by Cait London
His face seemed chiseled, planes gleaming, shadows defining his harsh features, that almost sensuous mouth. Except for his anger about Carley’s past and the new threat, and obvious distaste for Jemma, she couldn’t define what thoughts lurked in those black, black eyes guarded by the long sweep of his lashes.
“No man ought to have lashes like that. Not when I spend a fortune on high-priced mascara,” Jemma muttered.
Holding her close against him, Hogan’s body was hard and safe. His loose silk pants were worn without underwear, and she’d felt his sex nudge against her stomach. But she hadn’t been thinking of anything, anyone, but Carley and the danger to her.
The black silk had flowed around him, the shirt open and loose. She’d been aware of how beautiful he was, gracefully padding after her, that nettled, hounded look almost shielded from her.
Dedicated to her finances, Jemma had few entertainments, but one of them was upending Hogan’s famed control.
He’d known how to hit back and had gone right to the barb— “You were married, weren’t you? About four years ago?”
“You knew I was. You just like playing games,” she batted back into the empty cockpit.
“What was that, Pilot Jemma?” the flight controller asked sharply, cutting into her dark thoughts about Hogan— the brother who pretended to be an outsider, when he loved the family deeply.
Hogan loved Ben, though he didn’t know it— the layers of fighting and coldness ran too deep. For his part, Ben had dug in, refusing to relent, and the Kodiaks were at an impasse, each locked in his own cave.
Jemma intended to change the rules where Ben and Hogan were concerned. They were going to relate if it killed her. “Dysfunctional, stubborn, mule-headed bulldogs tearing at each other—”
“What was that, Pilot Delaney?” the controller asked again.
“Just checking my instruments. They’re fine.”
Jemma wasn’t about to explain to Hogan the sordid, embarrassing details of her marriage. She hadn’t wanted love, but respect and security would have filled the gap.
Donald Gillis ultimately gave her neither. The son of a banking family, he quickly pointed out her lack of society training and respectable background.
“I’m the daughter of migrant workers who had ten children. How much time between tending babies and moving from shack to shack did Donald think there was for classes on how to entertain?” she muttered.
But Donald was what she’d wanted— classy, connected in society, wealthy, and malleable. She liked having things her own way, and Donald had been easy enough to manage without too many problems— until it came to her acting as a proper hostess.
Once married, he’d laid down too many laws— including no flying and no business wheeling-dealing and no independent woman as his wife.
She could do without a husband and marriage tethers; she had always done just fine on her own.
Jemma glanced around the neat interior of her small Cessna jet. She’d traded a neat little stationery business she’d started for the jet; later, she’d trade it for a customized travel camper van.
She’d always been able to piggy-back money-making ideas. She’d already set the first step in action, to rope Hogan into her plan. Oh, he’d do it. Good old dependable Hogan—at least when it came to his family. He wouldn’t like getting along with Ben, but he’d do it.
Jemma’s nimble mind churned on, balancing the pluses, checking out the avenues.To protect Carley was on Jemma’s top shelf, but there was no reason she couldn’t fill her time at the Kodiaks by making a few dollars.
She couldn’t afford to have a Kodiak battle explode while she was promoting her fly-fishing idea to the producer. She knew how to bargain, and she wasn’t letting anyone make her feel incapable and dumb again.
“I thought marriage might be worth the try. Win some, lose some,” she muttered, aware of the bitterness in her tone.
She fastened her mind on Les Parkins, the producer of a men’s outdoors television program. Attracted to her, he wanted an affair. Les wasn’t having her, of course, but she wasn’t blocking any doors to financial opportunity. By July, she’d have him hooked on the idea. A mild flirtation with Les wouldn’t hurt, not when Jemma stood to gain a television series. “He’s coming along nicely.”
Hogan’s image seared back to Jemma’s mind. Trust Hogan to look as he had, dressed in a black-silk shirt, open to reveal his tanned chest and the ridges of his stomach.
His expression had been arrogant, disdainful, but his body had moved gracefully within the flowing silk. The firelight had gleamed upon his smooth chest, reminding her of a polished metal statue. She’d wanted to place her hand on those hard layered ridges, to smooth her palm down to....
Jemma glanced at a DC9 passenger plane gliding through the blue sky, preparing to land. That smooth white trail in the blue sky was like Hogan, tearing across her life.
Firelight had touched his cheekbones, on that blunt masculine line of his nose, those black fierce eyebrows, scowling at her as they always did.
Jemma smiled tightly. She knew how to get to him, dig at him, torment him until he responded, some of that calm torn away to reveal the heat.
Hogan had the effect of a fire that needed fueling on her. She delighted in pushing him, the layers cracking just a bit before all those wary angles locked into place.
Her leather gloves gleamed as she gripped the controls tightly, her thoughts veering back to Hogan. Always Hogan. Aloof, distant, dark, swirling in emotions about his home place and his past. The protector of the Kodiak family when Ben came undone, when Dinah left, Hogan could rally the others around him, even Ben.
His father respected Hogan as a man who could match him any day. He saw himself in Hogan, and understood him. Wary opponents, they’d coldly slashed at each other through the years, and forgiveness was eons away.
Aaron hid his bitterness for Dinah, for leaving Ben, but it was there. Carley’s defenses were a mile high, despite the warmth running beneath those drab, loose fitting clothes and her too-serious expression. More than anything, Jemma wanted Carley to have the best, to have a life that filled her. Jemma dreamed of Carley smiling, free and happy— before that night.
Jemma considered the stormy dynamics of the Kodiak family. To her, they were dysfunctional pieces in a puzzle, never quite fitting exactly right. Hogan clung to his outsider status and fought Ben, who was powerless to escape the grip his own father’s harsh ways had upon him.
Then there was Dinah, loving them both, and her children. Touched by a rawhide past and Ben’s accident, they were a family of high pride and warring emotions, a hard family to understand, but Jemma loved them.
They were hers. Her family. Even Mitch, the street orphan, who loved them all, was hers; and Dinah had protected her, fought for her. Growing up, Jemma practically lived with Dinah; the Delaneys hadn’t noticed, continuing to have other babies.
Dinah. A strong woman, Dinah still loved Ben, and she looked forward to having all of her family— and her family included Hogan— together.
“This is going to work. They are going to be a family again, whether Hogan likes it or not.”
Jemma slashed away another tear. She hated crying; it was only because she was too tired. She regretted grabbing Hogan like a lifeline. She’d never let him see her fears, shielding that unscarred part of her heart, because Hogan could hurt her.
Hogan. Jemma wondered if he could ever be any woman’s. “He’s a lone wolf, that’s what he is, and he’s licking his wounds. He’s going after Ben, positioning himself for the kill, and I won’t have it.”
Still, she could trust him and his unwavering love for Carley, Dinah, Mitch and Aaron. Jemma didn’t like him—that cold, stony silence, or the way he walked away from her, all lithe and rangy in that hunter’s stride, but she wanted him.
Jemma’s instincts told her to scoop all those dark corners into her and make Hogan better, to please him. “I am truly sick and demented. What woman would possibly want
to cuddle Hogan Kodiak?” she muttered.
He’d held her wrists once when she was fifteen and trying herself against a twenty-three-year old man of the world.
He’d flown to Dinah’s from his studies in France, looking tough in faded jeans and a tattered black T-shirt. She’d grabbed him, tumbled into his lap as she would with Mitch and Aaron to scuffle and laugh.
But Hogan hadn’t laughed. Fire and passion had leaped in his eyes, searing her, before he pushed her away with a look of disgust.
As an adult, Jemma didn’t want fire and passion, she wanted men she could control, just as she controlled her life. And Hogan wasn’t one of them. Jemma took a deep breath and repeated, “I can trust him. He won’t do anything to endanger Carley,” to reassure herself that Hogan would play ball.
She’d wanted to hear Hogan tell her that her plan would work. She was terrified it would fail, and Carley would pay. Jemma hit the leather flight bag in the empty seat beside her.
Hogan had held himself away from her, disdaining to touch her.
Well, there were plenty of other men who would, if she’d let them. So he couldn’t stand the touch of her, so what? That just made him all the more fun to torment, get under that dark skin, that stony expression, those hard blue eyes. “Too bad, buddy. We’re in it for the duration.”
And Hogan’s need to take down Ben had better wait until Carley was safe. One thing at a time, Jemma, she reminded herself. Carley first, Ben second....
Jemma shivered slightly with the knowledge that diverting Hogan from methodically destroying Ben wouldn’t be easy. Neither man was easy, an even match.
“Nice view, Hogan. You can see the Bar K ranch perfectly, and your ranch was originally on the Kodiak homestead before Ben sold it. But that was the plan, wasn’t it? To prove to the old man that you’d made it? That you’re not going away?”
*** ***
At dusk in the first week of April, the white rumps of antelope bounced away into the shadows of the Crazy Mountains.
From Hogan’s ranch house windows, the view was magnicient: Newborn calves suckled cows in Kodiak pastures and the foothills beyond the grassy expanse would have a blanket of light frost in the morning.
Mitch tossed aside his black-leather jacket, leaned back, and sipped his brew. He shared a look with Aaron, a replica of Ben, his blue-eyed, blond father. “So Jemma has a plan.”
“Dad is supposed to fake a terminal illness, or so goes her plan. Trust her to come up with drama.”
Aaron kicked off his expensive Italian leather shoes, and propped his stockinged feet on Hogan’s massive coffee table. He leaned back against the couch, his beer braced on his stomach. He flipped open the buttons of his shirt.
“Jemma probably has a dozen backup plans. I’ve still got scars from the last ones. We’d better pull this off quick—”
“Or that creep will go underground for another eighteen years,” Mitch finished roughly.
Crouched by the fire, Hogan studied his two brothers: Quick to smile and laugh, with black waving hair and the black sweatshirt, Mitch’s black jeans, and biker’s boots heightened his bad-boy looks.
Aaron was smoother, harder, his jeans meticulous, pressed to a sharp crease, and his shirt custom-made. “We’ll have to stay at the ranch— all of us. I don’t like the idea of Dad’s faked illness, but it is a good cover, especially if Carley won’t leave Seattle. We can protect her better here.”
Mitch snorted. “What about you, Hogan? You’ve got a house here. You can’t logically stay at the old place.”
“I’ll be there often enough,” Hogan said. He nodded toward the thick file Jemma had mailed overnight to him. He almost appreciated her quick mind for details. The report was thorough, mostly due to her relentless prodding; the detectives would have closed their case long before, except for Jemma’s insistence that they continue. She’d paid the bill, not wanting to alarm Dinah or Carley.
From the letters and faxes, Jemma had insisted on a list of every sex offender in the area eighteen years ago. She’d paid to have each located and their lives examined.
Hogan noted Jackson Reeves’s name. When they were in high school, Jackson hadn’t liked Hogan taking away his switchblade and breaking the blade. That incident and Hogan’s blocking of his bullying might be the motive to hurt Carley. Jackson would know of the Celestial Virgins rumor and Jackson liked to hurt the unprotected— Hogan decided to chat with Jackson.
“There’s a possible serial killer around here, and no one knows,” Mitch stated grimly as he flipped through the file. He whistled at the fee Jemma had paid to separate agencies. “She’s good. She’s hacked, bullied, and flirted her way getting info from the police who don’t want to alarm anyone by releasing the facts. Missing women.... Known virgins.... Or supposed virgins.... Three of them in ten years.”
“He spread it out,” Hogan noted. “He’s been practicing.”
Mitch nodded. “Maybe not just here. He’s probably worked elsewhere, too.”
“We’re sure then, that it’s a man,” Hogan stated flatly. “It was a man that night. Carley’s skin was whisker-burned.”
“I wouldn’t leave a woman out. Maybe one is involved somehow. Could be a woman, jealous of Carley, put some guy up to it.” Aaron studied the file Mitch had handed him. “Jemma paid a chunk for all this. Look at the matrix she worked up.... Those women are all the same body type and coloring as Carley.”
Mitch knew about women being stalked; working for social services, he’d seen too much. “Now he wants to finish the job.”
“He’s not getting Carley,” Hogan said, meaning it.
After the brooding silence, Aaron chuckled. “You have to hand it to Jemma. Carley is in danger and wouldn’t leave her job or let Mom sell the business. Ben’s request that his family be together was a great plan.”
Hogan sat back to enjoy his brothers’ expressions as he dropped a Jemma-fact into their laps. “She’s got others. Jemma’s trying to get a producer interested in starring her in a women’s fly-fishing television series.”
Mitch scratched his head and shook it. “No way. Not Jemma. She’d lay on the bank, painting her toenails while we fished. Played her boom box loud enough to scare any fish away.”
Aaron closed his eyes as if reliving a nightmare. “I see hooks flying everywhere. I remember when we were kids and she tried that beauty-operator thing—’’
“You looked great with orange hair.”
Mitch almost spewed his beer as Aaron elbowed him. Mitch rubbed his side, bruised days ago by a terrified little boy who had been living in the streets; the boy had thought Mitch wanted more than to comfort. The couple who took the boy knew how to handle him; he’d be safe. “Watch it.”
“I thought old Ben would faint when he saw Carley’s spiked orange hair. But he didn’t. He just said, ‘Fix it,’ and walked out the door.”
Aaron hefted his brew, toasting Jemma’s escapades. “Remember that time she wanted to be a chef? And if she starts on that ‘relate and express your feelings’ psychology crap—”
Mitch lifted his glass. “To Jemma. Aren’t we glad she’s adopted our family? Aren’t we all just looking forward to her schemes to bring us closer together? To make us better men? To make us hug? Come on, men, let’s do a group hug.”
“Sorry, but if I’m going to be hugging, it’s going to be a woman. I’ll be damned if I’ll take up knitting as therapy, and I’m not into visualizing flowers in fields and harmony. They should bar booksellers from selling any self-help books to her— everyone suffers,” Aaron muttered.
The brothers groaned in unison and unspoken memories filled the silence. They’d called each other through the years, but building lives and careers had taken time. Now they had Carley to protect.
Mitch studied Aaron and Hogan. “I’ve been working with street kids. Hugs can do miracles— if they’re not too terrified that you’re out to hurt them.”
“Sissy,” Aaron sneered.
Hogan’s thoughts ran
ged outside his brother’s conversation. In his arms, Jemma had felt like a fragile little shaking bird. He resented how he had tilted his head just so to feel that untamed river of fiery silk on his skin, catching Jemma’s scent— elusive, exotic and far more beckoning than expensive fragrances. Damn her.
“Have you seen the old man, Hogan? I came back about three years ago and he wasn’t pleasant. I caught hell about being a city-sissy when I didn’t want to shovel manure.” Aaron didn’t want to show how anxious he was about returning to the old house.
Hogan shook his head. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing Ben so soon, either. He’d wanted to wait and think. He’d been too busy remodeling the house to include a studio and office, transferring his business equipment to the ranch— to script the head-on meeting, that first dialogue. Or harden the shields of his heart.
“I’ve been back, last spring. I needed to see the fields and the new calves in them, replenishing life, spring in Montana where the air wasn’t gray with exhaust. I meant to send a note to you both, but forgot,” Mitch said.
He studied the amber shade of his brew and added, “Dropped in on Ben because I missed his sweet temperament. He gave me a life, and I respect him, because I know what could have happened to me if he hadn’t. He’s rawhide rough as always.”
He looked at Hogan. “You’re like him, Hogan, in more ways than one. Arrogant, keeping to yourself, and hard clear through. Old Ben went to bat for me, pulled legal strings, and I hated his guts.”
Mitch’s gaze returned to his brew. “Old Aaron’s portrait still hangs over the fireplace with old Jubal’s sprawling horns and that old bear-stopper buffalo gun. Dad says that Jubal was the first Kodiak Texas longhorn bull that made the Bar K.... But the place is run-down. He and old Joe Blue Sky can’t manage. We’ll be working our butts off.”
Aaron shot a sharp look at him. “Run-down? Kodiak ranch? Twelve thousand acres and six hundred baldies? How’s that possible?”