by Gayle Eden
He had backed out into the street, thinking the young man couldn’t shoot straight considering he was drunk and raving. Lucas hadn’t drawn until the cowboy cocked the hammer, but still—he’d fired wild, already focused and knowing the shot the boy took would skim his shoulder. It had, scorching his vest, before the young man passed out cold.
At first, the screaming and sounds confused him—but then the buggy rolled past him, the driver slumped, with a hole in his temple.
Lucas cursed and rubbed his eyes, remembering the Sheriff, who’d witnessed it saying, “Your Daddy can clear this for you, with the Christie’s', Lucas.”
Yeah. The old man could probably. He was aware that the Christie's were an older affluent couple, who lived in a big house in the valley—people who first settled PineFlatts. Nice, respectable people, who tried for years to have a child until their only one—Ashley —was born.
“Tell them, I’m sorry. Tell them… what happened.” Lucas had rasped before getting on his horse.
“What about, Finn?” The Sheriff grabbed the reins. “I’ve sent someone out for him—”
“Tell him—to go to hell,” Lucas had kneed the mount and tore out.
For the first week of sleeping in the saddle, moving, it was not Finn’s face that haunted him. It was a young, respectable, man, with a bullet hole in his head. With that, memory of the time Lucas had come upon him with Falon Landry, by a spring at the borders of Landry and McCabe ranch.
He’d sat his horse beneath the shade tree, seeing the young man in white shirt and city trousers with a taut strap, Falon, in a dress with tiny blue flowers, her tall, slim, form beautiful, with sorrel hair waist long, lifting gentle in the breeze. Ashley was on his knees and something sparkled in his hand.
Lucas could still remember Falon’s laughter, the kiss, and embrace he had witnessed when Ashley stood. The envy tinged with cynicism he felt as Ashley swooped her up like some hero in a novel, and whirled her around. He had watched them romp and play, later lay on the blanket, Ashley half over Falon, kissing her. Since Lucas’s first kiss was a floozy in town who caught him in the outhouse behind the saloon, he didn’t believe in all that idyllic romance.
He’d left them, secretly laughing and thinking that once the ring was on, and Ashley would be in town getting tail at Ma Keat’s place while Falon stayed barefoot and pregnant. He had kept that opinion—until the morning, his stray bullet struck Ashley Christie—
He recalled the Doc, an old quack, being in the saloon the night before the fight, drunk, claiming that the Landry girl was pregnant. Jeering; “Didn’t think that fancy pants young man had a cock big enough to do anything with, the way his Mamma coddled him. Can’t say I figure they’ll let him do right by the girl. Landry ranch might be something in these parts, but Frank never had much use for his oldest—she has been a caretaker for young Ashley’s folks for two years now. Tobias may be infirm, but he groomed that boy to marry something better.”
Sick now as he had been then, Lucas recalled when he’d slipped back into PineFlatts a year ago and rode to that valley. The big house sat nestled in the center of emerald green hills, four story, white, with neat veranda and front porches lined with rockers and flowers.
He had raised a spyglass and seen the aged Christie's in their wheeled chairs, blankets on their laps, on the upper veranda. A banner of sorrel hair caught his eyes below—Falon Landry taking in laundry out back. He didn’t ask and never heard anything about a child—but he felt guilt nonetheless. There was nothing he could do to change it, then or now. No way of taking back the night before and early dawn. A dozen or more times he had burned off his anger at Finn in the PineFlatts saloon. It only took once… for everything to go wrong.
Despite his fatigue, he rolled out of bed and went to the window, rolling a cigarette and sat on the ledge, peering at the big house.
A taste of being on his own changed him, too. For a while, he believed everything Finn threw at him when they had their fights, because he had killed a young man, an only son. For a while—he hadn’t given a shit what happened to him as a hired gun. Marshal Upsher crossing his path during a range war had been a wakeup call. Putting on a badge was no less secure, but it beat the hell out of coming home and letting Finn manipulate his life.
Shit. Lucas blew a stream of smoke, narrowing his green eyes against it. He would get through the funeral, a reading of the will, and be on his way. He didn’t have to speak to the sonofabitch.
* * * *
Andrea’s body lay in an ivory coffin in the parlor. Her beautiful blond hair long and flowing. A gold silk gown with seed pearls covered her lifeless body.
In his apartments, Finn McCabe sat sipping a whiskey, staring into an unlit hearth; his booted feet propped on a worn leather stool. Having bathed and shaved earlier, gone out to do the feeding, his long powerful legs were encased in denim, swarthy torso bare because he’d hung the chambray shirt on a peg. Muscle mounded across his shoulders and curved in his upper arms, veins under the dark skin full of lifeblood. Broad of chest, taut waist, he was stronger than he had been in his twenties and every day on the range shaved off any chance of fat and layered in muscle.
Having combed his raven and silver hair straight back from a broad forehead, it was drying and sliding forward. Layered in back to rest against his nape. His face was strong, sinewy, square jaw and strong chin, a blade of a nose, lips molded and dark. His lime green eyes were full of shadows for a change—men having said many times they were hard as bottled glass and full of fire.
Andrea was dead, and Lucas was home.
Taking a long sip, barring his teeth at the raw burn sliding down his throat and into his stomach, Finn was not a man who had time to look backwards most days. It served him better not to. There were things anyone would change or do over. Since that was impossible, the only thing eating yourself up about it did, was make a man stagnate.
He’d been moving forward, full speed, from the time he walked off the horseshit farm his mean as hell father worked him like a mule on. At the grand age of ten he figured out if the old man could whip him to work all day during the week, hire him out to work for others on Saturday, he could damn well strike out on his own and get paid for it.
Since his daddy didn’t allow him to eat until the moon rose, and that was worse slop than the hogs got, he had figured out pretty soon that the money earned from hiring him out went to whores and whiskey to warm the old man’s bed—while he was out plowing or felling trees in the boiling sun or freezing snow. He said to hell with that. One day he just put down the plow and walked.
PineFlatts. He’d breathed in the place when he’d gotten here, taking odd jobs, lusting every day for the unclaimed land just waiting for sleek horses and cattle. Learning to ranch, to cowboy. That was the best part. He’d become a wrangler, rounding up wild horses, taming them, selling them—adding that money to the kitty. By the time he bought his first hundred acres, he had met Sara—
Christ, he still couldn’t forget his first sight of her on those boarding house steps. He hadn’t learned how young she was until later. Full figured and with her strawberry hair curled and tumbling under a short brim straw hat, her body garbed in a dun blouse and dark broad cloth skirt, short boots—if her figure alone hadn’t made his knees weak, her autumn eyes looking him over certainly sucked the wind out of his lungs. Sara’s face was angular; her brows arched and lips a light pink. Her stare and stance had been curious and proud at the same time.
He had managed, “You’re new around here?”
“Yes. Papa and I just stepped off the stage. We’re looking for work.”
“Is he strong enough to clear land? I can’t pay much but meals and board, got a two story log home on the place and need someone to keep it.”
“He’s strong enough.” She’d nodded, accessing him. “Where is your place? We’ll be there at sunup.”
“Don’t you want to ask him first?”
“No need. He trusts my judgment.” She’d shaken her
head and asked his name, then introduced herself. “My pa is called Jim.”
“Sara,” he had repeated her name, thinking that she was all soft sunset in hues, but despite a womanly figure, there was something strong and fearless in her. Long after he had tipped his hat and left, he’d thought about strawberry haired Sara Landry. After her pa and her had showed up at sunrise the next day, he and Sara were inseparable. She had a little brother, Ryder, who stayed with an uncle in Arizona territory, because he’d been too sick over the last winter to strike out with Sara and their Pa after their small spread went under. Finn had never met him.
Mentally Finn shook his head, not willing to go back that far, sufficing his reflections with the truth—that when he had met Andrea no such reaction had struck him.
Outwardly an exquisite beauty, inwardly distant and cool, she had none of Sara’s passion. Where he and Sara breathed each other, felt things with the same depth, he and Andrea understood each other in an objective and distant manner that was more like business.
He understood why she let him be intimate with her within an hour of meeting in town, and she understood why he didn’t resist when her father caught them—and insisted on a wedding. She had heard of him, seen him, recognized his ambition, and set the whole thing up. He could not deny a thing to her father who caught them, and saw no point in trying. A man with that kind of money and power had everything arranged before he could go home and change his clothing. He told Finn he could take everything he had worked for and see him in prison for rape, if he refused.
Grunting, Finn shook his head. Sara’s Pa was on his deathbed then, she’d moved into town a week before, so the doc could take care of him at the boarding house. He had some kind of blood poising after cutting his leg on a rusty axe. The next time he had seen Sara was when he was coming out of the church, in a new suit provided by Mr. Croft, with his bride on his arm.
He’d made his bed. It didn’t take him long to figure out how his bride defined marriage—particularly once her parents were killed in an accident and she’d gained half control of their businesses, along with her brother. Distantly he could admire Andrea’s cool and measuring ways. Personally, it didn’t make for anything to burn the edges off his passionate nature. She couldn’t be provoked. She had her interests and outwardly did him proud as a wife of means and discernment. Privately they negotiated.
However, he won most of the time, when it came to their sons.
He certainly felt the hollow victory when Lucas started rebelling and resenting him. It was a war, a constant battle, since Lucas was old enough to stand toe to toe with him and get under his skin. Finn never thought, not even when he knew he had gone too far or let his temper get the best of him that Lucas would leave. He damn sure never thought that.
For all Andrea disliked the way he raised his sons, she never forgave him for not going after Lucas and forcing him home. Even when he let her know he kept tabs on Lucas, she’d look completely through him.
He didn’t lose sleep over it—not on Andrea’s behalf. They had long since drawn their lines and stayed behind them. After Morgan’s birth, she stopped any presence of intimacy. It was with some irony that he’d discovered going through her things that Andrea had a flowery tongue lover back east since shortly after they wed. Some already married heir to a shipping fortune.
He had gone against his better judgment and kept Jordan at a distance for Andrea’s sake, and all the while, she had a discreet lover she spent a month every year with. It was almost amusing. He couldn’t summon up any rage or anger. He never could when it came to Andrea. She had lived her life and he his. The children she bore him were all they had in common.
A knock on his private door caused Finn to blink. He moved his feet and set the glass down, padding over comfortably worn floors to the open it.
“Am I disturbing you?” Alex Croft stood there, looking as if he’d been wresting between sleep and waking for hours. His mahogany and wheat hair was mussed, jasper eyes strained at the corners, and his once starched white shirt was wrinkled, untucked in the black trousers.
“Nope. Come on in.” Finn moved back and then closed the door behind them, inviting Alex to take one the seats in the grouping by the unlit fireplace. “Whiskey?”
“No. Thanks. I’ve drank three already.” Alex’s smile was dry but his sigh was telling when he lowered his six plus frame into the well-worn leather. Elbow on the arm, he rubbed at his eyes and then leaned his head back, studying Finn who sat again and murmured, “Rogers was a thief, petty but a good one. I’ve gone over and over those books and he took a little here and a little there.”
“You want to bring charges?”
“No.” Alex shook his head. “He was scared enough when I came in and lit out, cleaned out his house and was gone before sundown. Some of that stuff needs to be unloaded, cut loose; I had sent letters telling him that last year. Stocks that have lost money. It’s a mess on this end. I have liquidated most of my assets before leaving Maine and coming here. Whatever is in my sister’s will, whomever she left her share to, needs to consider that. We do not know who stopped doing business with Croft because he overcharged or double charged them. Our rep is likely harmed. The land deeds appear clear, but I won’t trust anything until it’s checked out.”
“Do what you need to.” Finn shrugged.
“You never cared about that, did you? The money?” Alex was studying him thoughtfully.
“Nope. It helped improve the ranch, and gave Andrea all the better things she was used to. But me personally, no.”
“The two of you certainly didn’t have a love match.”
Finn scratched his chin slowly. He liked Alex, had liked him even when younger. He had none of his father’s ruthlessness nor Andrea’s distance, but rather Alex was methodical and on a personal level, down to earth. He knew Alex had a degree in law and had gone to West Point. He was a sportsman, which kept him from looking the well to do Yankee. He gathered Alex spent much of his youth in boarding schools and later having to constantly make friends and fit in.
They shouldn’t have much in common, considering their backgrounds, but he suspected Alex’s passions were the deep kind, and that the man pondered all angles and weighed options. He could not help but admire that in him.
“We didn’t fall in love.”
With a grunt, akin to a laugh Alex said, “Neither did my parents as I recall, unless you call joining the Croft millions with Shelton stock in mining companies, a love match. Old money and old bloodlines.”
Finn nodded.
Alex went on lazily, “I have to say that my father envied your ambition and drive. As for me, every time I came here I thought I would trade places with Lucas or Morgan any day of the week. Here on the land, ranching, you can see the fruits of your labor, feel some sense of satisfaction. Not quite the same going fox hunting or playing polo, sailing with one’s shareholders, watching younglings vying for a private club invite—or panting after their debutante daughters—who will keep another generation of ne’er-do-wells in the pocket.”
“Some men dream of that, I reckon. For us common folk, land is better than gold and ranching is—well, it has a rhythm and cycle, a ritual that gets in your blood.”
“Yes.” Alex’s jasper eyes moved over Finn’s strong face. “In any case, I’ve cut ties with everything east. After I see to Andrea’s wishes, I must start thinking of where to begin again.”
“Thanks,” Finn said quietly, and turned his green eyes to meet Alex’s waiting ones. “For what you did for Jordan. For when she was in school there and—” He shrugged.
“It was Andrea’s wish.” Alex held his gaze. “What either of us did, didn’t spare Jordan anything though. She’s not like to forgive any of us, including you.”
“I know.” Finn looked away.
“I heard from Morgan that she goes out on the range sometimes. They taught her riding at school, but he says she is a natural. Why don’t you start building a bridge, claim her, before it’s t
oo late?”
“She’s not speaking to me.” Finn stared at the suet that needed cleaned out of the hearth. “Hasn’t since Andrea refused to let her help out when she took sick. Hell, this house is big enough for six families and she’s the only one of my blood left under it, even though the wing she took ain’t half finished. It’s only a matter of time before she packs up and leaves.”
“Not if you try and—”
“She’s full grown. Almost eighteen. Truth to tell, we’re strangers. You know her better than I do.”
Alex sighed. “She’s got some of your traits—stubborn, smart, good instincts, and a healthy dose of cynicism. I think from the time she realized you taking her in, didn’t mean she was becoming part of a family, she learned to be on guard, and trust nothing too closely. She seems comfortable with Morgan, but then he’s the kind of man people just trust and have faith in, rock solid.”
“At least one of my sons turned out right.”
“Lucas, under that fire and ice is much the same, Finn. And for all Morgan is what he is, that’s more because he loves ranching and the land is in his blood, rather than you being easy on him.”
Cocking his brow, Finn looked at him.
Alex’s lips curved. “You’re a hard ass, Finn McCabe. You don’t have much give and you don’t cut much slack. Not even when those young men were boys.”
“I am what I am.”
“No excuses.” Alex nodded and looked away. “Beats pretenses any day.”
“You’re damn straight,” Finn said softly. “I met your sister half way on most things but if it had been up to me, I’d say to hell with everyone else and do what I felt was called for. I am not making excuses. I married her and I did have to give at times when I wanted to stand my ground. It’s done, and there’s no going back to change it.” He shrugged. “I won’t make excuses.”
“Never expected it.” Alex sat up and shoved his hands through his mane. “That’s real strength, McCabe, and both of your sons have it. Although it sets off sparks with Lucas, that is something you can be proud of. “