When The Heart Beckons (28 page)

Never in a thousand moments of reflection
had it once occurred to her that Livinia McCallum could have been
desperately unhappy.

“So you knew. I guessed as much.” Bitterness
rang through Brett’s voice like a hollow bell. He stared at Cade,
and both men’s eyes were filled with pain that went beyond words.
“That was the reason you left, wasn’t it?”

“You could say that. I left as soon as I
discovered how Ross had lied to us for all those years about how
she died.”

Annabel saw that beneath his quiet
self-control, a white-hot anguish held Cade in its grip. As he
stood there, tall and straight and calm, unutterable weariness in
his face and voice, her heart trembled and broke for him.

“One day I overheard the servants gossiping
and that’s how I learned the truth. You can imagine my shock—but I
wasn’t necessarily surprised,” he added harshly. “Father rode
roughshod over everyone else in his life, so why not her? He made
everyone whose life he touched utterly miserable, so why not her?”
Contempt glittered in his eyes. “He admitted it when I confronted
him—admitted that she had taken her own life. But, damn him to
hell, he had the gall to deny that it was his fault. And that’s
when I truly began to hate him.”

“Well, it wasn’t his fault, at least not
completely.” Brett began pacing back and forth among the clump of
piñóns, raking his fingers through his hair. “I’m the one you
should despise—me and my father. We had far more to do with it than
Ross McCallum.”

If his previous statements had elicited
stunned silence, this one brought forth a gasp of shock from
Annabel and sent her bolting off the tree stump. “Brett, you’re not
making any sense. What do you mean ‘me and my father’?”

“Ross McCallum is not my father, Annie.
That’s
what I learned not too long ago.
That’s
what sent me fleeing St. Louis, journeying far and wide to try to
forget everything I ever thought I knew about myself. Oh, hell,
what’s the use in talking about it? I’m going back to the ranch. I
need a drink.”

He started off, stomping past Annabel so
swiftly she had to jump out of his way, but Cade sprang forward
before he’d gone three steps and blocked his path.

“Get out of my way!”

“I think you’d better stay here and tell us
what the hell you’re talking about.”

“You do, do you?” Brett sneered at him, his
face flushed and sweating. The sun was in his eyes and he squinted
up at Cade, who was nearly a half a head taller than him. “What do
you need, another reason to blot me from your life? You already did
that thirteen years ago, big brother. Matter of fact, I don’t know
what the hell you’re doing here now. Why you’re even bothering with
the half brother you walked out on so long ago and never even
bothered to—”

“I came to find you. To help you.”

“I don’t need your help. Or want it! Damn
you, get out of my way, I want a drink!”

Without warning, his fist shot out and
struck Cade in the jaw. Caught by surprise, Cade staggered back a
pace.

“My God,” Annabel cried, “what are you
doing? Brett, how could you ...?”

But before she could reach Cade, he
recovered and spun back, his fist slamming into his brother’s
midsection in a blow that had Brett doubling over in pain.

“Damn ... you,” Brett gasped, as he dropped
to his knees, clutching his stomach and sucking in desperate gulps
of air. “I’ll kill you, you dirty no-good ...”

“Go ahead. I’m waiting.”

Brett stumbled to his feet. Cade hit him
again. As Annabel screamed, Brett went crashing down into the thick
grama grass.

“Stop it!” Annabel threw herself in front of
him, facing Cade with eyes that were turquoise with fury.

“How can you?” she flung at him. “He’s hurt!
And he’s upset! If you dare hit him again, I’ll ...”

“Damn it, Annabel ...” Brett winced as he
pushed himself to his knees. “Get out of the way. I don’t want or
need you defending me.”

“Yes, you do!”

“No, I don’t! A McCallum fights his own
battles! Get out of my way ...”

“I will not!”

“Children.” Cade’s voice broke into their
argument with icy calm. “That’s enough.” Cade reached out and
dragged Annabel aside, setting her firmly out of the line of
battle.

“Stay there.”

Without waiting for her to reply, he turned
back to Brett, who had by now managed to get to his feet. “You’re
right, little brother. A McCallum does fight his own battles,” he
said levelly. “He doesn’t hide behind anyone or anything
else—including a bottle.”

“I was forgetting,” Brett rasped, his face
the sickly green color of a sky before a storm. “I’m not really a
McCallum. So, none of that damned stuff Father—I mean, Ross
McCallum—drilled into our heads counts worth a plug nickel.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do.
You are what you are and you can’t change it now. Tell me why you
think Ross is not your father.”

“Because he isn’t!”

“Explain.”

Brett took a deep breath. He glanced once
from Cade’s coldly speculative countenance to Annabel’s anxious
one, and let out a string of oaths. “It’s true, damn it. I’m not
who I always thought I was, not at all. I don’t know who I am. My
real father was quite a paragon, though, let me tell you that. If I
take after him”—he gave a choking laugh—“then it will be better for
all concerned if Red Cobb does catch up to me or if Lowry’s men
finish me off tonight once and for all.”

Annabel turned toward Cade, wondering if he
understood any better than she what Brett was talking about. But he
looked just as skeptical as she felt. Obviously this was a
revelation to him as well.

“I think you should begin at the beginning,”
she told Brett softly, trying to make her voice as soothing and
steady as she could. “Neither Cade nor I understand what you’re
talking about. Are you certain that Ross McCallum is not your
father?”

“Quite.”

“How?”

Brett covered his face with his hands. “Oh,
hell, what’s the use?” he muttered, and sank down wearily on the
grass. Instantly, Annabel knelt beside him.

“The day before I ran away,” he said dully,
without looking at her, “I received a strange letter. The man who
sent it requested that I come to see him at the Fairbanks Hotel.
The letter said it was urgent that he speak with me. So I went.” He
plucked a blade of grass from the gray-green hillside, then another
and another. He opened his fingers and watched them float aimlessly
to the soft, fragrant earth. “The man’s name was Frank Boxer.”

“Go on,” Annabel urged. Cade stood stock
still, watching Brett’s face without his own expression revealing
anything of what he was feeling.

“Boxer told me a story so horrible I could
scarcely believe it was true. He told me how he had worked for my
father—that is, for Ross McCallum—as his man of business for many
years. And he told me that he had fallen under the spell of my
mother. And,” he finished in a miserable rush, “he told me that he
... and ... she ... had become lovers.”

Cade had been standing motionless beside a
tree during all this speech, but now he stepped forward. “What kind
of hogwash is this? You believe what this son of a bitch stranger
tells you about your own mother? It wasn’t Mama who violated her
marriage vows, I’d wager my hat, boots, and saddle it was the other
way around. Father is the one who no doubt kept a mistress and
broke her heart ...”

“No.” Brett looked up into his brother’s
flushed and angry face, his own awash in despair. “I don’t think
so, Cade. You see, when Frank Boxer had finished his sordid little
tale, I went straight to Father. I was so upset I could barely
speak.” He turned to Annabel, as if looking for understanding, or
answers, or some magic way to calm the turmoil inside him. “I was
beside myself with rage and doubt and questions,” he said in a low
tone. “But Father confirmed part of what Boxer had told me.”

“Brett, no!” Annabel’s heart ached for him,
and for Cade. She shook her head. “Are you sure you didn’t
misunderstand?”

“Oh, yes,” he muttered, “I’m sure. Of
course, Ross had a completely different view of the subject. And I
didn’t tell him that I had spoken with Boxer personally. I just
told him that someone had brought details of my mother’s death to
my attention, and I needed to know if they were true. He admitted
then that she had taken her life, and had not died of a fever as
the world at large—or at least, you and I and all of St. Louis
society—believed. I asked him straight out if a man named Frank
Boxer was involved in any way. He turned purple. He swore and
shouted; he smashed a brandy decanter against the wall. And he
demanded with the full force of his rage that I tell him who had
mentioned Frank Boxer’s name to me. I wouldn’t tell him. We had
quite a row.”

“I can well imagine,” Cade said grimly.

“The McCallums are not precisely known for
their mild tempers,” Annabel murmured.

“Yes, but you see that’s the whole point in
a nutshell, Annie.” Thick sarcasm coated Brett’s voice as he
continued. “I’m not a real McCallum, after all. According to Frank
Boxer—and this was confirmed by the man I thought was my father—I
am really Brett Boxer.”

“I don’t believe it.” Cade walked to the
nearest piñóns and paused, staring out for a moment at the
cloudless lilac sky, and the black buttes stretching into the
distance. “Mama wouldn’t ... she couldn’t have ...” He wheeled
back. “There’s been a mistake. Or a lie. Someone is playing a
filthy game.”

“Believe it, big brother.” Brett gave a
mirthless, ugly laugh. “But there’s more. Let me explain everything
Frank Boxer told me that day at the hotel. He claimed that he and
Mama loved each other passionately, that he wanted to run off with
her, to marry her and claim me as his child, but that she was too
frightened of Ross to follow her heart. And Ross, fearing a scandal
above all things, offered Boxer a huge sum of money to leave
Missouri before I was born and to never come back.”

“Did he ... take the money?” Annabel
ventured, wondering how much more there was to this awful tale,
thinking of poor Livinia caught between the man she loved and the
man to whom she was married.

“He did.”

Never had she seen such blazing fury as she
saw then in Brett’s usually dancing eyes. “He made no excuses for
it either. Boxer claimed he didn’t see how he could fight all of
Ross McCallum’s power, wealth, and influence. Said he thought it
would be best for Livinia if he just disappeared. So,” Brett
continued, his lip curling, “He left her. He went away for a while,
but when I was a year old, he came back. He told me that his
feelings for Livinia got the better of him, that he couldn’t stay
away any longer, and he wanted both of us to come and live with
him. This next part is not too pretty, but ...” His face twisted as
he glanced at Cade’s stony countenance. “It shouldn’t surprise you
much. When he showed up again, Father took drastic steps to keep
him from embarrassing the McCallums by persuading Mama to run away
with him. Boxer claims ...” His voice trailed off for a moment,
then he cleared his throat and continued. “He claims that Father
hired men to grab him—that he was kidnapped and shipped off to the
West Indies, virtually imprisoned first on a plantation there for a
landowner Father did business with, and then later forced into
labor on a ship owned by the same man, a ship called the
Emerald Prince
.”

“You’re right.” Cade stalked back and
regarded his brother from beneath the brim of his hat. “It
doesn’t
surprise me. It’s exactly the sort of ruthless act
I would expect of Ross McCallum. He taught me when I was still in
short pants that you don’t merely defeat a competitor, you
annihilate him.”

“Well, in this case, why not?” Annabel
exclaimed indignantly. “I’ll admit that it does sound rather
drastic on the surface. But it’s not all that unreasonable,” she
argued, “for a man like Ross McCallum to take strong action when
he’s threatened. After all, this Frank Boxer was trying to destroy
your father’s life, to ruin his marriage and his family, not to
mention publicly humiliating him before the very community that
held him in such high esteem. You can’t blame him for being put
out.”

“That’s an interesting way of describing
it,” Cade drawled.

“And besides,” Annabel went on, fixing him
with her sternest glance, “this Frank Boxer does not sound like any
paragon of virtue. I think he had it coming!”

“Since when did you become so bloodthirsty?”
The shadow of despair lifted momentarily from Brett’s face as he
regarded her with a wry smile.

“I’m not in the least bit bloodthirsty—but I
do see the value in protecting one’s own. Especially now that I’ve
spent some time in this part of the country. I’ve watched as your
brother has been forced to dispatch one unsavory scoundrel after
another, and I’ve concluded that all the world is not as genteel as
it should be, and oftentimes drastic measures are in order.
Besides,” she added, after this remarkably long speech, and
observing that Brett was shaking his head in amazement, and Cade
McCallum was rolling his eyes heavenward, “how do we know that what
Frank Boxer said is true? Maybe he just told you that your father
did this to shock you and try to win your sympathy. Maybe he made
it all up ...”

“No. Father confirmed it himself. He
admitted it after we had a horrendous fight. And swore that if he
had it to do over again he’d do things exactly the same way. He was
under the impression,” Brett finished, rubbing a hand over the
stubble on his jaw, “that Boxer died during a mutiny attempt on the
Emerald Prince
, but he was wrong. Boxer survived.”

“How?” Annabel inquired.

“Who knows—luck, toughness, circumstance. He
told me that he was one of only a handful of survivors who managed
to escape the ship. So after years of virtual imprisonment, he and
his fellow surviving mates fled to India. Apparently he made his
fortune there, and for the past twelve years he’s been amassing an
even greater one.”