Envious

by Lisa Jackson

  He couldn’t worry about Ms. Kinkaid or anyone else, for that matter. He’d learned long ago that he could only take care of himself.

  At that particular thought, he scowled. Reaching flatter ground, he pressed his knees into Lizzy’s sweaty sides. Though she was tired, the mare responded, her strides stretching as they reached the lower hills where the grade was much gentler and the stables were in sight. Her ears pricked forward and she let out a little nicker at the small herd that had gathered by the weathered fence.

  “Yeah, and they miss you, too, Lizzy,” Luke said, already feeling at home on this dusty scrap of land. All of the outbuildings needed new roofs, the siding of each was crying out for gallons of paint, and there were few windows that didn’t require replacement of at least one new pane.

  But he was getting ahead of himself. First he had to find out if Ralph’s son had fathered a child around here. It shouldn’t be too hard. He’d already started checking birth notices for ten and eleven years back. Tomorrow he’d drive to the county courthouse to check records there and, of course, there was always local gossip—as good a place to start as any.

  He cooled Lizzy down and stripped her of bridle and saddle, then set her free in the closest field. With an eager nicker, she joined the small herd gathered near a solitary pine tree. A few half-grown foals frolicked around their more sedate dams while a roan gelding rolled on the ground. His legs pawed the air madly and he grunted in pleasure as brown clouds of dust enveloped his body. Luke smiled. All in all, the horses looked healthy and alert. Good stock. Ten head if you counted the two fillies and one colt.

  The cattle were another story. They roamed the hillsides freely and were rangy and lean—not exactly prime beef. But they would do for what he had in mind.

  His plan was to start renovations on the main house as soon as the building permits were approved by the county, work through the winter, then start advertising in January. In order to be in full operation this coming spring, he’d have to hire at least basic help—a cook and housekeeper, along with a few ranch hands and a part-time guide or two. Hopefully he’d have his first group of clients in by mid-May. He figured he’d run the first two years in the red but after that, he hoped to turn a profit.

  He had to. All his hopes and dreams were tied up in this old place, he thought with a humorless smile.

  Years ago, he’d had other visions for his life. He’d thought he’d settle down and raise a family, save enough to buy his own place and live out the American Dream. But things hadn’t worked out the way he’d thought they would. His stomach clenched when he thought of his marriage. Hell, what a mess. Seven years of bad luck. Then the divorce. As bad as the marriage had been, the divorce had been even worse.

  Well, it was over. A long time ago. Since then, he’d worked his butt off to save enough money to buy a place of his own and this, it seemed, was it. So he’d better make good.

  He locked up, then climbed into his old truck. With a flick of his wrist, he turned the key. Tomorrow he’d start by cleaning out each of the buildings and checking on the permits again—just as soon as he’d done a little digging into the past. He figured it wouldn’t take long to discover the truth. If Dave Sorenson had fathered a kid eleven years ago, someone around a town as small as Bittersweet would know. It was just a matter of time before he found out.

  * * *

  “Don’t do this to me!” Katie cried.

  She tromped on the accelerator of the convertible, pushing the pedal to the floor, but the car continued to slow. The engine had died and she had no choice but to roll onto the shoulder of the road.

  “Perfect,” she grumbled sarcastically. She was nearly three miles outside of town, the sun was about to set and she was wearing sandals that would cut her feet to ribbons before she could catch sight of the town limits of Bittersweet. “Just damned perfect.”

  The car eased to a stop, tires crunching on the gravel.

  Valiantly she twisted the ignition again.

  Nothing.

  “Come on, come on.” She tried over and over but the convertible was as dead as a proverbial doornail and wasn’t about to budge. “Great. Just bloody terrific!” She thought of her half-brother and his efforts under the hood a short while ago. “Nice try, Jarrod,” she grumbled, but couldn’t really blame him. He was a private investigator, an ex-cop, and never had been a mechanic. Just because he was male didn’t mean he knew anything about alternators or batteries or spark plugs or whatever it was that made a car run.

  With a pained sigh she dropped her head onto the steering wheel and whispered, “A cell phone, a cell phone. My kingdom for a cell phone.” Sweat ran down the back of her neck and within seconds a lazy bee buzzed and hovered near her head.

  Katie drew in a long, deep breath, then gave herself a quick mental shake.

  “Okay, okay, you’re a smart woman, Kinkaid. When Jarrod worked on this he might have messed up and didn’t reconnect a wire or hose properly. It’s probably no big deal.” She buoyed herself up as she slid from behind the steering wheel and looked under the hood. The same engine she’d stared at earlier in the day sat where it always had, ticking as it cooled in front of her. Everything appeared in order, but then she didn’t know up from sideways when it came to cars. Gingerly, hoping not to burn herself or smear oil all over, she jiggled a few wires, poked at the hoses, checked the battery cables and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Not that she would recognize it if it was.

  In the distance, beyond the last hill, the sound of an engine reached her ears. “Hallelujah!”

  Ignoring all the warnings she’d been given as a schoolgirl, she stepped around the car and raised her hands. On this road she was most likely to come across a farmer or ranch hand, or a mother toting her kids into town.

  A battered pickup crested the hill and her heart nosedived. She recognized Luke Gates’s truck before it ground to a stop.

  “Great,” she muttered sarcastically. “Just . . . perfect.” She told herself she should be relieved rather than disgusted, angry or embarrassed. After all, he was a man she trusted. Well, sort of. At least, as far as she knew, he wasn’t a rapist or murderer or any other kind of criminal.

  He parked just ahead of her car and opened the truck’s door. Long, jeans-clad legs unfolded from behind the wheel and leather boots that had seen better days hit the ground. “Trouble?” he asked as he slammed the door shut.

  “A little.” Katie’s heart drummed a bit faster and she mentally berated herself for letting his innate sex appeal get to her. What did she care if he was tall and lean and irreverently intriguing? She’d met a lot of men in her lifetime—a lot—who were just as good-looking, rebelliously charming and sensual as this guy.

  Hadn’t she?

  “Looks like a lot of trouble to me.”

  “I guess. It just died on me,” she said as he bent to look under the hood.

  “And it was runnin’ fine before?”

  “No, not really.” Standing next to him, her bare shoulder brushing against his forearm, she explained how the car had been giving her fits and starts over the past six months. “It zips along just fine, then something goes wrong. I have a mechanic or one of my brothers fiddle around with it and it finally begins to run again. Or, worse yet, it stops on me and with enough prayer and sweat I manage to get it going again, only to take it into the service station where it purrs like a kitten.” She slid the convertible a spiteful glance. “Then the mechanics can’t find anything wrong with it.” Frustration burned through her veins. “It’s what you might call ‘temperamental.’”

  “Maybe it’s just old and worn-out. How many miles you got on her?”

  “Two-hundred-and-twenty-some thousand, I think,” she said with a shrug.

  He let out a long, low whistle. “As I said, she’s just tired. Think how you’d feel if you’d gone that far.”

  “Sometimes it feels as if I have,” she grumbled, and frowned at the engine.

  “Get inside and try and start it,”
he suggested.

  “It won’t go anywhere.”

  He cast her a look she couldn’t comprehend. “Maybe not, but I’ll get a better feel for it if I’m watching the engine attempt to turn over.”

  “Okay. Okay.” She climbed into the car, twisted the ignition and heard the engine grind laboriously.

  “Again,” he ordered and through the crack where the hood was raised she saw his arms reach deep into the cavern that housed the engine. She pumped the gas and turned the key again. Grinding. Slower and slower, then nothing.

  Three more times she tried before he slammed the hood down in frustration. “She’s dead.”

  “I knew that much.”

  He eyed the sky, judging the daylight. “I think I’d better drive you back to town and we can call a tow truck.”

  “Wonderful,” she muttered sarcastically, but reminded herself that at least she wasn’t stranded or alone.

  She hoisted herself into the passenger side of his truck, an older model with new seat covers and a thick layer of dust. Both windows were open and as Luke steered the rig onto the empty road, late-summer evening air streamed inside, tangling Katie’s hair and cooling her skin.

  Glancing at her watch, she frowned. “Oh, this is just perfect,” she said, unable to hide her sarcasm.

  “Something else wrong?”

  Why did she feel like an incompetent around him? She wanted to look and play the part of the clever reporter—sassy and bright. Instead she felt like a frazzled woman who couldn’t quite get her act together. “I’m supposed to pick up Josh from soccer practice in five minutes.”

  She folded her arms across her chest in frustration. “Damned machine.” Casting her would-be savior a glance, she swallowed her pride yet again. “I hate to ask, but would you mind swinging by Reed Field to pick Josh up? It’s pretty close to the high school.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, and she fell back against the seat.

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  But she did. She didn’t like owing anyone; especially a stranger she’d barely met. This time, it seemed, she had no choice. Feeling the wind brush against her cheeks, she stared through the bug-spattered windshield and watched as the sun sank behind the western hills to stripe the sky in vibrant shades of gold and pink. All the while she was aware of the man beside her—a sexy stranger with a Texas drawl, that seemed to bore right to the very center of her. Angry at the turn of her thoughts, she tapped her fingers nervously on the armrest.

  “You okay?” Luke slid a glance her way as he braked for a corner.

  She stopped fidgeting. “Fine.”

  “So what were you doing over at the Wells ranch?”

  Every muscle in her body tensed. “You saw me?”

  With a quick nod, he turned onto the main highway leading into town.

  She had no reason to lie, though the question made her edgy. She’d had no idea she was being observed. Well, a private detective she wasn’t. “I thought I’d go check things out,” she admitted, feeling suddenly foolish, like a kid caught with her hand in a forbidden cookie jar. “I’ve been by the place quite a few times ever since Isaac disappeared, but I haven’t really pried much—well, not as much as I’d like to.”

  “Nosin’ around for a story?”

  “Not just a story,” she admitted, trying to contain the excitement she always felt at the thought of uncovering a mystery and being the first to report it. “I think this is the scoop of the century around here.” She turned her head to stare at his profile as he shifted down. His face, all hard planes and angles, was a study in concentration. “Where were you that you saw me?”

  “At my new place.”

  “Your new ... ?” Her throat went dry and she licked her lips as she realized where he was going to live. At the Sorenson ranch. Dear Lord, no. Her heart turned to stone and she had trouble breathing for a second. “Don’t tell me you bought out Ralph Sorenson.” She could barely say the name. A sick sensation curled in her stomach.

  “That’s it.”

  Oh, God. Her fingers clenched into tight fists. Slowly she straightened them. This was no time to fall apart. “You know Ralph Sorenson?”

  “Sure do.” He slowed as they passed the sign indicating they’d entered Bittersweet’s city limits. A few streetlights had begun to glow as the first shades of evening slipped through the narrow streets and boulevards of Bittersweet. “Ralph helped me out of a jam a long time ago, gave me a job and treated me like a son ever since.”

  “Did he?” She felt the color drain from her face and her heartbeat thudded through her brain. “I suppose you met his son,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted when deep inside she ached.

  “Dave?” His smile faded and something dark and dangerous skated through his gaze as he glanced in her direction.

  “Y-yes. Dave.”

  “I knew him,” he admitted, his voice suddenly flat. Was it her imagination or did he suddenly grip the steering wheel more tightly? “Helluva guy.”

  “Is he?” she asked, her own question sounding far away when she thought of the one boy she had loved, the one to whom she’d eagerly given her virginity, the father of her only son.

  “Was,” Luke said, flipping on his turn signal and wheeling into the gravel lot beside the high school.

  Her heart turned to ice at the implication. Luke rubbed his chin as he pulled into a parking spot. He cut the engine and looked at her with troubled blue eyes.

  “I thought the news would have gotten back here by now.” She felt a chill as cold as Alaska in January and braced herself for words she’d never expected to hear.

  “Dave Sorenson died six months ago.”

  Chapter Three

  Katie’s world tilted, the underpinnings giving way. All that she’d held true for years shattered, bursting through her brain in painful, heart-slicing shards. No! It couldn’t be. Dave Sorenson was alive.

  But the look Luke Gates sent her convinced her that he was telling the truth, that this wasn’t some sort of cruel, hateful joke.

  Josh’s father was dead.

  “Dear God,” she whispered, her throat raw, the insides of her nose and throat burning with sudden, grief-riddled tears. “I—I . . . I didn’t know.” She cleared her throat and looked away, blinking rapidly against the wash of tears. Her throat was so thick she couldn’t swallow, her eyes ached. For years she’d considered trying to find Dave Sorenson and telling him the painful but glorious truth that they had a son—a wonderful, lighthearted boy she’d named Joshua Lee—but she never had. She’d always thought—assumed—that there would be time; that the perfect moment would somehow appear for confiding to Josh the fact that his father was a man whose circumstances had forced him to move to Texas; a man who, at the time of Josh’s conception, had been little more than a boy himself; a man, who at that tender age, couldn’t have been expected to settle down. Then she’d thought, in this silly fantasy, that she’d eventually track down Dave and give him the news. She’d told herself he would be mature and would understand, and that Josh would somehow connect with his father. But ... if Luke was telling the truth, it was too late. Josh would never know his father.

  “Katie?” Luke’s voice startled her.

  “It . . . it can’t be.” She glanced at him and saw a storm of emotions she didn’t understand in his expression. “He was so young—not much older than me.” She drew in a long, disbelieving breath.

  “I know.” His face showed genuine concern. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes . . . fine . . .” But it was a lie.

  “You’re sure?” Obviously he wasn’t convinced.

  “No. I mean, yes.” She blinked rapidly, refusing to break down altogether. Inside, she was numb. Shaking. Grieving painfully. But she couldn’t let Luke Gates or anyone else know how devastated she felt. This was too deep. Too personal. Dabbing at an escaping tear with the tip of her finger, she stared out the window. “I, uh, knew Dave. . . . He was in the
twins’—my half-brothers’—class in high school and he hung around the house sometimes. I liked him and I didn’t know that ... that he’d . . .” She swallowed hard, then let out a sigh that started somewhere deep in her heart. “You shocked me, I guess,” she admitted, trying desperately to recover a bit when her entire world seemed shaken, rocked to its very core. Forcing an empty, faltering smile, she asked, “What . . . what happened?” Then, as she looked through the windshield, she said, “Oh, no.”

  Focusing for the first time on her son’s soccer team, a ragtag group of kids in shorts and T-shirts who were coming off the dusty field, she saw trouble. The boys’ faces were red, perspiration darkened their hair and grass stains smeared their jerseys. Part of the team was still kicking a ball around, a few others were gathering up their bags and water bottles, but what held her attention was the group huddled around the coach who was helping a sweaty kid who bit his lip as he limped toward the parking lot.

  Josh.

  Her already-battered heart sank even further.

  Luke reached for the door, but Katie was ahead of him, out of the pickup like a shot. “Josh?” she called, waving her arms madly. “Over here!” His face was so red she could barely make out his freckles and every time he started to put some weight on his right foot, he winced, then bit his lower lip. He had one arm slung around his coach’s shoulder and he hobbled slowly. Though tears swam in his eyes, his chin was jutted in determination as he made an effort not to cry.

  “What happened?” Katie asked when she reached him. Luke had gotten out of the truck and was leaning on a fender.

  “Little accident,” the coach explained. “Josh and Tom were fighting for the ball and Tom tackled him. Josh went down and twisted his ankle.”