Bracing for the confrontation with Michaela, he shifted the rental Mercedes back into drive and turned down the gravel lane.
This morning he’d landed at the airport, then dropped his things off at the hotel in Brownwood; however, as he’d paced his room, the walls started closing in on him. He had to see Michaela and hoped she would hear him out before she jumped to conclusions that weren’t true.
Gabe knocked on the screen door and peered into the cottage. No doubt his antics from two nights ago would be a hot topic on the gossip show blaring from the living room TV.
He’d missed his flight yesterday morning. After spending hours talking to the hotel manager, he finally convinced the guy not to press charges for the damages done to the suite by writing him a whopping check to cover the cost of fixing the room and another for the manger to add to his bank account.
Then he’d spent the afternoon begging Gary not to dump him and the band. Gary Russell had taken a chance on Gabe when he’d signed him, but his conditions were straightforward and strict--no hotel trashing. Gary didn’t care about the women Gabe paraded in and out of his bedroom as long as he didn’t do something stupid--like getting caught kissing a stripper. Again.
Although Gabe was furious over the damage done and at his band for arranging the party Saturday night, he was more concerned about how the tabloid media would spin Lydia Greenhow’s lip lock on him. Gary had seen a picture someone had taken of the kiss on the Internet, and soon after that the connection was made to a photo taken of him with the same Vegas stripper fifteen months ago.
Reese was more than ten kinds of mad at Gabe. But, then, he was as disappointed in himself. None of this was going to help his custody battle with Lemont.
He rapped on the rickety old door again. This time Loretta heard him and called out a slurred, “C’mon in.”
Gabe opened the door and entered the darkened living room just as the picture of the stripper kissing him flashed on the TV.
Loretta hit a button on the remote, mercifully muting the report about his rock star antics. She didn’t turn to look at him when she said, “Looks like you had quite a Saturday night.”
He removed his hat and glanced at it before hanging it on a peg by the door beside a few other old hats. “You could say that.”
“Was that before or after you called and upset Micki?”
“After. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to anger her. But she drives me crazy.” He moved into the living room and sat on the couch. The brown corduroy was worn smooth on the arms and fronts of the cushions, but it was clean. His mother had made the mauve and sage-green crocheted afghan folded in the corner of the sofa. He took a deep breath and brushed his fingers over the soft wool before leaning over his legs and clasping his hands together, unable to meet the older woman’s eyes. The need to tell her about his purchase of the ranch caused his heart to pound. But first he needed to speak to Michaela.
Loretta let out a strangled chuckle. “She always did.”
He chose to let that particular bit of truth slip by without commenting. “How’re things going around here?”
“As good as can be expected all things considered. We miss Jesse.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“No. Have you?”
He nodded, remembering the brief call from a week ago. “Yeah. But Lemont caught him and forced him to hang up.”
She hissed and shook her head. “The jerk.”
Not wanting to trouble her further, he peered around the small room, hoping to think of something else to talk about. Knickknacks crowded the top of the TV cabinet. On the shelves between the windows were the buckles and trophies Michaela--and before her, Loretta--had won as barrel racers. Empty cardboard boxes sat in the corner, and his heart sank. “You’re moving?”
Loretta looked down at her crooked fingers splayed out over her faded housedress. She curled them into loose fists and nodded. “I don’t know. Micki’s trying to find a place in town.”
“Why would she do that?” Damn, now what did he say? He needed to find Michaela. Standing, he went to the front window and looked out over the driveway toward the barn. A cloudy haze muted the late morning sun.
Michaela was coming out of the second turn around a barrel she had set up in the corral. She headed for the third and leaned sharply in the saddle as the horse took the turn at a full gallop, horse and rider working together as one beautiful, connected being.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Michaela’s training?”
Loretta whirled her wheelchair over to sit beside him. He dropped the lace curtain and met her troubled blue eyes.
“She says she rides to keep her horse in shape, in case she decides to sell him. I know she’d never part with Beau. I think she’s got it in her head to go back out on the circuit. She wants to use any of the winnings she might get to pay for some fancy surgery the doc thinks will stop the pain in my face.” She averted her eyes to her knobby hands. “I wish she’d not worry so much about me. She should’ve never quit racing to begin with. I could’ve gone to a nursing home, then she wouldn’t have to be burdened with me.”
“Michaela loves you, Loretta. She would never consider you a burden.” Gabe was no shrink, but he recognized depression when he saw it. But, then, if he’d lived the life Loretta had before the onset of her MS, he’d be disgruntled, too. She’d been a champion barrel racer in her younger days and as much a cowgirl as her daughter. Now, she couldn’t walk and lived in constant pain.
When he and Michaela had dated, he’d become close to her mother and wished he could do something now to make things better for her. He forced a smile and gently touched her shoulder. “She only wants what’s best for you.”
“She’s too stubborn for her own good sometimes.”
He snorted and watched as Michaela put the horse through another cloverleaf pattern. “She is definitely that.” Resting a hand on Loretta’s frail shoulder, he said, “I have a plan. Can you trust me?”
Loretta stared out the window through the lace curtain, then shook her head as if physically shaking off a thought. She looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “I don’t know. Are you gonna tell me why you are all geared up to take Jesse from Micki? You know damn well Sam and Frankie would’ve wanted you to share him.”
“I don’t want to take Jesse from her or you.” He looked back out the window. In the corral, Micki led her horse toward the barn. “I need to talk to Michaela.” Leaning down, he kissed the older woman on the cheek, then headed out to the barn.
* * * *
No one else but Gabe would be parked out front of her home in some fancy luxury car. Was he here to gloat over his desire to adopt Jesse?
The echo of footsteps filled the breezeway of the barn, and Micki sucked in a breath. The image of him and that stripper she’d seen on the computer last night flashed before her closed eyes. Why did it bother her so much? She didn’t care what Gabriel McKenna did. Nor should she have expected more from him.
Gabe stopped on the other side of her horse, but she didn’t look at him. She continued stroking Beau’s neck with a currycomb as he slurped water. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He stroked the other side of Beau’s neck. “I’m here because we need to talk about the ranch. Loretta said the owner offered you a management position.”
“They did and I’m thinking I’ll tell them to go to hell.”
With a sharp look, he said, “I wish you’d take the job. There’s something about this whole thing you don’t know.”
She tossed the comb onto a shelf. “What isn’t there to know? One of those sleazy out-of-state agglomerates wants to destroy the ranch I love, and the man I should have known better than to trust is stabbing me in the back.”
Gabe stiffened his stance and glared at her. “Damn it, Michaela, I’m not trying to take Jesse away from you. I want to keep him out of Lemont’s hands. I still want you to have guardianship of him.”
> She stepped away from the horse. “I thought only you were good enough to raise him.”
“I never said that.” He stepped away from Beau and put his hands in his jeans pockets. “We’re in this together. All my lawyer thinks is that it would be easier for us if I petition the court for adoption than for us to try to adopt him together.”
“That doesn’t explain your appearance here at the ranch.”
He shifted his feet, his hat hiding his face. “I consider the Lazy M my home as you do, Michaela. I...” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and met her gaze.
Before he had a chance to tell her more pretty words that were nothing but lies, she said, “We aren’t friends. If your father and my sister hadn’t died, we wouldn’t even be talking to each other. Now you want to take Jesse away from me.”
Micki spun away from Gabe. Beau shifted his feet, bumping into her, probably sensing her frustration. The last person she wanted to talk to was Gabe.
She led the horse into his stall. Micki hoped Gabe would have gotten the hint and left. Her luck wasn’t that good. He leaned against a door of the stall next to Beau’s.
Micki dragged her gaze up his body. Over his polished snakeskin boots, his long, muscular legs encased in faded denim, the T-shirt that covered a flat belly she knew was washboard solid. She’d seen enough pictures of his bare torso on the Internet to know--as if her memory didn’t already provide enough X-rated images on its own. With his arms crossed over his broad chest, his biceps bulged. A tattoo of his mother’s first name, scripted over a breast cancer ribbon and surrounded by an intricate border, peeked out from under the edge of the black cotton of his sleeve.
She wasn’t prepared for the burst of heat shooting through her as fast as a brushfire in dry grass at high noon. The flash melted her insides into a wet, achy pool in her low belly.
Not wanting him to know how he affected her, at least not in that way, she turned toward the wall. She grabbed a rake and opened the stall door farthest away from him. As she busied herself with cleaning out the empty stall, she said, “You know, I’m glad you’re such a jerk.”
“Michaela, I have a plan that--”
“You honestly think a conservative judge like Anderson will let you have Jesse?” she cut in, glancing up to find him standing by the door of the stall she was working in. With more force than required, she raked the manure and straw on the floor. Pausing, she fixed him with a glare and let him have the full weight of her frustration and anger. “You’re fucking delusional! You showed the world, and more importantly Judge Anderson, what kind of life Jesse would be exposed to if you were to adopt him.” She stopped and smiled. “Makes my small town life not so damn bad. Tom Fleming thinks I have a pretty good chance of beating you at your own game.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She came out of the stall and closed the door as if she had all the time in the world, which she didn’t. The animals needed to be taken care of; then she had to make an appointment for the neurologist in Brownwood for her mother. Later that afternoon, she had a job interview at The Lasso Café and Bakery. The job had opened up, and she couldn’t let it pass her up. Work in Bluebonnet Creek was hard to find, and she hadn’t decided whether she would stay at the ranch or not.
But she’d be damned if she’d let him know any of it. When she faced him, she leaned on the rake. “Everyone in the county knows Anderson almost always sides with women in custody battles.” She paused and forced a confident grin she didn’t feel. “Besides, Anderson is no friend of Lemont’s, so that’s in my favor, too. Jesse will be better off with me. He’ll live here in his hometown, and I’ll be the one raising him. That’s more important than what you can offer: a revolving door of nannies, starlet flings, and groupie hookups.”
His jaw ticked as he clenched his teeth and his dark eyes flashed golden-brown fire. He stood with his feet apart, his arms tense at his sides. “As always, you blew this whole damned thing out of proportion. My only concern is my baby brother.”
Micki had waited too long to have it out with him to stop now. She set the rake against the wall and crossed her arms. “Oh, you might want Jesse now, just like you wanted to get married. But the moment something you want more comes up, you’ll leave Jesse flapping in the breeze.”
The muscle in his jaw quivered again, and he took a step toward her. “This isn’t about Jesse at all. This is about you breaking up with me.”
“You’re the one who left with that woman and never came home.”
The fire of a moment ago turned as cold as burnished bronze in his eyes, and his hands fisted at his sides. “You broke our engagement when you handed back my ring and told me I had no damned business coming back.”
“I wasn’t myself then! I’d just lost our baby. I saw the way Andrea touched you and you ate it all up at the bar that night she saw you sing.” She shook her head, hating that she bared so much of her pain to him, but she couldn’t stop. “If you loved me, you would’ve come back regardless of what I said. You sure has hell wouldn’t have fallen into bed with Andrea Rose! Or was that the only way you could get the recording contract?”
His nostrils flared and his shoulders moved as he sucked in a breath. “At least Andrea believed in my dreams. If you’d loved me, you would’ve, too.” His hard, low voice raked over her and abraded the raw places in her heart. “Yes, you had lost our baby. A baby I didn’t even know about until I found you bleeding in the bathroom, so don’t even go there.”
“I planned to tell you on our wedding night.” The burn in her eyes was almost too much. But she wouldn’t cry in front of him. “I wanted it to be a gift. I know it was stupid not to tell you I was pregnant, but…” She swallowed the lump and shut up before she started bawling. Pain from the memories of the night she lost the baby, less than two weeks before their wedding date, stabbed at her heart. She’d discovered she was pregnant only a week before she miscarried, but she’d loved the tiny child they’d created.
“None of this changes the fact that you--the most important person in my life then--didn’t believe in me.” He sniffed and his hard jaw ticked again. “I never once said anything about your damned rodeo obsession, but you hated my singing. Why, Michaela?”
His singing had nothing to do with it and she had believed in him, but she wasn’t about to reveal that much of her soul. She pulled herself up to her full five feet four and fought the crumbling of her defenses. Refusing to show any more emotion to him, she opened another stall door. “I have things to do. Goodbye, Gabriel.”
“See you in court, sweetheart.” He turned and strolled toward the door.
As she watched him leave the barn and speed away in the flashy car, she lost the battle with her pride and a tear rolled down her cheek. She was a damned fool for letting him get under her skin again.
Chapter 7
“After deliberating the case, I’ve determined neither Miss Michaela Finn nor Mr. Gabriel McKenna are suitable caregivers for the ward of this court, Jesse McKenna. The child will remain in the temporary custody of his maternal grandfather, Lemont Finn, until formal adoption proceedings on January sixth, at which time this court will reconsider the case.”
Gabe jerked as if punched in the gut when the meaning of the judge’s words sunk in. He looked at Reese, who sat beside him. The other man looked as perplexed as Gabe. Reese Goodwin wasn’t used to losing.
The past few weeks had been a roller coaster of concert dates, recording the live album, and attending appointments arranged by Judge Anderson. A few meetings had been with Allison Fennel, who supervised Gabe’s visits with Jesse in Lemont’s home. Jesse clearly wasn’t happy, but he hadn’t said so to Gabe in Fennel’s presence. After the second meeting with the social worker and Jesse, Gabe became more determined that Fennel was on Lemont’s payroll and Jesse was scared to death of his grandfather.
As the judge shuffled papers on his desk, Reese stood. “Your Honor, may I ask for an explanatio
n as to why my client is considered unsuitable? You have reports from Ms. Fennel and from my office to substantiate the special relationship Mr. McKenna has with the child.”
Reese had figured Bentley Anderson’s conservatism would give Michaela an advantage; however, after the case started, Lemont’s million-dollar female lawyer made sure Micki didn’t have a chance at winning on her own. And both Tom Fleming, who represented Michaela, and Reese, representing Gabe, blasted Lemont’s custody of Jesse.
Gabe swallowed and looked at the woman beside him at the table. She held her head high as she stared straight ahead. He hated that Lemont dragged her through the dirt. Although he hoped to adopt Jesse, Gabe knew Micki loved the boy as much as he did.
She turned, her gaze cutting through him. Her long blond hair, which she normally pulled back into a ponytail, was styled into a demure bun at the back of her head. He wished he could take the pins out and run his hands through all the softness. The same black dress she’d worn to the funeral stretched over her subtle curves. The sight never failed to make his mouth go dry.
Lemont’s lawyer glanced across Michaela’s table to glare at Gabe. Amy Johnson, Esquire, had worked hard to make both Gabe and Michaela look as bad as yesterday’s news.
The judge’s words brought his attention back to the matter at hand. “I am concerned with Mr. McKenna’s behavior. Only last month he was caught in a provocative photograph with a woman of questionable morals. I cannot take the chance of allowing him to care for the child, no matter how strong their relationship appears to be.”
Tom Fleming stood and cleared his throat. “Your Honor, I’m unclear as to why my client wasn’t given custody. Despite Mr. Finn’s claims, Miss Finn has a steady income and can provide a home for the child.”
Anderson’s shoulders shifted as he took a deep breath before leaning over his beefy arms on the large oak desk, which served as the judgment bench. “I beg to differ, Mr. Fleming. Miss Finn has her plate full with taking care of a disabled mother, as Miss Johnson pointed out,” he said, referring to Lemont’s lawyer.
Heartsong (Singing to the Heart Book 2) Page 7
