by Naomi Horton
"I told him I'd known you a long time ago, but without the gory details. What on earth do you think I told him?"
"And?" The fear was like something alive, and it kept trying to claw its way free, but he fought it back, knowing if she caught even a hint of weakness it would be all over.
"And nothing!" More than simple cold colored her cheeks now, and she tipped her chin up in a gesture so familiar it made him dizzy. "I know it's been sixteen years, Jett, but I don't know why you're turning this into a federal case when all I—"
"I'll turn it into whatever you want to make it," he said defiantly. "But I'll tell you one thing, lady—that deal I made with your old man still stands, and if you try breaking it, I'll fight you all the way to hell and back." He jabbed his finger at her. "Now get off my ranch and stay off. And stay away from Jody, or you'll regret the day you ever met me."
Then he turned on one heel and stalked back to the house, so filled with rage he could scarcely see straight. He took the front steps two at a time and stormed across the wide veranda and into the house, slamming the door solidly behind him.
Safe. He stood there for a moment, breathing hard, his back crawling. For the moment, anyway, he was safe.
He drew a deep, careful breath and unclenched his fists, trying to relax the taut muscles across his shoulders, heart still hammering against his ribs. Damn it, where the hell had she come from? He should have known. Should have guessed. Should have been ready for her…
For years after he had fought old man Patterson into a corner and made the bastard sign that agreement, he'd expected a double-cross. Patterson was too powerful, too important, too rich, to take something like that sitting down. Jett had spent years looking over his shoulder, waiting for the trap to close. But it never had. And after a while he'd relaxed a little, thinking maybe he'd gotten away with it after all.
When Patterson had died a year and a half ago the fear had started again. Fear that there would be something in his will, in his other papers, that would tear the whole thing wide open again. But nothing had happened. And finally Jett had convinced himself that nothing would. That it was over. That the whole matter, like Patterson himself, was dead and buried.
But then, a few months after Patterson had died, Kathleen's brother, Gordon, had moved back to Burnt River to settle into the family home with his family. That had been suspicious enough, but then Gordon had joined Cliff Albright's small downtown law practice, and Jett had spent weeks bracing himself for the phone call, the friendly visit, that would tear his life apart.
Because Cliff had been in on it right from the start. He knew everything, and it seemed a hell of a lot more than simple coincidence that Gordon should just happen to join his law firm.
But again, nothing had happened. Gordon was friendly enough the few times they'd seen each other on the street, but casually so, not seeming too interested. Showing no signs he knew the truth. That he was up to anything.
Then Cliff had died, and Jett had spent another uneasy month or two, wondering what papers he'd left behind. But still, nothing had happened. And finally Jett had managed to convince himself that this time it really was over. That the Kendrick secret was safe.
And now…
Now Kathleen herself was back in town, gorgeous and composed and cool-eyed. How the hell she'd tracked Jody down so fast was anyone's guess. Unless Gordon had been doing the groundwork all along, of course. Quietly. Stealthily. Getting the facts straight before he and Kathleen came in for the kill.
Jett swallowed and wiped at the sweat beaded on his forehead, his hand shaking slightly. He had to think. Had to come up with some sort of plan.
Still badly rattled, he walked down the central corridor of the old house toward the kitchen. The smell of fresh, strong coffee wafted toward him, and he followed it down to the kitchen and stuck his head through the door. Angel McLean, his stock foreman, and one of the young hands they'd hired on last week were sitting at the big maple table, mugs of coffee cupped between cold hands, talking quietly.
Angel lifted his mug. "It's hot and black, boss."
"Did Jody come through here?"
"Just poked his head in, then hightailed it upstairs. He, uh…" Angel paused, as though trying to judge Jett's mood. "We might want to think about hiring on another hand for a few weeks. Until we get the rest of those early calves in for branding and cutting, anyway. It's lookin' to be mighty busy around here, and with Jody havin' only one good arm…"
"He'll manage," Jett said tightly. "And don't you go making things easy for him, either. Maybe this'll teach him to think twice before takin' off again."
"He's just a kid, Jett," Angel said quietly. "Barely even halter broke yet. Why don't you cut him a little slack?"
"He's fifteen," Jett said from between his teeth. "Isn't there something you two should be doin'?"
Angel's nostrils flared, and he glared at Jett for a moment; then he scraped his chair back noisily and stood, reaching for his hat. "Come on, Billy," he said to the kid. "Let's get back to work. Colder'n a witch's backside in here all of a sudden."
The kid swallowed a gulp of coffee as he scrambled to his feet. He grabbed his hat and shoved it down over a tangled nest of hair the color of copper wire, giving Jett a nervous glance as he trotted out the back door at Angel's heels.
Jett swore wearily. Angel hadn't deserved that. He'd hired on three weeks after Jett had taken over the Kicking Horse and eight years later was almost like a brother. He'd always spoken what was on his mind, and Jett liked that. Had learned to value and trust it.
Except when it came to Jody. There, he and Angel had a definite difference of opinion.
Jett paused at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor of the big ranch house, wondering about the best way to handle this. One thing was certain: he had to get it right from the get-go. Jody was as cantankerous as a bull calf these days, as likely to argue that white was black as not. There was no telling how he was going to react to things, a good-natured boy one minute and a sullen, half-grown man the next, angry for no reason, storming out in fits of temper that had no cause.
Just a phase, the twice-weekly housekeeper, Mrs. Wells, kept saying. Wild blood, Angel kept saying. Just like his old man…
He heard the angry footsteps pounding across the veranda just as he planted his foot on the bottom stair, and stopped dead, the back of his neck prickling. Motionless, barely even breathing, he listened as whoever was out there stormed across and wrenched open the screen door. There was a barrage of furious hammering on the inside door.
"Jett! Jett Kendrick, damn you, open this door and talk to me!" It was Kathleen's voice, no doubt about it, muffled by three inches of solid pine but vibrant with fury. "Jett, you open this door and let me in!"
So angry she was practically incoherent, Kathleen hammered her fist against the door again. Like the three generations of Kendrick men it had sheltered, the thing was tall and wide and as solid as stone, impervious to her most determined pounding.
"Jett!" She gave the door another blow, then grabbed the brass knob and rattled it furiously. "Jett, if you think for one minute that you can—"
"I told you to get the hell off my land!"
The door was wrenched inward so abruptly that Kathleen nearly fell forward. A solid wall of blue denim loomed over and toward her, filling the entire doorway, and she held her breath for an instant, actually afraid he was going to strike her.
He didn't, but the expression on that hard, cold-eyed face made it pretty clear that he would like to. "Get back in your car and—"
"Don't you try to bully me, damn it!" More angry than scared, she planted her feet and glared up at him, hands on hips. "If you think you're going to get away with treating me like this after all this time, you—"
"I've got nothing to say to you," he said in a low, tight voice. "It's done. And there's nothing you or your brother can do about it now."
It didn't make any sense: not the anger, not the words, none of it. Struggl
ing to contain her own anger, she took a deep breath. "Jett, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I don't know anything about any business dealings you had with my father, and I don't want to know. All I—"
"You're lying," he said with flat, cold conviction. "You were in on it."
"Oh, for—" Kathleen caught the anger before it got away from her, took another deep breath and started all over again. "Jett, before he died, my father and I hadn't traded more than a dozen civil words in years. And he certainly never discussed business with me. If the two of you had some sort of arrangement that went sour, it's news to me."
She half expected him to argue with her, or at least call her a liar again. But to her surprise, he didn't say anything. Just continued to stare down at her with those obsidian eyes, face as hard as carved stone. There was a fresh cut along the high, wide plane of his left cheek, and rainwater had smeared a thin trickle of blood down the skin. Not deep enough to leave a scar, she found herself thinking inanely.
Although it wouldn't have mattered. He had the kind of face that bore scars well: the vee-shaped nick in his chin where an iron-shod hoof had clipped him when he'd been seventeen, the furrow bisecting his right eyebrow where he'd been hit with a flying stirrup a year later. There were other, faint badges of cowboy courage he could probably catalog by date and event.
Sixteen years. It was hard to believe it had been that long. Each of those years had left its mark on that lean, handsome face, but he wore it well, sculpted features still clean-cut and strong. He'd filled out, his shoulders nearly filling the doorway, chest solid with muscle. A man now and not the eighteen-year-old boy she'd once loved. A stranger, almost.
"Look, Jett," she said quietly, "I didn't come out here to cause trouble. I simply gave Jody a lift because he had no money and no way to get home and—"
"He knows how to use a phone."
"Oh, right. The kid's going to call home, collect, to listen to you lecture him on how irresponsible he is."
She must have hit pretty close to home, because a flush settled across Jett's handsome features and his mouth got all hard and stubborn. In spite of herself, she had to smile. "He doesn't need you to tell him he screwed up, Jett. He went out there and did his best and got nothing for it but some bruises and broken bones, knowing you were going to give him hell when he finally dragged himself home. Trust me, Sundance—he feels bad enough without you ragging on him some more."
"Don't tell me how to raise my son." His voice was ice-cold.
"I gave up trying to tell you anything sixteen years ago," she replied in a voice that was just as cold. "You didn't listen to anything you didn't want to hear back then, and nothing I've seen today makes me think you've changed."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"You figure it out. You always had all the answers." Not even bothering to wait for a reply—if he even had one—she turned and stalked across the veranda and down the steps. At the bottom, she paused and looked around. "Not that I think you give a damn, but I was sorry to hear about Pam. As far as I'm concerned, she deserved a hell of a lot better."
It was a cheap shot, but it seemed to be that kind of a day. Not feeling very proud of herself, but too angry to care, she turned and walked down the wide flagstone path to the driveway, back rigid against the almost palpable heat of his stare. She turned her coat collar up against the rain and pulled the car door open, daring to glance back up at him.
He was still standing in the doorway, as though barring hearth and home from a marauding army, and she fought down a sudden shiver.
Not a marauding army.
Just her.
She started the car and then dared another quick glance back up at the house. Jett had gone back inside, but she thought she saw the lace curtain in the living room window move just slightly. Saw—or imagined she saw—a tall shadow there, all but invisible through lace and rain.
She shoved the car's heater control to the highest setting, then headed back to the main road, chilled to the bone.
That deal I made with your old man still stands…
Deal. She found it almost impossible to believe that Jett and her father could have seen eye-to-eye long enough to have signed some deal. They'd hated each other on principle sixteen years ago; how in God's name had they ever bridged that gap? The only thing they'd ever had in common was her.
Just thinking about it made her go cold. She'd found out she was pregnant on the tenth of August, and two days after that she had made the mistake of telling her mother.
She'd planned to tell Jett first. But he'd been riding in the State National Rodeo Finals that week, and she hadn't been able to get hold of him. And the secret was too big to keep, too important. Foolishly, she'd thought her mother would understand. That when she explained how much she loved Jett and how much he loved her, her mother would be on their side.
But she hadn't been. She'd given her head an annoyed shake and had wondered aloud what on earth had possessed Kathleen to get herself pregnant by the likes of Jett Walking Tall. "He's probably a very nice boy," she'd added as a vague afterthought. "But really, dear, he's a half-breed. What were you thinking?"
But it hadn't even been Jett's half Sioux parentage that had annoyed her mother as much as the timing of the whole thing. Judge Patterson's name was being mentioned officially as a possible candidate for the state Supreme Court and, as Kathleen had been reminded icily, if people found out that he had an unwed and pregnant fifteen-year-old daughter on his hands, it could all be over before it even started.
"Why now?" she'd asked Kathleen impatiently. "For heaven's sake, why did you have to do this now?"
Bad timing. That had been her greatest error in judgment.
Kathleen had to smile at the absurdity of it.
Her father had handled the problem with his usual take-charge efficiency. A week after Kathleen had found out about the baby, she was on a plane to Baltimore. She'd tried to get hold of Jett, but no one knew where he was, and she'd finally just left a message with his grandfather.
A few days at the most—that was how long she'd figured it would take him to come after her. Each night she'd fallen asleep knowing he was on his way, that he would come striding into her uncle's house and sweep her up into his arms and carry her out to his banged-up old Chevy pickup, and then they would head back to Montana, so much in love it hurt to breathe. They would get married and raise their son—she'd never doubted it was a son—and she would never have to set foot in her father's house again.
Except the days had turned to weeks, the weeks to months, and Jett never arrived. There had been no phone call explaining the delay, no letter telling her that he loved her and would be there soon. Just silence. She called him countless times, but he was never there; she wrote letters by the dozen, but never got a reply.
Then a girlfriend had dropped her a note. It had been full of gossip and news, but it had been the last bit that had stabbed Kathleen right through the heart. The part that said, "Jett sure doesn't seem too broken up that you're gone. He and that Pam Easton can't keep their hands off each other. Of course, she'll do it with anything in jeans, but it's pretty obvious that Jett can't get enough of her, either."
That was why he hadn't called. Hadn't written. Hadn't come to take her back to Burnt River and marry her. He'd been too busy with Pam Easton.
And the "deal" he and her father had put together?
She didn't know, and at the moment, frankly, she didn't give a damn. Land, taxes, legal wranglings … it could have been any of a dozen things. The only thing she did know for dead certain was that it would have been in her father's favor, which probably explained at least some of Jett's foul temper.
But whatever it was all about, it had nothing to do with her. Jett didn't believe that, obviously, seeming to think that one Patterson was pretty much like any other. Maybe he thought she knew about the mysterious "deal" and was planning to use it to get back at him for abandoning her all those years ago. Maybe he thought
she was going to hurt him through Jody, using his own son in some bizarre scheme for revenge. Maybe…
Oh, hell, she thought wearily, there could be a thousand reasons for Jett's behavior. They'd both been hurt sixteen years ago. Who knew what he thought she was up to? If she decided to stay in Burnt River, she would deal with it later. Until then, she'd just stay as far away from the wretched man as possible.
* * *
Jett stood silently in the door of Jody's bedroom and watched his son struggle to pull on a pale denim shirt, wondering a bit wistfully how the two of them had wound up so far apart. They'd been best buddies once, Jett scarcely able to move without falling over the boy dogging his heels.
Now they barely spoke to each other unless they were trading hostilities.
Something tightened in his chest, and he took a deep breath to shake it off. Fear. Fear of doing it all wrong, of making one mistake too many and losing his son once and for all. He thought of his own father, of the unbridgeable distance still between them even after all these years. They were speaking to each other now, at least, but the tension was still there, the awkwardness, the awareness of too much of one thing said and not enough of the other. Both needing to be right, neither able to forgive.
Jody had all but given up trying to get the shirt on and was just pulling it around his shoulder, having trouble with even that much. Not surprisingly. Jett winced as he looked at the vivid bruising covering his son's slender back.
"Looks like she stomped on you a couple of times after you hit the dirt." He said it casually, trying to keep any hint of criticism out of his voice, and strolled into the room.
Jody looked around, startled.
"Ribs okay?"
Jody nodded warily, as though sensing a trap. "They took X rays. Said everything's fine."
"I'll dig out a plastic bag to wrap around that cast so you can have a shower."
Jody nodded again, even more suspicious now. "I was going to head out and have a look at that fence," he muttered, turning around and limping across to the dresser. He eyed himself in the mirror, gingerly touching the tape across the bridge of his nose.
