The whole situation was crazy,

Tate told himself. There could never be anything between him and lush, leggy reporter Natalie Grant.

She was a threat to his family. He felt nothing but disdain for her job. And he… Sweet hell, he was lying to her with every conversation, every look, every damned breath he took.

All excellent reasons to keep his distance and ignore his rampant attraction to the sweet Southern redhead.

But that might be easier said than done.

For one thing, in a ranch house normally filled with male voices and Okie twangs, Natalie sounded like a songbird among crows. Undeniably Southern, achingly feminine, her voice was made for whispering sweet, seductive invitations.

But not to Tate.

After all, he wasn’t even the man she thought he was. He was an impostor, telling her sweet, loving lies….

The Truth About Tate
Marilyn Pappano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARILYN PAPPANO

brings impeccable credentials to her writing career—a lifelong habit of gazing out windows, not paying attention in class, daydreaming and spinning tales for her own entertainment. The sale of her first book brought great relief to her family, proving that she wasn’t crazy but was, instead, creative. Since then she’s sold more than forty books to various publishers and even a film production company.

She writes in an office nestled among the oaks that surround her country home. In winter she stays inside with her husband and their four dogs, and in summer she spends her free time mowing the yard that never stops growing and daydreams about grass that never gets taller than two inches.

You can write to her at P.O. Box 643, Sapulpa, OK, 74067-0643.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Chapter One

The letter came in Tuesday morning’s mail—a pale-green envelope postmarked Alabama, addressed to J. T. Rawlins in a delicate script and lacking a return address. Alabama, the Heart of Dixie, home to a decent college football team, the venerable and newly retired U.S. senator, Boyd Chaney, and an incredibly determined, tenacious reporter by the name of Natalie Grant, who was writing said senator’s biography.

The single sheet of stationery inside the envelope was also pale green, textured. The tone was polite, professional, but the letter was a warning all the same. It was enough to justify a gathering of all four members of the Rawlins family at a time when each of them needed to be someplace else.

Tate Rawlins sat in his usual seat, to the left of his mother, Lucinda, who claimed the head of the dining table. His sixteen-year-old son, Jordan, sat on her right, and Tate’s half brother, Josh, was beside him. Tate’s and Josh’s fathers had never been part of the family. Ditto for Jordan’s mother. As families went, they were small, and not exactly traditional, but they were close.

Everyone wore the same somber expression, except Lucinda, who also looked guilty, worried and ashamed. So far she hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even hinted at what she wanted, except for this whole mess to go away.

But Natalie Grant wasn’t going to go away. In fact, according to the letter lying in the middle of the table, she would be appearing on their doorstep first thing in the morning, and she wasn’t leaving until, one way or another, she’d gotten the information she wanted. That was a fact, she’d written in the last line of the letter.

A threat, to Tate’s way of thinking.

“Well?” Josh prodded.

Tate felt three pairs of brown eyes, identical to his own, turn his way. While they’d waited for him to come in from the pasture, they’d hatched a plan for dealing with the reporter. No, correct that—a plan for Tate to deal with the reporter. Josh and their mother had already made arrangements, before the letter’s arrival, to spend the next few weeks at her parents’ ranch down in southern Oklahoma, and they wanted—needed—to go ahead. Grandpop had broken his leg two days before, and while Gran was convinced she could look after the place just fine by herself, the rest of the family wasn’t about to let her prove it.

Let me help Grandpop, Tate had suggested, and Josh could handle Ms. Alabama. After all, though they shared the same initials, Josh was the J. T. Rawlins she wanted.

Even Jordan had winced at the idea. Josh wasn’t the most cautious or even-tempered person around. Lucinda excused his behavior as impulsive. Grandpop said he let his mouth run without engaging his brain first. In his twenty-nine years, he’d sometimes talked his way into more trouble than Tate could get him out of. He’d gotten the two of them suspended from school, thrown out of bars and, on a few occasions, thrown into jail. There was no telling what kind of trouble he could stir up with a nosy reporter—especially one who was bound and determined to uncover every last detail in all the Rawlinses’ lives.

All because of a stupid affair Lucinda had had thirty years ago.

Tate shifted to face his mother. “What do you want me to do?”

Her gaze dropped to the tabletop, but not before he caught another glimpse of the guilt in her eyes. “This has to be your decision.”

His decision, when he was the one least affected by Alabama’s snooping. Josh was the reporter’s prime target, and Lucinda came next. Tate and Jordan were of interest only in that they were family.

“Why don’t you go on down to Grandpop’s? When she shows up, I’ll tell her you’re out of town and won’t be back for several weeks.”

“Read the letter again, Tate,” Josh said angrily. “The part about staying ‘as long as it takes.’ Besides, how hard would it be for her to find out where we’ve gone from someone in town? You want her showing up unannounced at Gran’s?”

No, Tate admitted silently. To this day, the mere mention of Boyd Chaney’s name could make AnnaMae Rawlins spittin’ mad or sorrowful and weepy. With Grandpop in the hospital, the last thing she needed was Natalie Grant’s questions about the bastard child.

Josh’s chair scraped the floor as he stood up. “Can I talk to you outside?”

Tate followed him onto the porch. It was a miserable day. The heat index had climbed past 110 for eighteen days in a row, they hadn’t had rain in more than a month, and things were likely to get worse before they got better. Hell had nothing on Oklahoma in August.

Josh rested his hands on the rail cap and stared at the horses in the pasture across the yard. “Look, I know you don’t want to do this. I know it’s sneaky and underhanded. But she’s not exactly playing fair, either. I told her I wanted no part of her project. I told her politely, and I told her rudely, and she’s coming here, anyway. I don’t owe her anything else. Mom for damn sure doesn’t owe her anything. Now it’s time to look out for our best interests.”

For an instant the tightness in Tate’s chest made it difficult to breathe. Lying to a stranger, impersonating his brother—it was wrong, and he wouldn’t consider it for an instant if his brother’s privacy and his mother’s reputation weren’t at stake. If his son weren’t at risk of getting tarnished by the same brush.

But Natalie Grant was nothing if not persistent. She’d been harassing Josh for months, wanting his cooperation for her book. She’d called. He’d turned her down, hung up on her and ignored her messages. She’d written, and he’d written back once—“No, thanks, not interested”—then returned her following letters unopened. But none of that had stopped her from making the trip from Montgomery to Hickory Bluff.

And why shouldn’t she be persistent? Given Chaney’s political power, his wealth, his family’s penchant for scandal and the American people’s penchant for gossip, her book was bound for the bestseller lists. She stood to make a nice chunk of money by exposing Tate’s family to ridicule.

But maybe he could minimize the damage.

As if he sensed Tate was wavering, Josh asked, “How much effort do you think Ms. Alabama will make to be fair? He handpicked her to write the book. You can be damned sure everything will be skewed to make him out to be the good guy. She’ll say Mom—” With a glance toward the house, as if Lucinda could hear through the solid walls, he broke off. But he didn’t need to go on.

Tate had only one memory of the illustrious senator. He’d been about five years old when Chaney had come to their apartment in Montgomery. The election was coming up, and he’d brought money to persuade a very pregnant Lucinda to leave the state and keep the identity of her baby’s father secret. Tate hadn’t understood most of the conversation, or why the man was giving his mother so much money. But he’d never forgotten the ugliness in Chaney’s voice when he’d made one last remark before walking out the door. “Gold-digging whore.” The insult had made her cry, leaving Tate afraid to ask what it meant. Eventually, of course, he’d learned on his own, and he’d hated Chaney ever since.

Josh’s quiet voice pulled him back from the memory. “You think this reporter won’t make it look like Mom made a habit of having affairs with married men, getting pregnant and blackmailing a little cash out of them? And let’s toss in the fact that her older illegitimate son is raising his own illegitimate son. You think she won’t twist that so it reflects badly on you? On Mom? Hell, even on Jordan?”

Though he’d already made his decision, Tate continued to raise objections. “What if she finds out the truth?”

“You put the word out around town that you don’t want anyone talking to her.” The answer came from Jordan, standing in the doorway. Sixteen years old, and already showing his uncle Josh’s talent for deception. “Then make it one of the terms of your agreement, that she can only ask questions of you and me. Not Grandma, not the neighbors, not anyone who knows us.”

“And if she agrees to that, I’m supposed to trust her to keep her word?” A writer snooping around in people’s private lives didn’t strike him as the best candidate to trust. Anyone working in any capacity for that bastard Chaney couldn’t be too upright in the morals department.

“We won’t let her go into town alone.”

Tate shook his head as Jordan came closer. “There’s no ‘we’ in this. I don’t want you involved. You stay away from her, don’t talk to her and—”

“Dad, I live here, and unlike Josh and Grandma, I can’t leave. I’ve got football practice. Besides, I’m old enough to watch what I say.”

“You can’t go to Grandpop’s, but you can stay with Steve while she’s in town.”

“Aw, Dad…” Suddenly he grinned. “You need me here as a chaperon. Grandma and I think it would be a good idea if she stays here. That way we can watch her and you won’t have to trust her to keep her word.”

Josh slapped Jordan on the back. “Good thinking. Keep her on a short leash and control everything she does.”

“I don’t want her staying here,” Tate protested. Inviting a strange woman into his house? Sharing a bathroom with her? Letting her sleep in the empty room between his and Jordan’s rooms? Worse, giving her free run of the house while they were working?

“Not here,” Jordan replied, gesturing toward the house. “At Grandma’s. She’ll lock away all her personal stuff so there won’t be anything for her to snoop through. Besides, the nearest motel is twenty miles away. If you make her stay there, she’ll spend half her time driving back and forth.”

Tate turned to look at his mother’s quarters. The two houses shared a roof, but were separated by a broad deck with flower beds all around. It was a great place for cooking out, watching storms or just kicking back, and gave them at least the illusion of privacy.

“What do we care if she spends half her time commuting?” he asked as he turned back to Jordan and Josh.

The two of them exchanged a damn-he’s-slow sort of look, then Jordan explained. “The more time she’s out without one of us, the more chances she has of meeting other people, and the more people she gets to know, the more likely it is that she’ll start asking questions and they’ll start answering them. A stranger asking questions is one thing. A friend is different.”

The floorboards creaked as Tate moved to lean against the rail. Sweat was trickling down his back, his stomach was queasy, his head was starting to ache, and it was so damn hot. Better get used to it, though, because he was going to hell.

He was an honest man. He’d never cheated on a test, his taxes or a woman. He’d accepted every responsibility that ever came his way, whether he was ready for it or not. For thirty-four years, he’d lived right, loved well—if not always wisely—and earned a reputation a man could be proud of. But if he agreed to this fool-minded scheme, he was surely going to burn in hell.

He took a deep breath of dry air that seared his lungs, then faced Jordan and Josh. “All right.” The words were stiff and reluctant. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his family. They’d never had a lot, but they had each other, and that was all that mattered. When one was in trouble, they all were. When one needed help, they all gave it. It was how they’d lived their lives, how they always would.

But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about the help he was giving this time. “I’m sure I’ll live to regret it, but…all right. Let’s get our stories straight and see if I can pull this off.”

And if he did, or even if he didn’t, he would surely burn in hell.

But maybe he could take Natalie Grant and Boyd Chaney with him.

Natalie Grant scanned her laptop screen:

Luther Boyd Chaney was born in the heart of Alabama, not far from the Coosa River, in a sharecropper’s shack that let in the rain and the heat and the cold. He watched his father work himself to death, and a few years later saw his mother do the same, and he swore his own life would be different. Seventy-some years later, he’s made good on that vow. He put himself through school, got elected to the Alabama state senate, went on to Congress. He became the confidant of presidents and the unofficial advisor to prime ministers and kings the world over. He was unarguably the most influential man in the last century of American politics.

Muttering to herself, Natalie paged down to a blank screen and started typing again.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find an American citizen whose life hasn’t been greatly improved by Boyd Chaney. Every major piece of legislation in the past forty years dealing with education, families and social programs bears the stamp of the senator from Alabama. If he didn’t author it himself, he ensured that it passed into law. From his first Congressional term to his last, he was, first and foremost, an advocate for the American family.

One might expect such an advocate to be a family man himself, but Boyd Chaney doesn’t always do what one might expect. Oh, he married six times and divorced six times, and he had children—nine of them. He knows his children’s names, and their mothers’, but birthdays, ages, occupations, marital status? Not with any degree of accuracy.

With a sigh Natalie pushed the computer away and stood up. She’d slept in until eight, then gone straight to the computer and had written a dozen pages, none of it keeper stuff. Like many reporters, she’d always planned to write a book whenever she found the time. Now she had the time, and the contract, and the full cooperation of the subject and a hundred or so of his nearest and dearest. She had reams of research and thousands of hours of taped interviews. She’d gathered enough material to write a dozen volumes on the senator who’d virtually run the country for all of her life and beyond.

She had everything…except the cooperation of one of the Chaney offspring. That one man’s stubbornness could cost her the project.

It had been a deal-breaker in the negotiations. Upon his retirement from political life, Chaney had chosen her to write his biography, but he’d insisted that she personally gain the cooperation of each and every one of his six ex-wives, nine children and seven grandchildren. She’d known it was a red flag, because he’d already secured agreements from half of them. The other half had signed on readily enough, except for one. The fourth son, the fifth child, the only illegitimate one in the bunch. J. T. Rawlins.

She turned on the water in the shower, then stripped out of her pajamas. She’d tried for months to set up an interview with the elusive son no one had ever heard of. She’d tracked him down in an end-of-the-line Oklahoma town called Hickory Bluff and sent him a letter politely requesting an interview. He’d returned it with a terse note scrawled across the bottom: No, thanks, not interested. She’d called repeatedly. He’d hung up on her. She’d written time and again. The letters had come back unopened.

So here she was, in a cheap motel nineteen miles from Hickory Bluff. She intended to show up at J.T.’s house, to talk to him reasonably, persuasively, to let him see for himself that she wasn’t a threat. She wasn’t looking to disrupt his life any more than was necessary.

Yeah, right, she thought scornfully as she rinsed magnolia-scented suds from her body. She just wanted all the personal details of his life so she could put them in a book for everyone to read. She wanted to announce to the world that his mother had had an affair with a tremendously rich and powerful married man and that he was the best-kept secret of one of the most flamboyant, tabloid-fodder families in the country. What would that do to his reputation, and to his mother’s? How would it affect their relationships with the people currently in their lives?

She was sorry, but she had no choice. She needed this project. She’d already screwed up once, and it had cost her career, her relationship with her family and her own self-respect. This was her chance to recover those things. Failing wasn’t an option.

After rubbing herself dry with a threadbare towel, Natalie quickly dressed. She applied the few cosmetics that were her major effort at looking good, tied her curls back with a strip of ribbon, then gathered everything she needed for a day’s work—steno notebook, ink pens, microcassette recorder, tapes and batteries, 35-mm camera and film, as well as digital camera. It all fit handily in the oversize tote she used for a purse. With sunglasses on and keys in hand, she left her motel room, deposited the laptop in the trunk for safekeeping, then slid behind the wheel of her classic Ford Mustang convertible and headed for Hickory Bluff.

With The Doors blasting on the stereo, she cruised along the two-lane highway at ten miles over the limit and thought about the events of the past fifteen months that, together, had brought her to this place. The award-winning articles she’d written, the accolades and recognition, the jealousy, the scandal and the truth that only she and one other person knew. No one had stood beside her—not her editor, not her best friend of five years, certainly not her father. An entire career of outstanding work had been forgotten, destroyed in one careless moment by the simple act of trusting someone she’d loved. I hope you learned a lesson, her father had unsympathetically told her, and she had. Don’t trust, don’t love, don’t care about anyone or anything except the story. Natalie Grant’s New Rules to Live By.

Dealing with Senator Chaney and his self-absorbed family made them easy to stick to. She hadn’t yet met any Chaney kin that she would give a plug nickel for. For a man who had accomplished so much good in his career, he’d married and helped give life to some of the most beautiful, charming, shallow, irresponsible and worthless human beings she’d ever met. Maybe J.T., being the exception as far as legitimacy went, would also be the exception in other ways, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

At the sight of a large wooden sign up ahead, Natalie slowed and pulled onto the shoulder, stopping twenty feet back. Welcome to Hickory Bluff, it read. Home of the Fighting Wildcats. Class 2A State Champions in Football, Basketball, Baseball. Each sport was listed on a separate line, followed by the years the team had won the championships. Spray-painted in hot pink across the bottom was an afterthought—Lady Cats Rule!

Was J. T. Rawlins an athlete? Had he suited up every fall Friday night in the Wildcats’ green and gold? Did he relive former glories every time basketball season rolled around or each time the crack of a baseball on a bat split the air?

Making a mental note to check the yearbooks for his high school years, Natalie pulled back onto the road and rounded the curve that led into Hickory Bluff. It wasn’t a prosperous town and never had been. Situated at the crossroads of two state highways, it consisted of four blocks of businesses, houses backing them up on both sides of the street and a water tower, painted green and gold and honoring the boys’ teams. There was a church on every block, or so it seemed, and a redbrick schoolhouse, a football stadium and a complex of baseball fields.

She parked in front of a store that announced its services in white letters painted across the plate glass. Hunting, fishing licenses. Ice. Bait. Video rental. Cold beer. Sandwiches. Notions. Driver’s licenses and car tags. Next door to it was her destination—the post office. The building was small, fronted with yellow brick and devoid of personality. If a tornado swept through the downtown area, it would probably take all the old stone-and-glass buildings with it and leave the amazingly unimaginative post office standing untouched.

The plate-glass door led into a room no more than eight feet deep and ten feet wide. Customer boxes filled the two end walls, and a counter took up most of the back wall. There were no customers other than her, and no employees visible other than a white-haired man sorting through a stack of mail. He glanced at her but didn’t speak or stop his work. She waited patiently, assuming that when he finished, he would turn his attention to her.

“Well?” he prodded after a moment. “You plannin’ on standin’ there all day, missy, or is there somethin’ you want?”

“Actually, there is. I’m looking for J. T. Rawlins.”

“Have you looked out at his place? Call me strange, but if I was lookin’ for someone, I’d start with where they’re supposed to be.”

“I don’t know where he lives. The address I have is 2111 Rawlins Ranch Road.”

“Yep, that’s right.”

She waited expectantly, but he didn’t go on. “Can you tell me where that is?”

“Sure can. It’s outside of town. West, then north. ’Bout…oh, four, five miles. You can’t miss it.” This time he was the one who waited expectantly. When she didn’t do anything—such as leave—he laid the mail aside. “Well? Is there somethin’ else you want?”

“According to the map, practically the entire state of Oklahoma is west of here. Could you be a little more specific?”

The old man rolled his eyes, then pointed out the window. “See that street? Not Main Street here in front. The one over there that runs east and west. You follow it outta town until you come to the old Mayfield barn on the left. Make a right turn and stay on that road a couple miles north until you come to the Rawlins place.”

“And how will I recognize the old Mayfield barn?”

He laughed. “You’ll know it. You’ll know the Rawlins place when you come to it, too. Trust me.”

With a tight smile Natalie thanked him and returned to the car. It was tempting to run across the street to Norma Sue’s Café and ask for directions there. Instead, she decided to test the old man’s “you’ll know it when you see it” theory. If she didn’t find J. T. Rawlins, she could always come back, ask for help and get some lunch while she was at it.

She turned right onto the street the clerk had pointed out, drove past a few businesses, an elementary school, two mobile home parks and a now-defunct plant that, according to the faded, peeling sign on one building, had once manufactured bricks. Now it was secured by a tall chain-link fence that trapped windblown leaves and trash inside, and looked empty and forlorn.

The odometer slowly rolled over—one mile, two, three. She was beginning to wonder if she’d been sent on a wild-goose chase, when a barn came into sight ahead on the left. It was octagonal in shape, painted bright red, and in huge block letters around the sides was painted The Old Mayfield Barn. Directing muttered curses toward the postal clerk, she slowed to turn right onto a dirt road.

About four or five miles, he’d said. She’d gone exactly four and a half miles when she turned into a driveway and stopped. A pipe gate formed an arch over the cattle guard that stretched across the drive, and a sign dangling from the arch announced that this was, indeed, the Rawlins Ranch. For a moment she simply sat there, engine idling. Since she’d come up with this less-than-brilliant plan to visit J. T. Rawlins on his own turf, she’d convinced herself that he would be so impressed by her professionalism, won over by her sincerity or maybe simply worn-out by her determination, and would agree to cooperate fully. In fact, she hadn’t let herself consider any other outcome.

But what if he wasn’t impressed, won over or worn-out? What if his determination to have nothing to do with her was stronger than her determination to write this book? What were the chances she could persuade Senator Chaney that twenty-one out of twenty-two wasn’t bad—that no one else could do better?

Slim to none. He’d been adamant that, without even one of the brood, as he called his ex-wives and children, there would be no book. Simple enough, then. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. However stubborn J. T. Rawlins was, she would be more so. He would talk to her if for no other reason than to get rid of her.

Slowly she shifted her foot to the accelerator. The driveway was dirt and gravel and ran between two fenced pastures. Several hundred yards back from the road sat a house the color of an unbaked pumpkin pie, with trim the same hue as fresh cream. The house was oddly laid out—two halves side by side, connected by a deck. The neatly maintained lawn was yellowed from lack of rain, but the flowers planted in beds around the house and in pots all over the deck bloomed as beautifully as if the climate was fit to sustain life.

Natalie parked in the shade of a massive tree that was already losing its leaves, climbed out and smoothed her dress. The place wasn’t exactly quiet—a dog barked somewhere, music was coming from the direction of the barn, and there were birds, crickets, wind rustling in the trees—but it was a different type of noise than she was accustomed to. At home in Alabama, she lived in an apartment complex where something was always going on—TVs blaring, kids playing, couples fighting. There was a fire station two blocks away, so sirens were a daily part of life, as well as traffic, construction and aircraft flying overhead.

She tried the house first, knocking on one front door, then the other. When she got no answer at either, she headed out back. The dead grass crunched underfoot, and the horses in the pasture lined up at the fence to watch her pass. As she neared the barn, she could tell the music came not from there, but somewhere on the other side. She followed it around the corner, then came to a sudden stop.

The source of the music—country, she thought, wrinkling her nose—was a portable radio sitting on a tree stump. Parked a few feet beyond it was an old pickup truck, its green paint sadly faded by the sun. The hood was propped open, and bent under it was a man. In faded jeans. Dirty boots. With lots of warm tanned skin exposed that glistened with sweat under the blazing sun. A white T-shirt hung from the truck’s outside mirror, and an oil-stained rag was draped over the open window.

Natalie swallowed hard. She’d always had a fine appreciation for men in snug-fitting jeans. The harder the body, the more faded the jeans should be, because faded denim was soft, yielding, gloving—and these jeans were pretty damned faded.

After all but drooling for a moment or two, she cleared her throat. “Excuse me. I’m looking for J. T. Rawlins.”

The man straightened, turned and gave her a long look. She stared back into a seriously handsome, seriously boyish face. He might be anywhere from fifteen to twenty, she guessed—way too young for her womanly appreciation. He didn’t smile, come closer or offer his hand, but subjected her to a thorough appraisal before he spoke. “Who are you?”

“Natalie Grant. I believe Mr. Rawlins is expecting me.”

The next response came from behind her. “Why would he be expecting you when he told you very plainly that he wasn’t interested in your book?”

She turned to find a bigger, impossibly harder version of the boy standing a few yards away. He, too, wore scuffed boots and snug jeans that rode low on narrow hips, and had discarded his shirt in deference to the day’s heat. He, too, showed lots of warm, tanned skin, stretched taut over muscle and bone, and wore the same unwelcoming look as the boy. “Mr. Rawlins, I presume.”

“Ms. Grant.”

“I take it you didn’t receive my most recent letter.”

“We got it. We considered barring the gate to you and having the sheriff run you out of the county.”

“But you didn’t.”

He shifted the toolbox he carried from one hand to the other. “Some pests will go away if you ignore them long enough. Others require a different solution.”

She didn’t particularly appreciate being called a pest, but she could hardly blame him. She had been a bit persistent. “And what solution did you decide on for me? Capitulation?”

“Hardly.” His expression was as dry as the air. “More like compromise.”

She mimicked the dry reply. “The sooner you deal with me, the sooner you get rid of me?”

He responded with a shrug that made the muscles of his chest and belly ripple enticingly. She’d known the odds were better than even that J. T. Rawlins was a handsome man. His father was. His eight half siblings were as beautiful as genetics, pampering and virtually unlimited wealth could provide. There wasn’t a crooked or unbleached tooth in the bunch. Not an inch of untanned skin or a pinch of untoned flab. Not one single hair on one head that would dare rebel enough to create a bad-hair day. They were all artificially, phonily gorgeous.

And they couldn’t hold a candle to their illegitimate half brother. His tan came from hours in the sun, his muscles from hard work. His dark hair was perfectly tousled, as if he’d combed it with his fingers. His smile, she would bet, was naturally perfect, as everything else was, though she doubted she would get the chance to see it. That would be her loss.

“Compromise,” she repeated. “As in you’ll tell me everything I need to know, and then I’ll disappear from your life?”

“As in I’ll answer the questions I want. As for the rest of them…well, you’ll have to live without the answers.”

“Or get them someplace else.”

With a glint in his dark eyes, he shook his head. “That’s part of the deal. You talk only to us. We don’t want you asking a lot of questions about us in town, or bothering our friends and neighbors. And my mother and my brother are off-limits. You don’t ask about them, you don’t get to talk to them, and you don’t mention them or Jordan any more than necessary in your book.”

Natalie studied him for a moment. Though his skin glistened with sweat, he didn’t seem to notice the miserable heat or the dryness that sucked the moisture from her pores. He didn’t seem to notice anything at all besides her, though it was a wary prey-watching-predator sort of attention. She wondered what it would be like to have that same intense focus in a man-woman way. Not that she was looking for a relationship. No trust, no love, no concern for anything but the story.

With that in mind, she turned her own attention back to the story. She could do without the brother—he was important only in that he was J.T.’s brother—but she really wanted an interview with Lucinda Rawlins. She wanted to know how the affair had started, how an unsophisticated waitress from Oklahoma had caught the eye of the powerful senator from Alabama thirty years ago. Had the woman fallen in love with Chaney? Had he given her anything besides a baby—sweet lies, affection, excitement, money? How had it felt, raising her son all alone and seeing his father on television traveling with the president, being presented to the queen of England, touring Israel with the prime minister? Had she kept her secret about J.T.’s father willingly, or had Chaney bought her silence?

So she would get those answers some other way.

“Are those your only conditions?” she asked evenly.

“There’s one other. You’ll stay here. My mother’s out of town, so you can use her place.”

She glanced at the divided house, then back at him with a wry smile. “And if I go into town, one of you will just happen to be going along, right?”

That negligible shrug again.

It was a smart idea on his part—restricting her movements, therefore restricting her access to the friends and neighbors he didn’t want her talking to. “This was a rather convenient time for your mother to go out of town, wasn’t it? When did she leave? Sometime after my letter arrived in the mail yesterday?”

“Actually, the trip was already planned. She and my brother went to help a…friend. But if she hadn’t already made plans, she would have. You’re not dragging her into this mess.”

Natalie resisted the urge to point out that it was Lucinda who had dragged J.T. into this “mess.” She was the one who’d chosen to have the affair, who Chaney believed got pregnant deliberately to get something from him, who chose to go through with the pregnancy, planned or not, and raise the senator’s son. Instead, she turned back to the boy, who watched them silently. “You must be Jordan.” Closing the small distance between them, she offered her hand. “I’m Natalie.”

He raised both hands palm out to show that they were greasy, and she lowered her hand to her side. “Who exactly are you, Jordan?”

He looked at J.T., then uncomfortably replied, “I’m—I’m Tate’s son.”

Tate, she knew from her sketchy information, was the elder of the two Rawlins sons. They both lived and worked on the ranch with their mother, and both were single. J.T. had a habit of picking up speeding tickets, and he and his brother had landed in the county jail for a few youthful offenses involving too much booze, pretty women and hostile competition for the ladies’ affection. They owned the ranch outright, though occasionally they had to take out a mortgage to get through a tough season, and they were both good credit risks, Tate more so than J.T., though they were never going to get rich from ranching. That was about the extent of what she’d learned before leaving Montgomery.

“Do I get to put any conditions on this agreement?” she asked J.T. as he finally came close enough to hand the tool box to Jordan.

“Sure. You can take it…or leave it.”

“My, you’re so generous.” She smiled in spite of the sarcasm underlying her words. “I’ll take it, of course. I’ve already checked into a motel in Dixon. I need to pick up my stuff.”

“Any reason why Jordan can’t get it?”

She gave the same sugar-atop-sarcasm smile. “You mean, did I leave anything of an intimate nature lying about? Files? Drafts of the book? Notes of the senator’s comments about you?”

“You and I obviously have different definitions of ‘intimate nature,’” J.T. said.

With a faint flush warming her cheeks, she tried to remember what she’d done with the clothing—including a black lace bra with matching bikini panties—she’d taken off the night before. She’d been tired when she’d checked into the motel, and she’d changed into her pajamas and fallen into bed…but not before stuffing the clothes into a mesh laundry bag.

Removing the motel key from her key ring, she offered it to the boy. “If you’d save me forty more miles on the road after yesterday’s trip, Jordan, I would be ever so grateful. There are a couple of suitcases, a laundry bag, some papers on the table…oh, and the stuff on the bathroom counter.”

Jordan accepted the key, then, at a nod from his uncle, he grabbed his T-shirt and headed for the house.

“So…would you prefer that I call you J.T., Joshua or Josh?”

“I’d prefer that you call me long-distance.”

“A sense of humor. None of the other Chaney kids have one.”

That earned her a scowl and a hostile response. “I’m not one of the Chaney kids. Don’t call me that.” He circled the truck, then came back with a chambray shirt. She watched as he thrust his arms into the shirtsleeves, then started fastening the buttons. It was a simple task, one she’d seen done a million times, but he made it look…easy. Fluid. Sexy.

And that wasn’t something she should be thinking about the subject of her most important interview ever.

He finished up, not bothering to tuck the wrinkled tails into his jeans—a sight she would have paid money to see. Instead he simply stood there, waiting for her to say something, and finally she did. “J.T., Joshua or Josh?”

There was a certain reluctance to his voice when he answered. “J.T. will do.”

“Then shall we get started, J.T.?”

Chapter Two

If Tate had given it any thought, he would have expected Natalie Grant to be…hell, he didn’t know. Older. Stuffier. More the type to be interested in the affairs, both governmental and personal, of an old man. He would have imagined her as shorter, stockier, grayer and wearing sensible clothes.

The woman walking beside him toward the house was none of those things. She was beautiful. Leggy. Wearing a summery-looking dress that was short and sleeveless and clung from shoulder to midthigh. And she was a redhead.

When he’d come around the corner from the barn and seen that, his breath had caught in his chest, robbing his groan of any sound. Red hair came fourth on his list of weaknesses—right after Jordan, Lucinda and Josh—especially that particular shade of shiny-new-penny red. And long legs ranked right up there, too, along with sultry Southern accents.

Not only was he going to hell, but God was going to see to it that he suffered here on earth first.

“Interesting layout.”

He glanced at her and saw her gesture toward the house. “Mother-in-law troubles.”

“Whose?”

“The man who built the place sixty years ago. His wife insisted on her mother living with them. Unfortunately, the old lady’s only purpose in life was to make him miserable, so he built this house, but instead of putting the porch across the back, he stuck it between the two halves. The mother-in-law lived in the north half, while he and his wife lived in the south half. Now Mom lives in the north half.”

“And you, Tate and Jordan live in the other half?”

Tate swallowed convulsively. When he’d agreed to impersonate his brother, he’d realized he was going to have to answer to Josh’s name—though he was glad she’d offered him the chance to use J.T. instead. He’d actually been called that, off and on in his life, so it didn’t feel totally foreign.

But somehow he hadn’t realized that he was also going to wind up talking about himself as if he were someone else. Listening to Jordan admit to being Tate’s son, hearing her refer to Tate just now…it was too strange an experience.

“Actually, I have…my own place, but I’m…staying here while Tate’s gone.”

“He doesn’t trust Jordan to be alone,” she said with a knowing nod.

His anger flared. “He trusts Jordan completely. He’s a good kid.”

“I’m sure he is. But teenagers, no matter how good, are trouble waiting to happen.”

No one knew that better than Tate. He’d been sixteen and planning on going to college and having a career, instead of a backbreaking job on a ranch, when he’d met Stefani Blake, and he was seventeen and devastated when she’d told him she was pregnant. He’d offered to marry her, but she wasn’t interested. She’d had her future planned, like him, and there was no place in it for him or his kid. Two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, she’d given birth to Jordan, signed away all her rights and they’d never seen her again.

Tate had forgotten about college, a career elsewhere and everything else, and had put all his energy into being a father and making a go of the ranch. He’d changed diapers, fixed bottles and learned to bathe and dress a wriggly, squirmy kid, and he and Jordan had done a bit of growing up together.

He had no doubt Stefani had given him the better deal. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, it couldn’t be as satisfying as his life.

“This is a nice place. Have you always lived here?”

“Pretty much.”

“Do you have any employees?”

“We hire on help when we need it, but usually it’s just us.”

“And what do you raise?”

“We’re a cow-calf operation.” At her blank look, he explained, “We have a dozen bulls we breed with our cows. We sell the little boy calves, keep the little girls and let them be girlfriends with the bulls when they’re old enough.”

She gave him a chastising look. “I don’t need the explanations quite that simple.”

“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t. Digging in his pocket for his keys, he led the way up the steps and across the deck to the side door of Lucinda’s quarters, then inside. The door opened into a broad room that doubled as a mudroom and laundry room. Off the connecting hallway, there was a bathroom on one side, a closet on the other, then a small dining room and kitchen straight ahead. From the kitchen a doorway opened into the living room, and from there another hallway led to the three bedrooms and the bathroom they shared.

The house was about twenty degrees cooler than outside, and was dimly lit, the blinds having been tightly closed against the sun. It smelled of furniture polish and mulberry, his mother’s favorite scent in the world, and it felt strangely empty.

Natalie gave a soft sigh as she closed the door behind her. “I don’t care what anyone says. Dry heat is not more comfortable than humid heat. At least you can breathe when there’s moisture in the air.”

“Have you always lived in Alabama?”

“No. We moved a lot because of my father’s job. I settled there about nine years ago.”

“What was his job?”

She turned from her study of the rooms they were walking through to give him an uneasy look. “He’s retired now, but he was a—a journalist. Maybe you’ve heard of him—Thaddeus Grant.”

Tate shook his head, wondering why she called herself a reporter and her old man a journalist. A mild case of hero worship, maybe. After all, she had followed in his footsteps.

“He won the Pulitzer Prize so many times they considered just automatically giving it to him every year, and the college he went to renamed its journalism school after him. He’s one of those people who becomes so much more than the job. Instead of merely reporting the news, oftentimes he is the news. These days he spends his time entertaining the rich and powerful, lecturing and giving promising young journalism students the full benefit of his years of experience.”

“Sounds intimidating.” Definitely hero worship, with a little something else underneath. Resentment? Jealousy? Anxiety?

He gestured toward the first bedroom they approached. “This is my mother’s room.” Then, down the hall, “Bathroom, guest room, guest room.”

She walked into the third bedroom, went to the windows that looked out on yard and pasture out back, yard and woods on the north, and nodded once. “This is fine. Am I allowed to go shopping for groceries?”

“Sure. You can go with me when I pick up a few things.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t taking my car keys away from me.”

“Why would I do that when you’ve already agreed to my conditions? Especially when breaking the agreement will mean leaving here immediately?” A few steps down the narrow back hall returned them to the kitchen. He glanced inside the refrigerator—pretty bare since Lucinda had transferred most of the perishables into his own refrigerator—then said without thinking, “You can eat with Jordan and me next door. Breakfast is at five-thirty, dinner’s around noon, and supper’s about six-thirty.”

“Thank you.” She sounded surprised, as if she hadn’t expected such an invitation—which was fair, since he hadn’t intended to make it. He would take it back if he possibly could. The last thing he needed was her in his house, sitting at his table three times a day.

But what did it matter whether they ate together when he was going to be spending plenty of other time with her? Lying to her. Pretending to be somebody he wasn’t to her. Deliberately misleading her. Even thinking about it made his stomach queasy.

Opening the silverware drawer, he withdrew the extra key his mother kept in the corner and laid it on the counter halfway between them. “Any questions?”

“Only about a thousand. Starting with—” In the brief silence came the rumble of her stomach, making her blush. “Well, gee, starting with the fact that I haven’t eaten since dinner last night so can I get some lunch?”

“Come on.” She was close on his heels as he left the house, crossed the deck and unlocked the door to his own house. He’d neglected to tell her that the same key that opened Lucinda’s door also opened his, but figured that was something she didn’t need to know. Unlike Lucinda, he hadn’t had the time to lock away anything he might not want a nosy reporter to see.

The layout of his half of the house was identical to his mother’s, but his mudroom/laundry room had been turned into an office. A battered oak desk with a computer was pushed into one corner, Jordan had built shelves into one wall, and two oak file cabinets stood side by side against another. Papers, records, magazines and stacks of mail were piled on most of the flat surfaces, including the old-fashioned desk chair made of hickory. He saw the glint of amusement in Natalie’s gaze as it swept over the mess, and felt his face grow warm. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Actually, it looks like home. This is the Thaddeus Grant Method of Record Keeping.”

“And yours?”

“Uh, no. I’m a bit more…compulsive. You’ll see.” Without waiting for an invitation, she went ahead of him into the kitchen. He stood where he was for a moment, watching her move with a lazy grace as if she had all the time in the world, and enjoying the view, before giving himself a mental shake and starting after her.

His kitchen was just like Lucinda’s, but where she had floral wallpaper and oak-stained cabinets, his walls were painted yellow and his cabinets and all the trim were white. Her appliances were harvest gold and practically antique. His were white and practically new. He wondered how it compared to Senator Chaney’s kitchen, or if any of the Chaneys had ever actually set foot in their kitchen. He also wondered idly if there was any money in winning Pulitzer Prizes, having a school named after you or lecturing students. He assumed there was, since she’d said these days her old man entertained the rich and powerful.

“Sandwiches okay?” he asked as he scrubbed his hands at the double sink.

“Sure. Can I help?”

“Just have a seat.”

With a nod Natalie turned toward the table. It was oval, massive and looked about a hundred years old. She could easily imagine generations of Rawlinses gathered around it, sharing meals and the events of their days. If her memory was good enough, she could probably count on both hands the number of times she and her father had sat down to a cozy dinner together. He’d traveled so much when she was growing up, and even when he was home, it seemed that work just naturally required his attention in the evening. She’d spent so much time alone, wishing for his company and vowing to grow up to be just like him.

She’d tried…and failed miserably.

Shying away from thoughts that would only depress her, she forced her attention to the walls behind the table. More than two dozen framed photos hung there, some recent, some discolored with age. Jordan’s pictures were easy to pick out by their sheer newness, but J.T.’s were identifiable, even if half a lifetime had passed since the most recent. “Is this your brother?” she asked, studying the third subject.

“Yeah.”

“How much older is he than you?”

“About five years.”

“Jordan looks more like you than his father.” In fact, she thought, if not for the obvious difference in the age of the photographs, a person could easily mistake Jordan in his football uniform for the teenaged J.T. in his uniform.

He set two plates on the table with more force than necessary. “Jordan and—Tate aren’t part of your interview or your book, remember?”

As he slid into a chair, she claimed the seat across from him. “Sorry. I’m more than a little fascinated by families.”

“So write about your own.”

“I don’t really have one. It was always just my father and me.”

“You didn’t have a mother? Guess that proves my theory that reporters aren’t born. They’re created in a lab somewhere.”

“I had a mother,” she said with a faint smile. “She died when I was six. I just have a few memories of her.”

“Sorry.” He said it brusquely, but she suspected he was sincere. “What about grandparents? Aunts and uncles?”

“My father was an only child who wasn’t close to his parents. My mother was the youngest of four children, but her family resented my father for taking her away. After she died, we never had any contact with them.” She glanced at her plate, at a ham sandwich too large by half for her appetite, a pile of potato chips and two home-baked chocolate chip cookies. J.T.’s plate held the same, plus an additional sandwich. “You know, I’m supposed to be asking the questions, not answering them.”

“So ask.”

She chewed a bite or two before leading into her first question. “I understand that your father—”

“Chaney was a sperm donor, not a father. Call him whatever you want, but not ‘father.’”

Natalie nodded in agreement. “Senator Chaney tried to establish a relationship with you some time back, but you refused to return his calls or answer his letters. Sounds like a pattern, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds like you people from Alabama are pushy.”

“Some of us more than others,” she replied with a smile. “At least he didn’t show up on your doorstep.”

J.T. wasn’t the least bit amused. “If he had, I really would have called the sheriff.”

“Aren’t you even curious about him?”

“No.”

“There’s nothing you want to say to him? No answers you’d like to get from him?”

He shook his head.

“I think he’s very curious about you. I think he regrets not acknowledging you all those years ago—not claiming you and giving you the same sort of privileged life the rest of his children had.”

“I’m not a possession to be claimed.”

“No, of course not. But you understand what I’m saying.”

“If the good senator has any regrets,” he said snidely, “I imagine they have to do with leaving office and losing some of that power and constant media attention. I think that’s the whole reason behind this book, and the whole reason for sending you here. His illegitimate son is the only surprise the old man has left to get people’s attention.”

Natalie disagreed with him, though she didn’t say so. She truly believed Chaney wanted to meet J.T., to know what kind of son he and Lucinda Rawlins had produced together. He’d made his own attempts and had been rebuffed, and so he’d turned to her to get the information for him.

“You’re very close to your half brother, Tate, and your nephew, Jordan.” When she paused, a wary look turned his brown eyes a few shades darker and cranked up the intensity in his gaze a few notches. “You have eight half brothers and sisters and seven nieces and nephews on your fa—on the Chaney side of the family. Do you have any interest in meeting them?”

“You’ve met them, haven’t you?”

She nodded. She’d had the dubious pleasure of spending weeks with every one of them.

“Do I have anything in common with even one of them?”

As far as she could recall, not one of the Chaney offspring had ever held a job. Oh, they’d been given titles in the family business and positions in their father’s campaign, but they were empty titles, responsibility-free positions. None of them had actually worked at anything beyond enjoying life to the fullest as one of the privileged elite. They partied. They indulged their every whim. They spent their father’s money as if the supply was inexhaustible—as it seemed to be. They carried on scandalously and considered themselves above the dictates the rest of the world lived by.

“Other than the brown hair and eyes, no,” she admitted. Then she smiled. “Of course, I don’t know that much about you yet.” But she knew enough to be certain that he wasn’t the typical lazy, self-centered, greedy narcissist the rest of the Chaney children were. She knew they would have no more interest in claiming him as their half brother than he had in being claimed.

“Are your mother’s parents still alive?”

The abrupt subject change made her blink. “I—I don’t know.”

“Why haven’t you found out?”

“I don’t even know where they lived.”

“You know their names?”

“Yes, but—”

“You found me, when I would have preferred to remain lost. Surely, if they’re still living, you can find them.”

“And what would I say?”

“How about starting with, ‘I’m your granddaughter’? Then moving on to ‘I’m fascinated by families and thought it was time to get to know my own.’”

Natalie’s laugh felt choked and phony. “Remember—I ask the questions and you answer them.”

His shrug was every bit as enticing as it had been earlier by the truck, with his shirt off. “Have you never even thought about tracking them down?”

“No.”

“Why not? Their problem was with your father, not you. They would probably be thrilled to meet their youngest daughter’s only child.”

Maybe, she admitted to herself. But her father would go ballistic if he ever found out. He’d made it clear enough when she was a child that her loyalties belonged to him, no one else. His parents, her mother’s parents—who needed them? They had each other.

But she had never really had him.

She cleared her mind. “Back to the Chaneys…”

“Let’s stick with the Grants, or actually…what is your grandparents’ name?”

“Stevenson.”

“You have a whole family out there somewhere. Wouldn’t you like to meet the Stevensons?”

“Wouldn’t you like to meet the Chaneys?”

“Aunts, uncles, cousins…”

“Half brothers, half sisters, stepmothers—several of whom are just about your age.”

“You think I’d be interested in one of the old man’s ex-wives? How sick would that be?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Not in the Rawlins family.”

Natalie took a few moments to eat, polishing off half of the sandwich and the chips and both cookies, then pushed her plate back. “What kind of schedule do you keep?”

“I get up around five-fifteen and work until everything that needs doing is done, and I’m usually in bed by ten.”

Some days she awakened with an excess of energy and did everything that needed doing, too. Other days she hung around her apartment, not getting dressed or combing her hair, eating junk food and taking naps between movies on TV. She considered those days the refilling-her-creative-well days. No doubt J.T. would think of them as damn-what-a-lazy-slug days.

“You don’t have a regular quitting time?” she asked.

With a brow raised, he reached for her plate. When she nodded, he took it and his own plate to the counter. After putting the remaining sandwich half in a plastic bag in the refrigerator, he returned. “I usually quit around six or six-thirty, depending on what I’m doing. Sometimes I have to work later. Occasionally I can quit earlier.”

“Doesn’t leave much time for a social life.”

He shrugged.

“You’ve never been married.” She waited for his nod. “I assume there are women in your life. Anyone in particular?”

For a long, still moment he simply looked at her. Though her gaze remained steady on him, some part of her mind noticed that it wasn’t as cool in the house as it had initially seemed, coming in from the searing oven outside. In fact, in the past few minutes she’d gotten distinctly warmer, almost uncomfortably so, and found herself wishing for a blast of chilly air, an industrial-strength fan…or maybe a cold shower.

“You don’t really think I’d tell you if there were, do you? Considering who—or rather what—you are….”

Though his tone was mild, his words measured, Natalie felt the insult’s sting. “This may come as a surprise to you, J.T., but not everyone regards reporters as the spawn of Satan.”

“Not everyone has one sticking her pretty little nose into their personal lives.”

She smiled smugly. Every Chaney male eventually got around to a compliment of some sort—though she had to admit, J.T. was the first one to select her nose. The number-one son had liked her legs, number two her breasts, number three her mouth. Number five had expressed great appreciation for the way she moved and the way she talked, and even the senator himself, old enough to be her grandfather, had made a few indecent suggestions the first time they met.

But of course she had better sense than to mention the reason for her smile to J.T.

“I’ve got to get to work,” he said, pushing his chair back.

She popped to her feet, too. “Can I come with you?”

His gaze started at her shoulders and glided all the way down to her sandaled feet before sweeping up again. She would bet the partial payment she’d received on the book’s advance that he was doing nothing more than taking note of how inappropriate her dress was to a working ranch—which didn’t deter her one bit from finding the look…sensual. Heated. A threat to the professional detachment she always maintained with her interview subjects.

“You’re not exactly dressed to ride one of my horses,” he said at last. “Jordan should be back before long. Get settled in, and we’ll talk at dinner.”

She couldn’t even argue the point about riding. There was no way she could make it into the saddle in this dress, and there was one other minor problem in that she didn’t know how to ride. She’d lived thirty-one years without getting closer to a horse than when they’d cut across the yard on the way to her temporary quarters, and she was convinced she could happily keep her distance for the next sixty years.

After thanking him for lunch, she returned to Lucinda’s place, nudged the thermostat into a cooler range, then wandered into the living room. With the sun already on its afternoon slide into the west, she opened the blinds, then turned to study the room.

It was a little on the small side and decorated in a rather fussy manner. There were hand-crocheted doilies on the arms of the sofa and chairs, dried flower arrangements, a ruffled cloth on one round end table. More pictures of the three Rawlins boys hung on the walls, along with a couple of snapshots of Lucinda. The one that appeared most recent had been taken in the spring, with that old green truck and the weathered barn for a backdrop. The photographer’s shadow fell across lush green grass and stretched toward the feet of the family gathered there—Jordan, wearing crisp indigo jeans and a vertically striped rugby shirt, the heartthrob every high school should have for its own; J.T. in faded jeans and a white dress shirt and holding a cream-colored cowboy hat in his hands; the absent brother, Tate, five years older than J.T., several inches shorter, less handsome, less sexy, more forgettable; and Lucinda.

From the time the senator had told Natalie about his affair with Lucinda Rawlins and the illegitimate son it had produced, she’d wondered about the woman. Was she as pretty as Chaney remembered, as sly, deceitful and cunning as he claimed? Had she pursued him, seduced him and deliberately set out to trap him, or had it been just one more instance of the senator’s lack of self-control?

In the photograph with her sons and grandson, Lucinda didn’t look sly, deceitful or cunning. What she looked like, in fact, was the senator’s preferred type—slim, blond, pretty, delicate. She had a lovely smile and held herself with a certain grace, though her life certainly hadn’t been easy. According to the senator, her marriage to Tate’s father had ended when he’d found himself one girlfriend too many. She’d been left to raise two kids alone, with no help from either father, and she had apparently been very successful. Well, except for the fact that Tate had apparently repeated her mistake and wound up raising Jordan alone.

“Hey.”

She gave a start, then turned to face the subject of her last thought, standing in the kitchen doorway.

“I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear. I don’t know if—if Uncle J.T. told you, but the doorbell at the side door doesn’t work. We got hit by lightning in the last storm, and it fried the doorbell and Grandma’s cable and the telephone. We got the telephone fixed, but if you want to watch cable, you have to come over to our place, and Dad will fix the doorbell—” he swallowed hard, and his cheeks turned pink “—or—or maybe Uncle J.T. will. When he gets the time. Maybe.”

Natalie offered her warmest smile to put the boy at ease. “I appreciate your picking up my stuff for me. It was nice of your uncle to volunteer you.”

“They’re always doing that,” he said with a shrug that was an unconscious imitation of J.T.’s. “But I don’t mind. I just got my driver’s license a couple months ago. Your bags are by the door. Want me to put them in the guest room?”

“That’s okay. I’ll get them later. Do you have to get to work, or can you sit down and talk?”

He shifted uneasily. “I’ve got football practice in a little bit.”

“In this heat?”

“We just run some laps, and mostly work out in the weight room. It’s air-conditioned. And we drink a lot of water and Gatorade and stuff. We won’t spend a lot of time outside until week after next.”

“I saw the sign outside town that said you were the state champions last year.”

He seemed intent on dragging the toe of his boot back and forth across the seam where vinyl flooring met carpet. “Yeah, we did okay.”

“I bet you did better than okay.” He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, about 180 pounds of muscle—and acting as shy as a tongue-tied six-year-old. “Is football your only sport?”

“I play baseball, too. Pitcher, just like my dad. He was one of the best jocks Hickory Bluff ever saw. He was recruited by the OU Sooners and the Razorbacks his senior year.”

“What happened?”

Jordan stared at the floor for a moment. When he looked up, his brown eyes were dark with regret. “Me.”

“Oh.” Natalie’s smile felt forced. “Look at it this way—you probably saved him from a lifetime of aches and pains from too many injuries.”

“Yeah, I saved him a chance at the pros and making millions and retiring when he’s thirty-five.”

“Do you think he’d rather have the chance at the pros and making millions than you?”

Jordan raised his head and slowly smiled at her—the naturally perfect smile that she doubted she would get to see his uncle wearing. “Nope. My grandma says I’m the light of their lives.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said dryly. “What’s your favorite subject in school?”

They answered in unison. “Football.”

“What’s your favorite academic subject?”

“Algebra. I think after college I’ll teach math and be a coach.”

“And you’ll be the most popular math teacher the school has ever seen—with the girls, at least.” She hesitated, debated the wisdom of her next question, then asked anyway. “Your father’s not married, is he?”

“No.”

“And J.T. isn’t married, either, is he?”

“Nope. Are you?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

He looked like J.T., his mannerisms were like J.T.’s, and he was quick to ask questions like J.T. Kind of made her wonder just how much effort his father had put into raising him, and how much of the responsibility J.T. had shouldered.

With a sigh, she sat down in the nearest chair. Jordan took a seat on the sofa arm. “Why am I not married…. Nobody ever asked. I didn’t particularly want to get married. I haven’t had much time in the past year or so for dating.” Or much desire. In fact, the thing she’d wanted to do most in that time was hibernate. Disappear off the face of the earth. Find some way to turn back time and make right everything she’d done wrong.

“Take your pick, or make your own excuse.” She smiled tautly. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

A faint blush stained Jordan’s cheeks. “Sort of. We go out, but she sees other guys, too.”

“Are you free to see other girls?”

“Yeah, but who’s got the time?”

Or the desire, Natalie suspected. A faithful man—a rarity in her experience. She wondered—purely for the sake of the book—if his uncle shared that trait or took after the fidelity-challenged Chaneys.

“Her name is Shelley. Here’s a picture of her.” He passed over a brass frame from the end table. It held an eight-by-ten-inch photograph of a dozen or more teenagers. Jordan and a tiny blonde were front and center, looking like Ken and Barbie, Jr.

“She’s pretty,” Natalie said of Shelley, then pointed to another girl. “Who is she?”

“That’s Mike. She lives down the road a ways. Her real name is Michaela.” With a glance at his watch, he jumped to his feet. “I gotta go. See you later.”

While listening to his footsteps, then the slam of the door, Natalie continued to study the photo. The kids all looked so young, so fresh-faced and innocent, starting lives that were brimming with potential. It seemed she had always been the new kid in school, there and gone before she’d had the chance to make any lasting friendships. She envied the kids and hoped they enjoyed the camaraderie while they could.

Poor Mike didn’t look as if she was enjoying anything in the moment captured on film. She was taller than every girl and most of the boys in the shot, a brunette in a sea of blondes, her glasses unflattering and her clothes ill-fitting, and she was looking at Jordan as if he’d hung the moon. Unfortunately, Jordan was looking at Cheerleader Barbie’s Best Friend, Shelley, in exactly the same way.

Young love. Young heartache.

Natalie’s only experience with heartache had been of a nonromantic nature. She’d been betrayed by her only best friend ever, and she couldn’t imagine a lover’s betrayal could hurt any worse. She didn’t intend to find out, though. In the foreseeable future, her life was going to revolve around work—the book on Senator Chaney, undoing the mistakes of the past, righting the wrongs, winning back her father’s respect.

Like Jordan, she had no time or desire for anything more.

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