by Lisa Jackson
“Life is good,” Skye said. “Slow down and smell the roses.”
“This...from you?” Skye opened one eye and saw her sister registering mock horror. “You, the honor student with the scholarship to college, the girl who plans to be Rimrock’s first woman doctor? Slow down? When you’ve been on the straight-and-narrow fast track for years?”
“Maybe it’s time to take it easy,” Skye said, stretching lazily.
“Something’s up. Something I don’t know about because life isn’t good. You and I both know it.” Dani wiped off a bead of sweat that had dripped below her rolled-up handkerchief, her answer to a headband. She was muscular and tanned from hours working with horses on the ranches bordering town, and she detested being trapped into doing anything the least bit domestic. Such as picking, husking and freezing corn.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a pessimist?” Skye rolled off the chaise, picked up her empty sack and started back to the garden.
Dani marched along at her heels. “Not a pessimist. A realist. Face it, Skye, we haven’t had a ton of breaks. Dad died in a logging accident working for old Jonah McKee so long ago, I can barely remember him, but Mom gets lucky because Jonah feels some sort of guilt and he gives her a job. She works for him for years and she’s still not earning enough to make ends meet and then she needs a hysterectomy—major surgery that will keep her off her feet for a couple of months at the least—so you, who should already be hot-trotting to medical school have to wait until she recovers. In the meantime, you get to wait on her and fill in for her at work. Doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t know why.”
“What about you, Dani?” Skye asked as she stood in the shade of the cornrows and started searching for ripe ears. The fat leaves were scratchy against her bare arms and legs, but she didn’t mind. Not today.
“I wasn’t talking about me,” Dani said from somewhere on the other side of the rows. “I don’t have any big plans to leave Rimrock, and God knows I’d never be a doctor. But I’m not silly enough to think that life is good. Not by a long shot. It’s hard work and it’s long hours and it’s bad news around every corner, and it’s damn sure not good—at least not for us. Now, if I were Casey McKee, maybe I’d think differently.”
There was a bitterness to Dani’s words, but Skye held her tongue. Her sister had a right to her own pain, to her belief that life never turned out right unless you were privileged, and in this town that privilege meant being blessed with the McKee name.
She cracked several ears from the tall stalks as she made her way down the row. Dani had her own bone to pick with the McKees, so Skye couldn’t very well explain that the reason she was on cloud nine was because of Jonah’s older son, Max.
She’d just met him for the first time. She’d known who he was, of course. Who didn’t? But he was five years older than she was, so they were never in high school together. He’d been to college in Seattle and law school somewhere in California and she and the rest of the town had expected him to join up with some big firm on the West Coast. However, after interning at a prestigious firm in San Francisco, he’d come home to Rimrock, and instead of hanging out his shingle for his own private practice, he’d started working for his father.
That’s how he’d met Skye. He’d sauntered into the office on the first afternoon that Skye had filled in for her mother. Skye, with Dictaphone plugs in her ears, hadn’t heard him, and suddenly there he was, an insolent hip propped against the table holding her word processor, a smile as crooked as the John Day River curving over his jaw, and aquamarine eyes that sparked with more than the hint of a devil.
“Who’re you?” he’d said as Skye noticed the way a clump of brown hair had tumbled over his brow. “What happened to the old lady who usually stands guard here?”
“That ‘old lady’ is my mother, so watch your tongue,” she’d said, irritated that he’d interrupted her. She’d never been impressed by rich men, especially rich, cocky men, and she was set to dislike him on the spot. Spoiled. Pampered. Born with a silver spoon wedged firmly between his gums, Max McKee represented everything she detested in men. The fact that he was handsome only added up to another strike against him. Rich, cocky, good-looking men were usually the worst.
Max held up his hands in surrender. “Didn’t mean to step on any toes.”
“She’s recovering from surgery.” Skye turned back to her work, but he snapped his fingers as if the light had suddenly dawned in his feeble brain. “That’s right. I remember now. I’ve been out of town for a few days and forgot.” His smile broadened. “No offense to your mom, but I like you better already.”
“I don’t type as well as she does.”
He lifted a shoulder and gave her the once-over with those warm blue-green eyes. “I think you’ll do fine. Just fine.”
Seething, she said, “You don’t know a thing about me, Mr. McKee.”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it. And it’s Max—”
“Max? Is that you?” Jonah bellowed from the other side of the door. “Where the hell have you been?”
The corners of Max’s mouth tightened, and Skye realized that the firstborn son of Jonah McKee didn’t like taking orders, not even from his father. “I swear the old man’s got radar,” Max muttered as he rapped his knuckles twice on the desk and reached for the door. But he hesitated and looked over his shoulder. “You’re...?”
“Skye.”
All at once everything came together in his mind, and the look of shock on his face warmed the cockles of Skye’s heart. No doubt he remembered her as a gawky twelve-year-old. All legs and arms, no chest, unruly hair and thick glasses. She’d been a tomboy then, tall and lanky, more interested in scaling trees and playing sandlot baseball than in boys.
He rubbed his chin. “Saying the years have been kind would be an understatement, but I suppose you know that.”
“Max?” Jonah’s voice rumbled with irritation.
Max’s jaw tightened. “Duty calls,” he said and shouldered open the door to his father’s inner sanctum.
“About time,” Jonah growled as Max slid into the older man’s office and Skye turned back to her word processor. She tried to type the agreements of sale and leases, but she found herself unable to concentrate. Her gaze kept wandering to the office door as she thought about Max McKee. Not that she was interested in him. He was everything she despised in a man. And yet...
Skye was still at her desk typing a water-rights agreement between McKee Enterprises and Fred Donner, a neighboring rancher, when Max and his father walked out of the office. Lines of strain showed on Max’s rough-hewn features, but Jonah seemed pleased as he slapped a couple of files on the corner of her desk. “I’ll need two copies of everything in these.” He thumped the top file with an impatient finger. “By tomorrow at nine. And don’t forget the Donner agreement. I’ll need that, too.” Without waiting for Skye’s reply, he headed out the door of the reception area while Max lingered.
“He could have said please, but that’s not his style,” Max said gruffly.
“Is it yours?”
His brows lifted slightly. “You don’t like me much, do you?”
“I don’t know you well enough not to like you.”
“But you disapprove of me.” He glanced at the doors that closed behind his father. “Don’t take too much guff from him.”
Skye yanked off her earphones. “I won’t. I don’t believe women, no matter who they work for, should be treated as doormats. If he gets too offensive, I’ll let him know.”
“Will you?” Max seemed disturbed and stared at her long and hard, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Not many people have the guts to stand up to him.”
“Then they’re foolish,” she replied.
“Or value their lives.”
“Does he scare you?”
Max’s grin was downright brazen. “I’m shaking in my boots. Can’t you tell?”
“Better leave then—don’t
want Daddy to get angry.”
“Anger is a way of life with him.”
“Sounds like you don’t like him much.”
“I can just see his faults, that’s all.”
“So there are some? According to my mother, Jonah McKee walks on water.”
That thought brought an irreverent grin to his face. “Next time he takes me fishing, I’ll check,” he said, and though he smiled there was an undercurrent of strain in his voice.
That had been their first meeting, and Skye hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind since. Now, as the sun began to lower in the summer sky, she heard the cornstalks rustle, and Dani, her bucket filled with ears of corn, slipped between the heavy leaves. “You know, I just figured it out.” Reaching into her jeans pocket, she withdrew a slightly squashed cigarette and a book of matches. “You met someone, didn’t you? That’s why you’re not pulling at the bit to leave town.” She lit up, inhaled deeply and spewed a stream of smoke from the side of her mouth.
“Those will kill you,” Skye said, avoiding the topic of her love life.
But Dani, if nothing else, was dogged. “I’m not worried about lung cancer in fifty years—”
“It could be sooner, or it could be throat cancer, emphysema or heart disease. If I were you—”
“Spare me the lecture, okay? I’m a big girl. If I want to smoke, I’m damned well going to smoke.” She drew in on her cigarette again. “And quit sidestepping the subject.”
“Which was?”
“A guy. You’re involved with a guy, aren’t you?”
Skye decided there was no reason to hide the truth. Dani was bound to find out, anyway. “It’s not that big of a deal,” she equivocated, not wanting anyone to know, least of all Dani, how her heart hammered whenever she was with Max, how she listened for the sound of his voice all day long, how she felt warm inside when he smiled at her. They hadn’t even dated, though he’d made a habit of meeting her for coffee and had brought in hamburgers when Jonah had insisted she work through lunch one day. Once, while they’d been walking through the park after work, she’d thought he might kiss her. He hadn’t, and she’d felt vastly disappointed.
“Whoever he is, he’s not worth giving up your dreams for,” Dani said, her eyes darkening through the curl of smoke that rose into the cloudless blue sky. “So, come on. Give. Who is he?”
“Max,” she said, yanking off another ear of corn and brushing past Dani as she headed down the row.
“Max? As in McKee?” Dani’s cigarette nearly dropped from her mouth. “Are you crazy?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything to you. It’s not like we’re even dating.”
“I should hope not! Don’t you know about him? All the McKees are trouble, every last one of them. But Max, he might be the worst.”
“No one’s worse than Jenner,” Skye said. “He’s been in jail and always seems to be on the wrong side of the law.”
Dani bristled slightly. “At least Jenner’s up-front. Max is as slick as a two-faced snake.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Remember I was still hanging around here when you went away to school,” Dani said. “He’s gone with about every girl in town, broken more than his share of hearts. Then he was involved with some girl in Seattle, nearly married her, but something happened.” She tossed her cigarette into the dirt and squashed it with the toe of her scuffed boot. “Rumor had it she was pregnant, but who knows?” Dani swallowed hard, and her eyes shifted to the middle distance as if she was pondering her own private thoughts. “If she was, no doubt his father found a way to convince the girl to get rid of the baby. Anyway, Max came out of it unscathed, of course, went off to law school in California and eventually landed here. Take my advice. Stay away from him—the guy’s poison.” She picked up her bucket and headed for the house.
Skye didn’t argue with her. Dani had her own reasons for hating everyone with the last name of McKee. Ripping off the rest of the ripe ears, she followed her sister onto the back porch and decided to ignore Dani’s well-intended advice. After all, she wasn’t a silly little schoolgirl; she was twenty-three, a college graduate, and she knew her own mind. She’d dated lots of boys in her life, and though she’d never been involved with anyone as wealthy or as city polished as Max McKee, she felt she could handle him.
From the way he stalked out the door, it was obvious that Jonah McKee was furious. As he always did when he was in a particularly foul mood, he grabbed his favorite rifle, one his father had given him as a boy, and stormed out of the house. His face was a mottled red, his lips compressed into a tight, angry frown, and his eyes, two blue coals glowing with a savage light, were trained on the far end of a barn in an empty field where he’d set targets against bales of hay. His fingers clenched over the polished barrel of the gun as Max approached. “What’re you doing, getting involved with that Donahue girl?” he demanded.
Max’s first reaction was to tell him it wasn’t any of his business, but he decided to keep his temper under rein. “I just asked her for a date. I don’t think that’s getting involved.” Max wished he’d kept his big mouth shut about seeing Skye, but he detested sneaking around and surely his father could already see that he was interested in her.
“She’s not the right woman for you!” Jonah shoved open a gate and spied Chester, one of the hands who worked the fields. “Saddle up Duke,” he barked, and Chester nodded before heading off to the stables.
“Skye and I are just going to dinner, not that it’s any of your business.”
“You have a history with women.”
“So do you.”
Jonah spun on his older son and grabbed Max by the front of his shirt. Though no taller than his son, Jonah carried an extra seventy pounds on his large frame. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he growled, his lips barely moving, his breath smelling of expensive whiskey. “What I do is my business.”
“And what I do is mine.” Max shoved away from his father. “I may have to live here until my house is built, and I work for you, but don’t think for an instant that you own me!”
“Don’t I?” Jonah hoisted the butt of the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The bullet ripped through the center of the target. “Just remember,” he said, sighting down the barrel, “I made you what you are. It was my money that sent you to college and law school, my money that bailed you out of that mess in Seattle, and my land where you’re building your house. Think again before you say I don’t own you, ’cause I do, son—lock, stock, and barrel.”
“No way. I could’ve taken the job in San Francisco.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t, did you? Why? Because you didn’t want to sweat your butt off in the city when you knew that you could come back home and have everything handed to you.”
“If that’s the way you feel,” Max said, his voice as low as the wind rolling off the hills, “then you can take your job, your property, even your damned house and shove them all to a very dark spot where—”
“Strong words.”
“And I mean every one of them. We had a deal, Dad. I’d come back and help you with the business and you’d let me live my life the way I want to.”
Jonah’s jaw tightened and he squeezed off another round. The target ripped near the center. “You’re making a mistake with the Donahue girl.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Damn it all.” He reloaded, then sighted the rifle again. “You’re as bad as your sister and brother. I thought, hell, I prayed, that you’d be different.”
“You mean you prayed that I could be manipulated? That I’d do whatever you wanted with no questions asked? You’d better understand something right now—if I don’t agree with what you’re doing, I’m going to call you on it. If I think you’ve made a mistake, I’ll let you know. And if you start meddling in my personal life, I’ll walk. Got it?”
Closing one eye, Jonah fired and missed the target entirely. “Son of a bitch,” he growled, glaring at the bul
l’s-eye. “You’re a fool, Max. It can all be yours, you know. This whole damned ranch, the business, everything.”
“What about Jenner and Casey?”
“Jenner’s made his bed, and as for Casey... she’s...well, she’s a woman.”
“A bright woman.”
“But she can’t give me grandsons with the McKee name, now can she?”
“She can if she doesn’t get married.”
Jonah turned away from the scope of his rifle and glared with pure malice at his elder son. “There will be no bastards in this family, Max, at least none that anyone ever learns about. You understand?”
“You can’t control people.”
“I can damned well try.” Jonah’s grin was wide. “I bought you, didn’t I?”
Before Max could answer, bootsteps and hooves crunched in the gravel yard, and Chester, leading Jonah’s favorite gray gelding, unlatched the gate. The nervous horse was already sweating as if he smelled the hostility simmering in the air and knew he was going to be ridden hard over punishing terrain. He pulled at the bridle, but Chester held him in check.
Swinging into the saddle, Jonah shoved his rifle into the scabbard.
“Goin’ huntin’?” Chester asked as he rolled a blade of dry grass from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Be back at nightfall.”
“It’s not quite hunting season,” Max said, and Jonah favored his son with a hard glance.
“I don’t give a damn. In town, I play by the rules, but out here I make my own. This is my property and I own everything on it including you, my boy.” With that, he shoved his heels into Duke’s sides and took off at a dead gallop, heading toward the timber-laden foothills.
“Mean old cuss, ain’t he?” Chester observed.
“Stupid, if you ask me. Bullheaded, proud and just plain stupid. Thinks he can bend the world to his way instead of the other way around.”
“He’ll git his,” Chester predicted as his eyes narrowed on the distant speck that was Jonah McKee. “They always do.”