Thunder at Dawn

by Jill Gregory

  “You got a death wish, Faith?” Zach McCallum’s eyes were silver slits. “Never mind, cancel that. You haven’t changed, have you?”

  Zach McCallum, no longer the lanky nineteen-year-old who for one glorious secret summer had laid claim to her heart, shook his head with the darkly sexy amusement she remembered so well.

  For a moment time stood still. Faith might have been nineteen again too—and in love. Foolishly, stupidly in love with the bad boy from Texas who had raised hell that summer in Thunder Creek and had left boot marks all over her heart.

  She hadn’t seen him in ten years. Which was fifty years too soon.

  “What are you doing back here, Zach? Besides driving on the wrong side of the road? You still make up all the rules as you go along, don’t you?”

  “Hey, don’t blame him, Faith. You were speeding!” A female voice piped up from behind Zach, and Faith’s gaze flew to Candy Merck, as the blonde she’d known since high school stamped over from the pickup, her orchid-blue eyes as round and darkly lined as ever.

  Great. Candy’d always had her eye on Zach. Well, she could have him. Unless his wife objected, of course.

  Faith ignored Candy and focused on Zach. “You were driving recklessly. As usual.” Good, she sounded cold as ice now—the tone she used in court when the opposing attorney made a particularly weak point. She met his gaze steadily, forcing herself to return the stare of those hard indifferent eyes and not to focus on the sensuous slant of his mouth, or the broad slope of those powerful shoulders.

  He was in even better shape than he’d been as a teenager, she noticed with a sinking heart. There were attractive creases at the corners of those penetrating silver-gray eyes, and a hard cynical wisdom in his face, a face that was still dark and beautiful all at once.

  If anything he was even more impossibly handsome than before.

  “I wasn’t the only one being reckless,” Zach said in a low tone. “You must have been going sixty, minimum.”

  “At least I was on the right side of the road.”

  “No one got hurt, Faith. I guess that’s all that matters.”

  “Since when do you care who gets hurt?” The words flew out before she could stop them. All these years as a lawyer, in control, disciplined, weighing her words while shooting with both barrels, and yet that came out as if ten days had passed since Zach had broken her heart and not ten years.

  She flushed, the warm color surging through her cheeks. Get a grip, she ordered herself.

  “I hope you were speeding out of town, back wherever you came from.” The words were cool now, almost light. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  As if I ever could.

  For a moment he stared at her, his eyes shuttered.

  Faith willed her own gaze to appear equally unreadable, equally detached.

  Damn it, why couldn’t he have looked slovenly, fat, decrepit? She felt prim and stuffy and dull in her dark suit and tailored silk blouse. Especially since the last time she’d seen Zach McCallum she’d been wearing a scoop-necked purple T-shirt and tight jeans. Her hair had streamed well past her shoulders, halfway down her back, and she’d been wearing too much eyeshadow and Love’s Baby Soft perfume. That was before she’d graduated high school, or gone to Yale, or interned for Judge Cobb.

  And before she’d become the woman who could tell Zach McCallum to go to hell and mean it, she thought, her lips compressing.

  Zach was studying her in a most discomfiting way. There was something in his eyes, something deep and quiet that drove a stake through her heart.

  It better not be pity, she thought desperately.

  “I can’t believe you’re still pissed off at him after all these years,” Candy muttered. She tugged on Zach’s arm.

  “Sweetie, I have to get back. I have another meeting at my office at four. If you want me to redo those contracts for you—”

  “Right.” Zach tore his gaze from Faith’s pale, rigid face, forcing himself to focus on Candy. “Let’s go. We’re done here.”

  “Contracts?” Faith kept her voice level, though anger and dismay were flickering through her. “Don’t tell me you’re buying property through her—property in Thunder Creek?”

  “No.” He flicked her another glance. “I have enough property in Thunder Creek already. But another party is interested in leasing some of it from me.”

  “Since when do you have . . .” Her voice trailed off as she remembered. The Last Trail ranch. Zach had inherited all of it, the ranch, land, cattle, oil company—everything—from his aunt’s estate, one of the largest properties in Wyoming. Ty had mentioned it once, casually, but she’d blocked it out, never imagining that he’d do more than sell it off to the highest bidder. So now the rich Texas boy who’d prided himself on his Lone Star roots had a foothold in Thunder Creek real estate—big time.

  But it didn’t matter to her, she reminded herself. She was only staying four weeks. And Zach was probably winding up this lease deal and leaving town. Back to Texas. Yeeee-haw.

  She wouldn’t have to see him again. This meeting was just a fluke.

  “Anything else you want to know about my property or business, Faith?”

  “I know more than I care to already. Don’t let me keep you.”

  Candy Merck fixed her with an exasperated glance. “Honestly, Faith, you don’t have to be so rude.”

  Her glance swiveled to the curvy woman in high-heeled boots, jeans, and a yellow blazer. She and Candy had never been the best of friends, but they hadn’t been enemies either.

  “No offense intended, Candy. This just . . . threw me a little. It’s not every day someone nearly drives me off the road. But you and I are fine.” She tossed out a quick smile and climbed back into the Explorer.

  “I don’t suppose you need any help backing away from here?” Zach said, eyeing the nose of her car perched perilously close to the edge.

  “Damn straight.” Her mouth curled into a tight grimace and he got the message.

  Without another word, Zach and Candy headed back to the pickup. She deliberately waited until they had rolled past her and disappeared down the road before she put the SUV into reverse.

  Damn. Running into Zach McCallum after all these years is not a promising way to kick off a vacation.

  But he’ll surely be gone by tomorrow, she told herself. You’ll never have to see him again.

  Yet as she backed the SUV onto the narrow road, she realized her hands were trembling. Come on, grow up. You were all shaken up seeing Zach again when the truth is you were over him years ago. Damn it, you were engaged to Kevin. You would have gotten married . . .

  But you didn’t. You aren’t.

  That’s because I’m a loser at love, she thought grimly. Or I’m jinxed. First Bayman goes free, then Zach roars back into Thunder Creek.

  Look on the bright side. What else could possibly go wrong? The rest of this vacation will have to be a breeze.

  Her cell phone rang at that moment and she reached for it as she eased back onto the road. It could be her assistant, Liz Cooper, calling with a question, or the deputy DA, Ben Waverly, with an update on the Russell appeal.

  But she didn’t hear Liz’s or Ben’s voice on the phone.

  She heard only silence.

  Bayman again, she thought, her tension spiking. Susan had told her how he’d often called, not saying a word, just breathing hard. And then she’d wake up in the middle of the night, and he’d be standing over her bed, looking down at her with a baseball bat or a Swiss Army knife in his hand.

  “Who is this?” she demanded, her fingers clenched around the phone.

  Silence. And she could picture him then, with that macho smirk on his face, imagining she was afraid of him.

  But unlike Susan, she wasn’t.

  “Go to hell.” Faith disconnected, tossing the phone down on the passenger seat.

  Bastard. At least Susan was safe. Bayman had no way to find her. And Faith was determined to keep it that way.

  She f
ixed her gaze on the road, forcing herself to forget about Zach and Bayman and Kevin, her own personal fiancé from hell. And about everything else in her life.

  Faith thought about the upcoming winter here in Wyoming. She’d never been here in the autumn before, when the weather was changing, the wind carrying with it the tang of snow and the land taking on shades of taupe and rust and gold. She thought of how wonderful it would be to stay up in the cabin all winter long—alone, peaceful, snowed in and cozy with nothing but a fire, a few months’ worth of pizza and steak and frozen lasagna, and a half dozen novels and jigsaw puzzles to occupy her time.

  Life felt simpler here in Thunder Creek. A helluva lot simpler than the mess of failure she’d left behind.

  Chapter 2

  “SUPPER’LL BE READY DIRECTLY. IF I WAS YOU, I’d start rounding that boy up now,” Neely Day said darkly. “If you can, that is.”

  Standing in the glossy oak-floored hall of the Last Trail’s gracious ranch house, Zach glanced up from his perusal of the day’s mail.

  Having gotten his attention, Neely gave a sniff, her iron-colored brows drawing together. “He’s in the barn,” she muttered. “And it’s not good news.”

  Zach studied the plump, gloomy face of the woman who’d cooked and cleaned in his father’s ranch house south of Houston ever since he could remember. And he didn’t need to wonder if she’d ever complained so gloomily about him and his brother when they were growing up.

  Neely Day had been widowed at the age of thirty-two, and had spent the next thirty years working full-time for his father, spurning any attempts to coax her into having a life of her own. She’d turned her back on the world and devoted herself to the McCallum family, all of whom had learned to take her grumpiness and complaints in stride. Optimism was not in Neely Day’s character, but she was softhearted as a lamb underneath the bushy gray hair and stout figure, and she also happened to be the best ranch cook in the western United States.

  “What’d Dillon do now? It can’t be as bad as the tricks I played on you when I was his age.” Zach regarded her with his most soothing smile.

  But Neely was in no mood to be mollified. “Hmmph. Tricks I can handle,” she retorted, shaking her head so the Brillo pad of gray hair flew about her bulldog face. “This boy is different. He and his animals’ll be the death of me.”

  “Uh-oh. What now?”

  “The Olsons’ barn cat had kittens a few weeks ago. And now Dillon’s brought one home.”

  “Only one, Neely? That’s a first.”

  “Thank the good Lord. You going to let him keep it?”

  Zach grinned. “What do you think?”

  Neely shook a fist in the air, her mouth turning down in a scowl. “Lord help me. I think this place is turning into a regular zoo. One of these days that boy’s going to come home with a bobcat cub and that’s the day I walk out that door.”

  “Neely, you know we couldn’t get by without you.”

  “Hmmph. Sweet talk don’t work for me, mister. A body can only take so much, and all of these critters running around this fine house is going to be the death of me one day.”

  She shot him a dour glance and stomped back into the kitchen, where Zach could hear and smell the sizzle of fried chicken.

  Dillon’s favorite. There’d be mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and watermelon slices too, he knew. Neely’s menus were predictable, but there was no better food on the planet.

  Neely Day might be no Mary Poppins, but she’d been the only mother figure in Dillon’s life since Alicia had abandoned the boy, abandoned both of them. And Zach knew she’d no sooner quit than cut off her ears. The bond between his son and the housekeeper who’d helped raise him was as solid as this house his aunt Ardelle had left to him. And for all Neely’s peevishness and threats, she was a pushover, a sour-faced Pillsbury Doughboy of a woman with a heart as big and mushy as a cinnamon bun.

  Still, she had a point about Dillon. The boy never met a creature he didn’t like—and didn’t want to adopt.

  Tossing the mail down on the oak table in the hall, Zach took himself off to the barn.

  “Dad, look! Her name’s Zena and you have to let me keep her!” Dillon’s eyes were shining with excitement. At nine, he was small for his age—he took after Alicia in that department, at least for now. He was smaller-boned than Zach had ever been, and he had Alicia’s fine, sandy blond hair, as well as her elegant, perfectly balanced patrician features. But his eyes were Zach’s—quicksilver and changeable—like gray smoke sometimes and the misty silver of a winter sea at others.

  Every day Zach thanked God that Alicia’s high-strung moodiness hadn’t been passed down to their son. At least no signs of it had appeared yet. Dillon was a boisterous, energetic, talkative child, a boy who loved to take in strays, eat spaghetti with his fingers, and try to beat his dad at every video game he could get his hands on.

  The only thing he didn’t like was going to bed early. Dillon was a night owl, just like Zach, and sometimes midnight would find the two of them alone in the kitchen, drinking milk shakes and playing gin rummy.

  Zach knew that most of his business associates and employees would be astonished at the thought of him sipping milk shakes from a straw in the night with his little boy.

  They only knew the tough-minded businessman who made a dozen deals a day, didn’t accept tardiness or excuses, and rarely took more than ten minutes away from his desk for lunch.

  Zach kept his private life separate from his work—and aside from two hours in his study every night, working at the computer or on the phone, he kept his work time at the house to a minimum.

  “You really want this ugly critter?” Zach asked, crossing to the corner of the barn where Dillon crouched on the floor beside a crate. A tiny gray-and-white ball of fluff was cuddled up against his shoulder. “You’re going to take care of it?”

  “It’s not an it, Dad. It’s a she. A girl kitten. And you know I’ll take care of her, just like I take care of Batman and Jelly and Tigger.”

  From the bench where he was stitching up a saddle, Gabe Hawthorn, Zach’s sixty-year-old ranch foreman, guffawed. “Might as well just say yes to him now, boss. There’s no way you’re getting that cat away from the boy.”

  “He’s right, Dad. Just look at her. She’s the best cat ever!”

  Zach didn’t bother trying to suppress a smile.

  He met Gabe’s shrewd, amused gaze for a moment and the foreman shook his head with mock dismay. Gabe, who’d worked for Zach’s father for decades before jumping ship and going to work for Caleb McCallum’s youngest son, knew him too well.

  It wasn’t that Zach believed in spoiling his son, but he also didn’t believe in depriving him. Not of pets, or of time just to be himself—or of praise and patience and love.

  “That settles it then. She’s part of the family.” Zach reached out and tousled his son’s pale hair. He smiled as Dillon’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning. “You hungry?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Better wash up for supper. Neely’s expecting us pronto. Afterward we’ll move this little lady up to the house and fix up a bed for her in your room. There’s a clean crate in the storage shed, and I’m betting Neely will come up with a few spare towels she can sleep on.”

  “In my room? Awesome!” Dillon slapped him a high five before setting the kitten back in the crate. “You’re the best, Dad.”

  When Zach and Gabe were alone in the barn, the foreman set down the saddle and peered over at the younger man. Zach had stooped down, reached into the crate, and was absently stroking the kitten. With Dillon gone, his face had settled into grim lines bordering on a frown. Gabe had known him for too many years not to recognize that expression.

  “Something bothering you, boss? You look like you’ve got more on your mind than this here cat.”

  “Hell, no.” Zach set the kitten back in the crate and stood up, his thumbs hooked in his belt. “You’re imagining things, Gabe.”

  “Ah
uh. If you say so.” The foreman shot him a skeptical glance and Zach met his gaze in annoyance.

  “Everything is coming along on schedule,” he said shortly. “The lease deal for the land bordering the creek is almost wrapped up. Candy’s redoing the contracts to add another two hundred acres. That way, the Skye Blue group can build a swimming pool for the kids.”

  “Well, that’s good, right?”

  “Yes, it’s good. Though some folks won’t like it—especially those who don’t want too many new developments in Thunder Creek.” Zach snorted. “Unless they’re headed by Wood Morgan.”

  “Everyone’s sure happy about the corporate branch office you’re building,” Gabe pointed out. “Lots of jobs there. Money flowing into town.”

  “Yep, everybody likes money. They’ll welcome TexCorp, but this other land deal . . . well, we’ll have to see. Might not be too popular.”

  “So why’d you do it?” Gabe knew the answer. He also knew that Zach needed to remember it.

  “I’m not interested in winning popularity contests. Never have been.”

  Boy, he could say that again. But that wasn’t the answer Gabe was looking for. He raised his brows. “Now you sound like your old man.”

  Zach shot him a frown, but Gabe met his stare and held it. There weren’t many men who could sustain eye contact with Zach McCallum when that ice-cold gaze, reminiscent of an Old West gunfighter’s stare, was fixed relentlessly on them.

  But Gabe was an old-time Texan who’d known the McCallums since he’d been not much older than Dillon, and he was one of the few who’d never backed down before any of them.

  “If I do, so be it,” Zach said in irritation. “I come by it naturally.”

  “You’re not like Caleb though. Not in most of the ways that count.”

  “You looking for a raise, Gabe? All this flattery.”

  The foreman chuckled. “You know damn well you’re leasing that land because you think it’s a good thing to do. A good cause. You just don’t want to give yourself any credit.”