Almost Home Part 4

She'd noticed. Dark gray s.h.i.+rt, black jeans, cleaner than the ones he'd worn earlier but very much the same. He looked good in black, she decided, strong, masculine, s.e.xy, maybe even a little dangerous. But it didn't seem to matter. Despite the warning from Maggie, despite the fact that she'd landed herself in trouble both times in his presence, she found herself wanting to linger in his company.

"Did you really help your father steal half the town's money?" she asked, somewhat surprised by her own boldness. But once the question was out, she found she desperately wanted to know the answer.

Zach sighed. "Get in the truck, Katherine."

"None of my business?"

"That's right."

"I'm sure someone will tell me."

"Probably without your even asking."

Katherine got into the truck as Zach slammed her door. This conversation wasn't going much better than their previous ones. Zach slid into the driver's seat and started the engine.

"I heard your car won't be ready for a few days," Zach said as he drove down the street. "I car have someone drive you into Lexington or Louisville tomorrow if you want to catch a plane home. I'm sure the rental-car agency can send someone out to get your car when it's ready."

Katherine didn't say anything for a moment. She looked out the window at the quaint, old-fas.h.i.+oned shops on Main Street , the tall, gnarly trees that graced the sidewalks, the dimly lit streetlamps. She hadn't begun to explore this town-or the people who lived here.

"Is that man-J.T., you said his name was?"

"Yeah. What about him?"

She heard the wary note in his voice but ignored it. "Is he married?"

"For a long time."

"How long?"

"I don't know-twenty-plus years."

"Does he have children?"

Zach shot her a quick look, then turned the truck in to a parking s.p.a.ce in front of the hotel. "No kids," he said abruptly, "And I don't want to know why you're asking."

"I can't help wondering. Did he live here in 1972?"

"You can't look at every middle-aged man and imagine he's your father."

"It's hard not to. Especially because of his name."

"I thought you didn't know your father's name."

"His first initial was J."

Zach stared at her for a long moment. "Do you want a daddy so bad you'll let yourself hope that some drunk in a bar is your father?"

He made her sound stupid, needy, desperate, and unloved. d.a.m.n him.

"Forget it." Katherine opened the car door and got out. She wasn't crazy to want to find her father, but she had taken leave of her senses to imagine that Zach Tyler was a nice man.

Zach wasn't taking care of her because he wanted to. He'd just gotten stuck with her-like so many other people in her life. He wasn't with her by choice, but by duty or courtesy or maybe guilt. She was a fool for mistaking politeness for friends.h.i.+p.

Zach met up with her on the sidewalk. He grabbed her arm as she started to walk away. "Look, Katherine-"

"No, you look," she interrupted, pulling her arm away from him. "I don't need your advice. I do not need you to tell me to go home when I'm perfectly capable of making that decision on my own."

"You don't know what you're getting into."

"So what?"

"You could get hurt."

She looked him dead in the eye. "I am not your responsibility. I am not even your friend. So it shouldn't matter to you what I do, or whether or not I get hurt in the process."

He didn't say anything for a long moment. "You're right. It doesn't matter to me."

She swallowed hard, his words cutting to the quick, even though she'd practically demanded such a response. "Then we're agreed that I can do what I want."

"I'm sure you always do what you want."

Katherine stared at him, realizing that he didn't know her at all. She almost never did what she wanted. Most of the time she considered pleasing other people her first responsibility and pleasing herself a distant second. But Zach Tyler had pegged her as a spoiled, stubborn, selfish city girl. They really had nothing else to talk about. So why wasn't she moving? And why wasn't he?

She looked into his eyes to find him staring back at her with a look too personal, too direct, for two strangers. "I should go."

"You should," he said obliquely.

"I mean into the hotel."

"Right."

But neither one of them moved, and the air between them sizzled. She'd never felt anything like it. This rough-edged cowboy had somehow gotten under her skin.

"You're wrong about me," she said abruptly, crossing her arms protectively in front of her. "I'm not who you think I am."

"You don't know what I think."

"You don't like me."

His lips curved into a wry smile. "Not liking you is not the problem and you know it."

A s.h.i.+ver shot down her spine. "I just came here to find my father, Zach. I'm not interested in-anything else."

"I don't recall offering you anything else."

She licked her lips. "I'll say good night then."

"Good night."

She started to move toward the hotel, when he caught her by the arm once more. This time there was no anger to blur the heat of his touch, the strength of the connection.

"Zach?" she asked, not sure what she wanted him to say.

"J.T. Baker runs the Pederson Stud Farm," he said abruptly. "It's about ten miles east of town. Ask at the hotel and they'll give you directions. His wife, Mary Jo, is a nice woman, kinder than most. I can't say the same for J.T."

"Why?"

"I'll let you figure that out for yourself."

"Thanks for the tip."

"If J.T.'s your father, I don't think you'll be thanking me."

"Maybe he's not," she said, suddenly realizing the search for her father might produce a man she didn't particularly want to call Dad. Funny, but the idea had never occurred to her until just this minute.

Zach smiled. "It finally sunk in, didn't it?"

"What?" she asked warily.

"The thought that your father might be a complete deadbeat. Then what will you do? Welcome him into your life with open arms or pretend you haven't really found him, that in fact you weren't even looking? It was just a misunderstanding, a mistake."

His words. .h.i.t too close to home, to the fear that had suddenly erupted inside of her. "It won't happen that way," she said fiercely. "He'll be a good person. He'll be strong and smart and kind and honorable. And he'll want to know me."

Zach looked at her for a long moment. "They should have named you Pollyanna."

"My mother wouldn't have been with him if he wasn't a nice man," she added, refusing to let any other doubt creep into her head.

"A nice man," Zach echoed. "Well, I hope he turns out to be what you want. Good night Kat." He tipped his head to her. "Sweet dreams."

Sweet dreams? She had a feeling she'd just drifted into the beginning of a nightmare.

Chapter 4.

Mary Jo Baker lay on her back and stared at the ceiling with a growing sense of frustration and restlessness. She was forty-seven years old and reasonably attractive. She dyed the gray out of her blond hair and remembered to put on makeup. So how had she come to this point-wearing a long sleeve, white cotton nightgown to bed and listening to her overweight, balding husband snort and shake with every breath he took? Where was the romance? The pa.s.sion? The man she'd desperately wanted to marry all those years ago?

Gone-all gone.

She had to face facts. She was married to a no-good, cheating, lying drunk. She couldn't believe he'd let his temper get so out of control that he'd actually thrown his drink at some woman in the bar. J.T. had told her it was an accident, but it didn't matter. She'd gotten three calls from so-called friends before he'd even made it home, three embarra.s.sing, humiliating calls. It was getting more difficult to go into town and smile, knowing that her longtime neighbors considered her an object of pity.

The shadowy moonlight danced across her ceiling, teasing her, taunting her. She hadn't been free to dance or sing or howl at the moon in decades. No, she was trapped in this bed, in this room, in this marriage, as surely as if her hands were tied to the bedpost. And she'd been a willing prisoner, looking the other way for more years than she could count.

With a sigh, she tried to remember J.T. the way he'd once been. She'd met him when he was going to college in Lexington. One of his friends worked as an exercise rider at their farm on the weekends, and J.T. started to come along with him. He soon became a regular visitor and a family favorite. Even her father, William Pederson, had become a fan of J.T.'s, attracted to the younger man's business ac.u.men, his drive, his ambition. Her father had always wanted a son, and in J.T. he'd found the next best thing.

No one had antic.i.p.ated how time could change a man. Over the years, J.T. had turned into a man Mary Jo barely recognized. Not all of it was J.T.'s fault. They'd spent a great deal of their marriage trying to have a baby. Fifteen years of fertility testing and s.e.x on schedule had taken their toll, and J.T. absolutely refused to raise a child not of his blood.

She told herself it was too late to change the bed she'd made, but deep down in her heart she knew she'd have to change something. It was one thing to give up on love and s.e.x. It was another to lose her self-respect and the respect of her friends.

Not to mention that J.T. was running her family business into the ground. How could she go on turning a blind eye? She was the last of the Pedersons, the only one who could stop the disintegration of the farm that had been in her family for four generations.

John Thomas snorted and rolled over. He blinked open one eye. "Did you say something?"

She hadn't, but now she intended to. "We can't go on like this, J.T."

"s.h.i.+t!"

"Don't swear at me."

"It's the middle of the night. Go to sleep." He turned over so his back was to her. Mary Jo leaned over him. "You can't keep getting drunk and losing control like you did tonight."

"It was an accident. Some woman got a little bourbon splashed on her clothes. Big deal. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"And so were you. You didn't need to be at Golden's. And you didn't need to be mixing it up with Zach Tyler."

"He's an a.s.shole."

"You should talk," she said sharply. "I won't let you embarra.s.s me like this. People are talking about us."

He rolled over and glared up at her. "I'll do whatever I d.a.m.n well please."

"No, you won't." It took a lot of courage for her to say the words, but she'd been practicing them for weeks.

"What did you say?"

"I won't let you humiliate me any further."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I'm making you a promise." She took a deep breath and dove in. "I still own fifty-one percent of the business, and if you do one more thing to embarra.s.s me, I'll sell it to Zach Tyler."

His eyes widened. She'd finally gotten his attention. "You wouldn't let your family farm go to that b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Don't bet on it."

"Have you lost your mind?"

"No, I've found it. I'm not going to live the rest of my life like this. I'm not going to go to my grave as a long-suffering martyr."

"Oh, and you have it so bad, all the clothes money can buy, a beautiful home, trips to wherever you want to go. I feel so sorry for you."

She glared at him. "It's my family's farm that's paid for most of those things. And this isn't about money. It's about us. If there still is an us."

J.T. looked a little nervous now, his eyes wary. "Of course there's an us. I had a little bit too much to drink. It won't happen again."