rest of the folks in town flocking to you.”
Jake had shuddered at the prospect. He hadn’t actually wanted to be successful all over again. It certainly hadn’t suited him well the last time. “Thanks all the same, but I came home to take it slow and easy. I don’t need you building up business for me.”
“Yeah, I heard about that kid. Must have shaken you pretty bad.” Tex had regarded him knowingly. “Almost as bad as finding out your wife was cheating on you with a man you’d thought of as a friend.”
“I see you’ve kept up,” Jake said dryly, not the least bit surprised at the old man’s ability to ferret out secrets. Tex had always known what Jake and Megan were up to, that was for sure, and he’d done his best to see that things between them never went too far.
“You cost me enough,” Tex said, explaining away his interest. “I figured it was my duty to see how my investment was paying off.”
Anger, long denied, surfaced. “No, what cost you was misjudging me. I was never a thief, old man, and you should have known it. I respected you, looked up to you like a father. I gave you an honest day’s work for every penny you ever paid me, and then some.”
Tex nodded in agreement. “True enough. And that’s exactly what I expect of you now.”
“What kind of legal work do you want me to do?” Jake asked reluctantly.
“I want you to write up my will, make it airtight, so no legal shark can pull it apart after I’m gone.”
Jake studied him and noticed something he should have spotted earlier. Tex O’Rourke’s color was bad, his complexion ashen. His words came with a hitch in his breath. For a man not yet seventy, a man who’d always been in robust health, the changes were dramatic.
Jake was surprisingly shaken by the thought of his old nemesis dying. He’d realized in that instant that, even after all this time, he wanted to prove himself to this cantankerous old man. Until the day Tex had charged him with cattle rustling, he’d been the closest thing to a father figure Jake had ever known. The realization that there might not be much time left shook him.
“Is it your heart?” he asked, trying not to let his dismay show. Tex would hate pity more than most men, hate it coming from him even more.
“So the doc says. It’s my opinion I’m too contrary to die, but you never know where God stands on something like that, so I’m not taking any chances.” He leveled a look straight into Jake’s eyes. “Will you do it?”
Filled with reluctance, Jake reached for a yellow legal pad and a pen. “Tell me what you have in mind.”
An hour later he was reeling. “Megan’s going to be fit to be tied,” he said.
Tex shrugged. “She’ll adapt. It won’t be the first time life’s tossed her a curve.”
“Being dumped on your doorstep as a kid was one thing. She had no choice. Now she does. She has a successful career in New York. Why should she come back here?”
Tex slammed his fist on the desk, proving he still had power enough to make his point. “Because, by God, she’s my flesh and blood. She’ll do what’s right, because that’s the way I raised her.”
“She doesn’t know anything at all about this?” Jake asked. “You’ve told her nothing?”
“Not a word. She hasn’t been home in months now and this isn’t something I wanted to get into on the phone. If the doc’s right, she’ll find out soon enough.”
“And I’m the one who gets to break the news.”
Tex grinned at Jake’s discomfort. “You’ll enjoy it, son. Don’t even try to deny it. You’ve been itching for a way to get under Meggie’s skin since the first time you laid eyes on her. Now’s your chance to do it. Better yet, you’ll have my blessing. That ought to satisfy you.”
It was evident that afternoon that the old coot had thoroughly enjoyed the bombshell he’d dropped and the fix he was putting Jake in. Now it was time for Jake to follow through.
But how the devil was he supposed to tell Meggie that her beloved grandfather had had a short-lived liaison with what could only be described as an unsuitable woman? Moreover, Jake was expected to explain that Tex had fathered a child who was now eight years old and had only recently come to live with him, abandoned on his doorstep just as carelessly and indifferently as Megan had once been.
Even worse than all that, though, he was going to have to break the news that Megan O’Rourke—hot-shot media executive—was now this child’s legal guardian and that she was expected to raise the girl on the very ranch she had fled a decade earlier, or she would lose her inheritance.
Even in death, Tex O’Rourke was destined to turn several lives upside down—Jake’s among them. Tex was probably laughing all the way to hell.
Megan had done everything but beg. Nothing she’d said, though, had dissuaded Mrs. Gomez from sending Jake Landers to pick her up at the airport.
“He will be there, niña. Look for him. You will recognize him, Sí?”
Recognize Jake? Oh, yes. She would be able to pick that low-down, conniving son of a gun out of a crowd of thousands. Her personal radar had been attuned to him practically from the second she’d hit puberty. It had taken several long and painful years for her to discover that her radar was not capable of exercising good judgment. When he’d stolen Tex’s cattle, she’d finally realized her mistake. Jake had been securely locked behind bars when she’d left for college. His name had never once been mentioned in all the years since.
So what on earth was he doing at the ranch now? she wondered. And why was he running errands for Mrs. Gomez? Had her grandfather hired him once he’d been released on parole, maybe given him an undeserved second chance? Tex wasn’t sentimental, so she doubted it. Jake had probably pulled some scam to get back in her grandfather’s good graces.
When the plane landed in Laramie, Megan was the first one off. It didn’t take more than a quick glance around the waiting area to spot Jake. He was propped against a railing, dressed in black from head to toe, the stereotypical western bad guy from his Stetson to his boots. Even his reflective sunglasses spelled trouble. At least they prevented her from getting a good look at his eyes. He’d always been able to make her weak kneed with a glance from those piercing blue eyes.
“I’m glad to see you’re on time,” Megan said briskly, handing him her baggage claim slips. “Four bags, all matching, Gucci.”
He grinned. “Of course, they would be.”
His amused tone, the wash of his deep baritone, raised goose bumps. The sarcasm irritated. “What is that supposed to mean?” she snapped, already breaking her vow to remain cool and impersonal for however long she had to put up with his company.
“Just an observation, Meggie. Don’t get your drawers in a knot.”
“My drawers are none of your concern.”
He waved the luggage claim slips under her nose.
“Apparently they are, unless you’re wearing the only ones
