Josie knew she couldn’t keep avoiding having this conversation with Declan indefinitely. The longer she waited, the harder it was going to be.
She really hated this feeling that she was leading him on, but that was exactly what she felt she was doing.
Gathering up her courage, Josie took a deep breath and called Declan on his cell. Since she knew that this wasn’t the kind of conversation that could be conducted on the phone, when Declan finally picked up, Josie made arrangements to get together later that day. She uttered those words that no one who felt that they were in a relationship ever wanted to hear.
“We need to talk.”
There was something in her voice that struck him as being rather ominous, but he chalked it up as being due to the poor connection.
“Sure, I’ve got some things to take care of, but I’ll be finished by three at the latest. You want to come over then?” he asked, thinking that once they were done, as always, Josie could take Shannon with her to the animal shelter.
Declan had no idea what might be on Josie’s mind, but whatever it was, he was confident that it could be easily cleared up.
It did strike him that Josie had seemed preoccupied for the last few days. He was actually looking forward to resolving whatever it was that was bothering her.
“Three o’clock it is,” Josie confirmed.
There was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she hung up.
When three o’clock arrived, Josie felt like a death row inmate who was about to walk their last mile. Driving to Declan’s, she must have gone over what she was going to say to him a number of times. Each version was slightly different, but none sounded quite right—not to mention that her sinking stomach now felt like it was tied up in knots.
The sooner she could finally let him down as gently as possible, the better she would feel, Josie thought. In the meantime, her nerves felt as if they were being shredded—not to mention the very real fact that she was already starting to miss him.
When Declan opened the door in response to her knock, she felt as if she were walking into the house on borrowed legs. Hers hardly felt as if they could support her much longer.
She really needed to get this over with, Josie thought.
One look at her face immediately told Declan that something was very wrong. Whatever was troubling Josie, he wanted to get it out in the open so it could finally be resolved and behind them.
“What’s the matter?” he asked her point-blank as he brought her into the living room.
“Declan...” Josie began, feeling like every word she was about to utter was liable to choke her, “we have to break up.”
There, she’d said it.
About to sit down, Declan could only stare at her. “Why would you even say something like that?” he wanted to know. “The way I see it, everything has just been getting better and better between us.”
Every fiber of her being wanted to agree with him, but she knew that if she did, that wouldn’t be fair to Declan. Because Declan deserved someone his own age, deserved to be able to create his own family with a woman young enough to give him children.
She needed to make him understand that this just wasn’t going to work between them. If they tried to stay together, then eventually he was going to walk away from her and, when that happened, she wouldn’t be able to take it. She was convinced that calling it quits now was better than leaving herself wide open to pain down the line.
Of course, sparing her future self pain meant feeling it now.
Searching for an excuse other than the humiliating truth, she thought she’d found one. “Look, you’ve just taken on a huge responsibility with Shannon, and I applaud you for that,” she told him. Pulling her shoulders back, she knew she was going to have to sound heartless, but there was no other way. “But I have already raised my family. I don’t want to go through all that again,” she told him. “It’s not fair to me.” Josie could feel her pulse hammering all through her body. “Can you understand that?”
But it wasn’t Declan’s voice she heard answering her. Instead, Josie heard a heartbreaking sob coming from behind her.
Turning around, she saw that Shannon was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She hadn’t even heard the teenager come home.
Shannon had walked in just as her idol had vocalized her feelings.
Stricken, Shannon cried, “I thought you were my friend.” She pushed past both Josie and her uncle as she raced up the stairs and to her room.
When Declan turned around to face Josie, his expression had changed entirely. There was fury in his eyes, white-hot fury.
“She looked up to you,” he accused, “and you just broke her heart. You turned your back on her the same way that her mother always did.” This was where he drew the line, Declan thought angrily. “Let me make this perfectly clear. No one, not even you, is ever going to hurt that little girl ever again. Do you understand me?” Declan demanded.
Realizing how Shannon must have felt overhearing her, Josie felt heartsick.
“I didn’t realize that she was even there,” she said helplessly.
He didn’t trust himself to talk to her right now. Struggling to hold on to his temper, Declan told her, “I think you should leave.”
There were just no words she could say that would undo the damage she had done. So, listening to his command, Josie left.
Quickly.
He let her go out without another word. As he heard the outer door close, Declan had no idea what to do with the anger he was feeling.
But right now, he wasn’t the one who mattered, he thought. The only one who mattered in this scenario at the moment was Shannon.
He had no idea what he was going to say to the girl. He only knew that he had to find some way to get through to her.
Declan hurried up the stairs two at a time.
Just as he had suspected, Shannon’s door was closed. At first, he debated leaving her alone to nurse her wounds. But he was well aware that wounds could fester, could very easily get infected. Leaving her alone was the coward’s way out.
So he knocked.
“Shannon?” He spoke through the door. “It’s Uncle D. Can I come in?”
The only response he heard was the sound of sobs. Ordinarily, Declan didn’t believe in intruding, but he knew pain when he heard it and he wasn’t about to just leave Shannon like that.
So he announced, “Shannon, I’m coming in.”
And with that, he put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. He was surprised when it gave. Shannon hadn’t locked the door.
Thinking that was a good sign, Declan let himself in.
He found Shannon on her bed, her face buried in her pillow. But as he entered, the teen scrambled up into a sitting position. She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand.
Sitting down beside his niece, Declan awkwardly took her into his arms in an attempt to try to comfort her. It was at that moment that he realized they really needed one another. He needed Shannon every bit as much as she needed him.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” he told her. “Only an idiot would think that you were all right after that. But I just want you to know one thing, and I want to make it perfectly clear.” He raised her head so that she could look at him. “You will always, always have a home here with me for as long as you want.”
Wiping away more tears, Shannon sniffled. Her eyes met her uncle’s. “Really?” she asked, almost afraid to believe him.
Declan put his arms around the teenager again and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Really,” he assured her in a warm, friendly voice.
His niece leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. She was obviously comforted by his words.
They remained that way for several minutes.
Declan couldn’t get what Josie had said out of his mind. Once he calmed down and got over the chaos her words had created, he began to reexamine the whole incident right from the very beginning. That was when he realized the sentiments Josie had expressed the day before were completely out of character for her.
Since the very beginning, she had been the one to urge him to try to communicate with his niece, to listen to her and reach out to her to strengthen their connection. She was the one who had volunteered to take the teen to the animal shelter with her so that the girl could get involved with both training and caring for the animals.
Yes, Josie got free horseback riding lessons for herself in exchange for working with his niece, but it was abundantly apparent to the man that she gave much more than she got in this exchange. That was the Josie he knew—the one who valued family and would do anything to be there for the ones she loved.
For proof, he had the fact that Josie had uprooted her whole life so that she could help look after her niece and nephew. That was not a woman who shunned taking on extra child-rearing responsibilities, who would walk away from a relationship just because it suddenly involved raising a teenager. A teenager who, he knew for a fact, Josie actually happened to like a great deal.
So then, why had she suddenly declared that his custody situation meant they had to break up? The question nagged at him.
The fact of the matter was that Declan knew Josie could easily take on the responsibility of raising another teen—and so did she, he thought.
So just what was behind this sudden about-face he had witnessed?
Was he somehow at the root of all this? Was Josie afraid of relationships because her husband had walked out on her?
He thought back to the time they had spent together. They’d gotten along really well, and that had been mostly her doing, he recalled. But there was that one sticking point she had raised very early in their relationship.
For some reason, the age difference between them bothered her.
Declan hadn’t brought it up afterward because he had a feeling that the more he pushed, the more she would resist. Now he wondered if that was truly the reason why she’d ended things between them.
And if it was, what then? If she struggled with feelings of inadequacy, he couldn’t fix that for her. She needed to come to terms with that on her own, he decided.
For now, he would just let the matter go. What he really needed to focus on right now was attempting to mend the rift that had almost taken down his relationship with his niece.
Declan began thinking about what he could do to fix it.
Maybe, he decided, he could open negotiations by offering Shannon a gift.
But what?
And then he remembered how taken the teen had been with Champ when she had first met the dog—and how hurt she had been when the Australian shepherd completely ignored her despite all of her attempts to win him over.
A pet, Declan decided. He could get Shannon a pet of her very own. Thinking, he tried to remember which ones she had talked about when she would come home from helping out at the shelter. He remembered that she had been involved in socializing a number of the newest additions. The problem was, try as he might, Declan couldn’t remember any of their names.
The simplest, most direct approach, he knew, would be to take Shannon to the shelter with him after school. Then she would be able to select one of the dogs she had put so much work into training. Her favorite one, he thought. But the problem with that approach would be that she might not be able to pick just one. And besides, taking her with him would spoil the surprise, and he definitely wanted to surprise her. After what she had been through, he felt she deserved something nice happening to her, he thought.
Well, someone at the shelter had to keep track of the dogs and puppies Shannon had worked with, Declan reasoned. Or at the very least, there might be some sort of a record kept in the main office.
Declan recalled having met the director of the animal shelter before. He had been out with Josie when they’d run into her. If he went to her alone, she might start asking him questions about why Josie hadn’t come with him, which could turn out to be extremely awkward.
But he couldn’t concern himself about that right now, Declan thought. He needed to tackle one problem at a time, he told himself. First, he wanted to comfort Shannon and bridge any gap that might have been created by yesterday’s incident.
Once he’d managed to take care of that, then he could get himself involved in other things, Declan thought—and he was certainly looking forward to that. He intended to make Josie see that he was nothing like her ex-husband. The fact of the matter was, he had never cheated on anyone in his life. Even in his casual relationships—and looking back on them now, pretty much all of them prior to Josie had been casual.
He’d gone out with his fair share of women over the years—but he had never been in love with any of them before. Certainly not to the point that he had entertained the idea of sharing a life with one of them.
Declan had actually begun to feel that that sort of attraction just wasn’t in the cards for him.
And then Josie had come into his life.
He had never met anyone quite like her before and now that he had, he wasn’t going to allow her to just walk out of his life like that.
Certainly not without giving him a damn good reason why—because that excuse she’d given him was nonsense from start to finish, and they both knew it.
First things first, though, Declan quietly told himself.
He wanted to find Shannon a pet of her very own. One she felt was strictly and exclusively hers. That was what his niece needed so that she could feel like she was a part of something.
Baby steps, he thought.
Declan smiled to himself, remembering the first time he had laid eyes on Champ. The dog had just showed up one day. He’d been a puppy at the time—cold, wet, and shaking in a far corner of the stable. When Declan had first spotted the puppy and approached it, Champ had tried to disappear beneath a layer of hay that was in the stall. The poor thing hadn’t even growled, Declan recalled, just whimpered.
After several attempts, he had finally managed to coax the puppy out, using a bit of chicken to tempt him. But even using that, it had taken some doing to fully win the animal’s trust. When the stray had finally crawled out, taking the food that was being offered, it struck Declan how small, frightened and pathetic the puppy really was.
“Don’t you worry,” he had said to the dog whose attention had been totally focused on the food. “You’re a frightened little dog now, but someday, you’re going to be a real champ.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Declan had stopped and considered the word he had used. “That’s what I’ll call you,” he decided. “Champ. You like that, Champ?” he’d asked in a more assertive tone.
The stray had paused to look up at him, cocking his head as if to absorb the word better. It had made Declan smile. “Okay, Champ it is.”
The dog had remained devoted to him from that day forward.
Declan just hoped it would be that easy to find the right dog for Shannon today.