And she would know, since she’d seen a sizeable chunk of that world.
“May I start again?” she asked.
“No one stopping you.”
So much for the Southern charm she’d heard about, too. She drew in a deep breath. “I’m Sydney Brock.”
“So you said.”
“I’m Lucas’s cousin.”
He went very still. He crossed his arms in front of him, and she’d read enough body language to know that meant the same thing most places in the world. He was not liking what he was hearing.
“Lucas,” he said slowly, “does not have a cousin. Or any other living blood relatives.”
“But he does. My father is—was his father’s brother.”
“All of his father’s relatives died before he was born.”
Understanding washed over her. “Who told you that?”
“You want a list? Starting with him?”
She looked suddenly sad. “He told you that?”
“So did every official agency that dealt with him along the way.”
“But—”
“Hey, boss!” Sydney jumped; she hadn’t even heard the vehicle approaching. The driver called out again. “No pretty ladies at the saloon tonight, but looks like you found one!”
He lifted a hand, but didn’t turn around. They kept going, and she heard laughter. Belatedly she realized she’d been fixated on his face, and wondered if he’d just waved them off, or maybe flipped them off.
Belatedly it hit her. Boss? “So…you are a Rafferty?”
“I am.” He said it proudly.
“Are you…Keller?” Mr. Diaz at the feed store had supplied that much, that it had been Keller Rafferty who had been the one to take on a “runaway kid,” as the man had put it.
“I am,” he said again.
“Then I have to thank you, for taking Lucas in.”
“Don’t bother.”
“It was kind of you, to see to him until I could get here. But I’m sure you’ll be happy to be relieved of the responsibility.”
“Get here to do what?”
“Take custody of him, of course.”
“Like hell.”
She nearly shivered, his voice was so cold. She felt as she had when her parents had had the brilliant idea to winter in northern Finland when she’d been eight. At least she thought it was eight. Her parents weren’t much on tracking her age, so things had been confused for a while until she realized she had to keep track herself. She stared at him, trying to understand.
Finally she just asked, “Why are you so angry?”
“Angry? You think this is angry? You make a move toward that boy and you’ll see angry.”
“Why?”
He stared at her almost incredulously. “Why? That kid’s already been through a hell no one should have to endure. His entire life was torn apart. He had nothing, and no one. He’s finally stabilized a little and then you drop in out of nowhere, declare you’re his cousin despite the fact we know he has no relatives, and with no apparent proof of your claim expect us to hand him over, and to top it off you want us to be happy about it?”
By the time he’d finished, his volume building as he went, she was smiling. Which only seemed to irritate him more. But before she could explain he asked, his voice ice now, “You find that funny?”
She slowly shook her head. “No.” She bit her lip, afraid her voice was going to shake. But she held his gaze—that very, very green gaze—and finally managed to say softly, “I find it wonderful.”
Chapter Four
Wonderful?
He was building up to the maddest mad he’d felt in a while, and she thought it was wonderful?
He couldn’t decide if she was crazy, or just foolish. He’d never, ever harm a woman, or anyone smaller than him—his father had made sure that lesson was bone-deep—but she didn’t know that. For all she knew he could be a guy with a hair-trigger temper and no boundaries.
“Look, whoever you are—”
“I told you who I am. But I see your point, and appreciate you wanting to be sure.”
She bent to the backpack at her feet, dug into an outside pocket that he noted had a small padlock on it, although it was open now. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, that meant, but he took note nevertheless. He was feeling as on guard as if he were riding herd on edgy longhorns in a thunderstorm.
She pulled something out of the pack, straightened, and held it out to him. A passport? Most people would have gone for a driver’s license, wouldn’t they? Unless she’d taken that hired ride because she didn’t have one. But why wouldn’t she? Then again, that passport looked pretty well used.
“So Texas really is a foreign country to you.”
It came out a bit sour, but so be it. He’d been there before with a woman, and he wasn’t going there again. Although why that thought even occurred puzzled him. For a moment she simply looked at him, still holding out the passport he hadn’t taken. Then, a bit too brightly, she said, “It was once, wasn’t it?”
Okay, points for knowing that. “It was. But, wisely or not, we joined the United States some time ago.”
“In 1845.” He blinked. “And,” she went on, “if Texas was still an independent country, it would have the tenth largest economy in the world.”
He got it then. She’d been reading. “Long flight?” he asked dryly.
“From where I was, yes.”
Curious now, he took the travel document. But rather than look at the first page of identifiers, he started at the back. The last stamp, on the last page, was in a language he didn’t recognize but that looked faintly Cyrillic to him. Before that he saw a couple of Nordic countries. Then African. Asian. Then it slid into…Arabic? He couldn’t be sure. From there to Tel Aviv—that must have been quite a trip—and then Australia.
“You’re going to need a new passport,” he said, but he supposed he should give her some credit for at least trying to learn something about a place that was obviously as foreign to her as most of the places on those pages were to him.
“That’s my third one,” she said. And in that moment she sounded unutterably weary. Which made him finally flip to the front of the passport.
His gaze snagged immediately on the photo. However old it was—passports were good for like a decade, weren’t they?—at the time her hair had been dark, even darker than the ends now. So was the blond natural and she had dyed it dark?
It did say Sydney Brock. But he was no expert on potentially forged documents. Maybe Shane could tell, or knew someone who could. As police chief he had friends at departments all over. He automatically noted her birth date: six years younger than him. Which made her seventeen years older than Lucas. That was a bit of a spread, for cousins, but not impossible.
Not that he was convinced she had any true connection to the boy.
Then his gaze snagged on her place of birth. His head came up and he looked at her sharply. “Seriously?”
She sighed. “Yes.” He stared at her. Waited. He’d stared down a stubborn longhorn before, this was nothing. Eventually she gave in. “What can I say, my mother has no imagination. Or too much. I’ve never been sure which.”
“So she named you Sydney because you were born in Sydney?”
“Yes.” He could almost see thoughts tumbling through her mind as she started to say more twice and stopped each time. Finally she grimaced and said, “I just consider myself lucky I wasn’t born where my parents were living when she got pregnant. Otherwise I’d be named Gogogogo.”
He blinked. “Try that again?”
“Four go’s. It’s in Madagascar. A commune. They were growing peanuts.”
“Madagascar.”
“That was after Mauritius. Which was after Namibia. Which was after—”
“I get the drift. They traveled a lot before you were born.”
“And after. As soon as they could.” She grimaced again. “They call the time when they couldn’t their ‘Stuck in Sydney with Sydney�
� period.”
He drew back slightly. “Well, that’s…loving.”
She shrugged. He found that…significant somehow. “Anyway, then it was off to another continent. And another. They’re definitely nomads.”
“That’s one word for it. All this while you were a baby?”
That got a nod. “Obviously I don’t remember much until I was a toddler. Then I have vague memories of Hungary. And Poland. Although I’m not real clear on which memories go with which. From later I remember more, of course.”
He was being drawn in despite himself, probably because he couldn’t imagine a life more different from his own. “What do you remember most?”
She smiled, and it changed everything. Those amber eyes lit up as she answered instantly. “Slovenia. The Lipica Stud. When I was twelve.”
He blinked. Stud? “What?”
“It’s where the Lipizzan horses come from. I got to see them. It was amazing.”
Horses? She loved horses? Judging by the change in her voice, she did. “The Spanish Riding School Lipizzans? Airs above the ground and all that?”
“Those are them,” she said with a grin. “The white ones.”
“Gray, technically,” he said, not at all sure why he was carrying on this conversation, other than at least horses were something he knew about. Unlike her travels.
“I know,” she said, still grinning. “But only because they have a white coat over dark skin. And they’re born dark and only turn white—or gray if you insist—years later.”
He blinked again. Realized with a little jolt he’d gone from being mad and protective to being…interested? He wouldn’t go so far as fascinated, but interested. As if she were some type of creature he’d never encountered before.
“I actually got to pat one,” she said. As if patting a horse were akin to patting some rare, elusive creature. As perhaps it was, to her. “Did you know they always have one bay stallion, by tradition?” she asked.
“I…no.” He glanced again at the passport in his hand, making a mental note of the date of birth in case he needed to know it later, when he followed up on whatever she told him. Then she answered a question he hadn’t yet asked.
“Anyway, as you can see, I’ve traveled most of my life. My US driver’s license expired while I was gone this last trip, and I haven’t had time to get to that yet. I assume that’s what you wanted to know?”
He looked at her again. Those eyes really were amazing. But he couldn’t let them distract him from why she was here. Who she claimed to be, despite all evidence to the contrary.
“What I want to know is why you’re claiming to be related to a kid who by all accounts has no living relatives.”
She sighed. “I know it’s complicated. I didn’t realize it was this bad.” He waited her out this time. “Because I didn’t know, either.”
“That’s…convenient.”
“Convenient? Hardly.”
“Where are your parents now?” He looked again at the most recent stamps. “Where you were?”
“Lord, no. I haven’t traveled with them for years. And I’m sure they’re happier that way.” His gaze narrowed instantly. Interesting way to put it. And she looked as if she regretted saying it. “They prefer their own way of living,” she added hastily.
“So where are they now?”
“I have no idea. They were packing up to move on when I left them.” She gave a wave of her hand, as if to dismiss the topic. A very graceful hand, with long fingers he had to try not to think about doing…other things. What the hell is wrong with you, Rafferty? “That doesn’t matter. What matters is I’m here for Lucas.”
“Nearly a year later.”
“I didn’t know until a month ago, when I ran into my parents in Warsaw.”
He stared at her again. “Ran into them? You say that like it was an accident.”
“It was. I had no idea they were there, they had no idea I was coming. We hadn’t spoken in a few months.”
“You hadn’t talked to your parents in months?” This was getting more and more ludicrous to him.
“We’re…not close.”
“Obviously.”
“Says the man who still lives with his mother?” She said it sweetly, making it sound like he was one of those helpless ones who lived in his parents’ basement and spent his life online. Yet underneath the flippant tone was an edge, almost like pain. Like an injured animal that struck out even as it curled up to protect the wound.
He straightened, pushing off from the porch rail. He towered over her petite, still-seated form. And used it.
“My mother,” he retorted, “is the best and bravest woman I know. And I’ve had enough of this, Ms. Brock, or whatever your real name is.” He tossed the passport back to her. “Go back to wherever you came from.”
“Real name?” Interesting that she chose that to react to. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he said icily, “that if you think on the strength of what could well be a fake document and a wild story I’m going to hand that boy over to you, you’ve got another think coming.”
“How…colloquial.”
“You want colloquial? Then I think I just heard a box of rocks rattle.”
Her brow furrowed. Then, “You’re calling me stupid?”
“Only if you think you’re taking Lucas.”
“I didn’t come here to argue with you,” she began.
“Here’s another colloquialism for you. There’s two theories about arguing with a woman, and neither one work.” He hadn’t grown up with Shane Highwater for nothing. “Goodbye.”
“You expect me to just leave?” she said indignantly. “Without even seeing Lucas?”
“I expect you to leave without disrupting the life that’s finally back on an almost even keel. That kid’s been through five people’s share of hell, and I won’t have him hurt all over again by some supposed relative who flits in and out on a whim.”
She looked stricken. Or maybe even a little frightened, which he regretted. He didn’t normally snap at women. And he hadn’t meant to sound quite so angry, but when he thought of how hard they’d worked to get Lucas on that even keel it ticked him off that someone with such a suspect claim would show up out of the blue and try to upend it all. No matter how attractive she was.
His anger kicked even harder even as the last words formed in his mind. There’s a reason honeypots work, Rafferty. On people more worldly-wise than you.
People like her.
She stood up then, and he felt even worse when he was reminded of how small she was. But she stood straight and faced him. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Rafferty. But Lucas is my cousin, and I’m the only relative he has besides my parents. And you can’t keep him from me.”
“I can until you come up with some proof.”
She gestured with the passport. “I thought I had.”
“Even if it is your real name, that doesn’t prove anything. Or that you’re connected to Lucas. There are a few Brocks in the world. Including a town up in Parker county, a great baseball player, and the guy who designed the Corvette Sting Ray.”
Her eyebrows rose. Inwardly Keller thanked his mother for the conversation she’d had with Lucas about his name. The first he’d known because he knew Texas, the second because he liked baseball, but that last one he only knew because she’d looked it up and read it off.
It was a moment before she spoke again, more quietly this time. “And what would you consider proof?”
“More than you’ve shown me,” he said bluntly. Then, knowing that under the circumstances he’d be forgiven for the name-drop, he added, “Something that would stand up to my old friend Shane’s scrutiny.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why? Who’s he?”
He smiled then. “The police chief of Last Stand.”
Chapter Five
She had obviously made a serious tactical mistake.
Sydney paced the spacious room she’d rented at a local B&B
. Realized she’d restarted the useless pacing process after making herself quit moments before. With a sigh, she stopped near the window that looked out over the stream below. Looking at the flowing water, still high now in late spring, she thought perhaps she should go down there to think this through. The idea clicked, seemed right, so she grabbed up her phone, decided she didn’t need anything else, pushed it into her pocket, and left the room.
She was glad that the woman behind the registration desk simply gave her a warm smile and waved. She didn’t feel like chatting with anyone at the moment. Wasn’t sure she was capable right now. She’d carried on conversations with people around the world, yet she’d made an utter mess of one of the most important ones of her life.
She paused as she neared one of the sets of glass French doors that led out onto the B&B’s deck. Through the trees that shaded it—something she was sure was very welcome in the high heat of summer—she could see the glint of water. But what had caught her eye was the portrait on the wall. She’d read, somewhere on the website while booking her room, that the place was owned by a former Texas Ranger. This must be him.
There was no smile for the portrait; this man was all business. Dark hair just touched with gray at the temples, a strong jaw, and a steady, penetrating gaze—even in a photograph. The omnipresent cowboy hat—did Keller Rafferty wear one? Silly question, of course he did—somehow added to the impression of power and strength. Funny how she, who hadn’t spent a lot of her childhood in her country of citizenship, still felt the little jolt she imagined most people felt simply at the name Texas Ranger. Fabled, storied, amazing, right down to the old saying she’d first heard, perhaps oddly, in Poland: “One riot, one Ranger.”
Once outside, she followed the sign she’d seen earlier, directing people to the creek overlook. That seemed promising.
When she’d first arrived, she’d been impressed that the small-town B&B had lived up to the online photos. The setting was pristine, peaceful, and pretty, accented by the quiet sounds of Hickory Creek flowing by. The building itself gleamed a clean white amid green grass and trees, the observation tower rising above promising a panoramic view of the Hill Country she’d spent so much time reading about on the flight here. The room itself was both elegant and functional, not to mention utterly spotless.
Nothing But Cowboy Page 3
