The Rivals

by Joan Johnston

  “Looks like her,” Drew said.

  “Are those her kids with her?”

  “I have no idea,” Drew said. “Let’s find out.”

  Before Clay could stop him, Drew headed straight for Sarah’s booth. He stopped there and said, without even a good morning, “I didn’t know you had kids.”

  Clay saw the blush rise on Sarah’s cheeks. An admission of the omission.

  “This is Nathan,” Sarah said, indicating the older boy, “and Brooke and Ryan,” she said, introducing the girl and the younger boy. “This is Mr. DeWitt.”

  Ryan waved and smiled, his mouth too full of pancakes to speak, while Brooke blurted, “You have really blue eyes.”

  Nate said in a snide voice, “Where did you meet him?”

  “That’s no way to speak to your mother,” Drew said. “Especially when your mom was obviously working overtime when she towed me out of the Snake River last night.”

  Nate’s look turned sullen, and Clay watched Sarah Barndollar’s claws unsheathe like a mountain lion who sees her cubs threatened.

  Clay was surprised Drew hadn’t used humor to deflect the boy’s comment, since his cousin was normally the picture of charm. As he watched Drew’s glance slip from Sarah to her three kids and back again, Clay realized why his cousin was acting so out of character. He’d heard Drew swear—more than once—that he’d never bring kids into this world, because he wanted nothing to do with being a parent. Clay knew enough about Drew’s miserable childhood to understand the rationale behind his cousin’s choice.

  Obviously, it had been an unwelcome shock for Drew to discover this morning that the sexy woman he’d entertained last night was also the mother of three very-much-a-part-of-her-life children.

  “My son’s behavior is a matter between him and me,” Sarah said to Drew.

  “I can speak for myself,” Nate snapped belligerently. He turned to Drew and said, “Stay away from my mom.”

  “Nate!” Sarah said in a shocked voice.

  Drew’s wintry glance stayed focused on the older boy. “I think your mom can decide whom she wants to see without your help.”

  Sarah rose from her seat, setting her napkin carefully beside a half-eaten plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. Clay imagined her police training at work. Staying calm to handle a subject who was likely to be bigger and stronger than she was. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet, but there was an edge to it. “Back off, Drew. Now. And Nathan, behave yourself!”

  Clay was aware of powerful undercurrents between the two adults as they squared off and realized that Drew must be way more attracted to the woman than he’d let on last night. If his cousin had only been interested in a quick lay, the fact that Sarah Barndollar had three kids wouldn’t have mattered.

  Clay tensed as sexual sparks arced between Drew and Sarah. It was plain that Drew wanted Sarah, and from Sarah’s flushed face, it was clear she wanted him, too. Clay didn’t think it would take much provocation for Drew to act on his desire, children or no children.

  In an effort to avoid getting caught in the middle of a lover’s quarrel that was bound, with the dearth of exciting news in Jackson, to end up on the front page of the local newspaper, Clay pitched his voice low and firm and said, “Come on, Drew. We came here to have breakfast. And to see what we can do to help find Kate.”

  It was the mention of Kate that finally turned Drew away from Sarah. He acknowledged what Clay had said with a sharp nod, then turned back to Sarah and said, “We’ll finish this later.”

  Without giving her a chance to reply, he turned his back on her and headed toward the table where Libby was sitting.

  Ever the politician, Clay stayed a moment longer. He diverted Sarah’s attention from Drew’s retreating back by asking, “Have you gotten any response overnight from posting Kate’s information with the NCIC?”

  Sarah quickly recovered and said, “There’s been nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “What happens now?” Clay asked. “Is there anything else we can do?”

  “I’d suggest that Libby contact her daughter’s friends at the school she was attending back East,” Sarah said. “Maybe one of them will know something about Kate’s whereabouts. I’m picking up a shift for a friend, so I can follow up on whatever leads there are here in town.”

  “Thanks,” Clay said. “We’ll be in touch if we find out anything.”

  Sarah lifted an eyebrow. “You’re going to stay in town and help Libby with the search for her daughter?”

  “Mom, I want more pancakes,” Ryan interrupted.

  “In a minute, Ryan,” Sarah said. She turned back to Clay and asked, “What’s your relationship to Libby?”

  “We’re just old friends,” Clay said with a casual smile. It was time he got out of here, before the detective started asking questions that required lies.

  “I’d better get going,” Clay said.

  As he walked toward Libby, Clay admitted he was still physically attracted to her. Even knowing how she’d betrayed him, he wanted her.

  There had been only two women in his life since he’d fallen in love with Elsbeth Grayhawk at twenty-seven—three, if he counted his late wife’s sister, who’d been his escort whenever he’d needed one over the past year.

  Clay had regretted getting engaged so quickly after the debacle with Libby. His terrible grief over Cindy Ridgeway’s untimely death a week before their wedding had been more a result of guilt and remorse than anything else. He’d felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to go through with the wedding, about which he’d been having second thoughts. He’d discovered too late that he didn’t love the woman he’d asked to be his wife.

  He’d been determined not to make that mistake again. But it seemed no woman could match up to the image of Libby that was imprinted on his heart and soul. Clay might never have married, except a politician needed a wife.

  And then he’d met Giselle Montrose.

  Clay had never met a person with a kinder soul or a more cheerful outlook on life. He didn’t know what he’d done to earn Giselle’s love, but there was no doubt she was devoted to him. It was hard not to love her back. Except for the fact his wife had been unable to conceive and they’d had no children, he’d been content.

  But in the dark, when he should have been sated and replete, he lay there remembering. Angry and resentful that memories of a woman who’d shoved him out of her life—and taken his only child with her—should still hold him in such thrall.

  But he was unattached now. And Libby was free. And they were going to be spending time together until they found Kate. She seemed to want him. He definitely wanted her.

  The question was whether he could enjoy Libby physically without allowing himself to fall back into the emotional trap that had left him wounded so many years ago. It might be worth the risk to try. Maybe he would find that the reality no longer lived up to his memories, and he could free himself from the chains that had bound him to the past.

  As he approached the table, where Drew had already seated himself across from Libby, Clay said, “Detective Barndollar says there’s no new word on Kate.”

  “I spoke with Sarah earlier myself,” Libby admitted. “I’ve been sitting here making a mental list of who else Kate might know here in town.”

  Clay seated himself at the end of the table next to Libby and said, “Sarah suggested we also talk to whomever Kate might have confided in at school.”

  “Kate only had two close friends that I know about,” Libby said. “I called them last night. They promised to ask around and get back to me.”

  “I can have a private investigator follow up with them and take a look in her dorm room for anything that might give us a hint about what’s happened to her,” Clay said.

  Their gazes met, and Clay watched as Libby conquered the terror that momentarily appeared in her eyes. She obviously wanted to believe that Kate would reappear healthy and happy and sorry to have troubled her parents for disappearing without a word. She was also apparently ve
ry much aware of the other two girls who’d gone missing over the past fifteen months and never been found, and the teenage girl who’d run away from her home in Nevada and been found with a bullet hole in the back of her skull.

  The ring of Libby’s cell phone startled all of them. Libby grappled for the phone in her purse and answered with a breathless, “Kate?”

  Clay watched as Libby pressed her lips flat, then shook her head to let him know it wasn’t Kate and said, “Thank you for calling, Patricia. What did you find out?”

  Libby frowned. “An e-mail? Who sent it? That’s odd. Would you forward it to me?”

  Clay listened as Libby gave her e-mail address.

  “Thank you so much, Patricia. Please call if you hear anything or if anyone thinks of anywhere else we might look for her,” Libby said.

  She clicked off her cell phone and said, “I asked Libby’s roommate to check Kate’s e-mail, if she could. She says Kate received an e-mail late Thursday night, telling her to fly to Jackson on Friday. That she was to tell no one she was leaving school, but to call her mother en route and ask her to meet her when she arrived in Jackson.”

  “We need to take a close look at that e-mail,” Clay said.

  Drew shoved his chair back noisily and said, “I’ll go tell Sarah what you’ve found out. I presume you’ll forward that e-mail to the sheriff’s office as soon as you receive it?”

  “Of course,” Libby said, as Drew turned and headed back across the restaurant toward Sarah Barndollar’s table.

  Clay clasped Libby’s hand when she reached out to him, her eyes stark, her chin quivering.

  “It sounds like someone planned to take her all along,” she said in a strained voice. “But why not kidnap her from school? Why make her come all the way home first?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay said. “Did Kate’s roommate tell you who sent that e-mail to her?”

  “Patricia didn’t recognize the return address. It seems to have arrived out of the e-mail ether.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Clay pulled his cell phone from his belt and dialed a Washington, D.C., number. “Hello, Morgan. No, she’s still missing. I need a favor.” Clay explained what he wanted and nodded his approval as Morgan DeWitt said he’d get right on it.

  “Drew’s stepbrother is as good with a computer as it’s possible to get,” Clay reassured Libby. “If that e-mail can be traced, he’ll be able to do it—or know someone else who can.”

  During the sixteen years they’d worked together as a team, forty-year-old Morgan DeWitt had become closer to Clay than Clay’s twin brother Owen, who was a Texas Ranger. Morgan knew all—or almost all—of Clay’s secrets.

  Clay had told Morgan about Kate, but he’d never confided the depth of his love for Kate’s mother. Clay had more than once turned to Morgan and gotten good advice. He intended to take his friend with him all the way to the White House.

  “Do you want to stay and eat?” Clay asked.

  Libby shook her head. “I can make us something at my house. Let’s go.”

  Clay was about to rise, when he felt a strong hand grip his shoulder and hold him in place. He turned to shake hands with the man who owned most of the oil in West Texas. “Hello, Niles. What are you doing here in town?”

  “I think the better question is what are you doing here, Clay? And who is this lovely lady?”

  Clay avoided the oilman’s first question and said, “Libby, this is Niles Taylor. He’s an oilman from Midland, Texas. Niles, this is Elsbeth Grayhawk.”

  “Grayhawk?” Niles repeated. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, be related to King Grayhawk, would you?”

  “He’s my father,” Libby replied.

  “Hell’s bells! I had dinner with your father last Sunday at that ranch of his outside of town, Kingdom Come. Near talked my ear off about all his oil wells in Wyoming and Texas. Never said a word about having such a beautiful daughter.”

  Clay felt a jolt of possessiveness when he saw the assessing look Niles gave Libby. Niles was dressed in an expensive Western-cut suit and cowboy boots. He was tall and barrel-chested, with a head of wavy, salt-and-pepper hair and an engaging smile that stretched from ear to ear. The oilman was married, but his wife stayed home in Midland, and Clay had often seen Niles at parties with a pretty young woman on his arm.

  “This little filly yours?” Niles said with a nudge and a wink at Clay.

  “I don’t belong to anyone,” Libby said in a cold voice.

  “No offense meant,” Niles said with a grin. He turned to Clay and said, “I’m having a party tonight at a friend’s house on Bear Island. As long as you’re in town, why don’t you come? In fact, why don’t both of you come?”

  “I have other plans,” Libby said.

  “I’m afraid—” Clay began.

  Before he could finish his refusal, Niles said, “Don’t say no. There are at least three congressmen from Texas and a passel of contributors to the party who can be a real help to you when you make your bid for governor.”

  Clay didn’t pretend he had no aspirations in that direction. But he wasn’t in the mood to shake hands and smile and get patted on the back by political sycophants. Not while his daughter was missing under mysterious—and threatening—circumstances.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t think,” Niles interrupted. “Just come. You won’t be sorry you did. In fact, if you come, I promise to make a substantial contribution to your campaign myself.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Clay said to Niles. “I can’t promise anything.”

  “I’ll be looking for you.” Niles tipped his hat to Libby and said, “You too, little lady, if your plans change.”

  Sarah felt totally rattled by Drew’s appearance at Bubba’s this morning. She’d known he was a rich playboy. She should have expected the shock and displeasure she’d seen on his face when he realized she was the mother of three kids. But she couldn’t help feeling a little sad and disappointed.

  In light of his attitude, she’d been stunned and appalled by the heat that had nevertheless leaped between them. She was actually sweating beneath her bulletproof vest!

  Sarah hadn’t mistaken Drew’s last words as anything less than what they were—a warning that he would be back to claim her, at a time and place where her children would not be there to act as a buffer.

  She forced herself to take a bite of pancake and chew.

  “That guy’s a total jerk,” Nate said under his breath, his narrowed eyes focused on Drew across the room.

  “I think he’s cute,” Brooke said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen eyes that blue.”

  Sarah wanted to correct her children, but they were both right. Drew had overstepped his bounds. And his blue eyes amazed her every time she saw them.

  She turned to her stepson and said, “I want you to keep an eye on Ryan today while you’re on the slopes.”

  “Aw, Mom,” Nate said. “If I have to stay with Ryan, I can’t snowboard the black diamond runs. Why can’t Brooke—”

  “You heard me, Nate. Brooke watched him last Saturday.” She turned to Brooke and said, “I don’t want you driving the car.”

  From the color that appeared on Brooke’s face, her daughter had already been negotiating with Nate, who’d had his driver’s license for nine months, to make use of her driver’s permit. “Not with Ryan in the car,” she amended.

  “Can we go now, Mom?” Brooke asked.

  “If you’re all done eating,” she said.

  Nate and Brooke jumped up and pulled on their ski jackets, then each took one of Ryan’s arms and shoved him into his jacket.

  “Have fun!” Sarah said as the two older children hustled the younger one out the door. “And be careful,” she said under her breath.

  She knew Brooke would spend most of the day with her girlfriends, sitting on the deck outside one of the ski lodges drinking Coke and talking about boys. Nate wouldn’t come off the slopes until darkness—or Ryan’s nagging that he wanted t
o go home—forced him off.

  She was lucky the sheriff’s office provided her a vehicle, so the kids could make use of her pickup. So far, Nate had proved to be a responsible driver, but she worried about Brooke driving, since she never seemed to focus her attention on anything for very long.

  The children hadn’t been gone more than a minute before Sarah caught sight of Drew heading back in her direction. She wasn’t about to let him catch her in Bubba’s, where any scene he created would become fodder for gossip. She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and headed for the door.

  She made it outside before Drew caught up to her, but he caught her arm before she could make it to her Tahoe.

  “Wait up, Sarah.”

  Sarah stopped abruptly and turned and stared at Drew’s grip on her arm, then focused her gaze on his. “Get your hands off me.”

  Drew let her go, but he stood between her and her SUV, an immovable object. “You look different in uniform,” he said.

  “It’s the Glock,” Sarah replied.

  Drew shook his head. “Nope. It’s the sharp creases and the badge and all that gear on your belt. You look like a real cop.”

  Sarah bristled. “I am a real cop.”

  Drew grinned. “And just as feisty in uniform as out.”

  Sarah glared at him. “If you’re finished gawking, I’ve got work to do.”

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “It’ll have to wait. I’m on duty.”

  “I’ve got news about Kate.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Sarah said, not hiding her irritation. “What is it?”

  “Let’s go somewhere we can talk in private.”

  Sarah shook her head. “If you have information about Kate, let’s hear it. Otherwise, we have nothing to discuss.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  Sarah’s fisted hands landed on her hips. “What is it you want from me, Drew?”

  “I want to finish what we started last night.”

  Sarah felt a flush rise on her throat. “Last night was a mistake. You caught me at a…vulnerable moment. I’m a married woman.”