Bride Included

Jay glanced up, wire-rimmed reading glasses framing his hazel eyes. “Where have you been?” he asked, his tone tinged with a hint of annoyance. “You missed Sunday dinner.”

“Sorry ’bout that.” Usually he was courteous enough to let Jay’s wife, Erin, know when he wasn’t going to be around for breakfast, dinner or supper so she didn’t prepare extra and they didn’t wait on him. Though Seth lived in one of the two cabins located on the ranch, eating with Jay’s family was part of his wages as a hand. It worked for him, considering what a lousy cook he was. “I didn’t think I’d be as long as I was.”

Jay’s gaze flickered over his tousled hair, noted the absence of his Stetson, then narrowed speculatively. “I noticed Lexi was gone. You out checking fences or something? If so, you know you don’t get paid for working Sundays.”

“I wasn’t working,” Seth assured his brother, tamping down the spurt of bitterness surging to the surface. He hated being treated like an employee on the very land that should have been half his. He wanted to believe he’d gotten over his father’s slight, but there were times, like now, when he felt the lash of David O’Connor’s punishment straight to the core. “I was over at the McAllister place.”

That snagged his brother’s attention. He closed the journal in front of him and pushed it aside. “Doing what?” he asked tentatively.

Drawing out the moment of victory, Seth folded his frame into the dark brown Naugahyde chair in front of Jay’s desk, making himself comfortable. “I was claiming the Golden M, which I won in a poker game against Jake McAllister.”

It took a few extra seconds for the importance of his statement to sink in. Seth knew the exact moment it registered—when selfish retribution glittered in Jay’s eyes. “No kidding? You won the Golden M?”

“Lock, stock and barrel,” Seth confirmed. Prime cattle, fertile land, and a feisty woman who hated him enough to threaten his life with a rifle. All his in the span of one night, he thought wryly.

“Whooee!” Jay slapped a hand on the surface of his desk, a wide, gleeful grin splitting his face. “If that isn’t poetic justice, I don’t know what is.”

“Yeah, it’s ironic all right,” he agreed mildly, “considering how we lost the land so long ago.”

Leaning back in his squeaky chair, Jay began spouting plans for Seth’s windfall. “We can join the property again, combine the livestock—”

“No.” Every muscle in Seth’s body had coiled tight. Jay looked taken aback by Seth’s refusal. His brows snapped together, emphasizing his displeasure. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“The Golden M is mine, Jay.” His tone was low, undeniably firm, and a trifle dangerous. “And it’ll remain separate property.”

“Why?” Jay challenged. Standing abruptly, he braced his hands flat on his desk and leaned toward Seth, glaring. “That’s O’Connor property! It always has been. It should remain in the family as a whole.”

Under normal circumstances, Seth would have agreed. But considering he’d been stripped of his rightful inheritance, he wasn’t about to share what now belonged to him. “It hasn’t been in our family for over seventy-five years. There’s no reason why it needs to be part of Paradise Wild again.”

Jay’s mouth thinned in anger. “So, you’ll be competing directly against me, then?”

“I’ll be competing with no one but myself. You’ve got a fine breed of cattle, and there are plenty of buyers to accommodate both you and me.”

“I can’t believe this!” Jay’s temper exploded and his face turned a bright shade of red. “Dad is probably rolling over in his grave right about now!”

“Probably, considering he left me with nothing, and I’ve acquired what he always wanted.”

A sneer curled the corner of his brother’s mouth. “If you wanted half of Paradise Wild, then you never should have messed around with Josie McAllister.”

“You’re right, of course,” Seth graciously conceded to what had been the single most stupid mistake of his life. His brief affair with Josie had cost him so much...a chunk of his youthful pride, his half of Paradise Wild and the inability to give any other woman what he’d given her. His heart.

Refusing to dwell on past mistakes, he casually added, “Just so you know, I’ll be marrying Josie by the end of the week.”

Jay’s eyes nearly bugged right out of their sockets. “What?” he wheezed.

A satisfied smile quirked Seth’s mouth, and he decided that he enjoyed having the upper hand for a change. Very concisely, he explained the stipulation Jake McAllister had added to the deed to the Golden M, which included offering his daughter the benefit of marriage in order for her and his granddaughter to remain on the ranch.

Jay’s blistering curses filled the office, and he paced the length of space behind his desk. “And you actually agreed to those outrageous terms?”

Refusing to be baited, Seth shrugged nonchalantly. “I’d be a fool not to. I want the Golden M.”

Jay stopped his agitated pacing and whirled to face Seth His stare turned hard and bitter. “Yeah, you’re a fool all right. An idiotic fool for marrying that little tra—”

“Don’t say it,” Seth interrupted, the chilling tone of his voice menacing enough to make Jay reconsider his derogatory remark. He stood and faced his brother squarely. He was taller than Jay by at least three inches and more muscular from the physical labor of working the ranch and herding cattle.

Now he used that superior strength to send a silent but unmistakable warning. “In fact, I’d appreciate it from hen on that you keep any insulting comments about Josie to yourself.” As much as Seth had his own personal grudges with Josie, he wouldn’t tolerate his brother, or anyone else for that matter, slandering the woman who would be his wife.

“Good God, Seth,” Jay breathed incredulously, “you’re not still hot for her, are you?”

Oh, Josie made him plenty hot all right—in ways than her becoming his wife would certainly appease. “She’s a means to an end,” he said, stating a fact. “However, since she’ll be my wife, I’ll expect you to give her the same respect you would any other woman I would have married.”

Jay shook his head, his eyes wide and wild, as if he was searching for a way to make Seth see reason. “Are you totally and completely out of your mind? You can’t marry a McAllister!” He spit the word out like an expletive.

If Seth wasn’t on the verge of letting his own anger get the best of him, he would have found his brother’s in amusing. But he didn’t care for the ominous slant of their conversation or the hostility burning in Jay’s gaze. For crying out loud, it wasn’t as though Jay had to marry Josie.

He let out a deep breath that did nothing to ease the tense muscles in his body. “I can marry a McAllister, and I will.” His brusque tone left no room for debate. “I suggest you get used to the idea.”

Jay raked him with a scathing look. “You’re going to marry her even after what she did to you?”

Seth didn’t want to think about Josie’s deceit, knowing if he dwelled on that aspect of their time together it would eat him alive. “What happened in the past has nothing to do with the present.” Josie was a business deal, part of the package for the Golden M, which he wanted so badly he could taste the sweetness of freedom owning his own place would provide.

“She used you, Seth!” Jay pointed an angry finger his way for emphasis but didn’t dare actually jab Seth with the offending digit. “And she tried to pawn off that brat of hers as yours after sleeping with God-only-knows how many guys!”

Seth’s jaw clenched. Unbidden, visions of Josie’s daughter filled his mind, momentarily taking the edge off his rising temper. The timid young girl looked just like Josie, with curly auburn hair and big green eyes. Nothing about her physical appearance gave any indication as to who her father could have been. Seth wondered if Josie even knew who’d fathered Kellie.

Shoving the disturbing thought out of his mind, he decided then and there that he wouldn’t punish the girl for her mother’s past indiscretions. It just wasn’t fair.

He headed toward the door, ready to end their discussion, but paused in the threshold to glance back at Jay. He leveled his steady gaze on his brother, who looked absolutely livid at the turn of events. “That ‘brat’ is going to be my stepdaughter and your niece. I’ll expect you to treat her with the same kindness I give your own two children, or you’ll answer to me.” With that, Seth left the office and headed down the long corridor to the entrance of the stable

“Don’t expect me to be at the wedding!” Jay yelled furiously after him.

Seth shook his head. He hadn’t realized until that moment how his brother’s spiteful attitude was so much like their father’s. David O’Connor hadn’t cut anyone any slack especially not a McAllister, and he’d allowed old resentments to fester until it had totally consumed his life. Jay was on that same collision course, straight to emotional destruction.

And there wasn’t a damn thing Seth could do about it.

As he walked out of the stables and felt the warmth of the sun on his face, Seth had the invigorating thought tha he was no longer under his brother’s thumb, no longer an employee of the Paradise Wild.

He grinned. He was a free man with a spread of his own

And it felt pretty damn good.

The heartache was already beginning, starting with the letter Josie’s father had left for her.

Sitting on the wooden bench just outside the barn, she read the brief correspondence Jake had scrawled on a scratch piece of paper. She read his words over and over trying to understand why he’d risk the Golden M in a poker game, add an outrageous stipulation that would ruin her lift and bind her to Seth O’Connor, when he knew there was every chance of losing to the last man in Montana she would have chosen for a husband.

But there were no answers in his letter. Just verification that the deed and stipulation were indeed real and blinding and an apology for what he’d done, for failing her and letting his gambling addiction force him to resort to desperate measures, though he’d done his best to secure her future. He knew she’d be disappointed in him, angry even and he couldn’t bear to face her condemnation, so he’d decided it was best if he left. The note ended by saying that he hoped she’d finally find happiness and not hate him too much for what he’d done, and that he loved her and Kellie.

There was nothing about his returning, and that tore her up more than anything because she couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing her father again.