“For God’s sake, Robbie,” he said, his voice a little gentler, “I’m not saying you are stupid. But you have a tendency to think with your heart, not your mind. Anyway, I don’t know why you’d be interested in a guy like him when you have someone like Evan Iverson wanting you.”
“Oh my God. I don’t want to be with Evan! He’s your choice, not mine. You told me to make my own way, Dad, and that is what I am doing.”
“I told you to take some time to discover what is important in life, to stop and smell the roses. I did not tell you to take up with some broke handyman!”
“Well pardon me—I didn’t understand that I had to with who you chose. For some asinine reason I thought that for once in my life, at least this choice would be mine!”
“Robin,” he said, gripping the rail, “the Lear name is a powerful one. There is an awful lot of money tied up behind that name. I will be damned if I am going to see you robbed blind because you got the hots for some construction worker.”
Furious anger blinded her. No matter how much she tried to care for this man, he seemed to knock her down at every opportunity, and Robin had had enough. He might be a powerful man, but he was a prick. And Jake—well, regardless of who he was or where he came from, Jake would never do that to her. Jake would hold her up on a pedestal, treat her with respect. Maybe that was what she had been searching for. Respect. Acceptance. She suddenly realized that was worth far more to her than her father’s money.
Robin squeezed through the railing, started walking toward the Jeep.
“Wait a minute! Where are you going?” Dad demanded.
“Home! I’ve had enough of your criticism, Dad. I’m not your window dressing anymore! I am not going to be some doll you can pose however you want!”
“Robin Elaine, stop right where you are!” he bellowed.
She stopped. Debated. And slowly turned around. Over Dad’s shoulder, she could see the three riders had come to a halt, too, were looking back at her and Dad. “If you walk out of here with that man, you can kiss your inheritance good-bye. I’m not playing around here. You go, and that’s final.”
He might as well have kicked her in the gut. Every word snatched her breath like a sucker punch. What had she done? Fallen in love? That was her crime? The very idea, the very thought that she might give up everything the Lear name brought her because she loved . . . loved (it was love, wasn’t it?) was unbelievable. And strangely liberating.
She stared at her father, keenly aware that for the first time in her life, she was going to do what she wanted to do and not try to please a father who could not be pleased. She smiled. “Okay, Dad, have it your way. You keep it, every last cent. I don’t want as much as a dime. You want me to make my way in this world? Then I’ll do start at the very bottom if I have to, because there is nothing you can say, no threat you can make to force me to give him up. Buy yourself another ornament.”
With that, she turned on her heel and went striding to the house to pack her things, almost laughing at the sound of her father calling her back.
Aaron watched his oldest child leave from the windows of the master suite, wondering if the nausea he felt this time was from the drugs or from losing her. Stubborn little fool. Yeah, but she’d come back. She always did. She’d say, I was wrong, Dad, you were right. Stubborn, but able to own up to it when she was wrong. And she was wrong about this, dead wrong.
She’d come back.
He just hoped it wasn’t too late.
As the Mercedes rounded the corner up the drive in a cloud of caliche dust, a door slammed behind him.
“You asshole. You never change, do you?” Bonnie seethed.
Aaron winced, turned halfway to look at her. She was standing in the foyer of the master suite, her legs apart, her hands braced against her hips. He could almost see the steam coming out of her ears and fire out of her nose.
“How . . . dare you?” she barely managed to get out.
“How dare I? How dare I try and help my daughter with my last dying breath?”
“I am not going to stand here and listen to your dying bullshit,” she said and marched forward to the dresser, yanked open the top drawer, and started jerking out various articles of underclothes, tossing them on the bed.
“What are you doing?” he asked, gingerly lowering himself to a chair.
“Leaving.”
A flame of panic raced up his spine. “You can’t leave—”
“Like hell I can’t.”
“Bonnie, for Chrissakes, stop it!” he said sternly, but she stared fiercely at him, daring him to try to stop her before she turned on her heel and marched to the closet. Aaron struggled to his feet. “So you’re just going to march out of here because Robin doesn’t like what I told her?” he asked incredulously.
Bonnie stopped what she was doing, slowly turned to look at him, and he was shocked to see that she was crying, tears streaming down her face. “How dare you judge that man, Aaron? He is kind, he is considerate, he is . . . is obviously and wildly in love with our daughter! What do you find so objectionable?”