Perfect Family

by Potter, Patricia;

  “Well, then I’ll retreat gracefully,” Alex said, but Jessie saw an angry glint in his eyes. “Cullen said you are planning to stay a few more days. Perhaps we can have dinner together, tomorrow.”

  Her dance card was filling up even more rapidly than she’d first thought. She’d never been in such demand. It made her more than a little suspicious. But perhaps she could extract something from Ross. She’d always been a good listener. And being a good listener often led to confidences. She tried to smile noncommittally.

  Then she looked back up at Ross, and realized she was fooling herself. He was probably as enigmatic as his eyes. He nodded at Alex, but thankfully she didn’t see any triumph in his face. Instead, he took her arm and guided her out the door as neatly as a dog might gather a sheep wandering in the wrong direction.

  But as his fingers lightly met her skin, she felt his very touch burn through her. She glanced up at him, remembering how she’d felt the night before, when Ross had found her. Safe. But this was different. This was anything but safe. She’d received what amounted to an electric shock, and now it sizzled inside her, twisting and burning and making a shambles of her practical self.

  He didn’t seem to notice, except perhaps when he opened the door and she stumbled. It had been a long time since she’d felt so clumsy. Inadequate. The fact that two very good-looking men had been vying for her attentions didn’t help at all. It only heightened her suspicions that something odd was going on, and everyone knew what it was but her.

  The thought angered her, and she straightened her shoulders. Tonight, she decided, she would start batting the piñata of mysteries. She moved perceptively away from her escort. She didn’t want the irresistible attraction she felt, especially since he didn’t seem to feel the same. Did there have to be two magnets to attract? An interesting proposition.

  She knew she was thinking nonsense as a safeguard. She hadn’t been this attracted to a man since Mills. And she remembered exactly how much Mills had reciprocated the feelings. She cringed as she remembered how angry he’d been when she refused to sleep with him when he’d taken her to the barn after returning from her first prom, the first that she’d ever been invited to attend. “You’re nothing but a cheap tease,” he spat at her. “Why in the hell did you think I took you to the dance?” Then he’d torn off her clothes …

  She’d stopped believing in princes.

  She’d stopped believing in fairy tales then, too. Until now. But Wonderland wasn’t really a fairy tale. It was a puzzle. Nothing was as it seemed; everything was nonsensical. She could accept that.

  “Are you angry?”

  The question startled her. She decided not to look at him. Perhaps that would help. “No. Sarah trapped you as well as me.”

  “Why do you think I was trapped?” He held the door of his truck open for her, closed it once she got in, then leaned against the door, looking at her through the open window. He was obviously waiting for an answer.

  “Sarah called you.”

  “I often tell Sarah no,” he said.

  “Do you?” she asked curiously, losing herself again in those fathomless dark eyes.

  “Just ask her.”

  All his natural intensity was focused on her. She really didn’t understand why. She only knew her stomach was doing somersaults.

  He abruptly left the window and walked around to the driver’s side. She wasn’t sure she was ready for him sitting beside her for the next thirty minutes or so. She found herself biting her lip, which she’d done a lot as a teenager. She thought she’d progressed beyond that. Apparently not.

  Ross handled the truck the same way he handled horses—with efficiency, respect, and, she thought, even a bit of affection.

  “Since you’re going to be here so briefly, I thought you might enjoy a part of Arizona the others wouldn’t expose you to,” he said, his eyes staying on the road.

  “That sounds ominous,” she replied.

  “I wouldn’t take everyone there, but I think you might enjoy it.”

  “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

  He chuckled. It had a nice sound, and she guessed its husky quality might come from disuse. “A compliment, suspicious lady. But anytime you want to leave, you can.”

  She had the strangest feeling that she’d passed some kind of test, that he really did want her to come with him.

  She only wondered whether he was going to pass her own test. It had everything to do with truth.

  ten

  Ross had lied, of course. He had indeed been coerced into driving Jessica home. He’d wanted to stay as far away from her as possible.

  He didn’t believe in forever. He didn’t even believe in relationships of any duration.

  And Jessica was a forever kind of lady. He’d learned to recognize those types immediately and to stay away.

  And yet … there was a recognition between them, one he’d tried to ignore. He’d never felt this kind of awareness before. He’d always been attracted to earthy women, not to sleek beauties like April, although at one time in his life he’d lusted after her. He probably still did, at one level. But he liked women who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty, who would drink beer from a bottle, and who didn’t spend half a day trying to improve on nature.

  He also liked women who enjoyed sex for sex’s sake, who didn’t expect a wedding ring at the end of a healthy coupling. He didn’t want entanglements. He’d seen too many go wrong.

  Unexpectedly, he’d found himself thinking far too frequently about Jessica. He liked the way she’d made so little fuss about her fall and, in fact, had taken the blame for it. He wasn’t sure she deserved to be doing so, but he admired her grit. He also liked the way she appeared the next day, driving herself, asking for little. And, as far as he knew, she’d not inquired once about whether she had an inheritance due.

  She had a quiet self-sufficiency. It was due, he expected, to her childhood, which Sarah had explained in detail. She too had been on her own much of her life. Perhaps that accounted for the attraction, or recognition, or whatever the hell it was that flashed between them.

  He’d resolved to keep his distance. Until Sarah called. Then he’d found himself not only coerced but eager, and he thought he would take her to his favorite place. Perhaps she would turn up her nose at it, and that would end any reluctant interest he might have.

  What he hadn’t expected was to become embroiled in a battle with Alex for the privilege, and he’d astounded himself for acting as idiotic as he had. But Alex’s possessiveness had struck him the wrong way. Alex had a reputation with women, and Ross didn’t want Jessica to be one of his victims. Damn. He didn’t like the sudden protectiveness he’d felt, or feeling like an adolescent kid vying for the favors of the prettiest girl in class.

  The only thing gained from the stupid confrontation was the distaste in Jessica’s eyes. She was obviously not one of those women who enjoyed being fought over. She’d found them both ridiculous.

  That knowledge didn’t help his pride, but it did make him like her more.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he drove toward Sedona. He realized he couldn’t remember when last he’d said those words. They knotted in his gut.

  “You don’t say that often, do you?”

  It was uncanny. Exactly as if she’d read his mind. Uncanny? Hell, unsettling.

  “No,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything, and yet he felt comfortable. Even his anger at himself faded away. He gave her a fleeting look. The windows were open, and her short hair blew against her face. Her lipstick was gone, and her cheeks were blushed with the wind.

  Warm air blew through the cab. He’d never liked air-conditioning and though the pickup had it, he seldom used it. He leaned down to turn it on.

  “No,” she said. “I like the air. It’s different here. Fresh.”

  “Is it that bad in Atlanta?”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Didn’t?”

  “You grow used t
o it. You don’t notice it until you come to someplace like this.”

  Except even here, the air was becoming polluted. Too many people. And there would be more if Marc and Cullen had their way.

  “You raised some interesting subjects earlier,” she said casually. So casually that it took him a moment before the words—and their meaning—registered.

  He turned, sorry that he’d brought them up at all. Perhaps it hadn’t been the time. But April’s stunt had worried him. He knew how much was at stake. “I talked too much. I just wanted you to be careful.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated, but then he had started to open the box of secrets. It wasn’t fair to her to slam it closed now. “Alex didn’t tell you anything about the trust?”

  “What trust?”

  “Old Hall Clements’s will—really it was Mary Louise’s doing—put the Sunset in a trust. Equal parts to the ranch went to the surviving children or their blood heirs. Only Heath had died without children, leaving five shares.”

  He waited for a reaction, but there was none. Her face showed shock. He hadn’t been sure how much he wanted to say. Whether he should say anything at all. Now he thought she should know it all. “The ranch couldn’t be sold without agreement of the owners of at least four of the five shares. One couldn’t stop the sale. Two could. That made it damned near impossible to sell the ranch since your father disappeared.”

  Grateful there was no traffic on this road, he turned his eyes from the road to her face. Color had drained from it. The news obviously came as a complete surprise.

  His eyes returned to the road, and he waited for the questions. It was a moment before they came.

  “I … don’t think I understand.”

  “If the DNA confirms the relationship, then you are one-fifth owner of the Sunset,” he said.

  “One-fifth?” She replied, wonderment in her voice. Shock filled her face.

  “Mary Louise died long before I came to the ranch,” he said, “but I understand she was the driving power behind the will. She had a fierce love for both the family and the Sunset. She wanted to keep them together. That’s why she talked Hall into adding the stipulation that at least four of the shares had to vote to sell.”

  “But my father—Harding—was missing for so many years. Why wasn’t he declared dead?”

  Jessica was smart as hell. She had found the one joker in the deck. “I don’t think Mary Louise ever accepted his disappearance,” he explained. “She made sure he could not be written out unless … there was proof he had died and had left no heirs.”

  “And so the ranch couldn’t be sold unless it was unanimous?”

  “Right.”

  Several moments of silence passed. He could almost see the thoughts running through her head. He waited for the next question. He was sure it would come. She was too bright not to understand.

  “Does someone want to sell?”

  “Everyone but Sarah.”

  “It would have been better then—for her—if Harding was never found. No one could ever get the four-fifths approval.”

  “The others planned to file suit and have him declared dead.”

  “The others?”

  “Marc, Cullen, Katherine, Andrew, and Elizabeth.”

  “Then that’s why they were looking for Harding,” she said, almost to herself. “It wasn’t a sudden surge of familial affection.”

  He heard the disappointment in her voice. And a certain cynicism. But she’d deserved the truth. She had to know what was going on.

  “Sarah did have a reason,” he said. “She loves the ranch. But she also loved Harding. She often talked about him. You can’t imagine how pleased she was when the search firm found you. And it wasn’t entirely because of the ranch.”

  “And you?” she asked.

  Ah, the final question. “I can never have a vote, nor can I inherit part of the ranch. I’m not a blood heir,” he said.

  “Then what happens when Sarah …” She couldn’t quite say the word.

  “Her share will be divided evenly among the others.”

  “That could get very complicated.”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  She was quiet, obviously trying to absorb all the information.

  He came to a turn and took a left. The road widened, and businesses began to dot the landscape. Ross turned into one of them. It was a cantina, one frequented by many of the Hispanic hands in the area and also local cowboys. The food was excellent, the music good.

  Then he looked at her, suddenly ashamed of his high-handedness. He had used it as a test, expecting her to dislike it and thus strengthen his resolve to stay away from her. He realized now how completely unfair that was. But then he hadn’t been acting rationally since he’d met her. “I didn’t ask you if you liked Mexican.”

  “I do,” she said. Her eyes sparkled suddenly, and he knew she wasn’t just saying it for her benefit.

  “We could go somewhere else.” Say yes.

  “No.” She was already getting out of her side of the cab.

  He swore silently. But it wasn’t the first time one of his plans backfired. He just wondered how badly.

  A will. Trusts. An equal share to each child and their blood heirs. The implications echoed in her head after the shock had worn off. She had never thought, never expected …

  Inheritances were what happened to other people.

  Why hadn’t Alex said anything? An overabundance of legal caution?

  The thoughts hammered at her. She’d needed the diversion that Ross provided when he’d pulled into the cantina. She’d automatically opened her own door, not waiting for him to come around, but he was there when she stepped down. His hand was outstretched and she took it, feeling the sudden warmth as his skin touched hers. Warmth? It was more like a red-hot poker and she dropped it that quickly.

  She still felt the surge of energy reverberating through her as his hand went to the small of her back, guiding her toward the door. She had seen men do that in films, but never had experienced it before. Sure, they’d held her hand, or put an arm around her shoulder, but none had so naturally claimed her both protectively and possessively. There was a casual elegance about it that made her heart pound harder.

  She loved the cantina. She’d always liked Mexican food and even had a predilection toward small, out-of-the-way authentic eateries that most people never found, or wouldn’t frequent even if they’d heard about them. No tablecloths, no overly attentive waiters.

  But the smells were wonderfully provocative, and the small dark interior was scrupulously clean. A singer was belting out a Spanish song on an old jukebox.

  A hostess gave Ross a big grin. “Señor Ross,” she said, “I have a table for you and the señorita.” They threaded through a room packed with mostly Hispanic families to a table in a corner. Many of them nodded at Ross, and he stopped several times to speak and introduce her. She was obviously with a well-liked celebrity. She had never seen him like this before. He was totally at ease, a quick smile on his lips. Eyes flashed to her in surprise, and she wondered if he’d ever brought a date here before.

  A date. She doubted he considered it as such.

  She knew a little Spanish and caught some words, but all her attention was fastened on her companion as they were seated at a table. A candle in a small bowl provided dim light. It flickered, casting shadows across Ross’s angular face, and seemed to make his eyes even darker.

  When a pretty young Hispanic girl appeared and asked for their drink orders, Ross looked toward Jessie, an eyebrow raised.

  She named a Mexican beer she often drank, and Ross ordered the same.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t until I came inside.”

  “Everything is good,” he said as the beer arrived, along with chips and dip. The music changed. A slow, sultry song drifted through the restaurant. Jessie understood enough Spanish to know it was a song about doomed love.

  Her gaze met his, and she felt h
erself being singed by his lazy, appraising look. This time, she didn’t try to look away. She felt as if every bone were melting, that under his gaze she was turning into one warm liquid puddle.

  His lips had a crook to them and she was disconcerted by that dimple that appeared on the rare occasions when he smiled. Other than those two vulnerabilities, his face was all angles and planes. His dark lashes were thick and long, giving him a lazy languid look. Yet there was nothing lazy—or languid—about him. His fingers thrummed on the table with the restless energy that so attracted her. It contrasted with the patience she’d seen in him when he was with the horses.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Made up your mind?”

  She did something she’d never done before. “Order for me,” she said.

  “Are you real hungry?” he asked, then without waiting for an answer turned toward the waitress and in what she thought must be flawless Spanish he gave what seemed an endless order.

  “Not that hungry,” she said.

  “But I haven’t eaten yet,” he replied with that rare, attractive smile. He seemed more comfortable here than any place she had seen him. An older Hispanic man came over and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “This is the owner, Ramon. His son, Dan’l, works at the Sunset. Ramon, this is Jessica Clayton.”

  The man bowed. “I am honored. I try to get my son to work here, to take over the business, but no, he wants to be a cowboy.”

  “He’ll outgrow it,” Ross assured him.

  “I am trusting you to make it so,” Ramon said.

  “I’m working his ass off,” Ross said

  “A conspiracy?” Jessie interjected.

  “A very small one,” Ramon said, holding up his two fingers and bringing them close together.

  “I won’t tell,” she promised.

  “I like this one,” Ramon said. He wandered off then, stopping to talk to customers at one table, then another.

  “This one?” She raised an eyebrow as he had.

  He chuckled, a sound that was like a gentle earthquake, if that were possible. She realized the dichotomy of that description. Nonetheless, it fit. She stored it in her mind.