The tycoons tots, p.17
The Tycoon's Tots,
p.17
“Goodbye?” She whispered the word as shock and loss and visions of the future tumbled through her mind.
His face grim, Wyatt nodded. “God knows it’s not what I want to do, Chloe. I want to be here with you and the twins. I want us to be a family. But if that’s not what you want, I realize I have to let go.”
He was going to leave! There would be no more shared meals, no more laughs or groans over the twins antics. She would never see the babies cradled in his arms again. She would never feel those same arms around her. His kisses and words of love would only be a memory. How could she bear the loneliness? But she had to! Didn’t she?
While the dreadful thoughts raced through her head, Wyatt rose to his feet.
He looked down at her, his gray eyes moist. “Goodbye, Chloe.”
She couldn’t bear the anguish on his face. She fixed her eyes on the far off peak of Sierra Blanca. The beautiful mountain jutted twelve thousand feet toward heaven and at the moment Chloe could see it was snowing there. But it felt as if the flakes of ice were landing right here, smack in the middle of her breaking heart.
“Goodbye, Wyatt.”
She didn’t look as he walked away. Nor did she turn her head to see him climb stiffly back into Pie’s saddle. She continued to watch the white shroud of snow fall over the mountains until she was no longer seeing anything except the vision of the coyotes. Once the animal found its mate, they traveled the rest of their lives together. Nothing but death would part them.
And suddenly she knew she could not let Wyatt leave. Selfish or not, she was like the coyote. She had found her mate and she would never let him go.
Jumping to her feet, she saw him riding away, his shoulders hunched, his head bent against the cold wind. She raced down the ledge, snatched up Pablo’s reins and swung into the saddle. Houston could live without Wyatt Sanders. But she couldn’t.
Wyatt didn’t know what hit him as the loop of the lariat settled over his head, then tightened around his arms and chest. The commotion caused Pie to come to an abrupt halt, nearly sending Wyatt tumbling over the horse’s head.
“What in hell—” His head jerked around to see Chloe right behind him, a broad grin on her face.
“You’re not going anywhere, cowboy!”
“Chloe?”
Recoiling the slack in her lariat, she nudged her horse up beside Pie. “You won’t go, will you, Wyatt? I told you I would never call you a fool. But I’ll call myself one.” Leaning out of the saddle, she grabbed his face with both hands. “Oh, Wyatt, I’ve been so…awful. But I don’t want to ever hurt you. Can you be happy with just me and the twins? Will we really be enough for you?”
Oh, God, he would gladly give up his fortune to erase the awful doubt from her face. “Chloe. Chloe, love. Don’t you realize that you are more than I ever dreamed of having?”
“But I’ll never be able to give you a child.”
He shook his head and smiled. “But I’ll have you, Chloe. You and me. Together. Besides, I have plenty of money—”
“Wyatt, I don’t want your money or anything connected to it. I know this ranch is floundering, but we’ll pull it to shore somehow. I would never have you thinking I married you for money. So go give it away. Do what you want with it. Just don’t try to give it to me.”
“Chloe, just hush for a minute about the money,” he said, pressing a finger against her lips. “Have you ever seen a specialist about your sterile condition?”
Her eyes widened at his unexpected question. “Well, not exactly a specialist You see, I had appendicitis in high school and that’s when the surgeon found the problem. But I’ve never been to a fertility doctor. Richard dumped me so fast I didn’t have a chance to check anything out. And then—” She shrugged. “I didn’t see much point in it”
Until this very moment he didn’t realize just how unworthy Chloe felt about herself. And he vowed he would spend the rest of his life showing her how special she really was.
“Well, there is a point now. That’s what I was about to say. I have the money to send you to the very best specialists. They’re doing all sorts of new and wonderful things to help infertile couples now. It might be that your condition isn’t so hopeless after all. But if it is—” he smiled and leaned his mouth next to hers. “I’ll still have you. And you’ll have me.”
A joyous sob welled up in her throat. “And we’ll have the twins,” she said.
He grinned as happiness spilled inside him like an overturned bucket of bright sunshine. “Oh, yes, the twins. The very reason we met in the first place.”
Chloe slipped the lariat up and over his head. “I guess I got you caught well enough to take this off now,” she said with a mischievous giggle.
He reached for the coiled rope. “Maybe you’d better give that thing to me. I might have to rope and tie you from time to time.”
Laughing, she tossed him the lariat. Wyatt slung it over the saddle horn and together they nudged their horses toward the Bar M.
After they had ridden a short distance Chloe said; “Oh, Wyatt, we’re going to be so happy.”
“I can’t wait to show you how happy.” He’d ridden out here expecting to get one final rejection. Instead Chloe had made him the happiest man on earth. He’d never be able to figure her.
She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I can see right now I’m going to have to teach you how to ride a horse.”
Her eyes were sparkling and Wyatt suddenly thought of all the things he was going to teach her, all the things they would see and do together. His life was going to be fuller than he’d ever imagined. “I’ll be your devoted pupil.”
“Do you know anything about cattle?” she asked teasingly.
“Only that I like to eat steak and hamburgers.”
Her sidelong glance held a bit of suspicion. “Tell me something, Wyatt. What did you really say to the banker that day I borrowed the money?”
He couldn’t lie to her. But damned if he wanted another argument. “Well, I…”
He chuckled and she began to laugh. And suddenly he knew that everything was going to be all right. Chloe finally understood him and accepted his love. “I signed a paper and told him to wire my bank in Houston and have seven thousand dollars transferred to your ranch account.”
Chloe wasn’t surprised. She realized now that he would do anything for her. It was an incredible feeling. “Looks
like I owe you a lot.”
“Nothing but your love. Think you can pay up?”
She gave him a slow, promising smile. “Only for the rest of my life.”
Epilogue
Chloe waved goodbye to the last of the guests, then shut the door behind her.
Across the living room Justine sagged wearily onto the couch beside Roy, who was holding their month-old daughter, Caroline.
“I’ve never seen such a noisy crowd. You’d have thought it was a New Year’s Eve party instead of a baby christening,” Justine said with a sigh.
“I guess we invited more friends than we thought,” Chloe said. “But it’s been a happy day. And little Caroline doesn’t seem the worse for wear.” She went over to Roy and bent down to kiss her new little niece’s red head.
“She hasn’t let out a peep,” Emily spoke up, “except when the minster got a hold of her. I don’t think she liked getting water on her head.”
Everyone laughed just as Rose entered the living room carrying a tray of soft drinks.
“Do I look funny or something?” she asked, glancing from one face to the next.
Harlan got up from an armchair to help his wife. “No, Rosie, you look beautiful.” He patted her small but protruding stomach. “We were just laughing about little Caroline.”
He began to pass the drinks around to the rest of the family. “Where’s Wyatt?” he asked.
“I saw him heading down the hallway a moment ago,” Roy answered. “Maybe he was going to go check on the twins.”
“Or wake them up so he can play with them,” Rose said with a laugh.
“I wish Uncle Wyatt would wake the twins up!” Charlie exclaimed. “They’re funny! Especially when Aunt Chloe has to chase after them.”
Chloe tweaked her nephew’s nose. “You would think that, little buddy.”
“Here he is,” Justine announced as Wyatt entered the living room.
Walking over to her husband, Chloe slipped her arm through his. “Been in the nursery trying to wake the twins?” she teased.
Chuckling, he kissed his wife’s cheek, then led her over to an empty armchair. Once she was settled, he took a seat on the floor at her feet.
It was then Chloe noticed he had a small padded book of some sort in his hand. “What is that, honey? Something to do with your new office?”
For the past three weeks, Wyatt had been putting his own oil drilling company together. And even though most of the actual drilling would take place in northern New Mexico, he could easily direct operations from an office in Ruidoso. Chloe was very excited for him and had been helping him furnish the building with a western flair. She had also taken a trip to see a gynecologist in Albuquerque and so far the doctor had given her an encouraging diagnosis. A new laser surgery could very well make it possible for her to become pregnant and safely deliver a baby. The wonderful news had only added to Wyatt and Chloe’s newfound happiness.
Wyatt answered, “No. It’s nothing to do with business. You remember Belinda’s landlady in Albuquerque sent some of her belongings to my office in Houston?” Chloe nodded and he went on. “Well, I had them shipped up here with a few of my trunks and last night as I was going through one of them, I found a journal.”
“A journal? Of Belinda’s?” Chloe leaned forward in her seat and peered at the book he was holding.
Wyatt nodded.
“Have you read it?” Roy asked.
“Most of it.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Kitty asked from a chair across the room.
The whole family looked at him and waited.
“I didn’t want anything to spoil Caroline’s christening party,” he told them.
“Why? Does it say something bad that we might not want to hear? Is it about Daddy?” Chloe prodded him.
“It’s all about your father,” he answered. “I don’t think my sister really started to live until she met him. But she didn’t know how to hold on to a good thing.” He opened the book, then glanced at the rest of the family circled around the room. “Do you want to hear it?”
They all agreed that they did and Wyatt began to read. A long time later after he’d read the last entry, he glanced up at his wife. There were tears on her face and he gently squeezed her knee.
“Poor Belinda,” Chloe murmured. “She loved Daddy very much. But he was afraid to tell us about her and the twins. He was afraid we would never forgive him for being unfaithful to Mother.”
“Well, I forgave him long ago,” Rose said. “I think Belinda was right when she wrote that Tomas turned to her out of grief. He was watching Mother wither away right before his eyes. That couldn’t have been easy for him.”
Justine nodded in agreement. “We all know he loved Mother. When he met Belinda at the racetrack in Ruidoso, her attention must have helped him forget he was losing his wife of thirty years.”
Wyatt sighed. “Well, I was relieved to read that Tomas was willingly sending the money to Belinda to support her and the babies. Like Chloe, I was afraid that maybe she had been blackmailing him.”
Roy glanced lovingly down at his new daughter, then said, “I guess it wasn’t until after Tomas died that she turned to drugs and alcohol.”
Wyatt nodded. “She had no way of knowing he’d died suddenly of a heart attack. She thought he’d simply deserted her and the twins. I guess the loss was more than she could bear. You can tell in the latter entries she wrote that everything was becoming confused in her mind.”
“She must have used all the money Tomas sent her to buy drugs,” Kitty commented. “The poor girl must have been deranged with grief.”
“I doubt she realized what she was doing when she tried to burn the ranch,” Harlan spoke up. “I’m just sorry she had to die so young.”
Chloe pressed her cheek against her husband’s. “We’re all sorry, darling.”
“So am I,” he agreed. “And sorry, too, that Tomas died before I ever had the chance to meet him.”
“Their affair was tragically wrong,” Chloe told him, “but you have to admit some good came out of it. They gave us the twins, and they brought us together.”
His wife was right, Wyatt thought as he looked around the room at his brothers- and sisters-in-law, his nieces and nephew, and Aunt Kitty. Belinda and Tomas had brought all of them together. And he, like the rest of the family, was very grateful for that.
His heart full, he closed the journal.
* * * * *
eISBN 978-14592-7292-7
THE TYCOON’S TOTS
Copyright © 1997 by Stella Bagwell
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office. Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Printed in U.S.A.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
Dear Reader
Title Page
Dedication
Books by Stella Bagwell
About the Author
Dear Reader
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Copyright
Stella Bagwell, The Tycoon's Tots
