Should Have Been Her Child. Stella Bagwell

from the fire to stab her with a hot glare. “Not in words. No, the old man was too sly for that. He knew just how to get to you. And he did.”

      Her jaw clenched. “I thought four years would have made you see how wrong you were. But it’s obvious you’re still just as blind and bullheaded as you ever were!”

      “You’re the blind one, Victoria. You were then. And you are now.”

      If he’d spoken the words in anger she would have understood them. But there had been no animosity in his voice. Just a quiet sort of warning.

      Before she realized what she was doing, she left the couch and went to stand in front of him. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

      He took a deep breath, then reached for a small framed photo on the fireplace mantel. It was a snapshot of Tucker and Amelia in their younger days, back when their four children had been small and the oldest, Hugh, had still been alive.

      “Everybody but you knows Tucker Ketchum was a shady character—”

      “You don’t—”

      “That’s one of the reasons why this ranch is so big and profitable. And I’m afraid it’s a likely reason a body was discovered facedown in an arroyo on the T Bar K.”

      She pushed at the heavy wave of nearly black hair dipping over her eye. “You’re despicable! You’re not fit to be this county’s undersheriff.”

      “Why? Because I didn’t hang around and let the old man corrupt me, too?”

      Raw fury brought her hand up and swinging at his face. He caught her wrist easily and jerked her up against him.

      “This whole thing is making you happy, isn’t it?” She flung the question at him. “You’ve just been waiting for some reason to spite my family. And now you have it in the form of a dead body!”

      His arm slipped around her back to still her squirms. “Nothing about this is making me happy, Victoria.” His eyes suddenly focused on her lips and then his head bent. “Especially not this.”

      A kiss was the last thing she’d expected from the man and for a moment she was frozen with shock at the feel of his hard lips spreading over hers. Then her hands lifted to his broad shoulders and pushed. The feeble gesture of disapproval caused his lips to ease a fraction away from hers. But his hold on her back tightened, making her breasts flatten against him, her hips arch into his.

      “Jess—”

      If she had whispered his name in protest, he would have released her. But there had only been hunger in the sound of her voice and his desire fed on it like flames to the wind.

      Time ceased to exist as his lips searched the sweetness of her mouth, his hands roamed the warmth of her back, then tangled in the thick waves of her hair.

      Long before he lifted his head, she was clutching folds of his shirt, struggling to keep her knees from buckling. Her breathing was ragged, her heart racing like a wild horse on a lightning-struck mesa. No one but Jess could make her feel so helpless, so alive. So much a woman.

      Dear Lord, nothing had changed, she thought desperately. Four long, lonely years had done nothing to erase this man from her heart.

      “Is this how you question your female suspects nowadays?” she finally managed to ask.

      Slowly, he moved his arm from around her back and she quickly put several inches between the two of them.

      “That wasn’t a question, Tori. That was a statement.”

      She swallowed as she pressed the back of her hand against her burning lips. “The statement being?”

      He smiled, but once again there was no warmth or sincerity behind the expression.

      “That I’m in charge of things now. And the fact that you’re a Ketchum means nothing where the law is concerned.”

      Pain splintered in the middle of her chest, but she somehow met his gaze in spite of it.

      “Is that how you kissed me? As a lawman? Or the Jess I used to know?”

      For long moments his gray eyes simply roamed her flushed face. Then his lips parted, but before he could reply, a knock interrupted him.

      Glancing over her shoulder, Victoria saw a young Native American man dressed similarly to Jess standing in the open doorway of the study. Victoria noticed that his dark, curious glance missed nothing as he took in the sight of her and Jess standing close together on the hearth.

      “Sorry to interrupt, Jess. I thought you’d want to know the head wrangler has arrived back on the ranch. He’s waiting in the bunkhouse.”

      The head wrangler for the T Bar K was Linc Ketchum, Victoria’s cousin. Like the rest of her family, she seriously doubted he would have any answers for the lawmen.

      “I’ll be right there, Redwing,” Jess told him.

      Nodding, the deputy slipped from view. Beside her, Jess made a move to leave the room. Before he could walk away, she reached out and caught his arm.

      One brow arched with mocking inquisition as he paused and glanced down at her.

      “Jess, what does this all mean?”

      The quiet desperation in her voice was a spur in his ribs, both painful and irritating. “We’ll just have to see, now won’t we, Tori?”

      Chilled by his sarcasm, she dropped her hand from his arm. “You’re not the same man I used to know, Jess.”

      His lips thinned, his nostrils flared as the track of his gray eyes burned her face. “No. I’ll never be that man again.”

      Chapter Two

      The night air had grown chilly and mosquitoes were making a feast of her bared forearms, but Victoria was loath to move from her spot on the patio to return inside the house.

      Jess and his deputy had left the ranch more than two hours ago, yet the place was still buzzing—she was still buzzing. And she didn’t like it.

      She hadn’t thought that seeing Jess again would have left her this shaken. And she tried to tell herself it was the circumstances of his appearance that were the real reason she was so disturbed. After all, it wasn’t every day a body was discovered on her family’s land, without any sort of explanation as to why or how it had gotten there.

      “Victoria? I wondered where you’d gotten to.”

      From her chair, she glanced over her shoulder at her brother Ross, then back out to the dark, pine-covered mountain rising like a sentinel over the T Bar K ranch house.

      “For the past hour I’ve been trying to muster up enough energy to leave this chair,” she told him.

      His hand came down on her shoulder and gently squeezed. “You hardly ate any supper. Are you feeling all right?”

      She tried to laugh, but the sound held little cheer. “Remember, I’m the doctor, Ross. I’m supposed to ask that question.”

      He eased his long frame down in the woven lawn chair sitting at an angle to hers. “That’s the trouble with you, Victoria. You’re always taking care of others rather than yourself.”

      At thirty-five, and five years older than Victoria, Ross was the younger Ketchum son. Since their brother Hugh had been killed in an accident with a bull six years ago, Ross had taken total reins of managing the T Bar K. Along with being business savvy, Ross was as handsome as sin and some said as tough as their late father, Tucker. But to Victoria he was always gentle, her rock when no one else was there for her.

      Casting him a wan smile, she said, “I’m all right, Ross. It’s just been a…long day.”

      He sighed. “A hell of a long day,” he agreed.

      “Were you able to contact Seth?”

      “No.