Scott straightened and extended his hand. “Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate you giving me a second chance.”
Jeffrey slipped his small hand into Scott’s, shaking it solemnly. Scott had to swallow a lump in his throat.
Blair cleared her throat as if she was affected in a similar manner. “Jeffrey, why don’t you run over to Aunt Wanda’s and tell her how much fun we had today? I’ll call you in about an hour to come home.”
“Are you going to yell at Scott?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Okay.” He smiled at her, then gave her a quick hug. “I had a great time today. Thank you.”
“I had a good time, too.” She rested her cheek against the top of his head, and Scott couldn’t help noticing how much more comfortable they looked together now than they had when he’d first met them. He wanted to believe he’d had some part in that, though he didn’t like to think they had drawn closer partly as a reaction to his disappointing them.
Blair walked Jeffrey out to the front porch, then watched until he was safely across the yard and inside his great-aunt’s house. Only then did she rejoin Scott, closing the front door behind her, her expression closed. “Why did you come here, Scott?” she asked wearily. “I thought you had a competition in Hawaii.”
“I didn’t enter it. After I talked to you, I dropped everything and headed back here.”
“Is that grand gesture supposed to impress me?”
He winced. He’d known Blair would be harder to bring around than Jeffrey. He had hurt her—that was bad enough. But he had also hurt the nephew she had made a commitment to raise and protect—and that she would find much harder to forgive.
*
BLAIR REGRETTED her words as soon as she said them. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. As I said to Jeffrey earlier, there’s no call for either of us to be rude to you.”
“And I’ll tell you the same thing I said to Jeff. Say whatever you want to me.”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sure you meant well by coming all this way to apologize, but it would have been better if you’d stayed where you were. I haven’t changed my mind about us.”
“You still think it best if we say goodbye.”
“Yes,” she said, finding it every bit as hard to say this time—maybe even harder after he’d made up so sweetly with Jeffrey.
“Because you think I’ll continue to disappoint you? That I can’t be trusted to follow through on my promises to you and Jeff? You think I’m another self-centered wanderer like your brother and your father?”
“I...didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“The thing is,” she said, determined to stay focused on logic and reason, “you and I are all wrong for each other. What happened this weekend is a perfect example of that. You weren’t obligated to be at the ranch to host us this weekend. You had every right to go to Hawaii with your friends. You very generously made arrangements for us to have a lovely day at your ranch, but it wasn’t enough for us. Jeffrey and I can’t seem to help wanting more from you, and you’re a man who doesn’t want any ties or commitments. We need order and security, and you crave freedom and adventure. It simply can’t work.”
“It can if I’m willing to change,” he said quietly.
Her chest tightened. “I haven’t asked you to change. There’s no reason for you to—”
“I’ve already changed.” He reached out to pull her hands into his. “Blair, why do you think I panicked enough to run all the way to Hawaii?”
“You went to Hawaii to surf.”
“I went to prove that I was free to do so,” he corrected. “When Bobby called, my first instinct was to turn him down. To tell him that I had a prior commitment for the weekend. Because that reaction was so new to me—and so momentous—it scared me into telling him I would be there.”
When she only looked at him in confusion, he laughed ruefully and tightened his grip on her hands. “Don’t you see? There’s never been anything so important to me that I couldn’t just ditch it if a better offer came along.”
That made her frown and pull at her hands. “I understand. You wanted to go surfing in Hawaii more than you wanted to play tour guide for us at your ranch.”
“No, you don’t understand. There was nothing I wanted to do more than play tour guide for you and Jeff—including surfing in Hawaii. I knew the minute I got on the plane that I’d made the wrong choice for myself. What I didn’t understand was that I had let you and Jeff down so badly.”
“Surely you knew how much we wanted you to be there.”