Stay...

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “Tell me this, Jefferson,” she said as she turned away abruptly, but not before he’d seen the sheen of tears in her eyes.

  “What?”

  “If that bullet had killed you two years ago, would we have ever known about it? Or would we have just gone on believing that you were still going around the globe, working yourself from one adventure to the next?”

  Kim’s wife had received a telegram, hand delivered by a chaplain appointed for such tasks. A man who’d been unable to divulge much more information than had been in the too-brief, too-horrifying message. “They’d have notified you,” Jefferson said quietly.

  He watched her slender shoulders tremble. “They.” Her shoulders firmed and she turned to face him. Her arms twined about her waist and she looked anywhere but at him. “Whoever they are.”

  “Em, we need to talk.”

  Emily couldn’t believe her ears. What did the man think she’d been trying to do with him since he came back into their lives? “That’s rich coming from you,” she said, her lips twisting.

  “About last night.”

  She shifted. From a distance she heard an engine crank to life. A dog barked. The Double-C gearing up for another day. “What about it?”

  “We…I…didn’t use anything. To protect you.”

  Squelching every shred of emotion from her face, she looked up at him. “From what?”

  Something flickered in his eyes. Just for a moment. “Pregnancy.”

  “Oh. That.”

  “What did you think I meant?”

  “How should I know? HIV?”

  His teeth bared for a bare second. “You think I’d take a chance with you like that?”

  “How should I know?” She sighed and recanted. “No, I don’t believe you would.”

  “I’ve been tested,” he said stiffly.

  “Fine.”

  “You shouldn’t be so casual about it.”

  “Fine.”

  “You need to check these things out beforehand, not afterward when it’s way too late.”

  “Like you did with this pregnancy idea?”

  His eyes flashed and were carefully banked. “Seeing that you were—”

  “Incredibly stupid,” she supplied.

  “—a virgin,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “I suppose you’re not on the pill or anything.”

  She studied him. Anything was preferable to his unyielding, unsmiling, unflinching control. She knew he had feelings. Emotions. Lord, the man was a seething cauldron of emotion. If he’d only just let out some of it. As he had when there’d been nothing between them but the layers of skin on their bodies. She’d gambled everything in her heart on breaking through to him, once and for all. Had it all been for nothing?

  “Emily?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she finally dismissed.

  His eyebrow twitched. “When’s your period due?”

  A tide of color burned its way up her neck to her cheeks to the tips of her ears. “That,” she snapped angrily, “is none of your blasted business.” Spinning on her heel, she took off, twigs snapping under the stomp of her sandals.

  “The hell it’s none of my business,” he grated, starting to take after her. But their night on the ground had taken its toll and a sharp pain seared its way down his spine. Swearing, he stood stock-still, waiting for the pain to abate. And watching her slender figure moving farther and farther away.

  By the time the pain eventually subsided, he was drenched with sweat. Emily was nowhere in sight. Moving slowly, he went back to get his shirt. Using a tree for support, he bent at the knees and snagged the denim between two fingers. He started to straighten and noticed the panties that still hung from the lilac bush.

  He slowly reached out and untangled the bit of lace, unaccountably sad when the lace snagged and a tiny tear formed. Carefully, he worked them free. They were still slightly damp from when he’d rinsed them in the spring water. He laid them over his thigh, fingering the torn lace. Ruined. Just like so many things he touched lately.

  He started to rise again. The pain that shot through him this time told him that the first one had merely been a mild warning. Nausea clawed at him and his back ached too badly to even swear. Eventually, when the stabbing pain had mutated into a stiff, throbbing pain, he slowly began walking back toward the house.

  Naturally, the first person Emily saw when she slipped in through the front door of the house was Tristan. He’d set up his computer in the little-used front room. Why couldn’t he still have been sleeping? Then she could have made it up to her bedroom in privacy.

  He looked up when the door opened and he leaned back against the couch. “What’s this? Emily, I do believe those were the very clothes you were wearing last night.” He fanned himself. “Mercy me. Have you been out all night? How scandalous.”

  “Shut up.”

  His wicked grin lost some wattage. “I’m not exactly hearing the lilt of morning-after euphoria in your voice.”

  “Aren’t you the genius,” she marveled sarcastically, stepping over the electrical and phone cords stretching from the wall to where his equipment was laid out upon the gleaming cherry wood coffee table.

  “Whoa,” Tristan leaped off the couch and headed her off before she reached the staircase. He took her shoulders in his hands and marched her back into the living room. “Give.”

  She twisted out of his hold. “Not now, Tristan. I’m not in the mood.”

  “We’ve got enough people in this family who don’t talk about what’s bugging them. We don’t need to add you to the ranks.” Pulling her by the wrist, he nudged her onto the couch and set his printer on the floor to make room for himself on the coffee table facing her. “What happened?”

  “Your brother happened.” Her elbows propped on her knees, she buried her face in her hands. “I’m such a fool.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  He gently pried her hands away from her face. “Tell me.”

  Long-used to Tristan’s brand of nosiness, she sighed. “It’s none of your business.”

  “I’m wounded. This is you and my brother we’re talking about here.”

  “Yes, well, it still doesn’t concern you.”

  “Emily,” he tsked.

  She groaned and raked her hands through her hair. “Oh, all right. All right!” Her hands flopped down onto the couch. “For crying out loud, between the two of you…” She shook her head, then again plopped her face in her hands. Her voice was a muffled mumble. “Some things are just too private, you know?”

  “So, tell me the parts that aren’t so private.” He sighed, patting her knee. “I’ll start. Will that help?” In typical Tristan fashion, he plowed right on, despite the very plain shaking of her head. “Rather than visit the esteemed Squire Clay in the hospital last evening, we know you chose to seek out my stubborn brother. You found him. Knowing Jefferson, you talked while he probably sat there doing his imitation of a hunk of granite.

  “Then, at some point, you probably got irritated with one another. There’s no surprise there. It’s what usually happens between you two. Then, one way or another, you guys ended up, shall we say, bunking down together? I know you didn’t come back to the house.”

  “What did you do? Sit at the foot of my bed, waiting up for me?”

  “No, I’ve been working all night. Right in this spot, squirt. I’d have heard you come in. So, how am I doing so far? Then, in the cold light of day, you or Jefferson…probably Jeff in his usual fashion…screwed it all up.”

  “He doesn’t screw up.” Emily’s head lifted. “How can you say such a thing!”

  Tristan smiled faintly. “Just seeing if you were listening.”

  “You…are…a…pig.”

  He smiled happily. “Yup. A Clay Pig.” His big hands rubbed together. “So, what went wrong?”

  Emily absently plucked a crushed leaf from the ends of her hair. “Has Jefferson told you what he’s been doing the past several years?”


  Tristan’s eyes strayed for a moment to his computer. “Not exactly.”

  The leaf came free and she studiously placed it in the crystal ashtray sitting on the little round table next to the couch. “He’s, um, got a scar. On his back.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Did he tell you where he got it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did he tell you why he got it?”

  Tristan shook his head.

  “At least he’s consistent,” Emily pushed to her feet, stepped around Tristan’s big feet and paced to the wide picture window. “He’s had surgery, too. Did he tell you about that? He certainly wouldn’t tell me.”

  She touched the spot on her hip where Jefferson’s scar was located. Tristan’s computer suddenly beeped softly, and paper began spewing from the printer. She bit her lip, staring sightlessly through the lace curtains. “I thought it would make a difference to him. After we—” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Well, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “We scratched an itch, Tristan,” Emily said deliberately. So deliberately that perhaps she would actually believe that was all she and Jefferson had shared.

  “Is that what he said?” Tristan slowly rose.

  “No. But that’s what it all amounts to, anyway.” She twitched a lace panel into place. “What is it with you guys, anyway?”

  “Are we talking guys in general?” he asked warily. “Or the Clay species?”

  Her lips twisted. “I dunno. Clay, I suppose. You all hide so much of yourselves. You only give a little bit away.”

  Tristan only grunted in reply.

  Emily swiveled on her heel and waved at the array of equipment spread about the room. At the paper silently sliding into the printer tray. “What do you do with all that stuff?”

  He frowned, looking down at his equipment. “Consulting. Stuff like that. You know.”

  “No, actually I don’t know. You’ve never really answered me whenever I’ve asked. And I just finally quit asking. Almost everything that I know about what you do, I’ve read in some magazine or newspaper article. You design software. You consult. You work for yourself, but you still work for someone else at times, or so it appears. I don’t know who. You hardly take two steps out of the house without one of your little toys there at your side.

  “You get calls in the middle of the night, and you’ll take off for days at a time. You rack up more frequent flyer mileage than anyone I know. But I still don’t really know what you do. And I live with you. You’re almost as secretive as Sawyer, only I know he’s with the navy. He, at least, wears a uniform. And then there’s Jefferson. He’s worse than all of you put together.” She hugged her arms to her.

  “We’re not all operating in some cloak of secrecy, you know. Matthew and Dan are about as upfront as it gets. And you know confidentiality is an important part of my job. But a job is all it is.”

  “So what kind of job is it that gets Jefferson shot up with something that blows a hole through his back the size of my fist? He’d never be involved in anything illegal, I just know he wouldn’t. Why does it all have to be such a big mystery?”

  The window rattled under the force of Emily’s open palm. “I just want him to open up to me! I thought if we…well, you know…I thought it would be a start. It’s not like I expected him to propose or anything. I just need him to share himself with me. Instead, he gives me some song and dance about safe sex and getting pregnant.”

  Tristan’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Uh, is that a possibility here?”

  She gave him a stony glare.

  “Sorry.”

  Emily sighed tiredly. Her emotions were heaving back and forth, riding a crazy roller coaster. “I love him. Tristan. I’d do anything for him.”

  “I know, squirt.”

  “I’d walk away from him if it was what he wanted.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I’m not so sure.” She didn’t need to close her eyes to picture the way Jefferson had looked at her earlier. As if they were two strangers passing on the street. Discussing the weather, rather than the baby he might have created with her. So effectively denying her the right or privilege of sharing the trauma he’d experienced. He’d done it as easily as turning off a light switch. “I want to believe that last night wasn’t a mistake.”

  “Loving someone the way you love Jefferson is never a mistake,” Tristan said quietly. “And you also need to remember that Jefferson doesn’t do anything he doesn’t choose to do.”

  Emily nodded sadly as she headed for the stairs. “Exactly.”

  Emily was sitting on the window seat in her bedroom, looking out, when Tristan came up to her room a few minutes later, carrying a stack of papers.

  “Here.” He held out the papers. “Maybe this’ll give you some answers.”

  Puzzled, Emily automatically took the stack in her hands. “What is this?”

  “The story of Jefferson Clay.” Tristan scrubbed his hands over his face, raking his fingers through his hair. “Don’t read it at bedtime, though. It’ll give you nightmares.”

  Unwillingly her eyes scanned the first few lines of the top page. She didn’t recognize the name of the company, but she certainly could identify the type of information printed. “Tristan, this is a personnel file. How’d you get it?”

  “I just did. Don’t question it.”

  “You’ve been hacking?” She shot to her feet. “No way! Tristan, that’s illegal! You’re supposed to catch hackers! Not be one!”

  “I wasn’t hacking,” he said quietly.

  “Then how—”

  “It’s just one of the jobs I do, okay? Don’t worry about it. I didn’t do a single illegal thing to get that information.”

  “No.” Shaking her head, she shoved the papers back at him. “I’m not going to read any of this. How’d you know where to look anyway?”

  He heaved a sigh. “Look, it’s not important how or why I came by the info. Let’s just say that Jefferson wanted to keep his business private, and I saw no reason to disabuse him of that idea. It’s only been since he returned that I’ve been nosing around.”

  “I thought Sawyer was the eyes and ears in this family. Are you secretly with the navy?” She eyed him sarcastically.

  “No. Look, we’re straying from the point here. Which is,” he said as he pushed the papers back into her hand. “This.”

  “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to read this.”

  “Why not?

  “It would be wrong, that’s why not!”

  “Wrong or not, it’ll explain pretty much everything to you.”

  “I want that sort of thing to come from Jefferson’s lips. Not some stack of papers you’ve managed to obtain! Here, take them back.”

  “No. Keep them. You might change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” she assured him, even though her curiosity was practically choking the life out of her. She firmly placed the stack of papers on the dresser. “You’ve wasted your time.”

  “We’ll see,” Tristan said. “We’ll just wait and see.”

  “You’ll just wait,” Emily corrected. “Now get out of here. I want to take a shower.”

  He headed for the door.

  “Tris, wait—”

  Tristan turned. “I knew you’d change your mind. It didn’t even take five minutes.”

  “I have not changed my mind. I was only going to ask how Squire was last night.”

  “Fine. They plan to release him tomorrow.”

  “So soon?”

  “He’ll have to take it easy here, for a while, of course. And his cardiologist has assigned a nurse to stay with him for the first week. Since we’re so far from immediate care. But they really don’t expect any problems.”

  “That’s so wonderful.” Emily blinked back relieved tears. But along with the relief came another dart of worry.

  How long would Jefferson be able to stay under t
he same roof as his father?

  Chapter Eleven

  That night Emily cooked a celebratory dinner. She’d managed not to think, too often at least, about the stack of paper sitting upstairs on the dresser in her bedroom. She hadn’t seen Jefferson in person since she’d left him that morning by the swimming hole, though she’d surreptitiously watched him from an upstairs window when he’d been working with a huge black horse. Carbon, she’d realized. For long minutes she’d watched him, drinking in the sight, even though she hadn’t been able to see his face because of the battered cowboy hat tilted over his eyes.

  It was the Jefferson she remembered. The man with an affinity for stubborn horses like no one she’d seen before or since. The man she’d fallen in love with before she’d been old enough to understand how that love would forever affect her life. She’d sat at the window, long after Jefferson had taken Carbon back to the barn, remembering every moment of the night they’d shared.

  She’d sought out Maggie before noon and had shared her plans for the dinner, taking care not to step on any toes. As it turned out, Maggie had been feeling particularly nauseous. Jaimie had been helping with the huge noon meal, and it worked out perfectly that Emily would cook for the Clays that evening. It also gave Emily something productive to do.

  She’d even managed to convince Maggie that she and Joe and Jaimie should join them. Emily dumped a tray of ice into the freshly steeped tea and glanced at the clock. In fact, the Greenes should be arriving any minute. Wiping her palms on the apron covering her sleeveless peach sweater and loose pants, she carried the crystal pitcher into the dining room.

  “Hi, Matt. Could you get those glasses down from the top shelf of the hutch? I can’t reach them without getting on a chair.”

  He opened the glass-fronted antique and began removing the delicate, fluted crystal. “They need rinsing,” he commented.

  “I know. Oh, you need three more,” she mentioned.

  Matthew didn’t need to count the plates she’d placed around the linen-covered table to know there were too many. “Three?”