by Naomi Horton
Sometimes talking with her was like steer wrestling, Jett thought, utterly confounded. You took out after a half-grown steer and figured out the angles and speed and all, and then you dove off your horse, and sometimes you grabbed that steer just right and over it went and you made some easy money. And other times the animal stopped or shied off, and you wound up on your face in the dirt with the wind knocked out of you, wondering what the hell had happened.
As he recalled, he'd never been much good at steer wrestling, either.
"But you're still planning on fighting me for custody," he said flatly, already knowing the answer.
She didn't answer right away, and Jett's gut wrapped itself into a knot. He'd already called three attorneys, one in Billings, one in Helena and the third in Bozeman, and all three had listened to his story with interest until he got to the name Patterson. Then each had suddenly remembered prior commitments and heavy workloads and declined to take the case, wishing him luck elsewhere. Although the guy in Bozeman had suggested someone else, a woman attorney over in Missoula who, rumor had it, would take on the devil himself if the price was right. Maybe he'd call her tonight. Maybe—
"No."
It took Jett a full half minute to realize what she'd said. And even then he just stared at her, not sure he'd heard her right.
But she just shook her head wearily. "No, I'm not going to fight you for custody, Jett. You've spent the past fifteen years raising Jody, and you've done a good job. He belongs out here, with his horses and his rodeo and you. Even if I managed to win the court case, he's going to be sixteen pretty soon and able to decide for himself where he wants to live. And I doubt it would he with me. So—" She bit off the words and pulled the car door open.
Still Jett didn't say anything, not feeling any of the jubilation he should have been feeling.
"He'd wind up hating me more than he already does."
It hit him finally, and relief surged up through him with the force of a river in flood, and he felt the knot in his belly dissolve. Felt like tipping his head back and giving a rebel yell.
And then he saw her face.
"Oh, hell, Kathy…"
Her expression just sort of crumpled, tears spilling, and then he was right there in front of her, taking the steps separating them without even realizing it, and the next thing he knew he was pulling her into his arms.
She shuddered, fighting it, fighting him, and then she sagged against his chest and started sobbing as though her heart was broken. Jett wrapped his arms all the way around her and tucked his face into her hair, his own throat pulling tight.
"It's all right," he murmured. "It's all right, Kath. It'll be all right."
* * *
It took what seemed like hours for her to stop shivering. Actually, it didn't take more than a few minutes in front of a blazing fire and a good swallow or two of bourbon, but it seemed a lot longer than that.
She'd scared the daylights out of him, coming apart like that. She'd always been one of the strongest people he'd known—one of the most stubborn, anyway—and seeing her break down and cry like that in front of him shook him up bad. Tears of anger, he could understand. He'd seen those before, plenty of times. But not this. Not heartbreak.
So he'd done the only thing he knew how to do: wrapped her in a blanket and got a shot of whiskey into her and kept talking to her, saying whatever popped into his mind in a soothing voice, like he would if she were a sick foal or a calf.
He never had been much good with women. Attracting them had never been a problem—in fact, it had always been a little too easy. But if lovin' them was easy, understanding them was near impossible.
They had layers of complexity to them he'd plain given up on years ago. For one thing, they never just came straight out and said what was on their minds. You had to dig it out of them, using guesswork most of the time, and if you guessed wrong, well, man, there was the devil to pay.
Like Kathy. She kept saying she was fine, that everything was all right, but you only had to look at her to know that was a lie. She was about as far from all right as he'd seen in a long while.
She was sitting on one end of the big sofa in the living room with the blanket he'd gotten off his bed still draped around her shoulders, a mug of coffee cupped between her hands, just staring into the fireplace with her mind someplace else altogether.. He stood in the doorway from the kitchen and watched her, not knowing what he should be doing.
He'd called Gord, but although her brother had sounded almost friendly, he'd been no help. "Talk to her," he'd said. "What you have to do now is just talk."
Which was what they'd been doing when she'd started to cry, he thought irritably. The last thing they needed was more talk.
What he wanted to do was to take her into the bedroom and make love to her. He wanted to feel that feeling he always had when he was with her, to get drunk on the scents and tastes of her, to fill himself up with the joy he felt just by looking at her. And he wanted to make her laugh again. To bring that sparkle of mischief and delight back in her eyes. To have her look at him the way she once had…
But he shook the thought off impatiently, knowing it was too late for that. She would just think he was playing some game with her, trying to get her to feel something for him again so she wouldn't change her mind about taking Jody away.
Shoving himself away from the door frame, he walked back into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of coffee, then carried it into the living room. He sat on the sofa and leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees, holding the coffee mug between his palms. He stared into it thoughtfully, seeing reflections on the surface and wondering if the answers were in there somewhere and he just couldn't see them.
"Look, Kath," he said carefully, trying to choose the right words for a change. "I … hell, I've screwed this whole thing up seven ways to Sunday. I've hurt you, and I've hurt Jody, and…" He shook his head slowly, swirling the coffee, waiting for it to reveal the mysteries he knew were there. But it didn't, and after a while he just swore and shook his head again. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry. I never meant for all this to happen. I would have cut off my right arm before hurting you."
Kathleen didn't say anything at first. She traced the strong line of his profile with her eyes, following the thrust of his jawline and stubborn chin, the hard-hewn plane of his cheek. He looked drawn and tired and subdued, and she felt an uprush of love so pure and strong it took her breath away. It was hard to believe that a mere day ago she'd tried to convince herself that she hated this man. Had been fully prepared to go to court and rip out his heart.
"You haven't got anything to be sorry for," she said softly. "If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't even know I had a son. He'd be living with strangers, and I never would have known."
"If it had been up to me," he said in a tight, even voice, "you wouldn't know now." He turned his head to look at her, eyes dark with shame. "You were right the other day—I wasn't going to tell you. I figured you had no right being here. Told myself it didn't matter if you didn't know. That you'd go back to Baltimore, and that would be the end of it."
"Maybe … it would have been better," she said raggedly. "Maybe I've been kidding myself all along. Maybe it would have been better if Jody had just gone on thinking that Pam was his mother." She swallowed. "In all the ways that mattered, she was."
"He has a right to know," he said with quiet certainty. "I know what it's like to grow up not knowing your mother. Always wondering what she was like. It wouldn't have been right, keeping you from him." He reached across and picked up her hand, then stroked the back of it with his thumb. "Or keeping him from you."
Even his touch made her heart leap. She took a deep breath, praying he couldn't tell. He would never believe it was real. Not now. He would just think she was playing some elaborate game to get him to marry her or some other silly thing to stay close to Jody.
"I didn't know you never knew your mother." She straightened her fingers, running
them between his. He had square, competent hands, good for building fences and breaking horses and making love. She thought of the warmth of them on her skin, of the gentleness in them whenever he touched her, and found herself near sudden tears again.
Smiling, she pulled her hand carefully from his and took a sip of coffee. "I thought you grew up on a reservation in North Dakota until you came out here to Montana to live with your grandparents. Wasn't your mother the daughter of the tribal chief, Buffalo Walking Tall? I can't remember her name … Running Deer?"
Jett gave an explosive laugh. "God Almighty, I'd forgotten all about that! Lynx, that was it. Running Lynx." Grinning, he looked at her. "You actually believed all that stuff?"
"Well of course I believed it." Kathleen looked at him indignantly. "You mean, it wasn't true?"
"Hell, no!" He tipped his head back and gave a belly laugh. "I made the whole thing up. She was just some girl my old man spent a night with. If she told him her name, he was too drunk to remember it. Though she remembered his well enough to dump me off with his parents when I was a few weeks old."
"You fraud!" Laughing, Kathleen gave him a nudge in the ribs with her bare foot. "So you're not the grandson of a Sioux chieftain or anything romantic like that at all!"
"Well, he was Sioux, all right. That's what my mom told my old man, anyway. But I wouldn't know about the chieftain part."
"So Jett Walking Tall was just plain old Jett Kendrick all along."
He grinned. "I heard the name in a movie once and thought it sounded cool."
"Was there a point, or was it just a great way to get laid?"
He shrugged. "I didn't like the truth much back then. So I invented one I liked better." He smiled, sliding her a lazy glance. "Though it didn't hurt when it came to gettin' laid, either."
"That's why you were so angry with me." Kathleen nodded slowly, the pieces falling together. "You thought I'd abandoned Jody like your mother had abandoned you."
Jett was swirling the coffee in the mug, gazing down into it as though seeing something reflected in its depths. "I know what it's like, growin' up without a real family. I just wanted to give him what I never had."
"You had your dad," Kathleen said quietly.
"My old man was seventeen when I was born, and he never had more than five minutes to spare for me." His voice was tight, and he glared into the coffee for a moment longer, then finished it in one swallow. "You want to know about my old man? He was one of the best saddle bronc riders in the country. Five times world champion. Enough other titles and championships and firsts to paper a wall. Inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame when he was twenty-six. A damn hero."
Kathleen set her mug of cold coffee on the table, then put her hand on Jett's broad shoulder, feeling the tension in him. "You wanted to be like him, I know that."
"Hell, I worshiped him from the time I was old enough to walk. All I dreamed of was bein' just like my old man. And I figured when I got old enough and good enough, we'd tour the circuit together, father and son, both winnin' every trophy there was. Wild Bill Kendrick and his boy, champions of the world. Between us, there wouldn't be anything we couldn't ride."
Kathleen started rubbing his shoulder, working her fingers into the taut muscles at the base of his neck. He resisted her at first, holding himself away from her; then he relaxed slightly and let his head fall forward, giving her room to work.
"Then you quit rodeo to take care of Jody and that was the end of the dream."
"No." He leaned back against her hands. "The dream ended way before that." He didn't say anything for a while, and Kathleen didn't press him, knowing if he was going to tell her, it would be in his own way.
"Turn this way a little—that's good." She shrugged the blanket off and sat up to get a better angle, then started working the muscles along the tops of both shoulders.
"When I was thirteen, Grandpop and I had a hell of a fight about something. He always figured I should be spendin' more time working than rodeoin', and I felt otherwise. Anyway, this time I'd had enough. I decided to go live with my old man, wherever he was. I hadn't seen him in almost six months, but that wasn't unusual. I tracked him down through the pro rodeo association and found out that he was living just outside Bozeman. It didn't make any sense, why he'd be livin' down there when he could just as easily be living with his folks and saving some money, but I never saw that at the time. Ow!"
"Sorry." Kathleen frowned. "Quit tightening up on me. You've gone all tense and hard again."
He laughed and reached around to catch one of her hands, pulling it around and across his belly. "I'll show you all tense and hard, darlin'."
Kathleen pulled her hand free, laughing softly, and went back to unraveling the knots across his shoulders. "Start that kind of thing and I'm going home, cowboy."
Grinning, he rested his forearms on his thighs and let himself relax. "There was once a time when you couldn't get enough of that kind of thing."
Kathleen dug her fingers into his neck, making him gasp and swear. "So, you were thirteen and you went to live with your dad just outside Bozeman. Then what?"
He smiled. "You don't really want to hear this."
"Not if you don't want to talk about it."
"It's not that I—" He caught himself, then laughed wearily. "Hell, why not? I spent two days hitchhiking my way there, and when I finally found it, I figured I had the wrong place. It was a beat-up, old single-wide in a trailer park just off the freeway. There was a baby's playpen set up outside, and a clothesline full of diapers and I knew there had to be some mistake."
Kathleen realized she'd stopped rubbing Jett's neck. She frowned and started working her fingers deep into the tight muscles again.
"But my old man's truck was parked at the side. I was standin' there trying to decide what to do when this blond, blue-eyed kid came out from around back somewhere. He was about a year younger than me, and when he asked me what I wanted, I told him I was looking for my dad. He told me I was lying. I couldn't be Bill Kendrick's kid, he said, because Bill Kendrick was his old man and in case I hadn't noticed, I sure as hell had more Indian in me than white man."
"Am I going to want to hear the rest of this?" She kissed his shoulder and slipped one arm around his chest.
But Jett was staring at the floor between his feet, almost as though he hadn't heard her. "Then the door opened and this woman came out with a baby in her arms. She took one look at me and went back inside, and a minute or two later my old man came out. He hawed and hemmed and looked foolish, then admitted he and the woman weren't married, exactly, but that both kids were his."
"Both?" Kathleen rested her cheek on Jett's shoulder. "Even the twelve-year-old?"
Jett gave a snort of laughter. "Twelve and a half. There's about four months between us."
"So much for what your dad got up to after he bade your mother a fond farewell. Had he and this other woman been together all that time?"
"Hell, no. She had a husband somewhere down in Texas and only saw my old man when he came through on the rodeo circuit. But then she got pregnant again and her husband tossed her out and she tracked my old man down. By the time I found them, they'd been living together for about six months. Tryin' it on for size, he said, before they told anyone."
"So even your grandparents didn't know about it?"
Jett smiled. "Grandma Kendrick was a church-goin' lady. She loved her son, all right, but she made no bones about the fact that she didn't approve of his tomcat ways. I think Granddad may have known, but he wouldn't have said anything. To her or to me."
Kathleen nodded. She could feel the deep, steady thump of his heart and closed her eyes, almost able to feel the heat and dust of that trailer park on her own skin. "So how did your dad take having you turn up in his other life?"
"Better than the blonde did. He went back inside, and I could hear them arguin'. He was saying it couldn't hurt if I stayed a while, and she was saying she had enough to do raisin' his kids without takin' on some oth
er woman's half-breed brat, and that if he wanted to take care of me so bad, maybe he should just leave."
"Oh, Jett." She tightened her arms.
"I didn't hang around to see how it worked out. I punched the blue-eyed kid and bloodied his nose, then I lit out." He was silent for a moment. "The cops picked me up as a runaway a couple of days later and brought me back here. I started calling myself Jett Walking Tall and copped an attitude and generally got on everyone's nerves, trying to see how much trouble I could get into. Then I got caught on a break-and-enter and wound up in a juvenile detention facility outside Helena."
"Thanks to my father."
"Best thing that could have happened to me," he admitted quietly. "It scared me straight. When I got out, I went back to rodeo and tried to forget all about my old man and the wife and the fair-haired, blue-eyed kids he'd never gotten around to telling me about." He braided his fingers with hers and lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing it. "Then I met you."
Kathleen closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his shoulder. "And your dad? Did he ever…"
"I hear from him now and again. The blonde ran off with a truck driver from Missoula a few years later, takin' the kids with her. My old man married again, and she seems nice enough. She sent a note and flowers when Pam died, and she remembers Jody on his birthday and all. They stopped by last year to show off their new baby." He gave an ironic smile. "For a day or two there, we were almost like a real family."
Like a real family.
No wonder he'd fought like a grizzly to get and keep his son all those years ago. And why he'd waited so long to tell her about Jody. He'd needed to be sure of her—of her feelings, her motives. Family. That was what it had been about. Just family.
