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Ty stared at the flashing gold material for a second, then flicked a glance around the rest of the room. The line of his mouth thinned with displeasure at its look of sleek elegance. “Next month when you and Cat go to buy all the baby things, you need to pick out some different furnishings for in here. It’s time we got rid of all this slick satin and gilded furniture.”
“That suits me,” Jessy replied, and wondered if Ty had noticed she had already removed some of the daintier feminine pieces. But the rest of the master suite was much the way it had been when he and Tara had shared it.
After their separation, he had moved back into his former bedroom and the master suite had sat empty. But with the twins coming, it was clear they were going to require larger sleeping quarters, hence the move into the master suite. But Tara’s hand was visible everywhere Jessy looked. She was never more aware of it than tonight.
With the satin coverlet stowed safely out of the way, Jessy turned back the top sheet and slipped between the covers. Meanwhile Ty turned off the light switch, leaving only the bedside table lamp to illuminate the room.
“One of the first things I want you to do,” he said as he crawled into the wide bed, “is to get rid of this king-size monstrosity. I’m tired of having to search for you when I climb into bed.”
“Is that right?” Jessy scooted closer and rolled onto her side to face him, always careful of his shoulder.
She reached up to caress a fingertip over the black brush of his mustache with its first few strands of gray showing. Jessy had never been one to avoid issues. It was her nature to confront them. All this talk about redoing the master suite was an oblique reference to Tara. The woman was on both their minds, and it was time they faced it.
“She still wants you, Ty,” Jessy murmured and studied him with knowing eyes.
He caught hold of her caressing fingers and pressed them to his lips, then held them against his chest. “Anything that’s out of reach, Tara has always regarded as a personal challenge. And I’m taken. Remember?”
It was never her memory that Jessy questioned, but she played along with him and pretended to give his question heavy thought. “It gets a little faulty at times. Maybe you need to refresh it.”
“With pleasure.” Ty cupped a hand to the back of her head and drew her lips to his mouth.
Drawn against his hard-muscled length, the heat of his body flooded over her, warming the bareness of her long legs. She wound herself closer, responding to the hungry demand of his kiss, understanding it. Like him, she had a desperate need to blot out the past. And this was the way to do it—together, in the darkness.
She pulled away long enough to switch off the lamp and peel off the long T-shirt, then she came back to him, all slim-hipped and naked, her stomach swollen with child as were her once-flat breasts.
In the skies far to the south, the corporate jet continued to wing its way into the night, on course for Fort Worth. In the lushly appointed cabin, E.J. Dyson sat huddled with his chief financial officer, poring over a set of quarterly reports.
Free at last from the necessity of making conversation, Tara slipped off her high heels and settled back in the plushly cushioned seat, delicately curling her legs beneath her. Briefly her glance strayed to her father, noting his drawn and haggard look. She made a mental note to urge him to slow down, then turned her face toward the porthole window by her seat and gazed into the blackness beyond the panes.
Finally there was time to let her thoughts dwell on that fateful meeting with Ty. A meeting that had been full of such horrible irony.
Tara had never wanted the divorce. Never. At the back of her mind, she had always planned, one day, to win him back, convinced that it would require only a reasonable passage of time in order for her to achieve that goal.
A near sob caught in her throat. Dear God, she had waited too long. She balled a hand into a fist, long nails digging into her palm.
But the truth was—she never truly realized how very much she loved Ty until that shattering moment when she learned he had been shot. It all had become crystal-clear to her in that instant.
For a time, Tara had reveled in the role of the gay, Texas divorcee. But not a single man she met had ever measured up even close to Ty. A discovery she had made too late.
The bitterness of that disappointment didn’t last, giving way almost immediately to an overwhelming rage at the knowledge that Jessy was going to have Ty’s child. Even worse, she was going to have twins.
Ty would never walk away from the mother of his children. That stupid code he lived by wouldn’t allow him to do it.
Not for the first time, Tara cursed herself for not giving Ty a child. She had always known he wanted one, but she had been too worried about the damage it would do to her figure. Now she had lost him forever.
Every ounce of her body screamed that it wasn’t fair.
Suddenly her life stretched before her as miserable and empty as the sky behind the plane’s window.
How could Ty do this to her? Surely he knew how much she loved him. Then came the cold, killing realization that he knew and didn’t care. As disgustingly trite as it sounded, he had dumped her for another woman. Tara couldn’t let him get away with that, not without making him pay. Dearly.
Chapter Three
The bawl of cow and calf traveled across the rolling grass plains mixed in with shouts from ranchhands and the clang and rattle of iron chutes and headgate. High in the vast blue sky, the sun looked on, indifferent to the noisy activity below.
It was preg-check time on the Triple C, a time when every cow was palpated to verify whether she was pregnant or not. It was one of many thankless tasks on the ranch that was completely bereft of glamour. At the same time it was necessary to the operation’s ultimate financial success. No rancher could afford to winter over a cow that remained barren more than two years, or a bull that couldn’t service all his cows. Nor could a rancher afford to wait until the following spring to learn the outcome.
Astride a dun-colored buckskin, Jessy slapped a coiled rope against her leg and herded the last cow out of th
