by Cait London
“But Maxi, you’ve always been my girl,” Aaron said. He snatched another cookie and tossed it to Ben, who leaned against the doorframe, watching the arm-wrestling contests.
Ben ate the cookie slowly and studied the match as Hogan took Mitch, two out of three.
“You’ve been working on something other than your jewelry, Hogan. I’ll take some of that,” Ben said quietly as Mitch rose from the table. Ben replaced him. “Unless you think you’re not up to it.”
“Bet,” Hogan said, testing his grip against Ben’s. The lock of their hands was unfamiliar, grown son to a hardworking father, the lock of their eyes said their lives were changing, a river of hard times lay between them, and both had terms to be met.
“Dollar.” Ben pushed Hogan’s hand enough to let him know he wasn’t easy.
“I win, and you take back the ownership of those cattle.”
By the kitchen counter, Aaron and Mitch turned to look at the two men.
“Like I said, you’re a hard man. You’re going to make me eat those years and a bit of my pride, aren’t you, boy?” Ben asked, as they gripped in earnest now, broad callused palms meeting squarely, free hands locked on their thighs for leverage.
“Uh-huh. Seems fair to me.” Hogan increased the pressure, and Ben met it.
Dinah and Jemma came to watch.
“Stop it,” Jemma ordered coldly, her eyes slashing at him. “Hogan, you stop it now.”
“Hush!” Ben shot back, sweating now with the effort of keeping his hand upright and not pinned to the table.
“Back off,” Hogan said, finding that Ben wasn’t an easy man to take down. Years of ranch work had earned him more muscle than a man of his age.
“This isn’t a game, it’s a duel,” Jemma muttered, folding her arms in front of her, her nails digging into her arms.
“Stop it, Ben. She’s right. It’s too serious,” Dinah said.
“Leave it,” Ben ordered curtly and Dinah’s expression hardened.
“I’m done taking your orders to leave you alone, Ben Kodiak.” Then without warning, Dinah grabbed Ben’s face and kissed him hard. She kissed his ear and then stood behind him, her hands resting on his chest. She winked at Hogan.
While Ben was dealing with his head resting against Dinah’s breasts, Hogan immediately pinned Ben’s hand. “I’ll have the sale papers to you in the morning.”
“He wants to do this, Ben,” Dinah said quietly, stroking Ben’s hair. “I think you should let this go.”
“Women think different. Two out of three?” Ben asked.
Hogan nodded. He realized that Ben’s pride wouldn’t go down easy, but there was something in Ben’s eyes now that caught Hogan, disarming him. The pride in Ben’s expression was for his son.
After Hogan won the next match, Ben sat back in the kitchen chair and nodded. Then he stood and took Dinah’s hand. “Hogan tells me that I should be dancing with you. Why don’t we put on those old Glenn Miller records in the living room and do that now?”
“Where’s Carley?” Mitch asked again as Ben held Dinah close and they swayed to the big band sounds.
A thundering blast from upstairs answered the question. Carley was already halfway down the stairway before Hogan took the first step. She pushed his chest with her hand. “Get out of my way.”
“Are you all right?” The shot had terrified him. If he’d missed any security upstairs and—
Carley pushed him aside and tromped down the stairs. “Someone will have to fix the roof before the next rain. I shot that old buffalo gun straight through it, because I didn’t want to shoot any liars down here.”
She glared at Jemma. “My best friend. A liar. I thought I could trust you. Dad is sick, is he? I just found a copy of his last medical exam in Big Timber. He’s missing one leg, but other than that, he’s as healthy as I am. Maybe more.”
Dinah inhaled sharply, the sound slashing through the room, and Carley turned to her mother. “Was I so pitiful and dumb that you had to get Dad to agree to this lie? It’s Jemma’s fault, isn’t it? She’s always the one with ideas, and most of them without a bit of sense.”
“Carley—” Jemma began, her tone shattered. Hogan took one look at her stricken, pale face and drew her close against him.
Carley slashed down her hand. “I’m running this show. Shut up. All of you were in on it, weren’t you? All of you knew that I was being stalked, and all of you stopped your lives to come here. And I’ve trusted you all with my life.”
She slammed her fist into Mitch’s midsection, and he didn’t blink, his features taut and pale.
“I trusted you,” she said, her voice vibrating with passion. “I trusted you completely.”
“Honey—” Mitch stopped when Carley glared at him, her usually cheerful expression livid with rage.
Hogan saw the family he loved, tearing in pieces, Carley wounded and slashing at the tenuous bonds. Jemma was shaking badly now, tense within the circle of his arm. Ben and Dinah were rigid and pale; looking helpless and worried, Aaron and Mitch were clearly gripped by Carley’s stormy emotions. “That’s enough, Carley.”
“No, it’s not. Not nearly enough.” Carley’s tears were trailing down her pale cheeks, dripping onto her T-shirt and spotting the dark blue fabric.
Jemma moved from Hogan’s protective arm around her waist and started toward Carley, to hold her as she always had. Hogan caught Carley’s open hand as it shot toward Jemma’s face. “No.”
“Let her.” Jemma pushed free of Hogan’s protection. “Hit me. I don’t care. Nothing could compare to losing you. I’d rather anything happened to me, than to have you hurt again. He’s been waiting since that night— Don’t you think I’ve lived every minute of it with you, every night when you cried out? It has to stop, Carley. Hogan can’t paint anymore, because he sees your face as it was that night— eyes open, rounded, your mouth bruised. It’s got to end. That bastard is lurking around here, making threats, and Hogan and Ben and Mitch and Aaron are the best protection you’ve got— This was the safest place for you.”
“The safest place for me is away from you all,” Carley stated darkly, her voice vibrating with emotions. “You came here, you got Hogan and everyone else in my family and—”
“You want to hit me, fine. Do it. But you were trapped in that night eighteen years ago and—”
“Dammit, what night eighteen years ago?” Ben demanded, and the entire room seemed to quiver and stop in time as the younger adults looked at each other.
Dinah took Ben’s hand. “What happened eighteen years ago?” she asked softly, fearfully. “I want to know. Something changed Carley— what happened?”
“Mother, you didn’t know, did you? That was our little secret, the girls and the boys.” In blistering detail, lashing out with all the pain in her, Carley told what the attacker had said and done to her.
Their expressions stricken, Ben and Dinah sank to the couch.
Mitch jerked Carley back from the door she had just opened. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I am, and not with you.”
“I’ll take you,” Hogan said, after smoothing Jemma’s taut back. Secrets kept too long hurled around the room, and there was nothing he could do to hold them back. Jemma looked as if she were crumbling and Ben stared vacantly into space. Dinah’s eyes held tears, Aaron looked off into the night, and Mitch never stopped looking at Carley.
“I want her out of this house, now,” Carley stated, glaring at Jemma. “Or I’ll never set foot in it again.”
Hogan took Jemma’s cold, shaking hand and placed his keys in her fist. He wanted to hold her in his arms, to protect her, but she wanted this finished. Jemma wanted the Kodiaks salvaged, and at the moment, he believed that, too. “You be at my place when I get there. Stay put. Aaron— Mitch, make certain she’s okay.”
“I’ll stay with her.” In the dim light, Aaron’s face looked as aged and haunted as Ben’s.
“You’re protecting her. Sending her away, so she
won’t have to face what she’s done.” Carley was taut with rage, sending an antique glass lamp onto the floor, shattering it. “She’s got you all wrapped around her finger, all dancing to her tune and telling me lies. My family, my fine, loving family, doesn’t think that I can handle my life.”
“That’s enough, Carley,” Hogan said, wrapping his hand around her upper arm and tugging her toward the door. “We’ll talk about it outside.”
But Carley was running toward a fast horse and when Hogan leaped from the front porch to follow her, Aaron called his name. “Here. If he’s out there—”
Hogan caught the heavy automatic Beretta and jammed it into his belt. He glanced at Jemma, took a hard, fast, kiss and said, “You’re not running away. I’ll come after you, if you do. Stay at my house, in my bed, and you’d better be there when I get home.”
He didn’t wait for her consent, there was no time; Carley was already racing across the pasture. Hogan caught a fast horse, a gelding named Pete. Wrapping his hands in Pete’s mane, he sailed over the fence as Carley had.
Carley was bent low in the moonlight, riding bareback across the moonlit stretch toward the stream where she’d been attacked. By the time he got there, Carley was running toward the spot in the bushes.
Hogan came up softly behind her. “Carley?”
She was shaking, staring at the spot where she’d been pinned and threatened and where her life had stopped.
“I hate myself,” she whispered, violence in the hushed tone. “I’m weak, and I’m pitiful.”
He wanted to hold her, to tell her that she was the beautiful sister he’d always loved, but Carley wasn’t listening now; she was tearing herself into shreds. “You’re not. You’re Carley.”
She pivoted to him, her body rigid, tears streaking her pale moonlit face. “Why are you always at the wrong place, saying the right things? Haven’t you had enough? You’re probably the only one in this whole situation who knew that I should be told... that Mom and Dad should have been told years ago. You told me that— that they should know. How many times was it? There was pain in you then, and now I know—”
Carley fell into the bushes, lying on her back, arms at her sides, shaking as she relived the attack.
Hogan jerked her to her feet and held her a distance away from him. He shook her, willing her to understand, to come back from the evil place she’d been. “Stop that. Do you want to give him more power? He’s already done enough.”
“I hate Jemma. She did this.”
“She loves you, Carley. More than herself. She knew what would happen if Ben and Dinah weren’t told— how she could be hated by them both, and yet for you, she kept a lie alive.”
Then Hogan released his sister and stepped back. Carley had to stand on her own, and she couldn’t if everyone continued to protect her. She had her pride, too, and Hogan prayed that she could deal with what he would tell her. “He’s dangerous, Carley. He’s probably a serial killer, and I think he murdered my uncle—”
“Joe Blue Sky? But—”
“There was motor oil on the rag near Joe’s body. The rag hadn’t been there long. It wasn’t weathered. The oil did not match that of Joe’s pickup.”
“That lovely old man? Who would want to kill him? What monster would kill him?” she corrected, her eyes wide, filling with horror.
Hogan studied her, gauging her strength now. “There’s more. Do you want to know or not?”
He’d banked on her Kodiak blood, that fearless blood that matched his, and when Carley nodded and held his hand, Hogan said, “Remember old Doc Medford, the dentist? His house and lab burned.”
“I know, but what does that have to do with—”
Hogan inhaled and wished he didn’t have to tell Carley. But there had been enough secrets around her. She needed the truth. “There were unusual bite marks on the women he murdered. Bite marks are traceable now to dental work. Those women were supposed to be— very sweet and untouched.”
“Virgins?” Carley supplied shakily. “Like me? Like I was?” she corrected with a blush.
Hogan brought her trembling body against his, wanting to protect Carley as he always had. But he had to go on with the truth, or Carley’s healing couldn’t begin. “Yes. But they weren’t virgins. I think he was angry to discover that special bit of information, and killed them in a rage. Those dental records could have proven him guilty.”
“He bit me that night.... He likes to hurt.” Carley wrapped her arms around Hogan, holding him tight. “How awful. That’s why I was never left alone, why you and Mitch and Dad and Aaron—”
“And Jemma, too. Try to understand, Carley. She loves you. She knew you wouldn’t leave Seattle for your own safety.”
“She did my thinking for me. I can’t forgive that easily.”
“Jemma was trying to protect you, maybe a little too much. But you’ve changed.”
Hogan held her back from him, looking down her small curved frame. “For one thing, you’ve lost weight, and you’ve been holding your own with Jemma, not letting her push you around. Your one handicap is that you have a family of powerful people around you with their own scars. That’s why they want to protect you— because they love you and don’t want you to be where they’ve been—”
“Mitch?”
Hogan prayed that what he was doing was right. “You should ask him about the scars on his back.”
Carley shook her head, the short boy cut making her face look more feminine than the longer style. “He won’t tell me. I’ve tried.”
“I think he will now.”
Carley was quiet, looking away into the rolling pastures. “What about Jemma? I know she hasn’t had an easy life, but she’s always seemed so strong.”
“She made herself that way. She’s fought a long time, and she’s done her best for everyone else. I want to help her now.”
“She had bruises on her face one day— when she was married. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ she said, and then she was divorced. I don’t know what she went through. She wouldn’t talk about it. Looking back, Jemma never told me anything she didn’t want me to know. That’s one-sided, isn’t it?”
Carley wasn’t asking questions; she was trying to unravel and rebalance a lifetime relationship.
Hogan let her deal with that, dropping painfully into the realization that Jemma had been in an abusive marriage. The thought startled him; he hadn’t thought of Jemma as a woman who would allow that.
Rage began to curl through him, and he slowly slammed the door on it. At the moment, he was trying to get through to Carley to trust the people who loved her, and Jemma hadn’t trusted him.
He pushed away that sliver of pain and concentrated on getting through to Carley.
In the moonlight, Carley’s face was stark with pain. “You’re saying that everyone has had pain and that they’re working to heal. I don’t know if I can do that.”
When Carley snuggled closer, Hogan knew that she would weigh her emotions. “Jemma is staying with me. She’s not going anywhere until this is over. I think that will be soon.”
Carley pushed free of him and walked to the stream bank. She threw rocks into the stream for a long time, skipping them. Hogan came to stand beside her, tossing rocks as she was.
He wanted her to know that he’d always feel the same about her, no matter what she decided about Jemma, or her family.
When Carley sat on the bank, he sat beside her, and together they watched the moonlight caress the stream.
“Cutthroat,” she said, noting the fish that had hurled itself out of the water.
“Big brown trout— five pounds,” Hogan corrected, and could almost imagine Jemma running for her high-priced, designer pole. “You do your thinking, Carley. Take your time.”
“Okay.” She turned to him. “Everyone else knows this, but me, right? Jemma?”
Hogan shook his head. “No. The Kodiaks have vigilante blood. I didn’t want a free-for-all, before the killer shows his hand. He meant to send a mes
sage to us— that he was a threat. I want it to appear that we didn’t get the message, and he’s just sent another in Ben’s mailbox— a picture of you in Seattle and a new bra.”
He waited to see the fear in Carley’s expression, but instead she locked her jaw and narrowed her eyes. She wanted to fight and that was good.
Hogan handed a truth to her, and hoped it would help strengthen her. “I didn’t think Jemma could handle it. She would, if she had to, though. I wanted to protect her, and they are only suspicions. I have nothing really to go on. I think he’s getting restless, and he’s stirred up. I think he’ll probably make a move soon. I didn’t want Jemma to go off half-cocked and set him off. I think we should sit tight.”
“But you thought that I should know, or you wouldn’t have told me. You think that I can handle this, don’t you?” Carley’s tone said that knowledge had helped her self-confidence, and Hogan nodded.
She inhaled the sweet night air, scented of cut grass, and said quietly, “I’m ready to take a long ride now, an easy one, to air out. I suppose I’m stuck with you, my Knight of the Round Table, right?”
He smiled at the memory she’d dredged up from her childhood. Carley’s emotions were churning now, but she knew what was sensible and right. “Let’s ride back and saddle up, and I’ll take you up to meet my mother. There’s nothing like a moonlight ride in the foothills to straighten things out. I’ve been thinking I’d like to roof that old cabin up there, if you’ll help me. It’s just a tiny thing, and we can use the leftovers in the barn. We’d take packhorses.”
“I’d like that— away from here and working to rebuild something that means so much to you.... One thing, Hogan. I’m still mad at Jemma. I don’t promise anything where she’s concerned. You’re half in love with her, and I don’t want to lose my brother, too.”
“You won’t, but it’s more than half, Carley. I’m thinking about romancing her.”
“Whoa.... Romance. That’s a big old-fashioned one for my cool-headed, logical, socialite brother, isn’t it? But no more, Hogan. I don’t want to even think about Jemma now.”