Unforgiven

But WT had changed that after inheriting the place when he was only a teen. He’d worked hard and had done well by the time he’d married. Carson had never known poverty, nothing even close to it.

But WT couldn’t seem to shake off the dust of his earlier life. He just kept buying, building, yearning for more. The manor on the mountain, planes, a private airstrip, and he’d even mentioned that he’d built a swimming pool behind the house. A swimming pool in this part of Montana so close to the mountains? How impractical was that?

As his son, Carson had certainly benefited from his father’s hard work. But it came at a price, one he’d grown damned tired of paying.

“Wait a minute, WT,” he said as his father began to wheel himself back toward the house. He hadn’t called him Dad since the fourth grade. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

* * *

DESTRY WATCHED THE passenger side of the sports car open and one long slim leg slide out.

She hadn’t noticed anyone else in the car, not with the sun glinting off the windshield, and neither she nor her father had apparently considered that Carson might bring someone home with him. That now seemed shortsighted. Carson was thirty-one. It was conceivable he’d have a girlfriend or possibly even a wife.

Destry glanced at her father and saw his surprised expression. She cringed. WT hated surprises—and Carson had to know that.

“I want you to meet Cherry,” her brother said, going to the car to help the woman out.

Destry felt her mouth drop open. Cherry was tall, almost as tall as Carson who stood six-two. She was a bleached blonde with a dark tan, slim with large breasts.

Cherry gave WT a hundred-watt smile with her perfectly capped ultrawhite teeth, which were almost a distraction from the skimpy dress she wore.

Carson was looking at their father expectantly, as if awaiting his reaction. There was a hard glint in her brother’s eyes. He had to know what WT’s reaction was going to be. It was almost as if he was daring their father to say something about the woman he’d brought home.

Beside her, their father let out an oath under his breath. Destry didn’t need to see WT’s expression to know this wasn’t the way he’d envisioned his son’s homecoming.

Cherry stepped over to WT’s wheelchair and put out her hand.

He gave her a limp handshake and looked to Carson. “I think it would be best if your...friend stayed in a motel in Big Timber.” Big Timber was the closest town of any size and twenty miles away. “Of course I’ll pick up the tab.” Only then did he turn his gaze to Cherry again. “I thought Carson would have told you. We have business to discuss. You’d be bored to tears way out here on the ranch.”

“WT,” Carson said in the awkward silence that followed, “Cherry is my fiancée.”

“Destry, show Cherry the swimming pool,” her father ordered. “Carson and I need to talk. In private.”

* * *

WT ROLLED HIMSELF INTO his den and straight to the bar. His son had brought home a Vegas showgirl and thought he was going to marry her? Over his dead body. As he shakily poured himself a drink, he realized that might be a possibility if he didn’t calm down.

“I’ll take one of those,” Carson said as he came into the room behind him. “I have the feeling I’m going to need it.”

Unable to look at his son right now, he downed his drink, then poured them both one. His hands were shaking, his heart jackhammering in his chest.

“Close the door,” he ordered and listened until he heard the door shut. “You aren’t going to marry that woman,” he stated between gritted teeth as he turned his wheelchair around to face his son.

Carson took the drink WT held out to him and leaned against the long built-in bar. His son had grown into a fine-looking man. WT felt a surge of pride. Until he noticed the way his son was dressed. Loafers, a polo shirt and chinos, for God’s sake. Who the hell did he think he was? He was the son of a rancher.

WT hated to think what that sports car parked out front had cost or about how much money he’d spent keeping Carson away from Beartooth.

“You aren’t going to marry that woman,” he repeated.

Carson met his gaze and held it with a challenge that surprised WT. With an inward shudder, he realized this wasn’t the son he’d sent away more than a decade ago. That scared twenty-year-old boy had just been grateful to get out of town alive.

“I’m in love with Cherry,” Carson said, as if daring him to argue the point.

WT shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s not happening. And I don’t want to talk about that right now,” he said with a wave of his hand. “We need to talk about the W Bar G. You’re my son. This is where you belong. When I’m gone, I want to know you’re here, keeping the ranch and the Grant name alive.”

“I think I have more pressing matters to concern myself with right now, don’t you?”

WT fought to control his temper. “You let me worry about the sheriff and that other matter.”

“That other matter?” Carson demanded. “Is that what you call Ginny West’s murder?”

WT refused to get into the past with his son. He’d looked forward to this day from the moment Carson was born. No one was going to take that away from him.

“As I was saying,” WT continued, “I’m not going to turn the W Bar G over to you until I know you can handle running it. You’re going to have to learn the ranching business.”

Carson took a long gulp of his drink and pushed himself off the edge of the bar to walk around the room. WT tried to still the anger roiling inside him. He knew Carson was upset about being summoned home. Just as he’d been upset about being sent away eleven years ago.

He watched his son take in the den he’d had built so it looked out over the ranch with a view that ran from the mountains to the river. WT joined him at the bank of windows.

The valley was aglow with golden afternoon light. WT loved the way his land swept down from the base of the mountains in a pale swatch of rich pasture, hay and alfalfa fields to the river. Much of the land had dried to the color of corn silk. It was broken only by rocky outcroppings, hilly slopes of pine and the rust hues of the foliage along the creeks that snaked through the property.

It was an awe-inspiring sight that he feared was wasted on his son.

Carson finally spoke. “Even if everything turns out the way you think it will, I don’t understand why I have to learn the business. Destry’s doing a great job running the ranch, isn’t she?”

“She has only been filling in until you returned.”

“Does she know that?” his son asked, his tone rimmed with sarcasm.

WT took a swallow of his drink, giving himself time to rope in his anger. “I want you to run the ranch.”

“What about my sister? She isn’t some horse you can put out to pasture.”

WT let out a curse. “She needs to find a man and get married before it’s too late for her.”

He thought of the times she’d come home from a branding or calving filthy dirty as if she thought she was one of the ranch hands.

“It’s unseemly for a woman to be working with ranch hands,” he said, repeating what he’d told Destry more times than he cared to recall. Like her mother had been, she wasn’t one to take advice. Especially from him. “She needs to start acting respectable.”

“Maybe you haven’t heard, but women can vote now.”

“Biggest mistake this country ever made,” he said, only half joking. He thought of Lila and the trouble he’d had with her. Women were too headstrong and independent. He still believed a woman’s place was in the home and said as much to his son.

Carson didn’t seem to be listening. He stood staring down into his drink. WT wondered what he hoped to find there. Carson had always been moody as a boy. His mother’s doing when he was young, WT thought with a curse. Why couldn’t Carson have been more like Destry?

That thought made his stomach churn. People said Destry was too much like him. They had no idea.

When Carson looked up at him again, his expression was both angry and guilty. “You take this ranch away from my sister and you’ll kill her. Hasn’t she lost enough because of me?”