by Joanna Wayne
She stretched her legs in front of her and crossed her arms over her chest, so tired of dead ends she could scream.
Matt leaned closer. “Are you cold?”
“A little. Inside.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that.”
“But you do help, all the time. Just being with you helps.”
He shook his head. “That’s only because you see in me what you choose to.”
“And you see in yourself what you choose to see. I like my vision better.” She wouldn’t give in to his demons tonight, not after he’d played and made love to her the way he had in the shower. He was flesh and blood, not some inhuman clone of his father, whether he cared to admit it or not.
“Tell me about Susan Hathaway, Matt.”
“What about her?”
“You told me she didn’t know a soul in Dry Creek, that she was only passing through town that night, when she was beaten and left for dead, but you’ve never really talked about her.”
Matt put down the legal pad he’d been using to scribble possible matches between the skimpy evidence he’d collected so far and every man in town. “She was quiet, loving. She laughed a lot, but sometimes I’d come in and find her crying. I never understood that until recently, when we found out who she really was.”
“What do you mean by that? Who was she?”
He walked over to the counter and poured himself a double shot of whiskey, drinking it down before turning back to Heather. “Susan kept her past a secret, not even letting my brothers know about it until just recently. I don’t know how much she remembered or how much she wanted to remember before that, but I’ve honored her wishes to keep it her secret.”
Matt returned to the couch. He took the end opposite Heather, working his feet from his boots. When the last one clattered to the floor, he propped his stockinged feet on the wooden coffee table. “In light of all that’s happened to you, I don’t think Susan would mind your knowing her story, but it’s to go no further.”
“Of course not.”
His gaze met Heather’s “Have you ever heard of Pamela Jessup?”
“Pamela Jessup? The name sounds familiar.” Heather pulled her feet up under her. “Wait, isn’t that the California heiress who ran away from home and joined up with some bank robber? I saw a TV show about her once.”
“That’s her.”
“According to the show I saw, her family never heard from her again. Her body was found in some motel in Texas. So what does that have to do with Susan?”
“Pamela Jessup is Susan Hathaway.”
Chapter Thirteen
Matt reached for the newspaper.
“Oh, no, you don’t, Matt McQuaid.” Heather snatched the paper from his hands and tossed it over the arm of the sofa and to the floor. “You don’t nonchalantly announce you were raised by some infamous bank robber heiress and then turn away as if you’d given me a weather report.”
Matt sighed and rubbed his forehead as if his head hurt, but he went on. “My brothers and I were raised by a homeless woman we found at the side of the road. Believe me, we never had a clue the woman who cooked our oatmeal and patched our jeans was a bank robber or an heiress. No one did.”
“Can you imagine, a woman wanted for bank robbery found by the sheriff’s sons. It was probably a good thing no one knew who she was.” Heather tapped the end of her pen against her tablet. “But I thought Pamela Jessup’s body was found in some motel in Texas.”
“That was all a lie concocted to keep her family from looking for her. Apparently Philip Gould lost track of her about the time we found her. When her body didn’t show up, he made up his own version of her disappearance. He admitted as much when he was finally arrested. He still claimed he wasn’t the one who’d attacked her.”
“It has to have been all one and the same, Matt. Your dad, Pamela Jessup, Billy Roy, my mother, all involved in something someone is determined to keep secret. You tried to tell me I might not like what I found out, but I couldn’t have imagined that Kathy Warren might be involved with a bank robber.”
“We don’t have proof of anything.”
“It still doesn’t make sense. I can see how my mother could have been mixed up with Pamela Jessup. We know nothing about her, but Billy Roy was just a local wrangler.”
“He could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens, especially when there are two beautiful young women about.”
Heather’s insides churned. All she’d wanted was to find a connection with her past, learn something about her birth mother, but the old secrets she was discovering were actually hidden crimes. She turned around so that she could face Matt. “Tell me about Susan, or should I say Pamela?”
“She’ll always be Miss Susan to me.” Matt’s tone softened. “She was different from the women around here. Her voice had a musical quality to it, and she had funny ways of doing and saying things. We laughed at her, but she was fast as the wind on the horse Dad bought her.”
“It must have been difficult for her, going from a life of luxury to being the caretaker for a poorly paid sheriff and his three sons.”
“I guess so, but we never noticed. We had no idea she’d ever been rich.”
Matt shifted, and a smile touched his lips. Heather sensed he was lost in his own past, this time in the good parts of it.
“Susan and I bonded right from the first,” he said, continuing the story. “I suspect I was a needy child, aching for a mother like all the other boys had. She gave me more than my fair share of love and attention. Not that she let me get away with anything. She was tough as nails.”
“According to the documentary that I saw, Pamela Jessup was a wild teenager who’d gotten involved in drugs and partying, a victim of too much money and loose morals.”
“There’s two sides to everything.” Matt reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He removed a small photograph, yellowed, the edges crinkled. “This is the woman I knew. No drugs unless you count an occasional aspirin. And I don’t remember a single wild party.”
He handed the photo to Heather, a smile curving his lips. “But she could dance. She’d play the radio and boogie with the broom or the mop or one of us boys. That was the wildest I ever saw her. Unless you count the time my brothers and I let a snake loose in the house.”
Heather held the photo so that it caught the glow of the lamp. “She was very pretty.”
“She still is.” Matt fingered a loose string on the throw pillow that rested between them. “You remind me of her.”
Heather studied the photo. There was a resemblance. Not the hair. Not the eyes or cheekbones, either. The mouth, maybe, or the shape of the face. A sinking feeling settled in her stomach. “Is that why you took me in, Matt, because I reminded you of Susan?”
“I took you in because you were in danger.” He stretched his arm across the back of the couch, catching a strand of her hair between his fingers, toying with it. “I know what you’re thinking, Heather. Forget it. The attraction between us is a hell of a lot more than my looking for a lost mother figure, and you know it.”
“You’re reading my mind. I’m starting to get worried.”
“I’m worried myself, but not about my mind-reading abilities. More that I’m so comfortable having you around even after we make love.” He pulled her to him, settling her in the crook of his arm. “That doesn’t usually happen with me. Most of the time, I’m ready to clear out and be by myself.”
“Have there been so many others?”
“Fewer than I like to admit.”
The confession warmed her heart. She snuggled closer. “I’d still like to know about Susan. What made her so angry with her parents that she turned to a life of crime?”
“A lack of trust, I suspect.” Matt paused, his fingers unconsciously rubbing Heather’s arm. “She was raped by the son of a family friend, the same man who faked her death. Her parents refused to back her in pressing charges, saying that she would caus
e unnecessary embarrassment for herself and her sister, but she decided to press charges anyway.”
“How sad, to have your own family turn against you after such a traumatic experience.”
“It gets worse. After he raped her, Phillip Gould apparently paid one of his no-good friends to kill her. Instead, the guy kidnapped her and tried to collect a ransom.”
“I remember that part from the TV show. David something or another. He was arrested later.”
“David Eisman, a first-class louse. May he rot in the California jail where they stuck him.”
“Wait a minute. Didn’t she marry him while they were on the run?”
“Yeah. Apparently, he was a charming and very charismatic first-class louse. She was caught on the surveillance camera helping him rob a bank.”
“But Pamela Jessup somehow wound up in Texas with Jake McQuaid and his three sons. This is a bizarre story.” Heather slipped from the shelter of Matt’s arms and picked up her pen and tablet again. The answer to the riddle of her own mother might lie somewhere in this muddle of facts. “So the notorious Pamela Jessup raised you and your brothers and none of you ever knew who she was until a few years ago.”
“That’s the size of it. We would probably never have known if my brothers hadn’t discovered her identity while trying to solve another crime.”
“Was she prosecuted then?”
“No. More than two decades after the fact, she was granted immunity and an annulment of her marriage to David Eisman. The best part was that she was able to keep her anonymity. It would have reopened the nightmare all over again if she’d been forced to become the focus of the media after all those years.”
“Your father must have been thankful to have it all out in the open. Now, with her annulment and immunity from criminal prosecution, she was finally free to marry him. It’s a beautiful story, Matt.”
“It is the way you tell it.” He rubbed the muscles behind his neck, the smile gone from his face, replaced by taut lines. “There’s been no wedding.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need his name or a license. Maybe knowing he loves her is enough for her.”
“Yeah, sure.” Matt walked to the window and stared out into the murky darkness.
Heather moved over to stand behind him. She circled his waist with her arms, smoothing her hands over his chest. His muscles tightened, every nerve in his body urging him to move away, not to let her get too close, not to let her into his personal world.
“You should go back for your father’s birthday. It would please Susan.”
“Leave it alone, Heather. Family is a dead issue with me. I’ve made my life here in Texas.”
“You’ve made an existence, not a life.”
She buried her head between his shoulder blades. Part of him ached to turn and take her in his arms. Part of him longed to run like hell. He did neither.
“You told me when I first came here that I shouldn’t dig up old secrets, Matt, that doing so might shatter the present.”
“And I was right.”
“Maybe, but it’s no worse than what you’re doing. You’re letting the past eat away at the present, letting it make you just as afraid as your dad to show emotion.”
“You’ve noticed. A chip off the old block, that’s me. Being with you these last few days has convinced me of that more than ever. I should never have touched you in any intimate way while you were under my protective custody. Follow the rules when they suit me, ignore them when they don’t. It’s a family tradition.”
Heather tugged him around to face her, rose up on tiptoe and met his gaze straight on. “Don’t give your father blame or credit for what’s happened between us these last few days. It was what we both wanted, and no matter what happens after this, I’ll never be sorry we made love.”
“Don’t count on that.”
Heather touched her lips to his, and seemingly unable to stop himself he wrapped his arms around her. The kiss this time was softer, sweeter than ever before. She shuddered, sensing instinctively that their relationship had moved beyond the savage sensual hunger that had driven them initially.
There was no denying the signs. She had fallen in love with Matt McQuaid, a man whose destiny remained chained to his past. A man who would never be able to love completely until he could learn to forgive his father and accept that he was his own man.
The phone rang then, and the next round of bad news hit home. Paul Ridgely’s wife had come home and found him unconscious in the barn behind their house. He had been stabbed twice, once in the back, once in the chest. The good news was that even though he’d lost a lot of blood, he was still alive.
HEATHER STOOD in the waiting room of the small hospital. It was a good forty-five-minute drive from Dry Creek, but the room was filled with Paul Ridgely’s friends and neighbors. John Billinger and his wife, Gabby, Rube and Edna, the pastor from his church, even Logan Trenton had shown up. There were others as well, some Heather had seen before, but she couldn’t put names to the faces.
Most of the men were grumbling about the fact that a man wasn’t safe on his own land anymore. Most of the women were consoling Mrs. Ridgely. She was dry-eyed now, but her red, swollen eyelids made it clear that she’d shed her share of tears.
“I hope Matt finds out who did this soon,” Edna said, walking up behind Heather. “None us are safe with a murderer roaming the area.”
“He’s doing everything he can, Edna.”
“I know. He’s a good man, just like his dad was. Where is he now?”
“He’s in the room with Paul.”
“I hope Paul lives, I truly do.” Edna shredded the tissue in her hands into tiny pieces. “But even if he doesn’t, I pray he regains consciousness long enough to tell who did this to him. I haven’t had a minute’s peace since Ariana was killed. And Rube’s as worried as I am. He’s hardly eaten since he found Ariana’s body, and I wake up in the night to find him walking the floor or staring out the window.”
Heather turned as Matt stepped into the room. A group of men circled around him, all asking the same question. Did Paul give him a name?
Matt put his hand up to silence the anxious questions. “Paul is still unconscious. The doctor promised to call me when he’s able to talk. In the meantime, we have a guard at his door to make sure the man who stabbed him doesn’t come back to finish the job. Believe me, the problems in Dry Creek are top priority. Go home and get some sleep, but keep your doors locked.”
“And your shotguns loaded,” John Billinger muttered. There was a rumbling of agreement among the men.
“Just watch out who you shoot,” Matt warned. “Nervous fingers on the trigger can get a man in a lot of trouble.” He motioned for Heather to meet him at the door. She did, and he wasted no time in hustling her outside.
“Do you think Paul will live?” she asked, as they hurried down the corridor and to the car.
“He has a good chance.”
“But he didn’t tell you who stabbed him?”
“No, he was muttering, but not coherently. The only name I recognized was Billy Roy Lassiter.”
Dread filled Heather, thick as smoke from a smoldering fire that refused to die. It burned her lungs and rolled in her stomach. The secrets that had lain hidden for a quarter of a century were ripping Dry Creek apart. She had been the catalyst for reawakening the terror.
And the end wasn’t even in sight.
STANDING under a tree a few yards from the back door of Logan Trenton’s sprawling house, Heather surveyed the scene, and marveled, “So this is how they throw a party in Texas!”
“It’s how the wealthier ranchers do it.” Matt grabbed a couple of glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. He handed one of the crystal flutes to Heather.
“I propose a toast,” she said.
Matt’s eyebrows rose inquiringly. He lifted his glass and waited.
“To finding answers to all of our questions so that we can go on with our lives.”
Matt
clinked his glass with hers. “I’ll drink to that,” he announced, “and I propose another toast.”
“What to this time?”
“To Lady Luck, for setting me up with the prettiest lady at the ball.”
A blush heated Heather’s cheeks. “I’m sure there are a lot of men here tonight who’d argue that with you.”
“Let them. My eyes don’t lie.”
They clinked their glasses again, but when Heather looked into Matt’s eyes, it was more than desire she read there. “Do you think there’ll be trouble tonight?”
“Could be. I plan to keep my eyes and ears open. That’s why we’re here, to try to find a few more pieces to the puzzle.”
Heather made a full turn, taking in the entire front lawn and the grassy area to the side of the house. Tables laden with food were sheltered from the late afternoon sun by huge white awnings. Brightly colored streamers and white lights hung from the branches of trees, and waiters in white shirts and black bow ties mingled with the festive crowd, passing out drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
“Even music,” she said, as a trio of strolling mariachis stopped nearby to serenade a young couple.
“And more people than you can shake a stick at. Let me know if you see John Billinger. I’d like to catch him away from his wife and ask him a few questions.”
“So, that’s why everyone’s avoiding you tonight. You’ve been harassing them with questions.”
“I hope they keep on avoiding me. I can work better that way. Are you up for a little snooping?”
Heather’s heart beat a little faster. “I’m up for anything that might produce results. What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t see Logan, but I’m sure he’s occupied now doing what he does best, schmoozing with people with money and power. It’s a good time to take an exploratory look around his office.”
“Without asking him?”
“That’s the general idea. You can stand outside the door, let me know if he’s coming.”
