The Baby Pursuit

“You look quite at home there,” she told him. “My father might get jealous. The lord of the manor used to sit there and dole out justice to my brothers and us.”

“Us?” he said.

“Victoria and myself.”

“You were always a pair?”

“Of course. We were twins. What one did, the other did, too.” She grinned. “We thought we had it all worked out when we decided that one of us should study for the biology test and the other for English finals when we entered high school. Since we had been assigned to different classes, we thought we could simply swap and each take the same test twice.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes.” She grimaced. “But about halfway through our freshman year, the English teacher caught on when someone spilled milk on Victoria. My dress was dry when I went in to take the test right after lunch. My dad grounded us for the entire semester after that.”

“Tough,” he said. He even looked sympathetic as well as amused. He took a bite out of his sandwich.

Vanessa ate, too, aware of the quiet that surrounded them. Her father was in town, probably visiting Lily. Matthew and Claudia had moved out of their house in town and back to the ranch to escape the prying eyes of the paparazzi who had hounded them since the kidnapping. There was still speculation on prime time news about the situation. The couple had taken up residence in the wing formerly occupied by Uncle Cameron’s family before he and Aunt Mary Ellen had built their own house.

“Why isn’t Savannah Clark’s name on the list?” Dev asked, breaking into her musings.

“I forgot about her,” Vanessa admitted. “She wasn’t on the guest list for the christening since I had invited her down to visit with me for the week.”

“Did she date any of your brothers?”

“Heavens, no. She and I were roommates in college. She didn’t know my family before then. I wouldn’t wish my brothers on any unsuspecting female.”

He didn’t seem to see the humor in her statement. His thick black brows drew closer over the beautiful summery blue of his eyes.

“She’s a teacher in Dallas?”

Vanessa paused before answering. “Yes. How did you know that?” She reached for the list.

He moved it out of her grasp.

“Tell me about that day. Start right after the christening and tell me everyone you spoke with and where you were at the time. Picture it in your mind.”

“Perhaps you’d like me to use self-hypnosis and regression?” she suggested, annoyed at his excluding her from his confidence, especially when she had already told him all she could remember at least three times.

“Just what you recall will be fine.” He pulled a legal pad toward him.

He was being very distant and crisp with her this morning. It was a denial of the attraction between them and the magic of those moments in her bedroom.

“How did you know about Savannah?” she asked.

“The sheriff filled me in.”

It was foolish to feel personally rejected, but she did. She knew this was an investigation. He was doing his job. Still, he could have told her what he had in mind.

The terrible despair she’d felt upon realizing the baby was really gone fell upon her. Her eyes ached with unshed tears. She took a steadying breath.

“Savannah and I stood directly behind my father and Lily…Lily Redgrove Cassidy. I forgot to put her down, too. She’s Dad’s fiancée.”

“When his divorce from his present wife—Sophia—is final,” Dev reminded her, his tone without inflection. He tugged his tie loose, then tossed it to the chair that held his jacket.

“Sometimes I wish Sophia would choke on a chicken bone.”

Her comment brought a flicker of emotion to his eyes. It wasn’t fair for a man to have eyes like that, Vanessa thought, eyes so beautiful they made a woman melt whenever he looked her way—even when he was frowning rather ominously, as he was at her right now.

“Just kidding,” she added.

“I wouldn’t,” he said without a smidgen of a smile. “Things sometimes have a way of coming true, and then you’re sorry for your evil thoughts.”

“Were you?” she asked with sudden insight.

“What?”

“Sorry when what you wished came true.”

His face hardened into a mask. “No.”

“What was it?”

“I wished my father would die.”

“And he did?”

“Coming home drunk one night, he ran into a truck. I’d wished for it a hundred times.”

“Did he hit you and your mother?”

His hesitation was noticeable. “Yes.”

She understood the darkness in him now. “It wasn’t your fault. Your mother was the adult. It was her job to protect you, not the other way around. She chose to stay instead of leaving your father.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“I didn’t say it was easy, only that she made a choice each time she could have left and didn’t.”

The muscles tightened in his jaw, but he didn’t say anything else.

“You won’t always close me out,” she vowed.

“Don’t confuse me with one of your psychology projects,” he advised. “My life isn’t open for study.”

“I don’t have to study it. I know all about you. From the moment we met. Just as you know me.”

She could feel the closing down and shutting out as he gazed at her without speaking. It hurt. She looked away, suddenly unsure of herself.

“I know you as the pampered darling of a very rich father,” he said calmly. “You’re spoiled, impatient and probably think you were put on earth to tell everyone how to live.”

“That’s right. My twin thinks it’s her calling to save the world. I tell people how to save themselves. We’re a good team, don’t you think?” Her tone challenged him to disagree with her.

He shrugged.

She finished her lunch, her eyes ever drawn to him. He glanced at her occasionally, noting her steady perusal, but obviously didn’t let it bother him. He looked over his papers while he ate.

“Let’s go for a ride,” she suggested, overcome with a need to do something. She stacked dishes on the tray.

He stopped her from taking his soup. “I’d like to finish, if you don’t mind. Besides, I’ve got work to do.”

“Being outdoors clears the cobwebs. It helps a person think. There’s a trail along the creek that’s perfect.” She eyed his brawny physique. “Between Dad and Matthew, we should be able to outfit you. Since you’re too stubborn to bring your things out here and stay in your room.”

He leaned back in the chair. “This may come as a shock to your delicate system, but not every person is born with a silver saddle in the stable, so to speak. I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.”

Heat slid up her neck. Her face grew hot. “That was terribly rude of me,” she apologized. “I did assume… Wouldn’t you like to learn?”

“I see no reason for it.”

“So we can share all the things we like,” she said, taking her most reasonable tone with him. “I want to show you all my favorite places, the hideaways where Victoria and I played—”

“Hideaways? Where?” he interrupted.

“Along the creek. There’s a bluff where there’s an overhang. We used to pretend we were Indians and try to track animals through the woods. Cruz was really good at it. He could follow deer and rabbits fairly easily. Once he led us to a bobcat. My brother Dallas and my cousin Logan were with us. You should have seen us scatter when the cat snarled.”

“Interesting.” Dev picked up the list of suspects, or whatever he called it, and made some notes. “Was he ever jealous of your brothers?”

“Cruz? Why should he be?”

“He’s the son of a hired hand. Your brothers were the landed gentry. It would be a natural thing, especially since he seems drawn to the land.”

“He wants a spread of his own, but it costs a lot to buy land and start an operation from scratch. He loves working with the horses, and he’s the best cutting horse trainer we’ve ever had. His mother, Rosita, tells him all things will come in good time, but he’s impatient.”

“Now that’s a trait your family should recognize,” Dev murmured.

She wrinkled her nose at him, then continued with her analysis. “Lately, Cruz has been moody. I think Dallas offered him the money to buy a small place near here to start a champion rodeo line, but Cruz got all steamed about it. He seems to have a chip on his shoulder, but I don’t know why.”

Dev gave a scornful snort.

“Cruz isn’t the sort to carry a grudge,” she assured him. She saw the doubt in his eyes. “You don’t suspect…surely you don’t think Cruz…he wouldn’t hurt us,” she ended vehemently, indignant for her childhood companion and friend.

“He had opportunity. He may have motive. That only leaves one thing.”

“What?”

“The drive.”

“Sophia has all three.”

“Your stepmother?”

“Don’t call her that,” Vanessa ordered sharply. “She was no mother to any of us. Aunt Mary Ellen and Rosita filled that gap after my mother died.”

“All right. Give me a motive.”

“She hates us.”

“She stands to gain more from the divorce settlement than from a kidnapping. Why would she jeopardize a sure thing for fifty million in ransom that might also land her in jail?”

Vanessa considered the situation. “You’re right. Sophia isn’t stupid, only greedy. Father has vowed she won’t get more than the Austin town house and the allowance he already gives her. Which is more than enough for ten families to live on.”

“But is it enough for her?”

“Well, I used to hear them quarrel about it when I lived at home full-time. She says she won’t settle for less than half his holdings.”

“A cool billion and a half.”

“Not really. Grandfather set up a trust for all the grandkids. Dad controls everything, though. I haven’t paid much attention to the legalities of it, so I’m not sure how it’s all divided.”

“Hmm,” he said.

She thought she heard condemnation in the word. “What does that mean?” she demanded defensively.

“It means money has never been a problem to you, so you’ve never had to think much about it.”

The truth in his statement hit home. “It means, I would never think of kidnapping to get it. But others would.”

“Exactly.”

“Cruz needs money to follow his dream. I suppose you think everyone who works for us is a suspect.”

“If the boot fits…” he said.

“You’ll find the one who wears it,” she concluded. She smiled beatifically at him. “I know you will.”

“Your faith is touching,” he mocked.

She shook her head and gave him a slow, deliberate grin. “Not faith, my love. You have more than luck on your side. You have me.”

“God help us,” he murmured.

Three

“You’re looking good,” Vanessa said.

“Huh.”

She hid a grin. Dev had arrived at the ranch dressed in jeans, obviously new cowboy boots—the correct kind, not the ones drugstore cowboys wore—and proper headgear, which for summer was a white straw hat. It had a blue band and no eagle feathers, thank goodness.

He was a natural athlete and had adapted his movements to those of his horse, Rusty, quicker than most city slickers. He looked great on the big roan gelding, which was her favorite mount because of his smooth gait. She was riding a gray gelding who was alert and good-natured.

After a weekend of easy riding and some practice at jumping in the ring, on Monday she declared him ready for the trail along the creek up to her secret cave. As usual, that morning he had talked privately with her father, then questioned several ranch hands before telling her he was ready for their ride. If he was saddle sore, he didn’t complain, but rode with the stoic nature she had learned to expect from him.

She sighed. Those first moments of meeting, the attraction that had nearly ended in a compassionate kiss between them, might never have been. He kept his distance. She felt thwarted and discouraged on all fronts.

Turning her thoughts to the task at hand, she led the way through the stand of oaks and around the alders that lined the small, rushing creek. Instead of soothing her as a ride usually did, she became nostalgic.

“My twin and I hid out here overnight one time. Dad was going to belt us for riding a half-broke stallion that Dallas said we were too chicken to ride. But Cruz said it was safe, so we did it.”

“You trusted him?”

She twisted around in the saddle to face him. “Yes. I told you he would never harm us.”

“Your unfailing feminine intuition, I assume?”

“Yes.” She stared him straight in the eye, willing him to acknowledge the feelings between them.

He gazed at her without blinking.

She turned toward the trail, annoyed with him. “You won’t always deny it.”

“Yes, I will. Because there’s nothing there.”

“How do you know what I’m talking about if there’s nothing there?”

“Don’t try your psychobabble on me.”

She kicked the gelding into a canter. This part of the trail sloped gradually upward in a series of rolling dips and rises. The gray jumped each low place easily. She knew the roan would follow their lead. She didn’t pull up until the path ended at the rocky ledge leading sharply upward.

Finally she stopped in a small hammock surrounded by wild pecan trees and shrub oak. She and Victoria had sprayed the poison oak out each year so that the area was safe for them to play. Dismounting, she dropped the reins to the ground, leaving the horse ground-hitched.

Dev did the same.

“We walk from here.”

“Which way?”

“Up.”

He took the lead now, his gaze intent on the ground. He bent and studied the nearly overgrown trail and every twig and blade of grass. When they arrived at the overhang of limestone that formed the secret hideaway, he heaved a disappointed breath.

“Nothing,” he said. “No one’s been up here since the last rain. That was four weeks ago.”

“After the kidnapping.”

“Yeah. I thought the kidnapper might have holed up close by, maybe left a clue. But no such luck.”

He searched the cave, looking over the tin tea set she and Victoria had brought up years ago. There was a tripod for cooking over a fire, an iron kettle, a skillet and a trivet.

“Who used this?” he asked.

“Victoria and I, mostly. My brothers did, too, before they discovered girls and dating.”

Dev walked out from under the overhang and stood looking down the three-story drop into the ravine, where the creek ran swift and cold over the limestone boulders.

“A long ways to go for water,” he remarked.

“Not really. Come on, I’ll show you.”

She walked around the ledge that narrowed as it curved past the shallow cavern. Up the trail a few feet was a water seep. She removed a pan hanging on a nail pounded into a pine and placed it so it would catch the drip from the trickle of water. The drops made a friendly patter against the aluminum until the water was deep enough to cover the bottom of the pan.

“All the comforts of home,” she pointed out. “Are you ready for lunch?”

He nodded, his eyes searching the area above the trail.

She returned to the horses and removed food from the saddlebag on her mount. She handed Dev the chilled container of lemonade when he joined her. Back in front of the cave, she divided the food she had prepared for their picnic when he had requested the ride up the ridge.

“How many times have you done this?” he asked.

She weighed the question. “Jealous?”

A flush lit his lean cheeks. “Hardly.”

“You are,” she said softly, wishing he would admit it.

He snorted. She laughed when one of the horses did the same as if mimicking him.

They ate the sandwiches made from roast beef, sliced homemade pickles and spicy mustard, then sipped the lemonade from tin cups taken from a rocky shelf in hers and Victoria’s childhood pantry.

Dev was aware of the quiet that surrounded them. They were alone for all practical purposes, and it bothered the hell out of him. He should have insisted that Cruz Perez or one of the hands show him around the ranch. Being with the daughter was too disturbing for his comfort.

Her gaze stirred something inside him—a place where hope lingered, foolishly believing the promises that life dangled in front of a person. But he knew about promises, knew that, like dreams, they were never fulfilled. He had no desire to be around to see the glow die when life slapped her down one time too many. Then she would know, too.

He concentrated on the details of the case. He had a good idea where everyone had been located and who they’d been with at the moment of the kidnapping. He knew which people correctly remembered events and those who had been mistaken…or had lied. There were loose ends, of course. Not everyone was accounted for by someone else.

Maria Cassidy, for one. However, Vanessa had seen her in the courtyard at the probable time of the kidnapping.

Lily Cassidy, Maria’s mother and the fiancée of Ryan Fortune, said she had spoken to Rosita Perez about serving the champagne for the toast, but Rosita thought that was before the christening, not afterward.

Cruz Perez was also unaccounted for.

The horse trainer had said he’d gone to the stable to check on a mare having difficulty foaling. Clint Lockhart, brother-in-law to Ryan Fortune through the rancher’s first wife, Janine, insisted he’d been outside at the time and hadn’t seen Perez at the stable.

Lockhart had a cowboy who could vouch for him, but the man had finished his temporary job the day before the christening and had been at the bunkhouse only an hour or so to pack up his belongings the day of the kidnapping. Lockhart didn’t know where the cowhand was now. Perez said he hadn’t seen Lockhart when he’d crossed the road to the stable.

One of them was lying, Dev was sure. Or their timing was off. The local cops hadn’t been able to locate the missing cowhand to verify Lockhart’s story.

He was at a stalemate.

“Have you found any clues?”

Dev shook his head, then went back to staring out over the land. In the vast pastures that spread beyond the creek at the foot of the ledge to the horizon, he could see hundreds of cattle grazing peacefully.

Fifty thousand head. Five thousand horses. Anywhere from fifty to a hundred cowboys, according to the season. But most of them were scattered around the half-million acre ranch, too far away to have been involved in the family’s affairs.

When she laid a hand on his thigh, he nearly jumped out of his skin as lightning sizzled through his veins. He pushed her hand away.

“I’ve written a profile of the kidnapping,” she said.

She pulled a slip of paper from her breast pocket and handed it to him. It was warm from her body and burned his fingers with the magic fire that came only from her. He forced himself to read her notes.

Well-planned and executed, indicating insider information.

Two people, possibly three or four, involved.

Leader is crafty and willing to play games for bigger stakes. Controls accomplices who are probably younger and willing to take more risks.

Someone used to children is taking care of baby and may have called Matthew. This could be their weak link.

Her handwriting was neat with evenly looped letters, but the impatience was revealed in the flying slashes that crossed the t’s and the dots that were near the i’s but didn’t line up with them. There was strength and decisiveness evident in the bold strokes, a certain confidence that could edge over into family pride—or perhaps snobbishness, although he admitted that wasn’t really true of her—in the tall capital letters, a gentleness as well as an unexpected vulnerability in the rounded strokes. He would have known it was her handwriting without being told.

And that her background was privileged, that she was used to getting her own way and that she wasn’t for him, no matter what wild imaginings occupied his dreams. He sighed and finished off the lemonade in the battered tin cup.

“Let’s go,” he said, and stood.

She took the cups and rinsed them out in the pan of water from the seep, then replaced them on the rocky shelf. Every move she made was poised and graceful. If he didn’t watch it, he would stare at her, spellbound when he was supposed to be concentrating on finding clues. Vanessa Fortune wasn’t good for his investigative abilities.

She turned and looked at him at that moment. Her eyes were tear-bright. “If we don’t find him, Baby Bryan will never know the ranch or how to ride. He’ll never know his family… He may never grow to manhood or know his first kiss…” She shook her head helplessly.

“We’ll find him.”

“How?”

He looked away from her despair. “We start with everyone who had an opportunity. Then we assign motives, no matter how bizarre, then we see who fits the picture.”

“We look for a pattern.”

He realized she’d had enough psychology to grasp his thinking. “Yes. No one does anything out of the blue, as most people seem to think. There are plenty of warnings. In this case, the puzzle pieces are there. It’s up to us to find them and put them together.”

“So we start with opportunity and motive.”

Her eyes brightened with determination once more. Something in him that he hadn’t known existed, that had been tight and concerned each time he saw her distress, suddenly breathed easier. He pulled back from the emotional brink. “I start. You stay out of my way.”

This time he ignored the way her expressive eyes darkened with hurt. He had a kidnapping and enough Fortunes to contend with to last a lifetime. He didn’t need her.

Vanessa joined her father and Lily in the courtyard at six o’clock. She poured a cool glass of champagne and took a seat across from Lily. “How are things going for you?”

“Fine,” her stepmother-to-be replied with a kind smile. “You look tired. Your father said there’s nothing new in the case. It must be doubly discouraging for you.”

Her father sat beside Lily on the swing and dropped an arm around her shoulders. Their glance at each other was filled with love and mutual concern. Vanessa felt tears well near the surface. She blinked them back with an effort and took a sip.

“Is Maria living with you?” Vanessa asked. “I meant to ask her out to visit, but with the investigation…” She gestured vaguely to indicate a lack of time. Or interest, she admitted. She had no time for idle social visits. Or Lily’s daughter. She had never been close to Maria.

Lily looked troubled. “No, she’s rented a trailer and is looking for a job, she says. I really haven’t seen much of her since her return. She doesn’t seem to want company.”

“We can’t control our children’s lives,” Ryan murmured reassuringly to his fiancée.

She sighed and patted his hand that rested on her shoulder. “I know, but parents always worry, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

Vanessa saw her father’s concern reflected in his eyes. She wondered if he was thinking of Matthew and Claudia. The tension between them was thicker than cream. She would have thought the tragedy would draw them closer, but she knew that most parents who lost a child ended up separated if not divorced.

Her thoughts drifting, she gazed at the sunset sky above the hacienda roof. She wanted several children. At least four.

At that moment Dev appeared at the great room door with Rosita, who indicated the family gathering under the vine-covered trellis. Her father stood.

“Come join us,” he called. “What can I get you?”

“Iced tea would be fine.” Dev crossed the flagstones and greeted Lily, then Vanessa, in his courteous manner.

He was dressed in the FBI uniform of dark suit, white shirt and conservative tie. She hadn’t seen him in hours, not since their excursion by horseback at midday.

Her father handed him the glass of tea.

“Thank you, sir.” He stood until the older man was seated, then took a chair to her left, a careful distance between them. He was so damn polite she wanted to scream.

“You have news to report?” her father asked.