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Proof of Innocence: Yesterday's Lies / Devil's Gambit
Lisa Jackson
Two classic stories from the New York Times bestselling queen of romantic suspenseYesterday's LiesIt's been five years since Trask McFadden betrayed Tory's trust, landing her father behind bars. She'd hoped Trask was out of her life forever, but now he's returned to the Lazy W ranch, claiming to have discovered a clue that might prove her father's innocence. For the sake of her family, Tory's trying to forgive, but she's finding it much harder to forget when Trask's presence begins to stir up feelings she'd thought were long gone….Devil's GambitTiffany Rhodes's horse farm was in trouble long before she met Zane Sheridan, a breeder with a shady reputation. Yet she can't help but feel relieved when Zane offers to buy her out. Though Tiffany doesn't trust him, she's drawn to him like a magnet. What does this mysterious man want from her…and can she contain her desire long enough to find out?


Two classic stories from the New York Times bestselling queen of romantic suspense
Yesterday’s Lies
It’s been five years since Trask McFadden betrayed Tory’s trust, landing her father behind bars. She’d hoped Trask was out of her life forever, but now he’s returned to the Lazy W ranch, claiming to have discovered a clue that might prove her father’s innocence. For the sake of her family, Tory’s trying to forgive, but she’s finding it much harder to forget when Trask’s presence begins to stir up feelings she’d thought were long gone….
Devil’s Gambit
Tiffany Rhodes’s horse farm was in trouble long before she met Zane Sheridan, a breeder with a shady reputation. Yet she can’t help but feel relieved when Zane offers to buy her out. Though Tiffany doesn’t trust him, she’s drawn to him like a magnet. What does this mysterious man want from her…and can she contain her desire long enough to find out?
Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author
LISA
JACKSON
“Best-selling Jackson cranks up the suspense to almost unbearable heights in her latest tautly written thriller.”
—Booklist on Malice
“When it comes to providing gritty and sexy stories, Ms. Jackson certainly knows how to deliver.”
—RT Book Reviews on Unspoken
“Provocative prose, an irresistible plot and finely crafted characters make up Jackson’s latest contemporary sizzler.”
—Publishers Weekly on Wishes
“Lisa Jackson takes my breath away.”
—New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller
Proof of Innocence
Yesterday’s Lies
Devil’s Gambit
Lisa Jackson


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Yesterday’s Lies (#u4a80c133-c5c4-56a6-91ae-071b2a852d7b)
Devil’s Gambit (#litres_trial_promo)
Yesterday’s Lies
Lisa Jackson
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u0654be18-6726-5f30-a51b-d02adc1c9d0c)
CHAPTER TWO (#u34771e5c-5094-5d0b-a513-56a2631903d4)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5261c0c7-cc1b-5131-86c2-ee796765076f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u14e2befd-8eae-5597-9597-f0f5b7c665c0)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u82a88785-d30c-567c-94ed-1a410d83b05b)
CHAPTER SIX (#u53bb1cf8-d3d0-5f72-bc96-9657d9566fbd)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
THE SWEATING HORSE snorted as if in premonition and his dark ears pricked forward before flattening to his head. Tory, who was examining the bay’s swollen hoof, felt his weight shift suddenly. “Steady boy,” she whispered. “I know it hurts....”
The sound of boots crunching on the gravel near the paddock forced Tory’s eyes away from the tender hoof and toward the noise. Keith was striding purposefully toward her, his lanky rawboned frame tense, the line of his mouth set.
“Trask McFadden is back.”
The words seemed to thunder across the windswept high plateau and echo in Tory’s ears. Her back stiffened at her brother’s statement, and she felt as if her entire world was about to dissolve, but she tried to act as if she was unaffected. Her fingers continued their gentle probing of the bay stallion’s foreleg and her eyes searched inside the swollen hoof for any sign of infection.
“Tory, for God’s sake,” Keith called a little more loudly as he leaned over the top rail of the fence around the enclosed paddock, “did you hear what I said?”
Tory stood, patted the nervous stallion affectionately and took in a steadying breath before opening the gate. It groaned on its ancient hinges. She slipped through the dusty rails and faced her younger brother. His anxious expression said it all.
So Trask was back. After all these years. Just as he said he would be. She suddenly felt cold inside. Shifting her gaze from the nervous bay stallion limping within the enclosed paddock to the worried contours of Keith’s young face, Tory frowned and shook her head. The late-afternoon sun caught in her auburn hair, streaking it with fiery highlights of red and gold.
“I guess we should have expected this, sooner or later,” she said evenly, though her heart was pounding a sharp double time. Nervously wiping her hands on her jeans, she tried to turn her thoughts back to the injured Quarter Horse, but the craggy slopes of the distant Cascade Mountains caught her attention. Snow-covered peaks jutted brazenly upward against the clear June sky. Tory had always considered the mountains a symbolic barrier between herself and Trask. The Willamette Valley and most of the population of the state of Oregon resided on the western side—the other side—of the Cascade Mountains. The voting public were much more accessible in the cities and towns of the valley. The unconventional Senator McFadden rarely had to cross the mountains when he returned to his native state. Everything he needed was on the other side of the Cascades.
Now he was back. Just as he had promised. Tory’s stomach knotted painfully at the thought. Damn him and his black betraying heart.
Keith studied his older sister intently. Her shoulders slumped slightly and she brushed a loose strand of hair away from her face and back into the ponytail she always wore while working on the Lazy W. She leaned over the split rail, her fists balled beneath her jutted chin and her jaw tense. Keith witnessed the whitening of the skin over her cheekbones and thought for a moment that she might faint; but when her gray-green eyes turned back to him they seemed calm, hiding any emotions that might be raging within her heart.
Trask. Back. After all these years and all the lies. Tory shook her head as if to deny any feelings she might still harbor for him.
“You act as if you don’t care,” Keith prodded, though he had noticed the hardening of her elegant features. He leaned backward, his broad shoulders supported by the rails of the fence. His arms were crossed over his chest, his dusty straw Stetson was pushed back on his head and dark sweat-dampened hair protruded unevenly from beneath the brim as he surveyed his temperamental sister.
“I can’t let it bother me one way or the other,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “Now, about the stallion...” She pointed to the bay. “His near foreleg—I think it’s laminitis. He’s probably been putting too much weight on the leg because of his injury to the other foreleg.” When Keith didn’t respond, she clarified. “Governor’s foot is swollen with founder, acute laminitis. His temperature’s up, he’s sweating and blowing and he won’t bear any weight on the leg. We’re lucky so far, there’s no sign of infection—”
Keith made a disgusted sound and held up his palm in frustration with his older sister. What the hell was the matter with her? Hadn’t she heard him? Didn’t she care? “Tory, for Christ’s sake, listen to me and forget about the horse for a minute! McFadden always said he’d come back; for you.”
Tory winced slightly. Her gray-green eyes narrowed against a slew of painful memories that made goose bumps rise on her bare arms. “That was a long time ago,” she whispered, once again facing her brother.
“Before the trial.”
Closing her eyes against the agony of the past, Tory leaned heavily against the split cedar rails and forced her thoughts to the present. Though her heart was thudding wildly within her chest, she managed to remain outwardly calm. “I don’t think McFadden will bother us,” she said.
“I’m not so sure....”
She forced a half smile she didn’t feel. “Come on, Keith, buck up. Let’s not borrow trouble. We’ve got enough as it is, don’t you think?” Once again she cast a glance at the bay stallion. He was still sweating and blowing. She had examined him carefully and was thankful that there was no evidence of infection in the swollen tissues of his foot.
Keith managed to return his sister’s encouraging grin, but it was short-lived. “Yeah, I suppose we don’t need any more trouble. Not now,” he acknowledged before his ruddy complexion darkened and his gray eyes lost their sparkle. “We’ve had our share and we know who to thank for it,” he said, removing his hat and pushing his sweaty hair off his brow. Dusty streaks lined his forehead. “All the problems began with McFadden, you know.”
Tory couldn’t deny the truth in her younger brother’s words. “Maybe—”
“No maybe about it, Tory. If it hadn’t been for McFadden, Dad might still be alive.” Keith’s gray eyes clouded with hatred and he forced his hat onto his head with renewed vengeance.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Tory replied, wondering why she was defending a man she had sworn to hate.
“Oh no?” he threw back at her. “Well, I can be sure of one thing! Dad wouldn’t have spent the last couple of years of his life rotting in some stinking jail cell if McFadden’s testimony hadn’t put him there.”
Tory’s heart twisted with a painful spasm of guilt. “That was my fault,” she whispered quietly.
“The hell it was,” Keith exploded. “McFadden was the guy who sent Dad up the river on a bum rap.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that.”
“I guess not,” he allowed. “The bastard used you, too.” Keith adjusted his Stetson and rammed his fists into his pockets. “Whatever you do, Sis,” he warned, “don’t stick up for him. At least not to me. The bottom line is that Dad is dead.”
Tory smiled bitterly at the irony of it all and smoothed a wisp of hair out of her face. She had made the mistake of defending Trask McFadden once. It would never happen again. “I won’t.”
She lifted her shoulders and let out a tortured breath of air. How many times had she thought about the day that Trask would return? How many times had she fantasized about him? In one scenario she was throwing him off her property, telling him just what kind of a bastard he was; in another she was making passionate love with him near the pond.... She cleared her throat and said, “Just because he’s back in town doesn’t mean that Trask is going to stir up any trouble.”
Keith wasn’t convinced. “Trouble follows him around.”
“Well, it won’t follow him here.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he’s not welcome.” Determination was evident in her eyes and the thrust of her small proud chin. She avoided Keith’s narrowed eyes by watching a small whirlwind kick up the dust and dry pine needles in the corral. Governor snorted impatiently and his tail switched at the ever-present flies.
Keith studied his sister dubiously. Though Tory was six years his senior, sometimes she seemed like a little kid to him. Especially when it came to Trask McFadden. “Does he know that you don’t want him here?”
Tory propped her boot on the bottom rail. “I think I made it pretty clear the last time I saw him.”
“But that was over five years ago.”
Tory turned her serious gray-green eyes on her brother. “Nothing’s changed since then.”
“Except that he’s back and he’s making noise about seeing you again.”
Tory’s head snapped upward and she leveled her gaze at her brother. “What kind of noise?”
“The kind that runs through the town gossip mill like fire.”
“I don’t believe it. The man’s not stupid, Keith. He knows how I—we feel about him. He’s probably back in town visiting Neva. He has before.”
“And all those times he never once mentioned that he’d come for you. Until now. He means business. The only reason he came back here was for you!”
“I don’t think—”
“Damn it, Tory,” Keith interjected. “For once in your life, just listen to me. I was in town last night, at the Branding Iron.”
Tory cast Keith a concerned glance. He scowled and continued, “Neva’s spread it around town. She said Trask was back. For you!”
Tory’s heart nearly stopped beating. Neva McFadden was Trask’s sister-in-law, the widow of his brother, Jason. It had been Jason’s mysterious death that had started all the trouble with her father. Tory still ached for the grief that Neva McFadden and her small son had borne, but she knew in her heart that her father had had no part in Jason McFadden’s death. Calvin Wilson had been sent to prison an innocent victim of an elaborate conspiracy, all because of Trask McFadden’s testimony and the way Tory had let him use her. Silent white-hot rage surged through Tory’s blood.
Keith was still trying desperately to convince her of Trask’s intentions. “Neva wouldn’t lie about something like this, Tory. McFadden will come looking for you.”
“Great,” she muttered, before slapping the fence. “Look, I want you to tell Rex and any of the other hands that Trask McFadden has no business on this property. If he shows up, we’ll throw him off.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” She snapped her fingers and her carefully disguised anger flickered in her eyes.
Keith rubbed his jaw. “How do you propose to do that? Threaten him with a rifle aimed at his head?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
Keith raised a skeptical brow. “You’re serious?”
Tory laughed nervously. “Of course not. We’ll just explain that if he doesn’t remove himself, we’ll call the sheriff.”
“A lot of good that will do. We call the sheriff’s office and what do you suppose will happen? Nothing! Paul Barnett’s hands are tied. He owes his career—and maybe his whole political future—to McFadden. Who do you think backed Paul in the last election? McFadden.” Keith spit out Trask’s name as if it were a bitter poison. “Even if he wanted to, how in the hell would Paul throw a United States senator out on his ear?” Keith added with disgust in his voice, “Paul Barnett is in McFadden’s back pocket.”
“You make it sound as if Trask owns the whole town.”
“Near enough; everyone in Sinclair thinks he’s a god, y’know. Except for you—and sometimes I’m not so sure about that.”
Tory couldn’t help but laugh at the bleak scene Keith was painting. “Lighten up,” she advised, her white teeth flashing against her tanned skin. “This isn’t a bad western movie where the sheriff and the townspeople are all against a poor defenseless woman trying to save her ranch—”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“Give me a break, Keith. If Trask McFadden trespasses—”
“We’re all in big trouble. Especially you.”
Tory’s fingers drummed nervously on the fence. She tried to change the course of the conversation. “Like I said, I think you’re borrowing trouble,” she muttered. “What Trask McFadden says and what he does are two different things. He’s a politician. Remember?”
Keith’s mouth twisted into a bitter grin and his eyes narrowed at the irony. “Yeah, I remember; and I know that the only reason that bastard got elected was because of his testimony against Dad and the others. He put innocent men in jail and ended up with a cushy job in Washington. What a great guy.”
Tory’s teeth clenched together and a headache began to throb in her temples. “I’m sure that central Oregon will soon bore our prestigious senator,” she said, her uncertainty carefully veiled. “He’ll get tired of rubbing elbows with the constituents in Sinclair and return to D.C. where he belongs, and that’s the last we’ll hear of him.”
Keith laughed bitterly. “You don’t believe that any more than I do. If Trask McFadden’s back it’s for a reason and one reason only: you, Tory.” He slouched against the fence, propped up by one elbow. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Her gray-green eyes glittered dangerously. “Let’s just wait and see. If Trask has the guts to show up, I’ll deal with him then.”
Keith’s lower lip protruded and he squinted against the glare of the lowering sun. “I think you should leave....”
“What!”
“Take a vacation, get out of this place. You deserve one, anyway; you’ve been working your tail off for the past five years. And, if McFadden comes here and finds out that you’re gone for a few weeks, he’ll get the idea and shove off.”
“That’s running, Keith,” Tory snapped. “This is my home. I’m not running off like a frightened rabbit, for crying out loud. Not for Trask McFadden, not for any man.” Determination underscored her words. Pride, fierce and painful, blazed in her eyes and was evident in the strong set of her jaw.
“He’s a powerful man,” Keith warned.
“And I’m not afraid of him.”
“He hurt you once before.”
Tory squared her shoulders. “That was a long time ago.” She managed a tight smile and slapped her brother affectionately on his shoulder. “I’m not the same woman I used to be. I’ve grown up a lot since then.”
“I don’t know,” Keith muttered, remembering his once carefree sister and the grin she used to wear so easily. “History has a way of repeating itself.”
Tory shook her head and forced a smile, hoping to disarm her younger brother. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life worrying about Trask and what he would or wouldn’t do. She had already spent more hours than she would admit thinking about him and the shambles he’d attempted to make of her life. Just because he was back in Sinclair... “Let’s forget about McFadden for a while, okay? Tell Rex I want to try ice-cold poultices on our friend here.” She nodded in the direction of the bay stallion. “And I don’t want him ridden until we determine if he needs a special shoe.” She paused and her eyes rested on the sweating bay. “But he should be walked at least twice a day. More if possible.”
“As if I have the time—”
Tory cut him off. “Someone around here must have the time,” she snapped, thinking about the payroll of the ranch and how difficult it was to write the checks each month. The Lazy W was drowning in red ink. It had been since Calvin Wilson had been sent to prison five years before. By Trask McFadden. “Have someone, maybe Eldon, if you don’t have the time, walk Governor,” she said, her full lips pursing.
Keith knew that he was being dismissed. He frowned, cast his sister one final searching look, pushed his hat lower on his head and started ambling off toward the barn on the other side of the dusty paddock. He had delivered his message about Trask McFadden. The rest was up to Tory.
* * *
TRASK PACED IN the small living room feeling like a caged animal. His long strides took him to the window where he would pause, study the distant snow-laden mountains through the paned glass and then return to the other side of the room to stop before the stone fireplace where Neva was sitting in a worn rocking chair. The rooms in the house were as neat and tidy as the woman who owned them and just being in the house—Jason’s house—made Trask restless. His business in Sinclair wasn’t pleasant and he had been putting it off for more than twelve hours. Now it was time to act.
“What good will come of this?” Neva asked, shaking her head with concern. Her small beautiful face was set in a frown and her full lips were pursed together in frustration.
“It’s something I’ve got to do.” Trask leaned against the mantel, ran his fingers under the collar of his shirt and pressed his thumb thoughtfully to his lips as he resumed pacing.
“Sit down, will you?” Neva demanded, her voice uncharacteristically sharp. He stopped midstride and she smiled, feeling suddenly foolish. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I just hate to see you like this, all screwed up inside.”
“I’ve always been this way.”
“Hmph.” She didn’t believe it for a minute and she suspected that Trask didn’t either. Trask McFadden was one of the few men she had met in her twenty-five years who knew his own mind and usually acted accordingly. Recently, just the opposite had been true and Neva would have had to have been a blind woman not to see that Trask’s discomfiture was because of Tory Wilson. “And you think seeing Tory again will change all that?” She didn’t bother to hide her skepticism.
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re willing to gamble and find out?”
He nodded, the lines near the corners of his blue eyes crinkling.
“No matter what the price?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Neva stared at the only man she cared for. Trask had helped her, been at her side in those dark lonely nights after Jason’s death. He had single-handedly instigated an investigation into the “accident,” which had turned out to be the premeditated murder of her husband. Though Trask had been Jason’s brother, his concern for Neva had gone beyond the usual bounds and she knew she would never forget his kindness or stop loving him.
Neva owed Trask plenty, but she couldn’t seem to get through to him. A shiver of dread raced down her spine. Trask looked tired, she thought with concern, incredibly tired, as if he were on some new crusade. His hair had darkened from the winter in Washington, D.C., and the laugh lines near his mouth and eyes seemed to have grown into grooves of disenchantment. His whole attitude seemed jaded these days, she mused. Maybe that’s what happened when an honest man became a senator....
At that moment, Nicholas raced into the room and breathlessly made a beeline for his mother. “Mom?” He slid to a stop, dusty tennis shoes catching on the polished wood floor.
“What, honey?” Neva stopped rocking and rumpled Nicholas’s dark hair as he scrambled into her lap.
“Can I go over to Tim’s? We’re going to build a tree house out in the back by the barn. His mom says it’s okay with her....”
Neva lifted her eyes and smiled at the taller boy scurrying after Nick. He was red-haired and gangly, with a gaping hole where his two front teeth should have been. “If you’re sure it’s all right with Betty.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tim said. “Mom likes it when Nick comes over. She says it keeps me out of her hair.”
“Does she?” Neva laughed and turned her eyes back to Nicholas. At six, he was the spitting image of his father. Wavy brown hair, intense blue eyes glimmering with hope—so much like Jason. “Only a little while, okay? Dinner will be ready in less than an hour.”
“Great!” Nicholas jumped off her lap and hurried out of the living room. The two boys left as quickly as they had appeared. Scurrying footsteps echoed down the short entry hall.
“Remember to shut the door,” Neva called, but she heard the front door squeak open and bang against the wall.
“I’ll get it.” Trask, glad for the slightest opportunity to escape the confining room, followed the boys, shut the door and returned. Facing Neva was more difficult than he had imagined and he wondered for the hundredth time if he were doing the right thing. Neva didn’t seem to think so.
She turned her brown eyes up to Trask’s clouded gaze when he reentered the room. “That,” she said, pointing in the direction that Nicholas had exited, “is the price you’ll pay.”
“Nick?”
“His innocence. Right now, Nicholas doesn’t remember what happened five years ago,” Neva said with a frown. “But if you go searching out Tory Wilson, all that will change. The gossip will start all over again; questions will be asked. Nick will have to come to terms with the fact that his father was murdered by a group of men whose relatives still live around Sinclair.”
“He will someday anyway.”
Neva’s eyes pleaded with Trask as she rose from the chair. “But not yet, Trask. He’s too young. Kids can be cruel.... I just want to give him a few more years of innocence. He’s only six....”
“This has nothing to do with Nick.”
“The hell it doesn’t! It has everything to do with him. His father was killed because he knew too much about that Quarter Horse swindle.” Neva wrapped her arms around her waist as if warding off a sudden chill, walked to one of the windows and stared outside. She stared at the Hamiltons’ place across the street, where Nicholas was busily creating a tree house, blissfully unaware of the brutal circumstances surrounding his father’s death. She trembled. “I don’t want to go through it all again,” Neva whispered, turning away from the window.
Trask shifted from one foot to the other as his conscience twinged. His thick brows drew together into a pensive scowl and he pushed impatient fingers through the coarse strands of his brown hair. “What if I told you that one of Jason’s murderers might have escaped justice?”
Neva had been approaching him. She stopped dead in her tracks. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe there were four people involved in the conspiracy—not just three.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
Trask tossed his head back and stared up at the exposed beams of the cedar ceiling. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Neva. She and the boy had been through too much already, he thought. “What I’m saying is that I have reason to believe that one of the conspirators might never have been named. In fact, it’s a good guess that he got away scot-free.”
Neva turned narrowed eyes up to her husband’s brother. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“This isn’t some kind of a morbid joke—”
“Neva,” he reproached, and she had only to look into his serious blue eyes to realize that he would never joke about anything as painful and vile as Jason’s unnecessary death.
“You thought there were only three men involved. So what happened to change your mind?”
Knowing that he was probably making the biggest blunder of his short career in politics, Trask reached into his back pocket and withdrew the slightly wrinkled photocopy of the anonymous letter he had received in Washington just a week earlier. The letter had been his reason for returning—or so he had tried to convince himself for the past six days.
Neva took the grayish document and read the few sentences before shaking her head and letting her short blond curls fall around her face in neglected disarray. “This is a lie,” she said aloud. The letter quivered in her small hand. “All the men connected with Jason’s death were tried and convicted. Judge Linn Benton and George Henderson are in the pen serving time and Calvin Wilson is dead.”
“So who does that leave?” he demanded.
“No one.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But now you’re not so sure?”
“Not until I talk to Victoria Wilson.” Tory. Just the thought of seeing her again did dangerous things to his mind. “She’s the only person I know who might have the answers. The swindle took place on some property her father owned on Devil’s Ridge.”
Neva’s lower lip trembled and her dark eyes accused him of crimes better left unspoken. Trask had used Victoria Wilson to convict her father; Neva doubted that Tory would be foolish enough to trust him again. “And you think that talking with Tory will clear this up?” She waved the letter in her hand as if to emphasize her words. “This is a prank, Trask. Nothing more. Leave it alone.” She fell back into the rocker still clenching the letter and tucked her feet beneath her.
Trask silently damned himself for all the old wounds he was about to reopen. He reached forward, as if to stroke Neva’s bent head, but his fingers curled into a fist of frustration. “I wish I could, Neva,” he replied as he gently removed the letter from her hand and reached for the suede jacket he’d carelessly thrown over the back of the couch several hours earlier. He hooked one finger under the collar and tossed the jacket over his shoulder. “God, I wish I could.”
“You and your damned ideals,” she muttered. “Nothing will bring Jason back. But this...vendetta you’re on...could hurt my son.”
“Even if what I find out is the truth?”
Neva closed her eyes. She raised her hand and waved him off. She knew there was no way to talk sense to him when he had his mind made up. “Do what you have to do, Trask,” she said wearily. “You will anyway. Just remember that Nicholas is the one who’ll suffer.” Her voice was low; a warning. “You and I—we’ll survive. We always do. But what about Nick? He’s in school now and this is a small town, a very small town. People talk.”
Too much, Trask thought, silently agreeing. People talk too damned much. With an angry frown, he turned toward the door.
Neva heard his retreating footsteps echoing down the hall, the door slamming shut and finally the sound of an engine sparking to life then rumbling and fading into the distance.
CHAPTER TWO
AS DUSK SETTLED over the ranch, Tory was alone. And that’s the way she wanted it.
She sat on the front porch of the two-story farmhouse that she had called home for most of her twenty-seven years. Rough cedar boards, painted a weathered gray, were highlighted by windows trimmed in a deep wine color. The porch ran the length of the house and had a sloping shake roof supported by hand-hewn posts. The house hadn’t changed much since her father was forced to leave. Tory had attempted to keep the house and grounds in good repair...to please him when he was released. Only that wouldn’t happen. Calvin Wilson had been dead for nearly two years, after suffering a painful and lonely death in the penitentiary for a crime he didn’t commit. All because she had trusted Trask McFadden.
Tory’s jaw tightened, her fingers clenched over the arm of the wooden porch swing that had been her father’s favorite. Guilt took a stranglehold of her throat. If only she hadn’t believed in Trask and his incredible blue eyes—eyes Tory would never have suspected of anything less than the truth. He had used her shamelessly and she had been blind to his true motives, in love enough to let him take advantage of her. Never again, she swore to herself. Trusting Trask McFadden was one mistake that she wouldn’t make twice!
With her hands cradling her head, Tory sat on the varnished slats of the porch swing and stared across the open fields toward the mountains. Purple thunderclouds rolled near the shadowy peaks as night fell across the plateau.
Telling herself that she wasn’t waiting for Trask, Tory slowly rocked and remembered the last time she had seen him. It had been in the courtroom during her father’s trial. The old bitterness filled her mind as she considered how easily Trask had betrayed her...
* * *
THE TRIAL HAD already taken over a week and in that time Tory felt as if her entire world were falling apart at the seams. The charges against her father were ludicrous. No one could possibly believe that Calvin Wilson was guilty of fraud, conspiracy or murder, for God’s sake, and yet there he was, seated with his agitated attorney in the hot courtroom, listening stoically as the evidence against him mounted.
When it had been his turn to sit on the witness stand, he had sat ramrod stiff in the wooden chair, refusing to testify in his behalf.
“Dad, please, save yourself,” Tory had begged on the final day of the trial. She was standing in the courtroom, clutching her father’s sleeve, unaware of the reporters scribbling rapidly in their notepads. Unshed tears of frustration and fear pooled in her large eyes.
“I know what I’m doin’, Missy,” Calvin had assured her, fondly patting her head. “It’s all for the best. Trust me...”
Trust me.
The same words that Trask had said only a few days before the trial. And then he had betrayed her completely. Tory paled and watched in disbelief and horror as Trask took the stand.
He was the perfect witness for the prosecution. Tall, good-looking, with a proud lift of his shoulders and piercing blue eyes, he cut an impressive figure on the witness stand, and his reputation as a trustworthy lawyer added to his appeal. His suit was neatly pressed, but his thick gold-streaked hair remained windblown, adding to the intense, but honest, country-boy image he had perfected. The fact that he was the brother of the murdered man only added sympathy from the jury for the prosecution. That he had gained his information by engaging in a love affair with the accused’s daughter didn’t seem to tarnish his testimony in the least. If anything, it made his side of the story appear more poignantly authentic, and the district attorney played it to the hilt.
“And you were with Miss Wilson on the night of your brother’s death,” the rotund district attorney suggested, leaning familiarly on the polished rail of the witness stand. He stared at Trask over rimless glasses, lifting his bushy brown eyebrows in encouragement to his star witness.
“Yes.” Trask’s eyes held Tory’s. She was sitting behind her father and the defense attorney, unable to believe that the man she loved was slowly, publicly shredding her life apart. Keith, who was sitting next to her, put a steadying arm around her shoulder, but she didn’t feel it. She continued to stare at Trask with round tortured eyes.
“And what did Miss Wilson confide to you?” the D.A. asked, his knowing eyes moving from Trask to the jury in confidence.
“That some things had been going on at the Lazy W...things she didn’t understand.”
“Could you be more specific?”
Tory leaned forward and her hands clutched the railing separating her from her father in a death-grip.
The corner of Trask’s jaw worked. “She—”
“You mean Victoria Wilson?”
“Yeah,” Trask replied with a frown. “Tory claimed that her father had been in a bad mood for the better part of a week. She...Tory was worried about him. She said that Calvin had been moody and seemed distracted.”
“Anything else?”
Trask hesitated only slightly. His blue eyes darkened and delved into hers. “Tory had seen her father leave the ranch late at night, on horseback.”
“When?”
“July 7th.”
“Of this year—the night your brother died?”
The lines around Trask’s mouth tightened and his skin stretched tautly over his cheekbones. “Yes.”
“And what worried Miss Wilson?”
“Objection,” the defense attorney yelled, raising his hand and screwing up his face in consternation as he shot up from his chair.
“Sustained.” Judge Miller glared imperiously at the district attorney, who visibly regrouped his thoughts and line of questioning.
The district attorney flashed the jury a consoling smile. “What did Miss Wilson say to you that led you to believe that her father was part of the horse swindle?”
Trask settled back in his chair and chewed on his lower lip as he thought. “Tory said that Judge Linn Benton had been visiting the ranch several times in the past few days. The last time Benton was over at the ranch—”
“The Lazy W?”
Trask frowned at the D.A. “Yes. There was a loud argument between Calvin and the judge in Calvin’s den. The door was closed, of course, but Tory was in the house and she overheard portions of the discussion.”
“Objection,” the defense attorney called again. “Your honor, this is only hearsay. Mr. McFadden can’t possibly know what Miss Wilson overheard or thought she overheard.”
“Sustained,” the judge said wearily, wiping the sweat from his receding brow. “Mr. Delany...”
The district attorney took his cue and his lips pursed together thoughtfully as he turned back to Trask and said, “Tell me what you saw that convinced you that Calvin Wilson was involved in the alleged horse switching.”
“I’d done some checking on my own,” Trask admitted, seeing Tory’s horrified expression from the corner of his eye. “I knew that my brother, Jason, was investigating an elaborate horse swapping swindle.”
“Jason told you as much?”
“Yes. He worked for an insurance company, Edward’s Life. Several registered Quarter Horses had died from accidents in the past couple of years. That in itself wasn’t out of the ordinary, only two of the horses were owned by the same ranch. What was suspicious was the fact that the horses had been insured so heavily. The company didn’t mind at the time the policy was taken out, but wasn’t too thrilled when the horse died and the claim had to be paid.
“Still, like I said, nothing appeared out of the ordinary until a company adjuster, on a whim, talked with a few other rival companies who insured horses as well. When the computer records were cross-checked, the adjuster discovered a much higher than average mortality rate for highly-insured Quarter Horses in the area surrounding Sinclair, Oregon. Jason, as a claims investigator for Edward’s Life, was instructed to check it out the next time a claim came in. You know, for fraud. What he discovered was that the dead horse wasn’t even a purebred Quarter Horse. The mare was nothing more than a mustang, a range horse, insured to the teeth.”
“How was that possible?”
“It wasn’t. The horse was switched. The purebred horse was still alive, kept on an obscure piece of land in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The way Jason figured it, the purebred horse would either be sold for a tidy sum, or used for breeding purposes. Either way, the owner would make out with at least twice the value of the horse.”
“I see,” the D.A. said thoughtfully. “And who owned this piece of land?”
Trask paused, the corners of his mouth tightening. “Calvin Wilson.”
A muffled whisper of shock ran through the courtroom and the D.A., while pretending surprise, smiled a bit. Tory thought she was going to be sick. Her face paled and she had to swallow back the acrid taste of deception rising in her throat.
“How do you know who owned the property?”
“Jason had records from the county tax assessor’s office. He told me. I couldn’t believe it so I asked his daughter, Victoria Wilson.”
Tory had to force herself not to gasp aloud at the vicious insinuations in Trask’s lies. She closed her eyes and all the life seemed to drain out of her.
“And what did Miss Wilson say?”
“That she didn’t know about the land. When I pressed her she admitted that she was worried about her father and the ranch; she said that the Lazy W had been in serious financial trouble for some time.”
The district attorney seemed satisfied and rubbed his fleshy fingers together over his protruding stomach. Tory felt as if she were dying inside. The inquisition continued and Trask recounted the events of the summer. How he had seen Judge Linn Benton with Calvin Wilson on various occasions; how his brother, Jason, had almost concluded his investigation of the swindle; and how Calvin Wilson’s name became linked to the other two men by his damning ownership of the property.
“You mean to tell me that your brother, Jason, told you that Calvin Wilson was involved?”
“Jason said he thought there might be a connection because of the land where the horses were kept.”
“A connection?” the district attorney repeated, patting his stomach and looking incredulously at the jury. “I’d say that was more than ‘a connection.’ Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Trask shifted uneasily in his chair and his blue eyes narrowed on the D.A. “There is a chance that Calvin Wilson didn’t know exactly what was happening on the land as it is several miles from the Lazy W.”
“But what about the mare that was switched?” the D.A. prodded. “Wasn’t she registered?”
“Yes.”
“And the owner?”
“Calvin Wilson.”
“So your brother, Jason McFadden, the insurance investigator for Edward’s Life, thought that there might be a connection?” the D.A. concluded smugly.
“Jason was still working on it when the accident occurred.” Trask’s eyes hardened at the injustice of his brother’s death. It was just the reaction the district attorney had been counting on.
“The accident which took his life. Right?”
“Yes.”
“The accident that was caused by someone deliberately tampering with the gas line of the car,” the D.A. persisted.
“Objection!”
“Your honor, it’s been proven that the engine of Jason McFadden’s car had been rigged with an explosive device that detonated at a certain speed, causing sparks to fly into the gas line and explode in the gas tank. What I’m attempting to prove is how that happened and who was to blame.”
The gray-haired judge scowled, settled back in his chair and stared at the defense attorney with eyes filled with the cynicism of too many years on the bench. “Overruled.”
The D.A. turned to face Trask.
“Let’s go back to the night that Victoria Wilson saw her father leave the ranch. On that night, the night of July 7th, what did you do?”
Trask wiped a tired hand around his neck. “After I left Tory, I waited until Calvin had returned and then I confronted him with what Jason had figured out about the horse swapping scam and what I suspected about his involvement in it.”
“But why did you do that? It might have backfired in your face and ruined your brother’s reputation as an insurance investigator.”
Trask paused for a minute. The courtroom was absolutely silent except for the soft hum of the motor of the paddle fan. “I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
Trask’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the polished railing. “I was afraid for Jason’s life. I thought he was in over his head.”
“Why?”
“Jason had already received an anonymous phone call threatening him, as well as his family.” Trask’s eyes grew dark with indignation and fury and his jaw thrust forward menacingly. “But he wouldn’t go to the police. It was important to him to handle it himself.”
“And so you went to see Calvin Wilson, hoping that he might help you save your brother’s life.”
“Yes.” Trask glared at the table behind which Tory’s father was sitting.
“And what did Calvin Wilson say when you confronted him?”
Hatred flared in Trask’s eyes. “That all the problems were solved.”
At that point Neva McFadden, Jason’s widow, broke down. Her small shoulders began to shake with the hysterical sobs racking her body and she buried her face in her hands, as if in so doing she could hide from the truth. Calvin Wilson didn’t move a muscle, but Tory felt as if she were slowly bleeding to death. Keith’s face turned ashen when Neva was helped from the courtroom and his arm over Tory’s shoulders tightened.
“So,” the D.A. persisted, turning everyone’s attention back to the witness stand and Trask, “you thought that because of your close relationship with Calvin Wilson’s daughter, that you might be able to reason with the man before anything tragic occurred.”
“Yes,” Trask whispered, his blue eyes filled with resignation as he looked from the empty chair in which Neva had been sitting, to Calvin Wilson and finally to Tory. “But it didn’t work out that way...”
* * *
TORY CONTINUED TO rock in the porch swing. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the aspen trees and whispered through the pines...just as it had on the first night she’d met him. All her memories of Trask were so vivid. Passionate images filled with love and hate teased her weary mind. Falling in love with him had been too easy...but then, of course, he had planned it that way, and she had been trapped easily by his deceit. Thank God she was alone tonight, she thought, so that she had time to think things out before she had to face him again.
It had taken a lot of convincing to get Keith to leave the ranch, but in the end he had gone into town with some of the single men who worked on the Lazy W. It was a muggy Saturday night in early summer, and Keith had decided that he would, against his better judgment, spend a few hours drinking beer and playing pool at the Branding Iron. It was his usual custom on Saturday evenings and Tory persuaded him that she wanted to be left alone. Which she did. If what Keith had been saying were true, then she wanted to meet Trask on her own terms, without unwanted ears to hear what promised to be a heated conversation.
The scent of freshly mown hay drifted on the sultry breeze that lifted the loose strands of hair away from her face. The gentle lowing of restless cattle as they roamed the far-off fields reached her ears. She squinted her eyes against the gathering night. Twilight had begun to color the landscape in shadowy hues of lavender. Clumps of sagebrush dappled the ground beneath the towering ponderosa pines. Even the proud Cascades loomed darkly, silently in the distance, a cold barrier to the rest of the world. Except that the world was intruding into her life all over again. The rugged mountains hadn’t protected her at all. She had been a fool to think that she was safe and that the past was over and done.
The faint rumble of an engine caught Tory’s attention. Trask.
Tory’s heart began to pound in anticipation. She felt the faint stirrings of dread as the sound came nearer. He’d come back. Just as he’d promised and Keith had warned. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on her back and between her breasts. She clenched her teeth in renewed determination and her fingers clenched the arm of the swing in a death grip.
The twin beams of headlights illuminated the stand of aspen near the drive and a dusty blue pickup stopped in front of her house. Tory took in a needed breath of air and trained her eyes on the man unfolding himself from the cab. An unwelcome lump formed in her throat.
Trask was just as she had remembered him. Tall and lean, with long well-muscled thighs, tight buttocks, slim waist and broad chest, he looked just as arrogantly athletic as he always had. His light brown hair caught in the hot breeze and fell over his forehead in casual disarray.
So much for the stuffy United States senator image, Tory thought cynically. His shirt was pressed and clean, but open-throated, and the sleeves were pushed over his forearms. The jeans, which hugged his hips, looked as if they had seen years of use. Just one of the boys... Tory knew better. She couldn’t trust him this night any more than she had on the day her father was sentenced to prison.
Trask strode over to the porch with a purposeful step and his eyes delved into hers.
What he encountered in Tory’s cynical gaze was hostility—as hot and fresh as it had been on the day that Calvin Wilson had been found guilty for his part in Jason’s death.
“What’re you doing here?” Tory demanded. Her voice was surprisingly calm, probably from going over the scene a thousand times in her mind, she thought.
Trask climbed the two weathered steps to the porch, placed his hands on the railing and balanced his hips against the smooth wood. His booted feet were crossed in front of him. He attempted to look relaxed, but Tory noticed the inner tension tightening the muscles of his neck and shoulders.
“I think you know.” His voice was low and familiar. It caused a prickling sensation to spread down the back of her neck. Looking into his vibrant blue eyes made it difficult for her not to think about the past that they had shared so fleetingly.
“Keith said you were spreading it around Sinclair that you wanted to see me.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
His eyes slid away from her and he studied the starless sky. The air was heavy with the scent of rain. “I thought it was time to clear up a few things between us.”
The memory of the trial burned into her mind. “Impossible.”
“Tory—”
“Look, Trask,” she said, her voice trembling only slightly, “you’re not welcome here.” She managed a sarcastic smile and gestured toward the pickup. “And I think you’d better leave before I tell you just what a bastard I think you are.”
“It won’t be the first time,” he drawled, leaning against the post supporting the roof and staring down at her. His eyes slid lazily down her body, noting the elegant curve of her neck, the burnished wisps falling free of the loose knot of auburn hair at the base of her neck, the proud carriage of her body and the fire in her eyes. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful and intelligent woman he had ever known. Try as he had to forget her, he had failed. Distance and time hadn’t abated his desire; if anything, the feelings stirring within burned more torridly than he remembered.
He had the audacity to slant a lazy grin at her and Tory’s simmering anger began to ignite. Her voice seemed to catch in her throat. “Leave.”
“Not yet.”
Righteous indignation flared in her eyes. “Leave, damn you...”
“Not until we get—”
“Now!” Her palm slapped against the varnished wooden arm of the swing and she pushed herself upward. “I don’t want you ever to set foot on this ranch again. I thought I made that clear before, but either you have an incredibly short memory, or you just conveniently ignored out last conversation.”
“Just for the record; I haven’t forgotten anything. And that was no conversation,” he speculated. “A war zone maybe, a helluva battle perhaps, but not idle chitchat.”
“And neither is this. I don’t know why you’re here, Trask, and I don’t really give a damn.”
“You did once,” he said softly, his dark eyes softening.
The tone of his voice pierced into her heart and her self-righteous fury threatened to escape. “That was before you used me, senator,” she said, her voice a raspy whisper. One slim finger pointed at his chest. “Before you took everything I told you, turned it around and testified against my father!”
“And you still think he was innocent,” Trask said, shaking his head in wonder.
“I know he was.” Her chin raised a fraction and she impaled him with her flashing gray-green eyes. “How does it feel to look in the mirror every morning and know that you sent the wrong man to prison?” Hot tears touched the back of her eyes. “My father sat alone, slowly dying, the last few years of his life spent behind bars, all because of your lies.”
“I never perjured myself, Tory.”
Her lips pursed together in her anger. “Of course not. You were a lawyer. You knew just how to answer the questions; how exactly to insinuate to the jury that my father was part of the conspiracy; how to react to make the jury think that he was there the night that Jason found out about the swindle, how he inadvertently took part in your brother’s death. Not only did you blacken my father’s name, Trask, as far as I’m concerned, you took his life just as certainly as if you had thrust a knife into his heart.” She took a step backward and placed her hand on the doorknob. Her fingers curled over the cold metal and her voice was edged in steel. “Now, get off this place and don’t ever come back. You may be a senator now, maybe even respected by people who are only privy to your public image, but as far as I’m concerned you’re nothing better than an egocentric opportunist who used the publicity surrounding his brother’s death to get him elected!”
Trask’s eyes flashed in the darkness. He took a step closer to her, but the hatred in her gaze stopped him dead in his tracks. “I only told the truth.”
Rage stormed through her veins, thundered in her mind. Five long years of anger and bewilderment poured out of her. “You sensationalized this story, used it as a springboard to get you in the public eye, crushed everyone you had to so that you would get elected.” The unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “Well, congratulations, senator. You got what you wanted.”
With her final remarks, she opened the door and slipped through it, but Trask’s hand came sharply upward and caught the smooth wood as she tried to slam the door in his face. “You’ve got it all figured out-—”
“Easy to do. Now please, get off my land and out of my life. You destroyed it once, isn’t that enough?”
Something akin to despair crossed his rugged features, but the emotion was quickly disguised by determination. “No.”
“No?” she repeated incredulously. Oh, God, Trask, don’t put me through this again...not again. “Well once was enough for me,” she murmured.
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you don’t know me very well. I’m not the glutton for punishment I used to be.” She pushed harder on the door, intent on physically forcing him out of her life.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“What!”
“Look at you—you’re still punishing yourself, blaming yourself for your father’s conviction and death.”
The audacity of the man! She felt her body begin to shake. “No, Trask. As incredible as you might find all this, I blame you. After all, you were the one who testified against my father...”
“And you’ve been hating yourself ever since.”
“I can look in the mirror in the morning. I can live with myself.”
“Can you?” His skepticism echoed in the still night air.
“I don’t see any reason for discussing any of this. I’ve told you that I want you out of my life.”
“And I don’t believe it.”
Once again she tried to slam the door, but his broad shoulder caught the hard wood. “You’ve got one incredible ego, senator,” she said, wishing there was some way to put some distance between her body and his.
“You were waiting for me,” he accused, his eyes sliding from her face down her neck, past the open collar of her blouse to linger at the hollow of her throat.
“Of course I was.”
“Alone.”
She was gripping the edge of the door so tightly that her fingers began to ache. “I didn’t want the gossip to start all over again. Keith told me that you were looking for me, so I decided to wait. I prefer to keep my conversations with you private. You know, without a judge, jury or the press looking over my shoulder, ready to use every word against me.”
His eyes slid downward, noticing the denim skirt and soft apricot-colored blouse. “So why did you get dressed up?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, senator. I usually take a shower after working with the horses all day. The way I dress has nothing to do with you.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “So why don’t you just take yourself and that tremendous ego of yours out of here? If you need a wheelbarrow to carry it there’s one in the barn.”
He shoved his body into the doorway, wedging himself between the door and the jamb. Tory was strong, she put all of her weight against the door, but she was no match for the powerful thrust of his shoulders as he pushed his way into the darkened hallway. “You’re going to hear what I have to say whether you like it or not.”
“No!”
“You don’t have much of a choice.”
“Get out, Trask.” Her words sounded firm, but inwardly she wavered; the desperation she had noticed earlier flickered in his midnight-blue eyes. As much as she hated him, she still felt a physical attraction to him. God, she was a fool.
“In a minute.”
She stepped backward and placed her hands on her hips. Her breath was expelled in a sigh of frustration. “Since I can’t convince you otherwise, why don’t you just say what you think is so all-fired important and then leave.”
He eyed her suspiciously and walked into the den.
“Wait a minute—”
“I need your help.”
Tory’s heart nearly stopped beating. There was a thread of hopelessness in his voice that touched a precarious part of her mind and she had to remind herself that he was the enemy. He always had been. Though Trask seemed sincere she couldn’t, wouldn’t let herself believe him. “No way.”
“I think you might change your mind.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Tory whispered.
She followed him into the den, her father’s den, and swallowed back her anger and surprise. Trask had placed a hand on the lava rock fireplace and his head was lowered between his shoulders. How familiar it seemed to have him back in the warm den her father had used as an office. Knotty pine walls, worn comfortable furniture, watercolors of the Old West, Indian weavings in orange and brown, and now Trask, leaning dejectedly against the fireplace, looking for all the world as if he truly needed her help, made her throat constrict with fond memories. God, how she had loved this man. Her fist curled into balls of defeat.
“I’m not kidding, Tory.” He glanced up at her and she read the torment in his eyes.
“No way.”
“Just listen to me. That’s all I ask.”
Anger overcame awe. “I can’t help you. I won’t.”
His pleas turned to threats. “You’d better.”
“Why? What can you do to me now? Destroy my reputation? Ruin my family. Kill my father? You’ve already done all that, there’s nothing left. You can damned well threaten until you’re blue in the face and it won’t affect me...or this ranch.”
In the darkness his eyes searched her face, possessively reading the sculpted angle of her jaw, the proud lift of her chin, the tempting mystique of her intelligent gray-green eyes. “Nothing’s left?” he whispered, his voice lowering. One finger reached upward and traced the soft slope of her neck.
Tory’s heart hammered in her chest. “Nothing,” she repeated, clenching her teeth and stepping away from his warm touch and treacherous blue eyes.
He grimaced. “This has to do with your father.”
She whirled around to face him. “My father is dead.” Shaking with rage she pointed an imperious finger at his chest. “Because of you.”
His jaw tightened and he paced the length of the room in an obvious effort to control himself. “You’d like to believe that I was responsible for your father’s death, wouldn’t you?”
All of the anguish of five long years poured out of her. “You were. He could have had the proper medical treatment if he hadn’t been in prison—”
“It makes it easier to think that I was the bad guy and that your father was some kind of a saint.”
“All I know is that my father would never have been a part of anything like murder, Trask.” She was visibly shaking. All the old emotions, love, hate, fear, awe and despair, churned inside her. Tears stung her eyelids and she fought a losing battle with the urge to weep.
“Your father was a desperate man,” he said quietly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Desperate men make mistakes, do things they wouldn’t normally do.” The look on his face was pensive and worried. She noticed neither revenge nor anger in his eyes. Trask actually believed that her father had been nothing better than a common horse thief.
“You’re grasping at straws. My father was perfectly fine.”
Trask crossed the room, leaned an arm on the mantel and rubbed his chin. All the while his dusky blue eyes held hers. “The Lazy W was losing money hand over fist.” She was about to protest but he continued. “You know it as well as anyone. When you took over, you were forced to go to the bank for additional capital to keep it running.”
“Because of all the bad publicity. People were afraid to buy Quarter Horses from the Lazy W because of the scandal.”
“Right. The scandal. A simple scam to make money by claiming that the purebred Quarter Horses had died and offering as proof bodies of horses who resembled the blue bloods but weren’t worth nearly as much. No one around here questioned Judge Benton’s integrity, especially when his claims were backed up by the local veterinarian, George Henderson. It was a simple plan to dupe and defraud the insurance companies of thousands of dollars and it would never have come off if your father hadn’t provided the perfect hiding spot for the purebreds who hadn’t really met their maker. It all boiled down to one helluva scandal.”
“I can’t believe that Dad was involved in that.”
“The horses were found on his property, Tory.” Trask frowned at her stubborn pride. “You’re finding it hard to believe a lot of things these days, aren’t you?” he accused, silently damning himself for the torture he was putting her through. “Why didn’t your father defend himself when he had the chance, on the witness stand? If he was innocent pleading the fifth amendment made him look more guilty than he was.”
A solitary tear slid down her cheek. “I don’t want to hear any more of this...”
“But you’re going to, lady. You’re going to hear every piece of incriminating evidence I have.”
“Why, Trask?” she demanded. “Why now? Dad’s dead—”
“And so is Jason. My brother was murdered, Tory. Murdered!” He fell into a chair near the desk. “I have reason to believe that one of the persons involved with the horse swindle and Jason’s death was never brought to justice.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “What do you mean?”
“I think there were more than three conspirators. Four, maybe five...who knows? Half the damned county might have been involved.” Trask looked more haggard and defeated than she had ever thought possible. The U.S. senator from Sinclair, Oregon had lost his luster and become jaded in the past few years. Cynical lines bracketed his mouth and his blue eyes seemed suddenly lifeless.
Tory’s breath caught in her throat. “You’re not serious.”
“Dead serious. And I intend to find out who it was.”
“But Judge Benton, he would have taken everyone down with him—no one would have been allowed to go free.”
“Unless he struck a deal, or the other person had something over on our friend the judge. Who knows? Maybe this guy is extremely powerful...”
Tory shook her head, as if in so doing she could deny everything Trask was suggesting. “I don’t believe any of this,” she said, pacing around the room, her thoughts spinning crazily. Why was Trask dredging all this up again. Why now? Just when life at the Lazy W had gotten back to normal... “And I don’t want to. Nothing you can do or say will change the past.” She lifted her hands over her head in a gesture of utter defeat. “For God’s sake, Trask, why are you here?”
“You’re the only one who can help me unravel this, Tory.”
“And I don’t want to.”
“Maybe this will change your mind.” He extracted a piece of paper from his wallet and handed it to her. It was one of the photocopies of the letter he’d received.
Tory read the condemning words and her finely arched brows pulled together in a scowl of concentration. “Who sent you this?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“It came anonymously?”
“Yes. To my office in Washington.”
“It’s probably just a prank.”
“The postmark was Sinclair, Oregon. If it’s a prank, Tory, it’s a malicious one. And one of your neighbors is involved.”
Tory read the condemning words again:
One of your brother’s murderers is still free. He was part of the Quarter Horse swindle involving Linn Benton, Calvin Wilson and George Henderson.
“But who would want to dig it all up again?”
Trask shook his head and pushed his fingers through his hair. “Someone with a guilty conscience? Someone who overheard a conversation and finally feels that it’s time to come clean? A nosy journalist interested in a story? I don’t know. But whoever he is, he wants me involved.”
Tory sank into the nearest chair. “And you couldn’t leave it alone.”
“Could you?”
She smiled bitterly and studied the letter in her hand. “I suppose not. Not if there was a chance to prove that my father was innocent.”
“Damn it, Tory!” Trask exclaimed. “Calvin had the opportunity to do that on the witness stand. He chose to hide behind the fifth amendment.”
Tory swallowed as she remembered her father sitting in the crowded courtroom. His thick white hair was neatly in place, his gray eyes stared straight ahead. Each time the district attorney would fire a question at him, Calvin would stoically respond that he refused to answer the question on the basis that it might incriminate him. Calvin’s attorney had been fit to be tied in the stifling courtroom. The other defendants, Linn Benton, a prominent circuit court judge and ringleader of the swindle and George Henderson, a veterinarian and local rancher whose spread bordered the Lazy W to the north, cooperated with the district attorney. They had plea bargained for shorter sentences. But, for reasons he wouldn’t name to his frantic daughter, Calvin Wilson accepted his guilt without a trace of regret.
“Face it, Tory,” Trask was saying. “Your father was involved for all the right reasons. He was dying of cancer, the ranch was in trouble financially, and he wouldn’t be able to take care of either you or your brother. He got involved with the horse swindle for the money...for you. He just didn’t expect that Jason would find out about it and come snooping around.” He walked to the other side of the room and stared out the window at the night. “I never wanted to think that your father was involved in the murder, Tory. I’d like to believe that he had no idea that Jason was onto him and the others. But I was there, I confronted the man and he looked through me as if whatever I said was of no significance.” Trask walked across the room and grabbed Tory’s shoulders. His face was twisted in disbelief. “No significance! My brother’s life, for God’s sake, and Calvin stood there like a goddamn wooden Indian!”
Tory tried to step away. “Not murder, Trask. My father wouldn’t have been involved in Jason’s death. He...” Her voice broke. “...couldn’t.”
“You don’t know how much I want to believe you.”
“But certainly—”
“I don’t think your father instigated it,” he interjected. “As a matter of fact, it’s my guess that Benton planned Jason’s ‘accident’ and had one of his henchmen tamper with the car.”
“And Dad had to pay.”
“Because he wouldn’t defend himself.”
She shook her head. “Against your lies.” His fingers tightened over the soft fabric of her blouse. Tension charged the hot night air and Tory felt droplets of nervous perspiration break out between her shoulders.
“I only said what I thought was the truth.”
The corners of her mouth turned bitterly downward and her eyes grew glacial cold. “The truth that you got from me.”
His shoulders stiffened under his cotton shirt, and his eyes drilled into hers. “I never meant to hurt you, Tory, you know that.”
For a fleeting moment she was tempted to believe him, but all the pain came rushing back to her in a violent storm of emotion. She felt her body shake with restraint. “I trusted you.”
He winced slightly.
“I trusted you and you used me.” The paper crumpled in her hand. “Take this letter and leave before I say things that I’ll regret later.”
“Tory...” He attempted to draw her close, but she pulled back, away from his lying eyes and familiar touch.
“I don’t want to hear it, Trask. And I don’t want to see you again. Now leave me alone—”
A loud knock resounded in the room and the hinges on the front door groaned as Rex Engels let himself into the house.
“Tory?” the foreman called. His steps slowed in the hallway, as if he was hesitant to intrude.
“In here.” Tory was relieved at the intrusion. She stepped away from Trask and walked toward the door. When Rex entered he stopped and stared for a moment at Trask McFadden. His lips thinned as he took off his dusty Stetson and ran his fingers over the silver stubble on his chin. At five foot eight, he was several inches shorter than Trask, but his body was whip-lean from the physical labor he imposed on himself. Rugged and dependable, Rex Engels had been with the Lazy W for as long as Tory could remember.
The foreman was obviously uncomfortable; he shifted from one foot to the other and his eyes darted from Tory to Trask and back again.
“What happened?” Tory asked, knowing immediately that something was wrong and fearing that Keith was in the hospital or worse...
“I got a call from Len Ross about an hour ago,” Rex stated, his mouth hardening into a frown. Tory nodded, encouraging him to continue. Ross was a neighboring rancher. “One of Ross’s boys was mending fence this afternoon and he noticed a dead calf on the Lazy W.”
Tory’s shoulders slumped a little. It was always difficult losing livestock, especially the young ones. But it wasn’t unexpected; it happened more often than she would like to admit and it certainly didn’t warrant Rex driving over to the main house after dark. There had to be something more. Something he didn’t want to discuss in front of Trask. “And?”
Rex rubbed his hand over his neck. He looked meaningfully at Trask. “The calf was shot.”
“What?” Tory stiffened.
“From the looks of it, I’d guess it was done by a twenty-two.”
“Then you saw the calf?” Trask cut in, his entire body tensing as he leaned one shoulder against the arch between den and entryway.
“Yep.”
“And you don’t think it was an accident?” Tory guessed.
“It’s not hunting season,” the foreman pointed out, moving his gaze to Trask in silent accusation. “And there were three bullet holes in the carcass.”
Tory swallowed against the sickening feeling overtaking her. First Trask with his anonymous letter and the threat of dredging up the past again and now evidence that someone was deliberately threatening her livestock. “Why?” she wondered aloud.
“Maybe kids...” Rex offered, shifting his gaze uneasily between Tory and Trask. “It’s happened before.”
“Hardly seems like a prank,” Trask interjected. There were too many unfortunate coincidences to suit him. Trask wasn’t a man who believed in coincidence or luck.
Rex shrugged, unwilling to discuss the situation with the man who had sent Calvin Wilson to prison. He didn’t trust Trask McFadden and his brown eyes made it clear.
Once the initial shock had worn off, Tory became furious that someone would deliberately kill the livestock. “I’ll call Paul Barnett’s office when we get back,” she said.
“Get back?”
“I want to see the calf.” Her gray-green eyes gleamed in determination; she knew that Rex would try to protect her from the ugly sight.
“There’s not much to see,” Rex protested. “It’s dark.”
“And this is my ranch. If someone has been deliberately molesting the livestock, I want to know what I’m up against. Let’s go.”
Rex knew there was no deterring her once she had set her mind on a plan of action. In more ways than one, Victoria was Calvin’s daughter. He looked inquiringly at Trask and without words asked, what about him?
“Trask was just leaving.”
“Not yet,” Trask argued. “I’ll come with you.”
“Forget it.”
“Listen to me. I think that this might have something to do with what we were discussing.”
The anonymous letter? Her father’s imprisonment? The horse swindle of five years ago? “I don’t see how—” she protested.
“It won’t hurt for me to take a look.”
He was so damned logical. Seeing no reasonable argument, and not wanting to make a scene in front of Rex, Tory reluctantly agreed. “I don’t like this,” she mumbled, reaching for her jacket that hung on a wooden peg near the door and bracing herself for the unpleasant scene in the fields near the Ross property.
“Neither do I.”
The tone of Trask’s voice sent a shiver of dread down Tory’s spine.
Rex cast her a worried glance, forced his gray Stetson onto his head and started for the door. As Tory grabbed the keys to her pickup she wondered what was happening to her life. Everything seemed to be turning upside down. All because of Trask McFadden.
CHAPTER THREE
TRASK SAT ON the passenger side of the pickup, his eyes looking steadily forward, his pensive gaze was following the disappearing taillights of Rex’s truck.
Tory’s eyebrows were drawn together in concentration as she attempted to follow Rex. Her fingers curled around the steering wheel as she tried to maneuver the bouncing pickup down the rutted dirt road that ran the length of the Lazy W toward the mountains.
The tension within the darkened interior of the pickup was thick enough to cut with a knife. Silence stretched tautly between Tory and Trask and she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming at him that she didn’t want him forcing himself back into her life.
She downshifted and slowed to a stop near the property line separating the Lazy W from Len Ross’s spread.
“Over here,” Rex announced when she shut off the engine, grabbed a flashlight out of the glove box and jumped from the cab of the truck. Trask held apart the strands of barbed wire, which surrounded the pastures, as she wrapped her skirt around her thighs, climbed through the fence and followed the beam of Rex’s flashlight. Trask slid through the fence after her. Though he said nothing, she was conscious of his presence, his long legs taking one stride to every two of her smaller steps.
The first large drops of rain began to fall just as Tory approached the crumpled heap near a solitary pine tree. The beam of Rex’s flashlight was trained on the lifeless white face of the calf. Dull eyes looked unseeingly skyward and a large pink tongue lolled out of the side of the heifer’s mouth.
“Dear God,” Tory whispered, bending over and touching the inert form. Her stomach lurched uncomfortably as she brushed the flies from the curly red coat of the lifeless animal. Living on the ranch as she had for most of her twenty-seven years, Tory was used to death. But she had never been able to accept the unnecessary wanton destruction of life that had taken the small Hereford. It was all so pointless. Her throat tightened as she patted the rough hide and then let her hands fall to her sides.
Rex ran his flashlight over the calf’s body and Tory noticed the three darkened splotches on the heifer’s abdomen. Dried blood had clotted over the red and white hairs. Tory closed her eyes for a second. Whoever had killed the calf hadn’t even had the decency to make it a clean kill. The poor creature had probably suffered for several hours before dying beneath the solitary ponderosa pine tree.
“What about the cow—the mother of the calf?”
“I took care of her,” Rex stated. “She’s with the rest of the herd in the south pasture.”
Tory nodded thoughtfully and cocked her head toward the dead calf. “Let’s cover her up,” she whispered. “I’ve got a tarp in the back of the truck.”
“Why?” Rex asked, but Trask was already returning to the pickup for the tarp.
“I want someone from the sheriff’s office to see the calf and I don’t want to take a chance that some scavenger finds her. A coyote could clean the carcass by morning,” Tory replied, as she stood and dusted off her skirt. In the darkness, her eyes glinted with determination. “Someone did this—” she pointed to the calf “—deliberately. I want that person found.”
Rex sucked in his breath and shook his head. “Might not be that easy,” he thought aloud.
“Well, we’ve got to do something. We can’t just sit by and let it happen again.”
Rex shook his head. “You’re right, Tory. I can’t argue with that. Whoever did this should have to pay, but I doubt if having someone from the sheriff’s office come out will do any good.”
“Maybe not, but at least we’ll find out if any of the other ranchers have had similar problems.”
Rex forced his hands into the pockets of his lightweight jacket and pulled his shoulders closer to his neck as the rain began to shower in earnest. “I’ll check all the fields tomorrow, just to make sure that there are no other surprises.”
“Good.”
Rex glanced uneasily toward the trucks, where Trask was fetching the tarp. “There’s something else you should know,” the foreman said. His voice was low, as if he didn’t want to be overheard.
Tory followed Rex’s gaze. “What?”
“The fence...someone snipped it. Whoever did this—” he motioned toward the dead calf “—didn’t bother to climb through the fence, or use the gate. No, sir. They clipped all four wires clean open.”
Tory’s heart froze. Whoever had killed the calf had done it blatantly, almost tauntingly. She felt her stomach quiver with premonition. Things had gone from bad to worse in the span of a few short hours.
“I patched it up as best I could,” Rex was saying with a frown. “I’ll need a couple of the hands out here tomorrow to do a decent job of it.”
“You don’t think this is the work of kids out for a few kicks,” Tory guessed.
Rex shrugged and even in the darkness Tory could see him scowl distractedly. “I don’t rightly know, but I doubt it.”
“Great.”
“You don’t have anyone who bears you a grudge, do you?” Rex asked uncomfortably.
“Not that I know of.”
“How about someone who still has it in for your pop? Now that he’s gone, you’d be the most likely target.” He thought for a minute, as if he was hesitant to bring up a sore subject. “Maybe someone who’s out to make trouble because of the horse swindle?”
“I don’t think so,” Tory murmured. “It’s been a long time...over five years.”
“But McFadden is back. Stirring up trouble...” If Rex meant to say anything more, he didn’t. Trask reappeared with the heavy tarp slung over his shoulder. Without a word the two men covered the small calf and lashed the tarp down with rope and metal stakes that Trask had brought from the truck.
“That about does it,” Rex said, wiping the accumulation of rain from the back of his neck once the unpleasant job had been completed. “It would take a grizzly to rip that open.” He stretched his shoulders before adding, “Like I said, I’ll check all the fences and the livestock myself, in the morning. I’ll let you know if anything looks suspicious.” Rex’s concerned gaze studied Trask for a tense second and Tory saw the muscles in Trask’s face tighten a bit.
“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” Tory replied.
“’Night,” Rex mumbled as he turned toward his truck.
“Thanks for checking it out, Rex.”
“No problem.” Rex pushed his hat squarely over his head. “All part of the job.”
“Above and beyond the call of duty at ten o’clock at night.”
“All in a day’s work,” Rex called over his shoulder.
Tory stood beside Trask and watched the beam of Rex’s flashlight as the foreman strode briskly back to the truck.
“Come on,” Trask said, placing his arm familiarly around her shoulders. “You’re getting soaked. Let’s go.”
Casting a final despairing look at the covered carcass, Tory walked back to the pickup with Trask and didn’t object to the weight of his arm stretched over her shoulders. This night, when her whole world was falling apart, she felt the need of his strength. She supposed her contradictory feelings for him bordered on irony, but she really didn’t care. She was too tired and emotionally drained to consider the consequences of her renewed acquaintance with him.
“I’ll drive,” Trask said.
“I can—”
“I’ll drive,” he stated again, more forcefully, and she reached into her pocket and handed him the keys, too weary to argue over anything so pointless. He knew the back roads of the Lazy W as well as anyone. He had driven them often during the short months of their passionate but traitorous love affair. How long ago that happy carefree time in her life seemed now as they jostled along the furrowed road.
Trask drove slowly back to the house. The old engine of the truck rumbled through the dark night, the wipers pushed aside the heavy raindrops on the windshield, and the tinny sound of static-filled country music from an all-night radio station drifted out of the speakers.
“Who do you think did it?” Trask asked as he stopped the truck near the front porch.
“I don’t have any idea,” Tory admitted with a worried frown. “I don’t really understand what’s going on. Yesterday everything was normal: the worst problem I had to deal with was a broken combine and a horse with laminitis. But now—” she raised her hands helplessly before reaching for the door handle of the pickup “—it seems that all hell has broken loose.” She looked toward him and found his eyes searching the contours of her face.
“Tory—” He reached for her, and the seductive light in his eyes made her heartbeat quicken. His fingers brushed against the rain-dampened strands of her hair and his lips curved into a wistful smile. “I remember another time,” he said, “when you and I were alone in this very pickup.”
A passionate image scorched Tory’s mind. Just by staring into Trask’s intense gaze she could recall the feel of his hands against her breasts, the way her skin would quiver at his touch, the taste of his mouth over hers. “I think we’d better not talk or even think about that,” she whispered.
His fingers lingered against her exposed neck, warming the wet skin near the base of her throat. “Can’t we be together without fighting?” he asked, his voice low with undercurrents of restrained desire.
After all these years, Trask still wanted her; or at least he wanted her to think that he still cared for her—just a little. Maybe he did. “I...I don’t know.”
“Let’s try.”
“I don’t think I want to,” she admitted, but it was too late. She watched with mingled fascination and dread as his head lowered and his mouth closed over hers, just as his hand pressed against her shoulder, pulling her against his chest. She was caught up in the scent of him; the familiar odor of his skin was dampened with the rain and all of her senses reawakened with his touch.
The warmth of his arms enveloped her and started the trickle of desire running in her blood. Warm lips, filled with the smoldering lust of five long years, touched hers and the tip of his tongue pressed urgently against her teeth.
I can’t let this happen, she thought wildly, pressing her palms against his shoulders and trying to pull out of his intimate embrace. When he lifted his head from hers, she let her forehead fall against his chin. Her hands remained against his shoulders and only her shallow breathing gave her conflicting emotions away. “We can’t start all over, you know,” she said at length, raising her head and gazing into his eyes. “It’s not as if either of us can forget what happened and start over again.”
“But we don’t have to let what happened force us apart.”
“Oh, Trask, come on. Think about it,” Tory said snappishly, although a vital but irrational part of her mind wanted desperately to believe him.
“I have. For five years.”
“There’s no other way, Trask. You and I both know it.” Before he could contradict her or the illogical side of her nature could argue with her, she opened the door of the truck and dashed through the rain and across the gravel drive to the house.
She was already in the den when Trask entered the room. He leaned insolently against the archway. The rain had darkened his hair to a deep brown and the shoulders of his wet shirt clung to his muscles. Standing against the pine wall, his arms crossed insolently over his chest, his brilliant eyes delving into hers, he looked more masculine than she ever would have imagined. Or wanted. “What are you running from?” he asked.
“You...me...us.” She lifted her hands into the air helplessly before realizing how undignified her emotions appeared. Then, willing her pride back into place, she wrapped her arms around herself and settled into the chair behind her father’s desk. She hoped that the large oak table would put distance between her body and his—give her time to get her conflicting emotions back into perspective.
Trask looked bone-weary as he sauntered around the den and, uninvited, poured himself a healthy drink from the mirrored bar near the fireplace. He lifted the bottle in silent offering, but Tory shook her head, preferring to keep her wits about her. Her reaction to Trask was overwhelming, unwelcome and had to be controlled. She couldn’t let herself be duped again. What was it they always said? Once burned, twice shy? That’s the way it had to be with Trask, she tried to convince herself. He’d used her once. Never again.
He strode over to the window, propping one booted foot against a small stool, sipping his drink and staring out at the starless night. Raindrops slid in twisted paths down the panes.
“This ever happened before?” Trask asked. He turned and leaned against the windowsill, one broad hand supporting most of his weight.
“What?”
“Some of your livestock being used for target practice.”
Her eyes narrowed at the cruel analogy. “No.”
Swirling the amber liquor in his glass, he stared at her. “Don’t you think it’s odd?”
“Of course.”
Trask shook his head. “More than that, Tory. Not just odd. What I meant is that it seems like more than a coincidence. First this letter—” he pointed to the anonymous note still lying face up crumpled on a small table “—and now the calf.”
Tory felt the prickling sensation of dread climb up her spine. “What are you getting at?”
“I think the dead calf is a warning, Tory.”
“What!”
“Someone knows I’m here looking for the person that was unconvicted in the original trial for Jason’s murder. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I intended to visit you. The calf was a message to stay away from me.”
Tory laughed nervously. “You’re not serious....”
“Dead serious.”
Tory felt the first stirrings of fear. “I think you’ve been in Washington too long, senator,” she replied. “Too many subcommittees on underworld crime have got you jumping at shadows. This is Sinclair, Oregon, not New York City.”
“I’m not kidding, Tory.” His eyes glittered dangerously and he finished his drink with a scowl. “Someone’s trying to scare you off.”
“It was probably just a prank, like Rex said.”
“Rex didn’t believe that and neither do you.”
“You know how kids are: they get an idea in their heads and just for kicks—”
“They slaughter a calf?” he finished ungraciously. Anger flashed in his eyes and was evident in the set of his shoulders. “Real funny: a heifer with three gunshot wounds. Some sense of humor.”
“I didn’t say it was meant to be funny.”
His fist crashed violently into the windowsill. “Damn it, Tory, haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? It’s obvious to me that someone is trying to scare you off!”
“Then why not send me a letter...or phone me? Why something as obscure as a dead calf? If you ask me, you’re grasping at straws, trying to tie one event to the other just so that I’ll help you in this...this wild-goose chase!” Realizing that he only intended to continue the argument, she reached for the phone on the corner of the desk.
Trask’s eyes were blazing and the cords in his neck protruded. He was about to say something more, but Tory shook her head, motioning for him to be silent as she dialed the sheriff’s office and cradled the receiver between her shoulder and her ear. “No, Trask, what you’re suggesting doesn’t make any sense. None whatsoever.”
“Like hell! If you weren’t so damned stubborn—”
“Deputy Smith?” Tory said aloud as a curt voice answered the phone. “This is Tory Wilson at the Lazy W.” Tory held up her hand to silence the protests forming on Trask’s tongue. As quickly as possible, she explained everything that had occurred from the time that Len Ross’s hands had noticed the dead animal.
“We’ll have someone out in the morning,” the deputy promised after telling her that no other rancher had reported any disturbances in the past few weeks. Tory replaced the phone with shaking hands. Her brows drew together thoughtfully.
“You’re beginning to believe me,” Trask deduced. He was still angry, but his rage was once again controlled.
“No—”
“You’d better think about it. Has anything else unusual happened around here?”
“No...wait a minute. There was the combine that broke down unexpectedly and I do have a stallion with laminitis, but they couldn’t be connected...never mind.” What was she thinking about? Governor’s condition and the broken machinery were all explainable problems of running the Lazy W. The malicious incident involving the calf—that was something else again. She forced a fragile smile. “Look, Trask, I think you’d better leave.”
“What about the letter?” he demanded, picking up the small piece of paper and waving it in her face. “Are you going to ignore it, too?”
“I wouldn’t take it too seriously,” she allowed, lifting her shoulders.
“No?”
“For God’s sake, Trask, it isn’t even signed. That doesn’t make much sense to me. Why wouldn’t the person who wrote it want to be identified, that is if he has a logical authentic complaint? If the man who wrote this note wanted you to do something, why didn’t he bother to sign the damned thing?”
“Maybe because he or she is afraid. Maybe the person who was involved with the swindle and avoided justice got away because he’s extremely powerful—”
“And maybe he just doesn’t exist.” She eyed the grayish sheet of paper disdainfully. “That could be a letter from anyone, and it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.”
“Tory—” His eyes darkened at her obstinacy.
“As I said before, I think it’s time you left.”
He took a step nearer to her, but she held up her hand before motioning toward the letter. “I can’t help you with this. I have enough tangible problems here on the ranch. I don’t have time to deal with fantasies.”
Trask watched as she forced the curtain of callous disinterest over her beautiful features. The emerald-green eyes, which had once been so innocent and loving, turned cold with determination. “Oh, God, Tory, is this what I did to you?” he asked in bewilderment. “Did what happened between us take away all your trust? All your willingness to help? Your concern for others as well as yourself?” He was slowly advancing upon her, his footsteps muffled by the braided rug.
Tory’s heart pounded betrayingly at his approach. It pulsed rapidly in the hollow of her throat and Trask’s intense gaze rested on the revealing cleft.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
“No—”
“I didn’t mean for everything between us to end the way it did.”
“But it did. Nothing can change that. You sent my father to prison.”
“But I only told the truth.” He paused at the desk and hooked a leg over the corner as he stared down at her.
“Let’s not go over this again. It’s been too long, Trask. Too many wounds are still fresh.” She swallowed with difficulty but managed to meet his stare boldly. “I’ve hated you a long time,” she said, feeling her tongue trip over the lie she had held true for five unforgiving years.
“I don’t believe it.”
“You ruined me single-handedly.”
“Your father did that.” He leaned forward. He was close enough to touch her, but he stopped just short and stared down into her eyes. Eyes that had trusted him with her life five years earlier. “What did you expect me to do? Lie on the witness stand? Would you have preferred not knowing about your father?”
She couldn’t stand it anymore; couldn’t return his self-righteous stare. “He was innocent, damn it!” Her fists curled into knots of fury and she pushed herself up from the chair.
“Then why didn’t he save himself, tell his side of the story?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself just that question over and over again?” She felt his arms fold around her, draw her close, hold her body against his as he straightened from the desk. She heard the steady beating of his heart, felt the warmth of his breath caress her hair and she knew in a blinding flash of truth that she had never stopped loving him.
“If there were another man involved in the horse swindle, don’t you want to see him accused of the crime?”
“So he could be put behind bars like my father.”
“Oh, Tory,” he said, releasing a sigh as his arms tightened around her. “How can you be so damned one-sided? You used to care what happened to people...”
“I still do.”
“But not to the extent that you’re willing to help me find out who was involved in my brother’s murder and the Quarter Horse swindle.”
She felt herself sag against him. It would be so nice just to forget about what happened. Pretend that everything was just as it had been on the night she’d met Trask McFadden before her life had become irrevocably twisted with his. “I just don’t know if it will do any good. For all you know that letter could be phony, the work of someone who gets his jollies by stirring up trouble.”
“Like the dead calf?”
Tory ran her fingers through her hair. “You don’t know that the two incidents are related.”
“But we won’t find out unless we try.” He held her closer and his breath whispered through her hair. “Just give it a chance, Tory. Trust me.”
The same old words. Lies and deceit. Rolling as easily off his tongue as they had in the past. All the kindness in her heart withered and died.
She extracted herself from his embrace and impaled him with her indignant green-eyed stare. “I can’t help you, Trask,” she whispered. “You’re on your own this time.” She reached for the copy of the note and slowly wadded it into a tight ball before tossing the damning piece of paper into the blackened fireplace.
Trask watched her actions and his lips tightened menacingly. “I’m going to find out if there was any truth to that letter,” he stated emphatically. “And I’m going to do it with or without your help.”
Though her heart was pounding erratically, she looked him squarely in the eye. “Then I guess you’re going to do it alone, aren’t you, senator?”
Looking as if he had something further to say, Trask turned on his heel and walked out of the room. The front door slammed behind him and the engine of his pickup roared to life before fading in the distance.
“You bastard,” Tory whispered, sagging against the windowsill. “Why can’t I stop loving you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR SEVERAL HOURS after Trask had left the ranch, Tory sat on the window seat in her bedroom. Her chin rested on her knees as she stared into the dark night. Raindrops pelted against the panes, drizzling against the glass and blurring Tory’s view of the lightning that sizzled across the sky to illuminate the countryside in its garish white light. To the west, thunder rolled ominously over the mountains.
So Trask had come back after all. Tory frowned to herself and squinted into the darkness. But he hadn’t come back for her, as he had vowed he would five years past. This time he had returned to Sinclair and the Lazy W because he needed her help to prove that another man was part of the Quarter Horse swindle as well as involved in Jason McFadden’s premeditated death.
With tense fingers she pushed the hair out of her eyes. Seeing Trask again had brought back too many dangerous memories. Memories of a younger, more carefree and reckless period of her life. Memories of a love destined to die.
As she looked through the window into the black sky, Tory was reminded of a summer filled with hot sultry nights, the sweet scent of pine needles and the familiar feel of Trask’s body pressed urgently against hers.
She had to rub her hands over her arms as she remembered the feel of Trask’s hard muscles against her skin, the weight of his body pinning hers, the taste of his mouth...
“Stop it,” she muttered aloud, pulling herself out of her wanton reverie. “He’s the man that sent Dad to prison, for God’s sake. Don’t be a fool—not twice.”
She walked over to the bed and tossed back the quilted coverlet before lying on the sheets and staring at the shadowed ceiling. Her feelings of love for Trask had been her Achilles’ heel. She had trusted him with every breath of life in her body and he had used her. Worse than that he had probably planned the whole affair; staging it perfectly. And she’d been fool enough to fall for his act, hook, line and sinker. But not again.
With a disconsolate sigh, she rolled onto her side and stared at the nightstand. In the darkness she could barely make out the picture of her father.
“Oh, Dad,” Tory moaned, twisting away from the picture. “I wish you were here.” Calvin Wilson had been an incredibly strong man who had been able to stand up to any adversity. He had been able to deal with the loan officers of the local banks when the ranch was in obvious financial trouble. His calm gray eyes and soft-spoken manner had inspired the local bankers’ confidence when the general ledgers of the Lazy W couldn’t.
He had stood stoically at the grave site of his wife of fifteen years without so much as shedding a tear. While holding his children close he had mourned silently for the only woman he had truly loved, offering strength to his daughter and young son.
When he had faced sentencing for a crime he hadn’t committed he hadn’t blinked an eye. Nor had he so much as flinched when the sentence of thirty years in prison had been handed down. He had taken it all without the slightest trace of fear. When he’d found out that he was terminally ill with a malignant tumor, Calvin Wilson had been able to look death straight in the eye. Throughout his sixty-three years, he had been a strong man and a loving father. Tory knew in her heart that he couldn’t have been involved in Jason McFadden’s murder.
Then why didn’t he stand up for himself at the trial?
If he had spoken out, told his side of the story, let the court hear the truth, even Trask’s damning testimony would have been refuted and maybe Calvin Wilson would be alive now. And Trask wouldn’t be back in Sinclair, digging up the past, searching for some elusive, maybe even phantom, conspirator in Jason’s death.
And now Trask had returned, actually believing that someone else was involved in his brother’s death.
So it all came back to Trask and the fact that Tory hadn’t stopped loving him. She knew her feelings for him were crazy, considering everything they had been through. She loved him one minute, hated him the next and knew that she should never have seen him again. He could take his wild half-baked theories, anonymous letters and seductive smile straight back to Washington where they all belonged. Surely he had better things to do than bother her.
“Just leave me alone, Trask,” Tory said with a sigh. “Go back to Washington and leave me alone...I don’t want to love you any more...I can’t...”
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, after a restless night, Tory was making breakfast when Keith, more than slightly hung over, entered the kitchen. Without a word he walked to the refrigerator, poured himself a healthy glass of orange juice and drank it in one swallow. He then slumped into a chair at the kitchen table and glared up at Tory with red-rimmed eyes.
“Don’t tell me you’re dehydrated,” Tory said, with a teasing lilt in her voice.
“Okay, I won’t. Then you won’t have to lecture me.”
“Fair enough.” From the looks of it Keith’s hangover was punishment enough for his binge, Tory thought, and she had been the one who had insisted that he go into town last night. If he were suffering, which he obviously was, it was partially because of her insistence that he leave the ranch. She flipped the pancakes over and decided not to mention that Keith hadn’t gotten home until after three. He was over twenty-one now, and she didn’t have to mother him, though it was a hard habit to break considering that the past five years she had been father, mother and sister all rolled into one.
“How about some breakfast?” she suggested, stacking the pancakes on a plate near a pile of crisp bacon and placing the filled platter on the table.
“After a few answers.”
“Okay.” Tory slid into the chair facing him and poured syrup over her stack of hotcakes. “Shoot.”
“What have to decided to do about McFadden?” Keith asked, forking a generous helping of bacon onto his plate.
“I don’t know,” Tory admitted. She took a bite from a strip of bacon. “Maybe there’s nothing I can do.”
“Like hell. You could leave.”
“Not a chance, we went over this yesterday.” She reached for the coffeepot and poured each of them a cup of coffee.
“McFadden will come here.”
“He already has.”
“What!” Keith’s face lost all of its color. “When?”
“Last night. While you were in town.”
Keith rubbed his palm over the reddish stubble on his chin. “Damn, I knew something like this would happen.”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal. We just talked.”
Keith looked at his older sister as if she had lost her mind. “You did what?” he shouted, rising from the breakfast table.
“I said I talked with him. How else was I supposed to find out what he wanted?”
Keith’s worried eyes studied her face. “So what happened to the woman who, just yesterday afternoon, was going to bodily throw Trask McFadden off her land if he set foot on it. You know, the lady with the ready rifle and deadly aim?”
“Now, wait a minute—” Tory’s face lost all of its color and her eyes narrowed.
“Weren’t you the one who suggested that we point a rifle at his head and tell him to get lost?”
“I was only joking...”
“Like hell!” Keith sputtered before truly seeing his sister for the first time that morning. A sinking realization hit him like a ton of bricks. “Tory, you’re still in love with him, aren’t you? I can’t believe it! After what he did to you?” Keith stared at his sister incredulously before stalking over to the refrigerator and pouring himself a large glass of milk. “This isn’t happening,” he said, as if to console himself. “This is all just a bad dream...”
“I’m not in love with him, Keith,” Tory said, tossing her hair over her shoulder and turning her face upward in order to meet Keith’s disbelieving gaze.
“But you were once.”
“Before he testified against Dad.”
“Goddamn,” Keith muttered as he sucked in his breath and got hold of himself. His large fist curled in frustration. “I knew he’d show up the minute I left the ranch. What did he want?”
“My help.”
“Your what? I can’t believe it. After what he put you through? The nerve of that bastard!” He took a long swig from his glass with one hand, then motioned to his sister. “Well, go on, go on, this is getting better by the minute.”
“He thinks that there may have been someone else involved in Jason’s murder and the horse swindle.”
“Are you kiddin’?” Keith placed his empty glass on the counter and shook his head in disbelief. “After all this time? No way!”
“That’s what I told him.”
“But he didn’t buy it?”
“I’d say not.”
“Great! The dumb bastard will probably drag all of it up again. It’ll be in the papers and everything.” Keith paced between the table and the back door. He squinted against the bright morning sunshine streaming through the dusty windowpanes and looked toward the barn. “Dad’s name is sure to come up.”
“Sit down and eat your breakfast,” Tory said, eyeing Keith’s neglected plate.
Keith ignored her. “This is the last thing we need right now, you know. What with all the problems we’re having with the bank...” He swore violently, balled one fist and smashed it into his other palm. “I should never have left you last night, I knew it, damn it, I knew it!” His temper threatened to explode completely for a minute before he finally managed to contain his fury. Slowly uncurling his fist, he regained his composure and added with false optimism, “Oh, well, maybe McFadden got whatever it was he wanted off his chest and now it’s over.”
Tory hated to burst Keith’s bubble, but she had always been straight with her brother, telling him about the problems with the ranch when they occurred. There was no reason to change now. “I don’t know that it’s over.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t think Trask is going to let up on this. He seemed pretty determined to me.” Tory had lost all interest in her breakfast and pushed her plate aside. Unconsciously she brushed the crumbs from the polished maple surface of the table.
“But why? What’s got him all riled up after five years?” Keith wondered aloud. “His term as a senator isn’t up for another couple of years, so he isn’t looking for publicity...”
“He got a letter.”
Keith froze. He turned incredulous gray eyes on his sister. “Wait a minute. The man must get a ton of mail. What kind of a letter got under his skin?”
“An anonymous one.”
“So what?”
No time like the present to drop the bomb, she supposed. With a feeling of utter frustration she stood, picked up her plate and set it near the sink. “If you want to read it, there’s a copy in the den, in the fireplace.”
“In the fireplace! Wonderful,” Keith muttered sarcastically as he headed through the archway that opened to the short hallway separating the living room, kitchen, dining room and den.
“Hey, what about this breakfast?” Tory called after him.
“I’m not hungry,” Keith replied, from somewhere in the vicinity of the den.
“Great,” Tory muttered under her breath as she put the uneaten pancakes and bacon on another plate. “Tomorrow morning it’s cold cereal for you, brother dear.” With a frown at the untouched food, she opened the door to the back porch and set the plate on the floorboards. Alex, the ranch’s ancient Border collie, stood on slightly arthritic legs and wagged his tail before helping himself to Keith’s breakfast.
“Serves him right,” Tory told the old dog as she petted him fondly and scratched Alex’s black ears. “I’m glad someone appreciates my cooking.”
Tory heard Keith return to the kitchen. With a final pat to Alex’s head, she straightened and walked into the house.
Keith was standing in the middle of the kitchen looking for all the world as if he would drop through the floor. He was holding the crumpled and now slightly blackened piece of paper in his hands and his face had paled beneath his tan. He set the paper on the table and smoothed out the creases in the letter. “Holy shit.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
“So how does he think you could help him?” Keith asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“I don’t know. We never got that far.”
“And this—” he pointed down at the paper “—is why he wanted to see you?”
“That’s what he said.”
Keith closed his eyes for a minute, trying to concentrate. “That’s a relief, I guess.”
Tory raised an inquisitive brow. “Meaning?”
Keith smiled sadly and shook his head. “That I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
“Don’t worry, brother dear,” she assured him with a slightly cynical smile, “I don’t intend to be. But thanks anyway, for the concern.”
“I don’t want to be thanked, Tory. I just want you to avoid McFadden. He’s trouble.”
Tory couldn’t argue the point. She turned on the tap and started hot water running into the sink. As the sink filled she began washing the dishes before she hit Keith with the other bad news. “Something else happened last night.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what it is,” Keith said, picking up his coffee cup and drinking some of the lukewarm liquid. With a scowl, he reached for the pot and added some hot coffee to the tepid fluid in his cup.
“You probably don’t.”
He poured more coffee into Tory’s empty cup and set it on the wooden counter, near the sink. “So what happened?”
“There was some other nasty business yesterday,” Tory said, ignoring the dishes for the moment and wiping her hands on a dish towel. As she picked up her cup she leaned her hips against the edge of the wooden counter and met Keith’s worried gaze.
“What now?” he asked as he settled into the cane chair near the table and propped his boots on the seat of another chair.
“Someone clipped the barbed wire on the northwest side of the ranch, came in and shot one of the calves. Three times in the abdomen. A heifer. About four months old.”
Keith’s hand hesitated over the sugar bowl and his head snapped up. “You think it was done deliberately?”
“Had to be. I called the sheriff’s office. They’re sending a man out this morning. Rex is spending the morning going over all of the fence bordering the ranch and checking it for any other signs of destruction.”
“Just what we need,” Keith said, cynicism tightening the corners of his mouth. “Another crisis on the Lazy W. How’d you find out about it?”
“One of Len Ross’s men noticed it yesterday evening. Len called Rex and he checked it out.”
“What about the rest of the livestock?”
“As far as I know all present and accounted for.”
“Son of a bitch!” Keith forgot about the sugar and took a swallow of his black coffee.
“Trask thinks it might be related to that,” she pointed to the blackened letter.
“Trask thinks?” Keith repeated, his eyes narrowing. “How does he know about it?”
“He was here when Rex came over to tell me about it.”
Keith looked physically pained. “Lord, Tory, I don’t know how much more of your cheery morning news I can stand.”
“That’s the last of the surprises.”
“Thank God,” Keith said, pushing himself up from the table and glaring pointedly at his older sister. “You’re on notice, Tory.”
She had to chuckle. “For what?”
“From now on when I decide to stay on the ranch rather than checking out the action at the Branding Iron, I’m not going to let you talk me out of it.”
“Is that so? And how would you have handled Trask when he showed up on the porch?”
“I would have taken your suggestion yesterday and met him with a rifle in my hands.”
“This isn’t 1840, you know.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t threaten a United States senator, Keith.”
“Just you watch,” Keith said, reaching for his Stetson on the peg near the back door. “The next time McFadden trespasses, I’ll be ready for him.” With those final chilling words, he was out the back door of the house and heading for the barn. Tory watched him with worried eyes. Keith’s temper had never had much of a fuse and Trask’s presence seemed to have shortened it considerably.
It was her fault, she supposed. She should never have let Keith see the books. It didn’t take a genius to see that the Lazy W was in pitiful financial shape, and dredging up the old scandal would only make it worse. But Keith had asked to see the balance sheets, and Tory had let him review everything, inwardly pleased that he had grown up enough to care.
* * *
DEPUTY WOODWARD ARRIVED shortly after ten. Tory had been in the den writing checks for the month-end bills when she had heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and had looked out the window to see the youngest of Paul Barnett’s deputies getting out of his car. Slim, with a thin mustache, he had been hired in the past year and was one of the few deputies she had never met. Once, while in town, Keith had pointed the young man out to her.
When the chimes sounded, Tory put the checkbook into the top drawer of the desk and answered the door.
“Mornin’,” Woodward said with a smile. “I’m looking for Victoria Wilson.”
“You found her.”
“Good. I’m Greg Woodward from the sheriff’s office. From what I understand, you think someone’s been taking potshots at your livestock.”
Tory nodded. “Someone has. I’ve got a dead calf to prove it.”
“Just one?”
“So far,” Tory replied. “I thought maybe some of the other ranchers might have experienced some sort of vandalism like this on their ranches.”
The young deputy shook his head. “Is that what you think it was? Vandalism?”
Tory thought about the dead calf and the clipped fence. “No, not really. I guess I was just hoping that the Lazy W hadn’t been singled out.”
Woodward offered an understanding grin. “Let’s take a look at what happened.”
Tory sat in the passenger seat of the deputy’s car as he drove down the rutted road she had traveled with Trask less than twelve hours earlier. The grooves in the dirt road were muddy and slick from the rain, but Deputy Woodward’s vehicle made it to the site of the clipped fence without any problem.
Rex was already working on restringing the barbed wire. He looked up when he saw Tory, frowned slightly and then straightened, adjusting the brim of his felt Stetson.
As Deputy Woodward studied the cut wire and corpse of the calf, he asked Tory to tell him what had happened. She, with Rex’s help, explained about Len Ross’s call and how she and Rex had subsequently discovered the damage to the fence and the calf’s dead body.
“But no other livestock were affected?” Woodward asked, writing furiously on his report.
“No,” Rex replied, “at least none that we know about.”
“You’ve checked already?”
“I’ve got several men out looking right now,” Rex said.
“What about other fences, the buildings, or the equipment for the farm?”
“We have a combine that broke down last week, but it was just a matter of age,” Tory said.
Woodward seemed satisfied. He took one last look at the calf and scowled. “I’ll file this report and check with some of the neighboring ranchers to see if anything like this has happened to anyone else.” He looked meaningfully at Tory. “And you’ll call, if you find anything else?”
“Of course,” Tory said.
“Does anyone else know what happened here?” the young man asked, as he finished his report.
“Only two people other than the ranch hands,” Tory replied. “Len Ross and Trask McFadden.”
The young man’s head jerked up. “Senator McFadden?”
Tory nodded and offered a confident smile she didn’t feel. Greg Woodward was a local man. Though he had probably still been in high school at the time, he would have heard of Jason McFadden’s murder and the conspiracy of horse swindlers who had been convicted. “Trask was visiting last night when Rex got the news from Len and came up to the house to tell me what had happened.”
“Did he make any comments—being as he was here and all—or did he think it was vandalism?”
Tory’s mind strayed to her conversation with Trask and his insistence that the animal’s death was somehow related to the anonymous letter he had received. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “I suppose you’ll have to ask him—”
“No reason to bother the senator,” Rex interjected, his eyes traveling to Tory with an unspoken message. “He doesn’t know any more than either of us.”
Deputy Woodward caught the meaningful glance between rancher and foreman but didn’t comment. He had enough sense to know that something wasn’t right at the Lazy W and that Senator McFadden was more than a casual friend. On the drive back with Tory, Woodward silently speculated on the past scandal and what this recently divulged information could mean.
When the deputy deposited Tory back at the house, she felt uneasy. Something in the young man’s attitude had changed when she had mentioned that Trask had been on the ranch. It’s starting all over again, she thought to herself. Trask has only been in town two days and the trouble’s starting all over again. As if she and everyone connected with the Lazy W hadn’t suffered enough from the scandal of five years past.
* * *
TORY PARKED THE pickup on the street in front of the feed store in Sinclair. So far the entire day had been a waste. Deputy Woodward hadn’t been able to ease her mind about the dead calf; in fact, if anything, the young man’s reaction to the news that Trask knew of the incident only added to Tory’s unease.
After Deputy Woodward had gone, Tory had attempted to do something, anything to keep her mind off Trask. But try as she might, she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything other than Trask and his ridiculous idea—no, make that conviction—that another person was involved in the Quarter Horse swindle as well as his brother’s death.
He’s jumping at shadows, she told herself as she stepped out of the pickup and into the dusty street, but she couldn’t shake the image of Trask, his shoulders erect in controlled, but deadly determination as he had stood in her father’s den the night before. She had witnessed the outrage in his blue eyes. “He won’t let up on this until he has an answer,” she told herself with a frown.
She pushed her way into the feed store and made short work of ordering supplies for the Lazy W. The clerk, Alma Ray, had lived in Sinclair all her life and had worked at Rasmussen Feed for as long as Tory could remember. She was a woman in her middle to late fifties and wore her soft red hair piled on her head. She had always offered Tory a pleasant smile and thoughtful advice in the past, but this afternoon Alma’s brown eyes were cold, her smile forced.
“Don’t get paranoid,” Tory cautioned herself in a whisper as she stepped out of the feed store and onto the sidewalk. “It’s not as if this town is against you, for God’s sake. Alma’s just having a bad day—”
“Tory.”
At the sound of her name, Tory turned to face Neva McFadden, Jason’s widow. Neva was hurrying up the sidewalk in Tory’s direction and Tory’s heart sank. She saw the strain in Neva’s even features, the worry in her doe-brown eyes. Images of the courtroom and Neva’s proud face twisted in agony filled Tory’s mind.
“Do you have a minute?” Neva asked, clutching a bag of groceries to her chest.
It was the first time Neva McFadden had spoken to Tory since the trial.
“Sure,” Tory replied. She forced a smile, though the first traces of dread began to crawl up her spine. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Neva wanted to talk to her the day after Trask had returned to the Lazy W. “Why don’t we sit down?” She nodded in the direction of the local café, which was just across the street from the feed store.
“Great,” Neva said with a faltering smile.
Once they were seated in a booth and had been served identical glasses of iced tea, Tory decided to take the offensive. “So, what’s up?”
Neva stopped twirling the lemon in her glass. “I wanted to talk to you about Trask.”
“I thought so. What about him?”
“I know that he went to see you last night and I have a good idea of what it was about,” Neva stated. She hesitated slightly and frowned into her glass as if struggling with a weighty decision. “I don’t see any reason to beat around the bush, Tory. I know about the letter Trask received. He showed me a copy of it.”
“He showed it to me, too,” Tory admitted, hiding her surprise. She had assumed that Trask hadn’t spoken to anyone but her. It wouldn’t take long for the gossip to start all over again.
“And what do you think about it?” Neva asked.
Tory lifted her shoulders. “I honestly don’t know.”
Neva let out a sigh and ignored her untouched drink. “Well, I do. It was a prank,” Neva said firmly. “Just someone who wants to stir up the trouble all over again.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
“I wish I knew,” Neva admitted, shaking her head. The rays of the afternoon sun streamed through the window and reflected in the golden strands of her hair. Except for the lines of worry surrounding her eyes, Neva McFadden was an extremely attractive woman. “I wish to God I knew what was going on.”
“So do I.”
Neva’s fingers touched Tory’s forearm. She bit at her lower lip, as if the next words were awkward. “I know that you cared for Trask, Tory, and I know that you think he...”
“Used me?”
“Yes.”
“It was more than that, Neva,” Tory said, suddenly wanting this woman who had borne so much pain to understand. “Trask betrayed me and my family.”
Neva stiffened and she withdrew her hand. “By taking care of his own.”
“He lied, Neva.”
Neva shook her head. “That’s not the way it was. He just wanted justice for Jason’s death.”
“Justice or revenge?” Tory asked and could have kicked herself when she saw the anger flare in Neva’s eyes.
“Does it matter?”
Tory shrugged and frowned. “I suppose not. It was a horrible thing that happened to Jason and you. And...and I’m sorry for...everything...I know it’s been hard for you; harder than it’s been for me.” Her mouth suddenly dry, Tory took a long drink of the cold tea and still felt parched.
“It’s over,” Neva said. “Or it was until Trask came back with some wild ideas about another person being involved in Jason’s death.”
“So you think the letter was a prank.”
“Of course it was.”
“How can you be sure?”
Neva avoided Tory’s direct gaze. “It’s been five years, Tory. Five years without a husband or father to my son.”
All the feelings of remorse Tory had felt during the trial overcame her as she watched the young woman battle against tears. “Neva, I’m sorry if my family had any part in the pain you and Nicholas have felt.”
“Your father was involved with Linn Benton and George Henderson. I know you never believed that he was guilty, Tory, but the man didn’t even stand up for himself at the trial.”
Tory felt as if a knife, five years old and dull, had been thrust into her heart. “I don’t see any reason to talk about this, Neva. I’ve already apologized.” Tory pushed herself up from the table. “I think I should go.”
“Don’t! Sit down, Tory,” Neva pleaded. “Look, I didn’t mean to start trouble. God knows that’s the last thing I want. The reason I wanted to talk to you is because of Trask.”
Tory felt her heart begin to pound. She took a seat on the edge of the booth, her back stiff. “So you said.”
“Don’t get involved with him again, Tory. Don’t start believing that there was more to what happened than came out in the trial.”
“I know there was more,” Tory stated, feeling a need to defend her father.
“I don’t think so. And even if there was, what would be the point of dredging it all up again? It won’t bring Jason back to life, or your father. All it will do is bring the whole sordid scandal back into the public eye.”
Tory leaned back and studied the blond woman. There was more to what Neva was suggesting than the woman had admitted. Tory could feel it. “But what if the letter Trask received contains part of the truth? Don’t you want to find out?”
“No.” Neva shook her head vehemently.
“I don’t understand—”
“That’s because you don’t have a child, Tory. You don’t have a six-year-old son who needs all the protection I can give him. It’s bad enough that he doesn’t have a father, but does he have to be reminded, taunted, teased about the fact that his dad was murdered by men in this town that he trusted?”
“Oh, Neva—”
“Think about it. Think long and hard about who is going to win if Trask continues his wild-goose chase; no one. Not you, Tory. Not me. And especially not Nicholas. He’s the loser!”
Tory chose her words carefully. “Don’t you think your son deserves the truth?”
“Not if it costs him his peace of mind.” Neva lifted her chin and her brown eyes grew cold. “I know that you don’t want another scandal any more than I do. And as for Trask, well—” she lifted her palms upward and then dropped her hands “—I hope that, for both your sakes, you don’t get involved with him again. Not just because of the letter. I don’t think he could handle another love affair with you, Tory. The last time almost killed him.” With her final remarks, Neva reached for her purse and sack of groceries and left the small café.
“So much for mending fences,” Tory muttered as she paid the small tab and walked out of the restaurant. After crossing the street, she climbed into her pickup and headed back to the Lazy W. Though she had never been close to Neva, not even before Jason’s death, Tory had hoped that someday the old wounds would heal and the scars become less visible. Now, with the threat of Trask opening up another investigation into his brother’s death, that seemed impossible.
As Tory drove down the straight highway toward the ranch, her thoughts turned to the past. Maybe Neva was right. Maybe listening to Trask would only prove disastrous.
Five years before, after her father’s conviction, Tory had been forced to give up her dream of graduate school to stay at the Lazy W and hold the ranch together. Not only had the ranch suffered financially, but her brother, Keith, who was only sixteen at the time, needed her support and supervision. Her goal of becoming a veterinarian as well as her hopes of becoming Trask McFadden’s wife had been shattered as easily as crystal against stone.
When Calvin had been sent to prison, Tory had stayed at the ranch and tried to raise a strong-willed younger brother as well as bring the Lazy W out of the pool of red ink. In the following five years Keith had grown up and become responsible, but the ranch was still losing money, though a little less each year.
Keith, at twenty-one, could, perhaps, run the ranch on his own. But it was too late for Tory. She could no more go back to school and become a veterinarian than she could become Trask McFadden’s wife.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BUILDINGS OF the Lazy W, made mostly of rough-hewn cedar and fir, stood proudly on the flat land comprising the ranch and were visible from the main highway. Tory wheeled the pickup onto the gravel lane that was lined with stately pines and aspen and led up to the house.
Purebred horses grazed in the fields surrounding the stables, whole spindly legged foals romped in the afternoon sunlight.
Tory’s heart swelled with pride for the Lazy W. Three hundred acres of high plateau held together by barbed wire and red metal posts had been Tory’s home for all of her twenty-seven years and suddenly it seemed that everyone wanted to take it away from her. Trask, with his damned investigation of the horse swindle of five years ago, was about to ruin her credibility as a Quarter Horse breeder by reminding the public of the shady dealings associated with the Lazy W.
Tall grass in the meadow ruffled in the summer breeze that blew across the mountains. White clouds clung to the jagged peaks of the Cascades, shadowing the grassland. This was the land she loved and Tory would fight tooth and nail to save it—even if it meant fighting Trask every step of the way. He couldn’t just come marching back into her life and destroy everything she had worked for in the past five years!
Tory squinted against the late-afternoon sun as she drove the pickup into the parking lot near the barn and killed the engine. The warm westerly wind had removed any trace of the rainstorm that had occurred the night before and waves of summer heat shimmered in the distance, distorting the view of the craggy snow-covered mountains.
She pushed her keys into the pocket of her jeans and walked to the paddock where Governor was still separated from the rest of the horses. Eldon, one of the ranch hands, was dutifully walking the bay stallion.
“How’s our patient?” Tory asked as she patted Governor on the withers and lifted his hoof. Governor snorted and flattened his ears against his head. “Steady, boy,” Tory murmured softly.
“Still sore, I’d guess,” the fortyish man said with a frown. His weathered face was knotted in concern.
“I’d say so,” Tory agreed. “Has he been favoring it?”
“Some.”
“What about his temperature?” Tory asked as she looked at the sensitive tissue within the hoof.
“Up a little.”
She looked up and watched Governor’s ribs, to determine if his breathing was accelerated, but it wasn’t.
“I’ll call the vet. Maybe Anna should have a look at it.”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
She released Governor’s hoof and dusted her hands on her jeans. “I’ll see if she can come by tomorrow; until then we’ll just keep doing what we have been for the past two days.”
“You got it.”
Tory, with the intention of pouring a large glass of lemonade once she was inside the house, walked across the gravel parking area and then followed a worn path to the back porch. Alex was lying in the shady comfort of a juniper bush. He wagged his tail as she approached and Tory reached down to scratch the collie behind his ears before she opened the door to the kitchen.
“Tory? Is that you?” Keith yelled from the vicinity of the den when the screen door banged shut behind her.
“Who else?” she called back just as she heard his footsteps and Keith entered the homey kitchen from the hall. His young face was troubled and dusty. Sweat dampened his hair, darkening the strands that were plastered to his forehead. “You were expecting someone?” she teased while reaching into the refrigerator for a bag of lemons.
“Of course not. I was just waiting for you to get back.”
“That sounds ominous,” she said, slicing the lemons and squeezing them on the glass juicer. “I’m making lemonade, you want some?”
Keith seemed distracted. “Yeah. Sure,” he replied before his gray eyes darkened. “What took you so long in town?”
Tory looked up sharply. Keith hadn’t acted like himself since Trask was back in Oregon. “What is this, an inquisition?”
“Hardly.” Keith ran a hand over his forehead, forcing his hair away from his face. “Rex and I were just talking...about what happened last night.”
“You mean the calf?” she asked.
“Partially.” Keith had taken the wooden salt shaker off the table and was pretending interest in it.
Tory felt her back stiffen slightly as she poured sugar and the lemon juice into a glass pitcher. “And the rest of your discussion with Rex centered on Trask, is that it?”
“Right.”
At that moment Rex walked into the room. He fidgeted, removed his hat and worked the brim in his gnarled fingers.
“How about a glass of lemonade?” Tory asked, as much to change the direction of the conversation as to be hospitable.
“Sure,” the foreman responded. A nervous smile hovered near the corners of his mouth but quickly faded as he passed a hand over his chin. “I thought you’d like to know that all of the horses and cattle are alive and accounted for.”
Relief seeped through Tory’s body. So the calf was an isolated incident—so much for Trask’s conspiracy theories about vague and disturbing warnings in the form of dead livestock. “Good. What about any other signs of trouble?”
Rex shook his head thoughtfully. “None that I could see. None of the animals escaped through that hole in the fence, and we couldn’t find any other places where the fence was cut or tampered with.”
Tory was beginning to feel better by the minute. The dark cloud of fear that had begun to settle over her the evening before was slowly beginning to dissipate. “And the fence that was damaged has been repaired?”
“Yep. Right after you brought the deputy out to look at the calf. Did it myself.”
“Thanks, Rex.”
“All part of the job,” he muttered, avoiding her grateful glance.
“Well, then, I guess the fact that the rest of the livestock is okay is good news,” Tory said, wincing a little as she remembered the unfortunate heifer. Neither man responded. “Now, I think we should take some precautions to see that this doesn’t happen again.”
Rex smiled slightly. “I’m open to suggestion.”
“Wait a minute, Tory,” Keith cut in abruptly as Tory turned back to the pitcher of lemonade and began adding ice water to the cloudy liquid. “Why are you avoiding the subject of McFadden?”
“Maybe I’m just tired of it,” Tory said wearily. She had hoped to steer clear of another confrontation about Trask but knew the argument with her brother was inevitable. She poured the pale liquid into three glasses filled with ice and offered a glass to each of the men.
“McFadden’s not going to just walk away from this, you know,” Keith said.
“I know.”
“Then for Pete’s sake, Tory, we’ve got to come up with a plan to fight him.”
“A plan?” Tory repeated incredulously. She had to laugh as she took a sip of her drink. “You’re beginning to sound paranoid, Keith. A plan! People who make up plans are either suffering from overactive imaginations or are trying to hide something. Which are you?”
“Neither. I’m just trying to avoid another scandal, that’s all,” Keith responded, his eyes darkening. “And maybe save this ranch in the process. The last scandal nearly destroyed the Lazy W as well as killed Dad, or don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” Tory said, some of the old bitterness returning.
“Look, Sis,” Keith pleaded, his voice softening a little. “I’ve studied the books and worked out some figures. The way I see it, the Lazy W has about six months to survive. Then the note with the bank is due, right?”
“Right,” Tory said on a weary sigh.
“The only way the bank will renew it is if we can prove that we can run this place at a profit. Now you’re close, Tory, damned close, but all it takes is for all the old rumors to start flying again. Once people are reminded of what Dad was supposedly involved in, we’ll lose buyers as quickly as you can turn around, and there go the profits.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I sure as hell do.”
Tory shifted and avoided Keith’s direct stare. She knew what he was going to say before the words were out.
“The only way the Lazy W can stay in business is to sell those Quarter Horses you’ve been breeding. You know it as well as I do. And no one is going to touch those horses with a ten-foot pole if they think for one minute that the horses might be part of a fraud. The reputation of this ranch is...well, shady or at least it was, all because of the Quarter Horse scam five years ago. If all the publicity is thrown into the public eye again, your potential buyers are going to dry up quicker than Devil’s Creek in a hot summer.”
“And you think that’s what will happen if Trask is allowed to investigate his anonymous letter?”
“You can count on it.”
Tory’s eyes moved from the stern set of Keith’s jaw to Rex. “You’ve been awfully quiet. What do you think?”
“I think what I always have,” Rex said, rubbing his chin. “McFadden is trouble. Plain and simple.”
“There’s no doubt about that,” Tory thought aloud, “but I don’t know what any of us can do about it.”
“Maybe you can talk him out of dredging everything up again,” Keith suggested. “However, I’d like it better if you had nothing to do with the son of a bitch.”
Tory glared at her younger brother. “Let’s leave reference to Trask’s parentage and any other ridiculous insults out of this, okay? Now, how do you know he’ll be back?”
“Oh, he’ll be back all right. He’s like a bad check; he just comes bouncing back. As sure as the sun comes up in the morning, McFadden will be back.”
Tory shook her head and frowned into her glass. She swirled the liquid and stared at the melting ice. “So if he returns to the Lazy W, you want me to try and persuade him to ignore the letter and all this nonsense about another man being involved in the Quarter Horse swindle and Jason’s death. Have I got it right?”
“Essentially,” Keith said.
“Not exactly an intricate plan.”
“But the only one we’ve got.”
Tory set her glass on the counter and her eyes narrowed. “What if the letter is true, Keith? What if another person was involved in Jason’s death, a man who could, perhaps, clear Dad’s name?”
Keith smiled sadly, suddenly old beyond his years. “What’s the chance of that happening?”
“’Bout one in a million, I’d guess,” Rex said.
“Less than that,” Keith said decisively, “considering that McFadden wouldn’t be trying to clear Dad’s name. He’s the guy who put Dad in the prison in the first place, remember? I just can’t believe that you’re falling for his line again, Sis.”
Tory paled slightly. “I’m not.”
“Give me a break. You’re softening to McFadden and you’ve only seen him once.”
“Maybe I’m just tired of everyone trying to manipulate me,” Tory said hotly. She stalked across the room and settled into one of the chairs near the table. “This whole thing is starting to reek of a conspiracy or at the very least a cover-up!”
“What do you mean?” Keith seemed thoroughly perplexed. Rex avoided Tory’s gaze and stared out the window toward the road.
“I mean that I ran into Neva McFadden at the feed store. She wanted to talk to me, for crying out loud! Good Lord, the woman hasn’t breathed a word to me since the trial and today she wanted to talk things over. Can you believe it?”
“‘Things’ being Trask?” Keith guessed.
“Right.” Tory smiled grimly at the irony of it all. Neva McFadden was the last person Tory would have expected to beg her to stay away from Trask and his wild theories.
“You know that she’s in love with him, don’t you?” Keith said and noticed the paling of Tory’s tanned skin. Whether his sister denied it or not, Tory was still holding a torch for McFadden. That thought alone made Keith’s blood boil.
“She didn’t say so.”
“I doubt if she would: at least not to you.”
“Maybe not,” Tory whispered.
“So anyway, what did she want to talk about?”
“About the same thing you’re preaching right now. That Trask’s anonymous letter was just a prank, that we should leave the past alone, that her son would suffer if the scandal was brought to the public’s attention again. She thought it would be wise if I didn’t see Trask again.”
“Too late for that,” Rex said, removing his hat and running his fingers through his sweaty silver hair as he stared through the window. His thick shoulders slumped and his amiable smile fell from his face. “He’s coming down the drive right now.”
“Great,” Keith muttered.
Tory’s heart began to pound with dread. “Maybe we should tell him everything we discussed just now.”
“That would be suicide, Tory. Our best bet is to convince him that his letter was nothing more than a phony—”
A loud rap on the door announced Trask’s arrival. Keith let out a long breath of air. “Okay, Sis, you’re on.”
Tory’s lips twisted cynically. “If you’re looking for an Oscar-winning performance, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Keith asked warily.
“Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar’?” Without further explanation, she walked down the short corridor, ignored the round of swearing she heard in the kitchen and opened the front door.
Trask was about to knock again. His fist was lifted to his shoulder and his jaw was set angrily. At the sight of Tory, her gray-green eyes sparkling with a private joke, he was forced to smile and his angular features softened irresistibly. When Senator McFadden decided to turn on the charm, the effect was devastating to Tory’s senses, even though she knew she couldn’t trust him.
“I thought maybe you were trying to give me a not-so-subtle hint,” Trask said.
Tory shook her head and laughed. “Not me, senator. I’m not afraid to speak my mind and tell you you’re not welcome.”
“I already knew that.”
“But you’re back.” She leaned against the door, not bothering to invite him inside, and studied the male contours of his face. Yes, sir, the senator was definitely a handsome man, she thought. Five years hadn’t done him any harm—if anything, the added maturity was a plus to his appearance.
“I hoped that maybe you’d reconsidered your position and thought about what I had to say.”
“Oh, I’ve thought about it a lot,” Tory replied. “No one around here will let me forget it.”
“And what have you decided?” Cobalt-blue eyes searched her face, as if seeing it for the first time. Tory’s heart nearly missed a beat.
“Why don’t you come inside and we’ll talk about it?” Tory stepped away from the door allowing him to pass. Keith and Rex were already in the den and when Trask walked through the archway, the tension in the room was nearly visible.
“It takes a lot of guts for you to come back here,” Keith said. He walked over to the bar and poured himself a stiff drink.
“I said I would,” Trask responded. A confident grin contrasted with the fierce intensity of his gaze.
“But I can’t believe that you honestly expect Tory or anyone at the Lazy W to help you on...this wild-goose chase of yours.”
“I just want to look into it.”
“Why?” Keith demanded, replacing the bottle and lifting the full glass to his lips.
Trask crossed his arms over his chest. “I want to know the truth about my brother’s death.”
Keith shook his head. “So all of a sudden the testimony at the trial wasn’t enough. The scandal wasn’t enough. Sending an innocent man to jail wasn’t enough. You want more.”
“Only the truth.”
Keith’s jaw jutted forward. “It’s a little too late, don’t ya think, McFadden? You should have been more interested in the truth before taking that witness stand and testifying against Calvin Wilson.”
“If your father would have told his side of the story, maybe I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Too late for second-guessing, McFadden,” Keith said, his voice slightly uneven. “The man’s dead.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Rex shifted restlessly and pushed his Stetson over his eyes. “I’ve got to get home,” he said. “Belinda will be looking for me.” He headed toward the door and paused near the outer hallway. “I’ll see ya in the morning.”
“Good night, Rex,” Tory said just as the sound of the front door slamming shut rattled through the building.
“I think maybe you should leave, too,” Keith said, taking a drink of his Scotch and leaning insolently against the rocks of the fireplace. He glared angrily at Trask and didn’t bother to hide his contempt. “We’re not interested in hearing what you have to say. You said plenty five years ago.”
“I didn’t perjure myself, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“I’m not insinuating anything, McFadden. I believe in telling it straight out.”
“So do I.”
“Then you’ll understand when I ask you to leave and tell you that we don’t want any part of your plans to drag up all the scandal about the horse swindle again. It won’t do anyone a bit of good, least of all the people on this ranch. You’ll have to find another way to get elected this time, senator.”
Trask leaned a hip against the back of a couch and turned his attention away from Keith to Tory. His blue eyes pierced hers. “Is that how you feel?” he demanded.
Tory looked at Trask’s ruggedly handsome face and tried to convince herself that Trask had used her, betrayed her, destroyed everything she had ever loved, but she couldn’t hide from the honesty in his cold blue stare. He was dangerous. As dangerous as he had ever been, and still Tory’s heart raced at the sight of him. She knew her fascination for the man bordered on lunacy. “I agree with Keith,” she said at last. “I can’t see that opening up this whole can of worms will accomplish anything.”
“Except make sure that a guilty party is punished.”
“So you’re still looking for retribution,” she whispered, shaking her head. “It’s been five years. Nothing is going to change what happened. Neva’s right. Nothing you can do or say will bring Jason back.”
“Neva?” Trask repeated. “You’ve been talking to her?” His features froze and the intensity of his stare cut Tory to the bone.
“Today, she ran into me on the street.”
“And the conversation just happened to turn to me.” The corners of his mouth pulled down.
Tory’s head snapped upward and her chin angled forward defiantly. “She’s worried about you, senator, as well as about her son. She thinks you’re on a personal vendetta that will do nothing more than open up all the old wounds again, cause more pain, stir up more trouble.”
Trask winced slightly and let out a disgusted sound. “I’m going to follow this through, Tory. I think you can understand. It’s my duty to my brother. He was murdered, for God’s sake! Murdered! And one of the men responsible might still be free!
“The way I see it, you have two options: you can be with me or against me, but I’d strongly suggest that you think about all of the alternatives. If your father was innocent, as you so self-righteously claim, you’ve just gotten the opportunity to prove it.”
“You would help me?” she asked skeptically.
“Don’t believe him, Tory,” Keith insisted, walking between Tory and Trask and sending his sister pleading glances. “You trusted him once before and all he did was spit on you.”
Trask’s eyes narrowed as he focused on Tory’s younger brother. “Maybe you’d better just stay out of this one, Keith,” he suggested calmly. “This is between your sister and me.”
“I don’t think—”
“I can handle it,” Tory stated, her gaze shifting from Trask to Keith and back again. Her shoulders were squared, her lips pressed together in determination. Fire sparked in her eyes.
Keith understood the unspoken message. Tory would handle Trask in her own way. “All right. I’ve said everything I needed to say anyway.” He pointed a long finger at Trask. “But as far as I’m concerned, McFadden, you have no business here.” Keith strode out of the room, grabbed his hat off the wooden peg in the entry hall, jerked open the front door and slammed it shut behind him.
Trask watched Keith leave with more than a little concern. “He’s got more of a temper than you did at that age.”
“He hates you,” Tory said simply.
Trask smiled wryly and pushed his fingers through his hair. “Can’t say as I blame him.”
“I hate you, too,” Tory lied.
“No, no you don’t.” He saw that she was about to protest and waved off her arguments before they could be voiced. “Oh, you hate what I did all right. And, maybe a few years back, you did hate me, or thought that you did. But now you know better.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind.”
“Sure you do. You know that I haven’t come back here to hurt you and you know that I only did what I did five years ago because I couldn’t lie on the witness stand. The last thing I wanted to do was send your dad to prison—”
Tory desperately held up a palm. “Stop!” she demanded, unable to listen to his lies any longer. “I—I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses or rationalizations—”
“It’s easier to hate me, is that it?”
“No—yes! God, yes. I can’t have you come in here and confuse me and I don’t want to be a part of this...investigation or whatever you want to call it. I don’t care about anonymous letters.”
“Or dead calves?”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” she said firmly, though she had to fight to keep her voice from trembling.
Trask studied his hands before lifting his eyes to meet her angry gaze. “I think you’re wrong, Tory. Doesn’t it strike you odd that everyone you know wants you to avoid me?”
She shook her head and looked at the ceiling. “Not after the hell you put me through five years ago,” she whispered.
“You mean that it hasn’t crossed your mind that someone is deliberately trying to keep you out of this investigation for a reason?”
“Such as?”
“Such as hiding the guilty person’s identity.”
“I can’t be involved in this,” Tory said, as if to convince herself. She had to get away from Trask and his damned logic. When she was around him, he turned her mind around. She began walking toward the door but stopped dead in her tracks when he spoke.
“Are you afraid of the truth?”
“Of course not!” She turned and faced him.
He pushed himself away from the couch. “Then maybe it’s me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, but as he advanced upon her, she saw the steadfastness of his gaze. It dropped from her eyes to her mouth and settled on the rising swell of her breasts. “I’m not afraid of you, Trask. I never have been. Not even after what you did to me.”
He stopped when he was near her and his eyes silently accused her of attempting to deceive him. When he reached forward to brush a wayward strand of hair away from her face, his fingertip touched her cheek, but she didn’t flinch. “Then maybe you’re afraid of yourself.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“I don’t think so.” His fingers wrapped around her nape and tilted her head upward as he lowered his head and captured her lips with his. His mouth was warm and gentle, his tongue quick to invade her parted lips. Memories of hot summer nights, star-studded skies and bodies glistening with the sheen of perfect afterglow filled her mind. How easily she could slip backward...
The groan from deep in his throat brought her crashing back to a reality as barren as the desert. He didn’t love her, had never loved her, but was attempting once again to use her. As common sense overtook her, Tory tried to step backward but the arms surrounding her tightened, forcing her body close.
“Let go of me,” she said, her eyes challenging.
“I don’t think so. Letting you go was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made and believe me, I’ve made my share. I’m not about to make the same mistake twice.”
“You may have made a lot of mistakes, Trask, but you didn’t have a choice where I was concerned. I swore that I’d never let you hurt me again, and it’s a promise to myself that I intend to keep.”
The warm hands at the base of her spine refused to release her. Instead they began to slowly massage her, and through the thin fabric of her cotton blouse, she could feel Trask’s heat. It seeped through the cloth and warmed her skin, just as it had in the past.
His lips caressed her face, touching the sensitive skin of her eyelids and cheeks.
“I can’t let this happen,” she whispered, knowing that she was unable to stop herself.
Her skin began to flush and the yearnings she had vowed dead reawakened as his mouth slid down her throat and his hands came around to unbutton her blouse. As the fabric parted Tory could feel his lips touching the hollow of her throat and the swell of her breasts.
“Trask, please...don’t,” she said, swallowing against the desire running wildly in her blood.
His tongue circled the delicate ring of bones at the base of her throat while his hands opened her blouse and pushed it gently off her shoulders. “I’ve always loved you, Tory,” he said as he watched her white breasts rise and fall with the tempo of her breathing.
Her rosy nipples peeked seductively through the sheer pink lace of her bra and the swelling in his loins made him say things he would have preferred to remain secret. “Love me,” he pleaded, lifting his gaze to her green eyes.
“I...I did, Trask,” she replied, trying to think rationally. She reached for the blouse that had fallen to the floor, but his hand took hold of her wrist. “I loved you more than any woman should love a man and...and I paid for that love. I will never, never make that mistake again!”
The fingers over her wrist tightened and he jerked her close to his taut body. With his free hand he tilted her face upward so that she was forced to stare into his intense blue eyes. “You can come up with all the reasons and excuses you want, lady, but they’re all a pack of lies.”
“You should know, senator. You wrote the book on deceit.”
His jaw whitened and his lips twisted cynically. “Why don’t you look in the mirror, Tory, and see the kind of woman you’ve become: a woman who’s afraid of the truth. You won’t face the truth about your father and you won’t admit that you still care for me.”
“There’s a big difference between love and lust.”
“Is there?” He cocked a thick brow dubiously and ran his finger down her throat, along her breastbone to the front clasp of her bra. “What we felt for each other five years ago, what would you call that?”
“All those emotions were tangled in a web of lies, Trask. Each one a little bigger than the last. That’s how I’ve come to think of what we shared: yesterday’s lies.” He released her slowly and didn’t protest when she reached for her blouse and slipped it on.
“Then maybe it’s time to start searching for the truth.”
“By reopening the investigation into your brother’s death?”
“Yes. Maybe if we set the past to rest, we could think about the future.”
Tory let out a disgusted sound. “No way, senator. You know what they say, ‘You can never go back.’ Well, I believe it. Don’t bother to tease me with vague promises about a future together, because I don’t buy it. Not anymore. I’ve learned my lesson where you’re concerned. I’m not as gullible as I used to be, thank God.” She stepped away from him and finished buttoning her blouse.
His lips tightened and he pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, as if trying to thwart a potential headache. “Okay, Tory, so you aren’t interested in a relationship with me—the least you can do is help me a little. If you really believe your father’s name can be cleared, I’m offering you the means to do it.”
“How?”
“I want to go up to Devil’s Ridge tomorrow.”
The request made her heart stop beating. Devil’s Ridge was a piece of land not far from the Lazy W. It had once been owned by her father and Calvin had willed the forty acre tract in the foothills of the Cascades to Keith. Devil’s Ridge was the parcel of land where the Quarter Horses were switched during the swindle; the piece of land that had proved Calvin Wilson’s involvement in the scam.
“Tory, did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Will you come with me?”
No! I can’t face all of the scandal again. “If you promise that no one else will know about it.” Tory saw the questions in his eyes and hastened to explain. “I don’t want any publicity about this, until you’re sure of your facts, senator.”
“Fair enough.” He studied her face for a minute. “Are you with me on this, Tory?”
“No, but I won’t hinder you either,” she said, tired of arguing with Trask, Keith, Neva and the whole damned world. “If you want permission to wander around Devil’s Ridge, you’ve got it. And I’ll go with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to keep my eye on you, senator.”
“You still don’t trust me, do you?” he asked.
“I can’t let myself.” It’s my way of protecting myself against you.
A cloud of anguish darkened his eyes but was quickly dispersed. “Then I’ll be here around noon tomorrow.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He had started toward the door, but turned at the bittersweet words. “If only I could believe that,” he said before opening the door and disappearing through it.
Tory watched his retreating figure through the glass. The late-afternoon sun was already casting lengthening shadows over the plains of the Lazy W as Trask strode to his pickup and, without looking backward, drove away.
* * *
“WHAT BUSINESS IS it of yours?” Trask demanded of his sister-in-law. She was putting the finishing touches on a birthday cake for Nicholas, swirling the white frosting over the cake as if her brother-in-law’s tirade was of little, if any, concern. “Why did you confront Tory?”
“It is my business,” Neva threw back coolly as she surveyed her artwork and placed the knife in the empty bowl. When she turned to face Trask, her small chin was jutted in determination. “We’re talking about the death of my husband, for God’s sake. And you’re the one who brought me into it when you started waving that god-awful note around here yesterday afternoon.”
“But why did you try to convince Tory to stay out of it? She could help me.”
Neva turned world-weary brown eyes on her brother-in-law. “Because I thought she might be able to get through to you. You don’t listen to many people, Trask. Not me. Not your advisors in Washington. No one. I thought maybe there was a chance that Tory might beat some common sense into that thick skull of yours.”
“She tried,” Trask admitted.
“But failed, I assume.”
“This is something I have to do, Neva.” Trask placed his large hands on Neva’s slim shoulders, as if by touching he could make her understand.
With difficulty, Neva ignored the warmth of Trask’s fingers. “And damn the consequences, right? Your integrity come hell or high water.” She wrestled free of his grip.
“You’re blowing this way out of proportion.”
“Me?” she screamed. “What about you? You get one crank letter and you’re ready to tear this town apart, dig up five-year-old dirt and start battling a new crusade.” She smiled sadly at the tense man before her. “Only this time I’m afraid you’ll get hurt, Don Quixote; the windmills might fight back and hurt you as well as your Dulcinea.”
“Whom?”
“Dulcinea del Toboso, the country girl whom Don Quixote selects as the lady of his knightly devotion. In this case, Victoria Wilson.”
“You read too much,” he said.
“Impossible.”
Trask laughed despite the seriousness of Neva’s stare. “Then you worry too much.”
“It comes with the territory of being a mother,” she said, picking up a frosting-laden beater and offering it to him. “Someone needs to worry about you.”
He declined the beater. “I get by.”
She studied the furrows of his brow. “I don’t know, Trask. I just don’t know.”
“Just trust me, Neva.”
The smile left her face and all of the emotions she had been battling for five long years tore at her heart. “I’d trust you with my life, Trask. You know that.”
“Neva—” He took a step closer to her but she walked past him to the kitchen window. Outside she could watch Nicholas romp with the puppy Trask had given him for his birthday.
“But I can’t trust you with Nicholas’s life,” she whispered, knotting her fingers in the corner of her apron. “I just can’t do that and you have no right to ask me.” Tears began to gather in her large eyes and she brushed them aside angrily.
Trask let out a heavy sigh. “I’m going up to Devil’s Ridge tomorrow.”
“Oh, God, no.” Neva closed her eyes. “Trask, don’t—”
“This is something I have to do,” he repeated.
“Then maybe you’d better leave,” she said, her voice nearly failing her. Trask was as close to a father to Nicholas as he could be, considering the separation of more than half a continent. If she threw Trask out, Nicholas would never forgive her. “Do what you have to do.”
“What I have to do is stay here for Nicholas’s birthday party.”
Neva smiled through her tears. “You’re a bastard, you know, McFadden; but a charming one nonetheless.”
“This is all going to work out.”
“God, I hope so,” she whispered, once again sneaking a glance at her dark-haired son and the fluff of tan fur with the beguiling black eyes. “Nicholas worships the ground you walk on, you know.”
Trask laughed mirthlessly. “Well, if he does, he’s the only one in town. There’s no doubt about it, I wouldn’t win any popularity contests in Sinclair right now.”
“Oh, I don’t know, you seem to have been able to worm your way back into Tory’s heart.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll see, senator,” Neva mused. “I think Victoria Wilson has never gotten you out of her system.”
CHAPTER SIX
ANNA HUTTON LIFTED Governor’s hoof and examined it carefully. Her expert fingers gently touched the swollen tissues and the bay stallion, glistening with nervous sweat, snorted impatiently. “Steady, there,” she murmured to the horse before lifting her eyes to meet Tory’s worried gaze. “I’d say your diagnosis was right on the money, Tory,” Anna remarked, as she slowly let the horse’s foot return to the floor of his stall. “Our boy here has a case of acute laminitis. You know, girl, you should have been a vet.” She offered Tory a small grin as she reached for her leather bag and once again lifted Governor’s hoof and started cleaning the affected area.
“I guess I got sidetracked,” Tory said. “So I’ll have to rely on your expertise.”
Anna smiled knowingly at her friend before continuing to work with Governor’s hoof. The two women had once planned to go to graduate school together, but that was before Tory became involved with Trask McFadden and all of the bad press about Calvin Wilson and the Lazy W had come to light.
Tory’s eyes were trained on Anna’s hands, but her thoughts were far away, in a time when she had been filled with the anticipation of becoming Trask’s wife. How willingly she had given up her career for him...
Glancing up, Anna noticed Tory’s clouded expression and tactfully turned the conversation back to the horse as she finished cleaning the affected area. Governor flattened his dark ears to his head and shifted away from the young woman with the short blue-black hair and probing fingers. “You might want to put him in a special shoe, either a bar shoe or a saucer; and keep walking him. Have you applied any hot or cold poultices or put his hoof in ice water?”
“Yes, cold.”
“Good, keep doing that,” Anna suggested, her eyes narrowing as she studied the stallion. “I want to wait another day and see how he’s doing tomorrow, before I consider giving him adrenaline or antihistamines.”
“A woman from the old school, huh?”
“You know me, I believe the less drugs the better.” She patted the horse on the shoulder. “He’s a good-looking stallion, Tory.”
“The best,” Tory replied, glancing affectionately at the bay. “We’re counting on him.”
“As a stud?”
“Uh-huh. His first foals were born this spring.”
“And you’re happy with them?”
Tory nodded and smiled as she held open the stall gate for her friend. “I’ve always loved working with the horses, especially the foals.”
Anna chuckled and shook her head in amazement as the two women walked out of the stallion barn and into the glare of the brilliant morning sun. “So you decided to breed Quarter Horses again, even after what happened with your father. You’re a braver woman than I am, Victoria Wilson.”
“Or a fool.”
“That, I doubt.”
“Keith thought raising horses again was a big mistake.”
“So what does he know?”
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Go ahead. I think it takes guts to start over after the trial and all the bad publicity...”
“That was all a horrible mistake.”
Anna placed her hand on Tory’s arm. “I know, but I just thought that you wouldn’t want to do anything that might...you know, encourage all the old rumors to start up again. I wouldn’t.”
“You can’t run away from your past.”
“Especially when our illustrious Senator McFadden comes charging back to town, stirring it all up again.”
Tory felt her back stiffen but she managed a tight smile as they walked slowly across the gravel parking lot. “Everyone has to do what they have to do. Trask seems to think it’s his duty to dig it all up again...because of Jason.”
One of Anna’s dark brows rose slightly. “So now you’re defending him?”
“Of course not!” Tory said too quickly and then laughed at her own reaction. “It’s just that Trask’s been here a couple of times already,” she admitted, “and, well, just about everyone I know seems to think that I shouldn’t even talk to him.”
“Maybe that’s because you’ve led everyone to believe that you never wanted to see him again. After all, he did—”
“Betray me?”
“Whatever you want to call it.” Anna hesitated a moment, biting her lips as if contemplating the worth of her words. “Look, Tory. After the trial, you were pretty messed up, bitter. It’s no wonder people want to protect you from that kind of hurt again.”
“I’m a grown woman.”
“And now you’ve changed your mind about Trask?”
Tory shook her head and deep lines of worry were etched across her brow. “It’s just that—”
“You just can’t resist the guy.”
“Anna!”
“Oh, don’t look so shocked, Tory. In my business it’s best to say the truth straight out. You know that I always liked Trask, but that was before he nearly destroyed my best friend.”
“I wasn’t destroyed.”
“Close enough. And now, just when it looks like you’re back on your feet again, he comes waltzing back to Sinclair, stirring up the proverbial hornet’s nest, digging up dead corpses and not giving a damn about who gets hurt, including you and Neva. It tends to make my blood boil a bit.”
“So you don’t think I should see him.”
Anna smiled cynically. She stopped to lean against the fence and gaze at the network of paddocks comprising the central core of the Lazy W. “Unfortunately what I think isn’t worth a damn, unless it’s about your livestock. I’m not exactly the best person to give advice about relationships, considering the fact that I’ve been divorced for almost a year myself.” She hit the top rail of the fence with new resolve. “Anyway, you didn’t ask me here to talk about Trask, and I’ve got work to do.”
“Can’t you stay for a cup of coffee?” Anna was one of Tory’s closest friends; one of the few people in Sinclair who had stood by Tory and her father during Calvin’s trial.
Anna squinted at the sun and cocked her wrist to check her watch. “I wish I could, but I’m late as it is.” She started walking to her van before turning and facing Tory. Concern darkened her brown eyes. “What’s this I hear about a calf being shot out here?”
“So that’s going around town, too.”
Anna nodded and shrugged. “Face it, girl. Right now, with McFadden back in town, you’re big news in Sinclair.”
“Great,” Tory replied sarcastically.
“So, what happened with the calf?”
“I wish I knew. One of Len Ross’s hands saw the hole in the fence and discovered the calf. We don’t know why it was shot or who did it.”
“Kids, maybe?”
Tory lifted her shoulders. “Maybe,” she said without conviction. “I called the sheriff and a deputy came out. He was going to see if any of the other ranchers had a similar problem.”
“I hope not,” Anna said, her dark eyes hardening. “I don’t have much use for people who go around destroying animals.”
“Neither do I.”
Anna shook off her worried thoughts and climbed into the van. The window was rolled down and she cast Tory one last smile. “You take care of yourself, okay?”
“I will.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow to see how old Governor’s doing.”
“And maybe then you’ll have time for a cup of coffee.”
“And serious conversation,” Anna said with mock gravity. “Plan on it.”
“I will!”
With a final wave to Tory, Anna put the van in gear and drove out of the parking lot toward the main road.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER Tory sat in the center of the porch swing, slowly rocking on the worn slats, letting the warm summer breeze push her hair away from her face and bracing herself for the next few hours in which she would be alone with a man she alternately hated and loved.
Trask arrived promptly at noon. Fortunately, neither Keith nor Rex were at the house when Trask’s Blazer ground to a halt near the front porch. Though Tory felt a slight twinge of conscience about sneaking around behind her brother’s back, she didn’t let it bother her. The only way to prove her father’s innocence, as well as to satisfy Trask, was to go along with him. And Keith would never agree to work with Trask rather than against him.
What Tory hadn’t expected or prepared herself for was the way her pulse jumped at the sight of Trask as he climbed out of the Blazer. No amount of mental chastising seemed to have had any effect on the feeling of anticipation racing through her blood when she watched him hop lithely to the ground and walk briskly in her direction. His strides were long and determined and his corduroy pants stretched over the muscles of his thighs and buttocks as he approached. A simple shirt with sleeves rolled over tanned forearms and a Stetson pushed back on his head completed his attire. Nothing to write home about, she thought, but when she gazed into his intense blue eyes she felt trapped and her heart refused to slow its uneven tempo.
“I thought maybe you would have changed your mind,” Trask said. He mounted the steps and leaned against the rail of the porch, his long legs stretched out before him.
“Not me, senator. My word is as good as gold,” she replied, but a defensive note had entered her voice; she heard it herself, as did Trask. His thick brows lifted a bit.
“Is it? Good as gold that is?” He smiled slightly at the sight of her. Her skin was tanned and a slight dusting of freckles bridged her nose. The reckless auburn curls had been restrained in a ponytail, and she was dressed as if ready for a long ride.
“Always has been.” She rose from the swing and her intelligent eyes searched his face. “If you’re ready—” She motioned to the Blazer.
“No time like the present, I suppose.” Without further comment, he walked with her to his vehicle, opened the door of the Blazer and helped her climb inside.
“What happened to Neva’s pickup?” Tory asked just as Trask put the Blazer in gear.
“I only used it yesterday because this was in the shop.”
“And Neva let you borrow her truck?”
“Let’s say I persuaded her. She wasn’t too keen on the idea.”
“I’ll bet not.” She tapped her fingers on the dash and a tense silence settled between them.
The road to Devil’s Ridge was little more than twin ruts of red soil separated by dry blades of grass that scraped against the underside of the Blazer. Several times Trask’s vehicle lurched as a wheel hit a pothole or large rock hidden by the sagebrush that was slowly encroaching along the road.
“I don’t know what you hope to accomplish by coming up here,” Tory finally said, breaking the smothering silence as she looked through the dusty windshield. She was forced to squint against the noonday glare of the sun that pierced through the tall long-needled ponderosa pines.
“It’s a start. That’s all.” Trask frowned and downshifted as they approached a sharp turn in the road.
“What do you think you’ll find?” Tory prodded.
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re looking for something.”
“I won’t know what it is until I find it.”
“There’s no reason to be cryptic, y’know,” she pointed out, disturbed by his lack of communication.
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
Tory pursed her lips and folded her arms across her chest as she looked at him. “You just think that you’re going to find some five-year-old clue that will prove your theories.”
“I hope so.”
“It won’t happen, senator. The insurance investigators and the police sifted through this place for weeks. And that was right after the indictments...” Her voice drifted off as she thought about those hellish days and nights after her father had been arrested. All the old feelings of love and hate, anger and betrayal began to haunt her anew. Though it was warm within the interior of the Blazer, Tory shivered.
“It doesn’t hurt to look around,” Trask insisted. He stepped on the throttle and urged the truck up the last half mile to the crest of the hill.
“So this is where it all started,” Tory whispered, her eyes moving over the wooded land. She hadn’t set step on Devil’s Ridge since the scandal. Parched dry grass, dusty rocks and sagebrush covered the ground beneath the pine trees. The land appeared arid, dryer than it should have for late June.
“Or where it all ended, depending upon your point of view,” Trask muttered. He parked the truck near a small group of dilapidated buildings, and pulled the key from the ignition. The Blazer rumbled quietly before dying. “If Jason hadn’t come up here that night five years ago, he might not have been killed.” The words were softly spoken but they cut through Tory’s heart as easily as if they had been thin razors.
She had been reaching for the handle of the door but stopped. Her hand was poised over the handle and she couldn’t hold back a weary sigh. “I’m sorry about your brother, Trask. You know that. And though I don’t believe for a minute that Dad was responsible for your brother’s death, I want to apologize for anything my father might have done that might have endangered Jason’s life.”
Trask’s eyes softened. “I know, love,” he said, before clearing his throat and looking away from her as if embarrassed at how easily an endearment was coaxed from his throat. “Come on, let’s look around.”
Tory stepped out of the Blazer and looked past the few graying buildings with broken windows and rotting timbers. Her gaze wandered past the small group of paddocks that had been used to hold the purebred Quarter Horses as well as their not-so-blue-blooded counterparts. Five years before, this small parcel of land had been the center of a horse swindle and insurance scam so large and intricate that it had become a statewide scandal. Now it was nothing more than a neglected, rather rocky, useless few acres of pine and sagebrush with a remarkable view. In the distance to the east, barely discernible to the naked eye were the outbuildings and main house of the Lazy W. From her viewpoint on the ridge, Tory could make out the gray house, the barn, toolshed and stables. Closer to the mountains she saw the spring-fed lake on the northwestern corner of the Lazy W. The green and gold grassland near the lake was dotted with grazing cattle.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Trask said.
Tory jerked her head around and found that he was staring at her. The vibrant intensity of his gaze made her heartbeat quicken. “What?”
“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.
Trask didn’t seem consoled and ignored his drink.
“We don’t need the wine,” Tory pointed out. “Maybe Neva knew that it would be best if we kept our wits about us.”
“Maybe.” Trask eyed Tory speculatively, his gaze centering on the disturbing pout of her lips. “She thinks I’ve given you enough grief as it is.”
“You have.”
Trask took off his hat and studied the brim. “You’re not about to let down a bit, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that you’re going to keep the old barriers up, all the time.”
“You’re the one intent on digging up the past; I’m just trying to keep it in perspective.”
“And have you?”
Tory’s muscles went tense. She took a swallow of her tea before answering. “I’m trying, Trask. I’m trying damned hard. Everyone I know thinks I’m crazy to go along with your plans, and I’m inclined to believe them. But I thought that if you came up here, poked around, did your duty, so to speak, that you’d drop it and the fires of gossip in Sinclair would die before another scandal engulfed us. I knew that you wouldn’t just let go of the idea that another person was involved in your brother’s death, and I also realized that if I fought you, it would just drag everything out much longer and fuel the gossip fires.”
He set his food aside and wrapped his arms around his knees while studying the intriguing angles of Tory’s face. “And that’s the only reason you came up here with me?”
“No.”
He lifted his thick brows, encouraging her to continue.
After setting her now empty plate on the top of the basket, she leaned back on her arms and stared at the countryside far below the ridge. “If by the slim chance you did find something, some clue to what had happened, I thought it might prove Dad’s innocence.”
“Oh, Tory...” He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. “I know you don’t believe this, but if there were a way to show that Calvin had no part in the Quarter Horse swindle, or Jason’s death, don’t you think I’d be the first to do it?”
He sounded sincere and his deep blue eyes seemed to look through hers to search for her soul. God, but she wanted to believe him and trust in him again. He had been everything to her and the hand on her cheek was warm and encouraging. It conjured vivid images from a long-ago love. She had trouble finding her voice. The wind rustled restlessly through the branches overhead and Tory couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything but the feel of Trask’s fingers against her skin. “I...I don’t know.” She finished the cold tea and set her glass on the ground.
“My intention wasn’t to crucify your father, only to tell my side of the story, in order that Jason’s murderers were found out and brought to justice. If Calvin wasn’t guilty, he should have stood up for himself—”
“But he didn’t; and your testimony sent him to prison.” She swallowed back the hot lump forming in her throat.
“Would it help you to know that I never, never meant to hurt you?” he asked, lowering his head and tenderly brushing his lips over hers.
“Trask—” The protest forming in her throat was cut off when his arms wrapped around her and he drew her close, the length of his body pressed urgently to hers.
“I’ve missed you, Tory,” he admitted, his voice rough with emotions he would rather have denied.
“And I’ve missed you.”
“But you still can’t forgive me?”
She shook her head and for a moment she thought he would release her. He hesitated and stared into her pain-filled eyes. “Oh, hell,” he muttered, once again pulling her close to him and claiming her lips with his.
His hands were warm against her back and through the fabric of her blouse she felt the heat of his fingers against her skin. Her legs were entwined with his and his hips pressed urgently to hers, pinning her to the ground as one of his hands moved slowly upward and removed the leather throng restraining her hair.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered against her ear as he twined his fingers in her hair, watching the auburn-tinged curls frame her face in wild disarray. Slumberous green eyes rimmed with dark curling lashes stared up at him longingly. “I want you, Tory,” he said, his breathing ragged, his heart thudding in his chest and the heat in his loins destroying rational thought. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.”
“I don’t know that wanting is enough, Trask,” she whispered, thinking about the agonizing hours she had spent in the past five years wanting a man she couldn’t have; wishing for a father who was already dead; desiring the life she had once had before fate had so cruelly ripped it from her.
“Just let me love you, Tory.”
The words had barely been said when she felt Trask stiffen. He turned to look over his shoulder just as a shot from a rifle cracked through the still mountain air.
Tory’s blood ran cold with fear and a scream died in her throat. Trask flattened himself over her body, protectively covering her as the shot ricocheted through the trees and echoed down the hillside. Dear God, what was happening? The sound was so close!
With the speed and agility of an athlete, Trask scrambled to his feet while jerking her arm and pulling her to relative safety behind a large boulder.
Tory’s heart was hammering erratically as adrenaline pumped through her veins. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and discovered that her hands were shaking. “Oh, God,” she whispered in desperate prayer.
“Are you okay?” His eyes scanned her face and body.
Her voice failed her but she managed to nod her head.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes!”
“Who knows we’re here?” Trask demanded, his hushed voice harsh, his eyes darting through the trees.
“No one—I didn’t tell anyone,” she replied.
“Well someone sure as hell knows we were here!”
“But—”
“Shh!” He clamped his hand over her mouth and raised a finger to his lips as he strained to hear any noise that might indicate the whereabouts of the assailant. Far down the hillside, the sound of hurried footsteps crackled through the brush. Tory’s skin prickled with fear and her eyes widened until she realized that the footsteps were retreating, the sound of snapping branches becoming more distant.
Trask moved away from the protection of the boulder as if intent on tracking the assailant.
“Trask! No!” Tory screamed, clutching at his arm. “Leave it alone.”
He tried to shake her off and turned to face her. “Someone’s taking shots at us and I’m going to find out who.”
“No wait! He has a rifle, you...you can’t go. You don’t have any way of protecting yourself!”
“Tory!”
“Damn it, Trask, I’m scared!” she admitted, holding his gaze as well as his arm. Her lower lip trembled and she had to fight the tears forming in her eyes. “You can’t die, too,” she whispered. “I won’t let you!” He stood frozen to the spot. “I love you, Trask,” Tory admitted. “Please, please, don’t get yourself killed. It’s not worth it. Nothing is!” Tory felt near hysteria as she clutched at his arm.
Trask stood stock still, Tory’s words restraining him. “You love me?” he repeated.
“Yes!” Her voice broke. “Oh, God, yes.”
“But you’ve been denying—”
“I know, I know. It’s just that I don’t want to love you.”
“Because of the past.”
“Yes.”
“Then we have to find out the truth,” he decided.
“It’s not worth getting killed.”
Trask’s eyes followed the sound of the retreating footsteps and the skin whitened over his cheekbones as he squinted into the encroaching night. His one chance at finding the accomplice in Jason’s murder had just slipped through his fingers. When silence once again settled on the ridge, he turned his furious gaze on Tory. His grip on her shoulders, once gentle, was now fierce.
“Who did you tell that we were here?” he demanded.
“No one!”
“But your brother and that foreman, Rex Engels, they knew we would be here this afternoon.”
Tory shook her head and her green eyes blazed indignantly. She jerked away from his fingers and scooted backward on the ground. “I didn’t tell anyone, Trask. Not even Keith or Rex; they...neither one of them would have approved. As far as I know the only person who knew we were coming here today was Neva!”
The corners of Trask’s mouth tightened and he glared murderously at Tory. “Someone set us up.”
“And you think it was me?”
“Of course not. But it sure as hell wasn’t Neva!”
“Why not? She didn’t want you coming up here, did she? She doesn’t want you to look into Jason’s death, does she? Why wouldn’t she do something to sabotage you?”
He walked away a few steps and rubbed the back of his neck. “That just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well nothing else does either. The anonymous note, the dead calf and now this—” She raised her hands over her head. “Nothing is making any sense, Trask. Ever since you came back to the Lazy W, there’s been nothing but trouble!”
“That’s exactly the point, isn’t it?” he said quietly, his mouth compressing into an angry line. “Someone’s trying to scare you; warn you to stay away from me.”
“If that’s his intention, whoever he is, he’s succeeded! I’m scared right out of my mind,” she admitted while letting her head fall into her palm.
“What about the rest, Tory? That shot a few minutes ago was a warning to you to stay away from me!” He looked over his shoulder one last time.
“If that’s what it was—”
“That’s exactly what it was,” he interjected. “Let’s go, before someone decides to take another potshot at us.”
“You think that’s what they were trying to do?”

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