Shadows from the Past

by McKenna, Lindsay

  Iris scowled. Whatever had riled the woman, she was breathing flames from those fine, paper-thin nostrils of hers like a fire-breathing dragon. Taking another bite of her dessert, Iris slid a glance over at her son. Rudd seemed taken aback by his wife’s fury. Wisdom dictated it would do no good to react with the same idiotic fervor that Allison displayed. It would only amp up Allison’s Hollywood performance. Iris compressed her lips to refrain from speaking.

  Rudd set his cup on the mahogany table next to his chair and sat up. “Allison, what are you talking about?”

  Pacing in front of the floor-to-ceiling flagstone fireplace, Allison snapped, “That bitch tried to attack me! If it wasn’t for Wes Sheridan, she’d have hit me!” Allison jerked to a halt and stabbed a finger at her chest. “Kam was going to strike me, Rudd!”

  “Whoa,” Rudd muttered, his hands coming to rest on his thighs. “Tell me what happened.”

  Allison twisted the story to make it sound as if Kam had charged her instead of the other way around. When she was done spitting out the details, she rasped, “I want her gone, Rudd. Tomorrow morning! Never to return to our home!”

  Standing, Rudd twisted the ends of his mustache and faced his red-faced wife. “Allison, you know I can’t do that.”

  “You’d let that bitch strike me?” Her voice went shrill as she eyed Rudd in disbelief. “You’d let her stay here after what she tried to do to me?”

  “Did you provoke her in any way?” Iris asked in a quiet tone.

  Allison snapped her head toward Iris and glared down at her. “How dare you!”

  “I’m only asking for the truth,” Iris shot back, her voice rising a few notches. She gazed at Rudd, who looked torn and upset. The hatred that Iris had for Allison bubbled close to the surface. She allowed enough of it to be reflected in her tone. “I know you don’t want Kam here, Allison. You’ve made that painfully clear to everyone. You’re going to have to mend fences and make peace with her. Kam is my granddaughter. She’s not leaving the ranch because I want her to stay, also.”

  “You are already a grandmother to our children,” Allison shot back, giving Rudd a frantic look that said: jump in and side with me. “Rudd is the father of my children!” Allison added in a lethal voice.

  Raising one brow, Iris studied Allison. The room had turned cold. The tension snapped tautly between them.

  “I won’t have Rudd’s children savaged by this bastard child! I just won’t.” Allison stomped her foot, the sound swallowed up in the large grizzly bearskin rug. She stared at Rudd. “They are your children by me. You have to protect them! What if that bitch decides to go after one of them? What then? Are you going to sit back and let it happen?”

  Iris had had enough. “Stop calling Kam a bitch, Allison. She’s my granddaughter. And you have no right to savage her like this.”

  “Go to hell, Iris.”

  “Allison!” Rudd growled. “Stop this! You’re out of control. And none of this warrants your overreactions.”

  Iris slowly stood up. Her face was set, her mouth grim. She held Allison’s steely gaze. “I have a suggestion, son,” she said softly.

  Startled, Rudd looked over at his mother. She seemed so tense that he wondered if she was going to fly at Allison and tear her apart. “What?” he wondered.

  “Tomorrow, take Regan and Zach to the doctor. Get DNA blood tests on them.”

  Iris watched as Allison’s face drained and went chalk-white. She smiled faintly at the woman whose red mouth opened and closed several times without a sound. Her son cleared his throat.

  “I don’t understand,” Rudd said, confused and looking at one woman and then the other. They seemed like two cocks ready to fight, their eyes never leaving one another, their stances squared, the tension brittle between them.

  “Allison calls Kam a bastard just because her mother is someone else. Yet, you’re her father.” Iris lifted her chin to a challenging angle and stabbed Allison with a glare. “And you dare to infer that my son is the father of your two children?”

  Allison rocked back in shock. “You’re a cruel, lying person,” she quavered, waving her finger unsteadily at Iris. “You’re doing this just to muddy the waters! Kam is a bastard! My two children are fathered by Rudd.” Her voice cracked. “No one else. How can you even suggest such a thing?”

  Iris smiled a little. She brushed away a few crumbs that had fallen on her cranberry slacks. Iris had always known that one day she’d play this card. She hadn’t known when or why, but she’d known it would be played. “Allison, you seem to place a lot of spit and venom on Kam because she’s not ‘pure’ like your children. You allege they are by Rudd. Well, I’m calling your hand on that. I’m not putting up with any more of your tirades and your hatred of Kam. At least she came to us and revealed her true intentions. She faced the music and owned up to who and what she was.” Her voice dropped with derision. “I can’t say the same of you.”

  Rudd tugged on his mustache. “Wait a minute,” he said, holding up his hand and looking at Iris. “What’s this all about?” He knew the two women disliked one another intensely. And he knew how hard it was on his mother because Allison was tough on everyone. His wife was never sensitive toward others, only herself and Regan and Zach.

  Allison felt her heart pound so damned hard she thought she would suffer a heart attack. The look in Iris’s eyes scared her as nothing else ever had. The old woman reminded her of a deadly cobra, her eyes mere slits. And what she read in them turned Allison to ice. How could the old woman know that Regan and Zach were fathered by two different men and not by Rudd? In those heart-pounding seconds, she ravaged her brain to think of a time when Iris might have gotten wind of the truth.

  Allison figured her mother-in-law was bluffing to defend Kam. The old dowager knew nothing. Allison had been very careful about the conceptions of her children and ensured she’d had sex with Rudd within a week of each affair. That way, he’d never guess they were fathered by another man. Rudd had never suspected her of cheating. Allison had quietly taken hair samples from Regan and Zach’s brushes and had them analyzed for DNA. In both cases, her lovers were the babies’ fathers and not Rudd. She vowed that no one would ever find out. But now, as she studied Iris, she could see the conviction in the old woman’s eyes. How much did Iris really know? She couldn’t have gotten her hands on the results because they were locked away in a safe deposit box in a bank in Los Angeles only she knew about. There was no paper trail to those DNA results.

  “I see no reason to get DNA on my children,” she snapped at Iris. Gaining her former confidence, Allison huffed, “The very fact you’d even suggest such a thing makes you small in my eyes, Iris. I’ve always respected you, and now, you do this to me in a moment when I need your support.”

  “Your drama is wasted on me, Allison.” Iris looked over at her son who had a drawn expression. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Rudd. Damn Allison. She’d forced a hand that Iris had not wanted to play. All along, Iris had been going to make sure in her will that neither child got ownership of the ranch. Oh, she’d take care of Regan and Zach, but this ranch was too important, too much of her and Trevor’s blood had poured into it, for it to go to them. They’d get ample money, but not the land because of the false circumstances that Allison had created.

  “Allison, I’d like to talk to you in our suite.” Rudd gave his wife a withering look.

  “Of course, dear,” she said contritely, reining in her anger. There was more than one way to manipulate Rudd. Right now, Allison’s focus was on blunting Iris and her damnable demand. Somehow, she had to turn that request around. The look on Iris’s face, however, scared her as little else ever could. That old woman was going to have her way. As she turned to leave, Allison thought of asking André Jenkins to take Iris out as well as Kam. She’d be more than willing to pay the price to get the old woman off her back once and for all.

  “Stay,” Iris told her son as Allison disappeared down the hall.

  He nodded. S
itting down on the leather stool in front of where she stood, Rudd asked, “What do you know?”

  Iris sat down after placing her hand on her son’s slumped shoulder. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, Rudd. But I’m not going to let Allison push Kam out of our lives.”

  Sighing, he waited until she’d settled into her chair. Her gaze was like steel and he realized she had information he did not. Was it possible that Allison had borne two children that were not his? The idea was just too much for him to absorb. Oh, he knew Allison was devious. But to lie to him about that? To make him think that Regan and Zach were his when they were not? Rubbing his brow, he muttered, “What do you know, Iris?”

  She sat there and placed her hand over his. “Son, I’m sorry. So sorry. I had hoped this day would never come.” She squeezed his hand and took in a deep, ragged breath. “Do you notice anything about Regan?”

  He eyed her pointedly. “Like what?”

  “She doesn’t bear any resemblance to you, son, except for her red hair. Not her eyes. The shape of her face. Her interest in the movie industry.”

  Rudd shrugged. “So what? It happens. I can see Allison written all over in Regan’s face.”

  Iris knew this was going to be hard for Rudd. “Look at Kam, son. Do you see resemblance in her face shape to yours?”

  “Well, yes I do.”

  “She also has some of your mannerisms even though she’s never lived with you.”

  “I saw that,” he said tensely.

  “And Kam loves the earth like you do.”

  “That’s true,” he muttered.

  “And look at Zach. Do you see any of your features, mannerisms or body structure reflected in him?”

  “He’s tall and gangly, Iris. But at his age, he should be.”

  Hearing the panic and hurt in his tone, Iris couldn’t go any further. She knew more. Much more. “Maybe the best way to approach this is through a DNA test.”

  He glanced away. “This can’t be true,” he whispered unsteadily. “It just can’t.”

  Patting his hand, Iris said in a quavering tone, “Rudd, I hoped to have spared you from this. But Kam is your daughter. And I can’t allow Allison to throw her out on such a trumped-up charge. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Rudd gazed at his mother. His eyes filled with tears and then he fought them back. Maybe she was wrong. “Yes,” he rumbled, “a DNA test. That will settle it once and for all.”

  “Yes,” Iris answered him softly, “it will.”

  ALLISON STOOD waiting for Rudd. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. She had to stop this insanity! Her mind spun and her emotions were ripped apart. Never in her life had she conceived of Iris knowing her grandchildren were illegitimate, that they were not Rudd’s offspring. If that secret were to open up, Allison saw her life’s work—to give them what she had never had—destroyed.

  Her emotions seesawed between hatred of Iris and an urge to contact André Jenkins to finish off Iris and Kam. The assassin was an end to all her problems. If Iris were dead, she couldn’t encourage Rudd to test the children. Her husband was putty in her hands when his mother wasn’t around.

  The door opened and Rudd stepped in. Allison noted his gray pallor, his eyes like wounded sockets. The man was in pain and for one split second she felt pity. He closed the door and stood there, hands tense at his side.

  “Is it true? That Regan and Zach aren’t my children?”

  The words cut through Allison like a saw and she started to cry. “How can you believe that filth? I bore those two babies from you, Rudd. Your mother is saying those awful things to protect Kam!”

  Grimly, Rudd walked toward Allison. When she lifted her face, her mascara running, she reminded him of someone wearing war paint. Her eyes were glittering shards of rage and frustration. Rudd tried to steel himself against her coming tirade. “My mother doesn’t lie, Allison.”

  “Well,” she exploded, throwing up her arms, “if that’s the truth, then why didn’t she tell you this years ago? Why, all of a sudden, did Iris concoct this stupid story? Does that make sense to you?”

  Scratching his head, Rudd rumbled, “No, it doesn’t.” And it didn’t. “My mother is a straight talker and so am I.” He wondered if Iris had brought up the accusation just to protect Kam. Anything was possible, he decided.

  “Yes,” Allison said harshly, “but she sure as hell is on Kam’s side. Never mind that Kam was going to hurt me, Rudd. The moment I brought her up, Iris sprang into action like a protective old bear.”

  Rudd couldn’t deny her argument. He watched Allison dab at her eyes, but all it did was blotch the black mascara across her blazing-red cheeks. “That’s true, she did come to Kam’s defense.” He looked at her hard. “Kam isn’t the type to attack a person, though, Allison.”

  She rankled beneath his intent, searching stare. She’d never loved him, but was grateful for his care of her children. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was loving. “Anyone can attack if they’re provoked enough.”

  “Did you provoke her, Allison? You’ve never been known for being diplomatic.”

  Allison tried to curb her rage over his insult. “Let’s stick to Iris’s accusation. She’s trying to build a wall between you and me, Rudd. You can’t believe her.”

  “Is she telling the truth?” he asked, his voice wary.

  Seeing the fear in his eyes, Allison said, “Regan and Zach are yours, Rudd. I swear to God they are! How many Bibles do you want me to swear on?”

  He shook his head. Allison had never considered the Bible a holy book—ever. In fact, she disdained going to church. And she derided those who did. He didn’t go regularly, but at least once or twice a month, he attended the Unitarian church in Jackson Hole. Many of his rancher friends went there, as well. Rudd went for the religion as much as socializing. Since his wife was such a social creature, he could never understand why she didn’t go with him. Churches did an awful lot of good in a community. Didn’t she see that?

  “No need to swear on a stack of Bibles, Allison.”

  She stared at him, her mouth open. “You mean? You believe me?”

  Hearing her strident tone, Rudd winced. He felt as though he were caught in a bear trap. Iris never lied to him. Yet, if this was the truth, why hadn’t she told him a long time ago? It just didn’t add up. He did understand that Kam and his mother were very, very close. The love between them was clear and wonderful. Rudd was delighted that finally Iris had a granddaughter who loved her and the ranch.

  “Let’s drop this for now,” he told Allison. “There’s a lot for me to think on.”

  “I won’t allow you to test my children,” Allison warned, holding his shadowed gaze. “I just won’t, Rudd. Iris is wrong. I’m not subjecting our children to this insane political allegation. Not like this. And not by her!” Allison jammed her index finger down at the cedar floor with a finality that made him cringe.

  “I need to read my newspaper,” Rudd muttered, walking toward the living room. “I’ve had enough of this for tonight.”

  A thrill of victory ran through Allison. Rudd looked defeated. Had she convinced him? Allison couldn’t be sure. One thing she knew: she would give André Jenkins a second target to take out. One way or another, Allison was going to protect her children, make sure they got their deserved legacy and give them the security they deserved. And no one—not even Iris—would stand in her way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WES MADE one last inspection around the main trail-horse corral near the barn before he hit the bunk for the night. He spotted a shadowy figure hurrying toward the last dude cabin. Frowning, he stopped, unsure of what he’d seen in the darkness illuminated only by the rising full moon. At first, he thought it had been a fox or other creature foraging for a meal.

  No, he was wrong, and he squinted into the darkness. To his surprise, it was Allison. And even more shocking, she was dressed in what appeared to be a pair of jeans and a black tank top. He knew her by her stiff blond hair
that sat like a helmet on her head. Halting at the gate of the corral, with the horses also watching her stealthy progress, Wes watched, curious.

  Allison never came outdoors after dark. She always retired to her suite after dinner. Where was she heading? And why? Stymied, Wes remained stationary and watched her stealthy progress. After using the rear of the barn as a way to cover her movements, she slipped around the rear of the dude cabins. He almost had the urge to call out to her but his instinct told him to stay silent.

  To his surprise, she came around the end of the last cabin where Thierry De Bourdeille resided. Wes moved quietly toward the end of the corral to get a better look as Allison slipped up onto the porch. Her knock was so light he could barely hear it. The door opened and the light revealed, without a doubt, it was Allison. He didn’t see Thierry. The woman slipped inside and the door quietly shut.

  Pushing up the brim of his hat, Wes shook his head. Iris had told him about Allison’s affairs in Hollywood. Was Allison having an affair with this guy? Something didn’t smell right. Wes turned and headed toward the bunkhouse.

  “KAM?” Rudd called.

  Concerned over her father’s tone, she walked up to the counter of the office and flashed him her brightest smile.

  “Are you feeling okay, Rudd? You look a little under the weather.”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “You goin’ somewhere?”

  “I was going to help Wes. Two of his wranglers are taking the dudes over to the Twin Hills area. I was going to get the box lunches from the dining room and carry them over to the supply horse.”

  “That can wait for a moment.” Rudd sighed and stared into Kam’s wide blue eyes. “Allison came in mighty upset last night. I was wondering what your side to the story was.”

  “Oh…that…” Kam gulped before launching into her version of the events. Rudd’s face mirrored surprise as he listened. “I’m sorry it happened. I was out of line for what I said to her. It won’t happen again.”