Perfect Family (12 page)

Jessie looked at April. She'd never said that, only that she could ride “adequately.” Once more, she wondered how much the family knew, how much of her life had been torn open for strangers to examine. The sense of invasion replaced the warmth, even happiness she'd felt. Both April and her brother—and their mother yesterday—disconcerted her. Perhaps because they all appeared “perfect,” and she didn't trust perfect. Mills had been perfect on the surface and scarred on the inside.

“Yes,” she said shortly.

“We're going riding later this afternoon,” April added.

Hall's brows furrowed together in surprise. He looked at his sister, then back at Jessie.

“Do you want to go?” April asked. Jessie detected a challenge in her question.

“Hell, no.”

“Hall fell a couple of years ago,” April said, and there was a slightest edge of contempt in her voice. “He hasn't ridden since.”

Hall flushed. “You haven't been riding yourself very much.”

“How would you know?”

Jessie was forgotten. The animosity seemed to be something more than sibling rivalry. She felt like backing away from the intensity of it.

Instead, she tried to change the subject. “Alex said you've just finished law school. Congratulations.”

The grin returned to his face. “Thank you. I'll be joining Dad's campaign here next week.”

“Hall just returned from Europe,” April said.

“A graduation gift,” Hall said. “Now I have to start working.”

“That will be a change,” April sniped.

Jessie was beginning to understand. Both brother and sister working in their father's campaign? She could virtually feel April's jealousy.

Jessie had always wanted brothers and sisters. She'd had a make-believe sister when she was a child. Now she wondered whether there was always this kind of tension between siblings.

“You are just envious, sister dear,” Hall said.

April shrugged. “I hardly think so.”

Then they were interrupted by still another Clements and, in minutes, April and Hall left, first one, then the other. Jessie saw them in a corner arguing.

She excused herself. She was feeling overwhelmed again, uncertain about the currents flowing in the room. She stepped outside, tasting the smell of smoke permeating the area.

Her Wonderland!

Was it like Alice's? Nothing as it seemed to be?

She was seized again with the sense of unreality. She had felt a sense of belonging, and yet there was also a detachment, a sense of looking into someone else's house.

Jessie went outside and looked over the scene in front. The smoking meat, the stretch of picnic tables, the horses in a pasture. Just as she had seen in the movies. Just as she had always wanted.

She walked over to the barn. It had been a long time since she smelled those odors. Fresh hay, horses, leather. She hesitated at the door, not sure whether she wanted to feel all those emotions again. She had not been in a barn since the day she'd found her father there. He'd been late, much too late, in returning home. She'd thought he might be at a bar, but his truck was still in front of their small house that was part of the Lynford Farms. She found him there, sprawled out over the hay, a hand clutching his chest. He'd been given notice the night before. And it had been her fault. Everything had been her fault …

She heard a soft, warning growl. It startled her out of the memory. Out of the nightmare. She turned.

“Timber. Down.”

The growl stopped, and her eyes adjusted to the interior of the barn. An animal that looked more wolf than dog glared at her.

“Miss Clayton.” The soft drawl was a counterpart to the earlier sharp command. Ross Macleod had approached silently. His dark eyes were quizzical but guarded. She wondered whether they were always like that.

“This is Timber,” he said. “He's a bit … edgy among people he doesn't know, or like. I'll put him away.”

“No,” Jessie said. She stooped and held out her hand for the dog to sniff. “Timber?”

He looked down at the dog. “For Timber Wolf. It just seemed to fit.” Then he spoke to the dog. “It's okay,” he said. Only then did Timber take a step forward and cautiously sniff Jessie. After a moment of tentative exploration, she ran her fingers behind his ear. He moaned quietly with pleasure.

She looked up and saw an astonished expression on Ross's face. “He doesn't usually do that,” he said.

“I've never met a dog I didn't like,” she said, taking liberties with Will Rogers. “They seem to know that.”

“He won't let April anywhere near him. I have to keep him at the house or locked in the tack room when she's here.”

“That doesn't seem fair.”

“Timber doesn't think so, either,” he said. He paused for a moment, then asked, “Family getting too much for you?”

She didn't have to ask what he meant. “A little,” she said. “I'm not used to so many people.”

His gaze was appraising. She felt as though she were under a microscope. She gave the dog one last pat, then stood, moving over to the stalls. A head poked out and she held out her hand. The animal sniffed it, then tossed its head.

“Firebird,” he said from behind her. “He's more than a handful. April shouldn't have suggested you ride him.”

She resented his assumption that she was either fainthearted or incompetent. Still, it had been years—it seemed a lifetime—since she'd been near a horse. She had consciously stayed away from them. Now all her old love for them flooded back. She was a horse-struck girl with a stable of animals to love.

“It has been a long time,” she admitted.

“How long?”

“Ten years.”

The horse extended his head, and she ran her fingers along the side of his head. He whinnied softly.

“He doesn't usually accept people that easily either,” Ross said, moving to her side.

“I like horses. They know it. At least, that's what my father used to say. They can detect a phony in a moment.”

“I think I would have liked your father.”

“He probably would have liked you, too. He too was …”

“Was what?”

“A loner. At least, that's what everyone says about you.”

“Do you always believe what everyone says?”

Her gaze met his. “No,” she said. “But you do seem to be avoiding everyone.”

The side of his lips turned up. “I'm the family skeleton. Hasn't anyone told you?”

“Only that you were adopted.”

“I'm also part Apache,” he said. “And my adoptive father's blood son. A bastard, in other words. The two aren't exactly what a family of this … stature really wants.”

He looked at her steadily, obviously trying to gauge her reaction.

She met his gaze. “At least you know who you are.”

“Oh yes, I know,” he said bitterly.

“You manage the property,” she said.

“Only because no one else wanted the job. Can you imagine our congressman cleaning out a barn?”

“Do you do that?”

“When we're shorthanded, which is today.”

“I used to enjoy cleaning stalls,” she said. And she had. She'd felt at home in the barns. She'd loved the shuffling of horses, the soft muzzles as they searched her hand for a piece of carrot. Because she and her father had moved so often, she'd never had time to make human friends, and so she made them of the animals. She'd loved some with all her heart.

“I'll remember that,” he said, his lips turning up at the sides again.

She tipped her head slightly to look up at him. She was tall, but he was several inches over six feet, and all of his rangy body was whipcord strong.

Her gaze apparently disconcerted him. He turned around. “You want to meet the others?”

Meet
. She liked that. It demonstrated a care for his charges, a respect.

“Very much.”

“What kind of horses did your father train?”

The question surprised her. Everyone else seemed to know more about her than she did herself. “Thoroughbreds. Racing stock.”

“You'll find ours far different. They're quarter horses, bred and trained for cutting and reining. They move suddenly and unexpectedly. They think for themselves. You have to be alert every moment.”

“They're beautiful.”

A hint of pride broke the stark angles of his face. “We're gradually earning a reputation,” he said. “A few more years …” He left the sentence unfinished and walked down the aisle, mentioning the names, occasionally running a hand affectionately down a well-groomed neck. Then they arrived at a set of larger stalls. A mare nuzzled her colt. “He's going to be the best yet,” Ross said.

Her heart speeded. She hadn't realized how much she missed this. How much the miracle of birth had always moved her. Her teeth bit her lower lip. She could almost see her father squatting next to a foal, eyeing it speculatively. She turned away blindly. Damn it. Ten years. And yet now it felt like yesterday, the memories illuminated by the photographs, the recollections.

All of Ross's attention was on the foal, his dark eyes warm for the first time. When he turned back, though, they were cool. She felt as though she'd been dismissed. Yet she didn't want to go. He apparently expected nothing of her, while the others in the house all seemed to have expectations. Here, there were no odd little currents, no competition. She felt at home here.

She'd thought she'd made the bookstore her home. Now she wondered whether she hadn't just been hiding.

“You had better get back,” he said. “They'll be sending out a search party.”

“Why?”

His eyes narrowed. “You really don't know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Damn Alex.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “He likes games.”

“Then you tell me.”

“It's not my place.”

“Because you feel like an outsider?”

“Did I say that?”

“In essence. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you tell me what you did about yourself?”

He shrugged. “You'll hear it soon enough. It's just one of the family secrets. I thought you should know.”

“Is that a warning?”

“Maybe.”

“You're like Mouse.”

His brows furrowed together. “Mouse?”

“In
Alice in Wonderland
. He doesn't finish a story. He just … intimates.”

“I've never read it.”

“Then that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“The scowl on your face.”

“I don't see the connection.”

“Read the book. You have to have a healthy respect for the absurd.”

“Why?”

“Sometimes it's quite necessary to survive.” She found herself confiding in him. “In fact the only way I can tell everyone apart is by thinking of them as a character from the novel.”

“And I'm Mouse?” he said with an arched eyebrow. It was the first indication of humor she'd seen.

“It's better than Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” she said. “Or Humpty Dumpty.”

“I
have
heard of
them
,” he said. “Now who do you think are Tweedledee and Tweedledum?”

“Can't you guess?”

“I don't have a clue.”

“The twins.”

“And Humpty Dumpty?”

“I don't think I should say,” she said.

He grimaced. “So you think this is Wonderland?”

“It is to me.”

His gaze bored into her, but she saw a glimmer of interest that wasn't there before. “Perhaps I
should
have read it. I didn't have much time to read as a kid.”

She turned around. There was a quiet intensity about him that attracted her far more than Alex's breeziness. She'd felt struck by lightning when she first met him. She still felt heat, but it was no longer the sudden violent kind. Her body was tremulous, warm. Aware. She couldn't remember ever responding this way to anyone, not even to Mills.

Ridiculous. She remembered the seductive look April had given Ross.

How could she ever compete with such glossy perfection?

“How many secrets are there?” she asked after a brief pause. She heard the break in her own voice. She had always thought her life so ordinary, and now she found it wrapped in mystery.

He shrugged. “Probably not many more than other families.”

“I don't know about families,” she said.

He had moved closer to her. She smelled aftershave, and the aroma of horses and leather. Heat seemed to radiate from him, as well as assurance. An assurance that she didn't have, had never had. His proximity bombarded her senses. A trembling excitement reverberated inside like the beginning rumblings of an earthquake.

“It looks like you're going to find out about one,” he said. His voice, she'd noticed before, was deep, and he spoke with a lazy drawl. But there wasn't the easy give and take she had with Alex. She had to draw every word out of a most reluctant mouth.

“Should I?”

“Having second thoughts?” he replied in a cool tone. He'd answered the question with a question, and that was disconcerting. It was obvious he was sparing with words, with thoughts, with explanations. No quick retorts as Alex produced, no quick smiles. He seemed to consider each word, weighing it carefully. He was probably impatient with her at the moment, her and her
Alice in Wonderland
nonsense.

She felt totally unsophisticated. Nothing like April's easy assurance. Her throat suddenly became tight.

Jessie thought she must appear cowardly. “No,” she said.

He looked skeptical, as if he knew she was lying. “Just keep your sense of the absurd,” he warned. “And now you had better go out to supper.”

“Are you coming?”

“No. Someone has to keep the ranch going.” A hard edge shadowed his voice.