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Thinking of Maggie, he felt old and tired and alone. But there were decisions to be made, and he knew what they would be. He also knew Cat would fight him every inch of the way.
Turning from them, Chase said, “I’ll get Jessy and Quint, and we’ll be on our way.”
The sun rode low in the western sky, prolonging the hours of daylight into early evening and pouring its rays through the windshield of the speeding pickup. Reaching up, Logan lowered the visor to block the sun’s blinding glare. Cat turned her head from it and stared out the opened side window. The inrushing air whipped at the ends of her long black hair, blowing strands around in a corkscrew of motion.
A charged silence filled the cab of the pickup, broken only by the roar of the wind and monotonous whine of wheels. Logan deliberately let the pressure of it build, well aware that silence was a highly effective interrogation tool. He slowed to make the turn at the ranch’s east gate, the road surface changing from pavement to gravel.
On either side of the road, the wide-flung plains rolled in uneven dips and swells, capped by a gigantic sky.
“What is it you want, Logan?” Cat scraped a stray lock of hair from her cheek.
His glance observed her action, then skimmed her profile. “What any father would want: some time with his son.”
“He doesn’t need you.”
“I was raised without a father, Cat.” He rested one hand on the top of the steering wheel, his gaze fixed on the road ahead, his eyes narrowed slightly against the sun’s brightness. “I asked my mother about him once. But she couldn’t tell me his name. It turned out that she had been with a number of men, some she knew and some she didn’t. I never asked about him again, but I always wondered.” He waited a beat, then added, “So does Quint.”
“He has never asked about you.”
“Maybe he hasn’t, but he’s wondered about me.”
“You don’t know that,” Cat insisted curtly.
His mouth quirked in a humorless way. “When I asked Quint where his father was today, do you know what he told me?”
“No.” Resentment turned her stiff.
“He said he didn’t have a father, that he guessed he had never had one. He didn’t know why.”
This revelation gave Cat pause and made her uncomfortable. But she couldn’t allow doubt to set in and weaken her resolve. “His answer is hardly surprising, considering the subject has never come up before,” she said with deliberate indifference.
“He’ll have to be told about me, Cat.”
“Why?” she challenged. “It would only confuse him. He doesn’t know you. You’re a total stranger to him. Quint won’t understand any of it.”
“He’ll understand even less why you don’t tell him.”
Fully aware that her attitude was indefensible, Cat went on the attack. “Look around you, Logan. This is Quint’s backyard, as far as the eye can see in any direction. This is his legacy, his home, his future. He’s a Calder, with all the power, influence, and position that the name implies. I’ve given him that. And you want to take it from him, turn him into Quint Echohawk.” The scorn in her voice was rampant and cutting.
“I wonder if you would be quite so contemptuous if his last name was Taylor?” The look in his gray eyes was hard with mockery. “That was your dead lover’s last name, wasn’t it?”
Shock gave way to fury and guilt. Cat lashed out, the throb of both in her voice. “God, I hate you.” She turned her head to hide the tears that stung her eyes. “Why did you have to come here at all? We were happy. Content. Then you showed up and ruined it all.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“But that’s what you’ve done. You’ve totally disrupted our lives, torn them apart. And you don’t really care. How can you do that?” she protested. “Haven’t I been punished enough? I loved Repp. Do you have any idea what it’s been like to live with the shame and the guilt of that night with you? Or how hard it was to face my family and Repp’s parents when I learned I was with child because of that night?”
“If I had known you were pregnant—”
“But I didn’t want you to know.” Anger blazed in her green eyes. “Don’t you understand that I didn’t want you in my life? And I don’t now!”
“What you or I might want doesn’t enter into it,” Logan replied. “Quint is the only thing that matters now.”
“Yes.” Her voice grew firm with decision. “And if you truly wanted what was best for him, you’d walk way.”
“I’m not convinced that would be best for him.” The peaked roof of the Calder home jutted above the skyline, the structure’s towering proportions making it visible for miles in the flat and empty landscape. Its size was a statement of its owner’s dominion over the surrounding plains, a dominion that implied power, wealth, and prestige, something that Cat had known all her life and none of which he could offer their son. But Logan had only to remember the hole in his own life to know that he could give Quint the one thing no one else could—a father.
“No, you would rather divide him,” Cat retorted, the sting of accusation in her voice. “You would always make him wonder if he belongs with you or here on the ranch with me. There will always be a conflict of loyalties and identity.”
