Nothing To Lose

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Wyatt looked her over, a strange, hot light in his eyes that made her stomach flutter.

  “Probably that we’ve had a night of wild, steamy sex.”

  “We haven’t!”

  “I believe I’m aware of that,” he said wryly, then grinned. “But then, if we had, you’d probably be a whole lot more relaxed right now.”

  She smacked him with the closest thing she could find, a dish towel patterned with chili peppers.

  He laughed and grabbed it from her, then tugged her into his arms for a quick, heartbreakingly casual kiss. “Don’t worry, Tay. They know what happened to your house last night. No one will give a second thought to how you’re dressed.”

  A quick knock sounded at the door and Taylor scrambled away from him just as it opened and two little dark-haired girls bolted through.

  “Hi, Uncle Wyatt.” The older one hugged his leg. “Can I go ride your horsey?”

  “Me too. Me too! I wanna ride Lucy,” the other one exclaimed.

  Taylor watched, charmed, as Wyatt picked one little girl up, kissed her forehead with a loud smack, then repeated the gesture with the other, amid a chorus of giggles.

  “I don’t think your mom would be too crazy about that plan today, girls. How about if we save it for next week while your mom and Gage are in San Francisco on their honeymoon? Tell Grandma Lynn to bring you over, okay?”

  “Okay,” the older of the two said with a heavy, put-upon sigh. Then she caught sight of Belle, lying in a pool of morning sunshine from the bay window.

  “A dog! Look, Anna!” she exclaimed. “Uncle Wyatt has a new doggy!”

  “Not mine,” he corrected. “This is my friend, Taylor. Belle is her doggy.”

  The girls immediately rushed to Belle. Taylor stepped forward with concern, as Belle didn’t have a great deal of experience with children, but she needn’t have worried. The dog calmly endured the girls’ excited attention. The older girl threw her arms around Belle’s neck and hugged her tightly, but the dog only licked at her face, sending both girls off on another round of sweet giggles.

  A moment later, two women came through the door, both carrying armloads of fall flowers in rich crimsons and yellows and umbers.

  “Here, let me get some of those,” Wyatt said, taking some from the older of the two and setting them on his dining table before returning to kiss each woman on the cheek in turn.

  “Thank you, dear. There are more in the car. Would you mind grabbing them?”

  This must be his mother, Taylor thought, mortified all over again at what she was wearing—or more precisely, what she wasn’t wearing.

  Lynn McKinnon was one of those women who had aged gracefully. With a son as old as Wyatt—and one older, Taylor remembered—she had to be at least in her late fifties but she looked a decade younger.

  Taylor narrowed her gaze. Something about her lovely, warm features reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t immediately place her. Perhaps she was only seeing the son in the mother.

  The other woman, Wyatt’s future sister-in-law, was blond and small and lovely. The smile she gave Taylor was open and friendly.

  “Mom, Allie, this is Taylor Bradshaw,” Wyatt said on his way out the door. “The friend I told you about. Taylor, this is my mother, Lynn McKinnon, and Alicia de Barillas, soon-to-be McKinnon. And the two rugrats are Gabriella and Anna.”

  Lynn McKinnon’s eyes filled with compassion and, before Taylor realized her intent, she reached for Taylor’s hands and gave them both a warm squeeze. “I am so sorry about your house,” she said. “I was sick about it when Wyatt told me. Just sick. I’m so relieved my son was there with you so that you wouldn’t have to be alone after such a horrible ordeal.”

  Taylor didn’t know how to react to such warmth from her or the empathy in Allie’s expression. These women didn’t even know her! They had enough to worry about, with a wedding the next day.

  “Thank you,” she finally murmured.

  “We brought you clothes and some makeup,” Allie said. “We didn’t know your size for certain, but I think what we have will work for you.”

  “Thank you,” she said again, overwhelmed. “I am so sorry to barge in on you like this in the middle of your wedding. If I had known, I never would have agreed to come. You have a million things to do besides worry about some stranger.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Lynn said. “You and Wyatt can go shopping for the things you need today and then tonight you must come over to my house. We’re having a wild bachelorette party.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t intrude.”

  “You wouldn’t be intruding,” Allie insisted with a smile. “We’d love to have you!”

  “Grandma Lynn says we’re all gonna pop popcorn and watch Beauty and the Beast on DVD,” the girl named Gabriella said with excitement. “My favorite.”

  Taylor said with a smile, charmed by the girl and by the insight into just how “wild” the bachelorette party was likely to be.

  “I love it too,” Anna said with a wide, gap-toothed grin. “And we get to stay up until ten-thirty! Can you bring your doggy?”

  “We’ll have to figure that out,” Lynn said. “Come on, Taylor. Let’s see if any of the clothes we brought will fit you.”

  Without giving her a chance to argue, Lynn grabbed her out of the kitchen, and Taylor discovered just where the son learned his high-handedness—and his kindness.

  Chapter 9

  With an exaggerated flourish, Wyatt twirled his mother around the dance floor that had been improvised on his broad deck overlooking the vast mountains.

  Mother Nature had cooperated with a lovely fall day, sunny and mild with a brilliant blue, cloudless sky.

  Allie and Gage had been married in a sweet, solemn ceremony in the same tiny chapel in Liberty where his mother—and all three of her children—had been christened.

  Allie had cried, his mother had cried. Hell, he thought even Gage had shed a tear or two. After all the blubbering seemed to be through, the party had adjourned to his ranch.

  The late-afternoon sun cast stretched-out shadows across his deck where a truly horrible band made up of Gage’s FBI buddies was filling in while the regular musicians took a break.

  At least the drummer could keep time, Wyatt thought with a grin as he and his mother two-stepped across the deck.

  “I’d forgotten what a good dancer you were,” Lynn said with a breathless laugh.

  He dipped her low, then brought her vertical again with another elaborate flourish. “I’m a regular Fred Astaire. Who would ever guess I’m the same kid who spent a childhood constantly tripping over my own feet—as well as everyone else’s.”

  She made a face at him. “Oh, stop. You weren’t that bad.”

  “How many pairs of glasses do you think you bought me between the ages of seven and fifteen?”

  “At least three a year.”

  She laughed and he thought how lovely she still was, even after all she had been through.

  “I don’t know who was more relieved when you finally switched to contact lenses—me, your optometrist or all the girls who could finally see those heartbreaking eyes of yours.”

  “Right. That was me, the gawky, skinny klutz with the heartbreaking eyes.”

  Lynn shook her head. “You were never as awkward as you seemed to think.”

  “Says my adoring mother.”

  He grinned, although the talk about his klutziness reminded him of the one terrible day he couldn’t change, when it had mattered.

  If he hadn’t fallen off his bike just before Charlotte was kidnapped, perhaps he might have been able to see more than the color of a car so police could have sharpened their search for his sister.

  He sobered at the reminder, then was angry at it. How long did they all have to suffer? Why did his sister’s shadow have to blight this day that should be nothing but joy?

  Would they ever have a day of full-on sunshine, without that shadow that always seemed to hover over them?

 
He sensed Lynn had been thinking of Charley too at various moments during the day. After twenty-odd years, he had learned to recognize that faraway look in her eyes, the tight set of her features.

  She must have been thinking of her daughter—it would be extremely difficult at the marriage of one child not to wonder and worry about the one who was lost.

  “Today was a good day, wasn’t it?” he asked, compelled somehow to remind her.

  Lynn smiled, though it was a little wobbly. “Perfect. Allie makes a lovely bride. Just what I have always dreamed of for Gage. She and her girls have been so wonderful for him.”

  Wyatt followed his mother’s gaze to Gage and Allie. They were dancing together in the corner, and though Gage looked slightly unsteady on his legs, they both seemed radiantly happy.

  He couldn’t help thinking about the hard man Gage had been at the beginning of the summer. Testy and taciturn, he had pushed them all away at every turn.

  Finding Allie and her girls had mellowed him, softened his hard edges. Wyatt was thrilled that Gage had found a woman who made him so happy—just as he was thrilled that because those edges had softened, Gage and their mother had begun to rebuild their relationship damaged by guilt and loss and pain.

  Taylor suddenly whirled by him in the soft blue dress she had picked out the day before at a little boutique in Riverdale. She was on the arms of his father, who winked at Wyatt.

  “This band stinks, doesn’t it?” Sam asked, then didn’t wait around for an answer before twirling her away.

  “Dad looks good, don’t you think?” he asked Lynn, then was surprised when she blushed and focused on a spot over his right shoulder.

  “Your father always looks good,” she murmured, then quickly changed the subject. “I like your friend Taylor very much.”

  Now it was his turn to feel uncomfortable. “Yeah. I like her too.”

  “We had a wonderful time at the party last night. We pigged out on popcorn and pizza and played games until the girls fell asleep, then the grown-up girls watched a chick flick. It was great.” She smiled at him. “How long will she be staying?”

  “That’s up to her.” He shrugged. “The invitation is open-ended. She hasn’t figured out what she’s going to do yet, but I know she’s anxious to return to law school and the rest of her obligations in Salt Lake. Whatever she decides, I hope she takes at least a few more days here.”

  “Poor thing. How awful to lose her home like that, especially after all she and her family have been through. She told me you’re helping her look into her brother’s case. That’s the case you’re writing about now, isn’t it?”

  Right. The one he was losing all perspective about. He started to answer, but Sam and Taylor circled around to them again. This time Sam stopped by them as the song ended with a crash of discordant notes. To everyone’s relief, the real musicians wrested their instruments back and immediately struck up an old Cole Porter love song.

  “Aw, now this is more like it,” Sam said with a smile. “Lynn, can I have the honor?”

  Wyatt was amused—and a bit disconcerted—to see his mother blush again and slip willingly into her ex-husband’s arms. On the plus side, it left him free to dance with Taylor.

  He didn’t want to think how perfect she seemed in his arms, tall and lithe and desirable. He wouldn’t think about it, he decided. If he did, he was likely to embarrass both of them.

  “You have a great family,” she said.

  Wyatt couldn’t argue with that. “We have our problems but I wouldn’t trade them.”

  “I believe I’ve danced with an uncle, a first cousin and a second cousin twice removed. And now your father.”

  “Both of my parents grew up around here,” he said. “Throw a stick in town and you’re likely to hit a relative of mine. Do you have extended family?”

  “My father was an only child and I never knew my mother’s family. I think she had an estranged sister but I don’t remember ever hearing much about her.” She made a face. “With both our parents gone, I only have Hunter left. It’s a little tough to have family reunions in prison.”

  He squeezed her hand in sympathy and she sent him a sidelong look. “I sound like a baby, don’t I? I’m sorry.”

  “You’re trying to make the best of a tough situation.”

  “And not succeeding very well, usually.” She paused, then made a transparent attempt to change the subject. “I like your house, Wyatt. There’s a quiet here. A peace.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I bought it. No matter whatever craziness I have to deal with on the outside, I can come here to find sanity and calm.”

  That peace seemed worlds away right now, with Taylor in his arms and the slow glide of the dance, he admitted to himself. She shouldn’t fit there so perfectly. It only made his body ache more for her.

  He was sure his palms must be sweaty, his movements as jerky and awkward as in those gawky teen years, but she didn’t seem to notice. She swayed in his arms in time with a slow, sweet love song.

  After a moment, she closed her eyes, savoring the music and the cool afternoon breeze ruffling her auburn hair.

  He couldn’t seem to push away the memory of kissing her the week before in her office. He would swear he could still taste her on his lips, still feel her twisting those arms around his neck and drawing him closer.

  The urge to kiss her almost overwhelmed him. He even caught himself leaning forward, his mouth eager to taste her again, but he managed to check the motion just in time, praying she didn’t notice. The abrupt movement threw off his dance rhythm a little and he stumbled against her.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m a little out of practice.”

  At kissing and at dancing, he acknowledged ruefully. Both were dangerous activities to his equilibrium, especially where Taylor Bradshaw was involved.

  The reception broke up soon after Wyatt’s brother and his new wife drove away amid a shower of bubbles and sunflower seeds.

  From the wide deck of his ranch house, Taylor watched the last guests drive away just as the sun slid behind the mountains. After the crowds and excitement of the afternoon, the ranch echoed with a silence broken only by the piercing cry of a hawk wheeling and diving overhead and the evening breeze moaning in the tops of the pine trees.

  The air was sweet here, clear and scented with the sharp, citrusy tang of pine and fir. Inhaling it into her lungs brought back many happy memories of childhood weekend trips to their cabin in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

  For all their conflicts, her father and brother shared a love of fishing. In the stream, they could at least try to find common ground. Taylor wasn’t big on fishing but as long as she could take a book or two along, she hadn’t minded the long days of solitude while Hunter and the Judge tried out woolly buggers and renegades.

  Her stern, unapproachable father seemed to mellow on those trips. She supposed it was a little hard to stay solemn and dignified and judicial when he was traipsing through thick willows on the slippery riverbank wearing hip waders.

  She let her mind pick through those pleasant memories while she automatically started to straighten some of the mess left by the wedding guests.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  Wyatt’s voice from the doorway startled her and she bobbled a glass and nearly dropped it. With an exclamation she reached for it just before it would have shattered on the deck.

  “Nice save,” he said with a grin as he walked out to join her under the dusky, orange-streaked sky.

  She made a face. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were supposed to be changing your clothes.”

  “Doesn’t take me long to climb out of the monkey suit. I see you’ve already changed.”

  “I don’t have many nice clothes left. I need to take care of the ones I have until I have the chance to build up my wardrobe a little more.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he repeated when she continued collecting napkins and plates. “The caterer and her people are taking care
of the dishes and I’ve got a crew coming in the morning to clean the rest.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I do. You need to work on relaxing, Ms. Bradshaw.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not very good at that.”

  “No kidding?” He grinned. “Since you’ve got a jacket, let’s take a walk. We’ve still got a half hour or so of twilight—this is a gorgeous time to see my ranch. Come on, I’ll show you my favorite spot.”

  She wasn’t used to leisure time. For the past eight years she’d been a student, always aware in the back of her mind there was something else she should be doing. Studying, working on a project, researching a report.

  And then for the past two, every spare minute had been spent on Hunter’s appeal. She wasn’t very good at relaxing, but she decided now was as good a time as any to try.

  They walked away from the house with its rock and log facade and charming gables, along a pathway that passed a barn and several outbuildings, all painted a traditional red. Belle followed him, along with Wyatt’s two black-and-white border collies, Abbott and Costello.

  It was a lovely evening. Not full dark yet—with the lavender glow of twilight making everything shimmer—the ranch seemed a magical place surrounded by soaring mountains. The air here smelled of fall, of dying leaves and distant woodsmoke.

  They walked along a split-rail fence toward a copse of trees in a peaceful silence broken only by the dogs panting ahead of them and leaves crunching under their feet.

  Even though the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, Taylor was painfully aware of him. All day she had watched him interact with his family, dancing with his mother, talking quietly with his father, teasing his brother’s new stepdaughters. She had found herself watching him far more often than was good for her.

  Her awareness of him was only heightened by that dance they had shared. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the strength of his arms around her.

  As they neared the trees, she could hear the murmur of a small stream. The trees had camouflaged another red-painted outbuilding, a gazebo, about fifteen-feet square, with screened walls.