by Fran Baker
“Sit down, son.” The rancher had looked up from the ledger book on his desk with an expression that was anything but inviting. He indicated with a brusque nod of his head one of the leather armchairs normally reserved for his cronies.
Rafe’s instincts, already on red alert, had screamed a warning when he’d heard the word son. It was odd enough that he’d been summoned to the rancher’s inner sanctum. But not once in the six years he’d been living and working on the ranch had Big Tom ever called him—to his face anyway—anything but “boy.”
“I’ll stand,” he’d said politely, preferring to face calamity on his feet.
Big Tom had shrugged, as if to say, “Suit yourself.” Then he’d closed the ledger book and cut straight to the chase. “There’s two things you don’t mess with, boy.” He’d also reverted to type. “One is a man’s mind, and the other is his daughter.”
Rafe had known then that Jeannie’s father had found them out. He’d known, too, that the wealthy rancher would spend every dime at his disposal, call in every favor at his command, pull every string at his fingertips, in order to keep his daughter from marrying a migrant worker’s son.
“I love her,” he’d declared, his muscles coiling for action and the blood singing in his veins as he’d geared up for the showdown.
“Love—the great equalizer,” Big Tom had scoffed before reaching for one of the specially blended cigars that he’d kept in the silver humidor that sat at his elbow.
Rafe had been vaguely startled to realize that this wasn’t just about Jeannie. He loved her with all his heart, and he’d always hated the sneaking around because he felt it cheapened their relationship, making it something to be ashamed of rather than something to be celebrated.
But he’d also had a bellyful of backing away, of being treated as less than human because he was Hispanic, of watching his parents bow and scrape to the Anglos in general and to this Anglo in particular.
The air in the office had been as sulfurous as the match that lit the cigar, as electric as the atmosphere before a tornado, as tense as a standoff.
Without breaking eye contact, Big Tom had lazed back in the desk’s companion swivel chair and clamped the cigar butt between his teeth. And then, with the richly fragrant tobacco smoke rising above his head like a cloud and a knife edge of hardness underlying his smooth voice, he’d proceeded to make Rafe an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse.
“ ’Scuse me.”
The polite young voice jerked Rafe back to the present. He shook off the galling reverie and turned to see Jeannie’s son fidgeting in the doorway. But as he searched the juvenile face, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen it before today.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
The boy grinned sheepishly. “I forgot something.”
“Where is it?”
“In the desk.” The boy took off his hat, sprouting a cowlick. “But if you’re busy or something, I can come back for it later.”
Rafe smiled at his obvious reluctance to leave empty-handed. “Come and get it.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Except for that fleeting sense of recognition at the gravesite, Rafe hadn’t really given Jeannie’s son much thought. And even though he’d heard his name a couple of times, he was ashamed to admit he couldn’t remember it.
Now he turned his full attention to the boy, his eyes skimming the rebellious mop of dark hair and the youth-softened yet strongly chiseled lines of his profile as he stepped to the desk, opened the lap drawer, and began rifling through it.
“What did you forget?” Rafe swirled the contents of his glass, then drained it in one long swallow. The combination of vodka and jalapeño-flavored tomato juice burned away the bad taste that Big Tom’s memory had left in his mouth.
“This.” Jeannie’s son smiled and held up an ivory-handled pocketknife, its blade safely closed. A gangly mixture of arms and legs, his serious blue eyes struck a kindred chord in the man observing his actions. “Grandpa said I could have it if anything happened to him.”
Bothered by something he couldn’t identify to save his soul, Rafe narrowed his study of the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Tony Crane,” he said as he shut the drawer.
Crane.
Some cold premonition clenched at Rafe’s guts as he remembered Jeannie’s evasive response when he’d asked her why she hadn’t kept her husband’s name. It couldn’t be, and yet …
“How old are you?” he demanded now.
“Ten.” And then the boy qualified his answer with, “Well, I’m almost ten.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“April twenty-fifth.”
Time stopped moving forward for Rafe as he recalled those long-ago midsummer nights. He recalled, too, that Jeannie had seemed more disconcerted than defensive when he’d mentioned her elopement.
Something in his intense expression must have spooked Tony because he began slowly backing toward the door. “Well, I’ve gotta go now.”
Rafe nodded, his eyes never leaving that more-familiar-by-the-minute face.
Tony wasn’t so nervous, though, that he forgot the manners his mother had drilled into him. At the door he paused and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr.…?”
“Martinez.”
“Martinez,” Tony repeated before he took off.
Damning Jeannie and the SOB who’d fathered her in the same sizzling breath, Rafe followed the boy into the dining room.
His footsteps slowed as he watched Tony stop and take a sugar cookie off one of the plates on the table. His eyes hardened to ice when he caught a glimpse of two faces, one a clone of his own, in the mirror above the sideboard. His ears roared as the truth hit him with the power of a freight train.
Fear drove a stake through Jeannie’s heart as she stood in the entry hall, gripping the brass door handle and staring apprehensively at Rusty. “I thought Tony was with you!”
“He was.”
“What happened?”
“My horse came up with a limp, so I had to saddle another one.” Rusty’s battered straw Stetson shaded his sun-leathered face, and a tin of snuff shone through the pocket of the shirt he’d changed into after the funeral. “Tony was looking for a piece of wood to whittle while he waited—”
Jeannie snapped her fingers. “Big Tom’s pocketknife.”
Rusty shook his head in self-disgust. “I should’ve known.”
“You see if he’s gone back out to the barn,” she ordered as she turned on her heel. “I’ll check in the office.”
Her search ended when she entered the dining room. Her eyes went dark with despair when she saw Rafe standing behind Tony at the table. Her heart hit rock bottom when she looked into the mirror over the sideboard to find two faces, one a perfect miniature of the other, reflected in its silvery surface.
Four
My son, Rafe thought, his swelling pride undercut by the painful realization that he’d been played for a fool. Tony is my son, and she never told me … never intended to tell me.
In suspense, Jeannie watched his face. At first she read incredulity, then enlightenment, then finally an intense rage. While she deeply regretted that he’d had to find out like this, she also felt relieved that the truth was out at long last.
Their eyes, his burning with an arctic brilliance and hers misting with hot tears, met in the mirror for an ephemeral moment. Once, a passing glance was enough to set her soul afire and her body aflame. Now she shook under the piercing accusation reflected there.
Jeannie was the first to look away, her gaze veering to Tony, then back to Rafe. Her beseeching expression asked him not to create a scene in front of their son; his barely perceptible nod assured her that he would keep this between the two of them for the time being.
She took him at his silent word, stepping up to the table to put a possessive hand on Tony’s shoulder and saying lightly, “There you are.”
He turned, the pocketknife and his cap in one hand and a half-eaten coo
kie in the other. “Oh, hi, Mom.”
“Rusty’s been looking everywhere for you,” she chided him in a mild tone.
“Gosh, I hope he wasn’t worried about me.” Tony frowned in sincere contrition. “I just came back to get Grandpa’s pocketknife.”
“And a cookie.” Her voice held no rebuke as she smiled down at the sugary treat.
He grinned, obviously relieved to hear that he wasn’t in serious trouble, and put his hat back on. “I’d better go catch up with Rusty, huh?”
She nodded. “He’s waiting for you in the barn.”
Rafe had remained stationary to this point. Now he set his empty glass on the sideboard and grabbed hold of her wrist, his fingers clamping around it like a manacle.
Jeannie stiffened but she didn’t pull away. She understood the silent message conveyed by his detaining hand. Tony could leave, but she was to stay. She felt hot and cold all at the same time, dreading the conversation that was to come yet hoping to finally set the record straight.
“Why don’t you take some of those cookies with you?” Rafe’s calm tone belied the angry vibrations emanating from him like a force field, charging the air around him.
“Take some for Rusty too,” Jeannie encouraged, fighting to keep her voice on an even keel.
Tony seemed oblivious to the brittle tension between the two adults, but he knew a good idea when he heard one. He stuck the knife in his jeans pocket, stuffed another cookie in his mouth, then grabbed as many more as he could carry in one trip.
“Rusty went out the front door,” Jeannie told him as he started for the kitchen.
He braked on a dime and changed direction.
Rafe tightened his hold on Jeannie’s wrist and dragged her along behind him. She stumbled in her high heels and gasped his name, but it did her no good. He neither slowed down nor relieved the painful pressure of his fingers until they reached the kitchen. And then he let up only slightly.
Martha was loading the dishwasher when they barged in on her. She looked from Rafe’s formidable expression to Jeannie’s fatalistic one and closed the machine.
“I’ll go gather up the rest of the dirty dishes.” She took a tray to carry them on, then stopped at the door and looked back at Jeannie. “But I’ll just be in shouting distance if you need me for anything.
As the door swung closed behind her, Rafe spun on Jeannie and jerked her toward him, facing her furiously.
He towered above her, his expression as hard and vengeful as a bandido’s and his eyes as hot and blue as a flame. There was an aura of coiled violence about him, a savage quality in the ruthlessly molded line of his jaw and mouth that was totally at odds with his otherwise civilized appearance.
Jeannie quailed beneath his fierce stare but kept her own expression defiant. She’d had too many years of practice in holding up her head, of leading with her chin in the face of censure. And she didn’t have to cower before any man, even if he was Tony’s father.
“He’s my son, isn’t he?” he accused.
“He’s my son!” she said adamantly.
“You know damned good and well what I mean,” he retorted with deadly calm. “I’m his father.”
“You’re nothing to him,” she returned cruelly. “You’re just some stranger who showed up for his grandfather’s funeral.”
His reaction made her die a little inside. His head snapped back, as if she’d slapped his face. His nostrils flared on a stunned breath. His eyes darkened momentarily as something like pain clouded their depths.
Jeannie longed to reach out and caress that rigid jaw, to take away the hurt. She wished she could snatch back the hateful words she’d so callously thrown at him. She wondered what had happened to the love they had known, the promises they had made, the life they had planned.
“Rafe—” she began, but it was too late.
“Husband be damned,” he snarled harshly. “You’ve probably never even been married.”
“I never said I was,” she cried in self-defense. “You just assumed—”
“But you sure as hell let me believe it, didn’t you?” He flung her wrist away then, as if he couldn’t bear to touch her.
“Yes,” she admitted without apology.
“Why?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
She rubbed the slender wrist he’d just released, more as a stalling ploy than in accusation. He saw the bruises that were already beginning to form on her soft white skin—bruises that his own steely brown fingers had caused—and a surge of male protectiveness swept over him, leaving him shaken and disgusted with himself.
“Did I hurt you?” he demanded tersely.
She dropped her arm. “No.”
“You’re lying.”
“What difference does it make?”
“What do you mean by that?”
She tilted her head at its haughtiest angle. “It’s what you wanted to hear.”
His eyes hardened to cold blue marble. “I guess it was, at that.”
For a long moment they simply stared at each other.
Behind them lay a passion that, for better or worse, had never cooled. Between them stood a child conceived of their love. Ahead of them loomed a potential custody battle that could prove bitter, brutal.
“How could you do this to me?” he suddenly roared.
“Shout it to the world, why don’t you?” she yelled back.
“Answer me, damn you.” He lowered his voice to a sinister whisper. “How could you do this to me?”
“You’re a fine one to talk!”
“Don’t give me that garbage.”
“Who left who?”
The silence that followed Jeannie’s heated demand was filled with pain. It glittered in gray eyes and blue. And it was physically etched on both her face and his. But when he spoke again, Rafe’s words reflected neither the grief nor the regret that each of them felt.
“My name’s been in the newspaper at least once a week for the last five years.”
“Congratulations.”
He ignored her snide compliment and went on coldly. “I’ve spoken at dozens of large rallies. Hundreds of small—”
“So?” She nearly choked on her challenge.
“So you’ve known where I was all this time.” His hands worked in vivid concert with his voice, cutting to the heart of the matter. “So you could’ve called me and told me I’d fathered a child.”
Jeannie sidestepped that for the moment. “I tried to find you right after you left.”
“I’ll just bet,” Rafe scoffed.
“I called everyone I could think of—your relatives, your friends. I even went into the barrio, thinking you’d gone back there. And then …” She swallowed hard, the memory of those dreadful days coming back to her with sickening clarity. “Then the nausea hit me, and I had to tell Big Tom.”
His jaw bunched with a fury too long contained. “Did he tell you in return that he’d offered to pay off my college loans and pick up the tab for my law school tuition if I promised to leave the ranch and never contact you again?”
She recoiled in shock and anger. “I don’t believe you!”
Unperturbed, he went on. “And did he tell you that when I refused his offer, he threatened to report my family to the immigration authorities if we didn’t pack up and clear out?”
“But you were born in San Antonio.” She knew that that automatically made him an American citizen.
“Olivia and Enrique and I were, yes.”
She was almost afraid to ask. “And your parents …?”
He confirmed her worst fears. “Mexican nationals who’d illegally crossed the border looking for work and then stayed to raise a family.”
Jeannie shook her head in frantic denial, as if doing so would negate everything he’d just said.
Rafe took a step closer, his eyes narrowing to menacing slits. “Last but not least, did he tell you that when I called the ranch a month a
fter we left, he dropped the bombshell that you’d eloped?”
“No,” she said softly, still shaking her head.
He nodded his. “Yes.”
“But …” Struggling against this new betrayal, she tried one last time to clear Big Tom’s name. “He said he’d help me look for you. He even said he’d call the sheriff and have him try to track you down.”
He laughed mirthlessly. “With all his money and all his connections, don’t you think he could have found me if he’d really wanted to?”
She had no answer for him, and in the ensuing silence even the clock on the wall seemed to mock her naiveté.
Tick … How could she have been so blind as to overlook a lifetime of prejudice on Big Tom’s part? Tock … How could she have been so stupid as to believe he would really pull out the stops to help her locate Rafe? Tick …
Oh, if only she could turn back time!
“Five years!” Rafe finally addressed the issue she had managed to avoid earlier. “You could have told me five years ago that I’d fathered a son, and you didn’t!”
Near panic, Jeannie raised her palms in a conciliatory gesture. “If you would just listen to me—”
“So you can tell me some more of your lies?”
“I’ve never lied to you!”
“Except by omission.”
She lowered her hands and glanced down at the floor, knowing her actions were as good as admissions of guilt. But she refused to damn herself further by offering lame explanations.
He captured her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her head up so that he could see her face. The blue of his eyes burned into hers before blazing a fiery trail down her cheeks to her lips, moist and trembling.
A dizzying sense of déjà vu enveloped them, and she half-expected his mouth to smother hers in another kiss.
Her mind rebelled against the idea, given the animosity between them, but her body had a memory of its own. It recalled instead the gentle caress of his hands upon her breasts and their aching crests, the spreading warmth of his palms sliding down her belly to the juncture of her thighs, the ball of his thumb bringing her to the brink of oblivion, the muscular length of him weighing her down and driving her over the edge.