Back on Bittercreek Ranch

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Jane sipped her coffee. “Though knowing Mason,” Pam went on, “I can’t say he wouldn’t have the same reaction a dozen years from now, after he’s had plenty of experience being a father. Mason can be a hard man.”

  A mild understatement, she thought. The man had a glare that could cut grooves in tungsten. “I had guessed as much. Has he always been this way?”

  “I suppose so. He was a tough kid who grew into a tougher man. Not that he had much choice, I suppose. His mama died when he was thirteen or so—the cancer—and both he and his dad took it hard. I was newly married, just moved in over at our place, and I really felt for both of them. They fought all the time and Mason took off as soon as he graduated from high school. He hated this place and couldn’t wait to leave.”

  Pam started to clear her plate but Jane shook her head, unwilling to let the other woman wait on her further—and hoping she would continue more of this fascinating discourse on Mason Keller.

  “Where did he go?” she asked, loading her dishes into the dishwasher.

  “Joined the Army. Special Forces. Rangers, I guess. Best thing for him, you ask me. He didn’t come back often over the years but the few times he did, I could see the changes in him. Everybody could. Mason went in an angry kid and after only a few months they made a man out of him. It was like watching steel temper in front of my eyes. He just seemed to get harder and harder over the years.”

  Pam shook her head with a smile. “But not so hard that he couldn’t forgive. He and his dad made their peace about five years ago, a couple of years before Boyd Keller died of a heart attack. But even when they were on the outs, I never saw a man so proud of his boy as old Boyd.”

  Jane returned the other woman’s smile, relieved that Mason hadn’t had to endure his father’s death with regrets or self-recrimination.

  Did she have living parents, someone who might be worrying for her? She had a quick flashing image of a handsome, distinguished man with a charming smile and piercing blue eyes. She caught her breath, trying to burn the image into her mind, but she had grabbed hold of it an instant too late. It was gone so quickly she couldn’t catch it.

  She gave a tiny whimper, though she wasn’t really aware of it until Pam reached out and touched her shoulder.

  “Are you all right?”

  Jane exhaled slowly. “I thought I was grabbing hold of some memory there but it slipped away.”

  Pam pulled her into a quick hug that Jane had to admit she found wonderfully comforting. “You poor thing. I can’t imagine how frightening this must be for you. But don’t you worry. We’re going to help you through it and before you know it, you’ll be your old self again.”

  Whatever—or whoever—that was, Jane thought. After her terrifying dreams the night before, she was almost more afraid that her memory would come back. And that she wouldn’t like what she remembered.

  * * *

  It was nearly 10:00 p.m. when Mason walked into the Bittercreek kitchen. His back ached from lying on gravel for two hours trying to fix the damn fuel pump on Burnell Lewis’s truck and he hadn’t eaten since wolfing down a charred hamburger at the auction in between bids and that was nine hours ago.

  All he wanted was a little food in his stomach and a warm bed. But first he was going to have to be a man and face the wrath of Pam, who had been stuck here for fourteen hours with his kids.

  He didn’t suppose it would do any good for him to use the excuse that the delay could be firmly blamed on her husband’s piece-of-crap truck. Pam wasn’t exactly the forgiving sort.

  Might as well face his medicine.

  “Pam?” he called softly as he walked through the house looking for her. She didn’t answer—nor did she come running out wielding a frying pan to bean him with.

  Frowning, he headed up the stairs. He opened Charlie’s bedroom door and found the room empty, his bed unused. Maybe she’d taken the children over to the Lewis place to sleep—but wouldn’t she have left some kind of note if she had so he wouldn’t rip the house apart looking for them?

  When he walked across the hall to Miriam’s room, though, he found them both asleep on the floor, atop the intricately woven banig they had brought from their home.

  He shouldn’t have been so surprised, Mason thought. Though they had separate bedrooms, more often than not, he found them together in one of their rooms, usually on the banig. He supposed in some ways the traditional sleeping mat was a security blanket for them, one of their last ties to the life they’d left behind.

  Though it frustrated him that they didn’t feel comfortable yet here with him, he couldn’t really blame them. This had to be a terrifying time for two young children, uprooted from everything familiar and thrust into a world where they knew no one but him and each other.

  Miriam and Charlie had few constants in their world right now and he understood their need to cling to each other—and to the comfort of something that had belonged to their parents.

  He understood, but he couldn’t help wishing he had some kind of guidebook to help him know when they should be ready to separate a little from each other. At least when they might be comfortable enough in his home to spend the night in their own rooms. How was he supposed to know these kinds of things?

  So at least one mystery was solved—he knew where the children were. But where was Pam? He couldn’t believe she would just leave them here. He had a good mind to head over to the Rocking L and give her a piece of his mind.

  He was still stewing when some subtle change in the atmosphere—a scent, a tiny sound, perhaps just a shifting of molecules—warned him that he was no longer alone.

  Instantly alert, he whirled, instinctively reaching for a weapon he wasn’t wearing.

  CHAPTER 7

  His houseguest.

  His hand dropped to his side and he stood in the dim hallway feeling foolish.

  She was lovely in the low light, small and ethereal. She wore jeans and a T-shirt in a color that reminded him of key lime pie and had pulled her hair back in a ponytail thing that made her look about sixteen.

  Something about seeing her this way struck a chord and he cocked his head, trying to figure out why she looked so familiar.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  He’d just spent more than a dozen years as a government spook. He refused to allow himself to be startled in his own damn house.

  “You didn’t,” he lied, then he felt even more foolish when she raised her eyebrows in a doubtful look, as if she knew perfectly well he wasn’t telling the truth.

  “Where’s Pam?” he asked, mostly in an effort to change the subject. “I called for her when I came home but she didn’t answer.”

  “She’s not here, I’m afraid. She left around six-thirty.”

  “Really? The kids were in bed that early?”

  She shook her head, peering into the room where Miriam and Charlie were curled up on the floor. “Shall we discuss this downstairs so we don’t wake the children?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she headed for the stairs and Mason had the distinct impression by the stiffness of her shoulders that she was retreating down the stairs to avoid meeting his gaze.

  In the kitchen, she leaned against the counter, her arms folded across her chest. He thought he saw apprehension in smoky-blue eyes but she hid it behind a pleasant smile.

  “Pam had a terrible migraine,” she said in that prim British accent he was disgusted to discover hadn’t lost one bit of its effect on him. “I could see her poor head was throbbing so I encouraged her to go home. The children and I could manage just fine for a few hours. We did. We played a game then read for a while, they took their baths and then they went straight to sleep about an hour ago.”

  He had just endured one hell of a miserable day, between the cattle auction where he’d felt incredibly out of his depth despite Burnell Lewis’s amused tutoring, and then losing the blasted fuel pump on the way home. The whole time he’d been away, he had bee
n worried about the kids and how they were doing without him.

  His mood hadn’t improved at all when he’d talked to Daniel Galvez a few hours earlier and learned that the sheriff’s deputies hadn’t found any trace of a car accident in the general area where he had stumbled upon Jane the day before, and he was no closer to discovering who this stranger might be.

  A call to Cale Davis revealed the FBI agent had much the same information—zip.

  And now to discover the woman in question had not only defied his firm orders to stay away from his children, but had actually spent several hours alone with them, seemed like the final straw.

  Mason did his best to rein in his anger. Though he was annoyed with Pam for leaving, he couldn’t be too angry with her, especially if she was ill. He already owed her more than he could ever repay for all she had done for them since he’d moved back to the Bittercreek with the kids. She had taken them all under her wing and insisted on helping him with the cooking and the kids during the summer until school started.

  No, the bulk of his aggravation was directed at this woman, with her big blue eyes and her innocent appearance and her sexy voice that was driving him crazy.

  “I seem to remember a conversation last night where I asked you to leave Miriam and Charlie alone.”

  “You did.” She lifted her chin and those smoky eyes were wary but defiant.

  He hated that his gut clenched with desire as he watched her. How could it be that even though he was exhausted and annoyed and starving, his body could still respond instantly to this woman he didn’t trust?

  “I see.” Through fierce effort, he was able to keep his voice calm. “So you thought the best way to honor my efforts to protect my children would be to spend the entire evening with them.”

  Color rose on her high cheekbones but she didn’t retreat. “It wasn’t just the evening. I suppose you’ll find out eventually, as Charlie and Miriam aren’t exactly discreet, so I might as well tell you now before you hear it from them in the morning. The truth is, Pam and I and the children spent the entire day together picking strawberries and then preserving them. It was quite lovely, actually. There’s fresh strawberry jam in the refrigerator if you’d care for some and Pam made bread this morning.”

  His stomach growled at the prospect of homemade bread and jam, which only added to his frustration. “No, I wouldn’t care for any fresh strawberry jam! What I would like is for somebody in my own home to listen to me once in awhile.”

  She looked down at the peeling linoleum of the kitchen floor. “I listened to you. I even agreed with most of what you said.”

  “But you decided what I asked didn’t matter, you would just go ahead and do what you wanted anyway.”

  Her sigh somehow made him feel like the guilty one. “I think when my memory returns I’m going to discover I must be a terribly selfish person,” she said after a moment.

  He frowned, more at the note of self-disgust in her voice than at her words. “Why do you say that?”

  “I couldn’t bear the idea of spending all day alone in my room, Mason. I couldn’t. I know what you said last night about wanting to protect your children. I respect you for that, I do, and the last thing I would ever wish would be to hurt them.”

  “They’re lonely and frightened and desperate to make attachments wherever they can. Don’t you think they’ll view it as another loss when you leave?”

  Any defiance she might have worn at the beginning of their conversation had trickled away. “I hope not. I had it all worked out in my mind, that I would hurt them more if I ignored them or avoided them. I thought if I could be distantly polite with them, they wouldn’t care when I left. But the truth is, I just couldn’t bear the thought of spending all day staring at the walls of my room. I would suffocate in that room without someone to talk to.”

  This whole situation was enough to make him miss the tense intrigue of Mindanao.

  He could see it wouldn’t have been fair to ask her to hide out in her room. He should have thought this through better, perhaps taken the children with him to the cattle auction so this problem wouldn’t have come up. He carried as much blame in this as she did.

  “I just don’t want to see them hurt more than they have been,” he finally said.

  “Oh, neither do I, Mason.” Her smile was quick and genuine. “They’re wonderful children. Sweet and funny and so eager to please. I wanted to be distantly polite with them but I found it just too difficult.”

  He couldn’t help noticing how Jane’s features became bright and animated when she talked about the children.

  “Miriam is so quiet,” she went on, “but I can tell there’s so much going on inside that mind of hers. And her eyes! I know she’s only nine but have you noticed her eyes are those of an old, wise woman? I think she must know the secrets of the universe. Do you know her mother called her ne ne? Little sister? I used the endearment and you should have seen her face light up! You should try it. And Charlie. What a rascal! You know, I think he ate an entire bucket full of strawberries before we could even carry them inside. He had both Pam and me laughing all afternoon, even with Pam’s headache.”

  Boy, he really must be getting into this whole fatherhood thing if hearing someone praise the children could fill him with such pride.

  “Yeah, they’re great kids.”

  Jane lapsed into silence but he could see questions forming in her eyes. Even before she opened her mouth to speak, he steeled himself for what she might ask.

  “I know this is terribly forward of me,” she said, “but can you tell me how they came to be living here with you? What happened to the children’s parents?”

  The crushing guilt he had borne for two months reared up as he thought of the long, tragic journey that had led them all here. Samuel, Lianne, the car bombing that had killed them.

  He had the oddest urge to tell her about it, to confide his own culpability in their deaths. He opened his mouth to do just that, then shut it with a snap.

  He was turning soft. Why should he even consider confiding in this woman, this stranger? He didn’t like the fact that he’d been tempted to break the first unwritten rule of espionage: Keep your mouth shut at all costs.

  He knew nothing about her, he reminded himself. Oh, she might seem innocent and genuinely drawn to his children, but it could all be an act to pry information out of him—for whatever purpose, nefarious or otherwise, he couldn’t begin to guess.

  He pushed away from the kitchen counter. “They’re mine now. That’s the only thing that matters.”

  Her color faded a little at his curtness and she drew in a breath. “Of course. I’m sorry for prying. None of this is any of my concern. I have no concerns, I suppose, do I? At least until I remember who I am.”

  How could she make him feel so damn guilty for his shortness? He wasn’t sure how she did it, but he found it humiliating that the woman could play him like nobody else. He vowed not to let her get to him, with her softness and her air of fragility.

  “I do have concerns. My children. I’m all they have now and I will do whatever it takes to protect them.”

  “Of course. That’s as it should be, Mr. Keller.” Her voice was cold, tight, and no trace of softness showed in those smoky-blue eyes now. He told himself he was relieved, that things were easier that way. But somehow he had a hard time believing it.

  “Thank you for watching them tonight but in future—”

  “I know.” She cut him off before he could complete the sentence, grimly certain what he intended to say. “In future, you would prefer I leave Charlie and Miriam alone.”

  “It can’t be that hard. It’s only for a few days. Your memory will be back soon and then you’ll be out of here, on your way to wherever it is you’re supposed to be.”

  Jane knew she should have been heartened by his comment, that soon things would once more be as they should, but she was aware of a deep sense of unease fluttering low in her stomach.

  The thought of what might
await when her memory returned left her depressed and rather frightened of the unknown. Still, she decided to put on a brave face. “Right. Absolutely.”

  Her efforts at sangfroid apparently fell short of complete success. Mason’s brow furrowed as he studied her carefully. “What is it? Have you remembered something about your past?”

  She thought of the odd flickers of memory that had haunted her all day. First had been that strong image of a suitcase and the boring, bland wardrobe it contained, then the man’s face she couldn’t quite remember.

  Even more disturbing had been not so much a clear memory as an odd, twisting fear that writhed through her at random moments. She and the children had been out in the garden picking berries when it had struck her for the first time.

  She had been basking in the jumbled beauty of the overgrown garden, in the June sun warm on her shoulders and plump bees buzzing in the flowers. The garden smelled sweet and musty and the sky had been a stunning blue and she couldn’t imagine there could be another place on earth she would rather be than right there.

  Lost in enjoying the moment and determined to burn this one into her flawed memory, at least, she had been taken unaware by a cloud drifting past the sun. She wasn’t aware of the shift but suddenly the lovely, peaceful garden had turned into somewhere dark and terrifying.

  As she’d stared at the sky, she had been struck by the compelling sensation that something important lurked just on the other side of her subconscious, something frightening and ugly. She hadn’t wanted to remember it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had to, that something dire would happen to a great many people if she didn’t.

  What was it? She had to think. She needed to remember so she could tell someone….

  What? What did she need to remember? Try as she might, there in that tangled mess of a garden, she couldn’t come up with the answer to that burning question.

  The cloud shifted away from the sun and she was once more in a cheery garden spot in Utah with the birds twittering in the treetops and the mountains comforting and solid in the distance.