Free Montana Reunion by Soraya Lane Page A

been in love. Because I’ve never been with a person truly
prepared to put me first. I’ve never been so passionately in love that I’ve
known my life would never be the same without that person.”
    Her eyes glistened with tears now.
Jack watched as she deftly wiped them away, blinking and looking sideways for a
beat.
    “When you put it like that,” he
said with a chuckle, hoping to lighten the mood, “then I’ve definitely never
been in love.”
    “What I’m trying to say is, what if it had been my mom that day? If
it had been her in that accident.”
    They
were going back to a place he wasn’t prepared to go, that needed to be locked
away for good. “It would never have been your mom, Maddison ,
and I don’t know what you’re trying to get at, but can we just drop this?”
    “If it had been my mom though, maybe my dad would have become someone
different too. Not in the same way, but maybe it would have changed something
about his personality, too. Maybe your dad was just so heartbroken, so lost
without his one person in the world, that he couldn’t help the man he became.
Maybe it triggered something that he’d been struggling with for…”
    “ Enough .” Jack could hear the cool, hard edge to his tone, was
struggling to stay in control of his anger. He
wanted to bellow at her to stop her talking about this. “So what if that
was the case, Maddison ? It makes the reason I don’t
want children even more justifiable, don’t you see that?”
    “Even if it was a
marriage of convenience? If you weren’t in love?”
    Jack shut his eyes, took a deep
breath. “What if I did fall in love? What if I repeated the mistakes I’ve
already lived through?” It was something that he thought of constantly, that he
might repeat the cycle that had almost broken him as a kid. “What if I couldn’t
help the man I became? What then?”
    “I don’t believe you could ever do
that, Jack,” Maddison said, coming closer and placing
her hand on his arm, fingers firm against his skin even through his shirt.
“You’re a good man. A kind man. And I know you well enough to believe otherwise. If you were in the
same circumstances, it might change you, but it wouldn’t turn you into that
man.”
    He cleared his throat. “You want to
know who I am? I’m a man who doesn’t want to be a dad, Maddison ,” Jack told her, knowing exactly what she
was doing, trying to change his mind. “No amount of flattery or talking about
the past is going to change that. It’s not just something that I can change my
mind about, because it’s part of who I am.”
    Maddison leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, her
lips soft, warm. “It’s not just about me wanting to be a parent, Jack,” she
whispered, “it’s about me telling you that you shouldn’t deprive yourself of
being one, just because you’re scared. Whether it’s me or someone else one day,
I don’t want to see you making a decision you’ll look back on and regret.”
    Maddison shouldn’t have said anything, but everything about Jack screamed dad . He was one of the strongest,
gentlest, most genuine men she’d ever encountered, and it broke her heart to
see how much his father still affected him.
    “How’s dinner looking?”
    His deep voice pulled her from her
thoughts. This conversation was clearly
over and she didn’t want to ruin things by pushing it. “Maybe you could put
the rice on?”
    Jack stood, looked at her one last
time like he was waiting for her to say something else, then walked into the pantry. She took her chance to watch him, to absorb his tall
frame, wide shoulders, dark hair that was an inch longer that he’d used to wear
it. His dark locks curled slightly at the ends. It was cute, kind of endearing. Maddison refocused on the window. She stared out at
the ranch, looked at the cattle grazing in the far distance.
    When she’d decided to come back to
see her dad, to take time out of her normal life, she’d expected to recharge
her