J.T. released a long breath. He'd already been to hell and back today, without Randal's good wishes. Between his morning talk with Caitlan, finding her sketch pad, their confrontation, and now this, he was pretty well wiped out.
'I didn't do anything wrong,' Mike said in a low voice.
J.T. looked from Randal's retreating back to Mike. Sincerity etched his features, but not knowing much about the man, J.T. couldn't give Mike his complete trust. 'You're the newest hand here, Mike. This is the first time I've had a problem between my men.'
Mike's jaw clenched, but he refrained from further comment. With a slight nod of acceptance, made more mocking by the rage of injustice burning in his gaze, he turned and walked away.
'You did the right thing,' Frank said, placing a reassuring hand on J.T.'s shoulder. 'Kirk found them having it out, but we can't be sure who started the fight.' Frank's gaze slid beyond J.T., his eyes widening in sudden surprise. 'Uh, afternoon, Caitlan.'
'Good afternoon, Frank.'
J.T. jerked around upon hearing Caitlan's soft voice. Seeing her standing conspicuously off to the side, hands clasped behind her back, he realized she'd never gone up to the house as he'd ordered. The sweet, angelic smile curving her mouth did nothing to soften his sudden irritation. He was gonna wring her neck for not listening to him!
'I'll talk to you later, Frank,' J.T. said, dismissing his foreman.
Casting a speculative glance from J.T. to Caitlan, Frank nodded, then headed toward the barn.
Grabbing the sketch pad he'd tossed to the ground earlier, J.T. strode purposefully toward Caitlan, scowling at her. 'Dammit, I told you to go on up to the house.'
Her chin lifted a fraction, and stubbornness sparked from her violet eyes. 'I was worried about you.'
He stopped in front of her, his large build shading the sun from her eyes when she looked up to meet his gaze.
Shoving those tender feelings aside, he focused on his annoyance, which was quickly becoming as thin and wispy as the clouds above. 'I'm a big boy, Caitlan. I can take care of myself and my workers.'
'I never said you couldn't.' Chewing on her bottom lip, she shifted on her feet, suddenly anxious. 'I didn't mean to become a problem with your men. I know there aren't any unmarried women on this ranch, and I never meant to…' A pink blush swept her cheeks. 'I mean, I'd never…'
'You, personally, didn't do anything to provoke them, Caitlan,' he interrupted. 'You're a novelty to the men and it's only natural they talk about you, but I won't condone this kind of crude talk and behavior. If any one of my men so much as touches you, he'll be off the Circle R so fast his head will spin.' His tone was possessive, but he couldn't help himself.
'And what about you, J.T.?' she asked very softly. Her gaze probed his, searching past the barriers he'd erected around his heart to the man who'd branded her his the night before.
He swallowed back the thick need gathering in his throat and lower, swirling in his belly. 'I won't touch you either, so you don't need to worry about it.'
She glanced away, but not before he'd caught a glimpse of hurt and hopelessness shimmering in her gaze. 'It's for the best.'
'Yeah,' he agreed, wondering who he was trying to convince.
After supper J.T. retired to his office, leaving Laura to finish up her homework and Caitlan to watch TV in the den. He wrote up individual reports on Mike and Randal, noting their suspension, then filed the slips of papers in each of their employee files. Impulsively, J.T. withdrew Mike's file from the cabinet and brought it back to his desk to peruse.
Shuffling through the contents, he pulled out Mike's employment application. A few lines had been left blank, mainly in the family-and-relative emergency information section, but that kind of vagueness wasn't unusual when hiring a seasonal hand. Most were drifters and had no family to call their own.
Mike's reference sheet listed the four previous ranches where he'd been employed. J.T. had called two of the spreads for references, and both told him Mike was quiet but a good hand. The first ranch laid him off due to lack of work, and the other ranch claimed there had been a personality conflict between Mike and the foreman, and Mike had opted to move on. A conflict in personalities was hardly a crime, J.T. thought, unless it interfered with work, as it had today.
Randal wasn't guiltless, J.T. knew. He had a volatile temper, more so these past months since his father's death and the debts that had been heaped on him. His flare-ups and bouts of drunkenness were increasing in frequency. J.T. hoped this suspension would force Randal to get his priorities together.
As for Mike's suspension, J.T. hadn't decided whether or not it would be permanent. He didn't know much about the man, not even if he was capable of setting up the sabotage attempt on his life. But what reason would Mike have for harming him? Mike had nothing to gain, unless he'd been hired by someone, which didn't make sense. J.T. didn't have any real enemies that he knew of. The 'accident' down by the creek still confounded him.
Mike had the perfect motivation for tossing the kittens into King's stall-retaliation for J.T. reprimanding him for smoking in the barn-but J.T. had no concrete evidence that Mike had actually done the deed.
Maybe he ought to cut his losses and let Mike go with a week's severance pay. J.T. had no proof the man was guilty of anything, but he couldn't afford to keep Mike on and possibly risk a potentially dangerous incident that might involve his family. Tomorrow, he decided, would be soon enough to let the hand go.
J.T. scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Hell, when had his life become so complicated? Ever since a violet-eyed woman had drifted into his life and saved him from a certain death. Even her sudden appearance he still found hard to believe, although he had no reason to distrust her.
Tossing Mike's file aside, J.T. reached for the sketch pad on the corner of his desk. Leaning back in his chair, he opened the cover. The shock of seeing Caitlan's portrait of him as a young boy had worn off, but he was still baffled as to how she'd accomplished the detailed and oddly accurate sketch.
The longer he studied the picture, the more it seemed familiar, as if he'd seen this particular drawing before. Putting the pad down on his desk, he sighed heavily. His gaze strayed to the bottom shelf of his bookcase, and he thought of the cigar box he'd stashed there, and Amanda's sketches of him tucked inside.
'Amanda,' he murmured, waiting for the familiar piercing pain to lance through him at the thought of her. The sorrow was dull and distant, overshadowed by his feelings for another woman. Caitlan. Despite his resolve to keep her at arm's length, he cared for her. Deeply. More than he wanted to admit. Making love to her had changed him in intense, unsettling ways.
Shrugging off the thought, J.T. stood, wanting to compare Amanda's sketches to Caitlan's. Just as he reached the bookshelf, the phone rang, detering his quest.
He picked up the receiver. 'Hello?'
'J.T., I've got an emergency on my hands,' Kirk said urgently. 'A waterline in my basement busted, and I know you have some spare pipe-'
'I'll be there in five minutes.'
'Great. Thanks.'
J.T. hung up the phone, the cigar box and sketches forgotten. He strode toward the den to tell Caitlan he'd be gone for a while, and paused in the doorway. Laura sat cross-legged on the floor, her schoolbooks and homework spread out on the coffee table in front of her. Caitlan sat on the couch watching TV, legs tucked beneath her, arms wrapped around a throw pillow.
Caitlan's soft violet eyes slowly lifted to meet his, and everything in the world receded from his mind but her. The quiet longing in her gaze reached past his heart and into his soul, nestling there like a warm ray of sunshine. The powerful, unexplainable link between them tugged at his heart, wrenching it open, ultimately allowing her warmth and gentleness to breach the emptiness he'd lived with for sixteen years.
His breath hitched in his lungs. Lord.
