to interrupt, Jess. I thought you’d want to know the head wrangler has arrived back on the ranch. He’s waiting in the bunkhouse.”
The head wrangler for the T Bar K was Linc Ketchum, Victoria’s cousin. Like the rest of her family, she seriously doubted he would have any answers for the lawmen.
“I’ll be right there, Redwing,” Jess told him.
Nodding, the deputy slipped from view. Beside her, Jess made a move to leave the room. Before he could walk away, she reached out and caught his arm.
One brow arched with mocking inquisition as he paused and glanced down at her.
“Jess, what does this all mean?”
The quiet desperation in her voice was a spur in his ribs, both painful and irritating. “We’ll just have to see, now won’t we, Tori?”
Chilled by his sarcasm, she dropped her hand from his arm. “You’re not the same man I used to know, Jess.”
His lips thinned, his nostrils flared as the track of his gray eyes burned her face. “No. I’ll never be that man again.”
Chapter Two
The night air had grown chilly and mosquitoes were making a feast of her bared forearms, but Victoria was loath to move from her spot on the patio to return inside the house.
Jess and his deputy had left the ranch more than two hours ago, yet the place was still buzzing—she was still buzzing. And she didn’t like it.
She hadn’t thought that seeing Jess again would have left her this shaken. And she tried to tell herself it was the circumstances of his appearance that were the real reason she was so disturbed. After all, it wasn’t every day a body was discovered on her family’s land, without any sort of explanation as to why or how it had gotten there.
“Victoria? I wondered where you’d gotten to.”
From her chair, she glanced over her shoulder at her brother Ross, then back out to the dark, pine-covered mountain rising like a sentinel over the T Bar K ranch house.
“For the past hour I’ve been trying to muster up enough energy to leave this chair,” she told him.
His hand came down on her shoulder and gently squeezed. “You hardly ate any supper. Are you feeling all right?”
She tried to laugh, but the sound held little cheer. “Remember, I’m the doctor, Ross. I’m supposed to ask that question.”
He eased his long frame down in the woven lawn chair sitting at an angle to hers. “That’s the trouble with you, Victoria. You’re always taking care of others rather than yourself.”
At thirty-five, and five years older than Victoria, Ross was the younger Ketchum son. Since their brother Hugh had been killed in an accident with a bull six years ago, Ross had taken total reins of managing the T Bar K. Along with being business savvy, Ross was as handsome as sin and some said as tough as their late father, Tucker. But to Victoria he was always gentle, her rock when no one else was there for her.
Casting him a wan smile, she said, “I’m all right, Ross. It’s just been a…long day.”
He sighed. “A hell of a long day,” he agreed.
“Were you able to contact Seth?”
“No. He’s out. On a case, more than likely.”
Their older brother Seth had moved away from the ranch many years ago to become a Texas Ranger. If a problem did arise over the discovered body, Seth would know how to handle it. Victoria could only hope their older brother wouldn’t have to be bothered.
“It’s just as well. There’s really not a problem. And I don’t foresee one.”
“How do you figure?” Ross asked.
She rubbed the mosquito bites on the back of her arm. “Obviously this man wandered onto Ketchum land and died of natural causes or suffered a fall for one reason or another. There’s nothing sinister about that.”
Ross thoughtfully stroked his chin. “I’m surprised you used that word. Jess didn’t imply there was anything sinister going on.”
Her mind whirled as she regarded her brother’s rugged face. “That’s not the impression he gave me.”
Ross’s brows lifted. “Maybe you misread the man.”
“The only time I misread Jess Hastings was four years ago. When he left San Juan County.”
But tonight Victoria had read him loud and clear. Especially his kiss. He was out to hurt her, any way he could. And the idea left a terrible ache in her heart.
“Hell, Victoria,” her brother gently scolded, “I thought you’d gotten Jess Hastings out of your system a long time ago.”
She rose to her feet with plans to go back inside. “I have. I just haven’t forgotten the hard lesson he taught me.”
He studied her for long moments. “I hope you had the good sense not to anger the man, Victoria. He’s in a position to help us or hurt us. I wouldn’t want it to be the latter.”
It didn’t dawn on Ross that Jess had already hurt her more than anything or anyone ever could. But then Ross didn’t know the whole story behind her and Jess. No one did. And as far as she was concerned, no one ever would.
“If Jess decides to pursue this thing in a negative way, there’s nothing I can do to stop him,” she said, then hurried inside the house before her brother could say more.
The baby-fine curls surrounded the child’s head like a red-gold halo. Long curling lashes of the same color lay against cheeks flushed from the warmth of the nearby fireplace.
Jess’s daughter had been asleep in his arms for some time now, but still he lingered in the rocker, savoring the feel of her warm weight resting against his chest. She was the only thing he’d done right in his life. The only thing he really lived for. Her and his grandparents.
“Is Katrina asleep? I’ve got your supper heated in the microwave.”
Jess looked up from his daughter’s face to see Alice, his grandmother, standing a few steps away in the dimly lit living room. She was a tall, rawboned woman, her skin brown and wrinkled by hard work and nearly seventy years of harsh, New Mexico climate. Her hands were big and tough, her hair gray and wiry. But her heart was as gentle as a Chinook wind that melted the winter snows.
When Jess’s father had died at an early age from pneumonia complicated by alcoholism, he’d left behind a five-year-old son and a wife who’d never really wanted a husband and child in the first place. As soon as Jim Hastings had been planted in the ground, his wife had left for greener pastures.
Thankfully, Alice and William had been there to take in their grandson and raise him as their own child. Ma and Pa, as Jess called them, were the only real parents he’d ever known. And now they were helping him raise his own daughter. But they were getting too old to see after a rambunctious two-and-a-half-year-old toddler, even if Jess did take her into a
