The Rivals (12 page)

By the time Ryan had finished reading two chapters of Harry Potter and Sarah returned to the living room, Brooke had disappeared into her bedroom. She could hear her stepdaughter talking on the phone. Sarah realized she was famished and headed into the kitchen, wondering if Brooke had made something for dinner that had resulted in leftovers.

She opened the fridge and found it nearly empty. She was supposed to have shopped for groceries this afternoon. She wondered what the kids had eaten for supper. The kitchen counters, she noted, were wiped clean. The sink was empty of dishes. She had Brooke to thank. And hadn't thanked her.

Sarah sighed. She wasn't doing a very good job as a mother. She felt frustrated that her work as a deputy sheriff hadn't produced the results she would have liked, which is to say, that she hadn't found any of the missing girls…alive.

“Mom?”

Sarah turned to find Brooke standing in the kitchen doorway, her eyes wide and frightened. “What is it?” she asked.

Brooke held out the cordless phone and said, “It's the Jackson police. They want to talk to you. About Nate.”

Sarah's heart leaped to her throat. A call from the police when your teenage son was out driving around at night was every mother's nightmare. She didn't dare let her terror show. Brooke already looked scared to death.

Sarah took the phone from her daughter and said in as calm a voice as she could manage, “This is Sarah Barndollar. To whom am I speaking?” She kept her face blank as she said, “I see. Thank you, Harry. I appreciate the professional courtesy.”

She hung up the phone and met Brooke's gaze.

“Is Nate all right?” Brooke asked, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“He's fine,” Sarah said, crossing to Brooke and hugging her tight.

“Where is he? What happened?”

Sarah sighed. “He's been arrested.”

“Arrested?” Brooke jerked free and stared up at Sarah, shocked. “What for?”

“Vandalism. He and a couple of other boys apparently tried stealing antlers from the town square. The other boys got away. Nate got caught. A friend of mine is holding him for me in an interrogation room.”

Brooke's eyes were huge. “Will Nate have to go to jail?”

“No. The officer who caught Nate is going to give him a warning and release him into my custody.”

“Nate must be scared shitless.”

Sarah realized Brooke was so scared that she hadn't even been aware of the language she'd used—which was strictly forbidden. “I'm sure he is,” she said. “I'd better go get him.”

Before she could take a step toward the door, the phone rang again.

“That's probably for me,” Brooke said.

Sarah handed her the phone and headed for the door, but before she reached it, an anxious-looking Brooke said, “It's for you, Mom. Sounds like somebody else is in trouble.”

Sarah took the phone and listened, then shook her head and smiled. “Congratulations, Buck. No problem. I promised I'd cover for you when Bobbie Sue went into labor, and I will. Don't worry. Tell Bobbie Sue to breathe deep and relax.”

When Sarah hung up the phone, she saw a mutinous look on Brooke's face. “I don't have a choice, Brooke. I have to go.”

“You just got home. You were barely here an hour. What about Nate? Are you going to leave him in jail?”

“I'll pick up Nate and bring him home before I go back on duty,” Sarah said as she headed back to her bedroom to change once more into her patrolman's uniform. “I'm sorry it worked out this way.”

“It always works out this way,” Brooke accused. “You're never home. I can see why Daddy left!”

Sarah paled as Brooke shoved past her and ran down the hall and into her room, slamming the door behind her.

“What's going on?” she heard Ryan call out. “Is everything all right?”

Sarah hurried down the hall and into Ryan's bedroom. “Everything's fine,” she said. “I have to go out again tonight to work. Brooke will stay with you and Nate will be home a little later. I'll see you in the morning.”

Ryan yawned. “Will you make blueberry pancakes for breakfast?”

“Sure,” Sarah said. And realized she was going to have to stop by the grocery on her way home and get milk and eggs and blueberries and pancake mix.

She knocked on Brooke's closed door, then opened it and said, “I'm leaving now. Nate should be back soon. Thank you for cleaning up in the kitchen.”

Brooke said nothing, just curled into a tighter ball in her bed.

Sarah had a sudden thought. Maybe the kitchen was so clean because Brooke hadn't eaten anything. But Ryan would have insisted on being fed, so something had been cooked. She wanted to confront her stepdaughter about whether she'd eaten, but right now didn't seem like the time. Nate was being held at the police station and was probably scared and worried. And she had to go back to work, to cover for Buck, whose pregnant wife had finally gone into labor.

“Good night, Brooke,” she said.

There was no answer as she closed her stepdaughter's bedroom door.

The phone rang again. Sarah was afraid to answer it, afraid of more bad news. She picked up the cordless phone and said, “Sarah Barndollar.”

“Are you taking Buck's shift?” the dispatcher at the sheriff's office said.

“Yes.”

“There's been an accident with injuries south of town.” The dispatcher gave her a mile marker to locate the scene.

“Got it,” Sarah said. And then she remembered Nate. She wondered if she dared take the time to pick him up on the way, and then realized that the scene of an accident with injuries was no place to take her teenage son.

Sarah grabbed her coat and headed out the door. Nate would have to wait.

Clay had thought the day couldn't get much worse, but the moment he stepped inside Libby's cabin, he realized he'd been wrong.

“Hello, King,” he said when he spied Libby's father.

King Grayhawk sat in a studded leather armchair near the fire, like a head of state on his throne, Libby's three hounds at his feet. Magnum rose and stretched. King had one hand on each redbone hound's head, and it wasn't until he released them that Doc and Snoopy bounded over to greet Libby, sad eyes adoring, tails wagging and tongues lolling.

“Clay.” The older man should have risen to greet Clay, but King used the fact that his left knee was stiff from an old bronc-busting injury, and stretched out on an ottoman in front of him, as an excuse to stay where he was. An impressive, gnarled oak cane with a golden hawk, wings outspread for a handle, remained in place, leaning upright against the chair.

Clay wanted to turn around and walk right back out the door, but Libby was behind him, and it would have looked too much like the retreat it was if he'd tried to get past her. And really, what was the point? This confrontation was bound to come sooner or later. It might as well be now.

“Who told you?” Clay asked as he took off his coat and hung it on an antler hook by the door. He stopped to help Libby take off her coat, then hung it beside his own.

“Hello, Daddy,” Libby said as she crossed into the living room.

Clay noticed she made no move to touch her father, not to hug him or kiss him or greet him in any familiar way. She headed directly to the crackling fireplace and stood there, her hands held out before her, as though its heat could warm the cold inside her.

Clay knew better.

There was no love lost between King Grayhawk and his eldest daughter. Clay didn't know all the details of what had transpired between them when Libby had finally told her father she was pregnant, but he knew King had struck her, because he'd seen the bruise on her cheek.

Someday, he'd vowed, he would repay King for that injury.

“North called me,” King said, his eyes focused on Libby in condemnation. “I expect to be told when something as monumental as the disappearance of my only granddaughter occurs.”

“There isn't anything you can do that we aren't already doing,” Libby said.

“You're wrong,” King said. “As usual.”

Clay saw the flush rise on Libby's cheekbones, saw the firm set of her lips as she bit back whatever retort had sprung to them. He opened his mouth to defend her but was never given the chance.

“I've hired private detectives to backtrack Katherine's steps,” King said. “They've already discovered—”

“They've found her?” Libby exclaimed, taking a step toward her father in her anxiety to hear good news about Kate.

“No,” King conceded.

Libby stopped in her tracks.

King continued, “But they've got an artist's rendering of the man who apparently kidnapped her, which they're circulating among—”

“The police have already done that, Daddy,” Libby said scornfully. “We've talked to everyone, we've—”

“You didn't issue an Amber Alert,” the old man contradicted.

Clay watched Libby's eyes brim with tears that she fought not to shed.

“You know how few roads there are in and out of here,” she said. “They were all blocked by police within hours of Kate's disappearance.”

“That doesn't mean someone couldn't have taken Katherine across state lines,” the old man said stubbornly. “I've got a nationwide Amber Alert in place.”

Clay was grateful for any effort that might help locate Kate, but he'd be damned if he'd thank the old man. “What has your investigator found out?” he asked.

The old man snorted. “Not much! But I have every confidence that—”

“Why did you come here?” Libby interrupted.

It was plain to Clay that, far from finding comfort in her father's presence, Libby seemed irritated by it.

King Grayhawk seemed impervious to his daughter's rebuff. “I'm here to find my granddaughter.”

“I don't need you here,” Libby retorted. “I don't want you here.”

“I have no intention of going anywhere until—”

“This is my home. You're not welcome in it.”

“I'll be at the Big House,” the old man said. “I thought you might want to know—”

“I don't care why you left that Big House of yours at Kingdom Come and showed up here. I don't care what you think you can accomplish. I want you out. Get out!”

Clay could see she was on the verge of hysteria. King apparently realized the same thing, because he reached for his cane, eased his left leg off the ottoman, and shoved his way upright. Clay had forgotten how tall he was, how imposing he looked. King Grayhawk was wearing what any cowboy might wear, jeans and a flannel plaid Western shirt and boots. But he looked far from ordinary.

The face above the clothes bore snakelike, unblinking eyes, a hawk nose, and sharp cheekbones etched into stone by wind and weather. The shirt did little to conceal broad, powerful shoulders, and the jeans revealed a wiry leanness that came from years in the saddle. The tooled leather belt, with its broad silver buckle, cinched a narrow waist, and the boots were scuffed and crusted with dirt that made it clear this man stood his ground.

King Grayhawk was not a man Clay admired, but he recognized a powerful adversary when he saw one. Clay had grown up with a father very much—almost exactly—like the man he faced now. They were two giants cut from the same rugged cloth, both shaped by the vast, unforgiving frontier.

Both men were descendants of English noblemen—the Duke of Blackthorne and the Earl of Grayhawk.

Despite the objections of her nearly grown son, a widow named Cricket Creed had married the first American Blackthorne, which had begun the feud between Blackthornes and Creeds that had lasted to modern times.

The Earl of Grayhawk, the family black sheep, had been banished from England by his father and made his living in the American fur trade. He'd used his profits to buy land in eastern Wyoming that happened to have a fortune in oil underneath it.

Several descendants of that original Grayhawk black sheep, King and North among them, seemed to have inherited a bit of his dark soul. Clay knew how ruthless such a man could be. How totally untouched he could be by the feelings of those whose lives he manipulated and controlled.

When he was a younger man, Clay had been caught between the desires of King Grayhawk and Jackson Blackthorne—and barely managed to escape without being crushed.

He could see Libby was still fighting a battle he'd opted out of years before. He didn't want to play knight in shining armor to her fair maiden and ride to the rescue. But he couldn't stand by any longer without doing something.

“We don't need your help,” he said.

“We?”
King shot back sarcastically. “I must have missed more than I thought. When did you and my daughter become a
we?”

Clay was surprised when Libby took the steps necessary to stand beside him.

“We're Kate's parents,” she said. “She's our responsibility. You don't belong here.”

“I'm her grandfather,” King said. “Which makes this my business.”

“No,” Libby said, shaking her head. “You never wanted Kate to be born. You wanted that foul Blackthorne seed torn from my womb,” she said, her voice vibrating with feeling. “It's only because I defied you that she exists. It's too late now to say you care about her.”

“The girl's last name is Grayhawk,” King said implacably. “Not Blackthorne.”

“Because you—”

King cut Libby off with a wave of his hand. “I take care of what's mine.” His cane made a thumping sound on the hardwood floor as he limped his way to the door.

Clay hadn't realized he'd slid his arm around Libby, but she'd backed up against him so they presented a solid front to her father as he turned to look at them one last time.

“I should have shot you,” King said to him. “No one around here would have convicted me if I had. Don't use what's happened as an excuse to go sniffing around my daughter. I won't make the same mistake twice.”

The deadly threat might have seemed melodramatic if it weren't King Grayhawk speaking. King controlled the judges and politicians in Wyoming the way Clay's father Blackjack controlled the judges and politicians in Texas. But Clay was no longer a young man in love, vulnerable and confused. He was a man who wielded a great deal of power himself.

“There's nothing you can do to me, King—short of shooting me dead—that will keep me from pursuing whomever I damn please.”

“You've been warned,” King said. “That's the most I feel obliged to do.”

It was strange to hear King suggest that he adhered to the Code of the West, rules of behavior established by cowboys over time, not unlike the code of chivalry observed by the knights of old England, which held that you could never shoot an unarmed man—or an unwarned man.

It dawned on Clay that from now on, he'd better watch his back.

When the door closed behind King, Libby pulled free of Clay's embrace and headed once more for the fireplace, crossing her arms and rubbing them with her hands as though she were freezing.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“You shouldn't provoke him,” she said. “It's exactly what he wants.”

“I meant every word I said.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “He'll ruin you. He can do it. All it would take—”

“Let me handle King,” he said. “What else can I do to help you?”

She turned to face him, her arms clutched tight around her middle, as though she would fly apart if she let go. “Hold me, Clay. Please.”

He couldn't have refused her. Didn't want to refuse her. In all these years, he'd never gotten over her. Libby Grayhawk was unfinished business. Maybe it was the way they'd been dragged apart by their respective fathers. The woman he'd loved in his youth, and been forced to leave, was a dangling string he couldn't help pulling, even though he knew that pulling that string might very well unravel the political life he'd been building.

When his arms closed around her, it felt like he'd come home. He pressed his nose into her hair and inhaled, wondering if he would recognize whatever scent it was she used now. But there was no hint of perfume, only the clean, fresh smell of soap and woman.

Her breasts were soft against his chest. He felt himself becoming aroused and kept their lower bodies separated so she wouldn't realize the effect she was having on him. He was supposed to be offering comfort.

He tried to imagine how any relationship between them could possibly thrive. He needed a wife who could be a political hostess, someone who could face liars and thieves with a smile on her face and never bat an eye.

Libby was too honest to put up with that sort of bullshit. And she wouldn't have recognized a pair of pantyhose if they bit her in the ass. It was no coincidence that their daughter thought jeans and boots were appropriate attire for all occasions.

Libby had made a life for herself here in the West, acting as a guide to hunters and fishermen and naturalists who wanted to see the land up close. Could he ask her to walk away from a life spent out-of-doors to join him in the political arena?

He had a brief, traitorous thought about his dead wife. If not for Giselle, he might have returned to ranch life in Texas long ago. His wife had found the endless South Texas prairies, with their abundance of dangerous wildlife, intimidating. She was much more comfortable dealing with the sharks in Washington's political waters.

That would never have been true of Libby. She was even more comfortable in the wilderness—mountain, plain or prairie—than he was.

The problem was their checkered past. It was easy to see how it could rear its ugly head to spoil whatever relationship they tried to carve out in the future. Not to mention the interference of two powerful, angry older men—their fathers—certain to be bitter rivals to the bitter end.

Clay would have dismissed the idea of pursuing Libby out of hand, except it was hard to ignore the way his body hummed—that was the exact word for what happened to him—whenever it came in contact with hers. He could feel it now, a sort of thrumming rush in his blood, a lightness in his head from the mere thought of pressing his mouth against hers.

Action followed impulse. He lowered his head as she raised hers, and their lips met in a kiss of utter tenderness. It was comfort of a sort he hadn't imagined he could feel with this woman, who'd always been the source of so much passion. He felt the moistness of her lips, the pliant softness as she pushed back against his own.

He wanted to tell her how he was feeling but feared he'd break whatever spell had fallen between them. He'd expected passion in her arms. He hadn't expected peace. And need. And, yes, there it was, simmering beneath the surface now and always…the ache of desire. The insatiable hunger. The desperate need to put himself inside her.

He slid his tongue into her mouth to taste. Slid his hand up to caress her breast. And heard her breath quicken.

He couldn't believe how good she tasted, how perfect she felt in his arms, how soft her breasts felt in his hands, how naturally her hips sought out his own. He was lost in sensation, his body hard, his need urgent, when the phone hanging on the clip attached to his belt rang. He swore bitterly at the interruption, then realized it might be news of Kate and grabbed for the phone.

“Blackthorne,” he snapped.

“Is it Kate?” Libby asked anxiously.

It took Clay a moment to recognize the female voice on the line. He took a step back from Libby and said, “It's nothing to do with Kate.” Clay realized he couldn't talk to the woman he'd considered making his next wife with Libby looking up at him, her eyes still dilated by passion.