. Just things had changed and he wanted me home.” Her gaze sharpened, bored into Clay. “Did your father call him? Is that it?”

“Tess,” Clay said wearily, “Ray’s dead. It’s behind us now. What—”

“It matters, Clay. It matters because I was part of it, but no one gave me a chance to make any of the decisions. Everyone, including you, decided for me. And I want to know why.”

Clay pulled free of Tess’s grip on her hand, breaking the last connection between them, and went to the window. Clouds rolled through the sky like angry waves on a deadly ocean, blocking out the sun. “The wind’s picking up. Rains will be here any minute. You should get down to the barn.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to run my farm,” Tess said from behind her. “And I can get back to doing that sooner if you’d stop hiding.”

Clay spun around. “All right, if that’s what you want, then here it is.”

Clay’s eyes grew cold and hard, and Tess braced herself. She was no stranger to pain, but when the hurt came from Clay, she feared she might not be strong enough. “All right. Yes. Tell me.”

“Ray saw us the night we were having sex up in the hayloft. I’m not sure how he figured out who I was, but he did.”

“He knew your name, it wouldn’t have been that difficult to find out the rest of it,” Tess said. “It never occurred to me to try to find out anything about you, but it probably wouldn’t have been that difficult. I bet there were even articles about you in the newspapers.”

“Sure there were. I wasn’t in hiding, just pretending I was,” Clay said bitterly. “Easy enough to read about the Sutter heir if anybody really wanted to look, and I guess maybe he did.”

“What did he do?” Tess said, ice freezing around her heart.

Clay looked directly into Tess’s eyes. Hers were dark as the storm sky outside. “He contacted my father and threatened to sell a story to the tabloids about us. He claimed I seduced you, took advantage of you.”

The air punched from Tess’s lungs and for a second she couldn’t breathe. “What? How could he—that’s ridiculous!”

“You were right about the newspaper articles about me and my family—my father is a very powerful man with a lot of enemies. We make good gossip, and the tabloids love stories about sexual indiscretions.”

“But I would’ve denied it, of course. I would’ve told everyone—” She stopped, stared at Clay. “I would have told everyone I was with you because I loved you.”

“That wouldn’t have changed anything. If Ray had gone through with it and the story got out, the press would have had a field day, my father would have set his lawyers on both of you and torn you to shreds,” Clay said softly. “But not before everyone in this county would have heard from my father’s spin doctors how you seduced me and your father tried to blackmail mine. You would have been front-page news, Tess. Your life would have been the topic of gossip in the diner and the Grange and every other place, forever.”

“So you decided the best thing for me was for you to disappear? To keep me in the dark about Ray? Your silence let me go on trusting him, and look what he did—he went right on stealing my life.” Hands trembling, Tess ordered her shaking limbs not to sway. “Damn it, Clay, why didn’t you trust me? Weren’t we worth believing in?”

Clay clasped her shoulder. “I know it looks that way, Tess, but—”

“I’ll tell you how it looks.” Tess jerked away. “It looks as if you took the easy way out. The way that wouldn’t embarrass your father or your family name with a scandal. I suppose I even understand that.”

“That’s not true. I thought I was doing the right thing for you.”

“Maybe I didn’t want you to decide that, Clay, but you never asked. You were right when you said it was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. It’s been over for a long time, I just didn’t know it.” Tess walked to the bedroom door, questioning herself and everything she’d ever known. Ray had manipulated her life for years and she’d never known. She would never let herself be that vulnerable again. She looked back at Clay, afraid she’d made a huge mistake. Clay touched the heart of her so easily and so deeply she couldn’t think rationally about anything. “Now you’re back, and I’ve got another decision to make. At least this time, I’ll be responsible for what happens to me.”

“Can we at least—”

“I don’t know.” Tess laughed humorlessly. “The only thing I know for sure is I can’t decide anything with you in my bed.”

Clay nodded. “I’ll clear out.”

Tess’s vision swam with confusion and regret, unable to trust anything she felt. Only the pain was real. “Good-bye, Clay.”