Renegade Father

“We can still go.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I’ll try to get away for a weekend and come up and take you.”

“It won’t be the same.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

More tears followed the pathway of that lone trail-blazer and Joe felt small and mean for putting them there. He wanted to gather his nephew close, to try to absorb his pain into him if he could, but he sensed the boy would only jerk away.

“Just because I’m leaving doesn’t mean I’ll stop being your uncle,” he said quietly. “That’ll never change. We can still talk on the phone and write letters. I promise, I’ll take you on that fishing trip this summer and maybe you can even come stay with me for a while once I get settled.”

“It won’t be the same,” C.J. cried again. His whole face crumpled. “Why do you have to go?”

How could he explain to a seven-year-old how a man sometimes ached for more than he had, more than he would ever have? And how sometimes the lack of it, this constant, aching emptiness, was like a living thing chewing away at him until he couldn’t breathe?

C.J. didn’t wait for an answer, which was probably a good thing since he didn’t have one to offer. The boy stared up at him, and there was a world of disillusionment in his eyes. “You’re no different than him. I thought you were, but you’re not.”

The impassioned words—and all the heartbreak behind it—sliced into him like a just-sharpened blade. No different than him. Than Charlie. The man who had spent every one of C.J.’s seven years destroying his faith in everything.

It was his greatest fear—that he and his half brother were more alike than he wanted to believe. That somehow the genetic makeup they had in common was stronger than his own self-control.

They weren’t, he reminded himself. He had done his damnedest throughout his life to make sure of that. Charlie was a drunk and a bully who delighted in terrorizing anybody smaller than he was. He wasn’t anything like him.

Oh no, he thought with sudden bitterness. Nothing at all. He was just an ex-con who served four years in Deer Lodge for killing his father.

He thrust the thought away and tried to concentrate on the crisis at hand. “C.J.—” he began, but the boy turned away.

“If you leave, I don’t want you to come back. I don’t want to go to the Ruby with you. I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” And for the second time in just a few minutes, the room echoed with the sound of feet pounding up the stairs and the slam of a bedroom door.

At the sound, Annie froze for just an instant, then she stood abruptly and started clearing away dishes with quick, jerky movements, as if she was suddenly desperate to keep her hands busy.

He scratched his cheek. “That went well, don’t you think?”

She fumbled with a plate, catching it just in time to keep it from smashing to the floor, and sent him a baleful look. “Great. Just great. With all these slamming doors, I’m surprised none of the windows are broken.”

His laugh sounded raw and strained. “I’m sorry, Annie. I didn’t think they’d take it this hard.”

“They love you,” she said simply. “You’ve always been decent and kind to them. Lord knows, they got little enough of that from their…from Charlie.”

“I hate like hell that I’m putting them through this.”

“They’ll live. People get over all kinds of things.”

Have you? He wanted to ask, but didn’t. He carried a pile of plates to the sink, wishing things were different. That he didn’t have to leave. That these were his dishes, that this was his kitchen.

That she was his woman.

Chapter 3

What a mess.

With her hands curled around a mug of lemon tea, Annie sighed and looked out the kitchen window at the snow whirled around by the shrieking wind. Hours after Joe’s announcement at dinner, her head still ached, her nerves still in an uproar, and nothing seemed to help.

C.J. was finally asleep after crying most of the evening. She had a feeling if she checked his pillowcase, it would be damp with more tears.

He couldn’t understand why the man who had been more of a father to him in the last eighteen months than his own father had been for his whole life could just walk away. All her efforts to console him only seemed to sound hollow and trite.

She had knocked on Leah’s door a few minutes earlier to tell her to turn the lights out and had received just a grunt in return. Her daughter was no longer speaking to her, but she didn’t know if it was due to Joe’s impending departure or because of their earlier battle over homework and riding privileges.

Had she been this difficult when she was twelve? She didn’t think so. She had been a handful, certainly, always tumbling into trouble with Joe and Colt, but she’d always tried hard not to disappoint her father, anxious for the love he had such a hard time demonstrating.

Of course, by the time she was twelve, Joe and Colt had been in high school and too busy with sports and school and girls to pay much attention to the wild-haired tomboy from the ranch next door who used to follow them everywhere.

She sighed again. If she didn’t stop woolgathering, she was going to be up all night trying to finish this blasted help-wanted ad. She wanted to be able to call it into the newspaper and some of the ranch periodicals in the morning.

She read what she’d written so far: “Wanted: Experienced foreman to oversee six-hundred-head Hereford operation. Prefer long-term commitment and extensive ranching background. Salary based on experience. Must be loyal and hard-working.”

She winced. Was she advertising for a foreman or a dog? She scribbled the last part out and was trying to come up with something better when she heard a soft knock at the back door.

A quick glance at the clock over the stove showed it was nearly ten—a little late for company.

Maybe Joe had some unfinished ranch business he needed to discuss. It wasn’t unusual for him to stop by after the evening chores were done to talk about what needed to be done the next day—a gesture she appreciated but which she’d tried to tell him repeatedly wasn’t necessary. She trusted his instincts completely.

It would take a long time to build up that kind of trust with whomever she finally hired to replace him. She set the pencil down so hard the lead snapped off, and went to answer the door.

To her surprise, it wasn’t Joe she found in the light of the back porch at all but Luke Mitchell, looking nervous and edgy and, if possible, even younger than normal.

“Luke! Is something wrong?”

“No. I just…” the ranch hand shifted his weight, “I wanted to talk to you tonight. Are you busy?”

“No. Just trying to write an ad for a new foreman. Come in.”

She helped brush snow off his black slicker in the mudroom, then led the way into the kitchen. “Can I get you something? I was having a cup of tea and there’s plenty more hot water.”

He shook his head. The movement seemed to remind him of his manners because he abruptly yanked the cowboy hat from his head, leaving a flat line haloing his blond hair.

She took her seat again and pointed to another chair. “Why don’t you sit down, then.”

He shook his head again, a quick, restless gesture. Shoulders tense, he stood in the doorway and began measuring the brim of his hat with his fingers. Round and round he went, first in one direction then the other, over and over until—given her lingering headache and the uproar of her emotions—she had to fight the urge to yank the blasted thing away from him and throw it on the table.

He opened his mouth to speak twice, but both times he jerked it shut again, and she could tell he was trying to work up his nerve for some kind of major announcement.

Fiddlesticks. She had absolutely no energy left to deal with this after the day she’d had. “It’s late,” she finally said, when it looked like he was going to stand in her kitchen fidgeting all night. She should probably try to be more patient, but she just wasn’t in the mood tonight. “What can I do for you, Luke?”

“I’d like to apply for the foreman job,” he blurted out, so loudly it startled both of them.

The foreman job? She stared at him, shocked, watching a flush creep up those baby-smooth cheeks. Of all the possibilities racing through her head about what he might be doing there at ten o’clock at night, the idea that he wanted Joe’s job never would have occurred to her.

“I know I’m young and all but I’m a hard worker. Joe’s always sayin’ so. I’m strong and I’m willing and I’ve been around cattle all my life. If my daddy hadn’t had lost our spread because of the damn banks—excuse my language, ma’am—I’d be on my way to runnin’ my own place by now.”