Page 32 of Back in the Texan's Bed
Grief and anger crashed fast on the heels of the astonishment. Hadn’t he just thought his father, who claimed family to be more important than everything, wouldn’t cut him loose? Had Gina and Asher known what he’d planned? Would they abandon him, too?
A yawning vacuum opened inside his chest.Alone.He was alone, and the emptiness threatened to swallow him whole. In an instant of time, he was swept back to that ten year-old boy who watched his mother walk out of their house. This void had swamped him then, too, and he’d tried to fill it with the stingy love and approval of the only consistent parent he’d had left. And now he didn’t even have that.
He’d been rejected, discarded.
Again.
“Ross, what’s wrong?” A hand settled on his taut forearm, and only then did he realize that he had such a stranglehold on the steering wheel that his knuckles had blanched white. Peeling his hand free, he flexed the fingers, the blood rushing back into them with a tingle. He turned to Charlotte, who studied him in the deepening darkness, with a slight frown.
“I can’t open the gate,” he murmured, still staring at it as if at any moment it would belatedly swing open. He laughed, and the bitterness of it filled the interior. “He essentially changed the locks on me so I can’t enter the property. My father kicked me out.” Out of the house. Out of the family.
“Damn,” she whispered. Her fingers curled around his arm, squeezing gently. “I’m sorry, Ross. I’m—”
“Doesn’t matter,” he cut her off, shifting the gear into Reverse and then hooking his arm over the back of her seat so he could turn the car around. At the same time, shaking off her touch. He couldn’t handle her sympathy—her pity—right now.
Not when the betrayal, the fucking hurt, of the person who was supposed to love him, support him,accepthim, tore at him with greedy, poisonous claws. The temptation to pull over, call Rusty and try to convince him to reconsider tugged at Ross. Hard. But Rusty had not only passed down his name to him. He’d bequeathed to Ross his stubbornness, as well. And Ross refused to beg his father for anything. Especially to let him come home.
He hadn’t run after his mother.
He hadn’t run after Charlotte.
Damned if he would with his father, either.
“Ross,” Charlotte said, and her soft voice with its hint of worry scraped over his senses, leaving emotional welts.
“Sorry about needlessly taking you away from work. I’ll drop you two back off at your house,” he interrupted her again.
“Where will you go?”
He shrugged a shoulder, the gesture deliberately nonchalant. “I’ll grab a hotel room for now. Doesn’t matter.” Goddamn, he was getting tired of saying those two words. Ofneedingto say them. “We planned on looking for a house together anyway.”
Silence hummed in the car for several moments, and he could feel the weight of her speculation.
“We’re going with you.”
He whipped his head to the side, spearing her with a quick glance before returning his attention to the road. But that look had been enough to glimpse the resolve in her expression.
“No, that’s not necessary,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Maybe not, but we’re still doing it.”
“Charlotte—” he snapped.
“I’m not leaving you alone tonight,” she murmured. “You were just cut off from your family several minutes ago. I know what that’s like. To feel alone. Without the anchor you always counted on to be there.” Her voice trailed off. But a second later, she cleared her throat. “So no, Ben and I are going with you. And tomorrow morning, we start the house search.”
“I don’t need your pity,” he ground out.
Another beat of silence. “How about my friendship?”
The objection welled in his throat again and pushed onto his tongue. But that part of him...the part of him that constantly surrounded himself with people, parties, withnoisebecause he hated the deafening and crushing silence of loneliness, smothered the prideful rejection.
“Okay.”
Ross paced the sunken living room of the luxurious hotel suite, his fingers clasping the tumbler of scotch ferociously tight. Either as a desperate lifeline or a potential weapon, he couldn’t decide at the moment. Maybe after several more sips, he could weigh in more decisively.
Thrusting his other hand through his hair, he stalked to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall and stared out over the lavish gardens that The Bellamy, Royal’s five-star resort, boasted. Usually, when he had occasion to visit The Silver Saddle bar or enjoy fine farm-to-table dining at The Glass House, both housed within the luxury hotel, he paused to appreciate its beauty. Inspired by George Vanderbilt’s iconic French Renaissance chateau in North Carolina, Deacon Price and Shane Delgado had built its newer, hipper cousin. With over fifty acres of gorgeous gardens, a spa, two hundred and fifty richly appointed en suites that included the latest in technology and amenities, The Bellamy was a crown jewel in Royal.
And for the first time since stepping foot in the resort, his corporate credit card had been declined.
