His heart turned over.
Her eyes were wide with shock. Her lips were trembling. She looked as if she had seen all the demons of hell, and she had.
She had seen his demons, and look what they had done to her!
He drew her close again, rocked her in his arms.
“Forgive me, baby.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. You had a dream, that’s all. Just a dream.”
Jake felt his muscles tighten.
“It’s not just a dream, it’s the dream. I have it over and over, night after goddammed night.”
“You haven’t had it since we’ve been together.”
She was right. He hadn’t. And based on that one fact, he’d tried to tell himself he was okay.
Well, he wasn’t okay. He was the same cowardly mess he’d been for almost two years. The only difference was that a dream was no longer simply a dream when it put someone else in danger.
And if that person was a woman you loved …
“I’ll make some coffee. Or tea.”
She was talking fast; he knew she was upset, although that probably wasn’t half the word to describe it. He wanted to hold her closer, tell her how much he loved her….
And because he wanted that more than anything, he let go of her and got to his feet.
Quickly, because he didn’t want too much time to think, he grabbed for his clothes and put them on. Shorts. Socks. Jeans.
“Jacob?”
When he yanked his shirt over his head, she took a cotton robe from the back of a chair and pulled it on.
“What are you doing?” she said as he stuffed his feet into his boots. “Please. Listen to me. If you don’t want coffee, we could go back to bed for a while and then—”
He swung toward her. The look on his face made her catch her breath.
“Coffee’s not going to do it. Neither will sex.”
She winced as if he’d hit her. He knew it was a cruel thing to say, a vicious thing to say, but everything inside him was coming apart.
“I know that,” she whispered. “I only meant … I care for you, Jacob. You mean—you mean everything to me.”
“Wrong,” he said sharply. “I don’t mean anything to anyone, especially to myself.”
“No! You don’t mean that.”
“Go home, Addison. Go back to New York and your law practice and your life.”
“Jacob.” Tears blurred her eyes as she hurried through the door after him. “I don’t want to leave you. You don’t want me to leave you. I know you don’t.”
She was right. He didn’t. His life was a mess and so was his head, but he loved her, he would always love her.
That was the very reason he had to leave her.
She deserved a man who was whole. Not a sick, useless coward like him.
He went down the stairs quickly, heard the soft patter of her bare feet behind him. Halfway to the door, he felt the touch of her hand on his shoulder.
Jake hardened his heart and swung toward her.
“The thing is,” he said, hating himself for the lie, for the pain he saw shining like tears in her eyes, “this had run its course anyway.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“You’re leaving in a couple of days. I was going to hit the road then, too—I mean, I figured we’d go on having a good time until then—”
“A good time?” she said in a whisper that made him want to tell her he was lying.
He couldn’t let that happen.
“I’m sorry if you figured on more from me but you always knew this was a temporary thing. You knew I was moving on.”
“Jacob.” She sobbed his name, reached her hand toward him. “Jacob, please listen! You need help!”
Jake turned on his heel and walked out.
What he needed, he thought as he got into the Thunderbird, was the open road.
Nobody to question him.
Nobody to make him think or remember when, dammit, all he wanted to do was to forget.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CALEB WILDE sat in his Dallas office, staring out the window.
Any man would do that instead of tending to the letters and files stacked on his desk.
After all, it was one terrific view. The city, its gleaming skyscrapers. Who could keep his mind on work if he had a view like that to distract him?
“Dammit,” Caleb muttered, and swung his leather swivel chair back toward his desk.
Lying to himself was pathetic.
He wasn’t only ignoring his work, he was ignoring everything, and it didn’t have a thing to do with the view.
It had to do with his brother.
Jacob.
Where was he?
Three months had gone by with no word. Not a note, a phone call, not even an email or a text message.
Well, yeah.
There’d been that one text message, sent to all their phones, his and Travis’s, Em’s and Lissa’s and Jaimie’s.
Do not worry about me. I am fine.
Caleb snorted.
What the hell did that mean? That ridiculous phrase, I am fine.
Jake was fine.
Really?
“Really?” Caleb said grimly.
How fine could a man be when he’d returned to his home as surly as a hound with a burr up its butt, taken up with a woman he’d wanted no part of, ended up not leaving her side for days and days until, just like that, he vanished.
Jake was gone.
So was Addison.
But they weren’t together.
She was back in New York.
He was Christ knew where.
And she wouldn’t so much as speak his name.
“I don’t know where he is,” she’d said when Caleb phoned her. She’d told Travis the same thing.
And, when they compared notes, they agreed that each time, she’d been choking back tears. Which hadn’t kept her from firing the two of them.
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to go on working together,” was what she’d said.
They couldn’t get anything else out of her.
Not that they really wanted to know what had gone wrong between their brother and their client. Their former client.
They’d just hoped she could tell them where Jake was.
Nobody knew.
Aside from that one totally unilluminating text message, he hadn’t contacted any of—
The intercom buzzed. Dammit, he wasn’t in the mood for interruptions. Hadn’t he told that to his PA?
“What?” he barked when he slapped it to life. “I told you, I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yes. I know. But—”
“No ‘buts,’ Jean. No calls, no messages, no—”
The door opened. Caleb glared at it. Then he shot to his feet.
“Father?”
The General, resplendent in his dress uniform, his chest bristling with ribbons and medals, nodded. “Hello, Caleb.”
“You should have … I didn’t expect …” Hell, he was running off at the mouth. “Come in, please. If I’d known—”
“There was no time. I flew into D.C. yesterday to meet with—Well, that’s unimportant.” His father shut the door, strode across the big room to one of the pair of chairs across from the desk and sat. “Please,” he said, gesturing, “take a seat.”
Caleb nodded. His father was inviting him to sit down in his own chair in his own office.
And he was doing it.
Some other time, he might have laughed. Not today. What was his father doing here? He was not given to dropping in for family visits.
“I am concerned about your brother.”
“Travis?”
“Jacob. I am very concerned about him.”
What did his father know? Caleb cleared his throat. “Yes. Well, you see—”
The door to his office swung open. Travis stepped into the room, raised his eyebrows and mouthed the words, What in hell’s going on?
Damned if I know, Ca
leb wanted to say….
“I hope you don’t mind, Caleb. I asked Travis to join us.”
“No. That’s fi—”
“Take a seat, please, Travis.”
Travis nodded. Sat in the chair beside his father. Caleb looked at him. Amazing. The General had taken charge.
“I was just telling your brother that I am concerned about Jacob.”
Travis and Caleb looked at each other. They could pretty much read each other’s thoughts. They could say, Why are you concerned? They could say, There’s nothing to be concerned about. Or they could be honest, even with this man who had not bothered to return to El Sueño for his wounded son’s homecoming.
Honesty won out.
“So are we,” Caleb said. “We don’t know where he is.”
“Actually,” Travis said, “we do.”
Caleb and the General both looked at him.
“We do?”
“He’s in Wilde’s Crossing. To be specific, he’s at the Chambers ranch. The Hilton ranch.”
“The McDowell ranch.”
Travis shook his head. “It’s the Wilde ranch now. Jake bought it for two million five. That’s the only reason I know about it. He wrote a check on his account with my firm and now he owns the place, lock, stock and downed fence posts.”
Caleb frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense. He turned down the General’s offer—your offer, sir—to take over at El Sueño. He left Wilde’s Crossing. For all we know, he left Texas. Why would he buy the Chambers place?”
“The Wilde place. That’s how he refers to it. And I have no idea. He won’t answer the phone.”
Caleb shot to his feet. “Hell!”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t think he’d do something stupid—”
“I think he’s done a lot of stupid things,” Travis said. He stood up. “Like denying that he’s one hell of a brave dude. Like refusing to let any of us help him.”
“Like walk away from a woman who cared for him.”
“Assuming she did.”
“People saw them together. They say what they saw was a woman who was crazy about a guy and a guy who was crazy about her.”
“Are you two finished with this discussion?”
Surprised, the brothers turned toward the General. Had anyone asked, they’d have said it was impossible to forget he was in the room….
But they just had.
The brothers made eye contact with each other and mentally agreed things had gone crazy.
“Because we don’t have time for speculation.” Their father rose to his feet. “We must get to the airport as quickly as possible.”
Travis narrowed his eyes. “Because, of course,” he said coolly, “you have a plane to catch?”
“Because,” the General said, “we’re flying to Wilde’s Crossing.”
Jake heard the truck coming minutes before he saw it.
Sounds carried pretty clearly on a still day, especially the sound of a truck. Or an SUV. Something good-sized and fast-moving.
People in a hurry to see him, he thought with a tight smile, and he was sure he knew who they were.
He’d been expecting his brothers to show up for a couple of days, ever since he’d taken ownership of the ranch.
The noise grew louder, and now he could see a plume of dust rising against the pale blue sky.
The cavalry, riding to the rescue.
He sighed, sat back on his heels, grabbed his discarded T-shirt and mopped his face with it. He looked the shirt over. It was stained, holey, it bore yellow smudges of pollen….
“The hell with it,” he said, and pulled it on.
He’d been working outside most of the day, first dealing with the barn, then with the sagging porch steps.
He was tired, his muscles ached, he needed a hot shower and a cold beer.
In other words, he felt fine.
The guys in his group had said physical labor was excellent for giving you enough mental space to help get your head straight.
Turned out they were right.
“Pare your life down to basics,” one guy who’d survived Kandahar had told him.
That, too, had been good advice.
Hard work during the day. Meetings a couple of evenings a week. Nights sitting here, on the porch, listening to the crickets and the coyotes. Then bedtime.
Jake had started as a cynic.
Now, he was close to a convert.
The regimen, especially the meetings, the open talk, had made big changes.
Correction.
He’d made big changes. In himself. It was important to know that.
He was in charge of his own life again. It was one hell of a feeling. He still had issues to get through but he could work through them.
The proof was that he slept dreamlessly through the night.
Okay.
Not necessarily dreamlessly. But when he dreamed, it wasn’t about fire and screams and death.
He dreamed of Addison. Of what he had lost and would never find again.
No point thinking of that now. The truck—a white SUV—was visible now, and barreling toward him.
Jake shaded his eyes as it ground to a stop.
Ready or not, here they were. Yeah. Travis getting out from the driver’s side, Caleb from the passenger’s side …
The General from the rear.
Jacob couldn’t believe it. His father? Here? Impossible. Maybe he’d been out in the sun longer than he’d thought. Maybe he was having a hallucination….
“Jacob,” his father said.
So much for hallucinations.
What now? Did he salute? No. He was no longer in the service. And salutes didn’t go with dirt-smeared jeans and sweaty shirts.
Instead, he stepped forward and stuck out his hand. It was dirt-smeared, too. His father looked at it. Then he took it in his.
“I’m happy to see you, son.”
Jake nodded. “It’s good to see you, too, sir.”
His brothers stopped just behind the General.
“Jake,” they said.
Heads nodded. Hands were shaken. And then Jake thought, Enough, and cleared his throat.
“So, the three of you just happened to be in the neighborhood and you figured you’d drop by?”
Caleb and Travis almost smiled. The General scowled.
“We made this trip specifically to see you, Jacob.”
So much for attempts, however pathetic, at humor.
And that “Jacob” thing …
How come, when Addison had called him “Jacob” it had sounded so soft and loving, not like a—a cold commentary, which was how it sounded, on his father’s lips?
“May we sit?”
Jake looked around. The house was out of the question. He’d started work on it a couple of weeks ago, before he’d made the purchase official, and he’d pretty much emptied all the furniture from the rooms on the first floor.
“Ah, sure,” he said. “The porch is shady, and there’s a six-pack of beer in that old cooler in the corner.”
The General marched up the steps. Did he ever walk? Not that Jake could remember. His brothers followed. The General took a chair. So did his brothers.
Bees droned in the eaves.
Nobody reached for the beer, except Jake.
Caleb and Travis followed suit.
Then, amazingly enough, so did the General.
All three Wilde brothers stared at him. Had any of them ever seen him drink beer before?
Jake considered offering to get him a glass. Then he thought, To hell with that, opened the longneck, tilted back his head and took a long, cold drink.
So did his brothers.
His father just sat there with the bottle in his hand.
“Okay, gentlemen. You want to tell me why you’re here?”
The General didn’t answer. Caleb and Travis looked at each other. Then Travis leaned forward.
“Where have you been?”
�
��Here and there.”
“That’s very illuminating.”
“I did some traveling. Is that more illuminating?”
“Why didn’t you get in touch with us?”
“I did. I sent—”
“That useless message. Yeah. We know. Would it have killed you to have called?”
The muscle in Jake’s cheek danced.
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “There are times I thought it might have.”
“What in hell does that mean?”
“It means I needed time to think. Just think, you know? Me, myself and I.” Jake’s expression softened. “I’m sorry if I worried you guys. That was the last thing I intended.”
“And maybe you think it was okay, too, not telling us if you were alive.”
“I did tell you.” Jake finished his beer, put the bottle on the floor beside him. “I texted.”
“‘Do not worry about me,’“ Caleb growled.
“‘I am fine,’” Travis added. His mouth twisted. “Very illuminating.”
“It sounded like it was sent by a robot. Anybody ever tell you people speak in contractions?”
Jake raised one eyebrow. “So, I should have said, ‘Don’t worry about me? I’m fine,’ instead of what I did say?”
Caleb opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. Travis made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort of laughter and Caleb shot him a look.
Jake took pity on them both.
“I didn’t call or write because I wasn’t ready to call or write,” he said quietly.
“Even about buying this place?”
Jake shrugged. “I knew you’d hear about it.”
“And?”
“And, what?”
His brothers exchanged a look.
“Jake,” Travis said gently, “you can’t go on like this.”
“Hating the world, hating yourself.” Caleb shook his head. “And for no reason, man. No reason that’s valid.”
Jake nodded. “Well, the reason was valid. For me, anyway. What it might not have been was logical.”
“Exact—” Travis frowned. “What did you say?”
“I said …” Jake shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
His brothers looked bewildered. Jake couldn’t blame them. Until recently, he’d been bewildered, too, except that was too polite a way to describe it.
“Post-traumatic stress,” he said quietly. “It hit me, hard. Guilt over what I’d done and hadn’t done—”
“You did all you could.”
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