Revenge

by Lisa Jackson

Genres: Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Dear Reader, In the early 1990s, I visited eastern Oregon for the first time. Inspired by its breathtaking scenery, I wrote Love Letters, a trilogy about a town called Rimrock--whose secrets come to light when the patriarch of its wealthiest family is murdered. Now here it is, collected in one volume, with a new cover, and a new title, Revenge! Over the years, Jonah McKee acquired vast wealth, power, and an unsavory reputation. Though his fatal car crash is ruled accidental, his widow is convinced otherwise and begs her children to find the truth. Eldest son Max knew his late father could be manipulative, but a letter found among Jonah's possessions shows just how many lives were subject to his meddling. That list includes Max's brother, Jenner--rodeo rider and rebel--who is confronted by a confession that changes his life. But even while the siblings reel from new revelations, stubborn, beautiful Casey McKee is kidnapped by an enemy who hates the family enough to destroy them, one by one… If you've enjoyed my earlier novels like Unspoken, Running Scared, and Whispers, then I believe you're going to love reading Revenge! Lisa Jackson

Release date: March 1, 2016

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 639

Sample

Curling the yellowed pages in his fist, Max McKee swore beneath his breath and kicked a dirt clod across the pasture. The dry piece of earth landed with a thunk on the side of the stables and shattered into dust. Barn swallows, disturbed from their nests, squawked and dive-bombed the intruder, but he didn’t give a damn.

He hadn’t for a long time.

But the letters changed things.

He’d discovered the aged pages earlier while going through the old man’s business papers, and there, in a thin file labeled MAX, were two handwritten notes that could have changed the course of his life. Max had read the damning words in his father’s den, then heard his mother’s soft crying whispering through the hallways of the old ranch house. Rather than disturb her grief, he’d walked outside, read each letter again and felt as if a vise had been clamped over his lungs and was slowly being tightened, ensuring that each one of his breaths was more difficult than the last.

“Bastard,” he snarled, disregarding the fact that deep down he’d felt a kinship with the crusty old man who’d been his father—Jonah Phineas McKee. The great manipulator.

But it wasn’t Jonah’s letter that disturbed him most. It was the other single sheet with the flowing script signed by a woman he detested, a woman who had betrayed him, a woman for whom, at one time, he would have walked through the gates of hell just to see her smile.

His back teeth ground together as he remembered her as clearly as if she were standing beside him. Her loose blond curls caught in the summer wind, and wide eyes the color of a morning mist sparkled with an impish light whenever she teased him. Her laughter seemed to roll off the surrounding hills. Her chin stubborn, her mouth wide and sensuous, she stood nearly five foot eight, with a slim and athletic body honed by years of hard work.

She’d left him seven years before, and he’d never really understood why.

“Face it, son, she just wasn’t the right woman for you. Too serious about that damned career of hers, too proud to admit when she’d made a mistake.”

His father’s sentiments had always been spoken brashly, without hesitation.

“She reminded me of one of them wolf dogs, you know the kind they’ve got down at the Purcell place,” Jonah had continued, his dark brows inching up to his shock of thick, snow-white hair. “Them dogs are deceptive—all cuddly and soft as puppies, cute as all get-out. But watch out. Those damned pups turn into killers, like as not. Remember Amy Purcell nearly lost half her face to one of them she-wolves. Yep, you’re better off without the likes of Skye Donahue.”

Max, after his initial denial, had finally decided his father was right about Skye. He’d told himself that Jonah had pegged Skye from the start, though, more often than not in recent years, Max had found himself at odds with his father and had started second-guessing his own loyalties. For years, Max, firstborn and groomed to inherit most of Jonah’s estate, had believed that his father walked on water, a veritable god on earth. But as the years passed and he grew more independent, Max began to see Jonah with new eyes. He realized his cantankerous father wasn’t as innocent as he would have everyone believe. Sure, Jonah had been a colorful character, as rugged and rough as the outcrop of rimrock that topped the hills surrounding this valley, but Jonah had also possessed a darker side, one Max had begun to discover and one he’d steadfastly ignored. Or been too blind to see.

Maybe Skye had been right all along.

Hell!

He brushed off his dust-covered hat and rammed it onto his head. The sun was beginning to set, the heat that had shimmered across the dry grass was letting up a little, and shadows stretched over the fields. Max decided he had to quit thinking of his father, of Skye, of the letters.

The damned letters.

He should burn them both and let the wind carry the ashes away, but he didn’t. Instead he took the wadded-up pages and tossed them through the open window of his pickup where they floated onto the worn seat. He’d think about the letters later. Much later.

The screen door banged open and Max’s sister Casey careened from the house. “There’s just no talking to her!” Casey declared, blowing her bangs from her eyes. Petite, with shoulder-length brown hair and a temper that wouldn’t quit, Casey stormed across the porch, stomped down the two steps, and landed on a lawn chair. She crossed her legs and bounced her foot up and down in frustration. “Idiot!”

“You’re talking about Mom.”

“Damn it, Max, do you know what she’s trying to get me to believe now? Do you?”

“I hate to ask.”

“She thinks Dad was murdered!” Casey looked up at the dusky sky, as if hoping God would send a lightning bolt straight from heaven and knock some sense into their mother. “Murdered! Like anyone has ever been killed in Rimrock!”

“There was Indian Joe.”

Casey rolled her eyes. “He was ninety-five years old, blind, and he walked in front of a logging truck! Elvin Green didn’t mean to run him over.”

“I was just trying to calm you down.”

“Well, you can’t!” She shot out of her chair and marched up to her brother. Jabbing the air emphatically, she said, “Mom’s gone ’round the bend on this one.”

“She’s still upset. It’s only been a week.”

Casey shook her head furiously. “She’s beyond upset and plans on calling Myrna Cassidy, the reporter for The Rimrock Review. Oh, I can see it now. Inch-high letters screaming that Dad was killed by some unknown murderer. You know that Myrna’s always looking for something more exciting to write about besides the school-bond measures and the county fair! She’ll print this...this ridiculous theory of Mom’s in a heartbeat—”

“Hold on a minute! Give Mom a break, will you?” Max closed his eyes against a sudden headache. “She’s not going to go spouting off to the papers—”

“You’d better stop her! She won’t listen to me.” Casey tossed her hair out of her eyes and headed toward the barn. “I’m goin’ for a ride. Tell Kiki not to hold supper.”

“I don’t think she’ll worry about it.”

Kiki, the gray-haired housekeeper who’d been with the McKees for as long as Max could remember, wasn’t likely to keep anything warming. Long ago, Kiki had made it clear she thought all the McKee children—Max, his brother, Jenner, and Casey—were spoiled, and she wasn’t about to take part in their pampering.

Max stalked into the house and found Kiki fussing over some peach dumplings bubbling on the stove. The aromas of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg mingled and wafted through the old ranch-house walls, reminding Max of happier, simpler times, when he’d been a kid. Life then had been working in the fields, skinny-dipping in the swimming hole, fishing until dark, sneaking a smoke, and constantly wrestling with his brother. Later, as the years had piled up, he’d spent more time wondering about the mysteries of all females and Skye Donahue in particular.

“You’d better go see after your ma. She’s carryin’ on somethin’ fierce!” Kiki didn’t bother looking up from her kettle. “Damned peaches, trying to turn to mush on me. And don’t you wear your boots on my clean floor. Curse it all, anyway.”

Leaving his hat on a peg by the back door, Max walked swiftly down the hall of the rambling ranch house he’d lived in for twenty of his thirty-five years. Virginia McKee’s sobs coaxed him around the corner and past the den to the master bedroom. Bracing himself, he rapped his knuckles on the double doors. He didn’t wait for a response but slipped into the room where his mother and father had laughed, cried, made love, and argued loudly enough to shake the rafters of the sprawling old house.

Virginia McKee was sitting on the edge of the bed she’d shared with Jonah for only six months before Max had been born. She’d been pregnant when she’d gotten married, a secret she’d have preferred to have kept hidden, but her husband hadn’t given a rat’s hind leg who’d known the truth. He’d been proud of his virility, prouder still when he’d fathered a son.

Virginia was a small woman with fine bones and a slight figure. She was huddled into a little ball, her arms wrapped around her middle. “Why?” she asked in a whisper that cut straight to Max’s heart.

“I don’t know, Mom. It just happened.”

“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t have been so careless. He was murdered, Max. I know it. I...just know it.” Staring sightlessly down at her wedding ring, she gnawed on her lower lip. Tears began to rain from her eyes.

“Have you taken a tranquilizer? Doc Fletcher—”

“I’m not taking any drugs! Besides, that old sawbones thinks a pill will solve everything. A pill to sleep, another one to wake up, one to quiet a fast-beating heart, one to keep you from running to the bathroom every ten minutes... Oh, Lord, I’m prattling on about useless things when there’s so much to do.”

“The funeral’s over, Mom. You can relax.” He sat on the bed beside her and the mattress creaked with his weight. “You should rest. Get your strength back.”

“He was killed, Max.”

“No—”

“Someone murdered him.”

Max rubbed a hand over his forehead. “He was drunk. He’d had five or six stiff drinks down at the Black Anvil. Jake, the bartender, thought about taking his keys, but didn’t. Dad left, driving too fast. He lost control, couldn’t make the corner, and the Jeep wound up at the bottom of Stardust Canyon. End of story.”

Virginia shook her head. Her lips pulled together as if drawn by invisible strings. “I tell you, he was killed, Max.”

Max closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Mom, just for the sake of argument, let’s say someone tried to murder him. Okay?”

“They did!”

“How? Did they wrestle the wheel away from him and somehow make the Jeep leap the guardrail? Did they force him off the road? How?”

“I... I don’t know,” she said stubbornly.

“The sheriffs department—”

“Hasn’t found anything, I know. But they just haven’t looked hard enough!” She stood, maintaining her balance by holding on to one of the carved bedposts. “I know your father. He could hold his liquor. He’d driven that road a thousand times.”

“Mom, his luck just plain ran out.”

“So you won’t help me on this.”

“It doesn’t serve any purpose.”

Her eyes blinked rapidly. “I can’t believe that you won’t do something. Casey, well, there’s no talking to her. She’s such a...well, so stubborn, and Jenner, God knows he doesn’t much care about the family. Never did. Always had to play the part of the rebel. But you...you were your father’s pride and joy, the son who always did what was right—”

“I’m no saint, Mom,” Max cut in, feeling the old, hard-edged emotions beginning to tear at him. “And I gave up being one of Dad’s yes-men years ago.”

“Still, you believed in him, and damn it, he believed in you. The least you could do is talk to Sheriff Polk, find out what really happened out on Elkhorn Ridge.”

“Nothing happened, Mom. Dad just misjudged the corner.”

She cut him a glance that silently called him a fool, and he stood to turn down the bed. “Come on, Mom.” Patting the crisp percale sheets, he said softly, “Take your shoes off. Try to get some rest.”

“I will not be coddled, son! And I’ll go to bed when I’m good and ready and not a minute before.” Sniffing back her tears, she angled up her thin face, glaring at her firstborn. “You do what you have to, Max, and so will I.”

“Mom—”

“Don’t you worry about me—I can take care of myself. And bring Hillary around more often. Just because Jonah is gone doesn’t mean that I won’t want to see my granddaughter.” She dropped into an antique rocker positioned near the bay window.

“I’ll have her this weekend.”

His mother snorted. “A weekend father. I always thought more of you than that, Max.”

He wasn’t going to get into this no-win argument. If he’d had his way, Hillary would live with him, but Colleen had fought him in court and won joint custody, which meant she kept Hillary five days out of the week and Max got the leftovers. The important thing was that his daughter seemed to be doing fine. He’d heard somewhere that kids were resilient. He hoped so. If a child was loved, Max believed the rest would take care of itself. Both he and Colleen loved their daughter; they just didn’t love each other. Probably never had.

Guilt was razor sharp as it cut through his heart.

He’d been at fault—the one to blame when the marriage had crumbled. He’d never really gotten over Skye, no matter how much he’d told himself that he had. She’d betrayed him, and he, wounded to the depths of his soul, had turned to Colleen to survive.

His father had been pleased.

But the marriage had been doomed from the start.

And now there were the letters... the damned letters. He felt as if acid had been poured into his gut because, until he found out the truth about Skye and why she’d left him, he’d never be satisfied.

He kissed his mother goodbye and left her sitting in the rocker staring sightlessly out the window to the dry, rolling fields dotted with white-faced Herefords. Somehow the ranch would survive. He wasn’t so sure about his mother.

Avoiding further conversation with Kiki, he snatched his hat from its hook and strode outside to his pickup. He climbed in and saw the wadded-up letters on the seat. Growling an oath under his breath, he switched on the ignition and tromped on the accelerator. Within seconds, he was tearing down the lane at a breakneck pace, dust and gravel spewing behind him, pine trees and fence line flashing by in a blur.

He didn’t want to think about Skye. Not now. Not ever. Thoughts heading in her direction invariably led to dangerous territory. Besides, what was done was done. If he’d wanted her—really wanted her—back then, he would have gone after her, wouldn’t he have?

Frowning darkly, he switched on the radio, looking for sports scores. Instead, a Bruce Springsteen song of love gone bad drifted out of the speakers. Tell me about it, Bruce, Max thought grimly as he squinted through the dusty, bug-spattered windshield.

The asphalt road he barreled along on stretched for miles in either direction, a straight, paved line that cut through this valley where the John Day River flowed swiftly between the rolling hills of dry grass and sparse juniper trees.

When he finally reached town, he stopped at the feed store, bought several sacks of grain and loaded them into his truck before walking the short distance to the Black Anvil. Where his father, just the week before, had consumed too much liquor before ending up at the bottom of Stardust Canyon, the nose of his Jeep plunged deep into the swift waters of Wildcat Creek. Jonah’s blood alcohol level had been near the stratosphere, he’d cracked his head on the windshield and died of heart failure, according to the county medical examiner. Jonah Phineas McKee, a Rimrock legend, had died, and the town had mourned.

Max would miss him, though for the past few years they hadn’t gotten along.

Ever since Skye.

Shoving open the swinging doors to the bar, Max strode past the cigarette machine to the interior where smoke hung in a hazy cloud near the ceiling and the air-conditioning system clattered and coughed. Men, just off work, clustered at the bar where they eyed a television suspended from the ceiling, sipped from frosted mugs of beer, picked at complimentary pretzels, and complained about the game, the weather and their wives.

Max ordered a beer and slid into a booth near the window. He stared outside, past a flickering neon sign advertising beer, to the street where heat waves rose like ghosts, though the sun was beginning to dip below the mountains.

“Didn’t expect to find you here.”

Max lifted one side of his mouth at the sound of his brother’s voice. “Can’t say the same for you.”

Jenner, a half-filled mug of beer in hand, slipped onto the opposite bench. Two years younger than Max, Jenner had always been the rebel, never doing one damned thing that was expected of him. Didn’t even finish high school—just up and left to join the rodeo circuit. A cowboy’s cowboy, he had only come home to roost a few years ago when his body, barely thirty, had been broken and taped together too many times from tumbling off wild broncs and Brahma bulls or crashing into the fists of indignant husbands. “Yeah, well, someone’s got to keep this place in business,” Jenner drawled with his go-to-hell smile stretching from one side of his face to the other.

Max and Jenner had been oil and water. Max, for years, had always tried to please their old man, while Jenner had done his best to thwart Jonah at every turn. If Jonah said white, then Max would say ivory, and Jenner was sure to bring up black.

“Mom thinks Dad was murdered,” Max said, then, watching the foamy head of his beer sink into the amber depths, took a long swallow. The liquor was cool and malty and settled deep in his gut.

Jenner lifted a shoulder. “He had enough enemies.”

“No one killed him, Jenner.”

“Probably not.”

“Probably?” Max couldn’t believe his ears.

“Contrary to what you’d like to believe, the old man was, well, borderline honest, would be the best way to put it. We both know it.”

Max didn’t want to be reminded of his father’s less-than-aboveboard dealings. “I know, but murder—”

“I’m not saying it happened. I’m just saying it’s possible.” He finished his beer and signaled for another round by lifting a finger. The waitress, a buxom woman named Wanda Tulley, winked at him. She was poured into a red-checked blouse and tight denim miniskirt. Her black boots reached midcalf on tanned legs that seemed to go on forever. A couple of years younger than Jenner, Wanda had been through two bad marriages and had been cursed with a crush on the younger McKee brother for as long as Max could remember. Max only hoped Jenner wasn’t taking advantage of her affections—he seemed to have no sense of responsibility when it came to women.

“Here ya go, sugar,” Wanda said, flipping her straight silver blond hair over her shoulder.

“Thanks. Put ’em both on my tab.”

“You got it.”

She slid the fresh mugs onto the table, then picked up the empties, allowing Jenner and Max a quick glimpse of the top of her breasts as she bent over, the red gingham of her blouse parting slightly.

As she left, Jenner ignored his beer. “I thought you should know...” he said, pausing as if something weighty was on his mind.

“Know what?”

“I ran into Doc Fletcher a little while ago. Seems he’s taking on a new partner. Maybe even selling his practice.”

“About time.” Fletcher had to be pushing seventy and had been looking for a younger general practitioner to eventually take over his business. However, in today’s world, most of the medical profession was specialized, and nearly all of the newly graduated doctors preferred to practice in the cities and suburbs where the money was better and the services of hospitals were close at hand. Few were interested in a small clinic hundreds of miles from a major city.

“He said he wanted to go over some details on his lease with you. The estate owns the clinic building, doesn’t it?”

“Yep, but Fletcher can link up with anyone he likes. Long as he pays the lease, I don’t have anything to say about it.”

Jenner’s grin was downright evil. The first premonition of disaster skittered down Max’s spine.

“Okay, so tell me. Who’s the guy?”

“Not a guy,” Jenner said, his gaze steady on his brother. “A woman. Not long out of medical school.”

Max felt as if some great hand had wrapped around his chest and was slowly squeezing, because before the words were out of Jenner’s mouth, he knew what they would be.

“Yep,” Jenner drawled, little lines of worry forming between his dark eyebrows, “word has it that Skye Donahue’s finally coming back to Rimrock.”

Skye rolled down the window of her ’67 Ford Mustang, then scowled as the handle snapped off in her hand. “Some classic,” she muttered, tossing the broken piece of metal onto the passenger seat already filled with her medical textbooks, notes and a bag of half-eaten French fries from the McDonald’s she’d driven through before leaving Portland.

She’d been in the car five hours and her muscles were beginning to cramp, but she wasn’t tired. No, as the miles leading to Rimrock disappeared beneath the balding tires of her little car, she felt a growing edge of anticipation. Adrenaline clamped her fingers around the wheel while she tried to ignore the feeling that she was making the biggest mistake of her life—second biggest, she reminded herself. The first was falling in love with Max McKee. Clenching her teeth together, she shoved aside the little tug on her heart at the thought of him. She didn’t have time for second thoughts about Max. She’d been young and foolish. She was lucky she’d forced herself to forgo listening to her heart and refused to marry him.

Max McKee may well have been her first love, but he certainly wasn’t going to be her last! Not that she needed a man. Being an independent woman had its advantages. She never had to worry about disappointing anyone else in her life, and if there was a void—an emptiness that sometimes seemed impossible to fill—well, that was all part of the choices she’d made. She wasn’t the type of woman to moan and cry about lost loves or missed opportunities.

From the carrier in the back seat, her cat, Kildare, let out an impatient cry.

“Not much farther,” Skye called over her shoulder. The cat, named for the doctor in Skye’s mother’s favorite medical show of all time, sent up another plaintive wail, but Skye ignored him and stared through her grimy windshield to the gorgeous Ochoco Mountains. The road edged the river as it cut a severe canyon through the towering hills topped with the stony red outcrop that had given the town of Rimrock its name.

The wind teased her hair and she rarely saw another car. She’d missed this—the solitude, the majestic stillness of the mountains, the peaceful quiet of the countryside—while she’d spent the past few years of her life in the frenetic pace of the city. Portland wasn’t a large town compared with New York, Chicago or Seattle, but for a girl who had grown up in a community with a population of less than a thousand people corralled within the city limits, Portland had seemed immense, charged with an invisible current of electricity. The streets were a madhouse where drivers surged from one red light to the next, anxiously drumming fingers on steering wheels, smoking or chewing gum or growling under their breath about the traffic. Where the smell of exhaust fumes mingled with rainwater. Where night was as bright as day.

At first, she’d loved the city, the change of pace, the demands of medical school. In her few precious hours of free time, she’d explored every nook and cranny of the restless town, indulging in the nightlife, the theaters, the museums, the concerts in Waterfront Park. She’d learned, as a matter of self-preservation, to be suspicious of nearly everyone in the city, and yet she’d met some of the most honest and true friends of her life while studying to become a doctor.

And yet she was drawn back home.

“Home.” She mouthed the word and it felt good.

She hadn’t been forced to return to the hills of eastern Oregon. She’d had options when she’d graduated and could have joined the staff of several hospitals in the Pacific Northwest, and another in Denver. Instead, after a year with Columbia Memorial, she’d decided to nose her little car due east and accept Doc Fletcher’s offer to buy out his practice in Rimrock.

Because of Max. Because there’s unfinished business between you.

Her fingers began to sweat over the steering wheel and she snapped her mind closed to that particular thought. Max was married, and she, perhaps romantic to the point of being an idiot, believed in the sanctity of marriage. Although her father was no longer alive, her parents had shown her love, laughter, trust and commitment.

So Max McKee was off-limits. Good. Even if he was still single, she wouldn’t have wanted him. She’d never met a more stubborn, arrogant man in all her life. A man just like his father. Her stomach turned over at the thought of Jonah McKee and she shoved his image out of her mind. She would have preferred a practice somewhere in eastern Oregon farther away from Max, but Doc Fletcher’s unexpected visit to Portland and his offer had been too tempting to turn down.

“We need young, dedicated, talented people, Skye,” he’d said in his slow-moving drawl, his words punctuated by snowy white eyebrows that dipped and rose above the gold rims of his glasses. “But most young doctors aren’t interested in a Podunk town so small you can drive through without blinking. So I thought you might want to come back home, be near your mother. I can offer you pretty good terms. Hell, I’ve made my money there, so I won’t need a down payment on the business—and you’re really just buying the practice. I lease the building, but there’s an option to buy in a couple of years. We’ll work out the contract so that you can pay me a balloon payment in five years....” He’d gone on and on, and though Skye had thought she’d turn him down flat, the deal had been too sweet to refuse. Fletcher had been right when he’d mentioned her mother. Irene Donahue, not yet sixty, wasn’t in the best of health, and Skye did want to be close to her. In the end, Skye had agreed. She didn’t regret her decision. The only hitch was Max.

As the road curved to accommodate the river and the mountains, she caught her first glimpse of Rimrock, little more than several blocks of buildings clustered around a single stoplight. She drove past the turnoff for the old copper mine and headed straight through the heart of town, past the small buildings, some ancient, some new, where afternoon shadows were slinking across the dusty asphalt streets.

On an impulse, she stopped at the Shady Grove Café, parked beneath an old oak tree and cracked open her windows before stepping onto the pockmarked asphalt of the lot. She set Kildare in his carrier in the shade of the tree, then walked to the twin glass doors of the old restaurant. An A-frame building with wings, the café had been through owners and names too numerous to remember.

Inside, the air conditioner rattled a noisy welcome. Several booths were occupied, but Skye didn’t recognize anyone. The place smelled of stale coffee and cigarette smoke, while the deep fryer added its own special aroma. She slid into a booth near the window, and despite all the efforts of the air conditioner, the heat seeped through the glass and the clear, black plastic curtain that had been drawn to offer some shade.

A short waitress with a frizz of brown curls took Skye’s order for a cola, then hustled, order pad and pencil in hand, to the next table. As it was the middle of the afternoon, the lunch crowd had dispersed and the dinner crowd hadn’t yet arrived.

Within minutes, the waitress left a sweating glass of soda and a bill on the table before passing through swinging doors to the kitchen. Skye took a long swallow as she studied the menu that hadn’t changed much in the past seven years. A bell tinkled and a gust of hot air whooshed into the room.

“I want chocolate and vanilla swirled together,” an impish voice commanded.

“Then that’s what you’ll have.”

Max! She’d know his voice anywhere—it still haunted her dreams and played with those memories that she’d sworn to tuck away forever. She froze for a second, then quietly took a breath and glanced up. Their gazes collided, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn there was a tremor in the earth. Her heart kicked into double time as she looked at him, tall and lean as ever, wide shoulders hidden by a time-softened work shirt, his brown hair still streaked by the sun. Raw as the wind that swept through this part of the valley and rugged as the hills that surrounded the river, Max McKee generated a kind of sexual energy that should have been reserved for movie stars and professional athletes. His lips were thin, nearly cruel, and the spark in his eyes was as cold as a Blue Norther.

Skye could barely breathe. She reached for her drink, nearly toppling it over onto the table.

His large, work-roughened hand was clasped around the chubby fingers of a springy-haired girl of five or six. His daughter. An ageless pain ripped through Skye’s soul as she stared, speechless, at man and child.

She was vaguely aware that the other patrons had turned their heads, drawn to the silent scene unfolding in front of the counter.

Max, as if suddenly aware that he was causing a stir, pulled on the little girl’s hand and guided her toward the booth where Skye sat frozen. His features, already hard angles and planes, seemed to turn more grim, and his eyes, shaded by thick gold-brown brows, were the same piercing, angry sea green that she remembered.

He slid onto the bench of her booth and glared at her without a speck of joy. “I heard you were coming back,” he said without so much as a hello.

“Bad news travels fast.”

He snorted. “The big city lose its at