by R. C. Ryan
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To my beautiful and talented daughter-in-law, Randi,
Who uses her skills to teach very special students.
And to Tom, my forever love.
Prologue
Billings, Montana—1997
He’s trouble.”
Twelve-year-old Griff Warren sat hunched in the principal’s office, his split lip swollen and bloody, scowling as his mother and Principal Marcone discussed his latest run-in with a classmate.
“Griff gave Jeremy Thornton a bloody nose and a black eye.” The principal’s voice frosted over. “Jeremy’s parents will be sending you the medical bills, Ms. Warren.”
Griff’s mother held tightly to her handbag as she turned to her son. “Why did you do it?”
“He called me a name.”
“What name?”
The boy shook his head, unwilling to say bastard in front of his mother. It always hurt her more than him.
She turned to the principal. “Perhaps we could speak more openly if my son could leave your office.”
The principal nodded. “Griff. Go to the gym. Maybe you can work off some of that aggression while I speak with your mother.”
Griff rose awkwardly to his feet.
As he crossed to the door, he heard his mother say, in a voice barely above a whisper, “Griff is a good boy.”
“Good boys don’t react with violence whenever someone angers them.” The principal waited a beat before adding, “I really think you ought to consider military school next year, Ms. Warren. Your son needs more discipline than we can offer him.”
“Griff is all I have…” His mother turned. Seeing him still in the doorway she frowned. “Go on now, Griff.”
He stalked to the gym and tossed aside his backpack before picking up a basketball and hurling it toward the hoop. It dropped cleanly through the net, and he raced up to catch it. In one reflexive movement he hurled it all the way across the floor toward the opposite hoop, where it circled the rim before dropping through the net.
A deep voice from the locker room startled him. “Pretty impressive. Think you can do that again?”
He turned and glared at Mr. Wood, the new coach hired at midseason when old Mr. Harris was forced to take a sick leave. “What do you care?”
The young coach shrugged. “Since you didn’t try out for the team, I guess you’re not interested in basketball. But I just figured, with all that anger, it might be interesting to see if you can repeat that performance.”
“Who says I’m angry?”
“Aren’t you?”
Griff tossed the ball as hard as he could, and had the satisfaction of seeing it drop through the net. Working up a full head of steam, he raced to retrieve it before tossing it to the opposite net where, once again, it circled and dropped.
When he retrieved the ball yet again, the young coach walked up beside him. “A dollar says you can’t do a repeat of that.”
“Make it five bucks.”
The coach shook his head. “Two.”
Griff heaved the ball and turned away, not even bothering to watch as it swished through the net. With a frown he held out his hand and Mr. Wood dropped two bills in it.
“Can you do it anytime? Or only when you’re mad?”
Griff shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The boy picked up the ball. “I only play when I’m mad.”
“I see. Tell you what.” The young coach gave him a long, assessing look. “You come back tomorrow after school and play with the team.”
“Why should I?”
“I could say because it’s a great stress reliever.” The coach grinned. “The truth? Jeremy Thornton wants to be captain. That honor goes to the best player on the team. You know what I’ve learned?” His voice lowered. “A good, old-fashioned fight may be good for the soul, but there are better ways to exact revenge.”
Startled, Griff looked up and saw the glint of unspoken humor in the coach’s eyes.
Seeing his mother waiting in the hall, he dropped the ball and picked up his backpack.
As he started away Mr. Wood said, “I heard what Jeremy called you, son. That’s some shiner you gave him. Just remember—there are other ways of winning without resorting to your fists. Sometimes, success can be the sweetest revenge of all.”
Something in the quiet way the man spoke to him had Griff’s mind working overtime as he followed his mother to the car. He had a whole lot to think about.
Maybe there was a better way. Maybe he’d even think about military school for next year. For now, he’d just decided to give basketball a try. Not because he loved the game. But Jeremy did, and he expected to be captain.
For the first time in hours Griff smiled.
It caused his lip to start bleeding again.
He never even noticed the pain.
The Hills of Afghanistan—Winter
Thirty-year-old Capt. Griff Warren tucked the envelope into his back pocket and filled a foam cup with coffee. Spotting a vacant corner of Tango Company Compound, he ambled over, juggling his rifle in one hand, coffee in the other. For Griff, now in his third tour of serving with the marines in Afghanistan, it was second nature to grab these quiet moments when he could, knowing that at any time the stillness of the night could be shattered by a blast of incoming fire.
Dropping into the dirt, he settled his back against the low stone wall and tore open the envelope bearing the name and address of a Montana law firm. After a long drink of steaming coffee, he unfolded a letter from his mother, which, according to the date, would have been written shortly before her death. Her musings, handwritten and often several pages long, were always filled with news of the fickle weather in Montana, drought, range fires, and occasionally the misbehavior of local politicians. Seeing the date at the top of the page, tears sprang to his eyes, and he felt a band tighten around his heart as he realized this would have been her last letter to him. He blinked, expecting more of the same sort of mundane news.
His attention sharpened as he began to read her stunning words.
My dearest Griff,
Please understand that this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write. I know that you gave up asking about your father when you were no more than five or six, after learning that your questions would send me into fits of tears. I saw the way you backed off, keeping your questions to yourself, rather than hurt me. I knew that my silence was driving a wedge between us, but I simply could never bring myself to speak of the man I’d foolishly loved and lost. Now, however, since my doctor has told me to get my affairs in order, my only affair of any importance, my only concern, is you, Griff. You deserve to know the truth.
When I was very young, and enjoying my first teaching assignment in a tiny Montana town called Copper Creek, I met a handsome young rancher who took my breath away. For several weeks we enjoyed a torrid romance, which I foolishly assumed would last a lifetime. Within weeks I heard that his former fiancée had returned from a modeling assignment in the South Seas and had a
greed to give up her career to become his wife. Shortly after that, I learned I was expecting a baby. Instead of confronting him with what I knew would be unwelcome news at such a time in his life, I chose to remain silent. Instead of renewing my teaching contract, I quietly moved to Billings and made a life for myself and you. Over the years I had many opportunities to marry, but somehow, after that one blazing romance, the prospect of a life with anyone else seemed dull and bland. I decided that my wonderful son and the many students whose lives were touched briefly by me would have to be enough to fill my life.
Though it shamed me to contact your father after all these years, my first duty must be to you. Therefore, my darling Griff, I have sent him the necessary documents to prove the legality of my claim. If you are reading this letter, it means that he and his lawyers are convinced that you are, indeed, his son and heir, and they have included my letter to you in their formal documents as I requested.
Please accept my heartfelt apology for withholding such vital information from you for a lifetime. I have always loved you, Griff. And now, with death at my doorstep, my greatest hope is that you will forgive me and understand that I was doing what I thought best for both of us.
Your loving mother
Shocked to his core, Griff unfolded a second lengthy document, signed, witnessed, and duly registered with the state of Montana, declaring him the legal son and heir of Murdoch “Bear” MacKenzie.
At long last his father had a name. After a lifetime of questions and doubts. After a lifetime of searching the faces of strangers, wondering if the man passing him on the street could be the one. At long last, Griff had his answer:
Murdoch MacKenzie.
The name meant nothing to him. The truth meant everything to him. There really was a man out there somewhere who had learned of a son he’d never met. But he would, by God. As soon as this tour was up, Murdoch MacKenzie would meet the result of a careless, reckless love affair of thirty years ago.
Griff’s hand fisted. And then he would do what he’d wanted to do for all these endless, painful years. His blood ran hot with the thought of a knock-down, drag-out bloody fight ending with MacKenzie flat on his back and regretting the day he’d walked away from Melinda Warren without a second thought.
Melinda. The thought of his very private, stoic mother had Griff going still. How she must have suffered for her foolishness. And how she must have loved this man, to walk away with her secret intact rather than intrude on his life.
Griff had never questioned her love for him. But he’d spent an entire childhood wondering about the man who had fathered him. Had he abandoned her because she was pregnant? Had she been the one to flee rather than spend the rest of her life with someone she deemed unworthy?
Now Griff knew otherwise. Though this letter gave a name, there were still too many gaps in his information. How had Murdoch MacKenzie received this sudden, shocking news? Was he angry? Dismissive?
The fact that his lawyer had forwarded Melinda’s last letter, along with legal documents declaring him the son of Murdoch MacKenzie, proved that the man was at least trying to do the honorable thing.
Everything else remained a mystery.
But, Griff vowed, he would have his answers.
After a lifetime, he deserved the truth. All of it, no matter who was hurt by the questions.
“Hey, Captain.”
The shout from his buddy Jimmy Gable had him looking over with a blank stare.
“I said, you just got mail, Captain. Me, too.”
“Yeah.” Griff tucked the letter in his pocket and got to his feet, his mind awhirl with so many jumbled thoughts, he could barely speak.
He’d been home to bury his mother less than a month ago. And now this letter was proof of just what had occupied her mind as she lay dying. Instead of worrying about herself, she’d been more concerned with connecting him with his father. A man he’d never known. A name he’d never heard until now.
Serving in this godforsaken outpost, he’d already learned how crazy life could be. Now he’d just been given proof that life as he knew it had gone completely mad.
Chapter One
Copper Creek, Montana—Present Day
Get ’im in that chute, Griff.”
The cowboy’s shrill voice had Griff Warren singling out the next calf from the portable corral and urging it into the narrow passageway toward a branding cradle. At least that was what the wranglers called it. Griff thought it was more like a torture chamber.
Once in there, the headgate slammed shut, the walls of the chute closed in, and the entire cage tipped to hold the calf on its side while Griff’s newly discovered half brother Whit MacKenzie pressed a sizzling branding iron to the calf’s right hip area.
The entire operation took only a few seconds, and the bawling calf was righted, released, and sent racing toward its mother in a second holding pen, while Griff, amid shouts and catcalls, was forced to prod the next calf toward the same fate.
The process was repeated over and over, for five hot, sweaty, endless days, until every calf born this spring on the MacKenzie Ranch had been branded with the unique MK on its right rump. Then they were herded by a team of wranglers, or in some cases trucked to the highlands in cattle haulers for a summer-long eating frenzy on the lush grasses that grew in the hills around Copper Creek.
When the last of the calves had met its fate, Whit dropped an arm around Griff’s shoulders. “Great job, cowboy. You just had your baptism of fire. And look at you. Still standing.”
“Barely.” Griff, his shirt so wet it stuck to his skin, eyes red from the dust of frantic cattle, managed a weak grin.
Brady Storm, foreman of the MacKenzie Ranch, offered a handshake. “Welcome to Ranching 101, son. It’s hard, dirty work. And not one of us would trade this job for a suit and tie in the city.”
Griff shook his head. “Don’t tempt me, Brady.” He tempered his comments with a sly grin. “At the moment, that almost sounds like heaven.”
“Another fine supper, Mad.” Griff sat back, sipping coffee. Fresh from the longest shower of his life, he was feeling almost human again.
He’d been living with the MacKenzie family on their ranch since mustering out of the Marine Corps. He’d arrived in time to bury the stranger who had been his father. But though he’d been acknowledged as the son of Bear MacKenzie, he resisted accepting the MacKenzie name, choosing instead to continue using his single mother’s last name as it had been recorded on his birth certificate.
“From what Brady told me, son, you deserve a good meal.” Seventy-year-old Maddock MacKenzie, Bear’s father and therefore Griff’s biological grandfather, was called Mad by all who knew him. The nickname suited him, since his temper was legend in this part of Montana. He seemed especially furious at being confined to a wheelchair since a ranch accident fifteen years earlier. And though he worked hard to hide his frustration for the sake of his family, it showed in the way he often slammed a hand down on the arm of the hated chair. Mad MacKenzie did everything he could to pretend that his life was the same as before, including his absolute refusal to have ramps built in and around the house, which he felt would shout to the world that he was a cripple, a word he detested.
The cantankerous old man winked at Brady Storm. “Brady tells me you’ve been jumping into ranch chores with both feet. But branding’s another thing altogether. For a novice, branding can be pretty grueling, even for those of us who cut our teeth on ranch chores.”
“Tell me about it.” Whit, twenty-five and the youngest of Bear MacKenzie’s three sons, shot a grin at his brother, Ash, who was seated across the table. “The first time Pa took me with him to help with the branding, I was five or six. The wranglers were still branding the old-fashioned way. Wrestling calves to the dirt, holding them down, and driving that hot iron into their rumps. I’ve never forgotten the smell of burning flesh and the bawling of those calves. I was sick for a week.”
“I guess to a kid it’s pretty barbaric.” Mad poli
shed off the last of his garlic mashed potatoes, one of his favorite side dishes, which he prepared at least once a week.
“Not just to a kid.” Willow MacKenzie, mother to Ash and Whit, turned to her father-in-law. “I may have grown up on a ranch, but I’m still troubled every spring during branding.”
“Can’t be helped.” Mad shared a knowing look with the foreman. “We can tag a cow’s ear or implant a chip, but the process our ancestors came up with is still the most efficient. The state of Montana is open range. We’ve got thousands of acres of rangeland. Those critters can hide in canyons, wander into forests. But the state demands that we register our brand with the state brand office. Not only the brand, but the exact location on each calf. That’s why we’ve got that MK on the right rump of every one of our cattle. It’s pretty hard for a thief to explain what he’s doing with your property.”
Griff shook his head. “All I know is, I’m glad that particular chore is finished for the year. Now I can get back to learning the easy stuff.”
“You think tending herds in the high country in blizzards or summer storms is easy? You like mending fences and mucking stalls?” Ash shared a look with the others. “I guess that’s what happens when you survive three tours with the marines in Afghanistan. Everything after that is gravy.”
The others around the table joined in the laughter.
Myrna Hill, plump housekeeper for the MacKenzie family, set a tray of brownies on the table before passing around hot fudge sundaes. “You have Brenna to thank for the dessert. She drove all the way into Copper Creek, to that cute little shop I’s Cream, for Ivy’s special chocolate marshmallow walnut ice cream.”
Ash nudged his bride, Brenna, seated beside him. “Is this a special occasion?” He put a hand to his heart. “Don’t tell me I’ve forgotten an anniversary or something already.”
“Now you’ve done it, lad.” Mad’s Scottish burr thickened along with his laughter. “Don’t you know that the first rule of a new husband is to never admit that you’ve forgotten a special day? You’re supposed to just smile and remain silent, and your bride will think you’ve known about it all along.”