Revenge (2 page)

He didn't want to think about Skye. Not now. Not ever. Thoughts heading in her direction invariably led to dangerous territory. Besides, what was done was done. If he'd wanted her—
really
wanted her—back then, he would have gone after her, wouldn't he have?

Frowning darkly, he switched on the radio, looking for sports scores. Instead, a Bruce Springsteen song of love gone bad drifted out of the speakers.
Tell me about it, Bruce,
Max thought grimly as he squinted through the dusty, bug-spattered windshield.

The asphalt road he barreled along on stretched for miles in either direction, a straight, paved line that cut through this valley where the John Day River flowed swiftly between the rolling hills of dry grass and sparse juniper trees.

When he finally reached town, he stopped at the feed store, bought several sacks of grain and loaded them into his truck before walking the short distance to the Black Anvil. Where his father, just the week before, had consumed too much liquor before ending up at the bottom of Stardust Canyon, the nose of his Jeep plunged deep into the swift waters of Wildcat Creek. Jonah's blood alcohol level had been near the stratosphere, he'd cracked his head on the windshield and died of heart failure, according to the county medical examiner. Jonah Phineas McKee, a Rimrock legend, had died, and the town had mourned.

Max would miss him, though for the past few years they hadn't gotten along.

Ever since Skye.

Shoving open the swinging doors to the bar, Max strode past the cigarette machine to the interior where smoke hung in a hazy cloud near the ceiling and the air-conditioning system clattered and coughed. Men, just off work, clustered at the bar where they eyed a television suspended from the ceiling, sipped from frosted mugs of beer, picked at complimentary pretzels, and complained about the game, the weather and their wives.

Max ordered a beer and slid into a booth near the window. He stared outside, past a flickering neon sign advertising beer, to the street where heat waves rose like ghosts, though the sun was beginning to dip below the mountains.

“Didn't expect to find you here.”

Max lifted one side of his mouth at the sound of his brother's voice. “Can't say the same for you.”

Jenner, a half-filled mug of beer in hand, slipped onto the opposite bench. Two years younger than Max, Jenner had always been the rebel, never doing one damned thing that was expected of him. Didn't even finish high school—just up and left to join the rodeo circuit. A cowboy's cowboy, he had only come home to roost a few years ago when his body, barely thirty, had been broken and taped together too many times from tumbling off wild broncs and Brahma bulls or crashing into the fists of indignant husbands. “Yeah, well, someone's got to keep this place in business,” Jenner drawled with his go-to-hell smile stretching from one side of his face to the other.

Max and Jenner had been oil and water. Max, for years, had always tried to please their old man, while Jenner had done his best to thwart Jonah at every turn. If Jonah said white, then Max would say ivory, and Jenner was sure to bring up black.

“Mom thinks Dad was murdered,” Max said, then, watching the foamy head of his beer sink into the amber depths, took a long swallow. The liquor was cool and malty and settled deep in his gut.

Jenner lifted a shoulder. “He had enough enemies.”

“No one killed him, Jenner.”

“Probably not.”

“Probably?” Max couldn't believe his ears.

“Contrary to what you'd like to believe, the old man was, well, borderline honest, would be the best way to put it. We both know it.”

Max didn't want to be reminded of his father's less-than-aboveboard dealings. “I know, but murder—”

“I'm not saying it happened. I'm just saying it's possible.” He finished his beer and signaled for another round by lifting a finger. The waitress, a buxom woman named Wanda Tulley, winked at him. She was poured into a red-checked blouse and tight denim miniskirt. Her black boots reached midcalf on tanned legs that seemed to go on forever. A couple of years younger than Jenner, Wanda had been through two bad marriages and had been cursed with a crush on the younger McKee brother for as long as Max could remember. Max only hoped Jenner wasn't taking advantage of her affections—he seemed to have no sense of responsibility when it came to women.

“Here ya go, sugar,” Wanda said, flipping her straight silver blond hair over her shoulder.

“Thanks. Put 'em both on my tab.”

“You got it.”

She slid the fresh mugs onto the table, then picked up the empties, allowing Jenner and Max a quick glimpse of the top of her breasts as she bent over, the red gingham of her blouse parting slightly.

As she left, Jenner ignored his beer. “I thought you should know...” he said, pausing as if something weighty was on his mind.

“Know what?”

“I ran into Doc Fletcher a little while ago. Seems he's taking on a new partner. Maybe even selling his practice.”

“About time.” Fletcher had to be pushing seventy and had been looking for a younger general practitioner to eventually take over his business. However, in today's world, most of the medical profession was specialized, and nearly all of the newly graduated doctors preferred to practice in the cities and suburbs where the money was better and the services of hospitals were close at hand. Few were interested in a small clinic hundreds of miles from a major city.

“He said he wanted to go over some details on his lease with you. The estate owns the clinic building, doesn't it?”

“Yep, but Fletcher can link up with anyone he likes. Long as he pays the lease, I don't have anything to say about it.”

Jenner's grin was downright evil. The first premonition of disaster skittered down Max's spine.

“Okay, so tell me. Who's the guy?”

“Not a guy,” Jenner said, his gaze steady on his brother. “A woman. Not long out of medical school.”

Max felt as if some great hand had wrapped around his chest and was slowly squeezing, because before the words were out of Jenner's mouth, he knew what they would be.

“Yep,” Jenner drawled, little lines of worry forming between his dark eyebrows, “word has it that Skye Donahue's finally coming back to Rimrock.”

S
kye rolled down the window of her '67 Ford Mustang, then scowled as the handle snapped off in her hand. “Some classic,” she muttered, tossing the broken piece of metal onto the passenger seat already filled with her medical textbooks, notes and a bag of half-eaten French fries from the McDonald's she'd driven through before leaving Portland.

She'd been in the car five hours and her muscles were beginning to cramp, but she wasn't tired. No, as the miles leading to Rimrock disappeared beneath the balding tires of her little car, she felt a growing edge of anticipation. Adrenaline clamped her fingers around the wheel while she tried to ignore the feeling that she was making the biggest mistake of her life—second biggest, she reminded herself. The first was falling in love with Max McKee. Clenching her teeth together, she shoved aside the little tug on her heart at the thought of him. She didn't have time for second thoughts about Max. She'd been young and foolish. She was lucky she'd forced herself to forgo listening to her heart and refused to marry him.

Max McKee may well have been her first love, but he certainly wasn't going to be her last! Not that she needed a man. Being an independent woman had its advantages. She never had to worry about disappointing anyone else in her life, and if there was a void—an emptiness that sometimes seemed impossible to fill—well, that was all part of the choices she'd made. She wasn't the type of woman to moan and cry about lost loves or missed opportunities.

From the carrier in the back seat, her cat, Kildare, let out an impatient cry.

“Not much farther,” Skye called over her shoulder. The cat, named for the doctor in Skye's mother's favorite medical show of all time, sent up another plaintive wail, but Skye ignored him and stared through her grimy windshield to the gorgeous Ochoco Mountains. The road edged the river as it cut a severe canyon through the towering hills topped with the stony red outcrop that had given the town of Rimrock its name.

The wind teased her hair and she rarely saw another car. She'd missed this—the solitude, the majestic stillness of the mountains, the peaceful quiet of the countryside—while she'd spent the past few years of her life in the frenetic pace of the city. Portland wasn't a large town compared with New York, Chicago or Seattle, but for a girl who had grown up in a community with a population of less than a thousand people corralled within the city limits, Portland had seemed immense, charged with an invisible current of electricity. The streets were a madhouse where drivers surged from one red light to the next, anxiously drumming fingers on steering wheels, smoking or chewing gum or growling under their breath about the traffic. Where the smell of exhaust fumes mingled with rainwater. Where night was as bright as day.

At first, she'd loved the city, the change of pace, the demands of medical school. In her few precious hours of free time, she'd explored every nook and cranny of the restless town, indulging in the nightlife, the theaters, the museums, the concerts in Waterfront Park. She'd learned, as a matter of self-preservation, to be suspicious of nearly everyone in the city, and yet she'd met some of the most honest and true friends of her life while studying to become a doctor.

And yet she was drawn back home.

“Home.” She mouthed the word and it felt good.

She hadn't been forced to return to the hills of eastern Oregon. She'd had options when she'd graduated and could have joined the staff of several hospitals in the Pacific Northwest, and another in Denver. Instead, after a year with Columbia Memorial, she'd decided to nose her little car due east and accept Doc Fletcher's offer to buy out his practice in Rimrock.

Her fingers began to sweat over the steering wheel and she snapped her mind closed to that particular thought. Max was married, and she, perhaps romantic to the point of being an idiot, believed in the sanctity of marriage. Although her father was no longer alive, her parents had shown her love, laughter, trust and commitment.

So Max McKee was off-limits. Good. Even if he was still single, she wouldn't have wanted him. She'd never met a more stubborn, arrogant man in all her life. A man just like his father. Her stomach turned over at the thought of Jonah McKee and she shoved his image out of her mind. She would have preferred a practice somewhere in eastern Oregon farther away from Max, but Doc Fletcher's unexpected visit to Portland and his offer had been too tempting to turn down.

“We need young, dedicated, talented people, Skye,” he'd said in his slow-moving drawl, his words punctuated by snowy white eyebrows that dipped and rose above the gold rims of his glasses. “But most young doctors aren't interested in a Podunk town so small you can drive through without blinking. So I thought you might want to come back home, be near your mother. I can offer you pretty good terms. Hell, I've made my money there, so I won't need a down payment on the business—and you're really just buying the practice. I lease the building, but there's an option to buy in a couple of years. We'll work out the contract so that you can pay me a balloon payment in five years....” He'd gone on and on, and though Skye had thought she'd turn him down flat, the deal had been too sweet to refuse. Fletcher had been right when he'd mentioned her mother. Irene Donahue, not yet sixty, wasn't in the best of health, and Skye did want to be close to her. In the end, Skye had agreed. She didn't regret her decision. The only hitch was Max.

As the road curved to accommodate the river and the mountains, she caught her first glimpse of Rimrock, little more than several blocks of buildings clustered around a single stoplight. She drove past the turnoff for the old copper mine and headed straight through the heart of town, past the small buildings, some ancient, some new, where afternoon shadows were slinking across the dusty asphalt streets.

On an impulse, she stopped at the Shady Grove Café, parked beneath an old oak tree and cracked open her windows before stepping onto the pockmarked asphalt of the lot. She set Kildare in his carrier in the shade of the tree, then walked to the twin glass doors of the old restaurant. An A-frame building with wings, the café had been through owners and names too numerous to remember.

Inside, the air conditioner rattled a noisy welcome. Several booths were occupied, but Skye didn't recognize anyone. The place smelled of stale coffee and cigarette smoke, while the deep fryer added its own special aroma. She slid into a booth near the window, and despite all the efforts of the air conditioner, the heat seeped through the glass and the clear, black plastic curtain that had been drawn to offer some shade.

A short waitress with a frizz of brown curls took Skye's order for a cola, then hustled, order pad and pencil in hand, to the next table. As it was the middle of the afternoon, the lunch crowd had dispersed and the dinner crowd hadn't yet arrived.

Within minutes, the waitress left a sweating glass of soda and a bill on the table before passing through swinging doors to the kitchen. Skye took a long swallow as she studied the menu that hadn't changed much in the past seven years. A bell tinkled and a gust of hot air whooshed into the room.

“I want chocolate and vanilla swirled together,” an impish voice commanded.

“Then that's what you'll have.”

Max!
She'd know his voice anywhere—it still haunted her dreams and played with those memories that she'd sworn to tuck away forever. She froze for a second, then quietly took a breath and glanced up. Their gazes collided, and if she hadn't known better, she would have sworn there was a tremor in the earth. Her heart kicked into double time as she looked at him, tall and lean as ever, wide shoulders hidden by a time-softened work shirt, his brown hair still streaked by the sun. Raw as the wind that swept through this part of the valley and rugged as the hills that surrounded the river, Max McKee generated a kind of sexual energy that should have been reserved for movie stars and professional athletes. His lips were thin, nearly cruel, and the spark in his eyes was as cold as a Blue Norther.

Skye could barely breathe. She reached for her drink, nearly toppling it over onto the table.

His large, work-roughened hand was clasped around the chubby fingers of a springy-haired girl of five or six. His
daughter.
An ageless pain ripped through Skye's soul as she stared, speechless, at man and child.

She was vaguely aware that the other patrons had turned their heads, drawn to the silent scene unfolding in front of the counter.

Max, as if suddenly aware that he was causing a stir, pulled on the little girl's hand and guided her toward the booth where Skye sat frozen. His features, already hard angles and planes, seemed to turn more grim, and his eyes, shaded by thick gold-brown brows, were the same piercing, angry sea green that she remembered.

He slid onto the bench of her booth and glared at her without a speck of joy. “I heard you were coming back,” he said without so much as a hello.

“Bad news travels fast.”

He snorted. “The big city lose its attraction?”

“Something like that.”

“Max, what'll it be?” The heavyset waitress appeared, pad and pencil ready, smile wide for the son of one of the richest men in the county.

“Coffee for me. A swirl cone for—”

“In a dish!” the child insisted.

“In a dish,” he repeated, “for Hillary.”

Hillary.
A beautiful name for a pretty little girl.

“That's it?” the waitress—her name tag read Sarah—asked, smiling broadly, almost flirting with Max.

“That's it.”

Sarah scooted away, leaving a yawning silence. Skye fiddled with her glass but managed what she hoped seemed like a genuine smile. “So, you're Hillary,” she said, turning her attention to the curly-haired sprite who was playing with the salt-and-pepper shakers.

“Who're you?” the imp asked.

“This is Skye...Donahue?” he asked, then glanced pointedly at her ringless left hand. “Dr. Donahue.”

Skye lifted a shoulder. “You can call me—”

“Dr. Donahue,” Max cut in.

“You can't be a doctor,” Hillary said, her little brow puckering in concentration.

“Why not?”

“You're a girl.”

“A woman,” her father corrected as his eyes locked with Skye's for an instant. Skye felt her pulse pounding in her throat. A tickle of a memory, of a dewy field and wild flowers, of sunshine and laughter, of kisses and cold wine, touched at her mind, but she shoved it steadfastly away. She would not,
would not,
remember all those rose-colored memories of her first love with the man bold enough to seat himself squarely across from her. The man who had turned out to be as ruthless as his father.

“That's right,” Skye said, forcing herself to concentrate on the conversation, “but just because I'm a woman—or you're a girl—doesn't mean you can't do anything you want to.”

“I don't want to be a doctor.” Hillary wrinkled her nose at the prospect and grabbed her spoon. “I hate shots!”

Skye couldn't help but smile. “What do you want to be?”

“A bride!”

Skye's throat turned to sand. “A...a bride. Well, I suppose you can do that, but—”

“But you might want to have a backup plan, just in case things don't go the way you think they will,” Max said to his daughter, though the words, spoken so coldly, could only have been meant for Skye.

Sarah brought Max his coffee and his daughter a towering dish of already-melting soft ice cream. Hillary, rather than accept a booster chair, knelt instead and, half-bouncing on the plastic-covered seat of the booth, dug into the sweet confection.

Stretching a jean-clad leg out to the side of the booth, Max said, “It surprises me—you coming back here. I thought you couldn't stand the sight of this place.”

“It was time.”

“Why?”

She bristled a little, then decided not to let her temper get the better of her. “Family. And Doc Fletcher's offer. It was hard to pass up.”

He looked about to say something, but changed his mind and picked up his cup. “Not as much money as you could make in the city.”

“There are some trade-offs.”

“Are there?” He took a long swallow from his cup, and Skye tried not to stare at the movement in his throat. But she couldn't help feel the weight of his gaze and was suddenly more nervous than she had been in years. “You know, Skye, there are lots of small towns all along the west coast, towns that need medical professionals. You didn't have to come back to Rimrock.”

Her temper started to rise. “I chose to, Max.”

“And why's that?”

“My family's here.”

“They've been here for the past seven years.”

“Doc Fletcher offered to sell out.”

Max smiled slightly as if he knew something she didn't. “He's been lookin' for a partner for a long time.”

“But I wasn't ready.”

“There must be more of a reason, Skye,” he said, and for the first time she saw a spark of amusement in his eyes. He was baiting her and she knew it.

“Don't make more of it than it is, Max.” She finished her drink, left a bill on the table, and when he began to protest, she cut him with a quick, scathing look that had kept more than one randy resident at bay. “Look, Max, I heard about your dad...I'm sorry.”

“Are you?” His eyes narrowed up at her, challenging her.

Standing, she bit back the hot retort on her tongue. “Goodbye, Hillary, it was nice meeting you,” she said, managing a tight smile for Max's daughter.