I have to see Jenny. I have to tell her there won’t be any wedding next month, that Huck was killed six days ago in a midair collision over the Egyptian desert.
Colt felt the sting in his nose, the tickle at the back of his throat. He wasn’t going to cry anymore. His best friend was gone, and nothing could bring him back.
“Colt, I heard some noise. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Colt said, blinking against the afternoon sun. He had locked the bedroom door, or he knew his mother would already have been inside. He was thirty-two, but he was her baby, the youngest of eight adopted kids and the only one who’d been an infant when Zach and Rebecca Whitelaw had made him a part of their family.
“Are you ready to get up?” his mother asked through the door. “Can I make you something to eat? Or do you need more sleep?”
He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep anymore. He couldn’t do anything until he’d spoken to Jenny. “I’m fine, Mom,” he said. “I think I’ll take a shower.”
“Everything you need is in the bathroom. Make yourself at home.”
Make yourself at home. He supposed he deserved that. Three of his sisters were married and lived nearby, while the rest of his siblings worked on the family ranch. He hadn’t been back to Hawk’s Pride except for a brief visit at Labor Day or Christmas for ten years. It wasn’t his home anymore, although at one time his father had expected him to manage the ranch. Colt had wanted to fly jets.
His brother Jake had become ramrod instead. His brother Louis—who was calling himself Rabb these days, short for Rabbit, a nickname he’d acquired as a result of eating a lot of carrots as a kid—worked the cattle, while his sister Frannie trained cutting horses. His brother Avery did the bookkeeping and legal work.
There was no place for him at Hawk’s Pride now.
Colt made himself get out of bed. He groaned as his bruised right knee protested, along with his left shoulder. He’d survived the crash between his and Huck’s training jets with minor injuries. The Air Force had exonerated him of blame in the incident, but he was on leave until he was fully recuperated.
He walked gingerly across the hall to the bathroom wearing only a pair of Jockey shorts and caught his mother peeking around the corner at the end of the hall. She jumped back out of sight, and he felt himself grinning as he closed the bathroom door behind him. Even if he didn’t plan to stay, it was good to be home.
A half hour later Colt looked himself over in the mirror above the dresser in his former bedroom. The doctor had said the six stitches across his chin wouldn’t leave much of scar, but he’d decided not to try to shave around them.
The day’s growth of beard made him look disreputable but was countered by a military haircut that had left his black hair just long enough to part.
He rubbed his hands over the thighs of a pair of butter-soft jeans he’d found in a drawer and curled his toes in the scuffed leather cowboy boots he’d found in the closet. He wore a tucked-in white T-shirt but didn’t have a Western belt, so the jeans rode low on his hips. He settled a battered Stetson on his head, completing his transformation into the Texas cowboy he once had been.
“Colt?”
Colt turned and found his mother standing in his open bedroom doorway, her heart in her eyes. There had always been a chance he’d be killed flying jets. This time he’d come damned close. He reached out and pulled her into his arms.
His birth mother had been a teenager, alone and in trouble, when she’d given him up to the Whitelaws for adoption. He often wondered about her, but he didn’t miss her. In Rebecca Whitelaw he had the best mother any kid could want.
“Are you all right?” she asked, leaning back to look into his eyes. “How about some breakfast? Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Really. I don’t think I could eat anything. I need to see Jenny, to tell her about Huck.”
His mother leaned back, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You mean the Air Force hasn’t contacted her?”
Colt shook his head. “Huck named his father as next of kin for notification purposes. The way things are between her and the senator, you can bet Huck’s dad hasn’t said a word to her, and I didn’t want to tell her over the phone.”
“I can’t believe what’s happened. Jenny’s been waiting years for her brothers to grow up, so she’d be free to marry. And now, with the youngest graduating in June and her wedding day set, Huck is killed. It’s just not fair!”
Colt rocked his mother in his arms. “I know, Mom.” Colt felt his throat swelling closed. Oh, God, Jenny. I’m so sorry. For your sake, I wish it had been me.
He let go of his mother and took a step back. “I may be gone awhile. If Jenny needs anything, I want to be there for her.”
“I understand,” his mother said. She brushed her fingertips across his chin, coming as near as she dared without touching his stitches. “I know how close the three of you were.”
Inseparable, Colt thought. We were inseparable.
“I’m sure Jenny will appreciate having you there,” his mother continued. “Tell her to call if there’s anything we can do.”
“I will, Mom.”
Colt decided to ride horseback to Jenny’s ranch, mostly because it postponed the moment when he would have to tell her about Huck’s death. It also gave him a chance to see the changes that had been wrought in the eight months since he’d last been home. Hawk’s Pride looked more successful than ever. Which, by contrast, made the poverty on Jenny’s ranch, the Double D, even more evident.
Fields that should have been planted in hay lay barren, a windmill wobbled and squeaked, fence posts needed to be repaired or replaced, the stock needed fattening, and a sun-scorched barn needed paint. Nevertheless, with its deep canyons and myriad arroyos, the land possessed a certain rugged charm.
His first sight of the ranch house, which looked as though it belonged in a Depression-era movie, confirmed his growing suspicion. If Jenny wasn’t flat broke, he’d eat his hat.
Colt was surprised when he rode around the side of the barn to find himself staring at another rider on horseback. “Jenny. Hi.”
The instantaneous smile made her bluer-than-blue eyes crinkle at the corners. His gut clenched.
I thought with Huck dead I’d feel different. But, heaven help me, I’m still in love with my best friend’s girl.
“Colt! What a wonderful surprise!” Jenny cried. “Where’s Huck? Did he come home on leave with you?”
“I’m alone,” he managed to say.
She wore frayed jeans and a faded Western plaid shirt and sat on a rawboned nag that looked like it was a week from the glue factory. She nudged the animal, and it took the few steps that put them knee to knee. He could see the spattering of freckles on her nose and the corn silk blond wisps at her temples that had escaped her ponytail.
“I’m so glad to see you!” she said, reaching out to lay a hand on his thigh. “How long has it been?”
His flesh felt seared where she touched him. He reined his horse sideways to break the contact between them. “Since Labor Day.”
“It seems like yesterday.”
It seemed like forever. “How are you?” he asked.
Her smile broadened, creating an enchanting dimple in her left cheek. “Great! Counting down. After ten long years, just forty-two more days till I’m Mrs. Huckleberry Duncan.”
Huck should have married her ten years ago, Colt thought. But Huck had followed where Colt led, and Colt had taken him off to fly jets. Jenny had stayed behind to raise her four younger brothers.
She was thirty-two now, Colt knew, because they were the same age. The freckles and the ponytail gave her a youthful appearance, but she wasn’t a girl any longer. He loved the laugh crinkles that age had put at the corners of her eyes, but he hated the worry lines in her forehead, because he was at least partly responsible for putting them there.
Colt knew life hadn’t been easy for Jenny. She’d been a nurse for her mother, who’
d died of breast cancer when Jenny turned fifteen, and then mother to her four brothers. It was finally time for her chance at happily-ever-after. Only Huck was dead. “Jenny—”
“Come inside,” she said, turning her horse toward the house. He kneed his horse and followed her.
There was no lush green lawn, no purple morning glories trailing up the porch rail, nothing to lessen the starkness of the faded, single-story, wood-frame ranch house that sat in the middle of the northwest Texas prairie. Jenny rode around back to the kitchen door, dismounted and tied the reins to a hitching post.
As she stepped up onto the sagging covered porch she said, “Let me get you something to drink. You must be thirsty after such a long, hot ride.”
“A glass of iced tea would be nice,” he said as he dismounted. “Are any of your brothers around?”
“I don’t see much of Tyler or James or Sam, now that they’re out on their own. Randy won’t be home from school for another hour.”
“Good,” Colt said as he followed her into the kitchen. “That’ll give us some time alone to talk. How are things going?”
She shot him a mischievous grin as the screen door slammed behind him, then crossed to an old, round-cornered Coldspot refrigerator and pulled out a jar of iced tea. “It’s a good thing Huck and I are finally getting hitched. If it weren’t for the money he’ll get from his trust fund when he marries, I’d have to turn the Double D over to the bank.”
He hadn’t expected her to be so honest. Maybe if she’d known about Huck, she wouldn’t have been. “You’re about to lose the Double D?”
“Not that I’d miss all the hard work, you understand, but this ranch has been in my family for so many generations, it’d be a shame to let it go.”
“I didn’t realize things had gotten so bad,” he said.
“In forty-two days, all my troubles will be over. But enough about me. How’d you cut your chin? Fooling around with Huck, I’ll bet. His last letter was full of—”
“Jenny, Huck is…” Dead. Gone forever. Never coming back. He swallowed hard.
“Huck is what?” she asked, her back to him as she reached for a glass from the cupboard above the sink.
“Huck died six days ago.”
As she turned, her eyes wide, her mouth open in shocked surprise, the glass slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor. “No!” She pressed a clenched fist against her heart. “How?”
“I killed him.”
ALL THE BLOOD LEFT JENNY’S head in a whoosh, and she swayed. She heard broken glass crunch under Colt’s boots as he stepped close enough to catch her before her knees gave way and lifted her into his arms. She clung to his neck in a daze as he carried her into the bedroom and sat her on her four-poster bed.
He tried to stand up, to move away, but she clutched at him and wouldn’t let go. “Stay here,” she rasped past a throat that had swollen closed. “Explain.”
She felt the tension in his shoulders. Felt the shudder that racked his frame as he settled down beside her. It took a long time for him to speak. She noticed the dust motes in the sunlight streaming through her bedroom window, the country tune about “friends in low places” on the radio that always played in the kitchen, the screech of a windmill that needed repair.
Everything was just as it had been a moment before. And nothing was the same.
Colt cleared his throat. “I knew Huck had been sick with some kind of flu bug the night before we were scheduled for a training flight. He said he was fine, but I should have known better and grounded him. Whatever illness he had affected his equilibrium.”
She felt the slight shrug in Colt’s shoulders before he said, “His wingtip brushed mine and…” He swallowed hard. “I bailed out. Huck didn’t.”
This isn’t real. I’m dreaming. Colt isn’t really sitting here beside me. He’s with Huck, training jet pilots in Egypt.
She brushed a hand across the short dark hair at Colt’s nape. So soft. She laid her cheek against his and felt the night’s growth of beard. So prickly.
I can feel. So this must be real, she thought. As real as the tight band of pain that bound her chest and made it so hard to breathe.
Colt leaned back and looked into her face. She had never seen such agony in a human being’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jenny. So very sorry. I should have done something. I should have—”
“I doubt you could’ve kept him on the ground,” she said in a shaky voice. “Huck was as crazy about flying as you are.”
“I outranked him. I could’ve made it an order.”
“You loved him too much to deny him anything he wanted,” Jenny said simply. Even me.
Jenny didn’t know where that last thought had come from, but she pushed it back into whatever dark hole it lived in. When they were kids, she’d known Colt Whitelaw had a crush on her. She’d even thought she might like to go out with him, if he asked. But Huck had liked her, too, and once Colt found out his best friend wanted her, he’d kept his distance. She had become—would always be—Huck’s girl.
Only, now Huck was dead.
“Oh, God, Colt. I don’t think I can bear it!” Jenny cried. “I don’t think I can live without him!”
Many times over the past ten years she’d wondered what she would do if something happened to Huck, and he didn’t come back to her. But he always did. Lately, like a combat veteran who counts the days until he can leave the battlefield, she’d counted the days until Huck would come home at last, and they’d be married and live happily ever after.
“It’s not fair, Colt. It’s not fair!” she wailed.
“I know,” he said, rubbing her back soothingly. “I know.”
The tears came then, spilling over in hot tracks down her face. And excruciating grief. She let out a howl of rage and pain. Throughout it all she clung to Colt, held tight to him, as though the mere presence of another human could keep her from hurting so much.
Jenny cried until her throat was raw, until she was too weak to lift a hand to wipe away the tears. It didn’t take long for exhaustion to claim her. She was already worn-out from overwork and from too many sleepless nights spent worrying about how she was going to keep the ranch afloat on a sea of debt.
Jenny had pinned all her hopes for saving the ranch on the trust funds Huck would receive when they married. Now there would be no wedding. She hadn’t merely lost the man she loved. She had also lost her home.
“What am I going to do, Colt?” she whispered. “How can I go on now?”
“I’m here, Jenny. I’ll always be here for you,” Colt murmured in her ear. “I love you, Jenny.”
Jenny knew Colt hadn’t meant it the way it sounded. Colt loved her the same way he loved Huck. He’d been a good friend to her, always willing to pitch in to help with her brothers, something Huck never seemed to have the time to do. It had been easy to lean on Colt, to lay her troubles on his strong shoulders whenever Huck was too busy to lend a hand.
Jenny was suddenly aware of how tightly her arms were wrapped around Colt’s neck. And in turn, how his hands were tangled in her hair.
“Colt, let go. Let me go!” She struggled to free herself from his embrace, from the illusion of safety, the awful, welcome comfort he offered.
He stared at her in confusion. “What’s wrong, Jenny? Tell me what I can do to help.”
“Nothing!” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Get out, Colt. Go away. I don’t want you here.”
“Because I killed him?”
She should have let him believe that was why she wanted him gone. One look at his face, and she couldn’t do it. “Oh, Colt, don’t you see? It would be so easy to turn to you, to depend on you. That wouldn’t be fair to you. No one can take Huck’s place.”
The color faded from his face, until there were only two blotches of red on his cheeks. “I feel responsible for what happened. The least I can do is make sure you don’t lose the Double D. I’ve got money. Let me help you, Jenny.”
“You’ve always been there
for me, and I love you for it. But money can’t give me what I need most. Money can’t bring Huck back.”
She saw him wince before he said, “I miss him, too. He’s going to leave a big hole in both our lives. But that doesn’t change the fact this place needs a lot of work.”
The words stung. “I’ve done the best I can.”
“I know that! But admit it, Jenny. You’re going to need help holding on to this place.”
“I’m not admitting anything,” she said stubbornly.
“You know Huck would want me to help you. Let me do this for him.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t take your money, Colt. And I know how committed you are to flying jets. You’ll be long gone before—”
“I’ve got up to sixty days’ leave for recuperation. That’s enough time to get some work done around here. I want to be here for you. Let me help you, Jenny. Please.”
She lifted her chin. “I won’t take charity, Colt. Even from you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re friends.”
“Friends. Not relations,” Jenny said. “You have no obligation to help me, Colt.”
His expression made it plain she’d offended him, but the only thing she had left was her pride. It was humiliating enough to be left at the altar—even if unwillingly—by Huck, without having to go begging for help to bail the Double D out of debt.
“You would have taken Huck’s money,” he said.
“He would have been my husband.”
“Then marry me, Jenny, if that’s what it takes. But damn it, let me help!”
The silence that followed his statement hung between them like temptation in the Garden of Eden. Jenny threaded her hands together to hide the fact they were trembling. “I know you must be hurting as badly as I am right now. But I won’t take advantage of your grief—”
“Marry me, Jenny,” he said, reaching out to separate her hands and hold them tightly in his. “On the day you would’ve married Huck. You should have a June wedding. You’ve waited long enough for it. You should walk down the aisle looking beautiful and knowing there’s someone waiting who’s willing to shoulder half the burden the rest of your life. We both know it’s been your dream for a very long time. Let me make it come true. I owe you that much.”
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