“Leaving? For where? For how long? What? Why?”
“I’m moving to Colorado.” She gave him a smile that didn’t fool either of them. “Going to stay with my brother Nick and his family until I find a place of my own.” She was backing up toward the door, keeping her gaze fixed on him as if worried he’d try to keep her from leaving. “I can’t stay here, Adam. I can’t raise my child so close to a father who doesn’t want it. I can’t be near you knowing that I’ll never have you. I need somewhere fresh, Adam. My baby deserves to be happy. So do I.”
“Gina, you’re throwing this at me too fast. What the hell am I supposed to do about this?”
“Nothing, Adam.” Her hand fisted around the doorknob behind her. “This isn’t about you. So anyway … goodbye.”
She was changing her whole life because of him. He felt like a jerk, but couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. She shouldn’t have to leave. Move away from the home she loved all because of him. “Gina, damn it—”
She shook her head. “It’s just how it has to be, Adam. So, have a good life, okay? Be well.”
Then she was gone and Adam was alone.
Just the way he wanted it.
Twelve
“You are a fool.”
Adam didn’t even look up when Esperanza served his breakfast along with her opinion. Morning sunlight splashed across him as he sat at the head of the long, cherrywood table in the dining room. One man at a table for twelve.
Quite the statement on his life.
His coffee was cold, but he had the distinct impression asking for a refill wouldn’t get him far. Glancing down at his breakfast plate, he noticed the scrambled eggs were runny—he loathed wet eggs and Esperanza knew it. The bacon was charred on one side and raw on the other and his toast was black.
Pretty much the same breakfast he’d been served every morning since Gina left.
Complaining about it wouldn’t change anything, he knew. Esperanza had been with the family for way too long. Once a woman’s paddled your backside for you when you were a kid, you no longer had any authority over her, no matter what you’d prefer to think.
“Thanks,” he said, picking up his fork and wondering if he could just eat the tops of the eggs. Damn it, he hadn’t told Gina to leave. That had been her idea. She’d walked away under her own power, but facts didn’t seem to matter to his housekeeper.
Did they matter to him, either? Not for the first time since she’d been gone, Adam wondered what she was doing at that moment. Sitting around her brother’s breakfast table? Laughing, talking, enjoying herself? Or was she missing him? Did she think about him at all?
“You are going to simply sit here and do nothing while the mother of your child is off somewhere in the wilderness?” Esperanza stood alongside the table, arms folded over her chest, the toe of her shoe tapping briskly against the wood floor. Her dark eyes snapped with fury and her mouth was so thin a slash, it had almost disappeared.
Adam pushed thoughts of Gina away, though they didn’t go far. He blew out a breath and nibbled at a bite of egg before grimacing and giving it up. He and his housekeeper had had this same conversation for three weeks now. At every opportunity, Esperanza alternately cajoled, harangued and berated him for allowing Gina to leave him. “Colorado is hardly the wilderness,” he pointed out.
“It is not here.”
“True.” Adam dropped his fork onto the plate and resigned himself to another hungry day. Maybe he’d drive into town for a decent breakfast. But as soon as he considered it, he changed his mind. In town, there would be people. People wanting to talk to him. To tell him how sorry they were to hear his marriage had ended. People fishing for more information than he was willing to share.
“You should go after her.”
He finally shot his housekeeper a dirty look. She remained unmoved. “Esperanza, Gina left. She wanted to go. We had a deal, remember? The deal’s finished.”
“Deal.” That single word carried so much disgust, it practically vibrated in the air. “What you had was a marriage. What you are going to have is a child. A child you will never see. This is what you want, Adam? This is the life you wish to lead?”
No, he thought grimly, looking at the chair where Gina used to sit. Imagining her smile. Her laughter, the gentle touch of her hand when she reached out to pat his arm. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d come to depend on seeing her every day. Hearing her. Talking with her. Arguing with her.
In the last few weeks, life on the King ranch had returned to “normal.” The Gypsy horses were gone, back at the Torino ranch until Gina sent for them to join her in Colorado. The constant stream of visitors who’d come to buy those horses had ended. There were no more vases of fresh flowers in his bedroom, because Gina wasn’t there to pick them. There were no more late night movies played or bowls of popcorn eaten, because Gina had left him.