Ruthless

  But she hadn’t counted on seeing Brand again nor had she ever thought they’d be next-door neighbors. “Oh, Lordy,” she whispered, borrowing a phrase her mother used whenever a situation seemed too complicated to deal with.

  Well, she wasn’t the rebel seventeen-year-old girl he’d left; she was a full-grown woman now with some measure of maturity. Not that he seemed to care. In their meeting at the ranch she’d acted as if they’d only been casual acquaintances. His agreement hurt a little, but she wasn’t going to let it bother her. She and Brand were ancient history. “So stop beating yourself up about it,” she told herself as she tucked the deed and check into her back pocket and turned her attention back to Typhoon. “Sorry,” she said, scratching the horse between her eyes. “You’ve been awful patient.” Pushing all thoughts of Brandon out of her mind, she unwound the reins from the top rail and led her horse to the stables. No matter what, she wasn’t going to let a man, any man get the better of her again. Especially Brandon Scarlotti.

  Dani tossed the currycomb into a bucket, unclasped Typhoon’s bridle and watched as the mare took off with a snort, galloping wildly over the packed dirt near the stables to join up with the rest of Dani’s small herd. Mares and foals picked at the stubble, tails switching, ears flicking.

  In another field, the cattle were all lying in the bleached grass, their dusty hides black, gray, dun and red. She and Jeff had experimented, crossing black Angus with white-faced Herefords and even Brahmans. The lazy beasts lay in the shade, flies collecting on their faces as they slowly chewed their cuds.

  She wasn’t much of a cattlewoman; the bovine part of the ranch had been Jeff’s domain, of which, she found out later, he knew little. She would sell off most of the herd this year, but if she could afford to, she’d keep a few head because a part of her enjoyed the lumbering, seemingly docile cattle. Though they could be startled or even dangerous, they appeared slow and lovably dim-witted when compared to her feisty, high-spirited horses corralled in neighboring fields. “You’re all right,” she assured them, as if they could hear or understand her.

  Carrying the bucket to the stables, she worked the kinks from her neck and tried not to think about Brandon or the fact that she was going to be living next door to him for the next three hundred and sixty-five days.

  “One day at a time,” she muttered as she eyed the sacks of grain and mentally calculated how long they’d last—probably until the first of the year. Now that Brand was paying the lion’s share of the rent, she would be able to survive here. But for how long? She knew that the owner of the property, Seth Macgruder, would like to sell the place to her. Seth and his wife, Katherine, had lived here for forty years before Katherine had died of a stroke and Seth, due to arthritis, had been forced to move to a retirement center.

  Dani had always dreamed of having a small working ranch—nothing fancy, just a place of her own. The old Macgruder homestead had seemed perfect.

  Now she had to share it. With Brandon Scarlotti. The father of the baby she had given up for adoption eleven years earlier. She’d balmed her conscience over the years, convincing herself that it was right not to tell him about the baby. After all, he’d taken off for California without a backward glance.

  But what about now? Doesn’t he deserve to know the truth, now that he’s here? Not saying anything is pretty close to lying and you swore off lying a long time ago.

  “Damn it all anyway!” Why did he have to come back now?

  Dropping the bucket on the back porch, she kicked off her boots and marched into the kitchen. She’d have to tell him that he was a father; it was the only decent thing to do. “Great. Just great.” How would he react to the notion that he had an eleven-year-old son who was probably just starting to latch onto a major growth spurt? Her throat felt suddenly dry. Biting down on her lip, she opened the refrigerator and grimaced at the few items stocked on the wire shelves. A pitcher of iced tea, yesterday’s soup still in the saucepan and a head of lettuce that had seen crisper days. She’d never been much of a cook or a housekeeper and had preferred working outdoors to spending any time inside.

  Sighing, she poured herself a glass of tea, searched for a lemon that didn’t exist and contented herself by opening the drawer near the door and finding her pack of cigarettes. As she stared out the window to the paddock where several pregnant mares were grazing, she lit up and drew the smoke deep into her lungs. “For old times’ sake,” she said, exhaling a soft white cloud. She saw her reflection in the glass and frowned. Is this what just seeing Brandon again could do? Disgusted, she squashed out her cigarette and crumpled the pack in her fist. After giving up the habit years before, she’d started smoking when Jeff had moved out; now it was time to stop again. She was over Jeff, over the pain of the divorce and ready to make it on her own. She didn’t need a man and she certainly didn’t need nicotine to see her through. By God, Brandon was not going to change all that!

  But as she sipped her iced tea and leaned against the edge of the table, she felt the letter in the back pocket of her jeans, reminding her that a part of her life was unfinished. She’d never registered herself as a mother looking for a child, never tried to make contact because of Jeff. Besides, she’d always figured that she’d made a decision that couldn’t be changed. Jonah McKee had promised her that the boy had been placed with a loving couple who would give her boy everything he needed.

  Now, of course, she and the rest of the county knew that Jonah had been a liar. She drained her glass. Jonah McKee was dead—murdered—and by his death, all the secrets of his life had come to light. Jonah McKee had made his own rules, played his own game. To Jonah, the law had been meant to be broken. So why should she trust his word that he had indeed placed her son with a loving, well-to-do family? For all she knew, Jonah could have given or sold the boy to anyone.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, denying the horrid fears that had been with her ever since she’d handed her son back to the nurse in the hospital. She should have demanded to meet the couple, checked to see that they were real. She watched the mares nuzzle their spindle-legged foals and a huge lump filled her throat. It was time to find out. After eleven years of second-guessing herself, Dani needed to find her baby, assure herself that he was being well taken care of.

  She wondered what he looked like—fair like the Donahues or dark-skinned like his father? The few seconds she’d held him, he’d been red and wailing and she’d thought he looked like the man who had sired him, but what had she known? The baby had only been minutes old and she’d been a kid herself. A kid who just kept making mistakes.

  Her first mistake had been getting involved with Brandon Scarlotti, the second had been becoming pregnant, the third losing contact with her son.

  It was time to rectify a few things.

  Dani considered herself a practical woman not prone to flights of whimsy. She believed in God, but didn’t attend church, was convinced that a person made her own way in the world, rarely catching a break, and that people created their own destinies. She didn’t believe in fate or kismet or great epiphanies, but she couldn’t fight the feeling that some greater force was playing with her life today. Why else would she discover the letter to her newborn baby on the very day that she was going to start life living next door to Brandon?

  Destiny.

  “More like disaster,” she told herself as she pulled the letter from her back pocket, scanned it once more, then struck a match and burned the damned thing, letting the dark ashes fall into the sink.

  Maybe it was time to stop letting the world spin around her. Maybe it was time to be in control of her own future. Her own life. Her child’s. She had rights.

  Fingers trembling, she opened the cupboard and pulled out an address book she’d had for years. Flipping the pages, she found the number for Sloan Redhawk, a private investigator who had recently married Casey McKee, Max’s younger sister.

  Casey and Sloan lived outside of Warm Springs now and his office was in their small ranch house. Swal
lowing back the doubts of over eleven years, Dani dialed, closed her eyes and waited. After four rings, the phone was answered by a machine, with Sloan’s voice giving instructions.

  As the taped message played and she waited for the beep, she cleared her throat. “Hi. This is Dani Stewart, Sloan, and I want to hire you. There’s someone I want you to locate for me—”

  The telephone clicked and Sloan answered. “Just walked in,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Dani’s voice sounded strangled and her heart was thudding wildly. “I, um, I need your help.”

  “Name it.”

  She could barely breathe. Her palms were slick with sweat “I don’t know if you had any idea, but I had a baby a long time ago. Eleven years. And . . . and I’ve lost all contact with him. The adoption was handled by Jonah McKee and I was hoping—” she crossed her fingers and took a deep breath “—I was hoping that you would help me find my son.”

  * * *

  “How do you know Dani?” Max asked Brand as he guided his truck along the smooth county road that rimmed Wildcat Creek.

  Settled low on his back, Brand glared out the window and barely heard the question.

  “You grew up in Dawson City, didn’t you?” Max was nothing if not persistent.

  “Yeah.” Brand rubbed his chin, feeling a day’s worth of stubble and wishing to high heaven that he’d never set eyes on Dani Donahue again. She brought back too many memories of a time he’d tried desperately to forget. Though he’d known there was a chance he’d see her again, a high probability that she’d never moved away from her family, he hadn’t expected to be living next door to her; nor had he anticipated the rush of emotion that had swept over him. Hell, one look at her and he was a randy teenager again. What a dumb reaction. “We ran with the same crowd for a while.” No reason to lie.

  “She never mentioned it.” Max downshifted as the truck started climbing toward the summit of Elkhorn Ridge. Max’s brows drew together in strict concentration, as if he was trying to figure out a puzzle but didn’t have all the pieces.

  “She didn’t, eh? Well, it wasn’t that big of a deal,” Brand lied, his chest constricting a bit, the memories he’d tried to suppress for years rising from the back of his mind like the morning mist on Elkhorn Lake. Near this very canyon, he and Dani had spent their last night together, making love until the sun had painted the sky a pale golden hue. Guts churning, he willed away the memories that he’d managed to bury without too much trouble. All those years in California, he’d forced himself not to pine for her, had been determined not to think about her after the first few months. Their lives had been on different courses and he’d told himself that their affair was just the passionate throes of youth. So why, with just one glance from her amber eyes, did she manage to awaken all those ghosts of the past? With a single look, nearly twelve years seemed stripped away.

  He studied the countryside. The road was narrow at the summit, and far below, the creek sliced through Stardust Canyon.

  He realized that Max was still waiting for more of an explanation, more specifics to explain his sister-in-law’s reticence to lease to Brand. “As I said, I knew Dani a long time ago, just before my mother got married and I took off for California.”

  “She didn’t seem to want to lease to you.”

  “She didn’t, did she?” Brand acknowledged with a bitter smile. “Well, I was always getting into trouble.”

  “You ever date?”

  “No,” Brand said quickly. It was the truth. “We just ran into each other at parties. That kind of thing.” He found his sunglasses and settled them onto the bridge of his nose, and Max, for the moment, seemed appeased. He grew quiet, nearly brooding, and for a minute, Brand thought that he was digesting everything he’d learned this afternoon until Brand realized where they were—the very spot where Jonah McKee had died.

  Max’s gaze drifted from the ribbon of asphalt to the steep canyon walls. Brand guessed from the gossip he’d heard that Max was thinking of his bastard of a father, who had been driving this stretch of road when Ned Jansen, a man he’d swindled, had taken the law into his own hands and forced Jonah’s Jeep off the road. Jonah McKee had met a sudden and brutal death in the swift waters of Wildcat Creek at the bottom of the ravine. A fitting end, Brand thought, feeling not a drop of remorse for the man.

  “You know Dani well?”

  “Well enough,” Brand said. The Jeep was getting hot. Too close. He loosened his tie. He didn’t want to remember Dani, the girl he’d left behind when he’d started over. It had been best for both of them. They’d been on a collision course ever since they’d first met. “But like I said, it was ages ago.”

  “There it is,” Max said, the shimmering waters of Elkhorn Lake visible through the trees.

  Brand felt a small grain of satisfaction. This was his new project. Long ago he’d decided that Elkhorn Lake, nearly a mile wide and several miles long, would be a perfect place for a new resort. Already the clear waters were a haven for speedboats, water-skiers, fishing craft and even houseboats. Several farmers had sold adjoining properties on the north end of the lake and the deal was coming together. That part of his life seemed to be working, but it was the only part. He had his mother and half brother to deal with, and now there was Dani. Beautiful, independent Dani.

  He was still brooding about her when the town of Rimrock came into view. As they turned onto River Drive, Max slowed for the speed limit. He glanced at Brand. “I think you should know something about Dani.”

  “What’s that?” Brand braced himself.

  “She was married.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “It didn’t work out. The guy turned out to be an irresponsible bastard who ran around on her.”

  Brand held on to his temper, but the term “bastard” always set his teeth on edge and the thought of a man cheating on Dani only made it worse.

  “Well, it’s over now,” Max went on. “The divorce was final six or eight months ago. She’s tough as nails on the outside but . . . well, she’s still picking up the pieces.”

  “Oh.”

  “She doesn’t need someone messing with her mind.” Max glared at Brand as if he knew his darkest secrets.

  “Someone? Meaning me?”

  “Meaning anyone. She’s working like hell to get back on her feet and I don’t want to see her knocked down again.”

  “Sounds like a warning.”

  “Just a piece of advice. Look, Scarlotti, I’m not blind. I saw the way she reacted when she saw you. I don’t know what happened between you two and I don’t want to. Besides, it’s none of my business.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Just be careful, okay? Tread softly.”

  “I’m not interested, okay? We were friends a long time ago, got into a little trouble—drinking under age, that kind of thing—but that was all.”

  Max wasn’t buying it. His expression clouded. “Whatever you say, Scarlotti. I just wanted you to know the ground rules.”

  He parked in a reserved spot in the lot for McKee Enterprises. They shook hands, and Brandon, with his new lease tucked into his briefcase, climbed into his car—a new midnight blue Mercedes—and drove to the Lucky Star Motel a few blocks away. There, he wedged his car between a rattletrap of a pickup and a dirty station wagon that sported one door held closed with bailing twine and a hand-scratched plea—Wash Me—scrawled on the back window. So much for blending in. His gleaming luxury car stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.

  The Mercedes would have to go. It worked in Southern California, where it was almost a necessity to make bankers, investors and rivals understand you meant business, but here, where everyone drove four-wheel-drive rigs and pulled horse trailers, the car would be a hindrance. People wouldn’t be in awe so much as envy. Brand was a practical man. The Mercedes would go and he’d buy a Jeep—one that was three or four years old at that.

  He pocketed his keys and climbed the outside stairs of the shoddy motel. He could aff
ord better, but this one had had the first vacancy sign he’d seen when he drove into town yesterday. He hadn’t bothered to move to fancier quarters and he had no intention of staying with his mother and half brother. She begrudgingly had taken his advice and kept the house, and when her marriage to Al had disintegrated, she and her son, Chris, had moved back to Dawson City. Brand wasn’t anxious to be constantly reminded of his youth, so he’d found his own place.

  “Great, so you moved in next door to Dani Donahue.” He unlocked the door and stepped into the room. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and some kind of rug deodorizer that was supposed to be fragrant. Cracking open a window, he muttered, “Stewart. Dani Stewart. She was married. Remember that, okay? She’s probably still hung up on the guy.” He slung his tie over the back of a chair and unbuttoned his shirt. What was Max’s warning all about? How much did he know about Brandon’s affair with Dani? Hell, it had been ten—no—nearly twelve years ago. Ancient history.

  But it was still there. That sizzle. He’d felt it when she’d raised her golden eyes to his and notched her chin up a degree in silent defiance. She might have settled down, become a model citizen, but lurking in the amber depths of her eyes was the spirit of a rebel, the girl who had straddled his Harley and, without a lesson, driven off; leaving him stranded one night when they were alone together. The girl who had laughed at his ambitions to make something of himself. The girl who had told him that it didn’t matter if you were rich or poor. The girl who had skipped school to spend the afternoon in a field making love with him, the girl who had willingly given him her virginity and adoration. The girl he’d purposely left behind.

  A headache began at the base of his skull where his neck muscles were clenched into tight knots. He didn’t need to remember her small breasts pointing upward to a cloud-scattered sky. He didn’t want to think about the long, supple legs and the thatch of red-blond curls at their apex. It wasn’t smart to concentrate on how her spine had arched off the carpet of grass and wildflowers, how her whole body had jolted every time he’d entered her, how her legs had wrapped around his naked torso, how she’d smiled upward, breathing rapidly, her hair fanned out on the grass as she’d clung to him, her sweat-slickened body melding so perfectly to his.