Montana Rose Read Free

his hands. And it was only the hot sun that had caused his heart to pound.
    Sure, he was anxious to get back to the ranch, but that wasn’t the real reason for leaving the beautiful schoolmarm standing in the dust. No, it was because he knew if he didn’t get away from her he’d do one of two things . He’d either kiss that saucy, red mouth of hers, or shake her until that absurd robin bounced off her head. He found himself smiling at the thoughts — both of them.
    What was done was done. He just hoped she wouldn’t be vindictive and hold his actions against Tory. The poor kid had enough troubles without his teacher taking her frustration out on him. He grinned, realizing Tory’s size alone should intimidate the school lady. If he could force Tory to attend school enough days for it to even matter.
    Tory had a grudge against the world. A valid grudge, but darn it, he’d done his best since coming back. Didn’t the kid have an ounce of forgiveness in him?
    Jesse knew the answer to that : No. Forgiveness would be a long time coming. Forgetting would be even longer. And the past was impossible to forget.
    The day Jesse had left the Rocking R he’d turned his back on his little brother’s pleas to not leave him. He’d hugged Tory and tried to explain he couldn’t take a four-year-old along when he had no idea where he was going. He only knew that he had to escape his father’s unreasonable, and often brutal, wrath before he reacted and did something — something he’d live to regret. The rage and beatings were happening more often, and they were turning him into a pain-filled fuse waiting to be lit. It could happen the next time meaty fists pummeled his body or the bullwhip was grabbed.
    So, like a thief, he left in the night on a nag stolen from his father’s barn. Rode out and left Tory crying in his bed, tears drying on his pinched face as he whimpered ‘please’ over and over. Jesse promised to come back just as soon as he’d made a place for the two of them. But the years tumbled one onto another, shaping him into the bitter, reclusive man he now was. Seven years of riding herd on someone else’s cattle, seven years of long, dusty cattle drives. Seven years saving every penny earned, telling himself that he’d come back for Tory when he finally saved enough. Now he was faced with a growing boy filled with bitterness that rivaled his own.
    Jesse shifted. Well, he was back, not because there was enough money, or even because he wanted to be back. No, his return was due to a letter from his stepmother that had finally caught up with him.
    His own mother had died trying to give birth to yet another stillborn child. Touting he needed more help on the growing ranch, his father had turned a deaf ear to warnings that any further pregnancies could be fatal. Sons were the cheapest labor to be had. Wore down from miscarriages, his mother had simply given up. Then, without her there to take the brunt, he had become the focus of his father’s drunken anger and cruelty.
    His stepmother Emma’s letter begged him to come back to the Rocking R. She was dying, and in paragraph after paragraph, she divulged that his father’s wrath had turned on Tory not long after Jesse had left, and the boy had come to know the beatings and unending work. For the past seven years, he’d taken Jesse’s place.
    His father was dead, Emma wrote. He’d been drunk and tried to ride a green-broke horse. He’d been thrown, landing head first in a rock pile and never regained consciousness. At her death, Tory would be left with no one. She’d try to hang on until Jesse returned. The ranch, despite his father’s drinking, was flourishing, and would be divided between the two boys. “ Please hurry,” were her last words.
    He had. But he hadn’t been in time. Emma died two days before he arrived to face the brother he no longer knew. To face the brother that had learned at an early age to trust no one and to smother any feelings except