Lucky in Love Page 2

  “Oh, Lucky!”

  It was a wail. One he remembered hearing for the first time when she’d been stood up for the Frontier Day rodeo dance by Cody Murdock. Lucky had, of course driven straight to the Murdock spread and punched Cody’s seventeen-year-old lights out. As any big brother would.

  “What’s the matter? Is it Dillon?”

  “N-n-no.” He heard a sniffle. “It’s Jack.”

  As hard as he tried for his sister’s sake, Lucky had never really taken to his brother-in-law. Jack Peterson was too slick. Too smooth. Too damn eastern.

  “What’s he done now?” Truthfully, the only thing he could honestly fault Jack with was getting Kate pregnant. But although the Wall Street banker had done the right thing and married her, in Lucky’s eyes, that had been crime enough.

  “Oh, Lucky,” she wailed again, sounding for all the world like a six-year-old who’d just had her dog die on her. “He’s l-l-left me.”

  On some distant level, Lucky experienced surprise that the old expression was true—blood did, indeed, boil. He’d always considered himself a pretty easygoing guy, everyone in Laramie County would attest to the fact that Lucky O’Neill didn’t rile easily. But right now he could cheerfully put a bullet through Jack Peterson’s black heart.

  He didn’t waste time asking questions. Didn’t push for an explanation, since as far as he was concerned, there was no good reason for a husband to run out on his wife and new baby. Lucky acted as he so often did, as his great-great-grandfather Garvey and every one of the O’Neill men after Garvey had, on instinct.

  “There’s a flight from Cheyenne to Denver that connects in Las Vegas with the red-eye to New York.” He’d checked into the airline schedule when he’d thought he was going to have to fly back east to convince Jack to marry Kate. “If I leave right now, I’ll be able to make it.

  “You stop crying, honey. Tears never solved a thing and Dillon needs his mama to be strong right now. I’ll be there in the morning and fix everything.”

  And Jack Peterson would be back in the loving bosom of his family by nightfall if Lucky had to go down to that damn high-rise office tower, lasso him like an obstinate steer, hog-tie him and drag him kicking and bawling back to his wife.

  “Th-thank you, Lucky.” Another sniffle. “I knew I could count on my big brother.”

  “You can bet the ranch on that one, baby sister.” After a few more words of reassurance, he hung up the phone—taking care not to slam the receiver down in case she noticed—and turned to Buck. “The son of a bitch deserted her.”

  “I never did trust that guy. His eyes are too close together. Ever notice how he squints? And he drinks white wine.” In Buck O’Neill’s view, this was definitely suspect. “Not to mention him being a banker.” Having come too close to losing the family ranch to foreclosure a time or two, Buck considered any banker to be lower than a rattlesnake in a rut.

  “You should have shot him when he moved her into his place without marrying her first,” the older man said sagely. “And getting her in the family way should have been a hanging offense.”

  “Well, it’s too late for second-guessing the situation now,” Lucky said. Above all, a rancher had to remain pragmatic to survive. “Jack Peterson made his bed. Now I’m going to make damn sure he stays in it. Where he belongs.”

  He stabbed a chunk of beef. It was, as expected, tender and delicious. His grandfather might possess some unbending rules about the natural roles of men and women, but the old man could flat-out cook.

  “You oughta take time to eat.”

  “I don’t want to miss my plane.” He ate another bite standing at the counter, then took the beer with him as he left the kitchen to pack. He wouldn’t need much. After all, there wasn’t any way he was going to spend the night in New York City.

  He’d calm Katie down, go confront Peterson at his office, threaten to break every bone in the banker’s body, then, after his brother-in-law had seen the light, he’d catch the afternoon flight back to Wyoming and be home at Cremation Creek in time to bring in the bulls.

  * * *

  “WELL, IT’S DONE.” Back home in her apartment overlooking the leafy green environs of Central Park—which was as close to nature as a person could get in Manhattan—Kate hung up the phone and turned to Jude. “Lucky’s on his way.”

  “I can’t believe you actually lied to him.” Jude shook her head in amazement and took another sip of the crisp gold chardonnay.

  “It wasn’t exactly a lie,” Kate argued. Jude wondered which of them she was trying to convince. “Not really. After all, Jack did leave.”

  “Your disgustingly devoted husband went to Boston for a meeting. He’ll be home tomorrow. And he’s already called you twice this evening.”

  Although personally, Jude would find such husbandly attentiveness suffocating, she had to admit that it was also rather sweet. From what she’d heard of the conversation between husband and wife at this end, after thirteen months of marriage, Kate and Jack were still billing and cooing like lovebirds.

  Despite the seed of guilt that lingered in her eyes, Kate smiled. “He worries.”

  “So, apparently, does your brother.” Jude refilled her wineglass. Since Kate was nursing Dillon, she’d stuck to mineral water.

  “Lucky’s always been a rock. As solid as granite and every bit as hard to move. Family—and the ranch—have always been the two things he truly cares about. And I told you, he takes his big brother responsibility very seriously.”

  “So, what’s he going to do when he discovers you set him up?”

  Red flags were suddenly flying at full mast in Kate’s cheeks. “Oh, I’m certain when I explain how important this is, he’ll understand,” she said quickly. A bit too quickly, Jude thought. The guilt in Kate O’Neill Peterson’s eyes was joined by concern. As if suddenly realizing the enormity of her ruse, she seemed almost relieved when Dillon began to cry.

  As Kate escaped the living room, Jude could only hope that she knew what she was doing. Then again, what could happen? she asked herself with a mental shrug.

  The worst-case scenario would have Lucky O’Neill losing his temper at having been duped. Since the magazine publishing world tended to be populated by more than its share of oversize egos and thin skins, temper tantrums were not uncommon. Fortunately, Jude had become an expert at smoothing ruffled feathers.

  Surely a simple cowboy—even an angry one—wouldn’t prove all that difficult to handle.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LUCKY WAS EXHAUSTED by the time he’d settled into the seat on the flight to New York. The commuter flight from Cheyenne to Denver had been a white knuckler, even for someone who believed man was meant to fly. Which Lucky didn’t. Unfortunately, the one from Denver to Las Vegas had been even worse as the plane had bucked like a bronc with a burr under its saddle through a thunderstorm that had required the cabin crew to spend most of the flight buckled into their seats.

  There was something unnatural about sitting thirty-thousand feet in the air, surrounded by an oversize tin can, putting your trust in some guy—or woman, these days, he allowed—you’d never even met.

  It wasn’t really that he was a control freak, Lucky assured himself as the jet taxied down the runway. A rancher couldn’t hope to control his environment in a business where so much depended on the weather, fate or God’s often bizarre sense of humor. But he still felt a lot more secure atop a horse than he did in an airplane.

  The flight attendant on the final leg of the flight was a willowy woman who appeared to be in her early thirties, with a pert red hairdo that swung against her cheekbones, slanted cat’s eyes outlined in kohl and glossy red lips that matched her scarf. The gold band on her finger revealed she was married, making him wonder if her husband minded her gallivanting all over the country, smiling and serving drinks to strange men. He surely wouldn’t like it.

 
But then again, since he’d be highly unlikely to ever marry such a polished city type—there wasn’t all that much need for silk scarves and lip gloss in Cremation Creek—Lucky decided it was a moot point.

  The idea of marriage got him thinking about Kate again. He almost wished he believed in divorce; then he could just bring Kate and Dillon back to Cremation Creek where they belonged and the hell with that skunk his sister had married. Although there’d never been a divorce in the O’Neill clan, Lucky figured that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if his sister’s marriage did break up. The only problem was, for some reason Lucky couldn’t fathom, she seemed stuck on the guy. Which just went to show there was no explaining the female mind.

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  The female voice shattered his dark thoughts, making Lucky realize he’d been scowling.

  “Not a thing, ma’am.” He flashed her his friendliest grin. The one that had worked wonders with women during his college rodeoing days.

  “Could I get you a drink? Or a pillow? Or perhaps put your hat in the overhead bin?”

  Lucky’s fingers instinctively tightened on the brim of his dress gray Stetson. He’d watched the harried-looking businessmen shoving overstuffed carry-on bags and laptop computers into the overhead compartments. There was no way he was subjecting his best hat to that.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” he said politely. “I’m just fine.”

  Her answering smile was friendly. “I thought that’s what you’d say. My husband feels the same way about his favorite Resitol. You couldn’t get it out of his hands at gunpoint.”

  “Your husband?” Lucky figured she must be married to one of those fake rhinestone cowboys who liked to dress up in western duds and line dance on Saturday nights.

  “He’s third-generation rancher. His family has a spread on the front range outside Denver.”

  This time Lucky’s grin was sheepish. That’s what he got for tying to pigeonhole people. Still, he was having trouble seeing this sleek woman with the red lips and fingernails castrating bulls and branding calves.

  “Nice country.”

  “We think so.” Her cat green eyes had a knowing look that suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Well, I’ll leave you to get some sleep.”

  Worried as he was about Kate, Lucky didn’t think that was very likely, but he thanked her just the same.

  As it turned out, the long wet day had taken its toll on him and sometime over Kansas, Lucky did indeed fall asleep, not waking up until the pilot announced the plane’s descent into New York City.

  He stretched in an unsuccessful attempt to work out the kinks earned from spending the night cramped in a too-small space, welcomed the warm damp towel the Colorado rancher’s pretty wife offered him and enjoyed the lingering memory of a dream of an old-time western necktie party. With that coyote Jack Peterson as the guest of honor.

  After making his way through the crowded terminal, where the myriad voices jabbering away in countless tongues reminded Lucky of the ancient Tower of Babel, he climbed into a yellow taxi that looked about as banged up as he felt.

  He gave the turbaned driver the address of Kate’s apartment. Then, remembering his one and only trip to Manhattan for his sister’s wedding, Lucky added one vital instruction.

  “And take the bridge.”

  “The bridge is backed up.”

  “The entire city is probably backed up most of the time. But we’re taking the bridge.”

  He might, on occasion, be forced to fly. But there was no way Lucky was going to risk going beneath the water in some tunnel. If the underwater trap wasn’t bombed by damned urban terrorists, it would surely crack from structural damage and drown them all.

  His usually easygoing tone was hard. And final. As if sensing he wasn’t dealing with his usual fare, the driver glanced up into the rearview mirror, met Lucky’s unwavering stare, and then, with a muffled word in some language Lucky couldn’t begin to understand, shrugged and pulled away from the curb.

  “I told you,” the driver said twenty minutes later when they were caught in the tangled snarl of urban gridlock. “I’m going to have to charge you waiting time.”

  “Fine.” Lucky folded his arms and glared back at the dark eyes glowering at him in the mirror. Even breathing toxic exhaust for thirty more minutes was preferable to arriving in the Hereafter soaking wet in a battered yellow cab.

  It turned out to be an hour. Which didn’t exactly have Lucky in the best of moods when he climbed out of the taxi outside Kate’s building.

  “May I help you, sir?” Although Lucky towered over the man dressed in navy blue livery with gold epaulets, the doorman still managed to look down his nose at him.

  “I’m here to see Kate Peterson. Mrs. Jack Peterson.”

  “Ah, Kate.” The doorman surprised Lucky by actually smiling. “She’s at work.” Despite his surprise that Kate would be up to going to work after the way she’d been crying, he was able to catch a hint of the auld sod in the man’s voice. His great-grandfather, who’d died when Lucky was ten, had the same faint second-generation American brogue. “But Mr. Peterson is in, if you’d like to speak with him.”

  So the skunk had returned. Lucky wondered if he’d come back for his clothes. Or, perhaps, the storm had blown over. In which case, he and Peterson still had a few things to get straight. Like making sure he never made Kate cry again.

  “Yeah. I’d like to speak with Mr. Peterson.”

  The doorman rang the apartment, then Lucky heard Jack’s voice, instructing the man to send his brother-in-law up. He certainly didn’t sound contrite, Lucky thought as he took the elevator up to the tenth floor, beginning to get irritated all over again.

  The door opened at Lucky’s first knock.

  “Hey, Lucky.” His brother-in-law’s handsome face split in a smile as he stuck out his hand. “What a sur—”

  Lucky cut off the welcome with a quick left to Jack’s jaw. The punch caught Jack Peterson by surprise, sending him reeling backward, where he tripped over a small wrought-iron-and-wood end table, scattered a group of miniature enameled boxes, then fell sprawling on his back on the gray Berber rug.

  “What the hell’s gotten into you?” Jack glared up at him.

  Lucky’s temper flared even higher when he realized the skunk didn’t even have the gall to look guilty. He strode across the floor to stand over him, hands on his hips as he glared bullets down at the man who’d scrambled to a sitting position and was rubbing his jaw.

  “You’re just damn lucky I don’t shoot you, Peterson.” His gaze slid threateningly from his brother-in-law’s face. “Or better yet, I should have brought along my nut-cutters. You ever hear of Rocky Mountain oysters?”

  When Jack arched an aristocratic blond brow, Lucky had to give him reluctant credit for not groveling. At least the skunk wasn’t a coward.

  “If you’re referring to what I think you are—”

  “I’m talking about the leftovers after you turn a bull calf into a steer. Now, you’d probably make a painfully puny serving, but—”

  “That’s crude, even for you.” The other man stood up, his gaze shifting momentarily to the scattered boxes. “Hell, Kate’s going to hit the ceiling if anything happened to those. She’s been collecting them since her first year at Harvard.”

  Which was where she’d met this weasel in the first place, Lucky reminded himself, thinking that he should have backed up Buck when his grandfather insisted Kate could get just as good an education at the state university.

  “She’s got a lot more to be concerned about than a few expensive knickknacks. Like her philandering husband for starters.”

  “Philandering? I’ve never looked at another woman since the day I met Kate!”

  “Then why did you walk out on her?”

  “I didn’t.” The denial was instantaneous.
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  Lucky caught hold of the silk tie and pulled Jack closer, so their faces were mere inches apart. “She called me last night, you son of a bitch. In tears.”

  “Kate was crying?”

  “Hell, yes, she was crying. I’d say that was fairly normal behavior for a woman whose husband had deserted her. And their child,” he added through clenched teeth. Buck was right. They should have just shot Peterson from the get-go.

  “I never deserted her! I never would.”

  “Are you saying you were home last night?”

  “No, but—”

  “You’re not wriggling out of this.” Lucky tightened his grip on the tie.

  “I’m not trying to wriggle out of anything, dammit.” Although he didn’t seem sufficiently contrite, if Peterson’s grayish complexion was any indication, he was beginning to get scared. Which was, Lucky decided, a start. “I was in Boston on business. Kate knew that. I called her three times.”

  “Three times?”

  “Once at six, again at eight, before I went out to dinner with clients, then at eleven when I got back to the hotel. It was the first time we’ve been apart since Dillon was born. I missed her.”

  Lucky felt his high horse beginning to slip out from under him. If Peterson was telling the truth, and it seemed real strange he wouldn’t be, since the story would be easy to check out, the first two calls would have come before he’d called Kate back. This wasn’t making any damn sense.

  “Kate called me,” he insisted darkly, “in tears. Because you’d walked out on her.”

  “There’s no way I’d do that. It’d be easier for me to stop breathing.”

  Damn. Again, the answer was too quick not to be believed. Which only meant one thing. Kate had obviously lied to him. But why?

  “Does she know you’re home?”

  “No, I just got in.”

  “Good.” Lucky released him. “Let’s go.”

  Peterson straightened his tie. “To her office?”

  “Yeah.” Lucky stepped over the pretty little boxes on his way back to the door. “I’d say my baby sister has herself some explaining to do.”