“At the very least, that son of a bitch will want to confront his wife. We can only hope he’ll take a shot at stealing the kids. Whichever move he makes, when he finally makes his move, you will grab him.”
Jack wasn’t surprised that D’Amato was planning to use Kate and the twins to lure J.D. Pendleton into the open, but he said, “I would think you’d rather keep your grandsons—and their mother—out of the line of fire.”
“They’ll be fine. One of the Texas Rangers’ finest will be there to keep an eye on them.”
“How do you figure that? As you pointed out, the three of them are now living with Shaw.”
“There’s no need for pretense, Sergeant. I know about your relationship with J.D.’s wife. I won’t mind at all if you ruffle my son’s feathers by getting as close to her as you can—and staying there.”
Jack felt a cold shiver knife down his spine. “I don’t know where you got the idea that Kate and I are together.”
“You’re in love with her. And she loves you. Although I’d question the latter, if I were you, considering the fact she was fucking my son last night.”
Jack came halfway out of his seat, saw the smirk on D’Amato’s face and forced himself to sit back down. D’Amato was quoting back Jack’s conversation with Kate yesterday afternoon at her house. The mob boss must have J.D.’s home bugged. Obviously, there were a lot more players than Jack and the hitmen assigned to track down J.D. Pendleton.
“J.D.’s wife will be untouchable so long as she’s behind Shaw’s walls,” D’Amato said. “But I understand she has insisted on working. Which means she’ll be alone for long periods at M.D. Anderson.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about Kate’s life?”
“I know all there is to know about your girlfriend. Just as I know all there is to know about your wife. Including the fact you’re not fucking her. At least, not lately,” D’Amato said with another smirk. “Although, you can always hope that will change, now that you’re moving in with her and your boy.”
Jack clenched his fists and managed, barely, to hold on to his temper. D’Amato was like a bully poking a chained dog with a stick through a fence. He felt safe rattling Jack’s chain from outside the bars. Jack consoled himself with the thought of what it would be like to sink his teeth into D’Amato’s hide, figuratively speaking, of course.
Watch out for your throat, old man, because one of these days I’m going to rip it out.
“I will contact Mrs. Pendleton and introduce myself and ask if I may meet my grandsons,” D’Amato continued. “Wyatt will try to stop her. Being a stubborn woman, she will then insist upon it. I will make sure I meet the boys where J.D. will be tempted to make a try for them.”
“And I’ll be there to catch him,” Jack finished.
“Precisely.” D’Amato’s eyes narrowed to slits. “And Roberto will make sure that the son of a bitch tells me what I want to know.”
Jack knew the plan would work, because both Shaw and Kate were likely to react exactly as D’Amato had predicted. Jack felt the blood throbbing in his temples and consciously relaxed his hands. His job was to capture J.D. before D’Amato did. That was turning out to be even more of a challenge that he’d thought.
So far, D’Amato had stayed five steps ahead of him. It was about time he took the lead.
14
Holly Gayle Tanner had always loved Jack McKinley. But she’d never trusted him. She’d held him close and loved him well when he was with her. But every time he headed out the door, she wondered if he’d be coming back. From the time she was knee-high to a grasshopper she’d known the way of the world: Men left. And women wept.
Growing up in a small East Texas town like Kountze hadn’t been easy for a girl with big dreams and a drunk for a father. As the eldest of five, Holly couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t trying to figure out how to keep the little ones from going hungry. Food stamps only went so far.
So at ten years old she’d planted tomatoes and string beans and watermelon in the rich red earth behind their shanty in the piney woods, better known as the Big Thicket, located so far east in Texas that it was practically in Louisiana.
They’d eaten stewed tomatoes and string beans over rice, and sliced tomatoes and string beans, and pickled tomatoes and string beans, and tomato soup and string beans, until she expected her skin to turn red and green. In the late summer they gorged on sweet, juicy watermelon that left their fingers sticky, and made a contest of spitting the seeds as far as they could.
All the while she hoed weeds and picked off caterpillars, Holly was planning how she’d have a different life than her mother. She’d learned early that her brains could get her a scholarship to college—and her beauty could get her just about anything else. The wealthiest man she knew in Kountze, the one with the biggest house, anyway, was Doc Benton. So she decided to become a doctor.
Holly had no intention of getting married. Ever. But she’d been fascinated to discover how much feminine power resided in her hourglass figure. She had a tiny waist set off by both generous breasts and sexy hips, exotic green eyes, a pretty smile, a pert, lightly freckled nose and curly red hair that she enhanced, unbeknownst to the boys or her mother, with a henna rinse.
While she was making the most of her looks, she was also getting straight A’s and planning her escape from Kountze. She never told anyone about her plans to go to medical school. The kids in her tiny high school would have laughed at the idea of Holly Gayle Tanner—with boobs and a butt that were heaven on earth—becoming a doctor.
Kountze was a basketball championship town in a football crazy state. Because she was the prettiest girl in school and could have her pick of the boys, she’d had her eye on the high-point basketball forward. She’d been caught off guard when the Kountze Lions’ football quarterback, Jack McKinley—with a mediocre team record of four wins, four losses and a tie—had asked her for a date.
Since Jack was just as tall, and better-looking, than the basketball forward, she’d said yes. She’d never expected to like him so much. He was thoughtful and kind. His kisses left her breathless. And he’d been gentle when he’d taken her virginity. Actually, it had been as much give on her part as take on his.
Best of all, Jack understood what it was like growing up with a father who made your life hell.
Jack’s father gambled away his paycheck every Friday night betting on whatever sport was in season, so Jack knew what it was like to scrounge food for himself and his two younger sisters. He understood what it was like to want a life beyond the boundaries of an old railroad town of two thousand mostly white, mostly lower income residents, where the labels you got at sixteen stayed with you the rest of your life.
Jack had been a refuge from the stark reality of her life.
It wasn’t just that her daddy was mean when he was drunk, calling names and striking out with his fists. When he was on a binge, he’d slam the screen door on his way out and disappear for days or weeks at a time. Once he was gone for a year, two months and three days. Her mother had cried bitter tears and languished all the while he was gone.
But she took him back.
Holly couldn’t see the point. Why set yourself up for that kind of disappointment again?
She had never wanted to hurt Jack. But when she saw him making plans for their future his senior year that included a walk down the aisle, she’d broken up with him.
Holly had kept her eye on the prize. First a high school diploma. Then a college degree. Then medical school. Internship and residency. And finally a specialty.
Eventually, she’d become a pediatric oncologist. She’d found herself wanting to understand more about the cancer that too often won the battles she fought. She began to do research into new treatments for childhood leukemia and made several breakthroughs that brought her notoriety.
She’d still been unmarried at thirty-one, when she’d met Jack again at his 15th Kountze High School reunion. They’d spent the night talking and laugh
ing and making love. She’d listened as he told her how his father’s gambling vice had ruined his football career. How he’d found work that made him happy and proud of himself with the Texas Rangers.
He’d listened to how she’d made her escape from Kountze just a few years after him. How much she enjoyed her work healing children and investigating the diseases that took their lives. And how lonely she was.
He’d comforted her. He’d made her feel cherished. And she’d finally understood why her mother had always taken her father back.
Holly wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to marry Jack, when she knew how it was going to end. Ryan, born three years after they married, had been an accident. She’d been determined not to bring a child into the world to suffer as she had in her youth. But she never thought of ending the pregnancy, and from the moment she held her son in her arms, she’d loved Ryan with her whole body and soul, the way she’d never been able to love Jack.
It hadn’t been a comfortable marriage. She and Jack had loved hard. And fought harder.
She’d never given Jack her whole heart because she hadn’t trusted him not to break it. For long periods she could keep her fears at bay, but they never really disappeared.
Whenever Jack was a minute-and-a-half late, she started worrying he was gone for good. She looked cockeyed at him if he had more than a single shot or a couple of beers. And it wasn’t only her own father’s vices she feared. She waited and watched for signs in Jack of his father’s compulsive gambling.
Finally, it had seemed easier to send Jack away herself. That way she didn’t have to keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Once he was gone for good she could grieve and get over him and move on with her life.
Only it hadn’t worked out that way.
Holly had learned something unexpected during their year of separation. She was miserable without Jack. She loved him, and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.
She was afraid her revelation might have come too late.
Because sometime during the eleven months when she’d been figuring out why she’d shoved Jack out the door and learning how to let him more fully into her life and becoming a more trusting—and less neurotic—person, Jack had fallen in love with another woman.
Holly certainly hadn’t planned to get pregnant again, but she blessed the child in her womb, because it gave Jack a reason to move back in. It had taken a lot of courage to mail Ryan’s Valentine’s Day card, with the drawing of her extended belly, but all had turned out well. She’d been given one last chance to win back her husband’s love.
Holly ran her hands over her five-months-pregnant curves and smiled wryly. She wasn’t even going to be able to use her beauty to lure him back. She was going to have to do it with a protruding stomach and fat ankles.
Her plan was simple. She would offer Jack her whole heart. And trust he would accept it.
“Mommy, Daddy’s here!” Ryan called from the living room.
Holly knew her son had been on his knees on the couch looking out the front picture window waiting for his father for the past hour. Jack was late. But she was not going to make an issue of it. She was not.
“Let him in, please, Ryan.”
Holly looked around the kitchen at packing boxes she’d purposely left half full. One of the ways she’d excluded Jack was by being extremely self-sufficient. She had to let him help her. She had to learn to depend on him.
Which wasn’t easy for a woman who hadn’t dared rely on the adults in her life when she was a child.
You’re a grown-up now, Holly Gayle. And Jack is reliable and responsible. He won’t let you down.
And that was another thing. She’d been Holly all through high school. It was only when she’d moved away that she’d dropped her first name and begun calling herself Gayle, because she thought Holly sounded too much like a Christmas decoration. Jack had balked at calling her Gayle, except when he was mad at her, preferring the name he’d called her when they were kids.
She’d already written to him, telling him that she was using Holly again. It was a small thing, but she needed all the reminders she could get of a time when Jack had loved her.
Holly left the kitchen and stepped into the living room, where she found Jack hefting Ryan, who was really getting too big for it, into his arms for a hug.
“I missed you!” Jack said, rubbing noses with his son.
“I missed you, too,” Ryan said, wrapping his arms tight around his father’s neck and pressing his cheek against Jack’s throat.
And then Jack saw her. His eyes never left hers as he set Ryan back on his feet. Holly felt breathless. She always forgot how good-looking Jack was, and how far she had to look up to meet his gaze. The sight of him made her pregnant body coil in expectation of his touch.
Ryan grabbed his father’s hand and tagged along beside him as he crossed to her.
She swallowed down the sudden lump of emotion in her throat and said, “Hello, Jack.”
“Hello, Holly.” His gaze dropped to her burgeoning belly.
She could see that he wanted to touch. He’d been fascinated by the way her abdomen grew when she’d been pregnant with Ryan. How taut it was, like a drum, when the rest of her was so soft. She reached for his hand and laid it on her belly and said, “She’s been moving around a lot today.”
“She? Do you know the baby’s sex?”
“No. I just have a feeling that this time it’s a little girl.” She felt her smile grow until it was so big it crinkled her eyes.
And he smiled back. His hand moved reverently over her belly, which was framed by a clingy white knit maternity top. “I’d like having a daughter to spoil.” He jerked his hand away. “She just kicked me,” he said with a laugh.
“Let me feel,” Ryan said.
He put his small hand on her belly, and Jack put his larger hand over it. The two men in her life waited with bated breath for the baby to move again.
“She’s obviously found a comfortable spot to sleep,” Holly said a few moments later, when the child inside her stayed quiescent.
Jack reluctantly removed his hand and took a step back. Ryan followed suit. Jack turned and looked around the living room, which held the hodgepodge of furniture the two of them had bought a piece at a time during their marriage.
They’d collected items they liked, without any thought to how they would look together, with mixed fabrics, mostly in blues and browns and beiges. A glass-bottomed lamp. A pine end table. A corduroy chair with an ottoman for him. A silk, flower-print upholstered rocker for her. And a long, wide, durable leather couch for making love.
“I’m sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get here sooner,” Jack said. “I had a meeting this morning. Work. I tried calling, but you didn’t pick up.”
She slapped her forehead. “I stuck my purse under the sink in the bathroom while the movers were here. I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me.”
“I left a message that I’d be late.”
Which was precisely why she hadn’t checked her voice mail after the movers left. She’d been too afraid she’d find a message that said he’d changed his mind about coming. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
An awkward silence followed, when he could have said, “I’m glad to be here.” And didn’t.
He glanced around. “It looks like someone’s already done all the heavy lifting.”
“Not me,” she assured him. “The movers stayed long enough for me to figure out where I wanted things.”
She could see he was disappointed. She’d shut him out of so much during their marriage. Now it was happening again. “There is something you could help me with,” she said, quickly looking around the living room to see what she could move.
She pointed to the rocker in which she’d sat for so many hours nursing Ryan. “I think my rocker is too far from the fireplace.”
“You always did like to roast your toes,” he said with a wry grin, heading across the room. “Come here and let me know when I’ve got
it right.”
“I’ll help you, Daddy,” Ryan said.
“Thanks, son.”
Holly bit back a warning to Ryan to be careful. She’d noticed the other day that he had a few bruises on his legs and one on his elbow. He was a boy. He needed to run and play. And she knew Jack wouldn’t let him get hurt.
As Jack lifted the chair and moved it forward, she could see Ryan’s hold on the opposite side was probably adding weight, but Jack only said, “Good job, Ryan.”
“Three or four inches is plenty,” she said.
Jack adjusted the rocker, angled it and said, “How’s that?”
“Yeah, Mommy,” Ryan said, putting his hands on his hips in imitation of his father and surveying the rocker. “How’s that?”
“Perfect.” She smiled at him. At them. Beamed, actually. Was she overdoing it?
Jack cocked a brow, and she knew he was waiting for the but that usually followed anything he did for her. He was going to be waiting a long time.
“I could use some help unpacking in the kitchen,” she said. Was that surprise she saw in Jack’s eyes? Had she really been so critical? And so independent? Was it so very strange for her to ask for his help? Apparently, it was.
“Come on, Ryan,” he said, “Let’s go help Mommy unpack.”
Holly had already unpacked enough dishes and pots and pans and silverware to show Jack where she wanted everything. They worked together for the next hour in perfect harmony.
“What’s your schedule like at the hospital?” he asked.
“Believe it or not, I’m working nine to five.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.
In the past, Holly had often become so engrossed in her work that she’d forgotten the time and ended up missing supper, and sometimes even Ryan’s bedtime. That was another thing she planned to change.
“Did you get as sick the first couple of months as you did with Ryan?” Jack asked.
She shook her head. “But I’ve needed a lot more rest during this pregnancy, so I’ve been taking a break in the middle of the day for a nap. I’ve turned forty-one, you know.”
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