What the hell?
He dropped his duffel on the log-framed bed and looked around, spotting the small straw cowboy hat he’d worn the day he’d won his first rodeo event at the age of seven. His first real chaps, a birthday present for his first cattle drive at the age of nine. His first baseball glove. All gifts from his father, placed on the high shelf Asa had built to store memories.
“In the end, that’s what life comes down to,” his father had told him the day he’d built the shelf. “Memories. Good and bad, they’re all you will ever really own, they’re all that are uniquely yours and ultimately all you can take with you.”
“You think Mom took memories of us to heaven with her?” Rourke had asked, looking up at his father.
Asa’s weathered face had crinkled into a smile, tears in his blue eyes. “She could never forget her kids,” he said without hesitation. “Never.”
“Or you, Dad. I’ll bet she remembers you.” It was the one time he’d ever seen his father cry, and only for those few moments before Asa could get turned and hightail it out to the barn.
Rourke walked through the bedroom, past the sitting room, to open the patio doors that led to the small balcony off the back. Stepping out, he gulped the afternoon air, the familiarity of it only making the lump in his throat harder to swallow.
As he looked out across the ranch, he spotted his brother J.T. riding in. Rourke watched him until J.T. disappeared behind one of the red-roofed barns, then he turned and went back inside.
Too many memories. Too many regrets.
He looked up again at the high shelf and all his trophies from first grade through high school for every damned thing from best stick drawing to debate, basketball to bull riding, baseball to target practice. And not a lick of dust on any of them.
He shook his head, not understanding himself any better than he did his father. He’d been wild from the time he could walk, bucking authority, getting in trouble, but somehow he’d managed to excel in spite of it. He got good grades without trying. Athletics came easy as well. In fact, he thought, studying the trophies on the shelf, maybe that was the problem. Everything had always come too easily.
He glanced around the room suddenly wondering why he’d come back here. Not to get his things. He hadn’t left anything here he needed. His grandfather had left all of them money, money Rourke had never touched. He could buy anything he needed for this new life the warden had tried to sell him on. He didn’t even need his old pickup. Hell, it was fifteen years old.
But he couldn’t leave without taking something. He went to the chest of drawers, opened several and took out jeans, underwear, socks, a couple of once-favorite T-shirts he knew he would never wear again and stuffed them into the duffel bag, zipping it closed.
Then he picked up the duffel bag and started to leave the room. His throat tightened again as he turned and spotted the faded photograph stuck in the edge of the mirror over the bureau.
It was a snapshot of Blaze and Cassidy.
He dropped the duffel bag on the bed and walked to the mirror. Blaze with her mass of long, curly fire-engine red hair and lush body standing next to her cousin at the rodeo grounds. Blaze nineteen and full of herself, he thought with a smile.
His gaze shifted to Cassidy and the smile evaporated. Cassidy looked plain next to Blaze with her brown hair and big brown eyes peering out of the shadow of her cowboy hat. Blaze was smiling at the camera, her hat pushed back. She was smiling at him behind the camera, flirting, being Blaze.
But Cassidy was leaning back against the fence, head angled down, peering out at the camera and him from under the brim of the hat, not smiling. Not even close. Her brown eyes were narrowed in an expression he hadn’t even noticed. Probably because he’d only had eyes for Blaze.
Now, though, he recognized the expression. Anger. Cassidy Miller had been furious with him.
He swore and plucked the picture from the edge of the mirror, remembering when he’d taken it. Only a week before Forrest Danvers’s murder.
Stuffing the photo into the duffel along with the clothes, he zipped it closed again and walked out of the room as he’d done eleven years ago, slamming the door behind him. He’d waited eleven years for this day. He couldn’t wait to see Cassidy.
Chapter Two
Cecil Danvers woke that afternoon with the worst hangover of his life. He rolled off the soiled cot he called a bed and stumbled to the rusted refrigerator for his first beer of the day.
He’d downed most of the can when he remembered what day it was. He stood in front of the fridge, listening to it running, waiting for the sweet feel of justified anger.
For the past eleven years, he’d plotted and planned for this day, but now that it was here, he had trouble working up the murderous rage he’d spent years nurturing.
Rourke McCall was to blame for every bad thing that had happened to him since the night his brother Forrest was murdered.
A lot of people in the county didn’t understand; they just thought Cecil was lazy, that he’d lived off Forrest’s death all these years. They just didn’t understand what it had been like to lose his only little brother, especially one who’d always taken care of him.
Cecil finished his beer, burped loudly and smashed the can in his fist before hurling it toward the trash can.
No matter what anyone said, he knew his life would have been better if Forrest had lived. He certainly wouldn’t be living in this rat hole on the tiny patch of land his mother had left him, living in the old homestead cabin that was falling down around his ears.
Nope. Forrest would have seen that he was taken care of. After all, Forrest was the smart one, the strong one. Hadn’t their old man always said so?
“Forrest is going to make something of his life,” the old man would say. “And if you’re lucky, Cecil, he’ll take care of your sorry ass as well.”
Now he had no one, Cecil thought as he opened the fridge and downed another beer, his eyes narrowing, stomach churning. His father had died right after Forrest’s murder. A farming accident. Happened all the time. Cecil’s mother hadn’t been far behind him. She was always moping around, crying over Forrest as if Forrest had been her only son.
Cecil shoved the memories away and concentrated on Rourke McCall. Yep, if it hadn’t been for Rourke, Cecil wouldn’t be forced to work when he ran out of money, mucking out other people’s horse barns or swabbing the local bars after hours.
He downed the rest of the beer, crushing the can in his fist and throwing it in the general direction of the trash can. Everyone in town was going to say that Rourke McCall had paid his debt to society for killing Forrest.
They’d tell Cecil to forget it, just as they had for the past eleven years. But people had always underestimated him, he thought grimly. He was the last of his family. It was up to him now. Rourke McCall had ruined his life and Cecil wasn’t about to let him get away with it.
ROURKE HAD JUST PUT his duffel on the seat of his pickup and was about to climb in when he saw his brother J.T. lead a large bay mare into the barn.
“Might as well get it
