Beloved Wolf

Who are you? Sophie asked silently, gazing down at the sunscreen-slick woman with the bloodred fingernails, the perfectly coiffed golden-brown hair, the too-youthful swimsuit…the pitcher of martinis on the table beside her. Who are you? Because you aren’t my mother anymore. You can’t be my mother.

“Hello, Mother,” Sophie said at last, when Meredith Colton didn’t respond to her presence. “I’m home.”

Meredith raised a hand, removed her sunglasses, then slid her long legs to one side and stood, looking at Sophie with Sophie’s own huge brown eyes. “Well, so you are,” she said, motioning toward the metal cane in Sophie’s left hand. “Is that going to be around for much longer? I mean, really, it’s so…medical. Couldn’t you find something nicer?”

“It’s good to see you, too, Mom,” Sophie said, giving in to her fatigue and sitting down on the matching chaise. She kept her head down, so that the curtain of her hair slid forward, covering her cheek.

“Don’t be snide, Sophie,” Meredith told her, sitting down again herself and taking hold of her martini glass. “Or hasn’t it yet occurred to you that you’re twenty-seven years old? Old enough to move to San Francisco. Old enough to be out on your own, just as you wanted to be. You wanted to be independent, and I let you be independent. But, obviously, for all that independence, you’re still not so grown up that you couldn’t insist that your doting daddy jump up and run when you wanted him.”

Shock made Sophie lift her head, and she watched in horror as Meredith’s eyes widened at the sight of the scar. She raised a hand to her jaw, but it was too late, because her mother had seen everything there was to see.

Meredith’s upper lip curled in distaste. “Not bad? That’s what your father said. The scar wasn’t bad. Doesn’t the man have eyes in his head? Oh, you poor thing. How are you going to manage, being so horribly disfigured like that? And your father says you sent Chet away? That wasn’t smart, Sophie. How do you expect to get another man with that ruined face? I really think you should— Where are you going? Is this how you were raised? How dare you walk away while I’m speaking to you. I’m your mother!”

But Sophie had gotten to her feet as quickly as she could and was already hobbling back toward the house, wondering what on earth had possessed her to come home. Whoever had said it had been right: You can’t go home again.

At least not to Hacienda del Alegria. The House of Joy?

No, not anymore.

River walked back to the stables after watching Joe’s car drive past, seeing Sophie’s form in the passenger seat.

So. She was home. Healing, but not quite mended. And without a diamond on her third finger, left hand.

Not that he was going to do anything about that, could do anything about that.

Besides, it might only be temporary, some sort of emotional fallout from the mugging. Joe had told him how sensitive Sophie was about the cut on her face, how she refused to see that the scar was fading every day, growing less obvious to everyone but her.

If nobody mentioned the scar, made a big deal about it, Sophie would probably soon be able to deal with the thing, put it behind her, look forward to the surgery that would finish the job the doctor had begun and her healthy body had taken from there. After all, her knee was already so good that the J-brace and crutches were gone.

She’d been in physical therapy in San Francisco almost from the beginning, and now that she would soon be putting aside her cane, the therapy could begin in earnest, building up muscles grown weak from disuse.

Sophie was fine. Fine. And she was going to be even better.

River told himself that every night. She was healing. She was back with her family, who would do everything in their power to help her heal. She’d soon be his own laughing, happy, optimistic Sophie again.

Please, God.

River busied himself in the tack room, making up excuse after excuse not to leave the stables, not to head up to the house. See Sophie.

She’d be too busy for him anyway, with everyone else crowding around, hugging her, kissing her, welcoming her back. Why, he might even take dinner out here with the boys rather than go up to the house for the evening meal. That wasn’t so unusual; he did it all the time.

“Coward,” he muttered under his breath as he hung up the bridle he’d just inspected. “What do you think she’s going to do, buddy? Bite your head off?” He lowered his head and sighed. “Ignore you?”

Okay, so now he was finally getting down to it. She might ignore him—or worse, treat him the same as she did her brothers and sister, her foster siblings. Happy to see him, polite, even loving. But not special.

Not the way they’d been, years ago.

He wouldn’t have made it without Sophie, wouldn’t have survived. He knew it, even if she didn’t.

River had come to the ranch a rebellious teenager—alternately hotheaded and morose, a teeming mass of hate and anger and, often, despair. He lashed out at anyone who came near him, tried to help him, although he didn’t realize until many years later that he kept people at arm’s length because he was too afraid to let anyone into his world, for fear they’d leave him.

He’d been born to a white rancher and a Native American mother whom his father had married only because he’d been careless and put a child in her belly, River. His father resented his Native American wife, and Rafe, her son from a previous marriage, but that didn’t mean he kept his hands off her.

River’s earliest memories were of his mother’s love and his father’s undisguised disgust.

And then his mother left him, died in childbirth when he was only six. His new sister, Cheyenne, was taken in by her maternal grandmother, to be raised on reservation land. Rafe, River’s protector, also stayed on the reservation, because their father didn’t want him, couldn’t control him. But not River. Oh, no, he wanted River. He was six years old now. Old enough to “help” eke out a poor living on that small, decrepit excuse for a ranch. Old enough to do a “man’s” work. Rafe, on the other hand, was old enough to talk back, and so he was left behind, considered worthless, too much the savage for his stepfather to have to face every day.

All the love went out of River’s life when his mother died, when his sister and brother had been taken away. His own life was reduced to caring for and avoiding the slaps from a rotten drunk.

School was a place River went when his father was passed out drunk on the couch and couldn’t stop him, saddle him with another chore. It was at school, when River was nine, that one of his teachers had seen the bruises.

Now his father was gone, left at the ranch while River was removed from his not-so-tender care and placed at the Hopechest Ranch, a haven for children from “troubled homes.”

He’d hated it there. Hated the kindness, the caring, the promise that he was safe now, had nothing to worry about anymore. What did those do-gooders know? He was alone, that was what he was. His mother gone, his Native American family unwilling or unable to take him, his father a brutal drunk who could show up at any moment, drag him back to the ranch.

River found some solace with the horses at Hopechest Ranch, a project initiated by Joe Colton, a charitable contribution he believed would help the children who cared for the horses, learned responsibility through that care, and in return were given something to love.

That was how it began. River James, half-breed and teenage menace, and Joe Colton, rich man, senator, and a man stubborn enough to ignore River’s animosity, his rebuffs, and finally take the troubled teen into his own home.

Joe and Meredith tried their best, they really did. So did the other Coltons. But River held out, held himself aloof from them all, ignoring their kindness while spending his days cutting school and hanging out at the stables. Hacienda del Alegria wasn’t exactly a working ranch, but Joe Colton did raise horses, and that was enough for River.

Except he couldn’t shrug off Sophie Colton, because the girl simply refused to go away, to leave him alone. God, how he’d tried to send her away. Called her names, ignored her, let her know her company wasn’t welcome.

For all the good it did him.

Just entering her teens, Sophie had been skinny as a Popsicle stick and just as physically two-dimensional. Bright silver braces on her teeth. Silly pigtails in her hair. With a curiosity that drove him nearly insane as she tagged after him asking “Why?” and “How’dya do that?” and “Can I ride him next, huh, huh, can I?”

He longed to strangle her, because she wouldn’t give up. Her tenacity infuriated him, right up until the moment he realized that Sophie Colton was special. All the Coltons were special, but Sophie was extraordinary. She had a heart so big it included the whole world, even him. She wore him down, wormed her way through his defenses, and the two of them became friends, more than friends. Inseparable.

And then she had to ruin it all and grow up, start seeing him as her boyfriend, her first love. God, that had been hard. Especially since River felt like her boyfriend, wanted to be the one who awakened Sophie to love, then held her in his arms forever.

He’d been a fool to agree to escort her to her senior prom, more of a fool to kiss her.

And then she’d gone away, and his last sight of her had been the tears in those huge brown eyes when he’d told her to go away, to grow up, to leave him alone.

He should have left then, left the ranch, left the Coltons. He was old enough to be on his own, legally free to leave. But then there was that mess with Meredith, the marital separation that had so unsettled everyone, and Joe’s unhappiness over these past nine years.

How could River leave the man who had given him so much? Even as word of River’s expertise with horses traveled far enough to have ranchers from Colorado to Texas making him offers, River had stayed with Joe and built up the Colton stud.

He had stayed with Joe and waited for Sophie to come home, knowing she never would. Not with her successful career in San Francisco. Not with that damned ring on her finger. And most especially not to revisit the strained unhappiness that hung over the ranch.

“River? You back there?”

River walked out of the tack room, toward Joe Colton, who was standing in the stables, looking lost and defeated. “Senator? Is everything all right? I saw you drive up a while ago with Sophie.”

River retrieved two soda cans from a small refrigerator and handed one to Joe, motioning for them to step outside, sit down on the bench against the wall, just to the left of the huge doors. “Joe? Everything is all right, isn’t it? I mean, you told me she was fine—”

Joe gave a slight wave of his hand. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. Sophie’s doctors are over the moon with her progress, just as I told you. All of them. And they’re satisfied that you’ll make sure she gets to physical therapy in Prosperino three times a week. So, no, nothing’s wrong there. It’s just…it’s just…”

“Meredith?” River asked, his jaw tight. “Tell me. What did she do?”

Joe, unable to sit still, got up and began to pace. “It’s more like what she didn’t do. She does nothing, and it hurts Sophie. Then she finally does do something, and it hurts Sophie. The poor kid’s in her room, crying her eyes out.”

“Sophie’s crying? Why?” River crushed the soda can, its contents spilling over his fingers, so that he tossed it into the garbage container beside the bench.

Joe sat down once more, his shoulders slumped, his hands locked together between his spread knees. “Meredith didn’t even watch for us, or come into the house when Inez told her we’d arrived. Inez took me to one side and told me she’d let Meredith know we’d arrived. But Meredith just stayed out at the pool, sunning herself, and then let Sophie know that her cane was ugly, her scar even more ugly. She told her…she told her she shouldn’t have tossed Chet over because now she’ll never get a man, not with that scar.”

River muttered a few choice words under his breath, then sighed. That was Meredith. Always saying the wrong thing, never concerned for anyone except herself, and Joe Junior, and Teddy. Nobody else mattered to her anymore. She only seemed to use the other members of the Colton family to sharpen her claws on. “Now what?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t know, son. Sophie was already pretty shaky about that scar, but I figured she’d get over it now that she’s here, with us. I never expected Meredith to— Aw, hell, River. What happened? What in hell happened to us?”

Four

S ophie had fled Meredith Colton’s presence and run to her room—hobbled to her old bedroom—and thrown herself on her bed to cry. It had been a veritable storm of weeping, as she’d cried with huge gulping sobs, the sort she hadn’t cried since her teenage years.

Since the night River had rejected her.

She’d come apart after Meredith’s cold, cutting comments that had sliced at her, injuring her as much as the knife had done, possibly more. There was no pretty way to say it, no rationalization that could explain how thoroughly Sophie fell apart, how completely she finally gave in, gave herself up to her grief as everything that was wrong in her life came together at once, threatening to destroy her.

Sophie had held it together, held everything in, since the first days after the mugging, once the painkillers had been stopped and she had more control over her thoughts, her reactions. She couldn’t let her father see how frightened she was, how defeated she felt. How violated. How used.

Because she’d known how nearly homicidal Joe had been, sitting beside her hospital bed as the police asked her for details of the attack, how impotent he still felt that he couldn’t protect his child, keep her from all harm. He had stayed with her for two weeks, the first spent in the hospital, the second as she got settled back into her apartment, hovering over her, fussing over her, worrying about her, playing mother and father to her in his wife’s absence.

She’d held back her tears as she slowly realized that Chet had taken her at her word. He didn’t phone. He didn’t come pounding on her door, demanding to see her. Yes, he had sent a note stuffed inside a soppy Get Well card, telling her that he loved her and he’d wait for her to “come to her senses.”

That had hurt. Come to her senses? Is that what he thought? That she’d lost her senses? Didn’t he understand? Didn’t anyone understand?

She’d lost a lot more than her “senses.”

When her dad had come into the room and gathered her into his arms, Sophie had told him what Meredith had said. She shouldn’t have done that, really, she shouldn’t have. But the loss she felt was so great, the hurt so overwhelming, that she hadn’t been able to keep the truth from her father—the truth that her mother, her own mother, now considered her disfigured and a total loss.

“She’s sick, baby,” Joe had said to her, his words sounding sad and tired and eerily hollow. “Ever since the accident. Something happened. Something changed her. You just have to remember how she was, baby. We all have to remember that, remember how she once loved us.”

That was when Sophie had gotten herself back under control. She couldn’t bear to hear the defeat in her father’s voice, the deep sadness that had to have been slowly destroying him these past nine years.

Sophie had hugged him, kissed him and promised to remember, to hold on to the memories of the good days. She listened as he discussed the physical therapy she’d begin in Prosperino in a few days, the surgery she’d have in less than five months, to minimize her scar.

She’d agreed with him on everything, assured him she was all right, and watched after him as he left her room, his large frame stooped, his feet dragging.

Her impulsively formed plan to leave the ranch the next morning embarrassed her as she watched her father. How could she leave him? How could she have stayed away so long? Why had she stayed away so long? Because of Meredith? Perhaps.

But there was another reason, and Sophie knew it.

She watched now as that reason walked toward her through the soft patches of misty yellow drifting down from the vapor lights placed around the stables.

He walked with his head down, his face hidden by that ever-present dusty tan cowboy hat that seemed so much a part of him. He had his hands stuffed deep in his jean pockets and kicked a stone along the drive with the tip of his worn cowboy boots. The lone wolf, prowling his nocturnal territory.

Sophie’s stomach muscles clenched as she watched him approach, drank in the sight of him. Long and lean, his shoulders broad, his waist and hips narrow, his straight legs wrapped tight in faded jeans. He moved gracefully, unaware of his natural grace.

When she had been a kid, she’d marveled at his shoulder-length hair, black as night, straight as sticks, and the perfect frame for his tanned, brooding face, his sparkling green eyes, the intriguing slashes that appeared in his cheeks at his rare smiles.

River had figured in all her dreams for just about as long as she could remember having dreams. The barely tamed rebel, the exotic creature with a Native American mother and a father who had tried, and failed, to destroy him. The misfit. The one person on the ranch who didn’t immediately love her, think she was wonderful, do anything and everything to please her.

A creature of light, Sophie had been drawn to his darkness, his secrets. He spoke to the horses, whispered to them, and they listened. He stood toe to toe with her father, the only person Sophie had ever seen do that, and never backed down. Never backed down from anyone, from anything.

He was wild, and wonderful, and Sophie would have done anything for his smile, a single word of praise, to have him notice her, talk to her, let her into at least a small slice of his life.

No, Sophie knew that she hadn’t stayed away from the ranch because her family had changed while she was gone at college. She’d gone, and stayed away, because River hadn’t wanted her.

Everything she had done since the night he had kissed her then pushed her away, told her to go away, had been to hurt River. Her choice of career. Her engagement to Chet Wallace, who was as different from River James as a pin-striped three-piece suit was from a battered cowboy hat pushed down low over all-seeing green eyes.

River had always been strong, definitely stronger than her. Because he had stayed, he had taken the good with the bad, raised himself above a truly tragic childhood. Stayed to give back for all he’d been given.

She watched as he lifted his head and saw her sitting on the bench. His step faltered for a moment, and then he walked toward her with his lazy, rolling gait, sat down beside her in the space she’d left for him—on her right, so that he couldn’t see her scar. Not that he could see much more than form and shadow in this spot just out of the reach of any of the vapor lights, but she just felt more comfortable with her left cheek hidden.

“Evening, Sophie. Welcome home,” he said, the sound of his voice soft, smooth. It was a voice that could soothe a frightened horse, spin a young girl wonderful stories of Native American life as it had been before the white man came. A voice that could whisper, “I want you. God, Sophie, how I want you.”

Sophie just nodded, her tongue cleaving to the roof of her suddenly dry mouth. He smelled of soap and shaving cream and something else, something undefinable, but definitely male. All male, all man.

“They were waiting for you up at the house,” he said, leaning back against the side of the stables, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his head still bent forward, so that he didn’t bang the rim of his hat against the wall. “Dinner’s up.”

“I know, Riv,” she said, wondering if he could condense his sentences anymore, make them shorter, more clipped. It was as if he didn’t want to talk to her at all. “I asked Inez to save me something in the refrigerator, in case I get hungry later. Riv, why did you tell me to leave?”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. Had she gone mad? How could she have asked that?

He didn’t react, didn’t flinch. It was if he’d been expecting the question, maybe waiting for it. Waiting ten years for her to ask.

“It was time for you to go,” he said, taking off his hat and placing it beside him on the bench. “Time for you to grow up, see the world, find out who Sophie Colton was.” He turned toward her and tipped his head as he looked at her in the darkness. “Did you find her, Sophie? Did you like her?”

“I thought I did,” she answered truthfully. “As long as I hated you, I liked myself.”

River chuckled low in his throat. “That’s my Sophie. Give her a good mad, and she can bring the world to its knees.”

She smiled, in spite of herself. “You remember that? You remember how I wanted to conquer the world?”

“Rule the world, I think it was, actually,” River corrected her. “Right after you flew to Mars, cured cancer and invented a pimple cream that really worked—which would have been just before you won the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, I remember. You had big-time dreams, Sophie. Dreams that were a lot bigger than this ranch.”

“I was a kid, Riv,” she shot back angrily. “What the hell did I know about life?”

“Well, Sophie, that’s just it. You didn’t know about life, did you? But you deserved a chance to find out what was out there.”

Sophie sniffed, shook her head. “What’s out there, Riv, is doing homey, tearjerker ads for health insurance companies who withhold treatment to their customers, writing jingles for pimple creams that don’t work…and a world that’s a lot bigger, and stronger, and meaner than I ever could have imagined.” Her voice broke slightly. “It knocked me down, Riv. The world out there knocked me down.”

“And so now you’re home again. Damn, Sophie. How do you sit there looking so comfortable, with your tail tucked between your legs like that?”

She turned sideways on the bench and glared at him. “You son of a— Damn it, Riv, shut up!” How did he do it? How could he make her so mad?

He reached up and scratched at a spot just below his left ear. “Hasn’t worked any miracles for you yet, has it, Soph? Coming home, that is. Joe told me about Meredith’s version of welcoming the prodigal back into the fold this afternoon. Nice. Very nice. Very Meredith.”

“I’m not going to let her get to me,” Sophie declared, trying to believe what she said, trying to tell herself that her mother’s words hadn’t hurt, didn’t still hurt. “She’s sick. Dad says so. The car accident did something—she banged her head, jiggled her brains, shook up her personality. Or maybe it’s…well, maybe it’s the changes. Some women have real problems as they go through menopause.”

“Wrote up a hormone replacement ad for that company of yours, did you?” River said, his even white teeth visible in the soft glow of light as he grinned at her. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all talk in advertising slogans and actually believe all the promises? A thirty-second fix for everything from bad hair days to world peace, if only you used the right product, picked the right party, whatever. Do you do political ads, Sophie? I’ll bet you do. Making silk purses out of sows’ ears, and then ramming it all down the public’s throat. Very commendable.”

Sophie clenched her hands into fists. “If you’re all done making fun of what I chose to do with my career…?”

“All done? Nope. I’ve got a few more stored away somewhere, but I guess I’ll leave them there for now. But admit it, Sophie, I got your mind off that cheek you were keeping turned away from me until a few moments ago.”

She quickly lifted a hand to her cheek, turned her head. “You never did play fair, did you, Riv?” she asked, staring out into the night, blinking back tears. “I—I didn’t know you were so disappointed in the career I chose.”

“You were going to do the internship at Joe’s place in Texas, then major in Communications at college. Graduate, work at one of the television stations, or do investigative reporting for one of the Colton family newspapers. Be like your dad, one of the few men who have used public office, public responsibility, to really help people. Next thing I heard, you were making up slogans for tartar-reducing toothpaste, earning the big bucks, but selling out all your dreams. Hey, now that’s really making a contribution, isn’t it?”