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“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Norman Lees told the cops everything. You won’t be able to lie your way out of it. Not even Mother’s highly paid attorneys will be able to get you out of here.” She saw him wince. “Mother did call her attorneys, didn’t she?” The fury in his face told her that she hadn’t weakened and sent them. “Seriously? Mommy not coming to rescue you this time? Wow, you really have hit rock bottom.”
“Speaking of rock bottom, you and the McKenna’s ranch hand? Not Pickett but Archibald Vanderlin Westmoreland. How’s that for a mouthful? Everything about him is a lie. Poor, sweet sister, you’ve been his buddy all this time and you had no idea that he’d been lying to you and everyone else and now you’re both going to end up behind bars just like me.” He laughed.
“Sorry, but there are no charges against either of us,” she said and saw his disappointment.
“Seriously? You blow up a CH4 drilling rig, you get one of their security members killed and they don’t do anything to you?”
“So unfair, huh? While innocent you rots in jail.” She shook her head.
“I need a good lawyer. That’s the least you could do since you put me here.”
She stared at him. “You can’t really think I’d hire a lawyer to get you out of here.”
“You and I can run the ranch. We can—”
“Not happening, CJ. Not ever, even if Mother would let you back on the ranch. You only have yourself to blame for all of this because of your greed. It’s never enough, is it?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not.” From pleading, he’d quickly turned to fury. “I’m going to get out of here and when I do—”
“Save your threats, CJ. By the time you get out of prison, you’ll be too old and frail to do anything. That’s if someone doesn’t shank you while you’re in there.”
“I’m going to be running that place and making friends, the kind of friends who’ll do anything I ask them to. They’ll have friends on the outside who’ll do my bidding. You’ll never be free of me, and neither will Mother. She, like you, will rue the day she turned on me.”
She stared at him, again reminded how dangerous he was.
“I know about the two of you spending the night at McKenna Ranch,” he called after her. “Pickett was seen carrying you inside. You didn’t come out until morning.” He laughed. “I have my sources.”
“What you won’t have is freedom,” she said. “We will all be living our lives, free to do whatever we want. I feel sorry for you, CJ. While you lose your mind plotting revenge against us, we won’t be giving you a thought. Goodbye, CJ.”
She walked down the hall and pushed the button, not looking back. As the door opened, she stepped out, took a deep breath and let it out as she walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“CANYOUEVERforgive me for not telling you the truth?” Pickett asked. He and Oakley were lying in bed after making love at her apartment. “I’ve wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how after so long.”
“Maybe, someday, I’ll find it in my heart to forgive you,” she teased as she kissed him. “I still don’t really understand.”
“Most people wouldn’t. They dream of coming from a wealthy family,” he said. “From as far back as I can remember I was to take over my father’s empire. My life was mapped out for me. It didn’t matter what I wanted to do with my life. As the only child of Archibald Vanderlin Westmoreland the third, I had no choice.”
“Obviously, you did have a choice, one you made when you showed up at the McKenna Ranch.”
“When I left at such a young age, I was running for my life. I told myself that if I failed, I would have to go back, that I really had no other option, then I got on at the ranch. I loved the work. I learned to ride a horse, mend fences, herd cattle, pull calves. I worked with my hands from sunup to sunset. I fell in bed at night, exhausted. I loved it. I needed it.”
She could see that it was true. He’d become the man he wanted to be, and he’d done it on his own. “Your father must have been proud of you.”
Pickett nodded. “He was. I’d burned that bridge. I believed there was no going back and yet I’d thrived and done well for myself.” He chuckled. “Nothing like my father. I’d started with nothing but a desire to be my own man.”
She curled into him, thinking what a man he was. He’d saved her life in so many ways. “Where did you get the name Pickett Hanson?” she asked, leaning back to look into his face.
He grinned. “I saw it on an old gravestone. I liked it. I wanted to be someone else. Once I met you...” His gaze held hers. “You and this life were all I wanted.”
“I wish you would have told me,” she said.
“Told you that I came from a wealthy family, that I’d walked away from all that to be a ranch hand, that I had no contact with them or that I’d changed my name? That’s about all that I could have told you. Would it have made a difference?”
She heard it in his voice. “You wanted me to fall in love with Pickett Hanson—not Archibald the fourth.” Everything about this man drew her to him, his blue eyes, his head of thick sun-blonded brown hair, one lock that fell over his forehead, that mouth that kissed like it had been heaven sent.
