She was failing.
Stupid excuses ran through her mind. She had lost track of time, missed her flight, and lost her cell phone. Then there was the truth. At some point two days ago she had begun to drink, just like her father, and married a virtual stranger on the beach. That sounded worse than the excuses popping into her head. She opened her mouth to speak when a voice from the patio stopped her dead in her tracks.
“It was my fault, sir.” How long had Jackson been standing there? Better yet, why was Jackson standing there? He was supposed to be hiding in the cabana. Far, far away from Mitchum.
Jackson strode into the room as if he owned the place, stuck out his hand, and pumped Grandfather’s arm twice.
“Jackson?”
“Yes sir. I’m surprised you remember.” He sounded genuinely surprised, as if his absence from Lockhardt wasn’t a regular topic of conversation back home. “Kathleen and I ran into one another a few days ago, got to talking, and before we knew it she’d missed her plane.” Jackson continued around the sofa to stand behind Kathleen, placing his hand over her shoulder. Like a knight in shining armor. Just what did he think he was doing?
She tried to ignore the heat spreading from Jackson’s hand, down her arm, and tingling into her fingertips. They jerked in response to the light touch. Sitting up straight, Kathleen tried to dislodge his hand but it seemed permanently affixed to her shoulder. She didn’t need a knight in shining armor, darn it. And his appearing from out of nowhere was not part of the plan to get her out of this mess.
Before Jackson could say anything she jumped in to the conversation. “Well, we were kids when he left Lockhardt, but we knew each other a little in college. Jackson lived in the dorm across the quad from Steph and me. He was a few years ahead of us. In art. We didn’t have any classes together but knew one another from the cafeteria and dorm parties — ”
Jackson squeezed her shoulder and Kathleen stopped babbling. What did she just say? She couldn’t remember anything after the word college. Not a good sign.
“And you were romantically involved back then?”
“No,” Jackson practically barked the word.
Thanks a lot. He made it sound as if she were totally undesirable back then. Sure there hadn’t been much up top or in the trunk but at least she hadn’t been fat, thankyouverymuch, and she had caught him watching her a time or two. Of course he had likely caught her watching him a time or twenty.
He continued in a more modulated voice, “No, sir. I was a senior when Kathleen started at UTEP. We were just friends back then.” Okay, that was a marginally better reply.
“But when you met in Mexico you decided this was the perfect place to test that attraction?”
Kathleen looked up at Jackson. He seemed dumbfounded, his mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out. Enough of this. Leaving her family worried was one thing, undergoing the Spanish Sex Inquisition at twenty-eight was quite another.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but Jackson was down here on a photo shoot. We had lunch, we went dancing” — maybe — “Then he decided to take a few extra days to photograph the Malecon” — possibly — “for a show next month.” Kathleen stood, brushing off Jackson’s hand and pointing a finger at her grandfather.
“Nothing untoward happened” — other than losing thirty-some hours, marrying Jackson and missing her return flight — “and I am still perfectly capable of running the ranch. Now instead of grilling me like a sixteen year old, why don’t you get on the phone and book us a flight home? I’ll just go and pack.” She started from the room, but Grandfather’s next words stopped her in her tracks.
“At what point in your lunch having, photographer helping, dancing reunion did the two of you get hitched?”
Chapter Four
Jackson followed Kathleen to the second floor of the villa, feeling Mitchum’s eyes on them the entire time. The urge to cut and run fought with the urge to stay and make things all right for his new-old friend. He was an idiot for ever walking through the lanai doors. Should have eavesdropped and slipped quietly away before Mitchum even saw him.
Now he was stuck with the girl he’d done his best to avoid during his senior year in El Paso. He hadn’t seen her since graduation ten years before. So why did he suddenly care that she seemed about to go over the edge with the marriage news?
He had no idea but for some reason he did care. He wanted to make things okay for Kath. Which was stupid. Even at his weakest he’d been able to withstand the covert glances and open wanting in her eyes. Apparently ten years had whittled away his ability to withstand her.
Damn it all, anyway. He’d seen the unasked questions in the old man’s eyes — what was the bastard, thrown-away son of Texas royalty doing on his granddaughter’s vacation? And how did he keep said throw-away out of his perfect family tree?
At the landing, Kathleen turned left, expecting him to follow. That alone should make him want to turn away and leave her to deal with the mess on her own. He didn’t like quietly following anyone.
That was what made him the most in-demand photographer in all of New York. Modeling agencies, magazines. They all flocked to Taylor Studios when they needed more than a pretty face with a pretty background. Branching into fine-arts photography was just another stepping stone to the good life he was creating. A life filled with money, fine things, and, most importantly, no commitments.
But follow Kathleen he did because not doing so might mean a delay in the annulment. Annulment. The guy who was never going to get married, who would never make that lifelong commitment was going to get an annulment.
Classic.
She entered the third room on the left and Jackson followed. Kathleen closed the door, sank down on the chaise and buried her face in her hands, mumbling something about her life being over.
“Well that’s a nice way to make your new husband feel like a winner,” Jackson said before he could stop the words. What, now he was baiting her? He wanted out of this just as badly as she did so why was he turning the screws?
Her jaw clenched and her eyes squinted.
“You’re no more my husband than I am your wife,” she said, holding her hand up when Jackson would have spoken. “A drunken mistake in Mexico isn’t exactly the lifelong commitment I’ve always associated with marriage. The question is how are we going to fix this?”
“Find a justice of the peace, cry drunken mistake to anyone who will listen, and sign the papers.” And get me out of Mexico and into San Antonio.
By Jackson’s calculations he still had the better part of six weeks to track down Maria and get the answers he had been looking for since he was seven.
“We can’t.”
“Can. Celebs do it all the time. We just need to find a courthouse or something to make it happen. You do have courthouses out here, don’t you?”
Kathleen sighed, the sound heavy in the quiet room. “Okay, I can’t. I can’t have just signed my plans away by marrying a more-or-less complete stranger in Mexico. And I can’t throw the rest of my life away by letting Grandfather know what we did.”
“Why should he care?” From what Jackson had seen of the man downstairs, he wasn’t any more excited about this marriage than Jackson and Kathleen were. He’d probably be overjoyed to learn a more-or-less complete stranger wasn’t joining their fine, Texas gene pool.
Kathleen buried her head in her hands again. “He cares. So much it’ll kill him when I tell him what we just did. Oh, how am I going to make this right?” She was talking more to herself than him. Still, Jackson couldn’t ignore her.
Against his better judgment, he joined Kathleen on the chaise. He massaged her shoulders, trying to drain some of the tension from them. Heat traveled from her shoulders through his fingers and straight to his groin.
“If it’s a religion thing, the annulment should make
things better. I mean, annulment basically means it never happened, right? So we can all just forget — ”
“It isn’t a religion thing. It’s a grandfather thing. He’s been pushing me to settle down for months now. This trip was a way to blow off a little bit of that ‘settled down’ steam that’s been building since about Christmas when I broke things off with Ty. Your brother, Ty.”
Kathleen sighed again, leaning back against him as his hands continued to work on her shoulders. Jackson fought to keep all the blood from rushing from his brain to just below his belt buckle. It wasn’t working. Not even knowing Kathleen had been in a relationship with Ty cooled the attraction, and it should have. Any woman who’d want his perfect brother couldn’t want him, too, and he definitely didn’t want anyone who bought into Ty’s false modesty and practiced charm.
Kathleen continued. “He freaked when my sister, Monica, was MIA during Lollapalooza a few years ago. My boozapalooza is going to send him straight into the cardiac ward. Having a three-day drunk fest in Mexico isn’t the kind of settled he wants. For me or for the ranch. And getting married and annulled within the same seventy-two hours is just going to be the cherry on top of his day. I might as well head down to the unemployment office as soon as the plane lands in San Antonio.”
“He’d kick you off the ranch?” What kind of bastard kicked his own granddaughter out of the house for a mistake? The same kind that allowed a spoiled wife to send his child away because he didn’t have the right parentage. Any sympathy Jackson had for the man drained away in a heartbeat.
“No. But he’s had a lot of offers for the property. I’ve been the only one interested in running it but my, ah, past proclivities have given him some cause for worry.”
“Past proclivities?” Jackson echoed, feeling a little bit like Alice’s brother falling down the rabbit hole.
“I don’t have a good track record for sticking with things. I’ve never held down a job outside the ranch.”
“So? You’ve stuck with the ranch, haven’t you?” Jackson stopped rubbing her shoulders and turned her to face him. “What does it matter if you haven’t worked in an office or a store? You’ve worked at the ranch, right? That should count for something.”
She shook her head. “He’s from the old school. Women work in the garden or the kitchen, not in the fields. And certainly not with the horses. I was doing a good job of convincing him that I could do the same work as a man, though. Until my stunning slide into our boozefest a couple days ago.” She twisted the slim gold band on her left hand.
She sighed, the sound a deep wave of agony. “It’s a lot of things. Shades of my father, who hasn’t been sober more than twelve hours at a time since I was about fourteen, shades of all the women he’s married and brought out to the ranch. They all left within a year,” she said, standing and beginning to pace, talking to herself as if she didn’t remember he was even in the room. “Shades of my sisters. I was his hope for the ranch. I was supposed to get married and have babies and let his new grandson-in-law run things.”
It was a lot to take in. From Mitchum’s old-school way of thinking of his ranch to Kathleen’s unwavering loyalty to her grandfather and his way of thinking. She obviously wanted to make him proud. Wanted to carry on his legacy.
And she was being beaten down in the process.
“What can we do to make this work?”
She started, as if surprised to see him still there and then laughed. It was not a humorous sound. “Stay married. Kidding,” she said, waving a hand when the color drained out of Jackson’s face. “I don’t expect you to stick with me. I dug this hole and I’ll find a way out of it.”
What was left of Jackson’s better judgment flew out the window at the defeat in Kathleen’s voice. He might not understand all of the family dynamics at work and he did think Mitchum was a fool for not seeing how great his granddaughter was, husband or not, but he understood the kind of loyalty that Kathleen had for the man.
It was the kind of loyalty he had been looking for his entire life. “What if we did stay married?”
• • •
Jackson scrubbed a hand over his face, watched the asphalt shimmer ahead, and glanced in the rearview hoping to still be able to see San Antonio fading into the distance. Instead he saw nothing but rolling hills, Texas blue bonnets, and space. He closed his eyes. What was he doing in the Texas Hill country, a good hour outside his destination of San Antonio?
Trying to catch up with his sanity, apparently.
They had turned off the Interstate two roads ago and were now traveling more or less west on a narrow strip of highway. Jackson glanced at the gas tank and realized the gauge was teetering on the quarter tank mark. Obviously the rental agency took their “full tank with rental” slogan lightly. Hopefully they would hit a town soon and he’d get Kathleen’s attention so he could fill up.
Kathleen. The woman made him forget his own plans and immediately fall in line with hers. How did she do that? And why couldn’t he ignore her now the way he had ignored her in college?
Because of what he hadn’t found in any trash can in the villa. No empty condom wrappers, no used contraceptives. Nothing. Apparently he’d not only gotten rip-roaring drunk for a few days he’d forgotten Rule Number One — always, always, always use protection — in the process. He’d even looked into her carry-on bag — and felt like a pervert for doing it — to make sure she had birth control pills. Nothing. Which meant there could be a child between them now. A child he wouldn’t leave behind or throw away as he had been, not that he would or could tell her about that.
He hadn’t given her any solid reasons why he’d stay married to her. He’d mumbled something about getting more nature pictures, and she’d been so focused on getting Mitchum out of the villa she hadn’t asked questions. Suited him fine, he decided.
He could just make out the back of her head in the driver’s seat of the Chevy SUV ahead of him. Mitchum, riding in the passenger seat, was no more than the outline of a cowboy hat. She was probably still trying to explain why Jackson had insisted on having his own rental vehicle instead of using one of the many ranch vehicles soon to be at his disposal. Good luck since he hadn’t explained it to her, either. He wondered what kind of story she’d made up. He would have to get the details from her later so he didn’t screw up this idiotic plan of hers — his, too, if he were honest about it — in the next few weeks.
Or maybe she hadn’t bothered explaining the car situation and was still trying to convince the old guy that they weren’t both recovering from that three-day drunk-fest which culminated in their walking down the aisle — or the beach, he still wasn’t sure — to get married.
Sunlight glinted off the slim gold wedding band and he squinted.
Married.
He wanted to slam his head against the steering wheel.
Jackson Taylor didn’t do long-term relationships. He didn’t even do short-term. He did no-term. No expected phone calls, no flowers, and certainly no anniversaries.
And yet he had been the one to suggest they stay married, for a little while at least.
Kathleen, who apparently didn’t do long-term either, fell in line with the plan fairly quickly. In her villa bedroom she had laid out the ground rules for their continued “marriage.” It would last the summer, until her twenty-eighth birthday in August and then he would be free to go. While they were married she could care less what he did with his days as long as he showed up for dinner and breakfast so they could put on their honeymoon show. When August came he was free to return to New York and his career. It basically fit in with his plans. Instead of spending the next few weeks looking for Maria from a hotel base, he would do it from the ranch. Added benefit, which he had no intention of mentioning to Kathleen, he would know by then if she were pregnant or not. If she was…well, they would definitely have to reevaluate this arrangement because
he wasn’t abandoning his child.
Jackson stepped on the brake, following her turn from the narrow black top onto a gravel road. Dust choked the road between the two vehicles and he eased farther off the gas, hoping to clear the visibility a bit. The gas gauge dropped a little lower, now hovering just over the red “E.”
The sharper hills gradually gave way to a rolling mass of tall grass and flowers and Jackson sucked in a breath. He’d erased from his memory how beautiful this part of the country could be, because the beauty of the place only reinforced the ugliness of his childhood. Now he couldn’t ignore either.
Black cattle dotted the hills as did a few horses drinking at a small creek running along the gravel road. Cottonwoods lined the banks, coleche glinted in the hills. He rolled down his window, slowed a bit more, and turned down the radio. Vaguely he could hear the call of a few birds hiding in the trees. Probably a few jackrabbits out there and maybe a prairie dog or two million. His fingers itched to grab his camera and capture the scene. There was so much life in the vast emptiness.
But he wasn’t a nature photographer yet and Vogue and Cosmo could care less about beautiful scenery that didn’t have a stick-thin model in the foreground. That was just one of a million reasons he had taken the sports shoot upon himself: a change of pace, a nice influx of cash, and an excuse to make a stop in Texas before his show in New York. Why it was so important to find Maria after all this time he wasn’t sure; all Jackson knew was he needed answers about his past.
A Latin beat drummed from the speakers and Jackson jolted, watching the images before him as if they were real.
Kathleen, auburn hair spread around her face on down-soft pillows. Eyes heavy, she reached for him as he entered her. Together they found a slow, seductive rhythm and, as one, flung over the cliff into the abyss together.
She sighed as he rolled his weight off of her and to the side. Brushing her hair from her face, he tucked her body close to his. He rested his arm across her belly, his thumb making small circles that made her stomach muscles clench.
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