The Loner (6 page)

"It was fun," she replied. "Being with the three of you was fun. And frankly, that summer, I'd have followed Logan Grey anywhere." She pinned him with a look. "You gave me my first kiss that summer. I don't suppose you remember that, either?"

Uncertain whether a lie or the truth would serve him best at the moment—he didn't remember that kiss at all—Logan simply shrugged.

"It's appalling to admit now, but when he offered me a way out of that marriage my father had arranged, I didn't think twice. I followed him out my bedroom window and to First Methodist Church, just like I'd followed him into his fort with its yellow bandanna flag in the Piney Woods forest. Only this time, he didn't stop after a few kisses." She met the gazes of each McBride sister before adding, "Fool that I was, I followed him to the hotel, too."

Kat gasped again. Emma winced. Maribeth frowned darkly at Logan and asked, "You consummated a false marriage, Lucky?"

Christ on a crutch. Did she have to do this here in front of his friends? He shot her a look that combined a glare with a grimace and said, "Well, yeah, that wasn't supposed to happen. We were to stay in the hotel to make it look good, and I was supposed to sleep on the floor. But I was eighteen and she was..."
ripe
was the first word that came to mind, but he knew better than to use it in a room full of women ".. .irresistible."

Enthusiastic, too, once she got past her nervousness.

Caroline made a little noise that was a cross between an embarrassed screech and an angry scream, and he eyed her warily. He could tell she wanted to strike out at him. Slap him. Punch him. Hell, she probably wanted to shoot him.

In retrospect, he couldn't say that he blamed her.

It was all coming back to him now. How
had
he forgotten that night? She'd been his first virgin, and as far as he knew, his last.

She glanced at the letter opener on the table beside her chair and Logan's eyes widened with alarm. He thought it best to move the conversation forward. "Look, Miss Kilpatrick—"

"Mrs. Grey."

"—I'll admit that wasn't gallant of me. In the heat of the moment I got carried away, and I'll apologize for that. But the rest—" he shook his head "—it was all your father's doing. He said he'd tell you everything that next day."

She folded her arms and stared at him. Studied him. He could all but see the wheels turning in her head. He knew she was considering that he might just be telling the truth when the light in her eyes changed and the color drained from her face.

A minute crept by, then two. Finally, in a quiet voice, she said, "When I awoke the following morning, Logan was gone. I thought perhaps he'd gone downstairs to order breakfast. The hotel owner told me he'd had bacon and eggs for breakfast, then climbed on his horse, and rode out of town."

Every last woman in the room now looked at Logan as if he were cow dung on the sole of a boot. He rubbed at the back of his neck and tried to ignore the headache beginning to pound at his temples. "Your father never told you it was all made up?"

"No." She closed her eyes and the cheeks that had gone ashen moments before flooded once again with color. "He was happy. He actually whistled in the wagon on the way back home. He told me he'd been wrong to try to force me to marry his friend and that he was sorry. He said we should look at life as a brand-new start."

Logan rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry you went through that, Caroline," he said sincerely. "You deserved better than a make-believe marriage from both me and your father."

Again, time dragged out. Then she appeared to gather her defenses and strengthen her resolve. She lifted her chin. "You're right. I did deserve better. But I'm not the only one my father duped, Logan. The marriage
wasn't
all made up. It was all very, very real. It was legal."

Her claim echoed in the uncomfortable silence that followed.

Cade cleared his throat. "So why wait fifteen years to track him down?"

Yeah. Logan wanted the answer to that, too.

Caroline smoothed her skirts and visibly braced herself. The look in her eyes said she'd made a decision and Logan felt a shiver of apprehension race up his spine.

"I didn't need him before," she said, clasping her hands in front of her, squeezing so hard that her knuckles went white. She licked her lips, then met his gaze. For a second—just a fleeting second—he saw calculation in her eyes. Immediately, warning bells clanged in his brain.

"Logan," she said, "I need you now. I need your help."

Suddenly, it all made sense. Like father, like daughter. The woman must be playing a con. She probably saw the article in the Fort Worth newspaper last week about the reward he'd received from Wells Fargo for facilitating the capture of the Dodd gang who'd been terrorizing the West for years. The arrests had been the culmination of a six-month effort and the crown in his cap as a range detective.

Logan drummed his fingers against the glass in his hand. He'd come a long way since the days the flat-broke bronc buster had run across Big Jack Kilpatrick in a West Texas bar. His investment in the Corsicana oil field had paid off, and the one in East Texas was looking good. His only question was how much Caroline Kilpatrick would ask for. "So, how much money were you figuring to extort from me?"

She blinked in surprise. "I don't want your money."

"Then what do you want?" he snapped back. "Apparently you've already taken my name."

"You gave me your name. Believe me, there have been plenty of times I'd have loved to give it back. But in a way, I guess it is your name I need—Lucky Logan Grey. I read of your exploits in the newspaper, the gun battles you've won, the outlaws you've brought to justice. The
Daily Democrat
says that you're the luckiest man in Texas. That's what I need. I need luck, a lot of luck."

Luck. Well, hell. In his peripheral vision, Logan saw the McBride sisters—the Bad Luck Brides—share a significant look. He looked past Caroline Kilpatrick to the doorway, thinking he'd be smart to make tracks. Now that his trouble-sense had finally kicked in, it was telling him that his life was about to change.

Nevertheless, he asked the question. "Why?"

"Because you and I made more than a mistake that night at the Magnolia Hotel. We made a son. I named him William Benjamin. Will."

Holy hell. Even as shock rolled through Logan's system, he saw her swallow hard, watched pain flash across her face. Her next faltering words were a second punch that made his blood run cold.

"Two weeks ago, Will ran off to join a gang of outlaws. I need your help, Logan Grey, your good luck, to bring him safely back home."

The Willow Hill drawing room went quiet as a tomb in the wake of her shocking announcement. Waiting for someone to speak, Caroline thought her heart might just beat out of her chest. She'd never expected confronting him to be easy, but it had proved harder than she'd expected. Much harder. She hadn't thought she'd feel any sympathy for him at all.

But she did.

She believed him.

He had been just as big a dupe as she. She could see her father doing exactly as Logan claimed.

Big Jack Kilpatrick had been a difficult man. Demanding, oftentimes cold, he'd run the K-Bar with an iron fist and a ready draw. It took a hard man to wrangle a living out of the plains of West Texas, but Caroline suspected her father had been harder than most. For most of her life she'd felt as if he valued his cattle more than her. She'd simply never mattered to the man.

Well, except when he'd needed her money.

She'd been a means to an end. Logan, too. If she'd known then what she knew now, she wouldn't have grieved so much when Big Jack died after being thrown from a snake-spooked horse three weeks after her "wedding." He'd hit his head on a rock and lingered unconscious for three days before passing.

The next day the lawyer had arrived and informed her of her father's gambling habit. She'd been shocked to discover that not only had he used her inheritance to pay off a mountain of debt, a second mountain just as high remained. When the dust settled, she'd had next to nothing left.

That's when Ben and Suzanne Whitaker entered her life, and she thanked God for that blessing every day since.

The reminder of her purpose here gave her strength and allowed her to shore up her defenses where Logan Grey— a now-shaky, pasty-looking Logan Grey—was concerned.

He cleared his throat. "You want to run that by me again?"

She licked her dry lips, then told the truth. "You are the father of my son."

He closed his eyes for a long minute, but when he opened them, they glowed with fury. "I don't believe you. This is some sort of ugly extortion plot that you've invented because I've made money in the past few years. We are not really married, and you damn sure didn't have my child. This is some scheme you've cooked up. Guess you take after your father in that regard."

"This is no—"

"Listen up, sweetheart," he interrupted, taking a threatening step toward her. His voice was cold and mean, his eyes flat and hard as granite. "You are a liar and a fraud and I'll
be damned
if I'll let you pass off another man's brat as my own. Now you need to get the hell out of here!"

The room went quiet, the others' shock at his reaction obvious.

Caroline's mouth was bone-dry as she went to open her suddenly very heavy purse, then hesitated. She could still back out. She could agree with him and make her escape and never see the man again. She wouldn't have to juggle the complications that involving him in their lives would invariably create.

But no, she'd already made this decision. She'd come too far to back out now, and she needed his help. Ben needed his help. Poor, devastated, crazy-with-grief Ben, who had taken in a homeless, penniless, pregnant girl and given her everything. Ben, who loved Will from the moment he was born, who protected him, provided for him. Ben who had stepped into the shoes of fatherhood because Logan was nowhere around.

Well, Ben needed her now the way she had needed him then, and Logan was their only hope.

She'd tried to hire someone else to do the job for her. She'd searched hard to find a man willing to brave the rumored evils of that place for the limited purse she had to offer. Quickly, she'd learned an undeniable truth: only a man with powerful motivation would voluntarily enter Black Shadow Canyon.

Logan Grey was the man. And because securing Ben Whitaker's safety simply wouldn't be enough, their son, Will, would be the motivation.

Which brought her here to this moment, offering up partial truths and a big fat lie. The lie provided Logan powerful motivation—saving his son. And the truth— the truth gave him Will!

Will was the greatest gift Logan Grey would ever receive. Will offset the price of the lie tenfold. A thousandfold.

Filled with righteous, maternal certainty, Caroline reached into her purse, pulled out the photograph and handed it to Logan.

"Holy hell," he breathed.

Gazing over his shoulder, Holt said, "He's your spittin' image."

Cade took a look, then blew out a long whistle. "Boy looks exactly like you did when you were his age."

"A son." Logan raked his fingers through his hair, his expression stunned and bewildered. He stared at the photograph, his jade eyes wide with shock.

He believes me now.
Caroline nodded. "Yes."

At that, Emma MacRae stood. "Let's take a walk, shall we? I think Lucky and Miss...Mrs....um.. .and Caroline deserve some privacy."

Caroline was grateful. After the women had stood up for her, lying to them didn't set well.

Logan poured himself another drink while the others exited the room. Kat Kimball looked as if she wanted to protest, but her husband ushered her from the drawing room while murmuring in her ear. Driscoll and Hollis-ter each slapped Logan's back in support on their way out the door.

When they were alone, Logan took a long sip of whiskey, then said, "He's what...fifteen?"

"Fourteen."

"Fourteen," he repeated. He sounded a bit fearful when he added, "I have a fourteen-year-old son."

"He has your green eyes." At that his gaze flew her to her face, and the quick flash of pleasure she spied in his eyes prompted her to add, "And your dark hair, your smile. I could never forget you, Logan Grey, because I see you every day in my son."

It was as true a statement as she'd made all night.

Logan blew out a heavy breath. "I can't quite wrap my mind around this. I never thought... Tell me about him."

Taking pity on him, she provided more detail than anyone other than a parent could possibly want. "He was only one week old when he smiled at me the first time. My friends told me that it was too soon, that it was only gas, but I didn't believe them. He got his first tooth at six months and began crawling at eight. He took his first steps in the aisle at the mercantile on his first birthday."

She spoke at length, and he listened raptly, asking occasional questions as she took him through the years until she told him about the Will of today. "He's a great kid. Everything a mother could hope for. He's smart and he's witty and he's kind. So kind. Oh, he's far from perfect—I can't tell you how many times he's late for supper—but it's his imperfections that make him all the more...well..."

"Perfect," Logan finished. At that point, he took his drink and walked to a window where he spent long minutes gazing outside without saying a word.

Caroline's nerves stretched so tight that when he finally spoke, she jumped.

"Let me make sure I have this straight. You claim you thought that we had a legal marriage, and yet you never bothered to inform me that I'd become a father?"

She refused to be battered by that argument. Suzanne used to scold her for not contacting Logan after she first saw his name in a newspaper when Will was eight. Caroline didn't care. "I was seventeen, destitute and alone with a baby on the way. At that point, I was busy trying to survive. Tracking you down was not a priority for me. After all, you left me and never looked back."

In her mind, with that single act he had forfeited any rights he might have where Will was concerned.