Her mother answered the phone on the first ring, and Rachel knew Judith had probably been pacing the floor for the last hour, carrying the portable phone in her hand and willing it to ring.
“He said yes, Mom.”
Judith Kerrigan’s swift, indrawn breath was audible. “Thank heavens.” Her voice vibrated with relief.
“He has to see Ransom’s Mist before he’ll sign the contract, but if Luke thinks he has potential, then he’ll take him on.”
“I wasn’t worried about whether Luke McCloud would agree with us that our horse can run,” Judith said bluntly. “But I admit I questioned whether he’d consider training a horse owned by a Kerrigan. I’m surprised he listened to you long enough to hear the proposal.” Her voice sharpened. “He was polite, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, Mom. He was polite.”
“Well, that’s a relief. He’s never been anything but respectful on the occasions I’ve seen him in town, but I admit I was worried about you going alone to talk to him.”
“We were in a public bar, Mom. I was hardly in any danger.”
“Humph. I never thought you were in any physical danger, but your uncle and the McCloud men hold on to that damn feud like dogs with a bone.” Judith’s tone left no doubt that she disapproved. “It wouldn’t have surprised me if Luke had been outright rude to you.”
“I half expected him to get up and walk away before I could explain why I wanted to talk to him,” Rachel confessed. “Fortunately, he stayed. And he listened.” She patted a yawn, overwhelmed with tiredness.
“You sound exhausted, Rachel. I’ll hang up so you can get to sleep. When are you coming home?” Judith asked, her tone brisk as she abruptly changed the subject.
“Early tomorrow. I should be in Wolf Creek before lunch.”
“Stop at my house before you go out to the ranch. I want to hear all the details of your discussion with Luke.”
“I’ll do that. Did you hear from Zach today?”
“No, but maybe I will tomorrow. Wherever it is the company has sent him, surely he’ll be in contact with them before too much longer.”
“I hope so, Mom.” Rachel wasn’t as convinced as her mother that Zach would contact them anytime soon. Over the last few years, her brother had often been out of touch for several months at a time, and when he finally wrote or called, he’d wouldn’t tell them where he’d been. Whatever Zach did for Connor Security Inc. was top secret. She tried not to think about how dangerous the work might be. “We can’t wait for Zach. We have to find a solution that will not only pay our share of the inheritance taxes but also generate future income.”
“Unless we want to sell out to your uncle Harlan.”
“That’s not a possibility for me.”
“Nor for me,” Judith agreed. “Harlan’s always been difficult, but I never anticipated he would act as he has since his father died and we learned the contents of the will.”
Judith’s heavy sigh conveyed her frustration. “I can’t help but wonder why Marcus divided up the ranch but prevented any of us from selling our sections to anyone outside the family, apart from the homestead’s 2500 acres. He created an impossible situation when he left us land but no cash.”
“I don’t think Granddad knew there wasn’t any cash.” Rachel didn’t want to believe her uncle had stripped the cash assets from the ranch during the two years her grandfather was ill. But she couldn’t come up with an alternative explanation that made sense.
Judith was silent for a long moment. “You may be right. After your father died and no longer provided a buffer between me and Harlan, I became convinced that he couldn’t be trusted. Nevertheless, it’s a big leap from family squabbles to an actual crime. But, I can’t help wondering how the ranch became so financially unstable in the past couple of years.”
“Even if Uncle Harlan juggled the books while Granddad was in the nursing home, I don’t know how we’d prove it now. And we still have to find a way to keep our sections financially solvent. Zach’s, too, until we can reach him,” she added.
“I think we’ve settled on the best possible alternative,” Judith said. “I just wish Zach wouldn’t be out of touch for such long periods of time. I worry about him.”
“So do I. And I miss him.” Her brother’s self-imposed exile from Wolf Creek and the Bar K had broken her mother’s heart, just as it had Rachel’s. Although they kept in touch with phone calls, e-mail and the occasional trip to visit Zach when he was in the U.S., it wasn’t enough to keep them from grieving over their separation. She understood why Zach had left and why he’d broken all contact with their grandfather and uncle, but it didn’t make her miss him any less. She yawned again. “I’d better get to bed. I want to be on the road early.”
“Drive carefully.”
“I will. ’Night.”
Rachel hung up, switching on the light as she walked into the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, having showered and pulled on lilac cotton pajama shorts with a matching knit top, she climbed into bed, then leaned across the nightstand and turned off the lamp.
She plumped her pillow before lying down, tucking the sheet and light blanket around her waist, before staring upward at the ceiling, where a faint strip of light from the streetlamp outside lightened the dark to gray.
What was it about Luke McCloud that affected her so wildly? One long, slow look from his blue eyes and she was instantly flushed, her nerves strung taut, excitement humming through her veins. She was no longer the naive teenager who’d been fascinated by Luke, despite knowing he was forbidden because he was a McCloud—why did she feel the same overwhelming attraction to him she’d felt at seventeen?
Granted, she thought, she hadn’t added a long list of lovers to her sexual résumé since she’d left high school. But she was certainly no longer the innocent virgin who’d been mesmerized by his kiss.
She frowned at the ceiling. No, she wasn’t a virgin. But the intimacy she’d shared with her short-term fiancé hadn’t held a tenth of the electricity she’d felt earlier when she sat across the table from Luke.
No wonder our engagement drifted into limbo before we called it off, she thought. She and Matt remained friends, and when he’d married a fellow lobbyist six months earlier, Rachel attended the wedding and wished them well without a single twinge of regret. She genuinely liked Matt, but she was relieved that she hadn’t been the one standing beside him at the altar, facing a future bound to his.
What did it say about her that one kiss shared with Luke McCloud when she was a teenager had more impact than being engaged to a very nice man she’d dated for three years?
Rachel groaned aloud and determinedly closed her eyes, willing herself to go to sleep.
It did her no good contemplating the reasons why she was so drawn to Luke. The attraction was going nowhere. It couldn’t. He was a McCloud; she was a Kerrigan.
Which is roughly equal to Luke and me being on opposite sides of the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud.
