the man who had climbed out. For a moment she didn’t recognize her own brother.
“Carson?” For eleven years, she’d wondered if she would ever see her big brother again. She ran to him, throwing herself into his arms. He chuckled as he hugged her tightly, then held her at arm’s length to look at her.
“Wow, little sis, have you grown up,” he said, making her laugh. She’d been seventeen when he’d left, newly graduated from high school and on her way to college that coming fall. She hated to think how young she’d been in so many ways. Or how much that tragic year was to change their lives. Seeing Carson on the ranch again brought it all back with sharp, breath-stealing pain for everything they’d lost.
Carson had filled out from the twenty-year-old college boy he’d been. His hair was still a lighter chestnut from her own. They both had gotten their hair color from their mother, she’d heard, although she’d never seen as much as a snapshot of Lila Gray Grant. Unable to bear looking at photographs of Lila, her father had destroyed them all after his wife’s death.
Her brother’s eyes were their father’s clear blue, while her own were more faded like worn denim. It had always annoyed her that her brother had been spared the sprinkling of freckles that were scattered across her cheeks and nose. He used to tease her about them. She wondered if he remembered.
Around his blue eyes was a network of small wrinkles that hadn’t been there eleven years ago and a sadness in his gaze she didn’t recall. Like their father, he was strikingly handsome and always had been. But now he was tanned, muscled and looked like a man who’d been on a long vacation.
“What are you doing here? I mean—” She heard the crunch of her father’s wheelchair tires on the concrete beside her and saw Carson brace himself to face their father. Some things hadn’t changed.
“Carson,” WT said and extended his hand.
Her brother gave a slight nod, his face expressionless as he reached down to shake his father’s hand. WT pulled him closer and awkwardly put an arm around the son he hadn’t seen in years.
For the first time in her life, Destry saw tears in their father’s eyes. He hadn’t cried at her mother’s funeral, at least that’s what she’d heard through the county grapevine.
“It’s good to have you home, Carson,” their father said, his voice hoarse with emotion.
Carson said nothing as his gaze shifted to Destry. In that instant, she saw that his coming back to Montana hadn’t been voluntary.
Her heart dropped at what she saw in her brother’s face. Fear.
CHAPTER TWO
CARSON COULDN’T TAKE his eyes off his sister. When he’d left she’d been a tomboy, wild as the country WT couldn’t keep her out of. Eleven years later, she’d turned into a beautiful woman. Her long hair, plaited to hang over one shoulder, was now the color of rust-red fall leaves, her eyes a paler blue than his own. A sprinkling of freckles graced her cheeks and nose. Even after all these years she never tried to conceal them with makeup.
He smiled. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.” Or how badly he felt about the pain he’d caused her. “Little sis,” he said, pulling her into his arms again.
She hugged him tightly, making him wonder what their father had told her about his return. Given her surprised reaction, he’d guess the old man hadn’t told her anything.
“Why are we standing out here? Let’s go inside,” WT demanded impatiently. “Don’t worry about your luggage. I’ll have one of the ranch hands unload it for you. You haven’t even seen the house yet.”
Carson released Destry and glanced behind him at the looming structure. How could he miss it? He’d seen the massive house perched like a huge boulder on the hill from way down the road. He didn’t need to ask why his father had built such a house. Apparently WT still hadn’t shed that chip on his shoulder after growing up poor in the old homestead house down the mountain. Back then, the house and a few acres of chicken-scratch earth were all he’d had.
But WT had changed that after inheriting the place when he was only a teen. He’d worked hard and had done well by the time he’d married. Carson had never known poverty, nothing even close to it.
But WT couldn’t seem to shake off the dust of his earlier life. He just kept buying, building, yearning for more. The manor on the mountain, planes, a private airstrip, and he’d even mentioned that he’d built a swimming pool behind the house. A swimming pool in this part of Montana so close to the mountains? How impractical was that?
As his son, Carson had certainly benefited from his father’s hard work. But it came at a price, one he’d grown damned tired of paying.
“Wait a minute, WT,” he said as his father began to wheel himself back toward the house. He hadn’t called him Dad since the fourth grade. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
* * *
DESTRY WATCHED THE passenger side of the sports car open and one long slim leg slide out.
She hadn’t noticed anyone else in the car, not with the sun glinting off the windshield, and neither she nor her father had apparently considered that Carson might bring someone home with him. That now seemed shortsighted. Carson was thirty-one. It was conceivable he’d have a girlfriend or possibly even a wife.
Destry glanced at her father and saw his surprised expression. She cringed. WT hated surprises—and Carson had to know that.
“I want you to meet Cherry,” her brother said, going to the car to help the woman out.
Destry felt her mouth drop open. Cherry was tall, almost as tall as Carson who stood six-two. She was a bleached blonde with a dark tan, slim with large breasts.
Cherry gave WT a hundred-watt smile with her perfectly capped ultrawhite teeth, which were almost a distraction from the skimpy dress she wore.
Carson was looking at their father expectantly, as if awaiting his reaction. There was a hard glint in her brother’s eyes. He had to know what WT’s reaction was going to be. It was almost as if he was daring their father to say something about the woman he’d brought home.
Beside her, their father let out an oath under his breath. Destry didn’t need to see WT’s expression to know this wasn’t the way he’d envisioned his son’s homecoming.
Cherry stepped over to WT’s wheelchair and put out her hand.
He gave her a limp handshake and looked to Carson. “I think it would be best if your...friend stayed in a motel in Big Timber.” Big Timber was the closest town of any size and twenty miles away. “Of course I’ll pick up the tab.” Only then did he turn his gaze to Cherry again. “I thought Carson would have told you. We have business to discuss. You’d be bored to tears way out here on the ranch.”
“WT,” Carson said in the awkward silence that followed, “Cherry is my fiancée.”
“Destry, show Cherry the swimming pool,” her father ordered. “Carson and I need to talk. In private.”
* * *
WT ROLLED HIMSELF INTO his den and straight to the bar.
