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But then Sean glanced toward Nora, and for a minute she thought she saw something else hiding behind the hostility. Something like…hope.
Hope that she believed in him.
In spite of the other sins, the tempers, the sneaking out, the running away and whatever had caused all that mud and blood, he wanted her to trust that he hadn’t done anything as terrible as destroy a living creature.
“Harry’s right,” she said, praying it was true. “I know you didn’t kill anything.” She ignored the intake of breath from Evelyn, who clearly thought she was, once again, being too soft.
Refusing to meet her sister-in-law’s outraged gaze, Nora watched as Milly and the boys climbed the winding staircase, Sean dragging his dirty hand along the iron railing. When they rounded the first curve, she called up the voice mail.
“Nora,” an elegant baritone said smoothly, “this is Logan Cathcart. My manager just said your son was at the sanctuary. He was— He’d been—” A short silence. “It’s nothing serious, but…I think we should talk.”
She shook her head, frustrated, and clicked the button. “He didn’t leave any details,” she said, for Evelyn’s benefit.
She began scrolling through the handset’s electronic address book. “I’d better call him and see what really happened. His message said it wasn’t serious, but of course he might be trying not to upset me. He’s a very nice man, actually.”
She had just found the Two Wings’s main number when she sensed Evelyn’s gaze boring into the top of her head. She glanced up. Her sister-in-law’s expression was even more unpleasant than Nora had imagined. It tried unsuccessfully to disguise her real anger as amusement.
“I know you want to come with us, Evvie,” Nora said, trying to smile. “But I honestly think we’d do better alone. Sean’s pride is one of his problems, and if you see him—”
“Oh, I know you would rather go alone. That doesn’t surprise me. I was just surprised that… You have his number on speed dial?”
“What?” Nora looked at the handset, confused. “Whose?”
“His.” Evelyn jerked her head toward the phone, as if there were someone in it. “Logan Cathcart’s.”
Nora’s hands stilled on the keypad. She was so shocked, she couldn’t think of a single response. Evelyn’s face…her tone…
What could she possibly be hinting at?
But then Nora realized her silence sounded guilty. It even felt guilty, which was ridiculous. She had nothing to be guilty about. She hadn’t spoken to Logan Cathcart, except to say hello if they passed in town, since Harrison’s funeral six months ago.
She’d hardly exchanged ten words with him even then. Or for several months before Harrison’s death, for that matter. Occasionally, in the middle of the night, Nora might wrestle with a guilty conscience about the handsome New Englander who had shocked Texas society by turning good cattle acres into a bird sanctuary, but Evelyn couldn’t possibly know that.
Could she?
“Of course I have the Two Wings’s number programmed. Why wouldn’t I? They’re our closest neighbors.”
Evelyn’s smile was cold. “And he is, as you say, such a very nice man. The kind of man you’d like to see…alone.”
Nora set down the phone carefully on the end table beside Harrison’s favorite leather couch. She faced Evelyn squarely, and waited for her to explain.
Clearly in no hurry to do so, Evelyn stared back, folding her arms neatly in front of her chest. Though she was almost sixty now, her skin leathered by years of too much sun, she was still a handsome woman. She wore her salt-and-pepper hair cut short and straight around her ears, accenting her black, bright eyes. Her body had been kept young by constant motion.
If she’d ever given a human being the same warmth she bestowed on her Jack Russell terriers, she might have been quite beautiful. In the ten years Nora had known her, though, she hadn’t seen that happen.
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply, Evelyn.”
“Of course you are.”
Nora hesitated, feeling as if she’d been caught on a dangerous square of an invisible chessboard. She knew that Evelyn didn’t like her. For so many reasons—many of them completely justified.
From the outset, Evelyn had been suspicious of a young nobody’s motives in marrying a very rich man twice her age. When it was clear she couldn’t prevent the marriage, Evelyn had tried to train Nora to deserve the name Archer, but in spite of her best efforts Nora’s social skills were slack, her ranching inferior.
She didn’t keep the correct distance with the servants, she couldn’t manage the appropriate intimacy with the horses and she never made friends easily with Harrison’s business pals.
And, of course, there was the matter of Bull’s Eye, the ten-thousand-acre horse and cattle ranch that had been the Archer home for generations.
Harrison had left Bull’s Eye to Nora, who didn’t appreciate it, involve herself in it or deserve it. Evelyn had been seething about it ever since the will was read.
Over the six months since Harrison’s death, the relationship had gone from marginal to messy. Somehow, they’d found a sliver of common ground in their mutual love for Sean and Harry, and Nora had tried to build on that.
Obviously it wasn’t working today.
“Isn’t that right, Nora?” Evelyn’s piercing gaze hadn’t flickered once. “You’re secretly glad to have an excuse to call Mr. Cathcart, aren’t you?”
Nora took a breath and squared her shoulders. “Evelyn, please. I don’t need anything else to worry about right now. If you have something to say, say it.”
“I did. I said that you have an interest in Logan Cathcart. And I’ll say more. I’ll say that you’ve been interested in him since long before your husband died.”
“That’s ridiculous. Where on earth did you get such an absurd idea?”
“From my brother.”
Nora felt her head recoil slightly, as if she’d been slapped. “That can’t be true,” she said. “Harrison would never have said…”
But she couldn’t finish the sentence. Harrison could have said exactly that. He had said it once, to Nora.
Evelyn saw Nora’s dismay, and she blinked slowly, a movement that was pained and triumphant at the same time.
“Yes, that’s right. He told me. He was my brother, and he confided in me. Did you think he wouldn’t? Did you think he’d suffer in silence?”
Nora shook her head. “It’s just that…I hoped he would have realized how wrong he was.”
“Wrong?”
“Yes. Not that I owe this explanation to you, Evvie, but he was wrong.” Nora’s throat felt dry. She was telling the truth, but she knew it sounded like a lie. That made her angry, almost as angry as Evelyn’s constant criticism and her heavy-handed interference in the boys’ lives did.
“Harrison did once suspect that I might be attracted to Logan. But I assured him it wasn’t true, and he believed me. There has never been anything between Logan Cathcart and me.”
She clicked Talk, and the dial tone hummed. She had a choice between two pre-programmed buttons, the Two Wings manager’s office, and Logan Cathcart’s home number. As her finger punched the home number defiantly, she looked up at her sister-in-law.
“And that’s the last time I’ll ever discuss this with you, Evelyn, because frankly it’s none of your business.”
The phone began to ring. She looked toward the fireplace, signaling the end of the argument.
But she should have known she wouldn’t get the last word.
“My brother has always been my business,” Evelyn said quietly, her voice a deadly monotone. “And so are my brother’s sons.”
Nora’s shoulder blades tingled, but she didn’t turn around. The phone kept ringing hollowly, and she imagined it echoing through Logan Cathcart’s small log-and-stone ranch house, which he’d inherited from his great-aunt.
She knew, somehow, that he was no longer there.
Illogically, the unanswered rings made her feel even more alone.
Alone with a troubled son, a haunted heart and a woman who hated her.
“I am always watching, Nora,” Evelyn’s voice came at her in low, hard waves. “I would never have let you hurt Harrison, and the same goes for Sean and Harry. There’s nothing I won’t do to protect my own flesh and blood. So be forewarned.”
CHAPTER TWO
EVEN BEFORE SEAN ARCHER’S unexpected visit, and the mess that followed, Logan Cathcart had been up to his eyeballs in alligators. Two candidates had shown up for the clinic tech job, but neither had any experience, so he was still administering antibiotics and changing bandages himself.
Three injured baby owls had been left in a shoebox on his doorstep overnight, and two of them didn’t have a chance in hell.
Finally, the county had sent over a ream of red tape so convoluted it made his law school years look easy. He wanted to shred it up for nesting material, but since the Two Wings tax break depended on it he had to resist.
So, frankly, he hadn’t been in the mood to hear that a troubled kid from the ranch next door had appeared with a dead bird in his backpack and for no apparent reason started tearing up the enclosures they’d just built yesterday.
He knew the kid’s dad had died, and the family was going through a bad patch. He even felt sorry for him. His manager didn’t believe the kid’s story—that he’d been bringing the bird here for tending, but it died along the way—but Logan did. Somehow he just didn’t think Sean Archer was that kind of crazy.
Still. A nine-year-old kid reacts to a bird’s death by ripping apart everything he can reach? That didn’t smell like fresh-baked mental health to Logan.
So now not only was he having to repair the damage himself, but also he was going to have to talk to Sean’s mother, and that was something he’d vowed to do as little of as possible. He’d decided to steer clear of Nora Archer about two days after moving to Texas, about two minutes after meeting her.
He tossed his hammer onto the pile of wood chips and pulled the measuring tape out. He might have to order new wood. The kid must know karate—he’d really smashed things up.
“Boss?”
Logan raised his gaze, sorry to see his manager, Vic Downing, standing at the edge of the hawk enclosure. He dropped the tape measure. “What are you still doing here? You should be at home. Tell Vic to go home, Max.”
Max, a red-shouldered hawk who was never going to live in the wild again, moved nervously from one foot to the other, head lowered on his flexible neck, fixing Vic with a beady-eyed stare. As if obeying Logan’s command, Max let out an ominous screech, the perfect sound track for a horror movie.
Vic just rolled his eyes. “Shut up, pudgy,” he said affectionately. It was all an act, of course. Max was gentle-natured, one-winged and a pushover for a fistful of treats. “Look, Logan. I can stay a little while. Let me give you a hand with that.”
“You’ve already worked fifty hours this week. Didn’t Gretchen say she’d shoot you if you missed dinner again?”
Vic stuck a piece of Juicy Fruit in his mouth. “Yeah, but that was just the hormones talking.” He sighed. “You wouldn’t believe how insane pregnant women can be.”
Oh, yes, he would. But Logan didn’t say that, of course. He also didn’t say that Gretchen would undoubtedly get worse in the next few weeks. She had about a month to go, and if Logan remembered correctly from those last months with Rebecca…
But remembering was one thing he didn’t waste time doing.
He retrieved his hammer and a broken plank and started working out the nail that was stuck in one end.
“Anyhow,” Vic went on, “where I put the bullets, she’ll never find them.”
Logan looked up. “Where did you hide them?”
“Behind the Windex. Woman hasn’t done a lick of housework in months. Says it makes her cranky.” Vic tossed down the plank. “But what doesn’t?”
As they exchanged a sympathetic chuckle, Logan glimpsed the slow fluttering of something pale and pink at the edge of Vic’s silhouette. For a fanciful split second he thought it might be a roseate spoonbill, although he didn’t have any at the sanctuary, and undoubtedly never would. The delicate beauties didn’t show up this far inland.
He blinked, and the fluttering became the edges of a loose pink skirt. He blinked again, and saw the woman wearing it.
It was Nora Archer, probably the only woman on the planet who could wear that color with that red hair and pull it off.
She was too far away for Logan to see details, but his mind could conjure up every inch. The silly auburn curls that frothed around her shoulders. The round eyes, too big for her face, forest-colored, mostly brown with shards of green and bronze. Little girl pink cheeks, freckles and an upturned cheerleader’s nose. But a dangerous woman’s mouth, wide and soft and tempting.
Today, her head was bowed as she moved toward them, her pale face somber. She might have the coloring of a roseate spoonbill, but she had the soft melancholy of the mourning dove.
The widow Archer. He squeezed the handle of the hammer. As beautiful, and as off-limits, as ever.
Vic had noticed her now, too, and both men watched without speaking until she finally reached them. Max stared as well, cocking his head and rotating it slowly to follow her all the way. Logan smiled inwardly. It must be a male thing.
When she got close enough, he stood. While she was shaking hands with Vic, Logan dropped the hammer again, and brushed his hands against his jeans, sorry that they were gritty with sawdust and dirt.
But that was dumb. His hands were always dirty. The days when he spent all his money on designer suits and weekly manicures were long gone and unlamented.
“Hi, Nora,” he said. “I was going to call you again later.”
“Logan.”
She held out her hand, and he took it. It had been six months, and yet he knew to brace himself for the little electric jolt. She felt it, too, he could tell, though she had always been polished at covering it.
“I came to talk about Sean. To apologize, first of all. He told me what happened this afternoon. He said he did a lot of damage.”
“Not so much. He busted up a couple of enclosures. Nothing we can’t fix.”
Logan was amused to see Vic nodding vigorously, although an hour ago the manager had been ready to wring Sean Archer’s neck with his bare hands. That was the effect Nora Archer had on people. Male or female, young or old, one look into those wistful hazel eyes, and they wanted to don armor and jump on a white horse.
She let go of his hand quickly, then gazed around, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “Did he—were there birds in any of the enclosures?”
“The screening wasn’t finished yet. It was just bare boards, really. Don’t worry, Nora. He hurt stuff, nothing living.”
She smiled, still sad but clearly grateful, then turned to Vic. “He tells me you were disturbed about the bird he brought with him. He thinks you believe he killed it.”
“Well, I—” Vic looked uncomfortable. “I couldn’t be sure. It was dead by the time I got here, and he was kind of going nuts, breaking boards and—”
“I can see why you were worried,” she said. “I was worried, too. But I’ve talked to Sean about it, and he told me everything. I’m convinced he’s telling the truth about that part. He simply doesn’t have that kind of brutality in him.”
Vic didn’t look quite as sure, but when he opened his mouth to respond, Johnny Cash’s voice suddenly growled out of his back pocket, promising in his rumbling baritone that he found it very, very easy to be true.
Max squawked, disliking the sound instinctively, and Nora’s eyes widened.
As the manager dug hurriedly in his back pocket, Logan chuckled. “Vic’s cell phone,” he explained. “That must be the new ringtone Gretchen put on it. That’s not the one that means the baby’s coming, is it?”
Vic shook his head. “No. That one’s ‘Stop, In the Name of Love.’ Johnny Cash is the get-your-ass-home-for-dinner ringtone.” He clicked the answer button. “Sorry, honey. I know what I said. I’m leaving right now. Yes, right now. No, not five minutes from now. Right now.”
