by Lisa Jackson
Laughing without a speck of mirth, Jenner climbed into his truck. “Oh, yeah? Just watch him.”
For the first time in her life, Skye felt like a hypocrite. After making love with Max, she’d intended to tell him that she couldn’t marry him, that she could never give him the children he and the rest of his family wanted. She was also going to let him know that she would never give up her career. She couldn’t see herself in Virginia McKee’s role, that of a housewife whose sole purpose was to stand beside her husband, be he right or wrong, never doubting him, always smiling, content to raise his children and maintain his house and, if push came to shove, blindly defending him against the world and keeping her mouth shut when she knew he was wrong.
She thought of Max and her insides warmed. He was strong and handsome and he loved her. So everything should be perfect.
As she drove home, she decided she had no choice but to tell him the truth and let the chips fall where they may. He needed to know how she felt about her career and the painful fact that she could never bear him a child. Oh, there was a chance, she supposed, but a slim one. She’d seen several doctors about her irregular menstrual cycle, and after giving each of them her history of pelvic inflammatory disease, it was generally concluded that she would have trouble conceiving. Then, even if she did, there would likely be problems in carrying the baby to term.
Maybe Max wouldn’t care.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said aloud. “You saw how his eyes shone when he talked about children.” She wouldn’t deny him the right to be a father. She loved him too much.
She had trouble sleeping that night and was on pins and needles the next day at work. Max wasn’t around. He and his father and some business partners had flown to Spokane, Washington, to discuss some real estate deal. He might be gone for several days and that thought was depressing.
Her in-basket was overflowing, and by the time five o’clock rolled around, she was barely half finished. She drove home and helped her mother and Dani with dinner. Dani had spent half the day at the McKee ranch, working with Casey’s stubborn colt.
“Heard you caused quite a scene last night,” Dani said as she fried strips of bacon for sandwiches. Irene was in the living room trying to watch the news, and the two sisters were alone.
“A scene?” Skye said, her insides tying into tense knots. “Mmm. Casey was in her room when all hell broke loose between Max and his old man.” She swallowed hard. “Seems Max wants to marry you.” Dani’s eyes lifted to meet Skye’s. The bacon sizzled, unattended, in the cast-iron skillet.
No reason to lie. “We’ve talked about it.”
“And...” Dani prodded, her expression unreadable.
“And I left it up in the air.”
“Why? Either you want to marry him or you don’t,” she said.
“Without any advice from you?”
“You know how I feel about the McKees. They’re as thick as thieves. All of ’em.”
“Seems you’re there enough.”
Grease spattered from the frying pan and Dani forked the bacon, flipping the strips over. “Look, I don’t really like Casey. She’s a spoiled brat, but—” she shrugged a shoulder “—she’s not as bad as I thought she was.”
“Maybe Max isn’t, either.”
“He’s just like his father,” Dani said, looking suddenly wise beyond her years.
Irene’s voice rose above the chatter of the television. “What’re you girls talking about?”
“Nothing, Mom,” Skye said, sending Dani a pleading look as their mother shuffled her way into the kitchen. Irene was able to be on her feet for a few hours these days, but allowed her daughters to baby her by making dinner and cleaning the kitchen.
“Hey, watch that skillet,” Irene said sharply to Dani. “Crispy is one thing. Burned black is another.”
“Don’t worry,” Dani said as she started pronging the bacon out of the pan and dropping the greasy strips onto paper towels spread over a large, chipped plate.
“What’s this about you and Max?” Irene stared at her elder daughter, and Skye suddenly wished she could just drop through the floor.
Though she knew she was begging for trouble, she couldn’t lie.
“He asked me to marry him.”
“Did he?” Irene’s eyes suddenly glistened and she hugged Skye fiercely. “How wonderful!”
“I don’t know if I can, Mom.”
“Why not?” Irene asked, holding Skye at arm’s length and staring at her as if she were crazy. “He’s a wonderful man. Educated. Handsome. Sexy.”
“Wealthy,” Dani said with more than a touch of sarcasm.
“Well, yes, that never hurts,” Irene said, still blinking from her sudden onslaught of tears.
“And he can be bought,” Dani said.
“Hush! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Don’t do it, Skye. Max would only make you miserable.” Dani picked up the skillet, burned her hand and let the pan drop back onto the stove. “Damn it!”
“I don’t know what you’ve got against Max, but you’re wrong. He’s decent and fair—”
“Check with Vickie Donner or Steve Jansen.” Dani turned on the faucet and stuck her burned fingers under the cold stream of water. “Vickie’s husband and Steve’s father were both swindled by Jonah McKee, and guess who drew up the legal papers? Good old Max. He’s probably up in Spokane right now screwing someone over.”
Irene caught her younger daughter’s arm and squeezed with all the strength she could muster. “I won’t have you talking like this, Dani!”
“I’m just tellin’ it like it is.”
“You won’t bad-mouth the McKees! Not in this house.”
“What if I do?” Dani asked, her eyes narrowing to small slits.
“Wait a minute.” Skye tried to intervene as she dug out ice cubes from a tray and dropped them into a plastic bag. “Here, use this.” She hoped the subject of the McKees would be forgotten, but Irene wasn’t about to give up.
“I won’t have all this rough talk in my house, you hear me? While you’re living in this house—”
“Fine! Then I’ll leave!” Dani jerked her arm away from her mother’s grip. Her hand smashed into Skye’s, sending the plastic bag flying across the room. Ice cubes skittered across the cracked linoleum of the kitchen floor. Dani, red-blond hair flying behind her like a banner, stomped to the little bedroom she shared with Skye. The door slammed with a thud that shook the house to its foundation.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Irene cried. “I don’t know what will become of her!” Running a trembling hand through her permed hair, she sighed loudly. “I can’t control her. Never have been able to. Oh, Lordy...”
“She’ll cool off.” Skye was already hurrying down the short hallway. She threw open the door and found Dani bending over the dresser as she ripped clothes from the drawers and flung them into the suitcase lying open on the bed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“Dani, come on—” She tried to reach for her sister’s arm, but Dani shoved her hand away and sent her a look of pure hatred.
“Don’t, Skye, okay? This is something that’s been coming for a long time!”
“You just can’t walk out.”
“Sure I can.” She threw jeans, underwear, socks and sweatshirts into the suitcase, swept the bureau top clean of her earrings and makeup and tossed the whole lot into a zippered pouch, which she pitched into the open case.
“Dani, calm down. For God’s sake—”
Dani snapped the case shut with a resolute click. “Leave it alone, Skye. You have no idea what I’m going through.”
“Mom’s still not on her feet.”
“You take care of her.”
“This will kill her.”
Dani’s smile was cold. “I don’t think so.” She threw her jean jacket over her shoulder, grabbed the bag from the bed and stormed out the door, nearly plowing into her mother. “S
he’s only got another week, anyway, then she’ll be back at work. Doc Fletcher told her so today. Not that I really give a damn.”
“You’re not leaving,” Irene said, her spine stiff, though her lips quivered slightly.
“Sure I am.”
“You can’t—”
“I’m twenty-one, Mom. Last I heard I was considered an adult at eighteen. You can’t stop me.”
“But—oh, God, Dani,” Irene whispered as if she finally understood that her daughter was truly leaving. “Where—where will you go?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“And how?”
“I’ll hitch.”
“You can’t! Danielle, don’t be stupid. It’s dangerous. You can’t accept a ride with just any—”
“I can handle myself,” Dani said and shoved her way past her mother to the front porch. “I always have.” Her footsteps thundered down the steps.
“Don’t let her do this,” Irene begged weakly, clutching Skye’s arm.
“I won’t. Dani—” Skye ran after her sister, but Dani was already halfway down the block. “I’ll be back later, Mom,” she said, racing outside and leaving her mother sitting in the living room, her head cradled in her hands.
Skye ran to the Mustang and jumped into the familiar interior. The old engine coughed, then caught, and she let out the clutch and took off. Dust and gravel spun from beneath the tires.
She caught up with Dani at the first stoplight.
Leaning against a lamppost, smoking a cigarette, her thumb sticking up in the air, Dani in faded blue jeans looked like a cross between a hooker and a rodeo queen. Skye ignored the green light and leaned over, pushing open the passenger door. “Get in.”
“No way.”
“For God’s sake—”
A horn blasted behind Skye, and a man in a red sedan shouted, “Hey, lady, it’s not gonna get any greener!”
Skye ignored the taunt and the red car zoomed past her, leaving a cloud of blue exhaust fumes.
“Dani, please—”
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud.” Dani ground the butt of her cigarette under the toe of her boot. “Okay, I’ll get in, but I’m not going back home. Not tonight.”
“You sure?”
“Unless you promise to take me down to the Lucky Star, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay, fair enough,” Skye agreed. The Lucky Star was a dive of a motel located on Lee Street, but the units were clean and cheap. Dani would be safe for the night. Maybe by morning, she’d cool off, but the glower on her face didn’t give Skye much hope.
Dani, muttering something under her breath, tossed her suitcase onto the back seat and slid into the front as another car, horn blaring loudly, squealed past. “I don’t even know how we got into this fight.”
“It was about Max.”
“Oh, right.” Dani fidgeted with the door handle, then said, “Do me and yourself a favor. Before you do anything as stupid as marrying Max, check out some of those deals his old man cooked up.” She tossed her hair out of her face and slid low in the seat. “Maybe Max is clean. Maybe he found a way to keep from sticking his hands into his father’s dirty business, but I’d bet against it.”
Skye guided the Mustang through the narrow streets of Rimrock as Dani stared sightlessly out the window.
“Why do you hate Max so much?”
“Not Max. Jonah.” She spat out his name as if it tasted foul. Hazarding a glance at her sister, she added, “I can’t help it. I feel that he took away the only thing that ever mattered to me.” Her mouth pinched hard at the corners. “He’d stomp on his own mother if it would make him a few more dollars. Believe me, Jonah’s sold his soul to the devil—time and time again.” They pulled into the parking lot of the Lucky Star and Dani’s face drained of color. Her bravado seemed to fade. “You know,” she said nervously, her fingers fumbling with the strap of her purse, “Jonah cheats on his wife.”
“That’s just gossip,” Skye said quickly. “He’s been married for years.”
“And he’s had one fling after another.” Dani’s face appeared gaunt in the harsh lights of the parking lot.
“Look, I don’t like the man, but I don’t believe every rumor I hear about him.”
Dani studied her hands, and for a moment, Skye thought her hard-as-nails sister might break down and cry. “I think Max is a lot like his old man.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Then prove me wrong.” All the defiance had left her features and she simply looked tired. “You know, I hope you’re right about Max. Because you love him too much. You’ve got him up on a pedestal and no man can handle that. He’s human. And he does have faults. You’re just afraid to look long enough to see them.” She grabbed her suitcase and climbed out of the car. Kicking the door shut, she never looked back as she walked into the office of the motel.
Emotionally drained, Skye sighed. Her shoulders sagged and she leaned heavily on the wheel. Was it true? Was she seeing Max as she wanted to see him and not as the man he really was? She let the Mustang idle and watched the small motel office through the glass. A black cat was wandering over the counter, and the manager, a short man with strings of red-brown hair combed carefully over his thinning crown, appeared through a doorway when Dani slapped a bell. Displaying crooked teeth, he smiled at her as she registered. Then, with a wink, he handed her a key and pointed to an upper unit facing the street.
Skye waited until Dani had climbed the stairs and disappeared into unit 19 before she slammed the little car into gear and pulled out of the lot.
Dani was wrong. She had to be. Max was good. Fair. Loving. And it didn’t matter, anyway, because Skye couldn’t marry him. But not because of any fault in him. Only because she was determined to have a career of her own, to carve out a niche for herself, and to accept the fact that she would never bear a child. Someday, after she’d graduated and established a practice of her own, she would marry. She and her husband would adopt children, or maybe he would have a son or daughter from a previous marriage. It didn’t matter. She’d love those babies as if she’d carried them in her body. And she’d love the man... even if he wasn’t Max.
Her heart caught at that thought and she drove without seeing the streets or paying attention to the traffic. Her motions were automatic, her mind wandering restlessly over disturbing territory. Her future. A future without Max McKee.
She felt the tears drip from her chin before she realized that she’d been crying. “Fool,” she muttered, swiping at her eyes. She needed to get home, but Dani’s words kept pounding in her brain, and she drove away from Irene Donahue’s little cottage and farther into town. Her throat tight, she pulled into the city parking lot one block away from McKee Enterprises. She didn’t even know what she was hoping to find out, didn’t even have a plan. She parked in the lot as she did every day from habit, she told herself, not because she didn’t want her car seen in the vacant company lot, not because she was going on a search for something incriminating against the man she loved.
Heart in her throat, she walked quickly along the darkened sidewalk to the back door of the building. With shaking fingers, she dug through her purse and found her mother’s set of keys and unlocked the door, careful to bolt it again behind her. Jonah’s office was on the second floor.
The building looked creepy at night. Cast in shadows, with only a few security lights glowing in a blue fluorescent haze, the rooms were a far cry from the bustling, noisy offices she was used to. As she took the back stairs to the suite of offices where she worked, she could hear herself breathe. No computers hummed, the air-conditioning wasn’t rattling, no phones jangled, no coworkers laughed or talked, and no piped-in music played instrumental renditions of old rock-and-roll songs. The rooms were as silent as the grave.
Heart thudding, she switched on one bank of lights on the second floor and started going through the files. Starting with the Donner water-rights contract, she scanned all the documents, signed by Fred Donner, Ralph Fle
tcher, Jonah P. McKee and Judge Ted Rayburn. The agreement was straightforward. Donner would be compensated for his loss of water. Nothing wrong with that.
Skye worried her lip between her teeth. The last few years had been extremely dry, a drought of unheard-of proportions, and the money offered Donner couldn’t possibly compensate for the loss of a means to irrigate. He was allowed some water, true, and she really didn’t understand how much or how little that was. Enough for the house? The cattle? Did he have a well?
Her throat turned to sand as she picked through the documents and saw an old loan ledger for a note between Donner and McKee Enterprises for ten thousand dollars. Checking the schedule of payments, it was obvious Fred hadn’t been able to pay back his loan and had defaulted. However, the note had been forgiven, marked paid in full upon the signing of the water-rights document. So Fred, probably desperate for cash, had made the mistake of borrowing money from Jonah McKee, and when he couldn’t make the payments, Jonah had accepted compensation in the form of water rights.
Skye felt sick.
She told herself the agreement had been drawn up and signed while Max was still in college. The new agreement was just an extension of the old one. If Max was involved, surely he wouldn’t have suspected that his father had resorted to some sort of legal extortion.
She shoved the file back in the drawer and found another, heavier sheaf of papers for the Jansen copper mine. Sitting at her desk, she perused all the legalese, studied Ned Jansen’s financial statements and decided he, too, had been in desperate economic straits. His house and ranch were mortgaged to the hilt, he was paying two wives child support, and the copper mine needed new equipment. His geological surveys demonstrated that the land was valuable, while Jonah’s had found the land worthless for mining. Either way, Jansen couldn’t make the old mine profitable. He’d sold the land and mineral rights to Jonah for enough money to pay off the IRS, his ex-wives and the back taxes on his ranch. Nothing illegal. Not really. It was all just slightly unethical—like a vulture circling a wounded sheep, waiting for it to die.
Her stomach was queasy as she read the final page of the contract. She was about to stuff it into the file, but froze. “Oh, God,” she whispered, staring at the very bottom of the document. It was signed by none other than Maxwell McKee.
