My Dearest Cal by Sherryl Woods Page A

grandmother,and I’ll be out of here so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
    “Get the letter,” he snapped.
    Marilou ran up to her room and retrieved the letter from her purse. Oddly, though, as she took it downstairs, she realized that instead of gloating with satisfaction, what she was feeling felt a whole lot more like pain.

Chapter Six
    C al had no idea why he’d been so infuriated when Chaney had told him about Marilou’s working in the barn. All he knew was that the admiring comments from Roddy and the other grooms had made him see red. Then when he’d walked into the kitchen and seen her rinsing her blistered hands at the sink, he’d lost it. Marilou wasn’t some fragile little flower needing his protection, but by God he was not going to let her wear herself out while she was working for him.
    It wasn’t until he was already in the midst of yelling that he had recognized the spark in her eyes for what it was—pride and excitement. She had actually loved spending the day in all that filth. That made him all the madder, because he hadn’t been the one to share with her an experience that obviously meant so much.
    Talk about perversity! He was getting to be a real genius at it. Now, as payment for his stupidity, he was going to have to read that damned letter.
    Read it, hell. If he knew Marilou, that wasn’t going to be the end of it. She was going to expect action, and he wasn’t ready for a confrontation with his past. The memories had been coming back the past few days, not all of them bad, but enough of them that he wished this so-called grandmother had never tried to track him down.
    He was pacing the length of the porch and back again when Marilou returned. Silently she handed him the letter, then retreated to one of the rockers and sat down. The thick vellum paper couldn’t have weighed over an ounce or two, but it felt like a ton in his hands. He didn’t want to open the envelope, didn’t want to know its contents, didn’t want to believe that it was really meant for him.
    If Marilou had pushed, it would have been easier to rip the letter up right then and there in a gesture of defiance. Or at the very least, he could have blamed her for the way he was feeling. Instead she just rocked and waited, all patience and serenity and expectation.
    Finally, itching for a fight, he went over and sat in the chair next to her, still regarding the letter warily.
    “What are you afraid of?” she said quietly. “It’s just a letter.”
    “It’s the past,” he corrected grimly. “And I’m not so sure I want to be reminded of it.”
    “Why?”
    It was something he’d never talked about, not evento Joshua. He figured his friend had seen enough and guessed the rest. Even if that hadn’t been the case, Cal wasn’t the kind of man who liked baring his soul. A man dealt with his problems; he didn’t share them. He stiffened instinctively at Marilou’s question, but then he looked into her eyes and there was that tenderness again, that genuine caring. He sighed and, to his amazement, the words just began to come.
    Keeping his gaze riveted on the horizon, he said slowly, “From the day I was born about the only thing I can remember about my parents is the fights. Nothing was ever good enough for my mother. Nothing. My father tried and tried, but no matter what he said or did, she was always looking for more.” He turned to her. “Do you see? A man can be destroyed by that kind of selfishness and greed.”
    “Was your father destroyed by it?”
    He shrugged. “No,” he admitted, still bemused by that. “For some reason he never seemed to blame her. It was like he believed she had a right to be angry and hateful.”
    “Did they ever explain?”
    “I never asked. I just got out as soon as I could and swore I’d never let any woman do to me what my mother did to my father.”
    “But maybe she had her reasons. Don’t you at least want to understand what they were?”
    “There’s nothing that