Revenge (40 page)

Jenner swung around and faced Beth. “You want this guy?” he asked, pointing a crutch at Stan.

“Jenner I—he's my friend.”

“Sure. Well, lady, it's your choice. If you want to marry the insurance man, no one's going to stop you.” His eyes narrowed on her, but the blue flames of anger were still visible.

“I'm not marrying anyone,” she said firmly. “I don't need a man—”

“Then why'd you come back here?” Jenner asked, cutting her off.

“For God's sake, Beth, he can't talk to you like that.”

“Maybe it would be better,” she said, more calmly than she felt as her insides were quivering in rage, “if you both left.”

The back door squeaked, and Cody, an apple with a tiny bite out of it in one hand, streaked into the room. He saw Jenner and slid to a stop. “You here 'gain?”

Stan stiffened. Beth, sending both men a glare meant to keep them quiet, bent down on one knee. “It's polite to say hello,” she said, her heart thudding wildly.

“'Lo.”

“He doesn't know?” Stan asked. This time Jenner's harsh glare shut him up.

“Know what?” Cody asked innocently.

“That Stan's leaving, honey.” Beth picked her son off the floor and tried to paste a composed, friendly smile on her face, though she seethed inside. “Say goodbye.”

“Bye-bye.” Cody moved the fingers of his free hand up and down in a wave.

Stan sent Beth a withering look. “All right. You've made your decision. But when it doesn't work out with the local yokel and you fall into a million pieces, don't expect me to pick them up again.”

“I won't,” she answered quietly and flinched as Stan stormed out of the house, the door banging shut behind him.

“He mad,” Cody observed.

“Very.”

Jenner hooked an insolent thumb in the direction Stan had taken.
“That's
the kind of man you've been dating?”

“The only man,” she said, still holding Cody so tightly that her son squirmed in her arms. Every other man who'd shown interest in her hadn't accepted Cody and looked upon her son as extra baggage. She hadn't expected the same from Stan.

“Sheesh.” He watched through the window as Stan slid into a shiny new Chrysler, started the engine and pulled a U-turn on his way out of town. “That guy's old enough to be—”

“Don't say it,” she snapped. “He's a good man. This wasn't one of his better days.”

“I hope not.” Jenner's gaze lingered on Beth's face for a second longer than necessary before sliding over to Cody's. “How ya doin', sport?” he asked. Cody tilted up his face to stare at Jenner.

“Why you got those?” He pointed at the crutches. “You hurt?”

“A little bit.”

“And that.” Cody eyed the brace quizzically, dropping the apple in his curiosity. He poked at the straps and padding. “I wear.”

Jenner snorted a humorless laugh. “Believe me, you wouldn't want to.”

“It wouldn't fit, anyway,” Beth said as she stood and straightened her sweater—the same sweater that Jenner had pulled over her head and tossed into the corner of his apartment. At that particular thought, her throat turned to sand and she couldn't find her tongue for a second.

Jenner turned his intense gaze on her again and she hazarded a quick glance at his face. What she saw there caught her breath, for the look he sent her was all male and sensuous, as if what had happened between them this afternoon was just a sample of what would happen, if she let it. She cleared her throat and said, “Well, since you didn't take my advice and leave, I guess I could offer you something cold to drink.”

Cody, oblivious to the silent message between his mother and his new friend, said, “We ride horses?”

“Wh-what?” Beth said.

“Horses,” Cody repeated, his brows knitting in frustration. “Ride.”

“Oh, I don't think—”

“Sure,” Jenner cut in. “How about tomorrow?”

“Jenner, it's not a good idea. He's too young.”

“I was riding by myself by the time I was three.”

“Yeah, but he's only two and you're certifiable, remember?”

“Come on, Beth. This is what you wanted, wasn't it?” he asked, the mockery in his face undisguised.

She couldn't answer. For the first time in a long while, Beth Crandall wasn't sure what she wanted.

“
I
didn't expect anything so soon,” Jenner said as Rex Stone slid a manila envelope across the polished mahogany top of his desk. They were seated in the private investigator's office in Dawson City. His back to the only window, Rex was wedged into a tufted leather chair positioned behind the desk. Jenner was on the far side, in a smaller, less-imposing chair. He picked up the envelope and fingered the corners, feeling an unexpected ton of guilt settle squarely on his shoulders.

“It's just preliminary. A little background on Ms. Crandall. I can dig deeper, but I thought we'd start here and you could tell me if you wanted more. Didn't want to waste your money.”

Jenner doubted that. He was certain that Rex had no qualms whatsoever of spending anyone else's cash. Nonetheless, he ripped open the envelope with his finger and slipped out the contents: copies of report cards from Rimrock High School, transcripts from Eastern Oregon College, several pictures of Beth as a student and later as she recieved her R.N. degree at the University of Oregon Nursing School. He also saw copies of her birth certificate, driver's license, social security card and a resume of her employment record. But the document that fascinated him most was Cody Crandall's birth certificate. Beth's name was listed in full, but the space for his father's name was blank, as if the man had never existed.

Jenner's fist closed over the papers. He felt like a goddamned Peeping Tom, peering into Beth's private life behind her back. He might as well be standing on the dark side of a window, peering through the blinds, watching her undress.

“The thing that I found interesting,” Rex said as he picked up a letter opener and began cleaning his thumbnail, “is that the blood type fits. The kid could be your son. But unless you want to go through all that DNA garbage, you only have her word.” He flicked off a bit of smut that he'd dislodged from his nail. “So...what do you want me to do? I also did a little checking to see if she was involved with any man three years ago, just in case there was an obvious boyfriend that we could pin the kid's paternity on. No such luck.”

“Good.” Jenner's gut twisted.

Was Cody really his son? Did it even matter?

Jenner rubbed the new growth of beard shading his jaw.

“Good? You want the kid to be yours?”

Good question. “I don't know,” he said, but deep down he knew the truth. He wanted to claim that fair-haired piece of mischief as his own, and the thought of Beth being with any other man disgusted him.

Rex leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk. “I can keep digging, you know. It's fascinating how some people appear so ordinary and normal on the surface, but underneath they're entirely different people. I followed one woman—a schoolteacher, no less. Came from a good family, had a loving husband, two kids, even a dog. Ended up she'd been having not one affair but two for years. Just to spice up her life. The husband was the last to know.”

Jenner thought he might be sick. “This is enough,” he said, pushing himself upright and balancing on his good leg. He shoved the papers back into the envelope, folded the packet and tucked it into an inner pocket of his jacket.

“Have you talked to your brother lately?” Rex asked.

Jenner pinned the P.I. with his intense stare. The only conversation he'd had with Max was about him going to the hospital. It hadn't ended well. “Why? What's up?”

Rex smiled, his pudgy face stretching like kid's clay. “That reward we offered is generating a lot of interest.”

“I'll bet. Every two-bit con artist in the state is probably coming up with stories just to get his hands on it.”

“We'll have to weed through the fakes. That's not so hard, but we might just get ourselves a concrete lead or two.” He rubbed his fleshy hands together in anticipation. “Even Hammond Polk thinks we might flush out a suspect or two.”

“Sure he does—he's up for reelection soon and doesn't want to lose his cushy sheriff's job.”

Nodding goodbye to the P.I., Jenner left the tiny suite of offices on the third floor. The entire conversation with Stone settled like lead in his gut. First there was the matter of the reward; Jenner was against it. The last thing his family or the Rocking M needed was a crowd of near criminals trying to find ways to get to the reward money. His mother, grandmother and Casey were alone in the ranch house every night, miles from town, with only Jonah's old Winchester and an ancient dog for protection—not that those women usually needed any.

Then there was the matter with Beth. Rex Stone, because of Jenner's request to find out the truth about Beth had just assumed Jenner wanted to prove that she was a self-serving gold digger willing to use her child to get a little fast cash from the McKee bank. But Jenner, who had once assumed the same wasn't so certain now. She seemed to love that kid so much; it couldn't be an act. Or could it? Or could she love the kid enough to do anything, including pawning him off on some unsuspecting cowboy, to assure the kid a secure future?

Hadn't the old man—Stan Whatever—said that he and Beth had planned to be married? He seemed to believe it even if Beth had denied it up and down. Would she have sold herself to a man more than twice her age just to provide for her little boy? The thought of Stan and Beth together made Jenner's blood run cold, but, if he was honest with himself, it wasn't so much Stan or his age that got to him, it was the fact that Beth had been involved with another man. Any man. “You're an ass, McKee,” he grumbled, and a slim woman standing next to him in the elevator glanced his way.

“Pardon me?” she asked, her perfume hanging on the air, her blond hair sweeping her shoulders.

“Sorry. Talkin' to myself.”

She favored him with a smile that would have, at one time, ignited something within him. “I do it, too. More often than I'd like to admit.”

He shrugged and turned away. The attractive woman held no interest for him—not like she would have a few weeks ago. Not like she would have before Beth Crandall had marched into the den of the Rocking M and announced they'd had a brief, hot, one-night stand and now were the parents of a two-year-old scamp named Cody.

Could the kid really be his? He was starting to believe it. Otherwise, Beth was taking a helluva risk, including scandal, because these days it was pretty easy to prove paternity. Hell, what a mess. What a goddamned, no-easyway-out, gut-churning mess!

The elevator stopped and he maneuvered his way through a crowd who'd been waiting for the car. Most people gave him the right-of-way because of his crutches, and he didn't know which he minded worse, the do-gooders who stepped aside and offered tentative, pitying smiles, or the hard-nosed, self-important jerks who took no heed of his... his what?
Disability?

His stomach soured. Surely he wouldn't be disabled for life. His blood congealed at the thought and he shoved it aside. Maybe Skye and Beth and his whole damned family was right. Maybe he should go back to that orthopedic snob and sign himself up for the physical therapy he'd signed himself out of.

“Here you go.” An old lady walking a dog no bigger than a rat held the door for him and he cringed inside.

He wanted to shout out that he could damned well handle the door himself, but instead he forced a cold grin and tipped his head. “Thanks.”

“No trouble. Come along, Felix,” she said with a winning seventy-year-old's grin as she tugged on the rat's leash. With a yip it headed into the building.

Outside, the day had turned cloudy with gusts of wind blowing down from the north. Any hint of summer seemed to have fled with the dry leaves scurrying across the street and the smell of rain in the air. Jenner climbed into his truck and glanced up at the offices of Rex Stone. The guy gave him the creeps. Stone seemed to
enjoy
digging into the dirt surrounding a person. But he wasn't just interested. No his fascination stemmed from some kind of deep need to prove that other people had failings—big-time failings.

Jabbing the key into the ignition and pumping the gas pedal, Jenner glanced in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of himself. Unshaven and weathered, squinting hard, he wasn't a pretty sight, and not much better than Rex Stone. Hadn't he ordered the investigation of Beth Crandall?

“Damn it all, anyway,” he muttered as he eased the truck into the uneven flow of traffic in downtown Dawson City. Shrugging his shoulders—as if he could shake the feeling of being akin to a snake like Stone—didn't help, and the investigator's report felt like a dead weight in his pocket. He'd never liked this slimy little P.I., but Rex was necessary it seemed to find out who was behind his father's death.

He pushed the speed limit and chewed on his lower lip. What if this mess about the murder was true? What if someone was really after the McKees? What if they'd stop at nothing to get their revenge or whatever it was they wanted? What if Cody and Beth were in danger?

 

“You promised!” Cody insisted, his lower lip protruding petulantly.

“I said I'd think about it. That's not a promise.”

“But I want horse ride!”

Beth gritted her teeth. Sometimes her boy could be so stubborn.
Just like his father!
The father who was definitely to blame in this case for offering to teach Cody to ride. A two-year-old! While the orthopedist was checking out his leg, Jenner McKee should have a neurosurgeon examine his head. “Look, I said we'd go out to the ranch this afternoon and I'll take you, but it's not time yet.”

“When?”

“In a couple of hours.”

“Now!” Cody protested. Beth decided he needed a nap. It was barely noon, but he was showing all the classic signs of being overly tired. He rubbed his eyes and stuck out his lower lip, looking more like Jenner than ever.

Jenner.
Beth's heart seemed to clench each time she thought of him. He was the reason she was sticking around. By all rights, she should be returning to Oregon City and starting to look seriously for a new job. The little bit of savings she'd put away wouldn't last forever and she needed to get on with her life. She'd done her duty by the McKees; now it was time to start over.

Except she couldn't. Not until things were settled with Jenner and Cody. She carried her son into the back bedroom but when he saw the playpen, he balked. “Nooo!” he wailed, sounding like a siren. “No. No. No!”

“Come on, sweetheart,” she cajoled, grateful that they were alone in the house. Her mother, bless her, had infinite patience with her headstrong grandson, but Zeke wasn't as understanding. He'd made a couple of comments and glared at Cody enough times to let Beth know they were about to wear out their welcome.

“Nonsense,” her mother had insisted when Beth had mentioned it, but her smile hadn't been quite as wide as usual and Beth knew that Harriet, though she protested, was feeling the strain, as well. Yep, soon it would be time to go home.

Home.
And where was that? The tiny apartment overlooking the Willamette River, where the sound of traffic was steady all night long? Or here in Rimrock, where the sky seemed to stretch forever and the moutains loomed like craggy sentinels and she knew many of the townspeople on a first-name basis.

Was home Oregon City, where she was anonymous and her son would grow up without a father, without many questions being asked, where many of his friends would also have single mothers?

Or here. Where everyone would know that he was Jenner McKee's bastard son? That his mother had been unmarried when she'd given birth? Would he grow up knowing that his mother and father had never really been in love and that his conception was just a mistake of white-hot lovemaking for a single weekend? What if Jenner married and had other children?

“Read!” Cody demanded, and Beth was grateful to turn her thoughts away from Jenner and concentrate on the worn pages of a collection of fairy tales, the same book that her mother had read to her. The pages were smudged, the cloth-bound cover ripped, crayon marks scattered throughout and corners of the most loved passages torn. She'd grown up with these fairy tales, believing her mother's soothing voice as she'd read about castles and princesses and enchanted frogs who, with a single kiss, could be changed into the handsome, rich son of a king.

They were silly, childish stories and still they rested deep in her heart. Didn't she, a grown woman, still believe? Wouldn't she always?

 

Jenner parked his truck near the garage and glanced past the barn to the dry fields where the horses turned their noses to the wind, ears flicking, as they smelled the approach of the storm. A few anxious nickers rippled on the breeze and the younger colts, tails aloft, raced along the fence line, bucking and rearing and feeling the energy in the air.

He felt the storm approaching, too. The wind was picking up, tossing the branches of a pine tree near the garage and shifting the old weather vane on the roof of the barn. He'd always liked the excitement a thunderstorm brought with it and he anticipated the sizzle of lightning streaking across the sky, looked forward to the crack of thunder rolling over the valley.

Hired hands on horseback sorted through paddocks of cattle, separating the heifers from the young bulls. A couple of other men were amoung the hands—new cowboys he didn't recognize. One sat atop the fence, another leaned against the barn. Both seemed vigilant, but not all that interested in working with the stock.

He felt a drip of apprehension in his spine. Something wasn't right and it wasn't just the approaching storm that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to raise.