The Pride of Jared MacKade (The MacKade Brothers 2)

He saw the letter from his colleague in Oklahoma, the standard cover for the dispensation of effects, the itemized list, the offer to assist if there were any questions.

Jared shifted it aside. And found the photographs.

Most were crinkled, as if they'd been carelessly shoved in drawers, badly packed in a move. He saw Jim Morningstar for the first time. An impressive candid shot of a man, face hard and set, eyes narrowed as he sat a horse in a high, narrow stall.

The dark coloring, the high cheekbones Savannah had inherited. But there was little else in this tough, leathery face that had been passed to her, unless it was the set of that chin, he mused. The set that warned that if life aimed a fist, this one would meet it straight on.

He found another, poorly framed, of the same man standing beside a young Savannah. Jared's lips curved as he studied her. She was maybe thirteen, fourteen, he thought. Tall, her bo

dy, tucked into jeans and a plaid shirt, already curving, her hair raining out of a cowboy hat.

She looked straight at the camera, her lips hinting at that knowing woman's smile she'd have in later life. She stood hip-shot, a certain arrogance in the stance. One of her hands rested lightly on her father's shoulder. Jim Morningstar had his arms folded over his chest. He didn't touch his daughter.

There was another of Savannah, a still younger Savannah, astride a horse. It was a classic pose, the buckskin-colored horse rearing up, the rider with her hat swept off her head and lifted high in one hand.

She looked, Jared thought, as if she would dare anything.

There were more of Morningstar with other men-grinning, leather-faced men in hats and boots and denim. Backgrounds of corrals, stables, horses. Always horses.

It played through his mind that they might clear space for a paddock, use the barn at the farm and get a horse or two. Savannah obviously loved them, and Bryan might—

Every thought leaked out of his head as he stared at the last photo.

Yes, she would have been about sixteen, though her body was fully a woman's, clad in a snug T-shirt tucked into tight jeans. Yet the face had a softness, a slight fullness that announced that the girl hadn't quite finished becoming a woman yet. She was laughing. The camera had frozen her in that full-throated moment. He could almost hear it.

She was wrapped around a man. And the man was wrapped around her. Their arms were entwined, their faces were laughing at the camera. The man's hat was pushed back on his head, revealing curls of shaggy blond hair. He was tanned, lean, tall. His eyes would have been blue, or perhaps green. It was hard to tell from the snapshot. But they were light, the corners crinkled with the smile.

The mouth that was cocked crookedly in that smile had been passed on to Bryan.

This was Bryan's father.

Jared felt his anger begin to pulse. This was the man. A man, he repeated in his head, not a boy. The face was undeniably handsome, even striking, but it didn't belong to a teenager. This man had seduced a sixteen-year-old girl, then abandoned her. And nothing had been done.

Morningstar had kept the photo. Because, Jared thought with a tight-lipped snarl, he'd known.

And nothing had been done.

Savannah watched him from the doorway. Her emotions had been on a roller coaster all day. This looked like one more dip.

She'd wanted to forget the edginess, the anger she'd felt when she left Jared's office. She'd hoped to come home, find him here and share with him her small triumph in selling Howard Beels three paintings.

With a very good possibility of more.

She and Bryan had cackled about it all the way home. Over Howard himself and the way he'd hemmed and hawed over what she considered a highly inflated asking price, and settled on an amount that had been considerably more than she'd anticipated.

She'd even stopped off and bought a bottle of champagne so that she and Jared could celebrate. So that she could celebrate with him the fact that her long-buried wish of painting for a living was working its way to the surface.

But she could see there would be no celebration now. Not with that look on Jared's face as he studied what her father had left her. She didn't know where his anger came from. But she had a feeling she was going to find out.

The hell with it, she thought, and pushed away from the door jamb. Let's get it over with.

"Not much of an estate, huh?" She waited until his head came up, until his gaze shifted to hers. The fury in them almost buckled her knees. "I imagine most of your clients have a bit more to deal with."

He knew how to take things one step at a time, to start at one point and work his way to the heart. "When did you get the shipment?"

"A week or two ago." She shrugged, then walked over to the window to look down. "Bry's down in the yard. We picked up the kittens. He's in heaven."

Jared MacKade also knew how to stay on a point. "A week or two. You didn't mention it."