Walk Away Joe (17 page)

He paused and looked around him with the air of a man coming home. Hands on his hips, his features shaded by the brim of a Stetson, he took in Blue Sky, from the barns to the bunkhouse, to the guest casas and finally the ranch house. When he spotted her watching him, his mouth tipped up into a slow, well-well-what-have-we-here grin.

Sara felt an unaccountable stirring of unease skitter through her blood as he drew nearer and she got a closer look. He was a handsome man. His age was a hard call. The deep smile lines on either side of his eyes and the streaks of silver threaded through the chamois-colored hair at his temples suggested early-to-mid-fifties. His stature and build—tail and lean and still firmly muscled—suggested a decade less.

His dress denims had seen some wear, as had his calfskin boots. Both were clean and neat, as was the fawn-colored hat he wore at an angle that was both flirty and fashionable.

Shifting Cody’s weight a little higher on her hip, she glanced toward the door, expecting to see Tucker or Tag slip outside to investigate. When neither did, she walked to the archway to get a better look—and froze. Her heart stalled in her throat when she saw his face clearly and connected with the heartbreak blue of his eyes.

“Evenin’, pretty lady,” he said with an appreciative smile as he sized her up, tipped his hat, then settled it back on his head. “Never expected to see a delicate little thing like you stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Makes a man wonder what that boy of mine could be thinking. But then again, maybe I understand after all. If I had me a fine little filly like you, I believe I’d be hiding you away out in the boonies, myself. Yes, ma’am. I believe I would.”

Her heart sank when his words cemented what her eyes had convinced her was true. He wasn’t just a man. He was Les Lambert. Tucker and Tag’s father.

This was the man who brought the dark look to Tucker’s eyes and whose name she’d never heard Tag mention. As she looked at him, stunned by the physical similarities his sons bore to him, she was equally shaken by the contrast in manner.

While Tucker and Tag both exuded unconscious sexuality and self-confidence, this man forced both issues. On him, it was distasteful and obviously overdone.

“Tuck around?” he asked as he skimmed her body again with his bold stare, then flicked his gaze to the door when it opened behind her.

Sara turned to see Tucker step out onto the brick-colored tile of the veranda. His face was a mask of jumbled emotions—none of which was affection.

“Hey, boy,” Les Lambert said, smiling as if he expected an open-arms welcome.

“You lost, old man?” Tucker’s voice, like his face, was as hard as granite.

The elder Lambert cocked his head, the wattage of his smile barely fading. “Hell, no, I ain’t lost. I know exactly where I am. And thanks to this—” he held up a dog-eared newspaper want-ad section “—now I know where you are, too.

“Son of a gun, boy, you’ve done all right for yourself,” he said with an expansive look around as he tucked the ragged piece of newsprint into his chest pocket. “All right, indeed,” he added, with a smug grin that he tried to pull off as pride but that Sara thought looked more like greed.

“What do you want?” Tucker asked flatly.

Sara’s gaze shot back to Tucker. His eyes were a cool gunmetal blue, as accusing as a prosecutor bent on conviction.

“What do I want?” Les Lambert repeated with an incredulous sigh. “What do I
want?
That’s all you’ve got to say to your daddy after all these years?”

“What did you want me to say?” Tucker’s expression never altered. “That I was glad to see you?”

“And why the hell not?” Lambert returned with a good- ol’-boy grin as he walked closer to his son. Hands on his hips, he shook his head. “Still the same old hothead, ain’tcha? Thought maybe time woulda mellowed you some, boy. Lord knows, if I had a spread like this and a woman like her—” he tossed a smile full of innuendo toward Sara “—I believe I’d be a real mellow fellow.”

“You had a woman,” Tucker said in a dangerously soft voice.

The older Lambert had the decency to look shamed. “That I did. That I did,” he repeated, with a grim set to his mouth. “And I hope you’re smarter than me, who didn’t know a good thing when he had it.”

Tucker didn’t so much as move an eyelash, yet Sara could sense a rage building, as sure as the sun was setting. Any minute now she expected him to act on that rage. And while she might have felt like rooting him on, she couldn’t see any good coming from physical violence.

“I’m Sara Stewart,” she said, stepping between Tucker and his father. “I’m a friend of Tucker’s.”

“Stewart?” Les Lambert’s gaze swept her again in a suggestive way that she knew would set Tucker off if she didn’t do something to stop it. “My pleasure, Miz Stewart,” he added, with an emphasis on her last name and a look at Tucker that made her uncomfortable.

“And this is your grandson,” she added quickly, shifting Cody on her hip. “Cody is Tag and Lana’s boy.”
 

“Lana?” The elder Lambert reached for the bouncing two-year-old, then laughed when Cody tugged his hat down over his eyes.

“Tag’s wife,” Tucker interjected darkly. “Something you would have known if you’d ever bothered to check.”
 

“Well, hell, son...that’s what I’m doing now. I’m checkin’. Never figured I’d find both my boys here, though. And a grandson to boot. Guess I hit the jackpot.

∙ ∙ ∙

Tucker felt like hitting something. The jackpot didn’t come to mind.

He’d felt like he’d been thrown from a Brahma when he stepped outside and saw his father standing there. It had been eight years. And it hadn’t been long enough.

Anger, humiliation and resentment all tunneled into one burning knot in his gut as he watched him. But hate was the strongest emotion of them all. Hate for the father who’d never been there. Hate for the child within who still clung to that scrap of need to please and forgive and even love this man he couldn’t ever remember calling Daddy. The man who’d never been there for him or for Tag or for their mother.

The last time he’d seen Les Lambert had been the day after he buried her. The bastard hadn’t even had it in him to make it to the funeral, pleading business or a big deal or whatever bull he felt like spreading that particular day. On the list of Les Lambert’s sins, that was at the top, higher than all the grief he’d caused Tucker’s mother. Higher even than the “Hey, what would
I
do with a fourteen-year-old kid?” response when he’d blown out of town, leaving Tag with Tucker. Higher than the legacy the old bastard had given him.

“You’re a big one, ain’tcha boy?” Lambert said with a grin as he hefted Cody against him. “Musta got them eyes from your mama though, ’cause they sure ain’t Lambert eyes.”

Another pair of Lambert eyes looked through the screen at that moment. After a long look, Tag stepped outside.

“Well, look at you,” Les Lambert said when Tag, as hesitant as Sara had ever seen him, joined them on the veranda. “Last time I saw you, you were about as meaty as a lone wolf, and just as mean.”

Tag looked from his father to Tucker, solemn and confused.

“It seems our
daddy,”
Tucker began, his eyes never leaving his father’s, “decided it was time to check on us. Loving father that he is, he just couldn’t stay away another eight years.”

Lambert shook his head, his smile unshakable. “Still got a mouth on you boy. Y’all just get pissy-mad if you want to, but we both know you never needed me around, anyway. Hell, as a matter of fact, looks like you did just fine all on your own. Here, take this little critter, will ya, son? I’ve wrestled smaller steers than him. He’s about to break my arm.”

Tag reached for Cody just as Lana burst out the door.

“What’s going...on?” she asked, her voice trailing off when she saw Tucker’s dark glare, Tag’s look of haunted yearning, and the man whose eyes they shared.

“Well,” Lambert said, his gaze skimming Lana’s dark beauty and lush curves. “My boys sure do know how to pick ’em. You must be Lana,” he added, before his appreciation for his son’s wife became too obvious. “Pleased to meet you, missus. Mighty proud to be your daddy-in-law. And I’ll be forever grateful that you made this lonesome old man a grandpa.”

Tucker wanted to swing at him. If not for all his past transgressions, for showing up at his home and flashing all that South Texas charm and homespun cock-and-bull.

He decided to settle for showing him back to his beat-up truck. Until he saw the look on Tag’s face.

He closed his eyes and swore under his breath. Damn you, Les Lambert. Damn you for coming here, stirring up old hurts and reminding Tag he had a father. He’d needed and missed his father, and was still young enough to wonder if there was anything in his daddy worth latching on to.

“What brings you to Blue Sky?” Tag asked, trying to sound like a man, not the child who had wondered about and waited for his father to come home.

The older man’s attention swung to his youngest son. “Why, you did, son. You and your brother.” His gaze strayed then to Tucker, all the swagger and sureness leaving his face. “I admit I wasn’t much of a husband to your mama. Wasn’t much of a daddy to you boys. It’s too late to make it up to your mother, and for that I’ll always be sorry. But I’d like to give it another try with you. Figured maybe, man to man, we just might make it work.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Just as Sara had moved without comment or fuss into the ranch house with Tucker, Les Lambert moved into the little guest casa she had vacated.

Just as Sara hurt for Tucker in silence, Tucker bore his anger with a clench-jawed determination to keep it in check.

It took Sara until the fifth night to work up her courage and ask, “Do you want to talk about it?”

They were in bed. They hadn’t made love to her since his father had arrived. Each night that passed, she felt Tucker slipping further away. The look in his eyes just before he rolled onto his side and away from her made her realize just how vast that distance had grown.

“Tucker?” she said softly, needing to open some line of communication.

“You don’t really want to hear what I’ve got to say.” His voice was heavy with the weight of years of disappointment and disillusionment.

“Maybe he’s changed,” she suggested hopefully.

He snorted and punched the pillow. “Skunks don’t change their stripes, darlin’. Les Lambert hasn’t changed his ways.”

“He seems genuinely interested in Tag.”

A long silence followed before he turned back to her. Flicking on the light, he propped himself on an elbow, his eyes as hard as crystal as he loomed over her.

“Get this through your head, Sara. The only thing genuine about Les Lambert is his past performance. He doesn’t care about that boy. He cares about himself. To get what he wants, he’ll make you believe anything.”

 
When she frowned at his cynical words, he dragged a hand through his hair.

“He’s at his best when he has an audience, all right? Tag is like playing to a new crowd. He doesn’t have enough memories to form an opinion, good or bad. He wants so badly for the old man to be his daddy, he’s tripping over himself to please him, and he’s playing right into his hand.

 
“And you want to know where that leaves me? That leaves me standing back and watching it, knowing that when our
daddy
finally comes clean with the real reason he’s here, it’s going to knock the props out from under Tag and I’m going to be left picking up the pieces when he falls. Me and Lana.”

 
He closed his eyes, then let out a deep breath. There was such anger, such hurt, in him that she knew she couldn’t dispel it.

 
“Then why did you let him stay?”

 
“Do you really think I had a choice?”

 
No, she realized. He hadn’t. If he had made Les leave, it would have left Tag resentful and full of regret. That resentment would have been aimed at Tucker. The regret could have grown into anger. Again, Tucker would have borne the brunt of it.

 
“What are you going to do?” she asked softly.

 
He looked past her to the shadows dancing on the walls.

 
“Wait,” he said finally. “Wait for him to show his hand.”

 
Then he turned off the light and turned away. Again.

 
She laid a hand on his shoulder.

 
“Go to sleep, Sara,” he said, rebuffing her offer of comfort with a heavy sigh.

 
But she didn’t sleep. Not for a very long time.

∙ ∙ ∙

“You’re giving him too much head, son. That martingale’s way too loose. And you ought to be using a snaffle instead of that side pull. He ain’t never gonna get good ground if you don’t show him who’s boss.”

 
Sara watched astride Jezebel as Les Lambert shouted a string of orders to Tag, who was working a little red roan gelding. Tucker observed it all with a dangerous set to his jaw.

 
It hadn’t started out this way. At first Les had been content to sit back, express his approval and, to all appearances, feel pride in his sons’ accomplishments. Little by little, though, he’d started adding his opinions. Expressing his views. Subtly undercutting Tucker’s authority and questioning his judgment. Today, he wasn’t being so subtle. And Tucker had had enough.

 
With a casualness that concealed his agitation, Tucker kneed his mount and rode slowly over to where his father stood by the fence.

 
“I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the training to us.” His voice was deceptively quiet.

 
“Well, boy, I’d like to,” Lambert said, a smug, authoritative look on his face, “but it appears to me that you could use my advice on this particular colt. He’s too headstrong.”

“ What he is, is a bit shy, and it comes across as stubborn,” Tucker explained, with a patience Sara hadn’t thought was in him. “He needs a real light hand and a long look at a calf to build his confidence.”

 
Unspoken was the “And I don’t need you undermining my methods.”