marriage. Akeem had shown her more consideration in the past hour than Gary had in the whole last year they’d been together.
He was a solid presence next to her. And she knew without a doubt that he meant every word he had said. Trusting herself to him, leaning on him throughout this terrible mess, would have been too easy. A few years back, she would have done just that. But Gary had taught her a couple of hard-learned lessons she could not soon forget. Would never forget, she hoped. Because she had sworn she would never let her life get so far out of her own control again.
Shouting drew her attention and she jumped up to push to the window next to Akeem, aware of his nearness suddenly, but only for a split second. Then cold gathered in her stomach at the sight of the familiar beat-up, green pickup. The man who’d pulled in a few minutes ago wasn’t a returning ranch hand.
She recognized the car, as she recognized the voice. And then as he stumbled out of the main house, lurching down the stairs, she recognized that he was drunk once again. The absolute last person they needed here.
One of the cops followed him out of the house to keep an eye on him.
“Who is that?” Akeem was already going for the door, ready to handle the situation to spare her any upset.
Jaw tight, she held him back. “You stay. I’ll deal with him.”
“I don’t think so.”
But her hand on his arm did make him pause for a moment.
“It’s okay,” she told him, although it wasn’t. Nothing was all right in her world at the moment. But Akeem needed an explanation, and she needed to deal with the man still spewing obscenities in the yard.
“He is Christopher’s father,” she said.
Chapter Two
One look at the thunder on Akeem’s face told Taylor she better head off conflict while she could. “Would you mind checking on the officers to make sure everything’s okay in there?”
“You want me to keep them out of this?”
She watched his handsome face harden as Gary kept calling for her outside. Gary could be difficult to handle when he was like this, and Akeem had never been good at suffering fools. She didn’t need a fight on her hands. “Please,” she said.
“And you want me to keep myself out of it.” Akeem held her gaze, then nodded after another second. “Of course,” he said, already walking out the door.
The tension in her shoulders relaxed a little. He wouldn’t cause any problems for her. When had he ever not done as she’d asked him? She could only think of one extremely embarrassing occasion, when she’d turned nineteen and gone to a clam bake at a friend’s house that morphed into a keg party. She’d come home, wasted, in the middle off the night, snuck into the guest bedroom and practically begged Akeem to take her virginity. He’d been visiting Flint to strategize some deal they were putting together.
Not only had he said no—emphatically—but he ran. He was gone by the time everyone got up in the morning, with some business-emergency excuse to Flint. They were wheeling and dealing even back then, in college.
She always traced the awkwardness that had entered their easy friendship back to that night. And she found now that she could still blush at the memory.
She rubbed her hands over her face before calling out an “In here” and watching through the open door as the two men passed and measured each other up in the yard.
They were nothing alike. Gary was blond, Akeem darker in coloring. Gary was the taller of the two but Akeem much better built. Gary had on a stained, olive-green T-shirt with equally stained blue jeans. Akeem wore suit pants with a crisp, white shirt—had probably come from work. But the main difference was in their faces, in their eyes that reflected the essence of each. Gary’s gaze was hazy, anger deepening the lines of his face, his mouth set in a leer, his chest puffed out. Akeem’s stance conveyed effortless power, his gaze holding concern for her as he glanced back.
She put on her “I’m fine here” smile. One dark eyebrow slid up his forehead, but then he nodded again as if to say “As you wish” and kept going.
She closed the door behind Gary the second he stepped over the threshold. Just in time.
“Who the hell is that? Your new boyfriend? What is he, Mexican? Ain’t there a border patrol looking for him someplace?” He laughed at his own joke, smelling of cigarette smoke and beer.
“One of Flint’s friends. Just trying to help.” She backed into the room, putting a small table between them that held a handful of flyers for the next open day at the ranch, and two coffee mugs that had been left out. When the alarm had been raised about Christopher being missing, everyone had rushed out to help.
“The pigs in the kitchen say Chris is still missin’. Shouldn’t have never let you take ‘im. What in hell was more important than watchin’ my boy? Playing with your Mexican friend?”
She knew better than to respond to his accusation when he was like this. Her gaze landed on the mugs. “I’m making coffee. Would you like some?”
He took a step forward, none too steady on his feet.
When had he changed from the charming, full-of-life rodeo cowboy to the bitter man he was now, one who regularly got drunk by noon? Once upon a time, he’d been her knight in shining armor, or so she’d thought.
He’d dazzled her with his larger-than-life personality, his outrageous courting and endless promises. Having just inherited money from his father, he’d shown her a side of life she had never known. He’d showered her with gifts and attention when Flint was one hundred percent focused on building a business out of nothing, and Akeem, the man she had a major crush on, always kept himself frustratingly out of reach.
Gary had introduced her to the fast life, and they had been happy for a while. By the time she figured out that they weren’t as much in love with each other as they’d thought, Christopher was on his way. Then Gary had run out of his father’s money and had no idea how to make more. The drinking began. When Flint had become more and more successful, the demands for her brother’s money started. And when after a while she refused, hatred and verbal abuse followed. Then more.
“I miss you, you know,” he said with drunk melancholy and walked around the table, put on that rodeo cowboy smile that used to make her heart beat faster, flashed those strong teeth.
She turned to the coffeepot, hoping some caffeine would sober him up.
“If your brother helped us, we could make it together. We should try again, babe.” He pressed against her back and put his hands on her waist. “We could make that little girl you wanted.”
She slipped out of his hold, away from the stench of stale beer on his breath. “Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you a cup.”
He followed her to the cupboard, looked around. “We can even live here, if you want to be close to your family. Flint would put up a decent house for you if you asked.”
Here we go again. She put the dirty dishes into the sink in the corner and set the two clean cups on the table. If Gary was willing
