mimicked the dry reply. “The sooner you deal with me, the sooner you get rid of me?”
He responded with a shrug that made the muscles of his chest and belly ripple enticingly. She’d known the odds were better than even that J. T. Rawlins was a handsome man. His father was. His eight half siblings were as beautiful as genetics, pampering and virtually unlimited wealth could provide. There wasn’t a crooked or unbleached tooth in the bunch. Not an inch of untanned skin or a pinch of untoned flab. Not one single hair on one head that would dare rebel enough to create a bad-hair day. They were all artificially, phonily gorgeous.
And they couldn’t hold a candle to their illegitimate half brother. His tan came from hours in the sun, his muscles from hard work. His dark hair was perfectly tousled, as if he’d combed it with his fingers. His smile, she would bet, was naturally perfect, as everything else was, though she doubted she would get the chance to see it. That would be her loss.
“Compromise,” she repeated. “As in you’ll tell me everything I need to know, and then I’ll disappear from your life?”
“As in I’ll answer the questions I want. As for the rest of them…well, you’ll have to live without the answers.”
“Or get them someplace else.”
With a glint in his dark eyes, he shook his head. “That’s part of the deal. You talk only to us. We don’t want you asking a lot of questions about us in town, or bothering our friends and neighbors. And my mother and my brother are off-limits. You don’t ask about them, you don’t get to talk to them, and you don’t mention them or Jordan any more than necessary in your book.”
Natalie studied him for a moment. Though his skin glistened with sweat, he didn’t seem to notice the miserable heat or the dryness that sucked the moisture from her pores. He didn’t seem to notice anything at all besides her, though it was a wary prey-watching-predator sort of attention. She wondered what it would be like to have that same intense focus in a man-woman way. Not that she was looking for a relationship. No trust, no love, no concern for anything but the story.
With that in mind, she turned her own attention back to the story. She could do without the brother—he was important only in that he was J.T.’s brother—but she really wanted an interview with Lucinda Rawlins. She wanted to know how the affair had started, how an unsophisticated waitress from Oklahoma had caught the eye of the powerful senator from Alabama thirty years ago. Had the woman fallen in love with Chaney? Had he given her anything besides a baby—sweet lies, affection, excitement, money? How had it felt, raising her son all alone and seeing his father on television traveling with the president, being presented to the queen of England, touring Israel with the prime minister? Had she kept her secret about J.T.’s father willingly, or had Chaney bought her silence?
So she would get those answers some other way.
“Are those your only conditions?” she asked evenly.
“There’s one other. You’ll stay here. My mother’s out of town, so you can use her place.”
She glanced at the divided house, then back at him with a wry smile. “And if I go into town, one of you will just happen to be going along, right?”
That negligible shrug again.
It was a smart idea on his part—restricting her movements, therefore restricting her access to the friends and neighbors he didn’t want her talking to. “This was a rather convenient time for your mother to go out of town, wasn’t it? When did she leave? Sometime after my letter arrived in the mail yesterday?”
“Actually, the trip was already planned. She and my brother went to help a…friend. But if she hadn’t already made plans, she would have. You’re not dragging her into this mess.”
Natalie resisted the urge to point out that it was Lucinda who had dragged J.T. into this “mess.” She was the one who’d chosen to have the affair, who Chaney believed got pregnant deliberately to get something from him, who chose to go through with the pregnancy, planned or not, and raise the senator’s son. Instead, she turned back to the boy, who watched them silently. “You must be Jordan.” Closing the small distance between them, she offered her hand. “I’m Natalie.”
He raised both hands palm out to show that they were greasy, and she lowered her hand to her side. “Who exactly are you, Jordan?”
He looked at J.T., then uncomfortably replied, “I’m—I’m Tate’s son.”
Tate, she knew from her sketchy information, was the elder of the two Rawlins sons. They both lived and worked on the ranch with their mother, and both were single. J.T. had a habit of picking up speeding tickets, and he and his brother had landed in the county jail for a few youthful offenses involving too much booze, pretty women and hostile competition for the ladies’ affection. They owned the ranch outright, though occasionally they had to take out a mortgage to get through a tough season, and they were both good credit risks, Tate more so than J.T., though they were never going to get rich from ranching. That was about the extent of what she’d learned before leaving Montgomery.
“Do I get to put any conditions on this agreement?” she asked J.T. as he finally came close enough to hand the tool box to Jordan.
“Sure. You can take it…or leave it.”
“My, you’re so generous.” She smiled in spite of the sarcasm underlying her words. “I’ll take it, of course. I’ve already checked into a motel in Dixon. I need to pick up my stuff.”
“Any reason why Jordan can’t get it?”
She gave the same sugar-atop-sarcasm smile. “You mean, did I leave anything of an intimate nature lying about? Files? Drafts of the book? Notes of the senator’s comments about you?”
“You and I obviously have different definitions of ‘intimate nature,’” J.T. said.
With a faint flush warming her cheeks, she tried to remember what she’d done with the clothing—including a black lace bra with matching bikini panties—she’d taken off the night before. She’d been tired when she’d checked into the motel, and she’d changed into her pajamas and fallen into bed…but not before stuffing the clothes into a mesh laundry bag.
Removing the motel key from her key ring, she offered it to the boy. “If you’d save me forty more miles on the road after yesterday’s trip, Jordan, I would be ever so grateful. There are a couple of suitcases, a laundry bag, some papers on the table…oh, and the stuff on the bathroom counter.”
Jordan accepted the key, then, at a nod from his uncle, he grabbed his T-shirt and headed for the house.
“So…would you prefer that I call you J.T., Joshua or Josh?”
“I’d prefer that you call me long-distance.”
“A sense of humor. None of the other Chaney kids have one.”
That earned her a scowl and a hostile response. “I’m not one of the Chaney kids. Don’t call me that.” He circled the truck, then came back with a chambray shirt. She watched as he thrust his arms into the shirtsleeves, then started fastening the buttons. It was a simple task, one she’d seen done a million times, but he made it look…easy. Fluid. Sexy.
And that wasn’t something she should be thinking about the subject of her most
