She shook her head. “It’s just how it has to be, Adam. So, have a good life, okay? Be well.”
Then she was gone and Adam was alone.
Just the way he wanted it.
Twelve
“You are a fool.”
Adam didn’t even look up when Esperanza served his breakfast along with her opinion. Morning sunlight splashed across him as he sat at the head of the long, cherrywood table in the dining room. One man at a table for twelve.
Quite the statement on his life.
His coffee was cold, but he had the distinct impression asking for a refill wouldn’t get him far. Glancing down at his breakfast plate, he noticed the scrambled eggs were runny—he loathed wet eggs and Esperanza knew it. The bacon was charred on one side and raw on the other and his toast was black.
Pretty much the same breakfast he’d been served every morning since Gina left.
Complaining about it wouldn’t change anything, he knew. Esperanza had been with the family for way too long. Once a woman’s paddled your backside for you when you were a kid, you no longer had any authority over her, no matter what you’d prefer to think.
“Thanks,” he said, picking up his fork and wondering if he could just eat thetops of the eggs. Damn it, he hadn’ttold Gina to leave. That had been her idea. She’d walked away under her own power, but facts didn’t seem to matter to his housekeeper.
Did they matter to him, either? Not for the first time since she’d been gone, Adam wondered what she was doing at that moment. Sitting around her brother’s breakfast table? Laughing, talking, enjoying herself? Or was she missing him? Did she think about him at all?
“You are going to simply sit here and do nothing while themother of your child is off somewhere in the wilderness?” Esperanza stood alongside the table, arms folded over her chest, the toe of her shoe tapping briskly against the wood floor. Her dark eyes snapped with fury and her mouth was so thin a slash, it had almost disappeared.
Adam pushed thoughts of Gina away, though they didn’t go far. He blew out a breath and nibbled at a bite of egg before grimacing and giving it up. He and his housekeeper had had this same conversation for three weeks now. At every opportunity, Esperanza alternately cajoled, harangued and berated him for allowing Gina to leave him. “Colorado is hardly the wilderness,” he pointed out.
“It is nothere. “
“True.” Adam dropped his fork onto the plate and resigned himself to another hungry day. Maybe he’d drive into town for a decent breakfast. But as soon as he considered it, he changed his mind. In town, there would be people. People wanting to talk to him. To tell him how sorry they were to hear his marriage had ended. People fishing for more information than he was willing to share.
“You should go after her.”
He finally shot his housekeeper a dirty look. She remained unmoved. “Esperanza, Gina left. Shewanted to go. We had a deal, remember? The deal’s finished.”
“Deal.” That single word carried so much disgust, it practically vibrated in the air. “What you had was a marriage. What you are going to have is a child. A child you will never see. This is what you want, Adam? This is the life you wish to lead?”
No, he thought grimly, looking at the chair where Gina used to sit. Imagining her smile. Her laughter, the gentle touch of her hand when she reached out to pat his arm. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d come to depend on seeing her every day. Hearing her. Talking with her. Arguing with her.
In the last few weeks, life on the King ranch had returned to “normal.” The Gypsy horses were gone, back at the Torino ranch until Gina sent for them to join her in Colorado. The constant stream of visitors who’d come to buy those horses had ended. There were no more vases of fresh flowers in his bedroom, because Gina wasn’t there to pick them. There were no more late night movies played or bowls of popcorn eaten, because Gina had left him.
There was no morelife at the ranch.
His world had become the stark black and white he’d once known and cherished. Only now…he hated it. He hated the sameness. The quiet. The everlasting ordinariness of his existence. It was like the breakfasts Esperanza had been serving him. Tasteless.
But he couldn’t change it. Gina had gone. She’d moved on to build a life without him and that was for the best. For her. For their baby. For him. He was almost sure of it.
“She has been gone three weeks already,” Esperanza reminded him.
Three weeks, five days and eleven hours.But who was counting?
“You must go to her. Bring her back where she belongs.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Only to a man,” she pointed out, grabbing up his untouched breakfast and heading for the kitchen.
He half turned in his chair to shout after her, “Iam a man!”
“A foolish one!” she shouted right back.
“You’re fired!”
“Hah!”
Adam slumped in his chair and shook his head. Firing her would do no good. Esperanza would never leave. She’d be right here for the next twenty years, probably making him miserable at every opportunity.
But then, he wondered as he shoved himself up from the table, did he really deserve any better? He’d let Gina go without a word because he hadn’t been able to risk caring for her. For their child.
Which made him, he knew, a coward.
And everybody knew that cowards died a thousand deaths.
* * *
By afternoon, Adam had irritated, angered and annoyed all of his employees and was even starting to get on his own nerves. So he closed himself up in his study, made some phone calls and started looking for new projects. After all, he had the precious land he’d wanted so badly. Now he needed something new to concentrate on.
The knock on the study door aggravated him. “What is it?”
Sal Torino opened the door and gave him such a long, level stare that everything in Adam went cold and hard as ice. He jumped up from his chair. There was only one reason for Sal to be there. “Is it Gina? Is she all right?”
Gina’s father stepped into the room, closed the door behind him and studied Adam for a moment or two before speaking. “I’ve come because it’s only right you know.”
The ice moved through his veins, sluggishly headed for his heart. Adam clenched his fists, gritted his teeth and fought for control. “Just tell me. Gina. Is she all right?”
“Gina is fine,” Sal said, walking slowly around the big room, as if seeing it for the first time.