by Ginna Gray
"Matt, please," Maude Ann began, but he ignored her and plowed right on.
"This sort of thing is exactly why you and I have been butting heads for twelve years. You're always poking your nose where it doesn't belong. You used to interfere with police investigations right and left and print all sorts of half truths and speculation, and now you're probing into what was the most hurtful event that Kate and Zach have ever lived through."
"If you don't mind, I'm not in the mood to get into another debate with you about freedom of the press."
"Freedom of the press, my arse. That's the flag you guys always wave to excuse your actions whenever you step over the line. Anyway, this isn't about the Constitution, you jerk. This is about betraying the woman you claim to love."
J.T. head snapped up. His blue eyes stabbed into Matt's like shards of ice. The urge to do violence raged inside him. "Back off, Dolan," he snarled.
Matt threw his napkin down on the table and stood up. J.T. shot to his feet, his stance full of aggression, jaw outthrust.
"Oh, for heaven's sake. Will you two stop it!" Maude Ann got between them and flattened a palm against each man's chest. "I mean it. Right this second. I will not—absolutely will not—spend the rest of my life separating two grown men who can't get around each other without acting like children. Now sit down. Both of you. As soon as I can get the waiter's attention I'll pay the bill, then we're getting out of here. Until then, not one word out of either of you."
* * *
Half an hour later, even though Maude Ann had bullied them into apologizing to each other, Matt and J.T. were still barely speaking. When the Dolans dropped J.T. off at his hotel, Maude Ann gave him a pep talk and kissed his cheek, but Matt merely grumbled a sarcastic, "Good luck," and drove away the instant J.T. climbed from the car.
J.T.'s heart pounded as he crossed the lobby and rode the elevator up to the eleventh floor. He'd rehearsed what he would say over and over in his mind all the way back from the restaurant. This time he would make her listen to him, make her see that his book posed no threat to her and Zach. If anything, she should be happy, because he had portrayed her and Zach as the good guys who'd been falsely accused. If that didn't prove she could trust him, he didn't know what did.
It was dark in the room when J.T. let himself in. "Kate, are you awake?" Groping along the wall, he found the light switch and flipped it on … and froze.
After registering at the hotel, they hadn't taken time to do more than stash their bags in the room before dashing off to find Zach.
He stared in disbelief at the empty space where her suitcase should have been.
Kate was gone. She and Zach had been no more than ten minutes ahead of them, but she had already grabbed her things and gone. For a moment J.T. could barely breathe. Then anger rose up inside him and galvanized him into action.
It didn't take a genius to figure out where she'd gone, and with a curse he spun around and raced from the room.
Fifteen minutes later J.T. stood in the camping area behind the Astrodome, staring in disbelief at the empty space where Zach's RV had been just a few hours earlier.
Frustration and fear swirled inside him. Frantic, he glanced around and spotted a light on, in the RV two slots down. It was after midnight, but he didn't care. He hurried to the camper and banged on the door. From inside he heard a muffled curse. A few seconds later the door was jerked open, and a lanky, barefoot man wearing only an unzipped pair of jeans glowered at him through the screen door.
"I don't know who you are, mister, but you'd better have a helluva good reason for banging on my door this time of night."
"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I need to find Zach Mahoney."
Instantly a taut wariness replaced the annoyance on the man's face. "Zach ain't here. He left."
"I can see that, but I thought maybe you might know where he went."
The man gave him a narrow-eyed once-over. "Even if I did, why would I tell some stranger who comes pounding on my door in the middle of the night? Mister, I don't know you from Adam."
"I'm Zach's brother, J.T."
If anything, the steely eyed cowboy's expression grew more remote. "Izzat right? Didn't know Zach had a brother. You got any proof a' that?"
J.T. ground his teeth. He had plenty of identification, but nothing in the name of Mahoney. "Not with me, no, but—"
"Can't help you."
"No, wait—" he began, but the door slammed in his face.
J.T. cursed and ground his teeth. He cast a grim look around at the other campers. There were no lights shining from any of the windows. Briefly he considered banging on doors anyway, but he discarded the idea. If the taciturn cowboy was any example, he would get no information from anyone in this tight-knit group.
Furious, he stomped back toward the taxi he'd left waiting in the parking lot. All right, fine. He might not be able to find Kate, but one thing was certain: sooner or later, she had to return to the Alpine Rose.
* * *
J.T. arrived at the B&B just before dark the next evening. His hope that he'd find Kate already there was dashed when he landed at the Durango Airport and saw that her SUV was still in the parking lot.
Knowing that, even if she had beaten him back, he hadn't a hope in hell of her fetching him from the airport, J.T. had called ahead and arranged for Cletus to pick him up.
The gregarious man was full of curiosity and started bombarding him with questions the minute they climbed into the battered pickup. "Hey ole buddy. I sure was surprised when you called. Didn't even know you'd gone somewhere."
"I had to make a quick business trip." J.T. hoisted his carryall higher over his shoulder and pushed the glass terminal doors open and stepped out into the Colorado sunshine.
"So … where'd you go?"
"Houston."
J.T. slung his carryall into the back of Cletus's pickup and climbed inside the cab. He'd hoped his brief answers would be sufficient, but Cletus wasn't satisfied. When he continued to probe, J.T. pleaded jet lag, slouched down in the seat, put his head back and closed his eyes. He didn't open them again until Cletus brought the truck to a stop before the Alpine Rose.
Without Kate, the huge house seemed like a mausoleum. His manuscript was finished except for the resolution and wrap-up, but he no longer had any stomach for the project. Day after day, J.T. rattled around the house, too restless to work and unable to settle long enough to read or watch television or do anything else.
He tried working on the jigsaw puzzle Kate had left half-finished on a table in the parlor, but after about thirty seconds it was all he could do not to sweep all one thousand pieces off onto the floor. He spent most of every day roaming from room to room and checking out the windows every few minutes, hoping to see her SUV climbing the road from town.
He had taken the precaution of moving his car into the carriage house, fearing if Kate spotted it in the port cochere, she would not return to the house. When the telephone rang he let the answering machine take the calls for the same reason, although he always raced into her office to try to hear who was calling. Most of the time there was only silence at the other end of the line, and he suspected it was Kate, calling to make sure he had left.
The solitude gave J.T. plenty of time to think about all that had happened and his part in the events. At first every time he played back in his mind the things that Kate had said to him, the things Matt had said, he refused to accept that he'd done anything wrong. After some intensive soul searching, however, he couldn't hold on to his denial any longer.
Matt had been right—for years J.T. had been using freedom of the press to excuse his actions. Charlie had wanted sensationalized stories, and J.T. had given them to him. Somewhere along the way, however, in his mind and his conscience, the line between a reporter's right to pursue a story and the individual's right to privacy had gotten blurred.
Gazing out the parlor window at the snow, J.T. snorted and rubbed the back of his neck. Damned if he hadn't become the very
kind of arrogant bastard he despised.
Reporting was supposed to be impartial and unbiased, a presentation of the facts, but he doubted that was entirely possible. Even with the best of intentions, a reporter's stories were subconsciously colored by his own beliefs and values.
The plain truth was, every reporter had his own perspective, his own particular agenda, and it was ridiculously easy to manipulate public opinion. A certain tone, a few cleverly worded phrases and veiled innuendoes could nudge a reader's thinking in the direction you wanted it to go. In the twelve years J.T. had worked for Charlie he had honed the skill of manipulation until it was second nature to him.
Damn! Looking back he realized that he had always behaved as though he had some sort of divine right to dig around in people's personal lives and write about whatever he found—sometimes, even what he merely suspected—for all the world to see, no matter how violated it made the people involved feel, no matter who it hurt.
And he had hurt Kate.
J.T. sighed. Matt had been right about that, as well. Writing about the swindle without Kate's knowledge had been a betrayal. The crime and its aftermath had been painful and humiliating for her and Zach. For four years she'd held her head high and endured her former friends' and neighbors' scorn and anger and false accusations with dignity, her only hope being that with time they would eventually realize she and her brother had done nothing wrong. Of course she didn't want the whole mess stirred up over and over again.
At the very least he should have talked to her, told her that he wanted to write a novel based on the crime, before actually starting the book. She was the woman he loved, for Pete's sake!
But that smacked of getting permission, something a hotshot reporter like him considered unnecessary, even offensive. He was used to barreling his way in and getting a story, and if someone was hurt by the fallout … well, that wasn't his problem.
In his entire career, J.T. admitted ruefully, the only person who had ever dictated to him regarding a story had been his sister-in-law, Maude Ann. In hindsight, he knew she had been right to do so, but he had chafed under the restraint at the time. And obviously he hadn't learned a damned thing from the experience.
All along the way he had handled things badly with Kate, he acknowledged with brutal self-honesty. From the get-go he should have told her he was a reporter, been open and totally honest with her. Instead, as usual, he'd been so intent on what he wanted, he hadn't let himself consider the situation from her perspective or given a thought to how she might feel. Nor had it occurred to him that, once she learned the truth, she might believe he'd never loved her at all, that he had sweet-talked his way into her life and strung her along merely to get the story.
All in all, J.T. came to the humbling and inescapable conclusion that he had behaved like an arrogant, self-involved idiot, and Kate had every right to hate his guts for what he'd done.
Now it was up to him to put things right. She had to forgive him. She had to, he told himself over and over. Still, deep down, it terrified the hell out of him that her pride wouldn't let her give him a chance to make up for the pain he'd caused.
On a bitterly cold day, a week after his return, as much for something to do as out of curiosity, J.T. climbed the stairs to the attic and dug through Bob Sweet's belongings one more time. He picked up the Bible first and turned it over and over in his hands, checking the lining, the edges, the thickness of the padded leather binding, turning each individual page, but he found nothing out of the ordinary.
With a sigh he put the Bible back into the box and turned his attention to the other items. He inspected each one in minute detail, but something about the Bible kept niggling at him and his gaze returned to the black leather-bound book over and over.
Finally, as J.T. was going through Bob Sweet's wallet for the third time, he realized what it was about the Bible that was bothering him: it was a standard size, about seven by ten inches, yet, in proportion, the lock and key that secured the strap were huge.
J.T. tossed the wallet back into the box and picked up the Bible again. The key dangled from a ribbon looped around the strap. He held it up closer to the bare bulb overhead, turning it slowly. Frowning, he angled the key this way and that. Barely discernible among the ornately etched vines and flowers was a tiny hole, partway through, no bigger than the shaft of a pin.
J.T. stared at the key, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. Acting on a hunch, he left the attic and carried the Bible downstairs to his room.
First he removed the ribbon from the strap and straightened out a paper clip, but the diameter was too large to fit into the hole on the key. Frustrated, he looked around for something else to use. Then he remembered the sewing machine in Kate's room and the needlepoint pin cushion that sat on top of the machine cabinet, and he hurried down the hall. Ignoring the pang of guilt for invading her private domain, he quickly pulled a straight pin from the cushion and went to stand in the natural light coming through the window. He inserted the pin into the minuscule hole and pushed. Immediately the ornate face of the fat key popped open.
"Oh-ho, what have we here?" J.T. murmured to himself. In the hollowed-out space was a smaller key. When he lifted the key out, beneath it, folded up like an accordion, was a small piece of paper about two inches long.
J.T. smoothed out the pleats and held the paper toward the light. As he read, a slow smile spread over his face.
"Gotcha."
* * *
Relief poured through Kate when she saw that J.T.'s Jeep was no longer parked beneath the port cochere. Before starting up the mountain road she had driven slowly through every street in Gold Fever, checking to be sure he wasn't there.
She had stayed away for two weeks, hoping he would pack up his things and leave. Apparently, he'd taken the hint.
Despite what he'd done, the thought that he was gone from her life forever made her already-aching heart contract with pain, but she gritted her teeth and refused to let the tears come again. She'd cried a river over J.T. already. Besides, it was for the best.
Too tired and dispirited to put the car away, Kate parked under the port cochere in J.T.'s usual space and let herself in through the side door.
As she passed the kitchen she remembered that she hadn't eaten since the previous morning. She hesitated, then shrugged and trudged on down the hallway toward the stairs. She was too tired and too sick at heart and it was too much of a bother to prepare a meal. Besides, she wasn't hungry.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and put her hand on the newel post just as J.T. stepped out of the library.
"So you're finally back."
Kate nearly jumped right out of her skin. She spun around, her heart pounding like a wild thing. "J.T.! What're you doing here?"
She stared at him, quivering inside, her entire being besieged with a combination of outrage and hurt and helpless longing.
He stood at ease just outside the library door, watching her, his hands in the pockets of his gray wool slacks, his tanned skin and vivid blue eyes enhanced by the cream turtleneck sweater that molded his broad shoulders and chest.
Oh, dear Lord, why couldn't he have left? Why? Did he have any idea what he was doing to her?
Learning that J.T., like Kurt, had merely been using her had nearly destroyed Kate. Nothing—not her mother's marriage to Bob Sweet, not the unfair treatment of her former friends and neighbors, not Kurt's perfidy—nothing else had ever wounded her so deeply.
It had taken her two weeks to drag herself up out of a bottomless pit of despair and pull herself together—two weeks of tears and humiliation and unbearable heartache, of merciless reevaluation and stern self-castigation before she found the strength to hold her head up and get on with her life.
Poor Zach. Powerless to help her, he had nearly gone insane with worry as he'd watched her struggle. They had been following the rodeo circuit, but Zach had been so concerned about her that he hadn't done well in the competition. For his sake, as much as for her own, she
'd decided it was time to come home and pick up the pieces of her life.
Now, just the sight of J.T., standing there looking so impossibly handsome and dear, undid all her hard work, because, God help her, even after what he'd done, her heart still ached for him.
Why did he have to be so cruel?
"I'm staying here, remember? As I recall, my rent is paid through April."
Kate's chin came up. "I'll be happy to give you a refund. I stayed away for two weeks, hoping you'd have the decency to clear out before I returned."
"Honey, you could have stayed away for a year and I'd still be here waiting for you." He started forward slowly, his blue eyes fixed on her, warm and entreating. "I love you, Ka—"
"Don't! Don't you dare say that to me!" she snarled. "I don't know how you have the nerve. It was all a lie. All part of your scheming and manipulating." She was shaking inside so hard she could barely stand, but she couldn't let him exploit her feelings for him again. She wouldn't.
She squared her shoulders and fixed him with an uncompromising stare. "Pack your things and get out. I don't want you here." The harsh words revealed only bitterness and anger and none of the foolish longing that was tearing her apart, for which Kate was profoundly grateful, even a bit proud of herself.
J.T. flinched, but despite her nasty tone his voice remained gentle and coaxing. "Honey, we have to talk."
"We have nothing to talk about." She turned her back and started up the stairs, her head held high. "I'm going to my room to unpack. When I come downstairs again, I want you gone. I never want to see you again. Is that clear?"
"Kate, listen to me. We have to talk. I think I've discovered where Bob Sweet hid the money."
She jerked to a stop. Her suitcase slipped from her nerveless fingers and dropped with a thud onto the first landing.
She swung around. "You what?" Her face stiffened. "Is this another one of your tricks? Because if it is—"
"It's true. I swear it." Quickly he explained about the key. "Inside was a smaller key and a receipt from a ministorage company on the island of Antigua."
"Antigua?" Excitement shot through Kate like a burst from a Roman candle. "That's where Bob was arrested!"