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Tyler nodded. “Yeah, well, that’s very interesting, but—”
“Maybe you figure to have some claim on it.” Jonas eyed him narrowly. “Maybe you already knew all that stuff I just told you, about my Juanita. Maybe that’s why you really come here, ’cause you thought you could make a case that Espada ought to be yours.”
“What?”
“You heard me, boy. You lied your way onto my land and now, for all I know, you’re gonna lie and say I’m the man who fathered you.”
Tyler grabbed Jonas by the shirt. “You call me ‘boy’ and accuse me of lying again and I’ll—I’ll—” He looked at his hand, knotted into Jonas’s shirt, made a sound of disgust and let go. “Listen to me, Baron, and listen good. I came here for one reason, and it didn’t have a damned thing to do with your ranch. Why in hell would I want it? It’s nothing to me, just acres of dirt and cows.”
“Them acres of dirt and cows is worth millions.”
“You did some checking of your own, you said. Then you know I don’t need your money.”
“Money ain’t everything.”
Tyler smiled thinly. “Is that advice? Or is it wisdom gleaned from your advanced years?”
“It’s fact, Kincaid. Ain’t a man alive don’t want his birthright.”
“His birthright,” Tyler said, lifting an eyebrow.
“There are some might say I denied you that. You would have had my name, if I hadn’t caught your mama with the drifter.” Jonas tossed aside the unlit cigar. “Bet you hate me for that.”
A muscle flexed in Tyler’s jaw. “I don’t hate you. You did what you had to do, that’s all.”
“Come on, Kincaid, be honest. On account of me, you ended up livin’ with people who got paid to take you in. And when they was gone, you went into a state home.”
“There are worse things,” Tyler said coldly.
“There surely are.” Jonas smiled slyly. “Things like that there ranch where the court put you, after you got yourself in trouble.”
“If there’s a point to all this,” Tyler said, even more coldly, “get to it.”
“Oh, there’s a point, all right. Seems to me is that it had to be a mighty temptin’ idea, you comin’ here to claim you was a Baron.”
“You just finished telling me I’m not.” Tyler smiled thinly. “And the better I know you, old man, the happier that makes me.”
“My firstborn came along three years after you.”
“The lucky bastard,” Tyler said, and grinned mirthlessly.
“And I’ll tell you right now, I ain’t takin’ no fancy tests to prove you ain’t of my blood.”
“Are you crazy? Did I even suggest you take tests to prove it?”
“I’m jes’ tellin’ you, loud and clear, you get yourself some fancy lawyer to talk about genes and chro-mo-somes and such, I’ll turn my lawyers on you an’ him both, and grind you into dog meat.” Jonas jabbed a finger into Tyler’s chest. “You got that?”
Tyler caught Jonas’s arm. The muscles were ropy and as hard as steel cables, but Tyler was stronger and more powerful. He twisted the arm behind Jonas’s back until the older man grunted with the pain.
“You son of a bitch,” Tyler said softly. “You’re not sure you aren’t the man who fathered me.”
“That’s bull patties.”
“You threw out a baby like it was garbage and all the time you knew that child might have been yours.”
“No way. You couldn’t have been mine. I told you, Juanita locked me out of her room for the better part of a long, cold year…except for—”
“Except?”
Jonas jerked his arm free. “Except for the one time I broke down that door and took what was mine to take, despite the fact that you was probably already in the oven.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You ain’t mine, Kincaid. I know that, and nothing my wife said then or you say now will change it.” He strode to the door and yanked it open. “You came for the truth and I gave it to you. It isn’t my fault you can’t deal with it.”
Tyler put his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
“My oh my,” he said softly. “Wouldn’t that make for the start of one hell of an obituary? ‘Jonas Baron, patriarch of the Baron clan. He carved out a kingdom and gave away his firstborn son.’” He smiled slyly. “Damn, but it’s almost biblical.”
“Get out!”
“Did she know? My mother. Did she know you gave me away?”
“I told you, she died.” He shot Tyler a hate-filled look. “But she damned well knew I wasn’t gonna be fool enough to raise a child that wasn’t my own. I told her that when I first saw you was growin’ in her belly.”
Tyler nodded. He imagined a woman with features like his, carrying him beneath her heart, imagined the pain she must have felt, hearing her husband say he wanted no part of her child…
Imagined her breathing her last, even as she struggled to give him life.
He pictured his mother as he’d never been able to see her before. She had a Spanish name. That might explain the midnight-blackness of his hair, the high cheekbones. She was taking on shape and substance for him now; she was a human being, a desperate woman trapped in a marriage to a man she must have hated, forced to endure the agony of wondering what would happen to her child, when it was born.
Tyler saw all this, and it broke his heart.
His breathing quickened. His muscles tightened. He wanted to beat Jonas Baron to the ground, stand over him as he struggled to get up and hit him and hit him until he went down and couldn’t get up.
The boy he’d once been would have done it. But he was a man now. He lived by a moral code. Despite his start in life, he’d grown up to be someone the woman who’d borne him would have been proud to acknowledge as her son.
Knowing that, believing it, was all that kept his hands knotted but at his sides.
“Are you deaf, Kincaid? I want you out of here.”
It was hard, gathering himself together, but Tyler did.
“I know what you want, Baron.” He walked to the door, pausing when he reached it, his eyes locked to Jonas’s. “You want life in your little kingdom to go on, the same as it always has. You want to crack the whip and watch your subjects jump.” Tyler’s smile glittered, glittered even more brightly when he saw the flash of apprehension in Jonas’s eyes. “Well, those days are coming to an end,” he said, almost gently. “You know tho
se blood tests you mentioned? The ones to do with genes and chromosomes?” Tyler reached out, smoothed down Jonas’s shirtfront. “You’re going to take them. A whole battery of them.” His smile tilted. “And when they’re done, and I’ve proved that you and I are father and son—”
“You’ll never prove that!”
“I will,” Tyler said, and meant it. He knew his mother now; knew, deep inside his soul, that she wouldn’t have violated her marriage vows, even if she’d made them with a man like Jonas Baron. “And after I have, the next thing I’m going to do is claim my birthright—isn’t that what you called it? Claim it, as your eldest son, and do it while you’re still alive, so that I can tell you, every day of your life right up to the minute you breathe your last, that once Espada is mine I’m going to cut it into little pieces and sell every last one of them, until nothing remains of you or this place, not even a memory.”
Jonas’s face went white. “I’ll fight you.”
“Fight me.” Tyler smiled. “That’ll make the victory all the sweeter.”
“Bastard,” Jonas said.
Tyler laughed, walked out of the library and out of the house, with Jonas’s curses ringing after him.
* * *
Day gave way to dusk, and dusk to night.
Tyler stood on the deck of his house in the rolling hills outside Austin. It was dark; the moon had yet to rise and the clouds were playing hide-and-seek with the stars.
He stood with one hip leaning against the wooden railing and a chilled bottle of ale in his hand. He’d been drinking everything from scotch to rye all day and he was still stone-cold sober. The liquor hadn’t even washed the bitter taste from his mouth.
He doubted anything could.
He sighed, rolled the cold bottle across his aching forehead and told himself that he was a stupid SOB.
“It’s the truth, Kincaid,” he said aloud. “You are one really stupid son of a bitch.”
What was he doing in Texas? He had a home, he had a life, back in Georgia. The home was handsome and the life was one he’d enjoyed, until he’d let a meddling mistress and a surprise birthday party turn his existence upside down.
