by Gayle Eden
She eventually went up the stairs, passing by the bathing room, seeing a lamp burning and hearing her mother inside. She would wait her turn. It would take Mamma awhile.
Corey went to her room and lit lamps, sat by the window looking out over the spread, observing lights on at the bunkhouse and hearing the sounds of ranch life lowering with the moon’s rise.
She hardly recalled Lucas McCabe, because he seemed the tumbleweed, the restless and rowdy one. Compared to Morgan, whom she knew, was his father’s right hand man. To be honest, she was curious about him. She would go to the funeral just to get a look at him, and see what all the fuss was about.
* * * *
In the tub, bathed and soaking, Sara Landry smoothed a hand over her wet hair and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. Attending Andrea’s funeral, the prospect of it, put that same knot in her stomach that came once before, with Finn’s setting foot on the ranch—to see Frank laid to rest. In her youth, she’d given her heart and soul to Finn McCabe—when she was of age, her body too
His sudden marriage to the richest, most beautiful woman in the world shattered her own in ways she could not articulate.
When Andrea Croft’s parents had come to PineFlatts to build the hotel and buy land, do their business, she’d never thought for a moment it would shake the foundations of her world. A world built on dreams—with Finn McCabe.
She had tried, been a good wife to Frank, despite the fact he was a hard man to live with. Until she discovered his obsession with begetting a son, and his utter coldness when she refused to keep bearing children just to try. If he could not love his own daughter by his first wife, the two she gave him, she didn’t want to birth a son into that kind of skewed love.
Her decision had made a rift, a gulf, and that was Frank’s decision. She took other rooms and he took whores and a particular widow who lived outside of town. Until the day he died, Frank resented her and spurned his own children. Save for Corey, who was so determined he had to notice her. Corey, he had loved, in his limited way.
However, nothing, nothing in time, or life, ever cured the wound Finn’s marriage put in her. She was a strong woman, had to be, and yet she rarely was able to speak to Finn without fearing her hurt and bitterness—the fire so long banked, would explode. Age didn’t change him that much either, not in looks. He was big and brawny, his shoulders wide, legs long, and his black hair may have silver streaks, his green eyes were light in a more browned visage—but Finn was potent—and more the man he’d already been when they were younger.
Sara sat up, reaching for the towel, drying absently before donning her robe and slippers. Squeezing water from her hair, she left and went to her rooms, one lamp burning as she sat at the vanity and combed her hair. It fell when wet below her shoulder blades. She wore it braided or up most of the time. Her autumn eyes moved over her face as she combed, seeing a fan of lines at the corner of her eyes, the freckles and tan, but not displeased with the angles of her face—for all that mattered anymore.
Setting the comb down, she leaned her elbows on the surface and buried her face a moment, absently hearing Corey pass on her way to the bath.
It was oft said that the McCabe’s had pride and arrogance in abundance, but Sara Landry had some of her own. She had never asked him, never looked him in the eye after he’d wed Andrea. She was too proud to let him know what he must have known already deep down. She had waited until her pa died and taken Frank Landry’s offer—an older widower with a spread that McCabe wanted to buy and join with his own.
Dragging her hands down, she met her gaze again in the mirror. Finn had his children with beautiful Andrea— children they had talked of having. From talk, she knew his life was far from peaceful. But, he was richer, bigger, and tougher by all accounts too. She could never quite feel sympathy for his troubles since he had a beautiful and cultured wife to ease him, and her own bed was cold—arms empty.
She doubted if, over the years, he’d given her or their young dreams, a thought. As her children grew up, she only had her pride, and the ranch to sustain her. No, she would never forgive him for taking their dreams and giving her part to someone so much more than she could ever be. He had left her to piece together some imitation with a man she’d tried and failed with. Her daughters were some comfort…. But, they needed her less and less these days.
Chapter Two
Lucas McCabe had arrived at the sprawling stone and timber ranch house after dark. He took his horse to the stable but climbed up into the loft to sleep instead of going into the house. He was bone weary from the trail and the sun had baked through his head for so long, it throbbed those last miles.
Sprawled on a bed of burlap sacks, amid the earthy smells, he didn’t doubt for a moment Finn knew the second he crossed the border of McCabe land. From the moment he’d lit out five years ago Finn’s shadow always lurked somewhere behind him. When Morgan sent him that telegram in Texas, it simply confirmed it. His father might not have been able to stop him leaving, but he always knew where Lucas was.
An arm flung over his aching eyes, hat having rolled off his sweat soaked hair, Lucas breathed in too much of his own sweat and dust to relax. He could see enough by moonlight to go down and dunk in the trough, but his body just wanted to lie there. The hard riding was necessary in order to make it to the funeral. Guilt drove him— because he’d cut all ties when he left, and that meant with his mother, too.
Oh, he had figured out that by keeping tabs on him, his mother was likely kept informed too. Except that Morgan or his father likely watered down the grimmer aspects those first two years. It wasn’t as if he set out to be a gunslinger. His beef was a personal one with the old man. Yet a man did what came natural, and he was a natural. At least until federal Marshal Upsher offered him a deal—Put on a badge and go legit or serve hard time. It wasn’t debatable. He put on a badge. He was still considered rogue, not so by the book. That was a plus as far as Upsher was concerned. By the book didn’t catch outlaws, and it took thinking like one, to catch them.
“You stink so bad I can smell you down here.”
Not taking his arm from his eyes, Lucas replied to Morgan, “So go back to the house and don’t smell me. I’m damn tired.”
Having come up the ladder, his brother’s voice was closer and holding some amusement this time, “I don’t live inside the house. I’ve had my own place on the spread for three years.”
“Congratulations.”
“You wanna' be a smart ass or you want an invitation? I’ve a hot bath waiting and some supper.”
Moving his arm away, Lucas lifted his lashes, seeing the shadowed figure of a big man, a man built like his father, with that same straight black hair. From the arc of moonlight, the same lime green eyes. Before he’d left, Morgan had all the signs of looking like Finn McCabe spit him out, and it seemed he’d fulfilled it.
Sitting up slowly, his spine feeling stove up, Lucas waved him back so he could come down the ladder. When he did so, noting that standing side by side, they were nearly the same height, but his own broad shouldered and lean honed form was nothing like his big muscled younger brother. Morgan had Finn’s blade of a nose, and strong jaw. His hair Lucas noticed, following him out into the full moonlight, was cut to the nape, but with long bangs. Just as silk straight.
They walked a path toward the house that Morgan had apparently built, passing the corral, shadows of men, and the bunkhouse—which was stone and timber. It was quite a walk, winding a bit, and beyond a strand of trees by the widening of the creek. The full moon lit the path.
Lucas stopped when his brother did, accepting the rolled cigarette Morgan offered, then the match, when they reached the bridge and leaned on the pole railings.
He could see the house, nowhere near the scale of the massive ranch house, but of the same stone, two stories, with a couple of soaring chimneys.
“He knows you’re here.”
Lucas grunted and blew smoke out his nostrils. “He always knows where I am.”
Crossing his booted feet, Morgan released a stream from his lips and commented wryly, “I may look more like him, but you two are peas in a pod.”
“I beg to differ.” Lucas noted a glow in the windows and shutters, some sound he thought was chickens somewhere to the right.
“Hardheaded and hot tempered.”
“I’m considered cool and detached,” Lucas, corrected in those exact tones.
“Except, when it comes to the old man.”
Lucas slanted him a glance. “What’s your point?”
“That you two need to settle it, bury whatever caused you to lit out. Our mother is dead, Lucas.”
A nerve jumped in his lean jaw. “I know that.”
“Fine. Do you know there are more people in this family than just you and Pa? There’s me, there’s Jordan, and there’s Uncle Alex—who lost the last of his blood.”
“That’s my problem?”
This time Morgan’s handsome face looked hard. “It’s not a problem, it is fact. A hell of a lot more went on then, and goes on now, than your and Pa’s head butting. This ranch keeps growing and with it comes the same troubles and headaches. I don’t know what’s going to be dispersed from Mother’s holdings, but I can’t see to the ranch and worry about that too. You know Pa cares only about the ranch. Uncle Alex went by the offices in town of that Manager Mother hired and said things were a damn mess. There’s Jordan—”
“How is she?”
“Tough. Hell, I don’t know.” Morgan looked away. “You know how Mother treated her. Even if Uncle Alex pretended she was his, and brought her here, she has Pa’s green eyes and Mother wasn’t an idiot. She knew. And having her schooled well or not, letting her use the Croft name—she couldn’t always hide what she felt.”
“Pa could have owned up to everything. At least to Jordan. The sonofabitch.”
“Maybe. But, what he owes, he owes to Jordan. What was between him and Ma—if he did get her by some soiled dove—was between them. Jordan had no more finished school than Mother got sick, and she wanted to help but Mother wouldn’t even see her. Hell, it was bad. Even if he was going to own up to it, he couldn’t have upset Mother and insist she let Jordan help. She hired nurses, and Jordan stayed out of the way.”
“That’s his doing. His shit to deal with.”
“Yeah, probably. You know how the old man is. I could have used you here, Lucas. I’ve enough on my plate with the ranch, and if you believe Jordan’s our blood, she could have benefited from knowing you feel that.”
“She’s grown and raised. So she has learned the old man is a self-serving bastard? Good for her. It’s better she get tough and have no illusions. Having Finn McCabe as your daddy doesn’t make life grand. It’s better she—”
“—Live with the town whispering her Mamma some two bit whore—”
“Finn should have silenced that a long time ago.”
“Mother wouldn’t have wanted him defending her. So long as the pretense was she was Uncle Alex’s, she could sigh and say it was her brother’s youthful indiscretion. If Pa had stood up then, he obvious would have been confirmed as having cheated on Mother and got a bastard daughter.”
“It is still his fault.”
They put out the cigarettes and walked toward the house, Morgan said, “I reckon he knows that. But it ain’t Jordan’s.”
Inside a great room with high beams and stone and plaster walls, comfortable with leather furnishings, big fireplace, Morgan waved him toward polished wood stairs. “Up on the right. I brought some clothing from your old rooms at the house.”
Lucas went, finding a large bathing room and thankfully a steaming bath. He peeled off his clothing and boots, climbed in, laying a bit loose boned before scrubbing. When he came down later, denim shirt flapping and Levis well worn, he was in bare feet.
Passing through the main room, seeing the round oak dining table, a full plate and coffee, he’d say one thing for Morgan, the solid as a rock brother who should have been born first, this house was comfortable with none of the we’ve-got-money things that were displayed in the big house—where any of them could have lived. He didn’t begrudge his mother the taste and style she was born and bred with, but to cattle and horsemen, it wasn’t relaxing. He knew the old man was proud of it, basked in his refined wife and home, but Finn had his “apartments” and his mother had hers, and aside from the social, Andrea’s love of china, crystal and all those rare paintings and vases—none of them actually (lived) in those parts of the house but Andrea.
Hell. His mother was dead. He should have at least written to her…
Morgan joined him, wet headed and wearing a softer blue shirt and worn trousers too, saying he washed up in the kitchen. He sat at the right, sipping from a blue mug full of coffee as Lucas ate.
“You didn’t stay gone all these years—just because of Pa, did you?”
Lucas chewed the last of the meal and slid the plate forward, taking a drink of brew before he answered, “No.”
Morgan, his green eyes moving over Lucas, murmured, “So what was the fight about?”
Looking down at the tabletop Lucas shrugged, “The usual. He was pushing and I pushed back. I’m not you, Morgan. You let his shit slide off and you thrived here, breathed the ranch. The ranching I could live with, even love, but Pa wanted to rope me like some steer, force feed me his idea of my future.”
“You were always something of a mustang.” Morgan laughed quietly. “Yelling and cussing as loud as pa. I remember those Saturday nights you came in from town and he’d be waiting—y’all would almost come to blows.”
“We did once.” Lucas looked up.
Morgan admitted, “I heard him and Mother talking afterwards. I gather he had picked you a bride. Maybe you should have figured Mother probably had a hand in that. Old man Jewell had a fortune in rail road stock.”
“Later I did figure it. Sowing oats and a Saturday night in town for a man the age I was then, wasn’t unreasonable. Pa’s iron fisted when it comes to the ranch and being a McCabe—”
“You’re the oldest.”
“Pure accident. I didn’t ask to be. I was working as hard here as any hand. I wrangled and loved it, but it could be suffocating. There’s a lot more I could have cared for if the old man hadn’t beat that McCabe tune into our heads every night at supper. There’s something to be said about being your own man, Morgan.”
“I know who I am. I am a McCabe. The ranch is like blood in my veins.” Morgan shrugged this time. “But I’ve heard enough about the old man scratching up enough before he got this place going—to know it took fire and guts to do it. He started out at barely eighteen, and I think you got that same fire, Lucas. You two just spark off each other.”
“Maybe.” Lucas was too weary to think about it. Somewhere in the main house, his mother lay dead. A mother he admired, like one does a beautiful butterfly. She was the opposite of their father. The more Finn seeped them in the ranch, in the land, the more contrast there was between them and the beautifully dressed woman at the table who expected perfect manners and polite conversation.
She had wanted them educated and won half that battle when he brought tutors here to the ranch, and paid them a fortune. She had wanted them to learn the Croft business, and they knew what she held, but not the scope of it because the ranch was what Finn cared about growing.
Their Uncle Alex wasn’t that much older than themselves, would be about thirty now, Lucas figured. He was brought up breathing the Croft business, as they were the ranch. So, he figured one day the man would handle both sides. Still, their lives were a contradiction because Finn was as tough as Andrea was refined. Somewhere between the two Lucas knew Finn had won more often. Andrea was “contained and poised” enough not to show, even to them, whatever she thought or felt. Her upbringing was about decorum, distance, and reserve.
“Was she happy?” Lucas murmured softly.
“I don’t know.” Morgan sat back, looked around the room, and then back to
meet his gaze. “She never changed, not even at the end. She was composed and restrained, writing her letters to friend’s back east, entertaining from her parlor. Life was the same. She closed herself in the bedroom, for a day, after you’d left…. She had her teas, her trips east by train, and her circle of society friends. Every night I kissed her cheek and she pat my hand. And no matter what set the old man off—what he wrestled with here on the ranch, his rants, a day of cussing, and shots of whiskey—she never changed.”
When Morgan stood, Lucas did too. After his brother told him to pick any room upstairs, they paused at the bottom.
“You would have come home if—”
“—Yes,” Lucas supplied abrupt and headed upstairs, leaving him. Not ready or willing to talk about the morning after gunfight—the stray bullet that, no way on earth, should have ricochet and hit Ashley Christie—Falon Landry’s fiancée. That bullet was meant to avoid killing a rash and drunken cowboy, who had taken the fistfights in the saloon—a free for all really—personally.
Lucas found the first good-sized bedroom, moonlight shining in; on a softer looking bed than he had seen in ages. He shucked his clothing and crawled in. The headache eased, but the memories were now gnawing at his guts. It wasn’t just the usual hell he and the old man had gone through, since Lucas was old enough to think for himself and Finn was determined to dictate.
He had gone to PineFlatts to drink and fight, aware there was always someone willing to engage. Before, he’d run into a fist or two that laid him out until the next morning.
That night, though, he’d come up against a cowboy who wouldn’t quit. Long after the fire inside was spent, and he was sore and bruised, intoxicated, the young man taunted him and mocked. He had ignored it, sitting on the boardwalk outside, waiting for dawn. Then the young man came out and said something about his mother that was on the vulgar side. Lucas stood, turned; ready to throw a punch—but found a gun barrel instead.