Hawk's Way: Callen & Zach

by Joan Johnston

  His eyes glittered in the sunlight, and for a moment she was frightened at their intensity. She shivered, and he pulled her close, murmuring, “Don’t be frightened, Callen.”

  Until Sam spoke the words, she hadn’t realized how scared she was. But the look in his eyes urged her to trust him. And she did. Sam would never hurt her the way she had been hurt before. He would never allow himself to be bought off by her father, as her first two lovers had done. Sam would only love her and respect her and protect her.

  Was it any wonder she had fallen in love with him? Was it any wonder that, when he had proposed, she had said yes? Her father had suggested that Sam was another fortune hunter. That he was lazy and poor and just wanted to marry her for her money.

  Callen didn’t believe it. Sam loved her. She would stake her life on it. Was staking her life on it. Because, come Friday, she would be standing in front of a judge with Sam Longstreet by her side. And when the judge asked if she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Sam, she was going to say yes.

  SAM LONGSTREET DIDN’T WANT CALLEN’S MONEY, but neither was he marrying her for love. He had wooed her and won her with one specific purpose in mind: to get revenge on Garth Whitelaw.

  Garth was the one who had convinced Sam’s father, E.J., to invest his life savings in several ventures that had turned out to be swindles. Sam had been shocked to discover that Garth had led his father so far astray, since the two men had been friends for more years than anyone could count. His best friend’s betrayal had made E.J. moody and morose. He had started drinking and rarely left the house.

  Sam had tried to console his father when things were at their worst, but E.J. was inconsolable. After more than a hundred years, he would be the Longstreet who finally lost the Double L to creditors. Sam had come home from working on the range one day to find his father, whom he cherished, dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

  He had nearly gone mad with grief.

  He had sat for hours in the same room with his father’s corpse, unable to move. The long hours he spent paralyzed had given him a lot of time to think. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that Garth Whitelaw had planned to dupe his father, knowing full well E.J.would lose his ranch. Then, when it went into foreclosure, Garth could buy the land for a pittance of its value and add it to Hawk’s Way, thus replacing the several thousand acres Garth had given to his eldest son, Zach, on his twenty-first birthday. It was Garth Whitelaw’s greedy desire to possess the Double L that was the direct cause of E. J. Longstreet’s death.

  On the day Sam buried his father, he confronted Garth at the graveyard with his knowledge of the other man’s perfidy. He waited until Garth was alone and approached him.

  “This is all your fault,” he snarled. “E.J. followed your advice and lost everything he worked for all his life!”

  “I never—”

  “Don’t try to deny it,” Sam said in a savage voice. “My father never invested a penny until he talked to you. Only this time you told him what would serve your purposes. This time you led him into a swindle. You knew how he felt about the Double L. You ruined him. You killed him as surely as if you’d held the gun yourself!”

  Garth blanched.

  Before he could retort, his daughter, Callen, reached his side. She was wearing her long black hair in a ponytail, with a fringe of bangs that made her look surprisingly young. Sam remembered her as a bothersome kid always trailing along behind her older brothers, Zach and Falcon, not that he and her brothers had had much to do with each other then or now. He noted in a detached way that Callen had grown up to be quite a beauty.

  Sam watched as Callen looked up with adoring eyes at her father. Then he caught Garth’s unguarded look of love for his daughter. At that moment the idea had come to Sam that here was one sure way to get vengeance on his enemy. Garth had stolen his father; somehow he would take Garth’s daughter from him.

  As Garth walked away, Callen looked up at him. “I’m so sorry about your father.”

  Sam checked the retort that he didn’t need any Whitelaw pity, and said, “Thanks.”

  His face remained a thing of carved granite as he stared down at her. It dawned on him how easily he could have his vengeance.

  Sam knew about Callen’s two previous engagements. He knew her father wouldn’t think he was good enough for her. All he had to do was make her fall in love with him. Father and daughter were sure to argue, and it would split them apart. Then he would offer to marry her, force her to choose between him and her father. Either way, she would lose. And, therefore, Garth would lose. His vengeance would be all the sweeter when he told Callen—if she chose him instead of her father—why he had married her.

  Sam hadn’t wasted any time beginning his conquest of Callen. He wasn’t without charm, he simply chose not to employ it most of the time. There, at his father’s graveside, he let his gaze linger on Callen’s lips and then focus on her eyes. They were a warm, tobacco brown.

  She flushed prettily. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “You can meet me for dinner in Amarillo,” he said.

  When he turned his gaze back to Garth at the graveside, he was pleased with the frown he saw on the other man’s face. He knew Garth wanted to warn him to keep his distance from Callen, but the older man kept his lips pressed tight as he whirled abruptly and walked away.

  When all the other mourners were gone and Sam was finally alone in the tiny graveyard that held the mortal remains of generations of Longstreets, he stood near the cold headstone that marked his father’s final resting place and made a solemn vow to avenge his death.

  “I promise you, Dad, however long it takes, no matter what I have to do, Garth Whitelaw is going to suffer for what he did to you.”

  His courtship of Callen had been accomplished with surprising speed. He suspected she had felt sorry for him at first, and thus her barriers were all down. He had swept her off her feet with honeyed words and a few searing kisses. He hadn’t bedded her, using old-fashioned morals as an excuse. His charade of respect and caring had worked even better than he had hoped. Within weeks she had fallen in love with him. When he proposed, she had accepted with tears of joy in her eyes.

  The best part had been when Garth Whitelaw came to the Double L with his checkbook open, asking how much Sam wanted to call off the wedding.

  “I don’t want your money, Whitelaw.” Sam hadn’t been able to keep from smiling. Garth was a fool to think he was going to be able to pay for his guilt with cash.

  “I know you need money to keep the Double L from foreclosure. Tell me how much, and I’ll loan it to you interest free,” Garth offered.

  “I don’t want or need your help,” he retorted. Truthfully, he was surprised that Garth had tried to buy him off with that particular offer. Sam figured the man must have had some other plan in mind to put the Double L in his debt. He wasn’t going to fall for it.

  “I want you to stay away from Callen,” Garth said.

  “She’s a grown woman. She can make her own decisions.”

  “She’s made her share of bad ones.”

  “And I’m a bad one?”

  “The worst.”

  “Does Callen know you’re here?”

  Garth shifted restlessly, uneasily. “No.”

  A wicked grin split Sam’s face as he relished Garth’s discomfort. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell her you tried to buy me off.”

  Garth hadn’t bothered thanking him, just stalked down the rickety stairs that led from Sam’s sagging front porch, gunning the engine of his pickup as he headed down the dusty road.

  So far, Callen had remained firm in the face of her family’s disapproval. Sam had to admire her for that. He fought back the nagging conscience that told him it was wrong to hurt an innocent woman for the transgressions of her father. He was only doing what was necessary to avenge the wrong done to E.J. Garth Whitelaw hadn’t given a thought to Sam’s pain when he had ruined Sam’s father. He quieted his conscien
ce with the thought that when it was all over, Callen would still be alive. E.J. was gone forever.

  The wedding was tomorrow. He wondered if Garth would find some way to stop it. He hoped the older man tried. It would surely put a wide breach between Garth and his daughter. It was a breach Sam intended to extend until father and daughter were totally alienated.

  Sam swallowed the bitter bile that rose in his throat when he thought of the senselessness of his father’s death. He needed the marriage to Callen to achieve his revenge against her father. It was important to guard against feeling anything for her. He had to bear in mind that Callen Whitelaw was just a tool he was using to achieve his goal of revenge. He had to forget about the softness of her skin, the sweetness of her kisses, the look of adoration and trust in her eyes.

  Sam’s lips pressed flat. When it came time to say his vows before the judge, he would do it. And crush the conscience that urged him to let the girl go free.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CALLEN CAME ALONE TO THE COUNTY COURTHOUSE for her wedding. Her father had held fast to his vow to be absent, and her mother had refused to side against her father. Her brother, Falcon, couldn’t leave Dallas because his wife, Mara, was pregnant and near term, and her brother, Zach, had told her plainly that she was making the worst mistake of her life, and he wasn’t going to be a part of it. In a privileged existence that had been marked by periods of loneliness, Callen had never felt so alone.

  As she paced the hardwood floor in front of the judge’s chambers dressed in an antique lace dress, wearing an ivory felt cloche and carrying a pungent bouquet of gardenias, Callen wondered whether she was playing the fool. Was her family right? Was Sam actually a fortune hunter?

  Callen glanced at her watch. Sam was late. For a half second she wondered whether he might not show up at all. Before that thought could take root, she saw him come through the imposing double doors of the courthouse. As glad as she was to see him, Callen couldn’t help the feeling of foreboding that wedged in her throat and made it difficult to speak.

  Sam walked right up to her, reached for her hands and took them in his. “You look beautiful,” he murmured.

  Unfortunately there was no way Callen could honestly return the compliment. In fact, she was sorely disappointed by Sam’s appearance. “You didn’t dress up.”

  Sam flushed. “No.”

  No excuse, no explanation, just no. His sun-bleached hair was shaggy and needed a cut, nor had he shaved for at least a day. His boots were worn, and his jeans were frayed. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week, and if he had, he’d done it in his clothes. The sun-lined face that had become so dear to her was carved in granite. And his green eyes, the kind, tender eyes that had made her fall in love with him, looked as hard as cut glass.

  Callen shivered. Sam seemed a stranger. This was a side of him she had never seen. He was the saddle tramp Zach had named him, shady and disreputable. Two spots of heat rose on her cheeks when she thought of the scathing comments her father would have made if he had seen her bridegroom looking like this. Callen was ashamed and embarrassed by Sam’s appearance. The thought flashed across her mind that she ought to run like hell from Sam, from this marriage.

  She couldn’t look at Sam, afraid he would see what was in her thoughts. Appearances shouldn’t matter, she told herself. She had known Sam was poor. She had seen him unshaven in the past, in fact, had seen him in the same Western shirt and jeans he was wearing now. But that didn’t ease her worry. She had expected Sam to treat their marriage, the ceremony at least, with the same reverence she felt. After all, they were beginning a new life together. If anything, Sam’s appearance evidenced contempt for the ritual of marriage. Obviously she had mistaken his feelings on the subject.

  What else are you mistaken about, Callen?

  Callen fought back the voices of her father and her brother, both of whom had warned her not to marry Sam. She opened her mouth to tell Sam she couldn’t go through with it and shut it again. She couldn’t be wrong about Sam. She refused to be wrong about Sam. There must be some good reason why he hadn’t taken the time to improve his appearance, an emergency on the ranch or some other disaster.

  “Was there some trouble on the ranch this morning?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “No cattle stampede? Brush fire? Pack of howling wolves at the door?” she teased.

  “No.”

  She pursed her lips ruefully. “You overslept?”

  “No.”

  She couldn’t think of another reason that would explain Sam’s careless appearance…and he wasn’t offering one. She looked up into his green eyes, which softened slightly as he stared down at her, and waited for an explanation.

  “I went to visit my father’s grave,” he said at last.

  “Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed. Of course. He was still grieving. He must have stayed at the small, fenced plot too long, and then not had time to remedy his appearance. Now that she examined Sam’s face more closely, she saw red-rimmed eyes, a clenched jaw. Yes, he was definitely still grieving. It must be awful to know his father hadn’t lived to see his only son marry, hadn’t lived to know his grandchildren.

  The thought of producing grandchildren brought a rosy glow to Callen’s cheeks. She had thought a lot about what it would be like to lie with Sam, to grow large with his child, to hold a baby in her arms and have Sam smile at her, as they admired their child together.

  Callen reminded herself of everything she had learned about Sam over the past three months. He was kind. He was considerate. He was charming. He was even handsome in a rugged sort of way. And his eyes made her feel cherished and loved. Or at least they had. Perhaps it was the memory of his father, the grief and the sadness, that had stolen the warmth from his eyes and made him look so harsh and hard when she had first seen him today.

  She loved Sam for who he was, not for the outer trappings of the man, not for his wealth—or lack of it—but for the way he made her feel. She squeezed Sam’s hands, raised her eyes to meet his and offered him a tremulous smile. “Come on, Sam. The judge is waiting.”

  “Your family?”

  She swallowed over the lump in her throat. “They’re not coming.”

  “Then it’s just us?”

  Callen nodded. Sam’s lips pressed flat and his eyes narrowed. For an instant she wanted to flee, to save herself from Sam, from the possibility of a failed marriage. But it would be devastating to break a third engagement. She wouldn’t be able to look her father in the eye. It was too late to back out now.

  Callen took comfort in the thought that she knew Sam better than her father did. Sam would never hurt her. And if he did, her father would never hear of it from her. She would do whatever was necessary to make the marriage a good one. As one of the Three Whitelaw Brats, and with a lifetime of outmaneuvering and outsmarting two older brothers to her credit, she had developed the ability to rescue herself from the toughest situations. She loved Sam. Somehow, this was all going to work out.

  She looked up at Sam, her heart in her eyes. There was a flash of some strong emotion on his face before he kissed her with a combination of tenderness and fierceness that left her breathless. The thought came to her, powerful and overwhelming. I want to spend my life with this man.

  “Come on,” Sam grated in a husky voice. “Let’s go.”

  SAM FELT LIKE SOBBING WITH RELIEF—and disgust. He had done what he could to keep Callen Whitelaw from walking into disaster, but she hadn’t backed away in time to save either of them. He led her toward the judge’s chambers. It was time to take the next step on his trail of vengeance.

  His eyes were red-rimmed because he hadn’t slept. His conscience had smote him the day before the wedding, demanding that he free Callen from the devil’s bargain he was about to make with her. He had tried desperately to think of a way to take his vengeance on Garth Whitelaw directly, without involving his daughter. But he couldn’t think of anything that was as likely to cause Garth the same pain he endured himsel
f as stealing someone he loved away from him.

  In endeavoring to free Callen from the morass into which he had drawn her, Sam made a stunning discovery. He wanted her. Somehow during the course of winning her admiration, he had come to admire her, as well. She had a wicked sense of humor, a smile that flashed often enough to lift even his leadened heart, skin softer than silk, and lips as sweet as anything he had ever tasted. His groin tightened at the mere thought of bedding her. He suspected his desire for her had contributed to his inability to come up with another route of vengeance.

  By the same token, because he had allowed Callen to get under his skin, it was going to be difficult to hurt her, as he must if he was going to achieve his goal of hurting her father. In the early hours of the morning, wretchedly alone, with the grief of his father’s death making his stomach spin and his chest ache, he had come up with the idea of presenting himself to Callen in such a state of disarray that she would be the one to back away from him. He couldn’t push her away; she was going to have to leave him of her own accord.

  It hadn’t worked.

  Callen’s family had sheltered her from the harsher facts of life, and with the confidence of the innocent, she had simply looked past the facade he had erected to shove her away and embraced the man she found beyond it. He sighed inwardly, damning her for making him want her even more, damning himself for being bastard enough to go through with his plan.

  They had reached the door to the judge’s chamber when Callen’s eldest brother showed up. Sam eyed Zach warily, aware of the animosity on the other man’s face.

  Callen appeared delighted by Zach’s arrival. “Zach! You came!” She let go of Sam’s hand and flung herself into her brother’s open arms.

  Sam met Zach’s narrowed eyes over Callen’s head and knew the other man would do whatever he could to stop the wedding. Sam welcomed the coming fight with relish. He had wanted—needed—to hit out at the injustice of his father’s death. With Garth unavailable, Zach Whitelaw made a very satisfying target.