Rancher's Deadly Reunion

by Beth Cornelison

  “So...you want a part in deciding Connor’s future?” The irony in his tone chafed, but she saw where he was going.

  “Are you really going to punish me for what I did when I was eighteen?” She didn’t bother to hide her hurt. The grip of emotions on her voice forced her to stand in strained silence with him for several moments, while she regained her composure and wiped the trickle of tears from her face.

  His lack of denial spoke for itself. Her hands fisted. “Brady, I said I was sorry. I made a bad decision at a time when I was young and scared and confused and feeling that I’d failed my family and—”

  She paused from her defense of her actions, even though she knew her decision had been indefensible, as a new realization hit her. “Wait...you got that letter from Scott’s lockbox at the bank when they died...in January?”

  He shrugged. With an exasperated sigh, he walked back to the bench. “Yeah.”

  “So you’ve known Connor was our son for, what, nine...ten months, and you’re only telling me now?”

  He looked at her as if she’d slapped him, then laughed bitterly. “Says the woman who hadn’t let me know for seven years about our baby. You’re something else, Piper. Throwing that in my face, when I still wouldn’t know the truth about our son if not for my brother dying! Could you be more of a hypocrite?”

  She raised a hand as she sprang up from the bench. “Fine. Fine. You win that point.”

  He grumbled a curse word. “It’s not about winning points. Connor is what is important.”

  She bobbed a nod. “Agreed. Absolutely. But seeing as I’m just learning all this... I’m still processing...”

  “By all means, process.” He waved a hand of invitation. “This is important, and I have all the time you need to discuss it.”

  She took a moment to catch her breath and let her reeling mind find traction. “I...don’t even know where to start. Connor is...our son.”

  She thought of the giggling boy who’d regaled her with kid jokes, loved his dog and brought her wildflowers. The boy with a curious mind, with Brady’s eyes and a bright, heart-stopping smile. Her son. Their son.

  Her pulse thundered as she grappled with the magnitude of the revelation. She stared out across the waving grass of the hillside, watched the tumble of leaves tossed by the breeze and soaked in the golden rays of midday sun as they filtered through the branches of the cottonwood tree. The simple autumn beauty, the peaceful setting should have calmed her. But learning the truth about Connor on top of the realities of the family’s finances and the offer from her brothers to be a part of something big, something that could help save the family’s ranch...

  Her mind reeled in so many directions, she didn’t know where to begin sorting it all out. She lifted her eyes to Brady, remembering how rock-solid he’d been in the past, how much she’d counted on his confidence and pragmatism when teen angst and life issues had rattled her in high school.

  “What do I do?” she asked him, because turning to him for advice felt as natural as breathing. She sat back down on the bench next to Brady and pressed her fingers to her mouth. “What am I supposed to do with this? If you don’t want my input on Connor’s future, then why did your tell me about him?”

  Brady angled an are-you-kidding look at her. His cool reception of her entreaty stung. The rancor in his expression spoke for how their relationship had changed. And she had only herself to blame.

  “Because you deserved to know. You didn’t give me that option, but I can’t keep a truth as important as our son from you.”

  With a slow breath and hard swallow to force down the bile and regret that burned her throat, she determinedly trained her thoughts on the issues at hand.

  “Does Connor know the truth?” she asked, then as more and more questions popped into her brain she lobbed them without waiting for him to respond to any of them. “Does your father know the truth? My family? Is that why they asked me to move back here? How do you think Connor will react? Maybe it’s better we don’t tell him. What’s his state of mind since Scott and Pam’s deaths? Are we supposed to share custody now, or are you—”

  “Whoa! Jeez, slow down!” He shifted to face her, raising a hand in a Stop! gesture before pinching the bridge of his nose. “We don’t have anything to decide about custody.”

  She jerked her head back in surprise and scrunched her face. “Excuse me?”

  His eyebrows lifted, and he turned up his palm as he said flatly, “Scott and Pam legally adopted Connor. In their will, they legally gave full custody to me.”

  She blinked and made a choking sound in her throat. “I—”

  “You signed away any claim to him when you put him up for adoption. Remember?”

  She shot up from the bench, her hands fisting. “Are you kidding me? That was... But everything’s changed! You can’t mean—”

  He shook his head and rose to his feet as well, squaring off with her. “I do mean it. Nothing has changed. Did you really think those adoption papers meant you gave up custody only until you changed your mind or your circumstances made it more convenient to be a parent?”

  She clamped her lips in a tight scowl. “Of course not. But who could have foreseen—”

  “No.”

  “Brady!”

  “I don’t want to fight you on this, Piper.” He aimed a finger at her, his expression flinty. “But I will if you push me.”

  She took a calming breath and continued in a quieter tone. “I don’t want to fight you, either. I...haven’t even had time to think about custody. I’ve only known about this for five minutes, but...” She blew out a puff of breath as she narrowed a frustrated glare on him. “I hate that you’re being a mule about it from the get-go.” She combed her fingers through her wind-ruffled hair, pulling strands from her mouth and eyes. “Yes, I signed papers when I was barely eighteen, not ever imagining the twists my life would take.”

  He jerked a nod as if to say, Case closed.

  “But if I move back here to take on the job my brothers offered—” she persisted, and his eyes grew wary “—I’ll see Connor every day. Don’t you think I’ll want a relationship with him?”

  “You can have a relationship with him.” His timbre warmed now, softening the hard edge he’d used earlier. “I encourage you to have one. Connor is a great kid, and I have no intention of standing in the way of you getting to know him.” He stopped there, holding her gaze with his own, but her guilty conscience heard the unspoken Like you did to me.

  She pressed a hand to her belly where the assault of winged creatures continued.

  “But...” he added, his eyes narrowing slightly to emphasize his determination “...I won’t let you break his heart. He’s already lost one mother. He needs someone he can depend on. Your track record says that person is not you. And I won’t let you take him from me. You’ll never move him to Boston or force him to choose between the two of us. He’s had enough disruption and upheaval in his life.”

  Even though an hour earlier, Piper could never have imagined taking Connor back with her to Boston, the rebellious streak in her chafed at being told so pointedly You’ll never... The stubborn sister who’d been told by her brothers you can’t simply because she was a girl bristled at the absolute. For years, she’d lived to defy expectations. She’d moved to Boston in part to escape the limitations and assumptions placed on her simply because she was the sister in the McCall triplets.

  “I see,” she said, straightening her spine and squaring her shoulders. “You’ve decided, and that’s it? End of discussion?”

  “In this matter, yes.” His jawline was rigid, and his mouth set. The hard determination in his eyes, usually so kind and full of warmth, sent a chill to her core. As she studied his unflinching expression, she cataloged the other differences in his face. The loss of boyish softness to his facial lines. The tiny lines bracketing his eyes that spoke of stress
and too much sun. He was the same man she’d fallen in love with, and yet...different.

  “What happened to your plans, Brady? You say vet school was unrealistic, but I thought you were accepted to Colorado State. Why didn’t you go?”

  He twitched his brow, clearly startled by her change of subject. “As I recall, I said I wanted to go to college with you. Part of me wanted to get a college degree, yeah. Being a vet seemed a good fit for a kid who grew up on a ranch. But the goal was always to be with you. You were at the center of everything I wanted for my life. And then...there was my dad. I had a drunk father to take care of.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head as a fresh wave of heartache washed through her. “Oh, Brady.”

  “You asked. Just being honest.”

  When she opened her eyes, she met the fire in his green gaze. Her body reacted the way it had so many times throughout the years. The reaction was instantaneous and powerful. A surge of heat in her blood, a flood of affection from her heart and a dizzying sense of destiny from her soul.

  Though so many things swirled in a maelstrom of indecision and heartache for her, one thing was clear. Her life was now bound even tighter to Brady’s thanks to the sweet little boy they had made together.

  * * *

  Whatever they were discussing, Piper had high stakes in it, and the greater her connections with this dusty track of land and the equally dusty people, the stronger the pull away from Boston. Ken had overheard her tell Sara in marketing that she missed her family and the mountains of Colorado, but that she had no plans to return. Yet the rumor he’d caught wind of over his eggs and sausage at the tiny diner in town contradicted Piper’s plan. Some schmuck in a pin-striped suit was grumbling about Piper and her brothers forming a partnership and starting a new business. A new business would make her ties to this cow town all the stronger.

  His usual sources of information, Piper’s emails and Facebook messages, had all but dried up, since she could communicate in person with her family about these plans. Ken shifted uncomfortably on the tree branch he’d claimed as his daytime monitoring station. Camouflaged with fall foliage, the branch afforded a secure perch across a pasture from the hill with the bench but also a straight line of sight to the main house. At night, he enjoyed the cover of darkness and the more comfortable bench where Piper and the cowboy had their private confabs. But the high-powered lens of his camera alone didn’t give him nearly enough information. What was the highly wrought discussion she was having with the cowboy about? How could he get closer, learn more?

  Ken gritted his teeth and slapped the rough bark of his perch. He had to find a way to get onto the property and plant a listening device.

  Piper was only scheduled to stay a few more days before returning to Boston, but he had a horrible suspicion that her return was in jeopardy. He had to do something to convince her this ranch was no longer the place for her. But what?

  Chapter 8

  For the next twenty-four hours, her discussion with Brady replayed in Piper’s head a hundred times. Each time, she formed more questions, heard nuances that broke her heart one minute, then filled her with hope the next. Confusion and hurt reigned supreme. What in the world was she supposed to do?

  I won’t let you break his heart. He’s already lost one mother. He needs someone he can depend on. Your track record says that person is not you.

  The day of her parents’ anniversary party arrived, and she went through the motions of preparation, helping tidy the living room, orienting the caterer in the kitchen and taking a long soak in a hot bath, trying to calm her whirling mind. Late in the afternoon, Piper pulled her dress for the party out of the closet and laid it across the end of the bed. For a moment, she stared at the dress, a fitted dove-gray number with cap sleeves and an empire waist, wondering what Brady would think of it, then returned to the closet. Brady’s opinion shouldn’t matter. She wasn’t dressing to please him. The dress had been selected by her girlfriends in Boston from three she’d bought. Her friends said the fitted design showed off her figure best and the color made her eyes pop. All good qualities in a dress, but who was she trying to impress? Had she, even back in Boston, secretly been hoping to catch Brady’s eye? The notion unsettled her.

  She retrieved her shoes, medium-heeled, faux-eel pumps with sparkly embellishments on the vamp, and when she turned back to the bed, shoes in hand, she pulled up short.

  Zeke had climbed on the dress and was settling in for a nap.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” She waved a hand at the fuzzy feline, thankful for the dry cleaner’s plastic bag that protected it from Zeke’s plethora of long fur. “Get off, Zeke. Go!”

  The Maine coon only looked at her with what she could only describe as a smug grin. Pure Cheshire cat.

  “Now!” She dropped the shoes and hustled over to lift the cat—carefully, so that his claws didn’t snag the dress through the plastic. Clearly thinking her intention was to cuddle, Zeke reached for her shoulder with his front paws and began purring loudly.

  And just like that, she melted. Pulling him close to her chest, his large body draped over her shoulder like a baby, she snuggled Zeke and reveled in his soft fur. One simply didn’t grow up on a ranch and not form a deep love for animals. Standing in her childhood bedroom, holding the feline like a baby, Piper flashed again to her conversation earlier with Brady.

  Connor was her son. Had life unfolded a little differently, she might have cuddled Connor as she did Zeke right now and sung him to sleep. Now, like a lullaby, the low rumble of the cat’s purr soothed her. She buried her nose in the fluff of belly fur and choked back tears of regret. She found herself swaying as she held Zeke, as if she were comforting a baby.

  Second-guessing her decision to give Connor up for adoption served no purpose but to torture her. What mattered now was deciding how to move forward, how to heal the wounds she’d caused Brady and find a way to maintain an amicable relationship with him. For Connor’s sake.

  Amicable. She scoffed a laugh under her breath. “That kiss we shared today was a little more than amicable,” she told the cat. “More like amorous.”

  Zeke nuzzled her hand, demanding that she pat his head. With a snort of amusement, she scratched his cheek and grinned as he rotated his head so that his chin and other cheek got similar attention.

  “Piper?” her mother called from the hall.

  “In here.” She set Zeke on the floor with a final pat on his rump. “All right, beastie. Let me dress.”

  Her mother stuck her head in the door. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Zeke. He’s doing his best to impede my progress.” She dusted cat hair from her bathrobe and cast a side-glance to her mother.

  Her mother squatted, talking baby talk to Zeke as she stroked his back. “Who’s a good boy? Yes, you are.”

  “Did you need me?”

  Her mother rose and flicked fur from her fingers. “I will later. My gown will be a bugger to zip.”

  “I’d be glad to, but can’t Dad—”

  “Nope. Like on our wedding day, I don’t want him to see my dress until I join the party.” Her mother flashed a coy grin. “A little mystery helps keep the romance alive, you know.” Melissa stepped farther into the room and set a jewelry box on the dresser. “Thought I’d offer to help you with your hair. Have you considered wearing it up?”

  Piper eyed the black velvet box but didn’t mention it. “I thought down would be easier. Maybe hot rollers for some curl, but...” She shrugged.

  Zeke had moved to her wastebasket and stuck his head over the rim, examining the contents.

  “Oh, but darling, this dress...” Her mother lifted the dress from the bed and pulled the dry-cleaner plastic off it with a sigh of awe. “This dress demands you show off your lovely shoulders and neck.”

  “I have lovely shoulders and neck?”

  “You have lovely everything,
Piper. And you don’t dress up nearly enough and show yourself off.”

  “Product of my environment. Jeans always suited me better.” She sent her mother a wrinkled-nose look. “And since when do I need to show myself off? You make me sound like the prize steer at auction.”

  Her mother chuckled. “Far from it. You’re my beautiful daughter, and for a change, I get to see you all spiffed-up and looking like the princess you are in my mind.” She wagged a finger, but her smile softened the scolding effect. “It’s my party. I’ve hired a photographer to take pictures and if I ask you to pull out all the stops getting dolled up, are you really going to say no?”

  “Well, no.” A thunk drew her attention back to the cat who’d now tipped over the trash can and was dragging out the plastic safety overwrap Piper had removed from a bottle of aspirin.

  “Oh, honey, get that from him. He’ll swallow bits of it and get sick.”

  Grunting, Piper swooped down to snatch the wrapper from Zeke, who meowed pitifully when his prize was taken away. “Your cat is weird, Mom.”

  “Hmm. Indeed. Now, about your hair...” She draped the dress over the end of the bed again and lifted the jewelry box. “Wearing it up will also better show off these.” Melissa cracked open the box and showed her the strand of pea-size silver-toned pearls.

  Piper gasped. “Mom, those are gorgeous. Are they for me?”

  “Someday. They were my grandmother’s, and you’ll get them when I die.”

  “Ugh! Don’t say things like that. You’re not allowed to die, Mom.”

  Her mother pulled a lopsided grin and smacked a kiss on Piper’s cheek. “But for tonight, I think they are the perfect complement to your dress...” her grin brightened “...and your lovely neck.”

  Piper took the proffered box and brushed her fingertips over the smooth pearls. “They are gorgeous.”

  “So...” Her mother stepped behind her and twisted up a handful of Piper’s hair. “Will you let me put your hair up? Being surrounded by so many macho men all the time leaves me no outlet for doing the girly things I love.”