The Boss and His Cowgirl(58)

“Georgie—”

“Georgie what? I love you, Clay. With my whole heart. Have for ten years. I believed you. I believed in you. What a complete and utter fool I turned out to be. Pretty sad for someone with an IQ of a hundred and fifty-seven.” She leaned against the horse she’d been brushing, her cheek resting against his arched neck as she smoothed her hand along the animal’s muscled chest. “I thought we had something special. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think you truly love me—you’ve never said the words. I’m so not your type and I’m sure not good enough to be first lady, but I thought you cared. At least a little.” She sniffled and rubbed her sleeve across her nose. “You said you cared. Said you wanted to take care of me, anyway. I guess your father was right. You need a woman like Giselle. Not someone as sick as a dog who probably won’t see next Christmas.”

Clay didn’t know what to say. This woman had always given him the words to speak. Clueless, he didn’t understand why she was having a meltdown.

“Go away, Clay. You don’t belong here.”

He reached to touch her, but she ducked away, sliding under the horse’s neck to peer at him from the other side. “Just go. I don’t have the time or energy for your games, Senator.”

“This isn’t a game, Georgie.”

She laughed, a deep, rolling burst of sound that quickly edged toward hysteria. “You’re right, Senator. It’s not. It’s life or death. Mine. Go. You’re not welcome here.”

She pushed away from the horse’s side and strode toward the barn’s exit, leaving Clay standing flatfooted. As she slipped between the doors, she whipped off the baseball cap and the bandanna beneath it. Her once luxurious hair—the silken fall he loved to run his fingers through—was gone. Only peach fuzz remained. The potent cocktail of chemo and radiation she’d endured hoping to save her breasts had taken its toll. Just as it had with his mother.

Heat flashed through his body followed by a chill so frigid he couldn’t breathe. Clay wanted to fall to his knees in the dirt and empty the contents of his stomach. Georgie didn’t look back, didn’t see how she’d devastated him. Instead, she marched off, head high, shoulders unbowed, her long-legged stride as graceful as a Thoroughbred racehorse’s.

He watched her walk away and in that moment, Clay came to two realizations—both of which paralyzed him. He was as despicable as his old man had ever been, and he’d lost the only woman he’d ever love.





Nineteen

“So what are you going to do about it, Clay?” Cord, as always, functioned as the family’s Jiminy Cricket.

Chance watched him, his expression shuttered, but anger simmered beneath his poker face. “It’s been a month, Clay. She won’t take calls from any of us. The girls drove down. Evidently, she was out in the barn when they got there. By the time her dad walked them down, she’d saddled up a horse and taken off. They waited all day. She didn’t come back.”

Clay stared at his brothers, remembering that first family intervention when everyone had ganged up on Chance, and the next when everyone but Chance had lined up against Cord. Both of his brothers had found women who loved them. Women who made them better men. In all honesty, Georgie was his touchstone. She settled him. Balanced him. Kept him centered in the crazy political storm that made up his world.

“You need to face the truth, bud,” Cord chimed in.

The truth. Yes. Truth was something he’d been running from lately. He’d screwed up. Royally.

“You know who and what she is, right?” Chance’s expression softened. “Because we do. She writes the words you wish you could say. She puts them in your mouth and makes not only the world believe them, but makes you believe them, too.”

“She’s my heart.” Had he admitted that out loud? “But I’m not the man for her. I’m not good enough. Not for her.” He forced down the bile burning his esophagus. “God. I don’t deserve her. I...aw, hell. I didn’t go after her. Not until it was too late. I ground her feelings into the dirt and then just let her walk away from me because I didn’t know what to do.”

Chance, ever the voice of reason—except now—gripped his shoulder. “What have you done?” His harsh voice grated in Clay’s ears.

Swamped by self-loathing and helplessness, he stared at his brothers. “You saw the pictures from Miami, of Giselle kissing me?” Their expressions darkened with anger. “She was just there. For the speech. Cyrus’s people set it up. Made sure of the photo op. She kissed me. I didn’t kiss her back.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled. “And I didn’t call Georgie to tell her to brace for the publicity. By the time I got around to it, she refused to talk to me, then blocked my calls.”