with him further, simply headed for the front door—she never used the back, as most people in this part of Texas did. “I’ll see you in court, Billy.”
Then she was gone.
Billy stood in the middle of the toy-strewn living room, furnished with the formal satin-covered couches and chairs Laura had chosen, feeling helpless. Moments later he was headed for the back door. He paused long enough to yell up the stairs, “I’m going out, Mrs. Motherwell. Good night, Raejean. Good night, Annie.”
“Good night, Daddy!” the two of them yelled back from the bathtub in unison.
Mrs. Motherwell appeared at the top of the stairs. “Don’t forget this is my last week, Mr. Stonecreek. You’ll need to find someone else starting Monday morning.”
“I know, Mrs. Motherwell,” Billy said with a sigh. He had Penelope to thank for that, too. She had filled Mrs. Motherwell’s head with stories about him being a dangerous savage. His granite-hewn features, his untrimmed black hair, his broad shoulders and immense height, and a pair of dark, brooding eyes did nothing to dispel the image. But he couldn’t help how he looked. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Motherwell. I’ll find someone to replace you.”
He was the one who was worried. How was he going to find someone as capable as Mrs. Motherwell in a week? It had taken him a month to find her.
He let the kitchen screen door slam and gunned the engine in his black pickup as he drove away. But he couldn’t escape his frenetic thoughts.
I’ll be damned if I let Penelope take my kids away from me. Who does she think she is? How dare she threaten to steal my children!
He knew his girls needed a mother. Sometimes he missed Laura so much it made his gut ache. But no other woman could ever take her place. He had hired a series of good housekeeper/nannies one after another—it was hard to get help to stay at his isolated ranch—and he and his girls had managed fine.
Or they would, if Penelope and Harvey Trask would leave them alone.
Unfortunately, Penelope blamed him for Laura’s death. She had been killed instantly in a car accident that had looked a whole lot like a suicide. Billy had tried telling Penelope that Laura hadn’t killed herself, but his mother-in-law hadn’t believed him. Penelope Trask had said she would see that he was punished for making Laura so miserable she had taken her own life. Now she was threatening to take his children from him.
He couldn’t bear to lose Raejean and Annie. They were the light of his life and all he had left of Laura. God, how he had loved her!
Billy pounded his fist on the steering wheel of his pickup. How could he have been so stupid as to give Penelope the ammunition she needed to shoot him down in court?
It was too late to do anything about his wild reputation. But he could change his behavior. He could stop brawling in bars. If only there were some way he could show the judge he had turned over a new leaf….
Billy didn’t drive in any particular direction, yet he eventually found himself at the stock pond he shared with Zach Whitelaw’s ranch. The light from the rising moon and stars made a silvery reflection on the center of the pond and revealed the shadows of several pin oaks that surrounded it. He had always found the sounds of the bullfrogs and the crickets and the lapping water soothing to his inner turmoil. He had gone there often to think in the year since Laura had died.
His truck headlights revealed someone else had discovered his sanctuary. He smiled wistfully when he realized a couple was lying together on the grass. He felt a stab of envy. He and Laura had spent their share of stolen moments on the banks of this stock pond when the land had belonged to her father.
He almost turned the truck around, because he wanted to be alone, but there was something about the movements of the couple on the ground that struck him as odd. It took him a moment to realize they weren’t struggling in the throes of passion. The woman was trying to fight the man off!
He hit the brakes, shoved open his truck door, and headed for them on the run. He hadn’t quite reached the girl when he heard her scream of outrage.
He grabbed hold of the boy by his shoulders and yanked him upright. The tall, heavyset kid came around swinging.
That was a mistake.
Billy ducked and came up underneath with a hard fist to the belly that dropped the kid to his knees. A second later the boy toppled face-forward with a groan.
Billy made a sound of disgust that the kid hadn’t put up more of a fight and hurried to help the girl. She had curled in on herself, her body rigid with tension. When he put a hand on her shoulder, she tried scrambling away.
“He’s not going to hurt you anymore,” he said in the calm, quiet voice he used when he was gentling horses. He turned her over so she could see she was safe from the boy, that he was there to help. Her torn bodice exposed half of a small, well-formed breast. He made himself look away, but his body tightened responsively. Her whole body began to tremble.
“Shh. It’s all right. I’m here now.”
She looked up at him with eyes full of pain.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his hands doing a quick once-over for some sign of injury.
She slapped at him ineffectually with one hand while holding the torn chiffon against her nakedness with the other. “No. I’m fine. Just…just…”
Her eyes—he couldn’t tell what color they were in the dark—filled with tears and, despite her desperate attempts to blink the moisture away, one sparkling tear-drop spilled onto her cheek. It was then he realized the pain he had seen wasn’t physical, but came from inside.
He understood that kind of pain all too well.
“Hey,” he said gently. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Easy for you to say,” she snapped, rubbing at the tears and swiping them across her cheeks. “I—”
A car engine revved, and they both looked toward the sound in time to see a pair of headlights come on.
“Wait!” the girl cried, surging to her feet.
The dress slipped, and Billy got an unwelcome look at a single, luscious breast. He swore under his breath as his body hardened.
The girl obviously wasn’t used to long dresses, because the length of it caught under her knees and trapped her on the ground. By the time she made it to her feet, the car she had come in, and the boy she had come with, were gone.
He took one look at her face in the moonlight and saw a kind of desolation he hadn’t often seen before.
Except perhaps in his own face in the mirror.
It made his throat ache. It might have brought him to tears, if he had been the kind of man who could cry. He wasn’t. He thought maybe his Comanche heritage had something to do with it. Or maybe it was simply a lack of feeling in him. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.
As he watched, the girl sank to the ground and dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders rocked with soundless, shuddering sobs.
He settled beside her, not speaking, not touching,
