had a hell of thunderstorm here this morning,” Brandon said.
Rourke could feel nervous waves of energy coming off his brother as they neared the ranch. No doubt Brandon was worried about the reception the two of them would get. Rourke doubted Brandon had told their father that he was picking up the first McCall to ever go to prison.
Brandon slowed the truck, pulled up in the yard and parked. Rourke sat for a moment after the engine died just looking at the ranch house, reliving memories, the good mixed with the bad, all treasured now.
The house seemed larger than even he remembered it: the logs more golden, the tan rock fireplace chimney towering above the roofline more majestic, the porch stretching across the entire front of the building, endless.
“I’ve got some business in town, but I’ll catch you later,” Brandon said, obviously anxious to get going. “Your pickup’s over there. Still runs good. I took care of it for you. Left the keys in the ignition.”
“Thanks,” Rourke said, looking over at his little brother, and extended his hand. “I appreciate everything you’ve done and thanks for coming up to get me.”
“No problem,” Brandon said, shaking his hand, then looking at his watch, fiddling with the band.
Rourke studied his little brother. “You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”
“No,” Brandon said too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“These investments you were talking about, they’re legal, right?” Rourke asked, seeing something in his brother that worried him.
Brandon fiddled with the gearshift, seeming to avoid his gaze. “Hey, it isn’t like that, okay?”
It was something, Rourke thought. Something that equaled trouble, sure as hell. “If you need help for any reason—”
“Stop acting like a big brother,” Brandon said, then softened his words. “I’m okay. I can take care of myself.”
Rourke climbed out of the truck and Brandon took off in a cloud of dust. He watched him leave, wondering how deep Brandon was in. And to whom.
As the sound of the ranch pickup engine died off in the distance, Rourke heard the front door of the house open, heard the solid thump of boot soles on the pine floorboards and knew before he turned that it would be his father.
Asa McCall had always been a big man, tall and broad and muscular. He’d also always been a hard man, mule stubborn, the undisputed head of the McCall clan, his word the last one.
The years hadn’t changed him much that Rourke could see. He was still large, rawboned, still looked strong even at sixty-eight. The hair at his temples was no longer blond but gray, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, the sun-weathered face still granite hard and unforgiving.
They stared at each other as Rourke slung his duffel over one shoulder.
“So they let you out,” Asa McCall said, his deep voice carrying across the wide porch.
Rourke said nothing. There was nothing to say. He’d told the old man he was innocent eleven years ago and hadn’t been believed. Not Rourke McCall, the wildest McCall.
“Don’t worry, I’m not staying,” Rourke said. “I just came by to pick up my things.”
Asa McCall nodded. Neither moved for a few moments, then Rourke mounted the steps and walked past his father and into the ranch house without a word or a look, torn between anger and regret.
As he stepped through the front door, he saw that nothing had changed from the Native American rugs on the hardwood floors to the western furnishings and huge rock fireplace.
He turned at a sound and was struck by the sight of a pretty young woman coming out of the kitchen. She stopped, her eyes widening. A huge smile lit her face as she came running at him, throwing herself into his arms.
“Rourke,” she cried. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back.”
He stepped away to hold her at arm’s length to study his little sister. “Dusty? I can’t believe it.”
She’d been six when he’d left, a kid. Now she was a woman, although it was pretty well hidden. She wore boys’ jeans, a shapeless western shirt and boots. Her long blond hair was woven in a single braid down her back and a straw cowboy hat hung from a string around her neck. She wore no makeup.
“Dusty?”
Neither had heard the front door open. They both turned to find their father filling the doorway.
“We got fencing to see to,” Asa said, and turned, letting the door slam behind him.
Rourke listened to his father’s boots pound across the porch. “You best get going. We can visit later. I’ll let you know where I’m staying in town.”
“You’re not staying here?” Dusty cried.
Rourke gave her a look.
“Daddy is so impossible,” she said, sounding like the teenager she was. “I swear he gets more stubborn every day.”
Rourke could believe that. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Cash lives in town. You know he’s still the sheriff?”
Rourke nodded.
“J.T. is running the ranch now, but Daddy and I help. Brandon is hardly ever around. J.T. is probably still out riding fence this morning. Did Brandon leave?”
“He said he had business in town,” Rourke told his sister.
She nodded and frowned. “I hate to think what kind of business. Daddy says he’s headed for trouble and I’m afraid he might be right.”
Headed for trouble. That’s what Asa used to say about him, Rourke thought.
“I’m so glad you’re finally home,” Dusty said, and stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek before closing the front door behind her.
He watched Dusty join their father out in the yard, watched her walk past the old man. Rourke had to smile, recognizing the familiar anger and stubbornness in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. The old man shook his own head as she sashayed past him, giving him the silent treatment just as she’d done to them all when she was mad as a child.
When Asa finally followed after her, he looked older, almost sad, as if another defiant kid would be the death of him.
Rourke’s smile faded as he watched his father follow Dusty to one of the ranch pickups. He stayed there at the window until they’d driven away, then he turned and climbed the wide staircase at the center of the room. At the top, the second floor branched out in two wings. Rourke walked down the wood-floored hallway to his old room at the end of the west corridor. He tried the door, wondering if his stuff had been moved out, the room used for something else.
But as the door swung in, he saw that his room was exactly the same as it had been when he’d left eleven years before. He expected the room to
