Lone Star Lonely (11 page)

Garrett nodded. “Later today, I imagine. And
if what’s in that will is what I’m thinking, it is, maybe sooner.
If they can get Hawkins to hand it over. So far he hasn’t.”

“We can’t just stand by and let this happen.”
Adam paced to where Kirsten sat looking stunned, and he leaned down
and pressed his hands to her shoulders. “We’re not going to let
this happen, Kirsty.”

“I don’t really see that we can prevent it,”
Garrett said, his voice soft and full of regret.

Shock rippled through Adam like ice water. He
straightened and turned to face his brother. “What the hell do you
mean, we can’t prevent it? She’s innocent.”

Garrett shook his head slowly. “Maybe if she
had admitted the gun was hers…but she didn’t, and that makes it
look even—”

“But it wasn’t mine!”

“I know…I’m just telling you the way it’s
going to look to everyone else,” Garrett said.

Kirsten was on her feet again, and tears—not
of fear, but of anger—welled in her eyes. Fists clenched at her
sides, jaw tight, she paced. “He’s doing all of this to me somehow.
My God, he’s going to make sure I go down with him.”

Garrett met Adam’s eyes. “No jury’s gonna
believe a man would set up his own murder. It’s not as if he faked
his death and skipped the country, Kirsten. He’s in the county
morgue, for God’s sake.”

“I don’t give a damn if he’s in the freaking
White House,” Adam said. “Kirsten didn’t kill him. And she’s not
going to jail.”

Garrett looked tortured. “It doesn’t mean
anything, Adam. It’ll only be temporary. Kirsten, we’ll find the
truth. You won’t be there long. I’ll talk to the judge, get him to
set bail. We’ll get you through this.”

With a sniffle, Kirsten nodded.

“She’s not going to jail,” Adam said again.
“Not for one night.”

Kirsten touched his shoulder. “Adam, I—”

“No. You’ve already served two years’ hard
time. No more.” He stepped closer to Garrett, met his brother’s
eyes. “No more.”

“Adam, don’t do this.” It was a plea.

“Then leave.”

“You know I can’t. You’re gonna run the
minute I’m out of sight. Dammit, Adam, I can’t just turn around and
let you do that.”

“You can’t stop me, either.”

Kirsten stepped between them. “Stop
this…Adam, stop—”

Adam pushed her gently aside. “I’m asking you
once more. Go home, Garrett.”

Garrett shook his head, his eyes sad, sorry,
but stubborn all the same. “You’ll wind up in jail, too, if you do
this. No, Adam, you’re gonna sit here and wait for the rangers.
We’ll do this by the book or—”

Adam hit him. He hit him with everything he
had, and he figured the blow probably hurt him as much as it hurt
his brother. Garrett’s head snapped backward, and he went down like
a felled redwood, breaking a coffee table in two on the way.

“Add assaulting an officer to the list of
charges,” Adam said, and he grabbed Kirsten’s hand and drew her out
of the room.

“Oh, God!” she cried. “Garrett?” She pulled
against Adam’s grip, turning to try to see if his brother was all
right, but Adam kept his hold as he dragged her through the house
and out the front door. He didn’t think Garrett would follow, but
he couldn’t be too careful. He paused at his brother’s pickup,
leaned in and snatched the keys. Then he pressed Kirsten into his
own car and got behind the wheel. The Jag roared. The tires spun,
then caught, and the car shot forward.

Adam’s throat was as dry as sand and so tight
no sound emerged when he tried to whisper, “Damn, why did you make
me hit you? I’m sorry, Garrett.”

Add yet one more crime to the list of
unforgivable acts she’d committed against the Brand family, Kirsten
thought miserably. She had now managed to turn brother against
brother. And there had never been any brothers less likely to turn
on one another than the Brands. Never. She’d done the
impossible.

And now here they were, she and Adam,
skulking around in a dim, dusty stable and actively tempting the
wrath of another Brand brother. The one with the hottest temper of
all.

“Adam, you’ve lost your mind!” It was a harsh
whisper in the darkness. “Why don’t you just let me go? I’ll just
go off on my own. You can’t do this–”

“Will you hush?” Adam whispered back. “If Wes
sees us sneaking around his stables, he’s liable to shoot first and
recognize me as blood kin later. You know his temper. Just trust
me, okay?”

She did know about Wes Brand’s temper. It
wasn’t something she would like to have directed her way. Yet here
she was, trespassing in the stables of his Sky Dancer Ranch, about
to steal a pair of the finest Appaloosas in this part of Texas.

“Do they still hang horse thieves?” she
whispered. Adam was opening a stall door, stroking a spotted muzzle
and leading a mare out onto the barn floor. One of the few who
wasn’t expecting a foal. Most of them were, Adam had told her.

“We’re only borrowing them.” He closed the
stall door. “This is Mystic. Hold her halter, Kirsty.”

She did. Adam immediately opened another
stall with the name Layla painted on the door and abducted another
horse. Kirsten led her own captive closer to a window, so she could
watch for Wes and his wife Taylor to return home from wherever
they’d gone. Or for a shotgun barrel to pop out a window. Neither
happened.

Adam stood near the open tack room door now,
saddling one mare, then the other. Slipping bridles into place.
“Borrowing” some saddlebags. He scooped grain into one of them, and
that let Kirsten know he was planning on being gone awhile. And
that he intended to take good care of his ill gotten
transportation.

Then he ripped the tag off the burlap feed
bag, flipped it over and wrote a note to his brother on the blank
white reverse. She leaned over to see what he could possibly write
to explain his actions.

Wes,

If anyone can understand, it ought to be you.
I’ll

take good care of them.

Adam

Kirsten read it, then sighed. “I’d forgotten
all about your brother’s time in prison,” she said.

“For a crime he didn’t commit.” Adam rolled
the note up and stuck it in the wire mesh on the front of one of
the empty stalls. “He’s not gonna want to see anyone else go
through that. I’m betting he won’t even tell Garrett the horses are
gone.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Adam shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Garrett
wouldn’t look very hard for us even if he did.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t? You’re talking about the
same Garrett you just punched out and left lying on my floor back
there, right?”

A pained look crossed Adam’s face. He covered
it quickly. “Right.”

Kirsten swallowed the lump in her throat.
“Put Layla back in her stall, Adam. I’ll leave this one off
someplace safe. But I’m going alone.”

“The hell you are.” The intensity was back,
burning in his eyes. And she knew what it meant. She’d known for
some time. He still cared for her, the idiot. It had been so much
easier, so much safer, when he’d still hated her for what she’d
done to him. When had it changed?

“Adam, I’ve ruined your life twice. I don’t
intend to do it a third time.”

“What do you mean, twice?”

She closed her eyes and didn’t answer him
right away. “You hit your own brother. Because of me, Adam. You
think I don’t know how much it hurt you to do that? You think I
don’t know how close you guys are? ‘Mess with one Brand, you mess
with them all.’ That’s what they say about your family around here.
Everyone knows how much love….” Her voice broke. Tears choked her,
burned in her throat, because she was thinking about the love in
that family—the loving parents who’d generated all of it. And how
she’d snuffed that love out. “I’m not coming between you and your
family. Not again.” She bit her lip. “As a matter of fact, I’m not
even borrowing your brother’s horse.”

She spun on her heel and ran out the barn’s
open rear door. The grassy meadow beyond cushioned every footfall
as she ran away. Her feet pounded across the barnyard and into the
pasture beyond. She raced toward the trees at its edge, pouring all
her anger and frustration and fear into every step. She would head
for the border. She would send for her father when it was safe. She
would….

Heavy steps came from behind, and then a pair
of arms snaked around her and drew her to a clumsy halt. Adam
turned her in his arms until she faced him. She was breathless, hot
with exertion. So was he. His face flushed with dark color. His
eyes sparkled with something. Adrenaline, probably. They stood
among some trees near the edge of Wes’s pasture, a hundred yards
from the barn, farther from the house. The sun beat down, and the
breeze ruffled her hair and cooled her heated skin. Adam’s arms
stayed put, linked at the small of her back. Then they
tightened.

She pressed both hands to his chest. Not
hard. Just a little, and he went still.

“Where did you think you were going?”

She lifted both shoulders, lowered her head.
“Same place all the wanted murderers go in the movies. Mexico.”

He shook his head. “You gonna live on the run
for the rest of your life?”

“I guess so,” she said. “If I have to. But
you are not.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Then….” She sent a questioning glance back
toward the barn. For a second she thought she’d heard something. A
motor, or…. But the sound faded so fast she must have imagined
it.

“What I was planning,” Adam said, “was to
hide out somewhere…somewhere close. So we can find out who is
setting you up, get the proof we need and clear your name,
Kirsten.”

“The person who is setting me up is beyond
our reach, Adam. He’s dead.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible for that man.”

Adam’s face went still. “He hurt you,” he
said, very softly, as if he didn’t want to hear his own words.
“Didn’t he?”

“He was incapable of making me feel anything,
Adam. Including pain.”

“But physically—” Fear in his eyes. Fear that
she would confirm his darkest suspicions.

“If he had, I would have shot him.”

“If he was still alive, I would,” Adam
said.

She lifted her face, searching his. “Don’t do
this, Adam. Don’t care about me. I ruin everything I touch, and I
don’t want to ruin you.”

He averted his eyes quickly. “I can’t stop
thinking how things might have been–”

“I wasted years doing that. Believe me, it
doesn’t help anything.”

“But if there could still be a chance….” He
looked at her again, dead on target with his piercing sapphire
eyes. “Could there? Still be a chance for us?”

It was Kirsten’s turn to look away. Because
tears of regret brimmed in her eyes, tears she didn’t want him to
see. “No. I’m sorry, but…but no.”

She heard his slow sigh. His arms were still
anchored around her waist, her hands still resting flat on his
chest. She felt his heart pounding against her palm.

“Because I took off. Because I believed the
worst all too readily and left when you needed me most,” he said.
“I ruined any chance we had when I walked away from you, didn’t
I?”

“No, Adam. I ruined it, not you.”

“I didn’t love you enough. Hell, I was scared
to death you’d do just what you did. Expecting it so damned much
that I wasn’t even surprised when you didn’t show for the wedding.
I don’t even know why.”

Kirsten did. He’d never given all his heart
to her, and she knew exactly why. He was afraid to risk it, afraid
to love someone utterly and completely and have her vanish from his
life one sunny afternoon the way his parents had done. He’d been
afraid of love ever since that accident. And that was Kirsten’s
fault, as well.

“You didn’t ruin anything, Adam,” she told
him again.

He lifted both hands, releasing her waist,
only to frame her face. “If I didn’t…then there’s a chance. You
still feel something for me, Kirsty, I know you do.”

She had to put a stop to this. It would only
hurt him more when he finally knew the whole truth. “No,” she said,
slamming her eyes closed against the invasion of his. “I
don’t.”

“Don’t you?” He was quiet, his breath on her
face. “Open your eyes, Kirsty.”

She did, and stared up into his. He moved
closer, and his hands slid around to the back of her head, cupping
it, tilting it. His lips brushed lightly over hers, his eyes
keeping her gaze captive. And then finally they fell closed, and he
kissed her. His warm, moist mouth covered hers. His lips moved
against hers. His body pressed against hers. The shaking began in
her knees and moved up until it encompassed her entire body. She’d
shut desire down a long time ago. Now it was alive and screaming
again for the only man she’d ever made love with. The only man
she’d ever wanted. Her first. God, she wished he could be her last,
as well. He could erase everything that had happened in
between.