“That’s right,” she taunted, hurling the words at his back. “Run. That’s all you ever do. You’re never willing to talk things out, to own your mistakes. It’s just easier for you to run away from any confrontation.”
Don’t say it, don’t say it, Levi counseled himself, afraid that if he did open his mouth, he wouldn’t be able to control the words that would come flying out. There was no doubt about it. Claire knew how to press all his buttons. Press them until he believed that all the negative thoughts she was spouting and hurling at him were his own, and all the detrimental things that Claire had said against him she actually believed to be the gospel truth.
There was a child to think of, Levi reminded himself. He couldn’t just put this all behind him and walk out. Besides, he didn’t want to. What he wanted was his life back.
Not today, Wyatt. Not after that little run-in, a voice in his head mocked him.
But where did that leave them?
They were at an impasse, he thought. But one of them was going to have to give in if this was ever going to be resolved.
Walking away, Levi paused for a second to look over his shoulder at his wife and daughter. Even as angry as she made him, he couldn’t help thinking how much he’d missed having them in his life.
How empty his life seemed with the realization that he didn’t have them to come home to anymore.
That had to change.
But how?
He wasn’t about to come crawling over to her side. After all, a man did have his pride.
But pride was a cold thing to take to bed with him, Levi thought unhappily.
Besides, there had to be more to this. She couldn’t be this angry over a stupid poker game—could she? He needed to get her to do more than just shout at him. He had to get her to come around—and really talk to him about what she was feeling,
Squelching the desire to march back to her, take her into his arms and kiss her until she forgot all about this stupid argument and all the stupid things she was saying to him, Levi forced himself to keep walking.
This was all probably just a ruse on her part anyway. Her so-called accusations were just an excuse she was using to stay away from him because she was disappointed in him.
He’d failed her somehow, and by failing he’d inadvertently shown her that he just wasn’t good enough for her. That he couldn’t give her the kind of comforts she had grown up with. Even if he tried to approximate the kind of life she’d had before she married him by working his way up the ladder and earning more money, she complained that he was never home. And if he kept the hours that she wanted him to, if he was home earlier, then he couldn’t give her any of the things she’d come to expect in her day-to-day life.
Either way, Levi thought glumly, he was doomed.
He had to get his priorities straight. He needed to find a way to fix all this and soon, otherwise, he was going to lose her for good.
Levi didn’t know how much longer he could put up with living without his girls. Living without seeing Claire and Bekka every day.
There had to be a way to fix all this. There just had to be.
* * *
“Grandpa, can I see you for a minute?” Claire asked, standing in the doorway of Gene’s cubbyhole of an office.
Gene rose to his feet. For the time being, what he was working on was temporarily forgotten.
“You, princess, can see me for a whole hour if you like,” he told her cheerfully. Joining them, he asked, “And how are my two best girls this morning?”
Claire thought of her run-in with Levi a few minutes ago. “Stunned and confused,” she told him.
Bushy eyebrows drew together, forming a squiggly line worthy of a fat caterpillar.
“Come again?” Gene asked. “Are you stunned and confused, peanut?” he asked Bekka.
Responding to the sound of his deep, resonant voice, the baby cooed at Gene, making him laugh with unabashed pleasure.
“Grandpa, she can’t talk,” Claire informed the older man flatly.
“Maybe you can’t understand her, but she can talk,” he assured Claire with a touch of whimsy. “Look at her expression,” he said pointedly. “That little girl is definitely trying to communicate.”
“And so am I,” Claire said to her grandfather in barely curbed exasperation.
Faced with this situation, Gene sobered slightly. “Go ahead, princess. I’m listening.”
Claire’s frown deepened. “Levi is staying here at the boarding house.”
He had a feeling that Claire knew she wasn’t telling him anything that he wasn’t already aware of. He didn’t bother feigning surprise at her news.
“Yes, I know.”
She stared at the older man in disbelief. How could he have betrayed her this way? Unless Levi was lying about this, too. She found herself fervently hoping that he was. Otherwise, this was really going to shake her faith in her grandfather.
“He said you rented him a room.” Maybe there was some other explanation for his being here.
The next moment her grandfather dashed that slim hope. He nodded his head. “I did.”
Her mouth all but dropped open. “Why?” Claire demanded.
“Well, I couldn’t very well not rent it to him,” Gene replied seriously. “That would be prejudicial.”
Claire’s big brown eyes widened. She couldn’t believe her ears. “Are you saying you were afraid he’d report you to the sheriff?”
Wide shoulders moved up and down in a vague shrug. He went with the excuse his granddaughter had unknowingly come up with.
“You never know,” he told her.
“Grandpa, this is Levi,” she reminded him. “He wouldn’t do that. Levi likes you.”
“He also likes you,” Gene told her. “A lot. And all he wants is a chance to prove it.”
Claire couldn’t believe her ears. “You’re taking his side, Grandpa?” she cried, appalled.
“Like I told your grandmother, I’m not taking any sides, I’m just making sure that both sides get a chance to be heard.”
“I don’t need to ‘hear’ anything,” his granddaughter informed him. “Besides,” she reminded the man, “weren’t you the one who once told me that actions speak louder than words?”
“I might have said that,” he allowed, then went on to remind her, “I’m also the one who said everyone deserves a second chance.”
“If you mean Levi, I gave him a second chance.” She was working herself up. “I gave him lots of second chances, and he blew them all.”
“He’s been skipping out on you to play poker on a regular basis?” Gene asked innocently.
“No,” she admitted reluctantly. As upset as she was about this situation, she wasn’t about to lie about it to her grandfather.
Her grandfather looked at her pointedly. “Then what?” he wanted to know.
She was referring to Levi going out of town for meetings and seminars as well as coming home late and falling asleep on the couch before she could get his dinner warmed up. But she had no intentions of going into all that now.
Besides, she had a feeling that her grandfather would be taking Levi’s side in that,