“Then give me a job, Matthew.” There was a touch of undisguised desperation in Jacob’s voice. “I can’t get anyone else in this town to even talk to me about a job. Everyone knows what my father did. Hell, my wife…my kids…we’re all starving because I can’t find work.”
Matthew knew the Tilleys had always been proud, and he knew the emotional toll it must have cost Jacob to come here this evening.
“Be here at dawn in the morning and plan on working harder than you ever have in your life.” Matthew hoped he hadn’t just made a mistake.
Jacob held a hand out to him. “Thanks. I promise you won’t regret it.”
After Jacob left the stables, Matthew remained for a few minutes longer. He sank down on a bale of hay, his thoughts going back to the conversation with Lilly.
Funny, he’d always been surprised that she hadn’t married. He wasn’t sure he’d ever met a woman who had no interest in getting married. Certainly most of the single women of Inferno had marriage on the mind, and there was nothing they’d like more than to snag the last available Delaney.
But Matthew’s desire to remain single went deeper than a mere whim. He would never marry, because he was afraid he was his father’s son. And as his father’s son, he was desperately afraid that if he ever fell in love he would only manage to hurt the person most dear to his heart.
Better not to love than to repeat the sins of the father.
Chapter 2
Lilly left the stables and checked on Aunt Clara, who had retired to her room for the evening. Lilly fixed herself a glass of iced tea, then went back outside and sat on the wicker chair on the front porch.
The sun had disappeared and the purple haze of twilight was fading as stars began to appear as if by magic in the darkening skies.
She saw Jacob Tilley leave the stables and get into his pickup. She waved at him as he drove off, then looked expectantly toward the stable, assuming Matthew would soon follow.
When minutes passed and he didn’t come out, she returned her gaze to the night sky. From her apartment in downtown Dallas she never saw the stars. But here they looked big enough, low enough, to reach out and grab.
She drew a deep breath, feeling more relaxed than she had in months. The frantic tempo of the Dallas city life and the daily stresses of her job seemed very far away at the moment.
A week or two here and perhaps she’d be ready to go back and face her life…and her failure. She drew another breath, fighting against a wave of sadness so deep it sent a piercing ache through her.
She consciously forced her thoughts away from her job and instead found thoughts of Matthew intruding into her mind. As a boy he had fascinated her and she was surprised to discover some of that fascination remained.
As the years had passed and she’d remembered the crush she’d had on him, she’d always believed that she’d been acutely drawn to him due to the raging hormones of a teenager. But she was well past the age of teenage hormones and still she found herself physically drawn to him.
The moment they had pulled in and she had seen him, she’d experienced a slight quickening of her pulse, an acceleration of her heartbeats.
Nostalgia. Surely that’s what she was experiencing. The nostalgia of that first crush, time spent with a handsome young man, the awakening of sexual awareness between two teenagers.
Hearing footsteps, she looked toward the stables to see the object of her thoughts approaching, his boots crunching on the gravel drive.
“Everything all right?” she asked as she saw the frown that deepened the lines on his face.
“I hope so.” He lowered himself into the chair next to hers. “I just hired Jacob Tilley and I’m hoping it’s not a mistake.”
“Why would it be a mistake?”
“Jacob Tilley’s father, Walter, was our family lawyer at the time my father passed away. He’s now in prison for running illegal aliens through our ranch and murdering a young woman who worked here as a social director. He also nearly killed my brother, Mark and his wife, April, when they stumbled on his operation.”
Lilly gasped and listened as he told her the details of Jacob’s father’s crimes. “But surely you heard about all this,” he said as he finished the story.
Lilly shook her head. “No, I didn’t hear anything about it. But you have to understand, most of the information I get about the ranch and what’s happening with your family is from Aunt Clara and the letters she gets from Johnna. Johnna doesn’t write her very often, and I think Aunt Clara often forgets what she’s been told in those letters.”
“That’s how I managed to keep up with your life over the years,” he replied. “Johnna would mention a letter she’d received from Clara and Clara’s letters were usually filled with tidbits about your life.”
Lilly grinned. “They must have been pretty boring letters.” She took a sip of her tea, then placed the glass on the porch next to her chair. “Whenever I visited out here, I thought you led the most exciting life I could ever imagine.”
“Really?” She heard his disbelief in his low voice.
“If you’d been here longer than a week or two at a time, you’d probably have realized just how unexciting ranch life can be. It’s a hard life. It can be brutal.” A hard edge had appeared in his tone.
He cleared his throat and stood. He moved to the porch railing and stared out at the encroaching darkness. For a long moment he was silent…a silence that invited no entry.
Lilly stared at the width of his rigid back and wondered if he dated, if he had a special somebody in his life. She remembered him as somebody who had difficulty opening himself to anyone, sharing pieces of himself.
In those summers when she had visited here, she had worked very hard to get through the barriers she sensed he’d erected to guard him from everyone. And when she’d felt she’d succeeded, it had been a sweet success.
But he wasn’t sixteen or seventeen anymore, and she had no right to intrude on his thoughts, his emotions or his life.
“You mentioned that Clara wants to make her home here permanently,” he said, finally breaking the silence. “I need to warn you that there isn’t any guarantee this place will be permanent.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?” She rose from her chair and joined him at the railing.
He didn’t look at her but continued to stare out at some indefinable point in the distance. “I’ve received an offer from a development company that wants to buy this place in five months when it officially becomes ours.”
“But surely you aren’t considering selling,” Lilly protested. She placed a hand on his forearm, and when he turned to look at her, his eyes were as dark as the night that surrounded them.
“To be honest, I don’t know what I’m considering.”
“But what does the
