by Cait London
He’d heard stories about Hogan rebuilding the old Holmes ranch. The jutting contemporary-styled addition with huge silver windows glinting in the dying sun, sat exactly opposite the Kodiak house.
Perfect, Ben thought again as his three sons stood together, all tough and arrogant, broad in the shoulder and with long, healthy legs. They’d come home for Dinah and Carley, to protect them.
They walked toward the corral, and frozen— terrified that old Aaron would surface in him— Ben stood still. For Dinah, he could change. He would change.
“Good morning, boys,” he said, perhaps a little too roughly, because his emotions were running away from him.
“Dad,” Aaron said smoothly.
“Dad,” Mitch said, acknowledging the man who had dragged him away from a life he had returned to— this time to help others.
“Ben.” Hogan’s greeting was cool, his thumbs hitched in his jeans, weight on one leg, the other apart, hip-slung just as Ben used to do before— What did he expect? Ben thought desperately.
This was the son he’d kept despite old Aaron’s objections. Ben should have known that the boy needed more. Dinah’s tender ways had shown Ben how it should have been—
Hogan’s hair was tied back at his nape, just long enough to almost make Ben smile. Hogan was like that, testing him, and Ben was proud of his son, making his own life against all odds. He admired Hogan, what he’d achieved, but more how he’d fought for it, reached out his fists and took what was his, what was his right and his talent.
Ben should have left old Aaron and the Bar K like Hogan did eighteen years ago.
Instead Ben had stayed and spread that unloving darkness into his children. For a time, Dinah had made a difference— until Ben had ruined it. He’d carry that sorrow all his life, how he couldn’t bear to have her help him, look at him, feel sorry for him.
Dinah. His heart leaped. She’d be coming home. Here, to him. Beautiful Dinah....
She’d given him everything and she deserved better than a broken down crippled old cowboy.... So he was afraid, so what?
Ben shoved himself back to the moment and found his three sons studying him. What were they thinking, these men, his sons? Did they hate him so much?
Years stood between them, harder than the ground beneath his boots. He’d made so many mistakes....
He suddenly realized that the leather reins in his hands were slick with his sweat, the sweat of fear....
“Supper is at six,” Ben stated, unable to bridge the distance between his sons and himself, especially Hogan. His words came out more like an order— be there on time or get no supper.
Anger tore at Ben. He should have given Hogan what he needed, held him more, loved him more, and now from the hard set of Hogan’s expression, the taut line of his body, it was too late. There would be no redemption for Ben with Hogan, but Hogan would not fail Carley.
Running away from his emotions and the inability to deal with them, Ben swung up into the saddle. “I’ve got work to do.”
He sat ramrod straight, riding away, and his gut clenched with every hoofbeat. Hell, they knew he wore a prosthesis, what did it matter how he looked, swinging up a little too much, his hands nervous on the reins?
“Still the same,” Aaron stated flatly as the brothers watched Ben ride to the natural grass fields where the small longhorn herd— descendants of old Jubal, a Texas bull— were grazing.
“The place isn’t,” Hogan said. He wasn’t prepared for the visual close-up of the house. Using binoculars, he’d seen that the house badly needed painting, one window was broken and patched with linoleum.
But close inspection revealed a worse picture: The front porch needed boards, the door wasn’t hanging straight on the hinges, and the roof’s shingles needed replacement. “I’ve got the power tools. We’ll bring them over.”
He glanced at Ben, back ramrod straight as he rode away. At that moment, he knew that Ben feared what his sons and his ex-wife would see, and he was ashamed.
His earliest memories included Ben working to make the house presentable to the woman he would marry— Dinah. Hogan had been eager to help, eager for his father’s approval, which never came.
Now, he scanned the twenty horses in the field; once there had been two hundred and a nice income after they were broken. But back then, he’d done his share of breaking and showing the horses.
Hogan missed that, handling horses, talking to them softly, and gaining their trust. He enjoyed the full mound of a mare’s belly, the unborn foal’s tiny leg protesting the touch. The wonder of birth always stunned and pleased him— and shapes stirred around him, colors and images, never defined.
Hogan slid back into his thoughts, prying at the images, trying to understand, because he knew as surely as he was in Montana, that the sensations came to him for a reason. They came and settled deep within him, lodging there, waiting for something.... What was it?
“Home sweet home,” Mitch said, taking in the two-story building. “It really was. When Ben brought me here, I had enough to eat for the first time. And I was thinking every minute what I could take when I ran. What I could turn into cash. But I stayed. As long as I played by the rules, life was okay. When I didn’t, Ben let me know hell. Kids sometimes need that, to know the rules, what is right from wrong, because they haven’t been taught.”
“That fat psychology degree probably taught you that, not Ben,” Aaron stated.
“Ben told me that I wasn’t a street kid anymore, that I was a Kodiak with a new name and a new start and that now there were new rules. I respected and hated him at the same time.”
Hogan stepped inside his emotions, not listening to his brothers. He watched Joe Blue Sky try to chop wood. The feeble old man had been a child when he first came to the Bar K, working for old Aaron Kodiak.
Joe had seen Hogan through those first years. When Joe turned to him, shadows moved across the old man’s face and Hogan wondered what tangled inside him. Memories? Sadness? Hope? An old man, seeing youth, and recognizing his age?
Maxi Dove hurried out the back door with the slop bucket for the pigs. Hogan didn’t want to think about the work that needed to be done inside and braced himself against the memories that could swallow him.
Hogan glanced at his brothers. “Fixing up this place is going to cost.”
“Plenty,” Aaron agreed. “And that’s not counting the barn— it needs shoring up, part of the metal roof is torn off. Look at that fence—”
“May as well see what’s inside,” Hogan said, and walked toward the house. He’d spent his young life there, fearing and hating Ben, and never free of his shadows. This time, he intended to settle his life. “It looked just like this before Dinah came. He put it back together for her. I guess we can do the same.”
“He’s too cool,” Aaron said quietly, studying Hogan’s set expression, the knee-locked, wide spread of his legs, as if nothing could tear him away from Kodiak land.
“Too much is going on inside him. He’s holding.”
Aaron winked. “Jemma never did like that— when Hogan pulled back into himself.”
“True,” Mitch agreed with a grin. “She’ll get under his skin in no time.”
“Twenty dollars says it’ll take one week.”
“I’ve got fifty on the first day. She’ll track him down like a dog the first day, and destroy that famous cool.”
Hogan lifted a wary eyebrow; his brothers knew too well how Jemma could hound him into a corner and test his control. He turned to look at the knoll overlooking the Bar K. Ben sat in his saddle, looking down at the ranch yard, a pose as eternal as the West.
“So much for homecoming,” Aaron muttered darkly.
“He doesn’t know how to handle it,” Mitch said quietly and glanced at Hogan, who stood apart, staring up at Ben. Hogan’s expression lacked emotion.
Aaron inhaled, already preparing for the old battles. “He won’t like you footing the bill for repairs, Hogan. We’re all chipping in.”
“Uh-huh.” Hogan remembered Ben, clenching every dollar, resenting the needs of a growing boy who had worked like a man.
Aaron and Mitch looked at each other; they knew that quiet, thoughtful tone. Hogan wasn’t backing off this time. With the experience of a peacemaker, Mitch hooked his arms around Hogan’s and Aaron’s necks and said, “Well, sons of Ben Kodiak, we only have a week to get this place in shape before Dinah and Carley arrive. Jemma will have our hides if we don’t pitch in.”
“She can be nasty. I remember that time she tied me up in the bedsheets, sat on me, and told me just how nice I was going to be at the supper table. And if I said anything to make Carley think about the poor dead bunnies we were eating— that were her pets— Jemma had a backup plan to murder me— slowly.” Aaron groaned and shuddered.
But Hogan moved aside, his stare locked on Ben and the sunlight between the two men seemed to shimmer with memories and emotions.
*** ***
“My mud flaps are going to be dirty.” Jemma grimaced when her custom camper-van hit a solid Montana rock on the way to the Kodiak Bar K.
She glanced in the opposite direction to Hogan’s stark home, the bleak windows catching the evening sun. In mid-April, white-faced black calves were frolicking in the field, the snow-covered Crazy Mountains rose behind Ben’s home. The rambling red barn and various sheds softened the no-frills house.
A yearling colt ran beside the fence, racing with Jemma’s van and then veered off into the field. Foals nursed at the mares, and she remembered how young Hogan had looked, walking among the horses, talking, and touching them. She adjusted her sunglasses to buffer the brilliant sundown ricocheting off the gold van. “Hogan had better be at the ranch. If he isn’t, I’ll hunt him down like a dog and drag him here.”
“Ben said that he would be and neither one ever breaks a promise.” Dinah turned to her, a cool, classy woman, dressed in a gray merino sweater and neatly tailored slacks.
She’d tried to hide her excitement and fought the flush on her cheeks— she was, after all, too old to be feeling so heady about seeing her first love again. Would she look old to Ben?
She quickly glanced down at her body, still trim, but not the same. She almost placed the simple gold band Ben had given her back on her finger, and then had scoffed at herself for dreaming.
Ben had been so terrifyingly masculine, so rugged and yet incredibly gentle and somewhat afraid of the lady he had captured. His shyness of her, yet his need, was more potent than heady wine and fancy words. “If Ben isn’t there, we’ll make ourselves at home. It’s not like we haven’t all lived at the ranch, one time or another. But he’ll be there.”
In the rear seat, Carley drew the sight of Kodiak land into her, holding it close to her heart.
Unwillingly, her eyes slid to the distant rise— beyond that lay the stream that watered Ben’s cattle.
There, in the willow and brush, she’d been shoved down and— she pushed away the terror that always found her, her father needed her desperately. “I can’t believe Dad is so ill. He was just fine last fall when I flew back to see him.”
“Things happen fast,” Jemma said, and prayed the Kodiaks would catch Carley’s stalker soon. She was terrified that her plan wouldn’t work, that Carley’s stalker would succeed.
Worse. She was afraid she’d do more damage than good in the stormy Kodiak family, hurting them all. Every one of them were hers to keep and to love; she couldn’t bear it if anything went wrong... if the stalker got Carley. Well, he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t, she promised silently.
“Ben,” Dinah said simply, tasting the name.
She’d loved him on sight that gentle, quiet-spoken cowboy who stooped to help her with her parcels. Her hand trembled as it rose to smooth her hair, a neat boy-cut in silky gray. He’d always loved smoothing her hair, a little embarrassed as he brushed it, a rawhide-rough Montana cowboy tending his wife’s hair. And then the accident—
From that one day, when Ben’s leg was mangled and taken from him, the Kodiaks’ perfect life had been torn apart. She’d seen old Aaron in him then, killing the love his family felt for him, denying what they could all have.
He’d wanted to die, and she didn’t let him. For that, he’d never forgiven her.
“I wonder how much time Dad has,” Carley worried for the thousandth time.
Dinah turned to her daughter; she’d lie to protect her daughter, yet it did not sit well upon her. “He doesn’t want anyone to know, Carley. Please don’t mention it to anyone outside the family. You know your father— he’ll be embarrassed to show any signs of frailty.”
He’d been so white, fainting from pain and loss of blood, his tall body crumpled beneath that tractor. “No, dammit, woman. Let me die a whole man, not some... thing.”
But she hadn’t listened, dragging him from under the tractor and tying off the mangled leg with his shirtsleeve and later, his belt— and he’d hated her.
Jemma gripped the steering wheel tighter. She wasn’t going to let this family drift farther apart. God help her, she had looked at the danger to Carley as a way to bring the Kodiaks together— they’d never let anyone down, and Carley was the most precious of the lot.
If this didn’t work to protect Carley— Jemma tossed away that thought. If there was a family who knew how to fight and survive, it was the Kodiaks— and Hogan, perhaps the most unpredictable, dark warrior of the lot, tried to keep himself outside emotion. But he felt it— it was there, stark love for every one of them, even Ben.
“Dad’s pride is everything, of course,” Carley murmured. “Yes, I can respect that. I won’t say anything.”
Pride. The Kodiak men were chock full of it.
Jemma damned Hogan’s and Ben’s pride. She hadn’t time to worry about her own, and theirs had cost too much pain and wasted too much time. Time was something she did not have, and the Kodiaks were going to be shoved back into a family, and they were going to like it, even if it killed her— and Hogan.
“Shut up and watch for big bumps and fresh cow piles— any cow pile. We’re all going to be with Ben, and that’s what he wants,” Jemma said softly, with the ease of a friend who could nudge and love.
She reached to tug Carley’s hand from her mouth. “I’m the only one allowed to bite nails, and I’m not doing it. I’m driving and nervous, and I’ve got a producer coming in July.... I don’t remember these roads being so narrow,” she said, as one tire slid off the dirt road.
“Stop muttering to yourself. This luxury boat isn’t narrow,” Carley said. “And you’re not a good driver.”
“Hey, babe, I’ve driven taxis, limos, and fishing trawlers. I’ll get the hang of it,” Jemma noted, concentrating on her plan.
Carley inhaled sharply, and Jemma forced back a smile. Carley had edges that could be pricked; she wasn’t always sweet, and beneath her angelic appearance, she had that high-wide Kodiak pride.
Jemma glanced at Carley— tense, sitting too straight, her fine blond hair hacked into an unflattering Dutch-boy cut, and her body layered with clothing. Overweight, reclusive, and too quiet, Carley preferred dull colors and ate to fill an unending ache inside her.
There was rage inside her, too, and Jemma knew that hot slap of her own as she remembered how Carley had been held down and—
“I hope he doesn’t come here,” Carley worried again. “I don’t want anything to happen to my family, not because of me.”
Dear God, please don’t let him hurt my family. They’ve been through so much, and now Dad is dying, Carley prayed. She fought the tremor that ran through her—
Her eyes locked in the direction of the meandering stream where it had happened eighteen years ago.
She’d been terrified to come back after that, terrified that her mother would discover the attack and forbid her to return. But she’d loved Montana, despite the horror of that night. Her heart belonged here, on Kodiak land. She felt the tug of home with each hour she was away.
Carley balled her fi
sts on her sweatpants. She knew how to fight now; she’d had hours of self-defense classes— urged into them by Jemma, who never stopped protecting her.
Carley glanced at Jemma. She had a quick mind; she was strong, eager for a new experience, completely and desperately driving herself to fill her bank account. But Carley saw something in Jemma that was rare and true— selfless love. Jemma had given Carley back a measure of her pride; Jemma had prodded and insisted, but Carley’s deep fear of men remained. She welcomed the time with her father and brothers; she could relax a bit, despite her concern for Ben.
“Ben wants his family together. Just being here is the best thing for him,” Dinah was saying. In an awed tender tone, she straightened, leaning forward to better see the old ranch house. Love nestled in her tone, not bitterness. “There’s the ranch house.”
Her hand covered her mouth, her blue eyes alight and eager. “Oh! There’s Ben and the boys.”
Jemma wanted to cry at the aching tenderness in Dinah’s voice, cry for the Kodiak family and all they’d missed. A perfect family torn apart by an everyday farming accident, they were hers now, and she was determined to mend the rifts.
She’d lined up the players, and it would be a war, but right now, Jemma wanted Dinah and Carley to have a homecoming to remember.
*** ***
Chapter Four
Home. Jemma felt the same thrill as she had when she came with Carley that first summer.
The house was weathered, a stark two-story white house with a big sprawling porch. Wooden rocking chairs swayed as though just vacated.
At the sight of the picnic table in the backyard, Jemma’s throat tightened, despite her determination to remain in control. Sheets, hung on a sagging clothesline, flapped in the clean Montana wind, just as on that first day she came.
There was so much heavenly space that stretched to the horizons around the ranch, the mountains’ white peaks brilliant in the distance.
When she’d first visited as an eight-year-old, she’d thought that Hogan and Aaron were Sasquatches. Hogan was just sixteen and too silent, a dark foil to the other Kodiaks. A loner, he’d been tall, dark, and impervious to her best smile. As a confident eight-year-old already playing others to get her way, Jemma had hated him on sight.