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. She hadn’t figured it mattered. He probably wouldn’t show up anyway, not after the way she’d accused him of using her to fill in until the right woman came along. He’d appeared to be genuinely exasperated with her for reaching that conclusion. She couldn’t imagine what else she was supposed to think, but he obviously resented the accusation.
At any rate, she wasn’t all that surprised when he wasn’t on her doorstep at dawn. All the way to church and back, she told herself it didn’t matter, that she wasn’t disappointed, that it would be better if he went back to Houston and got on with his life and let her get on with hers. She had too much pride to want to be a practice wife or a convenient hostess, until the right woman came along.
Apparently, however, that particular message didn’t quite get from her brain to her traitorous heart. That blasted part of her anatomy reacted with pure delight when she spotted him rocking on her front porch as she drove up the lane to her house after church. She fought the impulse to race from the car and fling herself into his arms. Dani’s reaction, however, was another thing entirely. For the first time Kelly could recall, her daughter didn’t look overjoyed to see Jordan waiting on their doorstep.
“Uh-oh,” Dani muttered, scooting down in the front seat.
Kelly glanced at her daughter and saw the worried frown puckering her brow. “What’s wrong?”
“I forgot something.”
Kelly glanced from Dani to Jordan and back again. “Something about Jordan?”
“Uh-huh.”
A vague stirring of alarm spread through her. “What did you forget?”
“He called before.”
“Jordan called?” She had to battle with herself to keep her voice from climbing. There was no point in letting her daughter know
