The Cowboy (5 page)

Callie felt the weight of blame on her shoulders. The four fillies had been born and raised at Three Oaks. She had meant to have them freeze-branded, which allowed the hair to grow back in a lighter color instead of leaving a scar. But over the past hectic year since Nolan had died, so many things that weren’t absolutely necessary had fallen through the cracks. And she had believed, with good reason, that the fillies were safe from thieves.

Three Oaks was a virtual island, 65,000 acres of rich Creed grassland completely surrounded by 745,000 acres of fenced Blackthorne property. There were plenty of roads crisscrossing Three Oaks, but there was only one way in or out, a single easement that wound across Bitter Creek Ranch, through at least a dozen gates, to the world beyond. Callie had made the terrible mistake of assuming no horse thief would dare to steal livestock from Three Oaks, when he could be so easily apprehended on the way in or out.

Her father must have had the same idea, because his eyes narrowed as he said, “The only person who could get a horse trailer in or out of here without being detected is someone able to move freely over Blackthorne land. I may not be able to pin this on your father, but I know he’s responsible.”

“My father doesn’t need four more horses,” Owen said.

Callie could see her father was incensed by Owen’s implication that what was everything to the Creeds was a pittance to the Blackthornes.

“Blackjack has been trying to force me into selling Three Oaks ever since I stole the woman he loved from under his nose,” her father snarled. “He can try every dirty trick in the book, but I’ll never let him break me. I’ll give this place to charity before I’ll sign it over to him!”

“Are you accusing my father of stealing your stock?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time one of you Blackthornes hit below the belt!”

Owen’s body visibly tautened at the jibe. He opened his mouth to speak, then clamped his jaw tight without replying. Callie knew there were no words to defend what he’d done. Too many people had seen the cheap shot he’d taken on the football field that had put Sam in a wheelchair.

She remembered how miserable—and defiant—Owen had looked as he walked down the hall at the hospital and stood before her father, chin up, shoulders squared, to apologize.

“It was an accident, Mr. Creed,” he’d said. “I’m really sorry.”

“Sorry won’t bring my boy’s legs back!” her father had shot back.

“If there’s anything I can do to help—”

“You can keep your Blackthorne charity!” her father had shouted. “And get the hell out of here!”

The one time Owen had come to the house after Sam was home from the hospital, her father had met him at the kitchen door with a double-pump shotgun. Now her father was being asked to put his trust in a man he despised.

“Why the hell did you come here, if you don’t intend to help?” her father demanded.

“I’m here to do my job,” Owen said.

“Get off my property. Get out! Go!”

Owen stood his ground. “I’m not through—”

“I sure as hell am!”

Callie saw that her father intended to shove the Texas Ranger out of his way as he stomped past him, but Owen deftly stepped aside, and the two avoided coming to physical blows.

Callie tugged her Stetson down low on her forehead, aware as she did so that her hand was shaking. She stuck her hands in the back pockets of her Levi’s to hide her agitation, eyed Owen ruefully from beneath the brim of her hat, and ventured, “That went pretty well, all things considered.”

Owen, who had the tall, lanky look of all the Blackthorne men, along with a shock of black hair and piercing gray eyes, shook his head and chuffed out a laugh. “I figure it’s a good day when no shots are fired.”

Callie caught herself smiling but sobered as the enormity of the loss struck her with renewed force. “Are you sure there isn’t any way to trace those four fillies without
a brand?” she asked. “Freckles Fancy has such a distinctive blaze. Surely you could send out a description that would get her recognized.”

Owen sighed and resettled his hat. “There are a hundred thousand horses in Texas with distinctive blazes. My suggestion is to brand what you have left that hasn’t been branded. It won’t prevent theft, but it’ll give us a better chance of recovering your stock if this ever happens again.”

Callie lifted her gaze to meet Owen’s. “You think this might happen again?”

“Face it, Callie. You made yourself an easy mark. If you don’t do something to improve the situation, what’s to keep the thieves from coming back to help themselves again?”

“I can’t figure out how they managed to get in and out without getting caught the first time,” Callie replied. “Unless they had the kind of help my father suggested.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think my family had anything to do with this.”

“You did it all right!” a childish voice behind Owen accused.

Owen stepped aside as Callie’s ten-year-old son Eli took an angry step forward. The boy glared at Owen, his hands clenched at his sides. Callie drew a sharp breath, wondering if Owen would see the resemblance, so obvious to her, between her son and Owen’s brother Trace.

Eli was tall for his age but rail thin, with narrow shoulders and big feet he had yet to grow into. His eyes were the same sky blue as her own, but his sharp cheekbones and square jaw and slash of mouth were all Blackthorne.

Callie had been careful over the years to ensure that Eli
did not cross paths with any Blackthornes. She had convinced her family that Nolan Monroe was Eli’s father with the story that they had slept together when she was home from college for the long Christmas holiday. But Owen knew about her relationship with Trace.

Callie held her breath as Owen surveyed the boy from top to toe, expecting him to ask why she’d kept Trace’s son a secret from him. Owen merely observed, “A man can cause a lot of harm making accusations without proof.”

“You’re a Blackthorne. That’s all the proof I need!” Eli retorted.

“Eli! Apologize to Mr. Blackthorne.”

“I won’t!”

“I’m sorry, Owen,” Callie said. “Ever since Nolan died—” Callie felt the sting in her nose that warned of tears. She closed her eyes to hold them back, but there was nothing she could do to stop the quiver in her chin. The thickness in her throat made it painful to swallow.

Every time she thought she was over Nolan’s death, something like this would happen to remind her how much she missed him. Nolan had not been her first love, but she had grown to love him. And he was the only father Eli had ever known.

Callie opened her eyes in time to see the stricken look on Eli’s face before he glowered at Owen and said, “This is all your fault!”

Callie understood her son’s behavior. Eli had been mad at the world since his father’s death, and the Blackthornes made a convenient target for his anger. But there was no way the Blackthornes could be blamed for Nolan’s death from colon cancer. “Go back to the house, Eli.”

“Gram says to tell you breakfast is on the table,” Eli said. “You’re not invited,” he spat at Owen.

“Eli!” Callie said, appalled at her son’s rudeness.

“No Blackthorne is ever gonna sit at our table, Mom. Grampa says they’re all lying, cheating—”

“That’s enough!” Callie said, cutting off her son. “Go back to the house. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve finished here.”

Her son shot a look of disdain in Owen’s direction, then turned and stalked away.

“Lot of hate in that kid,” Owen murmured. He turned and sought her gaze. “Kind of hoped you’d be the one to put an end to that.”

Well, he hadn’t forgotten she’d once loved a Blackthorne. Owen had discovered her relationship with Trace during his sophomore year at Texas A&M University in College Station, when he and his twin brother Clay had driven down to Austin one weekend to visit Trace and caught Callie in his bedroom.

“I’ve done my best to convince Eli the Blackthornes aren’t the devil in disguise,” she said. “But it hasn’t been easy when his grandfather blames all his troubles on your father.”

“Even when the accusations aren’t justified,” Owen pointed out.

“Don’t defend Blackjack to me,” Callie retorted. “Your father has done enough harm over the years to warrant the black name he bears, and my brother lives in a wheelchair because of you!”

Owen’s gray eyes flared with anger. And pain. It was the pain that made her wish back the words she’d spoken. But it was too late for that.

“How is Sam?” Owen asked at last.

He’s an embittered, antisocial alcoholic
.

Callie held her tongue. They wouldn’t be making a TV movie-of-the-week anytime soon featuring Sam Creed coping nobly with his paralysis. Sam had railed violently and vehemently against his fate ever since he’d woken up in the hospital and learned he would never walk again. But she would never betray her brother’s shortcomings to anyone outside the family. Especially not to the man who had made Sam so much less than he could have been.

“Sorry I asked,” Owen muttered when she didn’t answer.

Owen had already turned to leave when she said, “Sam’s become something of a computer whiz. He keeps himself busy doing the ranch paperwork.”
When he’s sober
.

Owen managed a smile over his shoulder. “I’m glad to hear it. I’ll call you if I get any word on your stolen stock.”

Callie spent the time it took her to walk the distance from the horse barn to the ranch house trying to regain some measure of inner calm. It was a losing battle.

The official visit from Owen Blackthorne had brought the past barreling back, and all her fears along with it. Callie had managed to avoid Trace Blackthorne during the three months he’d been back at Bitter Creek, but if he stayed around, it was inevitable that she would meet him again face-to-face. How would he look at her? What could she say to him?

Callie knew she had hurt Trace when she married Nolan, but she hadn’t known what else to do. If she had remained single, it was too likely Trace would have
figured out Eli was his son. As badly as Sam had coped with his paralysis, marrying Trace had been out of the question. And she had refused to take the chance that Trace would settle for having Eli, if he couldn’t have them both.

She had made a good life with Nolan Monroe. She’d learned to love Nolan for his kindness and his gentleness and his unwavering support. But she’d missed the passion she’d shared with Trace. Nolan Monroe was not the other half of her soul.

On his deathbed, Nolan had urged her to tell Trace about his son, but Callie had been careful never to promise she would. She was afraid of what Trace might do if he ever found out the truth. What if he wanted custody of his son? In this part of Texas, the Blackthornes generally got what they wanted. She would never give up her son. And she could never marry his father. So what choice did she have but to keep Eli a secret from Trace?

“ ’Bout time you showed up,” her father said as she crossed the wooden back porch and shoved open the screen door. The hardwood floor creaked as she stepped inside the kitchen to be greeted by the smell of bacon and strong, black coffee. The house was old, and had become more decrepit in the years since Sam’s accident, when they’d been so pinched for cash. But Callie loved every curling piece of flowered wallpaper, every water-stained ceiling, and every warped floorboard of it.

The original Three Oaks, built even before the days of the Texas Republic, had been a cotton plantation along the Brazos River, but the Southern mansion where the first Creed ancestors were born and had died had burned down during the Civil War. Southern Major Jacob Tyler Creed
had built a new house similar to the first Three Oaks but much farther south, on the small bit of land along Bitter Creek that was all he had left after a man who called himself, “Blackthorne, without the mister,” had stolen his inheritance.

The two-story antebellum mansion where Callie had been born, with its tall columns across the face and porch on the second floor, was situated near a stand of live oaks that provided wonderful shade in the summer. The kitchen was large enough to accommodate an immense trestle table, which was filled now with her family.

“Is that sonofabitch gone?” Sam demanded when he spotted her.

Callie shot Sam a reproving look, the reason for which became apparent when her four-year-old daughter Hannah parroted, “Is that sun-bitch gone?”

Callie crossed and lifted Hannah out of her brother’s lap. She glared at him over Hannah’s head, noting his brown eyes were bloodshot before he guiltily dropped his glance. “Yes, he’s gone,” she said as she settled her daughter into the youth chair next to Sam’s wheelchair.

“Would you bring some more butter to the table?” her mother asked.

Callie watched as Eli crawled up onto one knee in his chair and stretched across the length of the table for another biscuit. She tugged his ear to get his attention as she passed by on her way to the refrigerator. “Ask Gram to please pass the biscuits,” she instructed.

Eli dropped back into his seat with a sullen look and said, “Pass the biscuits, Gram.”

“
Please
pass the biscuits, Gram,” Callie corrected. She stood by the refrigerator door, her eyes focused on
her son, noting the mutinous thrust of his chin, wishing Nolan were here, knowing that Eli was testing her. His behavior had become increasingly defiant during the last months of Nolan’s illness. Since Nolan’s death, he had become nearly incorrigible. She kept hoping that if she were patient, yet persistent in demanding courtesy, his attitude would improve.

“Stop nagging the boy,” her father said. And in the same breath to Eli, “Do what your mother says.”

“
Please, please, please
pass the biscuits,” her son said in an aggrieved voice.

“For cripe’s sake, take them!”

Callie groaned in disbelief as her teenage brother Luke lobbed the basket of biscuits across the table into her son’s outstretched hands.

Callie crossed back to the table with a stick of butter, unwrapped it, and dropped it into the chipped saucer they were using for a butter dish, before she settled into the chair next to her daughter.