Screw it. Jessie already thought he was heavy handed, so he used that heavy hand to beat on the aluminum siding. “I ain’t leavin’ Jessie, so open up.”
Lexie barked inside and Jessie shushed her as the door swung inward.
His braced himself, half-expecting she’d be aiming a shotgun at him.
Why that thought heated his blood just proved how twisted he was when it came to his conflicted feelings about his former sister-in-law.
But Jessie wasn’t packing heat. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him through the screen door. “Did you bring the ropes to hogtie me with?”
“Funny. I’m comin’ in.”
She muttered, “Typical McKay macho bullshit ,” and unlocked the screen door.
Any relief that she’d relented to listen to him vanished when he remembered what he had to tell her.
Inside, he absentmindedly patted Lexie’s head and watched Jessie grab two beers out of the fridge.
She passed him a bottle on her way to sit on the couch.
She’d changed out of the slinky gray cocktail dress and into baggy red sweatpants and a black sports bra that molded to her upper torso, emphasizing the slenderness of her shoulders, the gentle curve of her br**sts and the flatness of her belly. Damn woman looked good no matter what she wore.
Or didn’t wear. The image of her naked in his arms had been permanently burned into his memory banks, but oddly, that wasn’t the first thing that popped into his head whenever he saw her. Usually the word mine flashed behind his eyes in big red letters, and that was just all kinds of f**ked up.
By the time she faced him, he’d managed a bland expression.
Jessie’s gaze dropped to his stomach. “Sorry for punching you.”
“No, you’re not.”
Her smile was there and gone. “Why are you here?”
“Because I need to tell you something.” At her uncomfortable look, he held up his hand. “I promise it doesn’t have nothin’ to do with the embarrassing way I threw myself at your feet last year.”
She frowned.
“You don’t remember?”
“Of course I remember. I just…didn’t see it that way.”
“Thank God for that,” he muttered, swigging his beer.
“What’s up, that you had to chase me down at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night?”
Blurt it out.
No, break it to her gently.
“Brandt?”
“It’s…” Fuck. This was gonna suck ass.
“What? You’re scaring me.”
“I came across some information… Well, that ain’t exactly true. I wasn’t the one who made initial contact… Ah hell. I’m doin’ this all wrong.” He chugged another drink of beer. “Last month a woman called me. She said she knew Luke.”
Jessie didn’t speak. She just blinked those amazing baby blues at him.
“She said she knew Luke intimately, so intimately in fact, that he’d knocked her up.”
“What?”
“This woman claimed she’d been sleepin’ with Luke and didn’t know she was pregnant until after he died.”
Every bit of color drained from Jessie’s face.
“She said she broke it off with him a week before his accident. When she discovered she was pregnant…somehow she’d heard you got kicked off the ranch. She figured she’d get the same treatment from Luke’s family, and get nothin’ but grief from you, so she didn’t tell anyone Luke was the father.”
“Bullshit,” Jessie spat. “She knew carrying the baby of a dead man was worth something.”
Brandt shook his head. “I honestly don’t think she did.”
“But she knew Luke was a married man when she slept with him?”
“Yes. There’s no excuse for that. But I will tell you, she’s young, Jessie.”
“How young?”
“She just turned twenty-one.”
Her mouth tightened. “That bastard Luke was f**king a nineteen-year-old girl?”
Hearing such crude words from Jessie caused Brandt to flinch. “Apparently.”
“How old is the kid now?”
“Sixteen months.”
“It’s pretty damn convenient, if you ask me. Luke’s been dead for two years. There’s no way to prove…” Jessie’s sharp gaze pierced right through him. “You have a guilty look on your face, Brandt McKay.”
“Because I did demand proof. Right away. I contacted Dr. Monroe and she put me in contact with a place that specializes in fast paternity tests. Long story short, Landon is Luke’s child. But really, all I had to do was look at the kid and I knew.”
Jessie’s tough shell cracked and her face crumpled. “Oh God. No. This is not happening.”
Brandt was beside her in an instant. He wanted so badly to pull her into his arms, offer her comfort, but he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t slap and claw at him, taking her rage out on the messenger since she couldn’t take it out on the person who deserved it.
Goddamn you, Luke. What the f**k were you thinking?
He hadn’t been. As usual his brother thought of himself first.
Jessie hugged her knees to her chest, hiding her face beneath her tangle of hair. Her shoulders shook as she rocked on the couch.
Brandt was helpless to do anything but watch her fall apart.
Lexie came over, whining at her mistress’s distress, but even the dog seemed at a loss.
He drained his beer. Then he got up and grabbed another. Staring out the window, his thoughts as jumbled now, as when Samantha Johnston had contacted him six weeks ago.
Brandt hadn’t told anyone in his family about meeting Samantha and Landon. It’d been ripping him up inside to the point he was pretty sure he’d given himself an ulcer.
He lifted the bottle to his lips only to come up empty. He’d sucked down the whole damn thing without thinking about it, without tasting it—which was why he hadn’t been drinking the last month. It’d be too easy to wind up drunk every damn night, without intending to.
“Am I the last one to know about Luke’s secret love child?” Jessie asked.
Her tear-choked voice startled him. “No. Hell no. I wouldn’t do that to you.” He crossed the room and sat next to her. “You’re the first one I’ve told. You’re the only one I’ve told.”
“Why me first? Why not Tell or Dalton or your folks?”
How did he phrase this?