“She tried,” Trask admitted.
“But failed, I assume.”
“This is something I have to do, Neva.” Trask placed his large hands on Neva’s slim shoulders, as if by touching he could make her understand.
With difficulty, Neva ignored the warmth of Trask’s fingers. “And damn the consequences, right? Your integrity come hell or high water.” She wrestled free of his grip.
“You’re blowing this way out of proportion.”
“Me?” she screamed. “What about you? You get one crank letter and you’re ready to tear this town apart, dig up five-year-old dirt and start battling a new crusade.” She smiled sadly at the tense man before her. “Only this time I’m afraid you’ll get hurt, Don Quixote; the windmills might fight back and hurt you as well as your Dulcinea.”
“Whom?”
“Dulcinea del Toboso, the country girl whom Don Quixote selects as the lady of his knightly devotion. In this case, Victoria Wilson.”
“You read too much,” he said.
“Impossible.”
Trask laughed despite the seriousness of Neva’s stare. “Then you worry too much.”
“It comes with the territory of being a mother,” she said, picking up a frosting-laden beater and offering it to him. “Someone needs to worry about you.”
He declined the beater. “I get by.”
She studied the furrows of his brow. “I don’t know, Trask. I just don’t know.”
“Just trust me, Neva.”
The smile left her face and all of the emotions she had been battling for five long years tore at her heart. “I’d trust you with my life, Trask. You know that.”
“Neva—” He took a step closer to her but she walked past him to the kitchen window. Outside she could watch Nicholas romp with the puppy Trask had given him for his birthday.
“But I can’t trust you with Nicholas’s life,” she whispered, knotting her fingers in the corner of her apron. “I just can’t do that and you have no right to ask me.” Tears began to gather in her large eyes and she brushed them aside angrily.
Trask let out a heavy sigh. “I’m going up to Devil’s Ridge tomorrow.”
“Oh, God, no.” Neva closed her eyes. “Trask, don’t—”
“This is something I have to do,” he repeated.
“Then maybe you’d better leave,” she said, her voice nearly failing her. Trask was as close to a father to Nicholas as he could be, considering the separation of more than half a continent. If she threw Trask out, Nicholas would never forgive her. “Do what you have to do.”
“What I have to do is stay here for Nicholas’s birthday party.”
Neva smiled through her tears. “You’re a bastard, you know, McFadden; but a charming one nonetheless.”
“This is all going to work out.”
“God, I hope so,” she whispered, once again sneaking a glance at her dark-haired son and the fluff of tan fur with the beguiling black eyes. “Nicholas worships the ground you walk on, you know.”
Trask laughed mirthlessly. “Well, if he does, he’s the only one in town. There’s no doubt about it, I wouldn’t win any popularity contests in Sinclair right now.”
“Oh, I don’t know, you seem to have been able to worm your way back into Tory’s heart.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll see, senator,” Neva mused. “I think Victoria Wilson has never gotten you out of her system.”