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“She’ll come around. Sooner or later. Until then, co-managing the arena will give me a reason to see her every day and get to know my daughters.”
“Good luck with that.” From what Deacon knew of Sunny Beckett, Mercer had his work cut out for him.
Mercer’s meal arrived. While he ate and Deacon finished a refill of his iced tea, they discussed the terms of the partnership agreement.
“We need to see copies of the arena’s financial statements before finalizing any agreement,” Deacon said. “The last five years at least.”
“Sunny will have them. She’s a whiz when it comes to the books and money. It’s one of the reasons we were able to build the arena up from practically nothing.”
Deacon maintained a neutral expression. Mercer’s drinking almost drove the arena into the ground. Sunny was clearly one sharp businesswoman. She’d built up the arena from practically nothing—twice.
“First order of business,” Mercer eagerly announced, “is to increase the bucking stock operation. Sunny has let most of it go since the accident.”
Mercer knew about the accident with the bull and that the blame had been pinned on Deacon. He’d told Deacon in their meeting yesterday that he didn’t care about a youthful mistake. Plenty of more experienced bucking stock handlers made worse mistakes than that.
When Deacon insisted on his innocence, Mercer’s response had been simply, “All the better.”
“You can’t purchase new bucking stock without her consent,” Deacon said.
“What if I use my own money?”
“She’ll still have to consent. That’s how most partnership agreements are worded.”
“Change the wording.”
Deacon typed another note into his tablet. “Her attorney will fight it.”
“Don’t know until we try.”
Before, Deacon would have seen Mercer’s confidence as cocky and arrogant. Now, he knew the reason behind it. The man was in love and, evidently, eternally optimistic.
He sure did have a funny way of demonstrating that love.
Not that Deacon was suave and sophisticated when it came to ladies. His acute reading disability hadn’t just held him back in school. Even when he’d learned to compensate, old habits were hard to break.
Take Liberty, for example. He’d had multiple opportunities to pursue her but hadn’t acted on them. Like Mercer said, she was pretty, with her short blond hair that didn’t look anything like a cowgirl’s. Neither did all those rings she wore, which he hadn’t noticed before today.
The boots and jeans were another story. He couldn’t take his eyes off her incredibly long legs when she was riding. It had cost him more than one disqualification when they were team penning together.
“Can you call Sunny and tell her to expect us tomorrow? After lunch sometime.” Mercer sopped up the last bit of chicken gravy with a chunk of dinner roll.
“No problem.”
“And ask her to make sure Cassidy and Liberty are there, too. This concerns all three of them.”
Deacon exhaled. He should have known Liberty would be there.
Despite his interest in her and the thoughts he couldn’t get out of his head no matter what, he hadn’t hesitated when Mercer approached him seeking representation. Having access to the arena’s records was exactly what Deacon needed to aid his own cause. For that, he would sacrifice a great deal.
Someone other than Deacon had left the bull’s gate unlatched that terrible day, and he intended to find out who. Then, armed with proof positive, he’d see to it Sunny Beckett and everyone else in Reckless knew the truth. Deacon would live in shame no more.
Chapter Two
“How could you?”
“Come on. Give Mom a break.”
Liberty sighed expansively and slumped down into the kitchen chair. For the past half hour, her sister, Cassidy, had been defending their mother while Liberty had paced back and forth in front of the sink, venting her outrage at being lied to and her anger at the turn of events. If she’d been told the truth from the beginning, none of this would have happened.
A lawsuit! And that was only a small portion of what Liberty was grappling with. The father she’d known for an entire five minutes had used her in his scheme to get the money owed him. Money!
Did he realize that, as employees of the arena, Liberty and Cassidy would be profoundly affected?
The scent of Mercer’s aftershave filled the air. Or maybe it was no more than a memory. One she’d be better off without. Refocusing her attention, she looked at her mother sitting across the table—and saw a stranger.
“What else haven’t you told us, Mom?” she asked.
“Nothing.” The response was uttered through tight lips. She’d been angry since being confronted.
“Yeah.” Liberty snorted derisively. “I guess the identity of my real father, his half ownership in our rodeo arena and the money you owe him are enough.”
“That’s not fair! I did what I thought was best to protect you.”
“From what? A reformed alcoholic who hadn’t touched a drop in twenty-two years? A man who, by all accounts, was a good father to his son?”
During most of their long, emotionally draining exchange, Sunny had sat at the table, enough sparks flashing in her eyes to ignite a brush fire.
“I don’t trust him,” she blurted out. “And with good reason.”
“Maybe once. Not for years. You had no right to screw with my life.”
“That’s enough.” Sunny slapped the table with her hand.
Liberty fumed. What did her mother have to be so mad about? Mercer’s return? She had to assume he’d approach her for the money one day. The amount was a staggering sum. Over one hundred thousand dollars. When Sunny informed them, Liberty had physically gulped. Their savings didn’t cover a fourth of that.
Cassidy, too, though she’d regained her composure quickly, making up for their mother’s silence with more verbal attacks on Mercer.
“She was thinking of us,” Cassidy said, her tone superior. “Like a good mother does.”
Younger by eleven years, Liberty had always been the baby of the family, doted on by her mother and ruled over by her big sister. Liberty might be twenty-four, but as far as Cassidy was concerned, their relationship hadn’t changed.
“Please.” Liberty leaned forward and waited for her mother to meet her gaze. A sudden surge of emotion tightened her voice. “I need to know. Why did you lie to me?”
The topic of Mercer and the money owed him had been temporarily set aside. Liberty instead pressed for the information most important to her.
“Trust me,” Cassidy quipped. “You don’t want Mercer Beckett for a father. He nearly killed us both.”
Killing might be a stretch. On his way home from picking up Cassidy at a friend’s house, an inebriated Mercer lost control of the pickup he was driving and slammed into the well house. Thankfully, no one was injured. The same couldn’t be said for the well house. But the wreck had terrified Cassidy and prompted Sunny to send Mercer packing a few weeks later.
Liberty might have sent him packing, too. Especially when he didn’t stop drinking immediately afterward. “He must regret what happened,” she said to Cassidy.
“If he does, he sure as heck never told me.”
Liberty’s sister always sided with their mother when it came to Mercer. With good cause, Liberty supposed. As far as Cassidy was concerned, Mercer’s past sins were unforgivable. Whereas Sunny hardly ever mentioned him, Cassidy seized every opportunity to speak ill. Daddy’s little girl hadn’t ever gotten over her hurt and resentment at his going from perfect father to raging alcoholic. Also fear. His drinking and actions while under the influence had scared her.
From what Liberty was able to determine, both her siblings had once adored their father. Ryder’s devotion, however, hadn’t ever wavered despite Mercer’s drinking problem. At fourteen, when he could legally choose which parent to reside with, he left Reckless and joined Mercer in Kingman, a town nearly a full day’s drive away.
Cassidy’s adoration of Mercer had soured. Liberty suspected their mother’s refusal to discuss him only hardened the shell surrounding her sister’s heart.
“Twenty-two years of sobriety is more than enough to prove he’s changed,” Liberty insisted. “I had the right to make my own decision regarding Mercer. Ryder did.”
Sunny jerked involuntarily at the mention of her estranged son. Then, to Liberty’s shock, her mother burst into tears.
Her fury instantly waned. It must have been heartbreaking for her mother to lose Ryder. And all her attempts to maintain contact with him had either been ignored or thrown back in her face. He resented their mother as much as Cassidy did their father—and Liberty was caught in the middle.
The stranger Liberty saw across the table disappeared, and her mother once more sat there.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you miss Ryder and wish things were different. But that doesn’t change the fact you should have told me about Mercer being my father.”
“I wanted to.” Sunny wiped her tears with a paper napkin from the holder on the table. “You have no idea how many times I tried.”
“What stopped you?”
“I lost my courage. I was so afraid you’d go looking for him.”
Like Ryder. The truth at last. Liberty supposed she understood her mother’s fear. Losing one child had been difficult enough.
“You think we would have had it so good if he’d been draining our bank account dry every month?” Cassidy interjected.
For the first time, Sunny defended Mercer. “It wasn’t like that. He couldn’t have drained us dry. There were clauses in our property settlement agreement. The monthly profits had to be at a certain level or the full amount he was owed went back into the operating account to insure sufficient cash flow.”
“In other words—” Liberty sent her sister a pointed look “—he cared about the arena and us and made sure we wouldn’t hit rock bottom again.”
Cassidy huffed and leaned against the counter, her arms crossed. “Before you go awarding him a big shiny halo, just remember he wants the money now.”
“He’ll take payments.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He won’t have a choice.”
“Girls!”
At their mother’s sharp outburst, both Liberty and Cassidy shut their mouths.
“Why didn’t you put the money aside?” Liberty asked a moment later when she and her sister were both calmer. “Just in case he came to collect.”
“I did at first.” Sunny was also calmer. “A couple hundred dollars a week. But Cassidy was competing on the rodeo circuit in those days. She needed money for a horse and training and a new saddle. With her gone so much, I was shorthanded and had to hire part-time help.”
Barrel racing was the same as any other rodeo event. Decent winnings could be had at the championship level. Getting there, however, required money, and Sunny had footed the bill.
Did Cassidy ever repay their mother? Liberty considered asking but held her tongue. In Cassidy’s current mood, she wouldn’t appreciate the underlying accusation.
“Then there was the accident and poor Ernie Tuckerman.” Sunny wrung her hands together. “I had a ten-thousand-dollar deductible to cover, and afterward, our insurance premiums skyrocketed. It was six years since Cassidy’s high school graduation. I figured if Mercer hadn’t demanded his share of the revenue by then, he wasn’t ever going to.”
A peculiar arrangement, Liberty thought, not for the first time since hearing about it. Mercer hadn’t paid any child support for Cassidy. Instead, he’d let their mother keep all the arena profits until Cassidy graduated high school. At that point, her mother was supposed to start paying him his share. Only she hadn’t. And he didn’t ask for it.
Sunny had obviously said nothing about his half ownership of the arena to Cassidy, either. Liberty had seen the shock and disbelief on her sister’s face when she’d blurted the news. Yet, Cassidy had blamed Mercer rather than their mother.
“You and Mercer must have talked over the years,” Liberty said. “Did he ever mention the money?”
Sunny shook her head. “The few times we did talk, the subject of money didn’t come up. That’s the truth,” she reiterated.
There was a wistfulness in her mother’s expression that Liberty had seen before. When she was young, she’d caught her mother studying a framed photograph, that same expression on her face. Later, Liberty had snuck into her mother’s room and removed the photo from its hiding place in the back of the drawer. A younger version of her parents stared back at her, except Liberty hadn’t known Mercer was her father.
When she’d asked about Mercer, her mother changed the subject. Eventually, Liberty stopped asking—but not wondering.
“Did he ever talk about me?” Her tongue tripped over the last word.
“To ask if you were his?”
Liberty nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Mercer must have realized she’d been born nine months, give or take, after he and her mother split.
“He did.”
“You lied to him, too!”
“He was drinking then. Heavily. I didn’t want to give him any reason to stick around.”
Emotions rose up in Liberty, threatening to choke her. She fought for control. “He must have been so hurt. Thinking you slept with another man within days after he left.”
Sunny remained mute, her features dark.
“He hurt us!” Cassidy insisted. Tears had welled in the corners of her eyes.
Liberty shot to her feet, the need to distance herself for a moment overpowering her. Sunny had lied to Mercer and driven him away rather than let him know he’d fathered a third child with her.
“Tell me this, Mom.” She hesitated on her way to the door. The barn, with its familiar scent of horses and dark, cool corners, beckoned. It had been her sanctuary since she was a little girl, the place she went to when she wanted to be alone. “If you despised Mercer so much, why did you sleep with him right up to the day you threw him out?”
If she meant to wound her mother, she succeeded. Sunny’s control collapsed, and her features crumpled.
Liberty wasn’t quite to the door when the arena phone rang. Extensions had been placed in the kitchen and Sunny’s bedroom in case of emergencies. With no one manning the office, they’d been answering the phone in the house.
Being the closest, Liberty grabbed the receiver, put it to her ear and automatically said, “Easy Money Rodeo Arena, Liberty Beckett speaking.”
“Hello, Liberty. It’s Deacon McCrea.”
She went still, and despite her resolve to the contrary, her insides fluttered as they often did when she spoke to him. Dammit. After the meeting with Mercer, he was off-limits. Apparently, her heart hadn’t gotten the memo yet.
