The Rancher's Surprise Son. Christine Wenger

      “Wait a second.” Laura raised a hand like a traffic cop. “My father helped to get Cody out on parole?”

       “Sí.”

      “I don’t understand. My father was never a Cody Masters fan.”

      Slim removed his straw hat and hung it on a knee. “That’s putting it mildly. All I know is that Georgianna Masters—er... I mean, Georgianna Lindy—paid the boss a visit, and soon the parole people were talking to J.W. So this morning, J.W. told me that after I pick Cody up, he’s going to be working at the Duke Ranch as part of his parole.”

      Interesting, Laura thought. I wonder what Daddy is up to.

      “But Cody’s own ranch needs a lot of work,” Laura said. “It’s been going downhill since he went to prison. He should be able to work his own property, not my father’s! Georgianna is struggling to keep it up herself, and Cindy has to go to school.”

      “Cody’s worked both ranches before.” Slim shrugged. “And from what I understand, the wages that he earned at J.W.’s back then went toward fixing up the Double M. As long as prison didn’t break Cody’s back, he can do the same again.”

      The Dukes had always had so much, and the Masters family barely scraped by. As far back as Laura could remember, it had been like that. To make things worse, her father enjoyed constantly riding Cody, telling him that he, Georgianna and Cindy would be better off if they sold their ranch back to J.W.

      Maybe for once her father was right.

      It’d be difficult avoiding Cody because, as exes, he knew they had things to discuss, but she’d have to avoid him as much as possible until she figured out a plan.

      “Slim, what will his duties be?”

      “According to J.W., I’m to treat him like a typical greenhorn. He can start by mucking out the stalls.”

      Laura sighed. It wasn’t just Cody that her father disliked. It always stuck in his craw that Mike Masters, Cody’s father, had won his little pie-slice of land, along with a decaying farmhouse from J.W., in an all-night drunken poker game.

      Subsequently, J.W. had devoted his life to getting the land back.

      To that end, he was probably going to use Cody somehow. Maybe use him to influence Georgianna Masters to sell out. That was the kind of man J.W. was. It was his way or the highway.

      Secrets. She’d have to keep hers as long as she could.

      * * *

      Cody shook off his rumpled suit and hurried into the shower, letting the water sluice over him. It couldn’t be hot enough, as far as he was concerned.

      A private shower—what a luxury! He fingered the vinyl curtain with a school of tropical fish swimming over a coral reef. He laughed at the design on a curtain in the middle of the damn Arizona desert.

      As the bathroom filled up with steam, he took a deep breath and poured shower gel all over himself. Then he found a pink loofah and scraped his skin with it until it tingled.

      As soon as he had a block of time, he’d head up into the mountains—to Saguaro Canyon—and soak in the cold rushing water. He knew just the spot, too. It was a favorite of his and Laura’s.

      They used to sit in the creek for hours at a time, his arm around her shoulders and her head on his chest. They’d relax in comfortable silence, just enjoying each other’s company. Sometimes they’d talk about the future. It had always been their dream that somehow he’d make his mark in the world and then he’d ask J.W. for her hand in marriage.

      But now he was a jailbird, a convicted felon. No one in their right mind would hire him, much less let him marry their daughter, but he knew he’d made the right decision, and he’d have to live with the consequences.

      He supposed he should be grateful that he had a paying job at J.W.’s ranch and that he got out of that hellhole earlier than he’d thought he would, even though he’d planned on serving his whole sentence. There were just some things that a man had to do to protect those he loved.

      He soaped up again and kept scrubbing with the loofah. Then he washed his hair with mango-coconut shampoo that must have been his mother’s or sister’s, digging his fingernails into his scalp.

      For the next several minutes, he just stood under the spray, letting the hot water cleanse his body, cleanse his soul.

      With a sigh of regret, he turned it off.

      He couldn’t stall any longer. He was burning daylight.

      He’d just spent three years out of five for involuntary manslaughter, and he owed the parole system two more years. That meant two years working as an indentured servant for J. W. Duke.

      In his wildest dreams, he could never imagine that he’d be working for J.W., and that he’d even pull some strings and get Cody out of jail early.

      He sighed. The fact that his stepfather, Hank Lindy, would never hurt another woman again was one of the things that had made Cody’s incarceration tolerable. If there truly was a heaven and hell, Lindy’s soul was in the special kind of hell reserved for those who hit women, nearly killing them, and who preyed on young girls.

      From all appearances, Hank Lindy, the owner of a feed and farm equipment store, was the epitome of a model citizen. That was the Lindy that his mother decided to marry. Cody never asked her if she’d really loved him, or just thought that he’d be generous and help get the Double M back into the black.

      Georgianna had been very wrong.

      While incarcerated, Cody had met a handful of genuinely great guys. Guilt, innocence or hard luck aside, they became his salvation. They got him through three damn years of hell, and he couldn’t have survived without them.

      Nor could he have survived without the picture of Laura Duke that he’d taped to the filthy cinder-block wall in his cell. The picture reminded him of better times—riding horses with her through the fields, Laura cheering for him at high school football games, going with her to the junior and senior proms.

      Of course, they’d had to sneak around to see each other, and Cody hated the deception, but J.W. had forbidden his beautiful daughter—his only child—to date him.

      Even though they’d grown up next to one another and had gone to the same schools, Cody Masters had never been good enough for Laura in J.W.’s mind. He didn’t come from a well-off family and he wasn’t connected financially, socially or politically.

      Then there was the fact that he was the son of Mike Masters.

      The bad blood between J.W. and Mike Masters was legendary in Duke Springs. Rumor had it that years ago, J.W. wanted to marry Georgianna, but Mike had beat him to her. His mother always had a special feeling for J.W., Cody knew that, but she always denied that she would have married anyone but Mike Masters.

      And when J.W. had lost the land in that drunken poker game and had wanted to buy it back throughout the years, well, their feud became epic.

      Cody flashed back to the summer day, years ago, that he’d first worked up enough courage to ask Laura to go riding with him. He was about Cindy’s age at the time.

      “Cody, I want to talk to you.” J.W. had sat him down on a hay bale in the barn and had pointed a finger at him. “You have nothing to offer Laura. I don’t want you to knock on the door of my house until you do, and even then, I might not open it to you. And if I find that you are sneaking around behind my back with her...well, you’d better be prepared for the consequences.”

      But he’d gone against J.W.’s wishes and went behind his back to see Laura, just as he always had. In school, it was easy. Out of school, they both had to be even sneakier, and it went against his moral grain.

      He remembered moving Laura into her dorm room at the University of Arizona in Phoenix. She’d been excited and eager to start her new life away