going anywhere until I find my sister. My own mother— My mother’s seriously ill and needs to see her. And every lead I’ve uncovered stops right here at this ranch.”
Mrs. Rayford straightened to look her in the eye, her otherwise pale face marked by two splashes of bright color. “I told you on the phone, Haley Layton moved on six months back,” she said, her voice going cold and brittle. “She and that good-for-nothing boyfriend of hers sneaked out of the old bunkhouse they were renting without a single word—or a penny of the three months’ rent they owed me.”
The part about the money didn’t surprise Jessie. Haley had a long history of abusing the trust of everyone with whom she came in contact. Jessie herself had fallen for a couple of Haley’s hard-luck stories—the last time to the tune of nearly five thousand dollars—all the savings she’d had at the time.
The very last time, she’d sworn, cutting off all contact once her sister had skipped out of a battered women’s shelter and disappeared almost four years before. It had hurt Jessie, too, turning her back on someone so close. She felt almost like a part of Jessie’s own body, but she knew, too, that if she kept enabling her twin, Haley would never learn to stand alone—and would never stop resenting Jessie for the accomplishments that set them apart.
“I’ll write you a check right now for the back rent,” she offered, now more intent on offering her mother peace than in fixing her sister’s life, “if you can only tell me where she went or even this boyfriend’s name. Then I’ll be on my way.”
The woman moaned. “I don’t care about the money. As I told you before, I have no idea where your sister’s gone.”
“Then why act so evasive on the phone, and why hang up on me every time I tried to call back?” Jessie demanded. “When you saw my face, too, I saw how you—”
From behind her, Zach Rayford returned to interrupt them. “What’s really going on here? Who the hell are you people, and what do you think you’re doing upsetting my mother?”
“I—I’m looking for my sister, that’s all,” Jessie stammered, forced to step aside once more as the rancher gave his stricken mother the pill and glass of water he had brought.
Gently, he touched her rail-thin shoulder. “Don’t you worry, Mama. Take this, and I’ll send these people on their way.”
She tensed visibly and then, a moment later, nodded.
“I—I’ll do that,” Nancy Rayford said, her voice small as a child’s as she pressed the pill to her lips and swallowed with a sip of water. “And then, I might— I think I may go up and lie down for a bit. I’m not— I’m feeling a little—”
“Go on ahead, Mama. I’ll be up in a minute to check on both of you. And I’ll look after Eden, so there’s no need to worry.”
Bending his powerful frame, he helped the fragile woman to her feet. As soon as she was standing, she murmured to Jessie, “Forgive me,” with a plea in her eyes before she started up the stairs.
“Just her boyfriend’s name,” Jessie called after her, caring far less about this stranger’s inexplicable desire for secrecy than her promise to her mother. “Please, if you can tell me that much, I’ll be on my way.”
Zach Rayford narrowed his eyes. “It’s time for you people to leave. Now.”
Still looking at Jessie, Mrs. Rayford shook her head. “I—I’m not sure I can—”
“You don’t have to answer her.” Laserlike in its intensity, Zach’s glare flew from Jessie’s face to Henry’s, where he quickly did a double take. “What the hell? Is that a camera you’re hiding? You people are filming us? Right here in our home?”
He stalked toward Henry, saying, “Give me that right now, you little—”
Scrambling backward, Henry twisted in an attempt to keep the mini-cam out of reach, but the rancher wrested it from his hands before the older man could do anything about it.
“Wait!” Jessie said, fearing the expensive camera would be damaged. And fearing even more that her foolish attempt to appease her boss had cost her her only real chance at finding Haley.
Rayford stopped, a mirthless grin spreading across his handsome face as his gaze swung from her to Henry. “Now that I have your attention,” he said, “maybe I can get some answers. First of all, you’re going to tell me right this minute, who are you?”
He nodded toward the red-faced cameraman, who was rubbing his neck and darting glances toward the door. It didn’t take a mind reader to see that he was thinking about bolting before the rancher’s big hands found him, too.
“Henry Kucharski,” he finally murmured, shoving his own hands into the pockets of his jacket. “And I’ll need that camera back, or I’m a dead man when I get back to Dallas.”
Ignoring him, Zach looked to Jessie. “And now you,” he ordered, “the woman with the questions.”
“As I’ve told your mother,” she said, her voice tight with anger, “my name is Jessie Layton, and I’m looking for a former tenant of yours—”
“A tenant? You think we’re running some sort of a boardinghouse here?” He glanced toward his mother, who lingered on the staircase, gaping at them as she clutched the railing for dear life.
She nodded, desperately, or so it seemed to Jessie. “Back before your brother...” Mrs. Rayford explained to her son. “While you were still away, I let Frankie McFarland and his girlfriend—you remember Frankie, don’t you?—he grew up right here in Rusted Spur—talk me into renting them the old bunkhouse on the East Two Hundred.”
Jessie threw up her hands in exasperation. “If you’d only given me that name when I asked you on the phone, I wouldn’t have had to come all the way here in the first place!”
Paying no heed to her outburst, Zach stared at his mother. “That old place?” He shook his head. “But no one’s lived there in years. It was falling apart.”
“At the time, they seemed like such a nice young couple. Down on their luck, that’s all.”
“From what I remember about Frank McFarland,” Zach said grimly, “there was never one nice thing about him.”
“I thought he’d changed,” his mother said, “but I was wrong. They disappeared six months back, without doing any of the repairs they promised in exchange for cheaper rent—or paying, either, for that matter.”
Turning to look at Jessie, Zach said, “So you’re looking for this woman, right? This deadbeat with the loser boyfriend really is your sister?”
“She’s my twin, and she’s missing,” Jessie shot back, her face heating to hear this glorified cowboy running down the sister with whom she’d shared a womb—a sister who had shared her every day and every thought for the first sixteen years of their lives. No matter how embarrassed she felt to be judged by Haley’s bad behavior, it came as second nature to defend her. “And for the record, I offered to pay your mother whatever Haley owed.”
Narrowing his eyes, he glared at Henry once more. “If you’re just here to find your sister, why’d you bring a cameraman? Tell me you’re not some damned
