ShotgunRelations (7 page)

Liz traced the tattoo on his arm. “You’re
not going to have me tattooed like you, are you?”

“No. At least I’m not marking you anywhere
the tattoo might show out in the vanilla world. Would you like one here?” He
reached down and cupped her mound. “Your choice, slave—a dagger here or
piercings in your pretty nipples?” He’d thought he wanted her pierced, but
somehow tattooing her with his mark appealed. From the smile on her face he
guessed that she liked that symbolism too.

“Your dagger, Master, please. Pierced
nipples too, if they turn you on.”

“That was just a sudden impulse. I like your
tits just the way they are and I love watching you play with them.”

“I want to make you happy, Master.” Her
soft blue gaze made him feel cherished as he’d never felt before.

“You do. We’d better get up and finish
riding that fence before it gets too late. I need to check my court schedule
for this week and see if I can squeeze in enough time to take you over to
Lubbock.”

“Lubbock?”

“Yeah, we can kill two birds with one
stone. I want you to meet my mother, who wants me to look over some bills she
doesn’t understand. If meeting her doesn’t scare you off, we’ll go to a tattoo
artist there and have him mark your pretty pussy as mine.”

“All right. With the rustling task force
coming around, I may be tied up a lot of the week myself.” She sat up and
started to put on her clothes, her lusty gaze on him. He deliberately put on a
show for her, flexing muscles that didn’t need to be flexed as he put on his
socks first, then straightened his jeans, tugged on his boots and finally put
on his shirt.

Smiling as he ogled her taut nipples, which
poked against her thin cotton shirt, he decided there was a lot to be said for
both of them going commando.

* * * * *

“I can’t figure out why you don’t just
shave your head all over. That way you could do it yourself and you’d save a
lot of money.” Chester Ryan, Caden’s only barber, took one final swipe with his
straight razor at the foam over Jack’s right sideburn. “Want the top cleaned
up?”

“Just shave the stubble off the landing
strip. I have to be in court in a half hour.” Jack wondered if his
military-style cut really made him seem more respectable to clients and judges
than he’d appear if he shaved his entire head. Bill was right. He spent a lot
of time maintaining his high-and-tight at the barber shop, time that he could
put to more profitable use.

It took him less time to shave his crotch
and face every morning than Bill took to clean up his sidewalls and the landing
strip he was taking extra pains to shape with hands that weren’t quite as
steady as Jack would like them to be. Maybe he ought to grow out the landing
strip to match the horseshoe-shaped edge at his crown. It would cut down on
maintenance.

Getting hard when he thought about Liz
running her fingers through the crisp stubble around his landing strip, he
wondered if she’d like a larger expanse of eighth-of-an-inch hair on top of his
head. Without saying a word, she’d let him know how much she liked the sides
and back of his head shaved smooth. He could practically feel her fingers
massaging his scalp while he’d been nibbling her clit.

“You hear about the rustlers hittin’ the
Bar C? Must’ve happened during Bye’s wedding.”

“I heard.” If Chester hadn’t heard yet that
he and Liz had been the ones who’d discovered the cut fences, Jack wasn’t about
to tell him. “Who told you?”

“Sheriff Atkins. He got here bright and
early for a haircut and shave. Told me Four was fit to be tied that somebody
sneaked in through the Laughing Wolf and made off with twenty of his prime
yearlings.”

Liz had told him when they’d spoken earlier
that the task force had arrived and was looking over her place as well as the
Bar C. She sounded stressed out and he hoped to hell he’d finish up with the
civil trial that had been dragging out for weeks now. If he did he’d change and
go out there. She needed a foreman she could trust, one who would take the load
off her. Jack was certain Frank Williams wasn’t that man, not to mention his
suspicions that he might be involved with the rustlers.

As he always did, Chester took a soft rag
and buffed oil into the shaved parts of Jack’s head before unfastening the
cape. “You’re done unless you want me to finish the job.” Jack didn’t know
whether the barber was laughing at him or himself.

“Thanks.” He glanced at his fresh haircut,
then dug in his pocket and handed Bill the ten he’d placed there before leaving
home. “See you Wednesday, same time.”

“Sure thing.”

When Bill unfastened the cape from around
his neck, Jack got up and headed for the door. As he opened it, Four
practically ran into him.

“There you are. I tried your office and the
courthouse. I might have known you’d be in here.” Four scowled when he looked
at Jack’s fresh haircut. “You look like a goddamn new Marine recruit.”

Jack scowled right back. “What do you want,
F—Four?” He’d started to call the old man “father” just to piss him off, but he
didn’t care to have the whole community know what neither he nor Four wanted to
acknowledge.

“Can we go to your office? I’ll pay for
your time.”

“That goes without saying, old man, but I
can’t accommodate you right now. I have to be in court. If you want to stick
around I should be free in an hour or so.” That should give the defendant’s
lawyer plenty of time for summation, and he didn’t plan to say more than a few
words on behalf of his client. The case was cut and dried as far as Jack was
concerned.

“I’ll wait at The Corral. Let me know when
you’re free.” Four shot a pained look Jack’s way, then stalked down the raised
wooden sidewalk. Jack watched him for a moment before going across the street
to the century-old courthouse.

* * * * *

It took the circuit judge less than ten
minutes to rule in favor of Jack’s client. The last thing he wanted to do was
spend time with his reluctant father, but he stuck his head through the door of
The Corral and motioned to Four before turning and heading up the outside
staircase to his office.

“That was quick.” Four had wiped the scowl
off his face and managed a neutral expression, as if he wanted to seem cordial
when dealing with his illegitimate son away from his own turf.

“Yes. Let’s cut to the chase. You don’t
want a pleasant chitchat with me any more than I want one with you.” Jack
motioned to one of the side chairs as he sat behind his desk and thumbed
through a stack of mail. “What can I do for you?”

“Unless you’re serious about Liz Wolfe, I
want you to stay away from her. She’s a good girl but she’s been worrying her
mother lately, since she started hanging around with you.”

Unless you’re serious?
Jack thought for a moment then met Four’s gaze.

“I’m serious all right. Dead serious.”

Four’s scowl lightened but didn’t
disappear. “She’s not just a diversion? Liz is a sweet girl. She deserves
better than that.”

“Liz is no diversion. She’s the first woman
I’ve ever felt so strongly about.” Jack paused, considering his words for a
long, silent moment. “If she’ll have me, I’m going to marry her. Not right
away. I haven’t asked her yet, but I will when the time is right.”

It was true, even though he hadn’t realized
how deeply he was caught until he’d said it. What really surprised him though
was that Four seemed more interested in assuring himself of Jack’s intentions
than preventing Liz from marrying him.

“There’s no need for you to hate me, Jack.
There were reasons why I never wanted you to know me.”

“Such as keeping your wife from finding out
about your mistress and her child?” Jack couldn’t keep the sarcasm from showing
in his every word.

Four shook his head. “That was part of it.
A big part. But I didn’t want you thinking you were a bastard or that your
mother wasn’t as respectable as she seemed. I couldn’t claim you then, just as
I can’t claim you now.

“That doesn’t mean I haven’t supported you
and followed your progress from the time you were a little boy, off to boarding
school, then prep school and college. I was proud as hell when you graduated
with honors from Harvard Law.”

Jack met Four’s gaze. “I’d rather have
heard that from you at the time instead of years after the fact. Instead I
believed my parents were married and that my father died before I was born—up
until Mother decided you’d soon be free and that she’d be able to get her hooks
into you for good.”

“I told her many times that would never
happen. I loved my wife. I enjoyed your mother but I never could have lived
with her or given her power over me. I’d walked away from Marianne before
marrying Mae, not knowing at the time that she was pregnant. She didn’t bother
to tell me until you were two years old, just before Bye was born. She wanted
me to support her and you, or she’d tell Mae.

“I set her up in the house in Lubbock,
wanting to be able to see you from a distance—and yeah, to see her once in a
while. Your mother was a beautiful, sexy woman—she still is, on the outside
anyhow. Call me an asshole if you want. Go ahead and keep hating me, but I want
you to know I could never hate you.”

Memories of his mother‘s emotional neglect
flooded Jack’s mind, negating a lot of the resentment he wanted to vent against
Four. “Yeah, you’re an asshole for having fucked around on the woman you say
you loved, but… Mother is no prize either. I honestly don’t know what to say.
I’ve carried around a lot of hate for as long as I’ve known I wasn’t an orphan,
just an unwanted burden to my old man. Now it doesn’t make me feel particularly
good to realize I was nothing but a meal ticket to my mother and that she used
me to blackmail you.”

“I don’t expect you to say anything. It’s
too late now for me to recognize you publicly as my son and I’m sure you don’t
have any intention of announcing to the world that I’m your father. It hurt my
little girl when she found out the day of her mom’s funeral, courtesy of
Marianne. Deidre can hardly stand to look at me and she’s staying away from the
Bar C because of it.”

Jack shook his head. “I know. If I’d known
at the time I first met Deidre, I’d have been less subtle about rebuffing her
right from the start. I hope you believe that, because I like your daughter and
never would have intentionally done anything to cause her pain.”

“I believe you. Deidre’s very young and
impressionable for her years. Mae and I both protected her too damn much. We
coddled Bye too, giving him too much and bailing him out of too many scrapes
when he was in high school and college. He’s turned out fine in spite of it. I
feel bad that nobody apparently coddled you at all, but I’m damn proud that you
took the basic tools and made the most of them.”

Jack thought of his penchant for kinky sex,
his years in Boston honing his skills at BDSM under the pretense of earning
spending money as a club employee. “At least I managed not to get in trouble I
had to call home to make go away. I didn’t know at the time that Mother had
resources beyond what flowed into her bank account every month.”

“You’re better off for it, whether you
believe me or not. I didn’t mean to bring up the past, Jack, only to tell you to
go ahead and tell Liz I’m your father—and to let her know why you’ll be set for
life financially once your mother dies.”

“Obviously I’ll have to tell her before I
propose, not because I’ll be set for life with the trust you set up but because
she has a right to know what genes we may pass along to our kids.”

Four laughed but the mirth didn’t take the
serious expression from his eyes. “I’d like for us to be friends, but if that’s
not possible I’ll understand,” he said, his voice cracking a little.

If Jack cared to be kind, he’d have said
let bygones be bygones and shaken his old man’s hand. But he wasn’t feeling
quite that charitable. “Thank you for that. You’re right, we’re not likely to
become pals, but there’s no need for us to look daggers at each other every
time we come in contact. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“The rustling. Whoever crossed the Laughing
Wolf to steal Bar C steers had to know about Bye’s wedding in advance and
figure that would be a time when everybody might be tied up around the house.
I’m damn careful to keep close tabs on my cattle. Yesterday afternoon was the
only time since other ranchers’ cows started disappearing that I haven’t kept
at least two cowboys on lookout in every one of our pastures.”

Jack steepled his hands and rested his chin
on top of them. “Do you suspect somebody in particular?”

“I suspect Frank Williams.”

“The foreman at the Laughing Wolf?” From
what Liz had told him the man had been with them since before her father’s
death and seemed almost like family. Jack had felt guilty for disliking the
man, but now it seemed that Four shared his suspicions.

Four shifted in his chair, turning his head
as though looking for someone to barge through the office door. “Yes. Mavis
treats him as though he were the boss. I guess I shouldn’t blame her because
she has no clue about running a ranch and her husband’s been dead for years.
She admitted to me last night that she’d let Frank know about Karen and Bye’s
wedding several days beforehand.”

Jack thought for a minute before he
replied. “Frank doesn’t impress me much but I wouldn’t go quite so far as to
accuse him of rustling. I know he’s been the Laughing Wolf’s foreman since Liz
was a kid. She trusts him—so much so that she lets him walk all over her at
times.”

“I know. Mavis leans on him even more than
Liz does. I told her what I suspect and asked her to be careful around the
man.”

Jack recalled hearing Liz tell Sheriff
Atkins that Frank had neglected to mention having hired and fired employees
around the time the Laughing Wolf had lost cows from a pasture where nothing
had been cut and the gate had remained locked. “You may be right. Have you
talked to Atkins or somebody from the Rangers’ task force about this?”