by Naomi Horton
She thought for a moment that he wasn't going to answer. Then he shook himself lightly, like a dog coming out of the water, and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. "Like you said," he muttered, not quite looking at her as he turned and walked across to the door. "I don't think it matters anymore."
"It matters."
"No." He paused with his hand on the door, his back to her, not turning around. "No, it doesn't."
And then, just like that, he was gone.
* * *
She didn't know.
Jett wet his lips and swallowed, his heartbeat still erratic. He gave Jody a sidelong glance, half afraid the boy could read his mind. But Jody was slouched in the seat, staring out the truck window, his profile hard with anger.
She didn't know.
It didn't seem possible. And yet … damn it, it sounded exactly like something Patterson would do. Even to his own daughter. And, in a nightmarish kind of way, it even made sense.
Patterson's name was being tossed around for the Supreme Court back then. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that a pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter—fifteen, God help him!—would be a definite liability for a man with political aspirations. Especially if the illegitimate baby she was carrying belonged to a half-breed rodeo rider with a juvenile record and a reputation for being a troublemaker.
So she didn't know.
The reality of it, the immensity of it, took his breath away. She actually had no idea that the baby boy she'd given birth to that cold April night a little over fifteen years ago was right here in Burnt River.
Again, he glanced at Jody, his gut tightening.
No one knew. No one but him, Patterson, Kathleen's uncle and Cliff Albright. And Pam, of course. Pam had known.
Jett's belly gave another unpleasant little twist, this time of guilt. After Kathleen had left, he'd started going out with Pam more out of anger than anything else. Then he'd found out about the baby, and things had gone a little crazy for a while. He'd gone after her, eighteen and green as grass, and that was when he'd found out they'd sold the baby—his baby—and had grown up fast.
His memories of those days were still fuzzy. And he never had known all the details, except that the original adoption had fallen through and there had been threats of legal action and counter threats of some kind. He hadn't cared. All he'd cared about was getting his son.
And he had.
With stipulations. Jett's fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and he took a deep breath to ease the knot of anger in his gut.
He'd agreed to the stipulations because there had been no other way, and he would have bartered his very soul if it had been the only way to get Jody. Then he'd married Pam because she loved him too much to care that he only needed a wife to look after his child. She had never stopped loving him, except maybe toward the very end, when his flat refusal to give her a child of her own drove her half wild with anger and grief.
He swallowed again. It had been his stubbornness that had killed her, as certainly as if he'd been at the wheel of the car that day. And his selfishness. If he'd relented and let her have a baby, she would probably be alive now.
But he hadn't wanted another child. Pam had been a good mother, but he'd feared that if she'd had her own baby, Jody would have become the outsider, the half sibling who suddenly didn't quite fit in.
Like he'd been, Jett thought bitterly. With absolutely no warning he found himself thinking of that hot August afternoon when he'd been thirteen and had hitchhiked down to Billings to be with his old man. He'd found him shacked up in a trailer park with a blowsy blonde and a couple of golden-haired, blue-eyed kids. Even now, a lifetime later, Jett could remember what it had been like, walking in there and realizing his father had a whole other life he'd never be a part of.
He shook the memories off impatiently. He hadn't thought of his father's betrayal in years, and he had no intention of thinking about it now. He took another deep breath, forcing it past a sudden tightness in his throat, very aware of Jody sitting beside him. He glanced at the boy, then reached across and squeezed his shoulder. "You okay?"
"You didn't have to drag me out of there like some kid." Jody gave him a hostile look. "She was just tryin' to help."
Jett blew his breath out, thinking about it. He'd gone all these years thinking she'd agreed to the adoption. That she'd sold his baby to the highest bidder like a calf at a stock auction. That she was back here now to lay claim to the son she'd abandoned fifteen years ago.
And all she'd been doing was trying to help some kid she'd befriended to get a passing grade or two.
"You could have come to me if you needed help," he muttered.
"And got a lecture on how I was just lazy and needed to apply myself more?"
In spite of himself, Jett had to smile. "I never said you were lazy. Bullheaded, maybe, but not lazy."
"That's what she said about you."
Again Jett surprised himself with an involuntary smile. "Yeah, she probably would."
"You know her pretty good, huh?"
"Knew." Jett took a deep breath, dispelling the past. "A long time ago." He looked at Jody and smiled again. "Before you were born, Slick. Back with the dinosaurs."
"Not that long ago." He looked at Jett for a long moment, eyes thoughtful. "You were pretty young when I was born."
"Nineteen," Jett lied casually.
"More like eighteen." Jody gave him a half smile. "I ain't so bad in math I can't figure that out."
Jett kept his eyes on the road, trying to keep his voice unconcerned. "Glad to hear it. Now, if we can work on your civics and chemistry, you'll have it made." When Jody didn't reply, he added, "So why all the questions?"
"Nothin'," Jody said absently. "I was just wondering when you knew her, that's all."
"Long before you were around, and long before I married your mother," Jett replied carelessly, praying Jody couldn't hear the tightness in his voice. All of a sudden, things were getting very complicated.
Because the question he didn't want to ask himself, didn't want to even think about, kept flickering through the darker reaches of his mind, demanding to be heard. And Jody's seemingly casual questions had only brought it closer to the light.
Was he going to tell Kathleen the truth?
Or just leave well enough alone and let her go back to Baltimore never knowing that the gangly dark-eyed kid she'd befriended in Burnt River was her son?
* * *
He didn't sleep well that night. Got up and wandered around at two in the morning, telling himself he was being eleven kinds of fool even worrying about it. It wasn't as though he'd been deliberately hiding the truth from her for all these years.
He'd thought she'd given Jody up for adoption fifteen years ago. Had abandoned the son as easily and with as little regret as she'd abandoned the father. So it wasn't as though she'd spent those fifteen years thinking about him. Perhaps waking at two in the morning to stare at the ceiling and wonder if he was all right, if he was happy, if she'd done the right thing.
She didn't know, period.
So if she went on not knowing, no harm would be done. It would be easier on all of them. She would go back to Baltimore, he would go back to ranching, and Jody would go back to dreaming of rodeos. And old man Patterson would still be dead and buried, the secret dead and buried right along with him.
Swearing gently at himself, Jett raked his fingers through his hair and wandered aimlessly around the big bedroom, stopping finally by the window. Moonlight poured through the glass and puddled around him, cold as ice. He set both hands on the frame and leaned on his braced arms, staring out at nothing.
He'd been nine weeks old when his mother had walked up the front steps of this same ranch house and handed him over to his grandmother like a bundle of old clothing.
"Here," she'd said. "This belongs to your son." Then she'd turned and walked away without even looking back, and had gotten into a beat-up old pickup truck with North Dakota plates to d
isappear from his life in a plume of dust and blue exhaust.
His grandmother had talked about it for years. "Just like that," she used to say with a grim shake of her head. "Just dropped the boy off as if he weren't nothin' at all, just some old thing she'd picked up by the side of the road."
Her fierce blue eyes would blaze, and she would touch Jett's head and smile down at him. "Don't know how a mother could do that, just walk away from her boy like that, as though he didn't count for nothing. Even half white, he's her son. And blood's blood, no matter the color of the skin."
He'd never even known her name, Jett thought dispassionately.
He'd sworn that would never happen to a son of his.
And now … hell, it didn't make any difference, he told himself almost angrily. Jody thought Pam was his mother, and that was all that mattered: He knew he'd been loved. Thought he'd been wanted. To tell him otherwise now would just stir up a whole lot of trouble for everyone concerned and wouldn't accomplish a damned thing but a lot of anger and heartache and confusion.
Swearing again, he shoved himself away from the window and rubbed his face with his hands, feeling tired and suddenly very old. Let it be, he advised himself as he turned back toward the bed. Just let it be…
For some reason, nothing went right the next morning. He and Jody argued about some damn silly thing he couldn't even remember later, and the boy wound up storming out of the house to catch the school bus, doors slamming like artillery in his wake. Then Mrs. Wells had gotten on his case about something else, and after he'd gotten that sorted out, he and Angel went head-to-head over the best way to repair a damaged gate on one of the stock corrals.
Finally, about noon, he just gave up. Saddling his buckskin mare, he headed for the hills, wondering why he didn't just sell the Kicking Horse and move to Helena and become a … hell, a ranching consultant or something! He could sit at a desk in a nice office with a view and get paid to tell people what to do. Same job he had now, except the pay would be better and people wouldn't be arguing with him every time he turned around.
He was still thinking about that when Dixie gave a sharp whicker and tossed her head, pulling at the bit. Jett shook off his fantasies about the good life—hell, what did he know about city living, anyway?—and gave his surroundings a startled look.
Cougar Ridge. He hadn't even remembered turning Dixie onto the trail. Below him lay the Kicking Horse, the ranch house and outbuildings the size of dollhouses, and ahead, rising up against the sky in a wild tangle of wolf-toothed rock, the Rocky Mountains in their full splendor. They stood along the edge of the world like a fortress of stone, snow and glacial ice glittering like treasure, the melting ice pack tinseling the walls of rock with waterfalls that looked from here like threads of silver.
Jett shoved his hat onto the back of his head and drew a deep breath of crisp air so heavily perfumed with pine that he could taste the pitch. There was a little valley tucked in behind the ridge, dotted with tamarack and pine, and he urged Dixie down the trail toward Beaver Creek.
She gave a snort, then whickered again, ears pricked forward, and a moment later there was an answering whicker from a clump of trees to his left. A tall bay with a white blaze and stockings came out of the trees, favoring its left foreleg. Dried mud caked its shoulder and side, and clumps of grass and dirt clung to the small stock saddle and stirrup leathers.
Jett dismounted and walked over to it, speaking gently as it gave a snort and tossed its head, spooked and nervous. It wasn't one of the Kicking Horse herd, but it wasn't until he could get close enough to see the brand on its left flank that he realized where it had come from. Two overlapping circles.
The Oaks.
He managed to grab one of the horse's dangling reins before it could move away, then ran his hand down its shoulder and leg. Nothing broken.
And the rider? Jett straightened and looked around. He might have been thrown clear, in which case he was probably already halfway back to The Oaks, on foot and madder than hell. Or he was still out here somewhere, busted up, unconscious, dead … there were a lot of possibilities, few of them pretty.
It didn't take him long to find where it had happened. The trail down to Beaver Creek was steep here, and the ground was all torn up just at the water's edge, the deep hoof marks where the horse had lunged back onto its feet still filling with water. But there was no sign of the rider. Then he found boot prints on the other side of the creek where the bank was low and wide and sandy, and followed them south.
When he finally found her at the deep pond just above the beaver dam, he wasn't even surprised. Nothing else had gone right this morning. It seemed only fitting that the footprints he'd been following belonged to the last woman in the entire world he wanted to see just now.
And here, of all places. Where else but here, where it had all started?
She was unhurt, from what he could see. Which wasn't much, considering she was neck-deep in creek water. A fact that in itself was a mixed blessing, Jett decided virtuously. Because from the quantity of clothing draped haphazardly on the bushes along the bank, it was pretty obvious that she was buck naked.
And suddenly, in spite of everything, he found himself grinning like some kind of fool. Shoving his hat onto the back of his head, he just stood there and watched her. If she spotted him, he was a dead man, but for the life of him, he couldn't take his eyes off her. She'd set her boots and hat beside a nearby log, and he could see a small heap of pink silk beside them. Bra and panties, no doubt.
Just like old times.
Unaware of him, she swam lazily across the pond, then twisted and dove hard, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of pale wet skin before she vanished.
Jett swallowed, a sudden rush of memory tightening his chest. It had been hot that summer. The hottest summer in fifty-seven years, the old-timers had said. But he barely remembered that. Another heat had consumed him that long, dry summer, the kind that started low in the belly and burned bone deep.
Kathleen reached up to smooth her hair back, the water barely covering her breasts, her wet shoulders and throat gleaming like satin in the sunlight. Jett's gut knotted, memories tumbling over each other. A hot Saturday afternoon. Unsaddled horses grazing nearby, tails swishing. The occasional thump of a shod hoof on grass, the rattle of a bit. A blanket spread on the grass. Kathleen naked for him for the first time, slender and lithe and as supple as a sun-warmed cat.
The first touch of him against her, man to woman. The look of surprise in her eyes as he pressed her thighs apart and eased himself against her, into her. The first snubbing pressure, not quite pain, but not what she'd expected, either. The tiny frown marring her forehead.
Then he was through and it was over and she made a tiny sound in her throat and arched slightly against him, lips half parted as the not-quite-pain gave way to something else altogether. He'd felt her melt around him, hot silken flesh eager for every touch, every sensation, and they'd damn near set the valley ablaze that afternoon.
Jett wet his lips, realizing that his body had responded to the all-too-vivid memories with a vigor that surprised the hell out of him.
He had to get out of here. Now. He would leave her horse tethered to a tree and hotfoot it home before he did something he would wind up regretting. Because if there was one thing he knew for damn sure, it was that this woman and trouble just sort of went hand in hand.
Then that damn fool horse of hers gave him a nudge between the shoulder blades that nearly sent him sprawling, and by the time he'd caught his balance, grabbing at tree branches and swearing, it was too late.
It took Kathleen a startled moment to even realize someone was there. And even then she couldn't tell who it was. He'd stepped out of the deep shadows under the trees and was standing with his back to the sun, not saying anything, and she felt a jolt of automatic fear. And then, very abruptly, she realized it was Jett.
It sent another jolt through her, not quite fear this time, but something near enough to it to make her stoma
ch tighten. She gave a strong kick that sent her to the far side of the pond, putting as much distance between them as possible.
"If you came up here to harass me again, just forget it!" Glaring at him, she gave her head a flip to get her hair out of her eyes, feeling naked and vulnerable and not liking the sensation one little bit. "I don't know what your problem is, Kendrick, but I'm tired of you taking it out on me."
"Are you all right?"
"Of course I'm all right. Why shouldn't I be all right?"
"I found your horse. I thought you might be hurt."
It wasn't at all what she'd expected. More anger, more accusations she didn't understand—those she was prepared for. But not this. It left her with nothing to say. "Oh." Treading water, she eyed him suspiciously. "Is he all right?"
"A little lame, but nothing a day or two of rest and a pail of oats won't fix. What happened?"
Kathleen's eyes narrowed slightly. That had to be—what? Two dozen words? And not a hostile one in the bunch. "Something spooked him. He shied and lost his footing, and I landed flat on my back in the mud. Then he bolted before I could catch him."
Jett hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans and wandered down to the edge of the pond, his expression slightly troubled. There was none of last night's anger there, none of the suspicion and hostility she was expecting. Just a quiet thoughtfulness she had no idea how to react to.
"That water must be damn cold."
"It's fine," she lied.
He hunkered down on his heels at the water's edge and picked a blade of grass, twirling it in his fingers. "I, uh…" He frowned, not meeting her eyes. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I had no right coming over to your place like that. Causing a scene."
Kathleen stared at him for a long, mistrustful moment. "Why are you being almost pleasant, Jett? What's the catch?"
"No catch. I've been acting like a jerk, that's all."
She wasn't going to argue with that, Kathleen decided, but she wasn't gullible enough to believe this sudden change in attitude was for real, either. She swam leisurely to the far side of the pond, then halfway back, trying to ignore him.
