Heartbreak Ranch

by Kylie Brant

  She slid him a sideways glance, which skittered away under the force of his gaze. At least he’d seemed to accept it. But when the two of them were in the same room, the tension was palpable. He’d made no attempt to talk her into staying again, and she knew he wouldn’t. The price she’d named had been too high, the demand too great. Maybe once she was one hundred miles away, in a new apartment, that fact might stop making her ache.

  He’d walked in on her when she was calling to inquire about the availability of apartments within walking distance of the campus, and just the memory of the expression on his face still had the power to weaken her knees. Until recently, she’d had no doubt about her ability to co-exist with him until Annie was well. But she hadn’t reckoned on the charged silences, the smoldering looks. She hadn’t reckoned on the strength of her own feelings for him.

  Because she was unwilling to examine those feelings too closely, she focused instead on her cards. She hadn’t counted on the torturous nights alone, when the prospect of sleep was distant and the future stretched out before her, bleak and desolate. She hadn’t counted on feeling like she’d lost every chance of happiness she’d ever had.

  She drew a card and discarded it without thinking. Only when Annie made a pleased sound and pounced on it with barely disguised glee did she remember what the other woman had been collecting.

  The next hand, Annie laid her cards down and crowed, “Gin! And I owe it all to you, Jed.” She beamed a smile at him. “Your pacing must have distracted the girl. Maybe I’ll keep you around every time we play.”

  Julianne didn’t dare risk a glance at him. He was a distraction, all right, much more so than Annie could know. And she was rapidly beginning to accept the fact that he would continue to be a distraction no matter how far she moved, or how fast she ran.

  The doorbell pealed then and she looked up quizzically. “Are either of you expecting company?” Annie shook her head, and Jed…she looked at him more closely. If she hadn’t doubted he possessed any, she’d have sworn he was wearing nerves.

  When he remained frozen in place, she rose and headed to the front door. “No, no, don’t get up,” she muttered under her breath. “Let me do it.” Then she pulled the door open.

  The couple on the porch were strangers to the area. She knew all the neighbors within a fifty-mile radius of the ranch. Yet there was something familiar about the man’s still, waiting air, something recognizable in his enigmatic gray eyes.

  Julianne’s gaze shifted to encompass the dark-haired woman standing by his side, and she smiled tentatively. “Can I help you?”

  It was the man who spoke. “We’ve come to see Jed. I’m John Sullivan, and this is my wife Ellie.”

  His words rocked her. Disbelievingly, her gaze swung from the man to the woman, and back again. Jed’s brother. One part of her mind took rapid inventory, even as the rest struggled with comprehension. At first glance, they didn’t resemble each other. Where Jed was dark, this man’s hair was almost as light as her own. Jed was an inch or two taller, maybe a bit leaner. But upon closer examination, the similarities were there, too. That gray gaze that gave nothing away; the quiet aura of strength and purpose. It was more than the thin white scar tracing across the man’s throat that told her that he could be as dangerous as his brother.

  His brother. Foreboding flashed across her mind. What was Jed going to say? How was he going to react? He’d firmly rejected the idea of contacting this man, despite every hope she’d held to the contrary. His brother’s unexpected appearance was going to force him to face his past, and her throat tightened in anticipation of the scene to follow.

  Then Jed’s voice sounded behind her, and his words completed the sense of unreality that encompassed her. “Well, don’t just leave them standing on the porch, Jules. Invite them in.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. From the lack of surprise on his face, it was clear that he’d invited the couple. The sense of unreality gave way to utter amazement.

  Pushing open the door, Julianne said, “John and Ellie, please come in. Jed forgot to inform us of his plans, but I’m frankly delighted that you’re here.”

  Ellie smiled then, and her husband slipped an arm around her waist as they entered the house. “Actually, my husband prefers to be called Sully. If you call him John, I’m afraid he won’t answer.” She slanted a glance at the man beside her. “We enjoyed the trip from the airport. It’s beautiful country.” As she made small talk, one hand was stroking Sully’s arm soothingly. “Neither of us have ever been west of the Mississippi. I can’t wait to see more of the ranch.”

  In a heartbeat, Julianne realized what the woman was up to. Jed and Sully were silent, watching each other with the wary air of two stalking predators. She’d thought before that they shared a similar sense of danger, and the air was charged with it now. Without conscious decision, she joined forces with Ellie Sullivan.

  “I’ll make sure you both get to see as much of the ranch as you like. There won’t be time for it tonight, but tomorrow…” As she chattered, she led the couple further into the house. “You’ll have a choice going by horseback or truck. Going by horse you’ll see more of the spread, of course. But the truck will save your backside.”

  Sully finally spared her a glance. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be here.”

  She aimed a winning smile at him, one fashioned to charm. When it had no appreciable effect, her estimation of John Sullivan went up a notch. “Certainly you’ll remain long enough to see a few sights. Jed meant for you to stay for a while, didn’t you, Jed?”

  His voice devoid of welcome, he replied, “Yeah. Sure. For as long as this takes.”

  At his flat tone Julianne’s smile bumped up in wattage and she resisted the urge to kick him. Hard. She was still struggling to comprehend that Jed had invited his brother here, despite his earlier decision not to. Now wasn’t the time to figure out what the act meant. And it certainly wasn’t the time to allow a tender sprig of hope to grow roots and bloom. She shifted into hostess mode and guided the group into the kitchen.

  She brought out refreshments and introduced the couple to Annie. When the tension between the two brothers didn’t lessen noticeably, she decided it was time to forget finesse and resort to bullying. She was equally adept at both.

  “Jed, why don’t you and Sully go to the den. Ellie and I will get acquainted out here.” She gave him a look that was forged with steel, and she hardened herself against the fleeting panic on his face. The flash of emotion was quickly replaced with annoyance.

  “I don’t need herding.”

  “I know that. If I thought you did I’d get the cattle prod.” Ellie’s laugh behind her was quickly disguised by a cough. But Julianne’s gaze never wavered from Jed’s. After a long moment he looked at Sully and muttered, “Follow me.” Turning on his heel, he exited the room.

  “Wait.” Sully turned back at his wife’s voice. She reached into her purse and withdrew a manila envelope, holding it out to her husband. “You’ll probably want this.” He reached to take it from her, sliding a finger over her wrist in an intimate caress. Then he followed Jed from the room.

  Ellie’s voice was tinged with worry. “Do you think it’s wise to leave them alone?”

  “Wise?” Julianne debated the word as she began to make coffee for what would surely prove to be a long night ahead. “Maybe not. But definitely necessary. Nothing is going to get resolved with either of us providing a buffer between them.”

  The other woman hesitated for an instant, then sank into a chair. “I suppose you’re right. But I can’t help worrying. Sully doesn’t exactly trust easily.” The two women shared a look filled with understanding.

  “Then that’s something the two of them have in common.”

  Jed motioned Sully to a chair and circled the desk to the portable bar. “Drink?” he asked in a clipped tone.

  “Whiskey, if you have it. Neat.”

  He splashed some liquor in the glass, then poured a Scotch for him
self. When he’d made the call to John—no, he corrected himself—to Sully, he’d been operating on a combination of exhaustion and desperation. Now he wondered what the hell he’d been thinking of.

  He turned and strode to the man who claimed to be his brother. Something inside him dodged admitting to a relationship, any relationship with him. Julianne had spoken of closure, and that’s what this meeting was about. He downed a swallow of the Scotch in one burning gulp. That’s what this meeting was supposed to be about.

  Sully sipped from his glass, watching him expressionlessly. “Julianne is who I talked to on the phone when I called?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seems like a determined woman.”

  All his frustration was loaded into his next words. “What she is is a pain in the ass.”

  Hiding his slight smile in his glass, Sully inquired, “And what else?”

  Jed speared his fingers through his hair and took another drink, welcoming the liquor’s warm explosion in the pit of his stomach. “Damned if I know.”

  The genuine bafflement in his tone had Sully’s face lightening a fraction. “I think I’ve been where you are not too long ago. You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  “Right now we have a few other things to figure out,” Jed reminded him. His gaze met the other man’s and held.

  “As far as I know, I don’t have any brothers.” Alive. The word whispered across his mind. With an ease born of long practice, he shoved it away.

  “We’re half brothers, I suspect. Though there’s no way of telling, short of medical tests, we most likely had different fathers.” Sully reached into the envelope Ellie had given him and withdrew some documents. Without a word, he handed them to Jed.

  Jed perused them one by one. It was a stack of birth certificates, and his was on top. With a curious sense of detachment he scanned the information on it. It read the same as the copy he had in his lockbox, with the exception of the parental information. The mother listed was Marcy Elaine Sullivan. Father…unknown.

  He stared at the document in his hand for long moments, expecting to feel something. Anything. But there was no emotion to bubble to the surface, no long-forgotten bit of memory to burst forth. The absence of either would have comforted him if he didn’t believe that they would pounce when he least expected it.

  He flipped to the next document, a birth certificate for the man before him—a second brother he never knew existed. With a feeling of dread he went to the last document, already knowing the name it would carry.

  Cage Sullivan. Birth date just twenty-two months after his own.

  The emotion that had been missing just moments earlier flooded through him now, great crashing waves of it, pounding him with relentless urgency. His brother’s name whispered across his mind, dragging unwanted memories in its wake. Memories that wouldn’t be banished. And a guilt that wouldn’t subside.

  He shoved the documents back to Sully, who took them and handed him a sheaf of papers. “County record copies of our births,” he said. With a sharp gaze he watched Jed carefully. “They can be checked out, if you want to.”

  Jed stared at the papers blindly. “You went to a lot of trouble.”

  Sully lifted a shoulder. “Figured you might need convincing.” He shifted in his chair, his first outward sign of unease. “I would, if I was in your shoes.” When Jed didn’t respond, he went on. “I found most of this stuff when I cleaned out my…our mother’s apartment. She died eight months ago. The birth certificates were there, some legal papers and these.” He reached into the envelope again, this time drawing out a handful of photographs.

  Jed took them slowly, reluctantly. And with a feeling of dread he forced himself to look at them, to read the notations on the backs.

  The first photos were of a young Sully, pictured with a blond woman whose good looks seemed to deteriorate in each successive shot. The next photos pictured the same woman, a little younger, this time with two boys. There was no mistaking the older of the two for himself. He had pictures taken only a couple years later, after his adoption, and the resemblance was too great. He handed the pictures back blindly, and rose to pace around the desk, to the window. And wished he could retreat from the dogging memories as easily.

  “I don’t want to hear a peep out of you two, you hear?” Why was it he’d had no memory of his mother’s face, but the sound of her voice lingered in his mind like a persistent ghost? The memory beckoned others, and it was too late to slam that mental gate shut. They wouldn’t be denied.

  The door closed, and the total darkness of the closet seemed to swallow them up. He and Cage huddled in the shadows, clutching each other, and tried to block out the noises in the bedroom.

  He tipped his glass to his lips and swallowed the remaining Scotch. Somehow the darkness had been the worst of it, he remembered. Worse than the hunger, worse than the beatings that would follow the slightest misdeed. At least it had seemed to be until that last night in the apartment.

  Swinging away from the window, he went to refill his glass. Without asking, he brought the whiskey bottle to Sully and splashed some more inside. “You’re right,” he said bleakly, meeting the other man’s gaze. “At least I figure you must be. That’s me in the pictures.”

  “I was as surprised as you are. Marcy never mentioned any of this.”

  Jed’s smile was humorless. “I’ll bet not. I didn’t live with her long, at any rate.”

  “Yeah, I found the court documents in her things. I know her parental rights were severed.” At Jed’s nod he continued, “I’ve pieced together some of it. We can probably compare notes.”

  There was a not-too-distant place inside him that would have liked to pull away from the whole scene now, a part that was every bit as cowardly as Julianne had accused him of being. He said nothing. It was too late, too late to do anything but play this bitter scene to the end.

  “I don’t know much,” he said. He lowered himself to a chair opposite Sully’s. For the first time, he let the memories play out. “My adoptive mother told me some, when I asked.”

  Surprise sparked in the other man’s eyes, eyes too much like his own. “You were adopted?”

  Jed contemplated the amber eddies in his glass as he nodded. “When I was six.” In a cynical understatement, he added, “It didn’t work out.”

  “With your last name of Sullivan I just assumed…”

  “I took my birth name back when I was nineteen.”

  “That made it a whole lot easier to find you. What about Cage? Was he adopted, too? Do you know where he is?”

  The question was expected, but that didn’t seem to lessen the punch of emotion that coursed through him. The tidal wave of guilt was never more than a heartbeat away, threatening to drag him into the darkness.

  “Cage is dead.”

  The words were too sharp, too sudden, but he knew of no way to pretty up the truth. He saw the shock on Sully’s face, saw the way he put the glass to his lips and took a long swallow.

  “Hell.” The two men drank in silence for long minutes, both wrapped in regrets, each stemming from a different place.

  Finally Sully heaved out a sigh. “How did it happen?”

  “There was a fire in the apartment. We were alone. Cage didn’t make it.” The words were succinct, the feeling behind them wasn’t.

  Sully’s gaze snapped to him, a frown on his face. “Are you saying he died in the fire?”

  Fingers gripping the glass in his hand tightly, Jed responded, “Yeah.”

  The other man shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. I’ve got records of the proceedings in which Marcy gave up her parental rights. You and Cage are both mentioned by name. Details of the injuries both of you sustained in the fire were documented, I suppose to support the county’s case. They said you were treated for serious burns, and Cage for smoke inhalation. There’s no mention of his death.”

  There was a haze in Jed’s mind that owed nothing to the alcohol, and everything to a cautious, bloomi
ng hope. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I have every reason to believe that our brother is alive.”

  Chapter 16

  The first thing that struck Julianne when she descended the staircase the next morning was that the door to the den was still closed. She paused midway down and contemplated it. It was early, at least an hour before she usually rose. That didn’t seem to matter since she hadn’t done much sleeping last night, anyway. When she and Ellie had finally retired, her mind had refused to shut off and let her rest, despite the lateness of the hour. She couldn’t tear her thoughts away from what was happening in the den between Jed and his brother.

  And Sully and Jed were brothers. What Ellie had told her had persuaded her of that. She wondered if Jed had been convinced. She wondered if he would let it matter.

  She continued down the stairs slowly, her gaze fixed on that door. There hadn’t been any noise from the den last night, and she’d know, she’d been listening. Surely the fact that the two men had been locked up together for hours was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  Hesitating outside the door, she mentally listed several reasons for continuing into the kitchen. She didn’t need to get drawn any closer into that dark and dangerous place in which he hid his feelings. Didn’t want to fall deeper into the trap of wishing to help. The only one who could help Jed was himself.

  Her hand reached for the doorknob and turned it. Someday, she acknowledged, she really would have to start listening to that wise inner voice.

  She took only two steps into the room before she saw him behind his desk. His gaze rose from the glass in his hands and fixed on her.

  “Either you didn’t get to bed last night or you’ve come up with a new morning routine.” Her approach was cautious and she surveyed him carefully. The hours since she’d last seen him had been rough ones. His hair was falling forward on his forehead in the way he’d always hated, and his jaw was unshaven. From the looks of the half-empty bottle next to him, Scotch was at least as much to blame for his heavy eyes as lack of sleep.