There were moments he was convinced she loved him back, when he'd seen something shining from her eyes that filled him with hope, with an excitement he'd never felt before. He'd felt love in her touch, in the soft smiles she gifted to him, but none of that mattered.
He hadn't been enough for his wife, and apparently he wasn't enough for Lizzy.
He'd been a fool when he'd married Janice, a fool driven by the desire to be married and start a family, blinded by lust and fantasy. And, it appeared he was a fool again for falling in love with Lizzy.
* * *
Lizzy sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window, where the darkness of night had fallen. Daniel had been unusually quiet during the afternoon and evening, and she wondered if talking about Janice had opened old wounds.
The guilt he'd carried for so long was tragic, and she wasn't sure a simple conversation with her had done anything to really ease it. He deserved better. He deserved so much more than what he'd gotten from life, from love, thus far.
Her bruises were slowly fading and she had most of her strength back. Mary had told her when she'd come to visit the day before that her job was waiting for her whenever she was ready to come back, but Lizzy wasn't coming back. In the next two days she intended to be back on the road again, getting away from Grady Gulch … away from Daniel.
Things had gotten far too complicated here. What had begun as a simple stop on her bucket list had gone way out of control. Lizzy didn't like complicated. Easy and breezy, that's the way she liked it, with her expecting nothing from nobody and depending only on herself.
She needed to get out of Daniel's way so he could start building something meaningful, something loving and good with the woman he was meant to be with for the rest of his life.
"Ready for your surprise?" he asked as he appeared in her doorway.
"Definitely, but it's awfully late in the day for surprises."
"The later the better for this surprise," he replied with a mysterious twinkle in his eyes.
She got up from the bed, the pain in her ribs much better and the ache in her thighs barely discernible. "Okay then, lead me to it." She suddenly noticed he had a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. "What's that for?" she asked in surprise.
For just a moment his eyes took on a hard glint. "I told you I wouldn't let anyone hurt you again. In order to have your surprise we have to leave the house." He touched the butt of the gun. "I'm just being cautious, that's all."
"And I like that about you," she returned with a light smile.
They walked down the stairs and to the back door, and then he turned to face her. "Your surprise is in the barn. Lizzy, if you feel like you can't go back in there after what happened to you, then we'll forget the whole thing." His eyes held a soft concern that whispered tenderness in her heart.
She thought about it for a minute. "A bad person did something bad to me in the barn, but that doesn't make the barn a bad place. The barn is a good place. Molly and all the other horses are there."
His gaze of concern changed to one of admiration. "You are an amazingly strong woman, Lizzy." He grabbed her hand and together they stepped out of the back door. He locked it behind them and then took her hand once again as they began to walk across the yard toward the barn.
She could tell as they walked that his attention wasn't solely on her, but rather on their surroundings. He gazed from right to left, a slight tension in his body as if he was ready for anything or anyone that might come out of the darkness as a threat.
When they were within about twenty feet from the structure tension started to well up inside her and she squeezed Daniel's hand tighter.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Just a little twinge of nerves," she admitted. "It's a beautiful night." She tried to focus on anything but the memory of what had happened to her the last time she had been in the barn.
"A perfect clear sky," he agreed. They reached the barn and opened the door and turned on the light.
She hesitated a moment before stepping inside, but she kept her nerves under control by focusing on the familiar scents and the sounds of the horses nickering a greeting. She started to walk in the direction of the horses, but he stopped her.
"We aren't going that way," he said. "Your surprise is up here." He pointed to a wooden ladder in the corner that led up to the hayloft.
She eyed him with curiosity. "Okay."
The ladder wasn't wide enough to allow them to go up together. "Stay right behind me," he said as they began to climb. Once they both reached the loft, he checked it as if making sure nobody else was up there, then he told her to sit on a bale of hay and he'd be back.
He raced down the ladder, and Lizzy was more curious than she'd ever been. What was up there that would be considered a surprise? All she could see were bales of hay stacked here and there.
The lights downstairs went off and sudden terror stopped her heart. "It's okay, Lizzy," he called quickly, as if he knew she'd be terrified. "I turned off the lights on purpose." A flashlight beam lit the stairs and then he was back in the loft, the beam of light a welcomed glow against the darkness.
"I don't understand," she said.
"I'm hoping you will in a minute. Here, hold this." He handed her the flashlight as he moved two bales of hay into position and retrieved a bottle of wine and two glasses from where they must have been hidden earlier. "Now, move over here next to me."
As she moved to the hay bale right next to where he sat, he popped the cork on the wine and poured them each a glass. "This is nice," she said as she took the glass from him. "Nice, but a little bit odd."
He laughed. "Hopefully you won't find it so odd in just a minute." He sobered. "You told me that one of the things on your bucket list was to sit on a mountaintop and stargaze. This isn't exactly a mountaintop, but it provides a pretty good view of the stars. Turn off the flashlight."
She did as he said and the loft was once again plunged into complete darkness. "I hate to tell you this, Daniel, but I don't see a single star."
He reached forward and unlatched two doors she hadn't realized were right in front of her. As they swung outward she gasped at the sight of the beauty of the night sky.
It was absolute magic. The stars appeared so close she felt that if she just leaned forward a little bit she could grasp a handful of the glittering lights.
"Oh, Daniel, it's beautiful." Emotion pressed tight in her chest, emotion she didn't want to examine too closely.
She couldn't believe he'd thought of her bucket list, that he'd arranged all this specifically for her benefit. He'd given her a mountaintop right there in Grady Gulch.
She leaned against the hay bale behind her and sipped the wine, her gaze captured by the astronomical splendor before her. "Do you come up here often?" She turned to look at him, his features visible by the light of the moon.
"This is my first time. I was just thinking about your bucket list earlier today and got this idea."
"It was a wonderful idea." Although she kept her focus on the skies, she was aware of his gaze lingering on her.
"Tell me about your childhood, Lizzy. Was it a good one?"
"Good in some ways, not so good in others," she replied. "My dad wasn't terrific with the child support payments, so financially we always struggled a bit. But, my mother was a wonderful, caring woman who always made me feel safe and loved. She could make a picnic of butter sandwiches seem like an elegant five-star meal."
She took another sip of the wine as she thought about her childhood. "When it comes to my father, I was the cliché child who sat on the stoop for hours waiting for him to show up because he'd made plans to take me to the zoo or to see a movie or a hundred other things. I spent a lot of nights over the years sitting on that stoop. It took me a long time to finally catch on that he wasn't dependable, that he was never going to keep a promise made to me."
The pain of the child she had once been resonated through her soul, making her realize there was still a little wounding there that would probably never heal. It had taken her a long time to realize the problem was with him and not that there was something wrong, something bad, with her.
"I'm sorry," Daniel said simply.
"It's all right. It was a long time ago. Look, there's the Milky Way."