She narrowed her eyes and studied his face as if she didn’t believe him.
And now, knowing what he’d forgotten, he could understand her skepticism. “Really,” he vowed. “It’s all a blank. And I felt so bad about that that I was too embarrassed to try to talk to you again. I knew I blew it with you. And I didn’t know how to undo it.”
“You could have called me,” she said. “Or at least called me back when I tried to get ahold of you at college. I had to get your number from your dad.”
Guilt washed over him now. He’d been mad at his dad for giving her his number because he’d figured that Lem was trying to set him up with a Willow Creek girl so that Bob would come home. And by that time, he’d met his wife-to-be, too. So he hadn’t called Sue back.
Things had felt safer with his wife. His feelings hadn’t been as overwhelming as they’d been with Sue.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back,” he said. “I didn’t know why you were calling. And since we never talked, how did you think I knew that you were pregnant?”
“I sent you a letter,” she said. “It was never returned to me, so I figured you read it.”
He shook his head. “No…” But now something from those days came back to him. The day that the girl he’d been dating had suddenly asked about Sue Lancaster. He’d wondered how she knew about his first crush, the beautiful blue-eyed girl he’d fallen for in high school.
Had she seen the letter? Had she seen it before he had and never showed it to him? They’d been in and out of each other’s dorms then.
“You never saw the letter?”
He shook his head. “No. I had no idea, Sue. I swear I would have come back if I’d known. I would have been there for you.”
She shuddered. “Nobody was. I was already away at college when I realized I was pregnant, and my parents wouldn’t let me come home. They told me that the best thing I could do for the baby I was carrying was to give him up, so a mature, established, happy couple could raise him.”
“Did they?” he wondered aloud.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Nolan won’t answer any of my questions about himself. He just seems so angry.” Her voice cracked with sobs.
Bob closed his arms around her, holding her trembling body. “I am so sorry, Sue.” He hated that she’d had to go through her pregnancy alone, with no support from her parents and especially with no support from him.
If only he’d known…
“Me, too,” she murmured as her arms closed around him. “Me, too.”
He’d messed everything up so badly, and apparently not just with her but with the son he hadn’t known he had. Now he understood why Nolan had hired his assistant to spy on him. He’d wanted to know if his dad was the deadbeat he’d thought he was. And he’d wanted to know for certain if Bob was his dad. Getting that confirmation hadn’t brought the man any peace, though. He was still so angry with him.
Rightfully so.
Bob would have to figure out a way to fix this.
“So you really don’t remember anything from that night?” she asked as she stepped back from him again.
His arms fell to his sides, and he shook his head. Then he clarified, “Except how beautiful you looked. I remember picking you up at your house and the blue dress you wore and the corsage I found had a flower that exactly matched the color of your eyes.”
Those eyes stared at him now with such shock—and something else, something he used to see in them all those years ago.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
An uncomfortable fewdays had passed since Trish’s welcome-back-to-Willow-Creek party. Nobody knew what to think of having another sibling they hadn’t known about, so they mostly avoided the subject.
And so far they’d avoided Nolan, too.
Brett was tempted to reach out to him, but the man seemed so angry and bitter. And Brett didn’t understand why. It wasn’t as if his dad had made a choice to give him up; he hadn’t even known about him. His dad had come by the Four Corners to make that all clear to them.
Brett should try to point that out to Nolan. But he wasn’t a lawyer like him. He didn’t know how to effectively argue with a man like that, who was so well-known for his courtroom victories, to get through to him. Their father had even admitted to being too intimidated to try to talk to Nolan yet.
So Brett focused on what he could control. The ranch. He worked with the cattle, getting orders ready for the new wholesaler. And he worked on Trish’s camps. The bunkhouse was finally done and ready according to the contractor. But Brett wanted to make sure that it was clean before he showed it to Trish. He was mopping up the dust from the polished floor when he heard the door creak open.
“There you are,” Trish said with a smile.
