Worriedly, Rachel sat there, knowing that he would be driving home to a nasty situation. Earlier, she’d seen the anguish in his eyes over his family. Taking a pillow, she pressed it against her torso, her arms wrapped around it. How she ached to have Jim against her once again! Yet a niggling voice reminded her that he had a dangerous job as an EMT. He went out on calls with the firefighters. Anything could happen to him, and he could die, just like … Rachel shut off the flow of her thoughts. Oh, why did she have such an overactive imagination? She sighed, wishing she had handled things better between her and Jim. He probably felt bad enough about her pushing him away in the middle of their wonderful, melting kiss. Now he was going to be facing a very angry father because he had been here, on Donovan property. Closing her eyes, Rachel released another ragged sigh, wanting somehow to protect Jim. But there was nothing she could do for him right now. Absolutely nothing.
“JUST WHERE THE HELL have you been?” Frank Cunningham snarled, wheeling his chair into the living room as Jim entered the ranch house at 9:00 p.m.
Trying to quell his ragged emotions, Jim quietly shut the door. He turned and faced his father. The hatred in Frank’s eyes slapped at him. Jim stood in silence, his hands at his side, waiting for the tirade he knew was coming. Glancing over at the kitchen entrance, he saw Bo and Chet standing on alert. Bo had a smirk on his face and Chet looked drunker than hell. Inhaling deeply, Jim could smell the odor of whiskey in the air. What had they been doing? Plying their father with liquor all night? Feeding his fury? Playing on his self-righteous belief that Jim had transgressed and committed an unpardonable sin by spending time at the Donovans? Placing a hold on his building anger toward his two manipulative brothers, Jim calmly met his father’s furious look.
“You knew where I was. I called you at five-thirty and told you I wouldn’t be home for dinner.”
Frank glared up at him. His long, weather-beaten fingers opened and closed like claws around the arms of the chair he was imprisoned in. “Damn you, Jim. You know better! I’ve begged you not to consort with those Donovan girls.”
Jim shrugged tensely out of his coat. “They aren’t girls, father. They’re grown women. Adults.” He saw Bo grin a little as he leaned against the door, a glass of liquor in his long fingers. “And you know drinking whiskey isn’t good for your diabetes.”
“You don’t care!” Frank retorted explosively. “I drank because you went over there!”
“That’s crap,” Jim snarled back. “I’m not responsible for what you do. I’m responsible for myself. You’re not going to push that kind of blame on me. Guilt might have worked when we were kids growing up, Father, but it doesn’t cut it now.” His nostrils quivered as he tried to withhold his anger. He saw his father’s face grow stormy and tried to shield himself against what would come next. A part of him was so tired of trying to make things better around here. He’d been home nearly a year, and nothing had changed except that he was the scapegoat for the three of them now—just as he had been as a kid growing up after their mother’s death.
“Word games!” Frank declared. He wiped the back of his mouth with a trembling hand. “You aren’t one of us. You are deliberately going over to the Donovan place and consorting with them to get at me!”
Jim raised his gaze to Bo. “Who told you that, Father? Did Bo?”
Bo’s grin disappeared. He stood up straight, tense.
Frank waved his hand in a cutting motion. “Bo and Chet are my eyes and ears, since I can’t get around like I used to. You’re sweet on Rachel Donovan, aren’t you?”
Bo and Chet were both smiling now. Anger shredded Jim’s composure as he held his father’s accusing gaze.
“My private life is none of your—or their—business.” He turned and walked down the hall toward his bedroom.
“You go out with her,” Frank thundered down the hall, “and I’ll disown you! Only this time for good, damn you!”
Jim shut the door to his bedroom, his only refuge. In disgust, he hung up his suit coat and looped the tie over the hangar. Breathing hard, he realized his hands were shaking—with fury. It was obvious that Bo and Chet had plied their father with whiskey, nursing all his anger and making him even more furious. Sitting down on the edge of his old brass bed, which creaked with his sudden weight, Jim slipped off his cowboy boots. Beginning at noon tomorrow, he was on duty for the next forty-eight hours. At least he’d be out of here and away from his father’s simmering, scalding anger, his constant snipping and glares over his youngest son’s latest transgression.
Undressing, Jim went to the bathroom across the hall and took a long, hot shower. He could hear the three men talking in the living room. Without even bothering to try and listen, Jim was sure it was about him. He wanted to say to hell with them, but it wasn’t that easy. As he soaped down beneath the hot, massaging streams of water, his heart, his mind, revolved back to Rachel, to the kiss she’d initiated with him. He hadn’t expected it. So why had she suddenly pushed him away? He didn’t want to think it was because his last name was Cunningham. That would hurt more than anything else. Yet if he tried to see her when he got off duty, his family would damn him because she was a Donovan.
Scrubbing his hair, he wondered how serious Frank was about disowning him. The first time his father had spoken those words to him, when he was eighteen, Jim had felt as if a huge, black hole had opened up and swallowed him. He’d taken his father’s words seriously and he’d left for over a decade, attempting to remake his life. Frank had asked him to come home for Christmas—and that was all.
Snorting softly, Jim shut off the shower. He opened the door, grabbed a soft yellow towel and stepped out. He knew Frank would follow through on his threat to kick out of his life—again. This time Jim was really worried, because neither Bo nor Chet would make sure Frank took his meds for his diabetic condition. If Jim wasn’t around on a daily basis to see to that, his father’s health would seriously decline in a very short time. He didn’t want his father to die. But he didn’t want to lose Rachel, either.
Rubbing his face, he drew in a ragged breath. Yes, he liked her—one helluva lot. Too much. How did a man stop his heart from feeling? From wanting? Rachel fit every part of him and he knew it. He sensed it. Could he give her up so that his father could live? What the hell was he going to do?
CHAPTER SEVEN
“DAMMIT all to hell,” Chet shouted as he entered the ranch house. He jerked off his Stetson and slammed the door behind him. Dressed in a sheepskin coat, red muffler and thick, protective leather gloves, he headed toward his father, who had just wheeled into the living room.
Jim was rubbing his hands in the warmth of the huge, open fireplace at one end of the living room when Chet stormed in. His older brother had a glazed look in his eyes, a two-day beard on his cheeks and an agitated expression on his face.
“Pa, that dammed cougar has killed another of our cows up in the north pasture!” Chet growled, throwing his coat and gloves on the leather couch. “Half of her is missing. She was pregnant, too.”
Frank frowned, stopped his wheelchair near the fireplace where Jim was standing. “We’ve lost a cow every two weeks for the last four months this way,” he said, running his long, large-knuckled hands through his thick white hair.
As Jim turned to warm his back, Chet joined them at the fireplace, opening his own cold hands toward the flames. Chet’s eyes were red and Jim could smell liquor on his breath. His brother was drinking like Frank used to drink before contracting diabetes, he realized with concern. Jim sighed. The last three days, since he’d come back from the Donovan wedding party, things had been tense around the house. He was glad his forty-eight hours of duty had begun shortly thereafter, keeping him on call for two days with the ambulance and allowing him to eat and sleep at the fire station down at Sedona. Luckily, things had been quiet, and he’d been able to settle down from the last major confrontation with his father.
“Have you seen the spoor, Chet?” Jim asked.
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��Well, shore I have!” he said, wiping his running nose with the back of his flannel sleeve. “Got spoor all over the place. There’s about a foot of snow up there. The tracks are good this time.”
“We need to get a hunting party together,” Frank growled at them. “I’m tired of losing a beef every other week to this cat.”
“Humph, we’re losin’ two of ’em, Pa. That cat’s smart—picks on two for one.”
“You were always good at hunting cougar,” Frank said, looking up at Jim. “Why don’t you drive up there and see what you can find out? Arrange a hunting party?”
Jim was relieved to have something to do outside the house. Usually he rode fence line, did repairs and helped out wherever he could with ranching duties. His father had ten wranglers who did most of the hard work, but Jim always looked for ways to stay out of the house when he was home between his bouts of duty at the fire station.
“Okay. How’s the road back into that north pasture, Chet?”
“Pretty solid,” he answered, rubbing his hands briskly. “The temps was around twenty degrees out there midday. Colder than hell. No snow, but cold. We need the snow for the water or we’re going to have drought again,” he muttered, his brows moving downward.
“I’ll get out of my uniform and go check on it,” Jim told his father.
With a brisk nod, Frank added, “You find that son of a bitch, you shoot it on sight, you hear me? I don’t want any of that hearts and flower stuff you try to pull.”
Jim ignored the cutting jab as he walked down the darkened hall to his bedroom. Moving his shoulders, he felt the tension in them ease a little. In his bedroom, he quickly shed his firefighter’s uniform and climbed into a pair of thermal underwear, a well-worn set of Levi’s, a dark blue flannel shirt and thick socks. As he sat on the bed, pulling on his cowboy boots, his mind—and if he were honest, his heart—drifted back to Rachel and that sweet, sweet kiss he’d shared with her. It had been three days since then.
He’d wanted to call her, but he hadn’t. He was a coward. The way she’d pulled away from him, the fear in her eyes, had told him she didn’t like what they’d shared. He felt rebuffed and hurt. Anyone would. She was a beautiful, desirable woman, and Jim was sure that now that she was home for good, every available male in Sedona would soon be tripping over themselves to ask her out. Shrugging into his sheepskin coat, he picked up the black Stetson that hung on one of the bedposts, and settled it on his head.
As he walked out into the living room, he saw Chet and his father talking. In another corner of the room was a huge, fifteen-foot-tall Christmas tree. It would be another lonely Christmas for the four of them. As he headed out the door, gloves in hand, he thought about Christmas over at the Donovan Ranch. In years past, they’d invited in the homeless and fed them a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Odula, their mother, had coordinated such plans with the agencies around the county, and her bigheartedness was still remembered. Now her daughters were carrying on in her footsteps. Rachel had mentioned that her sisters would be coming back on Christmas Eve to help in the kitchen and to make that celebration happen once again.
Settling into the Dodge pickup, Jim looked around. The sky was a heavy, gunmetal gray, hanging low over the Rim country. It looked like it might snow. He hoped it would. Arizona high country desperately needed a huge snow this winter to fill the reservoirs so that the city of Phoenix would have enough water for the coming year. Hell, they needed groundwater to fill the aquifer below Sedona or they would lose thousands of head of cattle this spring. His father would have to sell some of his herd off cheap—probably at a loss—so that the cattle wouldn’t die of starvation out on the desert range.
Driving over a cattle guard, Jim noticed the white snow lying like a clean blanket across the red, sandy desert and clay soil. He enjoyed his time out here alone. Off to his left, he saw a couple of wranglers on horseback in another pasture, moving a number of cows. His thoughts wandered as he drove and soon Rachel’s soft face danced before his mind’s eyes. His hands tightened momentarily on the wheel. More than anything, Jim wanted to see Rachel again. He could use Christmas as an excuse to drop over and see her, apologize in person for kissing her unexpectedly. Though he knew he’d been out of line, his mouth tingled in memory of her lips skimming his. She’d been warm, soft and hungry. So why had she suddenly pushed away? Was it him? Was it the fact that he was a Cunningham? Jim thought so.
Ten miles down the winding, snow-smattered road, Jim saw the carcass in the distance. Braking, he eased up next to the partially eaten cow. The wind was blowing in fierce gusts down off the Rim and he pulled his hat down a little more tightly as he stepped out and walked around the front of the truck.
As he leaned down, he saw that the cow’s throat was mangled, and he scowled, realizing the cat had killed the cow by grabbing her throat and suffocating her. There was evidence of a struggle, but little blood in the snow around her. Putting his hand on her, he found that she was frozen solid. The kill had to have occurred last night.
Easing up to his full height, he moved carefully around the carcass and found the spoor. Leaning down, his eyes narrowing, he studied them intently. The tracks moved north, back up the two-thousand-foot-high limestone and sandstone cliff above him. Somewhere up there the cat made his home.
Studying the carcass once again, Jim realized that though the cat had gutted her and eaten his fill, almost ninety percent of the animal was left intact and unmolested. That gave him an idea. Getting to his feet, he went back to the pickup, opened the door and picked up the mike on his radio to call the foreman, Randy Parker.
“Get a couple of the boys out here,” Jim ordered when Randy answered, “to pick up this cow carcass. Put it in the back of a pickup and bring it to the homestead. When it gets there, let me know.”
“Sure thing,” Randy answered promptly.
Satisfied, Jim replaced the mike on the console. He smiled a little to himself. Yes, his plan would work—he hoped. Soon enough, he’d know if it was going to.
RACHEL WAS IN THE KITCHEN, up to her wrists in mashed potatoes, when she heard a heavy knock at the front door. Expecting no one, she frowned. “I’m coming!” she called out, quickly rinsing her hands, grabbing a towel and running through the living room. It was December 23, and she had been working for three days solid preparing all the dishes for the homeless people’s Christmas feast. Her sisters would be home tomorrow, to help with warming and serving the meal for thirty people the following day.
When she opened the door, her eyes widened enormously. “Jim!”
He stood there, hat in hand, a sheepish look on his face. “Hi, Rachel.”
Stunned, she felt color race up her throat and into her face. How handsome he looked. His face was flushed, too, but more than likely it was from being outdoors in this freezing cold weather. “Hi… ?.” she whispered. The memory of his meltingly hot kiss, which was never far from her heart or mind, burned through her. She saw his eyes narrow on her and she felt like he was looking through her.
“Come in, it’s cold out there,” she said apologetically, moving to one side.
“Uh … in a minute.” He pointed to his truck, parked near the porch. “Listen, we had a cow killed last night by a cat. Ninety percent of it is still good meat. It’s frozen and clean. I had some of our hands bring it down in a pickup. I brought it here, thinking that you might be able to use the meat for your meal for the homeless on Christmas Day.”
His thoughtfulness touched her. “That’s wonderful! I mean, I’m sorry a cougar killed your cow … but what a great idea.”
Grinning a little, and relieved that she wasn’t going to slam the door in his face, he nervously moved his felt hat between his gloved fingers. “Good. Look, I know you have a slaughter-freezing-and-packing area in that building over there. I’m not the world’s best at carving and cutting, but with a couple of sharp knives, I can get the steaks, the roasts and things like that, in a couple of hours for you.”
Rachel smile
d a little. “Since we don’t have any other hands around, I’d have to ask you to do it.” She looked at him intently. “Are you sure you want to do that? It’s an awful lot of work.”
Shrugging, Jim said, “Want the truth?”
She saw the wry lift of one corner of his mouth. Joy surged through her. She was happy to see Jim again, thrilled that her display the other night hadn’t chased him away permanently. “Always the truth,” she answered softly.
Looking down at his muddy boots for a moment, Jim rasped, “I was looking for a way to get out of the house. My old man is on the warpath again and I didn’t want to be under the same roof.” He took a deep breath and then met and held her compassionate gaze. “More important, I wanted to come over here and apologize to you in person, and I had to find an excuse to do it.”
Fierce heat flowed through Rachel. She saw the uncertainty in Jim’s eyes and heard the sorrow in his voice. Pressing her hand against her heart, which pounded with happiness at his appearance, she stepped out onto the porch. The wind was cold and sharp.
“No,” she whispered unsteadily, “you don’t need to apologize for anything, Jim. It’s me. I mean … when we kissed. It wasn’t your fault.” She looked away, her voice becoming low. “It was me … my past… ?.”
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