Chapter 39
“Do you know how guilty that makes me feel?” he asked.
Frowning, Shayna walked over to where he stood. “Why should you feel guilty? Mel wanted to marry you, didn’t she?”
A wan smile suddenly touched his features. “Oh yes. In fact, we eloped because she was afraid my parents would try to stop it.” Dayton looked at Shayna. “You see, Mel was from a poor family, and she believed all the Radissons resented her.”
Shayna couldn’t imagine Martha being the sort of person to resent another just because they were less fortunate. But where their children were concerned, people often behaved differently. “Did your folks resent her?” she asked softly.
“No,” Dayton replied with a shake of his head. “My mother never resented Mel. She worried about us, though and thought we were too young, too impulsive. And she was right, but at the time, I couldn’t see that. All I saw was Mel and the life I thought we could build together.”
Shayna’s brow furrowed as she absorbed his words. “Did Mel know how your mother felt?”
“Yes,” Dayton admitted, his expression growing pensive. “But she interpreted her concern as disapproval of her background. She never felt truly accepted, and that created a rift between us and my family. It made things difficult, more complicated than they had to be.”
Shayna bit her lip, sensing the lingering pain and regret in his voice. “And you? How did you feel about it all?”
Dayton sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as if the memories physically weighed him down. “I was stubborn. I thought I could prove everyone wrong. I was determined to make our marriage work, to show that we didn’t need anyone’s approval or support. But in trying to prove a point, I missed the signs that our relationship wasn’t as solid as I thought.”
Shayna’s heart ached for him, for the young man who had tried so hard to build a life on shaky foundations. “It sounds like you were carrying a lot on your shoulders,” she said gently.
“I was,” he agreed, his gaze distant as he remembered. “And it wasn’t just about Mel. It was about trying to live up to expectations, to be the man I thought I needed to be. But in the process, I lost sight of what really mattered. Our marriage became more about proving something than about love and partnership.”
Shayna took a deep breath, trying to piece together the complexities of his past. “Did it ever get better between you and Mel?”
“Sometimes,” Dayton said, a hint of sadness in his eyes. “There were good moments, times when it felt like we were truly connected. But those moments were fleeting, overshadowed by misunderstandings and unmet expectations. We were both so young, so unprepared for the reality of marriage.”
Shayna nodded, feeling a deep empathy for him. “It sounds like you both had a lot to learn. But that doesn’t mean you have to carry all the guilt.”
Dayton looked at her, his expression softening. “Maybe not. But it’s hard to let go of the past, especially when it feels like I failed. Like I let her down.”
She smiled softly, sensing a shift in the air between them. “Did you and Mel live here on the ranch?”
Dayton shook his head. “Mel didn’t want to live around my family. Since she’d never had much of a home, she wanted one of her very own. So I tried my best to give her one. I got a job on a ranch just outside of the city, and we rented a little house not far away from it. I worked during the days and went to college at night for a degree in agriculture.”
“That must have been difficult,” Shayna said, trying to picture a very young Dayton struggling to become a husband and a man all at once.
He shrugged. “I’m sure you did the same thing. You obviously had to.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but I only had the responsibility of taking care of myself.”
With a long sigh, he turned his gaze back out toward the dark night. “Well, we made it somehow. Even up until it was time for the baby.”
Shayna’s breath caught in her throat, and she felt a pang of empathy for him. “The baby?” she repeated softly, her eyes searching his face for any sign of what he might be feeling.
Dayton nodded, his expression tightening with pain and regret. “Yeah. We were so young and unprepared, but we were also excited. It felt like maybe this would be the thing that brought us closer together, that solidified our relationship. But it didn’t turn out that way.”
Shayna moved closer, placing a comforting hand on his arm. “What happened?” she asked gently.
He swallowed hard, his eyes distant as he recalled the painful memories. “Mel had a difficult pregnancy. She was often sick and stressed, and I was stretched thin between work, school, and trying to support her. I thought I was doing everything I could, but it never felt like enough. We argued a lot, and the strain of it all just...weighed on us.”
Shayna squeezed his arm, silently urging him to continue. “And when the baby came...?” she prompted.
Dayton closed his eyes briefly, as if trying to block out the images in his mind. “The delivery was complicated. There were complications, and Mel...she didn’t make it. The baby was born, but Mel...she didn’t survive.”
Shayna gasped, her heart breaking for him. “Oh, Dayton...I’m so sorry. That must have been devastating.”
He nodded, his jaw clenched tightly. “It was. I lost them both, Shayna. Mel and our baby. I felt like my world had crumbled. I didn’t know how to cope with the loss. I dropped out of college, quit my job, and came back to the ranch. I couldn’t stay in that house, couldn’t face the memories every day.”
Shayna felt tears welling up in her eyes as she listened to his story. “I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been for you,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
His face full of bitterness, he said, “Neither could I. But there I was in the hospital waiting room, certain I was giving my wife the best of care, when the doctors came out and told me she was gone and so was the baby. A girl. Perfectly formed, but gone. Like her mother.”
Shayna’s heart squeezed with pain for him. In less than two years, he’d lost his wife and child, then his father. How had he endured such pain?
“What happened to her and the baby?” she asked.
One of his shoulders lifted, then fell, “Oh, the doctors gave me all sorts of medical excuses, most of which I couldn’t understand. I just knew that something had caused her to hemorrhage so violently that they couldn’t stop it. At the time, I didn’t care to hear their reasons or explanations, anyway. Mel and the baby were dead. As far as I was concerned I’d killed them.”
“Dayton!” she gasped, “That’s crazy.”
“Maybe so. But I’m the one who got Mel pregnant in the first place.”
“And that’s supposed to make you a murderer?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighed, then said, “I’ve always thought so.”
Determined to reach him, Shayna grabbed both his hands and held them tightly, “Then it’s high time you stopped,” she told him. “You need to put all of that behind you—leave it in the past where it belongs.”
His eyes lifted and locked with hers as slowly his fingers folded around hers and squeezed, “Do you think you’re the woman who can make me put it all in the past?”
She wasn’t expecting him to ask such a thing. Even so, the moment her heart had heard the question it had known the answer. She wanted to be that woman. His woman. The woman to give him true love and happiness. But that wasn’t possible. Not with Erik hanging like a dangerous cloud just behind her shoulder.
“Dayton, I’m not—I can’t be that sort of woman to you—or any man.”
“Why not?”
With an anguished groan, she turned away from him, “Because it isn’t possible. Because I can’t forget—”
Before she could get it out of her mouth, he snatched her arm and spun her back around to him.
“You just told me I needed to forget the past. Put it behind me. Why can’t you? Or is this a case of do as I say, not as I do?”
“This is different,” she said, her voice full of torment, “I have reasons to steer clear of a relationship with a man.”
His hands came up to gently frame her face, “For years I’ve had lots of reasons hanging in front of my eyes. Now you’ve come along and made them all look not so important anymore.”
Oh, dear God, he shouldn’t be saying this to her, she thought. And she shouldn’t be wanting to hear it. But her heart reveled in his sweet confession, glowed with love.
“I’m glad, Dayton.” With one hand she reached up and traced his cheek with the tips of her fingers, “You deserve to be happy. But not with me.”
“You might be wrong about that, Shayna,” he murmured, “in fact, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.”
As if she were under some sort of spell, she stood totally still and watched his face bend to hers, “Dayton—”
“Don’t talk, Shayna. Just close your eyes and let me kiss you. The way I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first night I saw you.”
The last was said against her lips, and by then Shayna had already surrendered to him. Like butter sliding down a stack of warm pancakes, she melted against him, opened her mouth to him and welcomed the sweet invasion of his tongue.
The smell of him, the feel of him had already become achingly familiar to her, and knowing these moments would have to last her a lifetime, she held on to him tightly. Urgently.
By the time Dayton finally lifted his lips, the room was spinning around Shayna’s head. Her breaths were coming in short pants and her knees were close to buckling beneath her.
“You say you don’t want a relationship with me,” Dayton murmured, his lips pressing tiny kisses down the side of her throat, “but your body is telling me something else.”
It was telling Shayna something, too. She wanted to make love to this man. That was bad enough. But even worse, she realized she not only wanted to give him her body, she wanted to give him her heart. Something she’d vowed to guard with her very life.
“Dayton, you don’t know—”
Her words were smothered as his mouth found hers once again. At the same time, his hands delved beneath the hem of her sweater, spread upward against her back, then slowly inched forward to her breasts.
Once his fingers closed around their fullness, Shayna was lost. Arching her hips against his, she urged him to deepen the kiss. Even though his teeth were grazing hers, his tongue was already exploring every intimate curve of her mouth.
Never had anything felt this good, or this right to her. And maybe that was the thing that frightened Shayna the most. She was rapidly losing herself to Dayton. She was letting another man take control of her again and she knew she must never let that happen. Twisting away and turning her back to him, she gulped in deep, ragged breaths.
“I’m not going to let you change my mind,” she whispered hoarsely.
Long moments passed without a word from him. Finally, unable to keep her eyes off him, she turned to see him smiling at her. It was a knowing smile, full of pleasure and a dash of smugness.
“I think I already have, Shayna.”
Terrified that he might try to prove it, Shayna stepped around him and rushed out the door. She wasn’t going to give him another opportunity to work his charms on her, she vowed as she ran down the hallway to her bedroom. Because next time, she might not be strong enough to resist.