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Trevor glanced over Ryan’s shoulder into the house, his eyes troubled, then he hitched a thumb toward the main horse barn. “Maybe we should go have a talk, before he finds out you’re here. Got a minute?”
Ryan shoved his battered duffel bag to one side of the doorway with his boot. “My time is yours.”
Trevor led the way to the pine-paneled office in the main horse barn, just inside the double doors.
“Looks like you’re doing well,” Ryan said with a dry laugh, nodding toward shelves crowded with quarter horse championship trophies and framed Superior and Register of Merit award certificates. “Last time I was here, the trophies only filled one wall.”
“I spend a lot of my time on the road now. We hit most of the major show circuits west of the Mississippi.” Trevor shrugged. “It’s good for business.”
Ryan sauntered over to the five-tier racks of show saddles and the glittering rows of silver-encrusted show halters, bridles and breast collars hanging from padded hooks. “I’ll be damned.” He rested a hand on the custom-made saddle that had been his, a lifetime ago. “I’m surprised this is still here.”
“Of course it is. It’s yours.” Trevor motioned to a couple of leather barrel chairs in front of the cluttered desk, then tossed his hat on one of them, propped a hip on the edge of the desk and rubbed his face. The premature gray in his dark hair and the deep lines creasing his cheeks made him look far older than thirty-two.
“It’s good to have you back. Things have been tough here—real tough. What did Leland tell you in the letter?”
“Mostly things I already heard. That Oscar moved away and left the financial records in a hell of a mess, then the new foreman embezzled a lot of money.” Ryan leaned back in his chair. “Did anyone check out Oscar to see if he was involved?”
“He went back to Mexico and we lost track of him, but we all thought he was an honest man. Experienced hand with cattle, though he managed just basic record keeping and never did understand that dinosaur of a computer. Hardly capable of pulling off embezzlement.”
“And the next man?”
“Dad fired Oscar’s replacement four months later.” Trevor shook his head in disgust. “Lucky, or Nate would’ve had more time to steal us blind. Leland says we’ll never know the full extent of that loss.”
“Nate Cantrell?” Ryan stared at him. “I knew there were problems, but never heard all the details.”
“You haven’t been back since. I thought I wrote you…but hell, with you halfway around the world most of the time, maybe that letter never caught up.” Trevor’s brow furrowed. “Crazy isn’t it? A local guy, doing something like that to people he knows.”
“All I remember is that he and dad had occasional business dealings over the years.” The name brought other, less welcome memories, but none Trevor needed to hear.
“After Nate, Dad hired a string of business managers who either quit or were fired, and now he’s trying to do it himself. He’s trying to get me to do it,” Trevor amended. “Shoot, I never went to college. I don’t know anything about accounting—and I’m out working with the cattle from dawn to dusk as it is. I’ve tried, but he gets impatient. Then he works on it himself and…” He took a deep breath. “You know about him, right?”
“That he’s an arrogant old coot? That he’s probably making your life miserable?”
Trevor stood and wandered over to the saddle racks, where he absentmindedly began polishing the silver cantle plate on a Billy Royal cutting saddle with the cuff of his shirt. “His eyes, Ryan. He won’t admit it to anyone. I only know because I happened to see a billing slip from his last ophthalmology appointment. He’s got macular degeneration. He’s also got high cholesterol and a bad heart, but I damn sure haven’t had any luck making him go in for his checkups. He’s long overdue—and one of these days, he’s gonna drop in his tracks.”
“All this at sixty?”
“His vision upsets him the most. He’ll spend hours in his office in the house poring over bills and reports, but I can tell he’s struggling. It’s no wonder he didn’t catch what was going on—he can barely see to read.”
Ryan sat back in his chair trying to absorb the enormity of that news. Clint was well-known as a powerful force in state and local politics; a wheeler-dealer who was ruthless in his business dealings and who carefully cultivated a broad spectrum of cronies to help him meet his ends. What was it like for him, now that he faced the potential loss of his independence?
“Can’t the lawyer help out with all of this?”
“Leland is on retainer. Dad consults him on financial matters sometimes—investments and so on—and he has limited power of attorney to oversee major business decisions if Dad isn’t available. He doesn’t cover day-to-day management. It might be different if he was always in town, but he lives in San Antonio and just comes to his satellite office in Homestead a couple days a week. I can’t do it all, no matter what Dad thinks. Frankly, I don’t even know where to begin. So—” Trevor ended on a long sigh “—we’ve had overdue notices. The hunting lease program is a mess. Records are missing. Dad is land rich and cash poor right now, and last winter he missed a chance to pick up a big piece of property that borders the Four Aces.”
“He needs more land?”
“You know Dad.” Trevor shook his head. “Money. Power. Land. He wants it all, but the K-Bar-C was far more than that. It controls the aquifer that supplies a large percentage of our land. It was tangled in foreclosure for over a year. When it finally came up for sale, he couldn’t pull enough money together in time. That still rankles him to no end.”
“I’ll bet.” Ryan gave a short laugh. In Texas, prime access to a substantial underground aquifer could mean the difference between bankruptcy and success. “He’s never been one to lose happily. What about Nate—has he been caught?”
“He died a few months after being fired. Leland worked for a couple weeks on the bookkeeping disaster Nate left, then gave up and hired a forensic accountant and a private investigator. They discovered that money disappeared through cash withdrawals, and large checks to fictitious companies in Austin and Dallas. Some was filtered into an account in Llano, in the name of a nonexistent crop-spraying service. That doesn’t account for all of it, though…not even close, from what we can tell.”
“Was any of it recovered?”
Trevor snorted. “Very little.”
“Do you have a copy of that report?”
Trevor hitched a thumb toward a bank of drawers behind the desk. “In there—but it really doesn’t say any more than we already knew.”
“What about the sheriff? Didn’t he investigate?”
“Dad said he wanted to keep this quiet until he had enough evidence.” Trevor lifted a brow. “Personally, I think he was more worried about the election year ahead—didn’t want voters thinking he’d mismanaged his own business. And knowing Dad, he probably has a few financial affairs he doesn’t want brought to light.”
“But when Nate died, surely—”
“Nope. The P.I. discovered that Nate had quite a gambling problem, so it must have disappeared on the gaming tables. There was no paper trail indicating he’d transferred the money to anyone else.” At a sharp rap on the doorjamb, Ryan looked over his shoulder.
Clint stood there, as tall and imposing as ever, his lean, hard face reddened and his eyes flashing with anger. “Guess I’m part of this here discussion, wouldn’t you say?”
No hello, no good to see you. Which was, Ryan reflected, no surprise at all. “Hey,” he said lazily, lifting a hand from the arm of his chair in greeting.
“Adelfa said you two were out here.” Clint glared at his sons. “You should have come to my office.”
Trevor cleared his throat. “I just—”
“I haven’t seen my brothers in a good long while, Dad.” Ryan swung out of his chair and met Clint’s steely expression head-on, knowing that any show of sympathy or support for the old man would likely spark a tirade. “When I run into Garrett, I plan to have a good, long visit with him, too.”
An uncomfortable silence lengthened until at last Clint swore under his breath, stalked into the room and scraped a chair against the floor before dropping into it. He gave Trevor a narrowed glance. “I understand you and Garrett sent for Ryan. It wasn’t necessary.”
“Sounds like it was,” Ryan said mildly, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “I understand y’all need some short-term help to get everything back in order. After that, you can bring in a new business manager, and I’ll be out of here.”
“Interference, that’s what it is,” Clint snapped. “You had no right.”
“Trevor didn’t hire anyone behind your back, Dad. He and Garrett asked me to come home for a while and pitch in.” Ryan gentled his voice to a lethal, dead-calm tone. “I know I have no stake in this place anymore, and I sure as hell know how you feel. Believe me, I wouldn’t have come back if I hadn’t felt I owed it to my brothers to make sure their legacy was secure.”
OVER THE YEARS he’d captured infiltrators. Rescued team members from impossible situations. Tracked, caught and interrogated enemies who would have welcomed death and the chance to take him right along with them.
Convincing his arrogant and irritable father to get into his own Lincoln the next morning and driving him to town—winning a ten-dollar bet with Trevor in the process—had been one of the greatest challenges of all.
Glancing at the sign over the door of the small clinic, Ryan stepped out onto the street and pocketed the car keys. “I’m sure this Dr. Hernandez is competent, Dad. We were lucky to get you in this morning.”
Clint climbed stiffly out of the car and straightened to his full six-foot-one height, his hand still on the open door of the car. From his thick white hair to the tips of his custom-made Lucchese boots, he exuded an imperious air of power—the Texas kind, an unshakable belief that he controlled everything in his part of the world.
The tense silence in the car on the way to town had proved that nothing in the rocky relationship between them had changed over the passing years…and it never would.
“Doc Grady died five years ago, and there hasn’t been a doctor here since. What the hell does that tell you?” Clint leveled a glare at Ryan. “This guy probably couldn’t get a job in a real town—or got chased out of the one he was at. If he’s any good, why in God’s name would he come to a town like this?”
Excellent point. Ryan looked down the deserted sidewalk, taking in the boarded-up storefronts and empty parking spaces. The only signs of life were a couple of old gents dozing on benches in front of the massive, yellow stone courthouse across the street, and a handful of dusty pickups nosed up to the local diner.
The Homestead, Texas, city limits sign still claimed a population of 2,504, but he’d bet a good thousand of those people had long since fled the area, for better jobs and a brighter future.
“You’re not having heart surgery here—just a quick checkup and some lab work,” Ryan said dryly. He opened the door of the clinic, and jingled the car keys in his pocket. “I’m sure the guy can handle that much. Get this over with, and we can go home. Unless you want to drive clear into Austin, fight traffic and sit in a busy waiting room all day for the same thing.”
Clint stalked to the clinic and brushed past Ryan as he went inside, muttering under his breath. He thrust an impatient hand toward the empty receptionist’s desk. “See? No one’s here.”
“But the door was open and the lights are on. Adelfa called and talked to someone here just an hour ago.”
The decor was nearly the same as it had been back when Ryan used to come here. Curling brown linoleum. Faded Western prints on the walls. He eyed the same, hard wooden chairs he’d sat on as a kid, knowing that after a few minutes in one of them, he’d have trouble walking.
An inexplicable, eerie sensation prickled at the back of Ryan’s neck as he walked farther into the room. He spun back to look at the open front door. There was nothing there. What the hell…?
From behind him, he heard soft footsteps come down the hallway leading to the exam rooms. A rustle of papers.
“Hi, can I help you two?”
The quiet voice slid through him like a bayonet.
As if from miles away, he heard his father swear under his breath….
And then he felt the earth shift beneath his feet.
CHAPTER TWO
HER VOICE WAS FIRM, with no hint of the old, familiar flirtatiousness, but those six, simple words had the impact of a round from an M-16.
Ryan turned slowly, wishing he’d lost this morning’s bet with Trevor, and looked into the eyes of the woman who’d left him fifteen years ago.
It took him a good five seconds—nearly a lifetime—to find his voice.
“I…thought you’d moved away from here, Kristin,” he said, dropping his gaze to her white running shoes, snug jeans and white lab coat opened to reveal a Texas A&M T-shirt, before finally meeting her eyes again.
She acknowledged Clint with a nod, but her attention was on Ryan; her shock apparent when she saw the thin, ragged scar trailing from his temple to the corner of his jaw. “Years ago, I—I heard you were missing.”
He hitched his good shoulder. “Yeah, well…maybe for a while.”
“For a while, people even thought you were…”
“Dead? Not quite.” At her stark expression, he regretted his flippant answer. Apparently even Kristin Cantrell had feelings, somewhere in her cold, dark heart.
“S-so you’ve moved to the ranch, then?” She paused. “Everything’s okay now?”
“Fine. But I won’t be here long.” He stared into her light blue eyes, so startling in contrast against her long, dark blond hair and late-summer tan. His gaze unconsciously slid to her bare ring finger before he jerked it back to her eyes.
She was more beautiful than she’d been at nineteen. Maturity had brought sharper definition to her cheekbones and an elegance that had been just innocent girlishness before. He nearly laughed aloud at that. Innocence. As if.
Long ago—not that he cared—he’d heard she’d married Ted Peters, a banker’s son they’d both known in college. Not a surprise, really. For her, it had always been about money.
Old memories, best left forgotten, he thought grimly. None of them mattered anymore.
She found her voice again before he could, though her face was pale and she seemed to have an overly strong grip on the documents she held. “A woman called to make this appointment for a physical, but with her accent I didn’t catch the name clearly. I—I didn’t realize—” she cleared her throat “—that it was for you.”
“It’s my father. He needs—”
“Absolutely nothing from another Cantrell.” Clint leveled a frosty glare at Kristin, then stalked to the door. “I’ll be in the car.”
An awkward silence lengthened as they both stared after him. Finally, Kristin looked at Ryan, embarrassed, and moved to the reception desk where she ran a finger down a column in the appointment book. “Apparently neither of you knew I was going to be working here. Um…we have other openings, if you think he’d be willing to come back.”
Ryan frowned, remembering her dreams of becoming a pediatrician. Her vow to never return to Homestead. “You…manage this place?”
“I’m a physician’s assistant, now. We’re formally opening this satellite clinic on Tuesday, but I’ve seen a few walk-ins early. Dr. Lou—Louisa Hernandez—will just be here on alternate Wednesdays.”
Clint probably wouldn’t want to see a female physician, either, but it might be worth a try…especially if Trevor or Garrett could be conned into the trip. “Next week, then?”
“He could see me anytime. We haven’t even started scheduling appointments yet, so the book is open.” She smiled regretfully. “If he prefers the doctor, he’ll have to wait two weeks, or he’ll need to drive clear over to the main clinic in San Antonio.”
“While I’m home, I need to get him set up locally. It’ll be that much easier for Trevor when…” Ryan hesitated. Clint would resent his sharing personal information if he didn’t end up a patient here. “When Dad gets older. Just give him another appointment on Tuesday morning, and I’ll make sure he gets here.”
“I know this is difficult for all of us. Tell him that he doesn’t need to worry, I won’t ever refer to the past.” The hint of sadness in her voice was almost believable. “Has he been under the care of another physician?”
Ryan nodded. “Apparently someone in Austin, but from what Trevor says, Dad has never been good about keeping appointments and taking his medications. He probably needs complete lab work in addition to a checkup.”
Kristin wrote on an appointment card and held it out. “Nine o’clock.”
Ryan flinched as he reached for it, the sharp pain in his shoulder reminding him about the empty prescription bottles in the glove box of his truck. Damn. Taking a deep breath, he fought the urge to close his eyes and lean against the wall until the dizziness passed.
“Are you all right?” Kristin stepped around the desk and hesitated, her hand hovering above his arm.
He gave the slightest shake of his head, wishing he could back away and get out of there without another word, but well aware that he probably wouldn’t make it to the door.
“Can I get you something? A glass of water?”
He didn’t try to disguise his irritation, hating his weakness, his inadequacy. Hating the attention and sympathy it always drew. “Leave…me…alone.”
She grabbed a chair, settling it behind him and gently took his other arm. “Sit, for God’s sake, unless you want to leave here in an ambulance. If you go over on this hard floor, you’ll end up with a concussion.”
Pride and stubbornness kept him upright, his anger subsiding as the sensation of vertigo faded. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Right. And I’m Mary Poppins.” Kristin took a step back and folded her arms across her chest, clearly now in professional mode. “Tell me. What happened to you?”
He managed what he hoped was a semblance of a smile. “Just a little…altercation.”
“A little one.” Her voice was filled with disbelief. “How long ago?”
“Six months. It’s nothing.”
“Right. And I bet you sleep like a baby, no problems at all. Are you in physical therapy? Do you take anything for pain?”
