The Price of Passion (Texas Cattleman's Club: Rags to Riches 1)

Or had it been sooner?

“I can’t believe this.” Her voice was low, carrying the ring of astonishment. “You’re defending what you did? Do you know how humiliating it was for me around here? For months after you and Julie left town, people stared at me. Wondering what had happened. Spreading rumors.”

She’d never forget it. The sympathetic stares from people or, worse, the amused glances of girls she’d thought were her friends. “My own mother thought I was pregnant and that’s why you left. Everywhere I went, whispered conversations stopped when I got close. There were guys who thought they could move right into your place. And my so-called friends turned on me like rabid snakes, gossiping, laughing.

“There was no way to avoid any of it. I was alone because you were gone. I finally left for college and it felt like an escape.”

He laughed a little under his breath. “Wow. You escaped. Good for you. Do you want a prize? Do you know the crap I heard when my friends found out you’d dumped me?”

“I didn’t dump you. You dumped me. Pretty damn publicly, too. And you didn’t have to listen to them for months, did you?” She glared up at him, feeling the fury that had been buried inside her for fifteen years rising up to the surface. “Just how long had you been cheating on me with Julie?”

Clearly shocked, he blurted, “What?”

“You married Julie like a week after we broke up—”

“So you agree, you broke up with me.”

“No, I didn’t say that. And don’t change the subject. You and Julie got married and skipped town in like ten seconds. And I was left here, trying to explain how my boyfriend of three years had married someone else!”

His brown eyes turned thunderous and a part of Beth was happy to see it. Why should she be the only one upset?

“I don’t owe you an explanation, Beth,” he ground out.

“Yeah, you do. But I’ll never get one.” She whirled away, took a step and looked back. “You go ahead and tell yourself whatever lie you have to, to make yourself feel better. I know the truth. And whether you admit it or not, so do you.”

He was after her in a heartbeat. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. She’d forgotten how fast he could move. Beth gasped as he took her arm, spun her around and then held on to her shoulders. He was looming over her and he did it well. He was so tall she had to tip her head back to meet brown eyes that were flashing with indignation.

“You think it was easy for me?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she snapped. “You’re damn right I do. You and Julie got out. Just the two of you. It’s more than I had.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “Nothing about leaving here was easy.”

She hoped not. “I don’t care.”

“Yeah, you made that clear the last night we were together.”

He kept trying to make her feel guilty about that night. But she’d done nothing wrong. She couldn’t regret it even now. She’d been right to go with her gut. With her heart. It hadn’t meant she didn’t love Cam. It felt as if she’d always loved him. And a part of her still did. Naturally, she kept that

part locked away in a corner of her mind she never explored.

“I was only eighteen, Cam.”

“And I was nineteen,” he reminded her. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, I did what I had to. You didn’t see how young I was—how young we were—back then, and you still don’t.”

“I saw it,” he argued. “I didn’t care. Didn’t think it mattered. We had a plan, Beth. And you scrapped it without a thought. Well, I did what I had to do, too. I found a way to survive what you did to me.”

She laughed again and the sound was painful, even to her. “Marrying Julie was a survival technique? Well, hell, Cam. You should teach a course on that at the city college. How to Get Over Heartbreak by Marrying Someone Else. I’m sure tons of men would sign up for that one.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what you said.”

“Damn it, Beth.” He shook his head, stared up at the sky for a slow count of five, then looked back at her. “You always had the hardest head.”

She inhaled sharply and held up one hand. “Don’t. You don’t get to pretend you still know me. I’m not that young girl anymore. We’re not together now and we’re never going to be.”