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Four Days Later…

 

“Hey, Dax. How you doin’?”

His spine went rigid. Her familiar, sexy-as-hell voice raked his nerve endings like a red-hot dagger. Kendra.

He was sitting at The Long Branch, sipping a giant mug of foamy, icy root beer, mainly just to prove to himself that he could. And for the company. Jason McIntyre was manning the bar this morning, helping out because the owner, his brother Joey, was too busy with his pet project, The Twig.

Jason met Dax’s eyes over the bar. They offered support, should he need it. Then he wandered to the other end of the bar to give them space.

The place was dead, but it was early. Its curved hardwood bar gleamed, and the tables around the room were mostly empty. The player piano was silent. Just past the curving staircase that led up to several guest rooms, red velvet curtains hung, graceful and heavy and soft. The dining room was on the other side, but that half of the place wasn’t open this early in the day.

Bracing himself, Dax spun his saddle-shaped barstool around to face her.

And there she was. He looked from her big, emerald green eyes, as innocent as springtime, to her plump, lonely lips, to the ivory silk cami that clung to her breasts and didn’t quite reach to the top of her low-slung, skin-tight jeans. She wore a denim jacket over the top, unbuttoned, and high heeled boots under the jeans.

He knew every inch of her. He’d loved her. Planned to marry her. She’d scammed him out of a pile of money and left him in the dust.

He forced his eyes to travel back up to her face again. Her hair wasn’t strawberry blond like her twin sister Kiley’s. It was lighter, the color of sweet lemonade, and long, and perfectly straight.

“Hello, Kendra.” He tried to make it sound cold and distant, and to hide the parts of him that wanted to lurch off the stool, pick her up and kiss her until she quivered. “What brings you back to Big Falls?”

“I miss my sister.”

Her sister. Hell. “She uh…she know you’re coming?”

“I imagine she does by now,” she said, giving a little nod. He followed her gaze and saw Jason, just sliding his phone back into his pocket.

He knew better than to take anything Kendra said as the truth, though. As a general rule, if her mouth was open and sounds were coming out, she was lying.

“You came here first?” If she was really in town to see Kiley, what was she doing at The Long Branch?

“Thought I’d see if I could get a room, unload my crap, freshen up. I don’t want Kiley to feel like she has to put me up.”

“I see.” No, he didn’t.

She lowered her thick lashes until they touched her cheeks. “I heard about your father, Dax. I’m real sorry.”

“How?” he asked.

“How what?” Her eyes opened again, locked onto his. “How did I hear?”

He nodded.

“Online, I guess. A friend of mine who knows a friend of yours posted an RIP or something like that.”

“Something like that.”

She nodded. “That why you’re drinking? Last I knew you were on the wagon.”

He said, “Yep. Drowning my sorrows in root beer.”

She blinked, her green eyes sliding to the mug. Then she smiled and it was the first genuine expression he’d seen cross her face so far. “That’s great. I’m glad.” She slid up onto a stool beside him. Jason noticed and came right over. Kendra’s twin sister Kiley was married to Jason’s brother Rob, so technically, they were family.

“Hey, Kendra. What can I get you?”

“I’ll have what he’s having,” she said. “And some information.”

Jason and Dax exchanged a quick look that said, here it comes.

“I’m dying to know what on earth you McIntyres are up to out yonder?” She gestured left, in the general direction of the construction project. It was fifty yards east and twenty yards back from the road, on Long Branch land. Another fifty yards past that was Joe and Emily’s newly built home.

“Joey’s building a miniature of The Long Branch out there for kids,” Jason said. “Bat-wing doors and all. Inside there’ll be a ball pit, arcade, and they’ll serve ice cream and pop. Outside, mini-golf and a paintball course.”

She lifted her brows and looked to Dax, who nodded confirmation. “Joey bought his brothers out, and he’s been going strong ever since. He’s calling his new venture The Twig.”

She slapped her thigh and laughed. Jason slid a mug of root beer her way.

“He has a wife and a little girl now,” Jason said. “You’ll meet ‘em if you stick around long enough. Did I hear you say you needed a room?”

“Yeah, if you have anything.”

He plucked a key off a hook under the bar, slid it across the wood to her. “Top of the stairs, hang a right. Corner room. No charge.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can pay my own way.”

“It’s a Brand-McIntyre rule,” Jason said. “Family doesn’t charge family.”

“Not even the black sheep?” she asked.

“Not even,” Jason said.

“Thank you. I’m grateful.” She took a sip. Foam stuck to her upper lip. Dax wanted to kiss it away, so he looked elsewhere. Then she said, “I feel bad, Dax. I caused a rift between you and your dad.”

“You widened a rift that was already there,” he said.

“Still…” Deep breath, sincerity in her eyes. A little too much of it. “I hope you had the chance to mend fences before….” She let the words trail off, waited for him to fill in the rest.

“I was with him when he passed,” he said. Which really didn’t explain anything.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“You don’t seem okay.” She sighed, and when he didn’t say anything, took another sip. “I’d like to ask you a favor, Dax.”

He had no doubt she did. He’d been waiting for her to get to the point, tell him what it was she wanted from him this time around. God knew if she was here and being nice to him, she must want something. “What kind of favor?”

Her deep breath expanded her breasts against the cami. He tried not to notice and noticed anyway. “I don’t know how Kiley’s gonna feel about me showing up. I’m… would you go out there with me?”

He closed his eyes slowly, opened them again. “I don’t get it.”

“I know it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, but…when we were together—”

“We were never together,” he said. “It was just a game you were running.”

“I was running a game. But you weren’t. You were a great boyfriend. I always felt good about myself when I was with you. I always felt safe.”

“You don’t feel safe around your sister?”

“I don’t feel good about myself around my sister.”

That was the thing with Kendra. She’d lie to him, she’d con him, but every once in a while she’d show him her soul in a moment of brutal, undeniable honesty. To this day he didn’t think she did that with anyone else. He took a deep breath, sighed heavily. “I have to go over anyway.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He drained his glass. Hers was only half empty. “Give me your keys. I’ll get your bags for you while you finish up.”

She smiled, a watery, wavery little smile of gratitude and relief. No hint of triumph, like he’d have expected if she thought she had him wrapped around her finger again.

He probably ought to warn her about what she was going to find out at Rob and Kiley’s Holiday Ranch. But he decided not to. It wasn’t his place. That was a matter between the two sisters. They’d have to work it out on their own.

Kendra dug out her car keys, dangled them in front of him. He took them, looked at them, and said, “You’re driving a ‘Vette?”

That smile was real. “Sixty-two, red and white drop top. It’s my most prized possession.”

“I bet it is.” He wondered what poor slob she’d taken for such a sweet ride, but he took the keys without asking and headed out to the parking lot to get her bags. Not because he was falling into her sticky, deadly web again, but because he hadn’t been raised to tell a girl to go get her own damn bags.

And because he wanted to get a look at that car.

Kendra drove out to the place where she’d grown up playing in wildflower meadows with her twin sister and thinking life would always be just that sweet.

She barely remembered her mother. Kiley didn’t either, but she’d built a pretty convincing version in her imagination—equal parts sixties sit-com supermom and angel. But Diana Kellogg hadn’t lived to see her twin daughters’ fourth birthday, and she couldn’t have been too angelic. She’d married Jack, after all.

Kendra’s heart twisted up a little as she thought of her father. In her head she saw his smile, the one that could charm the panties off a nun, the deep dimples, the sparkle in his light blue eyes.

He’d better be okay.

She glanced into the rearview mirror. Dax’s angry, snarling Charger came right behind, like a bright orange tiger stalking a deer, ironically, driven by the sweetest guy in America. Or at least he used to be. He seemed bitter now, wary, but whose fault was that? She firmed her jaw, caught a gear, pressed harder on the gas.

A few miles west of The Long Branch, she took a right onto Pine Road. She’d never seen the irony in the name until she’d lived in the northeast for a while. You couldn’t get five minutes outside NYC before the majestic conifers showed up, carpeting every rolling hill and tall enough to tickle the sky. What passed for a pine tree here was like a New York pine tree’s botched GMO experiment. One of the freaky ones that would have to be mercifully put down.

It was different here. Flatter, and wider, and hotter. And the pine trees were crooked and short, like arthritic old men.

The road was familiar, unwinding between wide meadows and harvested fields. The grasses were tall and spotted with orange Indian Paintbrush and yellow dandelions, even in mid-November, all of it swaying in the breeze like a slow-motion dance. The sun hung low. Every now and then, a sunbeam bounced off the Cimarron, at the far edge of the green dancing meadow, and flashed bright yellow in her eyes. It was fall. And she was home.

“What a sentimental pile of horse shit.” She turned left into the driveway, under the big HOLIDAY RANCH arch, past the barns, all freshly painted red with white trim. They’d cleared out the barnyard that used to be in front of the smaller barn, dozed it flat and added gravel to make a parking area surrounded by a split rail fence. The big barn had been modified, and looked almost new. There were horses grazing in the fields that stretched between the barns and the river, colts kicking up their heels where Kendra and Kiley used to play.

They’d painted the house too, white with red trim, and a white picket fence surrounded it now.

“It must’a looked so pretty once,” a little girl’s voice said in her memory. And she was there, right there, near that corner fencepost, with Kiley, who held up a rotted piece of rail that was still clinging by a single nail. “I bet it went all the way around.”

“We could fix it, maybe,” Kendra had said, her head full of visions of how nice it would look. Visions that had been quickly shattered, when her father put his two cents in. “And how you gonna get the funds for it, Kendra? Who’s gonna buy the boards and the nails and the paint? Not me, I’ll tell you that. You gotta start thinking about things like this now, so you don’t grow up all dependent and needy. You gotta figure out how to make your own way in this world. No one’s ever gonna do it for you.”

She sighed and snapped her attention back to the present, to the white picket fence around the house, and the shutters with the little heart-shaped cutouts. They’d replaced the old, rotting window boxes with new ones, painted red to match the barn, all of them overflowing with orange and yellow flowers.

It was as pretty as two little girls had once dreamed it could be.

The front door opened, and Kiley came outside. Her belly was as big as a beach ball. Her hands rested on top of it, and its weight pulled her back into a gentle arch.

Kendra hit the clutch and brakes and sat there in a cloud of red Oklahoma dust, staring. “What the—”

A soft beep beep from behind made her blink. Swallowing hard, she eased the stick into first gear and found a spot to park.

Her sister was pregnant and she hadn’t told her.

Kendra didn’t like the way that hurt. She didn’t do emotional shit, so it was uncomfortable to feel as if a hot blade had just slipped cleanly between her ribs and right though her heart. A blade held by Kiley. Kiley! The good twin.

She shut the car off and got out, taking a ridiculous amount of time to adjust her handbag over her shoulder, and clip her keyring into its spot inside.

Then, vaguely aware of the Charger rumbling to a stop nearby and shutting off, and of its door opening and closing again, Kendra walked toward the house where her sister waited.

Kiley looked worried behind her welcome-home smile.

Kendra walked a little faster, her anger like a weighted blanket, laid over the hurt. Anger was much more comfortable to her. No way was she going to let the sunshine, the breeze, and the combined smells of horse, hay, and river sooth her indignation away.

When she got close enough, she stopped, crossed her arms over her chest involuntarily. “How could you not tell me?”

Kiley’s smile died. She looked down, looked up again, sighed. “You want to do this now? Don’t even want to catch up first? See what we’ve done with the place? Tell me what you’ve been up to?”

“Why, Kiley?”

Kiley heaved a sigh. “Because I don’t want our father to know she exists.”

“She?”

“Yeah. We’re having a girl.”

And she wasn’t going to tell me, Kendra reminded herself, when the idea of a little girl running around this place tried to dissolve her anger by dousing it in buckets of warm gooiness. “She’s his granddaughter,” Kendra said. “He has a right—”

“He’s a criminal. He has no rights. I don’t want her growing up like we did, Kendra.”

“How could she? She’s got Snow White and Prince Charming for parents.”

“Don’t. Just don’t.” Kiley held up a stop-sign hand, shaking her head rapidly. “You remember how it was, the kinds of people who were always coming around. We’re lucky nothing awful happened.”

“Uncle Willie? Fat Carl and Miss Dolly? Those kinds of people?”

“Yeah,” Kiley said. “Crooks.”

“You used to call them family.”

“I didn’t know any better.”

“You’ll never know any better. They’re salt-of-the-earth people, Kendra.”

“Willie robbed banks, Fat Carl hustled tourists.”

“And Dolly was always there for us, any time we needed her. She tracked us down at every foster home. She made sure we each got a present every birthday, every Christmas.”

Kiley lowered her head. “Dolly’s a con. Not a very good one, though.” She smiled a little. She’d always had a soft spot for Miss Dolly, and Kendra knew it. “But if she knew, Dad would know.”

“Dad isn’t so bad that he doesn’t deserve to know he has a grandchild.”

“Yes, he is, Kendra! You’ve just always had a blind spot where he’s concerned. I’ve never understood it. You can see right through everyone else, straight to their flaws and hidden motives. But with Dad, you just…you just want him to be a good father so much that you refuse to see he’s just…not.”

“So what? You’re perfect now?”

“I’m not gonna have criminals around my daughter.”

“And that includes me, right Kiley?”

Kiley lowered her head. “I want you in her life. I do. You’re my sister.”

“But?”

“But… not if you’re gonna keep living like that.”

“So you’re gonna dictate my life now?”

“No. I just get to dictate my daughter’s.”

“Yeah. Good luck with that.” Kendra turned back toward the car. Dax was standing a few feet behind her, his eyes on hers, and damned if they weren’t sympathetic.

“Don’t go yet,” Kiley said.

Kendra stopped, but didn’t turn back around. She couldn’t really. Dax’s eyes had latched onto hers somehow and there was a conversation happening between them that went something like,

Dax: It’s gonna be okay. I’m here for you. 

Kendra: I will punch you in the face if you feel sorry for me.

Dax: I’ll feel sorry for you anyway, though.

“The baby’s not here yet,” Kiley went on, coming up behind her, touching her shoulder with a hand that landed like a nervous bird ready to take flight if she so much as twitched. “And there’s plenty of time before she does. And I really want you to stay.”

“Why?”

“Because I miss you,” she said. And it sounded honest and kind of sad. And since, allegedly, her sister didn’t believe in conning people anymore, it probably was. Besides, Kendra always knew when Kiley was lying.

Kendra turned to face her twin. Kiley’s skin was like a blushing peach, and her eyes shone with a glimmering coat of unshed tears.

“I’m not gonna let you tell me how to be.”

“Maybe we don’t have to talk about that right now,” Kiley said.

Kendra rolled her eyes. “What are we gonna talk about?”

“Holiday Ranch. Married life. The fact that I can no longer tie my own shoes.” She bent slightly forward, reaching down with both arms to demonstrate. Her fingertips only made it to her knees.

Kendra tried not to laugh, but it burst through anyway, as involuntary as a sneeze.

Kiley smiled too. “I’m gonna name her after Mom.”

“Ah hell, just keep pouring on the mush, why don’t you?” Kendra blinked wet heat from her eyes. “I don’t like being judged,” she said. “You don’t get to do that to me, Kiley.”

Kiley lowered her head. Her husband Rob, who’d been standing quietly a few steps behind her, came closer, leaned in, whispered in her ear.

She blew like an agitated mare and met Kendra’s eyes again. “Okay,” she said. “Come on, let me show you what I’ve been up to around here.”

Sighing, Kendra nodded. To her surprise, Dax fell into step beside her as she followed Kiley and Rob up a pretty stone footpath toward the barns. Leaning sideways, he whispered, “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you she was pregnant.”

“Why didn’t you?” Kendra was really pissed about that.

“Because it was between two sisters. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Rob and his family, it’s that a man has to be damn near suicidal to meddle in a mess between sisters.”

“So it wasn’t a little bit of payback for what I did to you before?” She looked up at him as she asked the question.

He seemed surprised. “Not even a little bit,” he said. “I’m not wired that way, Kendra. I’m not vindictive. You know me better than that.”

He was hurt she’d even asked. Well, hell, she was killing it here, wasn’t she? “You’re right,” she said. “I do know you better than that.”

He gave a nod and started walking again.

Sighing, Kendra did, too. 

She knew what her sister was doing. Kiley probably figured if Kendra spent some time here in this goodie-two-shoes town with her husband’s goodie-two-shoes family, she’d see the light, throw away her entire life, and join the goodie-two-shoes movement. It was a stupid plan, and a wasted effort, since she hadn’t run a con in a year and a half.

Until now. She was here for one reason and one reason only.

To save her father’s life.