HER CALLAHAN FAMILY MAN (6 page)

“That’s the problem,” Ash replied. “Wolf blames this whole situation on your uncle.”

Jace watched his wife’s expression turn fearful. “It’ll be all right,” he said quickly, but Sawyer stared at Ash.

“How could it be my uncle’s fault?”

She shrugged. “Wolf let your uncle know that he blames him for the deal falling apart. If Storm had stayed put and not sold his place to us, then Wolf would have continued to have ranch land he could operate from that bordered ours. Now he’s out in the open.”

“What does that have to do with the tunnels?” Jace asked.

Sawyer looked at him. “Your uncle Wolf thinks I turned on my uncle to marry you.”

Jace started to shake his head, then noticed his sister was nodding hers. “I don’t exactly get it.”

“You’ll have to tell him one day,” Ash said to Sawyer, who slowly nodded.

“You remember that I told you my uncle wanted me to report to him on anything suspicious your family might be doing, because he wasn’t sure who the bad guys and the good guys were?”

“Yeah,” Jace said, aware by the pained look on his sister’s face that he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear, “but I don’t care about that. You’re my wife. You’re having my children. Everything else is in the past.”

“I told my uncle that your family was thinking about leaving the ranch one day,” Sawyer said. “Especially since so many of you were married. And since Galen had bought the land across the canyons.”

“Sister Wind Ranch,” Ash said.

“Loco Diablo,” Jace said, trying to figure out why Sawyer was so upset. “I don’t see what’s wrong. We
will
go home eventually. When the land and the family are safe again, we’ll go back where we came from, and our cousins will return to their home.”

“I told my uncle that the Callahans could return home any day,” Sawyer said miserably. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just wanted to calm him down. He’s been so worried for so long. Wolf has really kept him rattled. He started out so friendly, but over time began to change, got more threatening. Uncle Storm panicked, knowing that Wolf’s men were close, and realizing that major trouble was coming if your family left Rancho Diablo. As far as my uncle is concerned, your family is strong, and maybe the only people capable of keeping Wolf at bay. So he sold out—to you. Wolf wanted him to sell to him,” Sawyer finished. “He’s furious with my uncle and promised to take revenge on him the moment his back was turned.”

Jace frowned. “This is typical Wolf stuff. If I listened to every threat that came out of Uncle Wolf, I’d be deaf.”

“But then the tunnels were reported to the Feds,” Ash interjected, “and Wolf believes Storm ratted him out.”

“How could he? Storm didn’t know about the tunnels.”

“He did,” Sawyer said with a sigh, “because of me.”

Jace felt a dawning sense of dread wash over him. “So? Wolf couldn’t know that your uncle knew.”

“Wolf knew,” Ash said, “because your wife was wired up.”

Jace stared at his wife, stunned. “Wired?”

“I thought I’d been wired by the Feds,” Sawyer said miserably. “But it was Wolf’s men, trying to get intel on your family.”

Her pretty blue eyes welled with tears, and Jace’s world turned on its head. “You ended up giving information to the enemy about your own uncle?”

“And you,” Sawyer said. “About the Callahans.”

“It’s not possible that you’re a double agent!” Jace felt his heart stop in his chest. “You were sleeping with me every chance we got.”

She blushed, and he felt a twinge for embarrassing her in front of Ash. But her betrayal had sent the words rocketing out of his mouth.

“Again, I thought I’d been wired by the Feds. They told me it was to protect your family, in case another one of the Callahans was kidnapped. They said Ash was wearing a wire, too.”

“You didn’t ask my sister if any Feds had questioned her about the tunnels? Or wired her?” Jace demanded.

“Actually,” Ash said, “I was wired. But I knew it was a trick, and I just played along to find out what I could about Wolf’s operations.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Jace demanded of his sister. “Do you realize the danger you put yourself in? What if Wolf had snatched you?” Anger rose inside him as he stared at the two most important women in his life. “Go outside,” he said to his sister. “I have to talk to my wife.”

Ash got up, slipped on her coat and went out the door. He heard a rocker scrape as she pulled a chair to the rail so she could stare into the forest. He glared at Sawyer, who tugged the blue robe around her more tightly. “I don’t think I completely understand why you did what you did. But what I do understand is that you’re not quite the bodyguard our family thought you were.”

“Jace—”

He held up a hand. “You’ve endangered yourself, you’ve endangered my children, your uncle, my family.” Jace stared at her. “I can’t trust you.”

“Were you ever going to trust a Cash?” she asked, her tone bitter.

Jace looked at her, wondering if the overwhelming pull he’d always felt for Sawyer had somehow clouded his mind, kept him from seeing her for what she really was. Maybe it had. He’d missed her like hell when she’d left Rancho Diablo. When she’d returned, he’d been relieved, and most of all, felt alive again.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Maybe I was too blind to see it.” Perhaps what he loved most about Sawyer was that she was life on the edge, the walk on the wild side that brought amazing emotions rushing through him. “Maybe trusting you was my Achilles’ heel. A weakness I brought on my own family.”

He left the kitchen and went to sit outside on the front porch, away from his sister, and definitely as far away from his wife as he could get. The moon hung full overhead, and the sky promised cold, and no doubt snow by morning. A tinge of fear gripped him, and his grandfather’s warning crept into his mind: one of the Chacon Callahans was the hunted one, the one who would bring danger and darkness to the family. Jace had always been so certain it wasn’t him. He felt his roots deeply, both in the tribe and in his Callahan lineage.

But he had brought danger to the family by marrying Sawyer. He’d married her, for God’s sake.

There’d been no choice. Not just because of the children, but because he loved her. He wouldn’t admit that to a single soul, but he was in love with a woman who seemed to have different faces, different lives.

The lightning-strike tattoo on his shoulder, which all the Callahan siblings had—the sign of their bond—burned suddenly, as if he was being branded.

Jace looked up at the full moon above and wished like hell he hadn’t found out who his wife really was.

He’d been sleeping with the enemy. For many long, tortured nights, he’d known his soul was hers.

He’d brought the enemy to Rancho Diablo. And made her a Callahan.

Chapter Six

“She’s gone,” Ash said, when he walked back inside the small cabin the next morning. His sister looked nonplussed as she snacked on some cookies and a cup of coffee.

“She isn’t gone.” Jace tossed his coat into a chair. He’d spent an uncomfortable night on the front porch, unaware of the time passing as he watched the snow drift down. It had piled up, maybe three inches, while he’d sat and stared at it. He’d felt dead inside, immune to cold and fear.

All he could do was play over and over in his mind how Sawyer could have betrayed him—and how he could have been too blind to recognize it. “Sawyer couldn’t have left. I was sitting out front the entire night. Anyway, she’s my wife. Right now, she needs me. She’s pregnant with twins.”

“I know.” His sister brought him a mug of black coffee. “You forget she’s a very well-trained bodyguard. Perhaps you even forget how skilled she is at not just protection, but evasion. It’s why Kendall felt secure hiring her for the twins. Don’t you remember this?”

“She must still be here, Ash. There’s no place for her to go.”

They were halfway up the mountain, maybe more. The road down would be a challenge, even if she’d stolen his truck.

“She took my Jeep,” Ash said.

He stared at his sister, reality socking him in the face. “How in the hell did that happen?”

Ash shrugged. “I gave her my keys.”

His jaw dropped. “What?”

“She wanted to go. I gave her my keys, told her how to get off the mountain without driving past your snowbound lair out there.”

“You had my pregnant wife drive up to the top of this mountain and go down the other side, in this weather, without even knowing if the roads were passable at the top?” He slumped into a chair at the table, unable to look away from Ash’s gamine face. She stared at him calmly.

“You can’t keep her prisoner.”

“I know that! She wasn’t a prisoner, damn it. We had things to work out.” She’d kissed him just as passionately as he’d kissed her last night, and he’d been pretty certain they were about to finally find out what making love together in a bed would be like.

And now this bombshell.

He felt wrecked.

“I’m so sorry, brother,” Ash said. “I usually don’t get involved in people’s personal lives.”

“You always get involved in everybody’s personal lives,” Jace said.

“What I mean is that I would never have done it, except that I can’t bear for anything to be trapped. You know that.” Ash stared at him. “Sawyer seemed as lost as the animals I do rescue work with. I wanted her spirit to be as free as the Diablos. You know how important that is.”

He grunted, not happy.

Ash put a hand on his arm as she sat next to him. “Brother, it’s bad to start off a marriage with one person feeling trapped. That’s not the way you want Sawyer.”

He just wanted her. He didn’t really care how he got her.

Which was a problem.

“She’ll come to you,” Ash said.

“Runaway brides usually run for a reason.”

His sister sighed. “Okay, I don’t know that she’ll come back for sure. But you two have a lot to build on.”

“Not really.”

“The children, Jace. They’ll be a huge part of your lives.”

He nodded. “Sharing custody with my wife isn’t what I had in mind.” No doubt Sawyer would want to divorce him now. Maybe even annul the marriage. Damn it, she might ask for a divorce
and
an annulment, which would stink to high heaven.

“She’s just heartbroken,” Ash said.

“Sawyer is heartbroken?” He got up and moved to stare out at the dawning sky.

“She knows you don’t trust her.”

“That’s a whole other problem.”

“Jace, relationships are built on mutual trust and respect.”

He shook his head. “There’s no reason for us to stay here. Come on. Pack your bags.”

“Bags? Since when do I travel with a bag?” His sister stood, reached for her coat and backpack.

“Whose joint is this, anyway?” He glanced around one final time. It was a great place for a honeymoon—if two people wanted to be alone together. Sawyer hadn’t wanted that.

“It’s Grandfather’s,” Ash said, sounding surprised.

Jace took further stock of the cabin. “It can’t be. It’s too frilly.”

She smiled. “Poor Grandfather. Don’t you think he has a life of his own?”

Jace looked at her. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Close your eyes.”

His sister was trying his patience, but he complied.

“What do you feel?” she asked softly.

“Pissed.”

“Besides that. Look beyond your own emotions.”

He focused on the smell of the cabin, the feel of the hot mug in his hand, the sense of home that pervaded every corner of the small house. “A woman lives here. A happy, contented woman.” He opened his eyes.

Ash smiled at him. “Yes, she does.”

“Who?”

“You’re older than me. You have to remember more.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder. “It’s time to go.”

He followed his sister out, glanced behind him one last time, then locked the door. After putting the key back under the board where he had found it, he stared at the cabin a moment longer, its presence in the wooded mountain joyfully framed by the sun. Icicles hung from the eaves, and in the sky overhead, a hawk soared.

He looked at Ash. “Our parents?”

She smiled. “I don’t know where our parents are. I only know I feel their spirits here.”

Jace followed her to the truck and they got in. “Grandfather told you something.”

“He told me that the cabin is the family’s. That it’s vacant right now because it always is in winter. Winter can be harsh on the mountain.”

Jace drove slowly through the snow. “It’s not the winter that’s harsh here. It’s the loneliness and solitude.”

“That’s right.”

He was amazed by his sister’s knowledge. She always seemed sort of otherworldly—had from the time she was born. “Did you even try to talk Sawyer into staying?” He’d liked to have told Sawyer about his parents. They’d never mentioned their families to each other. He had a faint memory of his mother and father; as the second eldest, he’d been old enough to remember when they’d gone.

It had been like a knife wound in his heart that hadn’t eased for years. For so long he’d felt deserted, betrayed, angry. He’d known why they had to leave, but he was still angry at the people who’d made them go.

The same people for whom Sawyer had been wearing a wire. Betrayal and anger ripped through him again. “How could Sawyer do it?”

“Family is important to her.”

“Damn it, I’m supposed to be her family. We’ve made a family together!”

“Easy, hoss,” Ash said. “No one ever said our lives were going to be easy. The path isn’t straight, with magical road maps.”

“I know that.” He knew that only too well.

“We are all on the journey, even Sawyer.”

He grunted. “You’re starting to sound more like Running Bear all the time.”

“I hope so,” she said softly, so softly that he glanced at her curiously.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Ash said. “It’s just that sometimes I know I’m not as good as Sawyer is. Or even my brothers. I’m the misfit in this family.”

“Ash!” Jace was completely stunned by her words. “You’re not a misfit at all!”

“I’m going to sleep,” she said, sticking her backpack under her head for a pillow. “Wake me when we cross the state line.”

“Why the state line?”

“Because it’s important to see where I’ve been and where I’m going.”

Jace was bothered by her words, but not really certain why. He should be angry with her, yet he wasn’t. In a way, she’d helped him and Sawyer. Ash was right: Sawyer’s confession had changed everything. They needed time to absorb the new twists in their relationship. He still couldn’t believe Sawyer had meant to harm his family. She’d won him at the ball for a reason, and it hadn’t been just to tell him about the babies.

Ash was right: the path didn’t point straight, with a magical road map. In fact, it was bumpy as hell and strewn with potholes.

He’d see his wife soon enough, and then they’d get everything worked out. Somehow.

* * *

“I
T
’
S
NOT
GOING
to work.” Sawyer laid Ash’s keys on the kitchen counter and looked at Fiona Callahan, the eccentric aunt of the Callahan clan. “Jace doesn’t trust me. And he has no reason to.” She took a deep breath. “Fiona, I need a place to stay, but it can’t be here. Nor at my uncle’s old place.” She’d be too close to Jace, and she knew Running Bear wouldn’t want her staying anywhere near Rancho Diablo, anyway.

Fiona shook her head. “You just let me pour you a cup of tea, Sawyer. You look exhausted. It’s a long drive from Colorado. Goodness, you should have flown!”

“I wanted to drive. I like driving to clear my thoughts.”

“Well,” Fiona said, putting a pretty china cup with pink flowers on it in front of her and a bowl of sugar cubes next to that, “Jace is going to want you to be with him, so you might as well get used to the idea. I’d stay put until he gets back.”

Sawyer picked up the delicate cup. “Fiona, I can’t. You don’t understand what I’ve done. He has a reason to feel the way he does.”

“Let’s let Jace decide how he feels, shall we?” The older woman slid a piece of spice cake next to Sawyer’s tea. “Patience rules the day, I always say.”

Patience wasn’t going to help her. Sawyer was so ashamed she could hardly bear it. Everything had happened so quickly, had gotten away from her. She’d prided herself on being a competent bodyguard, and then had let herself operate from a position of weakness. Let herself be wrangled into a bad situation that could never be fixed.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and take a little nap?” Fiona suggested.

“Why are
you
still here?” Sawyer asked suddenly. “If it’s so dangerous at the ranch, with the Feds and the spies and the reporters crawling everywhere, why haven’t your nephews made you leave?”

Fiona smiled. “When you’re my age, you get to do as you please. And I cook.” She tried to sound lighthearted, saw that Sawyer wasn’t convinced. “I’ve already been kidnapped by Wolf, and he doesn’t want me again. Have you forgotten I burned his last haunt down to the ground?” She looked very satisfied by that. “Life is good in my world.”

“I can’t wait to be at that point.”

“You’re closer than you think.” Fiona smiled at her, then turned to put a sheet cake in the oven. “It’s all about believing in your purpose.”

“Maybe.” Sawyer’s purpose had changed. Maybe that was the problem: she’d drifted. Gotten off course.

“Wait until those babies are born. You’ll have so much purpose you’ll be overflowing with it. Everything will get better.”

Not if her marriage wasn’t going to work out. “I betrayed your family, Fiona.”

“Let us decide that. Even if you did, what really happened? Isn’t our house still standing? Aren’t we still a family?” Fiona topped off her tea. “No one can take the important things in life away, if one knows what those treasures are.”

“You’re trying to make me feel better.”

“And I’m succeeding. Now eat that cake. I made blue-ribbon spice cake, my dear, and there’s nothing better in February than homemade spice cake with cream cheese frosting.”

Sawyer dutifully ate a bite—and to her surprise, the cake actually seemed to make her feel better. Or maybe it was Fiona, or being in the house where Jace lived. Hope rose inside her.

Maybe things could work out, after all. Maybe he wouldn’t regret marrying a woman from the wrong ranch.

Maybe he would.