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  But Blackjack hadn’t been a perfect father, either. He’d taught Trace everything he needed to know to run the Bitter Creek Cattle Company, then made it plain he had no intention of relinquishing control of the day-to-day operations of the ranch to his eldest son anytime soon.

  Callie knew Trace chafed at his father’s strictures. She knew he wanted to make his own way in the world, away from his father’s vast sphere of influence. She had tried very hard to want what he wanted. But her needs were very different from his.

  The Creeds had always lived on the brink of financial disaster. Callie had learned early to make do, to cut corners, to bargain and plead and placate. She treasured her home at Three Oaks all the more because she knew at any moment it could be lost. As the eldest, she had always been given a great deal of responsibility. Her father had needed her help just to make ends meet. She had yearned for the financial security, and the freedom to get up and go, that Trace took so much for granted.

  She couldn’t walk away from her family, because they needed her. He couldn’t bear to stay with his, because they didn’t.

  There were things she could say that would make Trace stay with her, but there was no hope that anytime in the near future her father would welcome a Blackthorne across his threshold. So what was the point?

  “I love you, Trace,” she said sadly.

  “Just not enough to defy your father and marry me,” Trace replied bitterly. “I should have known better than to get involved with a Creed. My father always said you couldn’t be trusted. What about the promises you made to me, Callie? Were those all a bunch of lies?”

  Callie’s stomach clenched. “Please, Trace. You’re angry and upset right now because we can’t be together, but—”

  “You’re the one pushing me away, Callie. You’re the one afraid to take a chance. Remember that. Because I won’t come crawling back.”

  Callie felt the acid rising in her throat. Not now. Oh, God. Not now.

  Trace grabbed his canvas backpack on the way to the door. “I don’t have to get my teeth kicked in more than once to learn my lesson. I’m out of here.”

  The door slammed, and she was alone. Not quite alone. She let her hand rest on the small mound below her waist. She swallowed several times, but it was a losing battle. Callie raced for the bathroom.

  Afterward, she pressed a cool, damp washcloth against her mouth as she stared at herself in the mirror. Eighteen and pregnant. And unmarried.

  You should have told him.

  I will. Someday. If he ever comes back.

  Chapter 1

  ELEVEN YEARS LATER.

  “YOU BLACKTHORNES ARE ALL GREEDY, thieving sons-of-bitches!”

  Trace kept his features even, but his heart was thudding, and beneath the ancient oak desk, his hands were fisted on rock-hard thighs. He barely resisted blurting, Those are fighting words, Dusty.

  They were, of course. But it sounded too much like dialogue from the barroom showdown in a western B movie. The scenario was classic Louis L’Amour, but Trace resisted the comparison, because he would have been forced to cast himself as villain, rather than hero.

  “Just sign the papers, Dusty,” he said in a level voice.

  But the young man sitting across from him had apparently crossed some threshold between rational being and trapped animal. Dusty Simpson scrabbled for the pair of crutches lying beside his chair. One crutch fell beyond the carpet, clattering across the polished hardwood floor. He shoved himself upright on the crutch he had left and stood, wavering on a single leg, the other having been amputated just above the knee. “Come and get me, Trace. Come on, take a swing!” Dusty yelled.

  Trace met Dusty’s furious gaze—furious, he knew, because Dusty must have felt so impotent—and said, “I don’t fight cripples.”

  He watched the blood drain from Dusty’s face, taking the fight along with it.

  “Sit down, Dusty.”

  The one-legged man, his whole body quivering with anger, stubbornly balanced himself between his booted foot and the crutch. “How do you live with yourself? Mine isn’t the first small ranch that’s been gobbled up by you Blackthornes. But you were best man at my wedding! You’re godfather to my two girls! What kind of friend are you?”

  “I’m only following orders,” Trace said through tight jaws.

  “Yeah. I know,” Dusty replied, a sneer twisting his features. “If Blackjack told you to jump off a cliff, you’d find yourself dead in the rocks below by sundown.”

  Trace’s eyes narrowed. He’d made the mistake, when he’d had one too many Lone Stars on Dusty’s back porch, of confiding the truth to his friend. It might look to the world like Trace Blackthorne had managed the Bitter Creek Cattle Company since his father’s heart attack three months ago, but Blackjack held a tight rein on everything Trace did and roweled with sharp, painful spurs when he wanted his dirty work done. Like now.

  Trace watched as tears welled in his friend’s eyes. He’d sat beside Dusty’s wife Lou Ann at the hospital while Dusty had the surgery that took off his leg, leaving him unable to compete in the arena on a cutting horse and thus unable to pay the mortgage on his ranch. Trace hated what Blackjack was forcing him to do. But he had no choice.

  “What happened to you, losing your leg in that car accident, was a tragedy,” Trace said. “But if we hadn’t bought the Rafter S, it would have gone into foreclosure.”

  “Blackjack owns the bank that holds my mortgage, Trace. Are you saying you couldn’t have talked to your dad, maybe persuaded him to give me a little more time to get back on my feet? Aw, hell. On my one damned foot?”

  Trace bit back an apology for his father’s ruthlessness. He’d learned some hard lessons at Blackjack’s side. Dusty was like a calf choking on a string of barbed wire tangled around its throat. When Trace was ten years old, he’d ignored his father’s order to kill the animal and tried to untangle the wire. But the harder he’d worked to unwind the deadly garrote, the harder the calf had struggled, and the more it had suffered. He’d learned it was more merciful to simply kill the calf and end its pain.

  “Sign the papers, so we can get this over with,” Trace said.

  Dusty sank into the horn and cowhide chair, defeated. The crutch landed with a thump on the handwoven Turkish carpet that framed the two chairs in front of the desk.

  “What am I going to do, Trace? How am I going to support Lou Ann and the girls? Without my leg, I’ll never ride well enough to work as a trainer. It would have been better for everyone if I’d died in that crash!”

  “Don’t talk like a fool.”

  “I’ve never said anything in my life that made more sense,” Dusty said. “The mortgage insurance would have paid off the ranch, and my life insurance would have given Lou Ann and the kids something to live on. Instead, my kids are being forced to leave the only home they’ve ever known, and Lou Ann is … is stuck with half a man.”

  Trace opened his mouth to frame a denial, but Dusty cut him off.

  “Before I came over here this morning, I sat in the barn for a long time with the barrel of my grandfather’s Navy Colt stuck in my mouth.”

  Trace felt his heart take an extra beat. “Dusty—”

  “I figured killing myself was the best thing I could do for them.” Dusty’s hands gripped the arms of the chair so hard his knuckles turned bone white. He glanced fleetingly at Trace, then away. “But I couldn’t make myself pull the trigger. So here I am.”

  Trace’s insides tightened, as though he were looking at a savage open wound. His friend was hurting, and he needed desperately to do something to take away his pain. But Dusty wasn’t some poor, dumb animal that could be put out of its misery.

  Trace said the first thing that came into his head, an idea he’d been mulling over but had delayed acting upon, because he knew it would mean another fight with his father.

  “I wasn’t going to mention this until later,” he said, “but now is as good a time as any to ask. How would you like to work for me?”


  Dusty grimaced. “You mean work for Blackjack? I’d rather starve in the street.”

  “No. I mean work for me. I’m starting up my own quarter horse operation.”

  “Since when?” Dusty asked suspiciously.

  Trace managed a crooked smile. “Since you became available to run a breeding program for me. Who knows better what makes a good cutting horse than the man who’s ridden a horse in the finals of the Futurity, the Stakes, and the Derby?” Dusty was one of only a few riders to make the finals in all three events in the triple crown of cutting horse competitions.

  Dusty rubbed the sandy-colored stubble on his chin. “I could do it, Trace. There isn’t a man in South Texas who knows more about quarter horse conformation than I do. And when it comes to cutting a cow from the herd, I can spot a horse with a knack for stopping and starting better than just about anybody.”

  “I know. That’s why I want you. Will you do it?”

  “How does Blackjack feel about hiring a cripple?”

  Trace regretted using the word earlier. He waited until Dusty met his gaze before he said, “Blackjack isn’t making the hiring decisions. I am.”

  He saw the skeptical look on Dusty’s face and had cause again to regret baring his soul to his friend. He’d made a number of suggestions over the past couple of months for modernization and diversification at Bitter Creek, which Dusty knew his father had vetoed.

  Once Blackjack had said no, the subject was no longer open for discussion. Whenever Trace had persisted, his mother had intervened, reminding him that his father shouldn’t be upset, and that Trace ought to have some consideration for Blackjack’s ailing heart. More than once since his father had gotten home from the hospital, Trace had repressed the urge to bolt.

  But there was no one else to take his place.

  Trace had known from the time he was old enough to understand speech that as the eldest, he would one day inherit the hundreds of thousands of acres of South Texas ranchland that some noble English ancestor had won on a bet. He’d figured all that would have changed after what he’d done.

  He’d gone on a trip after graduation that had taken him around the world … and simply hadn’t come home. Not for Christmas. Not for Easter. Not for eleven years. Not until he’d been summoned to his dying father’s bedside.

  Only Blackjack hadn’t died.

  Trace had been surprised, on his return home, to discover that his younger twin brothers Clay and Owen, and his baby sister Summer, had created lives for themselves that didn’t tie them to Bitter Creek.

  Owen, following in the footsteps of several Blackthorne forebears, had become a Texas Ranger. Clay had recently been elected, at age thirty, the youngest Attorney General of the State of Texas. Summer, bless her rebellious little heart, had managed to get herself kicked out of every university Blackjack had insisted she attend and was home raising hell until Blackjack could make yet another generous contribution to some institution of higher learning.

  It was as though, despite all evidence to the contrary, Blackjack had known Trace was coming home someday, so there was no need to train anyone to take his place. Trace still wasn’t sure why he’d returned. There was nothing he wanted in Bitter Creek, Texas.

  Except the one thing he couldn’t have.

  Trace gritted his teeth against the pain that was still there, even after all these years. The wound of betrayal had gone deep and healed badly. Callie had married her father’s wrangler, Nolan Monroe, a man at least twenty years her senior, a matter of weeks after Trace had left Texas. She hadn’t waited to see if things would settle down so they could get married. She had shut him out of her life for good.

  So why had he come back?

  Because, for the first time in his life, his father had needed him. And because, damn his soul, he’d heard Callie Creed Monroe’s husband had died and left her a widow.

  Trace had agreed to stay only until Blackjack could resume his duties. He’d figured he’d be around for six weeks at most, while his father recuperated from bypass surgery, and that he’d deal with Callie when their paths crossed, as they surely would. But Blackjack had never recovered sufficiently to handle all the day-to-day responsibilities of the ranch. And Trace hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Callie Creed Monroe.

  This business with Dusty was the last straw. Trace hadn’t spoken yet with Blackjack about his desire to start a quarter horse operation, but he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He looked at his friend and said, “If you want the job, Dusty, it’s yours.”

  Dusty’s face revealed relief, and his brown eyes were misted with a sheen of hope. “I’ll have to talk it over with Lou Ann. Where are you going to set up this operation of yours?”

  “For the moment, right here at Bitter Creek.”

  Dusty pursed his mouth thoughtfully. “That northwest section has a pasture perfect for yearlings. Is that where you mean?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Trace said. That’s where he’d tell Blackjack he was putting his quarter horse operation. As soon as he told his father there was going to be a quarter horse operation.

  “Look,” Dusty said, his voice excited, “I was working with this three-year-old stud when …” He swallowed and continued, “When I had that wreck. Best cutting horse I’ve had under me in a long time. I had Smart Little Doc signed up for the NCHA World Championship Futurity later this year, but now he’s going to auction with the rest of my stock. I think you ought to buy him.”

  “Just let me know when and where he’s being sold,” Trace said.

  “I’ll do that.” Dusty lifted his Stetson, brushed his shaggy, dust-colored hair back, and resettled the hat low on his forehead. “I came a hair’s breadth from killing myself this morning. And now …” He looked at Trace, his eyes full of wonder and disbelief. “Lou Ann … me girls …”

  His voice broke and Trace looked down at the desk to give his friend time to recover himself.

  “I’ll find out which of the managers’ houses here at Bitter Creek is vacant,” Trace said to fill the silence.

  “Trace, I—”

  “I’d be providing a home for whoever managed the operation,” Trace interrupted. “Just tell Lou Ann I’ll need to know what color to have the walls painted.”

  He kept his gaze focused on the papers in front of him while Dusty swiped at his eyes with a red kerchief he dragged from the back pocket of his jeans. Then Trace shoved the documents across the desk and handed Dusty a pen. “Sign everywhere the lawyer marked with an X.”

  When Dusty was done, he dropped the pen on the desk and slid back in the cowhide chair. “Would you mind getting that other crutch for me?”

  “Sure.” Trace crossed around the desk and retrieved the crutch that had slid across the floor, then handed it to Dusty, who was already standing, balancing himself on one foot and the other crutch. “When are you getting your prosthesis?” Trace asked.

  “I was supposed to start therapy with it a while ago, but—”

  “Like a stubborn mule, you’ve been putting it off,” Trace finished for him. “Get yourself another leg, you jackass,” he said, laying a supporting arm across Dusty’s back. “You’re going to need it.”

  “You bet, Boss,” Dusty said with a grin.

  “We won’t be taking possession of the Rafter S for a while yet,” Trace said, as they headed into the high-ceilinged central hallway. “How about inviting me over for supper, so I can enjoy some of your wife’s home cooking?”

  “Sure. Meanwhile, I’ll take a look at what brood mares are available at upcoming auctions and make a list of what you ought to buy.”

  Trace was hoping to get Dusty out of the ranch house before his mother and father returned from a board meeting at the Bitter Creek First National Bank, but they encountered his parents just as they were entering the front door.

  Trace felt Dusty recoil at the sight of Blackjack. His father was a tall man, broad in the chest, an imposing figure with flinty gray eyes that had a way of staring right through a ma
n. He still had a headful of thick black hair, most of which was hidden right now beneath an expensive Resistol with a Buster Welch double crease in me crown.

  Though Buster had long since retired from competitive cutting, he was about the best cutter alive, and many a cowboy had emulated the way he creased his hat. To Buster, a cutting horse wasn’t just a show animal, he was a link to a vanishing way of life. Last year, at the gala held in Fort Worth during the final week of the Championship Futurity, Buster had received the Charles Goodnight Award, named after cattleman and nineteenth-century trailblazer Charles Goodnight.

  Blackjack had recently learned he’d be receiving the prestigious Goodnight award himself at the upcoming Futurity in December. Being there to see his father receive the award was one more reason Blackjack had given Trace for staying at Bitter Creek long after he’d planned to be gone.

  “You finished signing everything?” Blackjack said by way of greeting to Dusty.

  “We’re done,” Trace said, speaking before Dusty could say anything to worsen the situation. “Dusty was just leaving.”

  “I was so sorry to hear about your misfortune,” his mother said. “How is …?”

  It was clear to Trace that his mother couldn’t remember Lou Ann’s name. Eve Blackthorne had never been the sort of PTA mom who consorted with other parents and knew the names of her children’s friends. Whenever Trace had wanted to find his mother as a boy, he’d sought her out in the upstairs studio where she spent her days and nights producing the most beautiful oil paintings he’d ever seen. Whenever he hugged his mother, he smelled paint thinner, rather than perfume.

  His mother frequently seemed distracted, as though she were listening to another conversation besides the one in which she was engaged. Watching his mother over the months he’d spent as an adult in his parents’ home, Trace had decided that when she wasn’t actually painting on canvas, she was mentally creating her next work in her head.

  It was hard to resent her total dedication to her work, because the art she produced was so unique. He wasn’t the only one who thought her work distinctive. Her paintings had been hung in some of the finest galleries in the country. But sometimes, like now, it was irksome to realize how totally out of touch she was with the real world.