Chasing the Sun

by Kaki Warner

  “The youngest?”

  Daisy nodded.

  “Haven’t met him. They say he’s the wild one.”

  Wild? The Jack she knew had been brooding. Lost. Almost desperate for something that seemed just beyond his reach. It wasn’t until that last bitter argument that she had found out the “something” was another woman.

  “Heard he was back,” Blake went on, pulling her from her dark memories.

  “Back?” Her stomach seemed to drop to her feet. “Jack’s at the ranch?”

  Something in her voice caused him to look over at her, his close-set eyes narrowed in speculation. “You didn’t know that?”

  “Well, I ...”

  “So it’s not him you’re going to see.” With a sly smile, Blake faced forward again. “Interesting.”

  Jack was at the ranch. Daisy didn’t know what to think or how Jack’s return would impact her reasons for coming here. She didn’t know what name to put to the tumultuous emotions pounding through her. But suddenly the journey that had felt interminable a moment ago now seemed to be moving along too rapidly.

  “How much farther is it?’ she asked.

  “The boundary line? Not far. Things will start happening real soon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering, he leaned forward and started popping the tasseled snapper on the end of the whip against the horse’s rump. “Get on! Get on, you!”

  The buggy lurched forward as the horse broke into a labored gallop.

  Alarmed, Daisy grabbed the roof support for balance. “What are you doing? Why are we going so fast?”

  The buggy rocked wildly as they picked up speed. Behind the seat, Kate awoke with a cry. Clinging to the support with her right hand, Daisy reached back with her left to pin the child to the floor as the buggy careened along the rocky road.

  “Slow down!” she shouted at Blake. “You’ll tip us over!”

  He swung faster, the whip whistling through the air, making sharp snapping sounds as it struck the horse.

  Up ahead, a man ran out of the brush and into the road. He waved a rifle over his head and shouted something she couldn’t hear. She looked at Blake, waiting for him to slow down.

  Instead, he laughed and struck the wheezing horse harder.

  Daisy tried to grab the whip.

  He blocked her with his shoulder, almost knocking her from the buggy.

  Two more men ran into the road, shouting, their rifles raised to their shoulders and aimed at the buggy bearing down on them.

  Terrified they would start shooting, Daisy made a desperate grab for the reins.

  Cursing, Blake jerked his hands aside, causing the horse to stumble. As he sawed on the reins, the horse whipped its head side to side, slinging streamers of bloody foam from its mouth.

  “Stop!” Daisy grabbed Blake’s arm.

  He shook her off, slamming his elbow into her cheek, driving her hard into the roof supports. Behind them, Kate clutched at the backrest, shrieking.

  They were almost on the men now. Blake was laughing, too lost in his own insanity to heed the danger. Panting with terror, her head reeling from the blow, Daisy balled her hand into a fist and drove it as hard as she could into Blake’s eye.

  He rocked back, arms coming up. The leathers slipped from his grip. The horse stumbled on the loose reins tangled in its legs as one of the men in the road ran alongside and grabbed for the halter.

  The buggy shuddered to a stop.

  “What’d you do that for?” Blake whipped toward her, teeth bared. “They wouldn’t have shot at us, you stupid woman!” Snarling, he drew back his hand.

  With a cry, Daisy ducked over Kate.

  But instead of the expected blow, she felt the buggy rock. Shouts. Then she looked up to see Blake flying through the air. He landed in a sprawl at the feet of three men who loomed over him with rifles pointed at his face.

  The next moments passed in a blur of confusion. The men in the road seemed to know Blake. Soon all four men were shouting.

  Daisy just wanted out of the buggy. Grabbing Kate and her valise, she climbed down onto wobbly legs as an older fellow walked around to her side. She drew back, one hand clutching Kate, the other ready to swing her valise at his face.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes.” Daisy eyed him warily, still shaking from the ordeal. “No thanks to that madman.” She glared over to where Blake argued with the other two ranch hands. “I don’t know what came over him—he’s—he almost got us killed.”

  The man must have seen her agitation. “It’s over now, ma’am. You’re safe. The little one okay?”

  “Yes.” Daisy took a deep breath and let it out. It helped. Feeling calmer, she lowered the valise and asked the man if he was from the ranch.

  He was. And after hearing that she was on her way there to see Jack, he introduced himself as Carl Langley and offered to escort her to the house himself.

  Daisy hesitated, wondering if this man was any more trustworthy than Blake. He looked kindly. But she’d thought the same about Blake. “And him?”

  Langley glanced over at the disheveled man arguing with the others. “No, ma’am. He’ll be heading back to Val Rosa.” The way he said it told Daisy he didn’t care whether Blake made it back in one piece or not. She just hoped the horse would.

  “Can you ride?” Langley asked. It’s only about ten more miles.”

  Only? “Yes.” Although it would be difficult holding Kate, Daisy would manage. At this point she would do anything to get away from Blake and get this ghastly journey over with. After she retrieved the pouch and Kate’s blanket from the buggy—as well as the bundle of mail, which she slipped into her pouch—she followed Langley toward the rope-strung corral situated quite a distance from the road.

  As they walked away, Blake yelled after them, “You tell that bastard he’d better pay up or I’ll have his smelter, his mines, and his ranch. You tell him that, Langley!”

  Langley continued on, giving no indication that he’d heard.

  At the corral, Kate was delighted to be able to totter around while they waited for the horses to be readied. Once he’d secured Daisy’s belongings behind his saddle, Langley helped Daisy to mount, handed up a squirming Kate, and they were off, leaving Blake behind to work his own way out of the mess he’d made.

  Ten more miles. This had to be one of the worst days of her life.

  It was almost dark when they finally rode up the rutted road toward an imposing house built of log and stone. Daisy was so exhausted her legs almost buckled beneath her when she slid off the horse. With the pouch over one shoulder and her sleeping daughter resting against the other, she followed Langley up the steps. As they crossed the porch, the front door opened.

  A tall, redheaded woman with a baby on each hip stepped out. One glance at Daisy’s bruised face, and her look of curiosity became one of concern.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” she said in a cultured voice with an English accent. “Langley, bring her things inside, please. Come along, dear.” And before Daisy’s sluggish mind registered what was happening, the woman was herding her through the entry, past a staircase, and down into a large room dominated by a huge rock fireplace. “Someone get Molly and the Ortegas. Where’s Brady?”

  Almost before the words were out, a tall, lean man appeared, trailed by a redheaded boy of three or four years. Close on their heels came two young Mexican women, who took the babies from their mother and left the room.

  “Step aside, Jessica,” the man ordered, moving to face Daisy.

  The woman blinked at his back, her expression one of surprise. “Brady ... ?”

  Brady. The oldest brother. The one Jack had called bossy and hardheaded. Daisy could see why. The boy must be his son, Ben, and the redhead, Jessica, his wife, Her Ladyship. She was every bit as striking as Jack had said she was.

  The man loomed over Daisy. “Who are you?”

  She frowned up at him, taken aback by his angry tone. But be
fore she could respond, the redhead grabbed his arm. “Brady, what is wrong with you? Can’t you see she—”

  He whipped around, cutting her off midsentence. “She was with Blake. They tried to run through the quarantine with a sick horse. I need to know why. Now step aside, Jessica.” Without waiting for a response, he turned back to Daisy. “Who are you and why are you here?”

  The boy planted himself at his father’s side, hands on his hips. “Yeah, why?”

  “Ben, hush,” his mother scolded.

  Fighting to calm her own rising temper, Daisy retrieved the packet of mail from her pouch. “We were asked to give you this.” She thrust it toward him, mildly surprised to see her hand was shaking. It would, she supposed, after almost a week without sleep, hardly any food, being knocked in the head by a madman, and now having to deal with this bully. Still, she hated the sign of weakness.

  He tossed the packet onto a nearby table. “Why were you with Blake?”

  “Why,” the boy echoed.

  “Ben!”

  “He offered me a ride.”

  Kate must have sensed her distress. She gave a soft whimper and moved restlessly against Daisy’s neck. Daisy patted her back in reassurance, hoping to forestall a frightful outcry should Kate awaken to find herself surrounded by a roomful of strangers. “But the real reason I’m here,” she went on, “is to see your brother Jack.”

  His eyes narrowed—odd-colored eyes, almost turquoise in color, and as sharp and cold as two chips of ice.

  Jack’s were warmer, Daisy recalled. More of a smoky hue with sooty rings around the irises, and framed by dark brown lashes and brows. A striking contrast against his sun-browned skin and wheat-colored hair.

  “Why do you want to see Jack?” his brother demanded.

  Before she could answer, Kate straightened in Daisy’s arms. Twisting around, she looked at Brady Wilkins.

  His face went slack with astonishment. “Holy Christ.”

  “Actually, her name is Kate,” Daisy snapped.

  “Hellfire,” the little boy said, then seeing the menace in his mother’s eyes, quickly fled the room.

  His father continued to stare in shock at Kate.

  Jessica moved closer. She looked at Kate, then at Daisy. “Oh my.” A smile spread across her freckled face. “She is absolutely beautiful. Kate, you say?”

  Daisy smiled tentatively back, warmed by this first show of welcome since she had entered the house. “Katherine is her full name. But I call her Kate.”

  “Kate. It suits her.” The woman brushed a lock of blond hair off Kate’s brow. “Welcome, little Kate. I’m Jessica.”

  Kate held out her stuffed cat. “Titty.”

  Jessica marveled over the ragged toy. “I have a kitty too. Would you like to see?” When Kate nodded, Jessica glanced at Daisy. “May I hold her?”

  Hesitant to relinquish her child to a stranger, yet not wanting to offend the only person who had shown her kindness, Daisy reluctantly passed Kate over into Jessica’s arms. “She’s tired. She may act up. It’s been a long, stressful day.”

  “Poor dear,” Jessica crooned. “I’ll wager you’re hungry as well.” Elbowing the befuddled Brady Wilkins out of the way, she carried Kate over to the tall bank of windows beside the fireplace. “See the kitty?” She pointed to a cat perched on the porch rail, licking its paw. “We can’t let him inside because he makes Penny sneeze. But perhaps tomorrow you might want to go out and pet him?”

  Kate grinned. Lifting a pudgy arm, she waved her toy. “See Titty.”

  Brady Wilkins seemed to come out of his trance. Turning back from his shocked perusal of Kate, he stared hard at Daisy. “You’re sure she’s—”

  “Jack’s daughter?” Daisy glared at him, liking this man less by the moment. “Yes, I’m sure. Aren’t you?”

  “Does he know about ...”

  “Kate?” Couldn’t he even say her name? “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Holy Christamighty hell.”

  “Brady,” came a singsong reprimand from the window. “Not in front of the children.”

  “Well ... hell.”

  The front door slammed. Footsteps crossed the entry, then two men stepped into the room—a huge dark-haired man who must have been the middle brother, Hank, and beside him, the man she had come to see. Jack.

  Her heart thudding in her chest and her stomach knotted so tight it hurt to breathe, Daisy watched him walk toward her. His hair was lighter. His skin darker. His easy rolling gait had given way to a limp. But those eyes ...

  “Heard we have company,” he said.

  His brother rounded on him. “Not we. You.”

  “Me?”

  Daisy studied him, searching those well-remembered features for a spark of recognition.

  It never came.

  The bounder doesn’t know me. He doesn’t have any notion of who I am.

  The humiliation of it almost choked her. She had given herself to a man who had no memory of it. She had borne his child, and he didn’t even remember her name. God, what a fool she was.

  For a moment she thought her knees might fold beneath her.

  “Well, hello,” Jack said, flashing the smile that had been the ruination of her heart, her will, the last shreds of her common sense.

  “Hello, Jack,” she managed to say.

  He looked a little more worn, but the puffiness of too much drink and too little rest had been replaced by honed muscle, and that angry, frantic look in his eyes had mellowed into something that looked more like weary resignation. He had matured. Yet he was even more beautiful to her now than he had ever been.

  And he didn’t even know who she was.

  Humiliation turned to fury as those eyes she could never forget—the same smoky blue, dark-ringed eyes that looked at her out of her daughter’s face—swept over her in total confusion.

  “Have we met?” he asked, a frown forming between the dark brows.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” Daisy’s lips were so tight with anger she could hardly form the words. “Two and a half years ago. In San Francisco.”

  His frown deepened. His gaze moved over her again, then jerked back to pause on her breasts. “Wait. San Francisco. Daisy!” He looked up with a wide grin. “You changed your hair. Or something.”

  Her breasts? He remembered her breasts but not her?

  Fury exploded. And that was when, for the second time that day and only the second time in her life, Daisy struck a man in the face with her fist.

  Jack staggered back.

  The room erupted in chaos—Brady and Jack arguing, Hank pulling both toward the hall, Jessica issuing orders, and Kate shrieking.

  It was too much.

  Defeated, Daisy sank onto the edge of a chair, dropped her head into her hands, and wept.

  Seven

  JACK SPRAWLED IN ONE OF THE CHAIRS IN FRONT OF BRADY’S desk. Hank took the other while Brady paced before the unlit fireplace, muttering.

  “I don’t understand why she hit me,” Jack mumbled through the kerchief pressed to his bleeding lip.

  Brady sneered at him. “You can’t be that dumb.”

  “Why? What did I do?”

  “Lost your touch with women, for one thing.” Chuckling, Hank propped his boots on the corner of Brady’s desk. “An amazing thing.”

  “It’s not funny,” Jack muttered.

  “Rampaging women rarely are.”

  Brady stopped pacing to loom over him. “You really don’t know, do you? You have no idea why a woman would drag her baby all the way from San Francisco to see you.”

  Jack blinked up at him. He vaguely remembered Jessica by the porch door, holding a kid. He’d thought it was one of the twins. “That was Daisy’s baby?”

  “No, you stupid bastard! It was yours!”

  The rag slipped from Jack’s hand. “Mine?”

  “And hers,” Hank reminded them. “It takes two—”

  “Shut up,” Brady snapped.

  “I’m just saying—�
�

  “Well, don’t.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jack raised a hand like that might stem the confused thoughts flooding into his mind. “Who said it was my kid? ’Cause they’d be lying. I don’t have any kids. If Idid, I’d know. Right?” He looked from one brother to the other, expecting confirmation.

  One stared furiously back. The other grinned. Neither spoke.

  “Jesus.” Jack slumped back into the chair. “It can’t be my kid.”

  He replayed the scene in his mind. The woman—Daisy—glaring at him, even after he gave her his best smile. Brady looking thunderous, which wasn’t that unusual, and Jessica over at the window with a baby in her arms. His baby?

  How could that be?

  Feeling a trickle, he lifted the kerchief to his split lip. “Why didn’t she just tell me, instead of hitting me?”

  “Hell, you’re lucky I don’t hit you too,” Brady said.

  “Why? What did I do, for Crissakes?”

  “Other than getting her pregnant then leaving her?” Hank asked, that smile still tugging at his lips.

  Ignoring him, Brady said, “You didn’t know her, that’s what you did. She shows up with a kid—your kid—all the way from San Francisco, and you didn’t even know who she was.”

  “Only at first.”

  “After you looked at her ... you know ...” Brady waved a hand in the direction of Jack’s chest. “When Jessica saw you do that, she almost hit you herself.”

  “They are nice,” Hank mused. “I’ve always appreciated a fine bosom.”

  Brady rounded on him. “Would you shut the hell up! You’re not helping.”

  “What’s to help?” Hank asked mildly. “The deed’s done. Our little brother is well and truly caught. And by a woman who might actually keep him in line.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Jack was stunned. “She’s upset just because I looked at her tits?”

  “Best not let Jessica hear you say that,” Hank advised. “She’s got a whole list of words we can’t use, and I’m pretty sure ‘tits’ is on it.”