The Cowboy (33 page)

“No. He didn’t say a word about that.”

“I hope you don’t mind. I know there are still a few of Nolan’s things there. I’ll be glad to box them up for you.”

Callie waited for the tears to come at the mention of Nolan’s name. But they didn’t. “I’d appreciate that,” she said to Sam.

When they arrived. Dusty slid an arm around Callie’s waist and dragged her from the van. “You look very pretty today.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “I see you’re walking on two legs—and without crutches.”

“All a matter of balance, my dear,” he said, escorting her to the house.

And who knew more about balance than a cutter, who had to keep himself centered on a two-thousand-pound whirling, wheeling dynamo? Callie thought.

“I’m proud of you, Dusty,” Callie said, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Lou Ann’s told me how hard you’ve worked to get back on your feet.”

“I couldn’t have done it without Trace,” Dusty admitted. “I owe him a big debt.” Dusty grinned. “I can’t believe I let Trace talk me into working for Blackjack when he goes back to Australia.”

“So he told you about that.”

“Finally,” Dusty said. “Speaking of which, is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Like what?” Callie asked.

“Like whether you’re going with him.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Too bad. Speak of the devil,” he said. “There he is.”

Callie froze. Trace was sitting at Dusty’s picnic table with Eli, their heads bent close together. Callie felt a chill of alarm. What if Eli accidentally said something that revealed the truth? She hurried across the patio, anxious to separate her son and his father.

E
li held up the woven wool horse blanket so Trace could admire the Western pattern.

“Very nice,” Trace said. “What else did you get?”

“Pokémon cards and a Star Wars light saber and an R. L. Stine novel—I’ve already read it, so I’m gonna have to go trade it for another one—and a Monopoly game and lots of other stuff.”

“You made out like a bandit,” Trace said, smoothing down the boy’s cowlick.

Eli grinned up at him. “I sure did.” Eli glanced at
Trace and said, “I wish my dad were here. I really miss him.”

“Yeah. That’s tough,” Trace said.

“Every year on my birthday he’d tell me the story of how he drove like a bat out of hell and ran four stoplights to get my mom to the hospital, ’cause I came three whole weeks early.

“I only weighed five pounds and twelve ounces,” Eli said. “And look at me now!” He held his arms out like Arnold Schwarzenegger and waited for Trace to feel his muscles.

“Pretty strong, all right,” Trace said, dutifully testing each biceps.

Mentally, Trace was doing the math, trying to figure out when Callie should have delivered. If today was October 22, that meant Callie shouldn’t have delivered until mid-November. Which meant Callie had conceived on or about … Valentine’s Day. On Valentine’s Day eleven years ago, he and Callie had left the dance at the UT Student Union and driven up into the hill country, where they’d found a spot in the cool grass along the banks of the Colorado and made love me rest of the night.

And created a child together
.

Trace stared at the boy with new eyes, noticing the familiar cowlick in his black hair and his sharp nose and Blackthorne chin. Eli was tall, with big hands and big feet, like a puppy that still had growing to do. Like Trace had been at the same age. He was horrified to think Callie had kept such a secret from him.

I have a son. Eli is my son.

He’d missed so much! The pain was searing.
Breathtaking. Why hadn’t Callie told him? She had to have known she was pregnant long before he’d gone away.

“Eli! Lou Ann needs you in the kitchen to help her light your birthday candles.”

Trace turned at the sound of Callie’s voice and stared at her, with all the fury he felt for what she’d done there in his eyes for her to see.

“You want to come help me, Trace?” Eli offered.

“No, son.” His throat ached as he said the word for the first time knowing he was addressing his own flesh and blood. “You go on ahead. I need to talk to your mother.”

He saw the fear on Callie’s face but felt no compassion for her. “I’ve found out your secret, Callie.” He rose slowly and said, “Come with me.”

“Trace, I can explain.”

“Not now,” he said curtly. “Wait till we’re alone.”

Trace kept his hand at the small of Callie’s back, forcing her ahead of him until they reached the shade of a live oak he thought was far enough from the party that he could raise his voice without being heard. Because he felt like howling.

When they stopped, he waited until Callie turned to face him before he spoke. “Is Eli my son?”

“Yes, but—”

“Shut up. I have a few things to say before you start making excuses.”

When she stared at the ground, he grabbed her chin and forced her face up until their eyes met. “You’ll marry me as soon as I can get a license. Then, my son is going back to Australia with me. You can stay here and take care
of your family, or come along for the ride. I don’t really give a damn.”

He let her go and stepped back, because he had the urge to hit something, and he didn’t want it to be her. “How could you, Callie? How could you steal all those years from me?”

“You ran away and never came back! What did you expect me to do? How was I supposed to find you? You never wrote to me. You never called me or contacted me. Nolan offered to legitimize your son. Should I have let Eli be born a bastard?”

“He should have been a Blackthorne! You must have known long before I left Texas that you were carrying my child. You should have told me about him, Callie. You should have given me a chance to be a father to my son.”

“If you’d really cared about me you would never have left in the first place!” she accused. “How do you think I felt? Alone and pregnant. And with your child! A Blackthorne child! I couldn’t tell anyone the truth.”

“Not even me.”

“You weren’t here!” Callie cried. “And you couldn’t have missed me much. I heard about all the women, Trace.”

“What women?”

“The women you took up with the minute I was gone.”

“I was trying to make you jealous, Callie. I wanted you to care.”

“If you wanted to hurt me, you did. More than you know.”

“And you’ve had your revenge,” Trace said bitterly.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

He took a menacing step forward. “Sorry? Sorry can’t make up for what you took from me.”

Callie held her ground. “What is it you want from me? Nothing can change the past.”

“I’ve told you what I want. My son.”

“You can’t have him.”

“He’s mine, Callie.”

“You’re a stranger. He hardly knows you.”

“Whose fault is that?” Trace snarled.

“You have no right to him. We were never married.”

“We will be.”

“You can’t force me to marry you.”

“Can’t I?” He grasped her arms. “Think about it, Callie. All the power of Bitter Creek aimed at the destruction of Three Oaks.”

“You’d never sink that low.”

“I’d hand my father the sledge hammer.”

He saw, from the stricken look on her face, that she believed him. “You owe me, Callie, for all the years I didn’t get to spend loving my son.”

“I can’t give him up to you, Trace. I won’t give him up. Not even to save Three Oaks.”

At last, something she cared about more than Three Oaks. Not him. His son. He let her go and took a step back. “Then I’ll fight you for him in court. And when I get custody—and in this part of Texas, that’s a foregone conclusion—you’ll never see him again.”

He saw the moment she realized she was beaten. Saw the moment when she knew it was useless to fight.

She met his gaze and said, “All right. I’ll marry you. But I want something in return.”

“How much is it going to cost me to buy my son?” Trace asked icily.

“I want all the inheritance taxes paid on Three Oaks. I want the title free and clear in my mother’s name.”

“Done,” Trace said. “Now get the hell out of my sight.”

C
ALLIE RUBBED HER THUMB ACROSS HER RING
finger, where Trace had placed a plain gold band only yesterday. He’d insisted on being married in a church, but he hadn’t invited his family to the ceremony, or allowed her to invite hers. He’d told her to dress as though they were going to Bobbie Jo’s Café in town, and he’d driven a pickup, since taking any of his father’s luxury automobiles would have provoked questions. Then they’d driven south across the border, to a small chapel in Matamoros, Mexico.

Callie didn’t know how Trace had arranged to have a Christian minister read their vows in the ancient Spanish mission, but she’d been grateful for the cool shadows created by the thick adobe and relished the rainbow of light through the stained glass windows. They were small comfort during such a dark moment in her life.

As he repeated his vows, Trace had looked at her with wintry blue eyes, as remote from her as though they still lived a continent apart. And yet he had promised to love and honor and cherish her. How had he choked out the words? They had stuck in her throat.

He had wiped her tears away with his callused thumbs before he bent to kiss her. His breath had felt warm against her cold flesh, before his lips touched hers in the barest caress. Then he’d taken a step back, clasped her hand, and led her out into the blazing heat and blinding sunlight.

Thirty miles north of Brownsville, while they were sitting in line for a spot inspection by the Border Patrol, waiting to have the pickup sniffed for drugs by a German shepherd, Trace had announced, “You’ll need to take that ring off before we get home. I want this marriage kept secret until my son is ready to hear about it.”

“When do you think that will be?” Callie asked, tugging the ring free and setting it in a pocket on the dash between them.

“When he’s ready to accept me for who I am,” Trace replied. “When I’ve earned his trust.”

Her ring finger was bare now. Callie might almost have imagined the events of the previous day. But the tension radiating from the man standing next to her at the corral was quite real.

“I wish you hadn’t given Eli such an expensive gift for his birthday,” Callie said, as she watched her son urge the spirited quarter horse gelding from a trot to a lope in the ring. “It’s too much.”

“Eli doesn’t seem to mind.”

Callie made a face. “What eleven-year-old boy wouldn’t be happy to get not only a brand-new saddle but the registered quarter horse to put it on?”

“My son deserves more than he’s had so far.”

Callie bristled at the suggestion that Eli had led a life
of deprivation. “
My
son hasn’t wanted for anything. He’s been loved and cherished his whole life!”

“Not by me!” Trace shot back.

Callie didn’t argue. There was nothing she could say. Her chin started to quiver at the mere thought of Trace taking Eli all the way to Australia.

“Give him a little more rein,” Trace instructed Eli.

“Can I go in the ring now?” Hannah asked from her perch atop the shiny black pony she’d received at the same time Eli had gotten his quarter horse.

Callie noticed the question was directed at Trace, rather than to her. “Not yet,” she answered her daughter.

“Why not?” Hannah demanded, her lips pouting.

“It isn’t safe,” Trace replied.

Callie noticed Hannah didn’t argue with Trace, merely accepted his word as law. But if Hannah had fallen completely under Trace’s spell, Callie felt sure the same was true of Trace in regard to Hannah. His gift to Eli was understandable. His generosity to Hannah was not. Hannah was another man’s child. Hannah was a reminder that Callie had been married to Nolan Monroe.

But Trace didn’t seem to mind when Hannah walked in his shadow, when Hannah demanded to be picked up and hugged and kissed, when Hannah wanted Trace to tuck her in or read her a bedtime story. He had already won Hannah over. It wouldn’t be long before he had Eli’s trust. And once that happened, he would take her son and leave Texas.

“How am I doing, Trace?” Eli called out.

“You’re doing great. Slow him down and cool him off.”

“When can I take Hickory for a ride in the pasture?” Eli asked, patting the sorrel’s neck.

“How about if we both ride out and take along a picnic?” Trace suggested.

“Can I go, too?” Hannah asked.

“Sure. We’ll all go,” Trace said with a smile. “I’ve already asked your grandmother to pack the two of us a lunch. She can always add another couple of sandwiches. It’ll be fun.”

Callie stared at Trace, annoyed at how quickly he’d arranged her day. “I have work to do.”

“Fine. You stay here. I can take care of the kids.”

Callie wasn’t about to leave Trace alone with Eli. What if he took the boy and disappeared? “I’ll rearrange my schedule,” she said.

Trace eyed her sideways. “Whatever you say.”

Callie fumed inside at how she’d been manipulated. But once they were on the trail, and she saw what a good time her children were having, she admitted it had been too long since they’d done anything like this. She’d been too busy since Nolan’s death to take time off with the kids just for fun. Or rather, she hadn’t aligned her priorities to put fun at the top of the list, as Trace seemed inclined to do.