Calder Pride (18 page)

It was an hour’s drive from the Triple C headquarters to the Shamrock Ranch. Far from being relaxed by it, Cat was wound in an even tighter ball of nerves by the time she reached the ranch lane.

When she pulled into the ranch yard itself, Cat was stunned to see a Chevy truck parked near the house. Culley never had visitors. Briefly she wondered if he had bought a new pickup, then she saw the old one by the barn.

Puzzled, Cat headed for the house. A few feet from the screen door, she caught the muffled voices coming from within, one she recognized definitely as Culley’s. She climbed the steps to the covered front porch and went inside.

The instant the door swung shut behind her, all conversation in the house ceased. “Who’s that?” Culley barked from the kitchen, his voice sharp with suspicion.

“It’s me, Uncle Culley.” She crossed to the kitchen doorway, her glance going first to her uncle, seated at one end of the table facing the door, then to the man next to him.

Smoke-gray eyes locked with hers, holding her completely motionless. Gone was the uniform of Logan Echohawk. He was dressed once again in the clothes of the man she had called Dakota.

Cat stiffened, blocking the swift rise of memories. She had locked the door to the past; she had no desire to open it.

“I didn’t figure on you coming over here tonight, Cat,” Culley said. “I was just sitting here talking to Logan. I guess you haven’t had a chance to meet—”

She cut him off. “I know who Mr. Echohawk is.”

“Hello, Cat.” He pushed the coffee cup away and leaned back in his chair with negligent ease, tipping his head back in a way that forcibly reminded her of Quint.

“What are you doing here?” Cat demanded, nerves taut.

“I had some business to discuss with your uncle.”

In her mind, there was only one kind of business a law officer could have. “What do you want with him? Uncle Culley hasn’t done anything wrong.” She was instantly furious and on the defensive. “I know people around here may have said some things about him, but they aren’t true. He’s never hurt anybody—”

“I don’t think you understand,” Logan interrupted smoothly.

The strain on her nerves was too much. She broke under it, her control shattering, unleashing a temper she had long held in check. “No, you don’t understand! I want you to leave my uncle alone. If you have any questions for him, you can talk to his lawyer. But you stay away for him!”

“Cat, you’ve got this wrong.” Culley frowned at her.

“It’s okay, Culley,” Logan told him, casually rising to his feet. “We’ll iron out the details another time. Thanks for the coffee.”

His calmness infuriated Cat even more. She trembled with anger and a dozen other emotions she refused to acknowledge. He walked from the room at an unhurried pace, his wide shoulders briefly filling the doorway.

“What the hell was that all about?” Culley wanted to know.

The door hinge creaked. He was leaving. But he planned to come back. He had indicated as much in
his parting remark to Culley. She couldn’t let that happen. She was too afraid of the questions he might ask—and the answers he might get. Answers that could turn her world upside down.

She caught up with him halfway to his truck. He swept her with one cool, swift glance and continued without a check in his stride. “If you’ve come to apologize, consider it accepted.” The golden glow of the setting sun washed over his profile, deepening the bronze cast of his skin and accenting all its bold angles.

“I didn’t come to apologize,” Cat informed him, the heat still in her voice. “I came to tell you I meant what I said inside. Don’t you come around here again and bother my uncle. You stay away from him and you stay away from my family.”

His steps slowed. “Is that a threat?”

“Take it any way you want. Just stay away from them.”

He came to a stop, angling his body toward her, his eyes coolly critical. “I was told the Calders are arrogant and high-handed, quick to use their weight to crush any opposition.”

“Not quick to use it, but ready to,” Cat replied, a defiant tilt to her chin.

He moved perceptibly closer. “I’ll tell you this once—and only once—don’t try it with me.” The coldness in his gray eyes told her as clearly as his words that he wasn’t the kind of a man to back down. A little shiver of gladness danced through her, which she quickly checked. “Do we understand each other?”

“Perfectly. As long as you stay away from me and my family, we’ll get along fine.”

“Believe me,” he said in an equally caustic voice, “beyond acquiring grazing rights from your uncle, I have no interest in your family or you.”

“Grazing rights?” Cat blinked in surprise.

“It so happens that is what O’Rourke and I were discussing when you arrived.”

“But…what would you want with the grazing rights on Shamrock?”

“The same thing any other rancher would want.”

“But you’re—”

“—a deputy sheriff,” he supplied the title. “Currently I’m also serving as acting sheriff while Blackmore is recovering from surgery. It’s a job with a steady income. Nowadays, small ranches aren’t all that profitable.”

Somewhere along the line, the anger had left him, but the growling need that replaced it was just as strong. Almost reluctantly he watched the play of expressions over her face, his glance drawn to her lips, the memory of their taste and texture returning to tempt him all over again.

“You’re thinking about buying a ranch here.” Cat recalled he had mentioned getting into ranching again on that long-ago night in Fort Worth.

“I already have.”

“What?” She looked at him.

“I bought the Circle Six.” A dry smile edged his mouth. “I guess that makes us neighbors, doesn’t it?”

“No.” Cat swung away, struck by the certain eventuality that one day he would meet up with Quint.

“It’s a pity you can’t pick your neighbors, isn’t it?” Logan said mockingly. Her hair gleamed a glossy black in the sun’s waning light. To his regret, he remembered the silken feel of it tangled in his hands.

She turned back to him in obvious agitation. “You had hundreds of places you could have gone. Why did you come here? Why?”

“I wasn’t searching for you, if that’s what you
think. Sorry, but you weren’t that unforgettable.”

Had she thought that? Cat realized she must have, because it stung to know she had played no part in his decision. “Then why did you come here?”

“Because I happen to like it.”

“But it isn’t always like this,” she argued. “The winters here can be brutal.”

“You forget I’m originally from the Dakotas. The winters here aren’t that much different.”

Frustration pushed at her. “What do I have to do to make you leave?”

His smile turned lazy and taunting. “What are you offering? A repeat performance of our night in Fort Worth?”

Furious, she struck out at him, her hand arcing toward a lean cheek. He blocked it, his fingers clamping around her slender wrist. With a jerk, he pulled her against him, molding her to his length. The contact with his flatly muscled body snatched at her breath and stirred alive all the old needs that had once driven Cat into his arms. His head tipped toward her, his face filling her vision, the moist heat of his breath warming her lips. She felt hot, the closeness of him leaving her in no doubt that he was as aroused as she was. Could she use that?

The question had barely crossed her mind when Logan killed that hope. “Pleasurable as it would be to take you again, Cat, it wouldn’t work,” he murmured, his gaze traveling over her face. “I’m here to stay. Get used to it.”

That was impossible, and Cat knew it. “I’ll buy your ranch. Whatever you had to pay for it, I’ll give you more,” she offered in desperation, for the first time truly thankful for the trust fund her mother had established.

He chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Money and pressure—I was told those were two ways the
Calders dealt with a problem. I can’t be bought, Cat. And don’t try pressuring me, because I’ll push back. Hard.”

He released her with a short, abrupt shove and walked away. A camp jay swooped across his path, aiming for a thickly needled pine tree. With a sharp cry of alarm, it suddenly veered from its path. Alerted by its call, Logan snapped a glance at the site. A dark figure lurked in the tree’s deep shadows.

The discovery of the man was a cold shock to his senses, proof of how completely he had been absorbed by Cat. That it was only O’Rourke mattered little. The man had gotten behind him, unseen and unheard. No one knew better than Logan the potential danger of such a lapse in his guard. The skin along the back of his neck crawled from the thought of it. Yanking open the door to his truck, Logan cursed her, and he cursed himself.

Culley waited until the pickup had started down the lane before he soundlessly moved out of the tree’s shadows. His gaze followed the departing truck with quiet speculation, his mind turning over the things Logan had said against the Calders.

He came up behind Cat, catching her unaware. “Are you okay?”

She turned with a start, then relaxed visibly. “Uncle Culley. I didn’t hear you come out.”

He could have told her the front door squeaked, but the back door didn’t. Instead he asked, “What was that all about with Echohawk?”

“Nothing.” She stared after the truck, absently massaging her right wrist.

Culley took note of the action, his eyes narrowing. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, I—” She threw off that question and came straight to the point. “He said he was here to lease Shamrock grazing rights. Is that true?”

“We were talking about it.” Culley nodded. “Running stock is young man’s work. I’m getting too old for it.”

“I don’t want you to sell him those rights, Uncle Culley. Not for any price.” She wore a determined look that he knew well.

“What’d he do to you?”

“Nothing.”

He didn’t buy that. “It’s plain enough you got something against him. You lit into him from the moment you walked in the door. You must have had a run-in with him before. I don’t think it was around here.” Culley didn’t mention the comment he’d overheard about Fort Worth. That was for Cat to tell him.

She released a long, tension-filled sigh, her head dipping a little. “Logan Echohawk is Quint’s father.” There was no one else she would have trusted with that knowledge.

“The eyes,” he murmured. “I should have seen it.”

“What will happen when he sees Quint? Will he notice the similarities? Will he care that he has a son? Will he demand a father’s rights, or will he use Quint to get his hands on the Calder fortune?”

Culley tipped his chin to one side in a denying fashion. “I got the impression he doesn’t think too much of the Calders.”

“Nobody does when they’re on the outside looking in,” Cat replied with heavy cynicism.

“Logan didn’t strike me as the kind who talks outa both sides of his mouth.”

“Maybe he isn’t. He certainly seems determined to stay here,” she said, then sighed again. “I don’t know what to do, Uncle Culley. I feel like there’s a sword hanging over my head, and the rope holding it is fraying.”

Advice had never been his strong suit. But he had a willing ear. “Sometimes just talking it all out makes it all clearer.”

Cat shook her head. “I don’t see how.”

“Well…what’s the worst that could happen?”

“That’s easy.” Wryness tugged at her mouth. “For my father to find out who he is. Dad would insist that I marry him, as if that would somehow legitimize Quint’s birth.”

“And you don’t want to marry him,” Culley guessed.

“Repp is the only man I ever wanted to marry. With him gone—I couldn’t love anyone else.” Even as she said that, she went hot with the memory of how readily her body had reacted to Logan. It was an animal thing. It had nothing to do with her heart.

“Marrying him would give the kid a father, though.”

“Quint doesn’t need one. He has Ty and my father. He couldn’t have better role models.”

Not to Culley’s way of thinking, but he refrained from saying that. “It strikes me if that’s the worst that can happen, you don’t have much of a problem. If Calder tries to make you marry him, you can just take the kid and leave, come over here and stay with me until you can make him see reason.”

“I hate to think of that,” she murmured. “Quint won’t understand all the quarreling and shouting, people making him a battleground. The Triple C is his home, his heritage. I want him to grow up there, loving it as much as I do. There has to be some way I can protect him from all this, but I don’t know how.”

“It would be confusing to a kid,” Culley agreed absently, distracted by other thoughts her remarks had triggered.

She glanced to the west where the sun sat half below the horizon in a golden fire. “If I’m going to
be home in time to tuck him into bed, I’d better be going.

“Are you sure? I got some cookies in the house.”

“Maybe another time.” She reached for his hand and watched him turn self-conscious. Touching always came awkward to him. “I’m sorry for unloading all my troubles on you tonight. I guess I needed someone to talk to, and there isn’t anyone else I can trust as I do you.”

“If you need me, you let me know.”

“I will,” Cat promised, her smile warming. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here, Uncle Culley.”

It was the same thought that was on his mind, but he said nothing as she brushed a kiss across his cheek, then walked away with a quick wave. He stood there while she climbed into the Blazer and drove out of the yard.

After she was out of sight, he waited there a little longer, then crossed the ranch yard to the pole corral. A halter with an attached lead rope hung on a near post. Culley gathered it up and slipped between the corral rails. A scrawny bay gelding snorted in quick suspicion and turned his head to eye him warily. The horse waited until Culley was almost to him, then flung up his head in a halfhearted attempt to elude capture.

Culley grabbed a handful of scraggly mane. “Whoa there, you old buzzard bait.” The horse stopped, snorting again, and Culley slipped the halter on with practiced ease. “You and me’s got us some nighthawking to do. It’s for sure I ain’t gonna be around forever to look after Cat.”