Almost Home

by Barbara Freethy

  "No," the bartender said. "He was just mad at Zach."

  She looked into Zach's grim face. "I guess I should be grateful I didn't walk into a fist."

  "I told you to go home. You should have taken my advice."

  "What's his name?" she asked, ignoring his comment.

  "J.T. Baker."

  "J.T." she echoed, her stomach clenching. Her gaze darted back to the man. He had to be in his late forties, early fifties -- the right age. But the thought of this man, with his red sweaty face and glazed, drunken eyes, being her father was hard to swallow.

  The bartender leaned forward, lowering his voice. "J.T.'s going through a rough patch, miss. Lost his prize stallion a few months back."

  Oh, God, this was about another horse. She should have figured. How the heck had she landed herself in a town where folks cared more about their horses than people?

  The man called J.T. suddenly moved. He stumbled over to the table, looking both embarrassed and angry. "I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to hit you with my drink. I don't know why..." He shook his head in bewilderment. "I don't know why I did that. I guess I had a little too much to drink." He rubbed a hand over the top of his balding head.

  "A little?" Zach interrupted. "You--”

  Katherine squeezed Zach's arm, sensing that there was more between these two men than bourbon in her face. "It's all right. It's over. In fact, I think I'd like to go back to the hotel. Would you walk me out?"

  Zach looked like he wanted to say no, but then he shrugged. "Sure. Why not? I was leaving anyway."

  She stood up and walked toward the door. Zach put a steady hand on the small of her back. It was a simple, polite gesture, but it felt good, especially with so many people watching. She needed to ask questions about her father, but she could hardly do it now with half the town wondering who she was and what she was doing there.

  Zach opened the door for her and she stepped out on the sidewalk. Twilight had come to Paradise, the crescent moon rising higher in the sky as the stars began to shatter the darkness with their light. For a moment Katherine simply breathed in and out and looked at the night sky, calmed by the cool quiet and the dark shadows.

  "This is better," she murmured.

  Zach watched her through narrowed, dark, unreadable eyes. "This is better?"

  "Yes." She raised her hand toward the sky. "There are so many stars. It's a different sky than in L.A."

  "Maybe you can just see it more clearly.”

  "Maybe. I don't seem to have gotten off on the right foot here."

  "That's because your foot doesn't belong in Paradise."

  "You're not going to start that again?"

  "Katherine, you've been in town less than twenty-four hours and you've already totaled your car and walked into the middle of a bar fight. Hasn't it occurred to you that this trip might be a bad idea?"

  "What were you fighting about?"

  "Nothing."

  "Oh, come on. I got a drink tossed in my face. I'd at least like to know there was some purpose to that argument."

  "Sorry, can't help you."

  "Can't or won't?"

  "Look, J.T. was drunk. He was itching for a fight, and I'm his favorite target. You just got in the way. Do you want a ride to the hotel?"

  "It's only a few blocks."

  "It's on my way. Come on. My truck is just around the corner."

  "All right." She didn't really need a ride, but she wasn't quite ready to say good night. She followed Zach around the corner to a dark brown pickup truck and waited while he unlocked the door for her. "Why do so many people in town dislike you?”

  He raised an eyebrow. "Who doesn't like me?”

  "Well, that man in the bar for one. And Maggie Harper said you couldn't be trusted."

  "Maggie Harper, huh? Well, she probably knows what she's talking about."

  "I can't believe you're so bad. You've helped me twice in one day."

  He gave her a warning shake of his head. "Don't start thinking of me as some sort of white knight. I've never been partial to that color."

  She'd noticed. Dark gray shirt, black jeans, cleaner than the ones he'd worn earlier but very much the same. He looked good in black, she decided, strong, masculine, sexy, maybe even a little dangerous. But it didn't seem to matter. Despite the warning from Maggie, despite the fact that she'd landed herself in trouble both times in his presence, she found herself wanting to linger in his company.

  "Did you really help your father steal half the town's money?" she asked, somewhat surprised by her own boldness. But once the question was out, she found she desperately wanted to know the answer.

  Zach sighed. "Get in the truck, Katherine.”

  "None of my business?"

  "That's right."

  "I'm sure someone will tell me."

  "Probably without your even asking.”

  She got into the truck as Zach slammed her door. This conversation wasn't going much better than their previous ones. Zach slid into the driver's seat and started the engine.

  "I heard your car won't be ready for a few days," Zach said as he drove down the street. "I can have someone drive you into Lexington or Louisville tomorrow if you want to catch a plane home. I'm sure the rental car agency can send someone out to get your car when it's ready."

  She didn't say anything for a moment. She looked out the window at the quaint, old-fashioned shops on Main Street, the tall, gnarly trees that graced the sidewalks, the dimly lit streetlamps. She hadn't begun to explore this town or the people who lived here.

  "Is that man -- J.T., you said his name was?”

  "Yeah. What about him?"

  She heard the wary note in his voice but ignored it. "Is he married?"

  "For a long time.

  "How long?"

  "I don't know, twenty plus years."

  "Does he have children?"

  Zach shot her a quick look, then turned the truck into a parking space in front of the hotel. "No kids," he said abruptly, "And you can't look at every middle-aged man and imagine he's your father."

  "It's hard not to. Especially because of his name."

  "I thought you didn't know your father's name.”

  "His first initial was J."

  Zach stared at her for a long moment. "Do you want a daddy so bad you'll let yourself hope that some drunk in a bar is your father?"

  He made her sound stupid, needy, desperate, and unloved. Damn him.

  "Forget it." She opened the car door and got out.

  Zach met up with her on the sidewalk. He grabbed her arm as she started to walk away. "Look, Katherine--”

  "No, you look," she interrupted, pulling her arm away from him. "I don't need your advice. I do not need you to tell me to go home when I'm perfectly capable of making that decision on my own."

  "You don't know what you're getting into."

  "So what?"

  "You could get hurt."

  She looked him dead in the eye. "I am not your responsibility. I am not even your friend. So it shouldn't matter to you what I do, or whether or not I get hurt in the process."

  He didn't say anything for a long moment. "You're right. It doesn't matter to me."

  She swallowed hard, his words cutting to the quick, even though she'd practically demanded such a response. "Then we're agreed that I can do what I want."

  "Don't you always do what you want? I'm sure those big blue eyes of yours can get you anything you desire.”

  He was wrong. She almost never did what she wanted. Most of the time she considered pleasing other people her first responsibility and pleasing herself a distant second. But Zach Tyler had pegged her as a spoiled, stubborn, selfish city girl. They really had nothing else to talk about. So why wasn't she moving? And why wasn't he?

  She looked into his eyes to find him staring back at her with a look too personal, too direct, for two strangers. "I should go."

  "You should," he agreed.

  But neither one of them moved, and the air between them
sizzled. She'd never felt anything like it. This rough-edged cowboy had somehow gotten under her skin.

  "You're wrong about me," she said abruptly, crossing her arms protectively in front of her. "I'm not who you think I am."

  "You don't know what I think."

  "You don't like me."

  His lips curved into a wry smile. "Not liking you is not the problem and you know it."

  A shiver shot down her spine. "I just came here to find my father, Zach. I'm not interested in -- anything else."

  "I don't recall offering you anything else.”

  She licked her lips. "I'll say good night then.”

  "Good night."

  She started to move toward the hotel when Zach called her back.

  "What?" she asked.

  "J.T. Baker runs the Pederson Stud Farm. It's about ten miles east of town. Ask at the hotel and they'll give you directions. His wife, Mary Jo, is a nice woman, kinder than most. I can't say the same for J.T."

  "Why?"

  "I'll let you figure that out for yourself.”

  "Thanks for the tip."

  "If J.T.'s your father, you won't be thanking me."

  "Maybe he's not." She suddenly realized the search for her father might produce a man she didn't particularly want to call Dad.

  Zach met her gaze. "It finally sunk in, didn't it? The thought that your father might be a complete deadbeat. Then what will you do? Welcome him into your life with open arms or pretend you haven't really found him, that in fact you weren't even looking? It was just a misunderstanding, a mistake."

  His words hit too close to home, to the fear that had suddenly erupted inside of her.

  "It won't happen that way," she said fiercely. "He'll be a good person. He'll be strong and smart and kind and honorable. And he'll want to know me."

  Zach looked at her for a long moment. "They should have named you Pollyanna."

  "My mother wouldn't have been with him if he wasn't a nice man," she added, refusing to let any other doubt creep into her head.

  "A nice man," Zach echoed. "Well, I hope he turns out to be what you want. Good night Kat." He tipped his head to her. "Sweet dreams."

  Sweet dreams? She had a feeling she'd just drifted into the beginning of a nightmare.

  Chapter Four

  Mary Jo Baker lay on her back and stared at the ceiling with a growing sense of frustration and restlessness. She was forty-seven years old and reasonably attractive. She dyed the gray out of her blond hair and remembered to put on makeup. So how had she come to this point -- wearing a long sleeve, white cotton nightgown to bed and listening to her overweight, balding husband snort and shake with every breath he took? Where was the romance? The passion? The man she'd desperately wanted to marry all those years ago?

  Gone -- all gone.

  She had to face facts. She was married to a no-good, cheating, lying drunk. She couldn't believe he'd let his temper get so out of control that he'd actually thrown his drink at some woman in the bar. J.T. had told her it was an accident, but it didn't matter. She'd gotten three calls from so-called friends before he'd even made it home, three embarrassing, humiliating calls. It was getting more difficult to go into town and smile, knowing that her longtime neighbors considered her an object of pity.

  The shadowy moonlight danced across her ceiling, teasing her, taunting her. She hadn't been free to dance or sing or howl at the moon in decades. No, she was trapped in this bed, in this room, in this marriage, as surely as if her hands were tied to the bedpost. And she'd been a willing prisoner, looking the other way for more years than she could count.

  With a sigh, she tried to remember J.T. the way he'd once been. She'd met him when he was going to college in Lexington. One of his friends worked as an exercise rider at their farm on the weekends, and J.T. started to come along with him. He soon became a regular visitor and a family favorite. Even her father, William Pederson, had become a fan of J.T.'s, attracted to the younger man's business acumen, his drive, his ambition. Her father had always wanted a son, and in J.T. he'd found the next best thing.

  No one had anticipated how time could change a man. Over the years, J.T. had turned into a man Mary Jo barely recognized. Not all of it was J.T.'s fault. They'd spent a great deal of their marriage trying to have a baby. Fifteen years of fertility testing and sex on schedule had taken their toll, and J.T. absolutely refused to raise a child not of his blood.

  She told herself it was too late to change the bed she'd made, but deep down in her heart she knew she'd have to change something. It was one thing to give up on love and sex. It was another to lose her self-respect and the respect of her friends.

  Not to mention that J.T. was running her family business into the ground. How could she go on turning a blind eye? She was the last of the Pedersons, the only one who could stop the disintegration of the farm that had been in her family for four generations.

  John Thomas snorted and rolled over. He blinked open one eye. "Did you say something?"

  She hadn't, but now she intended to. "We can't go on like this, J.T."

  "It's the middle of the night. Go to sleep." He turned over so his back was to her.

  Mary Jo leaned over him. "You can't keep getting drunk and losing control like you did tonight."

  "It was an accident. Some woman got a little bourbon splashed on her clothes. Big deal. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  "And so were you. You didn't need to be at Golden's. And you didn't need to be mixing it up with Zach Tyler."

  "He's an asshole."

  "You should talk," she said sharply. "I won't let you embarrass me like this. People are talking about us."

  He rolled over and glared up at her. "I'll do whatever I damn well please."

  "No, you won't." It took a lot of courage for her to say the words, but she'd been practicing them for weeks.

  "What did you say?"

  "I won't let you humiliate me any further.”

  "Are you threatening me?" he asked in surprise.

  "I'm making you a promise." She took a deep breath and dove in. "I still own fifty-one percent of the business, and if you do one more thing to embarrass me, I'll sell it to Zach Tyler."

  His eyes widened. She'd finally gotten his attention.

  "You wouldn't let your family farm go to that bastard," he said.

  "Don't bet on it."

  "Have you lost your mind?"

  "No, I've found it. I'm not going to live the rest of my life like this. I'm not going to go to my grave as a long-suffering martyr."

  "Oh, and you have it so bad, all the clothes money can buy, a beautiful home, trips to wherever you want to go. I feel so sorry for you," he sneered.

  She glared at him. "It's my family's farm that's paid for most of those things. And this isn't about money. It's about us. If there still is an us."

  J.T. looked nervous now, his eyes wary. "Of course there's an us. I had a little too much to drink. It won't happen again."

  "It's been happening all year. I'm not stupid, J.T. No matter what you think about me, you better not think that."

  His gaze dropped away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Yes, you do."

  Almost twenty-eight years of marriage lay between them, but instead of the comfortable familiarity of old lovers, they were separated by a huge wall of disillusionment, distrust, and betrayal.

  "Zach Tyler would destroy you," J.T. said a moment later. "He's a snake in the grass."

  "Well, at least he's not in my bed, like you are." She slid out from under the sheets, grabbing a blanket and a pillow. "If anyone is going to destroy me, it will be you. Think about what I said, J.T., and remember -- one more fight, one more affair, one more humiliation, and I'll be on the phone to Zach Tyler faster than you can spit."

  "You're bluffing. You'd never sell out half of your family farm to Zach Tyler."

  "Try me."

  * * *

  "Let's try him in the gate now," Zach said to the exercis
e boy who had breezed Rogue around the training track at Stanton Farms. It was barely 6:00 A.M. and the dirt track was soft and moist, the heavy morning mist still clinging to the nearby trees, giving the area an almost eerie appearance. Zach loved the early morning workouts. Here in this mist-shrouded world, he felt like anything was possible.

  The exercise boy walked Rogue over to the practice gate where another man was waiting. Rogue should have been used to the gate by now, but no matter how many times they practiced, he still got testy when the gate closed behind him. This morning was no exception.

  "Get in, Rogue," Zach muttered as the horse balked at entering the gate. "Dammit. I'm going over there."

  Sam Jordan put a hand on his arm. "He's got to do it without you, just like he will at the track.”

  "He's a stubborn son of a bitch."

  "Just like you. He doesn't want to do what anybody tells him to do," Sam said, chewing on a straw of grass as he leaned over the rail. "Gotta have it his own way."

  "If you have something to say, why don't you just say it," Zach muttered, his gaze still focused on Rogue. Thankfully, his big ugly baby finally went into the gate and came out of it without a hitch. He motioned for the exercise rider to take Rogue once more around the track at an easy pace. Then he turned to Sam, who was regarding him with kindly, amused eyes. "What's stuck in your gut?" he asked.

  "Rogue needs to be at Churchill. We should have taken him straight there, instead of letting him think he could get comfortable and lazy here at home."

  "He likes being here, and we've got plenty of time to get to Churchill."

  "Rogue needs to get used to the barn there, the atmosphere, the track."

  "We've got two and a half weeks."

  "Why are you stalling? Colin would like to see Rogue there by this weekend at the latest, but he told me you're thinking the following week."

  "Rogue gets special attention here, my attention and yours. It's better for him.”

  "You're babying him."

  "I'm treating him carefully, that's all." Zach walked along the rail as the exercise boy took Rogue off the track and headed back toward the barns. There were a dozen more horses to be worked, but he could leave those workouts to Sam. He needed to get back to the barns where the early morning chores were in full gear. It took several dozen employees to keep the farm operating at its peak, and Zach was in charge of making sure none of those employees screwed up. While he would have liked spending all his time with Rogue, he had a job to protect as well as a dream to chase, and Stanton Farms was almost as important to him as Rogue.