Branded

The rest of them gave him a bad time about winning and leaving immediately afterward, accusing him of planning it that way. Tom leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, hell, Crenshaw, the least you could do is give me a chance to win some of my money back!”

Jake lifted the corners of his mouth in a slight smile. “Next week, Tommy, my boy,” he said to the banker. “You’ll get your chance.”

He finished folding the money and stuck it into his shirt pocket. For the first time since Jordan had barged into the room, Jake turned and actually looked at him. Twenty-six-year-old Jordan was generally laid-back and low-key. Jake had never seen him this agitated before.

Jake said his goodbyes and walked into the other room, Jordan close on his heels. He continued moving through the crowd, responding to greetings without pausing, until they were outside in the graveled parking lot.

He turned and faced his cousin with considerable irritation.

“All right, Jordan, what the hell is so blasted important that you had to interrupt me at the game tonight? This is my only time to relax, kick back and enjoy myself. If the place were on fire, you would have called the fire department. If you’d spotted rustlers, you would have called the sheriff. So what, in your mind, couldn’t wait until I got home?”

“Tiffany.”

Jake stiffened. “What are you talking about?” His voice grew louder.

“She’s at the ranch.”

Jake stared at Jordan, stunned. Why would his ex-wife show up after all this time? He gave his head a quick shake. “Did she say what she wanted?”

Jordan got into his truck and slammed the door. “I’ll let her explain that. Told her I’d come get you and I have. Now I’m headed home. If I hadn’t been concerned about one of my mares, I wouldn’t have been there when she showed up.” He gave a brief wave and left.

Jake stood there, his hands on his hips, staring at the taillights until they disappeared from view. Tiffany Rogers had come back to the ranch after she’d vowed never to step foot on the place again. Wasn’t that just dandy? He’d never expected to see her again and couldn’t imagine what she wanted from him now.

He shook his head in frustration before he climbed into his truck and headed toward the ranch, thirty miles from town.

What could she want—he glanced his watch—at close to midnight on a Friday night? Hadn’t the woman caused him enough trouble?

He remembered the night before she left. She’d been sleeping in a guest bedroom earlier in the week, which wasn’t unusual when she didn’t get her way about something. By that time in their marriage, he felt he had done everything he could to make her happy and had learned to ignore her sulking. Despite her princess attitude, he’d loved her. He’d hoped that, given time, she would eventually mature into the woman he got glimpses of from time to time.

When he awakened that night and felt her in bed with him, he thought she’d gotten over her latest snit and was ready to make up. He’d sometimes wondered if she picked fights with him because she enjoyed their ritual of reconciling. Whatever her reason, he hadn’t put up much resistance, he remembered ruefully.

When he’d left the house at dawn the next morning, as was his habit, he believed that everything was fine between them. When he returned to the house later that day, she was gone, having taken all her possessions as well as some of his.

Within hours, he’d been served with divorce papers. That was when he knew she hadn’t been making up with him. She’d been saying goodbye.

They’d been divorced long enough now for him to recover from the shock and devastation he’d felt at the time. They’d been married almost four years when their relationship had blown up in his face.

Of course, he should have known that a Dallas socialite wouldn’t be happy living in the country but she’d insisted she didn’t care where they lived as long as they were together, and he had been too besotted to realize that their marriage wouldn’t work. She’d said what he wanted to hear and he had believed her.

Anyone with half a brain would look at the woman and know that Tiffany Rogers of the Dallas Rogerses would never be content as his wife. He hadn’t seen it at the time, probably because his brain hadn’t been the part of him making his decisions. Later, during one of her frequent tirades, she’d told him the only reason she’d married him was that he was a Crenshaw—a member of one of the most wealthy and powerful families in the state.

Their divorce had been far from amicable, as the lawyers liked to call a divorce where the husband rolls over and plays dead while the wife walks off with everything. Four years hardly constituted a long-term union and his lawyer—and poker-playing friend, Curtis Boyd—had vigorously fought her when she’d asked for an outrageous amount of money for alimony. He and Curtis knew she didn’t need the money. She’d just wanted to get back at him because he refused to let her stomp all over him.

The day he walked out of the courthouse a free man, he made a vow to himself never to get married again. He’d learned his lesson well. Marriage might be great for other people, but he wanted no part of it. He was content to remain a bachelor for the rest of his life.

Now she was back here for God only knew what reason, and once again he was being forced to face her.

The road to the ranch had little traffic at this time of night. He followed its winding path through picturesque hills until he had to slow for the turn into the ranch entrance.

The entrance was framed on either side by curving walls of limestone fashioned years before he was born. He and his brothers used to play king of the mountain on their broad surfaces until the time their dad caught them. Tonight, Jake scarcely noticed the entrance as he continued along the paved private road that eventually led to the main ranch house.

When he reached the house and parked, Jake noticed a black limousine sitting in the shadows beneath the trees. That would be Tiffany, all right, always traveling in style.

With an irritated sigh, Jake got out of the cab of the truck, slammed the door with a satisfying sound and strode toward a side entrance. The sharp sound of his boots on the patio echoed his impatience. He stepped inside the door that opened into the kitchen.

He stopped just inside the doorway. Tiffany sat at the kitchen bar, calmly sipping a glass of iced tea. She’d cut her hair since he’d last seen her and she had on slacks and an open-necked shirt, looking as though she were waiting for a modeling shoot, her hair and makeup impeccable.

As soon as she saw him, Tiffany slipped off the stool and faced him, smiling brilliantly. He recognized—only because he knew her so well—that she was nervous.

Smart woman.

It took a lot of nerve for her to walk into his house when he wasn’t there and make herself at home.

He leaned against the doorjamb, folded his arms and waited, his eyes shaded by his hat.

Her smile dimmed.

“Hello, Jake,” she said in her sultry voice.

There had been a time when that voice had done all kinds of things to him. He was considerably older and a great deal wiser now.

“What’re you doing here?”

A tiny frown appeared between her brows as she fluttered her lashes in simulated surprise. “Is that any way to greet me?” she finally replied, her bottom lip sliding out enough to form a provocative pout. “Ed brought me all the way out here to see you. You could at least be polite.”

“I’m not feeling particularly polite at the moment. Who’s Ed?”

“Edward James Littlefield Jr.”

“Never heard of him.”

She made a face. “Of course not. He and his family are quite well known in the Dallas area…banking, you know.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

She clasped her hands together and attempted another smile, her nervousness more obvious as her bracelets jangled around her wrists.

“I brought you something.”

He straightened and started toward her. “Cut out the games, Tiffany. They don’t work any more. I don’t want anything from you. So if that’s why you’re here—”

She turned and hurried across the room toward the hallway and said, “But you haven’t seen what I brought you, yet,” she said over her shoulder.

He strode after her. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he asked once he reached the front foyer.

“You’ll see,” she replied lightly as she ran up the wide, curving staircase toward the second floor. She didn’t look back.

Damn, but she was irritating! Always playing games, never saying what she actually meant. He shook his head in disgust and followed her. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, she was hurrying toward his wing of the house as if she knew he would stop her if he caught up with her.

He wanted to shake her silly. Once he reached her, he would haul her butt out of his house, but by the time he was close enough, she was already entering one of the bedrooms. Surely she didn’t actually think he’d hop in bed with her, did she? He reached the bedroom door and peered inside. She stood beside the bed, her finger to her lips. A night-light that wasn’t there earlier gave the room a soft glow.

When she remained silent, he walked over to where she stood and glanced at the bed.

He froze when he saw what was there. Or rather, who was there. A little girl, clutching a faded pink stuffed rabbit with an ear missing, lay there sound asleep, the covers pulled to her shoulders.

He glanced at Tiffany, wondering what she was up to now.

The child had blond curly hair and delicate features. He had no idea how old she was or why she was there.

He shook his head wearily and walked out of the room. He didn’t stop until he reached the kitchen. Once there, he went to the refrigerator and reached for a beer. When Tiffany followed him into the room, he turned to face her. “What in the hell is going on, Tiffany?”

“She’s your daughter. Her name is Heather and I’m leaving her here with you.”

Two

Jake looked at her in silence for several moments before he shook his head in disgust. “Very funny, Tiffany. You’ll notice that I’m not laughing, however. Need I remind you that we never had children? As I recall, once we were married, you informed me that you didn’t want children because pregnancy would ruin your figure.”

He drank a swallow of beer and struggled to hang on to his temper. “What game do you think you’re playing here? I haven’t seen you in years. Did you suddenly decide that I’m an easier touch than the father of that little girl? Sorry, but that kite won’t fly. I’m not paying you child support, Tiffany. You can’t hang that one on me. I want you to go upstairs, get your daughter and get the hell out of my home.”

It wasn’t the child’s fault her mother had no integrity, he reminded himself. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for the little girl, given her circumstances.

He rolled the bottle he held across his forehead to cool off. What he needed was to stick his head into one of the horse troughs outside. If he stayed in the same room with Tiffany much longer, he might forget that his mama had taught him always to be a gentleman, regardless of the provocation.

Without a word, Jake walked outside and sat down at one of the patio tables.

He stared into the night. The moon was high in the sky, almost full, giving enough light to see the rolling hills beyond his home. The vista usually had a calming effect on him. He hoped it would work this time.

There was no reason to let her get under his skin like that. Getting him to react had probably been her plan all along, wanting to see what he would say and do. Well, she had her answer.

The door opened behind him. He turned his head and watched Tiffany come outside empty-handed. His jaw tightened as she walked in and out of the shadows to the table where he sat. She sat across from him, the light from the kitchen window falling across her face.

He waited for her to speak and when she didn’t, he said, “Didn’t you forget something? I want you and your little girl gone. Now.”

Tiffany lifted her chin and stared back at him. He knew that look. She was ready to fight him if she didn’t get her own way. Well, too bad. She could throw as many temper tantrums as she wanted to throw, but they wouldn’t work. He wasn’t going to take her child and pretend it was his.

“Do you remember the night before I moved out of here?”

“Are you talking about the night you crawled into my bed after I was asleep?” he asked grimly.

She smiled at him and nodded. “Yes. I wanted to show you that you might deny me other things, but you never denied me sex.”

“You made your point. Making love to you was the only thing I seemed to do that you approved of. So what?”

“Well, as things turned out, I was a little too eager that night and since you were more than half asleep, we didn’t use protection. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I was pregnant.” She looked down at her clasped hands, resting on the table. “Mother Nature’s little joke on me.” Her voice had flattened by the time she’d stopped speaking.

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

She looked up at him, her gaze meeting his. “I really don’t care what you believe. She was born nine months after that night. Do the math.”

“I doubt I was the only man who was in your bed around that time.”

“I refuse to get into name-calling, Jake. Regardless of what you may want to believe, your name is on Heather’s birth certificate. If you have any doubts, have the tests run.”

He swallowed, thinking back to that night. He’d made love to her until they were both exhausted. She was right. He hadn’t used protection. He supposed the surprise would have been if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. If he gave the matter any thought after being served with papers, he probably figured she had used protection.

In the silence between them, he could hear the night sounds, the rustle of animals foraging by moonlight, the occasional deep croak of a bullfrog, the distant sound of a dog barking. “If you were pregnant at the final hearing,” he said after several minutes, “why didn’t the information come out in court?”

She sounded irritated and impatient. “Because I hadn’t paid attention to my monthly cycles during that horrible time. I was so distraught that I put any irregularity down to stress. The divorce was final before I discovered the truth.”

Which still didn’t explain why he didn’t know about it. Knowing Tiffany, as soon as she found out, she would’ve been screaming for his head…or other, more delicate parts of his anatomy…to be removed from his body.

“Why didn’t you tell me once you found out?”

“Because I didn’t want to have anything more to do with you, that’s why! I decided to raise her on my own. There are lots of single mothers who raise their children alone. You’d been so hateful during the divorce proceedings I decided you didn’t deserve to know you were going to be a father!”

“So you decided to punish me by not letting me know, is that it?”

“Yes!”

“The only problem with your logic, Tiffany,” he said wearily, “is that it isn’t punishment if I didn’t know about her.”

If what she said was true—and it would be easy enough for him to find out—then he really was the father of the little girl upstairs.

His stomach knotted at the thought and he broke into a cold sweat. For more than three years he’d had a child that he never knew existed.

“Why tell me now? Did you figure I’d been punished enough after all this time? You’ve kept her very existence from me for all these years, Tiffany, including the pregnancy itself. Care to explain to me why, after all this time, you brought her here tonight?”

She shifted and appeared to be trying to decide how to answer him, clasping and unclasping her hands.

Uh-huh. This was going to be good, watching her squirm. If he could find any pleasure in this encounter, which was certainly doubtful, it would be watching Tiffany as she tried to figure a way to justify her actions, which were inexcusable. He knew she was self-absorbed and permanently immature, but he never thought she would stoop so low as to keep a child from her father in order to get revenge.

She looked away from him, chewing her bottom lip. Finally, as though answering his question, she said, “Soon after Heather was born, my schedule became so hectic that my grandmother offered to keep her for me, which worked out great for everyone. Gram had someone to entertain and play with, and I was able to spend time with Heather as often as possible without disrupting her schedule.” She paused and rubbed her forehead, as though she had a headache. “The thing is, Gram had a stroke two weeks ago and she’s now bedridden. She won’t be able to care for Heather.”

“So much for raising a child on your own, right, Tiffany? But having your grandmother raise her for you has nothing to do with why you’re just now telling me about her.” He raised his brow. “Or does it? Without your permanent babysitter you don’t know what else to do with her, is that it?”

“No, that is not it!” Her calm demeanor fell away and her anger took over. “Certain things have recently changed in my life, for your information. Ed loves and respects me—something you never did—and he wants to marry me! We had all our plans made—we wanted to get married in Vegas and honeymoon in Hawaii, and then visit Japan and Australia. Everything would have worked out perfectly if Gram hadn’t had her stroke. The timing couldn’t have been worse!”

Jake stared at her in amazement. Did this woman care about anyone other than herself? There was no sign that her grandmother’s illness was anything more to her than an inconvenience.

“Let me get this straight. You planned to go off for months and leave Heather with your grandmother?”

She lifted a shoulder. “She would have been fine with Gram. They got along well together. Besides, I’ve taken trips before. I doubt she even misses me when I’m gone.”

“You must have considered the situation desperate for you to break your silence to bring her to me.”

Tiffany ran her hand through her carefully coiffed hair, another indication that this meeting wasn’t going the way she’d planned. He wondered what she’d expected he would do when she showed up? Welcome her and the child with open arms? Be so thrilled to discover he was a father that he’d ignore the fact she’d kept the knowledge from him for all this time?

If so, she was even shallower than he’d always thought.

In a quieter voice, she said, “I thought I’d worked everything out just fine. I told Ed that we’d have to take Heather with us.”

He dropped his head to hide a smile. After a moment he looked at her and said, “I somehow doubt he was thrilled with that particular idea. Most men expect to have their bride all to themselves at that stage of their marriage.”

“I thought he had accepted the idea, although taking a three-year-old on your honeymoon is certainly not what either of us planned or wanted!”

“Couldn’t your mother have looked after her?”

“That’s another problem, entirely. Heather won’t behave for Mother.”

Another proof that she was probably his. He had to admire Heather’s discrimination. Tiffany’s mother was just an older, even more spoiled, version of her daughter. Too bad he hadn’t recognized the similarity sooner. If he had, none of this would be happening.

On the other hand, if Mrs. Rogers and her granddaughter—and boy, he would have loved to have seen her face when she found out she was going to be a grandmother!—had gotten along, he would never have known about Heather.

Funny how life worked sometimes.

“We left Dallas this morning,” Tiffany continued, intent on her story. “I thought everything had worked out just fine. Ed never said a word to make me believe he hadn’t accepted the situation until we were on the road. That’s when he told me he wasn’t interested in raising someone else’s child. He hadn’t expected to become a full-time parent when he proposed to me. He assured me that he wouldn’t mind if she visited us occasionally, but he didn’t want her around all the time.”

Tiffany appeared to have run out of steam and just sat there looking at him.

After a moment, he said in a neutral tone, “And you still plan to marry him.”

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Please understand, Jake. I love him, really love him. He’s older, more mature. I’ve known who he was for years but I never expected him to show any interest in me. When he did, it never occurred to me that accepting Heather would be a problem for him. He knew about her, he’d even met her once, and I thought he would adore her as much as I do.” She pulled a handkerchief from her purse and carefully blotted beneath her eyes. “When he told me that, once he realized I wasn’t going to leave her in Dallas, he’d arranged for Heather to stay with a professional sitter in Las Vegas while we were overseas, I was horrified. I really was. He made it clear he didn’t intend for Heather to go with us and I didn’t want her to stay with a stranger. I didn’t know what to do.”

Jake didn’t know what to say. If she still intended to marry this weasel, he figured they deserved each other.

She sighed and said, “That’s when I thought about you. I remembered how you were always talking about wanting children. I decided to forgive you for being so mean to me back then. I knew that Heather would be better off with her own flesh and blood for a few months, instead of with some stranger in Vegas.”

Maybe the child was better off with him, if this was the way she was being treated. He was still having a little trouble absorbing the fact that people could be so callous to their offspring.

He leaned back in his chair, his gaze steady, and said, “You need to understand something before this conversation goes any further, Tiffany. If you intend to leave that little girl with me after not having the decency to tell me she even existed until tonight, I refuse to allow you to bounce her between us in order to suit your convenience.”

She frowned at him. “I don’t know what you mean, Jake. She’s your child, after all. If we can make an arrangement where each of us keeps her part of the time she’ll get to know both of us. I realize that I made a mistake keeping her from you. She deserves to know her father.”

Damned if she didn’t sound pious.

He folded his arms. “You’re treating her like a toy you grew tired of playing with. So let me make myself perfectly clear. If you leave here tonight without taking her with you, or if you decide to leave her somewhere in Las Vegas once you get there—and believe me, I’ll be keeping tabs on that—I’ll make certain you lose all parental rights to her. You will see her only when I think she’s capable of handling it.”

She looked at him as if he’d slapped her. “You’d take her away from me?” she asked in horror. She started sobbing. “I should have known better than to let you know about her at all. I should have followed my instincts and kept you out of both our lives! I knew you were going to be hateful about this. I just knew it!”

He stood. “C’mon, I’ll help you get her back to your car.”

She jumped up. “No! I can’t take her with us. I just can’t! I want what’s best for her, I really do.” Tears continued to run down her cheeks and her nose glowed where she kept wiping it with her handkerchief. She twisted the beleaguered piece of cloth between her hands. “It’s just so hard, Jake,” she said pathetically, “you know? I don’t know the first thing about taking care of her. She won’t behave, she ignores what I say, and just the other day she found some cosmetics in my purse and smeared them all over her face. I know she knew better, but she did it just to spite me! I’ve been doing the best I can, but I just don’t know how to deal with her!”

“And you think I do.”

Still wringing her handkerchief, she said, “Well, at least I’ll know she’s with part of her family. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting along with her because you’ve always been good with children. This is the best thing for Heather. You’ll find someone here on the ranch to keep an eye on her when you can’t watch her.”