“I’m not wallowing,” she said. “I’m just starting to realize most of this stuff.”

“I know, and I’m not trying to rush you into getting past your anger. Eventually you’ll come to realize other things as well, such as the fact that your mother did nothing to protect you from your dad. Why was that? I’m guessing she reached adulthood with some hang-ups of her own. What I’m basically saying is you can’t change either of them, and you certainly can’t go back in time and change your childhood. At some point, you can’t allow it to have power over you any longer. Does that make any sense?”

Erin sighed. “Yes. But I want to be pissed off for a while before I get all saintly and forgive either one of them.”

At that, he did laugh, and she enjoyed hearing the deep rumble. “Fair enough. Stay mad for a while. Then move on.”

“I think my mom saw my dad as her ticket off this ranch. She hated it here. Hated the dust and the mud and the manure. As an adult, she’s never liked animals. She let me have a kitten once, but I didn’t have it for long. Her marriage to my father gave her the life she always wanted, and then she couldn’t give him the son he wanted. I don’t know why she never had another child, but isn’t it possible that she lived in fear that he would divorce her and marry another woman who could give him a son?”

“I think that’s entirely possible.” He straightened and tightened his arm around her. “And you’re thinking she sacrificed you to keep him from leaving her.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it, and I’m furious with her for that. How could she stand aside and let him make me act like a boy? Even worse, whenever I was alone with her, she was constantly riding me for not acting like a lady. I couldn’t make her happy, and I couldn’t make him happy. And when a child never gets any praise, it becomes all-important. At least it did to me. Only now do I understand what I really wanted was to be loved. Instead they made me feel like a disappointment they’d both been saddled with.”

“I am so very sorry that they hurt you so deeply and in so many ways.”

The husky timbre of Wyatt’s voice caught Erin’s attention, and she glanced up to meet his gaze. Her breath caught, and her heart skittered, because she saw tears in his eyes. And there was no doubt in her mind that those tears were for her. He wasn’t merely commiserating with her and saying what he felt was expected; he truly felt sad for her.

But that wasn’t the only epiphany for Erin. She saw something else in those laser-blue depths that sent a shock wave of emotion through her chest. He loved her. She read it in his gaze and the tender expression on his face. How had she missed that? This man was looking at her as if she were the center of his whole world.