Your pregnant sister,
Cricket
P.S. Creed and baby Jesse send their love.
Sloan sighed. She supposed the pattern of her relationship with Cricket had been set too many years ago for her to change it now.
“Howdy there.”
Sloan sprang upright and whirled toward the voice, a Colt Patterson appearing in her hand. “Dear God, Luke! I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me like that. I almost shot you!”
Luke had a sheepish grin on his face and an apology written in his hazel eyes. He pulled his flat-brimmed hat off. His hand automatically reached up to brush back the sun-streaked hair that fell across his forehead. “Sorry about that. Guess that, being a Ranger, sneaking around just comes natural. I’ll try to give you fair warning next time. So . . . am I forgiven?”
Sloan gestured toward the ground next to her. “Come on and join me. I could use some company.” That was an understatement.
The lanky young man slipped cross-legged to the ground along with Sloan. The Texas Rangers didn’t have a uniform, and Luke wore an open-throated dark blue linsey-woolsey shirt and fringed buckskin trousers with knee-high moccasins. He looked totally comfortable on the ground. Once they were both seated, an awkward silence fell between them.
Sloan eyeballed the Ranger sideways. She knew Luke for a steady man, but right now his hands were anything but still. He straightened the brim on his hat, smoothed the snug material across his muscular thigh, then played with the fringe on his trousers. Whatever it was he wanted to say wasn’t sitting comfortably on his shoulders.
“Spit it out,” she suggested. “I doubt it’s going to go down any easier even if you keep chewing on it.”
He cleared his throat once before he said, “I decided to take you up on your invitation to visit, but I stopped by to visit Cricket and Creed on my way here. Uh . . . Cricket . . . uh . . . said you were in some sort of trouble.”
Sloan stiffened. How dare Cricket reveal her personal business to Luke! Not that Luke wasn’t the kind of person you confided in. He was. But choosing to confide in Luke was one thing; having the choice taken out of her hands was something else altogether.
“This is none of your business, Luke. Cricket spoke out of turn.”
“I just thought—”
“Don’t think! Forget anything Cricket said, and mind your own business.”
Luke wanted to tell her this was his business. But she would find that out soon enough. “I only wanted to say if there’s anything I can do to help, please ask.”
Sloan tore at the grass in front of her, mercilessly shredding each helpless blade. “I don’t need any help. I can handle my own problems.”
She sounded so much like Cricket, it was eerie, Luke thought. But then, Rip had raised his daughters to take care of themselves. Even soft-spoken Bay had a core of iron down her back, though it had taken several years of living among the Comanches to reveal it.
“All right, Sloan, it’s forgotten.” He pulled out a stem of seed grass and bit down on the end, sucking the sweet juice while he waited for her to calm down. “How’s Rip?” he asked offhandedly.
“Mad as a hornet,” Sloan replied.
“Oh?”
“This situation with Cruz has him upset.”
“What situation is that?”
“Damn it all, Luke! I said I don’t want to talk about this.” Sloan laughed at herself and shook her head. “Yet here I am spilling the beans. What is it about you that pries at closed lips like a coon at a crayfish?”
Luke shrugged and let a lazy smile tilt his lips up at the corners.
Sloan sighed and muttered, “Hell, I ought to go ahead and tell you. You know the parties involved, but you don’t have a stake in the outcome.”
Luke kept his mouth shut and waited for Sloan to make up her mind about what she wanted to do. Patience was something he had learned young, right along with disappointment.
Sloan had kept the secret from everyone for so long, it was hard to speak of it aloud. “Four years ago . . .” She cleared her throat and began again. “Four years ago I went to Cruz and asked for his help. I wanted him to take Tonio’s child when it was born. As you know, he agreed, and the Guerreros have raised my son. But Cruz demanded something in return, something that’s been a secret between the two of us.”
When Sloan paused, Luke said, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Sloan met Luke’s sympathetic gaze and suddenly knew why both her sisters had befriended him. She felt an affinity to the young Ranger she simply couldn’t explain. Luke’s encouraging smile made it easier for her to continue. “I guess I need to talk with someone, and you’re here.”
She took a deep breath and said, “Cruz asked that I marry him to legitimize Cisco, so he would bear the Guerrero name.”
Sloan glanced at Luke to see if she had shocked him, but Luke’s expression was more somber than anything else.
“So Cruz took your son . . . but you never married him?”
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly?”
Sloan found it hard to meet Luke’s inquiring gaze. She fidgeted with her Colt Patterson as she spoke, splitting it into three parts and then putting it back together again.
She continued, “We signed legal papers naming us man and wife. But we didn’t say any vows before a priest. And I made him agree that the marriage wouldn’t be . . .” Sloan swallowed. “. . . that he wouldn’t touch me until Tonio’s murder had been avenged.
“You know the rest. I once told Cruz that if he ever wanted out of the marriage, he could have it annulled. But he never did.”
“Why not?”
“How should I know?” Sloan answered irritably. She had never questioned Cruz’s motives. She had never understood his demand that she marry him. But she would have done anything to get him to take her unborn child.
Now, years later, she was seeing the fruit of her folly.
“So what’s the problem with Cruz that has your father upset?” Luke asked.
Sloan took a deep breath and let it out again. “Now that Alejandro is dead, Cruz wants to make the marriage real. He wants me to live with him at Rancho Dolorosa.”
“That sounds fair. But I can see how Rip would be a little upset.” Luke snorted, then laughed aloud.
Sloan frowned. She hadn’t expected Luke to take Cruz’s side in the matter, and she certainly hadn’t expected him to laugh at her situation. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry, Sloan. I didn’t mean to suggest your problem isn’t a real one. But it just occurred to me that your father has made all these grandiose plans for his daughters to carry on at Three Oaks after he’s gone, and one by one you’re all getting married and leaving. What’s he going to do once you’re gone?”
“I haven’t agreed to go with Cruz,” Sloan snapped. “And it’s doubtful I will—for precisely the reason you’ve named. I’ve spent a lifetime learning to manage Three Oaks. It’s my birthright. I’ve been bred to it. Besides, what would I do as the wife of Don Cruz Almicar Guerrero?”
Luke grinned, revealing strong white teeth that overlapped slightly in front. “I can think of a few things, but I’m not sure you want me to mention them.”
Sloan flushed. “No, I don’t.”
“Don’t you want to have a husband and children?”
“I have a husband and a child already.”
“Not a real husband. And when was the last time you saw your son?”
Sloan paled. “What good is having a husband if I have to give up Three Oaks?”
“The land isn’t everything, Sloan.”
“To me it is,” she replied quietly. “It’s the only thing I can count on.”
Luke looked into Sloan’s chocolate-brown eyes and saw a kindred soul. She knew the bitterness of betrayal as he did. She trusted no one; nor did he. She was alone, as he was.
The big difference was that she now had a chance to move beyond the tragedy that had scarred her life. Cruz Guerrero was nothing like his brother Antonio.
“I think you’re making a big mistake if you don’t think twice about fulfilling your bargain with Cruz,” Luke said.
“I have been thinking. I’ve done nothing but think for the past five days, since he showed up at Three Oaks and gave me an ultimatum—come to Dolorosa or he’d be back with his vaqueros to get me.” Sloan brushed a wisp of sable hair from her cheekbone.
“How do you feel about Cruz . . . as a man?” Luke asked.
Sloan shivered. She had been carefully avoiding this subject because the truth was that she found Cruz tantalizing in a way his younger brother never had been. But she wasn’t about to admit that to Luke.
“What do you want me to say? He’s strong and well formed. He has eyes as blue as the Texas sky and crow-wing black hair.” She shrugged dismissively. “He’s an attractive man. There’s no denying it.
“But he’s also arrogant and demanding. He’s used to giving orders and having them obeyed. And he doesn’t know the meaning of the word
compromise
!”
That last accusation wasn’t exactly precise, Sloan admitted, but it was true enough to mean problems if she found herself living with Cruz.
“Have you imagined what it would be like to—”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“How can you choose Three Oaks over a flesh-and-blood man when you won’t let yourself consider what the man has to offer you?”
“I’ve had a man between my legs,” Sloan said crudely, hoping to end the conversation. “I can’t imagine one is much different from another.”
Luke didn’t contradict her. She would have to find out the truth for herself. “You could give it a try. Things might work out. Did you ever think maybe you could use someone to lean on once in a while, someone to share your troubles and lighten the load?”
“That’s the last thing I need.” But Sloan knew the vehemence of her objection was directly related to the immense appeal of Luke’s suggestion.
Luke stood up and brushed the grass and dirt from the seat of his pants. “Sounds like you have your mind made up.”
Sloan rubbed her palms on the knees of her trousers, then looked up to meet Luke’s penetrating gaze. “I guess I do.”
“I’ll be going, then.” He wasn’t going to try to change Sloan’s mind. But he wasn’t going to approve of her decision, either. He swung into the saddle and kneed his chestnut gelding away from the river at a walk.
“Luke . . .”
He reined in his horse and looked back at Sloan over his shoulder, waiting for her to speak.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thanks for listening. I . . . needed . . . someone.” It was a hard thing to admit aloud.
“You’re welcome, Sloan. Anytime.” He nudged his horse with his heels and soon left her behind him.
Luke felt a well of anger rising inside him and struggled to subdue it. He shouldn’t care what Sloan Stewart did with her life, but he couldn’t seem to distance himself from any woman in distress. A legacy from his childhood, he thought with disgust, when his mother had needed someone to rescue her from the mire and he had been too young to help. He had grown up as fast as he could, but it had still been too slow to make a difference.
He wanted to help Sloan, but he debated the wisdom of interfering. Maybe he would only make things worse. He had no way of predicting how Rip would react to the message he planned to deliver.
Aw, hell! All Rip Stewart had ever wanted was a son. Knowing he had one—even if he was a bastard—was bound to make a difference.
Luke turned his mount toward the plantation house. There was no time like the present for digging up bitter, long-buried secrets.
S
LOAN SQUARED HER SHOULDERS AND LIFTED
her chin to confront her father. “I don’t care how many of your bastard sons turn up on the doorstep. Three Oaks is mine! And I don’t intend to share it!”
Rip quivered with repressed wrath. He had raised his eldest daughter to know her own mind, and he had never been sorry for it. But it was past time she understood that despite the recent stroke that forced him to lean on a cane for support, he was still the master of Three Oaks.
“Until I’m planted six feet underground, Three Oaks is mine,” he thundered. “It will be yours when, and if, I say it is.”
“You promised—”
“Whatever promises I made to you came before I found out I had a son.”
“You’d give Three Oaks to a bastard son you didn’t even know about until this morning, when I’ve worked my fingers to the bone all my life for this land? You wouldn’t dare! This plantation belongs to me. I’ve earned it!”
“Bastard or not, Luke Summers is my son. If I choose to divide Three Oaks between the two of you, I will.”
“You can’t! You wouldn’t! I would never allow—”
“
You
don’t allow anything.
I
make the decisions here,” he bellowed.
“Not since your stroke, you haven’t,” Sloan countered, her voice choked with frustration and fury. “For the past nine months, I’ve made the decisions. I’ve run Three Oaks and you’ve leaned back in your rocker and watched me do it. I have no intention of letting you take it away from me now.”
“That’s enough!”
“No, it’s not enough. I haven’t begun—”
Rip’s hand streaked out to silence Sloan. He could not bear to hear the truth she spoke, and fear—fear that he was growing older, fear that he was no longer in control—had brought the back of his hand across his daughter’s proud face.
He saw the growing red mark on her cheek and knew it would soon be a dark bruise. He felt ashamed, but he offered no apology. He’d had no practice at it in the past and now . . .
He could not explain to her the fears that had prompted his violence. His recent close brush with death had created a fierce need in him to ensure the continuity of Three Oaks. He had counted it nothing short of a miracle when Luke Summers had arrived on his doorstep that morning and announced, “I’m your son.”
Even knowledge of Luke’s bastardy had not forestalled the surge of emotion Rip had experienced at this devil-inspired answer to the fervent prayers of his youth. He could not help his reaction to the knowledge he had a son. He wanted to give Luke a part of himself. And that meant giving Luke a part of Three Oaks.