Perfect Family

by Potter, Patricia;

  He hesitated, then nodded. “All right,” he said, then followed Dan’l into the barn.

  Jessie watched him go, the confident walk, the innate pride. She bit her lip as she remembered the tight look on his face when he told her about the girl and her father’s reaction. She wondered whether that was a reason he always held himself apart from the family, refusing in advance any rejection that might come his way.

  When he disappeared into the barn, she looked at the porch, the door, the house. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go inside now. She was beginning to feel it was a lion’s den.

  Ross swore silently to himself as he rubbed down the horse. He’d wanted her more than he ever wanted a woman, but neither the location nor the situation had made lovemaking palatable for longer than a few moments.

  Her halting confidence about the rape made such a move that much more reprehensible. That the rape still haunted her was obvious. He cursed himself for being so determined to chase her out of his life, that he’d used such a weapon. He wondered if anyone else knew what had happened to her.

  It accounted for a lot, however. It explained her reaction to his kisses, as if she were astounded that she enjoyed them. That had surprised him. Even pleased him. As so many things about her pleased him.

  He liked the way she asked questions, listened, weighed. She hadn’t accepted everything he’d said. He knew that.

  The strange thing was that she seemed to trust him, even when he’d given her every reason to do the opposite. He’d been … humbled by that. Which was why he agreed to supper. She needed a friend and if nothing else he could do that for her. He owed it to her after his stupid confession.

  Sarah, he knew, would be amazed, but happy. Marc, well, he would probably glower. April would probably flirt with him to show her father her independence. Halden would be oblivious to everything, and Cullen anxious.

  Ross finished with the horse, then headed for his house. He needed a shower. And a good stiff drink.

  Wonderful aromas filled the house when Jessie entered. Marc was in the main living area, sprawled over a chair, reading something in a spiral notebook and sipping a whiskey. He must have arrived in the past hour, but he looked as relaxed and at home as ever. He rose when he saw her, a smile creasing his face and filling it with that charismatic warmth she remembered. “Hello, cousin. I hear it’s official now.”

  “So they tell me,” she said.

  “My daughter will be here soon,” he said. “Cullen is with our father. And Elizabeth is coming. You haven’t met her yet. She was out of the country during the reunion. We all wanted to welcome you to the family.”

  “Elizabeth?” she said. Jessie knew the name. She’d gone over the family tree with Sarah, but she’d concentrated on those at the family reunion. “She’s the granddaughter of Hugh, the twin that died in the war.”

  He nodded. “Hugh’s son, David, married a girl in Chicago, and went into insurance. He had two children—Elizabeth, who’s a librarian, and Andy, an attorney. Elizabeth had already planned a trip with a friend when we learned about you, so she didn’t make the reunion.”

  A librarian. That hadn’t been mentioned before, or she would have taken notice. Someone else with a love of books. She suddenly looked forward to meeting another member of the family.

  “Sarah didn’t mention a party tonight.”

  Marc beamed. “It was my idea when Alex called a few days ago. I didn’t have anything essential for the next two days, and I did want to welcome you. I knew some of the others did, too. I swore Sarah to secrecy. We wanted to surprise you.”

  In advance of Alex’s meeting. The thought came immediately to mind, and she scolded herself. She was becoming paranoid.

  “You flew here from Washington?”

  “It’s a regular commute for me, Jessica and it’s not often I gain a new cousin.”

  She met his gaze. It was warm and sincere. But she didn’t want to be disarmed. “How is your arm?” she asked.

  “Almost healed.”

  “I heard the police decided it was an errant hunter.” She heard the challenge in her own voice.

  “That’s the common consensus,” he replied cheerfully.

  “And Ross?”

  Marc shrugged. “A coincidence. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just … well, we haven’t seen eye to eye about a lot of things recently.”

  “He’s coming to supper tonight.”

  Surprise flickered across his face before he schooled it. “Good,” he said jovially.

  “We were out riding just now,” she said, testing him further. “He was telling me a little more about the history of the ranch. And the family. There seem to be some mysteries.”

  He shrugged. “I imagine every family has them.”

  “Some more than most, I suppose,” she said. “I had better go and see how Sarah is. I don’t think she was feeling well earlier.”

  “She seemed fine when I saw her.”

  She remembered what Alex had told her. Sarah’s ill … I don’t think anyone knows but me. I didn’t know myself until the DNA test proved you were a blood relative. Did her aunt feel a new urgency now? Was that why she told Alex?

  “I’m going to find Sarah,” she said.

  “Don’t be hard on her. We just descended on her.”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  She turned and went down to Sarah’s room, rapping lightly on the door.

  There was no response for a moment. She rapped again.

  “Come in.”

  Jessie opened the door. Sarah was seated on a sofa and had turned toward her. Her face was pale, but it broke into a smile. “Jessie, come sit next to me.”

  Jessie did so. “I didn’t know Marc was coming.”

  “Alex told him you were coming,” she said. “He called me this morning from the airport and said Elizabeth was coming too. I should have told you but he asked me not to, and I didn’t know what to do.” She brightened. “You’ll like Elizabeth.”

  “How does she feel about selling the ranch?”

  Sarah looked away. “If it were only her, I think she would probably vote to keep the ranch, but her brother wants to sell, and they’re very close. He’s an attorney in Chicago and has never much cared for the ranch. Elizabeth, though, has been visiting here since she was a youngster.”

  Jessie absorbed that particular piece of information.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Better. I’ll be ready to go riding tomorrow.”

  Jessie wasn’t so sure, but she merely nodded. “I’d best take a shower. I smell like horse.”

  “Everyone is leaving tomorrow. We’ll have time to talk about your father then.”

  “I would very much like that,” Jessie said. “Oh, and Ross said he was coming tonight.”

  Sarah’s eyes opened wide. “Ross?” A smile came to her lips and speculation to her eyes.

  “I think it’s probably to irritate Marc.”

  “I doubt he cares that much about Marc to bother,” Sarah said. “But for whatever reason, I’m glad.”

  Jessie reached over and touched her hand. Sarah patted it. “I’m so glad we found you. I think Harding would be pleased.”

  Jessie hoped so. She excused herself once more and headed out the door, down the hall. Before she reached the opening into the large area, she heard her name mentioned, and stopped.

  “She doesn’t know anything.” Alex’s voice.

  “Have you asked her?” Marc’s voice.

  “Yes. I’ve asked whether her father left her anything. She said no.”

  “There has to be something. Something she’s not aware of. Heath said he left that note in a book.”

  “It probably burned with the cabin.”

  “Dammit, I’m not ready to give up.”

  There was a pause. “Maybe we should look at Heath’s note again.” Alex’s voice. “Is it still in the files in the attic?”

  There was a silence, and she could only guess that o
ne of them had nodded.

  She continued, her shoes making clicks on the hardwood floor. Alex turned, saw her and came forward. “Jessica, I’m glad to see you again.”

  She regarded him carefully. A few moments ago, she would have greeted him with pleasure. Now she wasn’t so sure. What note? What was she supposed to have? The book? Could he mean the old primer?

  But she had no time to pursue that line of thinking because a tall, attractive, dark-haired woman came in the door. Jessie surmised that it was Elizabeth.

  The newcomer immediately came over to them. She grinned. “You must be the famous Jessica. Have you felt overpowered yet?”

  “How did you know?”

  “This family can do it to you. But they really aren’t so bad.” She gave Marc a big hug. “Are you, Marc?”

  The affection between the two cousins was obvious. It stirred the longing in her to have similar relationships. That was what she’d dreamed about. Not suspicion, nor manipulation, nor accusations. Could she have been wrong? Was she really just plain paranoid?

  In a matter of minutes, the room was full: Halden limped painfully from the hall on the other side of the room. Cullen appeared with his wife, Sondra. His twins were there with their wives. Samantha arrived several moments later with April.

  Marc served as bartender. Every time the door opened, she turned her head to see whether it was Ross strolling through the room as if he owned it.

  She accepted a glass of champagne as Sarah entered. No trace of fatigue was obvious in her face. She walked with a spring to her step and took a glass of champagne.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Marc said, “I would like to offer a toast.”

  Ross walked in then. All the eyes turned toward him, surprise in most of them. Jessie saw deep pleasure in Sarah’s eyes, then she turned back to Ross.

  He looked magnificent. He was wearing charcoal slacks, a light-blue dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and a gray sports jacket. He looked casual yet unexpectedly elegant. His hair was still damp and curled slightly.

  Elizabeth went over and hugged him. “I’m so glad to see you. Take me riding tomorrow?”

  Ross turned to Jessie. “Ah, a woman with rare intelligence. She knows not to go riding alone.”

  She wanted to kick him. But she could tell he liked Elizabeth and she felt a lurch in her heart. Elizabeth was about his age, and totally at ease with him.

  “I always used to read books in the barn, and he could never understand it, until I picked out a few I thought he might like. I created a monster.”

  Ross didn’t say anything, but she wondered at the one person who apparently had the affection of both Ross and Marc.

  Supper was surprisingly cordial, although she noticed that Marc and Ross said little to one another. Sarah beamed at Ross, Elizabeth looked at him fondly, and Jessie wondered how she looked at him. Not as hungrily, she hoped, as she felt or as openly as April seemed to ogle him. But though he was polite to Marc’s daughter, he made little attempt to engage her in conversation. Mostly, he talked to Elizabeth.

  Jessie tried to relax, but she kept hearing those words earlier. She doesn’t know anything. There has to be something. And a letter in the attic. It all sounded like some gothic novel. But she decided then and there she was going to see that letter.

  The meal was very good—Chateaubriand and more champagne. Lots and lots of champagne. Ross, she noticed, was the only one who was scarcely drinking.

  It was ten before dessert was finished, and the crowd started to disperse. Ross was the first to leave, saying he had work to do. Elizabeth was staying at the resort, and she decided to leave with Alex and April. Tweedledee and Tweedledum left with their wives, followed by Cullen and his wife.

  Sarah retired with apologies.

  Jessie had mellowed with the champagne. The normalcy of the dinner, the efforts of everyone to be pleasant, disarmed her. But she needed air. And time to think. She excused herself, went up and fetched Ben, then walked him around the paddock.

  The quarter moon looked fragile, almost transparent. The night was warm and a small, tender breeze made it sensuous. Or perhaps anything would seem sensuous after this afternoon. She couldn’t stop remembering the feel of Ross’s lips on hers, and the lightning that streaked through her at his very touch.

  Her gaze wandered over to his house beyond the barn, the small but well-tended manager’s house. Ben kept close by, happily sniffing the intriguing smells of other animals. He barked at the soft whinny of a horse.

  The door of the house opened, and she saw Ross standing in the doorway, Timber next to him. He was still wearing the dress shirt but the tails were loose, the sleeves rolled up and the neck unbuttoned. The dog’s ears were cocked, his body alert.

  She would dearly love to have a photo of them together like that.

  Jessie tried to resist and turn away, but then Ben with a loud happy bark tore off toward them, his tail wagging frantically. Her shy dog. Her cautious dog. Her Judas goat. She followed.

  Ross appeared bigger than life in the moonlight. His deeply tanned skin stretched over high cheekbones with an austerity lightened only slightly by thick dark eyelashes. Those lashes were half lowered, giving him a lazy look. But there was nothing lazy in his stance, in the energy that radiated from him.

  Her gaze studied his face, the slight dent in his chin that gave him just the faintest hint of vulnerability, the lips that were sensual, too sensual. They were curved into a question now. She wondered what they would look like in an honest-to-God smile. She’d never quite seen one.

  Timber sedately flicked his tail in a semblance of welcome as Ben wriggled ecstatically. He seldom saw other dogs and now he was making an abject idiot out of himself. She was afraid she would do the same.

  She hesitated at the bottom of the two steps that led up to the porch. “Thank you for coming tonight.”

  He watched her for a moment, then stood aside, inviting her inside. The dogs followed. “I ended up enjoying it. I like Elizabeth.”

  “I noticed.” She wished he’d said he liked her. But then his eyes were saying it. They were roaming all over her, apparently approving. “I liked her, too,” she added hurriedly, afraid he’d detect a hint of jealousy.

  He didn’t smile, but he took a step closer.

  All her senses began to react again. Traitorous body. Her heart pounded harder. Her nerve ends tingled. Desire eddied deep inside. She feared that she was standing there like a fool, staring up at him.

  But he had a gleam in his eyes, too. Not now. He’d said those words earlier, and they echoed in her mind. Had he meant never? Or just that moment this afternoon? She sought frantically for something more to say. She did know she didn’t want to leave. “Do you see her often?”

  Ross shrugged. “Not recently. She used to come here on vacations as a girl. She read every single minute she wasn’t on a horse.”

  Words. Questions. They always seemed to resort to that, Ross and she. They’d been protection against deeper feelings, against the heated recognition that always played between them.

  “She never married?” She continued to play the game.

  “She was engaged. Two days before the wedding, her fiancé died in an automobile accident. I don’t think she ever got over it. She rarely comes here anymore,” he said.

  Feeling like a three-year-old under his gaze, she reminded herself of her suspicions that he was hiding something she needed to know. She tried to summon up the anger she’d felt earlier but it melted under his gaze.

  But now she had another little tidbit of information, thanks to eavesdropping, and she couldn’t stop herself from probing again. “Have you ever heard of a book connected to my father?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She hesitated. He was not relaxed any longer. She saw the tension in him, tasted it. Felt it. Why? “I heard Marc and Alex talking.”

  He hesitated, obviously trying to decide what to say. Finally he shrugged, and
she knew she was going to get part of a story. If not all of it.

  Ross looked resigned. “The family legend has it that Heath supposedly left a clue as to where the bonds were located, that he meant them to belong to the family once the company succeeded. The money was only a loan, a way to get him inside the oil venture.” He paused. “I think he was just trying to justify a theft.”

  Her legs swayed under her. Her heart seemed to stop for a moment, then beat frantically. Breath caught in her throat until she felt she was suffocating.

  “That’s why they came looking for me,” she said after a moment. “I thought … it was the ranch.” But she had hoped a little bit had been for her. For her father.

  “Not Sarah,” he said gently. “Nor, I think, for most of the others.”

  “Most?” she asked. “Whom do you not include in ‘most’?” Her mind was spinning ahead. The feeling of betrayal deepened. “You knew this when I told you about the burglaries. You didn’t say anything.”

  “It’s legend, rumor, God knows what,” he replied slowly. “I’ve never seen the letter. I don’t even know if it really exists.”

  She turned away from him and fought back tears. She had never felt so alone. It was as if a starving man had been handed food, then had it snatched away as he was putting it in his mouth. She hadn’t realized until Alex contacted her how strong, how deep, her longing was.

  How much she’d hoped she’d found a family.

  And now the dream had exploded. It was all lies. No one had been completely honest, not even Ross. Her throat constricted until she couldn’t breathe.

  She’d realized, of course, that her vote on the matter of the ranch was important to everyone. But this … lost treasure or whatever it was far outreached that. Her home had been burglarized, her office ransacked, even her hotel room searched. Too much to be coincidental. She felt a sense of danger, even of evil, wrap around her, and she shivered. Could she ever believe any one of them again?

  The scars on her heart were tearing open. How many birthdays had she waited for her father to come home? How many times had he returned after she was asleep on the sofa? There was only that one good day, her sixteenth birthday, when he’d given her a locket and the book.