Page 35 of Bride for Keeps

“Because I was going through a rough time and didn’t pay attention to you?”

She closed her eyes against the stab of pain. That right there was exactly what she’d been afraid of. That he’d belittle what she felt. Act like she was the problem for needing more from him.

And maybe she was.

“I want to go to bed, Carter.”

“We are not done discussing this. If this is all it is—”

“All right.” If she couldn’t run away, she’d just have to get mean. “You want todiscussthings. Let’s talk about how your father told you he wasn’t actually your father and you let me walk into a family meeting to get ambushed by that information.” She forced herself to look at him even though there were tears on her cheeks.

He did that thing she’d always hated, even when she’d been so besotted with him she overlooked everything. He got very stiff, and his expression went blank. He sort of raised his chin as if he were a king surveying his manor.

It was a veryDr. McArthurlook.

“Is that what this is really about? That meeting?”

“So, to be clear, in your version of a conversation, I ask a question and you counter with one of your own?”

He pressed his lips together, some frustration slipping through that cool McArthur detachment he’d surrounded himself with. Good. She wanted to frustrate him. She wanted to make him mad—even madder than he’d been when she’d ignored him.

She wanted him so furious he’d realize it wasn’t worth it.Shewasn’t worth it.

“I couldn’t…” Something closer to confusion drew his eyebrows together. “It wasn’t you, Sierra. I couldn’t tell anyone. I still haven’t…”

“Still haven’t what?” she demanded when he just stuttered and looked so miserable she wanted to cross to him.

“I haven’tsaidit. Those words. Not…to anyone.”

“What words?”

“I am not…” He took a deep breath, raked his fingers through his hair one more time, and when he spoke his voice was little more than a whisper. “I am not Gerald McArthur’s son.”

*

Carter had saidit once, drunk as a skunk, alone in his house. To say it here, in this cabin, in front of Sierra…

It was horrible. Painful. He felt like crying, and he wasn’t drunk this time so there was no good excuse for the stinging in his eyes.

But there was something else too. A load lifted off his shoulders. A certain soaring…

Freedom.

“I am not Gerald McArthur’s son,” he repeated. Stronger this time. “I am not a McArthur.”

He glanced over at her, where she stood staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. Because Cole’s words about showing the cracks were revolving around in his head.

Nothing he was doing was getting through to her. Not telling her he loved her, not remembering why they’d fallen for each other or revisiting old memories. Not even that kiss by the river.

But she was looking at him right now as he said the hardest words he’d ever had to say. Watching him as he felt like he was falling apart from the inside out.

She wasn’t walking away or saying anything terrible to him. She was standing there, as if waiting for more.

It scared him to his soul, the thought of letting it all out, but he knew this little stunt he’d pulled in getting her here meant everything was now or never. Five minutes wasn’t going to last past this. This really was his last chance to get through to her.

And if it failed, he at least got to blame Cole for bad advice.

“You know how much I looked up to my father.”

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