Читать книгу The Cowboy's Secret Son - Gayle Wilson - Страница 10

CHAPTER ONE

LIKE A WHIPPED DOG with his tail between his legs, Mark Peterson thought, fighting the bitterness that always boiled up to the surface when he approached the ranch from this direction.

He dropped the chopper low enough that its powerful rotor kicked up dust from the arid ground below. There were no power lines or trees to worry about in this desolate terrain, and it had become his habit to low-level over the Salvini ranch whenever he was coming in from the west.

After a few pointless trips across the deserted ranch, which stirred up memories as well as dust, Mark had given up trying to figure out his motives for doing this. Maybe it was simply a form of masochism. Or maybe it was the fact that this was the last place on earth where he still felt a connection to Jillian. And that in itself was a totally different kind of masochism.

He had never forgotten her, of course, but since he’d come back to Texas, back to his family’s land, all those memories had become stronger. And much harder to deal with.

The For Sale signs were still up, he realized, which meant that the price on the property hadn’t yet dropped enough to make the co-op snap it up as they had most of the land around here. It would soon, of course, because the people who currently owned the ranch would be increasingly eager to get out of it whatever they could and move on with their lives.

The house had been unoccupied for a couple of months and was beginning to show the effects. Despite the fact that the last owners couldn’t afford to hold on to the ranch, they had at least kept it in good shape. Now…

Mark eased the cyclic back, bringing the nose of the helicopter up, and increased the pitch. As the chopper rose and then leveled out, he forced his eyes away from the familiar buildings spread out across the flat High Plains countryside below. He didn’t need to look at them. He knew every square mile of that ranch almost as well as he knew the one next door. The one where he had grown up.

It already belonged to the cooperation, as did most of those in the area that had come on the market in the last few years. Few individuals could afford the investment it took to make ranching up here a financial success. The cooperation had the backing of a couple of major banks and the monetary wherewithal to ride out the volatile ups and downs of the cattle market.

Families didn’t. They couldn’t afford to hold on through the hard times. That’s why more and more land was being sold to groups such as the one he now worked for. And as much as Mark hated to see that happen, he couldn’t blame anyone for choosing a less heartbreaking road than the one that had broken his father.

The thromping blades of the rotor startled an antelope into flight. It raced along under the shadow of the copter for a few hundred feet before it veered off to the right and disappeared beneath him.

Mark’s lips slanted with the pleasure of watching that brief display of grace and power. The country below was too dry and forbidding for much of the wildlife that flourished farther south. Of course, the High Plains were different enough from the rest of Texas that they were almost a separate entity—one Mark loved with a passion that rivaled his father’s.

Although the doctors had put his dad’s death down to a stroke, Mark knew that bitterness and failure had played as big a role as his physical condition. A longtime widower, deeply estranged from Mark, who was his only child, Bo Peterson had died a lonely and sour old man. And if he wasn’t careful, Mark told himself, coming in now over the ranch that had killed his father, that could be his own epitaph as well.

In contrast to the old Salvini place, the buildings below showed the effects of having enough money. There were only a few hands, including himself, living on the ranch now that the fall roundup was over, but it still had the well cared for air that all of the co-op’s properties possessed.

He wondered how his father would have felt about that. He sometimes wondered how he himself felt about it.

He set the chopper down with the ease of long practice. Even after he had completed the shutdown procedures, he remained in the comfortable warmth of the enclosed cockpit, delaying a moment because he dreaded the bite of the November wind, despite the protection of the leather jacket he wore.

There was nowhere in Texas as prone to bitter cold as the top of the Panhandle. The frigid gusts from the north swept ruthlessly across the flat landscape, chilling to the bone.

And his bones were a lot more susceptible than they had been before he’d left here ten years ago, Mark acknowledged. He remembered the pleasure he had once taken in a long day of hard physical labor or in the equally demanding leisure pastimes.

It had been a long time since he’d wrestled a steer or done any saddle bronc riding. And, he admitted ruefully, his lips quirking slightly, it would be a hell of a long time before he did either again.

He climbed out, feeling the jolt of the short step to the ground in every one of the damaged vertebrae of his spine. He gritted his teeth against the pain, trying to stretch out his back unobtrusively as he walked away from the chopper.

Too many hours in the cockpit without a break. He wasn’t making any complaints, though. Flying was the only activity he had ever found that he loved with the same passion he had once felt for rodeoing. He had been strictly an amateur, not nearly on a level to go pro, but he had been good enough to win some of the local prizes.

And good enough to win a few admiring glances from the women and slaps on the back from the men of the close-knit ranching communities of the Panhandle. Those had meant more to him than the money or trophies he’d won.

Especially at the last, when some of those glances had come from the doe-brown eyes of the once skinny little girl who had tagged along at his heels, hero-worshiping him the whole time they’d been growing up. Tagged along until in the space of one year, while he’d been away at college, Jillian Salvini had become a woman. A woman he’d seen with newly awakened eyes and fallen head over heels in love with.

“Back mighty late, boy,” Stumpy Winters yelled from the door of the bunkhouse. “Boss been calling you. He said for you to be sure and give him a ring when you get up to the house.”

Mark waved an acknowledgment to the old man, hunching his shoulders against a blast of wind that carried with it a stinging assault of dirt. Most nights he stopped at the bunkhouse to talk, delaying the lonely hours he would spend in his father’s house until it was time for bed. Tonight he needed to take a hot shower and stretch out his aching back more than he needed company.

Stumpy wouldn’t be offended. The old man had known him from the time he had ridden his first horse. Actually, he wasn’t sure Winters hadn’t been the one who’d put him up on that swayback.

Out of sight of the bunkhouse now, Mark slowed his pace, stretching his spine again. He climbed the three steps that led to the ranch house’s back stoop as if he were as old as Stumpy.

Once inside, he shut the door, blocking out the howl of the wind. Closing his eyes, he leaned back in relief against the solid wood behind him.

After a moment he straightened and walked across the kitchen, boot heels echoing on the vinyl-covered floor. He filled the glass standing beside the old-fashioned enamel sink and drank down the same clear, sweet well water of his childhood in a couple of long thirsty drafts. As he stood there drinking his water, he noticed that the shadows were beginning to lengthen over the yard, revealed through the windows above the sink.

He wondered idly what Tom Shipley wanted. Probably instructions about another errand to be run tomorrow. That was mostly what the chopper was used for during periods when cattle weren’t being moved. Bringing in supplies and shuttling guests from the airports in Amarillo and Lubbock out to the spread the co-op ran as a dude ranch. Or taking its owners, like Shipley, into market or meetings. Occasionally doing medevac duties for the few injuries that required more than the first aid available on the ranches themselves.

He put down the glass and turned to face the phone on the opposite wall. Make the call, get squared away with Shipley, and then grab a hot shower, he promised himself, imagining the heat relaxing muscles tensed by a long day in the air.

Maybe tensed even further by that little side trip into the past he took every time he flew over the Salvini place. Tensed every time he thought about Jillian. Which had been too often lately for his peace of mind. Especially since he’d come home.

Home, he thought, glancing around his mother’s kitchen. Not all that much had changed about it since she’d died. Just over twenty years ago, he realized with a small sense of disbelief.

There was a different color of paint on the walls. New curtains on the windows he’d been looking out. But the scarred wooden table and four chairs were exactly the same. He could still remember the night he’d brought Jillian here so they could tell his dad—

He stopped the playback of that image, closing his eyes against the painful strength of it. Too damn many memories. Too many ghosts. And none of them, except maybe his mother’s, would rest easy with him living here. He pushed away from the counter and walked over to the phone.

After he’d dialed Shipley’s number, he stood listening to the distant ringing, his eyes once more considering the chair where Jillian had sat that night. When he realized what he was doing, he turned around, facing the wall instead. And he knew that action was a physical enactment of what he needed to do mentally. To turn his back on the past.

He had been here long enough to know that coming home had been a mistake. It was time to start looking for another job. Time to move on. Time to forget about what had happened here and to get on with the rest of his life.

After all, he thought, the bitterness surging relentlessly to the surface again, that’s exactly what she had done. Jillian Salvini had turned her back on him and everything that had been between them. In doing that, she had been wiser than he. Apparently Jillian had known, even then, that no matter how badly you might want to, you could never really go home again.

* * *

“VIOLET,” Jillian Sullivan said. “Oh, God, not Violet.”

She touched the edge of her desk and, using it for support, eased down into her chair like someone who had suffered a hard blow to the midsection. Which was exactly what this felt like.

“I’m really sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” the man who had introduced himself as Dylan Garrett said.

Jillian forced herself to look up, taking a calming breath as she nodded. “I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea. I should have, I suppose. I had written her a couple of times and gotten no reply, which for Violet was so far from the norm…”

She shook her head, moving it slowly from side to side as she tried to assimilate the unwanted information that Violet Mitchum was dead. More unwanted than it would have been had they not had that silly argument the last time they’d met.

That was what those two letters had been about—an attempt to reassure Violet that she really did know what she was doing as far as marrying Jake Tyler was concerned. And as far as Drew was concerned as well, Jillian conceded.

That was what had eroded her confidence in her decision the most—Violet’s doubts about whether or not Jillian was doing the right thing for her son. The question of whether she was cheating him out of something that he was entitled to. And yet, one of the reasons she had agreed to marry Jake—

“Mrs. Sullivan?”

Dylan Garrett’s voice brought her back to the present, a present she was still having a hard time facing.

“I’m sorry,” she said blankly. “What did you say?”

“I was wondering if you had known Violet Mitchum long.”

Long enough to feel for her the kind of love usually reserved for family, Jillian thought. She didn’t say it aloud, but there was no doubt the old woman had assumed a parental role in her life. And therefore the loss was almost as devastating as if she had been one of Jillian’s parents.

Maybe even more so, she realized in regret. After she had left her family and ended up in Pinto, Jillian had desperately needed someone as supportive as Violet in her life. And through the years, she couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

“More than nine years. She was both a friend and a mentor.”

“A mentor?”

“She taught me a lot of what I know about this business,” Jillian said, glancing around the interior design studio. “When I came to Pinto, the only job I could get was in the local antique store. I learned a lot from the owner, who was a friend of Violet’s, but even more from Violet herself. Despite the rather…unusual appearance of her house, she had collected some really lovely things when she and Charlie traveled. Violet might not have had any formal education, but she had the eye, and the instinct, to discern quality and value.”

“And she shared those with you?”

Jillian smiled at him, thinking about all Violet had shared through the years. “That and far more. She paid for my classes in design and baby-sat my son so I could attend them. When I finished school, she helped secure this job for me by contacting a friend of hers who lived here in Fort Worth. I owe her more than I could possibly say, and now I discover that she’s gone, that she’s been dead for over a month. And I didn’t even know.”

Despite the depth of her grief, Jillian hated the catch in her voice when she spoke. Through the years she had learned the hard lesson of hiding her emotions. At first she had done it out of pride, and a determination that no matter what her father said to her, he would never see her cry. Then she had done it for Drew’s sake, keeping up a brave front for her son, despite the struggle those first years had been.

By now, guarding her feelings was a deeply ingrained habit. One that even a grief this profound apparently couldn’t break.

“I’m so sorry,” Dylan said again.

“Thank you. It’s just…such a shock.”

“And I have what will probably be another for you.”

“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.”