Cowboy At Arms

She gripped her order pad tightly in her hand and walked over to the booth were they were seated. “Good evening, gentlemen. What can I get for you all?”

“Trisha, honey, if you were on the menu I’d order you up in a hot minute,” Zeke said, his dark eyes gliding over her from head to toe. “In fact, I’d make it a double order to go.”

Lloyd elbowed his younger buddy and offered Trisha an apologetic smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Trisha. You know he’s just a dumb knucklehead.”

Daisy ambled over to the booth and smiled at Trisha. “Trisha, why don’t you go ahead and take your break now? I’ll take care of these rascals.”

With a sigh of relief, Trisha headed for the break room in the back of the café. Once inside the small room, she sat in one of the chairs and stared at her blouse hanging on a nearby coatrack. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and gazed down at the keypad.

She’d already put Dusty’s phone number into her list of contacts. All she had to do was punch a couple of buttons and she would be connected to him.

Desire battled with the old fear that had become so familiar. Was she a complete fool to believe that she could really have a normal life? A life that included going on dates with handsome cowboys and hopefully someday finding a special man who would love not only her but also her son?

She slid her phone back into her pocket. She wasn’t going to cancel meeting Dusty. She had no idea if he might be that special man, but she’d never know if she didn’t take a chance.

Is it safe?

She could only hope that she was truly free of the evil of her past.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_7fc0ef7c-095c-56c4-81dc-fb48e9619603)

Dusty stood in front of the mirror above the sink in his tiny bathroom and gazed at his reflection. Hair neatly combed...check. Light blue dress shirt buttoned and tucked into his jeans...check.

He grabbed a bottle of spicy cologne and splashed it on both sides of his neck and beneath his jaw and then left the bathroom. He was ready ridiculously early. It was only a few minutes before nine.

Nerves bounced around in the pit of his stomach. He’d drive himself crazy if he cooled his heels alone in the small bunk room he called home.

He stepped out the door and gazed down the length of the motel-like units where the cowboys who worked on the Holiday ranch lived. None of the other men were anywhere in sight.

He began the walk around to the back of the building where the cowboy dining room and a recreation area were located. Most of the men would be in town on a Saturday night, but there were always a few who preferred hanging out together in the rec room.

“Whoa, we could smell you coming from a mile away,” Adam Benson, the ranch foreman, exclaimed as he waved a hand in front of his nose when Dusty walked in.

“And he’s nice and cleaned up, too,” Tony Nakni, another ranch hand, added. “Hot date?”

“I don’t know how hot it’s going to be, but I’m meeting Trisha at the Watering Hole after she gets off work at the café,” Dusty said and sank down on a chair next to Tony.

Tony clapped him on the back. “So, you finally got up the nerve to ask her out.”

“Yeah, and even more surprising is that she actually agreed to meet with me.” Nerves once again kicked up in the pit of Dusty’s stomach.

“Well, it’s about time,” Adam replied. “You’ve been half-crazy about her forever.”

“You’re one to talk. Everyone knows you have a thing for Cassie. When are you going to ask her out on an official date?” Dusty asked.

Cassie Peterson had inherited the ranch from her aunt Cass, the woman who had taken in a bunch of dysfunctional, lost young boys and turned them into not just cowboys, but also strong and capable men.

There had been a lot of speculation as to whether the pretty blonde would stay and work the ranch or sell it and return to New York City, where she had a store that sold her original oil paintings, among other things.

The crime scene that had been discovered on the property had temporarily halted any plans she might have entertained of selling the ranch, but none of them knew what Cassie’s next move might be now that the skeletons had been removed.

“Yeah, maybe if you cozied up to her a little bit more then you could convince her to stick around here,” Tony said to Adam.

“You all know that the last thing I want is for her to sell out and leave us all not only jobless but homeless and separated, as well,” Adam replied.

They were all silent for a long moment. With the help of social worker Francine Rogers, Cass Holiday had taken in a dozen runaway boys to work her ranch. As they’d grown and matured, they had formed a family unit and Dusty had considered each one of the other men a brother.

As the others continued to speculate on Cassie’s future plans for the ranch, Dusty was far more concerned about his own imminent future and his date with Trisha.

He’d dated several women in town over the past couple of years, but he’d never made a real connection with any of them. Sometimes he wondered in the darkness of the night if his childhood had made it impossible for him to ever trust...to ever really love anyone.

He remained talking with the other men until nine thirty and then stood. “It’s time for me to head out,” he said.

“Good luck,” Tony said. “I hope you both have a great time.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Adam added.

Dusty laughed. “I wouldn’t think of it.”

He left the building and headed for the large shed where the men parked their personal vehicles and stored other big ranch equipment.

In the brilliant moonlight, the blue tent that covered the crime scene rose up like an alien entity. He grimaced as he thought of the skeletons. They had been found under the floorboards of an old shed the men had taken down after the spring storm that had killed Cass.

The discovery had been shocking, and even more shocking was that Chief of Police Dillon Bowie suspected it was possible that one of the men working the ranch might be responsible for the seven murdered young men.

Dusty would never believe that one of the men he considered his brothers was responsible for the murders that had occurred around the time the twelve young men had first begun working for Cass.

She had been a good judge of character and surely never would have kept anyone around who showed any kind of violent tendencies, somebody who was capable of slamming a meat cleaver or an ax into the skull of another human being.

If there was a killer in Bitterroot, then the odds were much better that he worked on the Humes ranch. Raymond Humes liked his ranch hands mean and on the edge, and many of them had been around for years or had been born and raised here.

As Dusty drove the short distance from the ranch into town, all thoughts of the murders fled his mind as he once again thought about the night to come with Trisha.

He had no idea if she was a potential long-term match for him or not. All he knew for sure was that he was attracted to her. For months she had invaded his thoughts and dreams. There was also a growing well of loneliness deep inside him.

Maybe his loneliness was more apparent lately because three of his fellow cowboys had found their love matches in the last couple of months. They had been a dozen single men working and living together, and now they were only nine. Dusty wanted to find the same kind of happiness that they had all found.

The Watering Hole was the only official bar in town. It was housed in a large wooden building and on a Saturday night the parking lot was nearly full.

He wished that there had been someplace to meet that was a little quieter, but this was basically the only game in town at this time of the night other than the café where Trisha worked.

Hopefully, he could snag a table away from the dance floor, where the music would be softer and they could actually carry on some kind of a meaningful conversation without too much difficulty.

He found an empty parking space and pulled in. The dog days of August were upon them. The stifling night air slapped him in the face as he hurried from his pickup toward the cooler air that would greet him inside the bar.

The place was definitely jumping. Dozens of couples moved across the dance floor to the beat of the jukebox playing a rousing country western song. Bottles and glasses clinked as drinks were poured and delivered by the waitresses, and laughter rang out from all four corners of the huge room.

Dusty waved to Brody Booth, Sawyer Quincy and Jerrod Steen, all fellow cowboys from the Holiday ranch. They sat together at a table near the back room, where there were two pool tables and a dartboard.