The Cowboy's Secret Son. Gayle Wilson

at him. “But…she was right about most of the things she told me through the years. Maybe I owe it to her to try to find out if she was right about this one, too.”

      Again her eyes fell to the check lying in the center of her desk. She wondered if Violet had intended her to use this money to do what she had suggested. Of course, it had come with no strings attached. No demands made. And what Violet had said had only been a suggestion. Still…

      “I’ll let you know where to send the piano,” she said.

      It was intended as a dismissal. Now that she had made the decision, Jillian found she was eager to get started. Maybe it was an eagerness to do exactly what Violet had said, and then put it all behind her. Or maybe… Maybe Violet had been right about the unfinished business of her life, she acknowledged.

      There were too many things that Drew would have questions about as he grew older. Too many things, Jillian realized with a sense of surprise, that she herself still had questions about. And there was only one way to answer them. And really, only one place to start.

      * * *

      “YOU’VE LOST your mind,” Jake Tyler said.

      “I know it must sound like that,” Jillian admitted.

      His gaze held hers a long moment before he turned and paced to the other end of his enormous penthouse office, his fury apparent in every step. When he reached the wall of glass that looked down into the heart of Dallas’s financial district, he turned, meeting her eyes again.

      His lips were compressed, and Jillian understood, because she knew him so well, that he was trying to gather control before he said anything else. His hands had been thrust into the pockets of the charcoal-gray suit he wore so that she wouldn’t see that they were clenched angrily into fists.

      “I thought everything was set,” he said finally, the fury tamped down enough to allow him to speak almost naturally.

      “I’m sorry, Jake, but this is something I have to do.”

      “Because that crazy old woman told you to do it.”

      Jillian suppressed her own anger at his characterization of Violet. Her grief was too new to shrug off Jake’s disparagement, although she recognized it was his disappointment speaking. And she couldn’t blame him for being annoyed. Any man would be.

      They had all but set the date before she had taken him to Pinto that weekend. And since they’d returned, even before she had known about Violet’s death, she had been putting Jake off about finalizing plans for the wedding. The news Dylan Garrett had brought her, along with Violet’s legacy, seemed almost a sign that she had been right in postponing things a bit.

      “And because of Drew,” she said, wondering as she spoke if she was using her son as an excuse for something she wanted to do. And that, too, created its own sense of guilt.

      “A good private school and a father’s discipline,” Jake said. “Those are the only things he needs. You know that.”

      “I’m not sure another school would be any better.”

      “He needs to be with children who are bright enough to judge on something other than physical attributes.”

      “Like how much money their fathers have?” she asked pointedly.

      “Not all children bully those who are…different. That doesn’t have to be a part of growing up. It shouldn’t be.”

      “He’ll be in a new school when we move.”

      “And you think it’s going to be any different in the back of beyond? You think those kids are not going to bully him?”

      There was no guarantee of that, and she knew it.

      “There’s more to this than just Drew,” Jillian said.

      “Then tell me. Explain to me why you’re giving up a client base you’ve worked so damn hard to build. Your career is just now starting to show the kind of success you said you’d always dreamed of. Why the hell are you throwing that all away?”

      Unfinished business, Violet had said. And that about summed it up, Jillian thought. “It’s just something I have to do, Jake,” she said aloud. “If I don’t…”

      “If you don’t, then…what?” Jake asked after the silence had stretched too thin between them.

      “If I don’t, then I won’t be able to be your wife,” she said, looking down at the emerald-cut four-carat diamond she wore on her left hand. “If you still want that.”

      “If I still want it? You know I do, Jillian. Is that what this is about? Is there someone else—”

      He broke off when her eyes came up too quickly from the ring he’d given her. Again the silence expanded, filling the space between them. Finally, almost reluctantly, she twisted the engagement ring off her finger.

      Holding it in her right hand, she walked across to the huge mahogany desk that was the focal point of the office she had designed for him a little less than two years ago. She laid the ring on the edge, allowing her fingers to rest on it a moment before she removed them, then clasped both hands together in front of her waist because they were trembling.

      “I have to know,” she said softly. “We both have to know.”

      “Don’t do this,” he said, his voice as low as hers.

      “If we’re right—if this is right,” she amended, nodding toward the ring, “then I’ll be back. I’m not asking you to wait. But…whatever you decide to do, I have to go.”

      “Are you telling me I won’t even be allowed to see you?”

      “Are you sure you still want to?” she asked, smiling at him.

      “Of course, I want to. I’m in love with you, Jillian. I thought you were in love with me.”

      “So did I,” she said. “But that’s something we both need to be right about, and I promise you, what I’m doing is the only way I know to be sure.”

      “And if you aren’t in love with me?” he asked, every trace of anger wiped from his tone. It held a note of uncertainty she had never heard in Jake Tyler’s voice before.

      “Then…I guess that’s something we both need to know.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      “SOLD?” Mark repeated in surprise.

      “Somebody bought it right out from under their noses,” Stumpy Winters said, grinning. “I guess they waited a little too long this time, trying to drive the price down to nothing.”

      “An individual?”

      “With enough money to get the paperwork done overnight. Seems like they even took Dwight Perkins by surprise.”

      That wasn’t the way things normally worked around here. Most of the Realtors, like Perkins, were in the co-op’s hip pocket, which was pretty deep, giving them inside information on the market that allowed them to get the best deals.

      Mark even understood why Stumpy was grinning with such unabashed delight as he told him about the sale. It did feel like a victory for the little man to have the Salvini place sold out from under the co-op’s nose. And to a family, apparently.

      “Poor bastards,” Stumpy said, spitting tobacco juice into the five-pound coffee can that had been provided in the bunkhouse for that purpose. “They don’t know it yet, a’ course, but there ain’t nothing except bad luck and heartbreak waiting for ‘em.”

      Stumpy would know. Although Mark hadn’t thought about it since he’d been back, that ranch had once belonged to Winters’s family, long before Tony Salvini bought it.

      “Maybe it’ll be different this time,” Mark said.

      Stumpy snorted, his