She put her hands over his. "No harm done, Alex. He said he wasn't going to hurt me and I don't think he intended to. I think he wanted to put me in my place because I wasn't responding to him the way other women did. He wanted to humiliate me because he felt humiliated. It wasn't right, but I don't think he came into the barn with the intent of doing me harm. He insulted you to hurt me."
He squeezed her hands. "You wanted a man who would wear the pants - someone to protect you. I failed you - again."
She put an index finger on his lips. "Stop it, Alex. I thought I wanted a man to wear the pants and make the decisions, but I didn't. What I wanted is who you really are, not the person I've guilted you into becoming. I didn't even know who I was until Katie started trying to make me over. Then I only knew that wasn't me. With all that going on, and your loyalty to a dying friend, you were so overwhelmed that you didn't know which way to turn. I was strangling you with demands. Of course you wanted to get away from me."
He pulled her close. "It wasn't you that I wanted to get away from, sweetheart."
"Did you talk to your father about it too?"
He gripped her shoulders and pulled her back so he could look at her face.
"What do you mean, too?"
"You said you talked to Gerald."
"No, I said Gerald warned me. I didn't go to Gerald or Senor Medena to talk about what was going on between us. My father would know less than Gerald about what it took to make a woman happy."
His father knew a lot more than Alex was giving him credit for, and likely so did Gerald. Still, if he wasn't talking to his father about their situation, why had he left her before she woke? What was so urgent that it couldn't wait?
His gaze traveled over her face, detecting something that touched his mouth with a slight smile.
"I went down that morning to talk to father about Felipa before she came down for breakfast. I told him about how she had helped us with the tours and suggested that he train her to take over the estate."
Once again she had let her imagination carry her into misery. Far from changing his mind about the inheritance or feeling competitive with a possible new heir, he was busy giving Felipa a boost into the position his father had coveted for his only son.