The Ransom

“Thanks.” Kathryn took the paper from Willa. “I’ll talk to Johnny before Matthew and I drive into Layton.” As for the reporter, Kathryn knew Burton had written articles in the Times that put a harsh light on her missing Sam’s funeral. Marriage to the country’s top box-office actor had taught Kathryn numerous ways to deal with that type of reporting.

Brad gave Matthew a considering look. “Are you going to see Dr. Teasdale because you don’t feel good?”

“No.” Matthew took a bite of sandwich. “This is a…Mommy, what kind of ’pointment is this?”

“An introductory appointment,” Kathryn said while opening a carton of yogurt. Even after two years, she still found herself gripped by a terrible panic when she thought about how ill Matthew had been when his kidneys had failed. After months of hospital stays and dialysis, a transplanted kidney had saved his life.

Now, a daily dose of an antirejection med and an occasional checkup kept Matthew on a healthy, even keel.

Glancing Brad’s way, Kathryn pulled a spoon out of a drawer. “Matthew and Dr. Teasdale are going to get acquainted today.”

“I’ve got two girls of my own,” Brad told Matthew around a bite of pie. “They both go to Dr. Teasdale.”

“Is he nice?”

Brad nodded. “He’s so nice, he has permission to deputize little boys. And give out special deputy badges.”

Matthew swiveled in his chair. “Mommy, can I be a deputy? And get a badge? Then I can arrest the outlaws in our tunnel.”

“We’ll ask Dr. Teasdale.” Kathryn slid into the chair beside her son, and pretended not to notice the bite of pie Brad snuck onto Matthew’s plate. Yes, when it came to banking, she much preferred dealing with him than with his father-in-law.

CLAY TURNER strode out of Layton City Hall into the fiery heat of the late afternoon sun. He was tall, nearly six foot four with a rangy, disciplined build more accustomed in the last few years to a rancher’s denim than the body armor and holstered weapons that were a part of his past. A well-worn Stetson shaded a tanned face that was lean and square-jawed. A scar slashed across his right cheek, disappearing into the dark hair at his temple. The scar was a reminder of a time he would never leave behind.

By the time he’d crossed the town’s busy main street, Clay’s white dress shirt was damp with sweat and he was sucking in air as dry as old bones.

He glanced at his watch, frustrated that so much of the day had gotten away from him. He’d spent the morning repairing fence near the road bordering the north side of Double Starr property. Fortunately he’d been able to continue working while talking financial business with Brad Jordan. Then he’d had to clean up and drive into town where he’d just wasted a couple of hours in a meeting of the Layton Municipal League, of which his uncle was chairman.

While an agent for the U.S. State Department’s diplomatic security service, Clay had attended so many meetings he’d grown to hate just the thought of sitting through another one. But his uncle was out of town on ranch business and he’d asked Clay to attend in his place. Since Les Turner was also his employer, Clay couldn’t very well say no. So he’d crammed the tail of his dress shirt into a clean pair of jeans, lashed on a damn tie and driven to town.

The tie was now loosened, his shirt’s upper buttons undone and its sleeves rolled up on his arms. He glanced toward the end of the block where a digital display scrolled beneath the bank’s sign. One hundred two degrees. Clay gritted his teeth. No man was supposed to live in these temperatures.

Lucky for him he’d been as good as dead nearly two years.

His eyes narrowed against a blast of hot wind and brutal memories. He feared he would hear his mother’s screams, his father’s shouts for the rest of his life.

His parents were dead. He was at fault. Blame weighted his shoulders, a heavy, unyielding albatross.

He dragged an unsteady hand across his jaw, swallowing the bile that rose like poison in his throat. The only thing that held back the guilt was work. Physical and mental labor, preferably to the point of exhaustion.

Clearly he hadn’t done near enough work today.

With his uncle out of town and the cook off, Clay decided to pick up his supper before he left Layton. When he got back to the Double Starr he would eat while he inputted the banker’s latest figures into the spreadsheets he maintained on the ranch’s finances.

Since his pickup was parked in front of a new place that featured sandwiches, ice cream and designer coffees, that’s where he headed. Pulling open the door, he stepped into the brightly lit glass-and-tile-lined café. To his left was a glossy black counter and a display case full of pastries and cookies the size of hubcaps. The tables that dotted the floor were covered with butcher paper and in the center of each was a glass holding colored pencils. The place looked good. And the air conditioner was set on arctic.

Clay glanced toward the far corner. Six teenage girls, each licking on her own ice-cream cone, were clustered around one of the tables, giggling and sharing secrets. A man and woman whom Clay didn’t recognize sat at one of the booths that lined the front window.

Easing back the brim of his Stetson, he scanned the menu board on the wall behind the counter.

“Afternoon, Clay. Glad you came in.”

He nodded to the plain-faced middle-aged man behind the counter. Norman Adams and his wife were teachers at the high school. Clay recalled hearing talk that a bad investment in the stock market had tumbled the couple into debt, and they’d opened the café to supplement their incomes. “The place looks great, Norman.”

“Thanks. So far, business has been good.” He sent Clay a smile that was shaky around the edges. “What can I get for you?”

While he ordered, Clay heard the café’s door open and close. He pulled money out of his billfold at the same time a child’s voice said, “Mommy, look at the football player in the window.”

“That poster he’s on lists the high school football games. We’ll have to go to some this fall.”

Clay froze. That voice. For an instant, he thought it was just another from his past, come to haunt him.

Throat tight, he forced himself to turn toward the door. A hot ball of awareness settled in his gut as he took in the woman clad in slim white slacks and a sleeveless crimson blouse who was leaning down, one arm around a small boy’s waist. She spoke to him softly while nodding toward the poster in the window.

He’d known she was coming back. With the newspaper running pictures and articles, and all of Layton buzzing about Kathryn Conner Mason’s return, there was no way Clay couldn’t have known.

What he hadn’t known was that studying every picture of her he’d come across had been the easy part. Seeing her in the flesh was the equivalent of a fist smashing into his solar plexus.

The eighteen-year-old girl he’d walked away from was now a woman. The raven-black hair she had worn to her waist now barely skimmed her shoulders, framing a face that had become more fine-boned with maturity. The slender, angular body that he’d known every dip and hollow of had developed a woman’s seductive curves. Studying her, Clay felt his heartbeat spike. His mouth went dry. And the floor beneath his boots shifted due to some age-old emotion, coupled with regret. Dragging regret over the choices made by a young man who had not fully understood repercussions, hadn’t thought long-term. Hadn’t wanted to.

A band tightened around his chest. On nights when his nightmares woke him he lay alone in a cold sweat, thinking about Kathryn Conner. Wondering which direction their lives would have taken if back then his mind hadn’t automatically done a quick sidestep at the thought of a woman, any woman, tying him down.

If only he’d responded differently when Kathryn pressed for a commitment. If only he’d taken time to explore the emotions he’d been so quick to deny that had drawn him to the spirited dark-haired girl. Maybe then he would have taken her to Houston with him when his vacation ended. Doing so might have saved their child. If so, his parents would have moved back to the States like they’d always promised they would when he settled down and gave them a grandchild.

His gaze went to the boy. Kathryn’s son. He was blond and brown-eyed, the image of his superstar father. Matthew Mason, five years old, Clay thought, his cop’s mind pulling back the information he’d read in the newspaper.

And in the People magazine he’d secretly bought to sate his curiosity about the woman who’d brutally clung to his thoughts over the past two years.

Her laugh drifted on the cool air as she cupped her son’s chin, gave him a kiss, then straightened and turned toward the counter.

With her gaze locked with Clay’s, Kathryn went still while everything around her slipped out of focus. A shudder shot down her spine and onward to bury itself behind her knees.

If she took two short steps she could reach out and touch him. Touch the man whom she had once wanted more than she’d wanted even to breathe. The man she had made such a fool of herself over.

She fought back humiliation along with the urge to grab Matthew into her arms and run as fast as she could away from Clay Turner, away from the past. The pain.

But all she could do was stare back at him while she struggled for words that wouldn’t come. His face was thinner than she remembered, the hollows of his cheeks deeper. Lines were scored into the corners of his eyes and mouth. His body was trim, muscled and looked hard as granite. A white dress shirt, open at the neck, revealed curling black hair as rich in color as the hair that brushed the shirt’s collar. Beneath the brim of his Stetson, his dark eyes looked as sharp as a sword.

Her gaze slid to his right cheek, now marred by a thin scar that slashed upward across his temple. A memory came: her own fingers stroking a similar scar on his back as they lay on rumpled sheets.

“Hello, Kat,” he said quietly.

“Clay.” Despite the blood pounding in her cheeks from his use of his private nickname for her, she kept her voice casual and controlled.

“Been a long time,” he said.

Not long enough. “It has,” she managed to say through stiff lips.

“Mommy, you’re squeezing my hand too tight!”