The Mccaffertys: Slade

“Okay.” It was Jamie’s turn to stand. “If any of you has any questions, you can call me through my cell phone, as I don’t have a phone number here in town yet, or you can leave a message with the office and they’ll get in touch with me. I’m staying at my grandmother’s place and as soon as the regular phone is hooked up, I’ll let you know.”

The meeting was over.

Everyone shook hands.

All business.

Somehow it galled the hell out of Slade, but he found her coat and helped her into it.

Without a backward glance, she walked out the door, her black coat billowing behind her, her briefcase swinging from one gloved hand. Slade hesitated, couldn’t help but watch as she climbed into her car and drove away, tires spinning in the snow.

“Randi’s right. You did date her,” Matt said as Slade closed the door and, hands in the front pockets of his jeans, strolled back to the living room where his brothers were waiting. Matt knelt at the fire, prodding the blackened log with a poker while Thorne rummaged in the old man’s liquor cabinet.

“I saw her a few times,” Slade admitted, leaning one hip on the windowsill. This conversation was getting them nowhere and he didn’t want to discuss it. Seeing Jamie again had brought back a tidal wave of memories that he’d dammed up a long, long time ago.

“Oh, come on, Slade. You saw her more than a few times.” Randi hobbled into the room, then fell onto the leather couch. “Let’s see,” she said, her features pinching as she tried to recall images from the past. Slade sensed he wasn’t going to like what was coming next and he braced himself. “The way I remember it, you dated Jamie for a couple of months while you were broken up with Sue Ellen Tisdale, right?”

“I remember you with Sue Ellen,” Thorne added. Great. Just what he needed: his family dissecting his love life.

“But,” Randi added, “once Sue Ellen came to her senses and came running back, you dropped Jamie like a hot potato. I thought you were going to marry Sue Ellen.”

Slade snorted; didn’t comment.

Thorne pulled out a bottle of Scotch. “So did I.”

“Everyone did.” Randi wasn’t about to let up. “Probably even Jamie.”

“Again, your memory amazes me,” Slade commented.

“As I said, ‘bits and pieces.’”

“Is that right?” Matt prodded the fire with a poker. “You really tossed Jamie over for Sue Ellen Tisdale?” His tone implied that Slade was a first-class idiot.

“That’s not exactly what happened. Besides, it was years ago.”

“Doesn’t matter when it happened.” Randi rested one heel on the coffee table. “Face it, Slade,” she said as the fire began to crackle, “whether you want to admit it or not, about fifteen years ago, you were the son of a bitch who broke Jamie Parsons’s heart.”

CHAPTER THREE

“WELL, THAT WENT SWIMMINGLY,” Jamie rumbled under her breath as she carried her briefcase and a sack of groceries into her grandmother’s house. Driving into town from the Flying M she’d second-guessed herself and cursed C. William “Chuck” Jansen a dozen times over for assigning her to the McCafferty project.

“Since you’re heading to Grand Hope anyway, I thought you could help the firm out,” Chuck had said as he’d sat familiarly on the corner of the desk in her office, one leg swinging, his wing-tip gleaming in the soft lighting. His boyish smile had been wide, his suit expensive, his shirt, as always, starched and crisply pressed. He’d tugged at his Yves St. Laurent tie. “I think it would be a good idea to put a face on Jansen, Monteith and Stone for the McCafferty family. John Randall McCafferty was an excellent client of the firm and the partners would like to keep the McCaffertys’ business. Maybe even get a little more. Thorne McCafferty is a millionaire several times over in his own right, and the second son, Matt—he owns his own place. He’s basically a small-time rancher, but he also seems to have some of that McCafferty-Midas touch. The third son…”

Jamie recalled how Chuck’s brows had knit and his lips had folded together thoughtfully while she had conjured up a few unwelcome memories of Slade and nearly snapped her pen in two. “Well, there’s always one in the family, I suppose. The third son, Slade—he never amounted to much. Lots of potential, but couldn’t get it together. Too busy raising hell. He drove race cars and rode rodeo and even led expeditions for extreme skiing, I think. Always on the edge, but never getting his life together.

“But John Randall’s only daughter, Randi—she’s a real firecracker—takes after the old man. No wonder she was named after him.”

Jamie tried to ignore the comments about Slade and concentrated on his half sister. She remembered Randi as being smart, sassy and McCafferty-stubborn.

“She’s got her own daily column, ‘Solo’ or ‘Being Single’ or something,” Chuck had continued. “Writes for a Seattle newspaper. There’s some talk of syndication, I think. And Thorne mentioned that she could have been working on a book at the time of the accident.”

“Thorne McCafferty used to work here, didn’t he?” Jamie had asked, twiddling her pen and not liking the turn of the conversation. Especially not any reference to Slade.

“Yes, yes, that’s right. He was a junior partner years ago. Then went out on his own. Moved to Denver. But he still throws us a bone once in a while. So, I’ve been thinking. Wouldn’t it be a plum to nail down the corporate account, steal it away from that Denver firm he deals with?” Chuck’s eyes had sparked with a competitive fire Jamie hadn’t witnessed in a while.

“I thought you were going to retire.”

“In a couple of years, yes,” he’d admitted, winking at her. “But why not go out in a blaze, hmm? It’ll only make my share of the firm worth more, hence my retirement…we could buy a sailboat and sail to Tahiti or Fiji or—”

“I’ll still have a job.”

“Not if you marry me.”

She’d squirmed. Chuck had been pressuring her lately and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. There had been a time when she’d thought that enough money could buy happiness, that the reason Slade McCafferty hadn’t been interested in her was because she was poor, from the wrong side of the tracks, and didn’t have the social status of Sue Ellen Tisdale. But over the years she’d changed her opinion about financial success and its rewards. She’d met plenty of miserable millionaires.

“Listen.” Chuck had rapped his knuckles on the desk as he’d straightened. “Think about it when you’re in Grand Hope. Being Mrs. Chuck Jansen wouldn’t be all that bad, not that I’m pressuring you.”

“Right,” she’d said, and managed a smile.

“We’ll talk when you get back.” He’d said it with the same confidence he oozed in a courtroom.

“What a mess,” Jamie muttered to herself as she adjusted the thermostat while, presumably, back in Missoula, Chuck was waiting, expecting her to get off the fence and accept his proposal.

But she couldn’t. Not yet.

Why?

Chuck was smart. Educated. Clever. Good-looking. Wealthy. His share of the business was worth a bundle and then there was his stock portfolio and two homes.

He also has a bitter ex-wife, her mind nagged. And three college-age kids. He doesn’t want any more.

Jamie thought of Randi McCafferty and her newborn son, the way the baby’s eyes had twinkled in adoration at his mother. Her heartstrings tugged. God, how she wanted a baby of her own, a baby to love. Could she marry Chuck, become a stepmother to nearly grown children, never raise a daughter or son of her own, one she conceived with a husband who made her heart pound and brought a smile to her lips? For a second Slade’s face flashed through Jamie’s mind. “Oh, stop it,” she growled at herself in frustration. Just because she’d been thrown back here and had to face him, she’d started fantasizing. “You’re pathetic, Parsons. Pa-thetic.” She started to unpack the groceries, but couldn’t forget how surprised she’d been at Slade’s easy manner with his twin nieces and tiny nephew. Who would have thought?

Ironic, she thought, touching her flat abdomen. But, once upon a time…

“Don’t even go there,” she chastised herself, stocking the cupboard with a few cans of soup and a box of crackers, then stuffing a quart of milk and jug of orange juice into the old refrigerator.

She remembered turning into the lane of the Flying M this afternoon. Her nerves had been stretched tight as piano wire, her hands sweating inside her gloves. But that had been just the start of it. Finally facing Slade again—oh, Lord, that had been the worst; more difficult than she’d even imagined.

He’d changed in the past fifteen years. His body had filled out, his shoulders were broader, his chest wider, though his hips were as lean as she remembered. At that thought, she colored, remembering the first time she’d seen him without clothes—at the swimming hole when he’d yanked off his cutoffs, revealing that he hadn’t bothered wearing any underwear. She’d glimpsed white buttocks that had contrasted to his tanned back and muscular legs, and caught sight of something more, a part of male anatomy she’d never seen before.

Oh, God, she’d been such an innocent. Of course he’d changed physically. Hard-living and years had a way of doing that to a body. Slade’s face was more angular than it had been; a thin scar ran down one side of his face, but his eyes were still as blue as a Montana sky.

She’d noticed that he’d limped slightly. And there was something in his expression, a darkness in his eyes, that betrayed him, a shadow of pain. Okay, so he had his war wounds; some more visible than others. Didn’t everyone? She folded the grocery sack and slipped it into the pantry.

She couldn’t help but wonder what had happened between Sue Ellen and him, though she imagined Sue Ellen was just one of dozens. The McCafferty boys had been legendary in their conquests. Hadn’t she been one?

“Who cares,” she growled as she picked up her coat and hung it in the hall closet where Nana’s vacuum cleaner still stood guard. All the McCafferty boys had been hellions, teenagers who had disregarded the law. Slade had been no exception. While Thorne had been an athlete, and toed the line more than either of his brothers, Matt had been rumored to be a lady-killer with his lazy smile and rodeo daring, and Slade had gained the reputation of a daredevil, a boy who’d fearlessly climbed the most jagged peaks, kayaked down raging rivers and skied to the extreme on the most treacherous slopes—all of which had been accomplished over his father’s vehement protests.