Second Chance Colton

Ryan frowned to himself. Ever since Greta had gotten engaged, she’d spent more and more of her time in Oklahoma City, where her fiancé lived. She’d even taken on horse training jobs there.

“I thought you’d stick around the ranch for a while, you know, because of Mother.”

There was silence on the other end of the line and for a moment, he thought that the call had been dropped. But then Greta said, “Yes, well, I wasn’t really doing her any good just hanging around the house. Especially since she kept looking at me as if she was afraid of me. As if she thought I was going to do something to her. I don’t know what’s with that,” Greta complained, sounding as if she was at a complete loss.

“Did you ask her about it?” Ryan asked.

“Yes. But when I asked her why she was looking at me like that,” Greta went on, obviously upset about the matter, “she denied it.”

“So what’s the problem?”

He heard Greta sigh. “I got the feeling she denied it because she was afraid if she didn’t, I’d do something to her.”

He couldn’t believe that things between his mother and sister had actually degenerated down to this, but then Abra was prone to mood swings. “You’re imagining things, Greta.”

He heard Greta sigh. “I suppose that maybe I am, but just the other day she asked me if I was doing any recreational drugs. Me, who’s never taken anything stronger than an aspirin. I think that beating Mother took might have been even more serious than any of us suspected.”

It was Ryan’s turn to sigh. No one was more frustrated about not being able to find whoever had hurt his mother than he was. But right now, he had the break-in to deal with.

The break-in with the evidence mounting against Greta. There had to be an explanation for all this, he thought, but he needed to talk to her in person to get at the truth.

Growing up, Greta had been a tomboy almost in self-defense. She’d been outnumbered by her brothers five to one and had learned to hold her own at a very early age. At five-nine she was tall and willowy, and at first glance, very feminine.

But she was also tough to the point that he was certain no one could easily push her around. As far as he knew, his sister didn’t really have much of a temper, but then he supposed everyone could be pushed to their limit. What was Greta’s limit? he couldn’t help wondering.

Was there something that could push Greta over the edge?

His thought process suddenly took him in a very new direction, almost against his will. What if, for some reason, their mother had suddenly taken exception to Greta’s pending marriage to Mark Stanton? Handsome and glibly charming, it was no secret that the younger brother of the president of Stanton Oil got by on his looks, not his work ethic. Maybe, despite the fact that she had been instrumental in throwing Greta and Mark an engagement party—their father always left such things to his wife—Abra had told Greta to slow down and think things through and Greta had balked. One thing could have had led to another and—

And what? Ryan silently demanded. Greta had had a complete reversal in personality and gone ballistic on their mother? That account just didn’t fly for him.

None of this was making any sense to him—and he was getting one hell of a headache just reviewing all the various details over and over again in his head.

“Ryan? Are you still there?” The stress in Greta’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“What?” Embarrassed, he flushed. Luckily there was no one to see him. “Yeah, I’m still here, Greta. How long have you been in Oklahoma City?” he asked her abruptly, changing direction.

He heard her hesitate. Was she thinking, or...?

“A couple of weeks or so,” Greta finally answered. “Why?”

Ryan suppressed his sigh. “Which is it? A couple of weeks? Or ‘so’?”

“Three weeks,” she replied more specifically, irritation evident in her voice. “Just what’s this all about, Ryan?”

He didn’t address her question. Instead, he asked her another one of his own. “So you weren’t there—at the ranch—yesterday morning? Or the night before?”

“No, I already told you,” she replied, annoyed. “I was here, working. Why are you asking me all these weird questions?” she asked. And then, as if she had a premonition about what was happening, she asked, “Ryan, what’s going on?”

He gave her the unvarnished details. “Someone broke into the stables early yesterday morning.”

“That’s awful,” she cried, upset. And then realization entered her voice, as did abject horror. “Wait, why would you think that it was me?”

Maybe he should have refrained from telling her this until later, but Greta was his sister and he had to give her every benefit of the doubt. “Because one of the windows had been deliberately broken and there was blood on the jagged edges.”

Even as she said the words, she couldn’t really get herself to believe it. It was there in her voice as she asked in stunned disbelief, “My blood?”

He had never hated sharing a piece of information more than this. “Yes.”

She felt as if she had slipped into some sort of parallel universe, one that was not bound by the laws of reason—or reality for that matter.

Stunned, she protested, “That’s not possible,” because she couldn’t see how it could be. “What reason would I have to break into the stable, going through a window for heaven’s sake?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, Greta. That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he told her wearily. “The DNA test that came back from the lab was conclusive.”

“Then you need better equipment—or better people doing the test—because the results they came up with are wrong. I wasn’t there,” Greta insisted heatedly one more time. “I was here, in Oklahoma City, working with the horses.”

Ryan paused for a moment, hating what he had to ask. But this was protocol, not something personal—even though he knew that Greta would take it that way. And in her place, he would have felt the same way. “Can anyone vouch for you?”

“The horses aren’t talking,” she snapped at him in exasperation.

“I didn’t think so,” he replied, hoping to inject a tiny trace of humor into the extremely awkward exchange. “How about the rancher who hired you?”

“Sorry, no help in that quarter,” she informed her brother coldly. “He’s away on business. Apparently he trusts me because I’ve got free access to his ranch while he’s away so I can come and go at will.”

Ryan took no offense at the attitude that had slipped into his sister’s voice. If someone had been listening to their exchange, it would sound as if he was trying to break Greta down.

“How about Mark?” he asked hopefully. Personally, he didn’t care for his sister’s intended, but maybe the man could prove good for something. Maybe he could provide the alibi that Greta needed. “Is he—”

Greta cut him off. “Mark’s just away. I don’t know where he is.”

What she didn’t say was that her fiancé had been rather flaky of late, not showing up when he said he would, being secretive whenever he did show up. She had a very uneasy feeling that the second she had agreed to marry him, Mark had decided he no longer had to be on his best behavior.

But none of this was something she wanted to share with her family, especially since someone had almost killed her mother, and apparently her police detective brother thought that she might be the one who was responsible for that.

Ryan jumped on the last thing she’d said like a hungry dog on his first bone after suffering a week of deprivation. “What do you mean you don’t know where he is?”

Greta’s tone became entirely defensive. It was obvious that she was tired of having to defend herself. “Just what I said. He’s my fiancé, Ryan, not my pet. I don’t keep track of him when he’s ‘off leash,’” she informed her brother heatedly.

Ryan felt he would have had to have been deaf to have missed her hostility. Not that he could blame her. Again, he supposed he’d feel the same way in her place if she’d all but accused him of hurting their mother and then began questioning him about vandalizing the family ranch.

The Lucky C was their father’s pride and joy. Big J treated the ranch as if it was actually an entity unto itself, as human as the rest of them—at times, maybe even more so.

Much as he hated to admit it, he had lost control of this conversation. All he’d wanted to do was arrange to get together with Greta to have this discussion face-to-face and it had veered completely off track. He had no idea how to smooth things over, only that he had to do it in order to get something to work with.

Pausing, he searched for words. But before they could come to him, his cell buzzed, announcing a second call was attempting to come in.

The phrase “saved by the bell” suddenly occurred to him.