Always a McBride

by Linda Turner

  Confused, in desperate need of some time to herself to think, she would have liked nothing more than to head back home right then and there, but Elizabeth still needed to check on the rest of the wolves. So when Zeke gave the signal, she climbed onto her horse, then fell in line with the others. She was thankful that the terrain grew rougher as they climbed higher into the mountains, and she couldn’t afford to be distracted by thoughts of Taylor. All her concentration was focused on following Zeke and making sure her horse didn’t take a misstep and send them both tumbling down the side of the mountain.

  It was Zeke who first spotted the wolf standing silently in a thick stand of pines, watching them with intelligent gray eyes that missed little. Without a word, Zeke pulled up. “Up in the trees to the right,” he murmured to Elizabeth when she brought her mount to a stop alongside his. “It looks like Queenie.”

  “No, it’s Duchess,” she said softly. “We didn’t see her last time. I was afraid something had happened to her.” Looking past the watchful female, she suddenly grinned broadly. “Look! She’s got pups!”

  The young gray wolf did, indeed, have two pups with her, but they were far more cautious than she. Blending into the shadows and half hidden under the underbrush, they lay on their bellies near their mother and didn’t so much as blink as they watched the riders a hundred yards down the mountain from them.

  “That’s Queenie and Napoleon’s granddaughter,” she explained to Phoebe and Taylor. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  “Where’s her mate?” Taylor asked quietly. “Wolves mate for life, don’t they?”

  Smiling, she nodded. “He’s somewhere nearby. He’ll show himself when he’s ready.”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when a large alpha male silently appeared in the trees off to their right. “That looks like the same one we saw yesterday,” Phoebe said in a hushed voice that didn’t carry past their ears. “He had that same white collar of fur around his neck.”

  “I’m surprised they showed themselves,” Taylor said quietly. “This area’s so remote. They can’t see many humans.”

  “They accepted Elizabeth a long time ago,” Zeke replied. “They know they have nothing to fear from her.”

  “They don’t let me get any closer than this, though,” Elizabeth quickly added. “They always seem to know when I’m here and come to check me out. Once they’re assured everything’s okay, they leave. See,” she said, nodding toward the female wolf. “There goes Duchess now. The others will follow.”

  True to her words, the pups slipped further into the underbrush, disappearing from view. The alpha male stood like a gray statue, its sharp, intelligent eyes quietly studying them, assessing them. Shrouded in silence, no one moved. Just when they began to wonder if the wolf saw them as some kind of threat, he turned and soundlessly slipped into the trees. As quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

  In the silence of their leavetaking, it was a long time before anyone spoke. Then Taylor said gruffly, “I can see why you’ve spent so many years studying them. They’re magnificent.”

  Phoebe had to agree. In all the years that she’d heard about Elizabeth’s wolves, she’d never dreamed that seeing them in the wild could strike such awe in her. “Now I understand why you and Zeke set up the wildlife preserve. They need a place where they are protected.”

  Blinking back the tears that glistened in her eyes, Elizabeth gave them both a watery smile. “It’s where they belong. It took a while to convince the neighboring ranchers of that, but time has a way of working things out.”

  “Time and a lot of hard work,” Joe added dryly. “People can act like real idiots when they don’t understand something.”

  “If they’d just gotten the facts before they rushed to judgment, there wouldn’t have been a problem,” Zeke added grimly. “But I guess that’s human nature. What’s important is that they finally came around and the wolves are safe.”

  The trip a success, there was no need to venture further into the mountains—they’d seen what they’d come to see and the ride back to camp would take several hours. It was already well past midday. By mutual agreement, they turned around and headed back down the mountain to the canyon where they’d made camp the night before.

  Dinner that night was a celebration. The wolves were all safe and accounted for and all was right with the world. In anticipation of that, the McBrides had brought champagne and all the makings of a feast. Laughing and talking, everyone working together, they had the meal together in a remarkably quick time, then gathered around the campfire to eat.

  It was a wonderful summer evening, cool and clear, and the food was fantastic. Normally, Phoebe would have thoroughly enjoyed herself, but she couldn’t stop thinking about last night…and Taylor. Sometime between the long hours of the night, when he’d made love to her again and again, and today’s ride up into the mountains, something had changed between them, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She just knew that he was already regretting last night.

  Oh, he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t even tried to avoid her. He’d joined in the conversation with the others, offered suggestions as Zeke grilled the steaks, and didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable in her company. But there was something in his eyes, a reserve, a distance when he looked at her that made her want to cry.

  Don’t! she wanted to tell him. She’d given herself to him freely, without strings, and it had been one of the most wonderful nights of her life. No one had ever made her feel the way he had. The last thing she wanted was for him to regret it.

  She didn’t, however, have any control over what he thought or felt. He was like a fish out of water in Liberty Hill and driven by something she would probably never understand. His stay there was only a temporary one, and when the time came for him to leave, he would, no doubt, do so without giving a second thought to her or the time they’d spent making love under the stars. The sooner she accepted that, the better.

  Still, it hurt, and that shook her to the core. She hadn’t realized last night, when she’d given herself to him without a thought to the future, that she’d also given him the ability to hurt her. Tears stung her eyes, but she quickly blinked them back. No, she told herself fiercely. She wouldn’t cry! If he didn’t have the good sense to appreciate her, then the loss was his.

  Shaking off the hurt that squeezed her heart, she forced herself to join into the easygoing conversation around the campfire after the meal. She smiled at an outrageous story Zeke told and even managed to eat a piece of the chocolate cake that Elizabeth had brought along to celebrate the thriving of the wolves. Phoebe didn’t doubt that it was delicious, but she’d lost her appetite and she could have been eating sawdust and wouldn’t have tasted it. She made sure that no one, especially Taylor, had a clue how she was feeling. When her eyes met his across the campfire, she smiled as if she didn’t have a care in the world and finished her cake with a flourish.

  She wasn’t smiling, however, when she retreated to her tent later. But then again, she didn’t need to. There was no one there to see.

  Taylor reached for her during the night…and cursed himself for his actions. He never should have made love to her. He’d known at the time that it would turn out to be nothing but a mistake, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Idiot! He hadn’t come all the way to Colorado to let his thoughts get tangled up with a woman. Sara McBride would be returning from her honeymoon soon, and he had yet to decide how he was going to confront her about Gus. That’s what he should have been concentrating on, not Phoebe!

  Just the thought of his father should have been enough to distract him from thinking of her, but the old familiar anger and resentment that usually knotted in his gut at the mere mention of Gus’s name was surprisingly absent. Scowling, he cursed softly in the darkness. What the devil was wrong with him?!

  The question nagged at him all that night and the next morning as they broke up camp and headed back down the mountain. If he was too quiet, the others were as well
, and he couldn’t say he blamed them. It was time to go back to the real world.

  And the further they made their way down the mountain, the grimmer Taylor became. When he’d first arrived in Liberty Hill, there hadn’t been a doubt in his mind about what he’d come there to do. Now he wasn’t sure of anything, and he didn’t like the feeling at all.

  He wasn’t an impulsive person who was ruled by his emotions, he assured himself. Whether he was considering strategy for a trial or for his life, he carefully considered his options, weighed the pros and cons, then made a decision based on logic. And he very seldom made mistakes.

  So why was he having second thoughts now?

  Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice that Zeke, who was in the lead, had taken a detour from the main path until he and the others brought their horses to a halt and began to dismount. Surprised that Zeke had called a break when the homestead was in clear view in the valley below, he started to ask if there was a problem when he suddenly saw the old, weathered headstones of a mountain cemetery.

  When he’d first learned that Gus was dead, he hadn’t given a thought to where he might be buried. After all, the old man hadn’t even known he existed when he was living, so he certainly hadn’t given a rat’s ass where Gus spent eternity. Then he saw his half brothers head for a gray granite headstone that was the newest in the rows of markers that were spread out under the pines on the side of the mountain.

  So this was his father’s grave. He didn’t have to read the nearby headstones to know that all the McBrides were here…grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins who had settled this land high in the mountains and carved a homestead out of the wilderness that would be there for generations to come.

  Dismounting, he stood back under the trees, silently watching the McBrides clean the pine needles from the graves. Their love and respect for not only Gus, but their grandparents and the rest of the family that had come before them was evident in every move they made. Never had he been more conscious of what he had missed out on his entire life.

  Once, that would have stirred nothing but bitterness in him, but as his eyes wandered over the headstones, noting the names, the dates, the history of the McBrides, an emotion he couldn’t put a name to reached out and grabbed his heart. And for the first time in his life, he knew what it was like to feel a connection to family.

  Stunned, he stood as if turned to stone and wondered how the hell this had happened. He didn’t want to feel anything for Gus or the grandparents he’d never had the opportunity to know. But he could see himself in Zeke and Joe—the way they stood, the curve of a brow, the set of their jaw—and too late, he realized that by meeting them, getting to know them, he’d opened a door to feelings he’d never anticipated. They were family…his family.

  Call off the revenge.

  The thought whispered through his head, urging him to do what he knew, deep in his heart, was the right thing. But then he remembered his mother and the loneliness and hardship of her life, the sacrifices she had made. She’d never complained, but she hadn’t had to. Even as a child, Taylor had known that she did without so that he could have the things he needed. She’d seldom bought herself any new clothes, and the only new car she’d owned in her life was the one he’d bought her after he’d graduated from law school. Before that, she’d only been able to afford used cars that seemed always to break down.

  And that was only one person’s fault—Gus McBride. He couldn’t forgive him for that, not without betraying his mother.

  “We always stop here on our way back home,” Zeke said as he walked over to join him. “It brings Dad closer. He died too young.”

  “What about your dad?” Joe asked. “I know you said your mom was dead, but you never mentioned your father.”

  He couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to tell them who he was, but Sara wasn’t there. If he was determined to do this, then he was going to do it the way he’d planned. “He’s dead, too. I never had the chance to know him.”

  His tone was flat and cold and didn’t encourage further questions. Taking the hint, Elizabeth politely changed the subject. “Is anyone besides me getting hungry? It seems like it’s been hours since we’ve eaten. How does taco salad sound? I’ve got all the makings back at the house. I can have it ready in less than a half hour once we get home.”

  She didn’t have to say it twice. Stomachs grumbled at the mere mention of food, and suddenly they all realized they were starving. Within minutes, they were all mounted and headed for Zeke and Elizabeth’s house.

  Two hours later, it was time to go back to the real world. They’d had dinner, Phoebe had helped Elizabeth with the dishes, and outside, it was growing dark. Phoebe knew it was time to leave, but sadness pulled at her at the thought. She knew she was crazy—she should have been eager to be alone with Taylor again—but she knew what would happen when they returned to Myrtle’s. He would retreat to his room, using the excuse that he had to work, and she would be alone with her memories of the weekend, of the loving they’d shared, of his withdrawal, of the feelings she was starting to have for him that she didn’t know how to handle. And she wasn’t ready to deal with any of it, least of all her feelings. Unfortunately, they couldn’t stay at the McBrides forever.

  So she forced a smile and hugged Zeke, Elizabeth, and Joe good-bye. “Thank you for the weekend. It was wonderful! I still can’t believe we saw the wolves.”

  “We’ll have to do it again sometime,” Elizabeth said. “Next time you’re in town, don’t be such a stranger. And you’re welcome any time, Taylor,” she added, turning to him with a smile. “I hope you had as good a time as we did.”

  “I won’t ever forget it,” he said solemnly. “It was incredible.”

  Her heart skipping a beat at his words, Phoebe wanted to believe that he wasn’t just talking about seeing the wolves in the wild, but the night they’d shared together, too. His eyes, however, still didn’t meet hers. And when they climbed into her car a few minutes later and headed back to Liberty Hill, silence fell between them like a rock. He didn’t say a word the entire way back to Myrtle’s.

  They needed to talk. Phoebe didn’t know about him, but she couldn’t pretend that the night they’d spent in each other’s arms had never happened. But every time she glanced over at him to say something, his jaw was set in granite and he was staring straight ahead. She told herself to wait until they got to the house, but the opportunity was lost the second they stepped inside. “I’ve got some writing to do,” he muttered. And without another word, he disappeared upstairs.

  “Well,” she sighed aloud as the firm shutting of his bedroom door echoed through the house, “so much for discussing things.”

  Tears stung her eyes, horrifying her, and she quickly blinked them back. She would not cry, she told herself fiercely. She’d known when they’d made love that there were no promises between them, no words of caring, no commitment. She couldn’t complain now just because she was starting to care and he wasn’t.

  Still, it hurt.

  “So, find something else to think of,” she muttered. “Like what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.”

  That was an issue she had put off dealing with, but she wouldn’t, she knew, be able to do that much longer. Myrtle would be back from her trip in a matter of weeks, and she would have to return home. Just thinking about it made her cringe. She’d never liked the business her father had loved so much, but since his death, she’d thought she’d come to terms with the fact that she was responsible for keeping it going. Granted, there was nothing exciting about it, but it was lucrative. Instead of complaining about it, she should have been grateful that her father had thought enough of her to leave her a business that would support her the rest of her life.

  And she was grateful. She just hadn’t realized how much the tediousness of it stifled her soul until she took over running Myrtle’s bed and breakfast for her. She loved the house, loved cooking and cleaning for guests, loved
the peace and quiet of life in Liberty Hill. How was she going to find the strength to leave it all behind and go back to the lonely existence of a business and life she hated?

  Pain squeezing her heart, she reminded herself that she didn’t have to do it today. She still had a couple of more weeks before Myrtle came home, and she wasn’t going to ruin that time by worrying about the future. One way or the other, it would take care of itself. In the meantime, she had guests to think of. They would be arriving Friday evening and she had a lot to do between now and then. The sooner she got started, the better. Focusing on that, she headed for the kitchen to polish Myrtle’s antique silver serving pieces.

  Long into the night, Phoebe cleaned like a woman possessed. After she polished the silver, she hand-washed Myrtle’s prettiest set of china and carefully returned it to the French étagère in the dining room that her grandmother had owned as long as Phoebe could remember. Half expecting Taylor to come downstairs for an evening snack, she set out a plate of cheese and fresh fruit, as well as homemade brownies, on the sideboard, but he didn’t so much as stick his nose out of his room. Not sure if he was avoiding her or so caught up in his writing that he didn’t want to leave it, Phoebe left him alone.

  That didn’t mean, however, that she didn’t think about him.

  Every time she let her mind wander, every time she dropped her guard, she found herself listening for his step in the hall upstairs, wondering if he was thinking about her, remembering what it was like to lie in his arms under the stars. Then she would reach for another plate, another glass, another piece of silver. And when she ran out of place settings to clean and polish, she started on the kitchen itself. By the time she went to bed at two o’clock in the morning, the glass doors of the kitchen cabinets were gleaming and her grandmother’s antique O’Keefe and Merrit stove was sparkling.