Luke's Proposal

“No, but maybe I will tomorrow. Wherever it is the company has sent him, surely he’ll be in contact with them before too much longer.”

“I hope so, Mom.” Rachel wasn’t as convinced as her mother that Zach would contact them anytime soon. Over the last few years, her brother had often been out of touch for several months at a time, and when he finally wrote or called, he’d wouldn’t tell them where he’d been. Whatever Zach did for Connor Security Inc. was top secret. She tried not to think about how dangerous the work might be. “We can’t wait for Zach. We have to find a solution that will not only pay our share of the inheritance taxes but also generate future income.”

“Unless we want to sell out to your uncle Harlan.”

“That’s not a possibility for me.”

“Nor for me,” Judith agreed. “Harlan’s always been difficult, but I never anticipated he would act as he has since his father died and we learned the contents of the will.”

Judith’s heavy sigh conveyed her frustration. “I can’t help but wonder why Marcus divided up the ranch but prevented any of us from selling our sections to anyone outside the family, apart from the homestead’s 2500 acres. He created an impossible situation when he left us land but no cash.”

“I don’t think Granddad knew there wasn’t any cash.” Rachel didn’t want to believe her uncle had stripped the cash assets from the ranch during the two years her grandfather was ill. But she couldn’t come up with an alternative explanation that made sense.

Judith was silent for a long moment. “You may be right. After your father died and no longer provided a buffer between me and Harlan, I became convinced that he couldn’t be trusted. Nevertheless, it’s a big leap from family squabbles to an actual crime. But, I can’t help wondering how the ranch became so financially unstable in the past couple of years.”

“Even if Uncle Harlan juggled the books while Granddad was in the nursing home, I don’t know how we’d prove it now. And we still have to find a way to keep our sections financially solvent. Zach’s, too, until we can reach him,” she added.

“I think we’ve settled on the best possible alternative,” Judith said. “I just wish Zach wouldn’t be out of touch for such long periods of time. I worry about him.”

“So do I. And I miss him.” Her brother’s self-imposed exile from Wolf Creek and the Bar K had broken her mother’s heart, just as it had Rachel’s. Although they kept in touch with phone calls, e-mail and the occasional trip to visit Zach when he was in the U.S., it wasn’t enough to keep them from grieving over their separation. She understood why Zach had left and why he’d broken all contact with their grandfather and uncle, but it didn’t make her miss him any less. She yawned again. “I’d better get to bed. I want to be on the road early.”

“Drive carefully.”

“I will. ’Night.”

Rachel hung up, switching on the light as she walked into the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, having showered and pulled on lilac cotton pajama shorts with a matching knit top, she climbed into bed, then leaned across the nightstand and turned off the lamp.

She plumped her pillow before lying down, tucking the sheet and light blanket around her waist, before staring upward at the ceiling, where a faint strip of light from the streetlamp outside lightened the dark to gray.

What was it about Luke McCloud that affected her so wildly? One long, slow look from his blue eyes and she was instantly flushed, her nerves strung taut, excitement humming through her veins. She was no longer the naive teenager who’d been fascinated by Luke, despite knowing he was forbidden because he was a McCloud—why did she feel the same overwhelming attraction to him she’d felt at seventeen?

Granted, she thought, she hadn’t added a long list of lovers to her sexual résumé since she’d left high school. But she was certainly no longer the innocent virgin who’d been mesmerized by his kiss.

She frowned at the ceiling. No, she wasn’t a virgin. But the intimacy she’d shared with her short-term fiancé hadn’t held a tenth of the electricity she’d felt earlier when she sat across the table from Luke.

No wonder our engagement drifted into limbo before we called it off, she thought. She and Matt remained friends, and when he’d married a fellow lobbyist six months earlier, Rachel attended the wedding and wished them well without a single twinge of regret. She genuinely liked Matt, but she was relieved that she hadn’t been the one standing beside him at the altar, facing a future bound to his.

What did it say about her that one kiss shared with Luke McCloud when she was a teenager had more impact than being engaged to a very nice man she’d dated for three years?

Rachel groaned aloud and determinedly closed her eyes, willing herself to go to sleep.

It did her no good contemplating the reasons why she was so drawn to Luke. The attraction was going nowhere. It couldn’t. He was a McCloud; she was a Kerrigan.

Which is roughly equal to Luke and me being on opposite sides of the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Rachel reached the small community of Wolf Creek just before noon the following morning. The wide, tree-shaded street where her mother lived was quiet, drowsing under the hot sun. She turned into the driveway and parked her little red sports car next to her mother’s conservative Lincoln sedan. The long rambler sat amid an expanse of neatly trimmed green lawn edged with flower borders filled with lush hybrid roses and sturdy geraniums, their stems heavy with pink and white blooms. An old oak tree towered over one corner of the lawn, throwing leaf-dappled shade over a large section of thick grass and the sidewalk beyond. Rachel gathered her overnight bag and purse from the car just as her mother stepped out onto the porch.

Judith shaded her eyes with her hand against the hot, bright sunlight.

“Hi, Mom.” Rachel closed the car door and started up the brick path that wound across the grass from the driveway to the shallow porch.

“How was the trip?” Judith held open the screen door as Rachel climbed the steps and crossed the porch.

“Fine.” She lifted her sunglasses from her nose to perch them atop her head, and stepped past her mother into the entryway. “There was hardly any traffic in Billings when I left this morning, and even the construction work on the highway didn’t hold me up very long. I don’t think I waited more than ten minutes.”

“You were lucky—I sat in line for a half hour the last time I drove south.” Judith let the screen door close gently behind her. “I made a pitcher of iced tea this morning and was just about to have lunch. Are you hungry?”

“Tea sounds wonderful, but I ate a sandwich the last time I stopped for gas. I’ll pass on lunch.” Rachel paused to drop her bag and purse on the low deacon’s bench in the foyer and followed her mother down the hall to the kitchen.

Judith waited until they were both seated at the table, sunlight pouring through the window beside them and brightening the comfortable kitchen, before she asked about the meeting with Luke.

“You’re sure he wasn’t rude to you?”

Rachel shook her head. “Not at all. Not that he was delighted to see me,” she added wryly, sipping sweet tea from the frosty glass. “But he didn’t refuse to listen, either. He asked some very pointed questions, though, and I hated having to tell him half-truths.”

“What did he ask you?”

“He wanted to know why we didn’t just sell him the property outright.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That selling the homestead wouldn’t create ongoing income to keep the ranch afloat.”

“And he accepted that?”

“He seemed to.” Rachel thought about how they’d parted at the bar in Billings and the way his eyes had narrowed as he’d stared at her during their conversation, as if he knew she was keeping a secret. He can’t read my mind, she thought, ignoring the shiver of fear that chilled her. And it’s unlikely he’ll ever learn the whole truth. “He has no reason to think I was being less than completely honest with him.” Saying the words out loud didn’t help the uneasiness she felt.

Judith frowned, rubbing the lines drawn by worry between her brows. “I can see why you’d want to conceal the clause in your grandfather’s will from Luke. If our finances weren’t such a disaster, I’d sign the land over to Luke or Chase, John and Margaret, or even Jessie McCloud tomorrow. Those acres have caused this family nothing but heartache.”

Rachel had never confided her misgivings to her mother about the night fifteen years earlier when Mike Harper died on the highway and the Kerrigan-McCloud feud had blazed out of control. Maybe it was time she did.

“I’ve often wondered—” She broke off, hesitated, unwilling to upset her mother and unsure how to phrase her concerns, before starting again. “I was shocked when the will was read and we discovered Granddad had split the ranch among the family instead of leaving the property entirely to Harlan. And the clause about the specific section that can only be sold to a McCloud…” She shook her head slowly. “It’s very odd and seems completely out of character for Granddad. He loved every acre of this ranch and was adamant about never selling off any part of it. It’s occurred to me that in the wording of the will, Granddad came as close as possible—without actually saying the words—to admitting he felt we Kerrigans owed something to the McClouds. Why would he have felt that way unless he knew Lonnie and Harlan had lied about who was responsible for the car accident that killed Mike Harper? Chase McCloud swore that Lonnie was driving that night—what if he was telling the truth and Granddad knew? I can’t believe he would have separated the 2500 acres of the homestead from the rest of the property in the way he did unless he believed Chase McCloud was innocent.”

“I agree. It’s almost as if Marcus is trying to make reparation from beyond the grave, isn’t it?” Judith’s voice was weary, her gaze troubled when she met Rachel’s. “We can’t sell the homestead acres to anyone but a McCloud, and we can’t take more than a dollar from them in payment. What does that mean?”

“I think Granddad knew Chase McCloud was innocent and Harlan and Lonnie set him up to keep Lonnie out of jail.” Rachel almost whispered the words, her voice hushed.

Judith’s eyes squeezed shut, and when she opened them a brief second later, the hazel depths were dark with guilt. “I think you may be right. Which makes it twice as unforgivable that we’re using that land as a lure to convince Luke to train Ransom’s Mist.”

Rachel nodded, her own conscience as tortured as her mother’s. “I know. But without Luke to train Ransom, we’ll lose everything Granddad left us, and so will Zach. Luke would never help us for any other reason. That land is the only thing we’ve got that he wants.”

“Then we’d better pray he doesn’t find out it’s already practically his.” Judith’s voice was grim, exhausted with worry and guilt. “Luke McCloud and his brother are dangerous men. I’d hate to give them any more reason to hate us.”

Chapter Four

“He’s not gonna take kindly to being loaded in the horse trailer.” Charlie Aker’s lined face was tanned and weather-beaten beneath his straw cowboy hat. His white eyebrows matched his short-trimmed thick hair, and his pale blue eyes reflected sharp intelligence and wisdom gained over seventy-odd years spent working with cattle and horses.

“I know.” Rachel peered through the corral rails at Ransom, the sole resident of the enclosure. “Do you think you and Mom can herd him into the trailer while I stand by to close the gate once he’s inside?”