Conall's Legacy (5 page)

Yes, she understood the terror that could drive a person to seek solace--solace of any kind. However, she couldn’t take on any more. Especially a pain she didn’t understand.

#

Mallet met metal with a reverberating ring. The vibration of the contact traveled through Drake’s forearm to his shoulder. He wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his gloved fist. Cool air whispered across his skin and evaporated the drops that gathered. With each crash his fury grew. Faces and names skimmed across his mind like a slow motion video with each fall of the mallet.

Conall came first, his laughing Irish eyes, clear and unbelievably green. The face soon became hidden by the lid of a coffin. Next came the beautiful and brave, red-haired Rebecca. Conall’s wife left behind to care for the boys, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And of course, Rachael, born after her father’s death. Conall had tried to talk his wife out of the Biblical names, saying it was too pretentious, but Rebecca had insisted. It was respectful, she’d said, knowing God would watch out for them and their children if they were devout.

Drake thought of what their God had done to them. Just the opposite of what she’d expected. He groaned, the sound breaking as it fought the tightness of his throat, threatening to choke him.

“Damn you.”
Whack
. “How could you--”
Whack
. “Take him--”
Whack
. “Instead of me?”
Whack
!

He threw the metal piece to the ground and grabbed another. His chest tightened. The muscles in his jaw twitched as he slammed the mallet against iron once again. The nightmare he’d lived with for twelve months flashed in his mind. The explosion, Conall running into the building from the alley with a wooden shaft imbedded in his chest. The image of his best friend dying in his arms.

A villain emerged from the clearing smoke. The face was that of the bomber, arrested and convicted of setting a revenge bomb in their favorite pub and killing a police officer. Drake spat in the dirt. Hell, the bastard hadn’t even gotten the cop who’d arrested him in the first place. The image blurred and when it cleared, Drake saw his own face as that of the villain.

He hit the metal hard enough to send a stabbing pain zinging through his wrist. The mallet dropped from his useless, unfeeling fingers and landed in the dirt at his feet. He backed away and sank onto a bale of hay.

Why didn’t you leave a decent man like Conall here to care for his family? To watch his children grow, marry, and have children of their own? Why didn’t you take me?

Drake cried out, but got no answers from the now still night.

A silent, solitary tear slid down his cheek and dropped onto his bare chest to mingle with the sweat that failed to cleanse his soul. Drake knew nothing would ever cleanse him of the guilt he felt. His young friend had died to save him.

“Conman, why’d you do it?” Drake whispered desperately. “You had so much more to lose than I did.” Drake shook his head. “I don’t understand. I miss you so much.” He nearly choked on the words. “I’m so sorry.”

Drake lowered his chin to his chest and covered his face with his hands, cursed the malevolent twist of fate, and wept for the first time.

CHAPTER FIVE

Luisa stepped from her porch, coffee in hand, and gazed toward the bunkhouse. Quiet surrounded it and settled in like ghosts from the past. No one stirred. Drake Forrester had dematerialized. She hadn’t shared a word with him in three days.

The mid-afternoon heat coerced Luisa into tossing the last of the warm coffee dregs onto the dirt. With a glance at the bunkhouse, she returned to the kitchen in search of iced tea.

She thought of the dark stranger again. A vision of his body sprawled across a carelessly made bed drifted through her mind. What did he sleep in? Weren’t men his age famous for sleeping in...?

Heat raced across Luisa’s cheeks clear to the tips of her tingling ears. What on earth possessed her to think of Drake like that? It isn’t right to think of someone in that way when you barely know them, she thought. Luisa did not intend to get involved with a stranger, especially one from Los Angeles who appeared to have problems the size of the San Andreas Fault. She refused to settle for just anyone in order to have a man on the ranch again.

This was Cindy’s doing. Her friend had put these ridiculous ideas in Luisa’s head. I’m better off with my computer than a sleep-all-day kind of man, she thought. Luisa walked to her office and sat down in front of the blank monitor. Setting her tea aside, she began to write. The keys clicked as her fingers sped nimbly over them. In a short time, she’d hammered out a scene for her children’s angel series. Luisa leaned back to read what she’d written. She skimmed the lines expecting humor, warmth, and love to radiate from the pages.

She frowned at the screen. The hapless little angel in the scene shifted from a sweet, gentle, disaster-waiting-to-happen to a dark, mysterious, fire-breathing brat. An evil dragon, to be exact. Instead of teaching lessons of patience and compassion, the story evoked self-centered egotism with a very short fuse. Drake came to mind--hot temper hidden behind his eyes. A deep sigh blew between Luisa’s lips as she thrummed her fingers on the desktop.

She glanced at Rooster, curled and half asleep at her feet. He peeked at her from one eye and his tail twitched in anticipation, apparently understanding she needed a break.

“This is a waste of time. I haven’t written two decent sentences since that man came on the property.”

A second disgusted sigh slipped from her as she thought about shutting off the computer without saving the new material. Her hand poised above the keyboard, she hesitated. Perhaps this nasty tempered little dragon could teach children lessons on the flip side of her angel stories. Luisa hit the save key, then shoved back from the desk and whistled for Rooster. She’d have to think about the new characters on her ranch--first Drake Forrester, and then the new dragon in her computer. The faces of both intermingled and became difficult to distinguish.

Luisa stomped into the kitchen, grabbed a canteen of water, and slipped it into a carrier for her belt. Rooster trembled from head to tail. She sat down to pull on her hiking boots, but had to push his eager face and licking tongue away to finish.

Time to recharge her batteries, to refocus her thoughts and energy on her work. Drake Forrester could darn well take care of himself. He wasn’t her responsibility. So what if he slept the days away and didn’t speak to her? Who cared? Not Luisa.

Snagging her walking stick from behind the door, she headed across the yard toward the back gate. A small break created an entrance to the mesquite, and she slipped into it, Rooster running ahead on the well-worn path.

#

Drake watched as Luisa melted into the thick trees and brush. Her stride held purpose, and a determination he hadn’t witnessed before. Weren’t there wild animals out there? Snakes? The worry for another human flitted across his police-trained mind before he pushed it aside.

She had uncommon strength. But then why should that be surprising? Luisa Montoya was not an ordinary woman. Like the situation or not, he respected her for living as she chose. Most women would be terrified of being the only human on 30,000 acres of wild desert.

The manager at the BLM had told him about the local ranchers losing the titles to their places so the government could create a preserve. She’d become a renter with a landlord instead of a landowner. Even though the ranch was way too isolated to suit him, he still recognized the rugged beauty here, and the oneness that developed between man, or woman, and nature. A flicker of pain around his heart hinted at what she and her family must have experienced when they lost land that he suspected had been in the family for generations.

Drake shook his head in disgust. The place was turning him into a wimp--a tree hugger, no less. He desperately needed to get back to Los Angeles and the things he understood: crime, pollution, concrete, and traffic. Those he could deal with. At least I used to be able to deal with them, he thought. He shook his head. His plan did
not
include a gorgeous, dark-haired beauty overflowing with independence.

As soon as Rick believed he was fit for duty, Drake would head west. Back to where he belonged.

#

The trail Luisa followed wound lazily along the river. Rooster launched off the bank, landing with a
splat
that sent birds winging into the sky. Luisa dropped onto her favorite boulder to watch as he splashed and played, snapping at the water.

She brought the image of her tiny angel character to mind, but the fire-breathing devil forced it away. The thing had eyes the color of a blued-steel gun barrel. Eyes that darkened in temper--darkened with each pound of the mallet against scrap iron.

What demons drove Drake? She wondered what he did for a living. Most of the time he stood like a cop or an FBI agent at parade rest with his knees locked and his back rigid. She shook her head when she thought of his sculptures. An artist he wasn’t. That thing in his shed was a pile of mangled junk.

She pictured Drake and tried to figure out what had trapped him. Why do the wounded always drop into my lap? she thought. Why do I always take them in?

Drake’s wound wasn’t physical, but was soul-deep instead. What caused him so much pain? she wondered. His twisted metal sculpture looked like a bleeding heart contorted in never-ending pain. She knew she shouldn’t have, but she had not been able to resist peeking into the shed. She would be furious if anyone poked their nose into one of her unfinished books. It was hard to resist looking for a clue to his pain, though. If he had caught her at it, she would have asked for forgiveness not permission.

Luisa rose and dusted off the seat of her pants. Curiosity was her downfall. She’d gotten into more than one jam because of it. What he did for a living didn’t matter. She had to get through the next few weeks until he left her in peace, and normalcy returned.

A horse’s trumpeting scream shattered her afternoon. Her heart tumbled to the bottom of her chest. The shriek came again--Royal Knight. Rooster charged out of the water and bolted into the brush. Luisa grabbed her things and ran after him, dodging through the mesquite, and taking a straight line to the barn. Thorns caught and tore her skin and jerked patches of cloth from her shirt.

A prayer ran through her mind, the words keeping time with her steps. Something terrified her animals, and she knew instinctively she’d need help to make things right.

She swung around the last corner of the barn holding the walking stick like a weapon. Kicking and snorting ricocheted off the walls. Luisa scanned the aisle expecting to find a javelina or mountain lion terrifying the horse. She didn’t see a thing. She hurried down the aisle to Knight’s stall.

“Whoa, Knight. What the devil’s gotten into you?”

A quick look into his stall revealed nothing. Her hair had swung loose, and she pushed it behind her ears. Luisa sagged against the door and sucked air into her gasping lungs.

“You scared me half to death. What’s the matter?”

Knight continued to pace and whinny. He charged to the back of his stall and dug in the dirt as though trying to get through the wall to the pen beyond. Dirt billowed around him, clumps flying up and over his door.

“Knight, settle--oh, no!”

She ran from the building and skidded around the corner. Luisa hurried toward the corral. Sweaty lather covered Queen of Knights where she lay curled on the ground. The mare rolled onto her side, moaned, then rolled back onto her belly. She gently nipped at her pulsing side.

“Queenie, you’re not due for two weeks. Blast.”

Luisa grabbed a halter from the fence post and went to the mare’s head. “Easy girl. Easy pretty baby,” she crooned, sliding the leather over Queenie’s head. “Come on, up you go. We need to go inside.” She tugged on the lead, but the mare groaned and lay back in the dirt. “Come on, girl.”

She pulled harder, but it didn’t work. “Get her up, Rooster,” she snapped. He ran to the mare’s hip and nipped at her, then barked. The mare lumbered clumsily to her feet. Luisa led her to an inside stall with the dog following to keep her moving. She quickly broke open a bale of straw and spread it over the dirt floor.

Queenie dropped into the fresh bedding with a groan. Luisa hurried to grab towels and medical supplies. When she returned, one tiny hoof showed under the mare’s tail.

“Bless this birth and this new baby,” Luisa whispered as she dropped to her knees and felt for the other foot and the baby’s nose.

They weren’t where they should be. Fear trembled through Luisa. She reached inside the mare for the other hoof, then pulled as hard as she could. Nothing happened. “Damn it!” Frustration choked her. She pulled again. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead and ran into her eyes. The foal’s nose and foot were tangled and wedged inside the mare. They wouldn’t budge. She wasn’t strong enough.

Terror grabbed Luisa by the throat. She could lose them both without help. “Son-of-a-bitch. What now?”

She wiped sweat from her eyes on her sleeve. Thoughts whirled. The vet was too far away. Pulling the foal like her father had done with calves would hurt Queenie and the baby.