Hero's Return

He picked up his phone, dialed 411 and asked the operator for a family with the last name Dunn in Clawson Creek.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m not showing any by that name. Could it be listed under another name or perhaps another town?”

He had no idea. Apparently the Dunns had left Clawson Creek. “That’s all right. Thank you.” Hanging up, he glanced at his watch. He was late and there were leftover barbecued short ribs from lunch that Maggie had promised to heat up for dinner. Mostly, he was anxious to see his wife.

Tracking down the family would have to wait until tomorrow. Another twelve hours wouldn’t make that much of a difference after nineteen years.

* * *

KATE TOOK A sip of her wine, giving herself a moment. She’d let Tucker get to her. This was not the way she’d planned for the night to go. But he’d given her no choice, she told herself. He wanted to cut to the chase? Fine.

She could tell that she’d caught him flat-footed with the package she’d sent, which had been her intention. Just as his had been when he’d called her on why she was interested in the remains from the creek.

“I wasn’t sure the discovery in the creek was enough to bring you home. I thought the package might,” she said.

Tucker blinked, clearly taken aback. “Where did you get...? Why would you send me something like that? How do you know me and that I’ve been gone, let alone know what Madeline put me through?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said and picked up her menu. “Is the steak good here?”

He leaned over to take the menu from her hand. “If you tell me you were the one working with Madeline—”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said, taking back her menu.

“If all you wanted to do was get my attention, we could have had this discussion on the bridge earlier. Why did you run?”

She lowered her menu. “Maybe I wanted to see if you would chase me, then I would know for sure that I had the right man.”

“The right man? You could have made it easier for both of us by not running,” he said, still eyeing her as if he thought if he looked deep enough, he’d see every truth she’d kept hidden for all these years.

She chuckled at his words, though it lacked the lightness she’d been shooting for. “Now, what fun would that have been if I hadn’t let you chase me down?”

He growled under his breath. “How do you know about Madeline? No more games.”

Kate took another sip of her wine, but from the look in the cowboy’s eyes, he was no longer willing to play along. While she could be flexible when it came to her game plan, she didn’t like it derailed so quickly. Worse, as she looked into Tucker’s eyes... They were silver in the candlelight and beneath the growing anger and frustration, she could still see the pain. It was as raw as her own and yet his had been banked for nearly two decades while hers had grown with each passing year.

It made her more than determined to expose the woman. But in exposing Madeline, she would be exposing the men who’d fallen for her, as well. She hadn’t cared before, but suddenly she didn’t want to hurt this man.

“Madeline,” Tucker repeated, making it clear he wasn’t waiting much longer for an answer.

She could tell he was surprised that she knew about Madeline, knew enough to send the doll. Madeline had always been all about secrecy. It’s how she did business. It’s how she destroyed young men, chewing them up and spitting them out and moving on.

“My brother knew her.” Kate hadn’t planned to tell him that.

Suddenly the waiter appeared to take their orders.

Tucker waved the man away and leaned forward. “Your brother?”

She started to pour herself more wine, but he took the bottle from her, their fingers touching, a brush of warmth against her icy cold hand. He poured her more wine and put down the bottle.

But she didn’t reach for her glass. She could see that he had already put the pieces together. “Clay,” he said. “Clayton Rothschild III.”

She felt her cheeks warm with the anger that was always just below the surface. Her gaze rose to meet Tucker’s. “Madeline killed him just as surely as if she’d been the one to tie the noose around his neck.” Her voice broke and she had to fight tears. No, this was not at all the way she’d planned this so-called date.

“He knew Madeline?” he asked, frowning. “That was about the same time as...” He broke off, shifted his gaze to hers again and held it. “He killed himself because of her?” He was shaking his head. “The package. The only way you could have known...” His gray eyes widened in alarm. “She pulled the same thing on him that she did me with the...baby?”

Kate nodded, unable to speak around the lump in her throat. She looked away. After all the interviews she’d done since she’d begun her career, she’d never let anyone get to her like this. But sitting across from a man who had known her nemesis...intimately, who knew how she operated, who had been hurt by her almost as deeply as her brother...

Staring into his gray eyes, she thought that maybe there was little difference between this man and her brother. That thought made her angry at both of them. How could they have fallen for such a woman? Tucker had left behind everything for nineteen years—his family, his ranch, his life to that point—because of Madeline. Clay had just taken a more drastic route to run away from what that woman had put him through.

“You want to know where I got the doll?” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears as she tried to rein in her fury without much luck. “It’s the one Madeline sent my brother. At the time, I had no idea what it meant when it was found in the room where Clay...” Her voice broke again. “But I was determined to learn the truth about why my brother killed himself. I was thirteen. My brother was a senior in high school.”

Tucker was staring at her with so much sympathy that she had to look away for fear of breaking down again.

“How did you find out about her?” he asked after a moment.

“My brother. I found a letter he had written her. His suicide note. Unfortunately, when I went searching for her, I realized that Madeline Ross never existed. She’d lied about who she was, no big surprise.”

“Still, how could you know that the woman from the creek—”

“Clay said in the letter that he knew there was another man Madeline was seeing. A cowboy who lived in Gilt Edge with the last name Cahill. It didn’t take much to put it together in the years since. At first I thought it might be your brother Flint. But when you took off suddenly, I figured you’d run away with her. That maybe the two of you had been in it together.” She met his gaze. “Until I heard about the skeletal remains found in the creek near your ranch.”

“So you sent the package to me.”

“I’d hoped you were in contact with your family and that the package would get you home. I wasn’t sure the remains were Madeline’s let alone that you would return.”

He looked shocked.

“I figured if you were the other man my brother had written about, then the doll might resonate with you.”

Tucker let out a bark of laugh. “Oh, it resonated, all right. I’ve believed for nineteen years that I was the reason she killed herself and our son.”

She shook her head. “How could you let her fool you like that?”

“I wish I knew. So you’ve known about me and Madeline for—”

“Years. That’s how long I’ve been looking for you. You did a good job of hiding. Does your brother the sheriff know that you haven’t been going by Tucker Cahill all this time?”

Tucker was staring at her again. “I see what you meant about the two of us having a lot in common. And what exactly were you going to do when you found me?”

She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment around the lump in her throat. “It was Madeline I wanted. If you were with her... But when the bones were found, I had a feeling you’d be coming back alone.”

They both fell silent for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” he said. “I had no idea there were...others.”

“Yes, except with my brother Madeline obviously survived her leap into the river to be saved by whoever she was working with and continued to blackmail Clay until he couldn’t take the guilt anymore.”

“It wasn’t just the guilt. I would imagine he thought he loved her.”