Under different circumstances, he might have found it only mildly insulting, even fairly amusing. But he had too much on his mind, and on his calendar, to play games.
With an irritated jerk of the wrist, he jammed a classical CD into his car stereo system and let Mozart join him on the winding route toward home.
Just one stop, he told himself. One quick stop, and then a cold beer.
And he wouldn't even have had that one stop, if this Savannah Morningstar had bothered to return his calls.
He rolled his shoulders to ease the tension and punched the gas pedal on a curve to please himself with a bit of illegal speed. He drove along the familiar country road quickly, barely noticing the first tender buds of spring on the trees or the faint haze of wild dogwood ready to bloom.
He braked for a darting rabbit, passed a pickup heading toward Antietam. He hoped Shane had supper started, then remembered with an oath that it was his turn to cook.
The scowl suited his face, with its sculptured lines, the slight imperfection of a nose that had been broken twice, the hard edge of thin. Behind shaded glasses, under arching black brows, his eyes were cool and sharply green. Though his lips were set in a line of irritation, that didn't detract from the appeal of them.
Women often looked at that mouth, and wondered ... When it smiled, and the dimple beside it winked, they sighed and asked themselves how that wife of his had ever let him get away.
He made a commanding presence in a courtroom. The broad shoulders, narrow hips and tough, rangy build always looked polished in a tailored suit, but the elegant cover never quite masked the power beneath.
His black hair had just enough wave to curl appeal-ingly at the collar of one of his starched white shirts.
In the courtroom he wasn't Jared MacKade, one of the MacKade brothers who had run roughshod over the south of the county from the day they were born. He was Jared MacKade, counselor-at-law.
He glanced up at the house on the hill just outside of town. It was the old Barlow place that his brother Rafe had come back to town to buy. He saw Rafe's car at the top of the steep lane, and hesitated.
He was tempted to pull in, to forget about this last little detail of the day and share that beer he wanted with Rafe. But he knew that if Rafe wasn't working, hammering or sawing, or painting some part of the house that would be a bed and breakfast by fall, he would be waiting for his new wife to come home.
It still amazed Jared that the baddest of the bad MacKades was a married man.
So he drove past, took the left fork in the road that would wind him around toward the MacKade farm and the small plot of land that bordered it.
According to his information, Savannah Morn-ingstar had bought the little house on the edge of the woods only two months before. She lived there with her son and, as the gossip mill was mostly dry where she was concerned, obviously kept to herself.
Jared figured the woman was either stupid or rude. In his experience, when people received a message from a lawyer, they answered it. Though the voice on her answering machine had been low, throaty, and stunningly sexy, he wasn't looking forward to meeting that voice face-to-face. This mission was a favor for a colleague—and a nuisance.
He caught a glimpse of the little house through the trees. More of a cabin, really, he mused, though a second floor had been added several years ago. He turned onto the narrow lane by the Morningstar mailbox, cutting his speed dramatically to negotiate the dips and holes, and studied the house as he approached.
It was log, built originally, as he recalled, as some city doctor's vacation spot. That hadn't lasted long. People from the city often thought they wanted rustic until they had it.
The quiet setting, the trees, the peaceful bubbling of a creek topped off from yesterday's rain, enhanced the ambience of the house, with its simple lines, untreated wood and uncluttered front porch.
The steep bank in front of it was rocky and rough, and in the summer, he knew, tended to be covered with high, tangled weeds. Someone had been at work here, he mused, and almost came to a stop. The earth had been dug and turned, worked to a deep brown. There were still rocks, but they were being used as a natural decorative landscaping. Someone had planted clumps of flowers among them, behind them.
No, he realized, someone was planting clumps of flowers. He saw the figure, the movement, as he rounded the crest and brought his car to a halt at the end of the lane, beside a aging compact.
Jared lifted his briefcase, climbed out of the car and started over the freshly mowed swatch of grass. He was very grateful for his dark glasses when Savannah Morningstar rose.
She'd been kneeling amid the dirt and garden tools and flats of flowers. When she moved, she moved slowly, inch by very impressive inch. She was tall—a curvy five-ten, he estimated—filling out a drab yellow T-shirt and ripped jeans to the absolute limit of the law. Her legs were endless.
Her feet were bare and her hands grimed with soil.
The sun glinted on hair as thick and black as his. She wore it down her back in one loose braid. Her eyes were concealed, as his were, behind sunglasses. But what he could see of her face was fascinating.
If a man could get past that truly amazing body, he could spend a lot of time on that face, Jared mused.
Carved cheekbones rose high and taut against skin the color of gold dust. Her mouth was full and unsmiling, her nose straight and sharp, her chin slightly pointed.
"Savannah Morningstar?"
"Yes, that's right."
He recognized the voice from the answering machine. He'd never known a voice and a body that suited each other more perfectly. "I'm Jared MacKade."
She angled her head, and the sun glanced off the amber tint of her glasses. "Well, you look like a lawyer. I haven't done anything—lately—that I need representation for."
"I'm not going door-to-door soliciting clients. I've left several messages on your machine."
"I know." She knelt again to finish planting a hunk of purple phlox. "The handy thing about machines is that you don't have to talk to people you don't want to talk to." Carefully she patted dirt around the shallow roots. "Obviously, I didn't want to talk to you, Lawyer MacKade."
"Not stupid," he declared. "Just rude."
Amused, she tipped her face up to his. "That's right. I am. But since you're here, you might as well tell me what you're so fired up to tell me."
"A colleague of mine in Oklahoma contacted me after he tracked you down."
The quick clutching in Savannah's gut came and went. Deliberately she picked up another clump of phlox. Taking her time, she shifted and hacked at the dirt with her hand spade. "I haven't been in Oklahoma for nearly ten years. I don't remember breaking any laws before I left."
"Your father hired my colleague to locate you."
"I'm not interested." Her flower-planting mood was gone. Because she didn't want to infect the innocent blooms with the poison stirring inside her, she rose again and rubbed her hands on her jeans. "You can tell your colleague to tell my father I'm not interested."
"Your father's dead."
He'd had no intention of telling her that way. He hadn't mentioned her father or his death on the phone, because he didn't have the heart to break such news over a machine. Jared still remembered the swift, searing pain of his own father's death. And his mother's.
She didn't gasp or sway or sob. Standing straight, 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."