by Laura Wright
James pushed open the screen door and headed out of the bunkhouse, down the steps and into the still, breezeless night. Over near the creek, under the light of a nearly full moon, he spied a heavy grain sack hanging by a few ropes that were wrapped around a thick branch on a nearby tree. Performing some fancy footwork while delivering several death blows to the sack’s gut, Cole didn’t notice his approach until James was right up on him.
“So, who you imagining this is?” James asked.
Wearing only a pair of gray sweat shorts, the rest of him covered in a sheen of sweat and aggression, Cole bobbed and weaved and tore into the sack several more times before he answered. “No one. Anyone.”
James nodded. “Right.”
“I have a match coming up, that’s all,” Cole said, giving the dejected-looking sack a roundhouse kick. “I need to be in top form. Which means training, even if we’re stuck here.”
“You don’t have to be stuck here.”
Cole stopped abruptly, then reached out and grabbed the bag to steady it. Breathing heavy, he turned and regarded James. “What the hell does that mean?”
Those black eyes narrowed and flashed with heat, and James knew that sometimes all it took was that look for one of his brother’s opponents to raise the white flag in the ring.
“Do you want any part of this place, little brother?” James asked.
“Fuck no,” Cole grumbled, then amended with a sigh, “Shit, I don’t know. Even when I’m away from here, it’s still with me. Clings to me like a disease I can’t cure. Maybe Deacon’s right. Maybe there’s only one way to finally have a little peace.”
“Destroying the Triple C,” James said evenly.
“Why not?” Cole turned and punched the bag again and sent it flying. “What’s left here but death and bad memories?”
James wasn’t sure of that himself, but he couldn’t help saying her name. “There were a lot of good memories, too. And there’s Cass.”
“Don’t.” His lip curling back, Cole pointed at James, his eyes—a perfect match to his twin’s—now ice-cold obsidian. “Don’t bring her into this. You and Mac talking like this. I don’t know what’s going on with Deacon. But this decision to keep the Triple C alive has nothing to do with her. She’s been gone a lifetime.”
Releasing a weighty breath, James leaned back against a nearby tree. “Yet she’s still here. All over this place. Never given the justice she was due.” His gaze darted around, from the cottage to the creek to the stars overhead. “I feel it. I feel her.”
“That job of yours,” Cole began in a dark voice, “whisperin’ to horses and whatnot . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I think it’s made you soft.”
James just watched him, completely unruffled by the accusation. “You think so?”
Cole nodded, sniffed. “Either that or it’s all the Shakespeare you read.”
James laughed softly. “I’m just made different, little brother.” His head cocked to one side. “Did you know the memory in a horse, good or bad, remains inside of them, inside their guts, inside their movements and reactions to everything and everyone around them? It doesn’t go away. They don’t deal with it. They may forgive or move on, but in my experience, they’re emotionally broken for good.”
His face shining with sweat, Cole studied him. “We talking about horses, or we talking about you?”
James shrugged lightly, knowing his eyes had just gone blank. “Horses.”
Cole nodded, unconvinced. “You feel whole again, J?”
James didn’t answer.
“Yeah, me neither.” Chuckling, Cole shook his head. “So, if I go, if I sign away my share of this godforsaken place, what then?”
“If you sign it over to Deac, the Triple C is as good as destroyed.”
“And what if I sign my share over to Blue?”
The question surprised James, though it probably shouldn’t have. This was Cole, through and through. Shit stirrer extraordinaire. He gave the fighter a slow grin. “You mean our new brother?”
Cole nodded, his eyes flashing with dark humor.
“Well, I guess that’d be a real nice gesture on your part.”
“Right?” Cole agreed, his lips twitching. “Real brotherly.”
“Problem is, you’ll never actually get to see it happen ’cause Deac will remove your larynx and your right hand before you can agree or sign.”
Cole burst out laughing. “Come on, J. You know what I do for a living, right?”
Grinning broadly, James nodded. All talk of the past and all the pain that rode its back now momentarily pushed aside. “I do. But you remember Deacon pissed off, don’t you?”
“Shit,” Cole muttered, turning to face the grain bag. For the next twenty seconds, he beat the living hell out of the thing, tearing into the side so deep and long that the grain spilled out in a dusty brown waterfall.
“Ha! There’s the answer to your question, big brother,” he said, drawing back, breathing hard.
“What question’s that?” James asked.
Cole turned and grinned at him, his black eyes flashing, his face heavy with sweat. “Who I’m imagining this is.”
• • •
“Are you still in River Black, Mr. Cavanaugh?”
“Yes,” Deacon said tightly, unconcerned with the surprised expression on his lawyer’s face, which was coming to him live via FaceTime on his smartphone. “You received the will, Ken?”
“About an hour ago,” the man confirmed with a nod.
“What can you tell me?”
Conducting business on a pale blue quilted bedspread atop a lumpy mattress was not Deacon’s way, but he wasn’t about to leave the house. His house. No matter how uncomfortable the situation inside it became. He wasn’t about to give Blue any advantages. If the cowboy did come back tonight, there would be no staking claims, no carrying out plans—not without Deacon knowing about it.
“All three partners have gone over it,” Ken said, his brow creased. “And I’ll do it once more. But it appears solid and, I believe, difficult to challenge. If the language provided for distribution was to Everett’s ‘children’ or ‘descendants’ without using the names, then we’d have a better shot. But it mentions a distribution by name.”
It wasn’t as though Deacon hadn’t expected this answer; he was just hoping that the minds he paid more than seven hundred dollars an hour to be simultaneously brilliant and devious had come up with a way to break, bend, or melt down ironclad.
“I have a DNA expert coming tomorrow,” Deacon said. “If the newest addition to our family doesn’t share our DNA, what then? Can the entire will be thrown out? Would James, Cole, and I be the sole recipients of the property?”
“Because he is named Blue Cavanaugh and not Perez, yes, I believe we’d have something.” He paused for a moment, his brow furrowed. Then he said, “Perhaps using the idea that somehow Everett was defrauded into thinking that Blue was his offspring.”
Yes. Deacon liked that. The first step would be the DNA test, of course. And if Blue wasn’t a Cavanaugh, Deacon would pursue the legal route. But if he was, Deacon was going to have to approach his plan from a different angle. Already he had his PI looking into Blue’s background. He would see what that turned up. And then there was the remote possibility that maybe Blue didn’t want the ranch. That maybe he’d rather get himself a million-dollar payday and a one-way trip on the Cavanaugh jet anywhere he liked.
Deacon glanced up, narrowed his gaze on the door. Someone was outside his room. Or something. Shit, the way it was stumbling around, stomping down the hall, it could be one of his father’s prize bulls.
He turned back to his lawyer. “Use a very fine-toothed comb with that final read-through, Ken. I’ll contact you tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
After disconnecting, Deacon placed his phone on the side table and got off the bed. Whatever was going on out in the hall, he was pretty sure it had to do with his neighbor. He hadn
’t seen Mackenzie since she’d left him on the porch. Since she’d stared down at him with hot eyes. It was a look he’d been trying to erase from his mind ever since.
He opened his door and stepped out into the hall. No one was there, and for a second he wondered if maybe she’d just been passing through on her way downstairs. But then he heard her. A few doors down, barking at someone inside her room.
“Goddamn you, Blue!” she called out in a strange combination of a hiss and shout.
Blue? Deacon mused darkly, instantly on the move. Was the cowboy back and in Mac’s room? And why was she so pissed?
“You!” she continued, her voice echoing down the hall. “This whole thing . . . You’re acting like a . . . bullshit.”
Deacon stopped outside her open door, frowned when he saw that she was talking on her cell phone. Talking and trying to unzip the back of her dress at the same time.
“You know I’m so worried,” she rambled on loudly, her words slurred.
Well, well. She’d been drinking.
“I’m worried, Blue. Don’t you get that? Worried. You’d better call me back, cowboy. No, you’d better be up and out at dawn or maybe I’ll fire you.” She pulled at her zipper, managed to get it halfway down her back before it refused to go any farther. She released it with a frustrated curse. “Ah, hell. I wouldn’t fire you, Blue. You know that, right? I love you.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Deacon leaned against the doorjamb, his frown downgrading to a scowl. Why was she saying that? Like that. All fearful and passionate. Friends didn’t talk like that. Not any of the people he called friends, at any rate.
“I love you,” she said again, then punched the end button on her cell and threw the thing on the bed. She stared at it, and in a soft voice, whispered, “And I can’t lose another person I love.”
Dammit. For a moment, Deacon contemplated walking away and pretending he hadn’t seen or heard a thing. That would’ve been the right move, the smart move. He didn’t need to engage with a drunk woman who was grieving the man he despised and crying out for the cowboy who could threaten his plans for vengeance. But then she turned and caught sight of him.
She didn’t even startle, which was a big clue to how drunk she probably was. She did however narrow her eyes, and her upper lip lifted into a sneer. “What do you want, Deacon?” she muttered irritably.
“I heard you yelling all the way down the hall,” he said. “How’s a man supposed to get any sleep with all that racket?”
She snorted. “If I see a man I’ll ask him.”
Deacon grinned. “You all right, darlin’?”
“As if you care,” she said, pointing at him, her cheeks flushed.
“I care, Mackenzie.”
She snorted again, then started working her zipper again. “You are a mean upstart.”
“Yup.”
“Greedy, too.”
“Sometimes.”
“Don’t patronize me, Deacon Cavanaugh.”
“Not trying to.” Shit, if she did manage to get that zipper down and started undressing in front of him, things were going to get problematic. He wasn’t a dickhead, but he wasn’t much of a gentleman either. She was a beautiful woman, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t curious.
“You shattered this day,” she said, yanking and pulling. “Wasn’t your day, Deacon. Not every day is your day.”
If she tugged on that thing any harder, it was going to rip in two. He pushed away from the wall and stepped into the room. “Come on, Mac. I’m responsible for only one of the scandals today. And, frankly, I’m thinking it’s not the worst of the lot.”
“Your plan to destroy us all is the ultimate of worsts,” she slurred, turning to look at him. She narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute. I didn’t invite you in here.”
“Your door was open.”
“Still not an invitation.”
“All right. Say the word and I’ll leave.”
Her eyes widened, hopeful. “The ranch? You’ll leave the ranch?”
He laughed. “No.”
She scowled. “Well, then, you might as well stay. Witness what you’ve come to destroy. What you’ve wrought.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And maybe what Everett wrought a little bit, too.”
Her eyes filled with tears on that last bit, and Deacon sighed. Damn woman. Damn Everett. “You been drinking, darlin’?”
“No.”
He went to her and took her by the shoulders. “Just a little bit?”
Her head dropped back and she looked up at him. “Maybe.”
“Whether you believe it or not, I’m not looking to destroy you, Mackenzie.” Her cheeks were flushed, and the color made her eyes so brilliantly blue it was like staring at the sky around noon on a perfect spring day. “Beautiful works of art should never be destroyed.”
Deacon realized what he’d said one second after it was out of his mouth. Where the hell did that come from? he mentally growled. Not from any rational or reasonable place he knew of. Shit, that was Hallmark card, romantic bullshit territory. He didn’t deliver that kind of slop to women.
He released his hold on her, ignoring the heat and tension building in his chest.
Mac didn’t move. She was still staring at him, pursing her full, pink lips. “Don’t you try to sweet-talk me, Deacon Cavanaugh. Unlike those beanpoles with fake tits and faker smiles that you go out with, I know you.” She pointed at his face. “I know the country boy you were and the heartless man you’ve become. I know everything.”
No, Deacon thought. She didn’t know everything. If she had, she might never have taken Everett up on his offer to work at the Triple C. And clearly, she’d needed that job. It was a conscious choice he and Cole and James had made long ago. To keep the truth from her. Losing Cass and dealing with a drunk for a father had been more than enough for her to handle. She hadn’t needed to take on their pain and humiliation along with it.
“Why do you pick women like that, Deac?” She verbally stumbled on, reaching behind her back and once again working her zipper. “You came from real. Why wouldn’t you want real?”
His lips twitched. “Sounds like you’ve been spying on me, Mackenzie.”
She cocked her head, trying to get a better angle on the willful little bit of metal. “Don’t have to. You’re all over the rags in town. Every time I buy a tub of ice cream, there you are.”
His brow lifted. “A tub of ice cream?”
She glared at him. “You got a problem with that?”
“Nope.” He laughed. “No problem.”
“Good answer,” she growled softly as she continued to pull on that zipper.
That damn zipper.
“Need a hand, Mackenzie?” he asked.
“I have two.” And she brought both out from behind her back to show him.
“They don’t seem to be working all that well.”
She ignored him and kept at it for the next thirty seconds. Then she let out a frustrated groan and dropped her hands to her sides. “I think it’s stuck.”
“You think?” he said, chuckling.
“Shut up.”
He reached for her waist and turned her around.
She gasped.
“Drinking alone isn’t a good idea,” he whispered near her ear. “You should’ve waited for me.”
She sighed tiredly. “I got tired of waiting for you, Deacon.”
The words were spoken softly, but Deacon heard them clear as day. His gut tightened as his fingers went to her dress, wrapped around the zipper, and eased the tiny piece of metal out of the fabric it was caught on. Mackenzie Byrd wasn’t some female from the city who wanted a few nights of uncomplicated fun. She was real and familiar, and smelled like sunshine. She was his past. Or a part of it, anyway. She belonged to a different time, and no matter how grown up she was or how his body might be reacting to her hot stares and cool attitude, he didn’t want any part of that time.
He stared at her back. The smooth, tan skin and the clasp of h
er pale blue bra. His mouth watered, and his nostrils widened to take in that warm, sunshiny scent. Even with the warnings his mind had just conjured, the urge to slip his hands inside the flared material of her dress, feel the heat of her skin against his palms, was nearly debilitating.
“I wasn’t alone,” she whispered.
Deacon’s fingers flexed. “What?”
She turned around, held her dress up with both hands, and lifted her dark blue gaze to his. Once again, heat and confusion battled within their depths. “I wasn’t drinking alone. I was with Elena.”
Deacon’s jaw tightened, and rational thought returned in a quick, jarring manner. The woman his father had been allegedly having an affair with for years—the woman who had borne Everett’s child, then kept it a secret. The woman Everett had no doubt turned to when he should’ve been helping his wife with her grief and protecting his sons from the terrifying effects of that grief.
Her eyes still hazy from all the alcohol she’d consumed, Mackenzie looked at him, studied him, like she was trying to read his mind. “Does it make you crazy not to have control all the time?”
His brows came together in a frown. “I always have control, Mackenzie,” he said, not sure where she was going with that line of questioning. “Even when it might not appear that way.”
Her cheeks flushed, and the confusion disappeared from her eyes. “You don’t now.”
“Why do you say that?”
Without warning, she reached up, fisted the collar of his shirt in her hands, and pulled his face down to hers. Her lips captured his in a hungry, almost angry way that made the breath leave his body, then rush back in at a hundred miles per hour. Holy shit! What the hell? She groaned against him, lapped at him with her tongue, then nipped at his bottom lip with her teeth as her hands ran up his jaw and neck, then into his hair.
Fuck! This was insane. Dangerous. But Christ, she tasted good. Felt good. Deacon had his hands around her waist in seconds, the pads of his fingers pressing into the small of her back until he had her flush against his body. Hot damn, she fit. Perfectly. He groaned and kissed her deeper. At some point, he thought he heard her mutter the words, “No control,” into his mouth, but he wasn’t sure. Hell, he hardly cared. She was grinding her body against his, fisting his hair, making sounds that were causing his mind to melt and his dick to beg for release from the prison of his zipper.
