“It was a fling. You knew that—”
It wasn’t a fling. It wasn’t. “No. No, I didn’t know that.”
“Please don’t make this hard.”
“What? I should make it easy for you to be a bastard?”
He winced, but it didn’t alter his next words. “If we hadn’t had the fire and the shooting here last night, you and I probably would have had a good ol’ time for several more days… or weeks. But all this crap changes everything.”
“How does it change everything?” My God! Have I no pride at all?
“I don’t have time for a fling right now. So it’s over. Forgive me, babe, but it’s over, and I want you to leave.”
“You said you loved me.”
He said nothing. Nothing!
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want you, Charmaine. Go away. Can I be any clearer than that?”
She felt as if a vise were clamped around her heart. Tightening, tightening, tightening. She stared at him with disbelief. “Don’t do this, Raoul. Because if you do, I will never forgive you. Some words can never be taken back. Never.”
He inhaled and exhaled, visibly shaken. But then, he said, “So be it.”
Charmaine turned away from him and walked stiffly toward the waiting motor home, tears streaming down her face. She’d always thought that a broken heart was an expression, not a real physical malady. She knew different now.
If only she had turned around, she would have seen that she wasn’t the only one with tears… or a broken heart.
But she didn’t turn around.
Tears on his pillow…
For two weeks, Raoul operated like a zombie.
Christmas would be here soon, and he couldn’t have been more crotchety than Scrooge himself. He really was turning into his father, bless his bitter soul.
He met with fire inspectors, police, his increasingly sadistic parole officer, the FBI and Jimmy’s dad. If all went as planned that week, he would soon have his conviction reversed, much to Devereaux’s chagrin, he was sure. Gaudet was going to face his own prison time for giving false testimony in his drug trial and accepting bribes; there was no longer any doubt about that. And Blue Heron Oil had their high-priced lawyers scurrying like rats to cover their tails. The oil company hadn’t murdered his father, though they probably had contributed to the stress leading to his heart attack, autopsy results showed. The oil company must be responsible, however, for the dead steers and the barn fire and a whole slew of other crimes. Jail time and fines out the kazoo were on someone’s horizon.
Much of the progress made in his case had been due to Charmaine’s family—Luc and Remy, with their police and P.I. contacts, even Tante Lulu, who kept him up-to-date on everything, except Charmaine. His wife was a taboo subject suddenly for the old lady.
Jimmy’s dad had elected to let his son return to the ranch this week and stay till January, now that he knew the whole story. It appeared as if the danger was about over.
Raoul had followed up on a bit of advice Charmaine had given him one time regarding Jimmy. Instead of having the boy spend his half days engaged in physical labor on the ranch, he had put him to work at the computer, logging in the cattle data. The kid was amazing. A real genius with numbers.
Right now, the gang was coming in for supper.
As all four of them sat down at the kitchen table, Jimmy moaned. “SpaghettiOs and hot dogs? Again!”
“Just eat it,” Raoul said.
“Ya caint have meat loaf and mashed potatoes and gravy every day,” Clarence said with seeming innocence. The old faker! He knew full well that there had been no home-cooked meals at the ranch since Charmaine had left.
I guess I’m not the only one missing Charmaine.
They all dug in to the not-so-gourmet meal. Hungry men would eat just about anything. If Jimmy weren’t here, they’d probably be having it with beer.
“I saw you got a letter today from that publisher,” Raoul said to Linc. “Good news?”
“Pretty good,” Linc answered. “They want to see a full proposal. That means an outline and a couple chapters. But they are definitely interested.”