by Unknown
“Yes,” Savannah Clay answered. While she talked to him, Jonah looked at Mike, who was silent and white as snow. His friend kept raking his fingers through his wavy black hair, an uncustomary gesture.
Jonah had seen Mike shot and he had seen Mike in critical, life-threatening situations. Remington was a cool, quick thinker, able to move and act swiftly, tough as well as brave, but at the reading of the will he had seemed on the verge of fainting.
“Are you all right?” Jonah whispered as the others talked.
Mike swiveled his head and gave Jonah a glassy-eyed stare. “Yes,” he murmured, but Jonah wasn’t convinced. Mike was not his usual take-charge self. Yet Jonah knew that inheriting a baby would be a shock far greater than inheriting ranches, as he and Boone had.
“Any questions, Colonel Remington?” the attorney asked.
“Yes, but I’ll wait until the others are through so I don’t take up their time,” Mike replied.
Even though they protested, Mike did wait, and finally Jonah and Boone signed papers, got their copies of the will and left the lawyer’s office.
“What a day this has been,” Boone remarked as they stepped into the sunshine. “When I flew in here, I thought the three of us would have a reunion and that would be it.”
“Yeah. Life takes strange turns,” Jonah replied. “Nobody knows that any better than the three of us do. I wish Colin were here to claim his inheritance.” Both men were silent until they reached black cars parked side by side. Then they stopped and faced each other. Boone had his hands on his hips, his tan sport coat pushed open. “See you back at the hotel. I’m going to swim, and then let’s have happy hour and celebrate our inheritance,” he said with a grin.
“Sounds fine with me. I’m still in shock,” Jonah replied as he shed his navy suit coat and pulled off his navy tie.
“I think all three of us are in shock, but Mike’s been hit the hardest. And I don’t blame him. Thank goodness he’s the one with the baby,” Boone said, unlocking his car door and tossing his sport coat on the seat.
“Yeah, I guess.” Jonah felt an aching twist deep inside.
“Man, you’re still hung up about your ex? Get over her,” Boone said, turning back to frown at Jonah. “You can marry again and have a passel of kids.”
“Boone, have you ever been in love, even once? I mean really in love?” Jonah asked, mildly annoyed by his friend’s remarks.
“Hell, no, not like you were. And I’m not going to be, either. No marriage chains for me. Lighten up.” With a flash of white teeth, Boone Devlin grinned. “The world has lots of beautiful, exciting women. You need to get out and about and forget her.”
“Sure,” Jonah answered dismissively, remembering what a playboy Boone was.
“And don’t bury yourself on a ranch, although there’s small danger of that. You’ll sell your inheritance as fast as I intend to sell mine.”
“Maybe not. I’m going to think about it and look the place over.”
“What do you know about cattle ranching?”
“I told you that my grandfather had a ranch, and I spent every summer there when I was growing up,” Jonah replied.
“You move to a ranch and you’ll be a hermit,” Boon warned, jiggling his car keys in his hand.
“As if I socialize a lot out in the oil field.”
Boone laughed and opened the door of his car. “See you at the hotel.” Each climbed into his rental car and drove out of the lot.
Jonah shoved those April memories aside and smiled at the clerk behind the rental counter. Moments later, he strode out of the San Antonio airport into bright sunshine on a cool, early June morning. After quitting his job and selling the home he owned in Midland, Texas, he was back in San Antonio to look at his inheritance for the second time.
He wanted to work the ranch, and from the time he’d made his decision, his eagerness to make the move had grown.
In the space of time between his first trip to San Antonio and this one, another shock had transpired. Savannah Clay, the lawyer who had read John Frates’s will to them, had married Mike Remington—a marriage of convenience to give Frates’s baby girl a mother and father. Jonah was surprised, and wondered how happy Mike was with the arrangement.
As Jonah neared the gates to the ranch, however, he forgot about Mike Remington. Green fields spread endlessly to the horizon. Stands of oaks gave shade to the hills, which were bright with patches of wildflowers. All land he owned…Then Jonah spotted two spirals of gray smoke rising against the deep blue sky, and he wondered what was burning.
As he drove along, watching the plumes of smoke darken and expand, Jonah had a gut feeling that something was wrong. The ranch hands could be burning off a field, but he didn’t think so.
Clamping his teeth together, he pressed the accelerator, speeding along until he reached the turn to the ranch house, then bouncing over the cattle guard. The ominous black smoke increased and he gunned the engine, skidding on gravel along the drive.
In the distance he heard sirens that only confirmed his suspicions. Another few seconds of driving and he saw bright orange tongues of flame spiraling in the sky. He caught up with a pickup truck speeding ahead of him.
Then, at another turn, the ranch house, barn and outbuildings came into view. Trees burned in two areas while flames shot up one wall of the barn, Jonah saw, but the roof hadn’t yet caught and men were pouring water on the blaze. Men fought the three blazes.
Other men carried equipment out of the barn. The wail of sirens grew louder as Jonah ran to help save the barn.
He approached the gang pouring water on the barn fire. Jonah took a hose from one of the men to relieve him, and directed ranch hands where to turn other hoses. He yelled for someone to get a ladder, and in seconds he’d braced the ladder against the barn wall. He climbed to the roof, tugging the heavy hose up with him and then motioning to a man on the ground to turn the water on again.
Flames danced in front of Jonah’s face, but he knew if they could keep the roof from going up they could contain the fire.
Two pumper trucks had arrived and started to spray big streams of water on the blaze. They could easily reach the roof, so Jonah tossed down his hose and climbed back down the ladder.
When he reached the ground, he took the hose and ran around to the entranceway, planning to go into the burning barn.
“Mr. Whitewolf! Don’t go in there!” Scott Adamson, the barrel-chested foreman, yelled at him.
Jonah shook his head and charged into the barn, where he spotted flames in a far corner. Dragging the hose, he ran forward and turned the hose on the conflagration.
A cowboy arrived to help him, and Jonah motioned to the loft. “I’m going up,” he yelled above the roar of the fire.
“That blaze could consume the loft in minutes,” the man warned, but Jonah was already climbing. “Pass the hose to me,” he called.
The man climbed behind Jonah, then handed him the nozzle. Jonah tugged on the hose and turned it on the flames.
Sweat poured off him and he could hear men yelling outside, but within minutes the blaze inside seemed under control.
When he climbed down from the loft, there were four other men in the barn, fighting the dying fire. He looked at the charred structure and knew the corner would have to be rebuilt, but the flames would be doused in minutes and the barn had been saved. The other fires had been brought under control.
He handed the hose to one of the cowboys. “I want to look around in here,” he said, skirting smoldering embers. “Keep the water flowing, because this could all burst back into flame.”
It took him only five minutes to find where he thought the fire had started. He straightened up and strode outside, past firemen who kept hoses trained on the charred and blackened wood. Cowboys had turned off the spigots to the ranch’s well water, no longer needed now.
Scott Adamson walked up to Jonah and shook his hand. “Thanks for your help, but you shouldn’t have put yourself at risk by going in
to the building.”
“It was safe enough,” Jonah said, brushing aside his foreman’s concern. “I need to talk to one of the officials about the fire. It was deliberately set.”
“Aw, hell!”
“You don’t sound surprised or shocked,” Jonah said, his eyes narrowing.
Adamson took his hat off to wipe sweat from his brow and rake his red hair back from his face. “We’ve had bad things happen lately. Some sick cattle—someone put poison in a water tank—some smashed fences. I thought it was kids doing pranks that got out of hand, but now I don’t know. This happened in broad daylight. Plus it was three separate fires. Someone set them. Fortunately, one of the men spotted the fires when they had just started and we had men close at hand to fight the flames.”
“It doesn’t look like the work of kids.”
“C’mon. I’ll introduce you to Tank Grayson. He’s the man you need to talk to. He knows fires, but then I guess you do, too.”
Jonah spent the next thirty minutes with the thin, blond fireman, who went inside the barn with him and confirmed Jonah’s suspicions.
“We’ll have an official analysis, but you’re right. This was started with kerosene and rags. So was the one in the trees. Anyone opposed to you moving here?”
“Not that I know of,” Jonah answered, perplexed. “Scott Adamson said that other things have been happening around here—poison in a stock tank. That kind of thing.”
The fireman shook his head. “This could have been a hell of a lot worse. We’ll let you know what we find out.”
Jonah shook hands with him and went outside to thank all the others for their help. As he shook his foreman’s hand and thanked him, Scott nodded.
“Anytime there’s a fire, everyone pitches in. We’re fortunate to have a good supply of well water, and Mr. Frates put in a fine system of water mains and spigots. Otherwise this barn would have been gone.”
“Well, I’m grateful for everyone’s help. We can rebuild that corner and it’ll be like new again. I’ll see if I can’t arrange a bonus for everyone with the next paycheck.”
“That would make a lot of guys happy, although they didn’t do this for a bonus.”
“I know that, but they took some risks fighting that fire.”
“Not like the ones you took.” Scott eyed Jonah. “I guess you’re going to live up to your reputation.”
“How so?”
The older man shrugged as he looked at the barn. “All that Special Forces stuff…Damn, I don’t know why anyone would do this.”
“I don’t, either. Well, I’m going to go get cleaned up.”
He glanced down the road at houses of people who worked on the ranch. If the fire had gotten out of control it could have spread to the bunkhouse, office and other outbuildings. They had been lucky. Jonah headed to the sprawling ranch house. Entering through the back door, he walked quietly through spacious rooms where sunlight spilled across polished hardwood floors and over classic furniture. Even though he was moving his things in tomorrow, it was still difficult to realize this was all his.
The house was rustic, yet with state-of-the-art appliances and conveniences, and a collector’s elegance to its antique furniture. Jonah didn’t know much about antiques, but Kate had been into collecting and had taught him a little about styles she liked.
He was spending tonight at the ranch, but he wanted to return to town and buy a pair of boots. He also planned to get pictures developed from a disposable camera he’d picked up on the way, to send to his folks.
When Jonah drove back to San Antonio, he was certain he had made the right choice about his future. He had had the past two months to think about it, and he wanted to keep the Long Bar Ranch, welcomed the changes it would bring to his life.
After purchasing boots, he put the package in the car and stood on the sidewalk in the hot sunshine. Tomorrow morning, before he left for Midland, he was to have breakfast with Mike and Savannah. Right now it was two o’clock in the afternoon, and he wanted to develop the pictures he had taken of the ranch so he could show them to his family back home. He smiled to himself. The ranch seemed to be in excellent shape, with enough land and stock to make it one of Texas’s largest and most successful cattle ranches.
As soon as he had made his decision, he’d felt restless, impatient to get moved in. Would he be buried out on the ranch and become a hermit, as Boone Devlin had predicted? At the moment Jonah didn’t care. The Long Bar would give him a stable life, a purpose, and the work would be something he liked to do—a lot more interesting than struggling with a burning oil well.
Climbing into the rental car, he drove into the parking lot of a drugstore and went inside. After leaving his film to be developed, he roamed the aisles, picking up a magazine to read at the ranch tonight, getting a couple of candy bars and another disposable camera. Then he headed back to the front of the store with his purchases.
Walking up the aisle, Jonah could see the cash register where customers paid on their way out. There was a short line, and he glanced at the people waiting there. Suddenly he froze in shock.
A tall woman stood there. Her back was turned to him, but he knew her at once. Her thick mane of unruly chestnut hair was as unmistakable as her long legs and tiny waist. It was his ex-wife, Kate Valentini Whitewolf.
For a moment, time seemed to fall away, as he remembered hours he’d spent lying in bed with her, holding her in his arms. Kate, warm and soft, laughing up at him, and then the laughter changing as her eyes darkened with passion and she wrapped her slender arms around his neck, pulling him down to kiss him…
Jonah groaned and ran his hand across his eyes, bringing himself back to the present with a jolt. Kate was there—only yards away. She wore a denim skirt, a red cotton blouse, with sandals on her feet and bracelets on her arm.
His first impulse was to grab her elbow and turn her to face him. “Kate,” he whispered, aching all over. How he had loved her! Then he remembered the pain of her leaving him, and he knew he should look away, let her walk out of the store. Speaking to her wouldn’t do anything except stir up old hurts.
Why was she in San Antonio? Jonah wondered. It had been five years since he had last seen her.
Other memories flashed in his head. They had met when he’d been stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and she had lived in Fayetteville. It had been a hot July afternoon when she had swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel, and instead had run into his car.
Since they were in a residential area, neither of them had been going fast, and it had been a mere fender bender. But Jonah recalled her embarrassment and his amusement. The moment he had stepped out of his car and looked at her, his pulse had started galloping.
She had been wearing cutoffs, with her hair in a ponytail, and his first thought was that she was a kid. But then she’d gotten out of the car, revealing her long legs and tiny waist, her lush breasts, and he always wondered later if he had fallen in love right there during that first glance. While they exchanged insurance information, he’d made a date to take her out to dinner that night.
He had met her family and learned she was an only child and had few relatives, but the few she had all lived in Fayetteville. She’d had a successful job in advertising. Three months later, they were married.
It took only seconds for those memories to flash in Jonah’s mind as he stared at her. Then he noticed movement at her side. A small child was tugging on her hand, and she looked down and spoke to him.
Pain sliced into Jonah as if someone had stabbed him.
He had known that Kate would remarry. She was too beautiful, too appealing, too sexy to stay single for long. But the child was proof of her union, and it hurt to face the reality. The boy looked about four or five years old. He had straight black hair and skin darker than Kate’s, as if he had already been out in the sun a lot this spring.
Their divorce had taken place five years ago. She hadn’t wasted any time in finding someone else, Jonah thought bitterly.
As if drawn by a will stronger than his own, Jonah’s attention returned to Kate’s face. While he moved toward her, he argued with himself whether or not to say hello, mentally telling himself to walk on past, stay out of her way and keep her out of his. She was a married woman now, with her own life, just as Jonah had his. Why open old wounds?
A few more steps and he was beside her, and she turned and looked into his face.
The impact of gazing into her thickly lashed hazel eyes was another blow to his middle, one that stole his breath and made his pulse jump erratically. Those seductive green-gold eyes could change hue with passion, vary with different colors of clothing, sparkle with humor and melt with love. Big eyes, a wide mouth, prominent cheekbones…She was always more vivid and striking than anyone around her. Today gold-and-red earrings dangled from her ears, giving her a gypsy look that went with her wild cascade of hair.
“Hello, Kate,” he said quietly. It hurt, remembering the terrible pain of breaking up the marriage.
As she looked at him, her eyes widened, her jaw dropped and all color drained from her face.
He frowned and reached out to steady her, because she looked as if she might faint. She caught the counter edge and held it in a white-knuckled grip. He was amazed at her reaction. Could she be that unhappy to see him, in a chance encounter in a public place?
“Kate?”
“Hello, Jonah,” she whispered, and he could see her make an effort to pull herself together. She blinked, licked her lips and stared at him. If he had drawn a gun on her, he didn’t think she could have looked more terrified.
“Are you all right?” he asked, feeling upset by her reaction.
“Yes,” she answered. “I’m surprised to see you.” She was mumbling, barely loud enough to be heard. “We—we need to go,” she stammered.
When she started to turn away, Jonah knew she would walk out of his life again, which was what she wanted. And he had to let her go because long ago their lives had separated.
“Mommy,” the little boy said, tugging on her arm.
Jonah had forgotten the child, but looked down at him now. When their gazes met, Jonah felt as if he had smashed into a brick wall. His breath left his lungs and his pulse roared in his ears. The shock he had experienced inheriting a ranch and fortune was nothing compared to what he felt now.
