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“I beg your pardon?”
“Another shock. Not more bad news,” he clarified quickly. “Violet’s death was enough, I know.”
“What kind of shock?” Jillian asked carefully.
“Mrs. Mitchum remembered you in her will.”
Remembered you in her will. Which could mean almost anything. Violet had a lot of money, of course. Jillian had always known that. Not that it was evident in her person or in her treatment of others. It was simply that Violet loved to tell the story of her beloved Charlie’s strike. And considering how well-known Mitchum Oil was in Texas…
“She left me something?” Jillian asked.
“A couple of things, actually.”
Mementos then, Jillian thought, relieved. For the first time in years her financial situation was stable and promising, and much of that was due to Violet’s past generosity. She didn’t really want her to do more.
“What are they?”
“One I couldn’t bring with me,” Dylan Garrett said, smiling at her for the first time.
Again Jillian shook her head. “I’m not sure—”
“Violet left you her piano.”
Memories she had been fighting flooded Jillian’s brain. How many afternoons had she taken refuge in Violet’s huge Victorian house rather than go back to that dreary apartment over the antique store. It was all she could afford, and she was grateful for the owner’s generosity in making it available to her, but her loneliness for adult companionship had been almost unbearable.
At Violet’s, there had always been a welcome. Jillian remembered the long, happy evenings she’d spent there, her heart filling again with the warmth of the unconditional love she had felt emanating from the old woman for both her and her son. She would play the piano and Violet would hold Drew until he fell asleep. It had been idyllic. And a balm for the rejection Jillian had felt in every other aspect of her life.
“I can have it delivered whenever and wherever you want it.”
He meant the piano, Jillian realized. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she said softly.
“I’ll leave you my card, and you can think about it. Just give me a call when you’ve decided.”
“I used to play that piano for her.”
Even as she said it, Jillian realized this man couldn’t possibly care about that. Dylan Garrett was simply acting at the request of Violet’s lawyers. He had told her that at the beginning.
“She left me a horse,” he said.
Surprised, she looked up into his blue eyes, which were almost amused—maybe at Violet’s choice of mementos. And yet, at the same time, they exuded a sympathy that made Jillian feel as if perhaps he did understand what she was feeling.
“And she also left me one of these,” he added.
He laid something down on the desk in front of her. It took her a few seconds to break the strange connection that had grown between them to look down at whatever it was.
“My God,” she whispered when she did. And then she added truthfully, “I don’t want this.”
She didn’t. She would have given every penny this check represented to have had the opportunity to clear up the disagreement that had marred her last visit with Violet, the one where she had taken Jake Tyler with her.
That had been her mistake. It wasn’t that Violet hadn’t liked Jake. She had said as much herself. But she had also warned Jillian that there was too much “unfinished business” in her past. Too many things she had never put behind her. Violet had warned her that she must clear those up before she could hope to start a new life for her and Drew. A life with someone else.
“I’m afraid giving it back isn’t an option,” Dylan said, his voice amused. “The money’s yours to do whatever you want.”
“What I want is to see Violet again,” Jillian protested, knowing how childish that probably sounded.
“I know,” Dylan replied, and the way he said it somehow made Jillian feel that he didn’t think her plea was childish at all. “I felt the same way when I found out she was gone. I’d lost touch with Violet, and I’ll always regret that. She told me something very meaningful, something that made an incredible difference in my life, and…I never got the chance to tell her that. Or a chance to thank her.”
Something very meaningful… The words seemed to echo in Jillian’s heart. She had tried to ignore what Violet had told her. She had tried to dismiss the old woman’s wisdom as something that wasn’t feasible or realistic. But none of the advice Violet had given her through the years had been wrong. Jillian had known that, even as she had stubbornly denied the sagacity of what Violet had said to her the last time they’d met.
“She told me something, too,” she said in a low voice.
Dylan tilted his head a little, as if he were trying to read her tone. “And…?”
“And…I didn’t listen because I didn’t want to hear what she was saying. I didn’t want to believe it.”
“I certainly wouldn’t presume to try to tell you—”
“Violet would,” Jillian assured him.
Dylan laughed.
“I don’t know if she was right about what she said,” Jillian went on. Despite her grief over the way she had left things the last time she’d visited Pinto, she managed to smile at him. “But…she was right about most of the things she told me through the years. Maybe I owe it to her to try to find out if she was right about this one, too.”
Again her eyes fell to the check lying in the center of her desk. She wondered if Violet had intended her to use this money to do what she had suggested. Of course, it had come with no strings attached. No demands made. And what Violet had said had only been a suggestion. Still…
“I’ll let you know where to send the piano,” she said.
It was intended as a dismissal. Now that she had made the decision, Jillian found she was eager to get started. Maybe it was an eagerness to do exactly what Violet had said, and then put it all behind her. Or maybe… Maybe Violet had been right about the unfinished business of her life, she acknowledged.
There were too many things that Drew would have questions about as he grew older. Too many things, Jillian realized with a sense of surprise, that she herself still had questions about. And there was only one way to answer them. And really, only one place to start.
* * *
“YOU’VE LOST your mind,” Jake Tyler said.
“I know it must sound like that,” Jillian admitted.
His gaze held hers a long moment before he turned and paced to the other end of his enormous penthouse office, his fury apparent in every step. When he reached the wall of glass that looked down into the heart of Dallas’s financial district, he turned, meeting her eyes again.
His lips were compressed, and Jillian understood, because she knew him so well, that he was trying to gather control before he said anything else. His hands had been thrust into the pockets of the charcoal-gray suit he wore so that she wouldn’t see that they were clenched angrily into fists.
“I thought everything was set,” he said finally, the fury tamped down enough to allow him to speak almost naturally.
“I’m sorry, Jake, but this is something I have to do.”
“Because that crazy old woman told you to do it.”
Jillian suppressed her own anger at his characterization of Violet. Her grief was too new to shrug off Jake’s disparagement, although she recognized it was his disappointment speaking. And she couldn’t blame him for being annoyed. Any man would be.
They had all but set the date before she had taken him to Pinto that weekend. And since they’d returned, even before she had known about Violet’s death, she had been putting Jake off about finalizing plans for the wedding. The news Dylan Garrett had brought her, along with Violet’s legacy, seemed almost a sign that she had been right in postponing things a bit.
“And because of Drew,” she said, wondering as she spoke if she was using her son as an excuse for something she wanted to do. And that, too, created its own sense of guilt.
“A good private school and a father’s discipline,” Jake said. “Those are the only things he needs. You know that.”
“I’m not sure another school would be any better.”
“He needs to be with children who are bright enough to judge on something other than physical attributes.”
“Like how much money their fathers have?” she asked pointedly.
“Not all children bully those who are…different. That doesn’t have to be a part of growing up. It shouldn’t be.”
“He’ll be in a new school when we move.”
“And you think it’s going to be any different in the back of beyond? You think those kids are not going to bully him?”
There was no guarantee of that, and she knew it.
“There’s more to this than just Drew,” Jillian said.
“Then tell me. Explain to me why you’re giving up a client base you’ve worked so damn hard to build. Your career is just now starting to show the kind of success you said you’d always dreamed of. Why the hell are you throwing that all away?”
Unfinished business, Violet had said. And that about summed it up, Jillian thought. “It’s just something I have to do, Jake,” she said aloud. “If I don’t…”
“If you don’t, then…what?” Jake asked after the silence had stretched too thin between them.
“If I don’t, then I won’t be able to be your wife,” she said, looking down at the emerald-cut four-carat diamond she wore on her left hand. “If you still want that.”
“If I still want it? You know I do, Jillian. Is that what this is about? Is there someone else—”
He broke off when her eyes came up too quickly from the ring he’d given her. Again the silence expanded, filling the space between them. Finally, almost reluctantly, she twisted the engagement ring off her finger.
Holding it in her right hand, she walked across to the huge mahogany desk that was the focal point of the office she had designed for him a little less than two years ago. She laid the ring on the edge, allowing her fingers to rest on it a moment before she removed them, then clasped both hands together in front of her waist because they were trembling.
“I have to know,” she said softly. “We both have to know.”
“Don’t do this,” he said, his voice as low as hers.
“If we’re right—if this is right,” she amended, nodding toward the ring, “then I’ll be back. I’m not asking you to wait. But…whatever you decide to do, I have to go.”
“Are you telling me I won’t even be allowed to see you?”
“Are you sure you still want to?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Of course, I want to. I’m in love with you, Jillian. I thought you were in love with me.”
“So did I,” she said. “But that’s something we both need to be right about, and I promise you, what I’m doing is the only way I know to be sure.”
“And if you aren’t in love with me?” he asked, every trace of anger wiped from his tone. It held a note of uncertainty she had never heard in Jake Tyler’s voice before.
“Then…I guess that’s something we both need to know.”
CHAPTER TWO
“SOLD?” Mark repeated in surprise.
“Somebody bought it right out from under their noses,” Stumpy Winters said, grinning. “I guess they waited a little too long this time, trying to drive the price down to nothing.”
“An individual?”
“With enough money to get the paperwork done overnight. Seems like they even took Dwight Perkins by surprise.”
That wasn’t the way things normally worked around here. Most of the Realtors, like Perkins, were in the co-op’s hip pocket, which was pretty deep, giving them inside information on the market that allowed them to get the best deals.
Mark even understood why Stumpy was grinning with such unabashed delight as he told him about the sale. It did feel like a victory for the little man to have the Salvini place sold out from under the co-op’s nose. And to a family, apparently.
“Poor bastards,” Stumpy said, spitting tobacco juice into the five-pound coffee can that had been provided in the bunkhouse for that purpose. “They don’t know it yet, a’ course, but there ain’t nothing except bad luck and heartbreak waiting for ‘em.”
Stumpy would know. Although Mark hadn’t thought about it since he’d been back, that ranch had once belonged to Winters’s family, long before Tony Salvini bought it.
“Maybe it’ll be different this time,” Mark said.
Stumpy snorted, his disdain for the prediction clear. “And maybe pigs’ll fly, too, but I ain’t hanging around expecting it.”
“Speaking of which…” Mark said.
He threw the dregs of his coffee out the open bunkhouse door. Considering the strength of the brew the old man boiled up on the woodstove every morning, he half expected it to sizzle in the dirt when it hit the ground. Despite the taste, though, there was nothing guaranteed to clear the head and get the heart pumping faster than Stumpy’s coffee.
“You take care,” Stumpy said. “We’re gonna have us some weather ’fore the day’s out.”
Weather. In the vernacular of the High Plains that meant a storm, which this time of year could include sleet or snow. Like most old cowpunchers, Stumpy’s battered bones were a better indicator of the local conditions than the six o’clock news.
“See you tonight,” Mark said, taking the bunkhouse steps two at a time.
Whatever Stumpy’s bones were telling him, Mark’s back felt better than it had for a couple of days. Of course, that might be due to the fact that he hadn’t had any marathon sessions in the cockpit lately. And today wouldn’t change that pattern. A run over to Albuquerque to take one of the co-op’s owners to a meeting was the only thing on his agenda.
That could always change, but it looked as if he might have the afternoon free to take the résumés he’d been working on to the post office in town. He didn’t want to mail them from the ranch. That was something that his dad had drummed into him from childhood. The fewer people who knew your business, the better.
Not a bad philosophy, Mark admitted. Not in this case, anyway. Until he had another position lined up, he couldn’t afford to alienate the owners of the co-op. He’d keep his mouth shut about his plans to move on. After all, that decision was nobody’s business but his.
* * *
JUST A GLUTTON for punishment, he thought as he found himself easing the stick to the right.
Flying over the Salvini place hadn’t been a conscious decision, but on the return leg of his trip, Mark had ended up again on the northern boundary of the property. Although the distance this route added to his flight time would be no more than a few minutes, they could be critical on a day like this.
The old man had been right about the storm. The sky was low, the clouds were dark and threatening, and the temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees since this morning. He needed to get the chopper down before the storm hit, but the temptation to see what the new owners were doing was too strong to ignore. At least that was what he told himself as he headed south.
