by Lisa Jackson
“Waste of time. Unless you want it.”
Matt’s smile was a slow grin. “I think I’m man enough to handle warm liquor.”
“Figured as much.”
Thorne took the drink Matt offered and clicked the rim of his glass to his brother’s. “To Randi.”
“Yep.”
Thorne tossed back his drink, unwinding a bit as the aged liquor splashed against the back of his throat then burned a fiery path to his stomach. He rotated his neck, trying to relieve the kinks in his neck. “Okay, so shoot,” he said, as Matt lit tinder-dry kindling already stacked in the grate. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Wish I knew. Near as the police can tell, Randi was involved in a single-car accident up in Glacier Park. No one knows for sure what happened and the cops are still lookin’ into it, but, from what anyone can piece together, she was alone and driving and probably hit ice, or swerved to miss something—who the hell knows what, a deer maybe, your guess is as good as mine. The upshot is that she lost control and drove over the side of the road. The truck rolled down an embankment and—” he studied the depths of his glass “—she and the baby are lucky to be alive.”
Thorne’s jaw tightened. “Who found her?”
“Passersby—Good Samaritans who called the local sheriff’s department.”
“You got their names?”
Matt reached into his back pocket and withdrew a piece of paper that he handed to Thorne. “Jed and Bill Swanson. Brothers who were on their way home from a hunting trip. The deputy’s name is on there, too.”
He read the list of names and numbers, his eyes lingering for a second when he came to Dr. Nicole Stevenson.
“I figured we should keep a list of everyone involved.”
“Good idea.” Thorne tucked the piece of paper into his pocket. “So do you have any idea what Randi was doing at Glacier or anywhere around here for that matter? The last I heard she was in Seattle. What about her job? Or the father of the baby?”
Matt finished his drink. “Don’t know a damned thing,” he admitted.
“Well, that’s gotta change. The three of us—Slade, you and I—we’ve got to find out what’s going on.”
“Fine with me.” Matt’s determined gaze held his brother’s.
“We’ll start tonight.” The gears were already turning in Thorne’s mind. “As soon as Slade gets in, we’ll start making plans. But first things first.”
“Randi and the baby’s health,” Matt guessed.
“Yep. We can start digging around in her private life as much as we want, but it doesn’t mean a damned thing if she or the baby don’t pull through.”
“They will.” Matt was cocksure as the front door banged open and Slade appeared.
“Thanks for all the help,” the youngest brother grumbled as he marched into the room smelling of horses and smoke. He found a glass and poured himself a stiff shot.
“You managed,” Matt guessed.
Thorne rolled up his sleeves. “Why are you so sure that Randi and her boy will be okay?”
One side of Matt’s mouth lifted. “Because they’re McCaffertys, Thorne. Just like us—too ornery not to pull through.”
But Thorne wasn’t convinced.
Chapter 4
“Don’t want to dance,” Molly insisted as Nicole shepherded both her daughters from the preschool and into the SUV. The rain had stopped in the night and an October sun peered through high, thin clouds.
“Why not?”
“Don’t like it.” Molly climbed into her car seat and started hooking the straps together while Mindy waited for her mother to snap her into place.
“Next year you can play soccer and we’ve got swim lessons in the spring. Until then, I think we’ll stick with dance. I already paid for the lessons and they won’t hurt you.”
“I like to dance,” Mindy said, casting her more outspoken sibling a look of pure piety. “I like Miss Palmer.”
“I hate Miss Palmer.” Molly crossed her chubby arms over her chest and glowered at the back of the passenger seat as Nicole slid behind the steering wheel.
“It’s not nice to hate.” Mindy lifted her eyebrows imperiously and glanced knowingly at her mother. The angel, making sure Nicole knew that Molly was being the embodiment of evil.
“Hate’s a pretty strong word,” Nicole said and started the SUV. The engine fired on the first try. “Atta girl,” she added and Mindy nodded, thinking her mother was praising her. Dark curls bounced around her head as she sent her twin a holier-than-thou look of supreme patience.
“Quit that! Mommy, she’s looking at me.”
“It’s okay.”
“I want ice cream,” Molly insisted.
“Right after dance.”
“I hate dance.”
“I know, I know, we’ve been over this before,” Nicole said adjusting the heat and defrost. Sun or no sun, the air was still cold. She drove over a small bridge and past a strip mall to the older side of town where an old brick grade school had been converted into artists’ quarters. She parked, took the girls inside, and rather than stay and watch them go through their routine, she drove to the service station where the mechanic looked under the hood of the SUV, lifted his grimy hat and scratched his head.
“Beats me,” he admitted, shifting a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. An elderly man with a barrel body and silver beard stubble, he frowned and wiped the oil from his hands. “Seems to be working just fine. Why don’t you bring it in next week and leave it—can you? We’ll run diagnostics on it.”
She made an appointment, mentally crossed her fingers, rounded up the girls and managed to stop at the grocery store and ice-cream parlor before they had a total meltdown.
“Why doesn’t Daddy live with us?” Mindy asked as they pulled into the driveway of their house.
Nicole parked and pocketed her keys. “Because Mommy and Daddy are divorced, you know that. Come on, let’s get out of the car.”
“And Daddy lives far away,” Molly said, drips of bubble-gum ice cream falling from her chin.
“He don’t come and see us. Bobbi Martin’s daddy comes and visits her.”
“Would you like for your father to visit?” Nicole had opened the back door and was unsnapping the straps to Mindy’s car seat.
“Yeth.”
“Nope.” Molly shook her head. “He don’t like us.”
“Oh, Molly—” Nicole was about to argue and then saw no reason to defend Paul. He’d had no interest in the twins since the divorce. Sending Nicole child support payments seemed to fulfill all his requirements as a father; at least in his opinion. “You just don’t know your father.”
“Is he going to come see us?” Mindy asked, her eyes bright, her ice-cream cone forgotten. The single scoop of cookies-’n’-cream was melting into her fingers.
“I don’t know. He doesn’t have any plans to, not yet. But, if you like, I could call him.”
“Call him!” Mindy swiped at the top of her cone with her tongue.
“He won’t come.” Molly didn’t seem upset about it; she was just stating a fact. “You can have the rest,” she said, handing her mother the cone and bolting from the rig. She tore off across the wet grass to the swing set.
“Can’t you undo this yourself?” Nicole asked lifting the safety bar of the car seat.
“You do it.” Mindy smiled impishly, then, still clutching her cone, slid out of the car.
You’re spoiling her, Nicole told herself as she juggled the grocery sacks and carried them into the house. You’re spoiling them both, trying to be father and mother, feeling sorry for them because, they, like you, are growing up without their father.
Was it her fault? She had a lot of reasons for moving away from San Francisco, for wanting to
start over. But maybe in so doing, she was robbing her daughters of a vital part of their lives, of the chance to know the man who’d sired them.
Not that he’d shown any interest when they still lived in the city. He’d never seen the girls for more than a couple of hours at a time and his new wife had been pretty clear that she saw his twins as “baggage” she didn’t want or need.
So Nicole wasn’t going to beat herself up about it. The twins were doing fine. Just fine.
Patches, who had been washing his face on the windowsill, hopped lithely to the floor. “Naughty boy,” Nicole whispered, but added some dry food to his dish, unpacked the groceries and watched her girls through the back window. They were playing on the teeter-totter, laughing in the crisp air as clouds began to gather again. Nicole pressed the play button on the answering machine.
The first voice she heard was Thorne McCafferty’s.
“Hi. It’s Thorne. Call me.” He rattled off his phone number and Nicole’s stomach did a flip at the sound of it. Why he got to her after all these years she didn’t understand, but he did. There was no doubt about it. She knew that he’d been her first love, but it had been years, years since then. So why did he still affect her? She glanced to the windowsill where she’d placed the bud vase with its single white rose—a peace offering, nothing more.
Sighing, she wished she understood why she couldn’t shake Thorne from her thoughts. She wasn’t a lonely woman. She wasn’t a needy woman. She didn’t want a man in her life—at least not yet. So why was it that every time she heard his voice those old memories that she’d tucked away escaped to run and play havoc through her mind?
“Because you’re an idiot,” she said and finished unloading the car. She remembered seeing him for the first time, the summer before her senior year in high school. He’d been alone, dusk was settling, the sky still glowing pink over the western hills, the first stars beginning to sparkle in the night. The heat of the day hung heavy in the air with only a breath of a breeze to lift her hair or brush her cheeks. She was sitting on a blanket, alone, her best friend having ditched her at the last minute to be with her boyfriend and suddenly Thorne had appeared, tall, strapping, wearing a T-shirt that stretched over his shoulders and faded jeans that hung low on his hips.
“Is this spot taken?” he’d asked and she hadn’t responded, thinking he had to be talking to someone else.
“Excuse me,” he’d said again and she’d twisted her face up to stare into intense gray eyes that took hold of her and wouldn’t let go. “Would it be all right if I sat here?”
She couldn’t believe her ears. There were dozens of blankets tossed upon the bent grass of the hillside, hundreds of people gathered and picnicking as they waited for the show. And he wanted to sit here? Next to her? “Oh, well…sure,” she’d managed to reply, feeling like an utter fool, her face burning with embarrassment.
He’d taken a spot next to her on her blanket, his arms draped over half-bent knees, his spine curved, his body so close to hers she could smell some kind of cologne or soap, barely an inch between his shoulder and hers. Suddenly she found it impossible to breathe. “Thanks,” he said, his voice low, his smile a flash of white against a strong, beard-shadowed chin. “I’m Thorne. McCafferty.”
She’d recognized the name, of course, had heard the rumors and gossip swirling about his family. She had even met his younger brothers upon an occasion or two, but she’d never been face-to-face with the oldest McCafferty son. Never in her life had she felt the wild drumming of her heart just because a man—and that was it, he wasn’t a boy—was regarding her with assessing steely eyes.
Five or six years older than she, he seemed light-years ahead of her in sophistication. He’d been off to college somewhere on the East Coast, she thought, an Ivy League school, though she couldn’t really remember which one.
“I imagine you do have a name.” His lips twitched and she felt even a bigger fool.
“Oh…yes. I’m Nicole Sanders.” She started to offer him her hand, then let it drop.
“Is that what you go by? Nicole?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard and glanced away. Clearing her throat she nodded. “Sometimes Nikki.” She felt like a little girl in her ponytail and cutoff jeans and sleeveless blouse with the shirttails tied around her waist.
“Nikki, I like that.” Plucking a long piece of dry grass from the hillside he shoved it into his mouth and as Nicole surreptitiously watched, he moved it from one sexy corner to the other. And he was sexy. More purely male and raw than any boy she’d ever been with. “You live around here?”
“Yeah. In town. Alder Street.”
“I’ll remember that,” he promised and her silly heart took flight. “Alder.”
Dear God, she thought she’d die. Right then and there. He winked at her, stretched out and leaned back on his elbows while taking in the back of her head and the darkening heavens.
As the fireworks had started that night, bursting in the sky in brilliant flashes of green, yellow and blue, Nicole Frances Sanders spent the evening in exquisite teenage torment and, without a thought to the consequences, began to fall in love.
It seemed eons ago—a magical point in time that was long past. But, like it or not, even now, while standing in her cozy little kitchen, she felt the tingle of excitement, the lilt, she’d always experienced when she’d been with Thorne.
“Don’t go there,” she warned herself, her hands gripping the edge of the counter so hard her fingers ached. “That was a long, long time ago.” A time Thorne, no doubt, didn’t remember.
She waited until she’d fed and bathed the girls, read them stories, and then, dreading talking to him, punched out the number for the Flying M Ranch.
Thorne picked up on the second ring. “Flying M. Thorne McCafferty.”
“Hi, it’s Nicole. You called?” she asked while the twins ran pell-mell through the house.
“Yeah. I thought we should get together.”
She nearly dropped the phone. “Get together? For?”
“Dinner.”
A date? He was asking her out? Her heart began to thud and in the peripheral vision she saw the rose with its soft white petals beginning to open. “Was there a reason?”
“More than one, actually. I want to talk to you about Randi and the baby, of course. Their treatment, what happens if we can’t find the baby’s father, convalescent care and rehabilitation when Randi’s finally released. That kind of thing.”
“Oh.” She felt strangely deflated. “Sure, I suppose, but her doctors will go over all this with you.”
“But they’re not you.” His voice was low and her pulse elevated again.
“They’re professionals.”
“But I don’t know them. I don’t trust them.”
“And you trust me?” she said, unable to stop herself.
“Yes.”
The twins roared into the room. “Mommy, Mommy—she hit me!” Molly cried, outraged, while Mindy, eyes round, shook her head solemnly.
“Not me.”
“Yes, she did.”
“You hit me first.” Molly began to wail.
“Thorne, would you excuse me. My daughters are in the middle of their own little war.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize.” He paused for a second as she bent on one knee, stretching the phone cord and giving Molly a hug. “I didn’t know you had children.”
“Two girls, dynamos. I’m divorced,” she added quickly. “Nearly two years now.”
Was there a sigh of relief on his end of the conversation, or did she imagine it over Molly’s sobs?
“I’ll talk to you later,” he said.
“Yes. Do.” She hung up and threw her arms around both girls, but her thoughts were already rushing forward to thoughts of Thorne and being alone with him. She couldn’t do it.
Even though he’d tried to apologize for leaving her and she’d spent years fantasizing about just such a scenario, she wouldn’t risk being with him again. It wasn’t just herself and her heart she had to worry about now, she had the girls to consider. And yet…a part of her would love to see him again, to smile into his eyes, to kiss him… She pulled herself up short. What was she thinking? The kiss in the parking lot had been passionate, wild and evoked memories of their lovemaking so long ago, but it was the kiss on her cheek that had really gotten to her, the soft featherlike caress of his lips against her skin that made her want more.
“Stop it,” she told herself.
“Stop what?” Mindy looked at her mother with wounded, teary eyes. “I didn’t do it!”
“I know, sweetie, I know,” Nicole said, determined not to let Thorne McCafferty bulldoze his way into her life…or her heart.
* * *
Thorne walked into the barn and shoved thoughts of Nicole out of his mind. He had too many other problems, pressing issues to deal with. Besides Randi’s and the baby’s health, there were questions about her accident and, of course, the ever-present responsibilities he’d left behind in Denver—hundreds of miles away but still requiring his attention.
The smells of fresh hay, dusty hides and oiled leather brought back memories of his youth—memories he’d pushed aside long ago. As the first few drops of rain began to pepper the tin roof, Slade was tossing hay bales down from the loft above. Matt carried the bales by their string to the appropriate mangers, then deftly sliced the twine with his jackknife. Thorne grabbed a pitchfork and, as he had every winter day in his youth, began shaking loose hay into the manger.
The cattle were inside lowing and shifting, edging toward the piles of feed. Red, dun, black and gray, their coats were thick with the coming of winter, covered with dust and splattered with mud.
After a day of being on the phone, the physical labor felt good and eased some of the tension from muscles that had been cramped in his father’s desk chair. Thorne had called Nicole, his office in Denver, several clients and potential business partners, as well as local retailers as he needed equipment to set up a temporary office here at the ranch. But that had just been the beginning; the rest of the day he’d spent at the hospital, talking with doctors or searching for clues as to what had happened to his sister.