Brenda Minton - Her Oklahoma Rancher

Their next phone call had been her telling him their engagement was over and that she never wanted to see him again. Her parents had refused to tell him anything. No surprises there.

Now, face-to-face with her, he got it. And he was angry and hurt all over again. After years of being best friends, in love, engaged, she had kept this from him.

“You could have told me about...” The words came out, torn from somewhere deep inside. “You could have trusted me enough to tell me.”

“Not here,” she said. She turned away from him, not before he saw the flash of pain that flickered in her brown eyes.

He didn’t want to feel her pain. The moment sympathy tried to surface, he shoved it back down. Tori shifted in his arms and hugged his neck, a reminder that this wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about Eve. The six-month-old in his arms came first. This was about her life, her future.

He’d had the most difficult two weeks of his life. Tori had shared in the devastation. She was just too young to really understand how her life had changed on a rainy night two weeks ago.

The devastation he’d felt was about to be visited on the woman sitting in front of him, dark eyes warily studying the child in his arms.

“You’re right. Not here.” He didn’t know how to proceed. “Where can we talk?”

She backed away from the table, her gaze flicking briefly to the woman sitting across from her. She noticed his attention on that woman and she sighed.

“Ethan Forester, this is my friend Kylie West and her daughter Cara.” Her gaze shot to the child in his arms.

A child she might have known had she kept in contact with friends. He should give her a definition of the word, so she would understand what it meant to her family, to her friends, that she’d disappeared from their lives.

Kylie gave him an easy smile. “There’s a small, private room through the door at the back of the restaurant. I’ll let Holly know where you’ve gone. And if you want lunch, I’ll have her deliver it to you there.”

Eve shook her head. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

Rather than respond, he followed Eve as she led the way through the now crowded diner. People spoke to her but gave him suspicious looks. He knew those looks. He’d grown up in a small town. The same small town as Eve, just a short distance from Austin.

The “private room” at the back of the restaurant appeared to be an afterthought. It was a small room with three tables joined together and a painted plywood wall separating it from the rest of the café. He pulled a chair away from the table and Eve gave him a look. Thanking him. Or possibly telling him she didn’t appreciate his help. He didn’t know the protocol for helping someone in a wheelchair.

He didn’t know this woman. Six years ago he would have said he knew her better than he knew himself. He had been wrong. The woman who had shared everything with him had been someone else. Maybe they hadn’t known each other at all.

The girl from his childhood would have turned to him, not away from him.

“I didn’t know you had a child,” she said.

He sat down across from her, Tori picking at his ear. He held her tight and tried to find the right words. As angry as he might be, he still had to tell her news that would devastate her. News she should have heard two weeks ago.

“She isn’t mine. If you weren’t hiding, you’d know that. If you’d let your parents tell me how to contact you, you’d know.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, glancing away as she made the apology.

Anger simmered, with her, with himself for caring.

“I found you because my sister saw your name mentioned in an article about Mercy Ranch. I’ve known you almost my entire life and I’ve spent four years not knowing where you were or what had happened to you. So, yeah, you’re sorry, but I’m afraid sorry doesn’t fix this.”

“This?” Her expression was calm. Her dark eyes had settled on Tori, revealing she was anything but calm. A storm brewed in those eyes.

“Tori is James and Hanna’s daughter.”

She sat perfectly still but her expression clouded at the mention of their friends. He thought she held her breath, waiting.

He had to say the words. He knew it would devastate her. But from her changing expression, she knew what was coming. “They were killed in a car accident.”

She shook her head. “No.”

He didn’t respond. There was nothing he could say that would make this any easier, so he gave her a few minutes to process. In the past he would have held her, comforted her. Now he sat there with his arms around Tori and he wished he knew what to do.

“I...” Her words broke off on a sob. He pulled napkins from the metal holder in the center of the table. She took them and wiped at the steady stream of tears trickling down her cheeks.

In his arms, Tori shifted to look at her, watching intently. Her big blue eyes watered and her lips puckered.

“And Tori?” she asked after a moment.

“Yours and mine.” He said it softly, then waited, watching as the news sank in.

Eve rolled back a bit from the table, shaking her head. “What does that mean?”

“It means I got a call from an attorney, informing me that James and Hanna had a will, probably written up before...” He let the sentence trail off. They both knew what before meant. “They must not have had it changed because they asked us to raise any child, male or female born to them, should something make it impossible for them to raise that child.”

“That can’t be. They wouldn’t have done that, considering the circumstances.”

“I’m sure if they’d thought something like this would happen, they would have changed their will. But the will was written when they thought we would get married. They thought you would come to your senses and...” He sighed.

“They would want her with a couple, with two people, a family.” The words ended on a sob. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I had no way.”

“No, you didn’t have a way of knowing.” He left it at that.

“What were they thinking?” she repeated.

“It doesn’t matter what they were thinking, this is the way it is. James was a planner and they made us the guardians of their child. I am assuming he thought you would surface and things would work out. He only failed to plan one thing, an alternate plan. And there’s no one else. Hanna was raised by grandparents who are now too feeble to care for an infant. And James had only his father and he’s still in the military. Single and stationed in Italy. He wants to know his granddaughter but he obviously can’t raise her.”

Eve’s eyes closed. When she opened them, he had to turn away from her grief, her pain. He couldn’t deal with that, not at the moment.

At the moment he was busy reminding himself of how she’d hurt him. He reminded himself that she’d cut him out of her life.

The door to the meeting room opened. The waitress, or perhaps owner of the establishment, entered. Her concerned gaze focused in on Eve, on her tears. She shot him a look that told him he was to blame. And boy, was she was going to blame him.

She set the tray she carried on the table and gave Eve a quick hug.

“Eve, honey, is there anything I can get you?”

Eve smiled up at the other woman. “I’m good, Holly, but thank you.”

“Okay, but if there’s anything I can do.” She picked up a bowl of mashed potatoes. “I brought this for the little one. And a bowl of green beans.”

“Thank you,” Ethan told her.

She gave him a frosty look but she put a plate in front of him, another in front of Eve. “Kylie ordered for the two of you.”

“Thank her for me.” Eve smiled up at the woman.