The Rancher's Spittin' Image

The chilling words sent ice through Mandy’s veins. Though she had feared this confrontation and had done everything in her power to avoid it, nothing had prepared her for the hate she saw in Jesse’s eyes. At that moment, she knew she stood to lose Jaime, the son she had given birth to and raised on her own. But denying Jesse’s accusation would do no good. “Jaime is a McCloud,” she told him firmly. “I gave birth to him and I raised him alone without help from you or anybody else.”

Which answered at least one of the questions that had haunted Jesse on the long ride to the Double-Cross. Mandy had never married.

“Through no fault of mine,” Jesse returned. He swung down from the saddle, fisting his hand in the reins as he strode to face her, his face contorted in anger. “Why didn’t you tell me I had a son?”

“Tell you!” Mandy repeated, taking a disbelieving step back. “You weren’t here, remember? You took off without telling anyone where you’d gone.”

Knowing she was right only made Jesse that much more angry. “I’m here now,” he warned. “And I intend to claim the boy as my own.”

When he whirled in the direction of the barn, Mandy lunged, grabbing for his arm. “Jesse, wait!” He snapped his head around, his eyes burning a hole in the fingers that held his arm. Mandy quickly dropped her hand to her side. “Please,” she begged him. “Don’t do this.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Why? Are you ashamed for the boy to know that his father is half-Mexican?”

Mandy’s eyes filled with frustrated tears. “No, it isn’t that. It’s just that he’s so young, he wouldn’t understand.”

“What wouldn’t he understand? That I’m his father or that his mother has kept that secret from him all these years?” Jesse took a threatening step closer. “Which is it, Mandy? Or has the boy never questioned his father’s absence?”

Mandy closed her eyes and pressed her trembling fingers to her temples. “He’s asked questions,” she murmured. “I explained his Spanish heritage to him, but I told him that his father died before he was born.”

“And I would be dead if Lucas’s aim had been a little better.”

Mandy paled at the memory.

“But I didn’t die, Mandy,” he reminded her. “I’m here and I’m going to claim my son whether you like it or not.” He moved to his horse and swung up in the saddle. Folding his arms across the saddle horn, he leaned down, putting his face within a foot of Mandy’s. “You’ve got twenty-four hours. You can pick the time and you can pick the place, but we’re going to tell him. When you’ve made your decision, you can reach me at the bunkhouse on the Circle Bar.”

Having issued the ultimatum, Jesse swung his horse around in a tight circle, dug his spurs into the gelding’s sides and galloped off, leaving Mandy staring after him in a cloud of choking dust

“Did you know he was my son?”

Pete draped his bridle over a hook and turned to Jesse on a weary sigh. “I suspected as much, though I never knowed for sure. The McClouds are pretty tightlipped about their personal affairs.”

“So no one knows?”

Pete lifted a shoulder before dragging his saddle off his horse’s lathered back. “Not long after you left, Lucas shipped Mandy off to stay with some cousin of his back east. She was gone more’n a year and when she come back, she had the boy in tow. Course he was nothin’ but a baby then. Rumor was she’d had an affair with some man she’d met while she was gone and he’d died before he could give the kid his name.”

“And people believed the story?”

“Why not? Nobody ever knew the two of you were sneakin’ around behind Lucas’s back, ’cept me.”

Jesse scowled at the mention of Lucas. “I didn’t see him when I was over there, though I kept expecting to feel the barrel of his rifle pressed against my back.”

Pete looked up in surprise. “You mean Lucas?” “Yeah,” Jesse muttered irritably. “Lucas.”

“Kinda‘ hard to do from the grave.”

Jesse jerked his head around to stare at Pete. “You mean Lucas is dead?”

“Been gone nigh on twelve years now. Had a heart attack not long after the girl brought the baby home to the Double-Cross.”

Shocked by the news, Jesse could only stare. “If Lucas is gone, then who’s running the place?”

“Mandy. With the help of Gabe, of course.”

Jesse dropped down on a bale of hay, his legs too weak to hold him. Lucas was gone, had been for twelve years. Jesse dropped his head in his hands on a groan. If only he’d stayed, he told himself, instead of hightailing it out of town. Without Lucas there to keep them apart, maybe he and Mandy could have been together.

No, Jesse, I can’t.

Mandy’s refusal seared its way through his mind and he raked his fingers through his hair as if he could tear the words from his memory. Mandy was the one who had sealed the end of their relationship, he reminded himself. Not Lucas.

He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to the bunkhouse,” he muttered to Pete. “You coming?”

Pete stared sadly at Jesse’s retreating back. “Yeah, I’ll be along as soon as I finish up here.”

“Maybe we should call Merideth,” Sam offered quietly.

Mandy whirled from the window and the darkness beyond. “And what could Merideth possibly do?”