“Charming?”
“I suppose so.”
“I’m not any of those things. I tried to be what Gabe wanted. I can rope and ride almost as well as he can. But he just saw me as his sister-or his brother.”
“Does it matter so much that he loves someone else?” Randall asked sadly. “What about us, last night? Was I just a substitute for Gabe?”
“Of course not,” she said a little too quickly. “But you don’t love me either.”
“Don’t tell me how I feel. Claire, listen.” He took hold of her shoulders and shook her a little. “You’ve got this fixation that you’re unlovable just because you didn’t get the man you always wanted. But did you ever lift your head and notice any other man? Did you give the rest of us a chance? This ranch isn’t the whole world, and Gabe McBride isn’t the only man in the universe. He just thinks he is.”
She gave a watery, unconvinced smile. Touched, Randall caressed her face with his fingertips. “You were in such a rush to tell me that I don’t love you. Did you ever think you might have that wrong?”
She shook her head. “Don’t, Randall. You should have told me about Honoria at the start-before we-”
“Before we made love?”
“Whatever it was that we did.”
“It was love that we made. You know that, don’t you?”
She looked at him defiantly. “Does your fiancee know it?”
“My what?”
“The Horrible Honoria. She as good as told me you were engaged.”
“Oh, did she! And you believed her?”
“She’d hardly have said you were engaged if you weren’t.”
“She’s been saying it for years. It makes her mad that I won’t say it, too. But I’m not in love with her, any more than she is with me. It’s only the title she wants.”
“I don’t understand that,” Claire said simply.
And she really didn’t, he realized. Her directness and honesty were like fresh air after the society hothouse where he’d been trapped most of his life.
“Can you understand this?” he asked urgently. “I love you, and I want to marry you.”
Something leapt in her, but the next moment something else held back.
“Randall, you don’t have to wed me because you bed me,” she said awkwardly.
“Is that all you think I- Claire, sometimes I could wring your neck.”
“Great! And you want to marry me.”
“Yes, I do, you impossible woman. I love you, and I want you to tell me that you love me.
She could have bitten her tongue out. Yet it had to be said. Nothing in life had come easy to Claire. She’d never before needed to analyze her own feelings, and the effort confused her now.
“I’m sorry,” she said, anguished at the sight of the pain on his face. “I’m sorry,
“It’s just that you still love Gabe,” he said bitterly.
“I don’t know,” she cried. “I’ve always loved him. When I heard that he was going to be married, I wanted to die. But when I thought you were going to be married, I wanted to die, too.
“I can’t marry you. How can I be a proper wife, feeling like this. I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
“And you never will know if you stay here,” he said angrily. “Claire, don’t you realize, Gabe is bringing his wife home? How can you stay at the ranch, watching them together day after day, torturing yourself-?”
“I won’t. Don’t worry about me. I’m not going to hang around like some damned poor relation. I’m good at what I do. I’ll never be out of a job.”
“Fine,” he said angrily. “Spend the rest of your life drifting all over Montana with nothing and no one to call your own. It’s obviously better than a life with me.”
Claire’s eyes blazed. “Well, I’ll be all right. I’m strong, I can cope with anything. And I don’t want you to marry me as an act of charity.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Drifting all over Montana, as you put it, will be a great life. I’ll be
“Rubbish!” he said furiously. “You can learn all that, it’s just a veneer and it doesn’t matter. What matters is loving someone and being at one with them-knowing they value the same things you do-like us.”
“Do you?” she asked wistfully. “You’ve been here six weeks. Maybe you’ve just lost your way. When you get back to England you’ll find it again.” She touched his hand for a brief moment. “I think you should go home soon, Randall. It’s been lovely, but we’re just too different.”
“We’re not different at all. We were born and raised thousands of miles apart, but inside, we’re the same. Can’t you understand that?”
Dumbly she shook her head.
His heart was too heavy to speak again and they returned in silence. Claire wondered if Randall was angry, but he was past that. He was brooding over his appalling picture of her life to come, moving on from one place to another, rootless, lonely, never quite belonging anywhere. While the man who loved her pined uselessly on the other side of the Atlantic.
As soon as he got back to the ranch he put through another call to Gabe.
“Hell, Randall? Haven’t you got anything better to do than call me up? What’s wrong now? Is my best bull dead?”
“Your bull’s fine. I’m not. It’s Claire. I’m in love with her.”
“Oh, boy!”
“I thought I could make her forget all about you. Hell, that shouldn’t have been difficult.” He heard Gabe’s appreciative chuckle down the line. “But I can’t.”
“You mean you offered her the Stanton land and titles and she turned them down?”
“That’s right. She turned them down. And me.”
“Well, she always was prickly as a thorn bush.”
“She damned well is not!” Randall said furiously. “That’s just an act she put on for you, and if you’d ever bothered to look at her properly you’d know that she’s sweet and vulnerable, and full of stubborn pride so she hates people to know how easily she’s hurt and-”
“Whoa. Hold on there.” Gabe whistled through his teeth. “You’ve really got it bad, haven’t you?”
