His father regarded him with open speculation as Jordan poured himself a cup of coffee and plucked a corn muffin he didn’t really want off the buffet.
“You didn’t listen to a word I said to you, did you?” his father grumbled when Jordan was seated at the table.
“Which words of wisdom are you accusing me of ignoring?”
“You spent the night with that woman.”
He noticed that the note of glee in his father’s voice contradicted the somewhat negative phrasing of the statement. It simply confirmed Jordan’s suspicions that his father had been trying out a little reverse psychology on him by warning him away from Kelly.
“I assume you’re referring to Kelly, and no, I did not spend the night with her,” Jordan told him irritably, cutting the muffin into precise little sections to avoid having to meet his father’s gaze. “I was at Cody’s.”
That grabbed his father’s attention. Harlan’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “What the devil were you doing there?”
“Trying to persuade him not to hightail it away from here.”
“Dammit all!” Harlan set his coffee cup down so hard, the coffee splattered all over the tablecloth. He made no attempt to blot it up. “Cody’s leaving? Without a word to me? Damn that boy’s hide.”
“He’s already left,” Jordan corrected.
“Why would he want to go and do something crazy like that? We have work to do. He couldn’t have picked a worse time for a vacation.”
“I don’t think he sees this as a vacation.”
The color drained out of his father’s face. “He’s taken off for good?”
“So he claims.”
He stared at Jordan, disbelief and anger warring on his face. “That’s nuts,” he protested. “He loves this place. It’ll be his one day. You and Luke will get your shares, of course, but the ranch will belong to Cody.”
“Which is exactly as it should be. He’s the one who always wanted it.”
“So, why the hell did he go and leave?” He waved his finger under Jordan’s nose. “I’ll tell you this, if he doesn’t have a darn good explanation, I’ll cut him out of my will, that’s what I’ll do.”
His father’s face was turning bright red as his anger mounted. Jordan suspected, though, that beneath that anger there was genuine concern. For all of his domineering attitude and his manipulations, Harlan loved his sons.
“Come on now, Daddy, settle down,” he soothed. “You don’t know the whole story.”
“So tell me,” his father snapped.
Jordan wasn’t sure how much detail Cody would want him going into, but he realized his father wouldn’t be satisfied with some evasive answer. “He and Melissa had some kind of a falling out. A pretty bad one. He needed to get his head straight, so he took off.”
“To go where?”
“He didn’t say. He did promise to let us know where he winds up on the condition that we never share that with Melissa. Who knows, maybe once he has time to cool off, he’ll change his mind and come straight back here.”
His father’s shoulders sagged. “I always knew that boy was going to wake up too late and see what his fooling around and taking her for granted had cost him. Did she leave him for somebody else?”
Jordan refused to say. “I don’t know that for sure.” He studied his father worriedly. “Will you be okay around here? Have you got enough help?”
As he’d expected, Harlan immediately scowled at the question. “Boy, I was running this place when the whole bunch of you were in diapers. I suppose I’m capable of putting in a few more years of hard work.”
“Luke would be willing to help out, I’m sure.”
“He has his own place and his own family to think about.” Harlan shook his head. “Dammit, Jordan, I don’t want to tell your mama about this. This means some of those trips she has planned will have to be postponed. Besides that, she dotes on Cody. He was her baby.”
Jordan wasn’t sure there was much truth in that. He’d never noticed that his mother doted on anyone in the household except his father. Still, he asked, “Do you want me to tell her?”
“No, I’ll do it.” He leveled a hard gaze at Jordan. “There’s just one thing I want to know, son. Why the hell didn’t you do something to stop him? This thing with Melissa would have passed over quick enough, if he’d stayed here and dealt with it. Now who knows how long it’ll fester inside him and keep him from coming home.”
Jordan’s own sense of guilt was as painful as any accusation his father could throw at him. “I did what I could,” he said tersely. He stood. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”
Harlan sighed. “I always am.”
Despite the assurance, Jordan squeezed his father’s shoulder on his way past. “I love you, old man.”
His father’s weathered, callused hand patted his. “I know you do, son.”
“So does Cody.”
His father nodded. “I know that, too.” He glanced up. “You on your way back to Houston?”
“No. I’m going back over to Kelly’s. She needs more help with that fence.”
“Exactly how long will you be sticking around here, then?”
“That remains to be seen,” Jordan said.
An awful lot depended on how long it took him to get Kelly to agree to his proposal. At some point in the past twenty-four hours he’d resolved not to leave until she said yes. Maybe it was Cody’s reaction to losing Melissa, maybe it was his father’s to Cody’s departure, but suddenly he’d grasped that there was nothing more important on earth than family and he wanted to claim Kelly and Dani once and for all as his.
Kelly hadn’t bothered the night before to tell Jordan that she and Dani always went to church on Sunday morning.
