SHE DIDN’T HEAR WHAT he told Chase. He had made that call from the kitchen, and she guessed that had been deliberate. At least he had called. This might not have anything to do with what they had talked about last night, but it didn’t hurt to be careful.

“Chase is coming over here,” Mac said.

She opened her eyes and found him standing in the doorway to the bedroom. His body blocked most of the light that was filtering around him from the distant kitchen.

“I can make coffee,” she offered.

“Don’t get up,” he said. He walked across the floor, his boot heels echoing on the hardwood. “Chase said for you to have breakfast ready when we get back.”

“‘Chase said,’” she teased.

“I thought you wouldn’t let your brother-in-law go hungry.”

“But I would let my husband,” she said.

“I hoped not, but I figure I’ll get better if you know we’re having company.”

She smiled at him, reaching up to catch his fingers in hers. She held them for a moment, still remembering last night.

“Chase sounded strange,” Mac said.

She looked up from his hand. “Strange how?”

He shook his head. “Just…strange. I don’t know. Different. He didn’t want me to go over there and pick him up. Said he’d come here. That’s when he said you could fix breakfast.”

“Ulterior motive,” she suggested, smiling at him.

“I guess.”

“Want anything special?”

“Uh-huh, but I don’t think I’ve got time for it before Chase gets here.” He put his knee down on the bed and the mattress dipped under his weight. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

“Sanchez ranch,” he said, his breath warm against her face. “In case anybody needs me.”

She nodded. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but she’d done enough nagging. Mac had promised, and if he told her he’d do something, he would.

“I’m going to wait out in the truck. Go back to sleep.”

He pulled the sheet and the quilt over her shoulders, tucking them around her. She listened to his footsteps fade away over the wooden floors and the sound the front door made as he closed it behind him.

She shrugged off the covers he’d tucked in and pulled his pillow into her body, resting her cheek against the soft cotton of its case. It smelled of Mac. He didn’t use cologne. This was soap. Shampoo. Always the same no-name-brand brands. Or maybe this was just the familiar, beloved scent of his skin.

She closed her eyes, willing herself not to think about anything but that. About last night. After the argument.

It was possible that she had gone back to sleep. She could never say for sure whether she had been awake or asleep when she heard the explosion. But she had known at once what it was. There had never been the least doubt in her mind, not from the first sound, exactly what she was hearing.

Chase would sometimes say that he could close his eyes and see Mac’s truck exploding, his brother’s burning body thrown out onto the ground. Jenny had no clear memory of any of that. The horror for her always began and ended with that sound.

The rest of it simply blended into the endless black nightmare she had always known living without Mac would be.

CHAPTER ONE

Five years later

“YOU GOING TO the wedding?” Chase McCullar asked his sister-in-law. His blue eyes were directed downward toward the coffee cup he held, rather than at Jenny, and his voice was almost innocent of inflection.

“Of course,” Jenny said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “Aren’t you?”

“You think I’ll get an invitation?”

“I think a better question might be, do you want one?”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t want an invitation?”

She laid the dishcloth she’d been using on the counter beside the sink and turned around to face him. Chase was sitting at her kitchen table, a table that had been in his family for three generations. He must have eaten tens of thousands of meals at its scarred wooden surface. Maybe that was why he looked so right sitting there, as if he still belonged here, living in this house instead of the one he had built on his half of the McCullar land.

Or maybe he looked so right, she acknowledged, because he always reminded her of Mac. They even had the same way of sitting, forearms on the table and broad shoulders slightly hunched, both hands wrapped around a mug, as if savoring against their fingers the warmth of the coffee it held.

She banished that memory as she had so many others in the past few weeks. She had even dreamed about Mac last night, dreamed about him making love to her, and that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

There had been too much upheaval lately, too many disturbances in her usually placid existence, she supposed. The kidnapping of Chase’s daughter and his belated marriage to her mother, Samantha Kincaid. Rio’s return from prison. Doc Horn’s brutal murder.

Apparently those things, as unlikely as it seemed, had somehow rekindled the memories of those nearly perfect days with Mac. Or maybe seeing Chase and Samantha finally together had made her remember her own marriage. Or perhaps that had been triggered by the way Rio looked at Anne Richardson, the two of them sitting at this very kitchen table, whatever had been in Rio’s black eyes so much like the way Mac used to look at her. Or, at least, she amended, the way she always remembered his look.

Most things were better replayed in memory than they had been in actuality. The reality of long-ago events faded, and the remembrance of them had a tendency to become more perfect with the passage of time, she reminded herself, trying to be fair to Trent. Anne Richardson’s brother, Trent, was the man she was fortunate enough to have in love with her now. A good man who wanted to marry her. A man who deserved not to have to fight against all those perfect memories.

Not that she minded having only good memories of her marriage, of course. However, she now admitted that savoring those had prevented her from moving on, from getting on with the business of living her life, and she was determined to change that. She had loved Mac McCullar with every fiber of her being, but Mac was dead. He had been dead for almost five years, and she knew it was time for her to begin living again.

She remembered that she had once accused Chase of doing that—of trying to crawl down into that grave with Mac. And instead she had discovered that she was the one who had been guilty of that sin. Once she had had the courage to make that admission, to face what her life had become, she had decided it was time to do something about it.

She realized suddenly that Chase was waiting for her answer, his blue eyes—eyes that were just like Mac’s—studying her face as she stood, lost in memory and regret.

“You and Rio haven’t exactly been…” She hesitated, searching for the right word, thinking about the strange relationship that existed between the half brothers.

“Not exactly bosom buddies,” Chase suggested caustically.

“Not exactly brothers,” she countered. “At least you haven’t acted like brothers.”

“I thought he killed Mac. At least had a part in Mac’s death. How did you want me to treat him?”

“You thought?” she asked, emphasizing the past tense, which was, to her, the pertinent part of that statement. “But you don’t think that anymore?”

“Hell, Jenny…” Chase began, and then he hesitated. “Sometimes even I don’t know what I believe anymore.” He shook his head, eyes lowering again to the steaming coffee. “It just doesn’t…” He shook his head again.

“Feel right to hate Rio any longer? Or to blame him for Mac’s death?” Jenny suggested.

Chase looked up. “You think I was wrong about that.”

“Yes,” she said simply.

Chase’s mouth tightened. It would be hard for him to make that admission, she knew. Almost as hard as it had been for her to make the unwanted one about her own life that she’d recently made.

“If that’s true,” Chase said, “then he probably hates me.”

Rio had tried to warn his half brother about what was going to happen to Mac. He had ridden across the river to tell Chase about a snatch of drunken conversation he’d overheard in a Mexican cantina. Only, he had made that ride the same night Mac’s truck had exploded, and the two events had become inextricably linked in Chase’s mind.

Chase hadn’t believed Rio’s claim that his mission that night had been a warning. Instead, he had interpreted his bastard half brother’s words as threat and had viewed Rio as the messenger of whoever had killed Mac. In the months following the murder, Chase had poured every ounce of his energy into seeing that Rio Delgado was punished for his part in that crime.

“You cost him five years of his life,” Jenny acknowledged. “If he is innocent, as he’s always claimed…”

“Then the wrong man got punished. And whoever killed Mac got away with murder,” Chase added bitterly. “I didn’t stop looking for them, Jenny. I always thought something would turn up. I never believed Rio was the mastermind. I thought he was just their damn messenger boy.”

“But he was the only one of them you could identify.”

Jenny understood all Chase’s motives in pursuing Rio. She had always understood them. She, too, had wanted somebody punished, but knowing Rio now, she had gradually come to realize that he hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened.

“Buck told me nothing else has ever come to light about that night,” Chase said. “There was never any indication that anybody was transporting drugs through this county. Or had even been planning to.”

Buck Elkins had been Mac’s deputy as well as his friend. He had been appointed sheriff after Mac’s death and had thoughtfully kept Jenny informed about the county’s progress, or in this case, its lack of progress, until she had finally asked him not to make any further reports to her about the investigation. There seemed no point in constantly being told that nothing else had been uncovered about her husband’s murder.

“Rio doesn’t seem to think too much of Buck’s detective skills,” Jenny reminded her brother-in-law.

“Couldn’t find his ass with both hands,” Chase said, repeating his half brother’s colorful assessment. Unconsciously, his lips moved, almost into a smile.

“Maybe Rio’s right,” Jenny said, “but I know Buck tried. Mac was his friend.”

“Elkins thinks Mac was wrong.”

“About what?”

“About everything. About the drugs.”

“Somebody approached Mac,” Jenny said, remembering, almost against her will, the argument they had had that night. The night Mac had died. “Somebody made him an offer.”

“Mac didn’t give me any details. Or anyone else, apparently. Not even Buck.”

“He didn’t have time. He would have told you. That’s why he asked you to come down here that weekend. And he had promised to contact the DEA. Officially, I mean. He promised me that night.”

“And instead… Hell, Jenny, we’re no closer than we were five years ago to knowing what really happened.”

The frustration she heard in his voice had played a role, she knew, in Chase’s determination to make certain that Rio, at least, paid for his part in his half brother’s death.

“And in the meantime,” he continued, his tone containing a thread of self-castigation now, “I got my half brother sent to prison for a crime neither of us believes anymore that he had anything to do with.”

“Have you told Rio that?” Jenny asked.

Chase pushed his cup away from him, the sudden motion strong enough to cause the coffee it contained to slosh out over the side. “How the hell am I supposed to tell a man that I’ve just realized my bullheaded stupidity cost him five years of his life? How do I do that, Jenny? How the hell do I ever make up for that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that you can make up for it, but I do know that admitting you were wrong would be a good first step.”

Chase’s laugh was short and harsh. “Somehow that doesn’t seem to be quite enough,” he said. “It damn well wouldn’t be enough for me.”

“But then you’re one of those hardheaded McCullars. Maybe Rio…” She hesitated, realizing that Rio was a McCullar also, that unmistakable heritage from his father stamped as indelibly on his beautiful Latino features as it had been on the faces of his two half brothers.

“Maybe Rio’s a better man than his brother,” Chase suggested quietly.

“A more forgiving one,” Jenny said, finally smiling at him. “At least I hope so. And you didn’t answer my question. Do you want an invitation to Rio’s wedding?”

The depth of the breath Chase took was visible and audible, but he still didn’t respond.

“If it’s any help to you in reaching that decision,” she said, “I’d really like for you to be there. I think Trent would appreciate your showing up.”

“Trent’s not too thrilled about this, I guess. About Anne marrying Rio.”

“I think he’s trying to make the best of what he’s bound to see as a bad situation.”

“Senator Richardson’s beloved little sister marrying an ex-con.”

“Who shouldn’t have been an ex-con,” she reminded him quietly, feeling the need to defend Rio, even from Chase.

“And who wouldn’t have been, except for me,” he acknowledged.

“That sounds like justification enough for you to feel obligated to show up at his wedding.”

“Obligated,” he repeated bitterly. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood.

“They wore hair shirts in the Middle Ages,” Jenny said, working at keeping her own lips from tilting, although the teasing note was clear in her voice. “All you’ll need to put on is a suit.”

“You don’t think Rio will throw me out?”

“If you show up, you can probably even dance with the bride.”

“I think I’ll settle for dancing with the groom’s sister-in-law,” he said.

“Samantha will be delighted to hear that, I’m sure.” Chase’s wife, Samantha, was one of Jenny’s best friends and had been long before she married Chase McCullar.

“I wasn’t talking about Samantha,” Chase said. He crossed the small distance between them and leaned down to press his lips lightly to Jenny’s cheek—something she couldn’t ever remember him doing before. Then, without another word, he went out the kitchen door.

Jenny turned back to the dishes in the sink, but she was smiling, and as the long afternoon passed, she found herself remembering that unexpected brotherly kiss, and smiling again.

It was good to have Chase home. And Rio, another of Mac’s brothers, whom she had really never known until he, too, had come back home. Rio had arrived at her ranch, angry and vengeful, determined to make Chase McCullar pay for what he had done, and instead he had ended up becoming part of Jenny’s family.

Two men who were, in spite of all the bitterness and betrayal that lay in their past, finally becoming brothers. She only wished there was some way Mac could know about that. She really believed Mac would have approved.

HE TOOK ANOTHER LOOK into the motel’s mirror. Doing that wasn’t something that ever gave him pleasure, although he thought he had probably done the best he could with his appearance this afternoon. His thick brown hair, brushed with gray at the temples, had just been trimmed. The suit he wore was new and expensive, and it had been expertly tailored to fit the tall, lean body. The white shirt was also a recent purchase, as was the maroon silk tie, its darkly subdued pattern very appropriate, they had told him, for an afternoon wedding.

These weren’t the kinds of clothes he was accustomed to wearing. Not like any he’d ever worn in his life, but then that was really what this was all about, he thought. Disguise and deception. He hated them both, hated the necessity of them, although he couldn’t deny that they were necessary. Just as he knew the brown contact lens he wore was necessary.

Before he left the room, he took the clipping he’d been carrying around with him for the last couple of months out of his wallet and laid it on the top of the dresser, carefully smoothing the creases with his left hand until it lay perfectly flat.

Knowing that he would need the courage it would provide, he made himself read it again, slowly, although by now he knew the words by heart. At least he knew the ones that mattered. The ones that had finally brought him to San Antonio today.

The newspaper column he had so carefully preserved contained the announcement of the engagement that had led to the wedding he would attend this afternoon. An engagement between Anne Richardson, Texas State Senator Trent Richardson’s sister, and a man named Rio Delgado. That announcement had been the crux of the column, but that hadn’t been what had caused him to read and reread this well-worn clipping.

It had been the two-sentence teaser the society writer had included at the bottom that had been branded into his consciousness, that had gnawed at his gut since he’d first seen it. The words he had read over and over concerned the impending nuptials of Senator Richardson himself. To the widow of slain Texas lawman Mac McCullar.

The man’s gaze lifted again to the mirror. He didn’t recognize the reflection there—the black patch that hid the empty socket of his right eye; the strange, reconstructed features; the deliberately altered color of his remaining eye. A stranger in a stranger’s body, and he guessed that was the way it should be. He felt like a stranger.

He picked up the clipping, which was beginning to come apart along the creases from the number of times he had unfolded the paper to reread those words, and he held it for a long time, thinking.

He had given up any rights he’d ever had to interfere in Jenny’s life, he acknowledged, given them up by conscious decision. He shouldn’t be here. He had no right to be. That had been the guiding principle of his life for the last five years. And then…and then he had seen this, and all the reasons he had known and understood had seemed to fade into insignificance in the face of those two sentences.

Finally, he took a breath and allowed his long, brown fingers to close around the small piece of paper, crumpling it between them. He wadded the clipping into a ball, and on his way out the door, he pitched it accurately so it landed in the metal trash can the motel had thoughtfully provided.

CHASE MCCULLAR WAS leaning against the wall watching the crowd at the wedding reception. The dancers were hugging the postage-stamp-size dance floor, working to avoid the long, lace-and-flower-covered tables that were filled to overflowing with finger foods and punch and wedding cake. The other guests were standing, balancing glass plates and cups, most of them managing to talk and eat at the same time, despite those burdens.

“You thinking they’re gonna let an ugly old cowpoke like you kiss the bride?”

Chase glanced up at the soft comment. The man who had asked that sardonic question was standing beside him. He was tall and broad-shouldered, yet whipcord lean, without an ounce of excess fat on his body. And his face was unfamiliar. Eerily unfamiliar.

Chase couldn’t prevent the telltale reaction that might have given him away if anyone had been paying the least bit of attention to either of them. Chase’s blue eyes had widened, the dark pupils dilating suddenly, and his heart had literally hesitated a few beats before resuming its steady rhythm. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked softly, his breathing uneven from shock. He pulled his gaze away from the man who had spoken and made himself focus instead on the crowd, automatically picking out the figures of his wife and his sister-in-law, who were engaged in an animated, laughing conversation on the far side of the room.

“I’m crashing a wedding,” the stranger said, his tone barely audible under the noise of the crowd, certainly audible only to Chase. “Think somebody’s gonna throw me out?” he asked casually.

That wasn’t something that he seemed to be concerned about, and he was probably right not to be. Given the size of the crowd and considering the impeccable cut of the charcoal gray suit, and the white shirt and maroon silk tie the gate-crasher was wearing, it was certainly unlikely that would happen.

At any wedding of this size, the bride’s friends would assume anyone they didn’t know belonged to the groom’s party, and vice versa. And at this particular wedding, since Rio knew almost no one in the throng, the groom was unlikely to protest the presence of one more strange face.

The features of the man who was now leaning against the wall beside Chase were, in fact, the slightest bit strange. There was nothing obvious, other than the black patch that hid his right eye, but still the alignment of the underlying bone structure was unusual. The angles were strong, almost harsh, and although he was clean shaven, the texture of the skin that stretched over those strong bones was as subtly different as the bone structure itself. What made them unusual, however, would have been difficult to articulate. It wasn’t an unpleasant face, but it was hard, and the black patch gave it an air of danger that was somehow in keeping with the rest.

He looked like a man who had seen a lot, who had endured a lot, Chase found himself thinking, his eyes skimming over the features again as if he had never seen them before. He had, of course, but they were always disconcerting.

“Well?” the stranger asked. The left corner of his mouth moved, twitching with amusement at whatever he saw in Chase’s face.

“Well, what?” Chase asked, deliberately forcing his eyes back to the crowd. Samantha and Jenny had moved away from the place where he had spotted them before, and now he couldn’t find either of them in the colorful, shifting patterns of the mob.

“You think they’ll let me kiss the bride?” the stranger asked.

The same amusement that had briefly touched the harsh features was in his voice. It, too, was unusual. Deep and almost hoarse, like someone getting over a bad case of laryngitis. “That’s not why you’re here,” Chase said sarcastically.

“It just seemed as good a time as any,” the stranger said laconically, his own gaze drifting over the throng.

“To do what?”

This time the corner of the thin mouth lifted, and the one-sided smile revealed genuine amusement. “Renew old acquaintances,” he said softly. The single brown eye continued to move over the crowd, as if searching it. “I heard somewhere that this might be a double wedding.”

“You heard wrong,” Chase said. He turned at that comment, his gaze focused again on the man beside him. His anger was apparent in the set line of his mouth. “I would have told you if that had been the case.”

“You tried to tell me. I wasn’t listening.”

“But you are now?”

“I am now,” the stranger agreed calmly.

Chase took the breath he had missed while he’d waited for that reply. “It’s about time,” he said softly. “What the hell changed your mind?”

“That,” the man said. His gaze was now following one of the couples moving on the crowded floor. A handsome man, tall and blond, his features remarkably well put-together by anyone’s standards, was guiding a small brunette in a slow waltz. They moved together flawlessly, despite the difference in their sizes. Her fingers were on his shoulder, the soft rose of her nail polish distinct against his jacket.

Chase nodded, knowing that there was probably nothing else in the world that would have brought this man here today. Nothing but the feelings that were revealed now in his face as he watched the attractive couple circling the small floor.

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