by S A Monk
“Nevertheless, I want to help cover the expenses.”
“We can go over the accounts with the attorney in a couple of days.” He didn’t want to discuss the cost or legalities of Tom’s death right now, and she looked like she didn’t either, so he headed for the door that led to the only full bathroom in the house, which adjoined her bedroom. “Well, I better shower and get dressed,” he stated. “We’ve got to leave here in half an hour.”
Just as he reached for the knob, the bathroom door was opened and an unfamiliar male head popped out. Hawk wondered if this was ‘the friend’. In his late twenties or early thirties, he was dressed only in a towel. Bare-chested, he was of medium height and build, dark blonde hair, perfectly tanned skin. Hawk supposed he was fairly good-looking. Was this her boyfriend? He couldn’t remember Tom saying she had one.
“I’m going to take a shower now, babe,” the guy announced.
“Peter.... ” Jenny raised her voice to try to stop him, but he quickly disappeared behind a shut door without even noticing the man standing beside it. “That was Peter Mason,” she explained with an apologetic expression. “He’s a co-worker and friend.”
Hawk nodded.
“We work for the same firm, and we do some small-scale fashion designing on the side,” she elaborated. “We’re kind of business partners, I suppose you could say.... We’ve known each other since college.” She was haltingly trying to explain her relationship with the guy. It seemed to make her nervous. It made him curious, but he didn’t pursue his curiosity. He’d save his questions for a better time.
He nodded. Giving the closed bathroom door a regretful last look, he turned to leave. He could hear the water running. “Guess I’ll take a shower at the bunkhouse,” he announced. “We’ll take my truck. There’s room to ride into town together.”
“I’m sorry about your shower.”
“Not your fault.” With a brief nod, he smiled, then left.
CHAPTER 2
There were close to three dozen people at her father’s funeral. Friends and neighbors, they stood in a semi-circle around the casket. Standing between Mr. Larson and Eli Banks, Jennifer Fletcher listened to the priest recite the Lord’s Prayer. Peter Mason and the other two men who worked at the ranch stood behind her.
A cold gust of wind blew over the crowd. The black veil on her hat fluttered in the breeze. Dressed in a cropped, tailored, black jacket and matching pencil skirt, black heels and stockings and matching leather gloves, she wished she had brought her coat. She felt ice cold. It hadn’t rained, which ended up being a blessing. But the dark clouds posed a continued threat, blanketing the mountains, the valley, and the sky.
Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance, causing everyone to look up and assess the approaching storm. There was no lightning yet, but it would inevitably arrive. Midday rain storms descended on the Rockies frequently from late spring through early fall. Normally, they didn’t last long. They just blew in fiercely, subjected everyone to a quick downpour, then departed on the wind, leaving fresh clear blue skies most of the time.
Everyone had just come from the service at the church— a requiem mass for her father that had included a very touching eulogy delivered by Mr. Larson. In the front pew, watching and listening to the man at the lectern, Jenny heard how much he had loved her father. The sheen of tears in his eyes testified to how much he was going to miss Tom Fletcher. He’d spoken of their long friendship and their six-year partnership. She had envied him those years with Tom. They had been as close as father and son. As close as she and her father had once been, before her selfish callow mother had stolen her life.
Tom had only been fifty-eight. A week ago, she had talked to him on the phone. Last month, they’d been together at her beach house in Santa Monica. Though they’d lived over a thousand miles from each other, they’d kept in touch regularly. Lots of letters, phone calls, and visits in California. Tom had never shown any sign of a bad heart.
Or had she been too caught up in her work to see any signs?
When she had received that first phone call from Mr. Larson four days ago, he’d been following her father’s ambulance to the hospital emergency room. She’d been called out of the studio where she’d been working. She’d waited for an hour in an empty lot trailer for the second phone call, praying desperately and crying. The news had been devastating when it had finally come.
Jenny didn’t remember much from that point on. Apparently Peter had driven her home and packed her clothes. They’d left for Colorado the next morning.
She’d insisted on going to the funeral home not long after arriving, and had the director open the casket, even though Mr. Larson had asked it be kept closed, even through the services. Jenny had mixed emotions about that. She wanted to remember Tom as she’d last seen him, alive and vital. But she’d also needed to know he had really died, because part of her was desperate to believe it was all just a terrible nightmare.
It had all been so incredibly unreal— until the moment she’d gazed at her father’s lifeless body. Then she’d nearly collapsed from the stark reality that he was never going to smile at her, laugh with her, hold her, comfort her, walk her down the aisle at her wedding, or hold her first child. He was never going to be there for any of the things she’d always thought he would be there for one day. At that moment, she’d wanted to die herself.
And amid the grief, guilt was eating away at her, telling her that she’d been thinking only of herself all these years. She should have come home sooner, at least after college. If she’d been here helping Tom, maybe he would have lived longer. Maybe she would have seen his failing health. Ranching wasn’t easy. With a weak heart, it would have been enormously taxing. It had been unforgivably selfish to think only of all the anguish she’d suffered when she’d been torn away from her home and her father all those years ago. She’d always been so certain that she couldn’t face those painful memories again. She’d lived in self-imposed exile. She should have been thinking more about Tom. He’d always accepted her choice to remain in California, but dammit, she should have come home sooner, dealt with the memories and the pain!
When you were young, there always seemed to be so much time ahead of you to rectify things. She’d put aside the painful decisions and ignored her heart’s true desires. Fear had ruthlessly ruled her emotions. Now the only thing she’d come home for was to bury her dad. She might as well be burying her heart! The candle in her window had gone out. She felt like that little twelve-year-old girl who had stared out the rear car window all those years ago, watching her father disappear in a cloud of dust.
The wind was picking up, and a rain-scented gust nearly blew her hat off. She reached for it and shivered. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She’d long ago given up trying to stop them. How was she going to live with the terrible fact that it had taken her father’s death to bring her home? How was she ever going to forgive herself?
Anguish nearly made her fall to her knees. Then the prayers of the priest standing at the head of the casket finally penetrated a small part of her brain. They reminded her that her beloved father was in paradise with God. She felt so certain of the fact that she was abruptly filled with unexpected peace. Tom Fletcher had been a good man, a compassionate man. A man of integrity. He’d been caring and generous. He had been well-loved and well-liked by many of these people at the service.
He’d left behind a brokenhearted daughter and a grieving friend who would never ever forget him or stop loving him, and in the end, she had to admit most of her grief was for the empty place in her life Tom’s death left. Right now, she couldn’t imagine anything or anyone filling it.
Strangely, though, the man beside her was helping her cope with it. She hadn’t expected that. He had been protectively by her side from the moment they’d left the house, lending her quiet support and comfort, even his arm whenever she needed it.
Through the black net that dipped over her eyes, she regarded him covertly. Attired in a well-tailored three-p
iece black suit and crisply ironed white shirt and maroon tie, he was still sinfully handsome. Broad shouldered, narrow waisted, and long legged, he moved with the loose-limbed rolling gait of a true cowboy. His hair was jet black, trimmed to sweep over his ears, and long enough in the back to curl over his collar.
His Native American heritage lent his skin a natural copper color, bronzed darker from working outdoors all day. His dark complexion set off a white-toothed smile, on the rare occasions that she’d seen it, and a pair of electric blue eyes that were the color of a Colorado columbine, shadowed now by a black felt Stetson. Framed by thick black lashes, those eyes were the first thing that had caught her attention when he had walked into her bedroom earlier. Despite her grief, she supposed she would have to be dead to ignore what an attractive man he was.
Her thoughts returned to the gravesite service just as the prayers and the blessings were finished. The priest walked up to her. She extended a black gloved hand to thank him, and he reached for both her hands compassionately, offering a few more words of comfort, before stepping over to talk to Hawk.
While the two exchanged words, Jenny approached her father’s casket. It was so highly polished, she could see her reflection in it.
Her mind wandered back to the day she’d always viewed as the worst of her life. All those years ago…. The memories had dimmed somewhat, but they were still so much a part of her, always too close….
Her dad had been a man devoted to his small family and his fledgling cattle ranch. It hadn’t been enough for his young wife, though. Not long after Jenny’s twelfth birthday, Mary Fletcher announced that she had filed for divorce. It had been a shock, but maybe not a surprise. Both Jenny and Tom knew Mary was not happy being a rancher’s wife. Though neither of them had expected the devastatingly cruel blow she inflicted on them in the process. With the help of her wealthy father, she had sued for and won sole custody of their only child.
Separating father and daughter was the cruelest thing her mother could have done, and Jenny had always believed that was exactly why Mary had done it— because it punished Tom for not giving her the life she had expected.
Mary had come from money, and expected to live her life surrounded by abundance. Why she had ever thought Tom Fletcher could provide that was beyond Jenny’s understanding. In the twelve years Mary had lived with Tom, Jenny had never seen a great deal of love or even affection expressed by Mary toward her husband or even her daughter. Tom’s struggles to establish his ranch had never reached Mary’s financial expectations, and her daughter was a nuisance. Mary spent more time back East with her wealthy family than she did on her husband’s remote mountain ranch. As a result, Jenny had never been close to her mother. There had been no bonds established between them.
And Jenny’s maternal grandfather had been undermining his daughter’s marriage from the beginning. Samuel Cameron visited frequently, and he always brought expensive gifts for his only grandchild. Jenny hadn’t liked him from their first meeting. Like Mary, he had a cold, manipulative manner about him. He resented Tom, sneered at his small-time business efforts, and visited simply to cause trouble.
In the end, Tom had never stood a chance against Cameron’s money and influence. His fight for custody of his daughter had been swiftly and ruthlessly stopped. He hadn’t even been able to win visitation rights.
The legal blow was heartbreaking for Tom, and it nearly destroyed Jenny. The pain of her last day with her father was still etched in her memory as if it had happened yesterday.
They had gone to their favorite fishing hole to be alone, granted that final indulgence by the two waiting for them at the house. Jenny could still see Tom’s midnight blue eyes gazing down at her. His handsome face had been filled with the Herculean effort to hold back the oceans of pain behind those eyes. Sitting against a big tree by the stream, with his arm curled around her and his long legs stretched out before him, he had spoken quietly to her, attempting to soothe the tearful, pleading protests she made.
She remembered thinking how small her hand had looked in his big work-roughened one. “I could run away, Daddy,” she had sobbed. “You could hide me. Tell Mary you can’t find me.” Her plea had been a desperate one.
“I don’t want you to do that, sweetheart,” Tom had replied, kissing the top of her dark head. “Never, ever run away. Something awful could happen to you, and it would break my heart.”
“But something awful has already happened!”
“Yes, it has,” Tom had agreed sadly. “But you must promise me that you will remember how much I love you. You will always be the most important thing in my life. No matter how far away you are or how long we are apart, I will always love you and be waiting here for you to come home someday. Mary can take you from me, but she can’t keep you from me forever. Someday, when you’re all grown up, we’ll be together again. I promise you that, Jennifer Michelle.”
Then Tom had pulled her into his strong arms and rocked her for a long, long time.
For as long as she lived, Jenny would never forget that final farewell. She had cried the whole time. Nothing her father said had eased the pain and helplessness she felt at being taken away from him. During the years afterward, when she got so lonely she thought she’d die, the knowledge of his love kept her going. It was like an eternally lit candle in a window.
And she never forgave her mother for shattering her life. They lived at the Cameron family estate, where Mary threw herself into partying and spending. Within months of arriving, Jenny was sent away to boarding school in Europe.
Her mother barely knew she was around, and her grandfather thought Europe would be far enough away so that she wouldn’t try to run away. He didn’t know that they need not have gone that far to keep her from her father. She had promised Tom she would never run away, and she always kept her promises to her beloved father. And, actually, boarding school ended up being more tolerable than living with her mother and grandfather.
Her mother had died several years ago, and her grandfather had followed her to the grave two years afterwards. Jenny had come to hate them both after they had separated her from her father, but her hatred had eased over the years into simply a deep regret.
After Mary’s death, Samuel Cameron had tried to win his granddaughter’s loyalty and affection with with more money and gifts. But the only thing she ever accepted from him was the college education he had paid for, and that was because Tom had begged her to accept it. He’d wanted her to have the higher education he couldn’t afford for her, and because of her mother’s money, there was no way to qualify for financial aid.
She’d finally, begrudgingly relented simply to please her father. But it had been a bitter, bitter concession to make. All she wanted, all she’d ever dreamed about was coming home to work side by side with her dad like she’d done as a girl. But Tom had wanted a good education for her, and she’d never been able to deny her father a thing.
So, after graduating from one of the several boarding schools she’d attended and been booted out of for rebellious conduct, she went to the University of Southern California Art and Design School, where she studied fashion design. The contacts she’d made there led her to the movie industry.
Designing costumes for films had eventually replaced the dream she’d once had of returning home and helping her father with his ranch. Success and time had changed her goals, but maybe not her truest and deepest ambition.
She’d come to accept her altered course in life. She liked her job and the people she worked with, and she had received an excellent education, which she had put to good use. Tom had been enormously proud of her, and she had been reunited with her father, just not in the way she had always dreamed of. She had paid a high price for her success, though, and if she had been able to alter her life all those years ago, she was certain that she would have been much happier for it. Tom might still be alive, too.
Tears welled in her eyes as she slowly emerged from the pain of the past to the pain of the present
. Leaning on stiffened arms, she flattened her gloved hands on the cold hard surface of the casket, and dropped her head. Tears splattered onto the shiny black surface as fresh waves of pain assaulted her. She wanted to drape herself over the casket and cry her heart out. She wanted to be with her father!
“Oh Daddy, how can I say good-bye?” she murmured in a broken whisper.
Someone’s large hands on her shoulders gently lifted her and turned her away from the casket. She looked up as Mr. Larson offered her his handkerchief. She just stared blankly at his chest, and he had to brush her tears away himself. She couldn’t make her brain tell her hands to do anything. She wanted to collapse into his arms.
Their eyes met, and there was a moment of complete understanding between them. There was no need to voice what they felt. Draping an arm around her shoulders, Hawk steered her toward the street where his newer model Dodge truck was parked.
Unfortunately, there was no escaping the gauntlet of mourners waiting to express their sympathy.
She let Hawk make the thank yous and accept the condolences, grateful that they were brief and that she could partially hide behind the netting of her hat. The support and strength he’d offered throughout the service was an unexpected comfort. Without it, she wouldn’t have made it through the day.
They got as far as the edge of the cemetery lawn when Peter Mason stopped them. Jenny had brought him along in the hope his presence would be a comfort. So far, he’d failed to offer her much. He seemed to think they had come here for a vacation, not to bury her father. Tom had never been too thrilled about her relationship with Peter, and she was beginning to understand why. He was decidedly self-absorbed. Professionally, they’d always been of the same mind, but personally, they had failed to emotionally connect with one another. Jenny supposed she should have realized Peter’s shoulder was not one to cry upon.
At the moment, she was irritated that he was going to delay their departure. She had held it together for three hours, but she couldn’t do it much longer. Peter appeared determined, though, to introduce her to the man and woman with him. Beside her, she felt Mr. Larson’s body stiffen noticeably.
