The same old words. Lies and deceit. Rolling as easily off his tongue as they had in the past. All the kindness in her heart withered and died.
She extracted herself from his embrace and impaled him with her indignant green-eyed stare. “I can’t help you, Trask,” she whispered. “You’re on your own this time.” She reached for the copy of the note and slowly wadded it into a tight ball before tossing the damning piece of paper into the blackened fireplace.
Trask watched her actions and his lips tightened menacingly. “I’m going to find out if there was any truth to that letter,” he stated emphatically. “And I’m going to do it with or without your help.”
Though her heart was pounding erratically, she looked him squarely in the eye. “Then I guess you’re going to do it alone, aren’t you, senator?”
Looking as if he had something further to say, Trask turned on his heel and walked out of the room. The front door slammed behind him and the engine of his pickup roared to life before fading in the distance.
“You bastard,” Tory whispered, sagging against the windowsill. “Why can’t I stop loving you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR SEVERAL HOURS after Trask had left the ranch, Tory sat on the window seat in her bedroom. Her chin rested on her knees as she stared into the dark night. Raindrops pelted against the panes, drizzling against the glass and blurring Tory’s view of the lightning that sizzled across the sky to illuminate the countryside in its garish white light. To the west, thunder rolled ominously over the mountains.
So Trask had come back after all. Tory frowned to herself and squinted into the darkness. But he hadn’t come back for her, as he had vowed he would five years past. This time he had returned to Sinclair and the Lazy W because he needed her help to prove that another man was part of the Quarter Horse swindle as well as involved in Jason McFadden’s premeditated death.
With tense fingers she pushed the hair out of her eyes. Seeing Trask again had brought back too many dangerous memories. Memories of a younger, more carefree and reckless period of her life. Memories of a love destined to die.
As she looked through the window into the black sky, Tory was reminded of a summer filled with hot sultry nights, the sweet scent of pine needles and the familiar feel of Trask’s body pressed urgently against hers.
She had to rub her hands over her arms as she remembered the feel of Trask’s hard muscles against her skin, the weight of his body pinning hers, the taste of his mouth…
“Stop it,” she muttered aloud, pulling herself out of her wanton reverie. “He’s the man that sent Dad to prison, for God’s sake. Don’t be a fool—not twice.”
She walked over to the bed and tossed back the quilted coverlet before lying on the sheets and staring at the shadowed ceiling. Her feelings of love for Trask had been her Achilles’ heel. She had trusted him with every breath of life in her body and he had used her. Worse than that he had probably planned the whole affair; staging it perfectly. And she’d been fool enough to fall for his act, hook, line and sinker. But not again.
With a disconsolate sigh, she rolled onto her side and stared at the nightstand. In the darkness she could barely make out the picture of her father.
“Oh, Dad,” Tory moaned, twisting away from the picture. “I wish you were here.” Calvin Wilson had been an incredibly strong man who had been able to stand up to any adversity. He had been able to deal with the loan officers of the local banks when the ranch was in obvious financial trouble. His calm gray eyes and soft-spoken manner had inspired the local bankers’ confidence when the general ledgers of the Lazy W couldn’t.
He had stood stoically at the grave site of his wife of fifteen years without so much as shedding a tear. While holding his children close he had mourned silently for the only woman he had truly loved, offering strength to his daughter and young son.
When he had faced sentencing for a crime he hadn’t committed he hadn’t blinked an eye. Nor had he so much as flinched when the sentence of thirty years in prison had been handed down. He had taken it all without the slightest trace of fear. When he’d found out that he was terminally ill with a malignant tumor, Calvin Wilson had been able to look death straight in the eye. Throughout his sixty-three years, he had been a strong man and a loving father. Tory knew in her heart that he couldn’t have been involved in Jason McFadden’s murder.
Then why didn’t he stand up for himself at the trial?
If he had spoken out, told his side of the story, let the court hear the truth, even Trask’s damning testimony would have been refuted and maybe Calvin Wilson would be alive now. And Trask wouldn’t be back in Sinclair, digging up the past, searching for some elusive, maybe even phantom, conspirator in Jason’s death.
And now Trask had returned, actually believing that someone else was involved in his brother’s death.
So it all came back to Trask and the fact that Tory hadn’t stopped loving him. She knew her feelings for him were crazy, considering everything they had been through. She loved him one minute, hated him the next and knew that she should never have seen him again. He could take his wild half-baked theories, anonymous letters and seductive smile straight back to Washington where they all belonged. Surely he had better things to do than bother her.
“Just leave me alone, Trask,” Tory said with a sigh. “Go back to Washington and leave me alone…I don’t want to love you any more…I can’t…”
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, after a restless night, Tory was making breakfast when Keith, more than slightly hung over, entered the kitchen. Without a word he walked to the refrigerator, poured himself a healthy glass of orange juice and drank it in one swallow. He then slumped into a chair at the kitchen table and glared up at Tory with red-rimmed eyes.
“Don’t tell me you’re dehydrated,” Tory said, with a teasing lilt in her voice.
“Okay, I won’t. Then you won’t have to lecture me.”
“Fair enough.” From the looks of it Keith’s hangover was punishment enough for his binge, Tory thought, and she had been the one who had insisted that he go into town last night. If he were suffering, which he obviously was, it was partially because of her insistence that he leave the ranch. She flipped the pancakes over and decided not to mention that Keith hadn’t gotten home until after three. He was over twenty-one now, and she didn’t have to mother him, though it was a hard habit to break considering that the past five years she had been father, mother and sister all rolled into one.
“How about some breakfast?” she suggested, stacking the pancakes on a plate near a pile of crisp bacon and placing the filled platter on the table.
“After a few answers.”