Her Scoundrel

by Geralyn Dawson

  “I’m committed to Kat!” Jake protested, snapping to a seated position despite the pain of moving. “Dammit, I’m not going to sit here and defend myself to you, McBride. If staying in Fort Worth after seventeen scrapes with death isn’t ‘committed,’ what the hell is?”

  “Well, she’s not committed to you, and who can blame her? I’ve gotten the whole story from my wife who got it from Mari who got it from Katrina’s own mouth. Your wife doesn’t trust you, Kimball.”

  All right, that hurt. Especially coming from Trace McBride. Jake let his aching head loll back on the pillow. “I know that. So if that’s the basis for your visit, gloat, then get the hell out.”

  “Gloat? You think I’m liking this? I gloated when Luke threw your sorry ass in jail. I laughed when that flock of geese flew over and dropped a load right on top of you in the middle of Main Street. Then things got ugly. And dangerous. I’m not gloating anymore. Do you see me smiling?”

  Jake cracked open one eye. The man looked mad. He always looked mad. “So what do I do? You’re the expert on this bad-luck insanity. What am I supposed to do to put an end to it?”

  “You’ve got to fix it. The girl wants to love you, that’s obvious. Disturbing, but plain as the nose on my face. What you have to do is convince her that doing so wouldn’t be a mistake. She has some experience with mistakes, does my Kat. She doesn’t want to make any more.”

  None of this was truly news to Jake. He simply didn’t know what to do about it. “I’ve tried, McBride. I’ve told her that I’m in for the long haul, that I won’t ever leave her again. I bought land here, for God’s sake. I want to build our home.”

  “Land? That I don’t know about. It’s close to Willow Hill, isn’t it?”

  Jake ignored that question. “I don’t know what else to do other than let time prove my sincerity.”

  “That’s just it. We don’t have time. You were lucky today for an unlucky son of a bitch. I’m not going to wait around and have my daughter or one of my new grandbabies be walking beside you when a church tower falls on top of you. Instead, we’re going to do whatever it takes to wipe the doubts from Kat’s mind and clear the way for her to let herself fall completely in love and do away with the damned bad luck.”

  “I suppose you have an idea regarding the ‘whatever it takes’ part?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” Trace sat back in his chair, stretched out his legs and pulled out a cigar. Lighting it, he said, “We’re going to give you a test.”

  A test? “Like what? Mathematics? Latin?”

  “Geography.” Trace blew a puff of ratafia-scented smoke. “As in how you don’t give a damn about it anymore.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “Katrina’s the one who lost. She lost two people she loved dearly, that bastard Rory Callahan who didn’t deserve her love but had it nonetheless, and our sweet little Susie Beth. When they died, a part of Katrina died with them. Then you come along, another bastard— with a ready-made family—and you give her back her dream. So, what do you do then? You leave her. After she went and fell in love with you.”

  Jake pondered that statement for a moment. He didn’t know how he felt about having her daddy say Kat loved him before Kat got around to saying it herself. Jake knew Kat loved him, she was just being hardheaded about saying it. Guess it wasn’t so bad to hear it from her father. “She won’t say it. Won’t admit to it.”

  “Of course she won’t. She’s a smart girl. She’s done a lot of growing up since she ran off with Callahan. I couldn’t be more proud of her. Look at what she’s done lately. Instead of feeling sorry for herself when you leave her in the lurch, she feels sorry for those children. She wants to do right by them, give them the very best, so of course she brings them home to me and her mama.”

  “I was wrong to go, all right? I know that, dammit. That’s why I’m here and not out looking for my brother!”

  “Exactly.” Trace pointed his cigar at Jake. “But you’ve got to prove it to her. Convince her and the children, too, for that matter, that their hearts are safe in your keeping.”

  “Which brings us back to the original question. How the hell do I do that?”

  “You pass a test.”

  “What test!”

  “Luke found Mari buried in a cave, and that pretty much proved his love.”

  “What, are you crazy? You want to bury Kat in a cave?”

  “No, stupid. That wouldn’t do any good. According to her mama and her sister, who know her better than anyone, you and me included, Kat is afraid you’ll get a wild hair again to go after your brother. So here’s what’s going to happen. Your brother is going to show up and tell you that you need to leave with him, go on an adventure. Maybe he’s found the lost city of Atlantis and he needs your help to strip it of its treasures. Doesn’t matter. Those are the kinds of details we can work out later.

  “The bottom line is your brother will ask you to go and you’ll tell him ‘hell no.’ You’ll pass the test. Kat will feel safe, and then the damned bad luck can find another body to haunt.” He paused, rubbed the back of his neck and muttered, “Worries me it’ll be after Emma next, but first things first.”

  “It’s an inventive idea, McBride, but there’s just one little problem. I haven’t seen my brother in seventeen years. I seriously doubt he’ll show up for supper sometime in the next few days.”

  Trace put out his cigar. “Sure he will. I already have it worked out.”

  “What?” Jake’s eyebrows winged up.

  “He waits bar at my old place, the End of the Line Saloon down in the Acre. Looks enough like you to give me nightmares. As soon as you’re back on your feet, you need to drop by and pay him fifty dollars. That’s what he’s charging to pretend to be your relation. Personally, I wouldn’t do the job for less than seventy-five.”

  “Hold on just one minute,” Jake said. “You—Kat’s father—are telling me to lie to her? Is this some kind of trap you’re setting? ‘Oh, look, Katrina, the bounder lied to you again. Let me shoot him this time.’”

  Trace rolled to his feet. “You put your mind to getting well, now, boy. There’s no time to waste. I figure the babies’ christening next Saturday would be a good time to do this. You’ll have a big audience. That ought to help. Gives you a whole week to get over your aches and pains.”

  Jake didn’t think a whole year would be enough time to prepare him to participate in this idiotic idea of his father-in-law’s. But Trace had made some valid points, Jake realized. He bought into the bad-luck theory, and he agreed with McBride’s assessment of Kat’s position. It crushed him, knowing how destructive his actions had been, but he couldn’t argue that his wife’s father had it right.

  Up to a point.

  “It’ll never work, McBride. It’s a lie. I’ve done a lot of lousy things to my wife, but I don’t lie to her. I won’t. It’s wrong. It’s not a way to begin a marriage, and it’s certainly not a way to establish trust in a relationship, and that’s the bottom line.”

  “You have a better idea, Kimball? One that’s gonna solve the problem within a week? Give it much longer, and I’ll be buying a casket for somebody. My neck niggle is telling me so, and believe you me, you don’t want to ignore my neck.”

  So I put mine in a noose instead? Son of a bitch.

  But, what if he was right? What if next time the bad luck struck, the children or Kat were with him? In a war—and this by God was a war—wasn’t a life worth a lie?

  Kat would understand that. Wouldn’t she?

  WEDNESAY AFTERNOON while Robbie napped upstairs in his crib and the three younger girls played dolls in the attic playroom, Kat stood in her kitchen glaring at half a dozen pie plates. She couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong with her crusts. They were heavy as bricks. “I can’t take these to the christening. What did I do wrong? I make good piecrusts. Light, flaky, melt- in-your-mouth piecrusts. Magical piecrusts, learned at the side of a master in Aunt Claire.”

  “Take �
��em anyway.” Jake looked up from his seat at the kitchen table where he sat helping Miranda with her homework. Not that Miranda needed his help. The girl was smart as a whip and knew her multiplication tables backward and forward, but she liked having her uncle’s attention. “You can call them the Bad Luck Piecrusts. Sell ‘em for doorstops.”

  Out of the blue, Kat burst into tears. Jake and Miranda shared a look of alarm. “Honey, I’m sorry. It was a joke. I was teasing. I didn’t mean to upset you. Look, it’ll be all right. You can make new piecrusts. I’ll help you.”

  She threw out her hands. “Isn’t that just what I need? A pirate in the kitchen. It’s not the pies, Jake Kimball. It’s you. Your being here and my being here and us being so far apart. I should have sent you back next door when you felt well enough to climb out of bed. This isn’t working, Jake. I just can’t do this anymore!”

  She rushed from the kitchen, running blindly outdoors into the backyard. Moments later the screen door banged a second time as Jake followed. Kat marched like a soldier away from the house and ended up at the sandbox Jake had built for the baby. She stepped over the gray railroad tie forming the border and gave the sand a swift, hard kick.

  Jake waited until the grains had settled back to the ground before asking, “Can’t do what, darling?”

  She whirled on him, her arms fisted at her side. “I’m so angry at you.”

  “Finally,” he muttered. “All right, Katrina. Tell me. I’ve been waiting for this, and it by God needs to happen. Tell me why you’re angry at me.”

  “You left those children. Left them! Like they were puppies to be shuffled from one family to another.”

  He set his jaw. “What’s bringing this up now? Did something happen? Did you hear about your father’s lunatic idea?”

  “This has nothing to do with my father. It has to do with you. Yes, something happened. You had a responsibility to those children, Jake Kimball. Parenthood is not something you pass off to an assistant. Your sister left them to you. Not me. I can’t believe you abandoned them that way.”

  “All right. Yes. Well, I figured we’d get around to this conversation sometime. But before you take a piece of my hide with that tongue of yours, tell me this. I’ve been here for weeks. Why are you just now getting around to telling me I’m scum?”

  “You’re not scum. You’re a scoundrel who only thinks about treasure and fantasy lands and fantasy sex. When are you going to grow up, Jake Kimball? You have five children to care for. Five children who depend on you.”

  “They depend on you, Katrina. I knew you’d take care of them. I knew you loved them.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I thought you’d be better for them than I would, and you are. Look at you. You’ve made a home for them. You’ve given them a mother again.”

  Kat wrapped her arms around herself as she stared up at the house. Her voice calmer, cooler, she said, “I know what it’s like to have a stepmother, and that’s basically what I am to these children. I know how insecure a stepchild feels, how difficult it is for them to feel loved and wanted and protected, even if their stepmother is as wonderful as Jenny was to me. I know how much the older ones miss their mother and father. And what about poor Caroline? She watched her parents die and she hasn’t spoken since. Did you ever once stop and consider what your leaving might do to her?”

  “I didn’t think it would matter,” he said with a guilty grimace. He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Look, Kat, did you ever think that maybe I’m feeling some of the same things you feel? Look, I loved Daniel and he disappeared. I loved my parents—they died. I loved Penny. She’s gone, too. Maybe I was a little afraid to set down roots for fear they’d be cut. You’ve got to understand that, Kat. I know you felt that way, too.”

  She considered it a moment, then shook her head. “It isn’t about us anymore. It’s about the children.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “Do you think anyone knows? You think I knew anything about taking care of children when Susie was born? I didn’t. I knew nothing, but I did my best. I take comfort in that now. I did my best.

  “Nobody knows what to do or how to act, Jake. Parenthood is a learning process and you stumble through it, doing your best. Making mistakes and making up for those mistakes. But what you don’t do is pick up and leave!”

  Now he yanked his hands from his pockets. Jake’s skin was scratched and scraped, colored black and blue and yellow and green with bruises. This time, he was the one who kicked at the sand. “I’ve told you I’m not leaving. What more can I do to prove myself? After all that’s happened to me since I set foot in Fort Worth, a sane man would have caught the first train the hell outta here and gone back to someplace normal. But not me. Here I am, bruised and battered and getting my ass chewed by the woman I love because I’m not proving myself. Why don’t you tell me what you want, Katrina? Give me your bloody test so I can pass it and we can get on with our life together.”

  She shook her head back and forth, back and forth. “No. No. Don’t you see, Jake? It isn’t something that I can just assign you like multiplication tables! This isn’t a game. Life isn’t a game. Marriage and family aren’t prizes that you seek. You have to want the whole package. You have to do it for us. It can’t be about you. And it has to be forever.”

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded, his tone scathing. “Of course I want the whole package.”

  Kat continued, “Do you? What happens when you get wanderlust in your shoes and you want to go looking for the lost mesquite tree of Wilbarger county? You can’t. Not when you have children. Not when you have five children who have been entrusted to your care.”

  “It wasn’t wanderlust, goddammit. I was in a tough spot. I went looking for—”

  “Your brother. I know.” Kat stepped out of the sandbox and paced back and forth beside it. “And you know what, Jake? I’d probably feel the same way if one of my sisters went missing. I’d probably want to go after them… unless I had children to care for. Children dependent on me. A responsible adult’s needs come after those of children. You were wrong to go, Jake. So wrong.”

  “I know.” He closed his eyes. Grimaced. “I’m sorry. I wish I could go back and do it over again.”

  “Well, you can’t,” she snapped. “We don’t get do-overs in life. God knows it would be a wonderful world if we could I’d give anything in the world to do over a horrible minute on Main Street.”

  She stood strong in the face of her pain, but he reeled as if from a blow. Silence hung between them for a long moment, until, with desperation in his tone, he asked, “So what do I do to fix it, Kat? Tell me. Please. What do I do to make it up to the children? Make it up to you?”

  A tidal wave of despair rolled through her. “That’s the problem. Don’t you see? You can’t. I don’t trust you. You left once. You might leave again. I’m not risking the children’s hearts again.”

  “You mean you’re not risking your heart.”

  Abruptly the fight drained out of her. She pushed a hand through her hair as her heart pounded and tears pooled in her eyes.

  “Honey, please. Tell me. What can I do? There has to be something I can do.”

  It hurt her to hear him beg. It was…wrong. “Jake, you’ve given me a fortune I’ll never spend, five beautiful children and lovemaking that thrills. You’ve fulfilled my every fantasy.”

  “So what’s the problem, goddammit?”

  Her smile was bittersweet. “Fantasy is merely that. I need reality. It’s a fever in my blood.”

  “Reality? I’ve tried to show you that you’re my reality. What are you talking about?”

  “Reality is what my father has with Jenny. What Luke has with Mari. I’m looking for the long run, Jake Kimball, not a fantasy that ends when the sun comes up and the everyday begins. I want a partner. Someone I can depend on. Someone I’ll never doubt. Never distrust.” She looked at him then, looked hard, as she added, “I need a partner who I know will always be there whe
n I need him. A partner who will be strong, vigilant and true.”

  He drew in a deep breath. Determination gleamed in his eyes as he said, “All right. Fair enough. I’ll give you that, Katrina Kimball. Give me a chance and I’ll be that person, that partner.”

  It would be so easy to give in. The woman she used to be would have given in long ago. Kat shuddered, resisted. “I want to believe you. I do. You don’t know how much. But I’m afraid…”

  “Don’t be afraid, honey. It’s gonna be all right. You’ll see. I have a niggling feeling that soon, now, everything will be all right.”

  A niggling feeling. Kat couldn’t help but smile at that. “You’ve been hanging around my father too much, Jake. You’re starting to sound like him.”

  Jake narrowed his eyes and stared at her for a long moment. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? A man like your father?”

  Before Kat could frame an answer to that perplexing question, the kitchen screen door opened and Miranda stood on the back stoop. “Aunt Kat? Your sister is on the telephone. Do you want me to take a message?”

  Grateful for the interruption, needing time to think, Kat replied, “No, that’s all right. I’m coming.” Glancing at Jake, she said, “I, uh…”

  “Go on, Kat. I’ll wait. I’ll wait for as long as it takes.”

  As she fled toward the house, her emotions a jumble, she knew he wasn’t talking about the length of her telephone conversation.

  JAKE SHOVED his hands in his pockets and strolled around the backyard. He certainly hadn’t figured on an outburst like this when he sat down to help Miranda with her arithmetic. More fool he for not taking notice of Kat’s agitation.

  And yet he wasn’t sorry for the argument. A couple needed to air their issues from time to time, to cuss and discuss and figure out a way to fix them. Otherwise, those problems would fester and grow into something bigger and even more destructive.

  “Well, she certainly aired her issues, that’s for sure,” he muttered.

  Jake took aim at a rock lying in the green grass and gave it a swift kick. As the stone went flying, he wondered if he’d been on target with his last question. Was that the problem? She wanted a man like her father, but she found herself attracted to scoundrels?