by Seton, Cora
“What’s your spread like, Rob?” Christine asked brightly. “Is it as nice as this one?”
“Much nicer,” Rob said and seemed gratified to get a chuckle from his feminine audience. “And about twice the size. We know how to run things right on the Double Bar K.”
“Is that so?” Jamie said. “Rumor has it you know how to run a video camera, anyway.”
“Keep your mouth shut, Lassiter,” Rob growled and Jamie nodded, but smiled. Rob was still trying to live down the bad reputation he’d gained as a result of Ethan’s last practical joke on him – the joke that had spurred Rob to place the video Wife Wanted ad on the internet for Ethan, and which had resulted in Autumn coming to Chance Creek and falling in love with him.
Ethan, knowing Rob was a ladies’ man, had waited until he was out at the local bar one night and sneaked into Rob’s house to set up a video camera, back drop, and lights in his bedroom, so that when he brought his date home later that evening it looked like he’d planned ahead to make a sex video. The poor young lady took one look and made a run for it, but not before spreading the gossip far and wide about what a sleaze Rob was. He’d been hard put to get a date ever since.
Jamie figured Rob thought this new crop of women were ignorant of his sordid past. No wonder he managed to show up in the east pasture out of the blue. Adrienne seemed more than willing to bite, and as far as Jamie was concerned, Rob could have her. Heck, he could have the whole damn lot of them. Although it served him right if he never got laid for the rest of his life. After all, it was Rob's fault Claire still didn't believe he really wanted to marry her.
It's your own damn fault, too, for being such a flirt.
Well, he was doing everything he could to remedy that.
“We’ve got some time to kill,” Rob said. “Mind if we tag along?”
“Not at all,” Liz said.
“I’d sure like to hear what it’s like to be a sheriff,” Maddy said, taking a place next to Cab.
Jamie smiled. Cab wasn’t often the center of attention when it came to women, and he deserved his fair share. Maddy had just raised her position in his books, but then she seemed much more down to earth than her friends.
“Cab’s got lots of good stories. Just keep pressing him until he tells you one or two,” Jamie called to her, then waited for Christine and Angel to move after the others before joining Claire in the rear.
“Just in time,” she said, nodding at Cab and Rob. “Adrienne was about to flip her lid. She wanted us to reroute the whole morning’s ride somewhere to a “scenic vista” as she put it. Can you believe her?”
“Maybe we should start telling the women our plans the night before so they can opt in or out,” Jamie said.
“What if they opt out? Then Autumn will be stuck with them all morning while she’s trying to clean up.”
“I guess we’d better discuss that with Autumn and Ethan. At least we should be good for now. You all right?”
"I'm fine," Claire said and urged her horse past him.
And they were. In fact, they managed to cover more of the fencing than Jamie had even hoped for, with Rob and Cab moving the group along swiftly from post to post. Rob flirted openly with Adrienne, Liz, and even Christine. Cab regaled Maddy and Angel with stories of various Chance Creek criminals’ exploits, and everyone helped out when they found a downed post.
Afterwards, Rob and Cab rode all the way back to the Big House with them and seemed more than happy to join the crowd for lunch when Autumn asked them to.
“You have enough food?” Jamie asked her when everyone went in to wash up. “I can always feed Claire back at my place.”
“I’ve got plenty,” she assured him. “Ethan warned me they were coming. They stopped by to talk to him before riding out to find you guys.”
“Got it.”
Inside, Jamie was surprised to see Tracey Richards behind the half wall that divided the kitchen from the rest of the great room. She was dishing salad into bowls and arranging them on a tray to bring to the guests. He nodded at her and took a seat next to Claire at the Cruz’s huge dining room table. The great room was two stories high, with floor to ceiling windows that framed the most spectacular view he’d ever seen from inside a building. He hoped to reproduce the effect in his own house when it was done, but he had to hand it to Ethan and Claire’s parents – they really built a beautiful home.
As the table filled up, the roar of conversation filled the room and mouth-watering aromas wafted from Autumn’s kitchen.
“I’m starved,” he said to Claire.
“Me, too.”
“Hey, lovebirds,” Rob bellowed from the far end of the table. Everyone hushed and glanced his way. “Where are you going for your honeymoon?”
* * * * *
Claire slammed the door on her Civic, reversed, swung the car around and headed down the lane to the highway as fast as she dared. Somehow she'd clung to her temper as Rob tormented her and Jamie throughout lunch.
Now she was driving to town to confront her mother's other daughter, the one she didn't even want to admit existed. Morgan. What kind of a name was that?
What kind of a woman was her mother?
It didn't matter, did it? She'd done without Aria for a long, long time – ever since she'd found her with Mack in the stable. She'd always envisioned her mother having a string of foreign lovers when she traveled to Europe on her months-long jaunts. So why was it worse to know she'd only gone back to one man, time and time again? Or at least, she'd gone back to her daughter.
Maybe her mother's affair with that daughter's father was short-lived.
Maybe it wasn't.
She couldn’t be sure of anything at this point.
As she pulled into the small parking lot at the Big Sky Motel, on Fourth Avenue, she ran her gaze over the nondescript two story building. It was clean, but that was about all you could say about it. A family run operation, like so many businesses in town, it had no pretensions to rating five stars.
She bypassed the front office and took a set of concrete stairs up to the second level, walking down a long exterior hallway to room number 29. She took a deep breath and knocked.
A second later the door flung open. "Mom!" A woman with blue eyes and hair the same shade as Claire's but long and wavy, looked out, and her excited smile turned to a puzzled frown. "Oh, I'm sorry. I was expecting someone else.
"I know," Claire said. "You were expecting my mother."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jamie sat on the wooden railings of a corral with their five female guests watching Rob demonstrate barrel riding. Rob should've been one of the foremost contenders on the circuit, but he lacked the drive to really go for it. Or maybe the confidence. As the youngest of four boys in a very wealthy family, Jamie thought Rob was never pushed hard enough in anything. Holt Matheson, Rob's father, still kept his finger in every pie on that ranch, and Jake, Ned and Luke were all capable men in their own right. There wasn't much left over for Rob to take charge of.
Like his brothers, Rob had his own cabin on the property, but in Jamie's opinion that wasn't separation enough from his parents to truly allow him to grow up. Rob wasn't completely spoiled, but he wasn't on track to make anything of himself, either. He was bored. Anyone could see that. And bored men made trouble wherever they went. Rob sure did.
Maybe he should talk to Ethan about hiring Rob on if Claire didn't stick to the job. He was a natural entertainer. He loved to talk and show off and be the center of attention. They weren't making enough money to pay for his services, but in the future…
Or he could take the son-of-a-bitch out behind the barn and give him a whupping for screwing up his chances with Claire.
Angel leaned in from his left. "I could watch this all day. You should have a rodeo school – teach people how to do all of this." She waved a hand vaguely at the corral and Rob on his horse.
"You want to learn to barrel ride?" Maddy asked, bending forward to look down the row at Angel.
The others exchanged a glance over Angel's head, something Jamie had seen them do several times so far on the trip. He understood why, too. Angel was the kind of woman who wafted through life with no idea how much work everyone else did to make things easy for her. Pretty, in a soft and floaty way, she seemed perfectly content to let her friends make all the decisions and plans.
"You're watching right now," Liz pointed out.
Angel shrugged. "Yep."
Liz sighed. "She's actually right, you know. You should open a riding school here. It would complement your guest ranch business."
"We've talked about it," Jamie said. They'd talked about a lot of things, but agreed they needed to take everything one step at a time. He'd enjoy giving riding lessons, but aside from keeping the guests busy, he still had a lot of work to do on the ranch, plus he was building a house and wanted to start breeding horses.
His mind wandered to Claire. How was she getting on? He hadn't liked letting her drive into town alone – how the hell did you break it to your long-lost sister that your mother was dead? – but they couldn’t both abandon Ethan and Autumn, not with guests present.
"Can we go to that swimming hole again?" Adrienne asked in a lazy drawl. "I'm all sweaty from being in the sun for so long."
The other women chimed in and Jamie found himself agreeing although he didn't think it was a good idea. Without Claire to shield him from their attention, he might get into trouble.
Well, if he did, at least Claire wouldn't be there to see.
Rob rode up and the ladies applauded and cheered. "Are you coming with us to the creek for a swim?" Adrienne called to him.
"Hell, yeah – sounds like a great idea!"
In the general confusion of climbing down from the corral fence and heading back to the Big House to change, Jamie found himself surrounded by the women. As they surged past, all talking and laughing excitedly, someone grabbed his ass and squeezed, hard.
Jamie jumped and looked around.
But the women surged on, not a one of them giving him a second glance. He turned around. Rob was at the far side of the corral, leading his horse through the gate. Who the heck had pinched him? He didn't have a clue.
What if whoever it was did it again when Claire was watching?
He could lose her for good.
* * * * *
Claire sat at the small, square table in the corner of Morgan's motel room, gazing out the window at the cars and trucks in the parking lot below.
Morgan finally sat down across from her. Her face was red and mottled, her hair damp around the edges from the water she'd splashed on it to wash away her tears. "I knew something was wrong. Really wrong. But my dad said to leave her be. He said she'd come back around when she was ready. I can't believe she's gone." Her voice was ragged and strained.
Telling Morgan about their mother's death was one of the hardest, ugliest things Claire had ever had to do. The other woman's obvious heartbreak made it impossible to hold onto her own rage and now all she felt was tired and empty.
"She never told you anything about me, did she?" Morgan went on.
"Nope. Nothing." But if she'd had any reservations about whether Morgan was really Aria's daughter, they went out the window the moment she saw her. Morgan looked like Aria. They both did. No one would be surprised to find out they were sisters.
"I knew all about you."
Claire looked up in surprise.
Morgan went on. "They had to tell me – the situation was too complicated."
"In what way?"
"My father has a wife, Amy. They were already married when he had the affair with Mom and he didn't want to leave her when Aria got pregnant with me. He has other children, you know – two of them. They're both in Vancouver now. Mom decided she still loved your dad and wanted to go back to him – back to Montana – but she was afraid he would ditch her if she came home with a child. So my dad's parents raised me. He saw me on weekends once or twice a month and Mom would come for several months at a time when she could. Gramma and Gramps were my mainstays."
"I can't believe she lied to us all those years." Claire couldn't believe any of this. She wanted to stare at Morgan – to force herself to see that she was real – that this was the daughter her Mom really wanted to be with, the one she left her for so many times.
"She made a mistake, and then she did the best she could, I guess." Morgan swiped at another tear that leaked from her eye.
"This is the best she could? Sneaking around, lying, cheating on my Dad?"
"She was young, Claire. Haven't you ever made a mistake? I know I have."
Sure, she'd made plenty of mistakes. Trusting Daniel. Sleeping with Jamie. But nothing compared to the colossal mess her mother had made of all their lives.
"She let you grow up alone and she nearly bankrupted my family."
Morgan looked up. "Bankrupted you? How?"
"The trips. All that money she spent on you!"
Morgan shook her head. "I'm sure the plane tickets cost a bit and she bought me things now and then, but her visits shouldn't have been that expensive. She lived with my grandparents and me when she came. Once I was grown up and on my own, she stayed at my apartment."
"I'll bet she paid for that apartment."
"No, she didn't," Morgan said firmly. "And she didn't pay for my grandparents' expenses either. I talked about it all with them. They disapproved of Mom and wouldn't take her money. They did their duty as they saw it – allowed her to visit and gave her a room when she was there – but they weren't chummy with her. I think they felt that if she paid for everything she could take me away whenever she wanted to." She sighed. "They meant well. They just thought she wasn't a very good mother."
"She must have bought you things, though – meals, clothes, bicycles, cars?" Claire challenged.
"Meals and clothes, sure, sometimes. She never bought me a car. Maybe if you guys didn't have much money to begin with I could see it putting a strain on your budget, but she always talked about the ranch like it was doing quite well."
"However she spent it, she spent it," Claire said. "Believe me, we're still recovering from it." Or, at least, Ethan and Autumn were. She was just fine, although her recent expenditures had nibbled away at her six hundred thousand dollars.
"Mom was pretty frugal," Morgan persisted. "I mean, she worked when she was in Victoria."
"What?" It was Claire's turn to look up in shock. Aria Cruz hadn't worked a day in her life, if you didn't count weeding the kitchen garden.
"At the University. She was a research assistant in the Anthropology Department. Dad was such a big shot, he made it happen for her. Otherwise there's no way they'd put up with her erratic comings and goings."
Claire folded her hands in her lap and stared out the window again.
She didn't know her mother at all.
* * * * *
By the time Jamie and the women arrived at the watering hole, Rob was there and he'd brought his brothers along. Jamie breathed a sigh of relief. Four extra cowboys ought to dilute the attention from him a bit. He'd been on edge since the butt pinch, constantly looking over his shoulder to catch one of the ladies sneaking up on him again.
It wasn't right, women coming on to men so boldly. He was as big a flirt as they came, ordinarily, but he liked to get the ball rolling, not be bulldozed by a woman's advances. He still didn't know who the culprit was, either. Liz, most likely. Maybe Adrienne, although she seemed to be making a play for Rob. Plucky Maddy was a possibility, but not Christine – she was married. And certainly not Angel who even now was floating lazily in the water like some kind of nymph.
Rob and his oldest brother, Jake, stood waist deep in the water tossing a foam football around with Maddy and Liz. Adrienne sat on the bank of the creek with her legs in the current, deep in discussion with Ned – Rob's second oldest brother. Christine, still on dry ground, was slathering sunscreen on every inch of exposed skin. Luke, the last of
the Mathesons, had a bucket full of water and was creeping up behind Rob. Jamie waited for the inevitable result and wasn't disappointed. As soon as the cold water splashed down over Rob's head, he spun around and tackled Luke. Both went underwater and came back up shouting and sputtering.
Happy that the women's attention was directed away from him, Jamie took his time stripping down to his swim trunks and moved a few yards away before slipping into the cool water. He forgot to worry about who had pinched his butt earlier and instead focused on Claire. How was her interview with Morgan going? How had the woman reacted? What did this long-lost daughter of Aria Cruz look like?
Claire and Ethan had a sister. How weird was that?
"Jamie! Jamie, come on!"
He opened his eyes to find that all-out war had broken out in Chance Creek. The three older Mathesons had ganged up on Rob. The ladies were rallying around him, splashing his brothers with everything they had. The whole creek roiled with their thrashing arms and kicking feet.
Which side should he join? A grin split his face.
A few quick strokes brought him in line with Jake, Ned and Luke.
"Traitor!" Rob gasped as a well-time splash from Ned filled his mouth with water. The women squealed and shrieked and for just a minute he forgot all of his troubles as he sent wave after wave cascading toward them.
"Take that!" Maddy called, slapping her hands on the surface of the creek. He retaliated with a wall of water that broke over the crown of her head. Laughing, she surged forward, drumming her arms into the water and slamming into him. He caught her around the waist, but lost his footing and they both submerged. Underwater, bubbles streamed from her mouth as she continued to laugh. When they managed to stand up, she leaned against his chest, breathing hard. "I guess you win," she said, her sunny smile undeterred.
"Now you have to join our side," he said, all too aware of Maddy's shapely, bikini-clad breasts pressed against his skin. Shit, he was touching her. Good thing Claire wasn't here to see. He carefully detached himself and sighed in relief when she didn't cling to him. Instead, she pushed off and went after Christine.