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The trip from Camden to Stephenville was a forty-five-minute drive. Drake drove a pickup or an SUV most of the time. Today, he planned to drive his Aston Martin. Before he could back the sports car out of the garage, Steve Logan insisted that he and his new partner, Mike Something would chauffeur them in one of Redstone Partners’ SUVs.
Drake took orders from few people, but if the security team suggested something he went along, even if grudgingly. Shannon was relieved. Not only was the trip safer in one of Redstone’s Suburbans, the roomy backseat was a more comfortable ride. Her expanded tummy made entering and exiting the Aston Martin a clumsy challenge.
Drake had awakened in a good mood. Shannon wanted this day to be perfect, but now, after his conversation with Steve Logan, a cloud hung over it. What did Steve tell him? Something about harassment of the Lockhart family, no doubt. What happened to Mandy had upped the anxiety in an already-tense situation. If only someone would figure out the guilty party. The unknowns were so scary.
They settled into the wide backseat of the Suburban. A scowl on his face, Drake leaned back against the seat, his arms crossed over his chest. Captive for the next forty-five minutes, Shannon could think of no better time to change the subject and talk to Drake about his brother and Mandy. She scooted close to her husband and hooked her hand around his elbow.
“I know you wanted to drive your sports car, but this is easier for me. I appreciate your making the concession.”
He had the grace to look sheepish. “I didn’t think about that.” His arm looped around her shoulders and he pulled her even closer. “This is cool. This is a big backseat. We can make out.”
Shannon glanced at the back of Steve’s head. She moved Drake’s arm and intertwined her fingers with his. “Shh. These guys take one look at me and at Will and think we’ve made out enough.”
“They don’t get paid for opinions,” Drake grumbled.
Shannon shouldn’t be embarrassed for Steve to hear their conversation. Except for weekends, she spent nearly as much time with him as she spent with Drake. When she went into labor with Will, only Steve was present. When her water broke and she panicked for a moment, Steve calmed her. Then he drove her to the hospital and stayed with her until Drake arrived from Fort Worth. Tramping around the obstetrics department wearing his gun on his hip, he kept an eagle-eye on everyone who came near her. He probably could have delivered Will without blinking an eye.
Unfazed, her husband gazed out the window at the sunny landscape. “Listen,” she said. “I need your undivided attention. I want to talk to you about something that’s come up.”
His attention remained focused on the passing landscape. “You always have my undivided attention, twenty-four hours a day. What is it?”
“Mandy called me yesterday. She and Pic are fighting over doctors.”
“And why would she call you? Don’t you have enough on your plate?”
“I gave her the phone number of my OB doctor weeks ago. Dr. Goodman is the third doctor she’s been to.”
“Why is she going to so many doctors? And what does that have to do with them fighting?”
Someone in the family had surely told Drake about Mandy and Pic’s difficulties, but with so much on his mind, Shannon doubted he had devoted three minutes of thought of it. She carried on. “You know she’s not having any luck getting pregnant, right?”
“I heard something about it.”
“You know what your dad said about them constantly having sex.”
“He was joking. Pic works dawn to dark. I don’t think he’s got time to constantly have sex.”
“They must manage. And nothing’s happened. Dr. Goodman wants her and Pic to make an appointment to visit her together, but Pic doesn’t want to. Mandy would like for you to take it up with him while we’re at the ranch.”
He turned his head back toward her. “And say what? That’s personal between them. I’m not about to put myself in the middle of it.”
“But, Drake—”
“Sweetheart.” He picked up her hand and brushed a kiss over her knuckles. “I don’t want something like this to fuck up the holiday. I want to kick back and relax. I want to shoot a few birds, maybe a hog or two. I want to show Will the livestock and weather permitting, take him for a horseback ride.”
“Drake, no. He’s barely a year old. He could—”
“Breeding cattle and horses is the business the ranch is in. He can’t grow up to be afraid of the animals.”
Why was she wasting breath? Drake’s getting Will onto the back of a horse was inevitable, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. She didn’t try to hide a sigh.
“Is a disagreement between Pic and Mandy about this really a big deal? Pic’s never said a word to me about having kids.”
“It’s a big deal to Mandy. All she wants you to do is persuade your brother that for them to see a doctor together is a good idea. And to convince him a female doctor is okay.”
Drake harrumphed. “How can I do that when I’m not convinced myself?”
Shannon gave him a look. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. You were there when Will was born. You saw that Dr. Goodman is a good doctor.”
“Darlin’, I was in a state of panic. I didn’t have the wits to assess the doctor’s abilities.”
“Drake—”
“I’m kidding you.” His mouth tipped into his half-grin. “Do you think I’d allow you to see a doctor in whom I had no confidence?”
He would never not allow her to have a doctor she wanted to see and she had no idea what she would do if he tried.
Since their wedding, he had come a long way in raising his opinions of professional women in general, but he might never totally abandon his chauvinistic streak. Except for whatever influence his mother might have had on him as a boy, he had grown up in a world dominated by men. He had been mentored by two unwavering misogynists—his father and grandfather—who evidently thought women were good for only one purpose.
He followed that upbringing by becoming unbelievably successful in industries populated mostly by men. Once, after an expensive mistake by a construction company’s female manager, he said: Women should stick to what they’re good at. If they don’t, they make messes and somebody has to go behind them and clean up after them.
The cleanup crew was, of course, men. Shannon let the word “allow” pass without a reply, but she gave him a flat look.
“Uh-oh. Something tells me I said the wrong thing. This is one of those female issue things, isn’t it? You’re looking at me like you want to hit me with a skillet.”
She suppressed an arm-flapping fit and poked his ribs with her finger. “You’re such a devil. I can’t tell when you’re teasing me and when you’re serious. And for the record, I haven’t had a skillet in my hands in months. I’d have to fight Gloria to get hold of one.”
He chuckled.
Damn him. He enjoyed throwing her off track in conversations he wanted to bypass. “Don’t distract me. Mandy and Pic need to figure this out and apparently, they need help. Mandy’s talking about doing that thing you do to impregnate horses.”
The deep line between his brows grew deeper. “AI?” An insincere laugh huffed out of his chest. “My brother would never agree to that. That’s for cattle and horses.”
Artificial insemination. A topic she and Drake never discussed, but he surely knew that women sometimes got pregnant artificially. She gasped. “Mandy says they do it with people all the time. In people, they call it IUI—”
“Which is an anacronym for what?”
“Intrauterine insemination.” She paused, waiting for the information to sink in.
He turned his head toward the window again and stared out. “Same thing.”
Lord, he was grouchy today. “She also wants you to talk to your brother about IVF. That’s where they would take eggs from Mandy and sperm from Pic and—”
“I can figure out how it works.” He turned back to her. “My God, Shannon, can you honestly imagine me and Pic talking about something this personal?”
“Why not? According to Mandy, y’all have shared...er, share all sorts of personal things.”
She almost blurted what Mandy had told her about Pic and Drake as teenagers and Pic’s secret collection of porn movies he and Drake sneaked around and watched. They had even let Troy watch them, though he was years younger than they.
“When we were kids maybe,” he said. “I haven’t had a personal conversation with Pic since before he and Mandy got married.”
Shannon still had much to learn about her husband, but she did know for certain that he possessed a will of iron. If he made up his mind not to discuss this with his brother, no one would persuade him otherwise. “He looks up to you. Your opinion would be important to him.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said, but he shook his head and continued to stare out the window. Shannon gave a mental sigh.
They were nearing their destination. More talk about this subject would only aggravate him and her both and she didn’t want to be aggravated on the day she gave him a wonderful Christmas present. “That’s fine. Nothing else I can say about it. I wouldn’t have brought it up if Mandy hadn’t asked me to.”
After a few beats of silence, he turned back to her, an expression of curiosity on his face. “How would they, um ... get Pic’s ... sperm?”
“You’re asking me that question? How do you suppose?”
A few more beats passed. Then he glared down at her. “Pic won’t go along with any of this. My God, Shannon—”
“I know. I know. I said I have nothing else to say about it. It’s none of our business anyway and all of it sounds kind of risky.”
“Let me tell you what’s riskier and a helluva lot more important. The bullshit that’s going on at the Double-Barrel right now. Pic needs to be thinking about the lowlife who’s harassing the ranch and the family. Nobody seems to be doing anything to make it stop. Who knows when harm will escalate to people instead of animals?”
“What about the sheriff? The Texas Rangers? I thought they’re supposed to be geniuses when it comes to solving crimes.”
“The sheriff is a damn fool and I’m disappointed in Blake and his partner. I’m considering calling his boss and asking for him to be replaced. Having so many security people around night and day is driving everybody crazy and the cost is adding up big time. Christ, I’m wondering if I’m going to have to drop everything and go down there and deal with this myself. Right now, darlin’, whether Mandy has a baby is low on the list of priorities. The next time she calls you, you need to tell her that.”
Finally. The crux of what was on his mind. Shannon, too, worried about all that had happened at the Double-Barrel just since she met Drake—Kate’s multi-million-dollar barn fire started by an arsonist and her unsettled insurance claim; the unexplained disappearance of numerous cattle; a hit-and-run accident in which she herself was badly shaken up; an irreplaceable family landmark vandalized and no one arrested; horses being shot and worst of all, an attack on Mandy’s SUV late at night. Beyond all of that, Shannon herself was concerned about Redstone Security’s monthly bill. It had to be enormous.
Finding herself in a different conversation altogether and coming closer to agreeing with her husband than with her sister-in-law, she sighed. “Mandy and I might never talk about it again. I don’t want to get into her and Pic’s personal issues any more than you do. I told her I’d mention it to you. What you do with the information is up to you. Let’s don’t discuss it anymore. This is going to be a great day. You’re going to love the surprise. I want you to be in a good mood.”
He leaned toward her and kissed her. “I am in a good mood. I don’t mean to make you think I’m not. We haven’t spent a whole day together just the two of us in a while. That’s better than anything I could wish for.” He pulled her close again. “I’m excited about the surprise, sweetheart.”
As they rode in silence, Drake’s words hit home: ...bullshit that’s going on at that ranch right now.... Who knows when harm will escalate to people instead of animals?”
Dear God. Would they be safe at the Double-Barrel? Did she need to worry about her own babies?
***
“I’VE SENT HIM A DOZEN text messages, but he only texted me back once. He didn’t even wish me a Merry Christmas.”
Jordan Palmer’s bleached-blond lunch companion, Dorinda Fisk, had been whining and bawling for an hour.
Sitting at a table in a busy café with a weeping woman was not his idea of a good time. A few diners at nearby tables discreetly stared from the corners of their eyes. He growled mentally. He had no interest in having lunch, dinner or even a snack with Dorinda, but after she called him, wailing about Troy Rattigan dumping her, his curiosity had overpowered his good sense.
His mind wandering, he glanced around. Elaborate Christmas decorations adorned not just this café, but the entire Galleria mall. Christmas. Ugh. Shit. While he was here, should he pick up a gift for his mother? What could he buy her that she couldn’t buy for herself? Hell, she had more money than he did. ... Still, he had a couple of her credit cards in his wallet. ... He could probably find something. ... If he ever escaped this lunch.
His plate held a half-eaten pizza slice. He should have ordered soup or a sandwich or something. Even if he were a lover of pizza, which he was not, he wouldn’t choose to eat it in a department store café, even a department store as fancy as Nordstrom’s. Dorinda said she was paying, so he hadn’t argued about the location.
He slid his plate aside, braced an elbow on the table and propped his chin on his palm. “I’ve sent him a couple of texts myself, Dorinda. He hasn’t replied to me either.”
She drew a deep sniff and pawed inside a giant purse that had some designer’s initials on it. The monstrosity had probably cost as much as a month’s rent for Jordan’s shitty apartment. Or hell, for all he knew, it was a knock-off. She pulled out a tissue, dabbed at her eyes then blew her nose. Under the fluorescent lighting, large diamonds glinted from rings on both of her hands. She wore rings on five of her ten fingers.
“If his text wasn’t to wish you a Merry Christmas, why did he send it?” he asked her. “What did he say?”
“He told me not to text him anymore unless I talked to Blake Rafferty.”
A sharp pang knifed through Jordan’s midsection. Fuck! The Texas Rangers was a serious law enforcement organization with whom no one with a brain played games. They nailed people’s asses when no other cops could. He straightened from his relaxed posture, leaned across the table and spoke in a stage whisper. “That’s out of the question, Dorinda. I hope you told him to forget it.”
She frowned. “Don’t be silly. Even if I wanted to talk to some Texas Ranger, Duncan’s fixed it so I can’t.”
Duncan Fisk, Dorinda’s husband, was a powerful United States Senator who sat on several committees. Before that, he was a prominent personal injury lawyer in Dallas. His influence had long tentacles. Over a year ago, at Fisk’s request, the governor had restrained Blake Rafferty and his partner from interviewing Dorinda. Even so, if a Ranger had a valid case, he could interrogate anyone he chose, including the governor himself. The fact that Rafferty and Dawson hadn’t taken that step where Dorinda was concerned must mean that they were still looking for evidence.
That bit of knowledge settled a modicum of relief within Jordan and he relaxed, but only slightly. Rafferty was like a dog with a new rawhide bone. He would just keep gnawing. Sooner or later, he would dig up something that enabled him to override the restraining order that protected Dorinda. No point in alerting her to that fact and causing her to faint. Hell, she might drown in her own tears, right here on the floor of the Marketplace Café.
She sniffed loudly. “Duncan and the governor are old friends, you know. Chuck’s been taking orders from Duncan for a long time. He’ll do anything Duncan tells him to.”
Helps to have friends in high places—an axiom Jordan never forgot.
Governor Chuck Garner and Duncan Fisk both were career politicians. Which one was the most corrupt was an ongoing debate in the Texas news media. Garner was the worst governor Texans had elected in years and Duncan Fisk was probably the most crooked Senator.
“Yeah, well, thank God for corrupt politicians.”
She gave a little gasp. “Are you calling my husband crooked?”
Jordon assumed his most obsequious persona and pulled his brow into a furrow of contrition. “No, no, darlin’. I’d never say that about Duncan. Why, he and I are friends. I was talking about the governor.”
“I know what you mean about Chuck.” Dorinda prowled inside her purse again, came up with a silver compact, opened it and studied her eye makeup that had become wide swatches of black under her eyes.
“You look like a raccoon,” Jordan told her.
“Shut up, Jordan.” She dipped a Kleenex into her water glass and wiped at the bands of mascara, but to no avail. “Chuck gets on Duncan’s nerves, you know, but I told him if he can keep that Blake Rafferty and Jack Dawson from badgering me, at least he’s good for something.” She gave an exaggerated shudder, snapped her compact closed and dropped it back into her purse. “Even if he can’t get it up.”
Jordan’s brow shot up. Holy shit! Had she screwed the governor? It wasn’t impossible. It wasn’t even hard to imagine. Chuck Garner had no more scruples in his personal life than in his political life and Dorinda and her bosom-buddy Lana had fucked half of Texas. Jordan could think of no reason for them to overlook the governor.
Did she and Lana, or even Duncan, and the governor play their kinky games together? Wow, wow, wow. Would Jordan love to know the answer to that question. Just a hint that it was true could be extremely useful.
This was getting serious. Dorinda wasn’t a strong woman and she wasn’t very smart either. She and her girlfriends were nothing more than vapid sluts with time on their hands and more money than brains. With no kids to take care of, they concentrated on shopping and having a good time. They spent hours on attempts to beautify themselves and look younger and they collected young guys like some women collected dolls.
The day would come when she was forced into an interview with the Texas Rangers. Jordan had no idea how she would hold up under pressure from a member of that organization. He suspected she would fall apart like a house of cards and spill her guts. Dumb bitch.
If he, Jordan, failed to take control of this situation, he could be spending next Christmas in a jail cell, in which case, he would never have the opportunity to impose justice on a man who deserved it, William Drake Lockhart, Jr.
With the Texas Rangers eager to question Dorinda about her association with Troy Rattigan, for Jordan to be seen having lunch with her was dumb. Someone might recall his own past association with the Lockhart family and with Troy. So far, the cops had left him alone, but anything could happen. He glanced around again, spotted no one familiar in the immediate vicinity, but this was a large, busy café. No way to know if someone might be lurking somewhere out of his range of sight.
He consoled himself with being able to explain the company he kept by saying he was having lunch with an old friend. Dorinda was an old acquaintance, if not necessarily a friend to anybody. What was that old saying? If you want to have a friend, be a friend? That didn’t apply to Dorinda or any of her associates.
She poured another glass of wine from a fresh carafe just delivered by the waitress. “He cares about me. I know he does.”
How many women had Jordan heard say this about Troy Rattigan? Females tagged after him as if he were Pied Piper and every fuckin’ one of them thought he cared. Any number of times over the years, Jordan had heard some stupid-ass woman say Troy made her feel safe. How could a man who cared more about horses than people make a woman feel safe?
Jordan had to admit that what Dorinda had going on with Troy was different from her past mischief with others. She had fallen hard and fast, but Jordan was certain the Troy Rattigan he knew hadn’t viewed his fling with her the same way she did. All Troy wanted from women was a scratch at a temporary itch.
She continued to sniffle and guzzle wine; he continued to scan his surroundings. His right knee bounced up and down. Nordstrom’s teemed with shoppers. This was North Dallas. Most of them probably were rich with no spending limits on their credit cards. Something squeezed inside Jordan’s rib cage. He hated them, especially the ones who were born rich. Dammit, he deserved to be rich, but he wasn’t. He had lived all of his life around rich people, but he personally had never been an insider in that world. He had grown up as the proverbial kid staring into the window of a candy store.
Oh, he had tried half a dozen schemes to get rich, but nothing ever worked out. Even his current gig, commercial real estate, hadn’t been as lucrative for him as for others. And the responsibility for that deplorable happenstance lay with that fucker, William Drake Lockhart, Jr.
Dorinda broke into tears again. “I miss him so much. If he’d just talk to me ...”
Oh, Jesus Christ. Not more tears. “How the hell do you miss him?” Jordan snapped. “You never spent that much time talking to him anyway. If you cared so much about him, maybe you shouldn’t have showed him your kinky side. Hell, I used to wonder if he’d have any skin left on his dick after you got through with him.”
“Jordan! That is so tacky. He could’ve said no.”
“Really, Dorinda? How many young studs have said no?” Jordan sat back in his chair and gave her a smirk. “On the other hand, when you think about it, maybe saying no is what he just did.”
She broke into a new spate of tears. “Why are you being so mean to me? I’m not mean to you. I miss him so much. He didn’t even text me back when I congratulated him for winning—”
“Stop bawling, Dorinda!” Jordan threw up a palm. “Jesus! You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. Telling him you were going to leave Duncan scared the shit out of him. What were you thinking? Didn’t you hear what I said? If you’d restricted your get-togethers to sex, good times and rock and roll ... if you hadn’t started all of that love crap with him, he’d still be accessible and we could keep up with what’s going on with the Lockharts.”
Her black-rimmed eyes blinked rapidly. “What? Why should I care about keeping up with what’s going on with the Lockharts? They haven’t done anything to me.”
Jordan barely overcame the primal urge to put his hands around the woman’s throat and choke the living shit out of her. “But they’ve done something to your husband, Dorinda. Where’s your head? Duncan damn near lost his Senate seat because of Bill Lockhart. That old reprobate poured piles of money into the campaign, trying to get that fool that ran against Duncan elected. Those votes from all of those illegals in South Texas were all that saved him.”
“Well, you know what? The Lockharts are your problem. You’re the one with a vendetta. I never should’ve let you talk me into getting involved with this—this crime crap. Look what happened to poor Billy. Lana really likes him and she can’t even see him.”
Billy Barrett was one of “Lana’s boys.” Jordan dared not fail at keeping up with his activities. At present, he was in the Tarrant County jail on a DWI. He had been questioned twice about Kate Lockhart’s barn fire three years back and arrested once, a fact that still made Jordan nervous. Billy was lucky. Jordan, too. The insurance company and the Texas Rangers hadn’t had the evidence to link either of them to the fire.
Jordan leaned forward again and spoke in a low voice. “Billy’s a loose cannon, Dorinda, and he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s liable to trade spilling everything he knows for a blow job. I told you about him, but the minute Lana got a glimpse of his big dick, she couldn’t wait to get her mouth around it. He’s nothing but a hoodlum who’ll never amount to shit.” Jordan emphasized with air quotes. “You need to cut him out of your inner circle.”
Her blue eyes bugged and glared. She, too, leaned across the table and spoke with a tight-jawed hiss. “He’s not in my inner circle. But you’ve got to admit, hotshot, he came in handy when you wanted some dirty work done. I can’t think of many people lowdown enough to drive up the road and shoot some poor innocent horses for no good reason other than you said so.”
Fuck! Jordan’s head swiveled left and right, checking out their surroundings. Who had heard her? “Shut your mouth, Dorinda. People can hear you.”
She sat back and returned to sniffling and whining. “Jordan, you’ve got to talk to Troy and tell him to get in touch with me. It’s Christmas. I’ve got a present for him.”
Jordan clenched his teeth. “Don’t. Whine. I cannot stand a whining woman. I’m not in touch with him these days. I’ve been busy. And he’s been busy with his damn horses.”
And he’s probably fucking some hot babe who’s closer to his age.
“I love him. I want to be with him. He’s just confused. His brothers have been telling him lies.”
No doubt. The older Lockhart brothers had no qualms about passing judgment and Drake was the biggest hypocrite of the whole fuckin’ family. That fucker had hit him in the mouth and loosened two of his teeth. Jordan should’ve sued him back when he’d had the chance.
Dorinda’s ignorance never ceased to amaze. Jordan shook his head. As many men as she had screwed in myriad ways, she should have figured out by now that young studly millionaires didn’t fall in love with sluts or make lifelong commitments to manipulative rich bitches who already had husbands.
“You’d better re-think that, love. I can tell you this much about Troy. He’s not looking for a permanent human companion. You’d better stick with Duncan. He’s got deep pockets and he doesn’t give a shit what you do.”
Jordan stopped short of telling her the rest of his thoughts. Billy had damn near been caught when he banged up Pic’s wife’s car. He had gotten so carried away in his enthusiasm for doing damage, the car was declared totaled. Unknown was what other damage Billy might have inflicted against Amanda Lockhart personally if he’d gotten his hands on her before she ran back inside the building.
Sensing danger in the air, Jordan scooted away from the table. He had to get out of here. “Look, Dorinda, I’ve got an appointment and I’ve got to buy my mother a Christmas present.” He stood, lifted his jacket off the chair back and shrugged into it. “You need to go to the little girls’ room and pull yourself together. Your nose is so red you look like Rudolph. You’ll be lucky to get to your car without seeing anyone you know.”
He strode out of the café and away from Dorinda Fisk. He had one thought. He wouldn’t trust that woman as far as he could throw an elephant. She had no clue the risk that loomed for her, her husband and the governor.
And the worst part, for Jordan himself.
As he stepped out into the mall, he was met with a din of many voices blended with Christmas music. With the big day only a week away, the mall was packed with shoppers. He couldn’t even reach the entrance to stores without crossing the moving crowd. The thought of shopping in this environment and battling the rude, pushing mob took on monstrous proportions. “Fuck it,” he grumbled and headed for the mall’s exit.
Outside in the parking lot, he stood for a few beats orienting himself and trying to spot where he parked his Lexus, on which he’d had to borrow the money from his mother to make the December lease payment. He finally remembered and headed in that direction, his thoughts glued to his own association with Troy Rattigan.
They had met during Jordan’s short engagement to Troy’s half-sister, Kate Lockhart. Even at twenty-two years old, Troy had been an interesting young man who people—especially women—wanted to be around. He had charisma. Mystique.
These days, people were calling him a horse whisperer who magically “fixed” problem horses. But more than that, without trying, almost unconsciously, he drew people to him. Everyone—men as well as women—wanted to be near and be liked by the great Troy Rattigan who saw into the minds of horses and the souls of troubled human beings. Once, Jordan himself had similar feelings about the bastard, but he had damn sure gotten over them.
Approaching the dark green sedan, his thoughts veered to the Lockharts. All of the ways he had been slighted over the years, either directly or indirectly, by those fucking plutocrats swirled inside his head, starting when he was just a boy.
He beeped the driver’s door open and slid behind the wheel, relishing the way the luxury car’s leather seats hugged his body. His thoughts still roiled. He cranked the engine and sat a few seconds, waiting for the heat.
His mother had told him the story of her and Bill Junior’s affair so many times it tattooed like a drumbeat in his head. Thirty-eight years had gone by since she met Bill Junior and changed Jordan’s life.
Jordan’s dad had been a blue-collar employee in a plastics molding plant. His mother worked as a legal secretary at a silk-stocking law firm in Fort Worth. There had never been enough money.
Bill Junior, even though he had a wife and kids, was a known cockhound. He must have found it easy to sweep Marlene Palmer off her feet.
After he came on to her, her peers warned her about him, but he made her believe he loved her. The law firm employees speculated and whispered. Gossip raced through the firm’s three floors like a Texas range fire.
Bill Junior had never loved her. He had bullshitted her to get into her panties like he bullshitted so many women over the years. The sonofabitch had the libido of a dog pack.
Jordan backed out of his parking slot and eased toward the mall exit. More memories took him back to the day his dad discovered the affair. The story was that he confronted her at her job and a loud, nasty fight ensued. Such an unheard-of incident went off like an explosion in the staid old law firm and she was fired.
Later at home, Jordan’s dad questioned if Jordan was really his son. Ed Palmer walked away from his family, never to be heard from again, except through the courts where Marlene Palmer fought him endlessly for child support. She had lost the husband and breadwinner on whom she had cheated, but Jordan lost his father. Meanwhile, Bill Junior strolled back to the Double-Barrel Ranch in Drinkwell, ninety miles away from the turmoil he had instigated, as if nothing had happened.
For most of his youth, Jordan, too, wondered if Bill Junior was his father. He seduced and even got engaged to Kate Lockhart and stole a DNA sample attempting to learn the truth. As it turned out, he was Ed Palmer’s son, with no relationship to Bill Junior. His disappointment had been devastating. He desperately wanted to be the son of a millionaire.
As he waited for an opportunity to pull into the heavy traffic, an image of his mother when she was a younger woman floated into his thoughts. He remembered her as being a beautiful. She was nearly sixty now, but she was still a looker. And she was still as naïve as a kid.
So much anger and aggravation stewed within Jordan, he ran out of patience and darted in front of a long line of traffic. Horns blared, brakes squealed, but he ignored them. He roared toward the freeway, his thoughts still focused on how he had been cheated.
Following the scandal, Jordan’s mother and he lived a hand-to-mouth existence in a lower middleclass part of Fort Worth. Every day of his youth, she preached at him about all he couldn’t have because of that no-good, sorry bastard Bill Lockhart.
She found another job at another law firm and eventually married one of the partners, a widower years older than she. A new problem arose for Jordan. His new step-father’s three grown children were determined to see that their little step-brother didn’t gain a foothold in their family unit and thus the fortune they expected to inherit. The stingy old fucker did pay for Jordan to go to TCU, but so what? That was coffee money to a man as rich as his step-father and the degree in sociology Jordan earned had not enabled him to get a job that supported the lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed.
Upon his step-father’s passing, Jordan expected to receive some sort of an inheritance, some small part of the successful attorney’s substantial estate. Overwhelming disappointment struck again. The old skinflint left most of it to those kids from his first marriage. He left Jordan’s mother a nice home and a small estate that supported her reasonably well, but he left Jordan nothing.
In the end, his mother’s affair with Bill Junior must not have amounted to as much as it had been made out to be. Nowadays, all had been forgiven and forgotten by his mother. After all, she was taken care of. But Jordan hadn’t forgotten. And he damn sure hadn’t forgiven. He was the one who had been left no money. He would go to his grave pissed off at all of the people who could have done something for him and didn’t.
As he drove, he checked his phone again for a text from Troy. If he could ever get an answer, maybe he could find out if the Rangers still considered Troy a person-of-interest in Kate’s fire. Or, if they had moved on to someone else, who might that someone be?
Fuck! Nothing. Did he have to actually go to the Double-Barrel to get Troy’s attention? The ranch always held an open house at Christmas. Maybe he should drop in....
He had to do something before the whole world fell apart around him. He had to make certain the great Bill Junior got his, big time. He made a new vow. The Double-Barrel Ranch’s bad luck up to this point had been mere pinpricks.
