The Pride of Jared MacKade (14 page)

He stopped himself, took another deep breath. Look what the woman had brought him to. He was actually considering vandalizing her belongings in some sort of juvenile one-upmanship.

Wasn’t going to happen. He would gain revenge by showing her that, despite her outrageous behavior, he was a reasonable man. To make certain he would be, Jared detoured off the path and sat down on the rocks.

He couldn’t feel them—the ghosts that haunted this place with their sorrows and hopes and fears. Perhaps, he thought, because for the first time in a long time he was plagued with too many of his own.

He’d known loss. The jarring, devastating loss of his parents. He’d lived with that, because he didn’t have a choice, and because, he thought, there were so many good, solid, important memories to draw on for comfort.

And, of course, he’d always had his brothers.

He’d known sorrow. He had been struck with it when he finally admitted his marriage had been a mistake. Not a disaster. Somehow that would have been better, less pale, than a simple, easily rectifiable mistake.

Hope, of course. His life had been full of it, a gift from his parents, from his roots. Wherever there was hope there was fear, the price to be paid for the sweetness.

He’d known all those emotions, used them or overcome them. But until Savannah, he’d never known anything so sharp, so vital. So frightening.

The wind changed as he sat there, picked up, where it had been calm before. It fluttered the trees, whispered through the leaves that filtered sunlight. And chilled.

They came here. He sat very still as he thought of it.
The two boys, wearing different colors, came here. Each of them wanted only to find home again. To escape from the madness into the recognizable. The familiar. To find the sense of it all again, the meaning of it. The continuity of family, of people who knew and loved them. Accepted them.

Maybe, in some odd way, that was what they’d fought for.

For home.

What an idiot he’d been, Jared realized, and closed his eyes as the wind scooped up dead leaves and swirled them around him. The two boys had never had a chance once they chose their path. But he had a chance. The same fate that had doomed those two soldiers so long ago had placed Savannah and Bryan right in front of him.

Instead of accepting, he’d questioned. Instead of rejoicing, he’d doubted.

Because what frightened him most was this blinding love. A love that demanded he protect, defend, treasure. And he couldn’t protect the girl she had been, defend that girl against the cruel and thoughtless blows of life when no one else would help. She’d had to face it alone, without him. And, if necessary, she still could.

That left him feeling impotent, and scorched his pride.

So, he was an idiot. But she wasn’t going to get rid of him easily.

He heard a rustling, and when he opened his eyes he wouldn’t have been surprised to see a young Confederate soldier, bayonet ready, fear bright as the sun in his eyes, step off the path.

Instead, he saw Bryan, head down, feet scuffling leaves. He would have laughed at his overactive imagination if the boy’s pose hadn’t been one of such abject dejection.

“Hey, Ace, how’s it going?”

Bryan’s head came up. The smile, a bit more cautious than Jared was used to, fluttered around his mouth. “Hi. Just out walking. Mom’s in a mood.”

“I know.” In an unspoken invitation, Jared patted the rock beside him. “She’s pretty steamed at me.”

“She said you were steamed at her, too.”

“I guess I was.” Instinctively Jared draped an arm over Bryan’s shoulders when the boy settled beside him. “I’m over it. Mostly.”

“She’s not.” Ready for male bonding, Bryan rolled his eyes. “She kicked me out.”

“No, kidding? Me, too.”

The idea of that had Bryan chuckling. He didn’t think his mother had told Jared to go play outside, for God’s sake. “We can go live at the farm, till she cools off.”

“We could,” Jared said consideringly. “Or I could go on over and try to smooth things out.”

“Can you?”

Jared looked down, and for the first time saw the worry in the boy’s eyes. “She’s not really mad at you, Bry. She’s mad at me.”

“Yeah, I know. Can you make her not mad at you anymore?”

“I hope so. When you tick her off, does she stay that way long?”

“Nah. She can’t, ’cause…” There was no way to
explain it. “She just can’t. But she’s never let a guy hang around like you, so maybe she can stay mad at you.”

“She’s never…” He stopped himself. It was wrong to ask the child. “Maybe you should give me some pointers.”

“Well.” Bryan pursed his lips as he thought about it. “She really digs the flowers you bring her. No one ever did that before, except once I brought her some little ones for her birthday. She got all mushy about it.”

“No one ever brought her flowers,” Jared murmured. He wasn’t just an idiot. He was a champion idiot.

“Nuh-uh,” Bryan continued, warming up. “No one ever took us out to ball games or for pizza, and she likes that, too.”

This time he could ask, because it was for the boy. “No one ever took you to ball games or for pizza?”

“Nah. I mean, Mom and me went, sure, but not with a guy who like set it up and stuff.” Bryan was thinking that over, how much he liked it, when inspiration struck. “Oh, yeah. And when you’re going to take her out, like on a date, she sings in the shower. She went out on dates before and all, but she never sang when she was getting ready. So maybe you should take her on a date. Girls like that stuff.”

Jared determined there were going to be lots of ball games, lots of pizza, lots of dates and lots of flowers in Savannah and Bryan’s future. “Yeah, they do.”

“Have you got any love words?”

“Excuse me?”

“Like in the movies,” Bryan explained. “You know how the woman gets all moon-eyed when the guy says
love words. Only the guy has to be kind of moon-eyed, too, to make it work. She might like that.”

“She might.”

Bryan sighed at the thought. “It’s probably embarrassing.”

“Not if you mean them. Here’s the thing, Bryan.” Jared scooted away just enough that he could face the boy fully. “I figure I ought to run this by you, since you’ve been the man of the house for so long. I’m in love with your mother.”

As his stomach clutched and jittered, Bryan lowered his gaze. “I kind of figured you were stuck on her.”

“No, I’m in love with her. Moon-eyed. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

Bryan’s gaze whipped back up, and this time it held steady and searching. “For real?”

“For very real. How does that fly with you?”

He wasn’t ready to commit. Though he liked the strong weight of the arm on his shoulders, his stomach was still jumping. “Would you, like, live with us?”

“Not like. I would live with you, and you’d live with me. But there’s a catch.”

That was what he’d been afraid of. He braced himself, kept his eyes level. “Yeah? What?”

“I’m going to ask you to take my name, Bryan. And to take me on, as your father. I don’t just want your mother, you see. I want both of you, so you both have to want me.”

There was an odd pressure on his chest, as if someone had just sat on him. “You want to be my father?”

“Yes, very much. I know you’ve gotten along just
fine without one up till now, and maybe I need you more than you need me, but I think I’d be good at it.”

Bryan’s eyes goggled. “You need to be my father?”

“I do,” Jared murmured, realized he’d rarely spoken truer words. “I really do.”

“I’d be Bryan MacKade?”

“That’s the deal.”

While he hesitated, Jared’s universe simply ground to a halt. If the boy rejected him, he knew, it would cut straight to his heart.

But Bryan didn’t know for sure how things were done between men. He knew what to do when his mother offered him something wonderful, something he’d hardly dared to dream of but had wished for hard, really hard, at night. So, in the end, that was what he did.

Jared found his arms full of boy.

The breath Jared had been holding whistled out in almost painful relief. Have a cigar, he thought giddily, you’ve got yourself a son.

“This is so cool,” Bryan said, his voice muffled against Jared’s chest. “I thought maybe you didn’t want somebody else’s kid.”

Gently, for he suddenly felt very gentle, Jared cupped the boy’s chin and lifted it. “You won’t be somebody else’s. We’d make it legal, but that’s just a paper. What really counts is what’s between you and me.”

“I’ll be Bryan MacKade. You’ll make her go for it, won’t you? You’ll talk her into it?”

“Talk is my business.”

Furious at herself for snapping at Bryan, Savannah ruined two illustrations before admitting that work was hopeless. She’d been so pleased with herself when she drove away from the MacKade farm. Drunk with the power of causing fury to run hot and cold over Jared’s face.

Now she was miserable. Miserably angry, miserably frustrated. Miserable. She wanted to kick something, but wasn’t so far gone she’d take it out on the two kittens napping in the corner of the kitchen.

She wanted to break something, but after a frustrated search through the living room she discovered she didn’t have anything valuable enough to be satisfying.

She wanted to scream. But there was no one to scream at.

Until Jared strode through the door.

“You don’t have so much as a cuff link left here, MacKade. Everything’s in your front yard.”

“I noticed. That was quite a show, Savannah.”

“I enjoyed it.” She crossed her arms, angled her chin. “Sue me.”

“I might yet. Why don’t we sit down?”

“Why don’t you go to hell?” she drawled. “And be sure the door kicks you on your way out.”

“Sit down,” he repeated, in a tone just firm enough, just reasonable enough, to light a very short fuse.

“Don’t you tell me what to do in my own house!” she shouted at him. “Don’t you tell me what to do, period. I’m sick to death of you making me feel like some slow-witted backwater bimbo. I don’t have a fancy degree—hell, I don’t have a high school diploma—but I’m not
stupid. I muddled through with my life just fine before you came along. And I’ll do just fine after you’ve gone.”

“I know.” He acknowledged that with a slight inclination of his head. “That’s what’s been worrying me. And I don’t think you’re stupid, Savannah. On the contrary. I don’t think I’ve ever met a smarter woman.”

“Don’t play that tune with me. I know what you think of me, and I can live up to most of it.”

“I think you can,” he said quietly. “I think you can live up to everything I think of you. If you’d sit down, I’ll tell you what that is.”

“I’ll say what I have to say,” she tossed back. “You want to know about me, Jared. I’ll tell you about me. A parting gift, for all the good times. You sit down,” she demanded, and stabbed a finger at a chair.

“All right. But this isn’t why I’m here. I don’t need to know—”

“You asked for it,” she said, interrupting him smartly. “By God, you’ll get it. My mother died young, but she left my father and me first. She didn’t go far, just across the corral, so to speak. Another smooth-talking cowboy. My father never got over it, never forgave, never gave an inch. Certainly not to me. He never loved me the way I wanted him to. He couldn’t. Even if he’d tried, he couldn’t. I wasn’t a nice polite little girl. I grew up hard, and I liked it. Getting the picture?”

“Savannah, please sit down. You don’t have to do this.”

Enraged, she stalked over to him. “Listen. I haven’t even gotten started, so you just shut up and listen. We didn’t have much money. But then, a lot of people don’t,
and they get by. So did we. He liked to take risks, and he broke a lot of bones. There’s more than manure on the rodeo circuit, more than sweat. There’s desperation, too. But we got by. Things got a little interesting when I grew breasts. Men liked to stare at them, or sneak a feel. Most of the guys on the circuit had known me since I was a kid, so there wasn’t much trouble. I knew when to smile and when to use my elbow. I was never innocent. The way I lived, you’d better grow up knowing.”

He didn’t interrupt now, but sat quietly, his eyes unreadable. And her hands were cold.

“I was sixteen when I took that tumble into the hay. I wasn’t innocent, but I was a virgin. I knew, but I let myself forget, because… Because he was good-looking, exciting, charming, and, of course, he told me he’d take care of everything. No one had—”

“No one had ever taken care of you before,” Jared murmured.

“That’s right, and I was just young and stupid enough to believe him. But I knew what I was doing, knew the chance I was taking. So I got pregnant. He didn’t want me or the baby. Neither did my father. I was just like my mother, cheap, easy. He told me to get out. He might have thought differently the next day. He had a quick temper. But I wasn’t cheap, and I wasn’t easy, and I wanted the baby. Nobody was going to take that baby away from me. Nobody was going to tell me to be ashamed. They tried. Social services, sheriffs, state cops. Whenever they could catch me, they tried. They wanted me in the system so they could tell me how to act, how to raise my child or, better for everyone, to give
him away. But that wasn’t better for me, and it wasn’t better for Bryan.”

“No. The system’s flawed, Savannah. Overburdened. But it tries.”

“I didn’t need it.” She lashed back at him. “I got work, and I worked hard. I waited tables, I served drinks, I cleaned up slop. It didn’t matter what kind of work, as long as it paid. He never went hungry. My son never went hungry, and he always had a roof over his head. He always had me. He always knew I loved him and that he came first.”

“The way you never did.”

“The way I never did. Whatever it took, I was going to give him a decent life. If that meant taking off most of my clothes and dancing for a bunch of howling idiots, what difference did it make? I didn’t have an education, I didn’t have any skills. If I’d been able to go to art school—” She bit off the thought with a furious shake of her head.

“Is that what you wanted?” He kept his voice neutral, as he would have with a fragile or high-strung witness. “To go to art school.”