Renegade Father (2 page)

He had spent four years at the state pen in Deer Lodge after his father's death—years where the only things that kept him human were the memories of Annie and his friend Colt McKendrick over at the Broken Spur and all the good times the three of them had together as kids.

As bad as his prison term was, though, it was a piece of cake compared to the self-inflicted torture of forcing himself to stay here year after year, always watching her from the edges of her life while Charlie made her life a living hell.

At first he had stayed in Ennis out of guilt and maybe some helpless, misguided effort to protect her from his brother. Then, just as he was trying to finally break away, Charlie left her high and dry on the ranch, with a mountain of unpaid bills and a ranch she had absolutely no hope of running by herself.

He leaned on the pitchfork and watched the Hereford munch the alfalfa, her calf sleeping now. He was sick to death of it. Sick of watching silently from the sidelines, sick of pining for what could never be his.

He'd been refusing Waterson's job offer for months now, ever since he met the crusty old rancher at a stock sale in Bozeman, clear back in November. Each time he talked to him, the rancher had upped the ante, but still Joe had refused, loath to put that hurt in Annie's green eyes.

But even as he continued to turn down the increasingly generous offers, he could feel his control around her slipping away faster than a Montana summer.

Except for one infamous day he preferred not to dwell on, he had kept an iron grip on himself for years. But this constant proximity to her—this playacting at being a family, with them sharing meals and decisions and work—was slowly driving him insane.

He was starting to feel like a coyote caught in one of the traps some of the ranchers set out, as if he would do anything to get away, even chew off his own leg.

The day before, he and Annie had driven into town to look at a new spreader for the tractor.

He had spent the whole damn day trying to keep his eyes on the road and not on her. Every time he caught a whiff of that apple-scented shampoo she used, he nearly drove the pickup into a tree.

And then he'd been stupid enough to take her to the diner for lunch, and the whispers had started before they'd even picked up a menu.
Murderer. Killed his father. Spent time in prison.

He knew she heard them. Her peach-pie complexion had begun to fade, little by little, until the sprinkle of freckles that dusted the bridge of her nose stood out in stark relief.

By the time they finally made it home, he realized he would have to leave, for her sake and for his own. He just couldn't do this anymore.

He sighed heavily and put his coat and Stetson back on. He had work to do and it wasn't getting done while he stood here brooding.

The wind had picked up, he noticed as he pushed the door open and headed outside. It screeched under the eaves of the barn like an angry cat and swirled snow across the path between the house and the cluster of outbuildings and the house. The cold sneaked through his thick coat with mean, pinching fingers.

By the looks of those clouds, they'd get another foot or so tonight. A bad night to be a new calf.

The whine of brakes on the road out front sounded above the moan of the wind and he watched the school bus lumber to a stop near the house.

C.J. hopped down first, bundled up so only his eyes were showing and swinging his red backpack behind him. Leah followed more slowly, her straight dark hair—free of anything as sensible as a hat—twisting around in the wind and her hands shoved into the pockets of her coat.

No homework again, he noticed. No books, anyway. He frowned. She was never going to be able to get her grades back up to where they were before her father left if she never bothered to bring her books home from school.

C.J. spotted him first and waved wildly in greeting, then headed toward him. Leah barely acknowledged his existence with a curt nod before walking into the house. Nothing unusual there, but damned if he could figure her out. She used to always have a shy smile and a hug for him, but she'd been colder than that bitch of a wind ever since Charlie took off.

“Hey, Joe!” The boy's voice sounded distorted through his heavy scarf.

“How was school?” he asked.

He pulled the muffler down. “Good. We watched a movie about reptiles. It was awesome. Did you know there's this lizard some place in Asia that can grow to be ten feet long? Ten feet! I think it's called the Komodo dragon or somethin' like that. It can eat goats and deer and even people if they get too close.”

“No, I didn't know that. Thanks for the warning. I'll keep it in mind if I ever run into one.”

The boy snickered. “You won't unless you're goin' over to Asia sometime soon.”

Nope. Just Wyoming. His fingers clenched inside thick gloves. “It's cold out here. You'd better go inside and get to your homework.”

C.J. made a face, but turned obediently back to the house. He took a few steps, then turned back. “Hey, Uncle Joe,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the howling wind, “Nick told me a new joke on the bus today. Wanna hear it?”

He gave an inward groan. Colt's stepson told even cornier jokes than C.J. “Sure,” he said. “Lay it on me.”

“Knock knock.”

Great. A knock-knock joke. His favorite. He winced but gave the requisite answer. “Who's there.”

“Impatient cow.”

“Impatient cow wh—”

“MOOOOO,” C.J. cut him off before he could finish his part of the joke, then started giggling hysterically. “Get it? The cow's too impatient to wait for you to say ‘who.”'

No matter how many times Annie tried to set him straight, C.J. always insisted on overexplaining his jokes. Joe smiled anyway. “I get it. That's a good one.”

C.J. giggled again, then with a final wave of a mitten, he trudged through the blowing snow into the house, pausing only long enough to greet Annie's best cow dog, Dolly.

Joe watched until the boy climbed the steps to the back porch and closed the back door behind him.

He rubbed a fist over his suddenly aching heart. Damn, he would miss the little rascal. And Leah, too, even with this new frosty attitude of hers. He loved both
of them as much as if they were his own kids instead of his brother's.

The future stretched out ahead of him, a bleak and solitary landscape, without Leah's smart mouth or C.J.'s corny jokes, or that soft, hesitant smile of Annie's that transformed her from an ordinary woman into someone of rare beauty.

What was he thinking to move hundreds of miles away? He would hate Wyoming without them. He should call Waterson and tell him the deal was off, that he'd changed his mind about the whole damn thing and wasn't coming after all—

He caught himself. He wouldn't do anything of the sort. He
had
to leave, and soon. If he didn't—if he gave in to the low throb of desire—Annie would run from him faster than a mule deer caught in the crosshairs.

He had already screwed up her life enough by forcing her into his brother's arms. He refused to screw it up any more.

“S
hut up, you little brat. It's none of your business whether I do my homework or not.”

“Leah, that's enough. C.J., stay out of this. It's between me and your sister.”

Annie stirred the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove with one hand and pinched at the bridge of her nose with the other, futilely trying to squeeze out the killer headache that had formed with Joe's announcement in the barn two hours earlier and had since swollen to enormous proportions.

Thorny tendrils of pain converged behind her eyes, then snaked out in every direction throughout her head, threatening to crush the life out of any coherent thought she might have.

“Well, he
is
a little brat,” Leah snapped. “I'm sick and tired of him always butting in where he doesn't belong.”

“This discussion is about you, young lady. This is
the third phone call I've received from the school this month. You're seriously in danger of flunking algebra if we don't do something about it.”

“What do I care?” Leah studied purple fingernails resting on the kitchen table, her mouth set in heavy, sullen lines. “Mr. Sandoval's a dork.”

“He's a concerned teacher who cares enough about you and your grade to call me and inform me you're still not turning in your assignments.”

“So what?”

“So you lied to me, for starters. You told me you've been finishing all your work in study hall.”

“Algebra's stupid.”

“I like math,” C.J. piped in.

“That's because you're stupid, too.”

“Leah, that's enough,” Annie snapped again, feeling whatever shreds of patience she had been clinging to disappear as the headache began to writhe down her spine. “Apologize to your brother.”

“I'm sorry you're stupid.” Leah smirked.

With his innate sense of self-preservation, C.J. stuck his tongue out at his sister, grabbed a chocolate-chip cookie out of the boot-shaped jar on the counter, and headed for the family room.

Annie refrained from pointing out they would be eating in just a few minutes—she wasn't up to another battle, especially when his exit left her alone with the twelve-year-old daughter she barely knew anymore.

She hated this. Absolutely hated it. Leah used to be so sweet and good-natured, always eager to please, with a kind word for everyone. In the months since Charlie left she'd turned into this moody little monster with an attitude to match. She closed herself off in her room
every day after school and shunned all of her mother's attempts to get to the root of the behavioral changes.

This guilt didn't help matters. Annie pinched at the bridge of her nose again.

She'd like to think this constant defiance was just a natural part of growing up, just Leah testing her boundaries as she prepared for teenagedom in a few months. But she couldn't help wondering if her daughter was reacting out of latent rage and hurt at her, if somehow she had completely warped her daughter's psyche by putting up with Charlie for so long.

She couldn't think that way. Or at least she couldn't let her guilt over her own weakness affect her treatment of her daughter.

“You're grounded.” She tried not to grind her teeth at the pain in her head or at the pain in her heart. “For lying to me and for not taking care of your responsibilities. You won't be able to go to Brittany's birthday party this weekend or to any other activities with your friends until you're completely caught up in school—not just in algebra but in language arts and social studies as well.

“And,” she went on, knowing this was a much worse punishment to her daughter than curtailing her social activities, “you've lost your riding privileges starting right now. Stardust is now off-limits until you manage to bring your grades up.”

Leah's mouth dropped open and her eyes narrowed into a killing glare, though her lips quivered like she wanted to cry. “That completely reeks! Stardust is
my
horse. I raised her. You can't keep me from riding her!”

“Watch me.” Annie turned back to add spaghetti to the now-boiling water on the stove and to hide the quiver in her own lips.

“This is
so
not fair! I hate you!” Leah cried, then stomped up the stairs to her bedroom. A few seconds later, her door slammed shut with a resounding crack that echoed through the house, making Annie flinch.

“Uh-oh. Rough day?”

She glanced toward the mudroom to find Joe's broad shoulders filling the doorway, his hands rubbing the woven band on his Stetson. She had a fierce, powerful urge to fall into his arms, to bury her face in the folds of that soft chamois shirt and weep for the daughter she didn't know how to reach anymore.

But her days of leaning were done. Joe was leaving and she would have to stand on her own two feet.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to hear you ban her from that horse of hers.”

“You think it's too harsh?”

He was silent for several seconds. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the clock above the refrigerator and the burbling coming from the pots on the stove. “I think it's probably the only punishment that would mean a thing to her,” he finally said. “She loves that horse more than just about anything.”

“I had to do something. She's going to have to repeat the seventh grade if I don't.”

“She doesn't really hate you. You know that, don't you?”

If she did, it would be no less than Annie deserved. For most of her daughter's life, their home hadn't been the safe haven every child deserves but a place of prolonged tension and then sharp, sudden outbursts of temper. Why shouldn't Leah hate her for the choices she'd made?

The hell of it was, if she had it all to do over again, she would probably make the same choices.

She glanced up to find Joe studying her, expecting an answer. Since she couldn't very well tell him her thoughts, she just nodded. “I know she doesn't hate me,” she said, without conviction.

He looked like he wanted to pursue it, but to her relief, he changed the subject. “Have you told the kids about my new job?”

The new job. The reminder sent fresh pain slithering to the base of her skull.

She shook her head, wincing a little at the movement, while she pulled out a fragrant loaf of garlic bread from the oven. “You're the one leaving. You're the one who can break the news.”

He frowned at her shortness. “Annie—”

“This is almost ready. Where's the rest of the crew?” She cut him off, not wanting to hear more apologies or explanations.

A muscle flexed in his jaw but he let the matter rest. “Patch was just about finished in the barn and I think Ruben and Manny are right behind me.”

“What about Luke?”

“I think he went back to the trailer to get gussied up for you. Said something about putting on a clean shirt.”

She looked up from stirring the spaghetti sauce, just in time to catch his rare grin. She gazed at it, at him.

The smile softened the harsh lines of his features, etching lines along the edges of his mouth and the corners of his eyes. He was beautiful, in a raw, elemental way with those glittering black eyes fringed by long, thick eyelashes, that sensual mouth and that coppery skin from his Shoshone heritage stretched over high cheekbones.

She blinked, suddenly breathless. “Don't tease him, Joe. He gets enough from the rest of the men.”

“He wouldn't if the kid didn't make it so easy for us. He follows you around like he's a puppy dog and you're a big ol' juicy bone he wants to sink his teeth into.”

“He does not.” She felt her face flush from more than just the heat rising off the pans on the stove.

She was very much afraid Joe was right, that their newest ranch hand made it painfully obvious to everyone he had a crush on her. She had done her best to discourage him but he seemed oblivious to all her gentle hints. If it was causing problems between him and the rest of the help, she was going to have to be more stern.

“Does so.” Joe flashed another of those rare grins. “We practically have to lift the boy's tongue off the floor every time he looks at you.”

She managed—barely—to lift her own tongue off the floor and yanked her gaze away from that smile she suddenly realized she would miss so desperately.

She stirred the spaghetti sauce with vigorous motions. “He's just a little overenthusiastic. He'll get over it. Besides, don't you remember what it was like to be twenty-two?”

As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she wanted to grab them and stuff them back. The year he had turned twenty-two, she had been eighteen, and she had given him her love and her innocence on a sun-warmed stretch of meadow grass on the shores of Butterfly Lake.

Now, after her hastily spoken words, he was silent for one beat too long and she finally risked a look at him over the steam curling up from the bubbling pasta. That muscle worked in his jaw again and his dark eyes held a distant, unreadable expression.

“I do,” he said softly. “Every minute of it.”

Her breath caught and held, but before she could think of a reply, the outside door opened, bringing a gust of icy air, and the Santiago brothers tromped through the mudroom. The kitchen was soon filled with the sound of scraping chairs and melodious Spanish.

“That storm's gonna be a real bi…er, beast,” Patch McNeil entered the kitchen behind them, his leathery cheeks red and wind-chapped above the white of the handlebar mustache he was so proud of. “I'm afraid we're gonna lose some stock tonight.”

She barely heard the old cowboy, still flustered from the intense exchange with Joe. What could he have meant by those low words? Was she reading too much into it? Could he simply have been referring to being twenty-two or was he also haunted by the memory of those hours spent in each other's arms? After his release from prison, he had never given her any indication he even remembered the encounter that had forever changed the course of her life.

They had never talked about it, about the day of her father's funeral when he had come in search of her and found her lost and grief-stricken at the lake they'd spent so many hours fishing when they were younger.

While he was alive, her father had been stiff and un-affectionate, impossible to please, but she loved him desperately. He was the only parent she ever knew and his death had left her a frightened eighteen-year-old girl responsible for a six-hundred-head cattle ranch.

Joe had started out comforting her but she had wanted more from him. She had always wanted more from him.

She knew he regretted what they had done. He couldn't have made it more clear when he left Madison
Valley that night for a new job on a ranch near Great Falls, taking her heart with him.

In the years since, that hazy afternoon had become like the proverbial elephant sitting in the parlor that both of them could clearly see but neither wanted to be the first to mention.

Her mind racing, she drained the pasta with mechanical movements and spooned the sauce into a serving dish. She finally turned to set the food on the big pine table that ran the length of the kitchen and was startled to find all the men watching her, wearing odd expressions.

“What's the matter?”

“I asked twice if you wanted me to round up C.J. and Leah.” Joe sent her a long, searching look and she hoped like crazy he couldn't read her thoughts on her face.

“Um, yes. Thank you.”

Luke came in from outside just as Joe returned to the kitchen with C.J. riding piggyback and Leah trudging behind, resentment at her mother still simmering in her eyes.

As they began to eat, Annie thought about how much she had come to enjoy these evening meals with her makeshift family. It hadn't always been like this. During her marriage, meals had been tense, uneasy affairs that she usually couldn't wait to escape.

The first thing she had done after Charlie left was give notice to the crew he surrounded himself with, men whose insolence was matched only by their incompetence.

The second thing had been to steal Patch back from the ranch he'd gone to after she married Charlie so she could split kitchen duty with him.

In her father's day, Patch had been the camp cook. In those days, the Double C had fixed one meal a day for its hands, usually supper. The ranch provided the food for the other meals but left it up to the men to prepare their own in the bunkhouse.

Charlie, though, had insisted Annie cook a full breakfast, dinner and supper for the men. It was just another of his many ways of keeping her in her place, of reminding her who was boss.

She had never minded spending time in the kitchen when it was voluntary. But because he was forcing her to do it, she had grown to hate it. Her cooking responsibilities had become symbolic of the mess she had created for herself.

Freeing herself from the kitchen had been almost as liberating as freeing herself from her sham of a marriage. Maybe it was a true sign of how far she had come that she had started to once more enjoy cooking on the nights when it was her turn.

Most
of the time she enjoyed these evening meals, she corrected her earlier thought. This one wasn't exactly the most comfortable of suppers. Leah said nothing, just glowered at everyone and picked at her food. None of the other men seemed in the mood for conversation and if not for C.J.'s constant chatter to Joe about his day, they all would have eaten in silence.

Finally Luke Mitchell wiped his mouth with his napkin and cleared his throat. “Tastes delicious, Miz Redhawk. As usual.” He must have finally worked up the nerve to speak, and he punctuated the compliment with a shy, eager smile across the table.

Out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Ruben and Manny exchange grins and she felt a flush of embarrassment begin at the nape of her neck and spread up.
She was really going to have to do something about him, and soon.