Beloved Wolf (13 page)

Sophie blinked back tears as she blindly reached for the door handle. “And who told you that you were qualified to hang out your shingle,
Dr.
James? Some psychologist you are. You can't even run your own life.”

She opened the door, but River's hand on her arm stopped her from exiting the vehicle. “Oh, no, you don't, Soph. You don't make a crack like that and then run off. What's wrong with my life?”

Sophie turned, glared at him and smiled evilly. “You're kidding, right?”

“Sophie…”

“Oh, all right. Okay. Tell me this, Mr. Lone Wolf. When was the last time you let anyone close to you? Other than your sister, Cheyenne? Huh? Talk about
trust.
You don't trust anyone, Riv. You're always waiting for someone to leave you, so much so that, when they don't leave, you push them away. Your mother died and left you, your grandmother took Rafe and Cheyenne—but not you. Your father beat you, so that the authorities took you away—and your father never came back, never tried to make amends. Hell, he was probably glad to see you gone, right? Isn't that how you figured it to be?”

“Sophie, don't do this.”

“Don't do this? Why not? You're so busy telling
me
what's wrong with
me.
Why not you, Riv? You
came to the ranch, nasty and angry and prickly, and everybody tippy-toed around you, giving you room, giving you space. Poor River. Poor, poor River. Tread carefully with him, everyone. He's got issues. I damn near broke my neck trying to get close to you, and then all you did in the end was push me away.”

“You needed to go. You needed some experiences in life. College. You had dreams, Sophie.”

“And you didn't? You never dreamed of me, Riv? You never wanted
me?
”

“You know I did. I do.”

Sophie shook her head violently. “Tell yourself anything you want, Riv. But don't lie to me. Everybody on the ranch was afraid of you. The loner, the hothead, the troubled kid, and now the hard, and hard-to-read man. You pushed us all away, kept us all at a distance. You did it then, quite obviously, and you still do it now, only you're more subtle. You're thirty-one years old, Riv. When are you going to figure out that people love you, that they aren't going to leave you? When are
you
going to stop being afraid of
me?
Not that you could ever love me, Riv. You don't know how to love anyone.”

River let go of her arm, which was the only reason Sophie realized he'd still been holding her there, in the vehicle. She looked at him for long moments, saw the pain in his face. Pain she had put there.

“Don't bother to pick me up. I'm a big girl now. I know how to call a cab.” Sophie then took a quick, sharp, painful breath, and left him there.

“T
hank you, Inez,” Meredith called out over her shoulder, belatedly, she knew, but it always seemed to take her some time to remember things like “please” and “thank you” when the woman was only doing what Joe Colton paid her to do.

After all, Inez Ramirez and her family had a roof over their heads, food in their bellies and a job security most of the world would give their eyeteeth to have. Which, of course, wasn't enough for them, was it? Now one of Inez's little senoritas, Maya, had gotten her hooks into Drake and, as it followed, would soon be dug deep into the Colton money.

“Over my dead body,” Meredith assured herself, reaching for the stack of mail Inez had brought to her in her sitting room. “Isn't it enough we've already got the half-breed sniffing after Sophie? That's what
happens when you bring home strays, you stupid, stupid man. You have two sons that are worthy of the Colton fortune, and only two, not that you see that, of course. Joe Colton, you're the stupidest man alive.”

Meredith took a deep breath, reminding herself that it did her no good to become upset. After all, it would all change soon enough. Everything would change soon, and most definitely for the better.

She sorted through the mail, first picking out all the last few RSVP envelopes, smiling as she read the return addresses, sliced open the envelopes and saw all the positive responses, not that she had expected anyone to turn her down.

Look who was in today's batch of responses: Senator Howard, Representative Blakely and Mrs. Reginald Walker, III, a high-nosed widow who was a leading hostess in San Francisco. She frowned as she saw the overseas stamp on the envelope from Joe's Aunt Sybil, then put it with the others. Oh, well, at least Paris would be represented. She supposed that was a fair enough trade-off for having to put up with Sybil and her nosy, interfering ways.

Less than three weeks, and it would be party time. Oh, my oh my, she thought, would it ever!

Meredith picked up the remainder of the mail addressed to her and frowned as she realized she'd overlooked the most important letter, the one that had arrived without a return address and was marked Personal and Confidential.

Suppressing the urge to rip the envelope in her
haste, she carefully slit the top with the silver letter opener and withdrew the contents.

“My dear Mrs. Colton,” the letter began, and she sniffed derisively at the intimacy of the salutation. As if the man was her dear anything!

“Here comes the
however,
” Meredith muttered under her breath, and sure enough, there it was.

Meredith mentally wrote another five-figure check, wondering how many more she could write before Joe decided to take an interest in her personal account. He'd been so oblivious, for so long. But now he seemed to be taking an interest again, coming out of his stupor, his depression.

Dangerous. Very dangerous. Dangerous enough to give the detective the address she'd hoped never to have to use, just in case the man had more brains than she so far gave him credit for possessing. Locating her sister was one thing, exposing herself was another—and definitely not acceptable. She would much rather the detective located the Mississippi address on his own, so that it couldn't be connected with her in any way.

All of this was just another reason, of so many reasons, to give Joe Colton a fine and very final bon voyage on his sixtieth birthday. She was tired of hiding, tired of worrying. Tired of fearing discovery.

She read on:

Meredith looked at the bill, then crumpled it in her hand and flung it across the room. “Idiot! He's been at this for a year. All of them, all the idiots I've hired and fired. They couldn't find their own behinds with their own two hands!”

She stood up slowly, feeling stiff and defeated. She needed to find Patsy. She
had
to find Jewel.

She had to get rid of Joe Colton and his sniveling bunch of strays, so that she'd be free to do both.

Meredith picked up the private detective's bill and
smoothed it between her hands. She'd pay it. She'd pay and she'd pay and she'd pay. She'd do anything,
anything,
to find her Jewel. Anything to find and destroy Patsy.

Anything to be safe.

After all,
she
was Meredith Colton. Only her, no one else. Everybody knew that.

A slow smile lit Meredith's face as she entered the bathroom, drew out her small brown bottle of pills. Have to keep taking the pills, at least for now. Keep calm. Stay safe. Afterward she'd flush them all down the toilet, flush that quack doctor down with them.

She wasn't insane. She was the most sane person she knew. It was the world that had gone crazy. The whole system was insane. Seeking supposedly legal vengeance for the death of a lying, useless piece of male trash. Punishing a mother for trying to find where that cold monster had put her very own newborn child. Locking up that mother for years and years, telling her she was sick and needed help.

Help? Yes, she needed help. But not the kind those quack doctors meant.

Meredith went back into the sitting room and withdrew a small key from her pocket, unlocking her desk drawer. She lifted out the small, folded piece of paper that held a name and the phone number for a fleabag hotel. A name she had gone to the slums of Los Angeles to learn. A name she had paid dearly to obtain. A man who could point her toward yet another man, a man who would do anything she asked, if the color of her money was right.

Did she dare? Could she do it? Could she afford
not
to do it? Was the time right to bring in help that wasn't shackled by ethics or whatever it was that the private investigators she'd hired had all grumbled about?

She had one name, which would lead her to another name, to a man who could solve the rest of her problems for her. All she had to do was take that second step, the one that would put her face to face with a potential murderer.

After the party. She'd find him after the party, bring him into the picture when the household was already in shock, dealing with their grief. Why drag it out? Why make them deal with the grief twice? She could be nice, considerate. She'd get all the wailing and sobbing over with at the same time. Joe, dead. Emily, dead.

Whiny, talk-too-much, question-too-much, “I saw two mommies” Emily.

Oh, yes. One by one, they'd be gone, gone, gone.

“Ten little, nine little, eight worthless Coltons…seven little, six little, five no-good Coltons…” Meredith laughed, then quickly clapped both her hands over her mouth to keep that laugh from escalating into hysteria. She had to be careful. So careful.

Soon there would be only two. Her boys. Her very own boys.

And—if that idiot detective would just get on the stick—her Jewel…

 

“You look like you've been rode hard and put away wet,” Joe Colton said, opening the door to River's small apartment and stepping inside.

River, who had been sitting on the couch, unmindful of the trail dust that clung to him after his hell-bent-for-leather gallop over the fields, merely grunted, lifted the long-neck beer to his lips and drank deeply.

Joe picked up the two empty brown beer bottles sitting on the coffee table. “That's just about your limit, don't you think, son?”

River grumbled low in his throat. “White man's firewater bad for the Red Man,
Kemo Sabé,
” he muttered, inwardly wincing at his own juvenile sarcasm. He slowly lifted his head and looked at his foster father. “I'm sorry, Joe. Really. That was uncalled for.”

“It certainly was. It was an insult to your mother's people, to yourself, and probably to me.” He took the chair that sat at a right angle to the couch. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly, no,” River said with a faint smile. “Is she home yet? Or did she run all the way back to the city, putting as much space between the two of us as she can?”

“Oh, she's back. I saw the taxi drive up myself, about two hours ago. I asked her why you hadn't brought her home and she said she wouldn't cross the street with you. Nice. I take it you two had a small argument?”

“World War Two was a small argument, Joe,” River told him facetiously. “We had us one great big, whacking, thermonuclear war. Didn't you see the mushrooms clouds? They had to be kind of hard to miss.”

“You love her very much, don't you?”

River rubbed at his chin. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. For all the good it's doing me.”

Joe sighed, folded his large hands in his lap. “I remember when I met Meredith.” He shook his head. “God, so many years ago, and yet sometimes it feels like yesterday. Did I ever tell you the story?”

He had, but River decided that Joe needed to tell it again, that he needed to remember the good days, the good times. “No,” River said. “But I'd love to hear it. Let me get us some coffee, all right?”

River came back into the room a few minutes later, to see Joe sitting low in the chair, his chin on his chest.

“Here you go. Black, with two sugars, since Inez isn't around to make you use that funny stuff.”

Joe looked up, his eyes blank for a moment, and then smiled, accepted the cup. “She's going to have me out in the fields grazing pretty soon. I'm going to be sixty, not ninety, you know. You'd think she'd let me wallow in my fats and sugars for at least another few years.”

“Inez cares about you, Joe. That physical you had six months ago shook us all up. Cholesterol too high, overweight, your loss of energy…”

“I didn't ask for a list,” Joe bit out, then sighed. “You forgot depressed. As if there'd be anyone who wouldn't be depressed, damn it. Meredith—”

“Yes,” River interrupted quickly. “You were going to tell me how the two of you met.”

Joe sniffed, shook his head. “You're good at this, River. I'm surprised you can't talk to Sophie for more than two minutes without thermonuclear war.”

“My talents only reach so far,” River admitted, smiling wryly. “But maybe I can learn from you. Tell me, how did you woo and win the fair Meredith? I mean, there you were, this great big lump—” River's smile broadened “—and there she was, this sweet, gentle lady.”

Joe sipped at his coffee, then set the cup down on the table. “She was, you know. A sweet, gentle lady. Most definitely a lady.”

He looked across at River, who had retaken his own seat on the couch. “She had car trouble. Graham and I were driving along, heading for some business function. Just outside Sacramento we saw this car pulled over to the side of the road. Meredith was standing there, the hood open on her old, beat-up Chevy, as I remember, looking about as helpless as a babe lost in the woods. But beautiful. God, she was beautiful. They wore miniskirts back in those days. Hers was blue mostly, with some kind of flowers on it, not that I noticed. I was way too busy looking at her legs. Long, bare, tanned legs. I damn near tripped over myself trying to get to her first, but Graham beat me to it.”

“Your brother's a little smaller, could probably move faster,” River said as Joe paused, obviously lost in a mental picture of how Meredith had looked when he'd seen her for the first time. Her appearance had probably been one hell of a hit to Joe's solar plexus, rather like the one River knew he had felt the first time he'd seen Sophie. Hard to believe, he supposed, but even then he'd known. He'd always known. With
a woman like Meredith, like her daughter, one look was all it would take to have a man love her forever.

“My little brother was a little faster in a lot of ways, River,” Joe said, bringing River back from his own musings. “Before I knew what happened, I had my head stuck under the hood, fixing the problem, and he was asking for—and getting—her phone number. They made a date for that same night.”