Heartbreak Ranch

by Kylie Brant

  “Hell.” The word was softly explosive, rife with frustration. “I don’t know how to do this, so I’ll just say it right out. I think…I think I may be his brother.”

  Julianne had been unusually silent during dinner. They’d brought the meal into Annie’s room and eaten together for the first time since the woman’s accident. Jed had thought the change was due to Annie’s growing strength, but over the course of the meal he’d slowly changed his opinion. She’d done little more than stir at her stew while he’d talked about the day and teased Annie about malingering. Their words had drifted around Julianne, but she hadn’t joined in.

  It could have just been tiredness, as she’d told Annie. God knew he hadn’t given her much of a chance to sleep last night. But he’d been watching her, without seeming to, and he didn’t think so. She didn’t look tired, at least, no more than she’d been since she started trying to prove she was superwoman around the house. But she did look nervous.

  He gave her some time after dinner. While she was cleaning up, he stayed in with Annie, acting duly impressed with her newly gained prowess with a walker. But all the time, he wondered what could have rendered Julianne quiet, not to mention so uncharacteristically anxious around him. Knots began to form in his belly. As soon as he could, he made an excuse to Annie and went to the kitchen.

  Julianne was bent over the dishwasher adding the soap, so he just leaned against the counter and watched her. That mouthwateringly curvy bottom strained against the denim shorts encasing it. Her hips gave a little twitch and roll as she straightened, and his tongue grew thick in response. He shifted position and scowled. His reaction was too immediate, too involuntary for him to be entirely comfortable with it.

  She closed the dishwasher, locked it and turned it on. He watched the surprise, followed closely by wariness, flit across her face when she caught sight of him. Those knots in his gut tightened. “You’re quiet tonight,” he observed. “Something bothering you?”

  She started to shake her head and then stopped. “Yes,” she answered. “We need to talk.” Her gaze slid to Annie’s door. “But not here.”

  With effort, he kept his face blank. “The den,” he said tersely, and turned away, leaving her to follow. She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Still avoiding his gaze, she began to move. She rounded the chairs, running an absent hand over the butter-soft leather while nerves took control of her tongue. “Annie’s getting better, don’t you think? With that walker of hers, it’s all I can do to keep her confined. She’d be all over the house if I let her, probably trying to push the vacuum in front of her.”

  His palms itched at her chatter. It wasn’t too hard to figure what had her anxious and babbling around him. He should have been expecting it. Had been, in fact. But that didn’t explain why those knots in his belly took a sudden violent twist, why his throat abruptly went dust dry.

  He watched through narrowed eyes as she rubbed a finger over a smudge on a gleaming tabletop. “The doctor should be pleased. I just hope when her appointment comes that she doesn’t convince him she’s recovered more than she has. There’s always a danger of her overdoing and I…”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind, Jules?” Her gaze jerked to his, and something in his sternly controlled face must have alerted her, because her eyes went wide and she swallowed hard.

  When she didn’t speak he smiled humorlessly. “Nothing to say? That’s unusual. Maybe I can help. It sure isn’t hard to guess what has you stumbling over your words.” With a quick, almost violent movement, he reached for the cigarette he suddenly needed.

  She let out a shaky laugh. “Somehow I don’t think you could possibly guess what I’m going to say.”

  “No?” He made sure none of the savage emotion swirling and colliding inside him was present in his voice. Surveying her impassively through the smoke curling from the glowing end of the cigarette, he said, “I don’t think it’s so difficult. You’re having second thoughts about last night.”

  He took her silence for agreement. Despite his best efforts, his voice grew a harder edge. “I suppose it was to be expected. After all the time we spent fighting it, last night came as a shock.” He inhaled, let the smoke curl between them. “You’re having regrets.”

  Now it was she who seemed unable to do anything but stare, while he was driven to move. He strode toward the desk, around it, to the bookcase, and beyond. “Well, you’re entitled to regrets, I guess. But damned if I’m going to apologize.” His voice was harsh, and slightly fierce. “You wanted me last night, and you can’t deny it.”

  She finally found her voice. “I’m not denying it.”

  He put the cigarette to his mouth, sucked in savagely. He could handle the anger that was welling inside him. That was a simple matter of control. He’d rather not acknowledge the tiny spears of pain that jabbed with each word she spoke. Maybe they’d be easier to ignore if they weren’t identified. “Well, you’re honest, at least.”

  A few minutes ago she couldn’t seem to bear to look at him. Now she was staring, hard, that wide brown gaze assessing. It did nothing to relieve the feeling that his skin had suddenly grown two sizes too small.

  “Yes. Honest enough to admit that I don’t have regrets about last night. Not one.”

  His attention snapped to her like a whip. Because he wanted, badly, to touch her, he shoved his free hand in his pocket. “What are you saying?”

  Her laugh was shaky. “I thought I was pretty clear. I do have something to tell you, but it’s not about us.”

  His hand reached out then, quick and sneaky, and pulled her to him. She came willingly, leaning back against the hard arm he had encircling her back, and watched him from beneath lowered lids. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you look relieved.”

  He stubbed the cigarette out against the paperweight on his desk and flicked the stub into the waste basket. Then his free arm joined his other one and pressed her against him. He wasn’t familiar with the giddy rush of relief coursing through him, but it was an improvement over what he’d been feeling a few moments ago. “Lucky for both of us that you know better, then.”

  He brought her to him for a quick, hard kiss, then lingered when the first failed to satisfy. When he raised his head again, her mouth was soft and her eyes were dreamy. And he wanted. An emotion that fierce, that sudden, surely could be controlled. But he wasn’t interested in control. Lifting a hand, he threaded it through her bright hair, felt the silky strands caress his knuckles.

  “Jed?” Her voice had a satisfactory breathiness to it. He brought her hand to his lips and nipped at the knuckles.

  “Hmm?” Her scent was as much a part of her as her personality. He followed it up the inside of her arm, pausing to investigate the crease of her elbow with his mouth.

  Her free hand slapped against his chest, and she strained away. “Before this goes any further…”

  “This is going to go a lot further,” he assured her.

  “Miles. And miles.”

  She strained to take a breath. He watched, fascinated at the rise of her chest. “We really do need to talk.”

  “Okay,” he said agreeably, lifting her wrist to his lips and pressing a kiss against the pulse there. “Talk.”

  “I mean—” she hissed in her breath and her pulse scrambled beneath his lips “—both of us.”

  “My mouth is busy,” he murmured, trailing a chain of kisses up the side of her throat. “You’ll have to do all the talking for us.”

  “You’re going to have to stop that.” She shuddered once, hard, and then leaned away from him. “I mean it. This is serious.”

  He looked down in her eyes. “I’m plenty serious.”

  He eyed the couch behind her and mentally sized it up. It would do in an emergency. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, that’s exactly what this was developing into. Slowly, carefully, he began to walk her backward toward it.

  “You got a phone call today,” she blurted out.

&nb
sp; “I’ll return it tomorrow.”

  “I hope you will.” The words were fervent. “I really hope you will.”

  Something in her voice alerted him, and he paused. “Who was on the phone?”

  Her gaze locked with his, and she seemed to be holding her breath.

  “It was a man. He said…he’s your brother.”

  Chapter 12

  A deadly stillness came over him, creeping cold, a centimeter at a time. For one infinitesimal second, a name blew desolately across his memory. Cage. An emotion that had nothing to do with logic leaped, only to be reined in by a cooler more rational part of his mind. The brother he barely remembered had never had a chance to grow to adulthood. Dead men didn’t make phone calls.

  “You’re wrong.” Turning away abruptly, he went to stare out the window, as if by doing so, he could keep her from seeing those black ragged edges that still lingered within him. The tattered remains of a wrecked childhood and the constant insidious sense of guilt.

  The matches had been in plain sight, an overwhelming temptation for four-year-old fingers. He’d been delighted the first time he’d gotten one to light, watching the flame dance with the fascination of the innocent. And so began the horror that revisited him in his dreams to this day.

  “I’m sure this is a shock,” Julianne said quietly. “But he seemed very certain. He said he’s been working on finding you for months.” An apologetic note entered her voice. “I’m afraid I didn’t get many details. I was too surprised.”

  He swung from the window to look at her. “I don’t have a brother. Whoever called here is mistaken.” He paused for a moment, then for the first time in his life made himself say the words. “My brother is dead.”

  Detachedly, he noted the welter of emotions cross her beautiful face. Shock, confusion and…most difficult to contemplate…hope. Because it hurt to see that emotion there, hurt more to feel it, he moved past her to the desk and leaned against its corner.

  “I didn’t know. You never said…” She stopped before completing the sentence, as if aware of its absurdity. There were many things he’d never spoken of. More than she could possibly realize.

  He closed his eyes for an instant and rubbed the heel of his palm over the knot of pain rapidly forming in the center of his forehead. “He died.” The words were stated baldly, without decoration. He’d never found a way to pretty up what had happened to his brother and him in that locked apartment almost three decades ago. Never found a way to forgive himself for his part in it.

  When he opened his eyes again, it was Julianne he saw, her eyes that held his. The compassion in her gaze calmed something inside him; made it possible to tuck those rarely unharnessed feelings back into a pocket in his mind. “I had a brother. Once.” He sensed the question poised on her lips and shook his head. “Before I was adopted. He was younger than me. I don’t remember by how much. Funny.” His tone said it was anything but. “I can’t remember what my mother looked like, but I remember my little brother being in that god-forsaken apartment with me.” Remembered how often the two of them had huddled in the closet together, afraid to make a sound. Terrified of the wrath of the woman who’d called herself their parent.

  He went to the decanter of Scotch that sat on a portable bar against the wall. Pouring two fingers into a glass, he tossed back half of the drink and then stood, contemplating the amber eddies of the remaining liquor. “I told you about the fire,” he continued inflectionlessly. “My brother didn’t survive it. It was months before I was out of the hospital the first time. When I asked about him, all they’d tell me was that he was gone.”

  “So you thought he died.”

  He turned and pinned her with a stare. “It’s logical. My burns were severe enough to bounce me in and out hospitals for the better part of two years. Skin grafts, infections… Cage would never have survived that. He was too young. Too small.”

  “Cage?” Confusion shaded her voice. “Jed, the man who called today said his name was John Sullivan.”

  He brought the glass to his lips and took a healthy swallow, unwilling to identify the mass of emotions still twisting in his gut. “Well, there you go. He’s mistaken me for someone else.”

  “I don’t think so. He said you shared the same mother.”

  He clenched the glass tightly and gave a bitter smile. Of course it would be the same mother. God knew, there had never been a man in those shabby apartments. At least not one who had stayed for more than a few hours at a time.

  “My birth mother wasn’t exactly a candidate for mother of the year.” He reached for the decanter, poured more liquor into his glass. “After Cage died and I was taken away from her, I kind of doubt she was so anxious to replace us that she ran out and had another kid. Most likely this guy is mistaken.”

  “He seemed sure. He said he found proof of it last year—” she hesitated, as if uncertain whether to deliver the next blow “—when your mother died.”

  What was he supposed to feel at those words? he wondered as he stared at the alcohol in his glass. Certainly not sadness, not for a mother whom he could only remember fearing. Numbness was his uppermost sensation, and it had its advantages. Scraping up the past was like pulling scabs off old wounds. The years didn’t lessen the strength with which they could still throb.

  Feeling suddenly old, he strode to the desk, dropped into the chair behind it. He tipped the glass to his lips, welcomed the liquor’s burning slide down his throat.

  “I have his number.”

  His gaze slowly lifted. Julianne moistened her lips, then plowed on. “He said you should call. If you were interested in meeting.”

  “I’m not.” He watched the surprise widen her eyes, the protest form on her lips. It was too easy to predict her reaction to his terse words. Much easier than it was to analyze his own.

  When he said nothing further, she sprang from the couch to approach him. “At least take some time to think about it.”

  His gaze drifted back to his glass. He passed it from hand to hand. “I don’t have to.”

  “Don’t you have the teeniest bit of curiosity about meeting a man who may turn out to be your brother?” Impatience was edging into her voice. Impatience and disbelief.

  He brought the glass to his lips and took a long swallow. “Nope.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  The hint of challenge in her voice had his eyes narrowing in response. “You a mind reader now, Jules?” The words were encased in ice.

  She slapped both hands on the surface of the desk and leaned forward, undaunted by his response. “If you’re asking whether I think I know you, the answer is yes. At least better than you’d like to think. You’re taking the easy way out. No risks for Jed Sullivan. No sirree. He doesn’t spin the wheel and he doesn’t play the odds.” Her lip curled. “You like things nice and safe, so you don’t have to feel.”

  What he was feeling right now was an overwhelming urge to reach for her, so he tightened his fingers around his glass. “And what is it, exactly, that you want me to feel?”

  She looked at him incredulously. “My God, Jed, we’re talking about family. The kind you’ve missed out on all your life. How can you turn your back on that? Isn’t it worth reaching for? Risking for?”

  “The kind of family you had, Jules? Blood doesn’t make people a family. You’d be better off if you realized that. Maybe you wouldn’t have run off and married the first loser you met if your own family hadn’t been so messed up.”

  The look on her face made remorse stab deep, puncturing the glacial numbness. Seeing the pain in her eyes, knowing he’d put it there, was the worst kind of punishment.

  But then her chin angled with that ballsy resiliency of hers, and she matched her temper to his. “You’re right. I lived all my life with a man to whom I was a distant fourth or fifth. I came after my father’s cards, casinos, horses…. And yes, when Andrew started gambling, it was like a horrifying replay of my childhood. It was a mistake to think that if I just loved
him enough—” her words cracked here, and with it, his heart “—just tried hard enough…maybe he could change.”

  He heard the throb in her voice and hated knowing he was responsible for it. “That’s my point.”

  But she shook her head vehemently, holding up a hand as if to ward off his argument. “But despite all the hurt, all the disappointment, I still believe there are things worth fighting for. Sometime in your life you’re going to have to take a chance on another person. Sometime you’re going to realize that not doing so makes you the worst kind of coward.”

  She turned then and strode to the door. He wanted to call her back, wanted desperately to keep her near. Instead, he watched her walk through that door. Watched it close behind her. He knew she could never comprehend a man who considered trust the riskiest gamble of all. A man who would rather be alone than to chance the kind of pain that came from caring for someone, and having that person walk away.

  He lifted the glass to his lips and drained the remaining Scotch. Setting it down, he surveyed it fixedly, watching the drops that clung to the inside trickle back to the bottom. She acted as if being alone was the worst kind of fate imaginable. What she didn’t understand was that he didn’t deserve to have it any other way.

  Once Annie had retired for the night, Julianne went to her room, purposefully avoiding the closed door of the den. It was too early to try to lure sleep, despite her lack of it the night before. Instead, she took a bubble bath that failed to relax her, dressed for bed and puttered around the room.

  There was absolutely no reason for her to have this churning in her stomach, she thought, standing at the mirror and running the brush through her hair. It should come as no surprise that Jed chose to cut himself off from all normal human emotion. The catch in her heart gave lie to the thought. Because it did matter. It mattered terribly.

  She’d always known Jed preferred to play it safe, emotionally, at least. His refusal to even consider meeting with the man claiming to be his brother only meant he was running true to form. Funny how she hadn’t considered that guarded trait of his before making love with him. She wondered what it would take to make a dent in that blasted shield he’d built around his emotions. And the churning in her stomach only increased when she realized that she didn’t have a clue.