Ransom My Heart

by Gayle Wilson

  “We’re watching,” Samantha called. “We’re both watching you, Cupcake.”

  THEY ENDED UP AT twilight at the paddocks. The horses were obviously Kincaid stock and obviously well cared for. He wondered how much help Samantha had running the place.

  “Sam give you a start?” he asked. They were leaning on the fence watching the newest addition to her stables bolt around on pipestem legs, occasionally shying from imaginary dangers. His mother stood nearby, placid as a sheep, but keeping an watchful eye on the colt’s antics.

  “He would have,” Samantha said, and then she paused before she added, “if I’d been smart enough to let him.”

  Chase laughed at her tone.

  “It would have been a lot easier,” she admitted. She dropped her hand over the top rail, snapping her fingers, and the mare obediently ambled over for a visit.

  “How’d you swing the ranch, if you didn’t take anything from Sam?”

  “I had a trust fund. My grandmother, bless her, thought women should have something of their own. I already had my own horses, the two mares and Lightfoot Harry. Sam had given them to me as birthday presents through the years, and I didn’t have any qualms about bringing them with me. Then he offered me a few mares at what were rock-bottom prices, considering their bloodlines, and for Mandy’s sake, I swallowed my pride and accepted. I think it’s probably the first time anybody ever got the advantage over Sam Kincaid in a horse deal.”

  Chase laughed again, and eventually she joined him, the tone of her laughter still slightly rueful. “I picked up the black at auction for almost nothing,” she said, pointing to a magnificent stallion.

  “And you’ve been surviving by selling the offspring?” he asked.

  “Selling them without any trouble and for good money. The breeding’s prime, and everybody knows it. I had planned to expand next spring, but now…”

  “Now?” Chase repeated when she didn’t go on.

  He wondered if that “now” could have anything to do with him being back, and then he pushed that pleasant fantasy aside. Just because Samantha had admitted she wished she had told him about Mandy, just because she’d said she understood why he hadn’t been here, where he should have been, five years ago—none of that meant that she wanted him here now. That was just more of his fantasy. More of what he wanted.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I just don’t seem to be able to plan right now.” She patted the mare and then pushed the reaching nose away with her hand, stepping down from the bottom rail to look up at him. “You want to stay for supper? It’ll be potluck, I’m afraid. Whatever I can find in the kitchen. I don’t usually take a nap in the afternoon, but I can’t seem to catch up.”

  “I know. I slept the clock around at Jenny’s.”

  “Mandy seems to be the only one who’s not been affected,” Samantha said. Together they watched the little girl climb up the fence rails to entice the mare to come to be rubbed by her small fingers. “Maybe we’re just getting old,” Samantha said, smiling at him.

  “I feel old, about a thousand years or so, but I’m not sure it’s entirely due to the trip.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “It seems that everything has changed.”

  “That’s not necessarily bad.”

  He thought about that, his eyes on the child who had succeeded in getting the mare to do exactly what she wanted.

  “Maybe not,” Chase said finally. “But it may take some getting used to.” He looked at her then, wondering if she could really understand what he was feeling.

  She nodded, holding his eyes. And then she cleared the emotion from hers and asked, “When do you carry the rest of the money to the kidnapper?”

  “Saturday. I’m meeting him at Crosby’s.”

  “That seems…a little public.”

  Chase shrugged. “Keeping the arrangements under wraps didn’t make it successful before. In and out. That’s what I’ve always preferred.”

  “You be careful,” she said.

  The words moved in his memory. She had told him that the night he’d walked outside this house to find Rio waiting for him. The night Mac’s truck had exploded.

  “I will,” he promised softly, just as he had before.

  “How about supper?”

  “Maybe some other time,” he said, fighting the desire to stay. Fighting the need to walk into this house and make everything like it had been before. But that hadn’t been what her invitation had implied. “You got an itch, Chase?” she had asked him tauntingly in the mountains.

  He needed time to let her know that it was more than that. It always had been, of course, but he wasn’t sure he was in control enough right now to make her understand. He wanted her too badly, wanted them both too badly, to chance screwing it all up by a lack of control.

  “I need to let Jenny know where I am,” he said. “We had some words, and I left in kind of a…”

  “A McCullar tantrum,” she finished when he hesitated, and her voice was amused.

  “Too much like my daddy, I guess.”

  “You don’t have to be,” she said gently.

  “That’s only as far as my temper’s concerned, Samantha. I didn’t mean anything else. I’m not like my father in anything else.”

  “He never made it right about Rio,” she said.

  Another illegitimate child who had grown up without a father. Had that been what had gone wrong in his half brother’s life? Was that some part of the reason Rio had done what he’d done?

  “When your mother died,” she continued, “he could have married Rio’s mother. There was no reason for him not to.”

  Chase shook his head. He had never found any resolution to his feelings about Rio, for the childish jealousy and the grief and anger for the pain his father’s philandering had caused his dying mother. He didn’t want to talk about his half brother. Maybe his thirst to make sure Rio paid for his part in what had been done to Mac was more what Jenny had meant. Crawling into the grave. Living in the past.

  “I’m not like my father,” he said again. “I promise you that, Samantha.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know you’re not.”

  “I want you to think about what we should do.”

  “Do?” she questioned.

  “About Mandy. What’s the best thing for her.”

  She nodded, eyes searching his face.

  “And whatever you decide…” He took a breath before he said it, wanting to mean it, still wanting to do the right thing. “I’ll go along with it. With whatever you think is best.”

  He turned away from the fence and began walking back to the yard where he’d parked Sam’s truck. Mandy came running toward him and caught his hand. He stopped, standing there holding his daughter’s tiny hand in his big one. Just do what’s right for her, he thought again.

  “Next time will you push me?” Mandy asked. “The next time you come? If your arm’s all better?”

  “The next time I come,” he promised. His gaze lifted to find Samantha still by the fence, watching them. He squeezed Mandy’s hand and then released it. He opened the door of the pickup and climbed inside.

  “Bye, Mr. McCullar,” Mandy said, waving to him, although he hadn’t even started the truck. He fought the urge to get out and hold her, to settle the small warm body next to his as it had been during the crossing of the ridge behind the mining camp. To keep her safe. Instead, he lifted his right hand and then, taking a breath, he turned the key in the ignition. She was still waving when the dust trail the truck left behind obscured his vision. Or maybe that was something else.

  SAMANTHA HAD ALREADY put Mandy to bed, tucking her between sun-dried sheets and reading The Velveteen Rabbit for about the millionth time. They both knew it by heart, but the familiar ritual was important, especially after the turmoil of the last few days. As far as Samantha could tell, the kidnapper had kept his word. “As if she were my own daughter.” She found herself wondering about his child, about their relationship
.

  From there her thinking turned naturally to Chase. “Whatever you decide…What’s the best thing for her.” Because she knew Chase, she knew that whatever she decided was best for Mandy, he would agree to. A man of his word. A man of honor.

  The kind of man she wanted Mandy’s father to be. Maybe that was why there had never been anyone else. No one else had ever measured up to Chase McCullar. Not in her eyes. And, she admitted, no one ever would.

  The best thing for Mandy? She knew what she believed that would be. Having a family, a real family. A mother and a father who lived together. And maybe later…

  She realized that she had never before allowed herself to think about having other children, but now the images seemed to explode in her head, the feelings they evoked pushing under her heart, making her body too full as it had been when she had carried Mandy. Another baby. Chase’s baby. And this time…

  Except he had never said he wanted that or wanted her, she thought. Never said it, maybe, but in the mountains his body had betrayed his desire. Healthy adult male brushed like a warning through her mind, but she ignored it, and in response she felt the hot sweet ache move inside her own body. Never forgotten, those powerful feelings had deliberately been denied and buried in the routine of her busy life.

  She remembered them now, allowed herself to remember. The caress of Chase’s hands over her body. Slow. Unhurried and unhurrying. She shivered with the force of the memory and crossed her arms over her breasts, rubbing her hands up and down her upper arms.

  She was still standing in the doorway of Mandy’s room, staring unseeingly into its darkness. She could barely make out the small bulge of the sheet where Mandy lay, already asleep. Safe. Safe again, thanks to Chase.

  She turned and walked out, pulling the door almost closed behind her, leaving only a crack so she could hear if her daughter called. She went into the kitchen and began taking the dishes she had used for their simple supper out of the drain tray and putting them back into the cabinets. Chase had built those, too. She touched the smooth surface of the door, feeling the solid strength of the oak under her fingers. Nothing fancy. Just strong and solid and dependable.

  Except he hadn’t been. One aberration out of all the years she had known him. She had told him the truth. She had known how Mac’s death would affect him, but still…What he had done had been so out of character. Maybe Jenny had been right. Maybe for a little while Chase had died along with his brother.

  She put the cup she was holding down on the counter and walked to her bedroom. She stood for a moment in that doorway, looking into the moon-touched darkness of the room, thinking about that night. Remembering. Whatever you think is right…

  The phone interrupted, shrilling loudly enough into the stillness that she was afraid it would wake Mandy. She hurried into the living room and grabbed it before it could ring again.

  “Hello,” she said. It would be Sam, she had thought as she ran, calling to check on Amanda. But the voice that spoke to her wasn’t her father’s. It was familiar, its accented English almost as pleasant as the handsome face she was visualizing as she listened. Seeing him in her mind’s eye just as she had last seen him, standing in the narrow street of the mining camp in the mountains- of the Sierra del Carmen.

  “Miss Kincaid?” he said.

  “Yes.” For some reason, her heart was pounding. Even knowing that Mandy was sleeping in the next room, she was still anxious, still frightened that this man should know her phone number, that his deep voice should speak her name.

  “I would like for you to deliver a message,” he said. He was still speaking English. Very good English, she realized.

  “A message?” she repeated.

  “For our…mutual friend.”

  Chase, she realized. Something about the exchange. The sick fear in her stomach eased. Nothing to do with Mandy. No threat. Just instructions for the exchange.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Tell him…” The pleasant voice hesitated, seeming a most unsure of the message, and then finally he continue “Tell him that the ambush was not what he thought. N the man he thought.”

  She waited, thinking that there must be more, some e planation, some other meaning behind that cryptic phrasin The “man he thought” would be the one who had reco nized Chase in the shop that sold the painted annimals—th other kidnapper. If he wasn’t the ambusher…

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  The plan for the ambush originated on your side of th border,” the voice said softly, almost as if he were afrai of being overheard.

  “Our side? From the States? Someone up here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, trying to think what th meant. It didn’t make any sense. If it wasn’t Mandy’s ki nappers and not the man who had recognized Chase Melchor Múzquiz, then who had lain in wait for them the rock face overlooking that mountain road? Who ha taken the rest of the ransom? “How can you be sure that?” she questioned.

  “As our friend realized, I know a great many peop here, and I have…other contacts. Tell him what I said, Mi Kincaid. I believe he should be aware of the danger befo he brings the rest of the money.”

  “Do you…”

  She stopped because the connection had been broke She stood for a moment, holding the dead receiver in h hand and then she reached out and placed it carefully bac on the cradle.

  Above the border. Someone here in Texas had arrange the ambush. But no one in the States had known anythir about the payoff.. Chase had insisted on that.

  Except, she realized, someone obviously had. If the ma who had just called was right. This was a warning give by someone who had a vested interest in seeing that Chase would be able to deliver the rest of the ransom. Why would the man with the mustache lie? Why would he even call unless he really believed what he had just told her?

  Unconsciously, she shook her head. It couldn’t be someone from up here. There was no one else. No one but the three of them had known about the arrangements. No one but the three of them, she repeated.

  And thinking that,’ she picked up the phone again and began to punch in the familiar number.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jenny was on the phone when Chase walked into the kitchen. After he’d left Samantha and Mandy, he’d driven around for a while, trying to sort through all the emotions that had been stirred up this afternoon.

  He’d ended up again on the bluff overlooking the river. From there he had watched darkness creep over what had once been McCullar land. It touched the low hills across the Rio Grande, painting them with purple shadows so that their harsh details softened and then eventually faded into the blue-black descent of night. He had watched the first stars come out and the lights in the two ranch houses come on, flickering faintly through the clear desert air.

  He had tried to think about it all. About all of the people he loved or had loved. About his family. About his father’s betrayal and about Rio’s. Even about Sam Kincaid. There were no revelations about any of them. Or about himself, he guessed, but he felt better for trying to face some things that for years he had refused to think about.

  When he drove into the yard at Jenny’s, he cut off the engine and the lights and sat for a few minutes in the quiet darkness. He dreaded going in, dreaded facing Jenny, he guessed. There was nothing he could say to defend himself against the charge she’d made, no explanation he could offer as a defense.

  Finally, he got out of the truck and walked up the back steps and across the wooden porch. He knew she would hear him. The back door had been left unlocked, and he went through it and into the kitchen.

  There was a plate with a cloth napkin spread over it on the back of the stove. That was where Jenny had always left Mac’s supper when he was working late. Chase lifted the napkin, but his stomach roiled suddenly at the idea of eating. Mac’s house, he thought again, and then he laid the cloth carefully back over the food Jenny had fixed for him tonight and went down the hall toward t
he den.

  He could hear her voice, and he wondered for a second who had come to visit this late before he realized he was eavesdropping on his sister-in-law’s telephone conversation. He had even taken a step away, intending to go on to his room and save the apologies he needed to make to her for the morning, when what he overheard stopped him.

  “Because I didn’t have a chance to tell him about us,” Jenny said. “It wasn’t the right time. We argued about his obsession with Mac’s death, and then things just went…downhill from there.”

  Chase waited, trying to quell a resurgence of the nausea he’d felt in the kitchen.

  “He’s not home yet,” she said after a few seconds. “But I’m not making any promises. You’ll have to let me be the judge of when it’s right to tell him.”

  There was another brief silence. Chase put his forehead against the wall, the pattern of the wallpaper his mother had chosen just before her death right in front of his eyes.

  She had loved roses, but they had never flourished in the dry, too-alkaline soil of the ranch, despite her repeated efforts through the years. Finally she’d just given up—like she had given up on so many things—settling for the artificial blossoms that festooned the dark hallway in which he was standing. There his mother’s beloved roses still bloomed in an almost-garish profusion of pinks and reds. Chase put his hand on one of them, long hard fingers tracing slowly over it as he listened.

  “I have to go now,” Jenny said softly. “I promise I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  He heard her put the receiver back into the cradle and then he straightened.

  “It’s okay,” Jenny said, her voice louder now, pitched to reach into the hallway where he was standing. “I know you’re there.”

  Chase stepped into the doorway and into the light, but he didn’t say anything. Her dark eyes met his without embarrassment and without apology. She didn’t owe him either, he knew, but somehow he had thought she might not be quite so open about what was going on.