by Unknown
She thought of what that would be like—a gift, heavensent. An enormous break. At the same time, it would mean living with Jonah.
If she did, she might risk falling in love with him and being hurt all over again. She knew that because she was responding to him now. Yet, undoubtedly Jonah was in her life and would be until Henry was grown.
“Yes, it would help,” she murmured, possibilities spinning in her mind.
“If you’d like, I can take you out to look at the place. It’s furnished, and you and Henry can move in today. I’m staying out there tonight, and tomorrow I’m going home to get my things.”
“This is so sudden,” she said, rubbing her forehead. She wished she could choose a different course, but this was such a godsend for her.
“It’ll solve some of your problems,” he said, as if the matter was settled. “Cancel your appointment to look at that apartment, and let’s go to the ranch.” Jonah held out his cellular phone.
She looked up to meet his gaze. What was she doing? she wondered. Did he know what he was asking? The past hour had been strained, and Jonah was steeped in anger that she knew was going to last a long time. And this volatile chemistry between them—did he feel it, too, or was she the only one who would have to fight that magnetic attraction, as strong as it had been when they first met?
“Kate, you could save the money to get a better place,” he reminded her. “During the day I can keep Henry with me, and if we need to, I’ll hire a nanny. Henry is my son, and I want to do things for him.”
She was weak in the knees again. After all the responsibilities she had shouldered alone for the past five years, to have such an offer of help was overwhelming.
“I know you’ll be a great dad to him and a role model,” she said, convinced there was only one answer to give. Yet she felt an enormous reluctance. She didn’t want to rely on Jonah any more than she wanted to find herself loving him again. If she had ever been completely over him…
Kate didn’t want to think too much about that, either.
Bright sunshine spilled over him, highlighting his black hair. Looking relaxed, with his hands splayed on his narrow hips, he stood close enough that she could catch a faint scent of his woodsy aftershave. His jaw was clean-shaven. He was still dangerous to her heart, and she was sure that, ranch or no ranch, he was still as wild and impulsive as ever.
“Are you going to let Henry do risky things?”
Jonah looked at the boy, who was squatting down and watching a bug crawl along the edge of the sidewalk.
“Kate, you don’t have a right to ask me what I’m going to do. I can go to court and take him away from you for what you’ve done.”
She gasped, pain shooting through her because his words terrified her. At the same time, guilt swamped her, because to a degree, she knew he was right.
“And you think, under the circumstances, that we can stay under the same roof? I don’t think so, Jonah.”
“We won’t see much of each other at all. It’s a big house, as I said, and we can arrange it so we aren’t together.” He looked at Henry again. “And to answer your question, I won’t let him do anything beyond the ordinary kid stuff. He can climb a tree, dabble in the creek, learn to ride.”
“Horses?”
“Right, Kate. I’ll find a gentle one for him. I don’t want him hurt, either. Let’s go look at the place.”
Standing on the sidewalk, she stared into his brown eyes and debated with herself. Her life had just changed, but how big would the changes be? She wanted to tell Jonah no and walk away, as she had five years before, but this time she couldn’t. Because of Henry, her life was tied to Jonah’s now.
She sighed and nodded. “It would help a lot if I didn’t have to pay rent for a while.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
“Let me cancel my appointment,” she said, doing so quickly. As soon as she returned his phone, she said, “I can follow you in my car.”
Jonah shook his head. “Come with me, and we’ll stay there tonight,” he said, and in spite of the circumstances, his words made her tingle. “I’ll send someone into town to get your car.”
“Fine,” she said reluctantly, yet seeing little choice. Free rent would give her and Henry a wonderful financial boost.
“Henry,” Jonah said, raising his voice to normal level, “let’s go look at where you might live for a time. You and your mom might move into my house. It’s out in the country.”
Henry brightened and walked beside Jonah, and Kate moved to Henry’s other side so he was between them.
Jonah held the car doors for both of them again, and then she watched him walk around to the driver’s side. She didn’t want to live under the same roof with him. When they’d divorced, it had taken her forever to stop crying over him, but this seemed the only solution right now.
Jonah slid behind the wheel and in minutes they were driving along a freeway in San Antonio, while Henry asked questions about the ranch and Jonah answered.
“How did you inherit a ranch in the Hill Country?” she asked. “I thought all your family was up in the Panhandle.”
“I didn’t inherit from a relative,” Jonah replied. “It was a man whose life I helped save when he was a hostage—remember? The one in Colombia?”
She took a deep breath, because that assignment had been the last straw. That particular mission had sounded suicidal. At the time, she’d known that Jonah told her very little about what he had to do. Just enough for her to never expect to see him alive again when she kissed him goodbye. And that was when she had given him an ultimatum to choose between her or Special Forces. He had said he couldn’t quit the military.
“Although I’m glad you got something rewarding out of that,” she said, remembering too clearly, “I’m surprised you’re moving here.”
“I’ll see how I like ranching. I always liked it when I was a kid.”
“That’s different, Jonah. You didn’t have full responsibility.”
“Nope, but this ranch looks like a promising place for me to be.”
As they sped out of the city, heading north to the ranch, they rode in silence. For the first half hour, all Kate could do was think about the gift of no rent for the coming months, and what a wonderful help that would be to her finances. Her spirits lifted, and she tried to avoid contemplating living under the same roof with Jonah, or his fury, or the future. She wanted to bask in relief over the problems his offer solved for her.
The land was green from spring rains, and wildflowers still dotted the hillsides. At one point they reached barbed wire fencing that stretched into the distance. “This is the south boundary of my ranch,” Jonah said.
As she continued looking out at endless pastureland, she realized they were passing a lot of acres.
At last Jonah turned the car off the state highway onto a hard-packed dirt road, between tall stone posts. On one of the posts a sign held the Long Bar brand. Kate glanced back to see Henry sitting up, straining against his seat belt to see out the window when they bounced across a cattle guard.
She looked at the rolling hills and saw cattle grazing in the distance. She had imagined something on a much smaller scale, and when they topped a rise and she saw a sprawling ranch house and other buildings, her surprise grew. “Jonah, this operation is enormous. You inherited all of it?”
“Yes. It’s mine now, lock, stock and barrel.”
“What about the other guys in on the rescue? You didn’t go get the hostage single-handedly.”
“Nope. There were four of us back then. We lost Colin Garrick in the line of duty. Boone Devlin inherited a quarter-horse ranch, and Mike Remington inherited the house in town and the man’s baby daughter.”
“A baby? There weren’t any relatives?”
“Only John Frates’s in-laws. They were unfit for parenthood and are in a rehabilitation center now. Dina Frates’s father had been in prison, and both are alcoholics. They couldn’t take the baby.”
“Who ca
res for them?” Kate asked.
“They have a lifetime trust established for them by John. Savannah Remington is the attorney for it.”
“How sad about the grandparents,” Kate remarked. She was curious about the man they had rescued. “No wonder someone held him hostage, if he had this kind of money. What happened to Colin?” she asked, remembering a handsome guy full of life.
“He was killed on a mission,” Jonah answered, bringing back to her the seriousness of what he’d been involved in and what he had chosen over their marriage.
“Wasn’t Colin married?” she asked, thinking back and remembering the same woman with him each time she had seen him.
“Nope, engaged. They were planning on marrying. I heard she’s married someone else now.”
“I’m sorry. That’s sad. I don’t know how you got used to so much needless death, Jonah.”
“I don’t know that anyone ever does get used to it.”
“Oh, yes. You did, or you would have been too horrified to go back into that life. And you have all this now,” she said, still amazed.
“That’s right. I can keep it or I can sell it. I’ve thought it over and decided to keep it for a time and see how I like it. It’s a successful cattle ranch.”
Her head whipped around. “You won’t stay here long, because this will be much too quiet for you, too placid. I can’t imagine you doing this for more than six months or so.”
“We’ll see,” he said tightly. “Kate, my job was to do some good in the world, not to live dangerously. But that’s old territory, and there’s no need to go there now.”
“No, there’s not. How long have you been out?”
“Almost a year.”
“So what have you been doing?”
“Working for an oil company,” he replied, a muscle working in his jaw.
“Doing what for an oil company?” she persisted, wondering how much he had changed over the years, if at all.
“Fighting well fires,” he replied, and she shook her head. He hadn’t changed in the least. He had merely gone from one high-risk job to another. She looked again at the lush land surrounding them and the fantastic ranch house looming closer. She couldn’t imagine him staying out here, herding cattle and mending fences and keeping books. In a few months, he would be gone.
“Look, Mom, there are cows!”
“Yes, there are, Henry,” she replied as they neared a pasture where more Herefords grazed.
“There are horses, too, Henry. I’ll let you ride one this evening,” Jonah said.
“You will?”
Henry’s voice was filled with so much eagerness and anticipation that Kate looked back at him again. His eyes were wide and sparkling. “I get to ride a horse,” he said to her in awe, and she was saddened. Had she cheated Henry badly by keeping his father from him?
She had never thought about Jonah as being a super father, because she’d never thought about him being present enough to be any kind of a dad to a child. He had seemed so wrapped up in his military life that she had never expected him to be deeply interested in a family. Had she been wrong? And had she denied not only Jonah, but Henry as well?
“Look, there’s a barn!” Henry exclaimed.
Jonah took out a cell phone and called someone, and in seconds she realized he was talking to one of his ranch hands, telling him that he would be staying the night on the ranch and he had brought guests.
She listened as Henry bounced in the seat with excitement, and Jonah made arrangements for a gentle horse to be brought up to the corral.
She ran her hand across her head. This was a bonanza for her and for Henry in so many ways, yet at the same time she was putting her heart and her future in jeopardy. She looked at Jonah and drew a deep breath. Handsome, commanding, he was too many appealing things. If he turned out to be a loving, attentive father for Henry, she knew he would be just that much more irresistible to her. And she knew full well that he was still the same risk-taker he had always been, the same man who lived life on the edge and didn’t mind wading into a fight to help someone even when doing so put him in jeopardy.
When Jonah led them into a house large enough to be a mansion, Henry’s eyes were wide. He became quiet, and she was certain that he was awed by the enormous new home where they would live. She was a little awed herself.
“Wow! Mom, are we going to stay here?” he asked in his childish voice.
“Yes, you are,” Jonah answered before she could.
Her astonishment grew when they strolled into a large kitchen with a living area at one end of the room. Elegant glass-fronted oak cabinets, above a limestone floor and state-of-the-art, built-in appliances, looked wonderful to her. An adjoining eating area held a rectangular oak table and ten ladder-back chairs. A china vase filled with silk flowers was centered on the table. The house reflected the wealth of the previous owner, and she could hardly believe that it now belonged to Jonah.
“This is huge,” she exclaimed. “You’ll need a maid to keep it.”
“Actually, one comes with the place,” Jonah replied quietly.
“Jonah, this is fabulous! What an enormous inheritance.”
“Yeah, I was shocked, too, Kate. All we did was accomplish our mission.”
“You saved the man’s life.”
“That’s what I was supposed to do. All three of us have been in shock over our inheritance.”
Henry had gone to the window to look outside, so was out of earshot when Kate turned to Jonah. “You’re handsome and now you’re wealthy, Jonah. Women are going to be interested in you. Won’t we be in your way here?”
“Nope. If we need to make adjustments or other arrangements, we can,” he said, gazing steadily back at her. When he did, she could feel the air ignite between them.
In spite of all the arguments, their opposing views, his fury today and her determination to remain detached, the sparks were still there, as volatile and hot as ever. Her own gaze was locked onto his dark, enigmatic eyes. She couldn’t catch her breath or look away, and although she hated it, she had to admit that part of her wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him endlessly.
At the same time, another part wanted to resist with every ounce of her being. She didn’t want to look at Jonah and be set ablaze with desire, or touch him and ignite a firestorm of longing. Yet there was no mistaking what she was caught up in and unable to stop any more than she could stop breathing.
It was obvious that he was feeling sparks, too, and fighting his emotions as much as she was, because a muscle worked in his jaw and his fists were clenched again. Breaking eye contact, he turned abruptly, and she let out her breath.
“How can we live under one roof?” she asked softly.
“Damn easily,” he snapped, turning back, and this time his eyes flashed with a different fire. She knew instinctively that anger was his protection from the sparks that danced between them, just as shock had been her barrier the first hour with him. Swiftly, her shock at seeing him was wearing off, now that he knew the truth concerning Henry, and she had no shield except logic and determination, which was a weak buffer against the appeal that Jonah held for her.
“All I have to do is look at my son and I know I want you here,” Jonah said. “You’re part of Henry. It would hurt him to be taken from you, Kate. If it didn’t hurt him, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
Jonah’s words cut into her like a knife, yet she knew she deserved them, and she could understand his hurt and anger. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Henry walked around the room, looking at everything and then returning to Kate’s side. “This is a big house.”
“Yes, it is.”
“C’mon, Henry,” Jonah said, hoisting Henry to his shoulders. “I’ll show you around.”
Henry clung tightly to Jonah, and for an instant Kate wondered if he was frightened. But then she saw his grin and realized he liked being on Jonah’s shoulders. When he had been a toddler, her father had carried him that way. By t
he time Henry was three years old, her father hadn’t been able to do so, and Henry probably didn’t even remember that he ever had.
She saw that Henry was going to take to Jonah completely. Her son had missed having a father, and now not only was Jonah concerned about him, he could also enrich his life as well as become a role model for him.
She trailed after Jonah and Henry as they entered an opulent family room with rough, hand-hewn beams across the sixteen-foot-high ceiling. The furniture was dark wood, with the chairs and sofas covered in brown leather. The plank floor gleamed with polish, and a massive slate fireplace filled one end of the room. The pavilion-style space had a great view of a swimming pool and surrounding terrace.
“Oh, my!” Kate exclaimed, looking at the beautiful, sparkling water behind a black, wrought-iron grill. “I’m glad there’s a fence around the pool,” she said. “Henry doesn’t swim.”
“Don’t worry, Kate. He’ll be all right and the fence is sturdy,” Jonah said.
She turned her attention to the family room. “The house looks old, but they must have done it over in recent years,” she observed, gazing at a built-in entertainment center and a bar at one end of the room.
“It looks that way,” Jonah replied. “None of us knew John Frates very well, and our total knowledge of him involved his being a hostage.”
She crossed the room to a credenza. “Someone liked elegant antique furniture,” she said. “This period piece is beautiful.”
“The lawyer told me they had a decorator do the house. You can pick a bedroom, Kate, and select one for Henry. There are twelve bedrooms and eight bathrooms in this place—one bedroom downstairs and the rest upstairs. I’ve already decided to take the master bedroom.”
“That’s fine, Jonah. It doesn’t matter,” she replied. Only it did matter. She needed a bedroom a mile away from him.
He swung Henry to the floor and she watched the flex of taut muscles in his arms and back as his shirt stretched tightly across his shoulders.
“We’re going to live here, Mommy?” Henry asked in a subdued voice, and she wondered if he was overwhelmed by the house.
“Yes, we are for a while.”
