Holding his breath, he focused on slowing down the sound until it beat out a nerve-steadying rhythm, metronome-like. One-two…thud-thump.
Deke knew the mantra; it had become a part of him. You and you alone are in charge of your destiny. He was not at the mercy of his inclinations. At the mercy of his emotions.
Slowly, he raised his head and found her gaze.
“Hello, Addie,” Deke said, speaking for the first time in seven years the name of the woman he’d loved—and left.
He knows, Addie thought wildly. He knows about Jace. But perhaps that was all he knew at this point.
She had to get both herself and Jace safely away, though, from the force that was Deke Larrabie.
“Jace. Come on back here, hon,” she said as calmly as she could, holding her hand out to her son. Thankfully, he came, although the whole way he craned his head around to stare at the stranger as if he were Duke Wayne in the flesh.
Once he’d reached her, she couldn’t prevent herself from pressing him close to her side, obstructing his sight of the stranger. Or was she blocking Jace from Deke’s view?
His eyes were only for her, though, as he started toward her. Amber-green, eerie in their detachment, yet as intense as ever.
In fact, everything about him was more intense. More…Deke-like. He’d always filled out a Western shirt and pair of Wranglers in a way that was uniquely, devastatingly him. Had always worn a Stetson at that exact angle, pulled low over his eyes, in a way that had her believing the cowboy hat had been invented just for him.
Now, though, he wore everything with even more command, so that the fit of the shirt stretching across those wide shoulders, the cut of the jeans hugging those long legs, even the shade over his eyes created by his hat’s wide brim—all of them seemed branded by Deke Larrabie…as she once had been, and as her son now was.
It took every bit of her willpower to silence her heart, which continued to beat against the walls of her chest like a captive hostage, because she knew that the real moment of reckoning had yet to come—the one in which she’d discover why Deke Larrabie had really come back.
Whatever the reaction showing on her face, at least it stopped him ten feet from her and her son. Addie seized the advantage and pressed it home while she could.
“All right, hon.” She brushed back Jace’s thick, burnished-bronze hair. “You don’t have to go with us to Houston if you don’t want, but then you need to go help Granddad in the office.”
“Why?” Jace stalled, pulling away from her, his questioning gaze trained on her face.
Her own eyes remained on Deke. She almost expected from him a lightning move or sleight of hand that would snatch away some precious belonging, leaving her feeling dispossessed and bewildered by what had happened and how.
But that had already occurred, hadn’t it?
And, by God, it wouldn’t happen again.
“Do as I say, please, Jace,” Addie said more sternly, giving the boy a helping push in the right direction.
“I’m not leavin’.” He planted his booted feet in front of her.
Exasperated, she glanced down. Her son had sure picked a fine time to go from running away from conflict to hanging tough. She wondered whether to kill him or kiss him, but she knew that her first order of business must be to protect him.
“Please, hon,” Addie said, trying for a reassuring smile. “I’ll be all right.”
“But you know him, don’tcha, Mama?”
“Yes,” she said, praying he’d take the rest of her answer on trust. Yet how could you convey such a feeling if you’d given it up a long, long time ago?
“Then, who is he, Mama?” Jace asked. “Who’s that man?”
The boy’s question was like a wake-up call, breaking the spell he’d been under.
Deke found his feet moving from the spot where Addie’s warning look had riveted him. He started toward her again, still not knowing what he would say, how he would say it, if he should say anything at all. Regardless, any explanation Addie chose to make shouldn’t have to be made alone.
He stopped in front of her, trying hard not to put a label on the nature of the emotion radiating from her. Trying not to anticipate his own reaction.
Yet the sight and sound and smell of her filled his senses to the brink. Her eyes were even bluer than he remembered, the shade of blue that could bolt a man to the wall or drown him in desire. That flaming red hair spilled over her shoulders in a thick flow, like lava over a mountainside, as it swirled and waved with a life of its own. She wore a form-fitting skirt and short jacket in yellow, making her look as out of place as a daffodil sprung from the winterscape—and yet fitting as much as she ever did the definition of Texas ranch royalty.
Of course. He’d been the one who hadn’t fit in here. Sons of alcoholic cowboys who were surviving only by the grace of such royalty weren’t included in that class. Especially after his father had repaid the Gentrys’ kindness by letting a hundred-thousand-dollar ranch building burn to the ground around him, too drunk to save it or even himself—although, in truth, he’d already been dead inside for years….
At the thought, Deke felt his heart speed up, like a time bomb inside him just waiting to explode.
No! He must remember: Sure, he was D.K. Larrabie’s son. And yes, they bore the same name. But he was not his father. This D.K. Larrabie had set his every fiber to taking charge of his future, just as he’d set his mind to becoming the best damn ranch manager in Montana.
“Might be best to do as your mother says,” Deke said, trying to help Addie out.
“Yeah?” The youngster stared up at him with a mixture of youthful hope and distrust that again spoke to Deke of his own boyhood. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”
“Jace!” Addie clutched him to her almost frantically.
Deke heard the outright panic in her voice and realized she hadn’t answered the boy’s question because she didn’t want their son to know who he was. She looked not the least inclined to respond to either question put to her—this one, and Who’s that man?
So what had she told their son about his father? For the first time, it struck Deke that for six years he’d had a son. And although he had taken off for parts unknown, why hadn’t Addie or Jud tracked him down and let him know?
For that matter, why hadn’t Jud seen fit to tell him when Deke had called? And from the looks of it, it seemed Addie was as surprised to see him as he was her.
What the hell was going on here, anyway?
Deke didn’t want to jump to conclusions without having all the facts, but still he couldn’t resist asking, “Why not answer the boy, Addie? Or have you forgotten exactly who I am?”
She leveled a look at him with eyes of glacial blue.
“Go on along now, Jace,” Addie said, her gaze still on Deke. “If Granddad
