The Cowboy's Secret Son

The kid looked up, watching the helicopter’s approach. As Mark drew nearer, details became apparent. Boy, he decided, although with today’s unisex clothing and hairstyles, gender could be hard to distinguish.

As soon as the child realized the chopper was coming back, he turned, too, heading off in the opposite direction. Although he was hurrying, he wasn’t really moving very fast. He was limping, Mark realized as he watched the uneven gait. And his limp was slowing down what was obviously supposed to be an escape attempt.

Despite the threat of the predicted storm, Mark’s lips tilted into a smile. He’d be willing to bet the kid was wearing new boots of a kind not designed for hiking in this terrain. He could visualize them in his mind’s eye. The pointy-toed tourist-variety cowboy boot, gaudy with decoration. And if the boy thought he could outrun him in those things…

Mark brought the helicopter alongside and just above the child, jabbing his finger toward the ominous cloud bank that lay above the horizon. He was near enough to see brown eyes widen in a pale face as the child looked up. Near enough that he could tell that the flapping windbreaker would not offer nearly enough protection from the cold that would come sweeping in across the plain.

He increased pitch, pulling up a little and moving in front of the kid, who was still trying to run with that loping awkwardness. Then, very carefully, he set the chopper down maybe thirty feet in front of the boy. As soon as he realized what Mark was doing, the child changed directions again, heading north this time. Right into the heart of the approaching storm.

“Damn it, kid,” Mark said under his breath.

He could lift off and land in front of the boy again. He could keep doing that until he’d worn him into exhaustion. Or he could get out and try to talk some sense into him. Maybe try to figure out what the hell he was doing way out here alone, a good five or six miles from the nearest habitation, which was…

New owners. New boots. The kid must belong to the family who had bought the Salvini place. He had probably set out to explore and gotten turned around. That wasn’t hard to do, given the unchanging sameness of the landscape. There weren’t any landmarks up here, and unless you had a compass…

Mark lifted the chopper off the ground again, closing the distance between them, and landed directly in the boy’s path. The kid’s lips were parted now, as if he were panting from the exertion of trying to outrun his pursuer.

Mark throttled down to flight idle and locked down the controls before he unfastened his seat harness and opened the door of the cockpit. By the time he’d stepped down, ducking under the blades, the kid had twirled again and was heading in the opposite direction.

It took Mark only a few strides to catch up. The boy must have heard him, although he never looked back. When Mark put his hand on his shoulder, the child twisted, pulling out of his grip.

He darted away to the left, and as Mark turned to follow, he felt a twinge of pain ripple through his back. He ignored it and ran after the boy, using the advantage of his longer stride to quickly lessen the distance between them.

When he was close enough, he reached out again, grabbing the boy’s upper arm. His hand closed around it hard enough to withstand the attempts the child made to pull away. The kid must be more panicked than he’d realized, Mark thought, holding on despite the frantic struggle the boy was making to escape.

“Calm down,” Mark said, his tone the same he had once used to gentle spooked horses. “I’m not going to hurt you. There’s a storm coming, and believe me, you aren’t equipped for the kind we get up here. I’m going to take you home.”

The boy’s efforts to free his arm ceased, but Mark didn’t release him. And for the first time, he got a good look at the kid’s face. There was a dusting of freckles across a slender nose. Dark eyes were fringed by equally dark lashes. And compared with the thick brown hair and those eyes, the skin that surrounded them seemed awfully pale.

City kid, Mark guessed. Any boy this age who had spent the summer out in the rural Texas sun would still have a pretty good residual tan. This kid didn’t.

Of course, part of that noticeable paleness might be put down to fright. Odds were the kid had never been chased by a stranger in a helicopter before. That would be enough to scare almost anyone, especially a kid who had gotten lost in unfamiliar territory. Mark was about to offer more reassurances, when the boy spoke for the first time.

“I don’t want to go home,” he said, jerking his arm free.

So much for the scared spitless theory, Mark thought, realizing only now that what he was seeing in those eyes wasn’t fear, but defiance.

“I told you, kid. There’s a storm brewing, and up here, that’s nothing to fool around with. Not in November.”

The eyes changed a little, holding Mark’s a moment before they cut back to consider the line of clouds. When the boy looked back, he seemed less certain—and less antagonistic—than he had only seconds before. “My mom send you?”

“I don’t know your mom. And nobody sent me. I didn’t have any idea you were out here. Not until I saw you.”

The boy stared hard at Mark, obviously trying to decide whether to believe him or not.

“You running away?” Mark asked into the silence.

After a few more seconds of scrutiny, the kid nodded. Apparently Mark had passed the test for trustworthiness that had just been administered.

“I’ve done that a couple of times myself,” he said easily, smiling in memory. “And I can tell you from experience, it never solved anything I wanted it to.”

“I didn’t want to come here,” the boy said. “I told her that. There’s nothing out here.”

His tone was almost plaintive, and Mark laughed, provoking a flash of resentment in the dark eyes.

“Well, you aren’t wrong about that,” he admitted, attempting to regain the ground that unthinking laughter had lost. “Nothing at all, unless you’re partial to sky and dirt. We’ve got plenty of that. And cows, of course. Horses.”

“She said I could have a horse.”

Those words were less defiant, but there was something beneath the surface Mark couldn’t quite read.

“That’s good,” he ventured.

“I don’t like horses.”

“You ever been around any?”

“No,” the boy admitted after a brief hesitation.

His gaze skated again to the line of clouds, a little anxiously this time. Mark realized that the wind had picked up as they’d been talking. It was whipping the boy’s hair into his eyes and billowing inside the back of the light cotton jacket he wore.

“Your mom’s probably worried sick about you,” Mark said, bringing the boy’s eyes back to his face.

“You like horses?” the kid asked.

“Always have. Since long before I was your age.”

As he said the word, he tried to estimate how old the child was. He hadn’t really been around enough kids to make it an accurate evaluation, but…six or seven, he guessed. He wondered why the boy wasn’t in school. Maybe with the move and all—

“I don’t,” the boy said. “They smell.”

Mark laughed again, unable to argue with that assessment.

“You get used to it. After a while, that smell will seem like perfume. Cookies baking. Something good, anyway.”

He resisted the urge to reach out and ruffle the dark hair that was blowing around the pale, freckled face.

“She likes them.”

“Your mom?”

“Yeah. I told her I didn’t want a horse. Then I told her I didn’t want to be here, and she got all upset.”

“So you left.”

“She worries about me,” the kid said.

I’ll bet she does, Mark thought. He put his hand on the back of the narrow shoulders, directing the child toward the waiting chopper. There was no resistance this time, and as they walked, Mark noticed the uneven stride again. He glanced down at the boy’s feet, which were shod in ordinary sneakers.

“Blister?” he asked, still using his hand to direct the kid around to the other side of the helicopter.

He opened the door on the passenger side of the cockpit and put his hand under the boy’s elbow, preparing to help him inside. The kid squirmed away, the move almost like the one he’d made to throw Mark’s hand off his shoulder. And it was as effective.

“I can do it,” he said, that hint of defiance back.

Again Mark refrained from arguing. After all, there was nothing wrong with wanting to stand on your own two feet, even if they were blistered. It took the kid a few seconds to assess the unfamiliar situation. When he had, he put one foot on the skid and grasped the leather loop above the door. He scrambled into the seat, shooting a triumphant glance downward at Mark.

Resisting the urge to smile at that rather obvious, if silent, “I told you so,” Mark closed the door and walked around the nose of the chopper. He climbed inside, automatically fastening his harness as soon as he was settled in the seat.

The boy watched and then began fastening his own, making quick work of the procedure. Since Mark occasionally had to help adults figure out how to work the device, his opinion of the kid’s intelligence edged upward a notch or two.

He reached behind the adjacent seat and pulled out a flight helmet. Very few of his passengers wanted to wear one, and given the fact that most of them were his employers, he didn’t insist.

“Put it on,” he ordered this time, handing the helmet to the boy. If he had expected resistance, he was disappointed.

“Cool,” the kid said with a touch of awe in his voice.

Mark hid his grin by putting the helicopter into the air. The wind had picked up quite a lot in the short time he’d been on the ground, but he’d be flying south, away from the storm. At least he would until he got to the Salvini ranch, which was, of course, no longer the Salvini ranch, he reminded himself.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever known the name of the last owner. If he had, he couldn’t remember it. And he didn’t think Stumpy had mentioned the new owner’s. “What’s your name?” he asked.

He had to raise his voice to be heard over the engine. The kid had been watching the ground whip beneath him, which was an awesome sight the first time you experienced it. He turned his head, the helmet sliding around despite the chin strap. He raised both hands to straighten it as his eyes met Mark’s.

“Andrew Sullivan.”

“Nice to meet you, Andy.”

“Drew,” the child corrected.

“Drew,” Mark repeated obediently. “Mark Peterson.”

“You live around here.”

“Next door.”

“Cool,” the kid said again.

Mark allowed the smile he had resisted before. He glanced over at the boy, receiving an answering one. Wide and unabashed, it lit up the narrow features and lightened the dark eyes.

After a second or two, the kid turned back to watch the scenery below. Mark found himself hoping their passage would stir up some wildlife. He thought the kid would like to see that. It, too, would probably be deemed cool.

He was a little surprised at how gratified he was to have won that appellation. It had been a while since anyone had approved of him with quite that much undisguised enthusiasm. And that was definitely cool, he thought, again fighting a grin.

* * *

“I WISH YOU’D called me earlier,” the sheriff said.

“If I’d known he was missing earlier, believe me I would have,” Jillian said, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm.

She hadn’t liked Ronnie Cameron when they had gone to school together. Nothing that had happened today had changed her opinion. All she wanted him to do was to organize some kind of search, and instead, he seemed determined to let her know what a bad mother she was. Right now she didn’t need anyone else telling her that. Her guilt over letting Drew out of her sight while he was still so angry was quite sufficient without Ronnie’s comments.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” the sheriff asked, flipping the pages in the small spiral-bound notebook he had taken out of the pocket of his suede jacket. He licked the point of his pencil in preparation and glanced up at her expectantly.

Jillian wondered, her irritation growing, how long it had been since she had seen anybody do that and what it was supposed to accomplish. What was any of this supposed to accomplish?

Apparently Ronnie intended to write down everything she had already told him before he did anything. Jillian gritted her teeth over the delay, working to keep her temper in check. Not that she had much choice.

When she’d discovered Drew was gone, she couldn’t think of anything else to do except appeal to the sheriff for help. She had given the dispatcher all the information. And then she had repeated it for the sheriff as soon as he’d shown up, almost thirty minutes after she’d called the emergency number.

And she had searched the ranch herself before she’d called. Once she had, she had realized there was just too much very empty territory surrounding it for her to investigate alone. Besides, she couldn’t be sure how long Drew had been gone.

“A little after ten,” she said, trying to hold on to her patience. “He was playing a computer game.”

“And you didn’t see him after that?” Ronnie asked, carefully writing something in his notebook.

“That’s right,” Jillian said, taking a deep, calming breath.

“And you think he might have gone out exploring?”

“I said it’s possible. We just moved in a couple of days ago. I thought maybe… I don’t know. Maybe he just decided to take a look around and got lost.”

“Uh-huh,” the sheriff said, still writing.

“But…”

She hesitated, hating to confess the strained relationship with her son this move had caused. Ronnie’s blue eyes had lifted from his notebook at the pause. They held hers, waiting.

“He might have run away,” she said softly.

“Run away from home?”

She resisted the urge to state the obvious, nodding instead.

“Got his dander up about something?” Ronnie asked.

“He wasn’t too thrilled about the move.”

The sheriff’s eyes drifted over the buildings clustered around the house before they came back to hers.

“Could be hiding,” he said. “Lots of hiding places around here for a boy.”

“I called him. I went inside every one of the outbuildings and called.”

“That don’t mean he’s gonna answer,” Ronnie said, smiling at her. He flipped the top of the notebook over whatever he’d written and stuck it back in his jacket pocket.

“And why would he do that?” Jillian asked. “Why would he not answer? Exactly what are you implying?”

“That maybe the kid don’t want to be found. He’s got himself a mad on, and he’s trying to rattle your chain. Seems to be working, too.”

The smile widened, and Jillian, the most nonconfrontational person in the world, wanted to slap it off his face.

“There’s a storm coming,” she said. “I don’t want my son out in it. I called you to help me find him.”

“I expect he’s curled up somewhere watching us right now. He probably liked the idea of you calling the county out to look for him. Liked seeing the cruiser coming.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Best guess,” Ronnie said, seemingly unaware of her anger. “Based on eight years’ experience in this business.”

“And you aren’t going to do anything to find him,” Jillian said flatly, finally realizing that he wasn’t.

“I’ll take a look around. Drive out a ways.”

“I’ve already done both of those things.”

“But you’re his mama. I’m the sheriff. Kids react differently to a uniform. To somebody in authority.”

“I thought you’d decided Drew was enjoying watching this.”

“One or the other. Let’s start with the barn,” Ronnie said.

He began to walk in that direction without waiting to see if she was coming. As a child, the barn had always been her refuge, Jillian remembered. Its horse-scented darkness had given her a sense of safety unmatched anywhere else on the ranch. Reluctantly, knowing this was nothing but a wild-goose chase and a waste of what might be valuable time, she turned to follow him.

As she did, she realized that the sheriff had stopped, seeming to study the clouds to the north. As she glanced in the same direction, she became aware of a sound disturbing the prestorm quiet.

Helicopter, she identified automatically. She put her hand up, shading her eyes from the swirling, wind-driven dust more than from the sun, which had been dimmed by the clouds.

The chopper grew larger as she and the sheriff watched. After a minute or two, it became apparent that it was preparing to set down in the yard. Now that it was this close, Jillian could see it wasn’t any kind of official aircraft. There were no markings that would indicate it belonged to law enforcement or to the military.

It was small and sleek, its body white with bright-red numbers. There was a logo of some kind on the door, but Jillian couldn’t quite make it out from here.

She shielded her eyes again, this time from the dust the rotor was stirring up. Whoever was flying the chopper set it down with hardly a bump and shut off the engine. The sudden silence made her realize how noisy the thing had been.

“Co-op,” the sheriff said.

“Co-op?”

“Outfit that owns most of the land around here. They wanted this place, but I guess you beat ‘em to it.”

She had been told someone else was interested in the property, which had helped her make up her mind very quickly that this was what she wanted to do with Violet’s money. Once she’d made that decision, writing the check for the full purchase price was all that had been required to close the deal. That and signing her name on the bottom line.

Foolishly, she had done that before she had approached Drew. Because her childhood here had been so idyllic, she had never expected that he’d react the way he had. After all—

The door of the chopper slid open and the pilot climbed down. Head lowered a little, he walked around to the other side and opened the passenger door. By now, Jillian had begun to suspect what this was all about. Still, her heart leaped into her throat when Drew came running around the nose of the chopper.

She fought the maternal instinct to shout a warning to him to be careful of the still-rotating blades. Biting the inside of her lip, she simply watched as he approached, so relieved to see him that her knees felt weak.

His steps slowed the closer he came, especially when he noticed the sheriff. You know you’re in trouble, Jillian thought, when you find out your mom’s called out the law.

“Hi, Mom,” Drew said, his tone wavering somewhere between apprehension and excitement.

The latter she could credit to his recent ride in the helicopter, something he’d never done before. And the former was self-explanatory. Drew knew from experience that she wasn’t going to put up with this kind of nonsense.

He knew that, and yet he had done it anyway, which proved exactly how upset he was about the move. And she felt like a fool and a failure for not having any idea about how he’d react.

“Where have you been?” she asked, giving him a chance to tell his side of the story. Besides, listening to his explanation would give her a few seconds to decide what she was going to do about his disappearing.

“I was leaving, but…I got turned around.”

“You were running away?”

“I was going back to Fort Worth,” Drew said.

He sounded almost as determined as he had when he told her how much he hated the ranch. She wished she’d listened.

“And you got lost instead,” she guessed.

He nodded, his eyes cutting back to the pilot, who was rounding the nose of the chopper.

“You’re a little old for that kind of thing, aren’t you?” Jillian asked, bringing his attention back to her. “You must have some idea of how worried I’ve been.”

As she talked, she was aware of the pilot’s approach. She wanted to thank him for bringing Drew home, but she also wanted to make the point to her son that something like this wasn’t going to happen again. This kind of escapade was not allowed.

“He says there’s a storm coming, so he brought me back.”

He glanced away again, focusing on the man who was walking toward them. Jillian raised her own gaze this time, noticing the man’s sun-streaked hair first, since he was in the act of pushing it away from his face by running long tanned fingers through it.

And when he looked up, hazel eyes meeting hers, her heart stopped. Skipped a beat. Did something different, at least. Whatever she called it, something strange and terrifying happened in the center of her chest as recognition washed over her in a scalding wave of emotion.

The same weakness that had invaded her knees when she’d seen Drew run around the chopper moved up to her stomach. And then lower. Its effect was so unexpected that for a second or two she didn’t realize what was happening. After all, it hadn’t happened to her in more than ten years. Not since the last time she had seen this man, whose eyes locked on hers and then widened with what looked like the same sense of shock she had just experienced.

He recovered first. Although she didn’t believe she could manage to utter a coherent sound, Mark Peterson’s voice seemed perfectly normal. A little deeper than she remembered it, but other than that, exactly the same as it had always been.

Exactly the same as the night he’d made love to her. The night Drew had been conceived.

“Hello, Jillian,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

CHAPTER THREE

JILLIAN TRIED to think of an appropriate response. What Mark had said was nothing less than the truth. It had been a long time. A damn long time, better measured in events than in years.

“It has been, hasn’t it,” she said, thankful to find that her voice still worked, although to her own ears it was thready, a little breathless. “How are you, Mark?”

It’s been a long time.

It has been, hasn’t it? How are you?

The merest commonplaces. Phrases either of them might have said to a chance acquaintance. But beneath lay all the memories she suspected neither of them had forgotten.

Or maybe she was wrong about that, she thought, watching him turn to Ronnie. Maybe that was just her fantasy—that what she and Mark had shared that summer had meant more to him than a quick roll in the hay.

“Ronnie,” Mark said, nodding at the sheriff.

“Looks like you did my job for me,” Ronnie replied. “Much obliged. I wasn’t looking forward to searching for the kid all afternoon in a storm. Probably would have been calling on you to help, so I guess you saved us both some trouble.”

Mark nodded again, his mouth flattening as if he had wanted to say something and then thought better of it. “Glad I could help,” he said finally, his eyes coming back to Drew.

“You know what’s good for you, young man,” Ronnie said to the boy, “you won’t ever pull a stunt like this again. Worrying your mama and wasting the taxpayers’ money. I got gas and time tied up in coming way out here. Ought to make you work those expenses out. And I will the next time you get the notion to send everybody off on a wild-goose chase.”

As much as she knew Drew was in the wrong, Jillian found herself resenting the sheriff’s lecture. Overprotective. Jake had accused her of that, and she had resented his lecture, too.

He needs a man’s discipline in his life, Jake had said. He needs a father. Maybe he did. After all, Violet had told her the same thing. Of course with Violet…

Involuntarily, her gaze found Mark’s face. Now that her shock had faded, she was able to evaluate it dispassionately. He was still looking down at Drew, so she allowed herself to examine his features more freely than she might have otherwise.

His skin was as darkly tanned as it had been since she’d known him. Although his hair was much lighter than hers, Mark never burned, not even when working all day in the grueling heat.