Free The Texan by Joan Johnston

overhearing.” Owen’s voice was hard, his powerful body restless. He had the haunted, hunted look of a wolf caught in a steel-jawed trap.
    Blackjack had taken a step back from the kitchen door, but kept Bay’s mother in the circle of his arms. The two of them turned to face their children.
    Bay had never thought she would side with a Blackthorne on anything. But she was in perfect agreement with Owen that their parents had no business being together. Bay saw how her mother clung to Blackjack’s strong, encircling arm, her bastion of safety in the coming storm. There was a recognizable current that ran betweenthem, something so blatantly sexual that it made Bay uncomfortable.
    She glanced at Owen to see if he had picked up the same signals. His gray eyes told her nothing. They were so very cold. So very remote. So detached from what was happening.
    Maybe that was how he stayed in control. She could see his body quivering. His hands had balled into fists so tight his knuckles were white.
    “How long has this been going on?” Owen asked through tight jaws.
    “Like I told Bay, Ren and I never went near one another until after Jesse was dead,” Blackjack replied with that same annoying, unruffled calm he’d exhibited since Bay had discovered him kissing her mother. As though he could not be judged. As though he could do no wrong.
    Owen’s features revealed so little, Bay had no idea what was going on inside his head. When he spoke to his father at last, she was horrified by what he said.
    “Maybe Mom isn’t guilty of killing Jesse Creed after all. Maybe you’re the one who arranged his murder.”
    “You know better than that!” Blackjack said, his calm shattered at last.
    “Do I?” Owen challenged. “Mom wanted Mrs. Creed dead. Somehow, it was Jesse who got killed.”
    Bay’s heart was pounding a hundred miles a minute. Was Owen making this up because he was angry with his father? Or was there some truth to it? She’d assumed that Eve Blackthorne would never have been put in a sanitarium unless her husband and sons had positive proof that she’d been responsible for arranging Jesse Creed’s murder. Owen seemed to be suggesting there was room for doubt.
    “Mom told us she asked Russell Handy for help getting rid of Mrs. Creed. It’s just as likely you asked Handy for help getting rid of Jesse. Especially after that last confrontation between the two of you at the Rafter S auction, where you threatened to kill him. Maybe Handy was really working for you instead of Mom.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Blackjack said flatly.
    “We all figured the shooter was aiming at Mrs. Creed and missed—hitting Jesse by mistake,” Owen continued. “What if he hit exactly who he’d been told to aim at? What if Jesse was meant to die all along?”
    “That’s enough,” Blackjack said, his voice ragged with fury.
    Owen wasn’t done. “Handy never said anything one way or the other about who ordered him to arrange Jesse’s murder.
Because you told him to keep his mouth shut
.”
    “You know damn well why I did that!” Blackjack said. “Your mother would have spent the rest of her life in prison. Is that what you wanted?”
    “I remember being relieved when you said you’d make sure Handy never spoke to anyone about what he’d done. At the time, I believed you wanted to protect Mom from prosecution. I have to wonder, seeing you here with Jesse’s wife, whether that was a self-serving lie.”
    Bay’s heart was beating so fast it hurt. Complicated as Owen’s reasoning was, it made perfect sense. She saw from the look on her mother’s face that she didn’t want to believe that the man she loved had arranged to have her husband murdered. It was equally clear, from the way her body had tensed within Blackjack’s embrace, that she couldn’t discount it entirely. And certainly, the argumentbetween father and son was painful for her. She put her hands on the arm that surrounded her and pushed it away.
    “This is