She stood only a few feet away, her arms crossed over her chest, her feet spread as if in challenge. “You’ve been a real life of the party today. And now you’re leaving. I have ruined your holiday, haven’t I?”
“I told you, you haven’t ruined anything. My parents can entertain anyone they want to in their home.”
“Trent, please don’t leave because of me. I know you’re angry with me, but don’t let that ruin your time with your family. I’m the one who should leave, not you. You belong here.”
He glanced darkly toward the house, from which muted sounds of laughter and conversation drifted toward them. “Trust me, Annie, I feel as much the outsider here as you do, if not more. The Trent they knew—the one they still want me to be—died in a plane crash caused by his own reckless stupidity. It wasn’t even a military plane on a noble mission. It was a buddy’s home-built experimental model that he thought he could fly just because he thought he could do anything. That guy was so cocky and full of himself that he thought the world was his for the taking. He could do anything. He had no limitations. As for me—well, I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.”
Her eyes had widened in what might have been distress and she shook her head. “Your family knows who you are. You’re the same man they have always known and loved. Just because your circumstances have changed doesn’t mean they feel any differently about you.”
He blew air through his nose, telling himself he knew his family better than she did. “Of course they still love me—and they feel sorry for me. Poor invalid Trent.” Bitterness coated his voice so thickly that even he could hear it.
Distress changed quickly to anger as Annie drew herself up to her full five feet three inches and looked him straight in the eye. This was the look that had taken him so by surprise the first time he had seen it. The time he’d realized that she wasn’t the shy, meek little housekeeper he’d thought her at first. Maybe it was then he had started to fall for her—before he had learned how completely wrong that first impression had been.
“That,” she said crisply, “is the biggest crock of garbage I’ve ever heard. Your family doesn’t think of you as an invalid, Trent McBride, and neither do I. The only one around here who thinks of you that way—is you.”
He put a hand on the door handle of his truck. “I’ve got to go.”
“Fine. Run away. Go home and feel sorry for yourself. But that won’t change the fact that for some unaccountable reason everyone here loves you. Everyone, God help us. No matter how many excuses you make to keep us a
way, it won’t change the way we feel. All you’re doing is hurting us, and yourself, because you’re still punishing yourself for making a mistake. For not being perfect. So run hide, Trent, and make everyone else suffer along with you.”
What might have been terror rose up to choke him, compelling him to move. To run—just as she had accused him of doing. If he stayed, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He had an uneasy feeling he would do something that would change everything—permanently. And he just wasn’t ready for that.
He opened the truck door. “We’ll talk later,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” she said coolly. “Or maybe I’ll finally take your hint and get out of your life. If you’re so determined to be alone, I don’t know if I can change your mind. Or if I should even try.”
The thought of her leaving for good punched a hole right through his heart. He lashed out in panic and pain, reaching out to snag her by the back of the neck and pull her roughly toward him.
His mouth only a heartbeat from hers, he looked into her brown eyes, studying the stormy emotions reflected there. Some of them he recognized. Anger. Hurt. Desire. Love? If he saw it there, he refused to acknowledge it.
“Go back to your daddy, rich girl,” he muttered, holding himself away from her with an effort that made his hand tremble. “You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with me.”
He watched her eyes fill with tears just before he released her and turned away. He was in his truck with the engine started before she could speak. He knew she watched him as he drove away. He was so distracted by the tumultuous emotions she had roused in him that he forgot to compensate for his peripheral-vision loss and almost sideswiped a dark sedan that was cruising slowly past his parents’ house. The near accident only made him more aware of his shortcomings—and that Annie had been there to witness it.
How could she say she didn’t think of his limitations when she had been confronted with them so often? And how could he pretend they didn’t matter when he had to compensate for them every damn day?
But as he pressed the accelerator and sped toward the sanctuary of his cottage, he wondered miserably what truly made him less a man—a few physical flaws or the tears he had caused in Annie Stewart’s eyes.
ANNIE WENT through her routines Monday with emotionless efficiency. She tried very hard not to think about Trent or the words they had said to each other, but it was almost impossible to get him out of her mind.
She started the day by drinking coffee in the rocker Trent had given her. Before she left for work, she walked and fed the dog Trent had named, then put him safely back into the pen Trent had built. He haunted her thoughts while she cleaned her two regular Monday houses and gave his nephew a piano lesson that afternoon. After the lesson, she drove to the McBride Law Firm to clean the offices of Trent’s father and brother. When she finished, she would return to the house Trent had repaired for her, to sleep in the bed in which he had made love to her.
Working alone in the law offices, she finally conceded how useless it was to try not to think about Trent. He had invaded her life so thoroughly that there were reminders of him everywhere she looked. And it hurt every time.
Maybe she should leave Honoria, she thought wearily, meticulously dusting Trevor’s office. If there was even the slightest chance that she could put more distance between Trent and his family, it would be better if she went away.
Her money didn’t change who she was, or the way she felt about Trent. But apparently it made a significant difference in the way he felt about her. Or was her money only another excuse he had found to hold her—like everyone else—at a distance?
She wondered if Trent felt unworthy of being loved. She didn’t fully understand his feelings of inadequacy just because he had a bad back and slight vision loss. She had met many people in much worse physical condition than Trent. He had his family, his youth, his house, a marketable skill—there were plenty of people who would trade places with him in a minute, limitations and all.
Yet she couldn’t really blame him for being angry. From what she’d been told, Trent had dreamed of being an air force pilot from the time he was a small boy. He’d been close enough to reach out and touch his dream when he had seen it crumble around him. She could only imagine how devastating that must have been for him.
She’d never had a dream like that. She’d never wanted anything so badly she couldn’t imagine living without it. And then she had met Trent and tumbled foolishly into love with him. For a very short time, she had allowed herself to dream. If the emptiness inside her now was a measure of how Trent felt about the loss of his career, then she could understand how badly he had suffered during the past eighteen months.
She ached for him, even as she wanted to punch him for what he’d said to her. Go back to your daddy, rich girl. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with me. She could hate him for that if she didn’t understand so well where his anger had come from.
Maybe she should leave. Pack up the few belongings she had accumulated here, put Bozo in the back seat of her car and start over again someplace new. She wouldn’t go home to Daddy, as Trent had advised her so sarcastically—she would never live under her father’s control again—but she could find someplace else to settle. She could clean houses or give music lessons, whatever it took to support herself. But wherever she went, she knew she would miss Honoria more than she’d missed the house where she’d spent the first twenty-six years of her life. And no matter how much time and distance she put between them, she would never forget the first man she had ever truly loved.