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Glancing out the window as twilight caressed the land, Kyle said, “Sam’s got a kid.”
“Yep.”
“Said the father was out of the picture. I didn’t know she’d been married.”
“Wasn’t.”
“So where is the guy?”
“Beats me. I never asked. Wasn’t any of my business,” Grant said. Unspoken but implied was the message and it’s none of yours, either.
Kyle heard the quiet reprimand in Grant’s tone but ignored it. “No one knows?”
“Well, I suppose Sam knows, and Bess, her mother. Some of the gossips in town try to point the finger at Tadd Richter. You remember him?”
“Yeah. Never met him, but heard he was a local hood.”
“He ran with a fast crowd, rode a big motorcycle, drank and was always in trouble with the law. His folks split up and he ended up in jail, or a juvenile home somewhere near Casper, I think. Anyway, Sam had hung out with him right before he left town and then…well, she turned up pregnant. Not that it’s any of your concern. She’s kept quiet about it all these years and I figure she’s got her reasons…. Anyway, I just called to welcome you to Wyoming.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not a bad place, you know.”
“Never said it was.”
“But you weren’t too happy to have to move here.”
Kyle stared through the panes to the stand of aspen guarding the banks of Stiller Creek. “I don’t like being told what to do. Not even by Kate.”
“It won’t be so bad. You might find you like it out here, discover what it is you’re running from or looking for. You never know.”
“Nope, you never do.” Kyle felt his temper flare a little. Never one to mince words, Grant had let it be known that he hadn’t approved of Kyle’s rootless lifestyle in Minneapolis.
“Maybe you need to slow down a mite.”
“Maybe,” Kyle drawled, though his jaw tightened. He didn’t need a lecture. He knew that he’d thrown away a few years of his life, dabbling at this business and that, making a little money, sometimes losing a lot. Marrying the wrong woman. Working for the family and getting fired was the latest disaster. He didn’t want to be reminded of that failure, nor could he explain the restlessness that had chased after him since boyhood, the feeling that he couldn’t stay in one place too long. And, he suspected, six months in Clear Springs with Samantha living next door was going to be far too long.
“I’ll be by in a couple of days and see that you’re not mistreating Joker.”
“Yeah, more likely that stallion will be the end of me.”
“Or Sam will.”
Amen.
“She’s a bossy one. Likes to run things her way.”
“I figured that much out already.”
“Just remember, she might bug the hell out of you, but she knows a lot more about ranchin’ than you do.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You do that. See ya tomorrow.”
Kyle hung up, scowled at the ledgers on the desk and slammed the book closed. Sam. He hadn’t thought about her in years, wouldn’t let himself, but ever since he’d set foot in Wyoming, he couldn’t get away from her.
“Damn it all to hell.” Rotating his neck, he winced as a vertebra near the top of his spine popped. Tadd Richter—what had Sam seen in that lowlife? And why did Kyle care? It was old news.
His coffee, bad instant stuff when it was hot, was now cold and looked as if it might gel. Kyle ignored the cup. The old chair groaned as he stood and walked to a cupboard where, once upon a time, Ben had kept his liquor. Empty. “Strike two.” No computer and no liquor, not in this den with its yellowed, knotty pine walls, faded prints of rodeo riders and braided rug tossed over an ancient plank floor. It was as if life out here in godforsaken Wyoming hadn’t changed in the past fifty years. “Thanks a lot, Kate,” he grumbled, though the ranch in summer had always held a special spot in his heart—a spot he’d rather not remember.
Jet lag hadn’t settled in and probably wouldn’t. The plane ride from Minneapolis to Jackson hadn’t been all that bad, nor had the trip out to the ranch in his hastily purchased, used pickup. No, it wasn’t the travel that bothered him so much as the feeling that he was being manipulated. Again. By his grandmother. From her damned grave.
Snapping off the desk lamp, he walked in his stocking feet through the long hall that ran the length of this rambling, two-story house, the place where he’d spent many of his summer vacations. Sometimes the family had taken trips to faraway and exotic places—Mexico, Jamaica, Hawaii or India. But the summers he remembered best, the ones he cherished, weren’t when he was ensconced in some opulent hotel boasting five-star restaurants, mineral springs and connecting pools. No, the best summers of his life he’d spent here, learning how to rope calves, saddle horses, brand the stock, skinny-dip in Stiller Creek and sleep under the blanket of stars in the vast Wyoming sky.
Kyle walked up the steep, uncarpeted stairs to the second floor, where a warren of attic rooms was housed. At the end of the hall was the bunk room in which he and his cousins had slept. He felt the worn wood of the door and touched the gouge where Michael had broken the lock when Kyle and Adam had locked him out. Kyle had been about twelve at the time. Michael, a year older and full of piss and vinegar, wasn’t about to let a little latch keep him from breaking open the door and seeking some kind of vengeance for his brother catching him off guard and nailing him with a stream of ice-cold water from the garden hose.
Smiling, Kyle remembered Michael, dripping from head to toe as he’d crashed through the door and sprawled into the room, clunking his head on the end of one of the bunks and nearly knocking himself out.
It seemed like a lifetime ago. Before he’d started shaving, before he’d really noticed girls. Before Sam.
Snapping on the light, he walked into the room and eyed the bunks, three sets now without sheets, mattress ticking faded, tucked under the eaves and in the dormers. Nowhere in sight was the carton of cigarettes they’d swiped from their grandfather, the Playboy magazines that one of the ranch hands had “loaned” the boys or the bottles of booze they’d hidden deep in their dresser drawers when a local cowboy had, for a stiff fee, bought them whatever kind of rotgut whiskey they could afford.
Running his hand over one of the bed frames, he stopped at the window they’d used for escape. The ledge was located close to an ancient apple tree with wide branches, and the boys had rigged an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lower themselves to the ground or climb back up. They’d thought they were so smart, but, Kyle suspected, their grandmother probably knew everything that was going on. She was just too clever to have missed all of their shenanigans.
“Son of a bitch,” he growled, his fist curling in grief. To think that she was gone—really gone—caused a raw emptiness deep in his soul. What had she been doing, flying alone in the damned plane, looking for some rare plant in the Amazon rain forest? She’d never made it. Her plane had exploded over Brazil somewhere, falling to earth in a horrifying ball of flames. Her charred body had been shipped back to the States, where her stunned children and grandchildren had fought their disbelief and dealt with the fact that the most influential force in their lives was suddenly gone.
Opening the window, Kyle let in a late-evening breeze and stared across the rolling acres—his acres now, he reminded himself. Well, they would be in six months, if he could hack it here that long. It wasn’t as if he was unhappy to leave Minneapolis; his life there had stagnated and he’d never really found himself, never settled down, never held a job long enough to count. No, he’d been restless by nature, and maybe that’s why of all her grandchildren, Kyle had been picked by Kate to inherit this ranch. It was probably the old lady’s way of forcing him to put down roots.
Hell, he remembered the funeral and the closed casket covered with floral sprays, the church packed with mourners, the family members draped in black and fighting tears. Then later, stunned, barely able to speak, they’d sat around a huge table in Kate’s attorney’s office and listened while Sterling Foster, seated at the head of the table, his hands folded on Kate’s last will and testament, had eyed them all. “Kate Fortune was a remarkable woman, mother of five children—though only four were raised by her,” he began, his gaze moving slowly around the table. “Grandmother of what—twelve? And a great-grandmother as well.” He smiled sadly. “Though widowed for ten years, she was still the driving force behind Fortune Cosmetics. She survived the death of a husband, Ben, as well as the loss of her child…well, you know all this. First, she instructed me to give everyone the charms she’d collected at the times of your birth. I’ve taken them from the sculpture in the boardroom that displayed them all.” He passed a silver tray with white envelopes around the table, and when the platter reached him, Kyle found his name typed neatly on one of the packets. Oh, Kate, he thought sadly as he tore open the envelope and withdrew a silver trinket.
Sterling cleared his throat and lifted the neatly typed papers before him. “I, Katherine Winfield Fortune, being of sound mind and body…”
Everyone’s attention was on the lawyer, and Kyle felt his muscles tense. This was all so wrong. It was as if the world had suddenly stopped and shifted beneath his feet.
His sister Jane sat next to him, her fingers tightening over the sleeve of his coat, the antique lace of her cuff smudged with mascara where she’d wiped her eyes. She’d tried to be brave, but her lower lip continued to tremble and she’d clung to him for support. A single mother, she was supposed to be able to stand on her own, to face the challenges life threw at her. But none of them—sons, daughters, grandchildren—could believe that they’d lost someone so dear and integral, the foundation of their lives.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, a strand of cinnamon-colored hair falling out of its barrette.
He placed his hand over Jane’s and met Michael’s somber gaze. Michael’s eyes reflected his own misery. Michael. Always responsible. Where Michael had always done the right thing, Kyle had been the screwup. Michael shouldered responsibility; Kyle ran from it.
Jane seemed to gain some starch in her spine. Blinking and straightening her shoulders, she reached for the water pitcher on the table and poured herself a glass. At a signal from Allison, she poured a second glass. Allie the beauty, a model and spokesperson for Fortune Cosmetics, the rich girl with the thousand-watt smile. Now her pretty face was drawn and pale as she sat wedged between her brother and twin sister, Rocky. Even Rocky’s normally animated expression was lifeless in her grief.
Rocky seemed to gain a little strength from her only brother, Adam, who, as Sterling droned on, absently patted her shoulder. Adam was the oldest child and only son of Jake and Erica Fortune. Surrounded by sisters, Adam was someone Kyle used to look up to, a kindred spirit—a rebellious son. Adam had turned his back on the family fortune, knocking about the country for a few years before he joined the military, only to give it up when his wife died. Now Adam was a single father with three children and trying to cope.
Kyle didn’t envy him. Hell, he didn’t envy anyone here today. Tugging at his collar, he tried to concentrate.
Sterling, catching his eye for a brief instant, flipped the page and kept reading in his soft-spoken drawl. Kyle liked the guy. He seemed to shoot from the hip and rarely minced words. Reading glasses were propped on the tip of his nose, and his white hair, impeccably combed, gleamed silver in the gentle light thrown by brass fixtures.
“And to my grandson Grant McClure, I bequeath Fortune’s Flame, a registered Appaloosa stallion….”
Kyle watched for a reaction from his stepbrother, but Grant continued to stare out the window, never once flinching at the sound of his name. Grant seemed as out of place here in his jeans, Western-cut jacket and Stetson as a dusty pickup in a parking lot filled with BMWs, Cadillacs and Porsches. Kyle silently wagered with himself that his cowboy stepbrother couldn’t wait to climb on a plane, shed the lights of the city and fly back to the harsh life he loved in the middle of nowhere—Clear Springs, Wyoming.
Next to Grant, Kristina, the only child of Nate and Barbara, Kyle’s father and stepmother, fidgeted in her chair and bit her lower lip nervously while trying to appear interested. Spoiled beyond belief, she tossed a strand of blond hair over her shoulder and looked like she wanted nothing more than to flee from the stuffy attorney’s office. She caught Kyle’s eye, sent him a silent message, then glanced away.
He didn’t blame her. They’d suffered through the funeral, graveside service and a catered buffet afterward for the closest friends and family of Kate. Hundreds of sympathy cards, a veritable garden of flowers and sprays and tens of thousands of dollars in checks to Kate’s favorite charities had been arriving in a steady stream. Then there was the press and the speculation about her death, how she’d flown the company jet alone over the jungles of South America, somehow lost control and perished a horrible, mind-numbing death….
Kyle ground his teeth together.
“…And to my grandson Kyle, I leave the ranch in Clear Springs, Wyoming, with all livestock and equipment, aside from the stallion, Fortune’s Flame….” Kyle had barely been listening until the stipulation was read: “…Kyle must reside on the ranch for no less than six months before the deed and all other necessary paperwork is transferred into his name….”
It was just like his grandmother to bequeath him the ranch—the one oasis of his childhood—with strings attached. He heard his brother Michael’s swift intake of breath, probably because of the value of the ranch and the fact that Kyle had never made anything of himself—not really.
Later, Michael had spoken to him alone, given him some speech about responsibility, taking control of his life, making the most of the opportunity Kate had given him.
Kyle hadn’t listened much. He didn’t need lectures. He knew he’d fouled up and he didn’t figure it was any of Mike’s damned business what he did with his future. It was his to gild or ruin.
But his brother was right about one thing. Now Kyle had a chance to prove himself by living here on the ranch, making the necessary repairs and eventually selling it all for a tidy profit, though that probably wasn’t what the old lady wanted.
“What did you expect?” he said to the empty room, as if his grandmother could hear him. “Did you really think you could control me from the grave? Did you? Well, you’re wrong. I’m gonna sell this place like that….” He snapped his fingers and reached for the latch of the window, but as he closed the pane, he glanced out at the starry night, past the old orchard to the neighboring ranch, where a lamp glowed brightly in one of the windows.
Sam.
An unexpected jolt of emotion caused his heart to kick. For a fleeting instant he wondered if his grandmother had planned to place him in such close proximity with the one woman who could make him want to strangle her one instant and make love to her the next. But that was impossible. No one, but no one, had known about his affair with Sam—well, only Sam and himself—and that was the way it would always stay.
He stared at the warm patch of lamplight, a welcoming beacon, it seemed, and gritted his teeth as he realized he’d like nothing better than to walk across those moonlit fields, pound on her door and take her into his arms. He’d kiss her as he used to, with the same passion that had steamed through his blood and brought his manhood springing to attention years ago.
But crossing the fence line to the Rawlings place was the last thing on earth he planned to do.
Turning on his heel, he nearly slammed his head on a low-hanging crossbeam before he stalked out of the room. He felt cornered and manipulated and frustrated as he thought about Sam. As if his grandmother was listening from her spot on the other side of the pearly gates, he grumbled, “Okay, Kate. You’ve won. So I’m here. Just tell me one thing. What the hell am I supposed to do about Sam?”
Three
“Great, just great.” Sam kicked off her boots on the back porch, where a moth was beating itself senseless against the exterior light. She stole a glance past the barbed-wire fence to the few visible acres of the Fortune spread and wondered again what Kyle was up to.
All afternoon and evening she’d been fighting a blinding headache that had developed when she’d first set eyes on Kyle Fortune after ten long years. Throughout her chores she’d thought about him, wishing she’d never have to deal with him again, while knowing deep in her foolish heart that she had no choice.
Why had Kate—a woman Sam had admired for her courage and clear vision—seen fit to leave the place to him, when she had more than a dozen descendants to choose from? Kyle was the least fit to run the ranch, the most unlikely candidate for adopting Wyoming as his home. Why not Grant, who had never left Clear Springs? Or how about Rachel, who many people in town thought was so like her grandmother? Rocky, Kyle’s cousin, was adventurous, a pilot, for crying out loud, and she’d always loved Clear Springs. But no, Kate had chosen Kyle and then strapped him to the place for six long months—right next door to Sam.
Padding to the kitchen sink, she muttered under her breath, cranked on the faucets, then splashed cold water on her face, letting it drip onto her blouse. “Criminy,” she said under her breath before taking a long swallow from the faucet. If she had any brains or courage, she’d call Kyle, tell him she needed to talk to him, and then, once she was face-to-gorgeous-face with him again, admit that they had a daughter, a beautiful tomboy of a girl.
“Oh, right. And then what?” she wondered aloud as she wiped her sleeve over her mouth. Kyle would either turn tail and run—if history served to repeat itself—or he’d demand proof of paternity and then, once the results of the blood tests were announced, probably expect no less than partial custody. “Damn it all to—” She stopped short when she caught a glimpse of Caitlyn’s reflection in the window over the sink. “What’re you doing up?”
“What’re you doing cursing?”
Sam sighed and straightened the sleeves she’d pushed up over her elbows. With the special smile she reserved for her daughter, she lifted a shoulder. “Okay, you caught me,” she admitted. “I’m upset, I guess.”
“Because of your friend?” Caitlyn was eyeing her oddly. Her nine-year-old face was puckered in concentration, her Fortune blue eyes silently accusing.
“Yeah, because of him.”
“You tell me not to let other people bother me.”
“Good advice. I guess I’ll take it. Now, why don’t you explain why you’re up so late? I thought you went to bed an hour ago.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Caitlyn said with a shrug, but the lines of concern didn’t smooth from her forehead.
“Why not?”
“It’s hot.”
“And…?” Sam prodded, walking up to her daughter and, with gentle hands, turning her toward the stairs leading to her bedroom.
“And…” Caitlyn worried her lip.
“What is it?”
“It’s Jenny Peterkin,” Caitlyn finally admitted with a scowl.
“What about Jenny?” Samantha didn’t like the topic of the conversation. Jenny was a spoiled ten-year-old who had been the bane of Caitlyn’s existence since second grade.
“I think she called me.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. While you were in the barn, the phone rang and someone asked for me and said they were Tommy Wilkins, but it didn’t sound like him and I heard laughing.” She swallowed and looked at the floor.
“What did Tommy or Jenny or whoever it was say to you?”
“That I’m—I’m a bastard.”
Oh, Lord, give me strength. “You know better than that, Caitie girl. As for the people on the other end of the phone line, they’re just a pack of cruel ninnies,” Sam said, aching inside for her daughter. “They don’t know a thing about you.” She bent down and wrapped her arms around Caitlyn’s shoulders. This wasn’t the first time her daughter’s lack of a father had been brought to her attention and it probably wasn’t going to be the last, but each time it hurt a little more.
“Is it true?”
“What?”
“I looked up the word in the dictionary and—and I am one. I don’t got no daddy.”
“It’s true I wasn’t married to your father, but you’ve got one, honey. Everyone has a daddy.”
“Where’s mine? Who is he?” Caitlyn’s lower lip trembled slightly and fat tears filled the corners of her eyes.
“He’s a man who lives far away. I told you that.” Why now? With Kyle so darned close, why did those little snots have to bring up Caitlyn’s lack of a father now?
“You said I could meet him someday.”
“And you will.”
