Читать книгу Cowboy Brigade - Elle James - Страница 12
Chapter Four
Оглавление“Suppertime!” Lindsay called out from the kitchen. She carried the heavy platter of roast beef and potatoes to the table and set it in the middle, the fragrant onions and spices wafting up, assaulting her senses. She hadn’t eaten since early that morning and the way her stomach churned now didn’t bode well for a satisfying meal, no matter how well prepared.
The girls had eaten macaroni and cheese while she’d prepared the meal for the adults. They’d play in their room while the men discussed the day’s progress and plans for the next. Sometimes Lacey and Lyric joined them when they had a special meal, but not tonight. Until Lindsay had the opportunity to tell Wade he was a father, the less he saw of them the better.
Her heart thudded against her ribs as boots clumped on the porch outside the open front door. The ranch workers knew to be on time for dinner if they wanted a heaping helping. If not for the garden, the milk cow and the side of beef they’d put in the freezer a few months ago, they’d be facing beans and cornbread every meal.
With the bank account down to nothing, Lindsay didn’t know where she’d come up with money to buy pantry staples. They had run out of tea and flour and the coffee supply neared empty.
Gramps led the men into the dining room where they assembled around the table. Gramps stood at the head of the table, leaving a seat at his right for Lindsay. Frank aimed for the seat beside Lindsay, but Dusty beat him to it, resting his hand on the back of the chair, staking his claim.
Frank grabbed the seat across from Lindsay.
Gramps raised a hand. “Take the chair at the end, Frank. I want the Coltrane boy to sit here and fill me in on what he’s been up to.”
Frank’s eyes narrowed, but he backed away, purposely bumping into Wade’s shoulder as he passed him and took the seat at the end of the table. He plunked down.
Gramps’s mouth tightened and he remained standing as did all the other men and Lindsay. “You know the routine, Dorian.”
Frank’s cheeks reddened and he climbed to his feet. “Damn stupid, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t, now, did I?” Gramps nodded at Lindsay.
The tension in the air was thick enough that Lindsay could cut it with a knife. How the hell could she sit through an entire meal across from Wade? She might as well forget about eating. With her head bowed, she quietly asked the Lord’s blessing for the food. As the men all muttered a rumbling amen, she added a silent prayer for help in handling this latest of crises on the Long K Ranch.
Lindsay sat and the men all dropped into their chairs reaching for the nearest platter of food. Gramps served himself a portion of the roast beef and potatoes and offered to serve Wade at the same time. “How long has it been since you’ve been home, Wade?”
Lindsay could have answered her grandfather’s question down to the year, days and hours. Her gaze crossed over the bowl of corn she was scooping onto her plate.
“Five years,” Wade replied, his gaze meeting Lindsay’s.
Lindsay broke the eye contact first, her cheeks burning. The last time Wade had been to the Long K Ranch, she’d been engaged to Dr. Cal Murphy, certain Wade Coltrane would never step foot in Freedom, Texas, again. When he’d left to join the Army, he’d said he never wanted to come back to this two-bit town.
Lindsay had moped around for years, praying he’d return. Her heart broke a little more with each passing day. One year passed, then another and she’d given up hope that Wade would come back for her.
Her friends encouraged her to date other men to get Wade out of her system. Desperate to shake the depression, she’d gone along with them when they set her up on a blind date with the new doctor in town, Cal Murphy.
He’d been everything Wade hadn’t. Cal had a calming effect on her, where Wade stirred her blood and made her heart race. Cal was easy to date, demanding little from her, and not pushing sex. Wade made every female hormone in Lindsay’s body light up like fireworks.
When Cal had asked her to marry him, it seemed like the natural progression. She said yes, knowing deep down that her heart still belonged to another.
Then Wade had blown into town on leave from the military. He’d been angry about her engagement, they’d argued out by the barn, she’d ridden off in a huff on her favorite mare.
Wade had followed.
He’d declared his love, swept her off her feet and they’d made love long into the night.
Not until the cool mist of dawn did Lindsay realize her mistake. She’d made love to Wade while engaged to another man. Guilt made her sick to her stomach. Angry at herself and at Wade for confusing her, she’d told Wade to go away and never come back.
A little over five years ago…
“Didn’t you join the Army?” Gramps asked.
Wade jabbed a fork into his food, but didn’t bother to lift it to his lips. “Yes, sir.”
“What were you, Infantry?”
“No, sir. Special Forces.” Wade pushed his food around, his jaw tightening.
Lindsay didn’t have to avoid his gaze; Wade didn’t look up from his food as Gramps asked questions. Why so evasive? He’d been so proud to be a member of the Army and that he’d been selected to be a part of the Special Forces.
He’d been deployed to Iraq when he’d left Freedom five years ago. Had his deployment changed all that? Had it changed Wade?
Lindsay allowed herself to study him for the first time since he’d returned.
Wade Coltrane had always been lean and muscular. Although his shoulders were broader, he seemed even thinner than usual, the shadows beneath his eyes, the scar over the right eyebrow and a nick in the curl of his ear were new. How had he gotten those? Had he been injured by a roadside bomb?
Her heart squeezed in her chest. All those years she hadn’t received news of his exploits. With no family left in Freedom, news about Wade dried up.
Had he found another woman? Someone who would have worried about him, sat with him in the hospital and held his hand through the nightmare of recovery? Or had Wade been on his own like he’d been since his father’s death when he was only seventeen?
“I was in the Army once,” Frank boasted from the other end of the table. “Fighting a losing war over there in the Middle East. Damn waste of time. Just need to nuke them all and be done with it.”
“That your answer to any difficult situation, Frank?” Dusty asked. “Nuke ’em?”
Frank shrugged. “Beats standing around in boots in one-hundred-and-thirty-degree temps.”
“You can’t blow things up and expect everything to work out in the end,” Lindsay said. “Killing doesn’t resolve anything.”
“No, but it makes you feel a whole lot better, don’t it?” Frank laughed. When nobody else did, he frowned and muttered, “It’s an eye for an eye. Don’t you believe in payback?”
Gramps slammed his hand on the table. “Hell, yeah, I’d like to dish out a little payback.” Lindsay cringed. Here he goes again. Not a day went by her grandfather didn’t moan about the greatest wrong ever done to him.
“Wouldn’t be hurtin’ for money if the Lockharts hadn’t stolen our oil,” the old man grumbled.
“Gramps, they didn’t steal our oil. They bought that land from you. They didn’t discover oil on it until later.”
“One year later.” Gramps snorted. “Practically gave them that land.”
“And we needed the money.” She handed Gramps the platter of roast beef, hoping he’d change the subject. “Have some more supper, Gramps.”
Wade looked up from his plate. “On my way through town this morning, I heard Lila Lockhart was involved in an accident last night.”
Lindsay wanted to throw something at Wade. He knew the score. He’d lived here as a child. He knew how enraged her grandfather got at the mention of the Lockharts. Why feed the fire with more tinder?
“Serves her right.” Her grandfather snorted. “Goin’ around like royalty with money that should have been mine. Probably driving too fast, no respect for the speed limits the rest of us have to follow.”
“They said someone booby-trapped the road with horseshoe nails.” Wade looked directly at Gramps with piercing blue eyes.
Her grandfather harrumphed. “Might have thrown a few myself if I’d thought of it first.”
“Gramps!” Lindsay slammed her fork down and shoved to her feet so fast that she almost toppled her chair. She’d had enough. The stress of sitting at the same table with Wade had finally gotten to her. Her grandfather’s rant on the Lockharts just tipped her over the edge. “Excuse me while I go anywhere I don’t have to listen to this nonsense.”
Her grandfather clamped a hand on her arm. “Oh, Lindsay, girl, calm yourself down. I’ll quit talkin’ about those yahoos. Sit.”
Wade sat at the other side of the table, a hint of a smile tweaking the corners of his mouth. He was laughing!
Heat boiled up her neck into her cheeks. Lindsay shook Gramps’s hand off her arm. “I love you, Gramps, but I can’t sit here another minute.”
She took her plate and stormed out of the dining room. In the kitchen, she went to work cleaning the pots and pans she’d used preparing the meal. Scrubbing at the baked-on food did little to work off the anger and frustration that had built throughout the day.
How dare he come back now? And why? Obviously Wade hadn’t come back because of the girls—he hadn’t even recognized them as possibly being his own.
Her hands paused, buried in soapy water. Both girls had his black hair and blue eyes. After delivering them she’d gazed down at her baby daughters, ecstatic and heartsick at the same time. They’d been the spitting image of their father even then.
No wonder she’d never gotten over him. She saw him every day in Lacey and Lyric.
Hands reached around her and dropped plates into the soapy water.
The hair on the back of Lindsay’s neck stood on end. The scent of soap, leather and denim let her know the man foremost in her thoughts stood close behind her. His breath stirred the hair curling against the side of her neck.
Her pulse sped, her breathing became labored. If she moved just a little, her back would touch his chest. He could wrap his arms around her and hold her in his warm embrace. The years would fall away, they’d be that happy couple making love into the night.
And pigs could learn to fly.
Lindsay dropped the pan she’d been scrubbing, soapsuds splashing over the sides of the sink. She ducked around Wade and reached for the dry towel hanging from the oven handle. “What do you want, Wade?”
“I came in here to help wash dishes.”
“I don’t need your help washing dishes.”
“Then let me dry.” He closed the distance between them, reaching out.
As if her body had its own ideas, she swayed toward his outstretched hand.
He snatched the towel from her fingers, twirled it and popped her hip.
“Ouch!”
“You know you hate doing dishes.” That sexy smile that had always made her toes curl, tipped his lips upward. Although the trim beard hid a lot of his face, it couldn’t hide the sparkle in his eyes.
Lindsay steeled herself from reacting to his charm. “Not as much as I hate someone helping me.”
He didn’t budge. “You used to love it when I helped in the kitchen.”
Lindsay grabbed a glass from the dish drainer and plunked it into a cabinet just to keep busy, to focus on something other than the man she’d hung all her dreams on only to be disappointed time and again. “We were kids.”
“Not so much.”
She spun toward him, her fists clenching to keep from touching him. “Okay, we were young and stupid.”
“We used to have a lot of fun.” He whipped the towel around her, caught the other end and yanked her against him. “Remember this move?”
Her breasts pressed into his chest, her heart slamming against her rib cage, threatening to beat right out of her chest. “No,” she said, her mouth inches from his. God, she could still feel the warmth of his lips on hers, kissing her as she lay naked in the starlight with him.
“Let me remind you.” He leaned closer, his mouth descending to hers.
A plate clattered in the dining room, the noise snapping Lindsay out of the stupor and back to sanity. She shoved Wade away. “If you want to help do the dishes, you do them. I have other work that can be done.”
She passed Gramps on her way out of the kitchen. She pointed a finger at him as she hurried away. “We need to talk after I get the girls down for the night. Don’t you go off to bed until we do.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gramps replied. “What’s got your knickers in a twist, girl?”
Lindsay didn’t bother to answer. She needed someone to hug. Two someones who loved her unconditionally. She needed that hug now.
For the next hour, she coaxed the girls through their baths and into their pajamas. After they cleaned up their toys, all three of them settled in Lyric’s bed to read a story. It was Lyric’s night to choose. She chose Beauty and the Beast.
Almost too jittery to sit still, Lindsay forced calm into her voice. Before long she was immersed in the story, the girls leaning against her shoulders, eyes wide and wondering. Never mind they’d heard the same story at least fifty times before.
Lindsay loved her girls and would do anything to make them happy. Would it make them happy to know about their father?
WADE KNEW exactly what Lindsay had wanted to say to her grandfather and he got way ahead of her by reminiscing with the old guy as they shared the task of cleaning up the kitchen. Apparently Wade looked enough like his father that Henry Kemp automatically trusted him.
That worked in Wade’s favor, considering he was there to build trust and find evidence. He pushed aside the gnawing guilt at betraying the man who’d opened his home to him when his father had passed away.
Old Man Kemp had always been gruff, but he’d also been fair in his treatment of his employees. When it came to his granddaughter, he’d declared her hands off to the ranch hands. That included Wade.
They’d managed to keep their secret flirtation just that…a secret while Wade and Lindsay were in high school.
Deep down Wade always knew he was the hired help and Lindsay was in a different class altogether. That’s why he’d left to join the Army. He’d hoped to build a career for himself, prove he was worthy and then come back to ask her to marry him.
The idea had been a boy’s romantic dream. The reality had kicked him in the teeth.
As Henry stacked the last clean plate in the cupboard, he sighed. “I’m glad you’re here, Wade. The place hasn’t been the same since your father passed.”
“Nothing stays the same.” Wade dried his hands and laid the towel over the oven handle. “Sometimes things need to change in order to get better.”
“You got a point there.” Henry stretched and rolled his shoulders. “I ain’t gettin’ much younger, but I got plans to get this place going again. The Lockharts might have got the better of me once, but it won’t happen again.”
“How so?”
Henry shook his head. “I ain’t a tellin’. You’ll just have to wait and see, like the rest of them.” He strode toward the hallway. “Could you find my granddaughter and tell her I’m ready to go to bed. If she wants to talk, it better be soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
With the old man’s permission, Wade could walk through the house, searching for Lindsay. While he was at it, he’d look for anything that could be used as evidence that the old man was responsible for the most recent attack on Governor Lockhart.
Henry Kemp made no bones about his hatred for the Lockharts. He had the motivation to want to harm them. The question that tugged at Wade’s conscience was, did Henry have the killer instinct?
Henry headed for his office, while Wade walked toward the rear of the house, down the hallway he remembered that led to Lindsay’s bedroom. His groin tightened.
Back in high school, he’d sneaked into her room late one night when he’d been seventeen and she’d been sixteen. That was the night they’d both lost their virginity, the night he’d first declared his love to Lindsay Kemp.
Her bedroom door stood open, the lights off, the bed neatly made and empty. Although the room was empty, a soft voice carried through from somewhere inside.
Wade entered the room, the scent of Lindsay surrounding him, her presence filling the space. Everything about her room reminded him of Lindsay from the horse figurines she’d treasured as a child to the painting of a field of Texas bluebonnets that hung over her headboard.
Not much had changed in the room except the photographs of her daughters lining her dresser. He paused to stare at one picture of Lindsay and her twins, laughing in the sunlight, the love and joy reflected in their smiles made his chest ache.
Had he stayed in Freedom, would he have been a part of Lindsay’s life? He shook his head. Probably not. The hired help didn’t mix with the boss’s family. Not then and not now. Lindsay deserved better.
The voice continued on. Lindsay’s voice. He paused in front of what had once been Lindsay’s closet. It had been remodeled into a doorway into the room beside Lindsay’s.
A light shone down beside twin beds. Lindsay sat in the middle of one with a daughter nestled against either side.
Their dark hair spilled across the sheets, their faces soft and angelic, eyes closed.
Lindsay’s voice faded off as she smiled down at them. She laid the book on the nightstand and stroked their hair several times before she slipped out of the bed and reached down to move one of the girls.
Wade cleared his throat softly, announcing his presence.
Lindsay jumped, her eyes widening, then narrowing.
Wade crossed the threshold into the little girl’s room. “Let me.”
“I can get her,” Lindsay whispered.
He ignored her protest, scooping his hand beneath the little one and lifting. Light as kitten, the little girl rolled into his arms and snuggled against his chest. The scent of baby shampoo invaded his senses. Her silky, soft hair tickled his arm and everything about the little girl filled Wade with longing for something he could never have.
Lindsay turned back the covers on the other bed and moved aside.
Wade laid the child down on the bed and tucked her feet beneath the sheets.
Lindsay took over, adjusting the pillow beneath her head and drawing the blanket up under her chin, then pressing a kiss to the girl’s forehead. When she’d finished, she returned to the other bed and performed the same ritual.
A lump the size of Texas lodged in Wade’s throat. He could barely remember his mother, but the memories he did have involved a goodnight kiss just like the one Lindsay gave her daughters. “You’re a good mother.”
Lindsay switched the light off beside the bed and motioned Wade toward the door.
With one last glance at the sleeping children, he left the room. A sudden need for fresh air pushed him down the hall. Not until he was almost back to the dining room did he remember his initial task.
Wade conducted an about-face and bumped into Lindsay who had followed him. He grabbed her arms to keep her from falling, his fingers sliding across her skin, the urge to draw her closer so powerful that he shook with the effort to resist. “Your grandfather wanted to talk to you,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.
“We need to talk,” she said at the exact same time. “What?”
The green of her eyes drew him in, mesmerizing him, the curve of her full lower lip begged to be kissed. Wade swallowed hard on the rise of desire. He hadn’t come to the Long K Ranch to rekindle a burned-out flame. His mission was to expose this woman’s grandfather for attempted murder.
With all the self-control he could muster, his hands dropped to his sides, his fingers still tingling with her warmth. “Your grandfather said that if you want to talk to him, hurry up. He’d like to go to bed.”
She pulled that full bottom lip between her teeth and chewed on it like she always had when she worked a problem in her head. “Okay, but we really need to talk.”
“Tomorrow.” Wade turned and left before he forgot why he’d come. Before he started thinking there might still be something between them, if he gave it a chance.
He should have learned long ago that he didn’t deserve the boss’s granddaughter. Even less so now. A man who could betray his unit had no business dreaming about a life with Lindsay and her little girls. They deserved better.
Wade stepped out on the porch and dragged in a deep breath, which did nothing to relieve the pain in his chest. As a high school kid, he’d been a dreamer. He’d long passed the dreams. Time to get on with life and accomplish this mission as soon as possible.