by Cait London
He paused and looked off again toward the foothill clearing at Willow Creek. “Her name was Willow.... She’s buried by the big pine she loved near the cabin. Our initials are on the tree. She liked to draw.... I used to bring her pencils and sketch pads,” Ben said softly. “I was married in my heart, and how she looked that day, as my little bride when we gave our vows, and when she gave me my son—”
His voice died, washed away by emotions as though he’d spent all his energy on revealing something he’d kept locked in his heart for too long. Ben’s usual hard expression eased, and he suddenly looked old and worn— “When she laughed, it was like sunshine. It filled me.”
Hogan rubbed his hands over his face. Ben spoke tenderly of a woman Hogan had never known, a woman who had been kept from him. He’d been missing a part of his life and now it sliced through him, cutting at memories. He realized he knew how Ben had felt, because Jemma had filled him.
He hadn’t expected to understand Ben and yet he did. “Why tell me now?”
“Because it’s time you knew. Because you’ve got a woman in your heart now—a good woman. They make a difference in what a man understands. But most of all, you’re hard as rock, Hogan. Maybe you needed that to survive. You’re cold inside like me, and that was a gift I handed down to you from old Aaron. But you’ve got more heart than my father or me, and you’ve got a chance to be happy. And since I’m a selfish bastard, I want you for my son, and I want to hold your babies in my arms.”
Hogan stared at the man he’d hated and loved and respected and fought. He tucked the hot, fast bitter words behind his lips. His heart was already sailing up the mountain to the woman who was his mother— “I’m going.... You’ll see to Carley?”
“He’ll have to go through us first, that’s Aaron and Mitch and Dinah, too. Take your time. He’s not getting Carley.” Ben watched his son stride to his horse and mount, riding toward the mountain and his mother. “I love you, boy. God bless.”
*** ***
In the clearing in the foothills, near Willow Creek, the pine-tree bark had been stripped away, a lace of litchen moss covering the scarred wood, the heart with B and W K..... Ben and Willow Kodiak ...
Hogan went down to his knees, carefully easing away the pine needles and twigs that covered his mother’s grave. River rocks, worn smooth and round covered the small rectangular area. Hogan looked up to the cathedral of tall lodgepole pines and junipers to the blue sky beyond the branches. Ben must have carried the rocks there, because there were no stones matching their pink-and-gray color in Willow Creek.
“Hello, Mother. I’m your son,” he said unevenly, his heart filling with emotions.
He studied the old heart. “Ben and Willow Kodiak.” And heard Ben say quietly,“I was married in my heart, and how she looked that day, as my little bride when we gave our vows, and when she gave me my son—”
“B and W Kodiak.” In the spring air, Hogan’s voice was distant, not a part of him. Hogan swallowed, blinded by flashes of when Ben had brought him here to plant flower bulbs. Hogan swept his open hand across the smooth stones. He sat back, bent a knee, and placed his arm across it. Resting his chin on his forearm, Hogan tried to see her in his mind.
Three hours later, he crouched by Willow Creek, sipping water from his hands. “Aaron, you make enough noise to scare all the game off the mountain. I’ve been watching you come up the mountain. If Carley’s stalker wanted to pick you off, it would be easy enough and make one less of us to protect her.”
Aaron crouched beside Hogan and drank from his hands as Hogan had done. “Good water. Pure,” Aaron noted, and turned to closely study his brother. “How goes it?”
When Hogan was silent, watching a curled, golden willow leaf drift on the small stream, Aaron said, “Dad told us. He said you’d be here, making your peace.”
“Peace?” Bitterness surged in Hogan, and he stood abruptly, meeting Aaron’s guarded study. His brother was the same height and build, Kodiak bones running beneath that fairer skin, Aaron’s eyes as blue as the sky, as penetrating as Ben’s, a perfect match to Hogan’s darker features.
“Do you hate me?” Aaron asked baldly.
“Not a bit. I changed your diapers, remember?”
“The old man is holed up with a bottle. Just like the old days when he lost that leg. If I were to make a guess, I’d say he’s thinking that he deserved to lose that leg, and that he doesn’t deserve Dinah.”
“Maybe.” Hogan couldn’t spare time thinking about Ben now, not the man who had kept his birth mother in the shadows. He’d felt like a bastard all of his life, an outsider to the Kodiak blond, blue-eyed family, and now he was dealing with who he was: Willow’s son. He walked to the cabin, broken and rotted, the roof caved in by time and weather.
His hands were raw and torn, used roughly to tear away the brush, to find what he could of his mother.
Aaron stood beside him, studying the remnants of the small log cabin and then Hogan. “You look like hell, a dead tie with Dad. He looks like the whole world fell on him.”
“Hadn’t you better be getting back?” Hogan didn’t want his brother tangled in his pain, to see the dark fury and hurt inside him.
“Hell, no.” Aaron walked to the packhorse, and began to toss camping gear to the ground. “You’re not sending me back into that pit of worked-up females, Mitch’s psychology manure, and Ben’s black moods. When I left, Mom was threatening to take an ax to the door Ben had locked and Jemma was brewing up another jug of carrot juice. Carley was shivering in the shadows and not listening to anything I had to say to comfort her. Here—”
Aaron tossed an ax to Hogan, who caught it easily. “I took that ax before Mom found it, because your sweet self went to so much work to restore those doors. At the going rates you charge as an artist, those fine masterpieces are probably worth over twenty thousand a piece.”
Hogan was unable to say what was right to Aaron: that Aaron remained his brother, and was in his heart. Reacting to his emotions, wishing he could tear away the pain, Hogan threw the ax in a rotation at a tree twenty feet away; the blade sank solidly into the wood with an echoing whack.
“Good toss. I guess your pampered artist hands aren’t that weak.” Aaron tossed Hogan leather gloves and a rifle, then a gun belt and a revolver. “You forgot a few things you might need up here.”
“Get away,” Hogan said quietly, needing to sink into his thoughts, to deal with emotions he’d shielded all his life.
“You sound like the old man. Act like him, too. From the way you jumped Jemma, making certain you’d put your brand on her, I’d say that matches exactly what I heard about Dad shooing Mom down the wedding chute. She never knew what hit her, but she’s a lot sweeter than Jemma.... I’ll leave when I’m ready, bro,” Aaron returned evenly, meeting Hogan’s dark look.
Aaron watched a mule doe water at the stream. “You stuck when the going was rough all those years ago. You were there, taking it from Ben. You stuck by Mom, and Carley and me. We depended on you and you were there....”
He tossed a rock into the stream, startling the doe. He followed its leap to the other bank. “Lighten up, Hogan. All I did was bring beer and food. No women, and you’d better be grateful that I didn’t. They’re out to make us a lovely, civilized family. Mitch has all those psychology degrees, and he can handle it. In fact, I think Mitch is really into this female bonding thing, studying the dynamics. Dad can handle himself, but I’m defenseless as a baby. Let me enjoy my time away from the house.”
Aaron’s discomfort was probably a ploy, but for once Hogan didn’t state the obvious. He loved his brother deeply, always had. Hogan almost smiled, remembering the time he took Aaron into the woods to build a clubhouse far away from the stormy Kodiak ranch house. Aaron had been torn between his battling mother and father, and fighting pride and tears.
“Aaron, I want you to meet my mother,” Hogan said. “She’s right over there.”
“They met in that camas field,” Aaron stated softl
y, looking out into the small moist meadow, the camas stalks promising blue flowers.
In his mind, Hogan saw his father, a woman-shy, lanky cowboy, trying to talk with a black-haired girl in the meadow. Hogan’s emotions trembled within him, the new knowledge opening up visions he’d never expected. “He said she liked to draw, to feel, to take things inside her. Willow was her name.”
Aaron nodded slowly, studying Hogan. “I’d like to meet her.”
“He loved her.” Hogan inhaled the mountain air and let peace fill him. “He loves Dinah, too.”
They stood apart, studying each other—boys who had become men with love running between them. Suddenly, Aaron asked, “You ever tell anyone you loved them, Hogan?”
“No one but Carley, and she needed to hear it back then.”
“I’m thinking that if I have kids, I’m going to tell them that every chance I get,” Aaron stated firmly. “Now introduce me to your mother.”
*** ***
In the morning, Hogan’s head throbbed, and a boot was prodding his backside. Aaron yelled, cursing as a bucket of cold water splashed in his face. Hogan sucked in his breath as the other half of the water in the bucket was dashed into his face.
“I’m here and I’m ready to fish,” Jemma announced cheerfully. “It’s already eight o’clock, and boy, are they biting!”
Hogan stifled a groan and sat up on his bedroll; his head threatened to roll back down to the bedroll, and he held it tightly. Aaron was hopping and cursing, his bare feet hitting rock and pinecones—the reflexology lesson last night had required the use of his own feet. A radio blared rock music, crashing through Hogan’s skull. Jemma turned up the volume. “Just trying to find the fishing report.”
“Get the hell out of here! Men need peace and quiet and not screaming women,” Aaron yelled, as Hogan struggled to stand, bracing one hand against a tree. He had a distant memory of Ben yelling the same thing at Dinah.
“This isn’t your old clubhouse marked Men Only. This is a whole big mountain, and there aren’t any signs to stay away,” Jemma shot back, her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes.
“I’ll make one,” Hogan stated through his parched throat. A strip of sunlight speared through the pine trees and caught the back of his brain. He braced his other hand against the tree and tried to glare at Jemma, who looked as though she’d explode. “You’re not mad, are you, Red?”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, gee whiz, why should I be mad? Can’t you take a little payback? I had a morning I didn’t feel so good, either. But did you have mercy? Oh, no. Not you. Stop calling me ‘Red.’ I don’t like it, and there’s a little more volume I can get out of this radio.”
Despite his hangover, Hogan couldn’t help but notice how fine she looked in a snit, wearing cut-off jeans, a tight yellow tube band across her breasts covered by one of his shirts, knotted at the waist. He took in those long, long legs and stopped at the orange canvas shoes.
The bright colors hurt his eyes, jarred his artist senses. Yellow and orange usually meant Jemma was on the warpath and he’d experienced enough of her temper to know that the gloves were off.
In contrast to the jangling warning bells in his head, he wanted to hold her, to kiss her, and lay her down beneath him. The thoughts weren’t sweet, just pure hunger unleashed and devastating. He shifted, uncomfortable with his tight, burgeoning body, his arousal thrusting at his jeans. “I don’t know. Why are you mad? Did the modesty panel blouse-deal fall through?”
Faced with an angry woman, a hangover, and a cursing brother, Hogan took the safest path and walked to the creek to soothe his parched throat. He drank, and Aaron lay facedown beside him, cupping cold water onto his face. Hogan lifted a heavy, aching lid and eyed Aaron. “You led her here.”
“Did not. But if she’s on this mountain, I want off.”
Aaron stared down at the toothpaste and toothbrush she’d flung at him. “Where’s the floss, Mother?”
“Go to hell.”
Hogan turned to look up at Jemma, no small matter as she was outlined in the blinding sunlight.
“Will you go home?” he demanded, rather than asked.
“I’m here to fish. You said you’d teach me. I’ve got a schedule, you know—”
Jemma screamed as Hogan wrapped his hand around her ankle and tumbled her into the creek. “Cool off.”
Aaron began laughing, then studied Jemma tromping out of the creek.
“Hogan,” he said in an aside as they sat brushing their teeth and watching her, “there’s not a trout in that little creek. Bait fish, maybe.”
“I know.” Hogan stood up, feeling good enough to grin at her. “But she looks so fine when she’s casting.”
“Ah, the artist speaks.” Aaron’s tone was that of a man understanding another’s admiration of women’s bodies.
“Uh-huh. Something like that.” Hogan stood back as Jemma tromped past him, her shoes squishing. He had the odd sense that he needed her to hold him, to soothe him, past the sensual need of their bodies, and that thought terrified him.
“Oh, man, she’s tromping over our camp and calling us pigs... takes me back, but I really hate being called a pig. I’m getting the hell out of Dodge.” Aaron’s expression was a Western one that said he wasn’t staying anywhere near Jemma and her current mood.
He grinned at Hogan. “She’s tracked you down like a dog, man. You’ve already been bagged and don’t know it yet.”
“We’re just sorting out the rules,” Hogan began carefully, wary about his brother reading him so well.
“She doesn’t have ‘em,” Aaron returned cheerfully. “You’re just wide-open for the kill.”
Hogan studied the tiny weathered cabin, the distant snowcapped mountains and the stream and the woman. “I’ll take care of her.”
“Never a doubt in my mind,” Aaron said, swinging up onto his saddled horse. “I’ll tell Joe Blue Sky you’ll be wanting to talk with him.”
*** ***
Killing the old man was so easy, the murderer thought as he tucked Joe Blue Sky’s heart medicine pills back into the dead man’s pocket.
It had been so easy to fake car trouble on the country road that Joe took to visit his cousins. Once Joe stopped, the killer had only to excite the old man and keep the pills from him. While Joe was gasping for life, his heart bursting into pieces, the killer told him what he would do to Carley and the Kodiak family—just to enjoy the panic in the old man’s cloudy, pain-racked eyes.
Joe Blue Sky’s killer patted the old man’s flannel pocket, the medicine bottle safely inside where it would be found.
“It will be ruled a natural death, Joe. Too bad you couldn’t get your medicine when you needed it. But the Kodiaks will know. They’ll know that Carley is mine and that I am displeased. They’ll take this as a warning.
He studied Hogan Kodiak’s house, outlined against the bright Montana sky, big windows catching the sun and hurling a challenge at him.
Hogan was the worst— not read easily, wary enough to stand back and separate himself from his emotions.
Then there was Aaron, a smooth-talking ladies’ man. He’d always had everything: charm, talent, looks, an all-American golden boy.
Mitch. He dared to take Carley into his arms, to touch her virgin body. Dared to look at her beautiful pure blue eyes. With his Chicago street and gang background, his death could easily look like the result of his interference as a social worker....
Jealousy rose and flamed within the murderer, his fists clenching as he stared at the remodeled contemporary house.
Hogan was too talented, rising from nothing, a bastard making a fortune without half trying. Women clustered to his dark brooding looks, and Carley loved him. He was too strong, too complete, and not vulnerable.
But he wasn’t, not really, not when a superior intelligence wanted to defeat him, hurt him. Hogan had come back to make a statement to Ben and Hogan’s house was a monument stuck in his father’s face.
The killer knew
he had time on his side; sooner or later, he’d have Carley.
He returned to his pickup, slipped the coil wire back onto the distributor cap and closed the hood. He wiped his grease-covered hands on a rag, tossed it into the brush, and briefly saluted Joe Blue Sky’s body.
*** ***
Chapter Thirteen
“Hold still.” Hogan tried to work free the lure tangled in Jemma’s hair, pushed up onto the top of her head.
She squirmed, twisting the horsehair lure deeper into the thick, fiery strands. Hogan couldn’t resist the pleasure of running his thumb over the warm sleek strand, a vivid contrast to his dark skin. Holding the lure safely away from her face and scalp, he worked it from her hair. The pleasant bumping of her body against his was an added bonus.
He swatted her bottom lightly, not to hurt or remind her to stand still, but because the playful familiarity pleased him. Wanting more of that light feeling, he bent suddenly to growl and nuzzle her throat, and grinned when she squealed in surprise. The play was a first for Hogan and he’d stunned himself—and her. He loved stunning the woman who had pushed him into desperation.
“You rat. I’ve got to learn how to do this, and it’s impossible when you’re standing there grinning,” she said for the tenth time, temper quivering in the sunlit morning air.
“Shh.” He ran his fingers down the taut cords on her nape, and massaged lightly, expertly. She relaxed momentarily, issuing a long sigh of pleasure, then pulled away. “Don’t try that on me. I’m not turning into a pool of jelly before I’ve told you just what I think of you, and I’m getting that list in order now.”
Hogan tossed the nymph lure and line away and Jemma grabbed his wrist, turning his damaged palm up to her inspection. Almost pale as silver in the dappled sunlight, her eyes shot to his. She frowned, her voice husky. “How did you do this?”
Before Aaron had come, Hogan had wanted to see where his mother had lived and been happy. He’d hoped for a glimpse of her, and there was none. He glanced at the tiny cabin, the brush torn away, new timber replacing the old. His brother had worked easily at his side, as he’d always done, complaining occasionally about his posh office and missing the sweet young things that supplied his morning coffee.