* * *
The next couple of days were hard.
Dave worked himself into exhaustion all day and then lay awake all night. He couldn’t stop his brain from racing. Couldn’t stop the leapfrogging of thought to thought to thought.
There was Alex Santiago—still missing and no one had a clue where to look for him next. There was the destruction of the day-care center at the TCC. As far as he knew, there were no clues to the perpetrators there, either. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Nathan, so he knew nothing more than what was reported in the local paper, and judging by that, there were no suspects yet.
Then there was TexCat—and the deal for his beef that was at the heart of everything that had happened over the past month. He’d gotten that deal and had lost Mia. He’d secured his ranch’s future—his organic beef would now have the stamp of excellence recognized all over Texas. With that contract in hand, he could grow his herd and expand his contacts. It was all good. But his personal future looked pretty damn grim.
His room still smelled of her. Her scent clung to her pillow, and when he reached across the cool sheets in the middle of the night blindly searching for her, he came up empty.
Hell, he couldn’t even take a shower anymore without remembering the two of them on that wide bench seat. How Mia had looked with water streaming down her beautiful body. How she’d clutched at him and called his name. How she’d made him feel…whole.
Delores made his favorite foods, hoping to cheer him up, but how the hell could he choke down that mocha fudge cake when all he could think about was how much Mia had loved it?
Mike worked the ranch alongside Dave, but the foreman was so damn happy with Dave’s mother he was hard to be around. And as for Alice Firestone, the woman was bound and determined to make sure that her son knew he was the instigator of his own misery.
“You’ve been many things in your lifetime, David,” she said now over a glass of wine. “But I’ve never known you to be a coward.”
His head snapped up and he looked at her through narrowed eyes. He was too tired for this. Tired down to his bones. He’d spent the day on his horse, riding over the acreage that meant so much to him. Losing himself in the land because that was all he had left. Now it was night again and he wasn’t looking forward to trying to sleep in that big, empty bed upstairs.
She waved away his furious look. “Don’t think you worry me with that lord-of-the-range glare. You can’t fool me. I know you’re hurting.”
“You’re wrong,” he said flatly, and tossed his glass of sixty-year-old scotch down his throat as if it were foul-tasting medicine. The burn through his system was the only warmth he’d felt in days.
He wondered idly where the hell Mike was. Once the foreman arrived, they could sit down to dinner and this interrogation of his mother’s would end.
“I’m not wrong, and that’s what’s bothering you,” she said. Like a pit bull with a bone, his mother never let go once she’d clamped onto something. “You and I both know you miss Mia.”
He poured more scotch. “I never said I didn’t.”
“Never said you did, either, but we’ll let that go for the moment.” Alice took a sip of her wine, set the glass down on a side table and crossed the wide great room to her son’s side.
Heat from the fire in the hearth reached out to them and the crackle and hiss as flames devoured wood were the only sounds for a moment or two. Dave poured himself another drink, thinking he was going to need it.
Alice had been at him for two days, demanding that he do the right thing for himself—and for Mia. But he’d tried to do the right thing and Mia had shot him down. He’d offered her marriage and had that offer tossed back into his face.
Of course, his mind taunted him, you didn’t offer her what she needed to hear….
Scowling down at his scotch, he tossed that one back, too. But when he reached for the bottle to pour another, his mother’s hand on his arm stopped him. “David, that’s not the answer.”
“Not looking for an answer, Mom.”
“You should be,” she told him. “But since you won’t, I’ll just give it to you.”
He groaned and shook his head. “Could you just leave this alone, Mom?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Your problem is, you love Mia and you’re afraid to admit it.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said tightly, though a part of him wondered if she wasn’t right.