The Rancher's Spittin' Image. Peggy Moreland

      “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Margo hurried to assure him. “You’ll be much more comfortable in the Big House. Besides, I’m sure that’s what Wade would have wanted.”

      “Would he?” Jesse’s lips curled in a scowl. “Somehow I doubt that.”

      Margo struggled to think of something to say. “W-well, if you’re sure...” She lifted a hand to point the way. “The bunkhouse is—”

      Jesse turned his back on her, cutting her off. “I know the way.”

      Margo moved to the window and stood, her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed tightly together, and watched Jesse walk back to his truck. Tall, broad shouldered, that cocky swagger. She shuddered in revulsion at the sight. With the exception of the darker color of his skin, the slight Spanish accent, he could have easily been mistaken for Wade Barrister at the same age. And that alone was enough to draw Margo’s ire.

      She’d married Wade Barrister forty years before, blinded by his handsome face and awed by his wealth, thinking herself in love with him. It hadn’t taken long for the veneer of imagined love to wear thin. Wade Barrister was a mean-spirited man, obsessed with his own importance and the idea of producing an heir to carry on the Barrister name. When ten years had passed and it became obvious that Margo was barren, he had never slept with her again.

      She was sure that Wade would have demanded a divorce years ago and taken his chances for an heir with another wife, but there was a second facet to Wade’s personality that was as strong as his desire to produce an heir. He was greedy. By Texas law, he would have been forced to divide all his property equally with Margo as part of the divorce settlement, and Wade would never willingly give up anything that he considered his. Especially the Circle Bar.

      So instead, he’d chosen to take his pleasure with other women, all of whom Margo secretly referred to as his “whores.”

      And it was a particular Mexican whore who had finally produced the desired heir.

      At the thought of Jesse, Margo’s lips thinned again.

      Their first meeting hadn’t gone at all as she’d planned. She’d hoped that Jesse would be as anxious to unload the Circle Bar as she was to buy it. His hesitancy sent the first shiver of fear skating down her spine.

      She dropped the curtain, blocking him from view, and whirled away from the window. Well, she assured herself, she might have lost the first battle, but she had in no way lost the war.

      

      Jesse stood in the center of the small glen, his hands braced against his hips, his chest tight with unwanted memories. Darkness surrounded him, taunting him with shadowed ghosts he thought he had put to rest years before. He inhaled deeply, determined to keep the images at bay, and filled his senses with the bouquet of odors floating on the night air. The clean, sweet scent of freshly cut hay, the heady scent of honeysuckle that grew wild on a distant fence, the musty smell of damp leaves.

      With a sigh, he lifted his face to the heavens and closed his eyes. Though he tried to keep the images from forming, they pushed at him from every side. A blanket spread on the ground, and Mandy beneath him, her body hot and damp against his. With eyes still glazed with passion, she looked up at him while a soft smile of pleasure curved the corners of her full and sensuous mouth. He could almost feel her hands on his back as she soothed his fevered flesh with soft caresses of love.

      Sucking in an angry breath, he fisted his hands against his eyes. But instead of blocking the image, he only added another memory. As the vision formed, the smell of gunpowder rose, choking him, and his body recoiled with the impact of the blast that had slammed into him that night so many years ago. Instinctively, he raised a hand to his shoulder, feeling again the bullet ripping through his flesh and the fiery pain that had dragged him to the ground.

      But that pain was nothing compared to the pain that tore at his heart as the memory of her voice echoed through his mind.

      No, Jesse, I can’t.

      He lifted his fists at the dark heavens and shook them. “Damn you, Mandy!” he roared. “Damn you for choosing your father over me!”

      Two

      Jesse stopped his horse alongside Pete’s and dug a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He shook one out, then offered the pack to Pete, the foreman of the Circle Bar.

      Pete eyed him skeptically. “I prefer to roll my own,” he grumbled disagreeably, but took one with a muttered, “obliged.” In keeping with his own style of smoking, though, Pete pinched the filter off and tossed it to the ground.

      Hiding a smile, Jesse clamped his own cigarette between his lips and dug a hand in his jeans pocket, working a lighter from its depths. He’d always had a fondness for Pete Dugan. In some ways, Pete had been more a father to him than Wade Barrister had ever been. It was Pete who’d picked Jesse up off the ground after his first bronc had thrown him, and it was Pete who had stuck Jesse’s head in a horse trough when as a teenager he’d come home drunk the first time. It was also Pete who’d found Jesse the night he’d ridden his horse back into the barn after Lucas McCloud had put a bullet in his left shoulder.

      Though Pete had cussed a blue streak, trying to convince Jesse he needed a doctor, he’d cleaned the wound and patched Jesse up as best as he could, then stood on the porch of the bunkhouse and watched Jesse drive away into the night.

      Frowning at the unwanted memory, Jesse raked a thumb along the lighter’s wheel, then cupped his hands around the flame as he drew it to the cigarette’s end. Inhaling deeply, he passed the lighter to Pete, then blew out a thin stream of smoke and the memories along with it.

      “Looks like you’ve got a good crop of calves this year,” Jesse offered, gesturing to the cattle that grazed in the pasture below.

      “Cain’t complain.”

      Jesse nodded, hearing the pride behind the simple reply. “Who’s giving the orders around here now that the old man’s gone?”

      Pete snorted. “Who do ya think?”

      “And you’re taking them?” Jesse asked in surprise.

      “I listen, say yes’m real polite like, then do as I damn well please.”

      Jesse laughed, then leaned over to thump Pete on the back. “I always did like your style.”

      “Never did cotton to takin’ orders from no woman. ’Specially one that cain’t tell a bull from a steer.” Pete twisted his head around just far enough to squint a look at Jesse through the smoke that curled from between his gnarled fingers. “You gonna be takin’ over the reins now that you’re back?”

      Jesse shrugged, then squeezed the burned-out butt of his cigarette between two fingers before tossing it to the ground. “I suppose. At least until I decide what to do with the place.”

      “You mean you might sell?”

      “I don’t know,” Jesse replied uncertainly. “I’ve got my own place up in Oklahoma now. Kind of hard to manage two places that far apart.”

      Pete shook his head, turning his gaze back on the cattle. “Cain’t imagine the Circle Bar belongin’ to anybody but a Barrister. They’ve owned this land long as I can remember.”

      They sat in silence, pondering the reality of that a moment, before Jesse said, “The old lady offered to buy me out.” Though Pete’s gaze never once wavered from the cattle, Jesse saw the tension mount in his shoulders on hearing of Margo’s offer. “She said she’d do it to free me from any responsibilities or obligations that Wade might have burdened me with. Pretty generous of her, don’t you think?”

      Pete didn’t answer, but continued to stare at the cattle below, his mouth set in a thin, grim line.

      “Well, don’t you think it’s generous?” Jesse prodded.

      Slowly, Pete turned his gaze on Jesse.