He glanced through the open window to the house, where lights glowed in the living area, though the bedrooms remained dark. Again, his thoughts turned to Shiloh. Tall, athletic, with wide, green eyes that narrowed on him with distrust. As if he were cut from the same cloth as his old man.
So now, she was back? In worn jeans, a loose blouse, curly blond hair clipped at her nape, and carrying a don’t-mess-with-me attitude as if she had every right to be here.
He opened the backpack he’d left propped against an old bureau capped with a cracked mirror, opened the flap, and pulled out a bottle of Jack that was about half full. With a flick of his wrist he uncapped the bottle, then took a long pull. The whiskey warmed a familiar path down his throat and hit his empty belly hard. He didn’t need the distraction of Shiloh or any other woman now. The kid needed him, and he had a ranch to run, a mortgage to pay, the damned Dillingers breathing down his neck. Hell, no. Shiloh Silva was a distraction of the worst order, but luckily she despised him.
“Thank God for small favors,” he muttered to himself and took another swig.
So why the hell was she so damned intent on staying? Through the window, he watched her move through the living room to the kitchen and back again. She had a natural grace to her, a fluidity of movement. Long legs, rounded butt, high breasts, not too big, not too small, and straight shoulders. She claimed she’d never married. He decided she was probably telling the truth, though he hadn’t heard much about his stepsister. Faye had mostly kept mum about her, though there were a few pictures of Shiloh as a girl or teen in which she’d always been standing rigidly or riding a horse of some kind.
Those pictures were on the mantel, and he knew them by heart. In the first photo, Shiloh had been standing next to a docile pinto pony, reins gripped loosely in one hand. She must’ve been around seven or eight, her freckled face tipped up beneath the brim of a pink cowgirl hat that was buckets too big, her smile wide but missing one front tooth.
Next to the first was a slightly larger framed shot. Shiloh had been older, around fifteen, and the picture had been taken after a barrel-racing competition, Faye had explained when Beau had picked up the dusty picture. The spotted pony in the first photo had been replaced by a black horse that looked part Arabian. Astride the gelding, Shiloh was definitely on the edge of womanhood. Her cheekbones were high and pronounced, and her lips, without the slightest hint of lipstick, were full and lush, but now the earlier wonder in her eyes replaced with a mixture of innocence and suspicion, at least in Beau’s estimation.
“She’s beautiful,” Faye had murmured once, when she’d caught him looking at the photos.
“If you say so.”
Shiloh’s mother had smiled knowingly. “I do. But she’s a handful. A real pistol. Never could get along with Larimer, rest his soul.”
Beau had doubted that the old man’s soul was resting at all. If there was a hell, Larimer Tate was surely a deep-seated resident.
He took another sip, then recapped his bottle.
Never before, to his knowledge, had his stepsister shown an iota of interest in her mother or sister. So now she was back? Intent on staying? Going to, what, “mother” Morgan? Like that would fly. If nothing else, his half sister was stubborn and knew her own mind. Morgan would peg Shiloh fast.
So what was the deal?
Did Shiloh think she had to come here to stake her claim?
Was she angling for ownership of this scrap of land?
Or feeling some latent sense of remorse for taking off and barely communicating with her mother?
Shiloh had left years before under a cloud of suspicion, around the same time other girls had gone missing. Some people thought she’d been abducted, others considered her a runaway, but Faye had always maintained she was fine, had even talked to the police and insisted her wild child was just “growing up” and “finding herself.” No one had said differently, but Beau had suspected her abrupt leaving had to do with his old man. Larimer Tate’s quick temper and liberal use of “corporal punishment,” which of course was abuse, was a widely known secret around these parts.
Beau grimaced. It made him ill to think Shiloh might have been on the receiving end of Larimer’s cruel sense of justice. Hadn’t Beau been the object of his father’s rages more often than not while growing up? He’d certainly felt the bite of his belt more times than he wanted to remember. Beau doubted that Larimer’s warped sense of values had stopped at “disciplining” a child just because she was a girl.
Was that why she left? The thought made him go cold inside. Sure, it had crossed his mind, but he’d preferred to believe Shiloh was spared, that she’d escaped what Beau had endured—abuse that hadn’t abated until Beau turned sixteen and grabbed that sharp leather snake that kept a drunken Larimer at bay. They’d been in the barn in the sweltering heat of summer, Beau raking out the stalls, getting rid of the urine-soaked straw while flies buzzed near his head. Larimer, who’d been visiting Beau’s mother, had wandered out to the barn and had seen it as his opportunity to offer up his special brand of parenting, starting by badgering Beau and commenting upon how slowly he had been working.
“You’re a lazy son of a bitch,” his father told him, and Beau could smell last night’s alcohol seeping through the older man’s skin as he sauntered into the building. Larimer paused at the stall where Beau was working and looked over his son’s shoulder.
Beau hadn’t responded, knowing his dear old dad was baiting him. Trying to tamp down his rage, he’d kept raking, dropping the filthy straw into a rapidly filling wheelbarrow.
“A do-nothin,” Larimer goaded.
Beau’s jaw had tightened, and his hands gripped the smooth handle of the rake until his knuckles showed white. He’d been tired and dirty and had better things to do than clean the stalls, but he’d acquiesced, figuring it was a way to avoid his old man. Obviously, he’d figured wrong, so he kept on working, sweat pouring down his neck and shoulders, his T-shirt clinging to him.
“Won’t amount to nothing.” Larimer scowled into the stall.
“If you don’t like the way I’m doing this, then why don’t you do it yourself? Or better yet, just leave.”
“You need to listen to me.”
“And you need to screw off.”
“What’s that, boy? What’d you say?”
Beau had turned then, standing as tall as the man who had sired him, his shoulders flexed, his fists balled, his gaze staring straight into Larimer’s. With more calm than he felt, he clarified himself. “I said, screw off, but I meant fuck off. If you don’t like what I’m doing, then either you grab a damned rake and do it yourself or get the hell away from me.”
“That’s no way to talk to your father, boy.”
“You’re right. But then you’re not much of a father, are you? So go on. Go back to your other family. Mom and I don’t need you.” He’d turned back to the job at hand, but every one of his muscles was stretched tight, and if he didn’t control himself, he’d swing the damned rake right in the old man’s face.