Irene, now his ex-wife, was another reason he’d left Australia. A thoughtless and irresponsible parent, she’d been making noises about wanting custody of Nathan.
Nathan had ended up with one leg shorter than the other, resulting in a permanent limp, and he had a paralyzing fear of horses. That wouldn’t have mattered, except Nathan had been born into a ranching family. Matt had remained patient, hoping that time spent around horses, if not actually on one, would eventually solve the problem.
Nathan’s question reminded Matt that he needed a safe place in Houston for his son to stay after school, while he spent time with Jennie at the hospital. He hadn’t left Nathan behind at his father’s ranch, because he had no intention of ever returning, but he’d left so abruptly, he hadn’t made any plans for Nathan’s care.
Fortunately, he came from a large family. His niece, Kate, had a home in Houston with her husband, billionaire businessman Wyatt Shaw. With any luck, Kate would be willing to keep an eye on Nathan until he could make more permanent arrangements.
It surprised Matt to realize that he hadn’t thought twice about leaving Kingdom Come only three weeks before he could claim it under his agreement with his father. He grinned, imagining King’s expression when he realized the black sheep of the family had bolted again. His grin disappeared as he focused on the reason he’d been so willing to throw away a veritable fortune.
There was something a thousand times more valuable waiting for him in Houston.
Matt had never stopped loving Jennie, but at the moment, she wanted nothing to do with him. He couldn’t blame her.
His teenage romance with Jennie Fairchild had seemed like a fairy-tale love story. When Jennie was fourteen, sixteen-year-old Matt had literally bumped into her in the Jackson Hole High School gym. Her long blond hair had been tied in a ponytail that trailed halfway down her back, and a fringe of bangs had covered her eyebrows, leaving him looking into a pair of soft gray eyes.
When he began checking out the rest of her, she took hold of his chin, forcing his gaze to meet hers. “There’s more to me than my figure,” she’d chided.
That simple touch was the moment he’d fallen in love with her. Deep and hard and forever.
They’d been each other’s first loves, which might have been what made their attraction so powerful and lasting. Even though they were careful, Jennie got pregnant. When her parents found out, they left Jackson and hid Jennie away from him. Matt nearly went crazy searching for her. When his father told him Jennie had died giving birth to their daughter, who’d also died, Matt had raged against the world. But there was nothing he could do.
Until his uncle—King’s nemesis, Angus Flynn—told him the truth: both Jennie and the baby were alive.
Matt found their daughter, Pippa, with foster parents in Texas, and with Angus’s help, secretly sought custody of her. Jennie was also alive, but he’d been forced to make a choice. Take the baby and run, or try to bring Jennie, who was only fifteen, along as well.
He’d chosen his daughter over the girl he’d supposedly loved more than life. At seventeen, he’d fled with Pippa to Australia, where neither Jennie’s parents, nor his father, could find him to take the child away again.
During the years that followed, the time had never seemed right to contact Jennie and tell her they had a daughter. They’d both married other people. Before he knew it, their daughter was grown, and Jennie had remained unaware that Pippa even existed. Until finally, last year, an unwed and pregnant Pippa needed her mother. At least, that was the excuse he’d used to finally reach out to Jennie.
She’d been amazed to discover she had a grown daughter and devastated to learn that Matt had never corrected the lie her parents had told her. It had been the most gut-wrenching conversation of Matt’s life. To make matters even worse, Jennie was a widow and had never had other children. Matt didn’t know whether something had happened to her during the delivery of their child because she was so young, to make further pregnancies impossible, or whether Jennie had simply chosen not to have other children. Whichever it was, she blamed Matt for stealing her chance to be a mother.
Once Jennie and Pippa were reunited, they often spent time visiting each other. On the other hand, Jennie treated Matt like something unclean. It seemed the timing had always been wrong for them to make a life together. In the beginning, their parents had conspired to keep them apart, then fate had lent a hand, and his fear and foolishness had finished the job.
Now cancer was threatening to rob them of any hope of a future together. Matt had realized he couldn’t bear to be apart from the woman he loved for one more moment. He was determined to get her back. He just had to convince her to forgive him first.
Matt felt the knot of emotion grow in his throat and swallowed over the pain. He was lucky to have found out Jennie was in the hospital. She’d told Pippa, of course, with orders not to breathe a word to him. Pippa had told her husband, Devon Flynn, who’d told his brother Brian, who’d told his wife, Taylor, who’d told her sister Leah, who’d told him. Matt couldn’t discount the fact that Leah had spoken to him about Jennie’s illness because she wanted him to break his agreement with his father by leaving the premises, so she would get the ranch instead of him. But he was grateful to have learned the truth in time to do something about it.
“Are we there yet?” Nathan asked.
“Not quite.” Matt glanced at his watch. There was no time to drop Nathan off anywhere if he wanted to make it to MD Anderson before Jennie went into surgery. His heart lurched when he thought of what she’d intended to face all on her own.
A double mastectomy.
Matt couldn’t imagine what Jennie must be feeling at the thought of having both breasts removed. And surgery was only the preliminary step. She was also facing a course of adjuvant chemotherapy, which just meant it followed within thirty days of the surgery. She’d forbidden Pippa to come to Houston, since their daughter was still nursing her twins. That left him.
He parked the SUV in the MD Anderson garage and headed inside, holding Nathan’s hand firmly in his own. One whiff of the hospital corridor, and his son stopped dead. He looked up at Matt with anxious eyes and said, “Why are we here, Daddy?”
“A friend of mine is sick.”
“I don’t like hospitals.”
Who could blame him? Nathan had spent far too much time in one for a kid his age. “It’s okay, Nate. We’re just visiting. You don’t have to come back after today.”
He watched the tension visibly leave Nathan’s narrow shoulders before he said, “Okay.”
Matt continued his journey to Jennie’s room, hoping and praying they hadn’t taken her somewhere else to prep her for surgery. His heart was beating fast, but he wasn’t sure whether it was the prospect of seeing Jennie again, or the result of scooping Nathan into his arms and taking the stairs two at a time. He was pretty sure seven-year-olds weren’t allowed on Jennie’s floor, but he hadn’t seen a nurse at the desk nearest the stairs, and since he’d done a search online and knew exactly where he was going, he hurried along, hoping he’d get away with what he was doing.
He paused outside Jennie’s door to take a deep breath and let it out.
“Are you okay, Daddy?”
He gave his son a reassuring smile. “I’m fine.” Scared to death that Jennie will send me away, but otherwise, just fine.
“Are we going in?” Nathan asked when he didn’t move.
His feet felt like they were rooted to the floor. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he should have dragged Nathan here. What if Jennie yelled at him to “Get out!”
Then he reminded himself that she’d spent her life as a politician’s wife before she became a politician herself. She would take one look at Nathan and be calm and cool and collected. Was that why he’d brought his son? Because he knew Jennie wouldn’t make a scene with a little boy standing there and th
row him out on his ass? He flushed with guilt. But it was too late to leave Nathan somewhere else. He had no choice except to bring him along for the ride.
He knocked, heard no response, and knocked louder.
“Come in.”
Did she sound weak? Scared? Upset?
He opened the door, his heart in his throat. It had been a gamble to come here, but one he’d had to take. He watched her face closely as she looked up from rearranging the sheet around herself and met his worried eyes.
She looked surprised. No. Stunned. Her gaze shot to Nathan and then back to him.
“This must be Nathan,” she said, smiling at his son.
“I’m Nate,” Nathan replied as Matt set him down.
“I’m Jennie,” she said, extending her hand.
Nathan reached out and took it, shook it, then stepped backward until he hit Matt’s legs. Matt put a hand on his son’s shoulder and aimed him toward a chair in the corner. “Why don’t you have a seat and get comfortable while I talk to Jennie?”
Nathan glanced up to remind his father that he would never be comfortable in a hospital but did as he was told.
Jennie shot another look at Nathan, then narrowed her gray eyes as she focused them on him. “What’s going on, Matt?” she said in the carefully controlled voice he’d expected her to use. “Why are you here?”
“I heard about your surgery. Not from Pippa,” he hurried to say. “I’m here to offer whatever support you might need.”
“You’re twenty years too late.”
His heart sank at the bitterness in her voice.
“Don’t send me away,” he heard himself pleading, then added almost belligerently, “I’m not letting you send me away. You don’t have to forgive me.”
“No need to worry about that.”
“Just let me help.”
“I don’t want or need anything from you.”
He felt her rejection like a stab to the heart. But even wounded and bleeding, he kept on fighting. “You wouldn’t let Pippa come, and you don’t have anyone else. There’s only me, Jennie.”
“And me,” Nathan piped up from the corner. He hopped out of his chair and crossed to Jennie’s bed.
Matt had thought they were speaking too softly, if intensely, for Nathan to overhear. Obviously, he’d been wrong.
“It’s no fun to be in the hospital,” Nathan said. “I know. It’s better if someone comes to visit and brings you books and games and stuff. Daddy and I can do that.”
Matt could see Jennie was torn. She could easily say no to the man who’d stolen her child and run away. She was having a much harder time saying it to a little boy with his father’s sapphire-blue eyes and a terrible limp.
“All right,” Jennie said, addressing herself to his son. “I accept your offer.”
Nathan grinned. “Good. ’Cause, you know, you never win when you argue with Daddy. We could have been here all day.” He turned to Matt and said, “Can we go now?”
Astonished, Matt met Jennie’s eyes, which were crinkled with laughter. Before he could say anything to mess things up, a nurse opened the door, spied him and Nathan, made a disapproving face, and said, “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“We were just leaving,” Matt told her, grabbing Nathan by the hand. Before they got out the door, he turned to Jennie and said, “See you after your surgery. I love you.”
He hurried out the door before she could reply. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that, but the truth was the truth. She might as well get used to hearing it, because he intended to keep saying it for the rest of her life…however long that turned out to be.
LEAH GRAYHAWK STEPPED off her horse on the edge of an evergreen forest, where she couldn’t be seen from the main ranch house at Kingdom Come, and waited for her husband, Aiden Flynn, to arrive. Leah smiled inwardly. Poor Aiden. Not only was he not living under the same roof as his wife—he lived and worked on his father’s ranch, the Lucky 7—but as far as anyone except her sister Taylor and his brother Brian knew, they were merely dating.
Part of the reason for the deception was practical. Aiden’s father hated her father. For nearly forty years Angus Flynn had done his best to make King Grayhawk’s life miserable. It was Aiden’s potential courtship and marriage to Leah that had convinced Angus to take his foot off King’s neck last summer, because it presented him an even sweeter revenge for his sister’s death than King’s financial ruin. Quite simply, Aiden had promised that he and Leah would name their first child, King Grayhawk’s grandchild, after its other grandfather, Angus Flynn.
Meanwhile, Leah and Aiden had agreed that the best way to end the feud between their families once and for all was to merge the two ranches into one, so the two angry old men could no longer use those assets as weapons against each other. To make that happen, Aiden had to get control of the Lucky 7, and Leah had to get control of Kingdom Come.
Until that happened, Leah was unwilling to move away from home, which meant she and Aiden had to live separately, so they could manage their respective ranches. Their living situation gave both of them a lot of incentive to make the merger happen.
Although Matt was gone, that was only the first hurdle Leah had to leap. There was the small (Ha! Ha!) matter of getting her father to deed the land to her, a daughter who wasn’t even related to him by blood.
“The news is all over town,” Aiden said as he stepped down from his horse. “Congratulations, Leah.”
Aiden was wearing a wide smile, a twinkle in his blue eyes, and worn Levi’s with a heavy wool sweater. When he opened his arms, Leah stepped into them. Even when she’d hated Aiden, after discovering he’d bet his brother Brian that he could get her to fall in love with him, she hadn’t stopped loving him. Since then, she’d forgiven him, but she still didn’t quite trust him. Every time she allowed herself to be held by him, every time she allowed him to show his love, the hurt faded a little more.
As Aiden pulled her close, she leaned into his strong body. She wanted him, and it was obvious, once he embraced her, that he felt the same desire. She tipped her head back and took his face between her cold hands.
“I wish I could take credit for Matt being gone. All I did was inform him that Jennifer Hart is in the hospital. He was gone within hours. I feel sorry for both of them.”
“It’s too bad about her cancer. But it’s past time he went after her. He’s loved Jennie nearly all his life.”
Matt had left home and lived with his uncle and cousins after a pregnant, fifteen-year-old Jennie was hidden away from him by her parents, with help, Matt believed, from King. Aiden had firsthand knowledge of how distraught Matt had been as he made a futile search for her.
Aiden covered Leah’s cold hands with his warm ones and leaned down to kiss her gently on the mouth. “It’s been a long wait, baby. But it’s almost over.”
Aiden knew how she felt about his calling her “baby.” Babies had to be taken care of, and she stood on her own two feet. Allowing the endearment, gracefully accepting it, was a sign of her willingness to let Aiden carry some of the burden she’d always shouldered herself, a surrender to his love, and evidence of her growing confidence that he would never hurt her again.
“How soon can you ask King to put you in charge of the ranch?” he asked.
“Once Matt left, I became foreman by default,” she said. “What I need is a piece of paper from King making it clear that all future decisions about the ranch are mine.”
“What are the chances of that?” Aiden asked.
“King can’t want the ranch too badly for himself,” Leah said wryly. “He was going to give it to Matt in three weeks.”
Aiden grinned. “There is that. The question is will he give it to you instead?”
Leah lowered her gaze and pressed her cheek against Aiden’s chest, where she could hear the steady beat of his
heart. When his arms tightened around her again she said, “All I can do is ask.”
“When are you going to do that, exactly?”
She knew he was eager for them to live as man and wife, but she wasn’t as certain they would be living happily ever after as he seemed to be. She put the focus back on him. “How are things going at the Lucky 7? When is Angus going to hand his ranch over to you?”
Aiden sighed. “I thought he would have done it by now. I’ve been persistent about asking. He counters with ‘When are you going to make that Grayhawk girl your wife?’ ”
Leah smirked. “What do you say to that?”
“I’m working on it.” He pressed his forehead against hers and said, “I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this, Leah. I want to wake up with you beside me in the morning. I want to start a family with you. I want—”
She kissed him to cut off his entreaties, which made her heart hurt. His response took her deep, and she gladly followed where he led.
Leah wanted the same things Aiden did, but she was willing to wait until they’d done what was necessary to end, once and for all, the feud between their families. Or at least, that made a convenient excuse other than her fear of being abandoned by him. Leah had deep scars from being left behind when her mother ran off with one of her father’s hired hands. If a mother could abandon her daughter, how certain was a husband’s love? Leah knew her fear was unreasonable. That didn’t mean she wasn’t terrified all the time.
Breathless, she broke the kiss and put her fingertips against Aiden’s lips to keep him from speaking. “I’ll ask King today.”
He kissed her fingertips, then twined his fingers with hers. “What if he says no?”
“Let’s see what answer he gives me before we borrow trouble.”
“I won’t wait forever, Leah.”
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