“Come on, Jess.” Coaxing now.
Her eyes finally found and deciphered Ross. He was wearing a sling. His face was haggard. Unshaved. His thick hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed in a week. His shirt wasn’t stained, so he must have changed it, but it looked wrinkled. Slept in.
But he was alive.
He bent down and brushed a kiss along her cheek. “No coward here,” he said, and she saw something like mist in his eyes. But maybe it was just her eyes. They weren’t focusing very well.
“Little idiot,” he said. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to taunt a killer?”
“He was going to … shoot you.”
His fingers tightened around hers.
“Cullen,” she said. “It was Cullen.”
“Yes.”
“Where …”
“He’s dead,” Ross said as his fingers tightened around hers. “He died yesterday of a gunshot wound, but first he admitted to shooting Marc, trying to run you off the road. For what’s it’s worth, he claimed he didn’t want to kill you. Only scare you off. At the cabin, too. He’d hoped we would just run for it and leave the bonds. When we didn’t, he panicked.”
“But why … shoot Marc?”
“He hoped it would be blamed on me. If I were jailed, Sarah would have to sell the ranch. And it might well make you decide to sell. He was in deep financial trouble, deeper than anyone knew, with some very high-interest loans. He was about to lose the Quest. If you had agreed to sell the ranch, he could have stayed afloat awhile. Probably not long, though. Those bonds were his key to survival. He wanted them all.”
“The attic?”
“Cullen again. He’d stolen back into the house to get the letter. He was sure you knew more than you were saying. That’s the reason Timber didn’t bark that night. He knows Cullen.”
“But how did he know I had the book?”
“He hired some thugs in Atlanta. He’d borrowed money from a dubious source and they put him in touch with these people. They put a bug in the bookshop. He was convinced you knew more than you told Alex or the family.”
“And Alex?”
“Not involved at all. He was just keeping all his options open. I think he feels guilty as hell now that he didn’t realize how desperate Cullen was.”
She closed her eyes. She knew about desperation. Her father had been desperate. He’d set in motion consequences that continued until this day. She tried to move, and pain shot through her.
He leaned over and she felt his lips on her face. Tender. Loving. “Get some rest,” he whispered. “You were hit twice. One bullet hit your lung, the other your hip. Your lung collapsed and you had a touch of pneumonia.”
She remembered clouds of pain, a tube, suffocating. Her throat still hurt. So did her side whenever she moved. She also felt fuzzy, sedated. And tired. So tired.
But first she had to know one more thing. “The bonds?” she asked. “Were any of them saved?”
“Most of them,” he said. “According to Alex, the remaining bonds are probably worth a little more than the ranch would have brought. You seem to be an heiress again.”
“I don’t want any,” she said. “If I have a share, I want it to go to the others.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s fruit of a poisoned tree. They destroyed my father. If Heath hadn’t taken the money …”
“He might still have taken Lori.”
A shiver passed through Jessie. “Maybe. But my father never would have gone to the cabin that day. He never would have taken a gun. I can’t help but feel that money is more a curse than a blessing. At least for me. Not for the others.”
He nodded. His gaze was wondering. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever met that keeps turning down fortunes.”
“I still have a share in the Sunset. That’s a great deal more than I had a month ago.” She hoped she had something else. Something far more important.
With that thought in mind, she allowed her eyes to close. She was still so tired, so weak.
His fingers still clutched hers. It was all she needed at the moment.
Jessie didn’t know how long she slept this time. Some of the pain had faded, though. Her chest still burned, hurt, but she could breathe easier. When she woke again, Sarah was beside her.
Sarah. Marc and Samantha. Alex. Even Elizabeth, who must have flown in.
Marc came over and sat beside her. “We all wanted to tell you how sorry we are. If we had known how desperate Cullen was, we might have been able to help. I only hope that this doesn’t affect the way you feel about the rest of the family. We’ve all come to care for you.”
The grief in his eyes was unmistakable. Cullen was his brother. And now surely Marc knew that Cullen had been the one who shot him. History repeating itself. And greed had been at the bottom of both tragedies.
She held out her hand, took his, and squeezed it tightly. “If only I had told Sarah and Alex about the book sooner. He would have had his share of the bonds.”
“No,” he said. “None of it was your doing. He made his own decisions. The twins were unaware. They … were afraid you wouldn’t want to see them, or they would have been here.”
“There’s been too much grief already,” she said. “Of course, I don’t blame them.”
He hesitated, then added, “Thank you. Ross told us you wanted us to have the remaining bonds. I still think you should take your share.”
“I burned mine,” she said wryly. “My father should have told you about them long ago.”
His brows furrowed. “Still …”
“No. I have what I want,” she said. “I have a family.” She moved slightly, and winced as pain drove through her.
“We can talk about it later.” A smile lit his face. “I think Ross plans to stay nearby.” He ushered the others out. All except Sarah, who lingered at her bedside, a nervous smile on her face.
Her aunt tried to smile. “Ross went down for some coffee. All of them had been waiting to see you for hours. Marc even canceled some fund-raising event. And Alex has been haunting the corridors.”
“Some of the bonds were destroyed,” she said cautiously, wondering whether that had made a difference.
“You saved Ross’s life in doing so. Cullen rushed over to stamp out the flames, giving Ross enough time to get the rifle. No one faults you for that.”
Still, Jessie couldn’t let it go. “My father wanted me to get them all back to the family.”
“Ross told me about the letter.” She hesitated a moment. “I know … you believed Ross wasn’t honest with you.”
Jessie felt her stomach constrict.
“I was the one who had your home burglarized before you came here,” Sarah said slowly. “You weren’t supposed to know anything about it, much less come home early.”
“But Ross said Cullen …”
“He said he put a bug on your phone in the bookstore. He got the idea after Alex told him you’d been burglarized. He thought it more likely you would have left whatever it was in the bookstore.”
“But why …?”
“I thought your father might have left you some clue to those bonds. We knew they had never been redeemed. Those damnable things almost destroyed the family. Heath. Harding. And … I was afraid the sheriff’s office might revive the investigation into those deaths fifty years ago. But now I’m tired of secrets.”
Jessie waited.
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. “My brothers meant everything to me. Each one of them. They had protected me and looked after me since I was a baby. But your father was always my favorite. I would … have done anything for him.” Her fingers tightened around Jessie’s. “That day … that terrible day, I saw Harding rush out of the house. I knew something was wrong and followed him. But I lost him along the way. He was going too fast. I could only guess that he was going to the cabin.
“When I neared the turnoff, I saw his car turn out into the main road. I don’t think he saw me. I dro
ve on in. I found Heath dead of a rifle bullet and Lori … hurt. She regained consciousness, though, and demanded I call the police. She kept saying Harding had killed Heath and he would pay for it. I knew I couldn’t let Harding go to prison … or be executed. It was all Lori’s fault. She set one brother against another brother. I was wild with grief and anger and I knew that if she lived she would destroy Harding. I … couldn’t let that happen. She started for the door. I picked up the rifle and told her to stop. She wouldn’t. The rifle … went off.”
Her head fell. She was silent for a moment, then continued. “I went after Halden. We started a fire near the cabin, knowing it would spread and consume the cabin. It was easy to convince the law that Lori and Heath had been careless and must have been trapped inside. There were any number of fires that summer and once we were sure the cabin was destroyed, we stopped and phoned in an anonymous report.
“After that, no one was really surprised that Harding left town. His wife and brother were dead. It was only natural he would want to get away.
“You know the rest,” she continued. “We found the letter from Heath in his room. No one looked for the bonds because they weren’t worth anything at that time.”
“But the company became successful,” Jessie said.
“Beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. My brothers searched for the bonds over the years, then my nephews. I thought, hoped, everyone had given up on it. I … was afraid that if the book was found, it might raise questions and open an investigation. An autopsy would reveal bullet wounds.”
“Ross knew.”
“He knew I had covered up a murder,” Sarah said. “When he got in trouble once, I told him we all had our sins, actions we regretted. I was consumed with guilt and told him part of the story. I suspect he knew I did more than start a fire.”
She paused. “I tried for years to find Harding, tell him that it was safe to come home. That I had made it safe for him. Then Alex found you for me, and I wanted to make everything right. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t have that book, that it wouldn’t lead to you learning what happened with your father.
“Then I saw you and Ross together and thought perhaps I could ensure his future, too. But Cullen believed you might know something about those bonds. He was obsessed with them. I just never thought he would go so … far.”
Sarah’s confession was like new blows to Jessie’s stomach. They pounded far deeper than Cullen’s culpability. She remembered that photo, the old photo, with the six happy siblings. Part of her understood the horror of that confrontation in the cabin so many years earlier. If they had been her brothers, how far would she have gone to protect them?
“I’m sorry,” Sarah finished. “I am so sorry for everything.” She rose slowly and walked from the room. The energy was gone, the life. She looked like an old woman.
She’d left Jessie with choices. She could tell the police about the murder fifty years ago.
Or she could keep silent, as Halden had all these years. Had that silence infected his son, caused him to commit murder?
How many lies and secrets could the family endure?
A knock at the door. Then Ross came in. His face was troubled.
He sat on the side of her bed and took her hand again. “Sarah told me what she told you,” he said. “I’m so damned sorry about all of it. I should have told you everything I knew.”
She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it. “You were protecting the one person who had protected you,” she said. “It was fifty years ago. There’s nothing to be gained to prosecuting an old woman.”
“She doesn’t have long to live,” Ross said. “The doctors say no longer than six months.”
Grief flowed through her. No matter what Sarah had done in one moment of anger so long ago, Jessie had come to love her. She had obviously paid for that decision over the years.
Jessie nodded.
Ross hesitated. “You have to do what you think is right. That’s what I love about you. What Sarah so admires about you. It wouldn’t change anything.”
Love. It was the first time he’d actually said the word.
In that moment, she felt free. And she knew that what she was doing was right.
“I love you,” she said.
His fingers tightened around hers. “If you want to leave here, I can try to find a job around Atlanta,” he said.
She knew how much that offer cost him. She loved him even more for making it. But the Sunset was her future, as it had been responsible for so much of her past. She wasn’t going to run from it again.
“No,” she said softly. “The ranch is staying in the hands of the family. It’s what Heath and … my father would have wanted. I think he somehow meant for me to decipher the mystery of the primer and go home. And,” she added, “there’s no Sunset without you.”
A slow grin came to his face. “Will you marry me? I think it’s the only way I can keep you safe.”
“I like that,” she said.
“We’d both be getting one hell of a family,” he said.
“And enlarging it.”
“A dreadful thought,” he replied sternly, but a smile played around his eyes.
“A marvelous thought,” she corrected.
He leaned down, this rough cowboy of hers. His lips touched hers with a tenderness so sweet her heart swelled to near bursting. It was a promise, a melding of spirits.
And she knew it to be true and real and strong. As strong as the land and as true as its beauty. She was, at last, home.
epilogue
Jessie had never been so tired in her life.
Nor as content. Happy. Euphoric.
Her arms went around the tiny bundles. Twins. Both alive. Both well. Both with ten fingers and ten toes each.
Twins run in the family.
Ross had been in the delivery room with her, his hand holding hers throughout labor, breathing with her, encouraging her. Sharing the pain. She even felt that his was greater than hers, because he’d felt so helpless against it.
He’d hated feeling helpless. She knew that about him. And now so much more. She knew how big his heart was, how fine his mind, and especially how loving his soul.
She heard the door open and looked up. She saw Ross standing there. He’d left after the delivery to make a few phone calls and now he was beaming at her, grinning like the proverbial cat who ate the canary.
She relished the smile on his face. It came so easily now. He came over to her, and together they looked down at one red face, then the other. Both had fuzzy knobs of dark hair. And dark, dark blue eyes. She was told that might well change but she hoped not. She loved dark hair, their father’s hair.
The twins were not a surprise. They’d known for months, just as they’d known it would be a boy and girl. But the reality was something else, something so profound and glorious that she could scarcely contain the joy inside her.
She’d never known she had a maternal streak. But ever since she discovered she was pregnant, she’d felt a fierce protectiveness she’d never imagined possible. These children would never know a moment’s insecurity. Not if she could help it.
Nor her husband.
She smiled as she recalled how many times he’d touched her stomach with such awe, such reverence.
Jessie only wished that Sarah had not died two months earlier, one month after Halden—her last brother—died. But at least she’d known. She’d known about the twins, and she’d rejoiced with them. They’d shared a bottle of sparkling juice and watched the sunset together.
Ross had announced then they planned to name the twins Sarah and Harding.
They’d discovered Sarah the next day. She’d died in her sleep with a smile on her face.
Ross leaned down and kissed Jessie. “They’re wonderful,” he said. “Little miracles.”
“Take one,” she challenged.
He hesitated, but then he had taken child-care classes with her. He’d learned to hold babies. “I take it this is Sarah,�
� he said as he picked up the pink-blanketed baby, holding her gingerly. He’d practiced with dolls, and the remembrance brought a smile to her face. He’d been so big, so awkward, yet so tender.
“Hi, Sarah,” he said in a soft voice. “We did all right, you know, your mother and me. And your great-aunt. You wouldn’t be here without her.”
Then he turned back to Jessie. “Alex has called the rest of the family. Marc is delighted. And not only with our news. Our new senator just got his first bill passed.” He hesitated. “Alex said that both Heath and his brother send their best wishes.”
“Good,” Jessie said softly. “Perhaps they’ll come to the christening.”
“Alex believes they will.” The twins hadn’t attended their wedding ten months earlier, but had sent a congratulatory note. Alex explained that they felt guilty about their father’s actions and thought they wouldn’t be welcome. Sondra had taken what was in Cullen’s account after he died and disappeared, leaving the twins to clean up their father’s mess. They had inherited half of Halden’s share in the ranch and sold it to Jessie in exchange for her portion of the bonds; that money and their own share allowed them to pay off Cullen’s debts. She’d never wanted the bond money anyway, and this way she ensured the future of the Sunset.
Now Hugh managed the Quest, and Cullen’s dream had survived after all. As had Sarah’s to keep the family together …
Ross replaced Sarah into a nook under her arm, and he sat on the bed, his fingers touching her cheek. “You are so incredibly beautiful,” he said softly.
She was no such thing. She’d been in labor for the last six hours. But she knew he believed it, and that was all that mattered.
“I love you,” she said.
His eyes glistened, and she wondered how she’d even thought him aloof. He had filled her with love.
She looked down at the twins again. For a split second, she remembered the photo of five brothers and a sister: the laughing faces, the affection that had been so obvious before the war.
“He would be happy, wouldn’t he?” she asked.
His mouth creased into a tender smile. He didn’t have to ask who. He knew. It was part of the knowledge between them.
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