Yesterday's Lies (10 page)

“This.” He gestured to the buildings and paddocks of the ridge with one hand before pushing his hat off his head and wiping an accumulation of sweat off his brow.

“It gives me the creeps,” she admitted, hugging her arms around her breasts and frowning.

“Too many ghosts live here?”

“Something like that.”

Trask smiled irreverently. His brown hair ruffled in the wind. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said with a mysterious glint in his eyes.

“Oh?”

“This place gives me the creeps, too.”

Tory laughed in spite of herself. If nothing else, Trask still knew how to charm her out of her fears. “You’d better be careful, senator,” she teased. “Admitting something like that could ruin your public image.”

Trask’s smile widened into an affable slightly off-center grin that softened the square angle of his jaw. “I’ve done a lot of things that could ruin my public image.” His gaze slid suggestively down her throat to the swell of her breasts. “And I imagine that I’ll do a few more.”

Oh, Trask, if only I could trust you,
she thought as she caught the seductive glint in his eyes and her pulse continued to throb traitorously. She forced her eyes away from him and back to the ranch.

“I wish we could just forget all this, you know,” she said, still staring at the cattle moving around the clear blue lake.

“Maybe we can.”

“How?”

“If it turns out to be a prank.”

“And how will you know?” she asked, turning to face him again.

He shook his head. “I’ve just got to play it by ear, Tory; try my best and then...”

“And then, what? If you don’t find anything here today, which you won’t, what will you do? Go to the sheriff?”

“Maybe.”

“But?”

“Maybe I’ll wait and see what happens.”

That sounded encouraging, but she felt a small stab of disappointment touch her heart. “In Washington?”

“Probably.”

She didn’t reply. Though she knew he was studying her reaction, she tried to hide her feelings. That she wanted him to stay in Sinclair was more than foolish, it was downright stupid, she thought angrily. The man had sent her father to jail, for God’s sake. And now that Calvin was dead, Trask was back looking for another innocent victim. As she walked toward the largest of the buildings Tory told herself over and over again that she hated Trask McFadden; that she had only accompanied him up here to get rid of him once and for all, and that she would never think of him again once he had returned to Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, she knew that all of her excuses were lies to herself. She still loved Trask as passionately and as blindly as she had on the bleak night he had left her to chase down, confront and condemn her father.

“It would help me if I knew what I was looking for,” she said.

“Anything that you think looks out of place. We can start over here,” he suggested, pointing to the largest of the three buildings. “This was used as the stables.” Digging his boots into the dry ground, her pushed with his shoulder against the door and it creaked open on rusty hinges.

Tory walked inside the musty structure. Cobwebs hung from the exposed rafters and everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Shovels, rakes, an ax and pick were pushed into one corner on the dirt floor. Other tools and extra fence posts leaned against the walls. The two windows were covered with dust and the dried carcasses of dead insects, letting only feeble light into the building. Tory’s skin prickled with dread. Something about the abandoned barn didn’t feel right and she had the uneasy sensation that she was trespassing. Maybe Trask was right; all the ghosts of the past seemed to reside on the hilly slopes of the ridge.

Trask walked over to the corner between the two windows and lifted an old bridle off the wall. The leather reins were stiff in his fingers and the bit had rusted. For the first time since receiving the anonymous letter he considered ignoring it. The brittle leather in his hands seemed to make it clear that all he was doing was bringing back to life a scandal that should remain dead and buried.

He saw the accusations in Tory’s wide eyes. God, he hadn’t been able to make conversation with her at all; they’d both been too tense and at each other’s throats. Confronting the sins of the past had been harder than he’d imagined; but that was probably because of the woman involved. He couldn’t seem to get Victoria Wilson out of his system, no matter how hard he tried, and though he’d told himself she was trouble, even an adversary, he kept coming back for more.

In the past five years Trask’s need of her hadn’t diminished, if anything it had become more passionate and persistent than before. Silently calling himself the worst kind of fool, he looked away from Tory’s face and continued his inspection of the barn.

Once his inspection of the stable area had been accomplished, he surveyed a small shed, which, he surmised, must have been used for feed and supplies. Nothing.

The last building was little more than a lean-to of two small, dirty rooms. One room had served as observation post; from the single window there was a view of the road and the Lazy W far below. The other slightly larger room was for general use. An old army cot was still folded in the corner. Newspapers, now yellowed, littered the floor, the pipe for the wood stove had broken near the roof line and the few scraps of paper that were still in the building were old wrappers from processed food.

Tory watched as Trask went over the floor of the cabin inch by inch. She looked in every nook and cranny and found nothing of interest. Finally, tired and feeling as if the entire afternoon had been a total waste of time, she walked outside to the small porch near the single door of the shanty.

Leaning against one of the rough cedar posts, she stared down the hills, through the pines to the buildings of the Lazy W. Her home. Trask had single-handedly destroyed it once before—was she up here helping do the very same thing all over again?
History has a way of repeating itself,
she thought to herself and smiled cynically at her own stupidity for still caring about a man who would as soon use her as love her.

Trask’s boots scraped against the floorboards and he came out to the porch. She didn’t turn around but knew that he was standing directly behind her. The warmth of his breath fanned her hair. For one breathless instant she thought that his strong arms might encircle her waist.

“So what did you find, senator?” she asked, breaking the tense silence.

“Nothing,” he replied.

The “I told you so” she wanted to flaunt in his face died within her. When she turned to face him, Tory noticed that Trask suddenly looked older than his thirty-six years. The brackets near the corners of his mouth had become deep grooves.

“Go ahead, say it,” he said, as if reading her mind.

She let out a disgusted breath of air. “I think we’re both too old for those kinds of games, don’t you?”

He leaned against the building and crossed his arms over his chest. “So the little girl has grown up.”

“I wasn’t a little girl,” she protested. “I was twenty-two...”

“Going on fifteen.”

“That’s not nice, senator.”

“Face it, Tory,” he said softly. “You’d been to college, sure, and you’d worked on the ranch, but in a lot of ways—” he touched her lightly on the nape of her neck with one long familiar finger, her skin quivered beneath his touch “—you were an innocent.”

She angled her head up defiantly. “Just because I hadn’t known a lot of men,” she began to argue.

“That wasn’t it, and you know it,” Trask said, his fingers stopping the teasing motion near her collar. “I was talking about the way you looked up to your father, the fact that you couldn’t make a decision without him, your dependency on him.”

“I respected my father, if that’s what you mean.”

“It went much further than that.”

“Of course it did. I loved him.” She took one step backward and folded her arms over her chest. “Maybe you don’t understand that emotion very well, but I do. Simple no-holds-barred love.”

“It went beyond simple love. You worshiped him, Tory; put the man on such a high pedestal that he was bound to fall; and when you discovered that he was human, that he did make mistakes, you couldn’t face it. You still can’t.” His blue eyes delved into hers, forcing her to return their intense stare.

“I don’t want to hear any of this, Trask. Not now.”

“Not ever. You just can’t face the truth, can you?”

A quiet anger had begun to invade her mind. It started to throb and pound behind her eyes. “I faced the truth a long time ago, senator,” she said bitterly. “Only the man that I worshiped, the one that I placed on the pedestal and who eventually fell wasn’t my father.”

Trask’s jaw tightened and his eyes darkened to a smoldering blue. “I did what I had to do, Tory.”

“And damn the consequences?”

“And damn the truth.”

There was a moment of tense silence while Tory glared at him. Even now, despite her anger, she was attracted to him. “I think we’d better go,” she said. “I’m tired of arguing with you and getting nowhere. I promised to bring you up here so you could snoop around and I’ve kept my end of the bargain.”

“That you have,” he said, rubbing his hands together to shake off some of the dust. “Okay, so we found nothing in the buildings—I’d like to walk around the corral and along the road.”

“I don’t see why—”

“Humor me,” he insisted. “Since we’ve already wasted most of the afternoon, I’d like to make sure that I don’t miss anything.” He saw the argument forming in her mind. “This way we won’t have to come back.”

And I won’t have to make excuses to Keith or Rex,
Tory thought. “All right, senator,” she agreed. “You lead, I’ll follow.”

They spent the next few hours walking the perimeter of the land, studying the soil, the trails through the woods, the fence lines where it was still intact. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Tory and if Trask found anything of interest, he kept it to himself.

“I guess Neva was right,” Trask said with a grimace.

“About what?”

“A lot of things, I suppose. But she thought coming up here would turn out to be nothing more than a wild-goose chase.”

“So now you’re willing to concede that your anonymous letter was nothing more than a prank?”

Trask pushed his hat back on his head and squinted thoughtfully up at the mountains. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I can’t imagine why.”

“So you’re not going to give it up,” Tory guessed. “The diligent hard-working earnest Senator McFadden won’t give up.”

“Enough already,” Trask said, chuckling at the sarcasm in Tory’s voice. “Why don’t we forget about the past for a while, what d’ya say?”

“Hard to do, considering the surroundings.”

“Come on,” Trask said, his anger having melted at the prospect of spending time alone with Tory now that what he had set out to do was accomplished. “I’ve got a picnic hamper that Neva packed; she’ll kill me if we don’t eat it.”

“Neva put together the basket?” Tory asked, remembering Keith’s comment to the effect that Neva was in love with Trask.

“Grudgingly,” he admitted.

“I’ll bet.”

“Nicholas and I teamed up on her though.”

“And she couldn’t resist the charms of the McFadden men.”

Trask laughed deep in his throat. “Something like that.”

“This is probably a big mistake.”

“But you’ll indulge me?”

“Sure,” she said easily. “Why not?”
A million reasons why not,
and she ignored all of them. The sun had just set behind the mountains and dusk had begun to shadow the foothills. An evening breeze carrying the heady scent of pine rustled through the trees.

After taking the cooler and a worn plaid blanket out of the back of the Blazer, Trask walked away from the buildings to a clearing in the trees near the edge of the ridge. From there, he and Tory were able to look down on the fields of the ranch. Cattle dotted the landscape and the lake had darkened to the mysterious purple hue of the sky.

“Bird’s-eye view,” she remarked, taking a seat near the edge of the blanket and helping Trask remove items from the cooler and arrange them on the blanket.

Trask sat next to her, leaning his back against a tree and stretching his legs in front of him. “Why did your father buy this piece of land?” he asked, while handing Tory a plate.

Tory shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he intended to build a cabin for Mother...” Her voice caught when she thought of her parents and the love they had shared. As much to avoid Trask’s probing stare as anything, she began putting food onto her plate. “But that was a long time ago, when they were both young, before Mom was sick.”

“And he could never force himself to sell it?”

“No, I suppose not. He and Mom had planned to retire here, where they still could see the ranch and be involved a little when Keith took over.”

“Keith? What about you?”

She smiled sadly and pretended interest in her meal. “Oh, you know, senator. I was supposed to get married and have a dozen wonderful grandchildren for them to spoil...” Tory heard the desperation in her voice and cleared her throat before boldly meeting his gaze. “Well, things don’t always turn out the way you plan, do they?”

Trask’s jaw tightened and his eyes saddened a little. “No, I guess not. Not always.”

Trask was silent as he leaned against the tree and ate the meal that Neva had prepared. The homebaked bread, fried chicken, fresh melon salad and peach pie were a credit to any woman and Trask wondered why it was that he couldn’t leave Tory alone and take the love that Neva so willingly offered him. Maybe it was because she had been his brother’s wife, or, more honestly, maybe it was because no other woman affected him the way Tory Wilson could with one subtle glance. To distract himself from his uncomfortable thoughts, he reached into the cooler.

“Damn!”

“What?”

Trask frowned as he pulled out a thermos of iced tea. “I told Neva to pack a bottle of wine.”

Tory looked at the platters of food. “Maybe next time you should pack your own lunch. It looks like she did more than her share, especially considering how she feels about what you’re doing.” After taking the thermos from his hands, she poured them each a glass of tea.