by Jill Gregory
“So you knew. I guessed as much.” Bitterness rang through Brett’s voice like a hollow bell. He stared at Cade, and both men’s eyes were filled with pain that went beyond words. “That was the reason you left, wasn’t it?”
“You could say that. I left as soon as I discovered how Ross had lied to us for all those years about how she died.”
Annabel saw that beneath his quiet self-control, a white-hot anguish held Cade in its grip. As he stood there, tall and straight and calm, unutterable weariness in his face and voice, her heart trembled and broke for him.
“One day I overheard the servants gossiping and that’s how I learned the truth. You can imagine my shock—but I wasn’t necessarily surprised,” he added harshly. “Father rode roughshod over everyone else in his life, so why not her? He made everyone whose life he touched utterly miserable, so why not her?” Contempt glittered in his eyes. “He admitted it when I confronted him—admitted that she had taken her own life. But, damn him to hell, he had the gall to deny that it was his fault. And that’s when I truly began to hate him.”
“Well, it wasn’t his fault, at least not completely.” Brett began pacing back and forth among the clump of piñóns, raking his fingers through his hair. “I’m the one you should despise—me and my father. We had far more to do with it than Ross McCallum.”
If his previous statements had elicited stunned silence, this one brought forth a gasp of shock from Annabel and sent her bolting off the tree stump. “Brett, you’re not making any sense. What do you mean ‘me and my father’?”
“Ross McCallum is not my father, Annie. That’s what I learned not too long ago. That’s what sent me fleeing St. Louis, journeying far and wide to try to forget everything I ever thought I knew about myself. Oh, hell, what’s the use in talking about it? I’m going back to the ranch. I need a drink.”
He started off, stomping past Annabel so swiftly she had to jump out of his way, but Cade sprang forward before he’d gone three steps and blocked his path.
“Get out of my way!”
“I think you’d better stay here and tell us what the hell you’re talking about.”
“You do, do you?” Brett sneered at him, his face flushed and sweating. The sun was in his eyes and he squinted up at Cade, who was nearly a half a head taller than him. “What do you need, another reason to blot me from your life? You already did that thirteen years ago, big brother. Matter of fact, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here now. Why you’re even bothering with the half brother you walked out on so long ago and never even bothered to—”
“I came to find you. To help you.”
“I don’t need your help. Or want it! Damn you, get out of my way, I want a drink!”
Without warning, his fist shot out and struck Cade in the jaw. Caught by surprise, Cade staggered back a pace.
“My God,” Annabel cried, “what are you doing? Brett, how could you ...?”
But before she could reach Cade, he recovered and spun back, his fist slamming into his brother’s midsection in a blow that had Brett doubling over in pain.
“Damn ... you,” Brett gasped, as he dropped to his knees, clutching his stomach and sucking in desperate gulps of air. “I’ll kill you, you dirty no-good ...”
“Go ahead. I’m waiting.”
Brett stumbled to his feet. Cade hit him again. As Annabel screamed, Brett went crashing down into the thick grama grass.
“Stop it!” Annabel threw herself in front of him, facing Cade with eyes that were turquoise with fury.
“How can you?” she flung at him. “He’s hurt! And he’s upset! If you dare hit him again, I’ll ...”
“Damn it, Annabel ...” Brett winced as he pushed himself to his knees. “Get out of the way. I don’t want or need you defending me.”
“Yes, you do!”
“No, I don’t! A McCallum fights his own battles! Get out of my way ...”
“I will not!”
“Children.” Cade’s voice broke into their argument with icy calm. “That’s enough.” Cade reached out and dragged Annabel aside, setting her firmly out of the line of battle.
“Stay there.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he turned back to Brett, who had by now managed to get to his feet. “You’re right, little brother. A McCallum does fight his own battles,” he said levelly. “He doesn’t hide behind anyone or anything else—including a bottle.”
“I was forgetting,” Brett rasped, his face the sickly green color of a sky before a storm. “I’m not really a McCallum. So, none of that damned stuff Father—I mean, Ross McCallum—drilled into our heads counts worth a plug nickel.”
“You don’t believe that any more than I do. You are what you are and you can’t change it now. Tell me why you think Ross is not your father.”
“Because he isn’t!”
“Explain.”
Brett took a deep breath. He glanced once from Cade’s coldly speculative countenance to Annabel’s anxious one, and let out a string of oaths. “It’s true, damn it. I’m not who I always thought I was, not at all. I don’t know who I am. My real father was quite a paragon, though, let me tell you that. If I take after him”—he gave a choking laugh—“then it will be better for all concerned if Red Cobb does catch up to me or if Lowry’s men finish me off tonight once and for all.”
Annabel turned toward Cade, wondering if he understood any better than she what Brett was talking about. But he looked just as skeptical as she felt. Obviously this was a revelation to him as well.
“I think you should begin at the beginning,” she told Brett softly, trying to make her voice as soothing and steady as she could. “Neither Cade nor I understand what you’re talking about. Are you certain that Ross McCallum is not your father?”
“Quite.”
“How?”
Brett covered his face with his hands. “Oh, hell, what’s the use?” he muttered, and sank down wearily on the grass. Instantly, Annabel knelt beside him.
“The day before I ran away,” he said dully, without looking at her, “I received a strange letter. The man who sent it requested that I come to see him at the Fairbanks Hotel. The letter said it was urgent that he speak with me. So I went.” He plucked a blade of grass from the gray-green hillside, then another and another. He opened his fingers and watched them float aimlessly to the soft, fragrant earth. “The man’s name was Frank Boxer.”
“Go on,” Annabel urged. Cade stood stock still, watching Brett’s face without his own expression revealing anything of what he was feeling.
“Boxer told me a story so horrible I could scarcely believe it was true. He told me how he had worked for my father—that is, for Ross McCallum—as his man of business for many years. And he told me that he had fallen under the spell of my mother. And,” he finished in a miserable rush, “he told me that he ... and ... she ... had become lovers.”
Cade had been standing motionless beside a tree during all this speech, but now he stepped forward. “What kind of hogwash is this? You believe what this son of a bitch stranger tells you about your own mother? It wasn’t Mama who violated her marriage vows, I’d wager my hat, boots, and saddle it was the other way around. Father is the one who no doubt kept a mistress and broke her heart ...”
“No.” Brett looked up into his brother’s flushed and angry face, his own awash in despair. “I don’t think so, Cade. You see, when Frank Boxer had finished his sordid little tale, I went straight to Father. I was so upset I could barely speak.” He turned to Annabel, as if looking for understanding, or answers, or some magic way to calm the turmoil inside him. “I was beside myself with rage and doubt and questions,” he said in a low tone. “But Father confirmed part of what Boxer had told me.”
“Brett, no!” Annabel’s heart ached for him, and for Cade. She shook her head. “Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand?”
“Oh, yes,” he muttered, “I’m sure. Of course, Ross had a completely different view of the subject. And I didn’t tell him that I had
spoken with Boxer personally. I just told him that someone had brought details of my mother’s death to my attention, and I needed to know if they were true. He admitted then that she had taken her life, and had not died of a fever as the world at large—or at least, you and I and all of St. Louis society—believed. I asked him straight out if a man named Frank Boxer was involved in any way. He turned purple. He swore and shouted; he smashed a brandy decanter against the wall. And he demanded with the full force of his rage that I tell him who had mentioned Frank Boxer’s name to me. I wouldn’t tell him. We had quite a row.”
“I can well imagine,” Cade said grimly.
“The McCallums are not precisely known for their mild tempers,” Annabel murmured.
“Yes, but you see that’s the whole point in a nutshell, Annie.” Thick sarcasm coated Brett’s voice as he continued. “I’m not a real McCallum, after all. According to Frank Boxer—and this was confirmed by the man I thought was my father—I am really Brett Boxer.”
“I don’t believe it.” Cade walked to the nearest piñóns and paused, staring out for a moment at the cloudless lilac sky, and the black buttes stretching into the distance. “Mama wouldn’t ... she couldn’t have ...” He wheeled back. “There’s been a mistake. Or a lie. Someone is playing a filthy game.”
“Believe it, big brother.” Brett gave a mirthless, ugly laugh. “But there’s more. Let me explain everything Frank Boxer told me that day at the hotel. He claimed that he and Mama loved each other passionately, that he wanted to run off with her, to marry her and claim me as his child, but that she was too frightened of Ross to follow her heart. And Ross, fearing a scandal above all things, offered Boxer a huge sum of money to leave Missouri before I was born and to never come back.”
“Did he ... take the money?” Annabel ventured, wondering how much more there was to this awful tale, thinking of poor Livinia caught between the man she loved and the man to whom she was married.
“He did.”
Never had she seen such blazing fury as she saw then in Brett’s usually dancing eyes. “He made no excuses for it either. Boxer claimed he didn’t see how he could fight all of Ross McCallum’s power, wealth, and influence. Said he thought it would be best for Livinia if he just disappeared. So,” Brett continued, his lip curling, “He left her. He went away for a while, but when I was a year old, he came back. He told me that his feelings for Livinia got the better of him, that he couldn’t stay away any longer, and he wanted both of us to come and live with him. This next part is not too pretty, but ...” His face twisted as he glanced at Cade’s stony countenance. “It shouldn’t surprise you much. When he showed up again, Father took drastic steps to keep him from embarrassing the McCallums by persuading Mama to run away with him. Boxer claims ...” His voice trailed off for a moment, then he cleared his throat and continued. “He claims that Father hired men to grab him—that he was kidnapped and shipped off to the West Indies, virtually imprisoned first on a plantation there for a landowner Father did business with, and then later forced into labor on a ship owned by the same man, a ship called the Emerald Prince.”
“You’re right.” Cade stalked back and regarded his brother from beneath the brim of his hat. “It doesn’t surprise me. It’s exactly the sort of ruthless act I would expect of Ross McCallum. He taught me when I was still in short pants that you don’t merely defeat a competitor, you annihilate him.”
“Well, in this case, why not?” Annabel exclaimed indignantly. “I’ll admit that it does sound rather drastic on the surface. But it’s not all that unreasonable,” she argued, “for a man like Ross McCallum to take strong action when he’s threatened. After all, this Frank Boxer was trying to destroy your father’s life, to ruin his marriage and his family, not to mention publicly humiliating him before the very community that held him in such high esteem. You can’t blame him for being put out.”
“That’s an interesting way of describing it,” Cade drawled.
“And besides,” Annabel went on, fixing him with her sternest glance, “this Frank Boxer does not sound like any paragon of virtue. I think he had it coming!”
“Since when did you become so bloodthirsty?” The shadow of despair lifted momentarily from Brett’s face as he regarded her with a wry smile.
“I’m not in the least bit bloodthirsty—but I do see the value in protecting one’s own. Especially now that I’ve spent some time in this part of the country. I’ve watched as your brother has been forced to dispatch one unsavory scoundrel after another, and I’ve concluded that all the world is not as genteel as it should be, and oftentimes drastic measures are in order. Besides,” she added, after this remarkably long speech, and observing that Brett was shaking his head in amazement, and Cade McCallum was rolling his eyes heavenward, “how do we know that what Frank Boxer said is true? Maybe he just told you that your father did this to shock you and try to win your sympathy. Maybe he made it all up ...”
“No. Father confirmed it himself. He admitted it after we had a horrendous fight. And swore that if he had it to do over again he’d do things exactly the same way. He was under the impression,” Brett finished, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw, “that Boxer died during a mutiny attempt on the Emerald Prince, but he was wrong. Boxer survived.”
“How?” Annabel inquired.
“Who knows—luck, toughness, circumstance. He told me that he was one of only a handful of survivors who managed to escape the ship. So after years of virtual imprisonment, he and his fellow surviving mates fled to India. Apparently he made his fortune there, and for the past twelve years he’s been amassing an even greater one.”
“And what,” Cade asked slowly, his voice hard, his eyes almost opaquely black within his bronzed face, “does he want now with you?”
Brett stared down at the grass again. “When I went to meet him at the hotel, he said he wanted to claim me as his son. To be a father to me at last. And to share the empire he’s built with me. He offered me twenty percent of everything he’s built and acquired.” His lips twisted. “It was an impressive list of companies, with some freight yards, mines, and railroad holdings thrown in for good measure. But there was a nice little catch.”
“There always is.”
“Boxer wanted me to sign over all of my interests in Father’s companies to him.”
“What?” Annabel felt her pulse starting to race. Things were beginning to make sense. A queer, dangerous kind of sense. She didn’t fully understand it yet, but a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she soon would. Things were far more amiss with the McCallums than anyone had first guessed. An old enemy ... this shocking story ... an attempt to take over Ross McCallum’s business interests ...
“How much of an interest are we talking about here?” she asked abruptly, not caring that the McCallums’ personal concerns might be none of her affair, caring only that she sensed trouble. Big trouble ...
“Considerable. On my twenty-first birthday, my father made me a partner in several of his concerns. I own twenty percent of the stock in numerous McCallum factories and companies, plus a sizable share of railroad stock. Boxer wanted me to sign everything over to him, in exchange for twenty percent of his ownings.”
“Twenty percent for twenty percent,” Annabel murmured.
“It seems his goal in life is to wreak his revenge on Ross McCallum. He didn’t say as much, but I knew by looking into his eyes that he wanted to wrest control of all of my father’s business enterprises and bring him to ruin.”
Annabel touched Brett’s sleeve. “What did you say?”
“I knocked him down,” Brett spat. “Bloodied his damned nose.” His twisted smile held a measure of crude satisfaction. “Then I marched out of there and went home to talk to Father. I wasn’t sure I believed Boxer’s story, not on the surface, but deep down, I knew it was true. Most of it, I guess. I couldn’t get much out of Father—he was in too much of a fury—but he confirmed all the major points—the love affair between Mama and F
rank Boxer, the money paid to get the son of a bitch out of town, the eventual drastic action Father took to get rid of him when Boxer returned to claim Mama and his ‘son’.”
“What about the suicide?” Cade spoke quietly. “How did that fit into all of this mess?”
“According to Boxer, Mama killed herself because she was miserable with Father and he wouldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t allow a divorce, a scandal, wouldn’t stand to have the McCallum name and reputation sullied. Boxer insists he could have made her happy, but that Father kept them apart and crushed her will to live. And he also added that Ross never let her forget that her son was a bastard, a bastard he was raising as his own.” Brett’s voice was so low Annabel had to lean very close to hear him. “He claims that Father continually reminded her that instead of throwing her out as she deserved, she was fortunate to be able to continue living a life of luxury, fortunate her son would be raised as a gentleman and would inherit an empire—far more than either of them deserved.” His voice, thick with bitterness, broke. But after one ragged gasp, he managed to continue. “Boxer claims that at last she couldn’t take his tirades anymore, couldn’t take the lectures and the constant burden of guilt he heaped upon her shoulders, and she sought the only way out she could find.”
Brett threw himself down on his back in the grass, staring dully up at the sky. Beside him, Annabel closed her eyes. Poor Livinia. And poor Brett. A chilly gray sadness crept through her at the thought of pale, lovely Livinia caught in a vise of such utter misery. Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at Cade. He had turned away, toward the vista of gray-green sage and golden plains. She could not see his face, but his powerful shoulders were tensed beneath his flannel shirt and he stood perfectly still, motionless as a stone statue.
She rose without thinking and went to him. Without conscious thought, without even realizing what she was doing, she gently reached out and touched his arm.
“I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
The sight of his face shook her. It was ashen. The hard strong bones looked even sharper than before, and the grimness in his eyes had been replaced by an expression of such utter desolation that it ripped at her heart. As if dazed, he glanced over at her, then down at her slender hand upon his arm.