THE TRUTH CAN’T STAY BURIED FOREVER…
The McCaffertys: SLADE
Slade McCafferty was a bachelor through and through—too busy raising hell to settle down. Case in point: fifteen years ago daredevil Slade had taken wild child Jamie Parsons’s innocence, and then had broken her heart. But Jamie is back in town, a lawyer, all confidence and polished professionalism. And seeing her again is setting off a tidal wave of emotions Slade thought he’d dammed up ages ago. Back then, as now, there’d been something about Jamie that made Slade ache for more. A hell of a lot more…
The McCaffertys: RANDI
Is hiding the identity of her child’s father worth risking her life? Randi McCafferty seems to think so, but investigator Kurt Striker is hell-bent on changing her mind. Hired by her well-meaning but overbearing brothers to keep Randi and her son safe, Kurt knows the only way to eliminate the danger is to reveal Randi’s darkest secret…any way he can. Yet when protection leads to desire, will Randi and Kurt’s explosive affair leave them vulnerable to the threats whispering in the shadows?
Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Bestselling Jackson cranks up the suspense to almost unbearable heights in her latest tautly written thriller.”
—Booklist on Malice
“When it comes to providing gritty and sexy stories, Ms. Jackson certainly knows how to deliver.”
—RT Book Reviews on Unspoken
“Provocative prose, an irresistible plot and finely crafted characters make up Jackson’s latest contemporary sizzler.”
—Publishers Weekly on Wishes
“Lisa Jackson takes my breath away.”
—New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller
Also available from Lisa Jackson
and Harlequin HQN
Confessions
Rumors: The McCaffertys
Secrets and Lies
Abandoned
Strangers
Sweet Revenge
Stormy Nights
Montana Fire
Risky Business
Missing
High Stakes
Secrets
And coming soon…
Suspicions
Contents
The McCaffertys: Slade
The McCaffertys: Randi
Book One:
SLADE
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
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Prologue
There he was, sitting in his damned rocking chair as if it were a throne.
Slade McCafferty gnashed his back teeth and felt the taste of crow on his tongue as he glared through the bug-spattered windshield of his truck to the broad front porch of the ranch house he’d called home for the first twenty years of his life.
The old man, John Randall McCafferty, sat ramrod straight. In a way Slade respected him for his tenacious hold on life, his stubbornness, his determination to bend all of his children’s wills to meet his own goals. The trouble was, it hadn’t worked. The eldest McCafferty son, Thorne, was a hot-shot attorney, a millionaire who ran his own corporation from Denver, and the second-born, Matt, had struck out on his own and bought himself a spread near the Idaho border. Randi, the youngest, Slade’s half sister, lived in Seattle, and wrote her own syndicated column for a newspaper there.
That left Slade.
Ever the black sheep.
Ever the rogue.
Ever in trouble.
Not that he gave a damn.
As Slade eased out of the truck, a sharp pain shot through his hip and he winced, feeling the skin tighten around the barely visible scar that ran down one side of his face, a reminder of deeper marks that cut into his heart, the pain that never really left him. Well, no doubt he’d hear about that, too.
He paused to light a cigarette, then hobbled up the path through the sparse, dry grass that served as a lawn. Though it was barely May, it had been a dry spring, hotter than usual for this time of year, and the sun-bleached grass was testament to the unseasonable and arid weather.
John Randall didn’t say a word, didn’t so much as sway in the rocker as he watched his youngest son through narrowed eyes. A breeze, fiery as Satan’s breath, scorched across the slight rise that supported the old ranch house. Two stories of weathered siding with dark-green trim around each window, the house had been a refuge once, then a battlefield, and later a prison. At least to Slade’s way of thinking.
He sucked hard on his filter tip, felt the warmth of smoke curl through his lungs and faced the man who had sired him. “Dad.” His boots rang as he hitched up the steps and John Randall’s old hunting dog, Harold, lifted his graying head, then thumped his tail on the dusty planks. “Hi, boy.”
More thumps.
“I thought you might not come.”
“You said it was important.” Jeez, the old man looked bad. Thin tufts of white hair barely covered his speckled pate, and his eyes, once a laser-blue, had faded. His hands were gnarled and his body frail, the wheelchair parked near the door evidence of his failing health, but there was still a bit of steel in John Randall’s backbone, a measure of McCafferty grit in the set of his jaw.
“It is. Sit.” He pointed toward a bench pushed under a window, but Slade leaned against the rail and faced him. The sun beat against his back.
“What’s so all-fired important?”
“I want a grandson.”
“What?” Slade’s chest tightened and he felt the same old pain pound through his brain.
“You heard me. I don’t have much time, Slade, and I’d like to go to my grave knowin’ that you’ve settled down, started a family, kept the family name alive.”
“Maybe I’m not the one you should be talking to about this.” Not now, not when the memories were so fresh.
“I’ve already had my say with Thorne and Matt. It’s your turn.”
“I’m not interested in—”
“I know about Rebecca.” Slade braced himself. “And the baby.”
Slade’s head pounded as if a thousand horses were running through his brain. His scar seemed to pulse. “Yeah, well, it’s something I’ve got to live with,” he said, his eyes drilling into the old man’s. “And it’s hell.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“You can’t go beating yourself up one side and down the other the rest of your life,” his father said with more compassion than Slade thought him capable of. “They’re gone. It was a horrid accident. A painful loss. But life goes on.”
“Does it?” Slade mocked, then wished he could call back the cruel words. He’d said them without thinking that his father was surely dying.
“Yes, it does. You can’t stop living because of a tragedy.” He reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out his watch, a silver-and-gold pocket watch engraved with the crest of the Flying M, this very ranch, his pride and joy. “I want you to have this.”
“No, Dad. You keep it.”
The old man’s lips twisted into an ironic grin. “Don’t have any use for it. Not where I’m goin’. But you do. I want you to keep it as a reminder of me.” He pressed the timepiece into Slade’s palm. “Don’t waste your life, son. It’s shorter than you think. Now, it’s time for you to put the past behind you. Settle down. Start a family.”
“I don’t think so.”
/> A fly buzzed near John Randall’s head and he swatted at it with one gnarled hand. “Do me a favor, Slade. Quit moving long enough to figure out what you want in life. Whether you know it or not, what you need is a good woman. A wife. A mother for your children.”
“You’re a fine one to talk,” Slade growled, dropping his cigarette to the floorboards where he crushed out the butt with his boot heel.
“I made my share of mistakes,” his father admitted.
Slade didn’t comment.
“I was young and foolish.”
“Like I am now? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“No. I’m just hoping you’ll learn from my mistakes.”
“Mistakes. You mean, your two marriages? Or your two divorces?”
“Maybe both.”
Slade glanced over his shoulder to the rolling hills of the ranch. Dust plumed behind a sorry old tractor chugging over one rise. “And you think I should get married.”
“I believe in the institution.”
“Even though it stripped you clean?”
John Randall sighed. “It wasn’t so much the money that mattered,” he said with more honesty than Slade expected. “But I betrayed a good woman and let you boys down. I lost the respect of my children, and that...that was hard to take. Don’t get me wrong, if I had to do it again, I would. Remember if I hadn’t taken up with Penelope, I would never have had my daughter.”
“So it was worth it.”
“Yes,” he said, pushing the rocker so that it began to move a bit. “And I only hope that someday you’ll forgive me, but more than that, Slade, I hope you find yourself a woman who’ll make you believe in love again.”
Slade pushed himself upright. “Don’t count on it.” He dropped the watch into his father’s lap.
Chapter 1
Seven months later
The McCaffertys! Why in the world did her meeting have to be with the damned McCafferty brothers?
Jamie Parsons braked hard and yanked on the steering wheel as she reached the drive of her grandmother’s small farm. Her wheezing compact turned too quickly. Tires spun in the snow that covered the two ruts where dry weeds had the audacity to poke through the blanket of white.
The cottage, in desperate need of repairs and paint, seemed quaint now, like some fairy-tale version of Grandma’s house.
It had been, she thought as she grabbed her briefcase and overnight bag, then plowed through three inches of white powder to the back door. She found the extra key over the window ledge where her grandmother, Nita, had always kept it. “Just in case, Jamie,” she’d always explained in her raspy, old-lady voice. “We don’t want to be locked out now, do we?”
No, Nana, we sure don’t. Jamie’s throat constricted when she thought of the woman who had taken in a wild, rebellious teenager; opened her house and her heart to a girl whose parents had given up on her. Nana hadn’t batted an eye, just told her, from the time she stepped over the front threshold with her two suitcases, one-eyed teddy bear and an attitude that wouldn’t quit, that things were going to change. From that moment forward, Jamie was to abide by her rules and that was that.
Not that they’d always gotten along.
Not that Jamie hadn’t done everything imaginable behind the woman’s broad back.
Not that Jamie hadn’t tried every trick in the book to get herself thrown out of the only home she’d ever known.
Nana, a God-fearing woman who could cut her only granddaughter to the quick with just one glance, had never given up. Unlike everyone else in Jamie’s life.
Now the key turned easily, and Jamie walked into the kitchen. It smelled musty, the black-and-white tiles covered in dust, the old Formica-topped table with chrome legs still pushed against the far wall that sloped sharply due to the stairs running up the other side of the house from the foyer. The salt and pepper shakers, in the shape of kittens, had disappeared from the table, as had all other signs of life. There were light spots in the wall, circular patches of clean paint where one of the antique dishes Nana had displayed with pride had been taken down and given to some relative somewhere in accordance with Nita’s will. A dried cactus in a plastic pot had been forgotten and pushed into a corner of the counter where once there had been a toaster. The gingham curtains were now home to spiders whose webs gathered more dust.
If Nana had been alive, she would have had a fit. This kitchen had always gleamed. “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” she’d preached while pushing a broom, or polishing a lamp, or scrubbing a sink. And Nana had known about godliness; she’d read her Bible every evening, never missed a Sunday sermon and taught Sunday school to teenagers.
God, Jamie missed her.
The bulk of Nana’s estate, which consisted of this old house, the twenty acres surrounding it and a 1940 Chevrolet parked in the old garage, had been left to Jamie. It was Nana’s dream that Jamie settle down here in Grand Hope, live in the little cottage, get married and have half a dozen great-grandchildren for her to spoil. “Sorry,” Jamie said out loud as she dropped her bags on the table and ran a finger through the fine layer of dust that had collected on the chipped Formica top. “I just never got around to it.”
She glanced at the sink where she envisioned her short, round grandmother with her gray permed hair, thick waist and heavy arms. Nita Parsons would have been wearing her favorite tattered apron. In the summertime she would have been putting up peaches and pears or making strawberry jam. This time of year she would have been baking dozens upon dozens of tiny Christmas cookies that she meticulously iced and decorated before giving boxes of the delicacies to friends and relatives. Nana’s old yellow-and-white spotted cat, Lazarus, would have been doing figure eights and rubbing up against Nita’s swollen ankles, and she would have complained now and again about the arthritis that had invaded her fingers and shoulders.
“Oh, Nana,” Jamie whispered, glancing out the window to the snow-crusted yard. Thorny, leafless brambles scaled the wire fence surrounding the garden plot. The henhouse had nearly collapsed. The small barn was still standing, though the roof sagged and the remaining weed-strewn pasture was thankfully hidden beneath the blanket of white.
Nana had loved it here, and Jamie intended to clean it up and list it with a local real estate company.
She glanced at her watch and walked outside to the back porch. She couldn’t waste any more time thinking maudlin, nostalgic thoughts. She had too much to do, including meeting with the McCafferty brothers.
Boy, and won’t that be a blast? She carried in her bags and, despite the near-zero weather, opened every window on the first floor to air out the house. Then she climbed up the steep wooden stairs to her bedroom tucked under the eaves. It was as she’d left it years ago, with the same hand-pieced quilt tossed over the spindle bed. She opened the shades and window and looked past the naked branches of an oak tree to the county road that passed this stretch of farmland. All in all, the area hadn’t changed much. Though the town of Grand Hope had grown, Nana had lived far enough outside the city limits that the fast lane hadn’t quite reached her.
Jamie unpacked. She hung some clothes in the old closet, the rest she stowed in the top two drawers of an antique bureau. She didn’t allow her mind to drift back to the year and a half she’d lived with Nana, the best time of her life...and the worst. For the first time in her seventeen years she’d understood the meaning of unconditional love, given to her by an elderly woman with sparkling gold eyes, rimless glasses and a wisdom that spanned nearly seven decades. Yet Jamie had also experienced her first love and heartbreak compliments of Slade-the-bastard-McCafferty.
And whoop-de-do, she probably was going to meet him again this very afternoon. Life was just chock-full of surprises. And sometimes they weren’t for the best.
It took two hours to check in the barn and find that Caesar, Nana’s old gelding, was waiting for her. A roan with an ever-graying nose, Caesar was more than twenty years old, but his eyes were bright and clear, and from the shine on
his winter coat, Jamie knew that the neighbors had been taking care of him.
“Bet you still get lonely, though, eh, boy?” she asked, seeing to his water and feed and taking in the smell of him and the small, dusty barn. He nickered softly, and Jamie’s eyes burned with unshed tears. How could she ever sell him? “We had some good times together, you and I, didn’t we? Got into our share of trouble.”
She cleared her throat and found a brush to run over his shoulders and back as memories of racing him across the wide expanse of Montana grassland flashed through her eyes. She even rode him to the river where he waded into the deeper water and swam across, all at the urging of Slade McCafferty. Jamie had never forgotten the moment of exhilaration as Caesar had floated with the current. Slade’s blue eyes had danced, and he’d showed her a private deer trail where they’d stopped and smoked forbidden cigarettes.
Her heart twisted at the memory. “Yep, you’re quite a trouper,” she told the horse. “I’ll be back. Soon.” Hurrying into the house, determined to leave any memory of Slade behind her, she worked for the next two hours getting the ancient old furnace running, turning on the water, adjusting the temperature of the water heater, then stripping her bed only to make it again with sheets that had been packed away in a cedar chest. She smiled sadly as she stretched the soft percale over the mattress. It smelled slightly of lavender—Nana’s favorite scent.
Again her heart ached. God, she missed her grandmother, the one person in the world she could count on. Rather than tackle any serious cleaning, she set up a makeshift office in the dining room compliments of her laptop computer and a modem; she only had to call the phone company and set up service again; then, she could link to the office in Missoula.
She checked her watch. She had less than an hour before she was to sit down with Thorne, Matt and Slade McCafferty. The Flying M ranch was nearly twenty miles away.
“Better get a move on, Parsons,” she told herself, though her stomach was already clenched in tight little knots at the thought of coming face-to-face with Slade again. It was ridiculous, really. How could something that happened so long ago still bother her?