Renegade: A Taggart Brothers Novel (7 page)

“Why don’t you head back after dinner? You can drop your girls off at my place.”

“Oh, no,” she said hurriedly. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not? I’ll be there with Barry—and Bodey will probably be in and out. P.D. is coming down to the house to look through my mother’s old recipe collection for ideas, so there will be a female presence there as well. We’ve got plenty of television sets, an Xbox, basketball hoop, and”—he paused dramatically—“Wi-Fi.”

Bronte laughed, and he loved the way the brief expression of joy chased away the shadows in her eyes.

“Don’t say that too loudly or Kari will want to live at your place full-time.”

“Come on. What do you say?”

“You’ve already done so much—”

“I’m not doing anything I wouldn’t have been doing anyway.”

She bit her lip. Jace watched as it was trapped there for several long minutes as she thought things over. But she finally nodded, saying, “Thanks, Jace. I appreciate it.”

Knowing that he might blow it if he allowed things to remain personal for too long, he gestured to the notebook in the center of the table. “So why don’t we have a look at your list?”

*   *   *

IT
was growing dark when Bronte stepped out of the ICU unit. Ignoring the bank of elevators, she took the stairs instead.

It had been nearly a week since Jace had first offered to watch her children while she went to the hospital. At first, she’d been reluctant to accept his help more than that one night. But it soon became apparent that her children were growing weary of the hospital waiting room. They much preferred the comforts of Jace’s home—especially when he’d spent the last few evenings teaching them to ride by leading them around one of the corrals on a sleepy brown mare named Snowflake. They would run out to the car to meet her before she’d even brought the van to a halt, chattering about their rides. Unfortunately, that had left barely enough time for Bronte to do more than exchange a few pleasantries with Jace or wave to him from a distance, a fact that left her curiously . . . unsatisfied.

Thankfully, either Jace or Steff had managed to pull some strings, because once it had been established that Bronte was a close relative, she’d been allowed to stay in the ICU unit with Annie.

At first, Bronte hadn’t known what to do. Annie had begun to experience problems with her breathing and she’d been placed on a respirator, which had helped to improve her color. The sight of more machinery hooked up to her grandmother’s tiny body had been alarming at first. But after holding her hand and talking to her in a low voice, Bronte had felt the faintest pressure against her fingers. She couldn’t be sure if it had been a spasm or if her grandmother had been trying to communicate with her, but she decided to believe it was the latter. So she began a one-sided conversation, telling Annie all about the children, the journey they’d had, the sights they’d seen. She’d abridged the events, focusing on the scenery and famous landmarks as well as some of the funny things her children had done and said.

To Bronte’s surprise, the unburdening calmed her slightly. Maybe by relating the events of the trip, it became more . . . real. Boston was a long, long distance away, and she didn’t have to go back. Ever. Now, all that remained was convincing herself of that fact.

When she ran out of things to say, Bronte took her tablet out of her purse and ordered an e-book by Agatha Christie, one of Annie’s favorite writers. Unbelievably, as Miss Marple began to investigate, Annie’s pulse seemed to grow more regular and her oxygen levels began to climb. By the time Bronte left, Annie seemed to be sleeping deeply with none of the restlessness she’d shown earlier in the day.

Stepping outside, Bronte inhaled the cool mountain air. Spring had arrived in Utah, bringing moist balmy breezes that would fade to dry desert winds once the weather grew warmer. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she caught the deep loamy scents of the fields she’d passed on her way to Logan. The rich, dark earth had been tilled and furrowed and planted—no,
drilled
was the term she’d heard Jace use—with wheat, barley, and corn.

Spring had always been her favorite time of year. The dreariness of winter began to fade as the world awoke from its long hibernation. As Annie was fond of saying, “It’s a time of new beginnings.”

New beginnings.

Unconsciously, Bronte’s steps began to slow, then halted. When she roused from her thoughts enough to become aware of her surroundings, she knew it wasn’t a coincidence that a squat mailbox was right in front of her.

She hesitated—not in regret. No. The pause was more a way of saying good-bye to the life she’d once thought she would have. Then, she reached into her bag and pulled out the papers sent to her by her lawyer. After signing and initialing the spots indicated with fluorescent sticky notes, she slid everything into the prestamped envelope that had been provided, then dropped it down the chute.

As she turned and hurried to her car, Bronte thought that she would experience a wave of sadness. Instead, she felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her back. True, nothing had really changed. Her situation was no different than it had been ten minutes ago. She still had two children to raise, a job to find, an ailing grandmother to visit every day.

But she was going to do everything on her terms and in her way. For some reason, that brought a spring to her step.

*   *   *

TWENTY
minutes later, Bronte pulled into the lane leading to Taggart Hollow. For the first time, she didn’t see her children in the yard or the paddock. The only sign of life was Barry’s miniature goat, Bitsy. Bronte had already learned that the animal, which was wider than it was high, had an obsession for junk food and would shamelessly beg for snacks.

She maneuvered her car into a spot next to a rattletrap pickup truck with a peeling bumper sticker proclaiming:
SAVE A HORSE . . . RIDE A COWBOY!
For some reason, the motto made Bronte’s cheeks grow hot.

Truth be told, Bronte would have stayed longer at the hospital if her children had been with her, but she didn’t want to impose anymore on Jace’s hospitality—which was why she lingered in the car, suddenly nervous about knocking on the huge front door. Before she could psych herself into ignoring the nervous fluttering in her stomach, there was a sudden tap on her window, one that nearly sent her through the sunroof.

Jace stood on the other side.

“The kids have gone down to the barn with Elam, my older brother. We had a foal born last night, and they’re helping him feed the mare and have a look. Why don’t you come into the house and wait?”

The House. The Taggart Big House. How many times as a kid had she longed to see what it looked like on the inside? She knew all about the history of the place—as well as the smaller dwelling a hundred yards away, near the creek. The original Taggart ancestor who’d claimed the land had built a small cabin, the Little House, for his bride. But toward the end of the nineteenth century, another Taggart had made a fortune in cattle and built the Big House with all the ostentatious style of the nouveau riche.

It was an imposing structure. The foundation was made
of river rock and the façade of split logs. An ornate pine railing fashioned from slats of wood with cookie-cutter-like holes in the shape of pine trees marched around the entire structure. Supports made of thick, lacquered lodge poles gave the house a sturdy solidity that easily bore the weight of two more stories adorned with ornate gables and mullion windows. The house had a permanence to it, as if it had always been there, having somehow sprouted from the ground—a fact made even more evident by the towering pines and mature trees that surrounded it.

“Get out of here, Bitsy,” Jace said good-naturedly before opening her door.

Bronte swung her legs out, then followed him up the front steps to the wide wrap-around porch.

“How’s Annie?”

“The respirator seems to have helped. By the time I left, I was pretty sure that she knew I was there.”

“That’s a good sign.”

He opened the screen door for her and, miracle of miracles, after all these years, Bronte stepped into the entryway of the “western mansion” she and her sister had ogled all those years ago.

Her shoes sank into a thick oriental carpet that ran down the length of the polished hardwood floors. Ahead of her, a massive staircase curled around to the upper floors, rimmed by a baluster carved with trees and foliage and running horses. Another ribbon of carpet ran up the center, held in place by gleaming brass rails. Here in the entry, a looming antique hall tree as large as her van flanked one side of the door, while the other had a solid-looking Victorian bench with lion heads carved into the armrests. The effect of the heavy pieces and polished wood might have been stuffy if it weren’t for the pile of boots under the seat and scattered farm toys parked in random positions on the floor.

“Sorry for the mess. A bunch of men live here and we’re hopeless.”

She laughed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything to laugh about.

“Barry uses the floor for his farming and ranching,” Jace said, motioning to little tractors and pickups and other various pieces of machinery that were tiny replicas of the ones Bronte had seen working in the fields. “I’ve tried to teach him to park things in the ‘shed,’ which is an old cupboard in the family room. But as you can see, I’m not having much luck.”

Jace motioned for her to follow him. On opposite walls, two doorways led away from the entry. To the right, she could see a formal parlor decorated with period antiques, a crystal chandelier, and an enormous fireplace. But to the left, she was led through a very modern family room with leather sofas, a huge television, and strategically placed side tables. A discarded pair of sneakers—probably Barry’s—a newspaper, a plethora of remotes, and even more scattered ranch equipment and herds of plastic cows and horses proclaimed that this was a room for comfort rather than show. It was a guys’ room, stripped of frills and focused on comfort.

“You’re getting the benefit of a full deployment of Barry’s machinery, I’m afraid. He had Lily helping him ‘plant the south forty.’”

“I’ll make sure she helps him pick them up.”

“No need. Barry goes berserk if you move his stuff. Once a week, we have a lady come in, so he knows he has to drive everything into the barn so she can vacuum. Other than that, we tend to walk around it.”

“That’s sweet.”

Jace grimaced. “It’s not so sweet if you’re walking through the room in your bare feet and land on a swather, but”—he shrugged—“he’s come so far in the last few years, it’s a foible I haven’t bothered to corral.”

He moved to the back of the room to a heavy swinging door with brass hand- and kickplates and held it open for her. As she passed through, she found herself in a kitchen that screamed “the seventies!” with oak cabinets, an avocado and harvest gold motif, and Formica cabinets with a set of mushroom shaped canisters that had probably been someone’s ceramics project. If it weren’t for the modern appliances, she could have believed she’d walked into a museum.

Although she’d tried to keep her expression neutral, Jace must have sensed her surprise. “I know. Horrible, isn’t it? But everything works, so we’ve never bothered to update it.”

“I’d be happy to give it an overhaul if you’d give me the go-ahead,” a female voice wryly offered.

As the door swung back into place, Bronte could see a woman reaching to put a baking dish into one of the upper cupboards. She was tall and voluptuous—a fact made even more apparent by the tailored snap-front blouse she wore and her tight designer jeans. Her hair was long and loose, falling down her back in a riot of curls that Bronte wouldn’t be able to re-create, even with a hot curling iron and a gallon of hairspray. When she turned to face them, Bronte was struck by her prettiness, but even more by the aura of happiness that seemed to surround her like an invisible glow.

Bronte immediately felt dowdy and flat-chested. Why, in all their encounters, had she assumed that Jace was single? Clearly, if he wasn’t married already, he would be soon, because this woman had an easy familiarity with his kitchen—and with Jace—that Bronte absorbed even in the fleeting seconds they’d shared the same room.

“Bronte, this is P.D. Raines—”

“Short for Prairie Dawn,” she inserted.

“I was getting to that,” Jace groused good-naturedly.

“Sometimes, you forget.” P.D. patted his cheek as she brushed by him to hold out her hand. “I’m Elam’s girlfriend.”

E
LAM’S
girlfriend.

Bronte feared that her smile was too bright—too telling—because P.D.’s eyes sparked with her own brand of humor.

“It’s nice to meet you.”

After a firm shake, P.D. tucked her fingers into her pockets. Jace leaned against a nearby counter. Now that introductions were made, it was easy to see that the familiarity Bronte had sensed was one of friendship rather than intimacy.

“It sounds like you’ve had a rough welcome to the area,” P.D. said.

Bronte offered a rueful sound that was meant to be a laugh, but came out far more telling than it should have done. “I’m hoping Annie gets feeling better soon.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Oh, I—”

“No. She hasn’t,” Jace offered before Bronte could think of a suitable noncommittal reply.

“I’ll warm up some dinner.”

“No, I—”

“She’d love that,” Jace said, interrupting her again. Pushing away from the counter, he moved to pull out a chair for Bronte, leaning close to murmur, “Go with it. It’s turkey night at Vern’s.”

Bronte didn’t have a clue what that was supposed to mean, but with Jace standing so near, his lips next to her ear, the tiny hairs on her nape seemed to jangle in delight. She couldn’t think of a response, so she sat down.

It didn’t take long to see that—although this might be a bachelors’ stronghold—P.D. knew her way around the kitchen. Within minutes, a steaming open-faced sandwich with ciabatta bread, smoked turkey, and roasted vegetables smothered in a rich cranberry chutney was placed in front of her.

“My deconstructed Thanksgiving-leftover sandwich.”

Bronte had thought that she was too keyed up to eat anything, but the rich scents rising from her plate seemed to unlock her appetite. Instantly, the heady combination of hickory-smoked turkey and chewy bread, earthy sage and citrus-kissed cranberry brought her taste buds back to life.

“Oh, wow,” she mumbled around the first bite, then quickly covered her mouth at the breach of manners.

P.D. laughed. “That’s the kind of response I like.” She made a shooing gesture toward Bronte’s plate. “Don’t stop. We’ve all eaten, so we can hold up our end of the conversation until you’re done.”

And they did. While Bronte slaked her raging hunger, P.D. used the time to regale them with funny stories about the restaurant and the “kittens” that Barry had coaxed out from under the cabin deck.

“Except they weren’t kittens,” Jace said. He slouched in his chair, his ankle resting on his knee, one elbow propped on the table. A slow smile spread over his lips and Bronte felt as if she were struck dumb. The expression was so genuine, so wistful, so . . .
kind
 . . . as he thought of his little brother.

The food seemed to lurch in her stomach. What would she give if, just once, someone appeared even half that . . .
contented
as they thought of her? Even in the first few,
passionate years of her marriage, she couldn’t remember Phillip ever reacting that way. He’d been more possessive, his attitude more of a “look what I’m nailing on a regular basis” kind of smirk.

In time, she’d begun to hate that expression.

“He’d found a litter of skunks wedged into a hole under one of the supports,” P.D. was saying, her hands gesturing as she spoke.

But Bronte was still watching Jace, seeing the way his eyes crinkled slightly at the corners.

“I nearly had a heart attack,” P.D. said, a hand flattening over her chest, “because all of the windows were open and Barry was petting the baby skunk and scratching its ears. Apparently, he couldn’t figure out why the stupid cat wouldn’t purr when he was being so nice to it.” P.D. took a quick breath. “As calmly as I could, I told him it was time for dinner and to leave the ‘kitty’ and come inside. Barry reasonably informed me that it wasn’t even close to dinnertime—and since he’s got us all trained to his schedule, I couldn’t really argue with him. I had to come up with something quick.”

This time, it was Jace who laughed, a low, quiet rumble that came from somewhere in the depths of his chest.

“Which is how we got Monthly Cake Dump Day.”

Bronte must have looked confused because P.D. quickly explained, “The Cake Dump is a bakery here in town.”

The explanation teased a memory from Bronte’s brain. “The place with the doughnuts and hot rolls?”

“That’s the one,” P.D. affirmed exuberantly. “He put the ‘kitty’ carefully back in its hole, and we hightailed it out of there before mama could come home and catch us messing with her litter.”

“Leaving the third day of every month as an official Cake Dump Day.”

“It’s a small price to pay not to have Elam’s cabin covered in skunk spray.”

P.D. and Jace laughed, and as she watched the bob of his Adam’s apple, the unconscious way he rubbed the bridge of
his nose, those damned lines at the corner of his eyes, she was inundated with a wave of hunger that took her completely by surprise.

Suddenly, she wanted to touch him. She wanted to reassure herself that he was real. She wanted to bracket his face in her hands and look deep into his eyes. But more than anything, she wanted to kiss him.

Whoa, girl.
Just because she’d severed the last ties with her husband didn’t mean she had the time or the energy to rush headlong into the arms of another. That would be a big mistake.
Big
mistake. The mere thought of how complicated things could get—juggling her present worries with the emotional seesawing of a relationship that could never be anything more than temporary . . .

Her brain threatened to implode from the mere thought of the risk. Not to mention the upheaval that would soon erupt with her children when they discovered the divorce was final.

Jace.

In the past week, she’d discovered that he had his own brand of worries. He was knee-deep in spring planting and running the business end of Taggart Enterprises. From what she’d heard so far, Barry was hell on wheels, but Jace had somehow managed to deal with his brother’s special needs along with everything else.

Bronte joined in the laughter, but as her gaze flicked back to Jace, she realized how much he’d sacrificed over the last few years. He must have been in his wild twenties when the accident had occurred. To be that young and assume the responsibility of a sibling, especially one who’d suffered a brain injury?

It must have changed his entire life. Suddenly, he would have been confronted with rigid schedules, occupational therapy, doctors’ visits, school challenges. Judging by the lack of feminine frippery in the house, it didn’t look like he’d had a wife or girlfriend to help him. Even his brothers had been limited in their ability to lessen the load. If she remembered some of their earlier conversations correctly,
Elam had been out of the country and Bodey had been little more than a teenager himself.

Bronte wondered if his brothers were even aware of how difficult the shift in lifestyles must have been for Jace. Bronte fiercely loved her daughters. She would willingly step in front of a speeding bus if that’s what she had to do to protect them. Until each squirming bundle had been placed in her arms, she hadn’t understood how strong and all-consuming her desire to provide for them could be.

Yet, even with all that powerful emotion bonding them together, there were still days when she was severely tempted to send them both to military school. Kari could be petulant and obstinate and downright mean when she was in a snit. And Lily. Even her darling, shy Lily could whine and moan and pitch a fit worthy of a three-year-old. And the two of them together?

Lord, save her from the constant bickering and sniping.

So if Bronte had moments like that, even after having given birth to her daughters, how much more difficult must it have been for a twentysomething young man to step in and do the same?

What did that say about the man?

Jace looked up at her, and her expression must have grown serious, because his brows rose in a silent question. But Bronte wasn’t about to confess her thoughts, so she merely smiled and looked away.

It wasn’t long after that when Barry burst into the room.

“Jace! Elam sent me to get you. There’s another baby horse about to get born-ded.”

“Ah, hell,” Jace muttered, pushing himself to his feet. He rounded to the back door, grabbing a hat and a thick jacket from the rack. “Which mare, Barry?”

“The one with a flower on her nose.”

“It’s called a blaze, Barry.”

“Why? It looks like a daisy.”

Jace seemed to think about that, then he nodded. “I guess you’re right. The white patch on her nose does look like a daisy.”

He seemed to become aware of P.D. and Bronte. “I’ll, uh . . .”

“I’ll rustle up a jacket for Bronte, then we’ll come down to the barn.”

Bronte was about to protest that she should probably take the girls home and get them out of the way. But when a slow pleasure slipped across Jace’s features, dynamite couldn’t have blasted her off the Taggarts’ ranch.

“See you there.”

He jammed his hat over his head and hurried after Barry into the darkness on the other side of the door.

P.D. was reaching for Bronte’s empty plate, but she grabbed it herself and carried it to the sink. “I can rinse this off.”

“Great. I’ll get a jacket for you from one of the closets,” P.D. said, crossing to the swinging door.

While she waited, Bronte quickly washed her plate and utensils and placed them in the draining board by the sink. By the time she’d finished, the woman had returned.

“Here you go.”

It was another of the thick canvas jackets like the one she’d seen Jace wearing. But even as she slipped her arms into the sleeves, Bronte realized that it
was
Jace’s jacket. She recognized the familiar spicy scent of his cologne.

“Ready?”

“Mmm hmm.”

P.D. led her out the side door and slowly headed in the direction of the huge barn about a hundred yards away from the house.

“So . . . have you and Jace known each other long?” P.D. asked with utmost casualness.

“Oh, no,” Bronte interrupted quickly. “We’re not . . . he hasn’t . . .”

Damn.
Did P.D. think they’d had a long-distance relationship of some kind?

Bronte offered a too-casual shrug of her shoulders. “Jace has stepped in to help me the last couple of days.”

P.D. looked patently unconvinced.

Bronte opened her mouth to explain that she was married, but stopped herself in time. Like a bolt of lightning, the truth hit her with sizzling certainty.

She wasn’t married.

She hadn’t been married for a very long time. Long before the divorce had been started, long before counselors and lawyers had become involved, her relationship with Phillip had stopped being a “marriage” in any sense of the word. Although there might be those who would argue that, since she’d failed to promptly send in the last of the paperwork, she might still be harboring doubts about her decision to leave Phillip, Bronte knew there were no Freudian interpretations to be made. A flimsy piece of paper couldn’t negate what she already knew deep in her heart. She and the man she’d called husband for more than fifteen years were permanently and irrevocably split. What had once been a passionate romance had withered and died.

The process of their dissolution had begun so slowly and subtly that at first she’d been able to tell herself that Phillip’s inattention was simply a phase, a result from the way he spent too many hours at the clinic. But he’d begun to change, becoming a dark stranger that she didn’t recognize—that she’d begun to fear—until even the memories of the man he’d once been had begun to strangle.

Her fingers lifted to the bruise on her cheek that was nearly gone. Just as her skin was returning to normal, the quieter pace in Bliss was beginning to seep into her soul like a healing balm—one she was still having difficulty believing was real. But with each passing minute, her senses grew sharper and clearer, shifting from her inner pain to the possibilities that awaited.

P.D. looked contrite. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

“No. Not at all.” Bronte threw her a reassuring smile.

“I guess I jumped to conclusions with both feet. It seemed like there was some . . .
zing
between the two of you.”

Zing?

Bronte shied away from admitting that there was anything more than friendship with Jace. Lord, wouldn’t that
be a horrible mess if she jumped from one man’s control straight into the arms of another strong-willed male?

Or would it?

Stop it! Just stop. If there was anything that she had learned from her relationship with Phillip, it was the value of her independence. No one would ever take that away from her.

No one.

“If you’re . . . interested . . . he’s available.”

When Bronte looked at her, both brows raising, P.D. clapped both hands over her mouth.

“Oh, crap. Forget I said that. I must be channeling my friend Helen. Once Elam and I agreed to team up for the Wild West Games, she couldn’t resist pushing us together any chance she could, knowing that if we were given enough time alone, we would spontaneously combust.”