THE STARDUST COWBOY Read online

  When Chris left, Riley had told himself that it was just as well. Life would be a whole lot calmer without him. Chris had been a pain in the neck.

  And a whole lot of fun.

  Chris had been lightning. Quicksilver. He'd shot through life like a comet—here and there and gone again. Since the day of his birth, Chris had made everyone sit up and take notice. He'd laughed, he'd joked, he'd teased. He'd told outrageous stories; he'd make tremendous demands; he'd sung beautiful songs.

  He'd made the whole world laugh and cry—his brother, too.

  Riley had never had his brother's charm or his easy smile. He'd marveled at Chris's ability, though he'd never really envied it. Because he knew his brother so well, he'd seen the downside as well as the upside of Chris's mercurial brilliance. He knew Chris's shortcomings as well as anyone.

  And he knew his brother's strengths.

  Chris would sure as hell not be standing outside some woman's house, waiting for the right moment to knock on her door!

  Whenever Chris was anywhere, that was the right moment.

  Pull your socks up and get on with it, Riley commanded himself. He sucked in a deep breath and started across the street.

  The front door burst open, and the boy came running toward him.

  "I knew it!" he crowed. "I knew you'd come!"

  Riley froze, gaping.

  The boy was Chris all over again. Same dark hair, same high cheekbones, same stubborn jaw. Same quicksilver grin. And he was grinning now at Riley.

  Then he yelled back over his shoulder at the woman who was hurrying down the steps after him. "See," he said. "I tol' you!" Then he turned back to Riley again. "What're you waitin' for? Come on in." And he grabbed Riley's hand.

  Astonished, mind reeling, Riley allowed himself to be towed. The boy beamed up at him.

  "I'm Jake," he said. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

  Well, yeah, but how did the kid know?

  Before he could answer, thank God, Jake's mother reached them. It was the first good look Riley had got of Dori Malone up close, and all he could think was, Trust Chris to pick the most beautiful woman in Montana to be the mother of his son.

  She wasn't his type at all—not the willowy small blond type that Tricia was—but even so, he could appreciate her beauty. She had straight dark hair framing her face, full lips and wide eyes that were a deep dark blue as they stared at him with suspicion. She grabbed Jake by the arm.

  "Jacob Daniel Malone! Have you lost your senses? What are you doing, running outside in your pajamas, accosting a total stranger?" She shot a nervous, embarrassed glance at Riley as she tried to detach the boy. "I'm sorry. He's overtired. He ought to be in bed. He's got some notion that—"

  "He's the Stardust cowboy," Jake broke in. "He is! I saw the Stardust! He was outside the church hall. Weren't you?"

  He looked at Riley then, his eyes confident and trusting, exactly the way Chris had always done, knowing his brother would back him up. He was so like Chris. So exactly like Chris, it almost took Riley's breath away.

  "Weren't you?" the boy persisted when Riley didn't reply at once. "I saw you," he added almost plaintively. For just a second the boy's confidence seemed to falter. "Didn't I?" he asked.

  Riley couldn't stand it. He yanked off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair. "You might've. I was … I was there."

  Jake shot his mother a triumphant glance. "Tol' ya!"

  But at Riley's admission, Dori Malone's eyes narrowed. Then her brows drew down and she very deliberately detached Jake's hand from his arm. "Come along," she said to her son, all frost now as she steered him toward the house.

  Riley went after her. "Don't go. I … want to … need to … talk to you."

  "I don't think so." Whatever the Stardust cowboy was to Jake, she obviously didn't share the boy's enthusiasm. "My name is Riley Stratton."

  It took a second for his surname to register. When it did, she paled. Then, as he watched, she seemed to draw herself together. She sucked in a careful, steadying breath. "Just a moment."

  She turned the boy toward the steps. "Off to bed, Jake."

  "But—"

  "No buts. It's time for bed. Now."

  "Mom!"

  "Now."

  Jake looked at her mutinously, then at Riley once again. But Riley couldn't help. He glanced at his watch. "It is late," he pointed out.

  Jake's face fell. He looked betrayed. Once more Riley was reminded of the way Chris always looked when things didn't go his way.

  The realization that he would never ever see Chris look like that again brought a pain so swift and startling in its intensity that he shut his eyes.

  "You okay?" the boy asked him.

  Startled, Riley opened them again. The boy was still looking at him. But the look of betrayal had been replaced by one of concern. Then Jake nodded, as if he'd come to some decision. "All right," he said quietly. "I'm goin'."

  His mother squeezed his shoulder lightly. "That's my boy. Don't forget to brush your teeth. I'll come up and say goodnight after Mr. Stratton has gone."

  "And tell me what he said."

  Dori Malone rolled her eyes. "If it's any of your business." Jake looked up, and his gaze met Riley's for a long moment. Then he looked back at his mother. "It will be," he said.

  * * *

  Two

  « ^ »

  The two of them stood looking after Jake in awkward silence.

  Then, "Come in," Dori said with a certain resignation. "Whatever you have to say, you don't need to say it on the front walk."

  Riley followed her into the house. It was somewhat larger than your basic human chicken coop and reminded Riley of the tiny house he'd shared with five other guys during his brief stint at college. But Dori Malone had done more with it than he and his roommates had. They'd lived with beer cans and beanbag chairs. Here, with worn but comfortable furniture, inexpensively framed family photos, amateurish watercolors and an old oak clock on soft-peach-colored walls, Dori Malone had created a home.

  "Sit down. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

  Riley sat, but shook his head. "No. Thanks. I'm fine. I—" He found himself looking at a photo of Jake on the chair side table. The boy was swinging from a tree limb, his two front teeth missing as he grinned a purely Chris Stratton grin. Riley swallowed hard. "He's quite a kid."

  "Yes." Dori's face softened as she looked at the photo, too. Then, she straightened and said in a very businesslike tone, "And he's got a bit of an imagination, Jake does. You don't want to pay any attention to it." She gave a slightly forced laugh. "That 'Stardust cowboy' stuff, for example. It's just a story I used to tell him."

  "Don't worry. I'm under no illusion that I'm a Stardust cowboy. You're not going to find anybody with less Stardust in his life than me. Dust now—" he shrugged his shoulders ruefully "—I've got plenty of that."

  She smiled faintly, and their eyes locked.

  Then Dori blinked and went straight to the point. "What's happened to Chris?"

  Chris.

  Right. Riley took a breath. "Chris is dead. He … died in a car accident in Arizona last month." He watched her as he spoke, ready to stop if she fainted—God help him—but ready to keep going if she'd let him. He just wanted to get it said.

  She didn't faint. She sat down abruptly on the couch. What color she'd regained after the surprise at hearing his name, though, fled again at his words. She looked stricken for just a moment, and then something seemed to settle over her—a sense of inevitability, perhaps. She nodded. "I see."

  He thought she did. However shocked she might be, he sensed that she wasn't really surprised.

  "You were expecting it." It wasn't really a question.

  Her fingers twisted. "Not … expecting it. But…" She paused, as if she was searching for the right words. "Chris always lived on the edge. He was … larger than life. Brash. Brave. He … made things happen. Wherever he went he … left a wake."

  "Of Stardust?" Riley said the wor
ds before he thought. "I didn't mean—"

  But Dori just nodded and smiled faintly. "Maybe," she said wistfully after a moment. "Once."

  The clock struck the hour. Neither of them spoke during the litany of measured chimes. Then, when it fell silent, Dori said, "You're his brother."

  Riley nodded. He'd supposed that Chris had told her about his family, even if he hadn't told his family about her. But he didn't know what Chris might have said.

  "He talked about the ranch," Dori said. "And about his brother. He made you out to be quite a hero."

  Riley felt heat rise on his neck. "Yeah, well, Chris was a storyteller, that's for sure," he said gruffly.

  "They were wonderful stories," she said softly. Her eyes got a faraway look in them for a moment. Then her smile faded and she focused once again on Riley. "Did he tell you about Jake?"

  "He never said a word. No stories. Nothing." He knew it was blunt, and he wasn't sure it was what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth. Still, he felt obliged to explain. "Chris didn't come back often. Reckon he thought I'd try to make him stay if he did."

  And I would have if I'd known he had a kid, Riley thought. I'd have told him to stop fooling around and shape up.

  He hesitated, then added what was only the truth. "I wish he had."

  There was a moment of silence, and Riley wondered if he'd said the wrong thing. But finally Dori sighed. "Chris wasn't really into 'family.' And he wasn't especially interested in being a father, either."

  He should have been, damn it. "He sent money," Riley reminded her. He fully expected her to retort that there was more to being a father than sending money. It was only the truth.

  But she didn't. "Yes, he did that. That's something I suppose. And," she added realistically, "maybe it's all he could bring himself to do. Maybe he couldn't come here any more than he could go home. If he had, he'd have had to face up to his obligations."

  That was pretty much the way Riley saw it, too. "Did he ever come?"

  "No."

  "Never?" He couldn't imagine it. Hadn't Chris wanted to see his own child?

  "He promised to." She smiled wryly. "'I'll see you at Christmas.' 'Reckon I'll be there for his birthday this year,'" she quoted words that sounded just like Chris. "But, you know Chris." She smiled wistfully. "He promised a lot. He didn't always follow through."

  Riley had spent the better part of his life defending Chris's behavior—and being annoyed that he had to at the same time. But there was no defense here—no defense against the truth.

  "He meant well." It was the only thing he could think of.

  Surprisingly, Dori Malone agreed. "Always." She sighed. "I didn't expect him to come. Not after the first time he said he would and didn't. So I never told Jake he would."

  "Does Jake … know about him?"

  "He knows his name. He knows he was a singer who was once a cowboy. He knows his father was a man with a lot of dreams." She said the words frankly, without bitterness. Then she smiled. "It was Chris who came up with the Stardust cowboy, as a matter of fact. When Jake was two, Chris wrote him a letter filled with grandiose notions about him riding in at midnight and sweeping a little boy up onto his horse and riding off in search of grand adventures, scattering Stardust as he went."

  Riley smiled. That sounded like Chris.

  "My sister had just taken Jake to a rodeo, and he was starry-eyed over cowboys anyway. So when I read the letter to him, he thought it was a story about a cowboy. I didn't tell him it was from his father. He was too little to know what a father was at that point, but he was enchanted with the notion of the Stardust cowboy." Her smile got faraway and dreamy as she remembered. "We read that letter so often it nearly fell to bits. And when I did tell him it was from his dad, he said, 'Did the Stardust cowboy lead him on adventures?' and I said yes." She looked at Riley almost defiantly. "Why not?"

  Wordlessly he shook his head.

  "And then we made up more stories—adventures that a little boy might have." Her gaze fell on the picture of Jake that sat on the table. "I don't blame Chris," she said softly, almost to herself. "It's not wrong to have dreams."

  "No."

  Riley remembered once upon a time back when he'd had dreams—of a home, a family, a pretty little golden-haired wife—before life had got in the way.

  He wondered if Dori Malone had had dreams—dreams about Chris. It seemed likely.

  Riley could count dozens of girls who'd dreamed about Chris over the years. Chris had always had more women than he knew what to do with—unlike his brother, who'd only ever had one—had only ever wanted one. Tricia.

  He cleared his throat, put the thought out of his head and straightened where he sat. "Reckon maybe someday Jake can realize those dreams," he said, "whatever they are."

  Dori blinked. "What do you mean?"

  Riley shifted, feeling awkward, wishing he'd figured out a better way to broach the subject. "I mean he's Chris's heir."

  "Chris's heir?" She sounded doubtful. Then she smiled. "Does that mean he gets Chris's guitar?"

  "If he wants it." Riley hadn't even thought about that. "It's at the ranch. I can send it. But that's not what I mean. I mean, as Chris's heir he'll have resources so that someday, when he grows up and wants to go to college or do whatever he wants to do, he'll have a stake to get him started."

  "Chris had money?"

  "Not money. A ranch. Half a ranch."

  There was a moment's stunned silence. Then Dori said, thunderstruck, "Jake owns half a ranch?"

  Riley bounced to his feet and paced the length of the small living room. "It's not all that much. Little over fifteen-hundred acres on the front slope of the Big Horns. Simmental cattle. Not a huge herd. We get by. I do, anyway. It's my life." The only one he knew or was ever likely to know now. "But it sure ain't—isn't—for everyone. So yes, Jake owns half of it, but I'm willin' to buy him out."

  "Buy him … out?" Dori echoed.

  Riley nodded. "It only makes sense. You could put the money in the bank or invest one way or another. By the time he's grown up, it'd be a pretty good stake for his dreams."

  "Half a ranch?" She looked staggered.

  "It's not the Ponderosa," Riley said hastily. "Half the time we're damned lucky to break even."

  "But you want to buy him out?" She looked at him suspiciously now.

  "I'm not tryin' to put anything over on you. I just figured it'd be better this way. It isn't doin' him any good ownin' half of somethin' he doesn't even live near. He'd do better with the money. There's a damn sight more sure things out there than ranchin'. Besides," he added wryly, "lucky kid that he is, he'll likely inherit the whole thing someday."

  "He will? Why?"

  The weight of a dozen years of loneliness settled down on him. "I haven't got anybody else to leave it to," he said gruffly.

  She looked surprised. "No … wife? No kids?"

  "No."

  "You might have. Someday."

  "No." He shut the door hard on that notion. "The place will be Jake's. Trust me."

  He wasn't sure that she was going to. She looked a little flabbergasted. He supposed he didn't blame her. She couldn't have been expecting any of this. He sat down again and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "Look, Ms. Malone—"

  "Dori," she corrected promptly.

  "Dori," he repeated. Her name felt funny on his lips. Intimate, somehow. He resisted the feeling. He looked at her earnestly now. "It's a good deal. You won't have any money worries. Jake can go to college without gettin' up to his eyeballs in debt. Or if he doesn't want to go to college—like his dad—well, he'll have money to get set up in what he does want to do. He won't be tied down. Ranches tie you down."

  Still Dori didn't say a word. She looked as if he'd just punched the air all out of her. "I … need to think about it," she said at last, her voice a little faint.

  "Think about it?" What the hell was there to think about? He was offering her thousands of dollars!

  "It's so �
� sudden. I need to … to think," she mumbled.

  Well, hell, maybe she did. Maybe she had learned not to be impetuous after her involvement with Chris. He could hardly blame her for that. So he'd just have to swallow his impatience and wait awhile longer. It wouldn't make any difference in the end.

  "Fine." He got to his feet. "You think about it. Take your time. And—" he dug into his pocket and scribbled his phone number on the piece of paper tucked in it "—when you're ready, you call me."

  Dori stood, too, and took the paper from him. She glanced at it, then set it on the coffee table. "Thank you, Mr.—"

  "Riley," he said quickly. If she was Dori, he sure wasn't going to be Mr. Stratton!

  She smiled. "Riley." The way she said his name made him feel as if she was tasting it. Tasting him!

  Cripes! What was wrong with him? He felt heat flood his face. He jerked his gaze away and cleared his throat.

  "It was a … pleasure to meet you," he said, his voice ragged. His mother would have been proud. Then he realized that the circumstances of their meeting could hardly come under the heading of pleasure.

  "I mean, not why I met you—" he felt his face burn hotter "—well, you know…"

  She smiled slightly. "I know."

  The way she looked at him—with those big blue eyes, that soft understanding smile—he wondered that Chris could ever pull himself away. He gave his head a sharp shake and moved toward the door.

  He opened it, then stopped and turned back. "Jake's a fine kid. A son Chris would be proud of."

  Dori Malone blinked, then she smiled a sad sort of smile. "Thank you."

  Riley touched the brim of his hat and went out the door. There, it was done.

  A few days and things would be settled, he thought as he started his truck. He'd made Dori Malone a good offer. Once she'd thought about it, talked it over with her parents or her boyfriend or whomever she trusted, she'd see just how good it was.