Intimate Secrets

Josie felt the floor buckle under her. Blood drained from her head. Her ears rang. “A Texas accent?”

Mildred looked scared, too, now. She’d paled, her fingers nervously kneading the edges of a box of macaroni and cheese.

Josie could barely form the words. “What did he look like?”

“Oh, Josie, I didn’t really pay him much mind,” she cried. “He was just a nice-looking cowboy in jeans, boots and a Stetson. I guess he was tall and dark and—” She realized what she was saying. “—and yes, as corny as it sounds, handsome. But he didn’t do or say anything…inappropriate, and with tourists coming through town all the time—”

“What did he do and say?” Josie asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. Trying not to scare Mildred any more than she already had.

“He said something like ‘Oh, what a beautiful little girl.’ Ivy was giggling. She liked him. Then he said, ‘She looks just like someone I used to know. The spitting image. Except for the eyes.’ Something like that.”

A chill raced up her spine like a Montana blizzard blowing in. She tried to tell herself it was nothing. Just like thinking she saw Odell in the pines yesterday.

This had only been a cowboy in a grocery store. Ivy always attracted attention with that pale blond hair of hers and her angelic face. And those startling dark eyes. So why did Josie find herself shaking, fear making her heart pound and her knees weak with worry?

She saw Mildred frown as if she’d remembered something that disturbed her. “What is it?”

“He did ask her name. I didn’t think it would hurt anything.”

Josie found breath to ask. “You told him her name was Ivy O’Malley?”

Mildred quickly shook her head. “I just told him her name was Ivy.”

Josie tried to breathe. She’d kept her name when she’d left Texas. She’d wanted something of her family to take with her, something to give her child, and after Odell’s death, she’d believed that no one would ever come looking for her.

But now she realized keeping her name had been a silly, sentimental and very foolish thing to do. If someone from Texas was looking for her, she’d made it easy. So didn’t that mean if the man had been looking for her, he’d have already found her? He wouldn’t be watching her from a stand of trees. Or chasing after Ivy in some grocery store.

“I’m sure it was nothing,” she said, trying to reassure Mildred. Trying even harder to reassure herself.

Mildred looked more worried. “Do you think you might know him?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Tall, dark and handsome definitely ruled out her brothers. They were tall, handsome and quite the ladies’ men with their Irish charm, but they were blond like her.

Unfortunately, tall, dark and handsome did fit both Odell Burton and Clay Jackson. But Odell was dead. And Clay… Well, he didn’t know where she was and didn’t have any reason to come looking for her. At least not one he knew about.

Don’t panic. Mildred’s right. It all sounds innocent enough. So what if he had a Texas accent? Texas is a big state. So what if he took an interest in Ivy?

But Josie knew what she really feared. That the man was somehow connected to Odell Burton and what had happened in Texas two years ago.

“Did you happen to see what he was driving?” Josie asked.

Mildred shook her head. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” she assured the older woman. “It might be someone I know from Texas. You see, no one back home knows where I am. I left in a hurry.” She smiled at Mildred. “I found myself pregnant and knew if I stuck around, my father would either demand a shotgun wedding or shoot the man. The truth is, he’d have probably shot him.” How could she explain the Texas law of the West when it came to daughters? Or for that matter, Texas cowboys and their codes of honor?

“It’s none of my business,” Mildred said. “I didn’t mean to pry—”

“I want to tell you,” she said. Mildred needed to know the truth—well at least some of it—to keep Ivy safe. “I didn’t want anyone to know about Ivy or who her father was. He was the last thing Ivy and I needed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mildred said. “Then you think this man I saw might be looking for you?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. But she intended to find out. If the man was still in town. “Would you mind watching Ivy for a little while tonight?”

Mildred readily agreed. “He really did seem like such a nice man.”

THERE WEREN’T MANY PLACES to stay in a town the size of Three Forks, Montana. As Josie left in one of the old ranch trucks, instead of her own truck with Texas plates, she was thinking about where the cowboy stranger with the Texas accent might be staying.

She figured it wouldn’t take much to find him—if he was still around. There was the Sacajawea Inn, a white, wood-framed historic hotel on the north edge of town. Or several motels.

She decided to start with the Broken Spur on the south end of town, but a block before the motel, she spotted a newer black Dodge pickup parked on a side street with the silhouette of a cowboy behind the wheel and Texas plates.

Distracted, she barely missed hitting an older model Lincoln Continental that sped out of the Broken Spur motel parking lot and pulled in front of her, headed for Main Street.

Her heart was still pounding over her close call when a set of bright headlights filled her cab. She looked in her rearview mirror to see that the Dodge pickup with the Texas plates had pulled out and fallen in behind her.

Flipping up her rearview mirror, she pulled her western hat down and stayed low in her seat, telling herself the truck wasn’t following her. Anyone going into town would come this way. It was a coincidence that the truck had pulled out behind her at that moment. Right.

She tried not to look back as she turned left onto Main Street. Downtown Three Forks was only about four blocks long. She went two of those blocks and parked diagonally between two cars in front of the Headwaters Café, the most well-lit part of town and the busiest this time of night.

Immediately she realized that if she got out, she’d be caught in the pickup’s headlights like a deer on the highway. She shut off her engine and slid down in the seat, knowing no matter what she did, if the pickup was following her, the driver knew where to find her.

Facing the inescapable, she watched the pickup park back up the street a few spaces away. She could see the driver silhouetted behind the wheel, a man wearing a cowboy hat, his face shaded and dark. But she could tell he was looking her way. Her heart lurched, her pulse taking off at a sprint as he opened his pickup door and stepped out.

It had been two years since she’d last seen the tall, broad-shouldered cowboy, but there was no mistaking him or the impact he had on her.

He pushed back his Stetson and glanced in her direction as he walked toward her truck. Her breath caught in her throat. What was Clay Jackson doing in Montana?

Chapter Two

Josie held her breath as Clay started in her direction, her heart pounding. He stepped up onto the sidewalk, the heels of his expensive boots tapping lightly as he walked. He wore a gray Stetson, a western-cut leather coat and jeans. He looked like he belonged here. Or maybe Clay just had a way of looking like he belonged anywhere.

As he neared her truck, she slid farther down in the seat, afraid it would do no good. Of course he’d seen her. He’d been following her! He’d watched her park. He’d know that she hadn’t had time to get out of the truck.

She grimaced, realizing she was caught. She waited for him to turn at her front left fender and walk back to her door, maybe tap on the window, or knowing Clay, just stand waiting until she acknowledged his presence.

To her amazement, he didn’t slow in front of her truck, didn’t come alongside. Instead, he walked to the café entrance, his gaze not on her or the ranch truck at all, but down the street, toward the Town Club bar, where the rusted, dented cream-colored Lincoln Continental that she’d almost hit a few minutes earlier was now parked.

In fact, it was as if he hadn’t seen her at all slumped down in the seat, peeking out from under the brim of her hat.

It suddenly hit her. Clay Jackson hadn’t been following her! Wasn’t looking for her!

She felt a bubble of relieved laughter float up. As far as she could tell he didn’t even know she was here in Three Forks.

But if he wasn’t looking for her, then what was he doing here?

She watched with interest as he entered the Headwaters Café, took a seat at a front table. He looked out the large picture window in the direction of the Lincoln as a waitress slid a cup of coffee in front of him. The Lincoln hadn’t moved, but the driver, Josie noticed, was no longer inside.

She studied Clay, thinking how little he’d changed, as if life had stood still back in Texas, back on his Valle Verde Ranch. While time had flown for her and everything had changed—especially her. And yet just the sight of him still evoked a mix of emotions, regret at the top of the list and an even stronger emotion that she’d spent two years trying to forget.