“So I didn’t make a bad play?” she asked, snuggling against him.
With her delightful body aligned with his, he was finding it hard to draw his next breath, let alone think about playing poker. “No,” he finally managed.
“When do you think I’ll be ready to play you for the ranch?” she asked, leaning back to look up at him.
“I’d say within the next week or so,” he answered evasively. He had a feeling that either way the game went, he would come out feeling as though he’d lost. But he didn’t want to think about settling who would live on the ranch. With her in his arms, he had more pleasurable things on his mind. “Why don’t we take a break and go out onto the front porch to watch the sun go down?”
“I think I’d like that,” she said, giving him a smile that sent his blood pressure up a good ten points.
Ten minutes later, as they sat in the porch swing watching the last traces of daylight fade into the pearl-gray of dusk, Lane held Taylor to his side. They were both silent for some time and he couldn’t get over how right it felt to be enjoying something so simple with her.
“Could I ask you something, Lane?” The sound of her soft voice saying his name caused heat to gather in his loins.
“Sure.” Turning slightly to face her, he smiled. “What would you like to know?”
“Why did you go ahead and become a psychologist when you had already started playing poker professionally?” she asked.
He stared at her a moment before he answered. She had been truthful with him about her situation at home and her parents’ constant turmoil, which he knew wasn’t easy for her. He supposed it was only fair to tell her why he had chosen to study psychology.
“I wish I could tell you my reasons were noble and that I had wanted to help people. But I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I went into the field for one purely selfish reason. I was looking for answers.”
“May I ask what you were questioning?” she said cautiously.
He didn’t think about his biological father all that much anymore. After he’d been sent to live on the Last Chance Ranch, Hank Calvert had become his dad and had been more of a parent to him than his real father ever had. Ken Donaldson had been too busy wining and dining clients in order to climb the corporate ladder in the world of high finance to be a good husband and father.
“I told you that my father died a couple of years before my mother,” he said, choosing his words carefully. When she nodded, he went on. “What I didn’t say was that he died by his own hand.”
“Oh, Lane, I had no idea,” she said, hugging him. “That must have been horrible for you and your mother.”
He did his best to swallow the anger that always accompanied thinking about his father’s death. “I went into psychology because I wanted to understand what he might have been thinking and how he could cause his family that kind of devastation.”
She laid her soft hand on top of his. “Did you find the answers you were looking for?”
“Not really.” Shrugging, he twined their fingers. “It would have been easier to accept if it had been something he couldn’t help, like an undiagnosed chemical imbalance or some other psychosis that impaired his reasoning. But it wasn’t.”
“Did he leave an explanation why he thought death was his only answer?” she asked.
Lane clenched his jaw until his teeth hurt as he nodded. “My father selfishly took his own life because he was a coward.” Unable to sit still, he released her and stood up to walk over to the porch rail. Gripping the board so tightly he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d left dents in the wood, he kept his back to her as he finished. “The note was with him when I came home from school and found him hanging from one of the rafters in the garage.”
“Oh, my God, Lane! That must have been so awful for you,” she said, her tone quavering.
“It was a sight that I’ll never forget, as long as I live,” he admitted. He took a deep breath. “He explained in the note that he was facing legal issues over some bad financial decisions and couldn’t bear the loss of his reputation and financial ruin because of it.” He paused a moment before he could force words past the resentment that choked him. “It was all about him and his pride. He didn’t consider what it would do to my mother and me. Either that, or he just didn’t give a damn about all of the emotional pain taking his own life would put us through.”
“I’m so sorry, Lane,” Taylor said, placing her hand on his back. Wrapped up in his anger, he hadn’t even heard her get up from the swing. “I didn’t mean to bring up something so painful for you.”