The Texan by Joan Johnston

Owen said, as he set aside his clipboard.
    Bay shot Owen a sideways look as he powered up the jet’s FJ44-1A engine and confidently pulled the control yoke back for takeoff. She wondered if he realized how much he’d revealed in that simple statement.
    Bay knew something about being shunted aside by a parent, but she’d never resented the attention her father had paid to her injured brother. Sam had needed a lot of help when he first came home from the hospital.
    Later, when Sam had learned how to lift himself in and out of bed and how to manage his own care, her father had still given her brother the bulk of his free time. Bay had finally concluded that her brother and her father spent so much time together because they could feed on each other’s hatred of the Blackthornes.
    She shuddered to think how Sam would react when he realized their mother was having an intimate relationship with Blackjack. With any luck, her mother would come to her senses and call the whole thing off before Sam got wind of it.
    Bay waited until they were safely in the air to speak again. “Why didn’t you become a lawyer like your brother?”
    “I hated the thought of spending the rest of my life in an office. I like the wide open spaces.”
    “I can appreciate that,” Bay said. “I feel the same way.”
    “And I wanted to be a Texas Ranger, like a lot of Blackthornes before me.”
    “Creeds have been Texas Rangers, too,” Bay said. “Jarrett Creed, who married my great-great—however many greats—grandmother, Cricket Stewart, was a Ranger. In fact, they met when he recovered some horses that were stolen from her father.”
    “I’ve heard that story,” Owen said with a laugh. “Is it true Cricket had three pet wolves?”
    “Rogue, Rascal, and Ruffian,” Bay confirmed. “She raised them from pups. I keep forgetting our families are related—were related—in the beginning. I’d give a lot to know the truth about how and why Cricket Creed ended up marrying that English Blackthorne fellow. Her son Jake believed Blackthorne forced his mother into marriage because he wanted her land.”
    Bay glanced at Owen. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.”
    “It’s not,” Owen said. “My brother Trace showed me a diary Cricket wrote that proves they fell in love. Trace loaned the diary to your sister Callie. Didn’t she share it with you?”
    “I guess she didn’t have time before your brother rushed her off to Australia,” Bay said, unable to keep the resentment from her voice.
    “Sounds like you don’t believe your sister and my brother fell in love, either,” Owen said.
    “Trace swept Callie off her feet, all right. It helped that she needed the money he could provide to pay my father’s estate taxes, after your mother had him murdered.”
    There it was again. The most recent wrong the Blackthornes had done the Creeds, staring them both in theface. The reason her brother Luke had gone after his brother Clay. To prove, once and for all, that the mighty Blackthornes weren’t as righteous and law-abiding as they wanted everyone to think.
    Bay missed her father so much sometimes her chest physically ached. She felt cheated because he’d never had a chance to see her become a successful vet, especially when he was the one who’d made her believe she could be a good one. Deep down, she knew her father had been thinking of all the money he’d save on vet bills, but she didn’t think he would have pushed her, if she hadn’t loved it as she had.
    She angled herself toward Owen and asked, “Do you really believe that
both
your parents might have conspired—independently—with Russell Handy to kill my father?”
    She saw Owen’s throat working and noticed he avoided her gaze as he answered, “It’s possible. Handy was my father’s right-hand man. If Dad ordered him to squeeze the life out of someone, he’d have done it.”
    “Then Blackjack’s getting away with murder, too,” Bay said.
    Owen frowned. “I