LoversFeud (11 page)

“Yeah. I know. I may have majored in engineering, but I took some finance courses, so I’m not totally clueless about business reports. As for my recreation at the Neon Lasso, I’ll stop that if and when I ever decide to marry. My wife will have my loyalty, and not only when I’m in her sight.” Bye tried to banish thoughts of marriage to a woman whose sexual needs would match his own, but he kept seeing Karen in his head.

“You’ll understand, son, when you marry the right kind of woman. Don’t you make the kind of mistake our ancestor apparently did.”

Bye followed his dad back to the Jeep, and they made their way back to the house. He was still thinking about their conversation an hour later as he drove in to town.

Chapter Seven

At four o’clock that afternoon, Bye glanced past the swinging door to The Corral, grateful to see Jack holding court at the bar because he didn’t want to run into him upstairs. Since yesterday, Bye figured he’d seen enough of the SOB for a lifetime. Noticing for the first time how creaky the stairs were, he made his way up to Karen’s office.

It was damn hard to resist the urge to drag her from behind her desk and kiss her senseless, but he managed. “Here I am, counselor, right on time.”

“Sit down and make yourself comfortable. What do you want me to do?”

Her smile made him think of everything except what he’d come here to find out. “How about fucking me senseless? No, seriously, I want to know where I stand now that it seems I have a long-lost half brother.”

Karen shut off the computer monitor and met his gaze. “Did your mother leave a will? There’s not one on file with the court.”

“No.”

She frowned. “Then that means your father inherits everything they owned jointly. You understand the legal distinction in Texas between joint and separate holdings, don’t you?”

“I think so—at least in theory.”

“Good. I’ll put it simply then. Any real property your mom owned separately gets divided among her children, with your father holding a life tenancy in half of it, while the personal property she owned will be divided among the surviving spouse and her surviving children.”

That was more or less what Bye had figured, but it didn’t make much difference because Grandpa Young had deeded over his land to Bye’s parents after they married, which made the acreage where his wind farm was located joint property. “Do Jack or his mother have any rights when it comes to the Bar C?”

“Not unless your dad decides to marry Jack’s mother, or unless he gives them a gift of some of the property. Now if he should die without a will Jack could claim a child’s portion—”

“That’s not happening. Four’s obsessed about keeping his affairs in order. I already know his will is on file and what it provides for.” Of course, Bye realized his old man could easily change that will anytime he took a notion. He realized as well as anybody that the prospect of inheriting property and money—or not—worked pretty effectively to keep one’s relatives in line. Never mind that his father had insisted just this morning that his mistress and bastard son would never get a piece of the Bar C—and hinted that the long relationship was history. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

Karen smiled. “Only that your father could change his will, or he could outright give any or all of what he owns to anybody he chooses to, as long as he’s legally sane when he does it. You and Deidre could contest that, of course, if he did something that made it look as if he’d lost his mind. Anything you own individually, no one can take away—such as a piece of the Bar C that has been deeded over to you, or any personal property you may have been given.”

“Yeah. I own Vampire, a closet full of clothes, a watch, some cufflinks and a personal bank account that will have something less than five thousand bucks in it once you deposit that retainer.” He gestured toward the thousand-dollar check he’d placed on her desk as soon as he’d come in. “I guess I also will own some of Mom’s jewelry once we’ve sorted things out, but I’m sure the old man and I will let Deidre have her pick of it. The rest of it—credit cards, cars, trucks and so on, even the machinery for my wind farm and the windmills themselves—belong to the ranch. Makes me a pretty lousy prospect, doesn’t it?” He shot her a grin, but inside he felt like a twenty-eight-year-old failure with nothing much to offer, once he eliminated the possessions that belonged not to him but to the Bar C.

But he could change that, couldn’t he? He’d been resentful about it in the past but hadn’t really been interested in changing the spoiled kid he’d been accused of being, if he faced the harsh truth of it. When Karen looked at him, though, he wanted her to see someone who was making more of himself. He wanted to be better for her. That was a new feeling for him.

Maybe, instead of trying to legally wrestle away the wind farm Four had helped him start up, he should start thinking about using the profits from it to pay back the startup capital. Then if he did that, he could set up a plan to buy his father out or become more of an equal partner in the venture. The way a man ought to do it.

“I guess you are, at least for the moment. I still like playing with you, though. Are you coming to the Neon Lasso tonight?”

“That depends. Are you?” Maybe, back in the atmosphere of the club, Bye could banish the sense of ownership he wanted to have over Karen almost as much as he wanted to own the windmills on the high plateau as they turned in the wind, harnessing the energy of nature.

“Mmm. I think so. I feel like playing a little tonight. One on one was fun, but I can’t afford to start thinking of us as a couple. Oil and water, you know…”

Yeah, he knew. Cadens and Oakleys or oil and water, same difference. So why was it he’d gone to sleep last night, pretending the pillow he held close to his heart was her? “Just so long as you’re not gonna play with Jack.” He’d be damned if he wouldn’t set a limit on sharing her with his bastard half brother—whatever that might make everybody think.

“He scares me in a sexual setting. I can live without ever playing with him again, as long as I can play with you. Nine o’clock?” Her smile was full of promise when she got up and came around the desk, her slender hips filling out those tailored black slacks he’d love to peel off so he could play with the silky flesh they hid.

He stood, and it was all he could do to keep his hands to himself. There was something about Karen, and it wasn’t just the aura of earthy sexuality he’d first noticed back when she was a sophomore cheerleader and he’d been the all-state quarterback who’d taken their rural high school to the state championships. “I’ll meet you at the club, at nine o’clock.” Reaching out to her because he couldn’t help himself, he caught a lock of her long, silky hair and twirled the end around his finger. “You know you’re the sexiest woman in Texas. That makes it damn hard for me to be good.”

* * * * *

What the fuck was going on in The Corral? It was mighty early in the day for a bar fight, but from the sounds of cracking wood and shattering bottles, it seemed one was going on. Bye took the steps two at the time, getting downstairs in time to see Jack Duval fly through the swinging doors and land on his ass in the dusty street.

Two brawny cowboys—relatively new hires at the Bar C if Bye wasn’t mistaken—followed Jack out and proceeded to pound the shit out of him. The town’s only cop, Roy Cox, a fifty-year-old with a prodigious taste for barbecued ribs and cheap beer, lumbered down the wooden sidewalk. He’d never be able to separate the fighters and Bye figured he might die of a heart attack if he tried.

Part of Bye wanted to watch Duval get beaten to a pulp, but he’d been brought up better than to stand by and watch an unfair fight, so he jumped into the fray, catching the bigger wrangler in a chokehold and dragging him off his victim. “If you work for the Bar C, you’d better hope the boss doesn’t find out you’ve been starting fights in town on work time.” Bye took a pair of handcuffs from Roy and cuffed the man to a nearby light pole.

When he glanced at Jack, he saw the lawyer was giving back as good as the other cowboy was dishing out and decided not to interfere. Jack hadn’t inherited their old man’s size the way Bye had, but he’d apparently learned some pretty good survival tactics in the street.

The handcuffed cowboy spat out dirt from his mouth. “Your old man sent us to town with your sister to make sure she didn’t get in no trouble, asshole. That jerk said somethin’ to her that made her cry.”

“Deidre’s inside?”

“Yeah. She’s okay. I’d better not lose my job for doing what the li’l boss lady told me to.”

Shit. What was Deidre thinking, coming to The Corral in broad daylight? What had Four been thinking, letting her do it but sending along these two burly wranglers for protection? Roy was cuffing the second cowboy as Jack got up and dusted off his ruined suit. “I want to press charges against these two thugs,” he told Roy.

Bye straightened to his full six-four height and glared down at Jack. “I’d think twice about that.
Daddy
might not like having to bail out Deidre’s bodyguards. What the fuck did you say that got my sister to crying?”

“Nothing. I just reminded her that our esteemed father wouldn’t want her talking to the brother from the wrong side of the blanket even if it was to cuss him out.” Jack slurred his words just enough for Bye to realize he’d had more than a few beers. The cut on his swollen lip wasn’t enough to account for his sarcastic words, let alone the way he said them. “He prob’ly wouldn’t want you talkin’ with me, either.”

“Fuck off. If you piss me off, I’ll make what those cowboys did to you seem like an afternoon arm-wrestling match. I repeat, don’t press charges against the guys who stood up for Deidre.”

Jack turned to Roy. “You heard th’ crown prince of Caden, Texas. Let th’ cowboys go. Just tell ’em the next time they come at me they’d better bring some firepower. I don’t much like takin’ a beating when I did nothin’ to deserve it.”

“Okay. Bye, I’m gonna release these cowhands to you. I don’t much cotton to them goin’ vigilante on me. If anybody thinks a lady needs protection, they need to come to me,” Roy said as he unlocked the cuffs and let the wranglers go.

Bye riddled each of them with a stare. “Get in whatever vehicle you came in and go straight back to the Bar C. I’ll see you in the bunkhouse.”

“But, what about Deidre?” the big one asked as though he considered himself her protector.

“I’ll bring my sister home. Go on now, both of you.”

* * * * *

Drawn by all the noise outside, Karen watched the fracas from the window upstairs. Bye had it all over Jack when it came to physical prowess, no doubt about that. It made her sad, though, knowing a friendship had ended because of one huge secret revealed at what surely had been the world’s worst time.

Bye looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else although he’d gotten the better of the fight with the big cowhand. She wished she dared go down there, straighten the sunglasses that sat at an angle on his nose and wipe the smudge of dirt off his cheek. But she didn’t. Deidre would have to do that for him, at least for now. There she was, coming outside and going straight to her brother, sparing a look of pure hatred for Jack, who was hauling himself out of the dusty street.

Karen worried about Deidre. Learning that the guy she’d set her sights on was her half brother had to have torn at her heart. She was young—only twenty-three or so and way more sheltered than Karen or any of the other girls around here had ever been. It looked as though Deidre was going to rebel rather than slip into obvious depression.

Bye and his sister had always been close—normal, Karen supposed, for kids who’d been pretty much isolated from their neighbors geographically by the sheer size of the Bar C as well as because of the impression almost everybody had that the Cadens were too important to be part of the ordinary crowd when they were in school.
Just like I was too trashy, painted with the same brush folks had been using to smear Oakleys ever since before I was born.

Get off it, Karen. You’ve made it by being smart.
Bye had made folks accept him because he was the best athlete in school, star quarterback of Caden High School’s only state championship team. As Karen remembered, Deidre had just gone with the flow, quietly going to school and scurrying home with her mother to the safety of the Bar C. She’d just started blooming in the last few months since she’d come home from the all-girls’ college she’d attended somewhere out East. Karen figured Bye would be extra vigilant with Deidre—and that wasn’t a bad thing. He wouldn’t be the man Karen was getting too damn fond of if he didn’t want to protect his little sister.

It was all Karen could do to stay up here, watching from a distance. Not for the first time she wondered what had really caused such hatred between her family and the Cadens. Instead of listening to gossip or making conjectures, she’d find out. No feud could be healed unless somebody opened it up and exposed it to the light.

Surely there had to be old records—newspapers and diaries and such—where the origins of the feud had been recorded. She’d done a lot of research in college and law school, and she could use some of the tricks she’d learned to uncover the true story so the cancer that had been festering so long could be cut out and hopefully healed.

She’d talk with Bye about it tonight. It could be there were old diaries tucked away in the huge main house of the Bar C—or even in one of the other houses on the vast ranch property. Her own search would be easier, because there was only the attic of the one house where she and Slade lived. If she didn’t find anything there, she’d check out that rotting cabin near the road to town. The idea of that made her shudder, because she doubted anything except rats and rattlers has been inside the place for years.

Meanwhile, Karen went back to her desk and began her search on the computer. It didn’t take long to learn plenty about Caden genealogy but very little about her own family’s origins. Apparently Oakleys lived long lives, because she learned her own father was a late-life son of the same Oakley who’d taken over the Rocking O when his own father had left town. Her grandfather had buried five wives but had only two living children, her own father and Buck’s. They’d been born many years apart to different mothers.