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Landry stood still, there at the sink, remembering his mom. She’d had it tough, Maddie Rose had, but she’d never complained, as far as he could recall. Just when he was getting established and Zane was about to sign the contract to make his first movie, and they could have been assets to their mother for once, instead of liabilities, she’d come down with a case of flu that turned out to be some virulent strain of leukemia instead. After a week in a small hospital in the backwater Dakota town where she’d been waiting tables for the past few months, Maddie Rose had breathed her last.
Worse, she’d been alone when the time came, except for a friend or two from the café where she’d worked. He and Zane had both been far away, doing their own thing, blissfully unaware that Maddie Rose’s flu wasn’t flu at all.
Once they were informed, it was too late to say goodbye, or thank you, or I love you, Mom.
Landry sighed. Maybe one of these days, he’d be able to think of his mother without guilt and regret, but, just now, that day seemed far off.
He should have been there for her—Zane, too. The way she’d always been there for them.
He was just about to shut off the lights and retreat to his bedroom, to read or watch TV or maybe just lie down and stare at the ceiling with his hands cupped behind his head, waiting in vain for sleep, when the wall phone rang.
Landry scowled at the thing for a moment or two, tempted to ignore it. Unlike the phones in his bedroom and home office, this one hadn’t come equipped with caller ID, wasn’t even cordless. Highbridge’s doing, he recalled grimly—the butler didn’t entirely approve of too much modern technology, was suspicious of what he considered unwarranted convenience.
So Landry picked up the receiver, in case something was wrong over at Zane and Brylee’s, or those damn buffalo had broken through a fence line somewhere and made for Ria’s flowers again. He answered with a rather brisk “Hello?”
If the caller turned out to be a telemarketer or a survey taker, he might just take the person’s head off, long-distance.
The reply was a low, rumbling laugh, gratingly familiar. “Landry? Is that you, boy?”
Jess Sutton—his father.
“What do you want?” Landry asked. He didn’t hear from the old man for years at a time, and when he did, it was because a favor was about to be asked, so there was no point in beating around the proverbial bush.
Jess gave another chuckle. “Is that any way to talk to your old dad?” he chided, with just the slightest edge in his voice.
Landry said nothing. He knew what was coming, and saw no reason to make it easy.
His father sighed, long-suffering, patient as the day was long. As if. “I was wondering how Nash is doing,” Jess went on quietly, letting it be known that he was hurt but magnanimous enough to generously overlook the injury.
“In that case,” Landry replied, frowning, “why didn’t you call Zane and Brylee’s place? Nash lives with them—but I guess you were aware of that, since you signed him over like a quit-claim deed.”
A long silence followed; then Jess cleared his throat. “Hell, Landry,” he finally muttered, “I know I was a lousy father to all three of you. No need to rub it in.”
Landry relented, but only a little. “Lousy” didn’t begin to describe the kind of parent Jess Sutton had been—back when he and Zane were growing up, the man had mostly steered clear, and they’d liked it that way. After a while anyhow.
At first, they’d missed him to the point of genuine pain. They’d waited for him to change, come and get them and their mother, bring them home for good. They’d all live happily ever after then, like a real family. Not.
“Okay,” Landry said. “But I’d still like to know why you’d call here looking for Nash, when you know he’s elsewhere.”
“Zane and I don’t get along very well,” Jess said, aggrieved. He never seemed to relate consequences to anything he’d said or done, but that was nothing new. Most likely, he regarded himself as the innocent victim of betrayal, misunderstanding and just plain bad luck.
“He won’t ask you for child support, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Landry supplied ungenerously. Zane had had himself a successful movie career, a kind of lucky fluke, before he’d come to Three Trees to settle down and marry Brylee, and money wasn’t a problem.
“Do you ever let up?” Jess asked sadly.
Poor, beleaguered Jess Sutton. Good-looking, smooth-talking and not worth the powder it would take to blow him to hell.
“Look,” Landry replied, wishing he hadn’t answered the call in the first place, “as far as I know, Nash is fine. He’s grown about a foot in the last year, he does all right in school, he likes girls and he’s rodeo-crazy. All pretty normal.”
If only Jess actually cared about any of those things, or about the boy himself. The truth was, asking about Nash was just a way in, a conversation starter.
“I’m in a little trouble,” Jess said, after another silence, this one so long that Landry had been about to hang up, thinking the connection had been broken, when the man finally spoke.
Landry closed his eyes. Waited. Here it comes.
“Are you still there?” Jess asked.
“I’m still here,” Landry confirmed, opening his eyes again, shoving his free hand through his hair. He’d been expecting this, but that didn’t make it any easier to handle.
“I need a small loan,” Jess thrust out.
Landry felt a stab of pity then, but he didn’t let on—not because he was trying to spare his father’s pride, though. Jess was the classic con man, always on the lookout for a soft spot, and if he found one, he’d zero in on it like a suicide bomber.
“How small?” Landry asked. With Jess, the word loan was a misnomer. Handout was the better word, since he had no intention of paying it back.
“Five thousand dollars,” Jess said, and now the edge was back in his voice.
Landry gave a low whistle. Five thousand dollars wasn’t a lot of money to him personally, not these days anyway, but it was still a respectable sum, hard to come by for most people. “Go on,” he said.
“You want an explanation?” Jess asked, testy all of a sudden. It was an interesting approach, considering he was the one in need of some help.
“Yeah,” Landry said. “I guess I do. What happened this time?”
Jess took his time answering; he might be sulking, but he could be making up a story, too.
Finally, he launched into his spiel, and damned if it didn’t sound like the truth, for once. “I got into this private poker game down here in Reno—one of those backroom kind that aren’t entirely legal—and I was doing real good for a while, before my luck went sour. These guys aren’t the kind to wait around for their winnings, son. They’ll have their money or a strip of my hide if I don’t pay them, pronto.”
Landry shook his head, tired, disgusted and sore all over. “Damn it,” he muttered, “why did you get into the game in the first place, if you were broke?”
“I anted up a hundred dollars,” Jess said defensively. “That’s all. Before I knew it, I was up a couple of grand, and it was still early, so I couldn’t just cash out and leave everybody high and dry, now, could I?”
Shit, Landry thought. “Of course you couldn’t,” he rasped.
Jess didn’t pick up on the irony. Or maybe he just figured he couldn’t afford to remark on it. “I started losing, as the night went on,” he said hurriedly, as though talking fast would convince Landry that he ought to ride to the rescue, “but I figured things would start going my way again, so I gave my I.O.U. and—”
“And now you’re down five grand?” Landry supplied, when Jess fell silent.
“I’m only down three, actually,” Jess admitted. “But I’ve got some other bills to pay before I can leave town.”
“To go where?” Landry asked. He didn’t really care what the destination was, as long as it wasn’t Hangman’s Bend.
“Boise, I guess,” Jess speculated. “I know some people there.”
“Right,” Landry answered. Jess “knew some people” just about everywhere. Trouble was, if he hadn’t slept with their wives or girlfriends, he probably owed most of them money.
Maybe both.
“I’ve only got till tomorrow morning, when the banks open, to pay up,” Jess went on. “Once these guys find out I can’t make good on my marker, they’re going to want blood.” He sucked in an audible breath. “My blood. Are you going to help me out, or not?”
Landry let his forehead rest against the door of the cupboard directly above the wall phone. He knew he’d be enabling the old man if he gave him the five thousand, making bad matters worse. Still, the alternative—the strong likelihood that his dad would wind up sprawled in some back alley, beaten and bloody, or even dead—was no good, either.
“Where do I send it?” Landry asked.
CHAPTER THREE
RIA BARELY SLEPT that night, one moment worrying about her financial future and the next, lusting after Mr. Wrong, that being Landry Sutton, the first man she’d really been attracted to since Frank’s death. With widow guilt compounding physical and emotional exhaustion, she was out of the house as soon as the sun rose, taking no time for coffee, let alone breakfast.
Those things could wait. Right now she wanted a good look at whatever havoc the buffalo had—or hadn’t—wreaked on her farm, without Landry there to gauge her every reaction. Or to guess somehow that she’d lost sleep wondering what he looked like without a shirt, what it would be like if he kissed her or to feel the weight of that hard, uncompromisingly masculine body of his poised over hers, then settling into her softness and, finally, claiming her...
“Stop it!” Ria ordered her inner love slave, right out loud, as she marched through the still-dewy grass in the front yard, bent on inspecting poppies and daisies and other colorful residents of her flower beds, performing a sort of horticultural triage.
Some plants, she soon discovered, had been squashed, or even uprooted, but to her surprise and relief, most of the blossoms had survived. Ready for a new day, they were already raising their brightly colored faces toward the big sky and the first promise of sunshine.
Hardly daring to hope everything would be all right after all, Ria trudged over to the field of zinnias, a glorious ground quilt of red and magenta, orange and gold, pink and purple and white. There was no evidence of the buffalo invasion here, no tracks in the fertile soil, no broken stems and stripped petals. She was moving on to the field of gerbera daisies, which abutted the carnations, when she saw Landry’s truck turn into her driveway, glinting silver in the morning light.
Although her first impulse was to dive between the rows of multicolored daisies and hide there until her visitor gave up and left, Ria planted her sneakered feet firmly and stood her ground, lifting her chin a jot to convince herself, as well as Landry, that she wasn’t intimidated, and waited.
Landry parked the truck at the edge of the field, got out and strolled toward her in that easy, rolling-hipped way of men who were used to meeting challenges and coming out on top.
Ria gulped. Unfortunate choice of words, she thought, glad she hadn’t voiced the observation out loud.
Sunlight danced in Landry’s hair and lent him a full-body aura of glittering gold, and last night’s fantasies rushed to the surface of Ria’s skin, fiercely visceral now, and pulsed there, dangerous and primitive and absolutely delectable.
She frowned hard, hoping Landry wouldn’t pick up on the fact that she was ridiculously attracted to him, physically, at least—a man she didn’t even like. Maybe her friends back in Portland were right—she’d been too quick to start over in a new place, among strangers, wasn’t over the trauma of losing Frank, needed grief therapy, not a change of scene.
Landry’s smile was taut, but it still opened a trapdoor in the pit of Ria’s stomach and made her heart pound under her lightweight sweatshirt. “Well,” he said, coming to a stop one row over from where she stood, and she almost giggled at the contrast between his blatant self-confidence and all those delicate flowers at his feet, “what’s the verdict?”
Ria felt a blush climb her neck and throb in her cheeks. Damn it.
“There doesn’t seem to be any real harm done,” she finally managed, after reminding herself that Landry had told her he’d be stopping by, and so what if she hadn’t believed him for a second? She’d just have to deal. “No thanks to your marauding buffalo.” Even as Ria spoke, she was measuring the shadows under his eyes, the tight lines of his jaw, the hard set of his shoulders. He hadn’t shaved, she noticed, and the effect was disturbingly appealing.
You’ve been alone too long, girl, Ria thought.
For one terrible moment, she thought she’d spoken aloud, because Landry gave a rough bark of laughter, as if he’d heard her. He tilted his magnificent head to one side and studied her as though he couldn’t quite get a handle on whatever it was that made her tick. Dressed the way he was, in jeans and a long-sleeved green cotton work shirt and beat-up boots caked with manure, it was hard to picture Landry in his former incarnation, managing a multibillion-dollar international investment fund back in Chicago, where he’d surely have worn three-piece suits, custom-tailored, of course, and paid hundreds of dollars for a haircut.
This morning, he was all cowboy.
All man.
“You sound disappointed,” he observed, after a few moments, his tone on the dry side. “That your crops aren’t lying in ruin, I mean.”
Ria’s blush went from mild to moderate to off-the-charts, all in the space of a second or so. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she sputtered. “Of course I’m not disappointed—”
Landry laughed again, though this time it was more of a chuckle, and there was a rawness to the sound that pinched her heart—the heart she wished she could harden at will, but couldn’t. She didn’t need all these crazy feelings, didn’t want them.
“You’re hell-bent on hating me, aren’t you?” he asked, very quietly. Almost gently. “Why is that, Ria?”
Nervously, Ria twisted Frank’s wedding band on her finger, trying to ground herself. Landry’s gaze followed the gesture unerringly. “I don’t hate you,” she said lamely. “I just don’t happen to like you very much.”
Again, he laughed, and the sound stirred things inside Ria that were better left alone. “Why not?” he asked.
The question stumped Ria, at least briefly, and left her slightly embarrassed. “Because—well, because—”
While she faltered, searching for something sensible to offer in reply, Landry stepped over the row of tall orange zinnias between them and stood facing her, so close she could feel the heat and the hard substance of his flesh. “Because—?” he prompted. One side of his mouth crooked up slightly, but the expression in his blue eyes was solemn, even a little bleak.
Ria squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, prepared to brazen her way through to goodbye, see you around, get lost, and finally took a stab at putting her opinion into words. “Because you’re—I don’t know—too good-looking.”
His eyes twinkled. They were the most startling shade of blue. Was he wearing colored contacts? And were those impossibly white teeth genuine, or cosmetically altered?
“Excuse me?” he said.
Ria was mortified, but she forged ahead anyway. “And you know it,” she added.
He frowned, looking confused. “I do?”
Ria folded her arms, drew a deep breath, huffed it out again. “You’d have to be blind not to,” she retorted.
“That’s my big crime?” Landry asked, after a brief, charged silence had passed. “Being ‘too good-looking’ and ‘knowing it’?”
She didn’t have the first idea what to say to that. She’d gotten herself into this, and she’d have to get herself out, but she’d be darned if she could see how that was going to happen.
That was when Landry cupped one hand, calloused and gentle, under her chin, tipping her face up slightly, so that their gazes locked and their breaths mingled. Right there in that field of sunlight and dazzling color and sweet-scented breezes, he bent his head, and he kissed her.
At first, Landry’s lips merely brushed against hers, but before Ria could so much as catch her breath, and certainly before she could recover from the shock of pleasure jolting through her like a series of violent earthquakes, Landry deepened the kiss.
Ria moaned, knowing she should resist, pull back, make a run for it—and completely unable to do any of those things. Instead, she gave herself up to that incredible kiss, and to the man administering it, without reservation. The windswept depths of her need, a vast and lonely canyon yawning within her, terrified her, even as thrill after sweet thrill rolled through her.
She wanted to run away. Conversely, she wanted more of Landry, more than the kiss. Right here, right now. Yikes. She’d been intimate with one man in her entire life—her husband—and now here she was, ready to make love in the open, under the morning sun.
In the end, Landry was the one who withdrew, his breathing ragged, his gaze fixed on something—or someone—far off in the distance. When he looked back at Ria, though, an impish light danced in his eyes.
“That’s why you think you don’t like me,” he said.
Ria blinked, still dazed by the kiss and the internal ruckus it had caused, trying to firm up her melted knees by sheer force of will. “What?” she muttered, when she figured she could speak coherently again.
Landry’s crooked grin was mildly insolent, maddening in the extreme, and downright sexy. “You’re afraid of me,” he said easily.
Ria opened her mouth to protest, to tell Landry Sutton that she thought he was a smug, overconfident son of a bitch and, furthermore, she wasn’t at all scared of him, so he shouldn’t flatter himself that she was. But this time, nothing came out. Not a whisper, not a squeak.
Landry, meanwhile, reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind Ria’s right ear. “Admit it,” he said. “You’re afraid of the things I might make you feel if you ever gave me a chance to get too close to you. You’d have to let go, and that’s a risk you don’t want to take.”
The gall of the man.
A fresh surge of fury rushed through Ria then, and she fairly trembled with it. “You have to be the vainest, most obnoxious person on earth,” she burst out, though she wasn’t sure exactly who she was more put out with at the moment, Landry or herself. If she hadn’t let the man kiss her, or if she’d made even the slightest effort to pretend the sensation of his mouth on hers hadn’t shifted the very core of her, if she hadn’t been instantly and obviously aroused...
Landry was still grinning, the self-satisfied bastard.
“It just so happens,” Ria snapped, reconnoitering, “that you don’t ‘make me feel’ anything, Mr. Sutton!”
