Lone Star Redemption

by Colleen Thompson

  She held his gaze a beat too long and said, “I suppose you can try.”

  Jessie gave him a few minutes to collect himself, watching him attend to details like a pilot going through his preflight checklist. Not that he was technically a fighter pilot any longer.

  “Gretel, platz,” she said, and the big dog dropped into the down position. But she was still alert and watching, clearly uncertain whether the tall rancher was someone who could be trusted.

  That makes two of us, Jessie thought, telling herself not to let her own renegade hormones rob her of common sense.

  At his invitation, Jessie claimed one of the chairs and forced herself to wait in silence, in spite of the impatience clamoring inside her. As she waited, she noticed the framed photos sitting by a small clock on the desktop: a portrait of a handsome soldier and another of the pretty little girl she’d glimpsed so briefly, a child with a smile full of life and mischief. The girl somehow seemed familiar, though Jessie couldn’t put her finger on why that would be.

  It wasn’t as if she’d been around very many children, though the idea had been stirring in her subconscious lately, making her wonder what it would be like to have a family of her own. To have someone who depended on her, someone she could love.

  Maybe her recent losses had started her biological clock ticking. She reminded herself that with her future so uncertain and her promise to her mother unfulfilled, she had no business thinking about starting a family. And even less, wondering what kind of a father a man like Zach would make.

  Embarrassed by the thought, she felt herself flush as Zach brought her a white porcelain cup, brimming with a warm froth and smelling like heaven.

  “There you go,” he said, sitting with his own cup.

  “Thanks,” she said, nodding toward the pictures to distract him from her face. “This one has to be your younger brother. You have the same jawline, same nose.”

  The brother’s hair was shorter and a rich brown as opposed to Zach’s glossy black. Though the younger man’s eyes were a darker blue, they looked just as serious, as thoughtful, as Zach’s did now.

  “Yeah. That’s Ian,” Zach said, his voice roughening. “Last good picture we have of him.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, a sense of profound loss washing over her, at the thought of a man who should have had decades to enjoy his life and family. Another brave man, who had sacrificed his all for home and country. “Is the little girl his? Your niece?”

  He drank from his coffee, giving her time to add, “She’s absolutely precious. Reminds me a little of my—”

  “Having Eden means an awful lot to all of us around here,” Zach interrupted, his gaze boring into hers, “especially my mama.”

  Jessie hesitated for a moment and then nodded, thinking how much of a comfort it must be to have something of the son she’d lost.

  “You see, she lost my father, too,” Zach continued, “just six months before Ian. Sometimes, I figure that tiny little handful of spunk and attitude’s the only thing that’s keeping my poor mama afloat.”

  When he looked at Jessie, there was something so raw, so painful in his blue eyes that it threatened to tear her wide-open. Which was ridiculous, she told herself. She barely knew this family and didn’t trust Zach Rayford as far as she could throw him. So what if they’d both lost fathers close to the same time and he had a frail mother to watch out for, just as she’d had? She couldn’t afford to feel for him, or let him get her off track.

  Uncomfortable, she cleared her throat and raised her mug before admitting, “I have to tell you, this is actually one heck of a lot better than any grounds I’ve chewed on lately. Maybe there’s something to this fancy coffee business, after all.”

  He smiled. “I told you I’d corrupt you. But I notice you’re still favoring that right hand.”

  “I will be for a while longer,” she said, though the truth was, her dominant hand would never be as strong or dexterous as it had been. The sooner she accepted it, her surgeon has advised her, the sooner she could do what was needed to recover whatever she had left. “But I’ll be okay, thanks. At least I will be if people around here will ever quit stonewalling.”

  He took a thoughtful sip, the vibrant blue of his gaze—those eyes of his really were to die for—penetrating the veil of steam. “I can tell you one thing, Jessie. You come charging in, riding roughshod over people’s feelings, and that’s how it’s gonna go around here. This is a tight community, where if folks aren’t sure who you are and how you fit into the big picture, there’s no way they’re going to open up.”

  “Tell me, how am I supposed to pussyfoot around a dead friend and a missing sister? You explain that, and I’ll do it. Because I’m bringing her home this time, and if that hurts some yokels’ feelings, too bad.”

  “If you’re in that big a hurry, maybe you shouldn’t have let two months pass before you came back.”

  She glared at him. “Don’t you dare judge me, after everything I’ve— A few days after my surgery, after you decided to quit speaking to me, my mother—”

  She choked down on the words, still too raw and fresh to speak aloud.

  “Your mother...” he said, his eyes softening. “You’re not saying that you’ve lost her?”

  She answered with a nod.

  “I’m very sorry.” The words might be simple, but they held the compassion of someone who knew grief all too well.

  “Not half as sorry as I am that I didn’t have my sister there beside me.”

  To his credit, he didn’t rush to fill the awkward silence that followed with the usual platitudes. Instead, he said, “Hell, isn’t it? Pure hell. One there’s no way around but straight through.”

  “Before my mother—” She took a deep breath. “Before it got too bad, I promised her I’d come back for Haley. That this time I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not even the kind of no that comes with a bullet. And I will. I swear I will. I’ll bring her home for my mom.”

  Her throat closed, and she looked away, not wanting him to see her get any more emotional than she was. Not wanting him to guess how hard it had been to come back or how deeply she feared the answers she might find here.

  “I respect that,” he said, “and if I had it in my power to help you bring your sister home today, I promise you, I’d do whatever it took to make it happen...even if it’s not the happy ending you’re hoping for.”

  She speared him with a look. “Are you telling me she’s dead? Is that what you’re saying?”

  The room grew so quiet she heard Gretel’s breathing and the ticking of the desk clock, sounds drowned out by the pounding of her heart as she waited for an answer.

  Finally, he caved, his shoulders slumping. “I can’t tell you for certain. But I’m afraid that’s what you might find.”

  She nodded. “I saw blood there, in the bunkhouse.”

  “A lot of it,” he agreed. “Between yours and your cameraman’s—”

  “I found it before the shooting,” she said, “or at least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. There was a stained T-shirt on the front porch, some spatter on the bathroom mirror. Did Canter take samples before the place was torn down?”

  “I don’t know what he did there. I only know what I said before, that he went out a couple times. Took a deputy with him,” Zach said, the words spilling more freely. “He never mentioned what he found, but he did tell me the investigation was still active.”

  “That’s all he would tell me when I called him, aside from some stupid theory that it must’ve been a stranger, since nobody around here would ever do such a thing.” She rolled her eyes at the assertion. “Wouldn’t say if he had any suspects who weren’t figments of his imagination, like this bald guy with the odd tats he claims people saw around that day. Wouldn’t confirm that he’d cleared Danny McFarland, either.”


  “Hellfire’s walking around a free man, tats and all,” Zach told her. “I know that much for sure. I headed over to the Prairie Rose and tried to talk to him myself about it one night.”

  So he had been keeping his promise to help her, in spite of his silence. “And how’d that go down?”

  He snorted. “About like you would expect with him. A couple of bruises and a scrape or two.”

  “He hit you? I figured he was just the type to bully women.”

  Zach’s blue eyes lit up with dark amusement. “I didn’t say he hit me, but he took his best shot. And I didn’t say the bruises and the scrapes were mine.”

  “Ah,” she said, wishing she’d been there to see it. “But I take it you didn’t get any information.”

  “That, and I’m banned for life from the only watering hole in Rusted Spur.”

  “My condolences.”

  “I suppose I’ll manage.”

  “I suggested to Canter he might want to call in outside help,” she said, “maybe the Texas Rangers, if he was having so much trouble.”

  Zach winced. “Knowing him, I’ll bet that went over like a skunk at a watermelon social.”

  She nodded, smiling at the image. “You’ve got that right. He said a few choice words about the idea of calling in the Rangers—apparently, there’s some bad blood there—and assured me he had everything completely under control. Then he quit returning my calls, never mind answering his phone.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but he hasn’t been any more forthcoming with me. Just keeps saying he’s playing this one close to the vest.”

  “You buying it?”

  “I’m not sure what to think,” Zach told her. “I just thought it might be a problem with me in particular.”

  “You?” she asked. “How come?”

  Zach grimaced. “Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly a choirboy before the corps made something of me.”

  She snorted. “You look awfully clean cut for a teenage hell-raiser.”

  He shrugged. “It was either that or punch out my old man, and he would’ve kicked my ass from one end of the county to the other. Come to think of it, he did that, more or less regularly.”

  “My dad was a little like that, only he kicked our tails with words. That’s what drove Haley to take off—well, my father’s constant harping on her about some guy. One in a series of the worst guys she could come up with. Sometimes, I think it was her way of getting back at him, embarrassing him by living down to his expectations.”

  “I did the same thing with my hell-raising, until I realized I was the one getting bloody,” he said, his eyes misting over with the distant past.

  “My sister’s never learned that lesson,” she said, her worry for her family overwhelming her caution, “and now I’m scared to death that it’s already too late for her. If—if it turns out that Haley’s really gone, how will I ever forgive myself for turning my back on my own twin—giving up and leaving her out here to die alone?”

  She felt herself begin to tremble, and Gretel must have sensed it, too, for the dog lifted her head from her paws, her ears rising and her muscles gathering beneath her gleaming coat. Wanting to sink her teeth into whatever was causing her mistress distress, Jessie supposed. Which made two of them at this point; she definitely felt like biting someone.

  “I was eighteen when I walked out on this ranch,” Zach admitted, regret passing like a shadow over his strong features. “Left to find my future. Didn’t look back, not for years. I didn’t even come back for the old man’s funeral. Only Ian’s. It took that much—that and the mess I’d make of my career—to get me to finally step up.”

  Jessie stared at him, wondering what any of what he’d said had to do with her and Haley.

  He shrugged and said, “What I’m saying is that no one could have stopped me. I had to make the decision for myself to finally grow up and do the right thing, just the way your sister had her choice to make.”

  “Speaking of doing the right thing,” Jessie said, abruptly tired of talking around the real point of her visit, “don’t you think it’s time you try it right now? Only this time, you tell me the truth. Tell me what you’re hiding from me.”

  Chapter 10

  Zach pressed his lips together and pinned her with a hard look. A look he’d used to send the younger pilots he’d once trained scrambling for cover.

  “I think we’ve already established that it’ll take a whole lot more than a little manly scowling to get me off your case.”

  With a wry grin, he shook his head, thinking that he should have known better than imagining this woman, gutsy enough to return alone to face a hostile sheriff and a murderous attacker, was about to back down. “Anybody ever tell you you’re as stubborn as sin?”

  “In my profession, they give out awards for it,” she said before adding a self-deprecating shrug, “except those days when you try it on the boss.”

  “So you really did get fired?” He wondered what kind of boss canned a woman who’d just lost her mother—after having been shot on the job.

  “I’ve had all the luck, just lately. Which only means that I’m a woman with nothing but time to nail any butt to the wall that stands in my way. Including yours, cowboy.”

  He snorted, enjoying the sparring far more than he had any right to. “Better women than you have tried to nail my ass. A few of them ended up getting nailed themselves.”

  That earned him another eye-roll. “You fly-boys and your boasting. Or is it being filthy rich that makes you so obnoxious?”

  “Maybe it’s just you,” he said, wondering what it would be like to nail her. And immediately quashing the most dangerous idea he’d ever had. So what if he was attracted to her, if the perfect package of face and body, courage and determination made him eager to find out if she’d give as good as she got in bed, too?

  If she had her way, his family could be torn to pieces, and family was the one line he was never again crossing. Especially not now that that family included a little girl who, as secure and loved as she was, still woke screaming with night terrors several times a week.

  But Jessie had a family, too, a family that had dwindled down to a single missing woman. And she would never rest until she found her missing twin. Would never back off her search. Partially because it was the only thing that she had left.

  Grimacing, he said, “How about we ride back over there? There’s something I want to show you.”

  Want to was a gross overstatement, but the truth was, he knew he had to, even if he didn’t plan to tell her everything. But she deserved to know what he’d found, and only by going there could he put it all in context.

  “Ride over where?” she asked. “To where the bunkhouse used to be?”

  At his nod, she added, “You want me to go with you? Alone?”

  “I could point out that we’re alone now, or as alone as we can get with your friend there watching.” He gestured toward the dog, which eyed him with obvious suspicion. “But we won’t be for long if we don’t head out. If my foreman or some of the hands don’t show up and interrupt us, Eden’ll get curious and head back out here, or, worse yet, my mama. And what I have to say, I’m only going to tell you once. Without interruption.”

  She considered for a moment before saying, “I’ll drive.”

  “Paranoid much, Jessie?” he asked. “You don’t seriously think I’d take you there to jump you.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just that even the thought of that place creeps me out a little.”

  When he raised his eyebrows, she sighed. “Okay. A lot.”

  “No surprise there,” he said, “but I’m not the person you ought to be afraid of.”

  “The trouble is, I don’t know who is. But I’m hoping that whatever you tell me will help me.”

 
Not as much as it’s going to hurt me, he worried, if I’m not very careful.

  He rode beside her in the Escalade, the black-and-tan dog breathing down his neck from the backseat.

  Turning to look the animal in the eye, he said, “If you’re going to hang this close, someone should at least offer you a breath mint.”

  The Rottweiler peeled back her lips, revealing a set of fangs better suited to a T-rex.

  “Platz, why don’t you?” he suggested, test-driving Jessie’s German.

  It wasn’t until she repeated the command—smugly—that the animal relaxed and lay down on the rear seat.

  “Where’d you come up with a dog like that?” he asked. “They have a Rent-a-Menace center down in Dallas?”

  Jessie laughed. “Sorry if she’s a little hyped up today. She senses when I’m nervous, and reacts accordingly.”

  “In that case, I’m making you the decaf brew from now on.”

  “Perish the thought,” she said. “And to answer your question, she was my mom’s dog. My dad had his faults, and plenty of them, but he always wanted her to feel safe, and there was one home invasion too many on the evening news.”

  “Not much of an issue way out here,” he said as the mansion shrank down to a distant dot behind them. “That’s one thing to like about it. It’s a damn sight safer.”

  “Tell that to my right hand—and especially to Henry,” she said.

  And maybe to your twin, he thought, dreading what was coming.

  It took them fifteen minutes to get back to the old bunkhouse location, time enough for him to wonder why he was opening this can of worms. But there was no taking back his offer, and there’d be no more putting her off, either. He saw that in the fierce look on Jessie’s face, the determination in her left-handed grip on the wheel.

  He felt a stab of dismay, realizing it was a glimpse into the future. Eden’s future, he was certain, considering the child’s willful moments. But she was sweet, too, gentle with the animals and so full of life and imagination.

  And every day he spent with her, every hour, every minute, it was going to get harder to do the right thing, the moral thing. Until it became impossible to straighten out the situation—and not only for his mother’s sake.