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“It was a quirk of fate. Not a sign from God,” Caleb told him gently. “Dad, you and your destiny had nothing to do with your twin dying. No more than I did with mine.”
Cain shook his head stubbornly. “Nothing can ruin a political career faster than a woman and a sex scandal, Caleb. Nothing. Now you take my advice. You pay this woman enough to keep her quiet, and then, later on, you get a DNA test done very quietly. If it’s yours, you pay her some more. All it takes. Send her and the child away somewhere. But do it all through third parties. Send Bobby out there, or Martin and Jacob Levitz. They’re your lawyers, that’s what they’re paid for. Just don’t get personally involved in this.”
Slowly, Caleb went to his father. Keeping his tone low, he said, “I’m already personally involved, Dad. It doesn’t get much more personal than this. And I may be your son, but I’m my mother’s son, too, God rest her soul. And I think she’d want me to do the right thing here.”
His father’s head came up, one eye snapping with anger, the other dull and glazed over. “She died so you could be born to carry on this family’s proud tradition! She would want you to protect that legacy at any cost!”
Caleb smiled, leaned in and clasped his father’s hand once, firmly. “If I have a child, won’t he be a part of that legacy?” He sighed when his father didn’t waver in the least. “I have to do what I think is right, Dad. I’ll only be gone for a few days. You’ve got your nurse and the household staff, and if you need anything they can’t handle, call Bobby.”
Straightening, he turned and walked out of the room, even though his father’s voice shouted after him all the way. He only stopped long enough to pick up his suitcase, and then he headed out.
Two hours later, tired and wary, Caleb pulled into the parking lot of the OK Corral, that saloon he remembered so well, in the middle of Big Falls, Oklahoma. He hadn’t been here in the winter before. It was nothing like the city, and he couldn’t help feel a little stirring of the senses as José’s truck rolled over the narrow roads and in between hillsides that looked wild and ominous. They were almost bare of leaves, some of those trees, and the ground was brown and barren.
He wondered why there were no cars in the lot at the Saloon. Then he realized he had arrived in the middle of a Monday afternoon. The Corral probably didn’t even open until nightfall. He’d driven Maya home, past a boarding house as he recalled but it had been dark as pitch and he barely remembered which way he’d taken her.
He looked up and down the road. Saw a few men in red-and-black flannel, and some in camouflage from head to toe, hurrying to their pickups with gun racks in the back windows and shotguns in the racks.
Hunting season. This was not the city. Here, if you were a man, you owned a gun and knew how to use it. And hunting season was the be all and end all of your holiday experience.
Swallowing hard, he got out of the truck and started on a path designed to intercept one burly hunter before he reached the front door of the ammo shop. He paused briefly to snap up his fleece and denim coat and wondered if the thing looked rural enough to get him by.
“Excuse me,” he said, and he managed to draw the big guy’s attention. Jowls and whiskers was the impression he got when the man faced him.
“You lost?” the stranger asked.
“Actually, I, uh…I’m looking for a place to get a room. I didn’t see a hotel in town anywhere, so I thought….”
“We ain’t got no hotel,” the fellow said, putting the accent on the first syllable.
“That’s what I thought when I didn’t see one,” he said. “I seem to recall there was a boarding house last time I was here, but I’ve forgotten where, exactly.”
The fellow shrugged. “Yep. There’s a boardin’ house, all right. You might could get a room there. But I don’t know for sure.”
“Er…right. I might…could. If I knew where it was.” The man just stared at him, chewing. “Can you tell me how to get to the boarding house?” he asked, figuring direct was the way to go here.
“End of the road, on yer left. ‘Bout a mile up.” He pointed.
“Thanks. Good luck with the hunting. I, uh, hope you catch a big one.”
“Catch?” The guy grinned almost ear to ear and strode away, shaking his head. “He hopes I catch a big one,” he muttered, chuckling to himself all the way into the shop.
Caleb stared after him, saw him speaking to the fellow at the counter, and then they both looked his way and laughed some more.
Hell. He was fitting in here like a duck would fit in at a henhouse. He was going to have to do better.
He turned to go back toward the pickup and came face to face with a young woman with short black hair and dark eyes. For a moment they stared at each other as recognition clawed at his mind. And then it seemed to hit them both at once. She was one of Maya’s sisters—he’d met her at the saloon that night.
Even as his mind grasped who she was, hers seemed to identify him. Because her eyes went narrow and her lips thinned.
He thrust out a hand in greeting. She thrust out a fist in a right hook that caught him in the jaw and made lightning flash in his brain.
When he shook his brains back into order, he found himself on his butt on the ground and she was revving the motor of a well-worn minivan and speeding away.
He rubbed his jaw. Hell, he hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but he hadn’t expected an ambush, either.
The question was, would Maya be as glad to see him as her sister had obviously been? Suddenly he was having second thoughts about finding out. Maybe he’d better try to get the lay of the land just a bit first—rather than waltzing right out to that cozy little farmhouse with the red shutters, right away. Even if he could remember where it was. Maybe it would be wise to make sure there wouldn’t be armed infantrymen, or maybe just sisters, lining the driveway, with the intent to blow his head off first and ask questions later.
Swallowing hard, he nodded. To the boarding house…then he’d see.
