The Pride of Jared MacKade Read Free

Savannah absorbed the shock and refused the grief. Once there had been love. Once there had been need. And now, she thought, now there was nothing.
    “When?”
    “Seven months ago. It took awhile to find you. I’m sorry—”
    She interrupted him. “How?”
    “A fall. According to my information, he’d been working the rodeo circuit. He took a bad fall, hit his head. He wasn’t unconscious long, and refused to go to the hospital for X rays. But he contacted my colleague and gave him instructions. A week later, your father collapsed. An embolism.”
    She listened without a word, without movement. In her mind Savannah could see the man she’d once known and loved, clinging to the back of a bucking mustang, one hand reaching for the sky.
    She could see him laughing, she could see him drunk. She could see him murmuring endearments to an aging mare, and she could see him burning with rage and shame as he turned his own daughter, his only child, away.
    But she couldn’t see him dead.
    “Well, you’ve told me.” With that, she turned toward the house.
    “Ms. Morningstar.” If he had heard grief in her voice, he would have given her privacy. But there’d been nothing at all in her voice.
    “I’m thirsty.” She headed up the walkway that cut through the grass, then climbed onto the porch and let the screen door slam behind her.
    Yeah? Jared thought, fuming. Well, so was he. And he was damn well going to finish up this business and get a cold one himself. He walked into the house without bothering to knock.
    The small living room held furniture built for comfort, chairs with deep, sagging cushions, sturdy tables that would bear the weight of resting feet. Thewalls were a shade of umber that melded nicely with the pine of the floor. There were vivid splashes of color to offset and challenge the mellow tones—paintings, pillows, a scatter of toys over bright rugs that reminded him she had a child.
    He stepped through into a kitchen with brilliantly white counters and the same gleaming pine floor, where she stood in front of the sink, scrubbing garden earth from her hands. She didn’t bother to speak, but dried them off before she took a pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator.
    “I’d like to get this over with as much as you,” he told her.
    She let out a breath, took her sunglasses off and tossed them on the counter. Wasn’t his fault, she reminded herself. Not completely, anyway. When you came down to it, and added all the pieces together, there was no one to blame.
    “You look hot.” She poured lemonade into a tall glass, handed it to him. After giving him one quick glimpse of almond-shaped eyes the color of melted chocolate, she turned away to get another glass.
    “Thanks.”
    “Are you going to tell me he had debts that I’m obliged to settle? If you are, I’m going to tell you I have no intention of doing so.” The jittering in her stomach had nearly calmed, so she leaned back against the counter and crossed her bare feet at the ankles. “I’ve made what I’ve got, and I intend to keep it.”
    “Your father left you seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five dollars. And some change.”
    He watched the glass stop, hesitate, then continue to journey to her lips. She drank slowly, thoughtfully. “Where did he get seven thousand dollars?”
    “I have no idea. But the money is currently in a passbook savings account in Tulsa.” Jared set his briefcase down on the small butcher-block table, opened it. “You have only to show me proof of identity and sign these papers, and your inheritance will be transferred to you.”
    “I don’t want it.” Her first sign of emotion was the crack of glass against counter. “I don’t want his money.”
    Jared set the papers on the table. “It’s your money.”
    “I said I don’t want it.”
    Patiently Jared slipped off his own glasses and hooked them in his top pocket. “I understand you were estranged from your father.”
    “You don’t understand