Renegade Father

She took her seat again and pointed to another chair. “Why don’t you sit down, then.”

He shook his head again, a quick, restless gesture. Shoulders tense, he stood in the doorway and began measuring the brim of his hat with his fingers. Round and round he went, first in one direction then the other, over and over until—given her lingering headache and the uproar of her emotions—she had to fight the urge to yank the blasted thing away from him and throw it on the table.

He opened his mouth to speak twice, but both times he jerked it shut again, and she could tell he was trying to work up his nerve for some kind of major announcement.

Fiddlesticks. She had absolutely no energy left to deal with this after the day she’d had. “It’s late,” she finally said, when it looked like he was going to stand in her kitchen fidgeting all night. She should probably try to be more patient, but she just wasn’t in the mood tonight. “What can I do for you, Luke?”

“I’d like to apply for the foreman job,” he blurted out, so loudly it startled both of them.

The foreman job? She stared at him, shocked, watching a flush creep up those baby-smooth cheeks. Of all the possibilities racing through her head about what he might be doing there at ten o’clock at night, the idea that he wanted Joe’s job never would have occurred to her.

“I know I’m young and all but I’m a hard worker. Joe’s always sayin’ so. I’m strong and I’m willing and I’ve been around cattle all my life. If my daddy hadn’t had lost our spread because of the damn banks—excuse my language, ma’am—I’d be on my way to runnin’ my own place by now.”

Like so many ranching families, the Mitchells had been hurt by the recent run of low beef prices. They had run a pretty big spread near Big Sky and she knew his father slightly.

She heard he was trying to support his large family by working in a ranch supply store over in Bozeman now. It had been one of the reasons she’d taken a chance and hired Luke two months earlier, in an effort to give the family one less mouth to feed.

Compassion for the eager young man washed over her. To grow up thinking he would take over the reins of the family ranch someday and then to lose it all with the bang of an auctioneer’s gavel must have been devastating. Heaven knows, it was one of her own biggest fears.

“You could do a whole lot worse, ma’am,” Luke went on, “if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

Drat Joe for putting her in this position. She rubbed suddenly clammy hands on her jeans beneath the table. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt his fragile pride by telling him she didn’t think he was man enough for the job.

Especially when life had already dealt him a rough hand—and when he had more than a slight crush on her. “I… You’ve been a real asset to the Double C, Luke.”

“Thank you.” His wide grin made him look not much older than C.J. “I could be even more of an asset as foreman. I have some real good ideas about improving things around here. Not that Joe hasn’t done a good job, mind, but I’ve been reading about these fancy new low-cholesterol breeds they got out there and I think it might be worth your while to look into it.”

He went on for several minutes about the direction he’d like to take the Double C. She listened with only half an ear, trying to figure out how she could let him down gently. Finally she realized he had wound down and was waiting expectantly for an answer.

She cleared her throat. “I have to say, those certainly sound like interesting ideas.”

“Does that mean you’re willing to give me a chance?”

She paused, feeling like she was about to drop-kick a puppy, then finally drew in a deep breath and took aim. “Luke, you’re a good cowhand. Like you said, you’re a hard worker, always willing to dig in and do what has to be done, no matter what. And while I’ll certainly keep you in mind for the foreman’s job, I have to be honest with you. I was hoping for somebody with a little more experience.”

“I told you, I’ve been around cattle all my life. That’s twenty years of experience right there.”

Twenty years. Oh mercy. He wasn’t even as old as she had thought he was. She felt like a shriveled up old lady compared to all this youthful exuberance.

“It’s more than just experience.”

She fumbled for words for a few moments, then decided she would just have to be blunt, as much as she hated it, and as much as it might hurt. “The foreman of a ranch like the Double C has to have a certain…authority. Not just with the hands who work on the ranch, but out in the community, too—with other ranchers, with our suppliers, when we take stock to auction. He has to be able to command respect in the ranching community and that’s something that comes not just with experience, but with age.”

And something Joe still struggled with, at least with the ranchers around Madison Valley who couldn’t forget his history. She frowned, wondering if that was one of the reasons he was leaving, if he thought his presence was somehow detrimental to the Double C’s bottom line.

“So what you’re sayin’ is you’re not gonna hire me because I’m too young?” The boy couldn’t have looked more offended if she had just told him his horse was ugly.

“I’m not saying you could never be foreman of the Double C,” she answered. “But I have to be honest with you. I just don’t know if it’s a responsibility you’re ready for yet.”

Hurt flickered in his pale blue eyes and with it she glimpsed a deep anger that somehow made him look much older. Just as quickly, the anger disappeared and she wondered if she had imagined it.

“I see.” His voice was low in the hushed kitchen, so quiet she could barely hear him. “So that’s it?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’d like nothing better than to hire you for the job right now. Maybe in a few more years, though.”

“You’re wrong.” Though he spoke in the same quiet, intense voice, he gripped his hat so hard it creased the soft brown felt. He shoved the hat on his head. “I could do a helluva lot better job than Redhawk. I could prove it to you if you’d only give me a chance.”

He didn’t wait for an answer but stalked out of the kitchen and into the storm.

She watched through the window as he made his way back to the bunkhouse, shoulders hunched against the wind and whirling snow. Just as he went inside the doublewide trailer he shared with Patch and the Santiago brothers, a flicker of movement near the barn caught her gaze.

The vapor light on the power pole between the house and the outbuildings wasn’t powerful enough to completely pierce the darkness or the whirling snow, but she thought she could just make out the figure of a man standing motionless, his attention focused on her, on the house.

For just an instant, her heart stuttered, and old feelings of dread and helplessness came roiling back, and then the figure moved out of the shadows and she recognized Joe’s black Stetson and broad shoulders. Unlike Luke, he walked unbent in the wind, oblivious to the storm raging around him as he came toward the house.

“Everything okay in here?” he asked after she opened the door off the mudroom to his knock.

She shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I saw Mitchell walking back to the trailer. Just wanted to make sure he wasn’t pestering you.”

“Pestering me?”

He cocked his head. “I told you at supper, it’s no secret the boy’s got it bad, Annie. He makes moon-eyes at you every time he gets within spitting distance. I wouldn’t want him to make a nuisance of himself.”

She felt herself blush. “I can handle it.”

“Well, let me know if he gets to be too much of a bother and I’ll have a word with him.”

Why did he always assume she couldn’t take care of things by herself? Probably because she had a pretty lousy track record in that department, she admitted.

“He wasn’t pestering me or making moon-eyes or anything like that. If you must know, he was applying for your job.”

For a long moment, he just stared at her, the only sound in the kitchen the ticking of the clock and the whirring of the furnace spewing warm air out of the register, then he tilted back his head and laughed, low and long and deep.

The sound of it—so rare coming from him—slid over her nerve endings like silk.

“He wants to be foreman?” He laughed again and flipped a chair around to straddle it, removing his hat and tossing it onto the table in the same motion. “I hope you didn’t encourage him.”

There he went again, thinking she didn’t have a brain in her head. “Of course I didn’t. I told him I was looking for somebody with a little more experience.”

He snorted. “I’m sure that went over well.”

“About like you’d expect.”

“How could he think you’d be willing to hire a twenty-year-old kid to run a big operation like the Double C?”

“Maybe he thought I’d be desperate, with you leaving and all.”

He studied her for a moment, then looked away. “How’s the boy?”

“Sleeping. Finally.”

“I hate like hell that I hurt him like this.”

“Of course he’s hurting! Did you think you could just walk away and it wouldn’t affect any of us?”

“I guess I was hoping it wouldn’t.”

“You’re part of the Double C, Joe. More than that, you’re part of this family. What you do affects all of us. C.J. loves you—of course he’s upset you’re going to leave. And Leah is, too, although she shows it differently.”

“What about you? Are you upset I’m leaving?”

He didn’t know why he asked it. Maybe because she looked so damn beautiful here in her warm, cozy kitchen, with the light from above the stove turning her hair red-gold and making her eyes look soft and welcoming and her mouth about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

Or maybe because he’d been more annoyed than he had a right to be when he saw Mitchell sneaking out her back door so late at night.

Whatever his reason for asking, her answer was clear. “You know I am.” She spoke in a low voice and then lifted eyes the color of brand-new aspen leaves to his.

He was shocked to his bones at the depth of emotion there—if he didn’t know better, he could swear there were tears lurking in those green depths, but Annie hardly ever cried.

Even if she had been the watering-pot sort, his brother would have fixed that in a hurry.

He reached out and grabbed her hand. It was rougher than it should have been, almost as nicked-up and callused as his own. She was killing herself trying to turn the Double C back into the ranch it once was. And he sure didn’t help matters any by taking off.

Her fingers trembled in his and he realized too late why he did his best to avoid touching her—just the simple contact of her hand in his filled him with wants and needs he had absolutely no business wanting or needing.

What would she do if he reached across that scarred pine table and pulled her to him, if he dug his fingers into that sinful hair and devoured that luscious mouth of hers like he imagined doing a dozen times a day?

Easy. More than likely, she’d kick him off the ranch herself. She’d barely survived being tangled up with one Redhawk brother and she sure didn’t need the other one messing things up for her now.

But wasn’t he doing just that by taking this job in Wyoming? Putting her to the trouble of having to find a new foreman and leaving her to deal with two upset kids?

He shifted on the hard chair. “Maybe I ought to just call Waterson and tell him to forget it.”

Relief flickered in her eyes for just a moment, then she shook her head vigorously. “I won’t let you do that. You’ve sacrificed enough of your life for us. You’re right, you need to move on and this sounds like a wonderful opportunity for you, a real chance to make a new start. It will be good for you. And whether we like it or not, it will be good for us not to depend on you so much.”

She was ready to cut him loose, he thought as he said his goodbyes a few moments later and headed back out into the blizzard. So why was he suddenly not so sure he wanted to be free?

She was becoming a pretty darn good liar.

Her conversation with Joe the night before ran through her head over and over while she tried to catch up on the mounds of paperwork that seemed to pile up like January snow.

Since the kids were still in school and the men were out repairing damage from the storm the night before, she had the ranch house to herself. She should have been able to make a real dent in that month’s bills, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate on much of anything.

On anything except a dark-eyed Shoshone who would be blowing out of her life on the last of the winter storms.

She sighed and forced herself to concentrate on all the work she had to do. It wasn’t doing her any good to brood about Joe’s leaving. If she didn’t stop it, she would be completely worthless for the two remaining months she had left with him.

She was just wincing over the check she had to write to the vet when the door off the mudroom suddenly creaked open, sounding abnormally loud in the stillness of the empty house. Just as abruptly, it closed again with a quiet click.

She glanced at the digital clock on the command line of the computer. Odd. The kids weren’t due home from school for several hours and Joe said he thought the men would be tied up most of the day fixing the roof of the hay shed in the far pasture. They’d taken lunch with them but maybe they forgot something or finished up earlier than expected.

“Hello?” she called out. “I’m back here in the office.”

She was met by silence, unbroken except for the low, ubiquitous whir of the furnace. A shiver sneaked down her spine and she frowned. “Hello?” she called again.

No one answered.

Was somebody playing some of kind of trick on her? She didn’t think any of the men had that kind of cruel streak in them, but Patch could be mischievous and his sense of humor sometimes veered off into warped territory.

Puzzled, she rose from the computer and walked out of the office, through the empty family room and toward the kitchen at the other side of the house. In the thick silence, her pulse sounded loud and strident in her ears. She was more edgy than she cared to admit, a realization that sent fresh anger coursing through her.

This house, with its softly weathered logs and its wraparound porch, was her haven now. She had no reason to be afraid here anymore and she hated that someone could dredge up all these old feelings. If it was Patch playing a trick, she planned to give him an earful he wouldn’t soon forget.

She walked into the big kitchen, expecting somebody to jump out any minute with a gleeful “boo,” but the room was empty.

She scratched the back of her head, baffled and uneasy. Was she going crazy? She had heard the door open and close, hadn’t she?

Maybe not. Maybe she was hearing things. Maybe she was just overwrought from all the stress of the day before.

It was the only explanation, since there was obviously no one in the house and a quick glance out the kitchen window showed no one between the house and the outbuildings except a few chickens scratching through the snow looking for lunch.

She couldn’t see any tracks on the walk either, but C.J. had cleared most of the snow away this morning and the rest was so packed it probably wouldn’t show anything.

This was too creepy. Maybe she ought to go take a look upstairs….

The phone suddenly jangled loudly in the silence, sending her jumping at least a foot into the air. She grabbed at her chest where her heart threatened to hammer through her rib cage. “It’s just the phone, you big baby,” she chided herself, and crossed to the wall unit next to the refrigerator.

“Hello?” Despite her best efforts to calm herself, her pulse still fluttered wildly.

“Hey. I hear you’re on the lookout for a new foreman.”

She slumped against the counter at the familiar voice of her closest neighbor and pushed away the rest of her lingering unease. “Hey, Colt. News travels fast.”

“It does when it’s bad news. What the hell is Joe thinking? He can’t leave you in the lurch like that, right before spring planting.”

“He’s given me two months’ notice—more than anyone else would. I can’t ask for more than that.”

“I can. I’m coming over to talk some sense into him.”

She ground her teeth. Lord spare her from arrogant men who didn’t think she was competent enough to brush her teeth without them standing over her checking every last inch of enamel.

Colton McKendrick grew up on the adjacent ranch, the Broken Spur, where Joe’s father had worked. And just like Joe, he thought it was his mission in life to watch out for her. Even though she had been four years younger than the boys, they were the only other kids for miles so the three of them had been inseparable, always tumbling into one scrape after another.

Before her divorce, Joe had run the Broken Spur for him while Colt devoted himself first to the military and then to FBI undercover work, trying to outrun his ghosts.

She loved him dearly and was thrilled that his days of running were over, but she wished just once he and Joe would both realize she was all grown up and could take care of herself.

Most of the time, anyway.

“Colt, stay out of it. This is something Joe wants to do and I’ve accepted that. You should, too.”

“Bull. You need him.”

“I need a foreman,” she answered. “But it doesn’t necessarily have to be Joe Redhawk.”

“He’s the best there is. Dammit, how can he just run out on you like this?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

“I plan to, right now. I’m on my way.”

Colt severed the connection before she could argue with him. She had barely returned the phone to the receiver and put more coffee on when she heard the crunch of truck tires on snow out front, followed by a vehicle door slamming.

She opened the mudroom door before he could knock and was pleased to see Colt helping his very pregnant wife up the walk.

“What did you do, call from the mailbox?” she teased when they were safely inside.

“Just about. Aren’t cellular phones something?” He grinned and pulled her into a quick hug.

When he released her, she turned to his wife. “No office hours today, Maggie?”

“I don’t have any patients scheduled until this afternoon since I had my own appointment with Dr. Marcus.”

“And what did he say?”

“Everything’s fine. He moved my due date up to mid-April. It won’t be a moment too soon, as far as I’m concerned. I feel as big as one of those Herefords out there.”

Annie smiled. Colt and Maggie had married just weeks after her divorce and in the time since, she had come to love Colt’s sweetly elegant wife almost as much as she did him. There was a bond between the two women, forged of shared pain and rare understanding.

“You look absolutely radiant,” Annie said.

“Everybody always says that to fat old pregnant women.”

“Because it’s true.” It was. Maggie’s eyes were soft, serene, and her skin glowed with an inner tranquility that had to come from knowing her husband adored her and was thrilled about the child they had created together.

For just a moment, Annie tasted bitter envy in her mouth. She hadn’t experienced that contentment with either of her pregnancies. Instead, she had known only that trapped, powerless fear.

Dammit. She wanted to pinch herself, hard. Couldn’t she even be happy for two of her closest friends in the world over the upcoming birth of their child without this blasted self-pity taking over? She had two beautiful children, a ranch some men would kill for, and good friends like the McKendricks. Why couldn’t she let that be enough?

“Where’s Joe?” Colt asked.

She swallowed the envy and poured coffee, black the way he liked it. Maggie, she knew, was staying away from caffeine for the baby’s sake, so she put water on to boil for herbal tea.

“We lost the roof on one of the hay sheds in the wind last night,” she answered. “The men are doing their best to patch it together. What about the Broken Spur? How did you fare in the storm?”

“Lost three calves but it could have been a lot worse.” He sipped his coffee. “Now suppose you tell me what burr Joe’s got in his britches about taking some fool job in Wyoming.”

She busied herself rifling through the cupboard for the tea bags. “It sounds like a good opportunity for him.”

“What does he think he’s going to find at some stranger’s ranch in Wyoming that he can’t get in Madison Valley?”

“You’ll have to ask him that,” she said quietly.

“I’m asking you. What happened between you two?”

“Nothing.” She shut the cupboard door with a little more force than necessary. “Absolutely nothing. Why would you think that? Things are just fine between us.”

Unless you count the way he couldn’t stand to touch her and the way he sometimes went out of his way to avoid even looking at her.

“So why is he in such a big hurry to leave?”

She thought of those moments in the barn the day before and that rare vulnerability she had glimpsed in Joe.

Would she be breaking a confidence to talk to Colt about it? No. Colt cared about Joe. The two men shared a friendship closer than blood. Maybe if he knew the truth, Colt wouldn’t push him to stay against his will.

She almost laughed. Was she really going out of her way to defend Joe for taking a new job? Yes. She wanted him to stay, but she wanted him to find peace more. “He has a chance to start his own herd and to buy land of his own. I can’t match this Waterson’s offer, and I’m not sure I would even if I had the means.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Colt, he told me he wants to start over some place away from Madison Valley.” She paused. “Somewhere he can be just another rancher, just like everybody else.”

He was silent for a moment, his mouth set in a hard line, then he swore softly, pungently. “How can we argue with that?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t understand,” Maggie interjected with a frown.

Colt turned to his wife. “You know what it’s like for him in town. How people talk. He tries to pretend it doesn’t matter, but it obviously affects him more than any of us thought.”

The kettle whistled suddenly, shrilly, and Annie rose from the table to pour water for Maggie’s tea. “It just makes me so mad,” she muttered. “Why can’t people forget, just stop judging him for what happened years ago, for heaven’s sake? Why can’t they look at the man he’s made of himself?”

“We don’t have all that many murders around here, Annie. Of course people are going to remember it.”

“It wasn’t murder and you know it! And so does everybody else in town.”

“Not everybody. There are a lot of people who think Joe killed his father in cold blood and got off easy.”

In cold blood. It was an odd term to use for something as violent as taking the life of another human being.

“It was an accident.” She couldn’t help her vehemence, even though she knew she was preaching to the choir. “That’s why he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The only reason he served prison time at all was because he had alcohol in his system, even though it was under the legal limit, and because he was already on probation for that stupid bar fight when he was just a kid. Everybody with a brain in his head knows Joe was trying to protect his mother after Al beat her half to death.”

“You’ve heard the rumors that there was more to it than that.”

Yes, and she knew exactly who was behind them. She frowned. Charlie had kept his promise after he married her and hadn’t gone to his boss at the sheriff’s department with his version of events that night. But he hadn’t had any qualms whipping up the rumor mill in town.

Just another sin to lay at the door of her ex-husband.

She knew Joe hadn’t meant to kill his father when he had delivered that fateful punch. But even if he had, Albert Redhawk deserved everything he got and more.

He had spent his whole life and two marriages physically and emotionally abusing his entire family, turning one son into a mirror image of himself and the other into a stoic little boy who buried all his emotions so deeply it took nothing short of a cataclysmic event to ever bring them gushing out.