Guarding the Soldier's Secret (9 page)

“How—”

“He was my father’s father—hence my surname, Malone. My grandmother was his third wife, Katherine. She was old New York money. My dad was their only child.”

He stared down at the letters in his hands, still barely able to take it in. “My God, is he still alive? He’s got to be—”

“As the letter says, a very old man. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how old he is—I’m not sure anyone does. Including him.”

“I take it you’ve never met the man?”

“I may have, when my sister and I were very small, but I don’t remember it. Miranda and I were only five when our parents were killed, and I don’t remember ever seeing my dad’s parents after that. We were staying with my mother’s family in Virginia while they made that last trip to Africa. We wanted to go with them—I remember Miranda throwing a screaming fit about it—but they insisted we were too young.” She drew a shaky breath. “They promised us we could go on the next trip. I guess we were lucky we weren’t on that plane, or I wouldn’t be here now, would I?”

Hunt was studying the typed version of the letter, probably written by the old man’s lawyer. It concluded with his contact information, an address somewhere in Los Angeles, phone number, email address. “Have you contacted him?”

She shook her head. “I got the letter as I was knee-deep in preparations for this trip. I didn’t know what to think. Frankly, it came as a complete shock. I hadn’t even thought about that side of my family in...well, years.”

“From the way this letter’s worded, sounds like he expects you to have some sort of beef with him. Do you?”

“No—why would I? As I said, I barely know him. It does sound as if there are others—cousins of mine, I suppose they’d be, and isn’t that weird? Maybe they have reason—”

“So you wouldn’t have a problem taking him up on the invitation?”

“I— No. I mean, again, why would I? Of course—”

He was barely listening to her response. “I imagine he’d have plenty of security, with his money and fanaticism about privacy.”

“Do you really believe this is necessary?”

He looked back at her, seeing the strain in her face, the anguish in her eyes, refusing to think about the vulnerability in her mouth, the way strands of her hair licked across her cheeks like flames. He couldn’t think now about what she’d been to him, his refuge and comfort and bastion against the evil and horror that had been his daily mission. Her face the one he called up to banish the nightmares, her voice, her laughter the music that renewed his soul. All he could think about was the job he had to do now.

And that meant first getting her and Laila out of the country and to a safe place.

He didn’t mince words. “Yes. You’re getting your things and getting out of here. And I’d rather you didn’t use your cell phone.”

He pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the door.

Yancy stayed where she was. Conflict churned inside her. Emotions she was used to suppressing boiled to the surface, defying her every effort to push them back down.

“Yancy?”

She could only shake her head, afraid to speak. She could barely see through the fog of grief and rage and fear that had engulfed her—so suddenly she’d had no warning, no defense.

She was aware of the car door closing, of something touching her bowed head and then her shoulder. Strong hands turned her; strong arms gathered her in. Shaking with silent sobs, she buried her face in the soft fabric of his tunic and let herself accept, for just a moment, the solace and safety he offered. It felt so good being there in his arms, his heartbeat in her ear, his warmth seeping into her shock-chilled body. He smelled of laundry soap and dust and sunshine, something at once familiar and alien—the smell of Afghanistan, perhaps. She felt his hand stroking her hair and realized that, in all the times they’d been together in intimate circumstances, he’d never before held her just like this.

It took all her strength to pull away. For a long moment she looked into his eyes, blazing golden in the darkness of his skin and beard.

“You have to do this,” he whispered. “For Laila.”

She nodded, then turned to face front. “Yes,” she said. “For Laila.”

From the Memoirs of Sierra Sam Malone:

Living in Hollywood as long as I did, I had attended my share of black-tie affairs—white-tie, too, although I never was clear on the difference between the two. But that night in New York City I could tell right away was different. People in Hollywood wear tuxedos like they’re on camera, which I guess is not a big surprise since they usually are. That crowd at the Waldorf, though, they wore their tuxes like I’d wear my Levi’s and boots—you know, like they were comfortable in ’em. The women, too, and don’t get me wrong, they were as beautiful and rich as any I’d met in Hollywood, just not as flashy about it. A whole lot less skin showing, for one thing, though it wasn’t only that. Like the men, these women dressed like they were born to it, and didn’t have a thing to prove to anybody.

At that time in my life, I didn’t have anything to prove, either, so I felt right at home.

I was there for two reasons. First, because I had more money than I knew what to do with, and I was aiming to give a bunch of it away. I don’t recall the name of the charity; I’d been trying my best to give my money away ever since my second wife took a one-way walk into the Pacific Ocean, and I guess it doesn’t take a head-doc to figure out I was carrying around a load of guilt. And it didn’t bother me a bit that my money was newer than some of those tuxedos they were wearing, because it seemed to me it ought to buy the same amount of redemption.

Anyway, it wasn’t long before the smell of money and expensive perfume in that ballroom got to be a little heavy for a man accustomed to the wide-open deserts and mountains of Southern California, so I stepped out onto a balcony to have a smoke and get away from the crowd for a bit. I lit up and was looking down at the bright shiny people down below, biding my time until I figured I could write my check and get on out of there, when she slipped through the curtains and came to join me.

She acknowledged my presence with a nod but didn’t say a word, giving me the idea she knew who I was, so I didn’t introduce myself, either, just nodded back. She took out a cigarette, so I offered her a light, like any man would have done. Smoking wasn’t the taboo then that it is now, so I didn’t think any less of her for doing so, and we shared the silence in a comfortable way, like we’d known each other for a long time.

After a while, she turned her back on the ballroom and gave me a long, measuring look.

I gave her one right back. It was hard to know what she was thinking, which naturally made her interesting to me. I can tell when a woman is flirting with me, and she wasn’t.

She wasn’t what you’d call pretty, but she wasn’t hard on the eyes, either, just a little too bony for my own personal taste. She had red-brown hair and blue eyes and freckles and a wide mouth, and her gown was a shade of dark blue that didn’t do much for her except where it showed a bit of skin down the middle of her back. She held her cigarette discreetly down at her side, not up waving in the air with her elbow bent, like most women did. I noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring.

“I guess you don’t care for crowds,” she said. Her voice was low and throaty, and her accent was an upper-crust drawl. “Neither do I. I’m Katherine Beaumont, by the way.” She held out her hand.

I took it and found it strong and firm. “Sam Malone.”

She nodded and said, “Yes.” She went on studying me with intelligence in her eyes.

I took a pull of my cigar and squinted one-eyed through its smoke. “Miss Beaumont—”

“Katherine.”

“Katherine... Is there something I can do for you?”

Instead of answering, she turned again to look over the balcony wall at the crowd down below. “I have heard that you are considering a run for Congress.”

“Some have made that suggestion,” I said, being careful since I didn’t know what she was leading up to.

She looked at me now along one shoulder, and I could see a smile in her eyes. “Don’t you think your reputation might be a bit too scandalous for politics?”

I nodded and felt easy enough to smile back at her. “Some have made that suggestion, too.”

She put out her cigarette in the tall ashtray there by the balcony wall and faced me, and now I could see by the way her hands moved that the cigarette had been more of a crutch to her than a pleasure. She was nervous, and doing a fair job of hiding it. “If respectability is what you want,” she said in a manner more forthright than was usual for a woman, “I have a proposition for you.”

“Is that a fact?” I said, smiling inside.

“Marry me,” she said.

I don’t shock easy, but I’ll admit that set me back. I think I said something, making light of it. “Katherine, I believe that’s called a proposal, not a proposition.”

But I could see she was dead serious. She tipped her head back and her gaze didn’t flinch. She didn’t smile, exactly, but that wide mouth of hers kind of quirked off center.

“My family has all the respectability you’d ever need, if you should decide on a career in politics.”

I rubbed on the back of my neck and I might have laughed a little. “I expect that’s true. But you know I’m gonna ask, what’s to your benefit in this proposition?”

“Your money, of course.” But now her eyes wouldn’t meet mine, and she went looking in her little shiny silver handbag and pulled out a jeweled cigarette case. She took one out and I lit it for her, and she blew smoke, and now that she had her crutch back in her hand, she plowed on. “My family’s dead broke, you know.”

I did know but didn’t say so. I knew the Beaumont family’s fortune had been built on some industries that didn’t have much of a future in the modern world, and evidently whoever held the purse strings hadn’t had enough sense to diversify while they had the chance. “Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said in that dry, upper-class drawl, then pushed on in her no-nonsense way. “The fact is, we are on the verge of losing our family home. In exchange for respectability, I would expect you to save it for us.”

“That’s it? Purely a business deal, my money buys your family’s position?” It didn’t seem to me like much of a deal for a beautiful woman to make—and I was beginning to see that she was beautiful, in her own way.

“Not quite.” Now for the first time the hand that was holding the cigarette came up, like she was brandishing a sword. “There’s something I want from you, Mr. Malone.”

I felt my chest get tight, and I said, “And what would that be, Miss Beaumont?”

“A child,” she said and let out a long stream of smoke, slowly. Then she stubbed out the cigarette, though she’d barely started on it. “I find myself approaching what I believe is usually referred to as ‘a certain age.’ And, to my surprise, I find that I want very much to be a mother.”

I coughed, or some such thing, for the moment not having a word to say. “Miss Beaumont—Katherine,” I finally said, “I would find it hard to believe you can’t find someone who would be happy, to, uh—”

“Oh, yes,” she interrupted in that dusty drawl, “I am sure my family name still has some capital attached to it. Mr. Malone, I have spent—let’s call it the blossom of my youth, waiting for the right person to come along, but that has not happened. Which is rather a blessing, I find. Without the distraction of emotions, I can better search for the person with the attributes I would like to see in the father of my child. I believe you would do very well in that capacity. You are passably good-looking, if not overly handsome. You are possessed of a strong physique and appear to be in good health. You are certainly of high intelligence—”

“If not of good character.”

She brushed that aside like a horsefly. “Character can be taught. In any case, I believe I have enough character for the both of us.” She paused, but for the life of me I still couldn’t think what to say. She took a breath and plunged. “So, Mr. Malone, what do you think of my proposition—or proposal, if you wish. Is a partnership with me on those terms something you might consider?”

In my day I’d had offers with a lot less promise, so I didn’t keep her in suspense. “Kate,” I said, and I held out my hand. “If I am to be the father of your child, then I believe you ought to call me Sam.”

PART II

June Canyon, California

Chapter 7

L
istening to the tread of footsteps climbing the stairs, Sam shuffled the pages he’d been reading into some semblance of order and returned them to the desk drawer from which they’d come. He didn’t hurry—he knew by the sound of the footsteps who was about to pay a visit to his tower refuge.

This evening’s visitor wasn’t Josie—her step was lighter, quicker, partly because she had those short little legs, partly because the woman had more energy than she knew what to do with. And it wasn’t Sage, who also had a light step in spite of the boots he normally wore. Probably the Indian side of him, Sam thought, knowing that was a cliché right out of old Hollywood, a fact that didn’t bother him in the least. The boy was his own flesh and blood, after all, though he’d earned his father’s respect in his own right.

No, these steps were steady and strong—businesslike and no-nonsense—like the person making them, the one other person who could knock on Sam Malone’s door any time of the day or night and know he’d be admitted.

“Come on in, Branson, gol’dammit,” he snapped, when the steps paused outside the door, just before the knock came. “Are you gonna keep me waitin’ here in suspense all night?”

The heavy door creaked open and his lawyer slipped into the room. “Psychic too, now, are you?”

Sam responded to that with the snort it deserved. “Got good hearing, is all. I may not recall how old I am, but I’ve got my hearing and my eyesight and I can still pee standin’ up, which is about all a man can ask for. So what’s the news? She comin’ or ain’t she?”

“She’s coming.”

Strong emotions never had come easy to Sam Malone, so all he did was scowl and snort and ask, “When?”

The lawyer glanced at a paper in his hand, which Sam knew damn well he didn’t need to do. He cleared his throat, though most likely he didn’t need to do that, either. “She will be arriving at Meadows Field tomorrow afternoon. I offered to pick her up, but she said she prefers to rent a car.”

Laughter tickled through Sam’s chest and gusted forth like a sneeze. “Just like her grandmother—independent as a mule.” He was silent for a moment, remembering.

“She’s bringing the child, of course.”

“Well, she’d have to, I guess. Just what we need, another rug rat around the place. What the hell—it’ll make Josie happy.”

Branson put the paper carefully on Sam’s desk and frowned at it for a second or two. “Let’s hope the child isn’t all she brings with her. That trouble in Afghanistan...”

Sam snorted. “You figure the Taliban’ll track her here? Bring ’em on, I say.”

Branson gave a small put-upon sigh. “Well, security has been notified. Though I’d really rather not get into a full-scale war.”

“What about the other one? The sister—Miranda?”

“Nothing definite yet. According to my sources, she’s gotten herself into a bit of trouble down there in LA. She may have to sort that out first.”

Sam’s spine straightened right up, and he was an old warhorse hearing bugles. “What kind of trouble? Anything we can do to get her out of it?”

Branson gave him a crooked smile, one old Duke Wayne woulda’ been proud of. “I know you’d like to go riding off to her rescue, guns blazing—”

“Damn right!”

“—but I don’t think that’s necessary this time, Sam. At least, not yet.”

Sam scowled at him. “Well, you’ll be keeping an eye on things. I trust you to tell me if it’s time to step in.” He pulled a bandanna handkerchief out of his pocket, blew his nose and growled into it. “Lost one grandchild. Ain’t about to lose another.” He pointed at his lawyer with the bandanna flapping from his clenched fist. “You make damn sure that don’t happen, you hear me, boy? You look after those girls, whatever it takes.”

“I will, Sam,” the lawyer said in his quiet way, and Sam knew he would.

He knew Alex Branson would protect those girls with his life, if it came to that.

And so would he, Sam Malone.

* * *

Jethro Jefferson Fox III, mostly known as J.J., former San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy currently on disability leave, laid aside his guitar and eyed his crutches. The umbrella’s shade had moved and it had gotten too hot where he was sitting, there on the patio overlooking the valley, and he was thinking it was time to go find some air-conditioning.

He changed his mind when the kitchen door slid open and Rachel came out onto the patio to join him. She was wearing a sleeveless smock-type thing that came to her knees, which J.J. knew was because she was still self-conscious about her body. It had been more than two months since he’d helped her bring her son, Sean, into the world, and he still hadn’t been able to convince her a few bulges and pooches were normal and nothing to be ashamed of, and that she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. He meant to keep working on that, though, if it took him the rest of his life.

What he really wanted was to make that official, but he couldn’t see how he could ask an heiress to marry him when he was looking at one more surgery on his leg at least and months of rehab after that. And even then he didn’t know if he’d have a job to go back to. He’d been a sheriff’s department homicide detective once and wanted nothing more than to be one again, but the question was whether the department would have any use for a cop with a leg that had been patched together with bits and pieces and cold hard steel. He was pretty sure Rachel wouldn’t care about any of that, and he knew for darn sure Sean didn’t, but the thing was, J.J. did. He cared a lot. He wanted to be a whole man, a worthy husband to Rachel and a better dad to Sean than the one he himself had had.

Right now, Rachel had Sean in one of those carry-packs, strapped to her chest. The little guy had his head up like a little periscope and was looking around, taking in the world with his big dark eyes. He’d changed a lot in two months, but his black hair still stuck straight up like a silky-soft paintbrush.

Rachel came to Sean and kissed him slowly and sweetly, warm and breathless and smelling like the baby. He held out his arms and she unstrapped the kid and lowered him into J.J.’s lap. Sean immediately waved his hand in the general direction of J.J.’s chin; for some reason J.J. hadn’t yet figured out, the kid seemed to like the feel of beard stubble, though he hadn’t quite figured out how to grab on to it yet.

“Did you hear?” Rachel asked as she adjusted the umbrella so it shaded the three of them. J.J.’s reply was unintelligible as Sean’s clumsily exploring fingers were now in his mouth. She dropped into a chair, smiling and radiant. “They’ve heard from another one.”

“Another—”

“Granddaughter. Sam’s. Her name is Yancy, and she’s got a twin sister named Miranda—they haven’t heard from her yet. Their father was Sam’s son with his third wife, Katherine, so their name is Malone.”

J.J. shifted the baby in his lap. “Yancy Malone. Where have I heard that name?”

“You’ve probably seen her on the news. Until a couple of years ago she was WNN’s chief Middle Eastern correspondent, but Josie told me she adopted a little girl from Afghanistan and stopped going to war zones after that. According to Josie, the little girl’s name is Laila, and she’s eight.”

“So she’s bringing the kid with her, I guess.”

“Well, of course.”

“Ah, hell. More rug rats.”

Rachel smiled and nudged him with her foot. “They’re coming tomorrow. I can’t wait to meet them. It’s going to be so nice to have another child staying here. And I get to meet my cousin!”

J.J. grunted. “Let’s hope it’s a real one this time.”

Rachel’s smile vanished. “Oh, Jethro, we’re all heartbroken about Sunny. But Abby’s a darling, she really is, and I know you’d like her, too, if you’d give her a chance—”

“And overlook the small matter that she committed fraud? Impersonated an heiress?”

“Yes,” Rachel said firmly. “Sam has forgiven her, and so has Sage, so I think you could stop thinking like a cop and get over it, as well.”

“Huh.” He leaned over to make a face at the baby, who produced a drooly smile in return that made his heart do weird things. The truth was, he hadn’t been thinking like a cop for quite a while now—since about the time he’d come way too close to losing both Rachel and his leg. “Well, let’s hope this one comes with a little less drama.”

“Yes,” Rachel said softly, gazing at him and her son with love in her eyes. “Let’s hope.”

* * *

Sage Rivera-Begay got home from a long hot afternoon spent doctoring and ear-tagging calves to find his house enveloped in silence. Having lived alone for most of his adult life, the disappointment he felt surprised him.

“Hey, Sunshine?” he called, not expecting an answer. But he heard the soft thud of footsteps and Pia, aka the Cat From Hell, came stalking into the kitchen like a mountain lion on the prowl. Pia was the only cat he’d ever known whose footsteps were actually audible. So much, he thought, for “little cat feet.”

He took off his hat—not a cowboy hat, but the Australian outback-style canvas hat he preferred in the dry Southern California desert heat—and hung it on the rack beside the door. Then he unbound his braid to let it hang free down his back.

“Hello,
tuugakut
,” he said, speaking to the cat as he always did in Pakanapul, his mother’s native language. He stooped to let her sniff his hand, then gave her a brief head scratch, something she seemed to tolerate only from him. The cat replied with a chirp of appreciation, then went off to check out her food dish while Sage went in search of his roommate.

Roommate?

He grimaced in dissatisfaction at the term but couldn’t think what to replace it with. Abigail Lindgren had been sharing his house and his bed for only a couple of weeks now, and after the first night, neither of them had spoken again of
forever
. In his own mind and heart, he knew it was—for him, anyway. He hoped Abby knew it, too, but he couldn’t be certain she truly believed it. He had an idea how he might help her with that, but he also knew she still had a lot of healing to do. The last thing he wanted to do was dump something huge and life changing on her when she was trying to wrap her head around the things that had happened to her in the last few weeks. Patience, he told himself.
The right time will come, and when it does, you will know it.

He found Abby where he’d thought he might, in the old barn sitting cross-legged halfway up a stair-stepped stack of hay. Early as it was, the sun had already set behind the high hill to the west, and in the deep shadows he might have missed her if he hadn’t known where to look. And if the sunlight gleam of her fair hair hadn’t shone like a beacon in the twilight.

Sunshine.
She may not be Sam’s granddaughter Sunshine Blue Wells, but she was and would always be
his
Sunshine.

Though he tried to slip into the barn as stealthily as his heritage might have decreed, in an instant the lapful of kittens she’d been petting shot off in five different directions and vanished. Abby gave a little gasp of disappointment, but, in a way that made his chest swell, her face lit up when she saw it was him.

“Well,” she said in the husky voice he loved, “I
thought
I had them tamed.”

He scaled the haystack and leaned in to kiss her before seating himself on the bale beside her. “Granny Calico’s babies?”

“Yeah... I’m hoping if I can get them tame enough, I can take them all to the vet...get them spayed and neutered.” She sighed, and gathering her hair in one hand, she drew it over her shoulder, leaving her neck exposed.

It was an invitation he couldn’t ignore.

She sucked in a breath, laughed and protested weakly. “I’m all dusty. And sweaty.”

“Um...that’s okay. So am I. And I smell like horse.”

“Um...that’s okay. I like horses.”

The highly enjoyable interlude that followed ended abruptly when she gave a little gasp and pulled away. “Oh—I almost forgot. Your mom called.”

“Uh-huh... What did she want?”

“They heard from another one of Sam’s granddaughters. She’s coming tomorrow.” Her tone was light to match her smile, but he didn’t miss the shadows in her eyes.

Carefully, he said, “Oh, yeah? Which one?”

“The television journalist—Yancy.” He nodded, and she went on. “Turns out she’s got a little girl—adopted, from Afghanistan. She’s eight.” He nodded again. “She’s coming, too. Everyone’s really excited.” And now her smile, which had become more and more forced, faded completely. She looked away, and he knew she was remembering how, not so long ago, all the excitement had been for
her
.

For the person she was pretending to be.

He cupped her chin and gently urged her to face him, but she stubbornly kept her eyes lowered. “Hey,” he said softly, “you know what happened to Sunny wasn’t your fault.” She nodded but still didn’t meet his gaze. “You’re here, and you’re part of us now.”

“But I’m not family,” she whispered. “You know it, I know it, and they know it.”

You could be
, he wanted to say as he gathered her into his arms.
You will be, when you marry me.

But he knew it still wasn’t the right time to say it. So he kept silent and simply held her, and hoped he would know the right time when it came.

* * *

Laila’s voice came plaintively from the backseat. “Mom... I think I have to throw up. Really this time.”

With a glance in her rearview mirror, Yancy flipped on her signal and, a few curves farther along, pulled into a turnout. She unbuckled her seat belt and swiveled to look at her daughter, whose head was lolling pitifully over the side of her booster seat.

“Are you sure, sweetheart? The GPS says we only have a little bit more of the curvy road to go. If you keep your eyes on the road ahead—”

“I can’t
see
the road ahead from back here. I don’t see why I have to ride in a baby chair anyway. I don’t see why I can’t ride up front with you. I’m eight years old, Mom.” Grumpily, Laila unsnapped her belt and hitched herself out of the booster seat.

Yancy sighed and got out of the car. “You know what the man at the car rental place said,” she reminded Laila as she opened the rear passenger door for her. “You are too small for the front seat belt
and
the air bag. And if you’re going to sit on a booster seat, you have to be in the back. End of story. So stop complaining and hop out and walk around a little bit. That will make you feel better. And let’s try not to stop anymore, okay? We still have a way to go to get to Grandpa’s house.”