The Maverick's Return

by Marie Ferrarella

  He looked down at Anne huddled on the sofa in a fetal position. Her heart was clearly broken because her daughter wanted to go live with the man she regarded as her father. He knew Annie well enough to know that she wouldn’t stop the girl, wouldn’t force Janie to stay with her.

  If he hadn’t come back, none of this would have happened.

  He wanted to apologize again. Wanted to tell her that he would have rather died than caused her this pain.

  But nothing he said would change anything. The best thing he could do right now was leave.

  Opening the door, he let himself out. Annie was still on the sofa, in shock and staring at the rear of the house as he closed the door behind him.

  * * *

  Hank came to pick Janie up less than an hour later. Janie flew into his arms and held on tightly. “I want to live with you, Dad.”

  He hugged the girl to him, looking accusingly at Anne over her daughter’s head.

  He had arrived here so quickly, Anne had no doubt that Janie had filled him in on everything.

  She didn’t have long to wait before finding out.

  “Take your suitcase and wait for me in the truck, Janie,” Hank told the girl.

  “Sure, Dad,” she answered.

  Janie left without so much as a backward glance or a single word to her mother.

  Anne stared after her, feeling as if her heart had been slashed open with a jagged knife.

  “I warned you,” Hank said the moment Janie closed the front door behind her. “I told you that no good would come of telling Janie the truth. She didn’t need to know that Daniel is her birth father.”

  “I didn’t like lying to her,” Anne told him, doing her best not to fall apart.

  “You weren’t lying to her,” he retorted. “You were shielding her from a harsh reality that she was far too young to know. Or to understand.”

  “And how old should she have been before she found out?” Anne wanted to know, getting defensive.

  Except for the last incident—also centered around Dan—she rarely saw Hank get angry, but he was angry now. An angry Papa Bear protecting his cub with unsheathed claws.

  This was about the little girl he loved dearly and Hank intended to keep her safe, emotionally and physically, at all cost.

  “With luck, never,” Hank answered. “There was no reason for her to know who Daniel was. She was a happy, well-adjusted little girl who had two parents who loved her.”

  “Now she has three,” Annie answered defiantly.

  “And she’s not all that happy, is she?” Hank countered.

  It was obvious that he wanted to say something more, but he sensed it would only denigrate into really angry words that couldn’t be taken back. He took a different tone.

  “Look, I’ve got to go. Janie’s in the truck, waiting for me,” he said, his voice softening. “I’ll call you later in the week to let you know how she’s doing,” he told Anne.

  She pressed her lips together to keep back a sob. She could feel it throbbing in her throat. “I love her, Hank.”

  “I know that,” he answered. “And when she calms down, she’ll know that, too. But it’s going to take a while.” Hank was almost at the front door before he doubled back to her. He paused only long enough to kiss the top of Anne’s head and then tell her, “It’ll be all right.”

  With that, he walked out.

  * * *

  Feeling as if he had ruined Annie’s life for a second time, Danny did the only thing he could for her. He stayed away. He felt he needed to give her time to pick up the shattered pieces of her life and try to put them together again.

  To keep busy, he threw himself into working on the ranch with a vengeance. Though he was asked, he refrained from telling Jamie anything that had happened on Halloween. He made a point of denying, whenever Jamie asked him, that anything was wrong.

  Jamie knew better, but he bided his time and rather than grilling him, he waited for his brother to volunteer the information on his own. Waited for him to explain why he was suddenly staying on the ranch 24/7 instead of going into town the way he had been doing.

  Jamie strongly suspected that this changed behavior had something to do with Anne, but for now, he didn’t prod. But it wasn’t easy, watching Danny hurting, because he clearly was.

  * * *

  Danny didn’t come back. Not that evening, not the following day, nor the day after that. He didn’t come back and he didn’t try to see her or get in touch with her in any way.

  Had he just given up? Anne wondered. Or were those weeks they had spent together just a fluke? Did he really not care about her after all?

  She’d been so sure, after they had made love on Halloween night, that they actually were meant to be together. But maybe those were just her hormones talking. Maybe she had talked herself into believing that he cared about her after all when he obviously didn’t.

  Because if he actually did care, then where was he? Why wasn’t he calling, trying to get her to change her mind? Trying to find a way to help her convince Janie to move back in with her?

  Anne continued to go to work at the clinic, continued doing everything that she had been doing, but she was only going through the motions. Inside, she felt as if she had been completely gutted. Her daughter hated her and the only man she had ever loved had abandoned her a second time after he had made her yearn for him.

  She felt as if her life was going up in flames and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

  But even so, she knew that somehow, she just had to.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Anne’s natural inclination was to hide. Not physically, but emotionally. To run and to reconstruct those walls that she had so diligently built up over the last twelve years.

  The same walls that Danny had so effectively deconstructed like a velvet wrecking ball in one evening of unadulterated passion.

  But she sensed that if she continued to do what she had always done, she could expect to get what she had gotten these last dozen years: a life of mind-numbing emptiness. Yes, she’d had Janie, but right now, she didn’t even have her.

  She knew that she needed to rethink her position as well as her situation. Did she really want to continue this way? To live her life without Danny because she wanted to protect Janie? To keep her daughter and herself from possibly being hurt?

  In a perfect world, that might have been achievable. But this was far from a perfect world. It was a world where things sometimes got messy, despite the best of efforts and intentions.

  Anne really wanted to win back her daughter and, just as important, she wanted to get Danny back in her life, even if that meant risking being vulnerable. Love was worth the risk and she loved Danny with all her heart.

  Always had, always would.

  It was about time that she grew up and acted like a woman, not like an adolescent, Anne silently upbraided herself.

  * * *

  Danny didn’t know if it was the blazing sun that lit up the ranch as he worked next to his brother, but he was finally seeing things clearly. After a great deal of soul-searching he’d reached a conclusion. Leaving wasn’t going to solve anything. It wasn’t the answer to anything. Whether he was here or in Colorado, he was still Janie’s father and now she knew it. What kind of a father would he be, running off again? Moreover, if he did that, just how would that make Janie feel?

  Besides, he didn’t want to leave. He really loved Annie. Halloween evening had just proved it to him. He loved Annie and if he left Rust Creek Falls, it would mean literally tearing himself apart.

  The answer wasn’t running back to Colorado or to any other state, even further away. The answer was to dig in and ride out whatever storm might come his way. Ride it out until the storm finally passed and the seas became calm.
/>   Annie was worth anything he had to endure, as was Janie.

  Danny sighed, leaning on the shovel he’d been using to dig postholes. But now that he had made up his mind to stay, just how did he go about getting from point A to point B? How did he get Annie to allow him back into her life?

  That was the part he needed to figure out.

  Next to him, Jamie dropped the sledgehammer he was wielding to pound the new replacement posts into the ground. The hammer hit the ground, falling to the side as he looked at his brother.

  He and Danny had been at this, replacing fence posts, for over a day. For the most part, over the course of that time, the sound of the sledgehammer was the only sound that was heard. If not for that rhythmic noise, the silence surrounding the two of them would be close to deafening.

  Danny realized that his brother had stopped working. “Something wrong?” he wanted to know, looking in Jamie’s direction.

  “Yes, something’s wrong,” Jamie answered, doing his best not to sound annoyed. “I’ve been a good brother and held my peace for as long as I could. I didn’t push, I didn’t pry, thinking that eventually, you’d open up that sealed tomb of yours that you call a mouth and finally talk to me.

  “But you obviously like pretending you’re a sphinx,” Jamie complained, “so I’m going to break the silence for you and ask.”

  Danny looked at him, obviously confused. “Ask me what?”

  Jamie bit back a curse. Instead, he just got down to the bare bones of the question haunting him. “What the hell happened?”

  “Happened?” Danny repeated as if he wasn’t familiar with the word. It was clear that he was stalling, buying himself some time so he’d know how to frame his answer.

  Jamie came dangerously close to losing his temper. “Damn it, Danny, you’ve never been an innocent, so don’t try to play one now.” Because Danny still wasn’t talking, he went over the situation for him step by step. “You came home early Halloween night, dressed like a pirate and as silent as a crypt. Now, what the hell happened that night and why haven’t you been to see Annie since then?

  “Why have you suddenly become the epitome of a faithful hired hand, shadowing my every move like you don’t have a mind of your own or anything else to do? Talk to me, damn it, or the next thing I’m liable to pound with that sledgehammer,” he said as he nodded toward where it lay on the ground, “is your head.”

  Danny took a breath. Jamie was right. He couldn’t keep this bottled up inside him any longer. He needed to talk, to get it off his chest so he could finally move forward. “We told her.”

  “Annie? Told her what?” Jamie asked, confused. “And who’s ‘we’?”

  Dan shook his head. “No, not Annie. Janie. Annie and I told Janie that I’m her father.”

  “Her what?” Jamie cried, stunned. “Hold it, back up,” he ordered. “You’re Janie’s father?” Dumbfounded, he stared at his brother. This was the first he’d heard of that. “Are you really sure about that?”

  Dan nodded. “Annie told me. She didn’t want me to say anything to anyone about it. I couldn’t tell you,” he began, ready with an apology that didn’t make it past his lips.

  Jamie waved his hand at his brother, silencing him. “I’m not mad that you didn’t tell me. I’m just really surprised, that’s all. Annie was away at college and when she finally came back, she was married to Hank. I just assumed that Janie was Hank’s. The whole town assumed it.”

  “Well, she’s not, and on Halloween night we told Janie I was her father and she didn’t take it very well,” he said sadly. “She accused us of lying to her and then she called Hank to come get her. She told Annie she was going to live with ‘her father.’ It tore Annie up right in front of my eyes. I did that to her,” Dan said, the sadness audible in his voice.

  There was nothing but sympathy in Jamie’s eyes as he listened to his brother. “That’s a lot for you to be carrying around.”

  “It’s not me I’m thinking about. It’s my fault this happened, because I came back,” he said, feeling guilt sinking its teeth solidly into his conscience. “And now I have to find a way to fix this.”

  Jamie looked at him sharply. “Not by leaving again,” he warned. “Even if I have to hog-tie you, you are not going back to Colorado. You belong here. Not just for my sake or Bella’s,” Jamie told him, mentioning their sister. “Not even for my kids. You owe it to Annie and to Janie to stay.”

  Dan shook his head ruefully. “Janie hates me.”

  “Well, then you have to make her unhate you,” Jamie said simply.

  He was all for that. But there was just one little problem with Jamie’s advice. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Go talk to her. Not like she’s some little kid. Talk to her like she’s an adult. Listen to your heart, Danny,” Jamie advised. “The time comes, you’ll know what to say to her.”

  “You’ve got a lot of faith in a guy you haven’t seen in twelve years.” Frankly he didn’t know if he was up to it.

  Jamie grinned at him. “Yeah, but don’t forget, I’ve got a lot of memories to work with and I’ve got a good memory. No matter how rough the calluses are on your hands, you’re still the same guy inside that was always there for me when we were growing up. That’s what you tap into,” Jamie told him. “Be there for her. Be there for your daughter.”

  And then he stopped as he looked at Danny, trying to absorb the impact of what he’d just been told. “Wow. You a father. Now, there’s something that’s going to take some getting used to,” Jamie told him.

  “No more than you being the father of triplets,” Dan responded.

  Jamie’s eyes crinkled as he laughed. “I guess you’ve got a point.” He stripped off his heavy-duty gloves and stuck them in his back pocket. “C’mon, I’ll drive you back to the house. You’ve got to get cleaned up,” he told his brother, adding, “You’ve got some fancy talking to do.”

  “What about work?” Danny asked, looking back at the posts that were still on the ground, waiting to be pounded in.

  “Work’s officially done for the day. Fallon’s always after me to take an afternoon off. Looks like this is going to be it,” he declared, getting in behind the steering wheel of his truck. “Now, are you going to get in, or are you planning on running alongside the truck until we get back to the house?”

  “As appealing as that sounds,” Danny said sarcastically, “I think I’ll get into the truck.” He slid onto the passenger seat.

  * * *

  When Danny looked back on it later, his return to Rust Creek Falls seemed to be fraught with giant bouts of nerves. Nerves had danced throughout his entire body when he’d first stood on Jamie’s doorstep, waiting for his brother’s first words to him.

  The same complete uncertainty had telegraphed itself through his system when he’d stood before Annie’s door, wondering what she would say when she finally saw him there.

  And now he was going through the exact same thing as he waited for Hank to open his front door.

  Dan counted off the seconds. Fifteen went by before the door finally opened. When it did, he found himself looking up at a less-than-friendly face. Hank was all but glaring at him.

  “What do you want?” Hank demanded in a voice that was very close to a growl.

  Dan silently congratulated himself that at least the other man hadn’t slammed the door in his face. He took his victories where he found them.

  “I’d like to talk to Janie,” he answered.

  Hank’s eyebrows drew together in a dark, angry scowl. “Well, she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  Rather than turn around and leave, Dan made an appeal to the girl’s stepfather. “Please, Hank. I need to explain some things to her.”

  Unmoved, Hank retorted, “You’ve already explained enough.”

  But Dan was
n’t about to be dissuaded. “That’s just it. I haven’t. I need to make some things clear to her. And after I’m done, I’d like to talk to you, Hank,” he said.

  Hank looked skeptical, his eyes shrewdly assessing Dan. For a second, Dan thought Janie’s stepfather was going to turn him away. But then the rancher blew out an impatient breath and opened the door a little further.

  “All right,” Hank said. “Come in. But the first second Janie looks like she doesn’t want to listen anymore, you’re gone, even if I have to hurl you out the door myself. Understood?”

  Dan nodded, relieved that Hank was giving him this chance. “Understood.”

  Resigned, looking far from happy about the situation, Hank turned and led the way into the large, sprawling living room.

  Janie was on the sofa, watching TV. The second she saw Dan, she jumped to her feet. “What’s he doing here?” she wanted to know, glaring angrily at the man next to Hank.

  “He says he’s here because he wants to talk to you,” Hank told her.

  “Do I have to?” Janie’s voice bordered on whining as she stared defiantly at Dan.

  “Hear him out, honey,” Hank said, his voice taking on a kind tone when he spoke to the girl. “I raised you to be fair.”

  Janie sighed, put upon. “All right, if you want me to.” She shifted her eyes in Danny’s direction as Hank slipped into the background. “Go ahead,” she said to Dan. “Talk.”

  Danny felt as if he was standing before a pint-size judge. Not exactly ideal conditions in his opinion, but they were the only ones he was going to get so he knew he had to make the most of them.

  “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t know you even existed until just a few weeks ago.”

  “Mom didn’t tell you?” Janie demanded sharply.

  He could see she was going to hold that against Annie, too, unless he talked quickly. “No. Your mother had no way to get in touch with me to let me know I had a daughter.”

  “Were you some kind of bad guy on the run?” Janie asked suspiciously.

  “If you’re asking me if I was a criminal, no, I wasn’t a criminal,” he told her. “But you could say that I was on the run.” He saw his daughter looking at him quizzically but he didn’t want to get into that just yet. “The important part is that your mother was trying to do what she thought was best for you and I don’t want you to blame her for any of this, or to hold it against her, agreed?”