Too late to regret that now, she thought, as pain whipped through her. She wished she could see Jericho’s face. Would she see the lie in his eyes? Or would she see an indisputable truth written there?
But she stood her ground, because as long as he was with his brothers, it wasn’t the time to confront him. She’d only look like the fool she felt for having been caught eavesdropping on them all.
She stayed put and waited until the truck engine fired up and the three men rode off down the long drive. Only then did she come around the edge of the house to look at the fantail of dust rising up in the wake of the truck.
Her heart ached as Jericho’s words played over and over in her head. He was determined to feel nothing for her, she realized. It didn’t matter that her own feelings had grown and changed since she’d first come to King Mountain. Didn’t matter that she loved him—he wouldn’t be interested.
She wrapped her arms around herself and held on, scraping her hands up and down her upper arms in a futile attempt to beat back the rising chill inside her. Until just a few minutes ago, she hadn’t even been aware that she’d begun nursing dreams centered around Jericho. Dreams that had the two of them happily living together here on the mountain. Building a family. Raising their children and loving each other every night.
How hard it was to feel those nebulous dreams shatter and dissolve as if they’d never been. But through that pain, she managed to console herself with the fact that she’d done what she’d originally come here to do. She’d made love with Jericho King and if the gods were kind, she was already pregnant. She’d find out soon and then, while she still was able, she’d leave him here on his precious mountain and find another place to belong.
But not, she told herself, before she found out exactly what he was hiding from her.
Ten
By the end of the following week, Daisy felt as if her nerves were strung as tight as a newly tuned piano’s strings. After his brothers left for home, Jericho had retreated into himself. He hadn’t touched her, kissed her—had hardly looked at her in days. And the strain of that was beginning to take its toll. While she stood at her bedroom window looking out at the night, her mind raced even as she stood as if frozen in place.
Sensing a coming confrontation between her and Jericho, Daisy had made a trip into the local town and found the pregnancy test she’d been looking for. But buying it didn’t mean using it. The tidy blue box was still sitting in the cupboard beneath her bathroom sink, unopened.
She knew why she was hesitating to use it, of course. If she wasn’t pregnant, then she’d be staying on, whether Jericho approved or not—she’d find a way to stay close. To fight his instincts to chase her off. If she was pregnant, then she could leave—just as he wanted her to. As she’d planned.
Which, she told herself sadly, was exactly why she hadn’t used the test kit yet. She didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to leave Jericho, this place and the handful of employees that had given her such a feeling of family. She was a part of the life here now. She’d become one of them. She’d found her place in the world, found the one man she wanted above all others and she didn’t want to lose any of it.
Giving up went against her very nature, she thought. But was it giving up to leave when that had been the original plan? And was it worth it to stay if Jericho never allowed himself to care for her? God, her head hurt.
“What’re you doing?”
Nikki yipped in excitement from her perch on the bed and Daisy spun around to face Jericho when he spoke up from the doorway to her bedroom.
“Nothing,” she blurted because he’d caught her off guard and at a vulnerable moment. She forced a smile that felt brittle and false. “Just thinking.”
He walked into the room and didn’t stop until he was no more than an arm’s reach away. He ignored Nikki, who pranced to the edge of the bed, hoping for a scratch and head rub.
“I’ve been doing some thinking, too,” he said and he didn’t look any happier with his thoughts than she was with hers.
The time had come. Everything inside Daisy braced for whatever was next.
When silence spun out between them, Daisy took it for as long as she could and then felt what little patience she had left splinter and blurted, “For heaven’s sake, Jericho, just say it.”
His dark brows drew together and his mouth flattened into a grim line. “Say what?”
“What you came here to say,” she challenged. “What you’ve been dying to say since the day I arrived. You want me to leave the mountain.”
“You’re wrong,” he ground out. Shoving one hand through his hair, he stalked past her, looked out the window and, after a long minute, swiveled his head to lock his gaze with hers. “I don’t want you to go…”
Her heart swelled and an instant later deflated as if someone had popped it with a needle.
“…which is why you have to.”
She blinked at him, shook her head and finally managed to say, “That makes absolutely no sense.”
“Doesn’t have to,” he told her flatly. “Like I said before, my mountain, my rules.”
So cold. So hard. So distant. Not the man she’d come to know at all. He was already pulling away so fast she could hardly reach him. And that tore at her.
“So I’m supposed to just leave. Without an explanation. Without— Why, Jericho? Do I worry you that much?”
He laughed shortly, but there was no humor in the sound. “You don’t worry me, Daisy. You just have to go.”
“Why?”
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he told her.
“Oh, I think I will.” As she said it, as her spine stiffened and her shoulders squared, she realized that she was going to fight to stay, not even knowing if she was pregnant or not, she was going to take a stand. Because looking up into his ice-blue eyes, Daisy knew he was something worth fighting for. What they had together was too important to let die without a battle.
He looked like the cold-eyed warrior he was, she thought. But her brother had been a Marine, too. Now, Jericho was about to realize that this Saxon could be just as tough as any combat-hardened Marine.
And she fired her biggest gun with her first salvo.
“I love you.”
His features went blank and, if possible, his eyes became even icier, more remote. “No, you don’t.”
Anger, hot and alive, pumped through her and she stepped right up to him. Tipping her head back so she could give him a full power glare, she said, “You might think you know everything, Jericho King, but you do not get to tell me what I do and don’t feel. I said I love you. And I meant it. Now you have to deal with it.”