by Lisa Jackson
“Careful, woman,” Rand growled softly, leaning closer to her. “I might just have to show you who’s boss.”
Suzanne tossed back her head and laughed. Her auburn hair fell down her back in soft waves and a few of the men glanced at her in open admiration. “Oh, right. That’ll be the day, cowboy.”
Rand’s smile was one of wicked amusement and without so much as opening his mouth, he silently conveyed to his wife what he planned to do to her if she tried to tell him what to do. Again, Suzanne laughed in pure, loving delight.
Gina’s heartstrings tugged at the playful banter.
“You’re the foreman, right?” Cade Redstone, balancing a full plate, asked Rand as he placed a slab of garlic bread on his plate.
Rand nodded. “Yep. You thinkin’ about stayin’ on?”
“Not just thinkin’ about it. I plan to stick around at least for the summer and I want to work. I’ve been around horses and cattle all my life.”
“Consider yourself signed up,” Rand said, and clapped Cade on the shoulder.
Trent had sauntered onto the deck and snagged a bottle of beer. Twisting off the top, he started a conversation with Adam Benson.
Well, it was a beginning, Gina supposed.
Gina accepted a plate from Janie, but realized as she smelled the tangy chicken that she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite. Her stomach instantly roiled at the sight of the food. She tried to blame it on the tense conversation in the dining room, on the excitement of meeting the men she’d spent days searching for, on being keyed up whenever she was around Trent, but deep inside she suspected her lack of appetite and nausea were from another source.
Enough of this, she thought, angry with herself when she realized that she’d been afraid to find out the truth. It was time to face the future. As soon as possible, come hell or high water, she was going to go into town and stop by the local pharmacy. Once there she’d buy a pregnancy test kit, bring it back to the ranch, and use it. Then she’d know for sure whether or not she was carrying Trent Remmington’s baby.
Eleven
“So, you’ve got it bad for the investigator lady.” Blake’s comment wasn’t a question. He stood, leaning a shoulder on the doorjamb, sipping from a long-necked bottle of beer as the newfound half brothers talked between themselves. They’d eaten, had dessert and were now milling around in smaller groups. Wayne and Garrett were about to take some of the heirs on a tour; Adam Benson had disappeared into the house. Gina had ducked out. Brandon Harper had flung a few questions about family history toward the twins, but was now striking up a conversation with Suzanne Harding, so Blake had cornered Trent.
“What makes you think I’ve got it bad for anyone?”
“It’s written all over your face. You couldn’t take your eyes off of her during that meeting and, remember, I know you. We’re the only two people here who share the same mother.” Blake’s eyes, so much like his own, held his. “Come on, no more B.S. What’s up?”
There wasn’t much reason to lie. “As you know, I met Gina a few weeks ago,” Trent admitted.
“Why don’t we drive into town and I’ll buy you a real beer at the Branding Iron? You can tell me all about it on the way.” He shoved his hair out of his eyes. “While you’re at it, maybe you can explain what makes this ranch tick.”
“I didn’t think you were interested in ranching.”
“I wasn’t, but I’ve changed.” Blake frowned and picked at the label on his bottle. “Divorce does that.”
“You and Elaine were never right for each other.”
“Amen.” They both drained their bottles and left them on a table. As they walked out the front door they spied Garrett pointing out the bunkhouse, stable, machine sheds and various outbuildings to the sons of Larry who were interested in the ranch.
Trent wasn’t certain he was in that particular category, but he wasn’t alone. Benson seemed to want no part of his Whitehorn legacy.
As he and Blake walked to his twin’s car, Trent slapped at a horsefly that hadn’t figured out the herd was in the west pasture. The warmth of a bright Montana sun beat against the back of his neck and he couldn’t help but smile when he spied a frantic white-faced calf, bawling and running awkwardly toward the herd in search of his mother.
Trent slid into the passenger seat. He’d never been particularly close to Blake, but wondered for the first time in his life if that had been a mistake.
Blake slipped into the driver’s seat and shoved a key into the ignition. “Can you believe Larry Kincaid is our father? I mean, we’ve had some time to think about it, but never really discussed it.” The Acura roared to life.
“Nope. But then, I was never close to Harold.” Trent focused on a copse of aspens in one of the fields. Horses stood head to rump in the shade, their tails swatting at flies, their ears pricked. Coats from dun to black gleamed in the sunlight and Trent, for the first time in his life, felt a bonding with the land. But that was bull. He’d never felt anything close to roots in his life. Just as he’d never been able to settle down with one woman. But staring out the window to the stubble of freshly mown fields, Gina’s image appeared in his mind’s eye—her quick smile, wavy red hair and flashing green eyes.
Blake snorted. “Mom ran Harold ragged when she was alive.” He threw the car into reverse, backed up, then jammed it into drive. “I just wish she’d told us about Larry before she died.”
“Would’ve been thoughtful,” Trent agreed, not wanting to think too long or hard on the fact that Barbara Simms Remmington had given up her fight with cancer—one final battle that she hadn’t won. “But then, Mom always did things her way.”
Blake slipped a pair of wraparound sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose. “Do you think Larry ever thought about contacting us?”
Trent lifted a shoulder. “Who knows? Garrett told me there was a letter once, one that she wrote sometime after she found out she was going to die.” He cleared his throat. “Supposedly she told Larry about us but warned him to keep his distance because we’d grown up to be fine young men or some such trash and didn’t want him messing things up.”
Blake’s hands tightened on the wheel as he attempted to avoid potholes in the rutted lane. Long, dry grass brushed the undercarriage of the low-slung car. “Guess he took her advice,” Trent observed.
“Probably didn’t want to be bothered with a couple more kids.”
“Fine guy, our father.”
“The best.” Blake slowed for the highway, saw no traffic and gunned it. The Acura sprang forward, wheeling onto the main road, tires spinning gravel before connecting with asphalt.
“So where is this letter?”
Trent lifted a shoulder. “Who knows? I didn’t see it in that Pandora’s box that Celia—er, Gina passed around today.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed as he stared through his dark lenses and punched in the radio. Smooth jazz filtered through the speakers. “You called Gina ‘Celia’?”
Trent’s jaw hardened. It was just like his brother to pick up on any little error. “Just a mistake.”
Raising a dark eyebrow identical to his twin’s, Blake said, “Better be careful and keep your women straight. One doesn’t like to be called by another’s name.”
“How would you know?” Trent asked, irritated at his brother all over again. That was the trouble with Blake. Any time Trent had felt the slightest bit of brotherly affection for him, Blake would do something anal and irritating and self-righteous. It was enough to remind Trent that he was better off fending for himself.
“Oh, believe me, I know,” Blake said, and Trent had a glimmer that there was more to his brother than met the eye, a darker side filled with his own secrets. Well, well, well. They pulled up behind a tractor chugging down the road while pulling a trailer stacked high with hay bales. Blake eased into the oncoming lane, punched it, and the Acura surged past the farmer to settle back into the right lane and eat up the miles.
“I thought you were always a one-girl guy,” Trent
said as they neared the town.
“For the most part,” Blake hedged, and didn’t elaborate as he took a corner a little too fast and the tires whined. “But you weren’t.” He drove over a final rise and the town of Whitehorn appeared, rising out of the ranch land in a cluster of old and new buildings. “So now we’re back to it,” Blake said, easing off the accelerator as they passed a Welcome To Whitehorn sign followed closely by a new speed limit. “What’s the deal with Gina?”
Gina eyed the home pregnancy tests on a shelf in the town pharmacy, decided they were all about the same and tucked a box under her arm. Though she hardly knew anyone in the store, she stupidly felt self-conscience, as if she were wearing a bright neon sign that said she thought she might be pregnant.
“Get over it,” she mumbled to herself. People took the tests every day.
But not you. Until last month, you were a twenty-seven-year-old virgin.
Ignoring the gibe, she grabbed a tube of toothpaste, a roll of film, the latest edition of the Whitehorn Journal and a bottle of shampoo, then walked to the register. The cashier, who was barely eighteen from the looks of her, was snapping gum and blinking as if she was just getting used to contacts. She took an eternity ringing up the items.
The pharmacist, standing on a raised platform behind a half wall displaying over-the-counter medications, vitamins and herbs, was busily filling prescriptions. Throughout the store country music was playing softly over the whir of ceiling fans.
Shifting from one foot to the other, Gina had her wallet out of her purse and wondered if anyone in Whitehorn had ever heard of merchandise scanners. A skinny man in rimless glasses and smelling as if he hadn’t bathed in this century got in line behind her, and another girl, one Lily Mae had pointed out to her as Christina Montgomery, clutching more hair-care and beauty products than she could hold without a basket, stood a few feet from the smelly man.
Eventually the girl at the register had totaled up her bill and sang out the amount. Gina fished in her wallet and came up with a couple of bills.
“Have a nice day,” the girl at the register intoned automatically as she handed Gina her change.
“You, too.” Gina scooped up her bag and, hoping the damned pregnancy test wasn’t visible through the white paper, spied Winona Cobbs flipping through the magazine rack. That was the trouble with a small town, a person couldn’t help but run into someone she knew. With a quick smile and wave in Winona’s direction, Gina beelined past the latest in foot balms, bath oil beads and denture cleansers to the front door.
Outside the sun was bright, the afternoon warm. It had been nearly an hour since the gathering of Kincaid brothers had begun to splinter apart.
When she’d spied Trent with Blake, nursing beers and surveying the countryside, Gina had run upstairs, grabbed her purse and hightailed it outside to her Explorer, only pausing long enough to make a quick excuse to Garrett. Then she’d driven like a madwoman into town. Her pulse had been hammering, a headache pounding behind her eyes. She’d almost felt guilty, like a convict on the run, as she’d pushed the speed limit through the hills on her way into town.
How foolish. Now, balancing her bag, Gina reached into the purse slung over her shoulder and slipped a pair of sunglasses onto her nose. Searching for her keys, she looked into a deep pocket, not paying attention as she rounded a corner and slammed into a man walking in the opposite direction.
“Oh!” She nearly stumbled. The newspaper dropped from beneath her arm and the bag from the pharmacy slipped from her fingers. Large male hands grabbed her shoulders, keeping her upright, and with a sinking sensation she realized she’d just run smack-dab into Trent Remmington.
She dropped her keys and they jangled as they hit the cement.
Oh, God. The pregnancy test! “I—I didn’t see you,” she stammered as she felt her face turn a dozen shades of red.
Pull yourself together, Gina.
“I figured that,” he said dryly, and to her mortification she realized he wasn’t alone. Blake was just a step behind. Blake reached down, stuffed the toothpaste and film that had spilled onto the sidewalk into the bag and handed the sorry-looking sack with its contents back to her.
Gina scrambled for the keys glinting in the sunlight.
“Fancy running into you,” she quipped, managing what she hoped appeared to be a nonchalant smile though her heart was drumming a million beats a second. What if he saw the pregnancy test, guessed that she thought she might be carrying his baby? “I, um, I thought I already told you we have to quit meeting like this.”
Trent released her. “My thoughts exactly,” he said dryly, but no smile toyed at those razor-thin lips. His eyebrows had slammed together and his nostrils flared slightly.
He knew. Oh, God, he knew! “I, um, have to get going. I’ll see you back at the ranch.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Blake said, but he, too, sober as a judge, didn’t so much as crack a smile. A horrible, sinking sensation pounded through Gina’s already aching head. She was certain that her secret was out. The irony of it was, she didn’t know herself if she was pregnant or not.
Garrett had the feeling that something was going to blow. The tension between Gina and Trent was nearly palpable, like the electricity that charges the air just before a thunderstorm breaks.
It was just a matter of time.
He walked to the stables where the smell of horses and dry hay met him. Rand was in the third stall examining a mare who had been favoring a front leg.
“How is she?”
“Ornery,” Rand said as he bent the foreleg back and straddled it while keeping one eye on the palomino’s head. Though she was tethered, Mandy had been known to take a nip out of man’s hide. “As usual.” He was poking the inside of the hoof, watching the mare’s reaction. As the mare shifted, he growled, “Don’t even think about it,” then to Garrett, “What’s up?”
“Nothing good,” Garrett replied as his thoughts turned back to Trent and Gina. It was obvious those two were falling in love, they just didn’t know it yet. “I’m going into town later to interview a couple of gals who are interested in doing the cooking out here. One looks pretty good. She’s got a son and would like a live-in arrangement. Thought you might pass that information on to Suzanne. Just in case you see her before I do.”
“She’ll be relieved,” Rand admitted. “She’s got her hands full with the books, Mack, and Joe.”
“How’s that son of yours?”
Rand looked up and grinned. Proud as a peacock, he was. “Couldn’t be better.” The horse shifted and tossed her head. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Rand said to the mare.
“I’ll see you around.” Garrett slapped the rail of the stall, then headed outside where the sun was bright. Rubbing the back of his neck, he eyed the parking lot.
The lot was pretty empty. Trent and Blake had driven into town.
So had Gina. Separately.
Probably just a coincidence, and yet the feeling that there was going to be trouble lingered with Garrett as he made his way to his truck. He opened the door and slid into the sun-warmed interior, then poked his key into the ignition. Trent and Gina weren’t like oil and water, he decided, ramming the gearshift into reverse, backing up, then nosing the old truck toward the lane. Nope, those two were more like gasoline and a lit match.
A dangerous and extremely volatile combination.
Someone was bound to get burned.
Twelve
The beer didn’t settle well in his stomach. Jordan had spent nearly an hour nursing his bottle and his frustration at the bar of the Branding Iron. Besides, he didn’t fit in with the blue-collar crowd that was beginning to get off work. Half a dozen mill workers and cowboys had sauntered in, laughing and joking, all wearing dirty jeans and relieved smiles that they’d put in their shifts for the day. Talking to each other and catching the barmaid’s attention, they filtered through the front door to take up their usual spots in booths, at the pool table, or here at the bar, already eye
ing the television screen mounted high overhead in hopes of viewing the latest sporting event while thirstily tossing back brewskies and nibbling on peanuts before going home to the wife and kids.
Jordan caught a few grim looks cast his way from the men huddled over their drinks. Sour grapes, he thought. These poor working stiffs would never rise above their small-town roots and they were envious of a poor, sickly kid who had. They’d have manure and sawdust on their boots until the day they died. Jordan Baxter had gone from secondhand sneakers to Italian leather loafers.
The door banged open and Christina Montgomery, the mayor’s youngest and wildest daughter, flew into the bar. Several of the locals swiveled on their stools to check her out. Petite, curvy, and an outrageous flirt, Christina beelined for the bar. “I’ll…I’ll have a…” She looked at the bartender and shoved an errant strand of chestnut hair off her face. “A gin and tonic…no…just a…oh, it doesn’t matter, a diet soda, I guess!”
“That all?” the bartender asked, and Christina’s pouty lips pursed.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s all,” she said, lifting herself onto a bar stool and, noticing a few male glances cast her way in the reflection of the mirror, she shook out her mane of hair. Dressed in a blue dress with silver earrings dripping from her ears, she accepted her drink, took a sip and scowled.
Jordan saw her glance his way and offer him a cunning smile. He wasn’t interested and looked away, but Christina wasn’t rebuffed, just turned her attention to a young cowboy seated in a corner booth. His ears actually turned red as he blushed, but Christina didn’t stop there. With a walk that drew a man’s attention, she took her drink and sauntered slowly to a table near the back of the room. The girl was pure sex and she knew it, flaunted it.