Free Unspoken by Lisa Jackson Page B

eyes as he watched the flight of a flock of starlings taking off from a cypress tree on the far side of the pool house. “Oh, Shelby,” he sighed, running big-knuckled hands through his hair. The wrinkles lining his brow and etching his mouth deepened and he seemed suddenly an old man. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
    “Oh, yes, I do,” she said firmly, refusing to be shaken. “What I’ve done is the right thing.”
    “You find out anything today?”
    “Not enough. But I will,” she promised as she scraped her chair back. And in a sudden inkling of insight, she knew just where to start.

Chapter Five
     
    Nevada notched the ear of the last calf, slapped it hard on its dusty rump and sent it bawling and running toward the herd. Yanking off his gloves, he glared at the setting sun and wondered why he stayed here, barely scraping out a living in a place where even in these politically correct times he’d heard himself referred to as a half-breed.
    Not that he cared. It wasn’t the fact that his mother was part Cherokee that bothered him; nope, it was the simple notion that she’d taken off when he was three and he couldn’t remember her to save his soul. He’d never known what had become of her; he hadn’t felt the need to find out.
    Yet he’d decided to stay here, on the outskirts of Bad Luck. He had never fit in, and didn’t really give a damn. In the back of his mind he knew that someday things would be easier.
    And besides, this was home. Such as it was. He glanced to the north edge of the ranch and the land that he’d bought two years before, doubling his acreage and picking up a rock quarry and a peach orchard in the process. It had cost him big-time, but it was starting to pay off and the red ink he’d been drowning in was ebbing a bit, bleeding into black.
    At the watering trough, he stopped long enough to twist the faucet and duck his head under the water, warm from the pipes. It cooled down and he splashed it over his neck and shoulders before taking a long drink. Yeah, this place, such as it was, was home.
    Shaking the excess drops of water from his hair, he walked into the machine shed. There his tractor, four years older than he, lay idle, the rubber on its big tires cracked, its headlights dim. The rig’s coat of paint had long since lost its luster in the endless hours of chugging up hills and pulling equipment under an unforgiving Texas sun.
    But there was still life in the John Deere and he checked the oil, knowing that he’d keep the tractor until it died in a field. Wiping his hands, he considered the fact that he was now—if Shelby Cole could be believed—a father. He’d never thought he’d have any kids. Probably because he’d never found a woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Wouldn’t put a kid through the pain of growing up the way he did.
    Now he had a daughter. Shelby’s child. He’d spent a day digesting the news, even gone so far as to phone an old Army buddy who had become a PI in Houston.
    He’d tried to keep his mind from straying to Shelby. She was trouble just waitin’ to happen. Always had been, always would be. But then, he’d never been one to back away from trouble; in fact there was a time when he’d gone lookin’ for it.
    Years ago.
    He’d thought he was long over her, that he’d gotten her out of his blood.
    But some things never changed.
    One look at her and he’d felt that same old heat in his loins, that gut-wrenching tug deep in his soul. His jaw tightened, and he headed back to the house. No woman, not even Judge Red Cole’s sexy daughter, was going to get to him again the way she’d done ten years ago.
    Whistling to Crockett, he climbed up the back porch, kicked off his boots, took off his half-drenched shirt and used it as a towel, then downed a beer. He was about to step into the shower when he heard the sound of an engine and saw a plume of dust through the front window.
    A fleck of white flashed through the live oaks