The lady of the house would find herself no more immune, especially if the woman kept doing everything in her power to frustrate Jessie’s search.
“Mrs. Rayford? Nancy Rayford?” She blinked at an attractive older woman with a silvered pixie cut and blue eyes a shade darker than her soft cabled sweater. It was hard to imagine this was the same woman who had answered her questions on the phone so brusquely before repeatedly hanging up on her. She was a tiny, mousy-looking thing, so frail and insubstantial that Jessie quickly closed the door behind her, half-afraid that a stray gust could waft her up into the shadow of the elegant curved staircase just behind her.
“Yes, why—” Voice faltering, Mrs. Rayford took a step back before reaching for a candle with one trembling hand. Lifting its light toward Jessie, she gasped and spread her hand over her chest. “Haley? Oh, my— I thought you weren’t—”
Jessie shook her head. “My sister. Remember? I tried to tell you on the phone.” Her heart fell with a realization. “Then, Haley really isn’t here?”
She’d been banking on finding her sister hiding out here, after having talked her way into some menial job with some sob story about being pursued by an abusive stalker. It was Haley’s time-honored method for avoiding creditors, former lovers and, Jessie suspected, her family, as well.
Mrs. Rayford’s blue eyes widened before she flicked a fearful glance behind her, toward the stairwell. “You’re— Then you’re really not her? Truly?”
“We’re identical twins,” Jessie explained, offering a smile in an attempt to reassure the frightened woman. And more important, to gain her trust. “Our own father couldn’t tell us apart.”
Not that he’d ever made much effort. But Nancy Rayford didn’t need to know that.
From outside came a low hum, and a moment later, the chandelier above them flickered on. The sudden illumination revealed the older woman’s pallor, painting gaunt shadows in her hollowed cheeks.
Reminded of her own mother’s illness, Jessie said, “I’m sorry I’ve upset you. Do you need to sit down?”
Taking the woman by the arm, Jessie led her to a bench seat and squatted before her when Mrs. Rayford sank down to it.
“Are you all right?” Jessie asked, thinking of heart attacks and aneurysms, and the sudden, fatal stroke that had taken her father over one of her family’s mandatory Sunday dinners. “Is there something I can get you? Someone I can call?”
No sooner had she asked the questions than she heard the sounds of approaching boot heels on the marble. As Henry faded back, turning to hide the mini-cam still perched on his shoulder, a deep voice boomed, “Generator’s back online, Mama. Should keep us up and running for a while, anyway—”
A tall man holding a broad-brimmed gray hat came striding through the archway and stopped short, looking in confusion from Henry to Jessie before finding Mrs. Rayford. She had leaned forward, holding her bowed head in her shaking hands.
“What’s going on here? Mama? Is something wrong?” He rushed toward her so quickly that Jessie rose and stepped out of his way. “These people—are they bothering you?”
Blinking back tears, his mother waved off his concern. “No, no, Zach. They’re just—” She looked to Jessie. “They took a wrong turn in the storm, but they saw our gate and stopped to ask directions to town.”
Jessie stared in surprise. Why on earth would you lie to your own son?
“I was just helping them when all of a sudden, one of my headaches came on,” Mrs. Rayford continued. “They’ve been very kind, but I’ll need my prescription. You remember where I keep it, don’t you? And some water, too, please.”
Clearly uneasy, he looked from Jessie to Henry.
“I’ll be fine,” his mother said, tenting her fingers over one side of her forehead. “Maybe it’s the wind, but this migraine’s getting worse. If you could get my pill right away...”
“Sure, Mama. I’ll be right back,” he said, his concerned eyes as vibrant a blue as his mother’s. But that was where their resemblance ended.
Where Mrs. Rayford was petite and frail, her rancher son was broad-shouldered and long-limbed—a trim six-three, at least, and only a few years older than Jessie’s twenty-nine. The wind, or maybe the hat, had mussed his short jet-black hair, but it was his strong jaw that caught her attention—that and the high cheekbones, deep tan and dark brows that hinted he had Native blood, despite the color of his eyes. To her surprise, there was no ring on his finger, she noticed, sneaking a glance at his strong, work-roughened hands as he rushed back in the direction he had come.
He might be wearing a barn jacket, boots and worn jeans—well fitted to the contours of his body—rather than Armani, but she knew instinctively that if a gorgeous specimen like him showed up in Highland Park, he’d have half the women in that ZIP code lined up, hoping for a ride. And if they had any idea how much land and livestock his family owned—and how much oil had been found here, according to her research—a good number would be out to permanently corral him. She couldn’t imagine herself among them, though, for if she’d learned anything from her last boyfriend, it was that guys who looked that good and had the money to back it up tended to have a lot more ego than she cared to deal with.
“You’ll need to leave now,” Mrs. Rayford told them. “Before my son gets back. Please.”
Jessie squeezed Mrs. Rayford’s ice-cold hand and said, “I’m very sorry you’re not feeling well, but I’m not going anywhere until I find my sister. My own mother— My mother’s seriously ill and needs to see her. And every lead I’ve uncovered stops right here at this ranch.”
Mrs. Rayford straightened to look her in the eye, her otherwise pale face marked by two splashes of bright color. “I told you on the phone, Haley Layton moved on six months back,” she said, her voice going cold and brittle. “She and that good-for-nothing boyfriend of hers sneaked out of the old bunkhouse they were renting without a single word—or a penny of the three months’ rent they owed me.”
The part about the money didn’t surprise Jessie. Haley had a long history of abusing the trust of everyone with whom she came in contact. Jessie herself had fallen for a couple of Haley’s hard-luck stories—the last time to the tune of nearly five thousand dollars—all the savings she’d had at the time.
The very last time, she’d sworn, cutting off all contact once her sister had skipped out of a battered women’s shelter and disappeared almost four years before. It had hurt Jessie, too, turning her back on someone so close. She felt almost like a part of Jessie’s own body, but she knew, too, that if she kept enabling her twin, Haley would never learn to stand alone—and would never stop resenting Jessie for the accomplishments that set them apart.
“I’ll write you a check right now for the back rent,” she offered, now more intent on offering her mother peace than in fixing her sister’s life, “if you can only tell me where she went or even this boyfriend’s name. Then I’ll be on my way.”
The woman moaned. “I don’t care about the money. As I told you before, I have no idea where your sister’s gone.”
“Then why act so evasive on the phone, and why hang up on me every time I tried to call back?” Jessie demanded. “When you saw my face, too, I saw how you—”
From behind her, Zach Rayford returned to interrupt them. “What’s really going on here? Who the hell are you people, and what do you think you’re doing upsetting my mother?”
“I—I’m looking for my sister, that’s all,” Jessie stammered, forced to step aside once more as the rancher gave his stricken mother the pill and glass of water he had brought.
Gently, he touched her rail-thin shoulder. “Don’t you worry, Mama. Take this, and I’ll send these people on their way.”
She tensed visibly and then, a moment later, nodded.
“I—I’ll do that,” Nancy Rayford said, her voice small as a child’s
as she pressed the pill to her lips and swallowed with a sip of water. “And then, I might— I think I may go up and lie down for a bit. I’m not— I’m feeling a little—”
“Go on ahead, Mama. I’ll be up in a minute to check on both of you. And I’ll look after Eden, so there’s no need to worry.”
Bending his powerful frame, he helped the fragile woman to her feet. As soon as she was standing, she murmured to Jessie, “Forgive me,” with a plea in her eyes before she started up the stairs.
“Just her boyfriend’s name,” Jessie called after her, caring far less about this stranger’s inexplicable desire for secrecy than her promise to her mother. “Please, if you can tell me that much, I’ll be on my way.”
Zach Rayford narrowed his eyes. “It’s time for you people to leave. Now.”
Still looking at Jessie, Mrs. Rayford shook her head. “I—I’m not sure I can—”
“You don’t have to answer her.” Laserlike in its intensity, Zach’s glare flew from Jessie’s face to Henry’s, where he quickly did a double take. “What the hell? Is that a camera you’re hiding? You people are filming us? Right here in our home?”
He stalked toward Henry, saying, “Give me that right now, you little—”
Scrambling backward, Henry twisted in an attempt to keep the mini-cam out of reach, but the rancher wrested it from his hands before the older man could do anything about it.
“Wait!” Jessie said, fearing the expensive camera would be damaged. And fearing even more that her foolish attempt to appease her boss had cost her her only real chance at finding Haley.
Rayford stopped, a mirthless grin spreading across his handsome face as his gaze swung from her to Henry. “Now that I have your attention,” he said, “maybe I can get some answers. First of all, you’re going to tell me right this minute, who are you?”
He nodded toward the red-faced cameraman, who was rubbing his neck and darting glances toward the door. It didn’t take a mind reader to see that he was thinking about bolting before the rancher’s big hands found him, too.
“Henry Kucharski,” he finally murmured, shoving his own hands into the pockets of his jacket. “And I’ll need that camera back, or I’m a dead man when I get back to Dallas.”
Ignoring him, Zach looked to Jessie. “And now you,” he ordered, “the woman with the questions.”
“As I’ve told your mother,” she said, her voice tight with anger, “my name is Jessie Layton, and I’m looking for a former tenant of yours—”
“A tenant? You think we’re running some sort of a boardinghouse here?” He glanced toward his mother, who lingered on the staircase, gaping at them as she clutched the railing for dear life.
She nodded, desperately, or so it seemed to Jessie. “Back before your brother...” Mrs. Rayford explained to her son. “While you were still away, I let Frankie McFarland and his girlfriend—you remember Frankie, don’t you?—he grew up right here in Rusted Spur—talk me into renting them the old bunkhouse on the East Two Hundred.”
Jessie threw up her hands in exasperation. “If you’d only given me that name when I asked you on the phone, I wouldn’t have had to come all the way here in the first place!”
Paying no heed to her outburst, Zach stared at his mother. “That old place?” He shook his head. “But no one’s lived there in years. It was falling apart.”
“At the time, they seemed like such a nice young couple. Down on their luck, that’s all.”
“From what I remember about Frank McFarland,” Zach said grimly, “there was never one nice thing about him.”
“I thought he’d changed,” his mother said, “but I was wrong. They disappeared six months back, without doing any of the repairs they promised in exchange for cheaper rent—or paying, either, for that matter.”
Turning to look at Jessie, Zach said, “So you’re looking for this woman, right? This deadbeat with the loser boyfriend really is your sister?”
“She’s my twin, and she’s missing,” Jessie shot back, her face heating to hear this glorified cowboy running down the sister with whom she’d shared a womb—a sister who had shared her every day and every thought for the first sixteen years of their lives. No matter how embarrassed she felt to be judged by Haley’s bad behavior, it came as second nature to defend her. “And for the record, I offered to pay your mother whatever Haley owed.”
Narrowing his eyes, he glared at Henry once more. “If you’re just here to find your sister, why’d you bring a cameraman? Tell me you’re not some damned reporter—”
She pulled a card out of her purse and admitted, “Jessica Layton, Dallas Metro Update, Channel 37. But I’m really here to find my sister, for my mother’s sake.”
“I don’t buy that for a second. You’re here for some sleazy story. Here to make my mother look bad somehow,” he accused as he fumbled with the camera’s buttons. “How do I— Where’s the release on this thing, before I have to tear it apart? There’s a memory card in here, right?”
“Don’t you touch that,” Henry managed, but, thoroughly intimidated, he sounded more apologetic than outraged.
Finding the right lever, Rayford ejected the memory card and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.
“No, please. I don’t—” Jessie shook her head. “Forget that. You can keep it. Just— I need to ask your mother a few more questions. Please.”
“What I need,” he said as he jammed the mini-cam back at Henry, “is for the two of you to get the hell out of my house and off my property before I call the sheriff—or go get my gun.”
Copyright © 2014 by Colleen Thompson
ISBN-13: 9781460333563
PROTECTING HER ROYAL BABY
Copyright © 2014 by Beth Cornelison
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