The Pride Of Jared MacKade. Nora Roberts

sun glinted on hair as thick and black as his. She wore it down her back in one loose braid. Her eyes were concealed, as his were, behind sunglasses. But what he could see of her face was fascinating.

      If a man could get past that truly amazing body, he could spend a lot of time on that face, Jared mused.

      Carved cheekbones rose high and taut against skin the color of gold dust. Her mouth was full and unsmiling, her nose straight and sharp, her chin slightly pointed.

      “Savannah Morningstar?”

      “Yes, that’s right.”

      He recognized the voice from the answering machine. He’d never known a voice and a body that suited each other more perfectly. “I’m Jared MacKade.”

      She angled her head, and the sun glanced off the amber tint of her glasses. “Well, you look like a lawyer. I haven’t done anything—lately—that I need representation for.”

      “I’m not going door-to-door soliciting clients. I’ve left several messages on your machine.”

      “I know.” She knelt again to finish planting a hunk of purple phlox. “The handy thing about machines is that you don’t have to talk to people you don’t want to talk to.” Carefully she patted dirt around the shallow roots. “Obviously, I didn’t want to talk to you, Lawyer MacKade.”

      “Not stupid,” he declared. “Just rude.”

      Amused, she tipped her face up to his. “That’s right. I am. But since you’re here, you might as well tell me what you’re so fired up to tell me.”

      “A colleague of mine in Oklahoma contacted me after he tracked you down.”

      The quick clutching in Savannah’s gut came and went. Deliberately she picked up another clump of phlox. Taking her time, she shifted and hacked at the dirt with her hand spade. “I haven’t been in Oklahoma for nearly ten years. I don’t remember breaking any laws before I left.”

      “Your father hired my colleague to locate you.”

      “I’m not interested.” Her flower-planting mood was gone. Because she didn’t want to infect the innocent blooms with the poison stirring inside her, she rose again and rubbed her hands on her jeans. “You can tell your colleague to tell my father I’m not interested.”

      “Your father’s dead.”

      He’d had no intention of telling her that way. He hadn’t mentioned her father or his death on the phone, because he didn’t have the heart to break such news over a machine. Jared still remembered the swift, searing pain of his own father’s death. And his mother’s.

      She didn’t gasp or sway or sob. Standing straight, Savannah absorbed the shock and refused the grief. Once there had been love. Once there had been need. And now, she thought, now there was nothing.

      “When?”

      “Seven months ago. It took awhile to find you. I’m sorry—”

      She interrupted him. “How?”

      “A fall. According to my information, he’d been working the rodeo circuit. He took a bad fall, hit his head. He wasn’t unconscious long, and refused to go to the hospital for X rays. But he contacted my colleague and gave him instructions. A week later, your father collapsed. An embolism.”

      She listened without a word, without movement. In her mind Savannah could see the man she’d once known and loved, clinging to the back of a bucking mustang, one hand reaching for the sky.

      She could see him laughing, she could see him drunk. She could see him murmuring endearments to an aging mare, and she could see him burning with rage and shame as he turned his own daughter, his only child, away.

      But she couldn’t see him dead.

      “Well, you’ve told me.” With that, she turned toward the house.

      “Ms. Morningstar.” If he had heard grief in her voice, he would have given her privacy. But there’d been nothing at all in her voice.

      “I’m thirsty.” She headed up the walkway that cut through the grass, then climbed onto the porch and let the screen door slam behind her.

      Yeah? Jared thought, fuming. Well, so was he. And he was damn well going to finish up this business and get a cold one himself. He walked into the house without bothering to knock.

      The small living room held furniture built for comfort, chairs with deep, sagging cushions, sturdy tables that would bear the weight of resting feet. The walls were a shade of umber that melded nicely with the pine of the floor. There were vivid splashes of color to offset and challenge the mellow tones—paintings, pillows, a scatter of toys over bright rugs that reminded him she had a child.

      He stepped through into a kitchen with brilliantly white counters and the same gleaming pine floor, where she stood in front of the sink, scrubbing garden earth from her hands. She didn’t bother to speak, but dried them off before she took a pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator.

      “I’d like to get this over with as much as you,” he told her.

      She let out a breath, took her sunglasses off and tossed them on the counter. Wasn’t his fault, she reminded herself. Not completely, anyway. When you came down to it, and added all the pieces together, there was no one to blame.

      “You look hot.” She poured lemonade into a tall glass, handed it to him. After giving him one quick glimpse of almond-shaped eyes the color of melted chocolate, she turned away to get another glass.

      “Thanks.”

      “Are you going to tell me he had debts that I’m obliged to settle? If you are, I’m going to tell you I have no intention of doing so.” The jittering in her stomach had nearly calmed, so she leaned back against the counter and crossed her bare feet at the ankles. “I’ve made what I’ve got, and I intend to keep it.”

      “Your father left you seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five dollars. And some change.”

      He watched the glass stop, hesitate, then continue to journey to her lips. She drank slowly, thoughtfully. “Where did he get seven thousand dollars?”

      “I have no idea. But the money is currently in a passbook savings account in Tulsa.” Jared set his briefcase down on the small butcher-block table, opened it. “You have only to show me proof of identity and sign these papers, and your inheritance will be transferred to you.”

      “I don’t want it.” Her first sign of emotion was the crack of glass against counter. “I don’t want his money.”

      Jared set the papers on the table. “It’s your money.”

      “I said I don’t want it.”

      Patiently Jared slipped off his own glasses and hooked them in his top pocket. “I understand you were estranged from your father.”

      “You don’t understand anything,” she shot back. “All you need to know is that I don’t want the damn money. So put your papers back in your fancy briefcase and get out.”

      Well used to arguments, Jared kept his eyes—and his temper—level. “Your father’s instructions were that if you were unwilling or unable to claim the inheritance, it was to go to your child.”

      Her eyes went molten. “Leave my son out of this.”

      “The legalities—”

      “Hang your legalities. He’s my son. Mine. And it’s my choice. We don’t want or need the money.”

      “Ms. Morningstar, you can refuse the terms of your father’s will, which means the courts will get involved and complicate what should be a very simple, straightforward matter. Hell, do yourself a favor. Take it, blow it on a weekend in Reno, give it to charity, bury it in a tin can in the yard.”

      She forced herself to calm down, not an easy