Gayle Wilson - The Cowboy's Secret Son

The smile widened, and Jillian, the most nonconfrontational person in the world, wanted to slap it off his face.

“There’s a storm coming,” she said. “I don’t want my son out in it. I called you to help me find him.”

“I expect he’s curled up somewhere watching us right now. He probably liked the idea of you calling the county out to look for him. Liked seeing the cruiser coming.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Best guess,” Ronnie said, seemingly unaware of her anger. “Based on eight years’ experience in this business.”

“And you aren’t going to do anything to find him,” Jillian said flatly, finally realizing that he wasn’t.

“I’ll take a look around. Drive out a ways.”

“I’ve already done both of those things.”

“But you’re his mama. I’m the sheriff. Kids react differently to a uniform. To somebody in authority.”

“I thought you’d decided Drew was enjoying watching this.”

“One or the other. Let’s start with the barn,” Ronnie said.

He began to walk in that direction without waiting to see if she was coming. As a child, the barn had always been her refuge, Jillian remembered. Its horse-scented darkness had given her a sense of safety unmatched anywhere else on the ranch. Reluctantly, knowing this was nothing but a wild-goose chase and a waste of what might be valuable time, she turned to follow him.

As she did, she realized that the sheriff had stopped, seeming to study the clouds to the north. As she glanced in the same direction, she became aware of a sound disturbing the prestorm quiet.

Helicopter, she identified automatically. She put her hand up, shading her eyes from the swirling, wind-driven dust more than from the sun, which had been dimmed by the clouds.

The chopper grew larger as she and the sheriff watched. After a minute or two, it became apparent that it was preparing to set down in the yard. Now that it was this close, Jillian could see it wasn’t any kind of official aircraft. There were no markings that would indicate it belonged to law enforcement or to the military.

It was small and sleek, its body white with bright-red numbers. There was a logo of some kind on the door, but Jillian couldn’t quite make it out from here.

She shielded her eyes again, this time from the dust the rotor was stirring up. Whoever was flying the chopper set it down with hardly a bump and shut off the engine. The sudden silence made her realize how noisy the thing had been.

“Co-op,” the sheriff said.

“Co-op?”

“Outfit that owns most of the land around here. They wanted this place, but I guess you beat ‘em to it.”

She had been told someone else was interested in the property, which had helped her make up her mind very quickly that this was what she wanted to do with Violet’s money. Once she’d made that decision, writing the check for the full purchase price was all that had been required to close the deal. That and signing her name on the bottom line.

Foolishly, she had done that before she had approached Drew. Because her childhood here had been so idyllic, she had never expected that he’d react the way he had. After all—

The door of the chopper slid open and the pilot climbed down. Head lowered a little, he walked around to the other side and opened the passenger door. By now, Jillian had begun to suspect what this was all about. Still, her heart leaped into her throat when Drew came running around the nose of the chopper.

She fought the maternal instinct to shout a warning to him to be careful of the still-rotating blades. Biting the inside of her lip, she simply watched as he approached, so relieved to see him that her knees felt weak.

His steps slowed the closer he came, especially when he noticed the sheriff. You know you’re in trouble, Jillian thought, when you find out your mom’s called out the law.

“Hi, Mom,” Drew said, his tone wavering somewhere between apprehension and excitement.

The latter she could credit to his recent ride in the helicopter, something he’d never done before. And the former was self-explanatory. Drew knew from experience that she wasn’t going to put up with this kind of nonsense.

He knew that, and yet he had done it anyway, which proved exactly how upset he was about the move. And she felt like a fool and a failure for not having any idea about how he’d react.

“Where have you been?” she asked, giving him a chance to tell his side of the story. Besides, listening to his explanation would give her a few seconds to decide what she was going to do about his disappearing.

“I was leaving, but…I got turned around.”

“You were running away?”

“I was going back to Fort Worth,” Drew said.

He sounded almost as determined as he had when he told her how much he hated the ranch. She wished she’d listened.

“And you got lost instead,” she guessed.

He nodded, his eyes cutting back to the pilot, who was rounding the nose of the chopper.

“You’re a little old for that kind of thing, aren’t you?” Jillian asked, bringing his attention back to her. “You must have some idea of how worried I’ve been.”

As she talked, she was aware of the pilot’s approach. She wanted to thank him for bringing Drew home, but she also wanted to make the point to her son that something like this wasn’t going to happen again. This kind of escapade was not allowed.

“He says there’s a storm coming, so he brought me back.”

He glanced away again, focusing on the man who was walking toward them. Jillian raised her own gaze this time, noticing the man’s sun-streaked hair first, since he was in the act of pushing it away from his face by running long tanned fingers through it.

And when he looked up, hazel eyes meeting hers, her heart stopped. Skipped a beat. Did something different, at least. Whatever she called it, something strange and terrifying happened in the center of her chest as recognition washed over her in a scalding wave of emotion.

The same weakness that had invaded her knees when she’d seen Drew run around the chopper moved up to her stomach. And then lower. Its effect was so unexpected that for a second or two she didn’t realize what was happening. After all, it hadn’t happened to her in more than ten years. Not since the last time she had seen this man, whose eyes locked on hers and then widened with what looked like the same sense of shock she had just experienced.

He recovered first. Although she didn’t believe she could manage to utter a coherent sound, Mark Peterson’s voice seemed perfectly normal. A little deeper than she remembered it, but other than that, exactly the same as it had always been.

Exactly the same as the night he’d made love to her. The night Drew had been conceived.

“Hello, Jillian,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

CHAPTER THREE

JILLIAN TRIED to think of an appropriate response. What Mark had said was nothing less than the truth. It had been a long time. A damn long time, better measured in events than in years.

“It has been, hasn’t it,” she said, thankful to find that her voice still worked, although to her own ears it was thready, a little breathless. “How are you, Mark?”

It’s been a long time.

It has been, hasn’t it? How are you?

The merest commonplaces. Phrases either of them might have said to a chance acquaintance. But beneath lay all the memories she suspected neither of them had forgotten.

Or maybe she was wrong about that, she thought, watching him turn to Ronnie. Maybe that was just her fantasy—that what she and Mark had shared that summer had meant more to him than a quick roll in the hay.

“Ronnie,” Mark said, nodding at the sheriff.

“Looks like you did my job for me,” Ronnie replied. “Much obliged. I wasn’t looking forward to searching for the kid all afternoon in a storm. Probably would have been calling on you to help, so I guess you saved us both some trouble.”