He lifted a brow in contradiction.

Summer stopped pacing and marched over to stand in front of him. "Look, Geoffrey," she began, her hands shoved deep in her back pockets. "The truth is..." She couldn't tell him she didn't love him. That seemed cruel. But what other reason could she give him for calling off their wedding?

She pulled her hands out of her pockets and shoved them through her hair. "Oh, G.o.d. I don't know how to tell you this."

"Try putting one word after the other."

She glared at him. Anger was good. Anger would get her through this. "All right. Since you want it in plain words, here it is. I can't marry you."

Summer was watching his face, so she saw him flinch, saw the muscle work in his jaw, and the way his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he clamped his teeth and swallowed back the impulsive retort on the tip of his tongue.

The fire popped and crackled in the silence.

"Say something. Please," she whispered.

He eyed her keenly and said, "What about this Bad Billy character? Your father seemed to think-"

"Billy's a friend. We're just friends," she said quickly, perhaps too quickly. She meant it, but she could see that Geoffrey believed they were way more than friends.

He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his widespread knees. "I kind of thought something like this might happen."

Summer's eyes went wide as she sank into the wing chair across from him. "What?"

He looked down at his soft lawyer's hands, then back up at her. "I could feel you pulling away, the closer we got to the wedding."

She shook her head. "No, I just-"

"Don't bother denying it," he said, his voice more sad than upset. "I kept hoping. I figured once we were married, you'd let down your guard, and I could make you fall in love with me."

"I never meant to hurt you," Summer said, swallowing over the painful knot of guilt in her throat.

He took a hitching breath and let it out. "I know."

She rose to comfort him, but the instant she did, he lurched from his chair and said, "Don't."

He headed for the door to the library but stopped when he got there, looked back at her, and said, "Will you take care of letting everyone know?"

She nodded. A few moments later, she heard one of the immense double doors to the Castle open and close.

And he was gone.

Summer could hardly believe Geoffrey had left without a fight. Without once raising his voice. With hardly a word of protest. She sank into the wing chair, waiting to feel relief at her narrow escape.

What she felt instead was that awful ache in the center of her chest. If he'd loved her so much, why hadn't he fought harder to keep her? If he'd loved her so much, why hadn't he said something sooner about her apparent defection? If he'd loved her so much, why wasn't he here holding her in his arms, demanding she love him in return? Why had he simply given up? Wasn't she worth fighting for?

Summer hated her conflicting emotions. She had no right to demand Geoffrey release her from her promise and then blame him because he was gentleman enough to do so without making a fuss. But dammit! What kind of man walked away from the woman he loved?

Billy had done it two years ago. Asked her to marry him, and then walked away without a backward look when she'd refused. Now Geoffrey had done the same thing. Was she so unlovable? So little worth fighting for?

Summer could hear her parents shouting at one another. At least they were willing to fight. She wondered if her mother realized the futility of her efforts. Her father loved another woman and apparently always had. Sadly, her mother just as clearly loved her father and apparently always had.

It was a tragedy that had resulted in awful consequences.

Her "real" father, whose name was Russell Handy, had arranged the murder of Lauren Creed at her mother's instigation, in an attempt to get rid of the woman Blackjack had always loved. But the bullet had missed its target, and Lauren's husband Jesse had been killed instead. Handy, who loved her mother, had taken all the blame for the murder and was serving a life sentence in Huntsville.

Since there was no evidence against Summer's mother that would hold up in court, she'd spent eighteen months locked up in a sanitarium. But the "cure" hadn't worked. She'd come out with her jealousy and hatred of Lauren Creed intact.

Summer could hear her mother's shrill voice getting louder as she descended the stairs, with Blackjack right behind her.

"I will not have her doing anything as stupid as canceling this wedding at the last minute," her mother shouted.

"She's ent.i.tled to make up her own mind," her father yelled back. "Besides, she's not the one you're mad at. I am."

At the foot of the stairs her mother whirled, her elegant cream silk peignoir flying around her ankles like a dancer's costume. "And why shouldn't I be mad at you?" she shot back. "It is ridiculous for you to be thinking of divorce at your age. You're too old-"

"I'm still a man," her father raged.

"Who hasn't touched me in two years!"

"I don't want you," he said cruelly. "I want Ren."

"Momma, Daddy, please," Summer begged, crossing into the hall to let them know she was there. She'd overheard them fighting from behind closed doors, but she'd never before seen the naked fury on her mother's face or the loathing that contorted her father's features.

"There's nothing you can do, nothing you can say, to keep me here any longer," her father said.

Her mother stood at the foot of the stairs, Blackjack two or three steps above her. Any second, Summer expected to see her mother spread her arms across the open s.p.a.ce, as though she could physically keep Blackjack from leaving.

"Get out of my way, Eve," her father said.

"You'd go to another woman at this hour of the night?" her mother said.

"I'm finally free, Eve. Free. I don't want to spend even one more night under the same roof with you. And now that the truth is out, I don't have to. There's nothing you can do to hurt Summer any more than she's already been hurt."

"I can break this ranch into tiny pieces and sell it to a hundred buyers," her mother threatened.

Summer gasped. "Momma, you wouldn't! She can't do that, can she, Daddy?"

"Watch me!" her mother snarled. "I can and I will."

"You can try," her father snarled back. "Much good it'll do you."

"What is that supposed to mean?" her mother said.

"Just try breaking up Bitter Creek and you'll see," her father threatened. "Now get out of my way."

Instead of stepping back, her mother stayed where she was, forcing her father to take her mother by the shoulders and set her aside. She clung to him as he moved past, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

"Please don't do this, Jackson. You're my husband. I love you. I always have. I'll never give you up."

Summer watched, her face pale, her heart skittering, as her father reached up and yanked her mother's arms from around his neck.

"It's over, Eve. You can stop fighting now. I'm leaving. And I'm not coming back."

"We're still married," she said. "If you go to that woman you'll be an adulterer. That won't help your case in court."

Her father glanced significantly at Summer, and then at her mother. "I think I've got enough evidence of my own to counter whatever charges of adultery you lay against me."

Summer choked back a moan.

Eve glanced at her, then turned to Blackjack and said in a soft, silky voice, "You'd tell the world that your daughter's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

"The only person I was ever worried might find out the truth already has," he said. "Summer knows she's my daughter in every way that matters."

That silenced her mother. And filled an empty place inside Summer that she hadn't acknowledged was there.

In the tense quiet, Blackjack walked to the double doors, opened one, and closed it behind him.

Summer glanced at her mother, who seemed to deflate like a balloon. She'd never been close to her mother, hadn't hugged her in recent memory. Yet her mother seemed truly devastated by Blackjack's defection.

She took a step forward and said, "Momma?"

The virulent look in her mother's eyes stopped her in place. "This is all your fault."

"What?"

"Listening at closed doors. Telling secrets you aren't supposed to know, that you wouldn't know if you weren't spying on your parents."

Summer felt the words like a whiplash.

"I hope you're proud of yourself, Missy," her mother said. "Breaking up your parents' marriage."

"That's not fair!" Summer said. "I couldn't help hearing what I did. You were yelling and screaming and-"

"You didn't have to tell him the truth. You didn't have to tell him you know."

"I didn't tell him, Billy did!" The instant the words were out, Summer knew she never should have uttered them.

"That d.a.m.ned b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of his! I should have known. Bad seed, both of you."

Summer was appalled at the words coming out of her mother's mouth. "I am not-"

The smirk on her mother's face shut her up. Because the truth was, her real father was a convicted murderer. Oh, G.o.d. She couldn't stand this. She understood exactly how her father felt. She wanted to leave this place and never come back.

Except Bitter Creek was all she'd ever wanted. Now it seemed the ranch would be gone, sold away to strangers. And what would happen to her? "Please, Momma, couldn't you let Daddy have the ranch?"

"All that will be left of this empire of his when I'm done is little bitty pieces." She paused, her eyes narrowing, before she added, "Unless you'd be willing to marry Geoffrey after all."

"What?"

"I don't wish to call the governor of Texas and tell him my daughter's wedding has been canceled. Not to mention the other dignitaries I've invited, and the time and trouble I've been through to make this the social event of the season. I know you want Bitter Creek. So t.i.t for tat. You marry Geoffrey, and I might be willing to give Bitter Creek to the two of you as a wedding present."

"How is that possible?" Summer said.

"You heard your father. He doesn't want this place. And I don't intend to let him keep it if he tries to divorce me. The choice is up to you. I can cut Bitter Creek up into pieces and get rid of it, or I can make it a wedding gift to the two of you."

Summer's heart was pounding so hard it hurt. "But I don't love Geoffrey." And he doesn't love me enough to fight for me.

"Think about it," she said. "You have until tomorrow morning."

"Momma, please-"

"Don't cry, Summer. Babies cry. I find it irritating in the extreme."

Summer swiped at her eyes with both hands, but when the tears were finally gone, so was her mother. All Summer saw was the hem of her peignoir, floating up the stairs.

"This can't be happening," Summer said as she turned and walked back to the wing chair in front of the fire. She sank into it and stared into the flames. "This just can't be happening."

But it was. And she had until morning to make up her mind what to do.

Chapter 3.

WE'RE ALMOST THERE, WILL," BILLY SAID IN A soothing voice. "One more mile. A couple more minutes. Then I'll get you out of that car seat and get you dry and into bed."

The truck had dropped into a deep pothole in the dirt road that led from the highway to the Coburn ranch house, and the portable crib, stroller, and high chair which Billy had thrown into the back of the pickup when he'd packed so hurriedly had ricocheted noisily around the metal truck bed. At the crash of metal on metal, Will had woken with a cry of alarm and, when he realized he was still strapped into the car seat, began wailing miserably.

Billy had offered his fifteen-month-old son the warm bottle of milk, and Will had sucked it down like a starving calf. But the bottle was empty now, and Will was struggling against the car seat restraints, protesting his confinement with all his might and begging to be let out.

"Out, Daddy."

Billy felt his gut tighten. He hated the sound of his child in distress. But it made no sense to stop when he was so close to home.

"Just a little longer, Will," he said, brushing his hand across Will's baby curls. "You've been such a good boy. We'll be home soon."

"Out, Daddy. Out," Will cried woefully. And then, more angrily, "Out out out!"

Billy couldn't blame his son for being cranky. He felt the same way himself. Especially after his idiotic behavior in the parking lot of the Armadillo Bar.

He had thought he'd grown up since he'd left Bitter Creek. All it had taken was fifteen minutes with the people he'd known all his life, and he'd reverted to being Bad Billy Coburn.

Given a choice, Billy never would have come back to Bitter Creek. But he hadn't been given much choice. His nineteen-year-old sister Emma had called him last night in hysterics.