A Cowboy To Keep

Her lungs expanded as she took in a deep, stress-management breath. It wasn’t the same thing. She hadn’t actually intended to commit a crime.

In a flash, she was twenty-one again, double-parked on a busy street in Oklahoma City, finished with her morning jumping competition, excited to see what mischief her boyfriend, Kevin, would coax her into today. Maybe they’d borrow that ATV they’d been eyeing the past few days and take it for a spin. The owners looked like they were away...

A loud bang on the passenger-side window jolted her out of her thoughts and Kevin’s face appeared in the window.

“Let me in!” he yelled like some wild carjacker, and she immediately unlocked the door and hit the gas pedal when he hollered, “Drive! Fast!”

She thought maybe he’d gotten in a fight. He had a quick temper and she’d seen how easily he got riled. She wouldn’t stick around for some offended mountain boy to stomp out and teach Kevin a few manners.

Her pulse raced as they blew through five intersections before he turned to her with a big grin and opened his duffel bag. At the stacks of cash spilling through the open zipper, she hit the brakes and got honked at by a car that swerved around her.

“Woooo-hooooo!” Kevin whooped. His eyes darted over her shoulder. “That’s fifty Gs. At least. We’re going to take a vacation. I’ll buy you something special, too. Promise.”

Her insides froze. Her outside, too, for that matter, her hands awkward on the steering wheel.

“What did you do?” she asked dumbly, her thoughts tumbling over each other as she resumed driving, her body on a tense sort of autopilot. Sure they liked raising hell, but this...?

She wasn’t that kind of person.

Later on, as she’d agonized over what to do, she’d seen a picture of herself on TV. A wanted woman with a misspelled name—in some ways anonymous. She’d vowed to turn herself in, but was stopped by a call from Kevin. After she’d dropped him off to meet his cousin, a bank employee who’d been Kevin’s accomplice, the two men had been apprehended.

“You won’t do me any good locked up,” he’d said after he explained that he hadn’t clarified the correct spelling of her name or given any details about her. “When I get out, I’ll need a place to go, someone to help me out, and that’s you.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“Well. You won’t have a choice because you’ll owe me.”

Muffled words sounded through the phone, as if he’d put a hand on it, and then his voice returned, sharp as a knife.

“Look, my time’s up. Just remember what I said,” he’d hissed. “You owe me.”

The line went dead before she could speak.

At the gargled shriek of her connecting hard drive, her eyes flew open, rocketing her from her past and into the present that didn’t feel so very different.

A whirring overhead fan stirred the muggy air in the cramped space and didn’t cool her burning cheeks one bit. She needed to distract herself, and checking through her guest preference sheets a final time wouldn’t cut it.

A thirst to know more about Jack took hold. Technically that wouldn’t be procrastinating, since she needed to know about her employees—real or otherwise.

Ahem.

Oh, who cared if she justified her actions? She was curious and no one would know.

She opened her browser, typed his name in and drummed her fingers beside the framed family photos on her desk, waiting...waiting...waiting...for the toddler-sized brain of her ancient hard drive to figure out what she wanted.

Her gaze drifted over her eclectic picture collection. There was her father at age five in black-and-white, pulling a wagon with a droopy beagle in it. Beside him was a photo of her younger sister, Claire, her glowing face bent toward her newborn son, Jonathan, now ten, cradled in her arms. That fiercely tender expression always made a lump rise in Dani’s throat when she looked at it, remembering the miracle of that day.

Next to the photo of her sister was her much younger self atop a brown-and-white pony, her short legs just barely hitting the stirrups, reins gripped tight in her small hands, her huge smile scrunching her nose and eyes so that she was all freckles and teeth. Brownie... She traced her first mount’s nose, nostalgia rising, the sense of loss increasing as her eyes drifted to a last picture: her mother at Port Aransas.

Her mom perched on the rear deck of a fishing boat they’d chartered, her arm slung with casual abandon over Papa’s. Mama was laughing at the camera, at Dani, who’d been making crazy faces to get her to smile while Claire snapped the shot.

Remembering the I-love-you-you-fool look her mom usually wore around Dani, how her mother had always called her “baby girl,” wrung her heart right out. She’d never be anyone’s baby girl again.

She tore her eyes away and studied the monitor, the muscles on either side of her mouth tense as she kept her lips from wobbling, her mother dying again and again and again, as she did every time Dani looked at that photo. She wished she could step into it and have another one of her mama’s lilac-scented hugs that warmed her right through.

Her bangs lifted at the force of her exhale, and as she scanned her computer’s search results, a Forbes headline on the computer caught her eye.

New Heir to Cade Ranch: Jackson Cade.

Puzzled, she swirled her mouse on her Pride and Prejudice pad, brought the cursor over the words and clicked.

A picture of a beautiful vista, Rocky Mountains rising over grassy planes dotted with grazing cattle, appeared. Cade Ranch, the article chronicled, one of the biggest cattle ranches in Colorado, had been visited with tragedy when its owner, Jackson Sr., was killed in a private jet crash, leaving the firstborn of six kids, Jackson Jr., to step in as CEO of this beef corporation at the tender age of twenty-one. The article went on to talk about business facts that made her eyes cross. She closed the tab, wondering.

Why would the owner of a lucrative ranch leave it to track criminals?

She glanced at herself atop Brownie. Lots of reasons drove a person from home. Could Jack’s be one as dark as hers? A sympathy for him rose, which was ridiculous because she didn’t know any actual facts.

Her curiosity still piqued, she resumed her search and another headline snagged her eye.

Jackson Cade Sets Passing Record and Clinches Division One Win.

She clicked on it and a large shot of a teenaged Jackson filled the screen. His jubilant expression as he thrust two fists in the air while being held aloft by screaming teammates made her squint, marveling that this could be the same person as the remote, sober-looking man she’d met.

His unscarred face beamed at her, and the thought that he was almost too perfect-looking then, strange as that sounded, struck her. His scar brought his heavenly good looks back to earth, so that now he resembled a darker angel, a look that drew her much, much more than a Hollywood appearance.

But did her attraction suggest she might be falling into her old habits? She’d always had a weakness for sympathetic bad boys. She’d sworn off relationships, but now another brooding hero had appeared, just like the ones in her favorite gothic romances.

Well. No, thanks.

She’d left tragic love stories safely between the pages where they belonged long ago. She wouldn’t reopen that chapter in her life again.

* * *

JACK SLIPPED ALONG the edge of the clearing behind Tanya’s cabin, sticking to the tree line, out of view. No sense in alarming Smiley’s girlfriend in case she wasn’t involved (doubtful) or warning her if she was (a much more likely scenario).

It’d been clear she was hiding something from the moment Dani mentioned Smiley. He hoped she’d get something more out of Tanya when she visited her friend later. Would she blow his cover?

He moved a sapling aside and stepped over a rotting tree stump. Something about Dani made him instantly reject the idea. She’d given her word, and while he didn’t trust her, his instinct said that meant something to her.

He smiled as he pictured the spirited woman. She looked like the type who’d defend her friends till the end, who saw the good in people until they proved her wrong, which was just like...

His eyes dropped to his tattoo, and Jesse’s wide-open grin flashed through his mind, making his own smile fade. He forced his mind back to the hunt.

When he glimpsed the dirt footpath that led off Tanya’s clearing up to the copper mine, Jack followed it. He stepped lightly over protruding boulders and exposed roots as thick as his arms. Studying the dirt, he noted that the fresh prints lingering in the muddy depressions all pointed to Tanya’s house. A one-way trip. He puzzled over it, doubled back, moved slower still, checking and rechecking the area as he ascended the hill.

The shadows cast by the slanting sun pooled in the depressions, the way he preferred for tracking, illuminating the minute distinctions. A square heel with a pointed toe. Boots. Size twelve or so. A slight notch on the back of the left heel seemed to appear more than once. The stride suggested a man of average height, his build slightly husky given the depth of the impression, his gait uneven, which might mean bowlegs, a limp or just an adjustment for the terrain. There weren’t enough solid prints to be sure.

And where was the return set? Or a partner’s? Smiley could be hiding alone in Tanya’s house and waiting to slip back up to the mine to meet someone.