Willa Longworth
Willa was a woman with one chance at destiny and she wasnt going to let a manor her longing for himget in her wayor was she?
Lifes like the weather. You can never be sure of it. Thats the miracle, dont you see?
Luke McKade
He had done all the right things for the wrong reasonsuntil he met Willa. From that moment, his life would never be the same.
You owe me a romp in the hay, Mrs. Longworth.
Little Red Longworth
This ailing heir wanted someone to care for him during his final days. He found an angel in Willaand a wife.
I went to kill me a lawyer and a bastard brother. I got a wife.
Hesper Longworth
The spiteful sister-in-law doesnt want Willa to get a single red cent.
Your unfortunate past is hardly my concern, Willa dear. Im here to buy you out.
Brandon Baines
A powerful lawyer with an ego the size of Texas and a dangerous need to keep thingsand Willaquiet!
Its just me and you, sweetheart. Were all alone in the middle of nowhere. Now, wheres the money?
Also available from ANN MAJOR and MIRA Books
INSEPARABLE
Wild Enough for Willa
Ann Major
www.mirabooks.co.uk
DEDICATION
To my precious daughter, Kimberley Leta Cleaves, who is quirky, funny, warm, witty, young. And because she is all those things, she is a challenge to me as a mother.When somebody asks me, where do you get your ideas, I should tell them from my daughter, who is my very own adorable muse.Thank you for Willa, Kimberley.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I want to thank the following people:
To Tara Gavin and Dianne Moggy for more than I can say
To Karen Solem
To Patience Smith
To Ted, for realizing that dinners and a clean house dont matter nearly as much as writing
To Karen Olsson and Meg Guerra, who told me about Laredo
To Dorothy Deaver, who decorated Willas house
To Steve Stainkamp and Geri Rice
To Chris Misner and Greg McKee for telling me about the computer business
To Patricia Patterson for streamlining my business affairs so I can write
POEM
If I were alone in a desert
And feeling afraid,
I would want a child to be with me.
For then my fear would disappear
And I would be made strong.
This is what life in itself can do
Because it is so noble, so full of pleasure
And so powerful.
But if I could not have a child with me
I would like to have at least a living animal
At my side to comfort me.
Therefore,
Let those who bring about wonderful things
In their big, dark books
Take an animalperhaps a dog
To help them.
The life within the animal
Will give them strength in turn.
For equality
Gives strength in all things
And at all times.
Meister Eckhart (12601329)
(Authors note: As a cat lover, I change dog to cat. When I go alone into my imagination to write, Kanka, my cat, goes with me to help by sitting on my manuscript.)
Contents
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Book Two
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Book Three
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Book Four
Chapter 25
Book One
What we call the ending is usually the beginning.
1
Marcie, his gentle, beautiful wifeDead?
And it was all his fault.
Luke McKade sat alone in his vast penthouse office in southwest Austin. He willed the silence and the dark of his new gorgeous, empty buildingthe building that Marcie had helped design and decorateto devour him.
Driven, he always worked later than his employees. Not that tonight was about work.
Sa-a-ve the baby, Marcie had whispered in her pronounced Texas drawl with its elongated vowels. Shed gripped him fiercely when hed knelt over her bed. Her final, hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled. Then shed died in his arms.
His mind had raced. His heart had thundered. What baby? What baby?
A son, the white-coated doctor had confirmed after the autopsy.
Luke wearily massaged the back of his neck. Restless by nature, always on the move, he rarely sat behind his desk this longand never to reflect on his own shortcomings.
Murder. Hed done murder.
Shed been so beautiful. So gentle. So classy. How he had loved looking at her. She had known how to dress. Other men had envied him, which is why hed married her.
He pushed his fingers through his untidy wavy black hair. On top of todays unread newspapers and his managers reports from yesterday lay several mangled scraps of paperhis phone messages. Kate, his freckle-faced, madcap secretary with corkscrew red curls, scrawled numbers and names on whatever she had handy.
Among other problems, the Feds were suing him for restriction of trade, and he was trying to float a new IPO. Luke thumbed through the fast-food napkins, Post-it notes, and a couple of pages shed torn from her calendar, his tension heightening. His lawyers had called. So had his ranch foreman. The name of the president of a rival company was highlighted by a smear of mustard. But what charged Luke was the name, Brandon Baines.
Brandon Baines had called three times.
Baines, big criminal lawyer in Laredo.
Laredo was a border town. As such, it was too far from Mexico City and too far from Washington, D.C. for either nations laws to be taken too seriously. Men like Baines could prosper there.
Baines and he had gone to law school together. Hed been like most of their classrich, handsome, lily-white, ultraconservativea racist to the core, and worse things, too, underneath his politically correct exterior. Baines hadnt much cottoned to McKades darker skin or rougher, cruder views about lifeexcept where they concerned women.
Bainess tenacity and killer instincts had brought him fame and fortune in the free and easy Laredo. He had a rare talent for getting down and dirty in the courtroom. No lawyer in Texas had gotten more criminals acquitted than he. With the rise in crime, especially in drug dealing, his talents were in demand. He never gave up on a case. Never. Even when all seemed lost for the guiltiest of his drug-dealer clients, his mantra was, This is good.
Luke had forgotten all about Little Reds imminent release.
Im gonna shoot myself a lawyer and a bastard.
Luke didnt like Baines or Laredo even though the two men shared a common enemy.
Little Red Longworth. What was he nowtwenty-three?
The Longworths would be happy to have their precious son and brother home in New Mexico again.
Luke swallowed, trying to rid himself of the sudden bad taste in his mouth.
He wadded Kates scribblings and pitched them in the trash.
Later. Tomorrow.
Tonight was for Marcie, for his guilt.
Maybe everybody else in the whole damned world thought Marcie had slammed head-on into that limestone cliff all by herself, but Luke McKade knew differently. Hed killed her, and their unborn baby boy, as surely as if his hand had been on her black leather steering wheel.
Somehow it was easier to sit in the solitary gloom of his office with his own regrets than to endure the well-meant comfort of friends, colleagues and employees. He even preferred the fury of his hot-tempered, impossible mother-in-law to their consolation.
Sheila blamed him for the separationfor the accidentfor her only daughters death.
Luke felt the muscles of his jaw tighten. World-famous in computer circles, he was tall, well built, black-haired. He stayed in shape. During the week he jogged or went to a gym. On weekends he did manual labor on his immense south Texas ranch. Indeed, he was well disciplined in all areas.
Ruthless, his competitors called him. Competent and innovative were the labels his friends attached.
Luke had sea-gray eyes. And when you smile, Marcie used to say, you have the most devastatingly gorgeous face. Your eyes sparkle like dancing waves on a stormy day. I married you for that smile that gives your face so much energy. Now the only time I ever see it is when you perform for the press.
Marcie had been right. His virile good looks, especially the practiced smile, were a facade. The man behind the mask was colddeadand wanted to stay that way.
He hated how he felt tonightalive, raw, in pain, about to explode. He had to find a way to recap the volcano.
Luke McKade believed in order, in control. He lived by ruleshis own. He never drank alcohol in front of his employees, and he wouldnt be drinking tonight if he hadnt closed LMK for the funeral.
Luke sat behind a mammoth mahogany desk. Nursing his second whiskey, he clenched Marcies framed photograph and stared unseeingly at the brilliant Austin skyline glittering against the black hills.
The world thought he was a hero. Hed had more fun when hed been poor and fighting to make it. The higher he climbed, the more alienated and lonely he feltthe more powerless.
Marcie? His brown hand touched the pale cheek behind cold glass. He had more money than Midas. But he couldnt bring her back. He couldnt tell her he was sorry.
He began to shake. Such white skin, such warm, soft skin shed hadcompared to his. Her golden hair had felt like the richest silk while his had been black and coarse like his mothers. Shed been so high-class compared to him. His claim to fame was wealth. And power in the hottest business on the planet. They said he was a modern-day pirate, that hed gotten where he was by greed and underhanded tactics.
Whatever. He was rich, unimaginably rich, now. CEO of a dozen computer companies, he was a giant in a world hed helped shape. Known for his razor-sharp intelligence, tough negotiation tactics, and ruthless business instincts, he owned several highly competitive software and Internet businesses.
Hed known that the only reason an impoverished socialite like the exquisite Marcie Wilde had married a driven computer nerd like himself was for his money. Hed thrown that up at her the day shed asked for a divorce.
Your money used to be attractiveonce, shed admitted. But I always wanted you. I used to think that maybe someday youd feel that way about me.
What the hell did I tell you before we got married
I was in love. I thought I could change you. I thought I could settle till you fell for me, too. I thought I had enough love for both of us. Youre good-looking. Good in bedat least at first I thought so. Then I realized you werent there. It was always your money and always going to be your money. I was like some object youd bought to show offa trophy. Nothing more. And I want more, to be more. I deserve more. Youre a dead man, Luke, at least with me.
I gave you everything.
And its killing me. II cant go on like this.This house we built together is not a home. Its a monument like the pyramids or the Taj Mahal, tombs built for the dead to impress the living. Youre not richnot really. You dont have money. Your money has you.
Youre killing me.
Hed remembered how eagerly shed run to the door every night when hed come home in the beginning of their marriage. Until hed made it clear he didnt like such exuberant displays of affectionin bed or out of it. But divorce?
Hed said, So, how much are you going to take me for?
I dont want a dime of your precious money.
One day some slick lawyer will call me and show us both what a liar you are.
Shed stuck to her noble sentiment, taken a low-paying job. Shed rented a one-bedroom apartment. Hed hired a guy to keep tabs.
Even before shed called three days ago, he hadnt been able to get her out of his mind. Still, hed been surprised and pleased; but furious, too, that he was so happy to hear from her.
Shed said shed changed her mind about the divorce; shed had something important to tell him, something too important and too thrilling to discuss over the phone.