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Chapter One
They’d made itnearly an hour this time before somebody recognized him.
Jackson Thorpe let out a suppressed sigh as he watched his son, Jeremy, playing in the sand. Well, not exactly playing, although there were toys beside him. The seven-year-old spent more time simply grabbing fistfuls of sand and letting them spill out through his fingers.
Watching life slip away . . .
He couldn’t seem to rid his mind of the thought he’d had the first time he’d seen Jeremy endlessly watching those grains of sand slip out of his grasp.
Bringing the boy to the beach on this New Year’s Day had been a desperate grab for something, anything that would give him hope things would improve. Jeremy had always loved the beach, so much that his mother brought him here every chance she got. And he’d hoped that the winter holiday would mean fewer people there. No such luck.
But then his luck had run out two years ago.
He bit his lip, hard, trying to stop the stinging tears that wanted to form.
Leah, I don’t know what to do.
God, he missed her. Missed her smile, her laugh, that wisdom that had been so amazing for a woman still in her twenties. He had a couple of years on her, and was nowhere near as smart about people, especially their son. She was the same in his thoughts as she’d been then, teasing him about being an oldman at thirty. She was frozen in his mind, just as she’d been at twenty-nine.
Because she never saw thirty.
“Jackson!”
“Mr. Thorpe!”
“It’s Austin Holt!”
He smothered a sigh at that last shout of the too-familiar name from the growing cluster of people, some paparazzi, some apparent fans, some just beachgoers wondering what the fuss was, trying to clamber over the rocks to get to them. Every beach in California was technically public up to the mean high tide line, but this little one in front of Miles Flint’s place was exceptionally hard to get to under that rule, protected by the rocks that jutted far out into the water on one side, and a cliff with a sheer drop of over fifty feet on the other. Because of that, many of his friends—including the star of his latest television series that had become one of those soaring, engulfing things that had taken over most of the country—used it. Because his friends were the kind of people who treasured what was hardest for them to get: privacy.
You’ve hit the big time, Jackson, and now you’re going to see the downside. You won’t be able to sneeze without somebody getting it on video and spreading it far and wide, usually with lies attached.
He’d thought Miles was exaggerating, at the time. But the successful producer had been generous with his offer to come here anytime, and Jackson had gladly taken him up on it, for his family’s sake. Of course, the fact thatStonewallhad paid for a big chunk of this piece of high-end real estate probably made it an equitable trade. Miles had taken the chance of casting an unknown with no real experience in a modern-day western, and it had paid off a thousandfold when the show had shattered just about every broadcast and streaming record there was. Miles—and he, himself—had been riding high on the kind of wave onlyhitting the zeitgeist of the culture at the right time with the right story could create. They had—
“Is that Jeremy?”
The shout in a shrill female voice jolted him out of his reverie. That was it. The recognition of him was one thing, and part of the job. He’d always thought those who pretended not to want it, even as they made sure they got it, were the worst sort of phony. But when it came to his son, especially now, every considerable protective instinct he had kicked into overdrive at the slightest hint of intrusion into the boy’s seemingly bottomless grief.
He didn’t wait for the boy to get up and walk back to the house with him. He simply picked him up and took him. And tried not to wince at how light he was. He should weigh about fifty pounds by now, and Jackson knew he didn’t. Knew he’d lost weight when he should be gaining it rapidly. But every meal was a battle, albeit a very quiet one. Because just like now, when he’d picked him up, Jeremy didn’t fight, didn’t argue, didn’t pitch a fit. He just sat there and wouldn’t eat. Even things he’d gobbled down like a starving dog before.
He put the boy down once they were inside. Watched as his son sat on the couch, not the one facing the wall of windows looking out at the water, but on the one facing the fireplace wall, with the big painting of the place that had inspiredStonewall. The sprawling hills covered with bluebonnets in full bloom was a bright, colorful thing, although Jackson knew the color was transitory because the flowers only lasted about a month.
Miles had told him he’d had the painting for a couple of years before the idea of telling a story about it had occurred to him. He’d often talked about it in interviews. Which had been frequent after he’d become the hottest creator in Hollywood when the show had blasted through the summer doldrums to become the biggest thing going five years ago. Carrying Jacksonalong with it, taking him from a guy wrangling horses and scrounging for bit parts, to the flavor of the month. That month had become a year, that year two, then more, until he’d grown sick of seeing his own face everywhere.
Before he’d lost the only anchor that had kept him sane and grounded. Before the accident that had ended the life they’d built, the only life his son had ever known. The son who now sat in what had become his usual silence, just staring at the painting he wasn’t even sure the boy was seeing at all.
With an effort that never seemed to get any easier, he pulled his mind out of that ugly rut. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of the candy bars Jeremy had always loved, figuring at least there were nuts in it that would provide some nutrition. He walked back to the living room and sat beside him on the couch. He tossed one of the bars at his son and proceeded to unwrap the other himself, hoping the boy would just follow suit. He took a bite, making himself look at the painting and not Jeremy. It did taste good, although he didn’t indulge often.
After a moment he heard the tearing of another wrapper, and he dared to hope it had worked.
“Funny how that painting inspiredStonewall,” he said, still without looking at Jeremy. “Miles was just sitting here one night, just like we are, looking at it, and started asking himself questions about it. ‘What ifs,’ he called them. What if there was a ranch there, what if it was a family ranch, what if the guy who owned it had never expected to? What if, what if, what if?”
Jeremy said nothing, but Jackson caught out of the corner of his eye that the boy had taken a bite. He waited until he’d swallowed before trying to draw him into a conversation, an effort that was usually met with words of one syllable, or a shrug and no words at all.
He finally looked at his son. “What would you ask?”
He’d about resigned himself to the usual no answer when Jeremy said, very quietly, “What if it was real?”
Jackson froze. Five whole words. And an actual answer, not simply a variation on “Nothing,” or “Leave me alone.” It took him a moment of near-frantic thinking to decide how to respond. The only thing he was sure of was that it had to be normal, sound normal, as if this wasn’t the first time since that awful day the boy had actually participated in a conversation.
