Rumors: The McCaffertys: The McCaffertys: ThorneThe McCaffertys: Matt

  “Lucky me,” she sniffed, leaning down and brushing her lips against his.

  “No.” Of this he was certain. “Lucky me.”

  Epilogue

  “You’re sure you want to live here?” Nicole asked, her gaze roving around the snow-covered acres as she and Thorne sat on the porch while the twins, in matching snowsuits, frolicked in the yard. The old dog, Harold, barked and joined them, acting like a pup, and cattle and horses dotted the landscape. Slade, dressed in a thick buckskin jacket, was walking near the barn, checking the pipes and watering troughs along with the stock.

  It was beautiful here and Nicole’s heart was full. Though Thorne’s leg was casted, there was no keeping him down and they’d planned as soon as he was on his feet again to marry.

  “I’ll live here as long as Randi lets me.”

  Randi was the one worry. It had been nearly a month since her accident and she was still unconscious. Though Kurt Striker was still looking into the possibility of a hit-and-run driver forcing her off the road, he hadn’t found any suspects and Thorne’s plane crash was still under investigation. Was it foul play? Thorne hadn’t thought so, or so he’d insisted, citing the fact that he should have had the plane checked out before flying off in the snowstorm. But he’d been anxious to return to Montana. “By the way,” he said, “I have something for you.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Something to make our engagement official.”

  “Oh?” She lifted a wary eyebrow as he winced and dug into a front pocket of his jeans. Slowly he extracted a ring, a band of silver and gold.

  “It was my father’s, from his marriage to my mom,” he explained and Nicole was touched, her throat clogging suddenly as he slipped it onto her finger. “For some sentimental reason, the old man kept it even after the divorce and while he was married to Randi’s mother. He gave it to me before he died and now…because of tradition, I guess, I want you to have it.” His smile was crooked. “I think we’ll have it sized to fit.” The ring, an intricate band of gold and silver, was much too big for her finger but she clutched it tight, knowing that it meant so much to Thorne. That he would share it with her said more than words.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “And special.”

  “Oh, Thorne, thank you,” she whispered, then kissed him as he held her close and the old porch swing swayed.

  “And you’re special to me, Nicole, you and the girls.”

  She had trouble swallowing over the lump in her throat. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought she’d ever hear those words from Thorne McCafferty, the man who had so callously used her and then walked away.

  As if he could read her thoughts, he placed a kiss upon her head. “I know I made a mistake with you and I’ve kicked myself a dozen times over, but I want to make it up to you, to the twins. I…I never thought I’d want to settle down, to have a family of my own to…” he struggled for a moment, looked across the snow-crusted fields “…to share my life here. On the Flying M. But I do. Because of you.” His eyes found hers. “You’re the one, Nicole. The only one.”

  She sighed against him and looked at the ring. God, she loved him. Blinking back tears of joy, she whispered, “I love you.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” he said, a slow, sexy smile creeping from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “Scout’s honor,” she said. His grin was infectious and she tossed a sassy smile back his way. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Maybe…”

  “But maybe not?”

  “You could prove it.”

  She laughed and rose to the bait. “And how would I do that?”

  His eyes gleamed wickedly. “Oh, I can think of a dozen or two different ways.”

  “And I can think of a hundred.”

  He rose awkwardly to his feet and pulled her to hers. “Then let’s start, shall we? As my father would say, ‘time’s a wastin’,’ and he did say he wanted some grandchildren.”

  “What about J.R. and the twins?”

  “A start, lady, just a start.”

  “Slow down, Romeo,” she said giggling.

  “No way, lady. We’ve only got the rest of our lives.”

  She threw back her head and laughed huskily. “I do love you, Thorne McCafferty, but if anyone’s going to have to do the proving it’s you.”

  “All right.” He swept her off her feet and she squealed.

  “Thorne, don’t! Your leg! For crying out loud, let me go! Put me down!”

  He held her tight, his shoulder braced against the side of the house, his strong arms holding her close. “Never,” he vowed, then kissed her hard. She closed her eyes, kissed him back and wondered if anyone had the right to feel this happy. As he lifted his head and stared into her eyes, he said again, “I will never let you go, Nicole. Never again.”

  And she believed him.

  * * * * *

  The McCaffertys: Matt

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Early May

  “You miserable piece of horseflesh,” Matt McCafferty growled as he climbed to his feet, dusted the back of his jeans and glowered at the wild-eyed Appaloosa colt. There was a reason the damned beast was named Diablo Rojo, the orneriest two-year-old on the Flying M Ranch. A challenge. In all his thirty-seven years, Matt had never met a horse he couldn’t tame. But he was having second thoughts about Red Devil. Major ones. The horse had spirit. Fire. Not easily tamed. Like a lot of women Matt had run across. “Okay, you bastard, let’s start over.”

  He reached down and picked up his hat. Slapping it hard against his thigh, he squinted into the lowering Montana sun as it started its slow descent behind the western hills. “You and I, Devil, we’re gonna come to a reckoning and we’re gonna do it this afternoon.”

  The colt tossed his fiery head and snorted noisily, then lifted his damned tail like a banner and trotted along the far fence line, the empty saddle on his back creaking mockingly. Damned fool horse. Matt squared his hat on his head. “It isn’t over,” he assured the snorting animal.

  “It may as well be.”

  Matt froze at the sound of his father’s voice. Turning on the worn heel of his boot, he watched as Juanita pushed John Randall’s wheelchair across the parking lot separating the rambling, two-storied ranch house from the series of connecting paddocks that surrounded the stables. Matt didn’t harbor much love for his bastard of a father, but he couldn’t help feel an ounce of pity for the once-robust man now confined to “the damned contraption,” as he referred to the chair.

  John Randall’s sparse white hair caught in the wind and his skin was pale and thin, but there was still a spark in his blue eyes. And he loved this spread. More than he loved anything, including his children.

  “I tried to talk him out of this,” Juanita reprimanded as she parked the wheelchair near the fence where Harold, John Randall’s partially crippled old springer spaniel, had settled into a patch of shade thrown by a lone pine tree. “But you know how it is. He is too terco…stubborn, for his own good.”

  “And it’s served me well,” the old man said as he used the sun-bleached rails of the fence to pull himself to his full height. Lord, he was thin—too thin. His jeans and plaid shirt hung loosely from his once-robust frame. But he managed a tough-as-old-leather smile as he leaned over the top bar and watched his middle son.

  “Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” Juanita said, sending Matt a worried glance and muttering something about loco, prideful men.

  “I doubt it. I never could before.”

  The older McCafferty waved Juanita
off. “I’m fine. Needed some fresh air. Now I want to talk to Matt. He’ll bring me inside when we’re through.”

  Juanita didn’t seem convinced, but Matt nodded. “I think I can handle him,” he said to the woman who had helped raise him. Clucking her tongue at the absurdity of the situation, Juanita bustled off to the house, the only home Matt had known growing up.

  “That one,” John Randall said, hitching his chin back to the wayward colt. “He’ll give ya a run for your money.” He slid a knowing glance at his second-born. “Like a lot of women.”

  Matt was irritated. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and swatted at a horsefly that got a little too close for comfort. “Is that what you came all the way out here to say to me, the reason you had Juanita push you outside?”

  “Nope.” With an effort the older man dug into the pocket of his jeans. “I got somethin’ here for ya.”

  “What?” Matt was instantly suspicious. His father’s gifts never came without a price.

  “Somethin’ I want ya to have—oh, here we go.” John Randall withdrew a big silver buckle that winked in the bright Montana sun. Inlaid upon the flat surface was a gold bucking bronco, still as shiny as the day John Randall had won it at a rodeo in Canada more than fifty years earlier. He dropped it into his son’s calloused hand.

  “You used to wear this all the time,” Matt observed, his jaw growing tight.

  “Yep. Reminded me of my piss-and-vinegar years.” John Randall settled back in his wheelchair, and his eyes clouded a bit. “Good years,” he added thoughtfully, then squinted upward to stare at his son. “I don’t have much longer on this earth, boy,” he said, and before Matt could protest, his father raised a big-knuckled hand to silence him. “We both know it so there’s no sense in arguin’ the facts. The man upstairs, he’s about to call me home…that is, if the devil don’t take me first.”

  Matt clenched his jaw. Didn’t say a word. Waited.

  “I already spoke to Thorne about the fact that I’m dyin’, and seein’ as you’re the next in line, I thought I’d talk to you next. Slade…well, I’ll catch up to him soon. Now, I know I’ve made mistakes in my life, the good Lord knows I failed your mother....”

  Matt didn’t comment, didn’t want to even think about the bleak time when John Randall took up with a much younger woman, divorced his wife and introduced his three sons to Penelope, “Penny” Henley, who would become their stepmother and give them all a half sister whom none of them wanted to begin with.

  “I have a lot of regrets about all that,” John Randall said over the sigh of the wind, “but it’s all water under the bridge now since both Larissa and Penny are dead.” He rubbed his jaw and cleared his throat. “Never thought I’d bury two wives.”

  “A wife and an ex-wife,” Matt clarified.

  The old man’s thin lips pursed, but he didn’t argue. “What I want from you—from all my children—is grandchildren. You know that. It’s an old man’s dream, I know, but it’s only natural. I’d like to go to my grave in peace with the knowledge that you’ll find yourself a good woman and settle down, have a family, and that the McCafferty name will go on for a few more generations.”

  “There’s lots of time—”

  “Not for me, there ain’t!” John Randall snapped.

  Feeling as if he was being manipulated for the umpteenth time by his father, Matt tried to hand the buckle back. “If this is some kind of bribe or deal or—”

  “No bribe.” The old man spit in disgust. “I want you to have that buckle because it means something to me, and since you rode rodeo a few years back, I thought you might appreciate it.” He wagged a finger at the buckle. “Turn it over.”

  Matt flipped the smooth piece of metal and read the engraving on the backside. “To my cowboy. Love forever, Larissa.” His throat closed for a minute when he thought of his mother with her shiny black hair and laughing brown eyes, which had saddened over the years of her marriage. From a free spirit, she’d become imprisoned on this ranch and had sought her own kind of solace and peace that she’d never found in the bottles she’d hidden in the old house she’d grown to despise.

  Matt’s gut twisted. He missed her. Bad. And the old man had wronged her. There were just no two ways about it.

  “Larissa had it engraved after I won it. Hell, she was a fool for me back then.” The wrinkles around John Randall’s mouth and eyes deepened with sadness, and there was a tiny shadow of guilt that chased across his eyes. “So, now I want you to have it, Matthew.”

  Matt’s fingers tightened over the sharp edges of the buckle, but he didn’t say a word. Couldn’t.

  “And I want me some grandbabies. That’s not too much for an old man to ask.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Then get yourself hitched.” His father gave him a head-to-toe once-over. “Fine, strappin’ man like you shouldn’t have too much trouble.”

  “Maybe I don’t believe in marriage.”

  “Then maybe you’re a fool.”

  Matt traced the silhouette of the bucking bronco with one finger. “It could be I learned from the best.”

  “So unlearn it,” John Randall ordered, just as he always did. His way or the highway. Matt had chosen the latter.

  “I’ve got me a horse to break,” he said. “And my own place to run.”

  “I was hopin’ you’d be stayin’ on.” There was a hint of desperation in his father’s voice, but Matt stood firm. There was just too much water under the damned bridge—muddy, treacherous water fed by a swift current of lies and deceit, the kind of water a man could slowly drown in. Matt had come to the ranch to mend some emotional fences with the old man and to help the foreman, Larry Todd, for a week or so, but his own spread, a few hundred acres close to the Idaho border, needed his attention.

  “I can’t, Dad,” he said finally as he followed the path of a wasp as it flew toward the back porch. “Maybe it’s time to get you inside.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t try to mollycoddle me, son. It’s not like I’m gonna catch my death out here today.” John Randall folded his hands in his lap and looked between the old slats of the fence to the hard pan of the paddock where the Appaloosa, still wearing an empty saddle, pawed the ground, kicking up dust. “I’ll watch while you try to break him. It’ll be interesting to see who’ll win. You or Diablo.”

  Matt lifted a disbelieving eyebrow. “You sure?”

  “Ye-up.”

  “Fine.” Matt squared his hat on his head and climbed over the fence. “But it’s not gonna be much of a contest,” he said, more to the horse than the man who had sired him. He strode forward with renewed determination, his eyes fixed on the Appaloosa’s sleek muscles that quivered as he approached. Few things in life beat Matt McCafferty.

  A high-strung colt wasn’t one of them.

  Nor was his father.

  Nope. His weakness, if he had one, was women. Fiery-tempered, bullheaded women in particular.

  The kind he avoided like the plague.

  And now his father wanted him to find a woman, tie the knot and start raising a passel of babies.

  He nearly laughed as he reached for the reins, and Diablo had the nerve to snort defiantly.

  No way in hell was Matt McCafferty getting married. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. That’s just the way it was.

  Chapter 1

  The following November

  She’d met him before.

  Too many times to count.

  That didn’t mean she had to like him.

  No, sir.

  As far as Detective Kelly Dillinger was concerned, Matt McCafferty was just plain bad news. Pure and simple, cut from the same biased, sanctimonious, self-serving cloth as his brothers and his bastard of a father before him.

  But that didn’t mean he didn’t look good. If you liked the rough-and-tumble, tough-as-rawhide cowboy type, Matt McCafferty was the man for you. His rugged appeal was legendary in Grand Hope. He and his older and younger brothers had been considered t
he best catches in the entire county for years. But Kelly prided herself on being different from most of the women who wanted to swoon whenever they heard the McCafferty name.

  So they were handsome.

  So they were sexy.

  So they had money.

  So what?

  These days their reputations had tarnished a bit, notoriety had taken its toll, and the oldest of the lot, Thorne, was rumored to be losing his status as an eligible bachelor and marrying a local woman doctor.

  Not so the second brother, Matt. The one, it seemed, she was going to have to deal with right now.

  He was muscling open the door to the Grand Hope office of the sheriff’s department with one broad shoulder and bringing with him a rush of frigid winter air and snowflakes that melted instantly the minute they encountered the sixty-eight degrees maintained by a wheezing furnace hidden somewhere in the basement of this ancient brick building.

  Matt McCafferty. Great. Just…damned great. She already had a headache and was up to her eyeballs in paperwork, a ream of which could be applied to the McCafferty case—no, make that cases, plural—alone. But she couldn’t ignore him, either. She stared through the glass of her enclosed office and saw him stride across the yellowing linoleum floor, barely stopping at the gate that separated the reception area from the office, then sweep past the receptionist on a cloud of self-righteous fury. Kelly disliked the man on sight, but then she had her own personal ax to grind when it came to the McCaffertys.

  There was fire in McCafferty’s brown eyes and anger in his tight, blade-thin lips and the stubborn set of his damnably square jaw. Yep, cut from the same cloth as the others, she thought as she climbed to her feet and opened the door to the office at the same time as he was about to pound on the scarred oak panels.

  “Mr. McCafferty.” She feigned a smile. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Cut the bull,” he said without preamble.

  “Okay.” He was blunt if nothing else. “Why don’t you come in…” But he’d already crossed the threshold and was inside the small glassed-in room, pacing the short distance from one wall to the other.