The Next Mrs. Blackthorne (Bitter Creek Book 6)

by Joan Johnston

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s…majestic. Like a grand old dame,” Libby said with reverence, as she slowly perused the house.

  Instead of stopping, Clay drove past the front entrance and headed toward the back of the house. Libby felt a spurt of pleasure. Only strangers, and those attending funerals, entered the front door of a ranch house. Friends and family were welcomed at the back door.

  Clay pulled the SUV into a spot next to several other SUVs and pickups beside the back porch. He turned to her and said, “Welcome to the Castle, Libby.”

  Libby felt a smile curve her lips. “Thank you, Clay.”

  It was dusk, but Libby could see Blackjack and Ren sitting in side-by-side rockers on the left side of the back porch. Clay’s younger sister Summer, whom Libby recognized from pictures taken with Kate, sat on the right, on a porch swing that hung from the second story gallery.

  Summer was barefoot, with her legs crossed in front of her on the seat of the white wooden swing. Her husband Billy was sitting on a porch rail nearby, and gave the swing a push to keep it moving.

  There was no screen around the porch, and moths fluttered around oil lanterns that gave off a soft yellow light. A trellis of morning glories, which had closed for the night, enclosed the right end of the porch. Tall glasses containing a dark liquid, bearing a sprig of something green and dripping condensation, sat on nearby end tables. Libby imagined the many generations of Blackthornes who must have lingered here to enjoy the sunset at the end of a hard day riding herd on their cattle.

  Her stomach was filled with nervous butterflies. She turned to Clay and said, “I can’t believe I’m actually here. After all these years.”

  “It’s about time, don’t you think?”

  “I wonder where Jack and Kate are. I thought they’d get here before us.”

  “There’s been a slight complication,” Clay said.

  Libby shot him a concerned look. “Are they both all right?”

  “As far as I know,” Clay said. “I’ll explain later,” he said, when she prompted him with a raised eyebrow for details. “Let’s leave our bags in the car while we go say hello and get ourselves one of those mint juleps.”

  Libby eyed Clay askance, wondering if he was leaving the bags in the car because he wasn’t sure whether they would be welcome. She felt her stomach knot. She wasn’t looking forward to the next few minutes. But, as she’d told Kate, she wasn’t going to run.

  Libby had debated what to wear tonight and opted for a simple white blouse belted into jeans and cowboy boots. She wiped her sweaty palms on her Levi’s before she stepped out of the car. She waited for Clay to join her, and they walked the short distance to the porch together.

  “Hello, everybody,” Clay said as he stepped onto the porch.

  Libby’s anxiety shot up a notch when not a single person on the porch made a move to acknowledge their arrival, as though she were an insect beneath their notice.

  Clay slid an arm around her waist to draw her close and turned them both to face his younger sister and her husband. “Summer, I don’t think you’ve ever actually met Libby. Libby, this is my sister Summer and her husband Billy Coburn. They manage the ranch.”

  Libby pasted on her brightest smile and said, “I’m so glad to meet you both at last.”

  Summer’s face was openly hostile as she uncrossed her legs and dropped her bare feet to the wooden porch, but she said nothing, and Billy made no move to reach out and greet Libby. From the corner of her eye, Libby saw Ren lay a restraining hand on Blackjack’s arm to keep him from saying whatever ugly thing she was sure he’d been about to say.

  Libby felt the hair on her arms stand up.

  Clay had led her to believe he’d smoothed the way for her visit. But it was obvious that no one on the porch wanted her here.

  She’d been bushwhacked.

  But a lot of years had passed since Libby Grayhawk had been a powerless sixteen-year-old girl and allowed her brash, bullying father to intimidate her. She wasn’t about to bow her head or bend her back to a bunch of Blackthornes.

  She turned and nodded her head to Blackjack and Ren and said, “I envy you the rich heritage of your home.”

  “Which won’t be ours much longer, if your brother gets his way,” Summer retorted. She stood, and Billy moved to her side—to check her, Libby realized, when he slid an arm around her shoulders.

  “No thieving Grayhawk is crossing the threshold of this house,” Summer said heatedly. “Not while I’m alive and kicking.”

  Libby cocked a disdainful brow in response to Summer’s hyperbole. She hadn’t stolen a thing. And neither had North. Yet.

  Clay’s response was more direct. “Cut the crap, Summer. Libby’s not responsible for what her brother does. And Kate’s been in and out of this house all her life, so there’s already been a Grayhawk over the threshold.”

  Summer was clearly embarrassed at being corrected but uncowed by her older brother. “You know what I mean, Clay. I don’t want her in my house.”

  “It isn’t your house,” Clay replied with brutal frankness. “Bitter Creek belongs to all of us. Now stop being a horse’s ass and welcome Libby.”

  “You hate the Grayhawks as much as I do,” Summer said. “Maybe even more!”

  “I have no fondness for King. And I’m mad as hell that North managed to put us in this position. But Libby is the mother of my child, and I won’t see her treated rudely by my family.”

  Libby’s heart swelled as she listened to Clay defend her. Was this what it would have been like if she’d told him the truth about how much she’d loved him twenty years ago? Clay not backing down? Clay shielding her from his family’s animosity?

  It was a lovely thought.

  But Clay’s defense of her had done nothing to soften his family’s feelings toward her. If she spent the night in this house, it would be over the objections of the four people sitting on this porch. The expression on Ren’s face wasn’t antagonistic, but it was clear her loyalty was to Blackjack, and that she wasn’t going to greet Libby until Blackjack did. And Libby was pretty sure Blackjack wouldn’t.

  “You know, Clay,” Libby said, as she looked from face to face on the porch, meeting the unfriendly eyes of first Billy, then Summer, and finally Blackjack, “I’ve always wanted to sleep under the same roof as a president. Why don’t we stay at the cabin?”

  Clay was clearly startled by her about-face. “You don’t want to stay here?”

  Libby met his gaze with shining eyes and said, “No. I’ve already got what I wanted from this visit. Let’s go.”

  Clay had defended her against his family. Chosen her over his family. It meant more to her than she could ever tell him in words. But she could show him, if they were alone. Suddenly, she wanted to be away from here. “Come on,” she said, reaching for Clay’s hand. “Show me the bed where Eisenhower slept.”

  Libby watched as Clay shot everyone on the porch a look of disdain. “You’re my family. I expected better of you than this.”

  Summer broke first under his stare. “Clay, I—”

  “We’ll be at the cabin,” he said, cutting her off. “Don’t bother us. We don’t want your company.”

  Libby turned quickly, before Clay’s family could see the satisfaction she felt at how he’d turned the tables on them. Then she felt Clay’s warm, protective arm around her shoulder, escorting her away from the Castle.

  Libby had always thought that crossing the legendary threshold of the Castle would be a life-altering event. It would mean the demons of the past had been conquered. That she could banish them from memory.

  Tonight, she hadn’t set one foot inside the Castle, and yet, Clay had slain all her dragons. Maybe she was never supposed to cross the fabled threshold. Maybe she was destined to find the inner peace she’d been seeking in a pair of fierce gray eyes.

  “This is it,” Clay said as he stepped into his family’s hunting cabin ahead of Libby and turned on the lights. He set do
wn his overnight bag and hers, and turned to see her reaction to the two-story log home in the middle of the South Texas prairie. Filled with leather and wood and antlers, the walls lined with glass and wood cases filled with guns of all kinds, it seemed more like something built in the 1850s than the 1950s.

  The cabin was equipped with state-of-the-art security devices to ensure the safety of dignitaries, including the president of the United States, who’d stayed there. Since the shoot-out at the cabin several years past, between Blackthornes and Creeds and a rogue FBI agent, it had been used primarily as a family retreat.

  “I wondered what we would find behind all that concealing shrubbery,” Libby said with a smile. “It’s…quaint.”

  Clay smiled and headed for the fireplace, where Summer and Billy kept a fire laid, and set a match to it. Then he and Libby removed the sheets that covered the furniture when the house wasn’t in use. Clay settled into the brass-studded leather sofa centered before the fire and patted the seat beside him. “Come sit down.”

  Libby hesitated, then joined him.

  “I was proud of what you did,” Clay said.

  Libby arched a brow. “Attacking your family?”

  “Standing up for yourself,” Clay said. “it made me wonder…”

  “What might have been?

  “Yeah,” Clay admitted.

  “Me, too,” she said quietly.

  A comfortable silence descended as they watched the fire begin to crackle and spit.

  Clay hadn’t tried to make conversation during the short flight in his Citation from Austin to the family airstrip near the cabin, and Libby had seemed content to remain silent. He hadn’t wanted to take the chance that she would ask him about Kate and Jack. He didn’t want to lie to her, and he thought there was a good chance she would cancel if she realized their trip to Bitter Creek had turned into a weekend on their own. But he couldn’t put it off much longer.

  Libby had to be told that when she’d chosen the cabin over the Castle, it meant she’d be spending the entire weekend alone with him.

  Clay looked at the woman who’d held his heart in her keeping all these years and wondered what it was about Libby Grayhawk that had so captured his imagination. She wasn’t beautiful. Her eyes were spaced too wide apart, and her chin was too pointed. She had a nice figure, with a small waist and trim hips, but she lacked the long legs he’d admired in both his late wife and his former fiancée.

  But something indefinable about Libby had appealed to him from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. Was it her feistiness? The sound of her bubbling laughter? Her enthusiasm for life? Her fearlessness? Or perhaps it was the fact that, like him, she was a survivor. Someone who would never shrink from life, but meet it head-on, fighting back against adversity and never giving up.

  Physically, she’d changed over the past twenty years. There were lines from squinting against a strong sun sprayed at the corners of her eyes and brackets around her mouth where she smiled. And there were tiny wrinkles in her forehead, from worry, he supposed. All of which only made her more attractive in his eyes.

  She started when she caught him staring at her.

  “You’re beautiful, Libby.”

  She seemed flustered for a moment, then thwarted his attempt to make the conversation personal by abruptly changing the subject. “I was surprised you decided to fly down here, after what happened to the last judge who presided over this trial.”

  Clay smiled and said, “I had my mechanics check everything carefully and then keep a close eye on the plane.”

  “So you might be in danger, after all?” Libby asked as she edged toward the opposite end of the couch, as far from him as she could get.

  “I’ve made a lot of enemies as a prosecutor, and then as the attorney general for Texas and U.S. attorney general,” Clay said, turning his body to face hers. “If I let threats worry me, I wouldn’t be able to leave the house.”

  Libby looked around and said, “This cabin is so isolated we’re either very safe or a very vulnerable target.”

  Clay pointed to the windows and said, “Bullet-proof glass.” He pointed to the guns on the wall and said, “Plenty of ammunition to go with these.”

  Libby laughed. “I wonder if Kate arranged for us to stay here to make sure you’d be safe.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Clay admitted.

  “Do you suppose she and Jack have arrived by now? Should we call them?”

  The moment of truth had come. Clay took a deep breath and said, “Jack had to work this weekend. So Kate decided to stay in Austin.”

  Libby sat forward on the edge of the couch. Clay thought she looked ready to bolt and felt his stomach lurch. He hadn’t realized until this moment how much he wanted this time with her. He wasn’t sure what he hoped would happen over the weekend. But he was pretty sure if he let Libby walk out of his life this time, it would be forever.

  She sat perched tensely on the couch, her blue eyes never leaving his. “You came knowing Kate and Jack wouldn’t be here?”

  Clay nodded, cleared his throat and said, “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Clay hadn’t expected to be asked for an explanation, and he gave the excuse that seemed most logical. “We still need to figure out how to separate those two.”

  Libby dropped her gaze so he couldn’t see what she was thinking. He realized that if they were going to have any sort of chance to resolve things between them over the weekend, he was going to have to take the first step, so he added, “And I wanted to spend time with you.”

  He held his breath waiting for her to look up. When she finally did, what he saw in her eyes was distress.

  “I haven’t changed my mind, Clay. I’m not going to fall into your arms. Or into your bed.”

  Clay flushed. He’d been imagining exactly that scenario. In the past, he was sure, all he would have needed to do was beckon, and Libby would have come running. He’d certainly been holding all the cards. Things had definitely changed. Now he was the one wanting a relationship, and she’d put up a stone wall to keep him out.

  He knew he ought to apologize for his past behavior, clear the air, make a clean breast of the things he’d realized about himself, explain why he’d been so unwilling to forgive. But it was so unusual for him to apologize—for anything—that he found the words “I’m sorry” caught in his throat.

  “I was hoping you’d reconsider,” he said instead.

  Libby rose and crossed to the fireplace, putting her hands out to catch the warmth from the fire. “No.”

  Clay crossed to stand behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and felt her tense. “I want another chance, Libby.”

  She eased herself free and turned to face him, her blond curls bouncing on her shoulders as she shook her head. “I’m not going to let you hurt me again, Clay.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

  She laughed scornfully. “Right.”

  “Maybe I did once upon a time,” he corrected.

  She crossed her arms and lifted her chin.

  “A long time ago.”

  She tilted her head and glared up into his face.

  “Maybe even more recently,” he conceded. “But I had good reason.”

  Libby threw her hands up in apparent frustration. “Good reason? I was sixteen years old when I hurt you. I was in love. I thought being with me would ruin your life, so I lied to you. I’ve paid dearly for it every day since.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? You know?” Libby said, her voice sharp.

  Clay flinched.

  She stepped deeper into his space, and Clay had to force himself to stand his ground. He resisted the urge to take hold of her arms, to keep her at a distance. He had to let her in. Finally. At last. If he wanted any kind of future with her, he had to hear what she had to say. And let himself feel her pain.

  Except he had no idea how he was supposed to do that. He’d been catered to all his li
fe, so he had no experience being empathetic. Partly, it was because he’d been his mother’s spoiled, favorite child. Partly, it was because he was and always had been rich and hadn’t needed to pander. Partly, it was because from a very early age he’d been in a position of power. People answered to him. He didn’t answer to them.

  How could he begin to comprehend what Libby had been through over the past twenty years? How could he expect her to forgive him for walking away from her? How was he going to convince her that he’d never stopped loving her even when he’d been married to one woman and gotten engaged to another? All he could do was try.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  Libby opened her mouth to speak and shut it again. “Talking isn’t going to solve anything.” She backed up two steps, then crossed to where he’d dropped the two overnight bags, picked hers up and slung the strap over her shoulder. “Will you fly me out of here? Or shall I take the car?”

  “Don’t leave. Please. We won’t talk about us. I won’t even mention us. We’ll focus on Kate and Jack.”

  Libby pursed her lips. “I don’t want you thinking that if I stay here I’m capitulating to—”

  “I wouldn’t think that,” Clay said. But he now had some idea exactly how thick and how high she’d built that stone wall to keep him out.

  “I am concerned about Kate,” she said. “Did you know I went with her to try on wedding dresses?”

  “I’ll bet she was beautiful.”

  Libby frowned. “Beautiful. And flippant.”

  “Flippant?” Clay crossed and slipped the luggage strap from Libby’s shoulder and set the bag back on the ground. “By the way, how about something to drink? There’s a bar here with anything you want, and I’m sure Summer and Billy keep the refrigerator stocked.”

  “Something hot,” Libby said, rubbing her arms against an apparent chill.

  With another woman, Clay would have stepped closer and warmed her himself. But Libby had set boundaries he had to respect. Boundaries he had to hope she would relax as the weekend progressed. He thought of all the pressure he normally brought to bear when he wanted something and was determined to have it. None of those tried-and-true methods were going to work with Libby.