She told herself that by driving her mom’s Escalade and avoiding town on the way in, she would be far safer. Still, she was shaking by the time she turned in on the ranch road, her brain crackling with fractured images that flipped through it from the day of her last visit. Pain spiked through her still-bandaged hand, a pain so sharp and fresh it had her reflexively stamping on the brakes.
The Cadillac stopped short, and she felt a solid thump behind her. Gretel whined in protest, offended by her lousy driving.
“Sorry about that, girl,” Jessie said as the dog climbed, panting, back up on the seat.
The pain’s not real, she reminded herself. Those memories aren’t now.
To distract herself, she imagined how angry Haley would be, once she learned that, as soon as the estate was settled, Jessie would be managing a trust to be set up for her sister, a trust thoughtfully constructed to save her from her own disastrous choices.
Haley would rail at the restrictions, at the fact that Jessie’s share would have none, but Jessie vowed she wouldn’t complain, as long as her sister was still alive to give her grief. With both their parents now gone, that last link to her family was all that mattered to her.
And if she’s dead already? Dead and buried somewhere out here?
Gritting her teeth, Jessie vowed, “Then I swear I’ll find you, bring you home, where you belong.”
Channeling weeks of grief into raw anger, she mashed down on the gas, sending pebbles spraying from the tires. But when she crested the hill that should have revealed the bunkhouse, she sucked in a startled breath and stared.
Nothing. There was nothing remaining of her sister’s last known residence but a scraped-bare wound in the earth and a few last boards and shingles.
Heat threatened to consume her, a burning that had her instantly soaked in perspiration. When she swore, Gretel rose like a thunderhead in the seat behind her, suspicious as she scanned the area, her hackles rising and her deep growl vibrating in the air.
“Platz,” she said, using the German command. As she’d been trained to do, the Rottweiler dropped to the down position, where she lay perfectly still but alert.
Sucking in a deep breath, Jessie ground out, “Damn them. Damn all of them,” feeling a sense of deep betrayal, of the loss of something she had never even had, as she turned the SUV around and made for the mansion that served as headquarters for the ranch.
Only this time she wasn’t leaving until she had solid answers, even if she had to set her dog to rearranging Zach Rayford’s all-too-handsome face to get them.
Chapter 9
“That’s right, Eden,” Zach told his niece as he guided her hand. “Always brush in one direction, the same way his hair grows.”
She brushed the pony’s fuzzy winter coat just as he had shown her, though she could only reach halfway up Mr. Butters’s rib cage by standing on her tiptoes.
“How ’bout a boost so you can do his back?” Zach invited.
Eden looked up and sighed. “Why can’t I just ride him now? My arm’s getting really tired.”
Zach lifted her with one arm. With the other hand, he patted the pony’s golden back, raising dust. “If you don’t brush him, he’ll have grit under the saddle, and it’ll make him all sore when you ride him. You don’t want to hurt him, do you?”
She hesitated, her mouth pursing before she thrust the brush at Zach. “You do it, then. Don’t want to.”
She’d been trying his patience for the past hour, fussing and demanding and getting into so much mischief with those hell-spawned puppies of hers that his first impulse was to threaten to take her over his knee. But as he opened his mouth to speak, the words reverberated through his mind—his father’s words, along with harsher ones, all spoken in anger before the blows rained down.
I’m not him. I won’t be, Zach told himself, wrestling his frustration as he’d once wrestled men during hand-to-hand combat training.
“If you want to ride,” he said, a thin veneer of calm covering his impatience, “you’ll have to brush him yourself. Otherwise, you’re welcome to spend the rest of the afternoon in your room. Only this time, your puppies will be staying in their kennel inside the barn, where you can’t dress them in your grandma’s Sunday best.”
Eden giggled, “But they looked so funny wearing dresses!”
“I’m sure they did—for the three seconds before they shredded them.”
Eden laughed, and he was explaining to her why her behavior wasn’t appropriate when he spotted an unfamiliar SUV barreling down the drive. Apparently, the driver of the pearl-white Escalade saw them, too, standing by the hitching rail just outside the main barn, for it sped past the house. The Caddy pulled up short, causing the normally sedate pony to prance and whinny, struggling to get away.
Zach snatched Eden out of harm’s way, holding her in his arms with the intent of giving the idiot behind the wheel a piece of his mind. But as the driver bailed out and marched toward him, leaving the door open behind her, he froze, barely biting back a curse as his hope collapsed.
The hope that she wouldn’t prove half as gorgeous as he remembered—and, even more important, that she would stay away forever. But those disappointments were nothing when compared to the guilt he felt—and the fear that she knew everything already, that she was coming to destroy everyone he held dear.
What the hell have I done, letting things go this far?
“What on earth do you mean, Zach Rayford,” Jessie demanded, fury sparking in her green eyes, “tearing down that bunkhouse without a word to me about it?”
Ignoring the question he couldn’t answer, he scraped up as much righteous anger as he could. “What do you mean, roaring up here and scaring my niece and her pony half to death?”
“I’m not going with her!” Eden insisted as she wriggled down from his arms, the stubborn fierceness of her gaze mirroring Jessie’s. “I won’t!”
Eden’s voice wound down, the defiance in her expression collapsing into what looked like confusion. She blinked, then shook her head and muttered, “Go away! You’re not my mama.”
Panic slicing through him, Zach searched Jessie’s face for some reaction. But intent as she was on ripping into him, she clearly hadn’t heard the damning words.
“Eden, I need you to go inside now,” Zach said, keeping his voice calm but firm in the hope she wouldn’t argue. “Go inside and ask Miss Althea—nicely—if we can have some mac and cheese with dinner.”
The child hesitated, looked from him to Jessie and back again and then asked, “Tater tots, too?”
“One or the other, if you’ll eat your baby carrots,” he said.
Eden looked at him suspiciously. “What about my pony ride?”
“We’ll talk about it later—if you do as I ask right now.”
He saw the bright flare of the child’s temper and thought Eden might balk—or worse yet, shout what she’d said earlier loudly enough that Jessie couldn’t miss it. No more than he could miss the strong resemblance between the two.
“Inside, Eden. Now,” he ordered.
Huffing an exasperated sigh, she dragged out, “Okaaaayyy.” After shooting Jessie one last, defiant look, she took off running for the house.
Jessie barely glanced at her before returning her attention to Zach. “So why’d you tear it down?” she demanded. “What are you trying to hide?”
He held up a finger in a wait-a-second gesture, delaying his answer until the child was safely inside the house. “I didn’t, but it’s for the best. It was a safety hazard to anybody who got curious enough to come snooping around. And people were. My mother told me just last week she’d spotted a truckload of teenagers checking the place out, checking out where the—the murder took place.”
Though his mother rarely went out, she’d been adamant about that, insisting that was
what had convinced her to have the place demolished, after clearing it with Canter and supposedly forgetting to mention it to Zach.
It was a coincidence, he tried to tell himself, that the crew had shown up only hours after Zach had snapped those damning photos, before he’d had time to do anything about what he’d found.
“My friend’s murder might never be solved now,” Jessie continued, “with any evidence destroyed. Is this why you quit calling, why you stopped returning my calls? Because you were planning this—this cover-up?” Tears stood in her eyes, but she had never looked fiercer.
Or more stunning, thought Zach, even if she was a damned reporter. But with her reddish-blond hair blowing in the chill breeze and her green eyes blazing, there was no denying how gorgeous she looked, wearing jeans that hugged her tight curves and a royal-blue ski jacket. Even if she was about as cuddly as the bobcat he’d spotted tearing apart a jackrabbit last week.
“Honestly, Jessie, I didn’t know about the demolition until it was a done deal. It was Canter—he arranged it after my mother complained about those teenagers getting in there.”
“You should have told me,” she repeated, and this time, he glimpsed the hurt and the sadness behind her hostility.
“I—um—I lost your cell phone number,” he added, not explaining that by lost he meant deleted, “so I called the television station and asked to leave a message. The person I spoke to told me you don’t work there anymore. Is that right?”
Jessie shook her head, her eyes glittering with anger. “Nothing’s right about any of this. There was evidence inside that bunkhouse—I swear to you, I saw it when I was there before. How could Canter just pull down the scene of an unsolved— Did he even bother investigating it first?”
“He was out there several times. And the place was torn down just yesterday. I’m sorry to tell you, you just missed it.”
“Fabulous,” she murmured. “And did this all happen before or after he bribed or threatened you into doing a total one-eighty about finding Haley? Or did you decide it wasn’t worth the bother, caring what happened to some out-of-towner?”
Guilt sliced through him, his gut twisting with the memory of what he’d witnessed yesterday. What he still had on his cell phone. He could reach for it, could show her.
Painful as it might prove, he knew, if it were Ian who was missing, he’d want to see the evidence, no matter where it led. And he’d want to kill anyone who withheld such important information from him.
But a simple vision stopped him, a memory of Eden clapping her hands in delight as he had stood high on the ladder, repositioning a hot-pink Christmas bulb more to her liking as joy lit his mother’s eyes. If it turned out his suspicions were correct, there was no way any big-city reporter was going to let it go, much less allow the family who had hidden the truth from her to be involved in Eden’s life.
So instead, he buried his doubts over whether he was protecting his niece, his mother or his own selfish desire to keep his family together. Instead, he hardened his heart and said goodbye to his fantasies about Jessie. Looming over her, he hid his fear and regret with anger. “What do you mean, trespassing on my land again, tossing off a bunch of crazy accusations?”
She drew back slightly, clearly startled, before turning toward the Cadillac and calling, “Achtung, Gretel! Hier!”
“What the—” he began, cutting himself off as a shadow leaped from the SUV’s open front door, the dark bulk of a Rottweiler that rushed up and stood poised beside her elbow, its hackles raised and its dark eyes glittering with anticipation.
“I wouldn’t advise you come any closer,” she warned.
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” he asked before turning to Mr. Butters, who struggled nervously against his lead. As Zach unwound the rope and tried to settle the frightened pony, his temper flared. “It’s okay, little fella. I won’t let the bitch eat you. Or the big dog, either.”
Ignoring the comment, she said, “As a matter of fact, I do think Gretel’s necessary. You might, too, if you’d been knocked down, shot and watched your partner—your friend—die.”
Seeing her point, he pulled himself together. “Well, before you call out Hansel, too, you should know I’m not about to hurt you. Pushy and annoying as I find you.” That wasn’t all he found her, he thought, unable to keep himself from admiring her courage.
“Glad we’ve got that clear,” she said. “Now, maybe you can turn around and tell me what’s really going on here—and why you’re participating in it this time.”
He frowned at her over his shoulder. “It’s been pretty quiet since you left here. And come to think of it, things were running awful smoothly before you showed up, too.”
“Really? Well, my sister’s still missing, and Henry’s murderer’s still on the loose.” Using her bandaged hand, she pushed a windblown strand of hair from her eyes, the fingers moving stiffly. “That’s not what I’d call running smoothly.”
Reminded of her injury, he changed the subject. “So how’s the hand? You get it taken care of?”
She glared at him. “Don’t try to pretend you give a damn about me.”
“You mean, like I pretended the night I bandaged your wound so you wouldn’t bleed to death?”
She grimaced. “Not like that night, no. Like now, because I’m a trained reporter, and I know you’re lying to me, Rayford.”
He tipped his hat back and blew out a breath. “It’s Zach, remember? Now how ’bout you let me take care of my niece’s pony, and we start this conversation over? Maybe on a civil note this time. You think we can do that?”
Part of him hoped she would say no, would stalk back to her vehicle, her storm trooper’s dog at her side, and tear off to stir up trouble elsewhere. But foolish and irrational as it was, another part of him wanted her to stay here—to stay and let him get to know her better and see how she was with Eden. Are you crazy...or just suicidal?
She studied him through narrowed eyes before nodding. “Okay, Zach. We’ll try it your way.”
“Great. I’ll be right back.”
He took his time with sweet, old Mr. Butters, turning the gentle pony into his stall with a few soothing words and some fresh hay in his rack. He checked water buckets, too, then gave his big bay, Ace, a neck scratch, all the while taking deep breaths as he tried to figure what to do, what to say to get Jessie out of here before his mother saw that she’d come back.
But could he really do that—blow off the reporter without a word about what he’d seen? Pretend this all away while she continued to search frantically for Haley? Was that the kind of man he had become?
Jessie appeared in the doorway, the light behind her silhouetting her lithe body. “You coming back out? Or you want to talk in here?”
What he wanted to do was sling a leg over his horse and gallop off where she couldn’t follow. Or maybe yank her into his arms and kiss her senseless.
But one idea was as insane as the other—and as likely to get him torn to pieces by her dog.
“I’ve got a little office right inside the barn here,” he said, gesturing toward the room his father had had built into the corner of the building, where he could work the business side of the ranch without interruption. There, Zach could talk to Jessie without his mother’s knowledge. “Why don’t you come on inside where it’s warm? I’ll make us some coffee.”
“All right,” she said, “but Gretel comes with me.”
“I’ll make her coffee, too, if you want.”
A ghost of a smile played about Jessie’s lips but didn’t touch her eyes. “She’s watching her caffeine intake. It makes her a little tense. Or intense.”
“I have to tell you,” he said, working to dredge up a little long-lost charm in an attempt to disguise his rising panic, “I thought it was kind of sexy when you spoke German earlier. But I like it when you spe
ak badass even better.”
* * *
Definitely hiding something, Jessie thought, homing in on the awkwardness of his flirtation, on the way his gaze shifted away from hers so quickly. If she was reading him right, he was both nervous and conflicted by whatever it was he knew.
She almost felt sorry for him, but she pushed those feelings aside. She couldn’t afford to allow empathy—and the undeniable attraction she felt every time she was in his presence—to cloud her judgment. Not when her promise to her mother to find Haley was at stake.
So for the time being, she played along, following him into a small, paneled office area: a simple affair with a big desk—a Texas lone star design carved into the front panel—a couple of well-made leather chairs, a phone and a closed laptop computer. Behind the desk, a small pair of windows allowed in light and let him see the house while on the opposite wall was a sink and countertop, along with an espresso machine with more buttons and levers than she’d ever seen in her life.
“Pretty fancy,” she said as he fiddled with the settings. “I’d sort of figured you for the macho type who tosses back his coffee black and boiling, a big, bad fighter jock like you.”
He went stiff for a moment, long enough for it to sink in that she’d used part of her time away to do more research on him, including the brilliant military career that had gone down on the wings of two fighter jets in an Afghan city. A career to be proud of, in the service of his country—all ending with an accident he could have prevented.
He gestured toward the machine. “Everybody has his vices. So how do you take yours?”
She grinned at the question and admitted, “Black and boiling. I was on the overnight crime beat so long, sometimes I just chew grounds.”
He smiled back, a hint of wickedness in his expression. “Are you sure I can’t corrupt you?”
Lone Star Redemption Page 9
