Rudy’s bald head was a distraction. The knotted flesh at the back of his scalp and a lobster-red strip down the middle, which he had not revealed with the tip of his hat earlier, was raised with proud and scarred flesh that reminded her of a rooster’s comb. He must have suffered a terrible accident years ago, she concluded. He was certainly a talkative sort and never allowed silence to take hold for more than a few seconds. She liked him. He was friendly and funny, although she suspected the others had heard his stories more than once.
When Rudy had walked into the dining room, she saw that he limped some, but the gnarled wooden cane in his hand seemed more style than necessity as his stooped form moved with a strong gait. The gray whiskers that covered his cheeks and chin suggested he was a weekly shave man and nearing harvest.
Jack mostly listened to the others, nodding and smiling agreeably. When he spoke, it was to ask about ranch or freight operations, and she came to understand that the supper gathering was in no small part a business meeting.
She hoped her appetite did not appear unladylike, as she asked for additional helpings of roast beef, fried potatoes and mixed vegetables. Jordy smiled at her when he passed the serving platter. “Save room for Josephina’s cobbler. I sneaked in the kitchen earlier. Apple tonight.”
“I haven’t eaten all day,” she said. “I have room for cobbler. I fear I’ve been eating like a—”
“A cowhand,” he said. “Nothing goes to waste at this table. Thor will clean up the remains, and he’s already had a few servings of beef.” He nodded at the big dog waiting patiently in the corner of the room, watching the diners intently and wagging his tail, starting the begging with hungry eyes.
She spoke to the Cortez women. “Josephina and Consuelo, I haven’t eaten this well for months. Everything is delicious. Thanks so much.”
The women beamed and Consuelo replied, “You are welcome. We hope you will be at this table for many more meals.”
Sierra noticed that Jack did not smile.
Sierra felt stuffed after she finished the hot cobbler. She was wondering when she would have her confrontation with Jack Wills when he answered her question. He pushed back his chair and stood. It occurred to her for the first time that, in a rugged way, he was a handsome man, crow’s feet wrinkles accentuating the eyes they shared, straight nose, thin lips. He stood erect, and she noted he was not quite Jordy’s height but might have been in his youth, certainly not as muscular and broad shouldered as the younger man but not frail, either. Clean shaven and a full scalp of wiry, salt and pepper hair, more salt than pepper, though. Time had been kind to this man’s appearance. Good. He might be useful to achieving her objective.
“Join me in the library, Miss Wills,” Jack said softly.
Chapter Six
Jack and Sierra sat at the round table in the library. Without request, Consuelo had brought them each a steaming cup of hot coffee as soon as they were seated, leaving quickly and closing the door behind her. It was quiet as a tomb in the room, Jack sipping at his coffee before he spoke to the young woman across the table.
“You claim to be my granddaughter,” he said.
“I am your granddaughter,” she replied. “My late father was your son, John Thomas Wills. Everybody called him ‘J. T.,’ but you wouldn’t know that. You didn’t stick around long enough to find out.”
Jack’s face did not change expressions, but she had shaken him a bit. His own baptized name was John Thomas Wills. “Your mother?”
“Rosa Martinez Wills. She died ten years ago.”
“And who was your father’s mother?”
She gave him a disgusted scowl that did little to diminish her beauty. “Please don’t play dumb with me. Emily Wills. Emily Cooper Wills. The woman you deserted over forty years ago. She was the mother of the child you abandoned.”
He remained silent while he tried to sort out the statements she had made. There were pieces of truth there. He had been married to Emily Cooper. They had met in the late twenties on a wagon train organized by Stephen Austin when Austin was recruiting settlers to Texas and the area was still part of Mexico. Jack, whose parents had both died before he was sixteen, had given up on being a Tennessee farmer and latched onto a job escorting wagon trains for Austin in 1825. It did not seem possible. A half century ago. He had just turned twenty.
Three years later, he met a buxom girl with chestnut-colored hair and blue eyes traveling with one of the trains he was escorting. Emily Cooper drew the eyes of most of the young men on the train, but she flirted mostly with Jack. Her roots were in Virginia, and her wealthy father, Cyrus Cooper—probably rightly so, Jack now figured—was convinced Jack was not a proper suitor for his daughter and made no bones about it, likely fueling the fire between the two. Jack’s brains resided below his belt in those days, and he owned a horse and saddle and the clothes on his back, not much else. In hindsight, old Cyrus could not be faulted for wanting something more than a broke kid for his daughter’s husband.
After a courtship of two months, and upon arrival in Texas, Jack had spirited Emily away and married her before an old wagon master friend who claimed to have authority to marry folks. Jack had never been sure if their marriage was legal, but he would have never got beneath Emily’s skirts without a wedding. And his pizzle was in a hurry.
“I was married to Emily,” Jack said. “We had no children. The marriage lasted less
