’t be able to put down

Chapter 1

Jared wanted a cold beer. He could already taste it, that first long sip that would start to wash away the dregs of a lousy day in court, an idiot judge and a client who was driving him slowly insane.

He didn’t mind that she was guilty as sin, had certainly been an accessory before and after the fact in the spate of petty burglaries in the west end of Hagerstown. He could swallow defending the guilty. That was his job. But he was getting damn sick and tired of having his client hit on him.

The woman had a very skewed view of lawyer-client relations. He could only hope he’d made it clear that if she grabbed his butt again, she was out on hers and on her own.

Under different circumstances, he might have found it only mildly insulting, even fairly amusing. But he had too much on his mind, and on his calendar, to play games.

With an irritated jerk of the wrist, he jammed a classical CD into his car stereo system and let Mozart join him on the winding route toward home.

Just one stop, he told himself. One quick stop, and then a cold beer.

And he wouldn’t even have had that one stop, if this Savannah Morningstar had bothered to return his calls.

He rolled his shoulders to ease the tension and punched the gas pedal on a curve to please himself with a bit of illegal speed. He drove along the familiar country road quickly, barely noticing the first tender buds of spring on the trees or the faint haze of wild dogwood ready to bloom.

He braked for a darting rabbit, passed a pickup heading toward Antietam. He hoped Shane had supper started, then remembered with an oath that it was his turn to cook.

The scowl suited his face, with its sculptured lines, the slight imperfection of a nose that had been broken twice, the hard edge of chin. Behind shaded glasses, under arching black brows, his eyes were cool and sharply green. Though his lips were set in a line of irritation, that didn’t detract from the appeal of them.

Women often looked at that mouth, and wondered… When it smiled, and the dimple beside it winked, they sighed and asked themselves how that wife of his had ever let him get away.

He made a commanding presence in a courtroom. The broad shoulders, narrow hips and tough, rangy build always looked polished in a tailored suit, but the elegant cover never quite masked the power beneath.

His black hair had just enough wave to curl appealingly at the collar of one of his starched white shirts.

In the courtroom he wasn’t Jared MacKade, one of the MacKade brothers who had run roughshod over the south of the county from the day they were born. He was Jared MacKade, counselor-at-law.

He glanced up at the house on the hill just outside of town. It was the old Barlow place that his brother Rafe had come back to town to buy. He saw Rafe’s car at the top of the steep lane, and hesitated.

He was tempted to pull in, to forget about this last little detail of the day and share that beer he wanted with Rafe. But he knew that if Rafe wasn’t working, hammering or sawing, or painting some part of the house that would be a bed and breakfast by fall, he would be waiting for his new wife to come home.

It still amazed Jared that the baddest of the bad MacKades was a married man.

So he drove past, took the left fork in the road that would wind him around toward the MacKade farm and the small plot of land that bordered it.

According to his information, Savannah Morningstar had bought the little house on the edge of the woods only two months before. She lived there with her son and, as the gossip mill was mostly dry where she was concerned, obviously kept to herself.

Jared figured the woman was either stupid or rude. In his experience, when people received a message from a lawyer, they answered it. Though the voice on her answering machine had been low, throaty, and stunningly sexy, he wasn’t looking forward to meeting that voice face-to-face. This mission was a favor for a colleague—and a nuisance.

He caught a glimpse of the little house through the trees. More of a cabin, really, he mused, though a second floor had been added several years ago. He turned onto the narrow lane by the Morningstar mailbox, cutting his speed dramatically to negotiate the dips and holes, and studied the house as he approached.

It was log, built originally, as he recalled, as some city doctor’s vacation spot. That hadn’t lasted long. People from the city often thought they wanted rustic until they had it.

The quiet setting, the trees, the peaceful bubbling of a creek topped off from yesterday’s rain, enhanced the ambience of the house, with its simple lines, untreated wood and uncluttered front porch.

The steep bank in front of it was rocky and rough, and in the summer, he knew, tended to be covered with high, tangled weeds. Someone had been at work here, he mused, and almost came to a stop. The earth had been dug and turned, worked to a deep brown. There were still rocks, but they were being used as a natural decorative landscaping. Someone had planted clumps of flowers among them, behind them.

No, he realized, someone was planting clumps of flowers. He saw the figure, the movement, as he rounded the crest and brought his car to a halt at the end of the lane, beside an aging compact.

Jared lifted his briefcase, climbed out of the car and started over the freshly mowed swatch of grass. He was very grateful for his dark glasses when Savannah Morningstar rose.

She’d been kneeling amid the dirt and garden tools and flats of flowers. When she moved, she moved slowly, inch by very impressive inch. She was tall—a curvy five-ten, he estimated—filling out a drab yellow T-shirt and ripped jeans to the absolute limit of the law. Her legs were endless.

Her feet were bare and her hands grimed with soil.

The sun glinted on hair as thick and black as his. She wore it down her back in one loose braid. Her eyes were concealed, as his were, behind sunglasses. But what he could see of her face was fascinating.

If a man could get past that truly amazing body, he could spend a lot of time on that face, Jared mused.

Carved cheekbones rose high and taut against skin the color of gold dust. Her mouth was full and unsmiling, her nose straight and sharp, her chin slightly pointed.

“Savannah Morningstar?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

He recognized the voice from the answering machine. He’d never known a voice and a body that suited each other more perfectly. “I’m Jared MacKade.”

She angled her head, and the sun glanced off the amber tint of her glasses. “Well, you look like a lawyer. I haven’t done anything—lately—that I need representation for.”

“I’m not going door-to-door soliciting clients. I’ve left several messages on your machine.”

“I know.” She knelt again to finish planting a hunk of purple phlox. “The handy thing about machines is that you don’t have to talk to people you don’t want to talk to.” Carefully she patted dirt around the shallow roots. “Obviously, I didn’t want to talk to you, Lawyer MacKade.”

“Not stupid,” he declared. “Just rude.”

Amused, she tipped her face up to his. “That’s right. I am. But since you’re here, you might as well tell me what you’re so fired up to tell me.”

“A colleague of mine in Oklahoma contacted me after he tracked you down.”

The quick clutching in Savannah’s gut came and went. Deliberately she picked up another clump of phlox. Taking her time, she shifted and hacked at the dirt with her hand spade. “I haven’t been in Oklahoma for nearly ten years. I don’t remember breaking any laws before I left.”

“Your father hired my colleague to locate you.”

“I’m not interested.” Her flower-planting mood was gone. Because she didn’t want to infect the innocent blooms with the poison stirring inside her, she rose again and rubbed her hands on her jeans. “You can tell your colleague to tell my father I’m not interested.”

“Your father’s dead.”

He’d had no intention of telling her that way. He hadn’t mentioned her father or his death on the phone, because he didn’t have the heart to break such news over a machine. Jared still remembered the swift, searing pain of his own father’s death. And his mother’s.

She didn’t gasp or sway or sob. Standing straight, Savannah absorbed the shock and refused the grief. Once there had been love. Once there had been need. And now, she thought, now there was nothing.

“When?”

“Seven months ago. It took awhile to find you. I’m sorry—”

She interrupted him. “How?”

“A fall. According to my information, he’d been working the rodeo circuit. He took a bad fall, hit his head. He wasn’t unconscious long, and refused to go to the hospital for X rays. But he contacted my colleague and gave him instructions. A week later, your father collapsed. An embolism.”

She listened without a word, without movement. In her mind Savannah could see the man she’d once known and loved, clinging to the back of a bucking mustang, one hand reaching for the sky.

She could see him laughing, she could see him drunk. She could see him murmuring endearments to an aging mare, and she could see him burning with rage and shame as he turned his own daughter, his only child, away.

But she couldn’t see him dead.

“Well, you’ve told me.” With that, she turned toward the house.

“Ms. Morningstar.” If he had heard grief in her voice, he would have given her privacy. But there’d been nothing at all in her voice.

“I’m thirsty.” She headed up the walkway that cut through the grass, then climbed onto the porch and let the screen door slam behind her.

Yeah? Jared thought, fuming. Well, so was he. And he was damn well going to finish up this business and get a cold one himself. He walked into the house without bothering to knock.

The small living room held furniture built for comfort, chairs with deep, sagging cushions, sturdy tables that would bear the weight of resting feet. The walls were a shade of umber that melded nicely with the pine of the floor. There were vivid splashes of color to offset and challenge the mellow tones—paintings, pillows, a scatter of toys over bright rugs that reminded him she had a child.

He stepped through into a kitchen with brilliantly white counters and the same gleaming pine floor, where she stood in front of the sink, scrubbing garden earth from her hands. She didn’t bother to speak, but dried them off before she took a pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator.

“I’d like to get this over with as much as you,” he told her.

She let out a breath, took her sunglasses off and tossed them on the counter. Wasn’t his fault, she reminded herself. Not completely, anyway. When you came down to it, and added all the pieces together, there was no one to blame.

“You look hot.” She poured lemonade into a tall glass, handed it to him. After giving him one quick glimpse of almond-shaped eyes the color of melted chocolate, she turned away to get another glass.

“Thanks.”

“Are you going to tell me he had debts that I’m obliged to settle? If you are, I’m going to tell you I have no intention of doing so.” The jittering in her stomach had nearly calmed, so she leaned back against the counter and crossed her bare feet at the ankles. “I’ve made what I’ve got, and I intend to keep it.”

“Your father left you seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five dollars. And some change.”

He watched the glass stop, hesitate, then continue to journey to her lips. She drank slowly, thoughtfully. “Where did he get seven thousand dollars?”

“I have no idea. But the money is currently in a passbook savings account in Tulsa.” Jared set his briefcase down on the small butcher-block table, opened it. “You have only to show me proof of identity and sign these papers, and your inheritance will be transferred to you.”

“I don’t want it.” Her first sign of emotion was the crack of glass against counter. “I don’t want his money.”

Jared set the papers on the table. “It’s your money.”

“I said I don’t want it.”

Patiently Jared slipped off his own glasses and hooked them in his top pocket. “I understand you were estranged from your father.”

“You don’t understand anything,” she shot back. “All you need to know is that I don’t want the damn money. So put your papers back in your fancy briefcase and get out.”

Well used to arguments, Jared kept his eyes—and his temper—level. “Your father’s instructions were that if you were unwilling or unable to claim the inheritance, it was to go to your child.”

Her eyes went molten. “Leave my son out of this.”

“The legalities—”

“Hang your legalities. He’s my son. Mine. And it’s my choice. We don’t want or need the money.”

“Ms. Morningstar, you can refuse the terms of your father’s will, which means the courts will get involved and complicate what should be a very simple, straightforward matter. Hell, do yourself a favor. Take it, blow it on a weekend in Reno, give it to charity, bury it in a tin can in the yard.”

She forced herself to calm down, not an easy matter when her emotions were up. “It is very simple and straightforward. I’m not taking his money.” Her head jerked around at the sound of the front door slamming. “My son,” she said, and shot Jared a lethal look. “Don’t you say anything to him about this.”

“Hey, Mom! Connor and me—” He skidded to a halt, a tall, skinny boy with his mother’s eyes and messy black hair crushed under a backward fielder’s cap. He studied Jared with a mix of distrust and curiosity. “Who’s he?”

Manners ran in the family, Jared decided. Lousy ones. “I’m Jared MacKade, a neighbor.”

“You’re Shane’s brother.” The boy walked over, picked up his mother’s lemonade and drank it down in several noisy gulps. “He’s cool. That’s where we were, me and Connor,” he told his mother. “Over at the MacKade farm. This big orange cat had kittens.”

“Again?” Jared muttered. “This time I’m taking her to the vet personally and having her spayed. You were with Connor,” Jared added. “Connor Dolin.”

“Yeah.” Suspicious, the boy watched him over the rim of his glass.

“His mother’s a friend of mine,” Jared said simply.

Savannah’s hand rested briefly, comfortably, on her son’s shoulder. “Bryan, go upstairs and scrape some of the dirt off. I’m going to start dinner.”

“Okay.”

“Nice to have met you, Bryan.”

The boy looked surprised, then flashed a quick grin. “Yeah, cool. See you.”

“He looks like you,” Jared commented.

“Yes, he does.” Her mouth softened slightly at the sound of feet clumping up the stairs. “I’m thinking about putting in soundproofing.”

“I’m trying to get a picture of him palling around with Connor.”

The amusement in her eyes fired into temper so quickly it fascinated him. “And you have a problem with that?”

“I’m trying to get a picture,” Jared repeated, “of the live wire that just headed upstairs and the quiet, painfully shy Connor Dolin. Kids as confident as your son don’t usually choose boys like Connor for friends.”

Temper smoothed out. “They just clicked. Bryan hasn’t had a lot of opportunity to keep friends. We’ve moved around a great deal. That’s changing.”

“What brought you here?”

“I was—” She broke off, and her lips curved. “Now you’re trying to be neighborly so that I’ll soften up and take this little problem off your hands. Forget it.” She turned to take a package of chicken breasts out of the refrigerator.

“Seven thousand dollars is a lot of money. If you put it in a college fund now, it would give your son a good start when he’s ready for it.”

“When and if Bryan’s ready for college, I’ll put him through myself.”

“I understand about pride, Ms. Morningstar. That’s why it’s easy for me to see when it’s misplaced.”

She turned again and flipped her braid behind her shoulder. “You must be the patient, by-the-book, polite type, Mr. MacKade.”

The grin that beamed out at her nearly made her blink. She was sure there were states where that kind of weapon was illegal.

“Don’t get to town much, do you?” Jared murmured. “You’d hear different. Ask Connor’s mama about the MacKades sometime, Ms. Morningstar. I’ll leave the papers.” He slipped his sunglasses on again. “You think it over and get back to me. I’m in the book.”

She stayed where she was, a frown on her face and a cold package of raw chicken in her hands. She was still there when his car’s engine roared to life and her son came darting back down the stairs.

Quickly she snatched up the papers and pushed them into the closest drawer.

“What was he here for?” Bryan wanted to know. “How come he was wearing a suit?”

“A lot of men wear suits.” She would evade, but she wouldn’t lie, not to Bryan. “And stay out of the refrigerator. I’m starting dinner.”

With his hand on the door of the fridge, Bryan rolled his eyes. “I’m starving. I can’t wait for dinner.”

Savannah plucked an apple from a bowl and tossed it over her shoulder, smiling to herself when she heard the solid smack of Bryan’s catch.

“Shane said it was okay if we went by after school tomorrow and looked at the kittens some more. The farm’s really cool, Mom. You should see.”

“I’ve seen farms before.”

“Yeah, but this one’s neat. He’s got two dogs. Fred and Ethel.”

“Fred and—” She broke off into laughter. “Maybe I will have to see that.”

“And from the hayloft you can see clear into town. Connor says part of the battle was fought right there on the fields. Probably dead guys everywhere.”

“Now that sounds really enticing.”

“And I was thinking—” Bryan crunched into his apple, tried to sound casual “—you’d maybe want to come over and look at the kittens.”

“Oh, would I?”

“Well, yeah. Connor said maybe Shane would give some away when they were weaned. You might want one.”

She set a lid on the chicken she was sautéing. “I would?”

“Sure, yeah, for, like, company when I’m in school.” He smiled winningly. “So you wouldn’t get lonely.”

Savannah shifted her weight onto her hip and studied him owlishly. “That’s a good one, Bry. Really smooth.”

That was what he’d been counting on. “So can I?”

She would have given him the world, not just one small kitten. “Sure.” Her laughter rolled free when he launched himself into her arms.

With the meal over, the dishes done, the homework that terrified her finished and the child who was her life tucked into bed with his ball cap, Savannah sat on the front-porch swing and watched the woods.

She enjoyed the way night always deepened there first, as if it had a primary claim. Later there might be the hoot of an owl, or the rumbling low of Shane MacKade’s cattle. Sometimes, if it was very quiet, or there’d been rain, she could hear the bubble of creek over rocks.

It was too early in the spring yet for the flash and shimmer of fireflies. She looked forward to them, and hoped Bryan wasn’t yet beyond the stage where he would chase them. She wanted to watch him run in his own yard in the starlight on a warm summer night when the flowers were blooming, the air was thick with their perfume, and the woods were a dense curtain closing them off from everyone and everything.

She wanted him to have a kitten to play with, friends to call his own, a childhood filled with moments that lasted forever.

A childhood that would be everything hers had never been.

Setting the swing into motion, she leaned back and drank in the absolute quiet of a country night.

It had taken her ten long, hard years to get here, on this swing, on this porch, in this house. There wasn’t a moment of it she regretted. Not the sacrifice, the pain, the worry, the risk. Because to regret one was to regret all. To regret one was to regret Bryan. And that was impossible.

She had exactly what she had strived for now, and she had earned it herself, despite odds brutally stacked against her.

She was exactly where she wanted to be, who she wanted to be, and no ghost from the past would spoil it for her.

How dare he offer her money, when all she’d ever wanted was his love?

So Jim Morningstar was dead. The hard-drinking, hard-living, hardheaded son of a bitch had ridden his last bronco, roped his last bull. Now she was supposed to grieve. Now she was supposed to be grateful that, at the end, he’d thought of her. He’d thought of the grandchild he’d never wanted, never even seen.

He’d chosen his pride over his daughter, and the tiny flicker of life that had been inside her. Now, after all this time, he’d thought to make up for that with just under eight thousand dollars.

The hell with him, Savannah thought wearily, and closed her eyes. Eight million couldn’t make her forget, and it sure as hell couldn’t buy her forgiveness. And no lawyer in a fancy suit with killer eyes and a silver tongue was going to change her mind.

Jared MacKade could go to hell right along with Jim Morningstar.

He’d had no business coming onto her land as if he belonged there, standing in her kitchen sipping lemonade, talking about college funds, smiling so sweetly at her boy. He’d had no right to aim that smile at her—not so outrageously—and stir up all those juices that she’d deliberately let go flat and dry.

Well, she wasn’t dead, after all, she thought with a heartfelt sigh. Some men seemed to have been created to stir a woman’s juices.

She didn’t want to sit here on this beautiful spring night and think about how long it had been since she’d held a man, or been held. She really didn’t want to think at all, but he’d walked across her lawn and shaken her laboriously constructed world in less time than it took to blink.

Her father was dead, and she was very much alive. Lawyer MacKade had made those two facts perfectly clear in one short visit.

However much she wanted to avoid it, she was going to have to deal with both those facts. Eventually she would have to face Jared again. If she didn’t seek him out, she was certain, he’d be back. He had that bull dog look about him, pretty suit and tie or not.

So, she would have to decide what to do. And she would have to tell Bryan. He had a right to know his grandfather was dead. He had a right to know about the legacy.

But just for tonight, she wouldn’t think, she wouldn’t worry, she wouldn’t wonder.

She wasn’t aware for a long time that her cheeks were wet, her shoulders were shaking, the sobs were tearing at her throat. Curling into a ball, she buried her face against her knees.

“Oh, Daddy…”