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What she’d felt for Matt had only been lust. With Angus, it was different. They had respect and a deep affection. If her heart sometimes whispered that she wanted more than that, she ignored it.
Angus must have seen something disturbing on her face. He came away from the window and opened his arms. She rushed into them, burrowing against his big warm chest.
Hold me. Help me. Reassure me. I’m so scared.
“Why, Angus?” The question came out muffled, but she couldn’t pull away from him.
“Why what?” His voice echoed against her ear. “What’s got you so upset?”
“I don’t want Matt Long here.”
“Why not? I thought he was a friend of yours. I thought you’d be happy.”
“Why did you hire him?” she asked without answering his question.
“He owes me.”
Jenny pulled away to look at him. “Owes you? Because you were good to him when he was a teenager?”
“No. That was freely given. This is for paying the taxes on his land for five years while he was away. So he wouldn’t lose it.”
“You mean he still owns it?” That cabin she wanted to burn to the ground? The one that had witnessed the worst humiliation of her life? Part of her whispered, and the best night you ever had, but she suppressed it. The pain on the morning after had far outweighed the pleasure of the night before.
Angus nodded. “I’ve been paying his taxes, but now that you and I are getting married, I need to get my life in order. I’m organizing my finances and adding you and Jesse to my will.”
“So what if Matt owes you money? Why couldn’t he pay you back from Wyoming or wherever he was?”
Angus seemed puzzled by the stridency of her tone. “Ordinary is his home. He should have stayed here all along.”
He stepped away from her and led her down the hall to his office. “I’ll show you the paperwork. Matt’s going to work off what he owes me here on the ranch.”
“Didn’t you say once that he was doing well in the rodeo? Why can’t he pay you from his winnings?”
“He had an accident with a bull.”
What? Matt had been injured? By a bull? She’d always thought him…indestructible, but in confrontations between bulls and men, bulls always won. “How badly was he hurt?”
“Bad enough. Broken ribs. Ruptured spleen. Emergency surgery. His rodeo days are over for good. His winnings all went to pay his hospital bills.”
“You’ve been keeping track of Matt over the years?”
“Of course. He’s like a son to me.”
Angus sat at the desk while Jenny took a chair across from him. He stretched his arms and clasped his fingers behind his head.
“I don’t know what happened to make Matt leave Montana but he should have stayed and ranched that piece of land he owns.”
Jenny chewed on her lip.
Angus cast her a glance. “Looked like you two were fighting out there.” He gestured with his head toward the front of the house. “What was that about?”
She should tell him, now, while they were alone. It would take Angus only a fraction of a second to see the family resemblance when Matt and Jesse stood side by side. It was unfair to blindside him like that.
She took a deep breath and held it. Angus wouldn’t like this. Could she make him understand why she’d never told Matt about his son? Well enough that Angus wouldn’t hate her?
She couldn’t stand to lose his respect.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
“Okay,” he murmured, sitting forward and releasing his hands.
“Matt is…” Oh, just spit it out and get it over with. “Matt is Jesse’s father.”
“Matt?” Angus fell back against his chair as if someone had hit him. His eyebrows nearly met his hairline. “Jesse’s father?”
“Yes,” she said. “Jesse is Matt’s son.”
“I never invaded your privacy, never asked who the father was,” he whispered, “but why didn’t you ever tell me this?”
Oh, Angus, don’t be disappointed in me. It hurts.
“Angus, I spend most days trying to forget it, forget that I ever had the poor judgment to get involved with him.”
Matt’s arrival on the Circle K changed so much for Jenny. Everything had been going along fine. She’d finally found the way to make her long-ago dreams of having a family and working the ranch she’d grown up on come true. She would finally have security for Jesse.
Angus scratched his head, as though he was having trouble taking it in. “I can’t believe Matt moved to Wyoming. Why didn’t he stay here and raise his boy?” His lips tightened. “I thought better of him.”
Angus stood and she reached a hand to stop him from leaving the room to hunt Matt down.
“I didn’t tell him.”
“What?”
Jenny stared down at her fist on her thigh, at the knuckles turning white, and whispered, “I never told him.”
Angus leaned forward to get a good look at her face. “Tell me I misheard you,” he said, his tone low and harsh.
“You didn’t.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. Sure, she’d had her reasons for not telling Matt, good ones, but Angus might not agree.
“You didn’t tell him he had a son and you don’t see what’s wrong with that?” The sharp edge of his voice grated on her skin. She’d never heard him so angry.
She lifted her chin defiantly. “No, I didn’t. I’m not proud of it, but I had to protect my son. I didn’t need Matt to be Jesse’s father. I didn’t want him to be.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t let him hang around for a couple of months or years and then abandon Jesse.”
“Matt is a better man than that.”
“No, he isn’t. Remember what happened when he got Scotty’s daughter pregnant? How Matt took off for a month and only returned after Elsa’s miscarriage?”
“That’s not a fair comparison. He was fifteen and running scared. He must have been twenty-five, twenty-six, when you got pregnant. He would have done the right thing.”
Jenny slapped the arm of her chair. “He was still the kind of man to leave a young woman after a one-night stand, in the middle of that night, and never bother to find out if she was pregnant.” Her voice rose. “He knew we hadn’t used birth control.”
“It was your responsibility to track him down and tell him.”
“True, and I would have if he’d been a different person.”
She’d heard him whisper that he loved her and it had set her heart soaring. She hadn’t asked, begged or cajoled. He’d offered it freely. She’d thought they were about to get their happy ending and had fallen asleep with a smile on her lips.
What a fool she’d been.
The following morning, Matt had left Montana. Why would he treat his son any better than he’d treated her? He was a man who raised hopes and then dashed them.
“You remember what Matt was like back then—even in his twenties,” she said, “fooling around with any woman who showed an interest. Lots of drinking on Friday and Saturday nights. Traveling with the rodeo whenever he could.”
“Jenny,” Angus said dryly, “you’re describing half the single men in the state.” He folded his arms across his chest and took his seat again, preparing to argue.
“Yes, but Matt seemed worse. His childhood was so unstable. He ran out on Elsa. He ran out on me. How could I trust him not to run out on Jesse one day?” She needed Angus to understand but couldn’t tell him how that “I love you” had been the answer to fantasies she’d woven around Matt for as far back as she could remember, since the first time she’d found him lying under the cotoneaster bushes on the hill, spying on her family and the ranch, his heart full of envy. She knew he’d loved the house and this land us much as she had.
She stood and spread her hands on the desk. “My son means more to me than anything on this earth. I would protect him with my life. I’m protecting him now.”
Angus shook his head. “Matt has a real decent streak inside him.”
“I know.” That was the part she’d fallen in love with as a girl. “But I don’t trust him. Jesse will fall for him and then Matt will leave. That’s always been his pattern. I know this in my bones, Angus.”
Jenny felt a headache throbbing against the backs of her eyelids. The fight left her and she sat back down.
Angus came around the desk and settled onto his haunches in front of her. He took her hands in his.
“Your fingers are like icicles.” He chafed them. “You have to tell him, sweetheart. It’s the right thing to do.”
She knew that and hated it.
“Angus,” she whispered, “I’m so scared. What if Jesse gets hurt?”
“I’ll be here. You’ll be here. We’ll make it all right for him.”
“But—”
“Talk to Matt,” he urged.
It was a losing battle and she gave in. “I’ll go pick up Jesse.”
“Where is he? At Hank’s?”
She nodded. “Don’t tell Matt anything while I’m gone. Promise?”
After Angus agreed, Jenny breathed a sigh and left the house.
Neither Matt nor Masterpiece was in the yard. The truck and trailer stood along the side of the stable. Obviously, Matt thought he was here to stay for a while.
Not if Jenny could help it.
CHAPTER TWO
JENNY JUMPED into her beater car and sped from the ranch.
Ten minutes later, she drove down the long driveway of the Sheltering Arms and pulled up in front of the house. The grounds were neat as a pin, as usual.
She walked to the nearest corral where a couple of mares chewed on the grass under the fence.
Jenny combed one horse’s mane with her fingers, and took comfort from the animal’s solid bulk.
She liked the simplicity of animals, of dealing with them. They had no problem offering loyalty and then sticking with it.
Children’s voices in the stable rose and fell in playful cadence. She thought she heard Jesse’s voice among them. He loved playing with the kids Hank brought to the ranch.
Her nerves hummed. Jesse didn’t know who his father was. She’d managed to dodge that bullet for four years now. He hadn’t asked yet, but he would.
When she and Angus married, she planned to tell her son that Angus was his father. Jesse would be satisfied with that. He loved Angus.
But what about when he got older, old enough to guess differently?
I’ll deal with that when it happens.
Jenny blew a soft breath through her lips. She had to believe her marriage to Angus would work.
A mess of poorly dressed kids ran out of the stable. Jenny approached them. Some kids had holes in the toes of their sneakers, or knees worn out of their pants. They all wore baseball caps with Sheltering Arms written across the front. They were inner-city children recovering from cancer and Hank Shelter was giving them three weeks of pure, unadulterated fun. Hank took in a pack of kids every single month, year-round.
Knowing their father’s drill by heart, Hank’s two children, four-year-old Michael and three-year-old Cheryl, led the pack. When Amy first came to the Sheltering Arms, a small girl was visiting who had become precious to both Hank and Amy. They’d been devastated when she died, and later named their daughter Cheryl in her honor.
Another little boy, with a head full of beautiful blond locks and long blond eyelashes that would do a girl proud, ran with them. Jesse. Jenny’s heart swelled, as it always did when she saw him.
“Jesse!” She waved and her son’s smile lit up his face. He ran across the yard and threw himself full force into her arms. Jenny caught him, laughing while she stumbled to keep her balance.
Oh, you rare gem. Oh, my little sweetheart.
She hugged the bundle of energy so hard he finally complained.
“Mo-o-om. I can’t breathe.”
Jenny loosened her grip and carried her son in her arms with his legs wrapped around her waist, like a little monkey.
She waved to Hank and his children.
“Hey, Jenny,” Hank called. Sometimes Jenny missed working for Hank. Sometimes she missed working with the children.
