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Jackson trotted up the patio steps and into the house, tempted to call his mother and ask for advice. But it wasn’t fair to load his problems onto her. His parents had raised their own family and two of his cousins, as well. They’d done their duty.
He glanced at Flora, the woman he’d hired to keep house. “Any pearls of wisdom to share?” he asked.
Flora shrugged. “Afraid not.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, snapping string beans. She worked hard and was a great cook but hadn’t connected with Morgan as much as he’d hoped. Not that it was a housekeeper’s job to provide motherly guidance.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were spending the night in town.”
“My sister canceled on me. She got a hot date at the last minute.”
The brevity of the comment made him wonder if Stella was going out again with his great-uncle, who was definitely enjoying his retirement. The image of Stella Charlton on a hot date with Uncle Mitch was almost too much for Jackson’s stressed-out brain. Stella was a gum-snapping, determined strawberry blonde, whose ample curves were often poured into the kind of tight clothes normally seen on a twenty-year-old.
He drew a deep breath, trying to dispel the mental picture of Uncle Mitch and Stella together.
“Er...Morgan wants to go camping at Flathead Lake with friends from school, a totally teen party of girls and guys.”
“She should know better than to ask.”
Yeah, she should. But lately it seemed as if his daughter was determined to cross every line, test every boundary and break every rule she could find. And she was so blasted angry while she did it. Who’d have guessed that she used to be a sweet kid who loved to spend time with her daddy while he worked on the ranch?
Jackson rubbed the tense muscles on the back of his neck. What was he doing wrong? And now Morgan was throwing out comments about his teenage exploits...?
Hell. He’d tried to live down those years, but it was inevitable that she’d heard some of the stories. No doubt Morgan considered him a complete hypocrite and was angry that he was making her toe the line. But hypocrite or not, he didn’t intend to let his daughter head down the same road that he’d traveled. Not if he could prevent it.
Hmm. What if he tried to make her wear those dresses he’d bought her? Would traditional feminine clothes encourage her to behave more appropriately? But dresses weren’t practical on a ranch, and Morgan would just accuse him once again of having double standards.
“I’ll be out for a while,” he said.
“Going to ride fences?” Flora guessed.
“Yeah.”
As a rule, Jackson rode fences whenever he needed to think or to regain his cool. And with Morgan constantly acting out, he’d spent a lot of time in the saddle checking fence lines.
The next few hours allowed him to relax and clear his mind, only to get uptight again when Morgan refused to come out of her room for dinner.
After eating alone, he went into the ranch office, built on the side of the house so it wouldn’t intrude on the backyard or pool area. Paperwork wasn’t his favorite activity, but he dived into his breeding records with grim determination, only to have the office phone ring soon after he started.
Jackson reached to pick it up, then saw the caller ID on the display... K. Anderson.
He dropped his hand back to the desk.
Seeing Kayla that afternoon had brought a rush of mixed feelings. Pleasure at first—once he’d been fascinated by the outsider who was so different from the other girls in Schuyler. But the memory of their last discussion in high school had intruded on the pleasure. No guy enjoyed being treated as a chump, and Kayla’s claim that he’d gotten her pregnant had been ridiculous; he’d used protection and half his classmates had boasted about sleeping with her.
After a minute Jackson dialed in and listened to Kayla’s voice mail message.
“Jackson, this is Kayla Anderson. It’s urgent we speak as soon as possible. I’m staying with my grandparents, but please call my cell phone.” She gave the number and got off quickly.
He sat back and frowned.
What could Kayla want? Surely not the same old thing. She couldn’t hope to raise the issue again after so long. Or maybe she could. What was it about women and the way they thought?
Twenty minutes later a knock on the door provided a welcome distraction. Jackson got up to answer and found his younger brother there. Behind Josh the July sun glowed low on the horizon. It was a time of day Jackson especially loved on the ranch, but lately he’d been too distracted by dealing with Morgan to appreciate it.
“Hey, Josh. You want a beer?” Jackson went to his small office refrigerator and extracted a couple of bottles.
“Thanks.” Josh popped the lid and settled onto a chair with a groan.
“Something wrong?”
“Same as always. I came up from Texas since Grandpa was making noises as if he was finally ready to give up the ranch. Then I get here and it’s business as usual, so I’m heading back in a couple of weeks. I’d leave earlier, but you know Mom. I thought she’d have kittens when I said I wasn’t staying.”
Jackson nodded sympathetically. The family plan had been for him to get Great-Uncle Mitch’s ranch, and Josh their maternal grandfather’s place. The second part of the plan kept getting delayed.
“Never mind,” Josh said. “I just need to unwind.”
“Yeah.” Jackson thought for a moment, then opened his mouth. “You want to know something weird?” he asked. “I saw Kayla Garrison in town today, except she’s Kayla Anderson now. Remember her?”
“Who could forget Kayla? I saw her, too, on my way to the post office. She’s even hotter than in high school. Say, are you still interested in her?”
Jackson almost let out an emphatic no before recalling that Josh didn’t know the history between him and his old girlfriend.
“Can’t say that I am,” he said slowly.
“Then, would it bother you if I asked her out? That is, if I run into her.”
Jackson gulped a mouthful of beer rather than reply too quickly. He didn’t know what kind of woman Kayla had become, any more than he knew what she wanted to talk about with him. She might have even called to apologize for claiming he’d gotten her pregnant—unlikely, but not impossible.
He finally shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. Just employ the usual caution when it comes to women.”
“Amen to that, brother.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_781c6cce-acb8-58e7-aee3-ae680c3f93a1)
ALEX SQUIRMED AS he listened to the faint murmur of his mother and her grandparents talking downstairs after dinner.
The discussion he’d dreaded all day was coming. Okay, so he’d been dreading it since the moment he’d decided to ditch Dad and head for Montana.
He just hadn’t been able to stand the way Dad got so excited about spending time with Brant, his new stepson, but didn’t seem to notice when his other two kids were around. Dad used to claim he didn’t care about sports, but now he was doing all that outdoor stuff with Brant and wasn’t interested in the things he and Alex had once done together. And it sounded as though the two of them had really gotten buddy-buddy on that camping trip they’d taken right after school got out.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Brant wasn’t such an obnoxious little creep.
Nah, Alex decided. Finding out his dad had adopted him when he was little would have been rough no matter what, though Brant being an obnoxious creep hadn’t helped.
Worst of all, Alex realized he should have figured it out a long time ago. He and Dad weren’t at all alike. Maybe, deep down, he had known and hadn’t wanted to admit it.
His sister slid into the room. “I gotta say,” DeeDee said, “I never thought you’d have the gazoomba to run away from home.”
Alex pulled himself up and faced the squirt. Why did she have to make up such strange words? You’d never know she was practically a genius. Maybe. Personally, he thought she’d just fooled the teachers and school counselor.
“I didn’t run away from home,” he informed her haughtily. “Guys who run away from home don’t leave letters to tell their mothers what they’re doing. Besides, I also emailed Sandy about it.” Sandy had been his best friend for as long as he could remember.
“That’s a technicality. Boy, was Mom pissed.”
“You’re too young to talk like that. Besides, Mom doesn’t get pissed, or at least I don’t think so.”
“Shows how much you know. She was pissed at Dad, too, at first because he thought you’d gone off for the day without telling anyone and hadn’t done anything about it, and then because he didn’t call her right off.”
“So she wasn’t mad at me?”
“Of course she was. Mom gets mad when she’s scared.”
“Really?”
DeeDee snickered. “You can build a computer, but you’re too much of an idiot to figure Mom out.”
“I wasn’t too much of an idiot to get here on my own, was I?” he countered.
“Probably just dumb luck.”
There was a knock on the door and Alex called, “Come in.”
It was Mom, and he couldn’t tell if she was angry or not. “DeeDee,” she said, “please go watch the baseball game with your grandpa.”
His sister grinned. “I’d rather stay and watch Alex get shredded.”
“Out.”
“Jeez, I never get to have any fun.”
“DeeDee,” Mom warned.
“Okay, okay.” His sister winked at him as she slid through the door.
“Close it,” Mom ordered.
“But closing it means I’ll have to work even harder to hear what you’re saying.”
“I don’t think so, young lady.” It was Grandpa, who’d come down the hallway and put his arm around DeeDee’s shoulders. “We’re going down to the family room to see how the Cubs are doing.”
“Okay.” DeeDee stuck her head back into the room again. “By the way, Alex, I am glad you didn’t get splattered on the road or kidnapped and taken by pirates to Shanghai or something. Surprised, but glad.”
“Get out of here, squirt.”
DeeDee simply grinned, and Alex was almost sorry when she was gone since their mother’s attention would have been split between them.
“Okay, I’m really sorry,” he rushed to say. “I guess it was a stupid thing to do, but I—”
“You guess it was stupid?” Mom interrupted, sounding incredulous. “I thought we’d brought you up with more sense than to do something so dangerous.” Her face was so tired and pale that Alex felt awful.
“You did, but...uh, Dad spends all his time with Brant and doesn’t notice us anymore, even when we’re there.” He’d meant to ask her about Dad adopting him, but the words got stuck in his throat.
Her lips pressed together, then relaxed. “What was the real reason? You’ve seen your dad in other relationships, and how he gets...er...swept up in them.” It was true—his father was an ass a lot of the time. Even when he was just dating some woman with a kid, he did the daddy thing with them and seemed to forget him and DeeDee.
Alex stuck his chin up. “Isn’t that good enough?”
Mom sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed the back of her neck. “Nothing’s good enough to justify a fifteen-year-old running off on his own. And why Schuyler? You could have come home if it bothered you that much.”
She was always so logical, it was hard to argue with her.
“I didn’t run away. I just took a...an unauthorized vacation.”
“You’re fifteen. An unauthorized vacation for a fifteen-year-old is running away.”
“Grandpa says he’s always admired the logical way you argue,” he said, hoping to avoid more questions. “He says you’d make a Vulcan proud. Imagine an old guy like that knowing about Star Trek.”
“Don’t try to slide around this, Alex. You scared me half to death. I almost...” Her voice choked up and he could swear she was ready to cry.
Crud. If he’d felt rotten before, now he was neck deep in pond scum. But it was mostly her fault, because she hadn’t told him the truth.
She straightened. “Alex, I want to know right now. Why did you run away?”
“I... Okay. That is, I thought...”
Now he wasn’t completely sure why he’d done it. He’d just been so angry the way Dad acted around Brant and how they’d kept the adoption a secret. Heck, he knew they’d gotten married three years after he was born, but that wasn’t unusual. Half his friends could tell the same story.
“I wanted to get back at Dad somehow, and you, too, I guess,” he blurted out.
“Why me?”
“Because you never told me that Dad isn’t my real father,” he said in a rush.
His mom’s face turned pale. “That was wrong,” she admitted slowly. “Your father wanted it that way, so I agreed. Later I knew it was a mistake, but Dad still thought it was best to wait. And it doesn’t change anything to say he isn’t your birth dad. He’s your real father. Adopting you was his idea. He really wanted to do it.”
She stopped talking and waited, but Alex didn’t know what to say.
“How did you find out?” she finally asked.
“From Brant. Dad told him when they went on that stupid ‘bonding’ camping trip.”
“Bonding?” Mom’s mouth tightened.
“That’s what Dad called it when he said I couldn’t go. I guess he was trying to be buddy-buddy with the obnoxious little creep. Brant couldn’t wait to spill everything.”
“Oh. Well, now that you know, you must have some questions.”
Mostly Alex had thought about how to run away without getting killed. Face it, he was a wimp. When he’d run away, he’d gone to his great-grandparents’ house; how lame could you get?
“Do you want to know anything about your biological father?” his mom prompted. “You have to hear about him now anyway. He lives in Schuyler.”
