A Family Kind of Wedding

by Lisa Jackson

  “Or someone who wants me to think he’s Isaac.” Katie lifted her hair off her neck as the sun warmed her crown. “I just wanted you to know what was going on before the story was printed in the paper. I took a copy of the note for me and one for Jarrod, then I’ll drop off the original at the police station.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “I know, Mom, but this could be my big chance.”

  “Just be careful, okay? You’re a mother.” Brynnie slid the sunglasses that held her hair away from her face on to her nose.

  “I know, I know, and there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.” Katie’s enthusiasm drained.

  Brynnie took a bite from the tiny tomato. “Shoot.”

  “Luke Gates knows the Sorensons. He said…” Her throat tightened, and she looked away. “He said that Dave is dead.”

  Brynnie froze. “But he’s only about thirty.”

  “I know, I know.” Katie shook her head and blinked back tears. “I didn’t get a chance to ask what happened, but I will.” She sniffed and looked away from her mother. “I can’t believe it. I always thought there would be time to talk to Josh, to tell him about his dad, have them meet.” Her voice cracked. “Oh, Mom, I really blew this one.”

  “Are you sure? This could be a mistake.” Brynnie threw an arm around her daughter. “Maybe Luke got his facts wrong.”

  Katie sighed and fought tears. “I doubt it, Mom. Luke Gates doesn’t strike me as the kind of man to spread idle gossip. I think…oh, God, I think Dave’s gone.” She took in a long, deep breath. “And someway I’ve got to tell my son.”

  “Hold on a second, will ya? Don’t rush into anything. This could all be a mistake.”

  “I doubt it,” Katie said. “But I thought I’d ask Jarrod to look into it for me, find out what happened and then…” She shuddered inwardly. “And then I’ll talk to Josh.”

  * * *

  “This won’t be cheap,” Bliss Cawthorne said as she rolled out the blueprints she’d drawn for Luke on a long low table in her small office. “But I think it incorporates everything you wanted in the most cost-efficient manner.”

  Luke stared down at the drawings and nodded, but he had trouble concentrating. Ever since being with Katie the night before, he’d thought of little else than the fact that he’d impulsively kissed a woman for the first time in years. He prided himself in always being in control, in taking charge of the situation, in avoiding the pitfalls of getting involved with any woman.

  Worse yet, Katie just might be the mother of Dave Sorenson’s kid. If, indeed there was a child at all.

  “So…I enclosed the area between the two existing buildings for the dining hall and added an exterior as well as an interior stairway.” From the old blueprints and a quick look at the ranch house, Bliss had drawn a new set of plans according to his specifications and the latest building codes. And the blueprints looked good.

  Bliss Cawthorne, Katie’s other half sister, was an interesting woman. Sophisticated and bright, with blond hair and blue eyes, she spoke and held herself well. Yet there was an earthiness to her, a down-home charm that was appealing.

  Manicured nails slid across the pages as she explained how she’d created a large kitchen within a small amount of space, enclosed an area between the two buildings that would become an oversize dining room and dance hall when the tables where pushed aside, then incorporated three more bedrooms and accompanying baths on a second level. It would cost him every dime he owned. A big gamble. But then he’d been a gambler all his life.

  “Looks good,” he admitted. Finally, a place of his own.

  “I think it’ll work.”

  “I appreciate you doing this so fast.” He’d only made the request ten days ago, and even though Bliss was planning her wedding, she’d found the time, energy and imagination to draw up exactly what he had in mind.

  “Had to get it done before the big day.” She smiled, showing off perfect white teeth that he suspected had once been braced. “It’s this weekend.”

  “So I’ve heard,” he replied. “The talk of the town.”

  “Bittersweet doesn’t have much to gossip about.” She rolled the plans into tubes and snapped them closed with rubber bands. “Well, except for my family. I guess we keep the rumor mill in business.” She blushed a little as she slapped the plans into his open palm. “If you’d like to come, it’s this Sunday at the church in the square and we’re having a reception afterward at the Reed Hotel just out of town.” She grinned up at him and seemed to sense his unease. “I know that this is sudden, but you are my client, and Mason and I would love it if you’d attend.”

  No way, José. “Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll make it.” He knew the invitation was just because she felt obligated to hand it out. Besides, he wasn’t interested.

  “If you change your mind, the wedding’s at seven, and the reception will probably last all night.”

  A bell over the door to the office tinkled, and Luke looked up to see Katie, dressed in a white-and-blue sundress, dash inside. “Bliss, I wondered—Oh.” For a moment the red-haired locomotive stopped dead in her tracks. “Hi,” she managed, recovering herself as she spied Luke, and a rosy color invaded her cheeks as it had her half sister’s a heartbeat earlier. Her eyes held his, and in a second he remembered the kiss—the damned touching of lips that had kept him awake all last night. He’d thought of her, fantasized about her, then dreamed of making love to her. He’d woken up on fire and had taken the longest cold shower of his life.

  “Get the car fixed?” he asked, and she shook her head, fiery red curls brushing her nape in a movement he found ludicrously sensual.

  “Nope. You were right, it’s dead.” She hooked her thumb to the window overlooking the parking lot. “I’m borrowing one of John’s rigs.”

  “So you two know each other?” Bliss asked thoughtfully.

  “Luke helped me out yesterday,” Katie explained, giving her half sister the blow-by-blow of her evening.

  Bliss’s forehead had wrinkled as Katie finished. “But Josh is okay—the ankle is all right?”

  “He’ll be fine. For the moment he’s enjoying being king of the roost.”

  “Good, good.” Folding her arms across her chest, Bliss asked, “Okay, so now that I know Josh will survive and the car won’t, why don’t you tell me what you think you were doing poking around Isaac Wells’s place? I thought it was off-limits to everybody but the police.”

  Katie lifted a shoulder. “I know, but I was hoping to find something—some sort of clue, I guess, to what happened to him.”

  “I thought that was the sheriff’s department’s job.”

  “Yeah, but I was…well, hoping to look at it with different eyes—a woman’s eyes, a reporter’s eyes—that I might see something everyone else had missed.” She was excited now, talking rapidly, and it gave Luke some insight into how much she loved her job. Katie Kinkaid, ace reporter.

  “Isaac’s been gone for months,” Bliss reminded.

  “I know, I know, but—” Katie hesitated, then looked as if she’d decided that confiding in her sister and Luke would be all right. Her cheeks flushed, and a smile pulled at the corners of her full mouth. “I want the story. Period. I’m tired of writing about bridge-club meetings and covering the school-board agenda.”

  “You want something with some mystery to it. Some adventure.” Bliss nodded, as if she’d heard it all before.

  “At least.” Katie looked away, and Luke noticed the column of her throat, the way it disappeared into the tangle of bones between her shoulders. She was sexy as hell and didn’t seem to know it.

  He wondered about the men in her life, then quickly shoved that wayward thought aside. What did it matter whom she dated, whom she kissed, who had experienced the rush of making love to her? His jaw tightened, and he fought a ridiculous envy of those unnamed men. All that he cared about was whether or not Dave Sorenson had fathered her child over a decade ago.

 
“Well, I’d better be shovin’ off,” he said. “You’ll bill me, right?”

  “You can count on it.”

  “Bliss did some work for you?” Katie asked, as if eager to know what he was doing in her half sister’s office. Luke noticed her eyelids crinkle at the corners as if she was trying to put two and two together.

  No way out of it now. “Bliss drew up some plans for me for the ranch house. I’m going to expand it.”

  “Oh.”

  “So you already know that he owns the Sorenson place,” Bliss added, and Katie again felt that dull ache in her heart, the one that reminded her Dave was dead.

  “I heard.”

  “And I heard that you might be moving into Tiffany’s place,” Bliss said.

  Luke froze. Katie was going to live next door to him?

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “That’s what Tiffany said when I bumped into her this morning.”

  “I’ve already talked to Josh, and he’s game, so I guess I’ll rent my place and move in whenever Tiffany and J.D. settle into the farm that they’re turning into a winery. I was on my way next door to the insurance office to give Tiffany the news, but I wanted to stop by here and see how the wedding plans are going.”

  “Hectic,” Bliss replied. “This is my last day of work—” she pointed a long finger at Luke’s blueprints and skewered him with her blue gaze “—so if you want any changes, they’ll have to wait for a couple of weeks until I get back.”

  “They’re fine,” he assured her and reached for the handle of the door. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Before he could yank the door open, Bliss added, “I was just trying to talk Luke into attending the wedding and reception.”

  “Oh, you should come.” Katie turned and gave him her thousand-watt smile. “It’s going to be the event of the summer.”

  “I’m not usually one for ‘events.’”

  “Well, think about it. Just drop by the reception, if you’d like,” Bliss invited, and he inclined his head.

  “I just might.” He left feeling that he’d somehow been manipulated by the two sisters, but he didn’t much care. He wouldn’t attend the wedding, but, hell, he might as well check out the reception.

  But it had nothing to do with the fact that Katie Kinkaid would be there, he told himself. Absolutely nothing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You think this is authentic?” Jarrod asked as he eyed a copy of the note Katie had received from Isaac Wells.

  Dressed only in frayed cutoff jeans, he toweled his hair and stood dripping on the rocky shore of the Rogue River. His house, a small single-story cabin of shake and shingles, overlooked this wild stretch of water and had been his home for nearly ten years. Jarrod, solitary by nature, lived alone here with his dog and seemed to like it just that way. No women to bother him. No children to care for.

  “I wish I knew,” Katie admitted. “It would make things a whole lot easier.”

  “What did the police say?”

  “Just that they’d look into it”

  A half-grown black Lab bounded up, and Jarrod bent down to pick up a stick, “Here ya go, Watson,” he said, hurling the stick into the water. The dog jetted into the swift current and caught up with the bobbing piece of wood.

  “Do you think it’s a hoax?”

  “Could be.” Jarrod scowled and squinted as the sun lowered over a ridge of hills to the west. Overhead a hawk slowly circled in the hazy blue sky. “But why?” He shoved his hair out of his eyes and chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t like it. Something’s not right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why would Isaac Wells—or even an imposter, for that matter—want attention from you?”

  “Publicity?”

  “A man who spent most of his life as a recluse?” Jarrod’s eyes followed the dog as he galloped out of the river and, with the prized stick in his mouth, shook the water from his coat. “Tell me you’re not going to print it.”

  “Too late.”

  “Not smart, sis.” His eyebrows slammed into a single, intense line. “You might be playing right into his hands.”

  “Whose? Into whose hands? Ray Dean’s?”

  “I wish I knew,” Jarrod said.

  “Well, maybe we’ll finally find out.”

  “Be careful, Katie. One guy’s already missing, and don’t even think about messing with the likes of Ray Dean if he’s involved—and even if he isn’t. The guy is a criminal, remember that.” Jarrod’s eyes held hers for a second. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “It won’t. I’m always careful,” she said flippantly. “I just stopped by because I thought you’d want to know.”

  Jarrod flung the wet piece of wood back into the river.

  “I do.” His scowl was so dark she nearly laughed.

  “Better crack this case quick,” she teased, “or I might just beat you to it.” She checked her watch and sighed. “Look, I’ve got to get a move on. I’ve got another errand to run before I go home. Mom’s hanging out with Josh, and I said I’d be back by five.” With a wave she was off, and she refused to let Jarrod’s warnings give her pause. He was just in a bad mood because this was one case he hadn’t been able to solve. The deputy she’d spoken with at the sheriff’s department hadn’t been any happier with her. He’d taken the note and asked her if she’d touched it, which, of course, she had, though she’d been cautious as she’d figured someone would check it for fingerprints.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” she whispered to herself as she drove away from Jarrod’s hermit’s abode in John Cawthorne’s Jeep. At a fork in the road, she turned toward the hills and angled away from town. As she passed Isaac Wells’s ranch she thought fleetingly of the mystery surrounding him, but didn’t turn off until she reached the Sorenson place. Her heart thudded with painful memories as she wheeled through an open gate where wildflowers and brambles grew in profusion. The smell of dust, dry grass and Queen Anne’s lace hung in the late-summer air as the Jeep bounced over the ruts and potholes of a lane that was once familiar to her.

  How had she let the years roll by without once trying to contact Dave, to tell him about Josh? Why had she let pride—always her enemy—come between her and the truth? She swallowed back a lump in her throat as she angled the Jeep around a bend in the lane and the Sorenson cabin came into view. A rambling single-story with a loft, it sprawled between thickets of pine and oak.

  Wearing only worn jeans that looked as if they might fall off his hips at any second and a pair of weathered rawhide gloves, Luke was straining against a wayward post in the fence near the barn, trying to push it into an upright position. His booted feet were planted solidly in the dry earth, one muscular shoulder braced against the graying post. Jaw set, lips pulled back with effort, he glanced in her direction, then gave one final shove. The post slowly inched upward, and Luke, muscles straining, sweat rolling down his face and back, moved one leg and kicked a pile of stones into the widening hole at the post’s base.

  Katie felt a jab of disappointment that he wasn’t glad to see her, then swept that wayward emotion aside. Feigning disinterest in his sun-bronzed chest with its mat of gold hair, she pretended not to notice how those curly, sun-kissed swirls arrowed down to his navel to disappear in a gilded ribbon past the worn waistband of his jeans.

  Her heart fluttered, and her stomach did a slow, sensuous roll as he straightened, crossed his arms over his chest and she noticed the striated ridges of his flexed shoulder muscles. Perspiration glistened on his chest, face and arms; dust clung to his skin.

  She climbed out of the Jeep and managed a smile that felt as frail and phony as it probably appeared. Just being on Sorenson ground gave her pause. “Hi.”

  “The convertible’s still not workin’?” He kicked the remainder of the stones into the hole, then tested the post by trying to move it with his hands. It held, and he grunted in satisfaction.

  “No… And Len seems to think it’s a
goner.” Lifting a shoulder, she tried to sound cheerier than she felt. “I guess I’m in the market for new wheels.”

  “Humph.” He yanked off his gloves and stuffed them into a back pocket. “Somethin’ I can do for you?”

  Her heart pounded, and her throat went dry. She remembered his hands on either side of her face as he’d kissed her, the desire that had burned through her body. Clearing her throat, she looked away. “Thank you again for helping with the car…it’s been acting up a lot. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.”

  “It was nothing. Really. Don’t think anything of it.”

  She managed a smile and glanced around the outbuildings. “So this ranch was the Sorensons’.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you said you knew Dave.”

  Luke nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing. “Since I was about twenty when I went to work for his old man. I was hell on wheels, in trouble all the time, and Ralph took a chance on me. Gave me a job. That’s how I met Dave.”

  “You became friends?”

  “For the most part, when he was around,” Luke said as he walked toward the ranch house. Katie fell into step with him. “He joined the army a little while after high school, became career military.”

  “What happened to him?” Katie asked as they reached the shade of the wide front porch.

  Luke frowned. “I’m not sure anyone knows all the details, but he was killed this past year in a freak accident. Helicopter crash during routine maneuvers.”

  Katie’s blood turned to ice. She closed her eyes and held on to the rail by the steps to steady herself.

  “Ralph and Loretta took it pretty hard,” Luke said.

  “I don’t blame them.” She ran a trembling hand over her forehead. “Lord, what a blow.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She swallowed hard and sagged against the rail. Dozens of memories, yellowed with age, their edges softened as the years had passed, swam through her mind. “So am I,” she said roughly, then cleared her throat.

  “You knew him well?”

  Better than anyone, she thought, then realized that wasn’t the truth, either. Dave had kept to himself, for the most part. As naive as she’d been all those years ago, she’d sensed that he was holding back, that even during their lovemaking there had been a part of him he’d kept hidden and remote, a part she would never understand. “I’m not sure anyone really knew Dave,” she admitted. “As I said, he didn’t live here all that long.”