by Christa Wick
Seeing Adler’s approach, Royce lobbed an apple at him. Adler caught it low. The horse began to prance.
“Who says this is for you?” he laughed and took the first bite.
Cannonball replied with a soft snort, his nostrils fluttering like a piece of silk in a gentle breeze. When Adler didn’t offer any of the apple, the horse nickered, the sound a low pulsating in the back of his throat.
“Only if you smile for me,” Adler teased as he broke off a chunk of apple.
Cannonball lifted his top lip, the amount of flesh about the size of a man’s hand. The row of strong, flat teeth exposed, he nickered again before Adler placed the bit of apple against the animal’s bottom lip and quickly pulled his fingers out of harm’s way.
He broke off a few more pieces, feeding them to the horse in between checking the saddle. When the apple was gone, he ran his hands over Cannonball, looking for potential problems. He knew Royce would have already done the same, but Adler was going to be the one making demands of the animal in getting Jupiter in the trailer. The simple act also strengthened his connection with the horse, Adler’s hands running over the soft coat that was golden brown everywhere but the legs and the end of his muzzle. Those areas and the mane and tail were colored a dark black.
Satisfied that the horse was both fit to work and ready to do so, he pulled the lasso off the saddle and whipped it out. He ran it through his fingers as he slowly coiled it back in to check for defects. With everything in order, he grabbed hold of the saddle horn, put his left boot in the stirrup and swung his right leg up and over.
“Will headed over on a fresh horse right before you pulled in,” Royce said.
Adler figured as much. Despite the speed his truck was capable of, he’d had to take the dirt roads around two large, empty pens, whereas Will was able to cut between the pens.
“Good,” he told the stable master. “Radio to let him know I’m on my way.”
With a tip of his hat, he started toward the summer pastures at a trot. It was an easy pace that would get Cannonball to Jupiter’s pasture inside of fifteen minutes without tiring the animal, while ensuring the muscles were warmed up and ready to work.
The horse followed along the side of the dirt road, knowing by the time of the year which way they were headed. Adler leaned back in his saddle and relaxed for the first time since Betty Rae’s early morning phone call about the strange woman left alone in Jake Ballard’s house.
He still couldn’t suss out what he felt about the situation, other than a low-level suspicion.
And, if he was being honest with himself, a definite physical attraction to the woman.
Adler snorted. He was already lying to himself about Sage Ballard. It wasn’t merely physical. He had the money and reputation to bring any number of beautiful women to his bed. He just didn’t want them.
He wanted the woman he’d heard singing in his sister’s kitchen, body moving in a way that wasn’t just sexy but exalted by her voice, by the depth of feeling she put into each word. He wanted the woman who’d drawn a knife on him and stood her ground when others would have collapsed into a shaking heap.
But wants weren’t needs. Above all things, he needed a woman he could trust. Only time would tell if that woman was Sage.
With Jake Ballard’s lies, things didn’t look good.
“You got a face like someone stole your puppy,” Will laughed as Adler reached Jupiter’s pasture. “I haven’t seen you pout like that since you were twelve and squawked like you were full of helium.”
Adler glowered at the ranch foreman for half a second before cracking a grin and turning his attention to the equipment. The gate had been opened and the trailer hauled in. Rails were set up on each side of the trailer’s ramp. The rails were short, about four feet high, so they wouldn’t block the ropes as the bull was led up the ramp.
In addition to Will, there were two men on horses serving as turnbacks to keep Jupiter from running off to the far side of the field and another two mounted as herd holders to keep the cows from straying into where Will and Adler would work Jupiter into the trailer.
The old bull was already separated from the herd after Will’s first attempt. Adler could tell by the obstinate dip of its head that the beast had decided to make a game of it and was waiting for the horses and their humans to catch a second wind. Jupiter didn’t need a second wind. He weighed close to twenty-six hundred pounds. Cannonball was a little over twelve hundred, not even half the bull’s weight. That’s why Adler and Will would tag team the beast.
“Ready?” he asked Will.
The older man nodded. He warmed up his lasso, twirling the big loop in the air as Katmandu, his gelding, began to measure up his opponent, his direction guided by the press of Will’s knees and the cant of his torso.
Adler twirled his lasso at the same time. Will would make the first toss, Adler would immediately follow if Will missed, eliminating the bull’s opportunity to evade the second rope being cast.
Will released. The loop landed atop the bull’s head, but Jupiter did a quick twist and duck. The heavy rope dropped to the ground. Adler released as the bull lifted his head in search of the next attempt, his nose lifting high in the bovine equivalent of flipping someone a middle finger.
The loop descended in a stiff circle over the beast’s snout, past the massive head and over the muscled neck. Adler jerked the rope tight before Jupiter could twist away. Cannonball walked backward, body straining. Will made his next throw, everything easier now that the first loop was firmly placed.
“Got ya, didn’t we!” Will whooped as he jerked his loop closed.
“Did you forget we have to coax his stubborn hide into the trailer?” Adler laughed.
They both knew the job wasn’t done yet. What came next was the second half of the dance. Now that the ropes were around Jupiter’s neck and they had two horses that together came close to equaling the bull’s weight, they would winch him forward step by step until he finally decided the sweet hay at the back of the trailer was worth more than the pure fun of being obstinate.
Jupiter jerked on the ropes, planted his legs wide and dropped his center of gravity in resistance. It didn’t matter. The horses only had to fight him in one direction, the bull had to fight them in two opposing directions. He couldn’t plant left and pull right at the same time he was planting right and pulling left.
Inch by inch, Will and Adler forced Jupiter to yield ground. Once they had the beast on the ramp, they threaded the end of the lassos around bars on the trailer, creating a pulley on each side that increased their leverage over the animal.
Suddenly abandoning the fight, Jupiter charged into the trailer. Adler’s lasso snagged, jerking him out of his saddle and body slamming him into the container’s side. A rough edge of metal tore through his shirt, its jagged teeth chewing across his shoulder blade.
The trailer doors slammed and locked. Adler freed himself from the rope. Neck twisting, fingers probing, he examined his left shoulder. When he pulled his hand back, the fingers dripped with bright red blood.
“That,” Will said. “Won’t make your momma happy.”
Adler grinned. “Then you better clean and stitch me before she finds out.”
Finding the edge of the long, uneven slice, he winced once. But the grin didn’t take but a second to return. Jupiter was in the trailer, soon he would be in Cassian’s pasture making sure the field didn’t turn a loss for the year. It was worth more than a little blood to help family.
For Adler Turk, family was everything.
5
The drive from Willow Gap to Lindy Turk’s home on Sunday exceeded twenty minutes, more than half that time spent on the private road cutting between the fenced pastures of the family’s ranch. There were no cattle in the fields they traveled past, just pale grass that reached knee high. Jake explained to Sage that the cows used the surrounding pastures for fall grazing. The summer pastures were beyond the ridge in the distance. Despite spring not yet official
ly over, most of the herd was in those other fields, fattening up and already pregnant.
From the private road, Jake turned onto a paved drive that disappeared into woods populated by tall pines. The trees grew so close together that it felt like twilight to Sage as the truck slowly drifted along the winding drive.
After a few minutes, the vehicle emerged from the tree line onto the edge of a rolling meadow carpeted with wildflowers. Gaze dazzled by the riot of colors, Sage didn’t notice the house in the middle of the field until Jake pulled his truck up to the sprawling three-story building constructed of fieldstone, massive logs and big plates of tinted glass, everything topped by copper roofing.
“It’s a mansion,” Sage murmured as the front door opened. “Do they all live here?”
“No, just Lindy and Adler at the moment,” Jake answered, releasing the catch on his seat belt. With his face pointing down, he whispered a warning. “You’ve got incoming.”
Cutting a glance out her window, she saw that Adler Turk had already reached the side of the truck and was preparing to open her door. A smile ignited, then quickly burned out as she remembered it was a little too late for him to start pretending he was a gentleman. Still, she had promised herself to remain polite to this man unless he proved a threat to her family.
“Gam-gam!” Leah squealed, little legs kicking excitedly in her car seat as she spotted Lindy Turk standing on the wraparound porch. Seeing her uncle opening the front passenger door, the toddler’s arms shot out. “Addy, up Addy!”
Wearing a tight smile and her favorite blue dress, Sage accepted the hand Adler Turk extended. She stepped quickly from the truck and off to the side, her fingers sliding from Adler’s grip as soon as her feet hit the ground.
He turned his attention to the back of the cab where Leah continued to make grabby hands in his direction.
“Told you, Addy!” she admonished, mouth pushing forward into a pink bud as she pouted. “Up! Go Gam-Gam.”
“What am I, your chauffeur?” Adler asked, opening the back door and leaning in to unbuckle Leah.
Her small hand cupped his ear and then she planted a tender kiss on his cheek.
“No, silly. You my Addy.”
A lump formed in Sage’s throat. For a day and a half, she had watched the fleeting interactions between her brother and his daughter. Leah had been listless the entire time, shying away from Sage completely and only seeking her father when she needed something. Sage wanted to attribute the behavior to Leah getting sick, but the little girl had come alive once she realized the truck was headed west out of town. Seeing Leah react to her uncle’s presence, Sage wondered if Jake hadn’t fully bonded with his daughter—or if he had started pulling away after Dawn’s death, a misguided certainty filling his chest that he would soon lose Leah, too.
Not on my watch, Sage promised herself as Jake rounded the bed of the truck with Leah’s backpack over one shoulder.
Giving his arm a little squeeze, she followed her brother up onto the porch. Leah had already melted into her grandmother’s arms, one small hand tracing the shape of the older woman’s drop earrings.
“Eight!” Leah proclaimed after following the outline of the silver infinity symbol hanging from Lindy’s earlobe. Pulling back, she held up the correct number of fingers.
“Right you are,” Lindy said before peppering kisses across Leah’s face. Shifting the toddler to her hip, Lindy extended her hand. “Welcome to the homestead, Miss Ballard. Mind if I call you Sage?”
“Please do,” Sage murmured, accepting the proffered hand.
“Great. Come inside. You’re the first to arrive but the others should be along shortly.”
“Others?” Sage hadn’t been sure what to expect and Jake wouldn’t speculate. He only told her who wouldn’t be there for sure. That was the twins. At twenty-seven, they were both public servants, Sutton an enlisted soldier and Emerson with the FBI.
She hadn’t stopped marveling about that last bombshell. The baby of the clan by thirteen minutes, Special Agent Emerson Turk had never dug into Jake’s past—at least not before Sage had arrived in the middle of the night. Now that the family knew Jake had a sister, Sage wondered just how long before Emerson used his investigative experience to expose why Jake had lied.
Softly exhaling away the specter of that future day, she stepped from the porch into a large entry room filled with sunlight despite the tint on the two-story window above the front door. Lindy walked ahead, her voice soft as she answered Leah’s questions.
“See horses?”
“After dinner,” came the reply.
The woman was tall, like her oldest son, her build similarly robust but distinctly feminine. A touch of silver ran through dark red hair and the gaze was as green as the pale grass the truck had passed in the fields.
Stepping into a great room with multiple couches and a fireplace, Lindy set her granddaughter down. Leah immediately moved to Sage and tugged on the sleeve of her dress.
“Yes, Honey Bee?”
The nickname slid off Sage’s tongue without thought. It was something her mother had used for Sage and Jake because of their blond hair and frequent swarming. Hearing it from her own lips brought a tightness to her chest, the pressure increasing at Jake’s soft grunt.
“Honey Bee?”
The question came from behind, the voice feminine. Sage turned to find a female somewhere in her twenties. No taller than five-five, her body was all curves wrapped up in jeans and a red plaid shirt over a blue tee. Fancy boots that looked like they had never walked through a field covered her feet, a scroll of vines and leaves embossed in the leather and painted red. Long black hair spilled down the young woman’s back.
Sage risked stroking the top of Leah’s head, running the toddler’s hair through her fingers as she did so.
“Something I called Jake because of his hair. Their coloring is the same.”
She hoped the partial lie wasn’t evident in her voice. She had never called her brother that, but she knew mentioning their mother would invite a host of questions Jake didn’t want answered.
“Well, it’s better than Monkey Butt,” the woman said with a roll of her dark brown eyes at Adler Turk.
Sage lifted her chin at the rush of warmth flooding her cheeks. This young woman with the mischievous smile was Siobhan Turk, the 911 operator who had tried to pry Sage’s personal details out of her during the call. It hadn’t occurred to her that the woman would be present at dinner.
Should Sage acknowledge that she recognized Siobhan’s identity?
Another pull at her sleeve, this time with the soft stamp of a small foot, erased the question. She looked down at Leah, the delicate face turned upward, the budlike pout once more in place.
“What is it, Honey Bee?”
Seeing she had her aunt’s attention, the toddler curled her fingers around Sage’s and began to lead her down a side hall. Sage looked over her shoulder to see Lindy with her hand on Jake’s arm and Siobhan standing next to him.
Only Adler followed, his midnight blue gaze hooking and holding Sage as securely as the toddler had captured her hand.
The hall felt as long as the drive through the trees. But they came at last to a set of open double doors. Beyond them, what might have been a small library at one time had been converted to a large playroom. There were beanbags on the floor, two toy chests, and a daybed covered with frilly pink pillows and a cream-colored blanket. The built-in bookcases held more attractions for children. There were books, of course, a few movies, dolls, stuffed animals, and plastic replicas of the kind of creatures that populated the ranch.
Bypassing the dolls, Leah led Sage straight to the stuffed animals. Reaching up, she pulled down a rabbit, a squirrel, and a great ape.
“This Rilla,” Leah announced, putting her hand up the toy’s backside to reveal it was a puppet. Finding opposing patches of Velcro on the arms, she stuck them together, pulled the arms over her head like the toy was hugging her, then reached for the ra
bbit.
“What’s his name?” Sage asked. She beamed a silly grin at the girl, Adler forgotten in the hall as Leah opened up to her for the first time.
“Quigly,” Leah answered. “‘Cause he fast. This Swirril.”
Leah made the squirrel dance. Sage thought her heart would explode. She hadn’t done the babysitting thing as a teenager. She hadn’t done the dorm thing at college, either, nor had she finished her degree. She hopped jobs out of necessity. So she had never really bonded with women who went on to produce tiny versions of themselves.
Now she understood exactly what she had been missing—and what Jake had been keeping to himself for almost two years.
Leah put the stuffed animals back on the shelf then reclaimed Sage’s hand. She led her aunt through a side door in the room, the once-upon-a-time library connecting to an office complete with a big desk, a love seat against the opposite wall, a filing cabinet, and a computer.
Leah crawled up onto the desk chair. “Mommy work.”
More than just a computer, the desk sported a landline, some pads of paper and several photograph frames. Leah grabbed the largest frame and handed it to Sage.
The picture inside was less than a year old. Leah was younger but not by much. Anchored on each side of the little girl were Jake and Dawn.
Sage looked up from the image to see Leah watching her with eyes grown suddenly sad.
“Oh, Honey Bee,” she whispered, lifting the little girl into her arms.
Forgotten in the hall, Adler cleared his throat. “Sounds like Walker and Barrett have arrived. I guess I should introduce you to my brothers.”
Sage lifted a brow. She couldn’t be sure, but Adler sounded like he wanted to keep her away from his brothers. She hoped it was just her ears playing tricks on her. Otherwise, the next member of his family he tried to keep from her might be Leah.
6
Adler led Sage and Leah to the dining room, where everyone had settled. He went around the table introducing the new arrivals. He started with Dorothea Turk. Time had shrunk the elderly woman down to a little over five feet tall. It had also gnarled her hands with arthritis. She wore her silver-gray hair in a pixie cut, the style making her bright blue eyes pop against the weathered face.