Ruthless

by Lisa Jackson

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “Like hell. The next thing I know, you’ll want to find a private investigator, then an expensive big-city lawyer so you can get custody.”

  “I’d never do that. He has parents, probably good ones. I just want . . .” I just want to see him, to know that he’s all right. But was that really enough, or was Jeff right? Would she want to talk to him, to try to explain, to hold him and kiss away his tears ... Damn it all, her own eyes were starting to fill.

  “What’s going on with you, Dani?” Jeff asked, his voice so low it could barely be heard over the whistle of the wind. He studied his wife huddled against the door, as much distance as possible between their bodies. With a long-suffering sigh, he turned off the ignition and let the keys dangle from his fingers. “Don’t tell me you’re still hung up on the kid’s father?”

  “Of course not.”

  He ignored her denial and tapped his fingers on the steering column. “It’s strange, you know. The way you’ve never told a soul who the bastard was who did this to you. You haven’t even confided in me and I’m your husband.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Isn’t it?” He pocketed his keys. “I’ve always wondered about him—what kind of a yahoo he was.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She wanted to squirm. True, she’d never told anyone about the baby’s father and she had her reasons.

  “Better not,” he said with a humorless smile. “’Cause you’re mine, damn it. Until I say otherwise.”

  “Or I do.”

  Condensation was collecting on the windows. Jeff opened the door and a blast of wind as raw as the Yukon swept into the cab. “Sometimes I can’t remember why I bothered to marry you.”

  * * *

  She thought the same thing. He’d been kinder in the beginning, more understanding, and they’d wanted the same things in life, or so she’d thought. A carefree man, he’d had an easy smile, and though his tongue had been sharp, it hadn’t been aimed at her until two years into the marriage. But their dreams—a ranch of their own, horses, cattle and children—had become a burden.

  His philandering and cutting remarks had hurt. That night of the blizzard his comments had penetrated deep into her heart, but she had learned to ignore the hateful little barbs, just as she’d turned her eyes away from the fact that he’d been cheating on her. She’d guessed that there were other women from the start, but she’d never had any proof, didn’t want any. She’d kept the marriage together—the dream—because she believed in the “until death do you part” section of the marriage vows. In fact, she believed in all of them, but eventually there had just been no reason to continue. Their life together was a sham; everyone in town knew it. Jeff wanted out. So they’d divorced and split their meager assets. Dani had clung on to this ranch as if it were her own, refusing to give up the lease, working from dawn to dusk trying to make enough money to save this little scrap of land tucked under the rimrock because it was all she had left.

  She’d never considered giving up. Stubborn Donahue pride, her mother had often suggested. After the divorce, Dani had lost weight, hadn’t been able to sleep nights, and worried herself sick about the future. She’d even bought her first pack of cigarettes in years, enjoying the calming smoke. In the darkness of her room, she had shed her share of tears over yet another failure in her life, but during the day, she’d worn an I-don’t-give-a-damn smile that she’d pasted onto her face for everyone to see.

  Most of the pain was in the past now. The fact that Jeff was living with Wanda Tulley, a waitress at the Black Anvil who was four months’ pregnant, bothered her, but it wasn’t the same dull ache she’d experienced for months after giving up her baby. No, this ache was simpler. Her pride was bruised. Any love she’d felt for Jeff had died a long, long time before.

  Now, as she rode up the final slope toward the ranch house, she was determined not to fail again. But fate seemed against her. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t afford to keep up the payments on the ranch and her mother’s words rang in her ears. “Running a ranch isn’t a job for a single woman, Danielle.”

  Dani’s cocky reply had been something to the effect that she didn’t plan on doing it by herself. But it was as if she’d been cursed on that day, and now, true to her mother’s worries, she was scrambling to make ends meet. Alone. Trying to save a ranch she didn’t even own.

  She’d worked a deal with the owner of the property and planned to sublease the main house. She could live over the garage in a small apartment. If only she found the right person to rent the place. She’d left the actual leasing and subleasing and all that legal mumbo jumbo to her brother-in-law, Max, who was a lawyer and whose company, McKee Enterprises, owned a good share of all the buildings in the small town of Rimrock. Max would find the perfect tenant with the right credit rating. All Dani had to do was move out by the first of July and she was just about ready.

  “Let’s go,” she said to the horse. The sun had disappeared over the western ridge of mountains and dusk was settling through the valley. A sliver of moon appeared in the deepening sky as Typhoon crested the final hill and the heart of the Macgruder ranch came into view. Outbuildings, ranch house, stables and a network of interlocking paddocks were a familiar and welcome sight.

  Home.

  For as long as she could keep it.

  Clucking to the mare, Dani saw a movement beneath the pine tree near the garage. Parked next to her old Ford Bronco was Max McKee’s new Chevy pickup.

  Urging Typhoon into a faster gait, she waved, recognizing Max from a distance. Tall and broad shouldered with brown hair streaked by the sun, her brother-in-law stood in the lengthening shadows beside another man, a man she didn’t recognize. He, too, was over six feet and had ink black hair and dark skin. His head was bent in conversation and she couldn’t see his features clearly, but her heart gave a little kick. Maybe this was the new tenant, the man who would help her hold on to the ranch. Smiling inwardly, she hoped that he had a wife and a couple of kids to fill up the empty house she’d shared with Jeff—the house she’d hoped to pack with her own children. She’d always loved kids and had envisioned a passel of them running through the fields, splashing in the creek, chasing after the barn cats, laughing and talking and asking her to show them how to ride bareback.

  Her heart ached.

  Someday, she told herself. It’s still not too late. And someday you’ll have your own, or at the very least, find the one you’ve already had.

  And no one would be able to stop her. No one. From this day forward, she was a woman with a purpose. Single-minded and determined.

  Clearing a suddenly thick throat, she dug her heels into Typhoon’s dusty sides and charged forward, determined to face whatever God had in mind for her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Life seemed to have a way of turning things around. Just when you thought you knew what you wanted, you found out you were wrong, or so it seemed to Brandon Scarlotti as he took in the panorama that was the Macgruder homestead. The very things that had driven him from this part of Oregon—weathered buildings bleached from the harsh sun in the summer and driving snow in the winter, acre upon acre of dry grass and windswept plateaus, a slow pace and friendly people who knew not only their business but yours, as well—had been reasons enough to climb onto his motorcycle and bum up the road to Southern California.

  He studied the man who had taken the time to show him the place. Max McKee was tall, straight shouldered and seemed to shoot from the hip—a far cry from the spoiled rich boy Brandon remembered. “You’ve got yourself a deal, McKee.” Brandon extended his hand and strong fingers clasped his open palm.

  “I think you’ll like it here.”

  “Plan to,” he said, thinking that the place was perfect, just what he was looking for. Peace and quiet, a sense of solitude, and yet close enough to Elkhorn Lake to oversee the job site, and a ranch where his half brother Chris could stretch his legs, explore, maybe even learn to ride. For the firs
t time in over ten years he wouldn’t be battling traffic, on the road for hours, concerned about earthquakes, mud slides, freeways that could pass for parking lots, wild fires and gang violence. Crowded city life was behind him. It was time to return, time to take things in slower stride. L.A. had been good to him and he’d loved the sunny days, elegant palm trees, calming Pacific Ocean and miles of white beaches, but for the past couple of years he’d felt the nagging urge to move on—or back here. Home to Oregon.

  He had some old business here that needed to be finished, and of course there was his family to consider—what little family he had. His jaw grew so tight it ached when he considered how he’d grown up and what he’d lacked. No father. No money. A mother who loved a glass of wine more than her son. His gut still burned at the memories, but the chip on his shoulder had disappeared over the years as he’d learned how to cope, how to make a name for himself, how to become successful on his own. Why he still felt hollow inside, he didn’t understand, assumed it was just a character flaw inherent in him.

  He surveyed the dry acres that he would call home—golden fields dotted with the dark shapes of cattle and horses. The sigh of the wind, low moans of the cattle and the ever-present choir of crickets as the night beckoned would replace the sound of traffic. Steep, rimrock-topped cliffs guarded this valley, casting deep shadows over the land. His new home. At least for a while.

  When he’d left this part of the country, he thought he’d never return, but here he was, pumping hands with a man he’d known long ago, a man he’d despised. Max McKee, firstborn son of the richest man in the county had worn his wealth easily, as if it had been written somewhere in the stars that he was destined to be born with a silver spoon wedged firmly between his teeth. Brandon, from a distance, had detested the rich kid. Max had always been too perfect, molded too much in his old man’s image, doing whatever old Jonah had wanted. Well, almost. Things had changed over the years and Max McKee had mellowed, learned that his father wasn’t the god he’d pretended to be, and eventually Max had become his own man while suffering a few tragedies of his own. All in all, McKee seemed a decent sort now, made of tougher, more independent stuff these days, and old Jonah was dead, killed by someone he crossed in one of his shady dealings.

  Good riddance.

  “You think I’ll be able to move in by the weekend?” he asked, taking off his sunglasses as night brought a dark cloak to the land.

  “Sooner, probably.” Max flashed a quick, confident McKee smile—the kind that once had gotten on Brand’s nerves. “My sister-in-law is anxious to sublet and from the looks of it—” he motioned to the boxes stacked on the front porch “—she’s nearly cleared out of the house.” Fingering a corner of one of the crates, he said, “The deal is that the place is just too much for her alone. She and her husband ran the ranch together, but then ... well, I won’t bore you with the sordid details, but Jeff split.” Max’s mouth thinned slightly, as if he was trying to keep a lid on an anger that just kept boiling inside him. “She doesn’t talk about it much and I guess I respect her decision to try to make it on her own, but just the same, I for one will feel better knowing that someone’s in the main house—that there’s a man on the place.”

  Brand felt suddenly cornered. He hesitated as he clicked his pen. The one part of the deal he didn’t like was that his new landlord would be living so closely to him in an apartment over the garage. He valued his privacy and didn’t want some busybody woman peering through her blinds at him. Nor did he want to hold her hand. He’d gotten the impression from Max earlier that this wouldn’t happen, that he’d have as much solitude as he needed. Now he wasn’t so sure. “You don’t expect me to play some kind of baby-sitter or bodyguard, do you?”

  Max barked out a laugh and his face, so recently serious, was animated once again. The idea of Brand trying to take care of the woman who lived here seemed to amuse him. “You don’t have to worry about that. My sister-in-law, well, she’s not exactly meek. She can rope a steer, ride a runaway horse bareback, climb mountains and knows her way around a rifle—supposedly can shoot the head off a dandelion, or probably a squirrel, at a hundred yards.”

  “Superwoman,” Brand said dryly.

  “Not exactly. She can’t cook and she’s not all that excited about keeping house. She won’t be showing up on your doorstep with a batch of freshly baked cookies to welcome you, if you know what I mean. You’ll be lucky to get an offer for some of the worst coffee brewed in the state.”

  Brand couldn’t help but smile. “Won’t bother me.”

  “Good.” Max slid a glance toward the house. “She’s a stubborn thing and arguing with her is like tangling with a wildcat.” He flexed his hand nervously. “I was afraid that the divorce might kill her, but she’s pulled herself up by the bootstraps, and other than being unable to keep this place in the black all by herself, she’s done all right. She’s independent, not looking for husband number two, and proud of it.”

  Satisfied that the woman wouldn’t be showing up on his doorstep with flimsy excuses to get to know him or spy on him and that she wouldn’t be peering through the curtains of her apartment to keep track of what he was doing, Brand held the lease against the rough cedar walls of the house and scrawled his name on the bottom line. The other spot was blank, the typed name reading Danielle Stewart.

  Danielle. For a moment his throat closed, then he gave himself a swift mental kick. It was a common enough name, especially when fathers hoped their firstborn would be sons and sometimes tagged them with manlike names to get even. He’d known several girls named Danielle in his lifetime. Nonetheless, he felt a premonition, a sense that he might be making a mistake, that somehow this ranch might be connected with a girl he’d known a long time ago, a girl who had messed with his mind and toyed with his heart.

  But that was crazy. Just because he was back in eastern Oregon, he seemed to be caught in this time warp. Ever since crossing the mountains, he’d experienced a few pleasant, though disturbing thoughts. Of her. He shoved those sensual, better-left-locked-away memories out of his head. So he’d known a girl named Dani a long time ago. What were the chances that his landlord was one and the same woman? And even if she was, so what? He wanted this place. He’d been shown other ranches and houses in town that weren’t suited to him either in terms of the lease, location or amenities. This spread, the old Macgruder homestead located between Dawson City and Rimrock, seemed perfect.

  True, Max hadn’t explained much about the mysterious woman who lived here, just that his sister-in-law was divorced, saddled with a lot of debt and anxious to sublet the house and part of the property to a new tenant. But the less he knew of her, the better off he was.

  “Dani will probably give you a wide enough berth.”

  “Dani?” he repeated, and that strange feeling, something akin to déjà vu, crawled through his innards again.

  “My sister-in-law.”

  Danielle Stewart. Not an unusual name. “She from around here?” he asked casually. No reason not to know what he was up against.

  “Lived here all her life. Here she comes now.” Max hitched his chin in the direction of a lone rider on a muscular red horse. The animal was racing flat out over the windswept fields, hooves thundering, legs flashing. The woman, tucked low over her mount’s straining neck, tanned legs gripping the beast’s sweating ribs, rode bareback, as if she’d been born on a horse. Streaming behind her was a banner of red-gold hair, tangling wildly in the wind. For a second, Brandon’s stomach dropped. He remembered a younger girl, surly and sexy as hell, with a devil-may-care attitude, pouty lips and laughter that was as clear as a June morning. Her hair had been the same brilliant shade.

  His throat tightened as she reined in and their gazes met. Instant recognition flared in her eyes. The color drained from a pretty face flushed from a breathless ride.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said under his breath.

  “Brand.” Her voice was soft and low, like a prairie wind. Shoving the
tangled mass of curls from her face, she slid to the ground. There wasn’t the hint of a smile on her sweat-streaked face, not so much as a glimmer of relief to see him again. “Well, well, well.” Silently appraising him with the rebellious gaze that had always cut straight to his soul, she wrapped the reins of her mount around the top rail of the fence and walked with quick, determined strides through the gate. “What’re you doing here?”

  Max, glancing from Brand to his sister-in-law, scratched his chin with the pen. “You two know each other?”

  “Yeah. A long time ago.” Brandon was fascinated by her. Her figure, though still slim, had filled out a little and there was a maturity in her face that he didn’t remember. She’d aged well and he imagined she was probably one of those women who just looked better and better as the years wore on. Too bad. He didn’t need her kind of distraction. Even in faded, dusty cutoff jeans that frayed around her thighs and a sleeveless blouse that had seen better days and stretched a little too tightly over her breasts, she was earthy and beautiful in a way that touched him deep in a dark spot of his soul he usually didn’t admit existed.

  Max was right about one thing, Brand decided as she glared at him with an expression about as warm as the bottom of Macgruder’s old well in the middle of winter: Dani wouldn’t be showing up on his doorstep with a platter of freshly baked cookies, unless, maybe, they were laced with strychnine.

  “We barely knew each other,” Dani clarified, and Brandon kept his mouth shut though he couldn’t resist lifting an eyebrow in silent mockery at the baldness of her lie.

  Barely knew each other? Who was she kidding? Their lovemaking still burned in his mind and seared his guts. He wondered what it would have been like if she’d really known him. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, but he kept it resolutely at bay. If she had secrets to keep, he wouldn’t be the one to betray them.

  Her spine was straight as a board, her face tense. She was sweating, but it could have been from the exhilaration of the fast-paced ride. “You didn’t answer my question.” Folding her arms over her chest, she continued to stare at him with those soul-searching whiskey-colored eyes. “What are you doing here?” Was there a thread of dread running through her question? She seemed to be asking it while already guessing the answer.