But five years ago he’d been a weary soldier just back from a war zone, and meeting Bridget had been almost like an escape to a gentler world. He’d started believing in himself and the idea that the two of them could actually make a life together. He’d been on the verge of proposing and giving Bridget the go-ahead to tell her family about their love, when the ground had suddenly opened up and hell had spewed out in the form of a so-called friend.
Johnny had never considered George Barefoot as anything more than an acquaintance, even though he lived on the reservation and had gone to high school with Johnny’s mother, Scarlett, and professed to be one of her closest friends. He was considered by most to be lazy and always looking for an easy angle to make money. Johnny usually did his best to avoid the man, but one day in Mescalero, he’d inadvertently passed the man on the sidewalk and before he could protest, George had pulled him into a nearby bar.
Over a beer, George had begun to tell Johnny that there was something about his rich girlfriend’s family that he ought to know. Johnny hadn’t been in any mood to hear tales about the Donovans. Most of them were far-fetched and based on unfounded gossip anyway, but when George had suddenly brought up Scarlett’s name, he’d forced himself to listen to the man.
Thirty minutes later, Johnny had left the bar feeling sick and the nausea hadn’t been a result of the cheap beer. Not wanting to believe George’s outrageous tale, he’d gone straight home and confronted his grandparents. That’s when he’d been forced to accept it as the truth. Reluctantly, his grandparents had revealed to him that his mother had been working for the Donovans, mucking stalls and doing other chores around the barns, when she’d gotten pregnant with Johnny. As the pregnancy had advanced, she’d offered the child to Doyle and Fiona. She’d wanted the Donovans to adopt Johnny and raise them as their son! His grandparents had been humiliated by her behavior and ordered Scarlett to put such a thought out of her head. But their opposition to her plans had set off a firestorm of retaliation in their daughter and she’d chosen to take her misery out on the Donovans, a family who seemingly had everything that she didn’t. She’d quit her job, then for further revenge she’d snuck back onto the ranch a short time later and attempted to burn down one of the brood mare barns. Thankfully, Doyle had caught her in the act and managed to prevent much damage from happening to their property, but to Johnny the Chino name had already been damaged beyond repair, especially with the Donovans. Moreover, the whole matter had pointed out the obvious. In spite of Charlie and Naomi’s protest, his mother had been of age and legally held the right to hand her son over to the Donovans’ care. She’d given the Donovans the opportunity to adopt him. But for some reason they’d not accepted the needy little Apache baby. Who could say they would accept him as a part of the family now?
Trying to control the violence he felt welling up in him, Johnny was torn between his realization that he wasn’t healed enough to trust himself and his anger with his mother and the pain she was still causing him. Forcing himself to face facts, Johnny had put an abrupt end to his relationship with Bridget. Of course, she’d not understood his sudden change of heart and he’d made a mess of giving her a logical reason. Clearly, she and her siblings hadn’t known anything about the incident that had happened with his mother and their parents so many years ago and Johnny was too humiliated and dejected to repeat the story. In fact, Johnny had made a point to search out George and threaten him with bodily harm if he ever repeated the story to anyone again. As for Bridget, he’d simply tried to explain that the two of them were from different worlds and to try to meld them would end up being painful for both of them.
Bridget had refused to accept Johnny’s excuse. She’d argued that he’d known all along that there were differences between them. So what had really changed with him? He’d not been able to give her the answer. He couldn’t explain that her parents had already turned him away from their home, or about the anger that still welled up inside him. Telling her would’ve only caused more hurt and, in the end, accomplished nothing. So he’d forced himself to push her out of his life, even while she was swearing that she would always love him.
Now, after five long years without her, nothing had ever really ended for Johnny. He’d simply gone on loving and wanting Bridget and doing his best to convince himself that he’d done the right thing. For both of them.
The nudge of a cold wet nose against his hand forced his thoughts to return to the present and he opened his eyes to see Daisy, the black collie, pushing herself between his knees.
“I’m not going to the top this morning, girl,” he told the dog as he gently stroked her shiny head. “I have to go back to the house. Go fetch Rowdy.”
The dog seemed to understand his order and she raced on up the mountainside in search of the Redbone. By the time Johnny got to his feet, he heard Daisy bark. The sound told him that she’d found her buddy and the two dogs would be back at his side in a matter of moments to join him on the trek back to the house.
He and the dogs were halfway home when the cell phone in his pocket rang. Frowning at the disturbance, he fished out the instrument and glanced at the illuminated number.
Seeing it was from the Brown Bear Cantina in Mescalero, he flipped the phone open and jammed it to his ear.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he answered bluntly.
A woman’s familiar voice came back at him. “Johnny, it’s me, Rosalinda. A couple of guys are here in the cantina right now looking to hire a hunting guide. I told them about you, but I didn’t give them your number. What with your grandmother sick and all, I thought I should call you myself first.”
“Thanks, Rosalinda. You’d better put them on to someone else. I can’t leave my grandparents right now. Not for any length of time.”
“Gotcha on that. She doing any better?”
“Holding her own.”
“Let me know if I can do anything to help,” she said, then after a quick goodbye cut their connection.
Johnny thoughtfully slipped the phone back into his jeans’ pocket and headed on down the path. Any other time he would have been more than glad for the work. Not that he especially liked being a guide for men who traveled out of the cities to hunt or fish in a rough wilderness that, more often than not, came as a rude awakening to them. He’d never been much of a people person. And he especially didn’t care for dealing with men, and sometimes women, who were so obviously out of their element. But other than the small fixed income his grandfather received for his retirement from the forestry service, his grandparents had no nest egg for their golden years. Being a fishing and hunting outfitter was a way for Johnny to make a fairly decent living and still be around to see after his grandparents and help with their living expenses.
You don’t have to cater to the whining demands of those people, Johnny. Ethan would jump at the chance to hire you to the force. You’d make a damned good deputy. Hell, all you’d have to do is give someone who was thinking about committing a crime one of those stares of yours and it would scare them into going straight.
Johnny’s lips twisted to a cynical slant. He didn’t know what made his friend, Brady, believe he’d make a good deputy. Sure, he’d served as a soldier in the army and completed two grueling stints in Iraq. And as a tracker, he’d worked with law enforcement agencies spanning several Western states. But that didn’t give him the right stuff to deal with thieves and drunks, domestic violence, vehicle crashes and all the other tragic situations that people got themselves into. A man needed patience for that kind of work and an innate understanding of human nature. He had neither. He’d learned that the hard way when he’d made a tragic mistake in the California desert. A child had died because of Johnny. Because he’d not been able to foresee or understand what had been guiding his little footsteps. Until it had been too late.
No, he thought grimly. Brady and Sheriff Hamilton might think he had the makings of a law officer, but they were wrong. Dead wrong.
Blowing out a heavy breath, he did his best to shake his mind of the past and quickly descend the last of the trail.
*