“I have a hunch it has something to do with an article that was in the paper recently.”
“What article?”
“About your sister’s dude ranch. Dev and I were there when Taylor was interviewed for the piece. There was a photographer who snapped a picture of the three of us and they put in a few facts about our ranches, how successful they are. I think he saw the article. That triggered memories. And maybe he saw an opportunity.”
Jensen’s eyebrows rose. “You think it’s about the ranch?”
“Of course. What other reason could there be? For nine years he’s been a no-show. Then he comes across the article and sees a way to cash in.”
“I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t he try to get you to pay him off? Keep it quiet. Protect the girls.”
“He wants the whole enchilada—the ranch.”
“That’s it, then,” she said. “He can get his hands on the land through the girls. And he’s a blood relative.”
Jensen had lost her illusions, but he was looking at losing his children. To a scheming creep. Who was related to the man she’d mourned for so long. Grady must think she was the world’s biggest fool.
“Look, Jen,” he said, moving around the chair. He curled his fingers around her upper arms and tried to pull her against him, but she held herself stiffly away from him. “I’m sorry. I never meant for you to know any of that.”
The last thing she wanted or deserved was his pity. Surely he had nothing but contempt for her. “I have to go.”
“Let me take you home. This has been a shock. You’re in no condition…”
“No.” She walked to the door.
“Okay. I understand why you feel that way about me. I’ll get one of my deputies to drive you. Phoebe can—”
“I’m fine,” she said, not feeling fine at all.
She wanted to be alone as fast as she could arrange it. His offer to drive her home was no more than automatic courtesy. She had to be the last person he wanted to be around. Married to the man who’d hurt the woman he’d loved. All these years she’d been foolish enough to mourn a man who’d deserved a punishment so much more than the black eye and fat lip Grady had given him.
Grady must hate her. He was a good man, a man who’d raised twin girls he’d known weren’t his as if they were his own. She’d never guessed they didn’t belong to him. And she’d had the nerve to say that no one could love them the way their biological father could. How could he stand the sight of her?
“I have to go,” she said again, and hurried out of the office.
It was almost dinnertime before Jen finally walked through the front door of the Circle S. After leaving Grady earlier that afternoon, she’d driven around for hours thinking about the past. Now she needed to talk to Taylor and Mitch.
She turned left toward a sitting area with a huge stone fireplace and overstuffed furniture. Just before she entered the room, the sound of giggling and a man’s deep-throated chuckle warned her.
“Hello?” She called out, then hesitated, giving Taylor and Mitch time to straighten clothing and stop any intimate behavior not appropriate for public consumption.
“Are you two decent?” she asked, entering the room.
On the sofa, Taylor sat on Mitch’s lap with his arms around her. He was nuzzling her neck and her blouse gapped open where several buttons were undone. So much for her warning.
Envy nipped at Jen. She couldn’t stop it, even though her sister deserved every bit of happiness she could grab with both hands. As for herself, she didn’t have a right to it. All the thinking she’d done since leaving Destiny that afternoon had convinced her of it.
She stopped in the doorway, waiting for the couple to notice her and cease cuddling. They didn’t. She remembered Grady kissing her on the front porch and her sister’s comment when she’d opened the front door.
Jen cleared her throat, loudly. “Oops.”
Instead of jumping apart, Taylor looked up and grinned. “Hey.”
“Hi, Jen,” Mitch said, tightening his hold on the woman in his lap.
“Hi, you two.”
They reminded her of Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey. Or maybe it was the happiness lighting their faces that made them so beautiful. She was glad Taylor had finally found someone to love. Correction—she’d found him ten years ago and a decade later he’d finally gotten the message.
“We’re making wedding plans,” Taylor said.
Jen smiled, then turned up the wattage to erase the sadness she knew was around the edges of it. “Didn’t look to me like there was a lot of talking going on.”
“You’d be surprised,” Mitch said, tucking a strand of hair behind his fiancée’s ear.
Jen released a big sigh and sat down on the sofa at a right angle to the couple. “After today, I’m not sure anything would surprise me.”
Taylor straightened out of Mitch’s arms. “What’s wrong? You look like you lost your only friend.”
She didn’t know about only, but Grady sure as shootin’ wouldn’t want anything to do with her. How could he? It didn’t matter that he’d been nice to her just last night. She’d forced him to reveal the past—now both of them had to face it.
“I found out something today,” she said hesitantly. She met Mitch’s gaze. Grady had said he knew everything. But the facts had stayed secret all these years. She wasn’t sure he would want anyone else to know. “Mitch, can I talk to you for a minute? Privately.”
He glanced at the woman still in his arms. “I’d rather Taylor stayed. We made a pact to not keep secrets. If you can’t tell both of us, then…”
“I’m sure this secret is going to come out anyway.” Lawsuits were public record. “What do you know about Zach and Lacey Miller?”
The expression on his face confirmed without words what Grady had told her. “How did you find out?”
“I overheard some gossip in town and I made Grady tell me,” she said.
“Tell you what?” Taylor asked. “What’s going on?”
“Billy Bob Adams is suing Grady for custody of the twins,” Jen told her.
“But that’s ridiculous. What right does he have?” Taylor looked from her to Mitch.
He linked his fingers together and rested them on her abdomen, holding her to him. “Zach was their father.”
He recounted the facts without interruption, and Jen figured it was because her inquisitive sister was too shocked to say a word. “Dev, Jack and I kept quiet out of respect for Grady’s wishes. That and the fact we all felt guilty,” he finished.
“Why?” Jen wanted to know.
“There were screams that night. But none of us recognized a cry for help. We were throwing each other in the lake, hollering and yelling ourselves. Every last one of us felt we should have done something to help Lacey, to protect her from that son of a—”
“Mitch…” Taylor warned him against dumping on her sister’s beloved dead husband.
“Don’t worry, Tay. That’s being kind.”
“Did he hurt you?” Mitch’s voice was one step up from a growl.
Jen wasn’t sure what had clued him in to the fact that all hadn’t been perfect between them. But what she’d learned today had shown her she’d been pretending all these years. She was tired of it.
“It wasn’t a fairy tale,” she admitted.
Taylor wiggled off his lap and sat down next to her, draping an arm across her shoulders. “Maybe it’s time to get it off your chest,” she suggested gently. “It’s been ten years. That’s long enough to protect the memory of a guy who obviously doesn’t deserve it.”
Jen looked into her sister’s sympathetic brown eyes and found she wanted to talk about the things she’d kept inside for so long.
“Toward the end, I think I knew the marriage might have been a mistake,” she began.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Taylor gasped.
“I didn’t want Mom and Dad to know I’d screwed up. I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
She shrugged. “Dad always said suffering the consequences of your actions defined character. I’d made a doozy of a mistake, and suffering the consequences in silence seemed nobler than whining. Besides, a part of me loved him very much. Even though…”
“What?” Taylor prompted.
“I found evidence of the women. He flirted even when he knew I was there. I saw lipstick on his collar that wasn’t my shade. More often than not he’d come in at night with liquor on his breath and unfamiliar perfume on his clothes. But he said it was nothing. He loved me.”
“Damn him,” Taylor said. “You should have left him.”
Jen smiled sadly. “I probably would have. But then he died. I was young, and at the risk of being a walking, talking cliché—really stupid.”
“You should have talked it over with me,” Taylor scolded gently.
“What was the point?” Jen asked, shrugging.
“The point is we tell each other everything and you shouldn’t have carried this around by yourself all these years,” her sister said.
“He sure as hell wasn’t worth it,” Mitch agreed.
“And don’t I feel like the world’s biggest, dumbest fool,” Jen finished. “It’s no wonder Grady refused my help with the custody suit.”
“At least tell me about that,” Taylor said. “You owe me.”
“Okay. We were sitting together in the stands when he was served with the papers,” Jen started. “I practically had to drag the information out of him. He tried to pretend it was no big deal. But I knew better, by the way he was acting. Even when he gave me the facts, he tried to gloss over it. But in the Road Kill Café he asked Jack Riley to use his computer expertise and equipment that wasn’t five years out of date. Maybe call in a favor to check out Billy on the Internet. Grady already tried his sources through the sheriff’s office and came up with zilch. He figured Jack had access to files he couldn’t open.”
“And you know this how?” Taylor asked.
“Bonnie Potts told me,” Jen said. “I heard her talking to Charlie Applewhite and she was more than happy to share the information with me, too. Then I went to see Grady.”
“And you offered legal counsel?” Mitch asked.
She nodded. “He said I wasn’t the right lawyer for this case. Now I know why. He thinks I’m too gullible.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Taylor said. “He’s just protecting you. I think he’s got a thing for you.”
Jen jumped up and backed away. “Don’t go there. I have no intention of getting involved with a man ever again. Even if Grady was willing, which he told me he’s not, there’s just too much baggage. On my part. Obviously my judgment leaves a lot to be desired. Bottom line—I don’t ever want to fall in love again.”
“Have you ever heard that saying about protesting too much,” Mitch said with a wicked grin.
Jen shook her head. “The jerk I had the bad sense to marry took a lot from Grady. We’ll never know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the stress of all that happened wasn’t responsible for the postbirth complications that took Lacey from him.”
“You were as innocent as Lacey,” Taylor said.
“But I feel responsible.”
“Stupidity isn’t a crime,” Mitch pointed out dryly.
Jen laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Thank you, Counselor, for putting that into perspective with the proper legal spin.”
“Any time,” he said, grinning.
Taylor smiled at him, a look brimming over with love. “I’m marrying the comic relief. It sort of makes you proud, doesn’t it? This probably isn’t the right time, but—Jen, will you be my maid of honor?”
“Of course,” she said simply, sitting down and hugging her sister. “Speaking of timing, mine sure is lousy. The last thing I want to do is bring you guys down when you’re so happy.”
Mitch grinned. “We’re so happy, I don’t think you could bring us down.”
For several moments they discussed plans for the wedding. Jen’s mind drifted to Grady and what he must be going through right now. Her heart went out to him.
“Earth to Jen.” Taylor met her gaze. “I know that look. What have you got up your sleeve? What are you going to do?”
“Actually the question is what am I not going to do. The answer is—I’m not going to walk quietly away. I can easily find out when the court date is going to be. No matter how Grady feels about it, he can’t arrest me if I show up for the preliminary custody hearing.”
Chapter Five
Grady walked into the courtroom with his lawyer. He’d been there countless times to testify in criminal procedures, but never for a personal reason. But he knew everything was going to be fine. Soon this would be history, a bad dream. This was Destiny. Where the philosophy was if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. No court would take his kids away.
He glanced down at the gray-haired attorney by his side. Clark Livingston had been practicing law in Destiny for fifty years. Shouldn’t that count for something? But he knew Billy Bob Adams had convinced a hotshot Dallas lawyer that he had a claim to the twins. Jen was a hotshot Dallas lawyer, too. Grady wondered if he should have taken her up on her offer of help.
It wasn’t just the promise he’d made to Lacey. He loved those kids more than anything else in the world. If there was any chance at all he could lose them—
As he moved down the aisle between rows of wooden benches, a subtle fragrance of flowers caught his attention. Something light, sexy—familiar. He followed the scent to his right and saw Jensen Stevens. Before he could put his “cop face” on, she could have seen the involuntary pleased expression in his eyes. He knew for a fact his pulse kicked up at the sight of her.
It had been two weeks since she’d charged into his office demanding the truth. Odd that he knew exactly how long; maybe because they’d talked about the past. Then again, maybe not so strange. He’d felt like slime for destroying her good memories of the man she loved. It wasn’t a feeling he particularly liked and a man tended to remember things like that.
So why the heck would she be in court today? Surely she wasn’t there to support Zach’s brother? He shook his head. No way. But, damn it. He didn’t want her involved in this. Zach Adams was gone, but Grady didn’t want the bad he’d left behind to touch her. His attorney continued down the aisle and set his briefcase on the wide table facing the judge’s bench. Grady hesitated a moment, then started to move past her.
Jen stood up and put her hand on his arm. “Hi.”
He froze and looked at her slender fingers on the sleeve of his suit coat. He’d dressed like a man going courting. A corner of his mouth lifted at the pun. He wished a pretty lady had been responsible for the red power tie around his neck. But his Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes were all he could think of to tip the scales in his favor. It was about keeping his girls, not showing Jen he could play in society big leagues. Besides, she was the last person he’d expected to see. Not that she wasn’t a sight for sore eyes, a fact he pushed down before it could get a toehold inside him.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“To help.”
“I’ve got an attorney.”
One corner of her full mouth rose as she glanced at the older man setting papers on the table. “Far be it from me to bad-mouth another member of my own profession. God knows the public at large does that to all of us in general.”
“Then don’t,” he said, knowing what she was thinking. He’d gone there himself before concluding that he didn’t have a whole lot of choice.
“Clark Livingston has to be seventy-five years old,” she pointed out. “He’s practiced law here in Destiny since the ink dried on his license half a century ago. I’m the first person to sing the praises of experience. But he does wills, property-line disputes, deed transfers and some minor misdemeanor criminal stuff. In a nutshell, his practice is general. You need someone who specializes in family law. Someone who knows it
inside and out. You need me,” she said emphatically.
“Why do you want to do this?”
“Because you’re my friend,” she said.
He stared into green eyes so serious and sincere and heart-wrenchingly beautiful that it hurt. Standing straight and tall and proud, she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. And he’d missed her. How was that for having his crosshairs not lined up? She’d barely breezed back into town and he’d seen her a couple of times. Why would he miss her? Or need her? Lord help him, the word need—her word—was too darn close to the truth. And he wasn’t talking legal representation. He also wasn’t giving in to the feeling. Because they were friends.
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, grazing his starched white collar. “I appreciate the offer. But it’s really not necessary. I’m sure this hearing is just a formality. In a few minutes it will all be over.”
“But what if it’s not? This concerns me, too.”
Was she worried about him trashing her dead husband’s reputation? She’d seemed sympathetic to Grady’s situation the last time he’d seen her. Even though he’d had to set her straight about her scum-sucking husband. Had she thought it over and changed her mind?
He removed her hand from his arm, holding it for just a moment before letting go. “No one is taking my girls.”
“Grady, please—”
“I have to go.” But he figured he should give her fair warning. In case there was a chance. “I’ll take his whole family down if I have to. So now’s the time to get out if…”
She shook her head slightly. “You’re not planning to do something desperate, are you?”
“Do I look desperate?” he asked. Lying didn’t come easy to him and he had a suspicion he looked just as bad as he felt. But not for the reason she thought.
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “You look like a man who could do something rash and reckless.”
“Define reckless.”
What If We Fall in Love? Page 5
