The Prodigal Groom

The little girl nodded distractedly, still staring at Jake.

Laurie took Wendy’s hand and entered the house. Maurice followed, and neither of them made a point of inviting Jake in. He went in, anyway. This wasn’t exactly the joyful reunion he’d expected.

“Laurie,” Maurice said, “you want I should take Wendy into town for a hamburger? Then you and Jake can talk.”

“Oh, that’d be terrific,” she answered, silently thanking heaven that Maurice was so perceptive. She grabbed her purse, which was hanging on a hook by the door, and pulled out her wallet. “Drat, I haven’t got more than a couple of dollars in here.”

“I’ll get it,” Jake said, quickly pulling a twenty from his own wallet. Maurice took it with a nod.

“Thank you,” Laurie said grudgingly. “Wendy, Maurice will take you to Dairy Queen, okay?”

The child nodded, but she was still studying Jake. Abruptly she ran toward him and grabbed on to his leg. “Daddy!” she shrieked.

Obviously horrified, Laurie pulled her daughter away. “No, Wendy,” she said sharply. “Remember what we talked about? Your daddy’s in heaven.”

Wendy folded her arms and firmed her mouth up in a mutinous expression, clearly not buying her mother’s explanation. Jake would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so poignant.

“C’mon, Sunshine,” Maurice interjected. “Let’s go get some hamburgers. And I bet Mommy’ll let us get some ice cream afterward. What do you say?”

Wendy grabbed on to the hand Maurice offered and allowed herself to be led away, but even the promise of ice cream hadn’t completely distracted her from her fixation on Jake. She looked over her shoulder, continuing to stare at him with solemn blue eyes until the front door closed, blocking him from view.

“I bet she’s a handful,” Jake said, feeling suddenly achy around his heart. He and Laurie had intended to have children, lots of them.

“She is,” Laurie said, her voice still a bit weak. “Sweet and cuddly one minute and stubborn as a mule the next. I’m sorry…I don’t know what to say. She never knew her…Charlie. Lately she’s become obsessed with finding her daddy.” Laurie waited, holding her breath, expecting some acknowledgment from Jake that he would soon rectify the situation.

“It’s okay,” he said with a shrug, dismissing the incident far more casually than she would have believed possible. “Hey, you look like you’re about to keel over again. Let’s get you some water.” With a hand at the small of her back, he guided her to the kitchen. He remembered where it was from visits to Birkett’s Folly as a child. His father and old Will Birkett had been good friends.

The absurdity of this situation made Laurie want to laugh. Jake Mercer was alive? How often had she dreamed that it was all a big misunderstanding, that the Marshals Service had made a mistake? Apparently those farfetched dreams were coming true.

Again she stifled an almost hysterical laugh. On the heels of her elation, however, came anger. How dare Jake come back from the dead? How dare he abandon her, abandon their child, then blithely waltz back into her life unannounced?

Oh, Lord, she was confused, still woozy and weak, and if she didn’t get herself something to eat or drink she was going to faint again. So she said nothing as Jake took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with cold water from the refrigerator.

He handed it to her. She took it, carefully avoiding touching him, and took several long swallows.

“Sit down,” Jake said.

She would have remained standing just to prove he couldn’t tell her what to do, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. She sank into the chair he held out for her.

He sat down across from her, with the old enamel kitchen table between them. Her dizziness abated and her wits began to return. Now maybe she was in some kind of shape to listen to Jake’s explanations.

Surely he didn’t expect to take up with her where he’d left off.

“So, talk,” she said. “Where have you been for the past four years? Now, let’s see, maybe I can guess. Juan LaBarba swore a vendetta against you, so the blessed U.S. Marshals Service decided to hide you for a while, and they told us you died so we wouldn’t come looking for you. Am I close?”

“Nowhere near.” He rested his hands on the edge of the table and rocked back and forth a couple of times. “Laurie, do you actually believe I’d leave you standing at the altar because of some stupid vendetta?”

Properly chastised for jumping to conclusions, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. Tell me what really happened.”

“I was shot and left for dead,” he said quietly. “I got caught in the same flurry of gunfire that killed Ernesto LaBarba, Juan’s brother. The LaBarbas dragged me inside the building where they were holed up, thinking to trade me for Ernesto. But when they found out Ernesto had died, they decided to keep me as a bargaining chip. They fled to Costa Rica and took me with them.”

“Did you try to escape?” Laurie asked, trying to fathom the horror he must have experienced. It sounded so unreal, like a bad movie.

“I wasn’t in any shape to escape. Juan’s wife, Carmen, patched me up pretty good, but I still got some kind of infection that lasted for months. I don’t remember a whole lot about that time.”

Laurie winced. What he must have gone through! She wanted to touch him, to offer him comfort, but the look in his eyes told her he hadn’t come to her for pity. “So did they use you as a bargaining chip, like they intended?” she asked.

“Apparently they tried, but by then the government was denying all knowledge of me. As far as they were concerned, I was dead—and they didn’t want anyone to contradict them.”

“But…” she started to object, then paused when Jake pulled a bit of metal out of his jeans pocket and laid it on the table.

“That’s the bullet Carmen found in me. It was from one of our guns, not the Uzis LaBarba’s gang was using.”

“My God, you were shot by one of your own men,” she said, barely breathing the words. “It wasn’t intentional, was it?”

He shook his head. “I’m sure it was an accident. All hell was breaking loose. Nerves were pulled to the breaking point.”

“Still, I can see why they wouldn’t want you spreading it around that you were the victim of ‘friendly fire.’”

“Particularly since, in their official report, I was shot in the head, not the back.” Bitterness twisted his mouth. “Apparently they weren’t as sure that I was dead as they pretended, and they wanted to make damn certain no one else questioned it.”

“So what did LaBarba do when he found out you weren’t—” she paused, choosing just the right word “—valuable to them?”

“He would have killed me outright and left me for the buzzards, but Carmen intervened. I’m not sure exactly what she did, but LaBarba listened to her for some reason.”

There was a certain kindness to Jake’s expression when he talked about Carmen, and Laurie felt a pang of jealousy. Had he and Carmen…? Oh, surely Jake wouldn’t get involved with another man’s wife! She pushed the irrelevant thoughts aside.

“LaBarba might have had other plans for me. I don’t know,” Jake continued. “But I didn’t wait around to find out. As soon as I was strong enough, I got the hell out of there. The first person I called when, I got back to the States was Danny.”

Danny. Her brother and Jake’s best friend. It bothered her that Jake hadn’t called her first. “When was this?”

“About…” He hesitated. “Shortly after Wendy was born.”

Laurie was out of her chair. “You’ve been back for more than three years, and you waited until now to contact me? You let me think you were dead all this time? Danny knew, and he didn’t tell me?” She was so angry and frustrated at the unfairness that she wanted to hit something. She settled for the tabletop, slapping it with the palm of her hand and almost upsetting her glass of water. “Why? Why didn’t you come back to me?”

“Because, Laurie, you were married to another man.”

Two

Laurie fell back into her chair with a thunk. Of course she’d been married. And Jake’s sudden reappearance would have been awkward, to say the least. She wasn’t sure that excused the fact that he’d continued to allow her to believe him dead, but there was some logic to his decision.

“I wanted to see you, believe me,” Jake said, softening. “But Danny…convinced me otherwise. He said you’d finally gotten your life pulled together, and with the new baby and all…well, he just didn’t think it would be fair for me to jump in and upset the applecart. Your brother can be very persuasive. I finally agreed with him,” Jake concluded, rubbing his jaw.

You agreed to stay away from your own child? She almost said the words aloud, but something held her back. This whole situation was getting harder and harder to accept.

“Who else knows you’re alive?” she asked, picturing the whole town whispering behind her back, pitying her in her ignorance.

“My folks, but that’s about it. They retired in Tyler after they sold the ranch, and that’s where I’ve been living, too, where I could keep an eye on them.”

“How are they doing?” She was ashamed to admit she hadn’t kept up with the elder Mercers. She had been to see them a few times after Jake’s supposed death, which they’d taken hard. But after marrying Charlie— and as her pregnancy advanced—visiting the Mercers had seemed awkward, so she’d gradually let them slip away from her.

“They’re holding their own,” Jake replied with an unmistakable note of fondness. “I’d swear they aged ten years during the months I was gone, but they’re doing better now. Anyway, I’ve made it a point to stay away from Winnefred. A couple of times I ran into people I knew, but I always managed to duck out of the way before they recognized me.”

“Then why now?” Laurie asked, finally verbalizing the question she was most anxious about.

He took a deep breath and sighed. “It was time.”

Laurie sighed, too, trying to adjust to this new reality. “You should have told me,” she finally said. “I’m not saying it would have been easy, but I’m not a child. I was, and am, capable of making responsible decisions.”

“Oh, you know how to make decisions, all right,” he retorted, a sudden bitterness in his voice. “It didn’t take you much time at all to decide to marry Charlie Birkett.”

Laurie blinked a couple of times as she felt the blood draining from her face. Jake didn’t know. He didn’t know that she’d gotten pregnant as a result of the one and only time they’d made love. He didn’t know that Wendy was his daughter. If he did, he would understand why she’d married Charlie so quickly.

How could Jake believe that she would marry anyone else if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary? How could he think she would treat their love so trivially? A denial was on the tip of her tongue. But again, something held her back. If she blurted out the truth now, it might have farreaching consequences, consequences she couldn’t even imagine.

Wendy had been born seven months to the day after Laurie and Charlie had wed. Anyone with a lick of sense could count, and had figured out that the baby was Jake’s, not Charlie’s. In fact, Laurie was sure there had been a fair amount of gossip about it at the time. But no one had said anything to her or Charlie directly. And Charlie had been such a proud and doting father, that soon the whole town had embraced the idea that Wendy was really his.

Laurie didn’t want that to change. Charlie had earned his place as Wendy’s father. He had delighted in everything the child did, from kicking in the womb to flinging baby food on his good shirt. He had been as supportive of Laurie’s situation as a man could be, and as devoted to Wendy as if the baby carried his genes. No one—not even Jake—was going to belittle Charlie’s role in her family or dishonor his memory.

So she kept silent. She had to think carefully about this. She had to weigh Jake’s right to know the truth with the possible repercussions.

“You’re not even going to comment?” Jake asked, crossing his arms.

“No, I’m not,” Laurie replied succinctly. She took a sip of her water to avoid looking into those steel blue eyes, afraid he would see that she was holding something back. Silence stretched uncomfortably between them. She could hear the old mantel clock ticking in the living room, and Maurice’s mongrel dog barking at something.

Clearly frustrated, Jake rose abruptly and walked to the back door, then gazed out pensively at the mild spring day. “Steering clear of you seemed like the right decision at the time,” he said. “Now, I’m not so sure. When I think about the years we lost, I have to wonder if I shouldn’t have been more selfish about the whole thing. Maybe I should have barged in and tried to break up your marriage.” He turned suddenly. “Would that have been better than my staying away?”

“You couldn’t have broken up my marriage,” she said. That was the one thing she was utterly sure of. Her marriage to Charlie may have lacked passion, but it had been strong in every other respect. She wouldn’t have hurt that man for anything in the world, not even for Jake.

A muscle ticked in Jake’s jaw. “Maybe that was why I stayed away. During those months in Costa Rica, thoughts of you were sometimes all that kept me alive. When I came back and found you were married…”

He must have been terribly hurt, she thought, though he would never put it in those terms.

“Maybe I was afraid you would turn me away,” he said, “so I never even tried.”

Her heart ached for him. She wanted to explain, but she couldn’t, not yet. She had to give it some thought. And she couldn’t think with Jake’s overwhelming presence filling her kitchen and stealing her breath away every time she looked at him. Maturity had only sharpened his already awesome virility.

“Well, I’m glad you finally came forward,” she said, the words woefully inadequate. “I’m glad you’re not…”

“Not dead?”

That’s what she’d been thinking, and it sounded awful. “Jake, I’m just too shocked to know what to say or how I feel. I think it would be better if you left.” Before she said or did anything really stupid—like throwing her arms around him and absorbing his sheer aliveness.

He shook his head. “Not yet. I still have some business I want to discuss with you.”

“What business?” she asked warily.

“I saw your ad in the Tyler paper. The one for the ranch manager,” he added, as if she ran dozens of ads and needed clarification.

“And?”

“I’d like to apply for the position.”

“Jake, don’t be ridiculous!” she exploded. “Where would you get a fool notion like that?”

“Now, wait a minute, hear me out. It’s not as crazy as it sounds.”

“The hell it’s not. You can’t—”

“Laurie, let me explain.”

She clamped her mouth shut. Apparently Jake was going tosay his piece, and she wouldn’t get him out of here until she let him.

“Now, then. I’ve heard some rumors that you’re having problems here, and I can see just by looking around that they’re true. Also, I know that you wouldn’t be trying to hire a manager if you didn’t need help. Just how bad is it?”

She considered lying. She didn’t want to appear any more vulnerable to Jake than she already did. But she was afraid the sheer misery of her situation would shine through no matter what she said. “It’s pretty bad,” she confessed. “Our insurance wasn’t adequate to cover the medical bills.”

That was an understatement.

“I thought I could scrape by. I sold off some of the stock, but that cut into the Folly’s income. Since then I’ve made some bad decisions.” She shrugged helplessly.

Jake nodded, as if he’d suspected as much. “How do you intend to pay your new manager’s salary?”

“Well…I was hoping to work something out. The position offers a nice little house, and I’d cook all the meals, like I already do for Maurice. Beyond that, I thought maybe some type of profit-sharing arrangement. The better job the manager does, the more money he makes.”

Jake was shaking his head.

“It could work,” Laurie said defensively.

“Have you had any qualified applicants?”

“Frankly, no, but the ad’s only been running a few days.”

“And do you honestly think a qualified applicant would work for you under those terms?”

“If he has vision,” she answered. “If he’s confident he can turn things around. The Folly once made bushels of money—and it will again. Anyway, if you think it’s such a bad deal, why are you considering it?”

“Several reasons,” he said, pacing the kitchen like a lawyer preparing to give a closing argument. “One, I know horses.”

“You grew up with cattle,” she said pointedly.

“But you can’t run cattle without horses, and I’ve bought and sold more than a few. I might not be Charlie’s equal when it comes to his knowledge about breeding, but it can’t be that different from breeding cattle.”

She suspected it was a lot different, but since she knew nothing about cattle, she couldn’t offer an intelligent argument. So she nodded, conceding the point.

“Two,” Jake continued, ticking his points off on his fingers, “I don’t need money, so it doesn’t matter what you pay me.”

“You don’t need money?” she repeated, incredulous. She’d never met anyone who would admit that. Even rich folks who already had lots of money always claimed to need more.

“The government gave me a generous settlement for my, er, unscheduled vacation in Costa Rica,” he said with a wry smile. “Actually, it was hush money. I was shot by my own man, the accounts of my death were falsified, and they made no effort to secure my release. They knew that, with a few well-chosen words in the right ears, I could have opened a huge can of worms. Not that I would have. I didn’t need that kind of aggravation. But I didn’t turn down the settlement.”

“Okay, so you’re set for life. That still doesn’t explain why you would want to.come here. Make no mistake, the manager’s job won’t be easy.”

“Maybe I need a challenge,” Jake said, reclaiming his chair across from her. “Maybe I need a change. I’ve been drifting aimlessly too long.” He leaned across the table, until his face was uncomfortably close to hers. “But mostly, I want the job because I owe you something, Laurie. I promised to marry you, and I broke that promise. I put you through quite a bit of distress, I imagine.”

“Distress? How about a living hell?” she retorted, suddenly angry again. Years ago she’d sworn she would never forgive him for leaving her alone, and that still held true.

“Must have been some living hell,” he said, his fury matching hers. “Took you all of two months to find a replacement groom.”

Perhaps he had a point, Laurie silently conceded. It must seem to Jake as if she’d gotten over her heartbreak pretty quickly. “Charlie helped me through it,” she said simply. It was the truth.

“If I could go back and relive that day,” Jake said quietly, “and do things differently, I would. Obviously I can’t. But if I can help you out of this situation…”

“No,” she said. “Not to soothe your conscience, not even if I really believed you could get me out of the mess I’m in. It could never work.”

“You won’t even consider it? On a temporary basis?”

“Absolutely not.” The thought of seeing him every day, cooking dinner for him every night, brushed uncomfortably close to those girlish fantasies she’d once had before Jake’s disappearance had shattered her life. Those dreams were wrapped securely in mental tissue paper and pushed far to the back of her mind—and they weren’t getting out.

“You’re being unreasonable,” he said, rising slowly from his chair, towering over her intimidatingly. “If you don’t get some help, and soon, you could lose the Folly.”

She knew that, dammit. “I’ll get some help. But not from you.” Standing also, she stared at him, refusing to back down even an inch. That old electricity arced between them, and for one insane moment she thought he was looking not into her eyes, but at her mouth, and that he was thinking about kissing her.

The phone rang, cutting through the tension. Laurie turned abruptly to answer the old black wall phone. “Hello?”

Jake continued to watch her as he took a few steadying breaths. God, she was magnificent. She’d been a fiery, passionate girl when he’d last seen her. Now she was unmistakably a woman. Motherhood had added curves to her previously boyish figure. More importantly, the hardships she’d endured over the past four years had given her depth and maturity, and a certain air of mystery, too.

He had always been drawn to her, intrigued by her, and seriously attracted to her. During her absence from his life, that attraction hadn’t diminished one iota. If anything, it was sharper, more intense, than ever.

He wished she hadn’t cut her hair. He could still remember, as if it had been yesterday, the single night of passion they’d shared. He recalled the silky feel of her hair all around him, his fingers tangling in the long strands.

A change in her tone of voice brought Jake’s attention back to the present. Who was she talking to?

“You’re telling me there’s no hope, that he’s finished?” Laurie gripped the phone receiver so tightly her knuckles turned white. She nodded, biting her lower lip.

“Laurie, what’s wrong?” Jake asked, moving around the table.

She turned away from him and faced the wall, but not before he could see that her eyes were unnaturally shiny. “All right. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll call in the morning.” She hung up, chewing on her lip again.

“Laurie?” Unconsciously he reached out to touch her, but she shied away from him like a skittish filly. “C’mon, Laurie, tell me what the problem is. Maybe I can help.”

“It’s…it’s Flash in the Pan.”

The Folly’s highly sought-after stud. A two-time national quarter-horse champion more than a decade ago, Flash was the ranch’s claim to fame and the source of a great deal of income. Mares were shipped from all over the country to be bred with the old stallion. Jake’s own horse, Flash Lightning, had been sired by the original Flash.

“Is he sick?” Jake asked.

“In a manner of speaking. Last week, I decided to breed Flash with a new filly. She’d never been bred before, but she’s the gentlest of creatures, and Flash is just a big old teddy bear. We—Maurice and I, that is—decided it would be okay just to turn them loose in the paddock and let nature take its course.”

Jake winced. He had a feeling he knew what was coming next.

“Well, it wasn’t okay. That ornery mare kicked him where it counts. My vet’s been running tests on him, and she says Flash is permanently out of commission. Finished as a stud. She says I should have him g-gelded…” With that, the tears in her eyes spilled over.

“Oh, Laurie,” Jake said, reaching for her again. This time she didn’t stop him when he pulled her against his chest, but neither did she fully accept his comfort. She stood stiffly with his arms around her, sniffling miserably.

Laurie had never been weepy. Even as a little girl, when she’d fallen down or hurt herself, she’d struggled not to cry, especially if any boy, Jake included, was around to tease her. Jake could count on one hand the number of times he’d actually seen her give in to tears. One of those times was when he’d asked her to marry him.

Jake rubbed her back with one hand and stroked her hair with the other. Her hair was as soft as he remembered, and it still smelled like green apples. He struggled to keep his hormones firmly under control. She was not exactly receptive to his attempt at comfort; he could just imagine what her reaction would be if she sensed his desire for her.

“It’ll be okay,” he crooned. “Flash is a tough guy, from what I hear. He’ll come through this just fine.”

But Jake knew she wasn’t upset merely out of concern for the horse. Losing Flash’s stud service could be a fatal blow to the struggling Folly. But not if Jake had anything to say about it. As it turned out, Flash’s unhappy experience had given Jake the opening he needed, the ammunition that would convince Laurie he was the right man for the manager’s job.