Wild Enough For Willa. Ann Major

25

      Book One

      “What we call the ending is usually the beginning.”

      1

      Marcie, his gentle, beautiful wife…Dead?

      And it was all his fault.

      Luke McKade sat alone in his vast penthouse office in southwest Austin. He willed the silence and the dark of his new gorgeous, empty building—the building that Marcie had helped design and decorate—to devour him.

      Driven, he always worked later than his employees. Not that tonight was about work.

      “Sa-a-ve the baby,” Marcie had whispered in her pronounced Texas drawl with its elongated vowels. She’d gripped him fiercely when he’d knelt over her bed. Her final, hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled. Then she’d died in his arms.

      His mind had raced. His heart had thundered. What baby? What baby?

      “A son,” the white-coated doctor had confirmed after the autopsy.

      Luke wearily massaged the back of his neck. Restless by nature, always on the move, he rarely sat behind his desk this long—and never to reflect on his own shortcomings.

      Murder. He’d done murder.

      She’d been so beautiful. So gentle. So classy. How he had loved looking at her. She had known how to dress. Other men had envied him, which is why he’d married her.

      He pushed his fingers through his untidy wavy black hair. On top of today’s unread newspapers and his managers’ reports from yesterday lay several mangled scraps of paper—his phone messages. Kate, his freckle-faced, madcap secretary with corkscrew red curls, scrawled numbers and names on whatever she had handy.

      Among other problems, the Feds were suing him for restriction of trade, and he was trying to float a new IPO. Luke thumbed through the fast-food napkins, Post-it notes, and a couple of pages she’d torn from her calendar, his tension heightening. His lawyers had called. So had his ranch foreman. The name of the president of a rival company was highlighted by a smear of mustard. But what charged Luke was the name, Brandon Baines.

      Brandon Baines had called three times.

      Baines, big criminal lawyer in Laredo.

      Laredo was a border town. As such, it was too far from Mexico City and too far from Washington, D.C. for either nation’s laws to be taken too seriously. Men like Baines could prosper there.

      Baines and he had gone to law school together. He’d been like most of their class—rich, handsome, lily-white, ultraconservative—a racist to the core, and worse things, too, underneath his politically correct exterior. Baines hadn’t much cottoned to McKade’s darker skin or rougher, cruder views about life—except where they concerned women.

      Baines’s tenacity and killer instincts had brought him fame and fortune in the free and easy Laredo. He had a rare talent for getting down and dirty in the courtroom. No lawyer in Texas had gotten more criminals acquitted than he. With the rise in crime, especially in drug dealing, his talents were in demand. He never gave up on a case. Never. Even when all seemed lost for the guiltiest of his drug-dealer clients, his mantra was, “This is good.”

      Luke had forgotten all about Little Red’s imminent release.

      I’m gonna shoot myself a lawyer and a bastard.

      Luke didn’t like Baines or Laredo even though the two men shared a common enemy.

      Little Red Longworth. What was he now—twenty-three?

      The Longworths would be happy to have their precious son and brother home in New Mexico again.

      Luke swallowed, trying to rid himself of the sudden bad taste in his mouth.

      He wadded Kate’s scribblings and pitched them in the trash.

      Later. Tomorrow.

      Tonight was for Marcie, for his guilt.

      Maybe everybody else in the whole damned world thought Marcie had slammed head-on into that limestone cliff all by herself, but Luke McKade knew differently. He’d killed her, and their unborn baby boy, as surely as if his hand had been on her black leather steering wheel.

      Somehow it was easier to sit in the solitary gloom of his office with his own regrets than to endure the well-meant comfort of friends, colleagues and employees. He even preferred the fury of his hot-tempered, impossible mother-in-law to their consolation.

      Sheila blamed him for the separation…for the accident…for her only daughter’s death.

      Luke felt the muscles of his jaw tighten. World-famous in computer circles, he was tall, well built, black-haired. He stayed in shape. During the week he jogged or went to a gym. On weekends he did manual labor on his immense south Texas ranch. Indeed, he was well disciplined in all areas.

      Ruthless, his competitors called him. Competent and innovative were the labels his friends attached.

      Luke had sea-gray eyes. “And when you smile,” Marcie used to say, “you have the most devastatingly gorgeous face. Your eyes sparkle like dancing waves on a stormy day. I married you for that smile that gives your face so much energy. Now the only time I ever see it is when you perform for the press.”

      Marcie had been right. His virile good looks, especially the practiced smile, were a facade. The man behind the mask was cold…dead…and wanted to stay that way.

      He hated how he felt tonight—alive, raw, in pain, about to explode. He had to find a way to recap the volcano.

      Luke McKade believed in order, in control. He lived by rules—his own. He never drank alcohol in front of his employees, and he wouldn’t be drinking tonight if he hadn’t closed LMK for the funeral.

      Luke sat behind a mammoth mahogany desk. Nursing his second whiskey, he clenched Marcie’s framed photograph and stared unseeingly at the brilliant Austin skyline glittering against the black hills.

      The world thought he was a hero. He’d had more fun when he’d been poor and fighting to make it. The higher he climbed, the more alienated and lonely he felt…the more powerless.…

      Marcie? His brown hand touched the pale cheek behind cold glass. He had more money than Midas. But he couldn’t bring her back. He couldn’t tell her he was sorry.

      He began to shake. Such white skin, such warm, soft skin she’d had…compared to his. Her golden hair had felt like the richest silk while his had been black and coarse like his mother’s. She’d been so high-class compared to him. His claim to fame was wealth. And power in the hottest business on the planet. They said he was a modern-day pirate, that he’d gotten where he was by greed and underhanded tactics.

      Whatever. He was rich, unimaginably rich, now. CEO of a dozen computer companies, he was a giant in a world he’d helped shape. Known for his razor-sharp intelligence, tough negotiation tactics, and ruthless business instincts, he owned several highly competitive software and Internet businesses.

      He’d known that the only reason an impoverished socialite like the exquisite Marcie Wilde had married a driven computer nerd like himself was for his money. He’d thrown that up at her the day she’d asked for a divorce.

      “Your money used to be attractive…once,” she’d admitted. “But I always wanted you. I used to think that maybe someday you’d feel that way about me.”

      “What the hell did I tell you before we got married—”

      “I was in love. I thought I could change you. I thought I could settle till you fell for me, too. I thought I had enough love for both of us. You’re good-looking. Good in bed…at least at first I thought so. Then I realized you weren’t there. It was always your money and always going to be your money. I was like some object