She nods, lips pursed in an ashamed grimace.
“Well, my fears are a little different,” I tell her as I press forward. “I’m afraid I’m going to wake up one day and you’ll be gone because I didn’t make the bold move to tell you how I’m feeling. I know you said you’re afraid you can’t give me what I’m expecting, and the ironic thing is, you already give me that and so much more, and you don’t even realize it.”
“Rand,” she says, and she sounds desperate. Her face is pale and she looks decidedly uncomfortable, but I decide to push forward.
“I’m crazy about you, Cat,” I tell her firmly, looking her dead in the eye. “That call tonight from Lorelei was my wake-up call and I realized I was not ready to lose you in any fashion. I’m falling in love with you and I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but you need to know for a woman who doesn’t think she amounts to much, you’re pretty much amounting to my everything.”
Cat blinks at me, her eyes getting shiny. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do and one day, you’ll believe it too,” I tell her with utter confidence.
“I don’t know if I can love,” she whispers fearfully. “I mean… look at what I know of it. A cold, derelict mother who only wants to use me and a dead husband who got off on humiliating me… a father who abandoned me. I don’t know what it even means to care for someone.”
“That’s bullshit, Cat, and you know it,” I tell her. “The mere fact you’re worried about not giving me what I need tells me you care for me. Hell, the fact that you were more worried about how Tarryn was tonight than yourself tells me that you’ve got a heart the size of this state.”
She blinks at me again, and I can see she’s confused. She even shakes her head in silent denial, opens her mouth to do the same, and then seems to reconsider because she closes it just as quickly. Her gaze slides over to my bookshelf that holds photographs of me competing and with my family. It tells of a happy, fulfilled life surrounded by people who love and care for me.
And then she totally changes the subject.
At least I think it’s a change of subject.
“If Kevin did this… hired someone to kill me, do you think that’s something within his very makeup or was it learned behavior from maybe his father… to sort of take what you want?”
Well, shit. That’s a deep as hell question and I don’t know much about Kevin or Samuel. She has to have a reason for asking it, but I’m not sure what she’s looking for, so I’m a little hesitant when I say, “I have to believe that his father’s influence played a role. His father pretty much taught him he could have what he wanted without working for it. You’re the example of that. He let that shit have you… someone beautiful, amazing, and totally beyond his reach, and he just handed you over without his son even earning the right to breathe the same air as you.”
She nods, gaze coming back to me. “I think that’s probably true. Although Richard doesn’t seem to have that same entitlement.”
“Or maybe he’s involved in this with Kevin and we just don’t know it,” I point out.
“Also true,” she says softly, and then changes subjects again. “I wonder what type of influence my father would have been on me. You know, if he’d have stuck around… been involved in my life.”
“You don’t know that he abandoned you,” I say carefully, so she’s not making conclusions about a situation she truly knows nothing about.
“That’s what my mom says,” she says bitterly. “But I can never trust what she says, so who knows?”
“Well, you didn’t have very good role models in your life,” I tell her, as this is something I am sure about. “And yet, you’re still an incredibly caring and empathetic woman, so I’m going to have to say that part is inside of you somehow. Maybe that’s part of your dad.”
Her smile softens, lips curved in a wistful arc while her eyes get dreamy. “You know… if I get money from Samuel’s estate, I think I’m going to try to find my dad. It may be a chase after nothing, but it seems the right thing to do if I were to have a windfall of some sort.”
“That inheritance is not a windfall,” I remind her. “It’s your due under the law as his wife. And we’re going to make sure you get every penny.”
She nods with another smile, and then yawns. It’s my cue that this deep conversation is over for now. While that part of me that is dying for her to admit her feelings for me wants to bully her into it, I think enough has been said tonight to at least make her think. She knows that this is more than just casual for me, so now I really just need to sit back and let her try to figure things out.
Chapter 22
Cat