The Ranch Stud

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “The power is still off,” Josh said, frowning.

  “At this point, I’ll settle for a cold shower and some clean, dry clothes,” Patience said wearily.

  “I’ll build a fire in the hearth,” Josh said.

  He was as good as his word. When she came back downstairs after her cold shower, wrapped in a warm, terry cloth robe, he went up to take his turn.

  Patience had an Irish coffee waiting for Josh when he rejoined her in front of the hearth. It was four in the morning. The thunderstorm had passed but the rain continued its steady drumming on the roof. Patience knew there would be much to do the following morning, repairing the damage and cleaning up after the storm, and that she would be required to help. Nevertheless, sleep seemed miles away. “I don’t know about you,” she confided with a winning smile, “but I am still way too keyed up to sleep.”

  Clad in jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, Josh joined her on the sofa. “The Irish coffee should help.”

  “Eventually, the fatigue has to set in.” Patience stared at the fireplace. “Can you believe we’re getting married in just twelve hours?” she murmured.

  WERE THEY? JOSH WONDERED. Especially when she heard what he had to tell her. Would she still feel the way she had?

  “Of course our inheritance has been damaged somewhat,” Patience continued.

  Josh touched her hand, loving the softness and the strength. “But you’re safe.” For that he was very grateful.

  Patience smiled. “And so are you.”

  Josh’s throat tightened and he shook his head. “When you dashed into that barn ahead of me—”

  “I know,” Patience concurred, resting her hand over his. “I knew I could lose you, too. But we did the right thing. All the horses are safe. And the barns that were damaged can be repaired. The storm is finally even letting up.”

  Or was it just beginning? Josh wondered.

  Patience took the edge of the towel she had roped around her neck and rubbed it through the dampness of her just combed hair. “Before the fire, you were going to tell me something.” She paused. “What was it?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Dear Patience,

  He says he has changed, but I’m wondering. Should I forgive a man who once heartlessly walked out on me?

  Sincerely,

  Abandoned in Amarillo

  Dear Abandoned in Amarillo,

  Never! Or in the words of someone much wiser: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

  As Cautious as a She-Bear with Cubs,

  Patience

  Josh took a deep breath, wishing it had not come to this. “I’ve lied to you, if not directly, then by omission.”

  Patience dropped the comb she had been holding. She stared at him, her hands lying limply in her lap. “What are you talking about?”

  She looked so hurt, it was all Josh could do to go on. “I am who you think I am, but I’m someone else, too.”

  Patience went completely still. “What are you trying to tell me?” she asked hoarsely.

  “That I have another identity, one I’ve been keeping from you.”

  At the low urgency in his tone, some of the happiness left her eyes. She backed away to the other end of the sofa and sat with her legs tucked up close to her body, the edges of her robe drawn tightly down to her ankles. Her spine stiffened, and she looked as if she were bracing herself for the worst. “I don’t think I want to hear this,” she said quietly.

  Josh put his untouched coffee aside. He would have given anything if he did not have to do this, but Patience had given him no choice. “I’m Alec Vaughn.” He took one of her ice-cold hands in his and clasped it warmly. “I’m the man you fell in love with.”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. When they did, she shook off his touch and stumbled abruptly to her feet. Her eyes still on him, she backed to the fireplace. She was white as a sheet and trembling visibly. “What kind of sick joke is this?”

  Josh stood, too. Knowing even if she didn’t that she needed him to hold her, he started toward her slowly. “It’s not a joke. Believe me,” he said with heartfelt regret, keeping his eyes on her pale face, “I wish it were.”

  She blinked, still appearing to be in shock. “You didn’t die—” she murmured, confused. “But—” She gestured inanely, her hands trembling all the more. “The obit in the newspaper, the one Uncle Max dug up—”

  “Was a fake, planted to make people think I had died.”

  He started to take her in his arms, but she motioned him away with short, choppy gestures. “And you went along with it?” She stared at him incredulously.

  Guilt flooded him anew. And regret that he’d had to hurt her, ever. “Yes.”

  Cheeks pinkening, she released a short, bitter laugh. “And you let everyone believe you were dead all this time!” She stared at him, enraged.

  “I was—am. At least Alec is.” Josh tried to get close to her, to take her in his arms again, but again she held him off and backed away.

  “I’m in the federal witness protection program.”

  She stared at him, as if unsure whether to believe him or not. Considering all he had thrown at her, he could hardly blame her for her distrust of him, yet it saddened him deeply nonetheless.

  “Why?” she asked finally, still eyeing him uncertainly.

  Josh returned to the sofa and sat down on the edge of it. He lifted his eyes to hers and, trying to make this as easy for her as possible, said gently, “You remember when we were planning the wedding, and your Uncle Max and my father both refused to attend?”

  Patience nodded slowly. Her blue eyes shimmering with hurt, she elaborated cautiously, “Because they thought we were too young.”

  Josh nodded, remembering. “I couldn’t bear seeing you that upset, so I decided the only thing to do was to get home and make sure that at least one of our parents—in this case my father—showed up for the wedding. So I told my roommate, William, I had an errand to run and caught a flight home the day before we were to get married. Figuring my father would try and talk me out of going to see him in person, I didn’t tell him I was coming. I just showed up. Only when I got there, my dad wasn’t alone.” Josh paused, his stomach knotting at the memory. “He was with a couple of thugs. They were trying to make him get the goods on one of his friends, a fellow businessman.”

  Josh kneaded the tense muscles at the back of his neck. “Apparently all the businessmen in the area had been laundering money for the mob for years. But the Feds were getting close, and the IRS was breathing down their necks. The guy who owned the café next to my father’s dry-cleaning business had just been audited, and although the Feds hadn’t yet been able to prove what he and the others had been doing, he was scared. The mob suspected he was close to turning informant, and as I found out later from Holly Diehl, they were right. The mob wanted my father, who was a trusted friend, to lure this guy away on a fishing expedition, find out for the mob what—if any—deal had been made with the Feds, and then make sure his friend had an unfortunate accident while they were out at sea. My father refused to be part of any murder, and that’s when they started beating him. I tried to intervene. But I was unarmed, and at that point in my life no competition for guys who made their living with clubs and brass knuckles, beating the stuffing out of people.” Josh grimaced at the memory of the savage beating he had taken. “They pounded the hell out of my face, probably so I’d be unrecognizable if I was found. Then they broke one elbow, my collarbone, and smashed one of my knees.”

  Patience stared at him in shock. “That’s where you got all the scars,” she said slowly.

  Josh nodded. “And why I look and seem so different to you now, because once I recovered, I worked out and learned how to fight.”

  “You used to wear glasses—”

  “For a while I wore contacts, then when it became available, I had corrective surgery on my eyes. Now I no longer need to wear corrective lenses of any kind.”

  Still struggling to
take everything in, Patience edged back toward the sofa and perched on the end of it. Hugging her arms close to her chest, she tucked her legs beneath her and asked shakily, “Your father got the same treatment as you, I guess?”

  A lump in his throat, Josh nodded. He still wished he had been able to make peace with his father, to do something—anything—to save him. Aware Patience was waiting to hear the rest of his story, he forced himself to continue, his voice hardening. “They threw us in the back of this van and drove us out of New Orleans, and to make the identification of the bodies and prosecution more difficult, over the state line to some remote area in Mississippi.” Tears stung Josh’s eyes. “My father had totally lost consciousness by then, so I don’t think he was aware when they took him out of the van and put him behind the wheel of his own car.”

  Patience was white as a sheet. She stared at him, her heart going out to him. “But you knew—” she guessed in a choked voice.

  Josh nodded, comforted by the aching sympathy in her eyes. “But with my broken bones, there wasn’t much I could do about it. As soon as we were in the car, they shifted it into drive and shoved us over the cliff.” He shuddered and closed his eyes against the grisly images flashing in his head. Feeling suddenly, unbearably weary, he dropped back against the sofa cushions and forced himself to finish his story. “My memories after that are kind of piecemeal. I remember the way the car turned end over end, the blackness of the night, and then the next thing I knew I woke up some distance away from the car. I had glass all over me, but I was alive.” He paused, shaking his head in sadness and regret, then pushed on grimly. “My father wasn’t so lucky. He burned to death in the car.”

  “Oh, Josh…” Tears flowed down Patience’s cheeks. She reached over and held his hand tightly.

  Basking in the comfort she offered, Josh went on. “I was able to tell the local authorities what had happened and they immediately had me in protective custody. To protect me and throw off the crooks, they ran stories of a car accident in rural Mississippi where two John Does had died. They had no idea who the two men inside the car were, only that it had gone off a cliff and the two men inside had been burned beyond recognition.”

  “Surely someone back in New Orleans knew you and your father were missing—”

  “The mob took care of all that, too. They brought in a moving van the next day, cleaned out all our belongings. They told everyone in the community that my father’s business had sold and we’d both relocated somewhere out of the country to avoid paying taxes on the profit. All traces of us ever living there were wiped out.”

  “So the mob thought you and your father were both dead.”

  “They were sure of it,” Josh confirmed. “And that misconception on their part is the only thing that saved my life.”

  A silence fell between them. Josh could tell she was still struggling to take it all in. “I was told that contacting you or anyone in my life was out of the question until after the trial. So I spent the next five years in hiding, with Holly Diehl and a host of other agents watching over me.” Josh grimaced, recalling those lonely years. “Once the trial was over and the crooks locked up, they put me in the witness protection program and I started all over again.”

  The color was coming back into Patience’s cheeks. “And that’s why you never showed up at the wedding,” she said after a moment. “Why you never called or let me know what was happening.”

  It had not been his choice, but he had done it because he had to. “I couldn’t, not without putting you in danger or taking you into hiding with me,” Josh explained.

  Patience jerked her hand away from his furiously and replied in a voice that was icy with disdain, “So you chose to break my heart instead?”

  “What choice did I have?” Josh shot back calmly, as if he had done the right thing instead of damn near destroying her, Patience thought. “I didn’t want you to have to live the kind of life I was living.”

  She glared at him as she uncurled her legs and vaulted to her feet. “Are you sure you didn’t just see your way out and take it?”

  Josh drew a long breath and kept his eyes firmly on hers. He had to make her understand, no matter what it took. “I loved you. I still love you,” he said firmly.

  “But not enough to be honest with me then,” Patience retorted bitterly as tears flowed from her eyes in a blinding torrent of hurt. “Not enough to tell me who you were now, right from the start,” she added with a short, harsh laugh.

  Josh was aware she was on the verge of becoming hysterical.

  “Instead, you made me think I was losing my mind, thinking of Alec so incessantly and seeing flashes of him in you.”

  He closed the distance between them and touched her shoulder gently. “That wasn’t my intention at all.”

  She skirted away from him, and he knew in a glance that she was never going to forgive him for this. Never. She shoved her trembling hands deep into the pockets of her thick terry cloth robe. “Then why did you come here?” she demanded.

  His gray eyes grew even sadder. “A lot of reasons.”

  Her limbs seemed so stiff and heavy that Patience felt as though she had been carved out of stone. “I’m listening.”

  His tone softened persuasively. He looked at her as if begging her to let go of her anger and understand, to see things from his point of view. “The two of us had never had any real closure. I knew how much I had changed—especially physically. I thought—hoped—if I saw you again, or at least found out how you were doing, that I might be able to go on with my life.”

  Go on with his life. His words hit her like a hammer blow. He had come here not intending to bed her again, not to love her or rescue her, but to leave.

  “So why didn’t you do just that, get what you needed and go?” she asked coldly, feeling her heart turn to stone, too.

  Josh’s eyes darkened protectively. “Because you weren’t all right. At least not in Max’s mind. Or anyone else’s.”

  Patience did not want to think about the long, lonely years she had spent mourning Alec. Or the fool Josh had made of her once again. When was she going to learn not to trust her instincts? “Surely the fact I’m a syndicated columnist and a public figure in my own right counts for something,” she said, beginning to pace again.

  “Maybe more than you know.” Josh lifted the coffeepot from the warmer near the fire. He freshened her coffee and held it out for her. She refused with a shake of her head and brushed on by. He caught up with her and pushed it into her hands anyway.

  Mission accomplished, he backed off. With a steady confidence that made her want to toss something at his head, he continued, “I’d been reading your column, and I just couldn’t reconcile the sweet and trusting girl you had once been with the tart-tongued cynic in your columns.”

  “Well, they are one and the same,” Patience snapped. Because she was so upset she felt as if she were going to explode, she decided to down the whiskey-andcream-laced brew anyway.

  He watched her with a smug look. “And that should tell you something, just like the fact you and I both are still single tells me something.”

  Patience glanced at the ceiling in silent supplication, then turned back to him. “I am single because I haven’t wanted to get married,” she told him stiffly as she set her glass down on the table with a resounding clink.

  To her increasing irritation, Josh made no immediate comment about that. Instead, he leaned against the fireplace, his shirt still open to the waist. Barefoot, his jeans clinging to his long, muscular legs, he had never looked sexier nor more approachable than he did at that moment. And that irritated her immensely. She did not want to be noticing how good he smelled—like soap and English Leather. Didn’t want to notice that despite the blackout and the barn fire, he had still taken the time to shave again. For her. Because he wanted to make love to her again.

  “Haven’t wanted to get married or haven’t found the right man?” Josh prodded finally, his eyes traveling over her languorously,
as if the outcome of this battle they were waging had already been decided, the war already won.

  Despite her promise to stay mad at him forever, Patience felt the ice around her heart thaw a little. For a man who had been out of her life for seventeen years, he was awfully hard to discourage now. Which was even more confusing, because she knew he was there at great personal risk.

  “What’s the difference?” she retorted, glowering at him. For the hell of it, she added another dash of Irish whiskey to her coffee and downed it in a single gulp. “I’m happy enough.”

  Half of Josh’s mouth curved up in obvious disagreement with her assessment. “Your Uncle Max didn’t think so.” He pushed away from the fireplace and sauntered toward her lazily. “As it happens, Patience, he was damn worried about you.”

  Patience hesitated. “He told you that?” she asked, regretting that she might have caused her late uncle a moment’s worry.

  “Not in so many words, not at first,” Josh confided. He continued to close the distance between them, not stopping until they were mere inches apart. “But it was no secret with the hired hands that he had longed to see you settled down by now.”

  Unfortunately, Patience knew that was true. Uncle Max had worried about her and blamed himself for her self-imposed solitude for years now. “Did he know who you were?” she asked quietly.

  Josh braced his hands on the bare skin of his waist and shrugged. “If he did, he never let on. As far as the past goes, I did what I thought was best.”

  What he thought was best. How utterly arrogant. How utterly male. “Without consulting me?” Patience asked irately.

  Josh sighed, beginning to look irritated now, too. “I explained all that,” he said with a thinly veiled tolerance that really grated on her nerves.

  “Yes, I know.” Patience spun away from him and moved so the cranberry red sofa was between them. “I heard.”

  He blew out a weary breath and raked both hands through the layers of his hair. “How long are you going to stay angry with me about this?”