The Rancher's Surprise Son (Gold Buckle Cowboys Book 4)

by Christine Wenger

  Secrets. She’d have to keep hers as long as she could.

  * * *

  Cody shook off his rumpled suit and hurried into the shower, letting the water sluice over him. It couldn’t be hot enough, as far as he was concerned.

  A private shower—what a luxury! He fingered the vinyl curtain with a school of tropical fish swimming over a coral reef. He laughed at the design on a curtain in the middle of the damn Arizona desert.

  As the bathroom filled up with steam, he took a deep breath and poured shower gel all over himself. Then he found a pink loofah and scraped his skin with it until it tingled.

  As soon as he had a block of time, he’d head up into the mountains—to Saguaro Canyon—and soak in the cold rushing water. He knew just the spot, too. It was a favorite of his and Laura’s.

  They used to sit in the creek for hours at a time, his arm around her shoulders and her head on his chest. They’d relax in comfortable silence, just enjoying each other’s company. Sometimes they’d talk about the future. It had always been their dream that somehow he’d make his mark in the world and then he’d ask J.W. for her hand in marriage.

  But now he was a jailbird, a convicted felon. No one in their right mind would hire him, much less let him marry their daughter, but he knew he’d made the right decision, and he’d have to live with the consequences.

  He supposed he should be grateful that he had a paying job at J.W.’s ranch and that he got out of that hellhole earlier than he’d thought he would, even though he’d planned on serving his whole sentence. There were just some things that a man had to do to protect those he loved.

  He soaped up again and kept scrubbing with the loofah. Then he washed his hair with mango-coconut shampoo that must have been his mother’s or sister’s, digging his fingernails into his scalp.

  For the next several minutes, he just stood under the spray, letting the hot water cleanse his body, cleanse his soul.

  With a sigh of regret, he turned it off.

  He couldn’t stall any longer. He was burning daylight.

  He’d just spent three years out of five for involuntary manslaughter, and he owed the parole system two more years. That meant two years working as an indentured servant for J. W. Duke.

  In his wildest dreams, he could never imagine that he’d be working for J.W., and that he’d even pull some strings and get Cody out of jail early.

  He sighed. The fact that his stepfather, Hank Lindy, would never hurt another woman again was one of the things that had made Cody’s incarceration tolerable. If there truly was a heaven and hell, Lindy’s soul was in the special kind of hell reserved for those who hit women, nearly killing them, and who preyed on young girls.

  From all appearances, Hank Lindy, the owner of a feed and farm equipment store, was the epitome of a model citizen. That was the Lindy that his mother decided to marry. Cody never asked her if she’d really loved him, or just thought that he’d be generous and help get the Double M back into the black.

  Georgianna had been very wrong.

  While incarcerated, Cody had met a handful of genuinely great guys. Guilt, innocence or hard luck aside, they became his salvation. They got him through three damn years of hell, and he couldn’t have survived without them.

  Nor could he have survived without the picture of Laura Duke that he’d taped to the filthy cinder-block wall in his cell. The picture reminded him of better times—riding horses with her through the fields, Laura cheering for him at high school football games, going with her to the junior and senior proms.

  Of course, they’d had to sneak around to see each other, and Cody hated the deception, but J.W. had forbidden his beautiful daughter—his only child—to date him.

  Even though they’d grown up next to one another and had gone to the same schools, Cody Masters had never been good enough for Laura in J.W.’s mind. He didn’t come from a well-off family and he wasn’t connected financially, socially or politically.

  Then there was the fact that he was the son of Mike Masters.

  The bad blood between J.W. and Mike Masters was legendary in Duke Springs. Rumor had it that years ago, J.W. wanted to marry Georgianna, but Mike had beat him to her. His mother always had a special feeling for J.W., Cody knew that, but she always denied that she would have married anyone but Mike Masters.

  And when J.W. had lost the land in that drunken poker game and had wanted to buy it back throughout the years, well, their feud became epic.

  Cody flashed back to the summer day, years ago, that he’d first worked up enough courage to ask Laura to go riding with him. He was about Cindy’s age at the time.

  “Cody, I want to talk to you.” J.W. had sat him down on a hay bale in the barn and had pointed a finger at him. “You have nothing to offer Laura. I don’t want you to knock on the door of my house until you do, and even then, I might not open it to you. And if I find that you are sneaking around behind my back with her...well, you’d better be prepared for the consequences.”

  But he’d gone against J.W.’s wishes and went behind his back to see Laura, just as he always had. In school, it was easy. Out of school, they both had to be even sneakier, and it went against his moral grain.

  He remembered moving Laura into her dorm room at the University of Arizona in Phoenix. She’d been excited and eager to start her new life away from the Duke Ranch and away from her father’s immediate control. She’d had the sweet taste of freedom on her soft, warm lips and hot body, and they’d made love for the first time.

  It was a day he’d never forget.

  And he’d never forget today, either, seeing Laura for the first time in three years. Damn, she looked better than ever. She’d let her blond, silky hair grow and it fell over her shoulders in shades of gold. Shiny bangs tickled her eyebrows, but it was her eyes that told him everything. As he passed by, they looked him over, from the top of his cowboy hat to the bottom of his old boots and the silly suit he wore. He could see the sadness in her eyes.

  Did she still love him?

  Her letters had been his lifeline. At first, she’d written him every day, begging him to let her visit him, but he steadfastly refused. He didn’t want her to see him in there, but more importantly, he was afraid that she’d catch him at a weak moment, and he’d spill his guts.

  She’d been mad, and her letters only came once a week. She claimed that she was hurt and claimed that there was nothing happening to tell him.

  He always wrote her back immediately, but he’d sent the letters to the Double M. He knew that his mother would see that Laura got them, just as sure as he knew that J.W. or Laura’s mother, Penny, would destroy them.

  He and Laura had made such wonderful plans for their future, but there was no chance now, no future for them.

  He didn’t want to saddle Laura with a jailbird.

  Before everything happened, they’d had plans to leave Duke Springs and relocate to escape the long-reaching claws of J.W.

  As he toweled himself off, Cody looked out the window. His gaze was drawn to the logo of the Duke Ranch on the side of the white pickup. J.W. had a fleet of new white vehicles. The Double M had a beat-up ten-year-old Dodge Ram that was on a respirator. Once red, it was now pink from sunburn.

  Cody stared at the crown—a perfect representation of J.W.’s character. Along with the Duke Ranch, the man owned all of Duke Springs—the bank, some clothing and shoe stores, the grocery, the feed and tractor store. Everything was a spoke in J.W.’s far-reaching wheel.

  Everything, except the Double M.

  As Cody slipped into a pair of worn jeans he’d found in his dresser and an equally worn black T-shirt, he found himself itching to get back to ranch work. But he wished it was his own property that he’d be working on. The Duke Ranch wasn’t where he wanted to be. Not today. Not any day.

  He had to admit that at the
Duke Ranch, he could see Laura from time to time. That was something to look forward to, but they’d have to be careful and tiptoe around so they could talk, catch up and maybe salvage some of their plans.

  That is, if Laura still wanted him. He couldn’t read her today. She seemed shocked to see him. Hadn’t J.W. told Laura that her father had helped to get Cody paroled?

  He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t want anything to do with him. At the start of his incarceration, her letters told him that she still loved him, but the frequency of her letters had faded. When she did write him, it was mostly about his mother and sister and nothing personal about Laura herself.

  He told himself for the hundredth time that Laura must have moved on and that anything between them was over.

  He didn’t blame her one bit. He’d told her to forget him and find someone else.

  But damn, he’d really hoped she hadn’t listened to him.

  Chapter Two

  “Laura’s little boy, Johnny, is a hoot. He’s going to be quite the cowboy when he grows up.” Slim Gonzalez handed Cody a pitchfork later that afternoon in one of the huge barns on the Duke Ranch. “You should see the little guy on his pony, Pirate.”

  Cody’s mouth went dry. He plopped down on a hay bale before he fell over. Grabbing a bottle of cold water from his small cooler, he took a long draw, then poured the rest over the back of his neck.

  Cody turned toward Slim and braced himself. He wanted—no, needed—more information.

  “Laura has a son?” Cody’s heart thumped as he spoke to Slim and one of the other Duke Ranch hands listened in. “Tell me more.”

  “His name is Johnny. He’s three, maybe almost four years old.”

  Why didn’t she wait for me?

  Cody took another long drink. He didn’t want to ask his next question, but he had to know. “Did Laura get married?”

  “To a guy she met at college. From what I hear, it didn’t last long. Too bad. She deserves more.”

  Cody tried to let that all sink in. Laura got married and had a son with her husband. He fumed at another man touching her, making love to her.

  He’d always thought of Laura as his. She gave her virginity to him in her small dorm room on a twin bed, and she’d told him that she’d loved him since first grade. He’d echoed that same statement, and told her that someday he’d make her father proud. Someday he’d make something out of himself and could date her out in the open, not sneak around behind J.W.’s back.

  It was selfish of him, but even when he told her to forget him—to find someone else—he’d hoped like hell that Laura would wait for him until he was released from prison. Three years was probably a long time, but here he was, ready to pick up where they’d left off.

  Shoot. She must have found someone right away.

  For a second, he wondered if the little boy was his, but then shrugged it off. In her letters, Laura certainly would have told him that he was going to be a father. Wouldn’t she? Of course she would!

  Cody couldn’t wait to see Laura alone and ask her about the college dude. He wondered if she was divorced or still married to the guy.

  Dammit, why the hell did she marry someone else?

  He had to leave, get out of here. The huge barn felt as small as his jail cell. He jogged outside and sat on an overturned barrel behind the building, gulping the hot desert air.

  Where was Laura? He had to talk to her.

  * * *

  Laura, her mother, J.W. and Johnny sat on designer chairs on the flagstone patio that was surrounded on three sides by the wings of the Duke ranch house. They were shaded from the hot sun by a large pergola, rich with bright fuchsia bougainvillea and surrounded by natural desert flora and fauna.

  Laura loved moments like this—nice and easy, when she could enjoy the company of her family—that was, until someone started a fight.

  She took a tray from Clarissa, Johnny’s nanny and all-around helper, which contained a frosty blown-glass pitcher and four matching pale green glasses that she’d bought on a trip to Mexico. Laura had always loved the set, and liked looking at the tiny bubbles that seemed to be trapped inside the thick glass.

  “Thanks, Clarissa,” Laura said then turned to her father. “I hear you hired Cody Masters, Dad.”

  He took the pitcher from the tray and poured the lemonade into a glass. “News travels fast.”

  “Did you also help him get out on parole?” Laura asked, trying to be nonchalant.

  “I did.” He tickled Johnny, and the laughing boy climbed out of his booster seat and got comfortable on his grandfather’s lap. J.W. hugged him tightly.

  Johnny just adored his grandfather, and Laura could tell by J.W.’s various questions and comments to the boy that the man was training him to take over the Duke Ranch.

  Johnny was the son that J.W. had never had.

  “What your father didn’t tell you was that Georgianna Lindy walked over here and asked him to get Cody out.” Her mother glared at J.W. “The man killed someone, and your father gets him out of jail because she came and smiled at him.”

  Her mother’s old wounds never healed. Penelope Belcher Duke had always despised Georgianna Masters Lindy. The story went way back and added to the long discord between J.W. and Mike Masters.

  The truth was that J.W. loved Georgianna first, but she’d picked Mike Masters over him, and Penny never stopped feeling like second best.

  “That’s enough, Penny,” J.W. said between gritted teeth.

  “Grandpa, can I ride Pirate now?” Johnny asked.

  “No. Not right now, honey,” Laura answered. “It’s time for your nap.”

  “Grandpa, I want to ride my horse!”

  “Aw, Laura, let the boy ride. He’s a genuine Duke,” J.W. said. “He loves horses.”

  “As opposed to a counterfeit Duke?” Laura said under her breath. “Dad, remember that I’m Johnny’s mother, and what I say goes. Please don’t interfere.”

  “Oh, all right,” J.W. snapped at her, then turned to Johnny and tickled him. “Do what your mother says.” J.W. lifted Johnny and set him on the flagstones. “Take your nap, partner, and then you can ride your horse.”

  Just as Laura stood up to take Johnny to his bedroom, Clarissa appeared and extended her hand. With a glance back at J.W., Johnny put his hand in Clarissa’s. “I’ll be right back, Grandpa.”

  J.W. grinned and lit a cigar. “Sweet dreams, Johnny.”

  Sweet dreams? Too bad she’d never heard J.W. say that to her when she was Johnny’s age. Laura followed Clarissa and Johnny toward the ranch house, feeling like a third wheel.

  J.W. reached out and clasped Laura’s wrist. “Wait a minute. I want to talk to you,” her father said in the gruff tone he reserved for Laura and her mother.

  “Yes?” Laura anticipated a pounding headache and sat back down. She looked to her mother for assistance, but Penny was busy typing something on her cell phone.

  J.W. took a long pull on his cigar and blew a stream of stinky smoke into the bougainvillea. “I want to talk to you about Cody Masters.”

  “I figured you would, sooner or later.” Laura knew the drill. “I’ll avoid him as much as I can, Dad, but what do you want me to do? Cody’s working here at the ranch, and I live and work here. I take Johnny to the barn to ride and out for walks. I’m bound to run into Cody.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You’ve been telling me the same thing since I was a kid. Cody Masters isn’t your enemy. Even Mike Masters wasn’t your enemy. He was your good friend at one time.” She turned to her mother. “Georgianna Masters was your friend at one time, too.”

  “That was long ago.” Penny never looked up from her cell phone.

  “Life is short.” Laura tapped a finger on the patio table. “All the more reason why you should
mend fences.”

  “Georgianna’s the one who should mend her fence. It looks horrible. It’s all falling apart.”

  That was her mother’s attempt to change the subject and zing Georgianna at the same time, but Laura wasn’t going to fall for it.

  “Mom, stop.”

  “It’s not my fault that she can’t afford to keep up her so-called ranch!” her mother said.

  J.W. put his cigar down. “That’s enough, Penny.”

  “Not before I remind you that we lost that land because you got drunk and failed to win a poker game against Mike Masters. I still can’t believe it.”

  Same old same old.

  Her mother never missed an opportunity to bring up J.W.’s fateful Texas Hold ’em game thirty-something years ago. It was like a recording that played ad nauseam.

  A bell on Penny’s cell phone rang, indicating a text message. Penny picked up the phone, punched some buttons and read the screen.

  Her mother had always been unhappy, and a lot of it had to do with the Masters family, but even more had to do with J.W. Laura always wondered why her mother didn’t just didn’t pack up and leave, but Laura knew that Penny just loved being the Lady Astor of Duke Springs.

  Penny pointed at the Double M, just beyond the tree line to the west of the ranch house. “That place is an eyesore.”

  “Mom, maybe she doesn’t have the money or the help to fix it up.”

  J.W. rolled his cigar tip on the lip of an ashtray. “Then she should sell it back to me. Matter of fact, I suggested that when she came to see me about getting Cody out.”

  Laura’s stomach lurched. She knew the power that J.W. wielded. “Dad, you didn’t get Cody out on the condition that Georgianna sell the Double M to you, did you?”

  Penny’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Did you do that, J.W.?”

  He took a long draw on his cigar. “I have some scruples, no matter what you both think.”

  Laura’s face flushed with guilt. Her parents didn’t have a clue that the Duke Foundation had provided Georgianna with money to do some repairs to her ranch house.