Nothing But Cowboy

by Justine Davis

  Add in the jack-of-all-trades, impossibly good-looking handyman with the incredible voice who sang as he worked, and this place was a treasure she’d like to blast out to the world if she didn’t want to keep it to herself at the moment.

  She reached the spot where a limestone ledge jutted out, creating a bend in the stream. It also created a calm pool to one side that looked almost deep enough to swim in, while the main stream rushed by. Sort of a metaphor for life. Hers, anyway. She’d spent too much of it in the rushing part, and not enough appreciating the cool, calm, and quiet parts. Of course that was her parents’ doing, mostly. Whenever she’d gotten to feeling comfortable someplace, they’d pulled up stakes and moved on.

  Hurry up, Sydney, or we’ll leave you here.

  She mentally shrugged off the old memory and focused on where she was now. She sat on the ledge, looking out at the water, the quiet pool and the rippled stream. Tried to focus, not on the mistake she’d made but on what to do next.

  She heard some quick, short chirps coming from above her. It was followed by a six-note song that ended on an attention-getting up note that made her smile. She looked into the tree just as a small bird took off. She thought she saw a flash of yellow on its head, but couldn’t be sure.

  She found she was still smiling, and realized she should have come out here much sooner. She’d always been able to find a smile outdoors, in the sighting of an animal going about the day, or the sounds like that birdcall. No matter where she’d been, it had always brought her peace, even if the creature she’d spotted could be a threat.

  Speaking of threats…

  The police chief of Last Stand.

  Somehow that put an entirely different cast on the whole thing. Coupled with the unexpected and unanticipated resistance, she was a bit at a loss. It had never occurred to her that Lucas’s foster family wouldn’t be glad she had turned up.

  Glad to be rid of him.

  Memories piled up behind the dam she’d built in her mind, threatening to break through. She fought them back. She stared at the water, at the spot where the calm met the rush. The water didn’t care which part it was in. She needed to find that mindset that would let her feel the same—that she could deal with whatever she landed in. She’d done it time and again, hadn’t she? It wasn’t like she was afraid of doing something new. How many times had her life been uprooted and she’d had to find her way in a new and strange place?

  But somehow this was different. And despite all the hardships and sometimes even danger she’d been in, the idea of building a family, the kind she’d never had, with her young cousin was more intimidating than anything she’d ever tried. But at the same time, it seemed more important as well.

  Maybe the most important thing in her life.

  A man came walking up from farther along the creek, a fishing pole in one hand and a creel over his shoulder. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and had on a well-worn baseball cap over dark hair just touched with gray at the temples. A handsome man, who seemed familiar. Without the cowboy hat, it took her a moment to recognize the man in the portrait she’d stopped to look at. Ranger Buckley, the owner of this place.

  When he saw her, he touched a hand to the brim of the cap as she’d seen every man wearing a cowboy hat do so far, and she guessed it was because he was used to it. She also noticed that hand was scarred, and that a couple of the fingers seemed rather stiff. Wondered if that was the reason for the end date of his service listed on the brass plate beneath that portrait.

  “Frank Buckley,” he said, introducing himself as he paused. “You must be Ms. Brock.”

  She smiled. “Sydney, please. Your place is lovely.”

  He smiled back. “I see you found our guests’ favorite spot for solving the world’s problems.”

  Her smile twisted rather wryly. “I’d settle for solving my own particular problem right now.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “To me, it is.”

  “Then it is,” he said easily. “Should I leave you to it, or would a sounding board help?”

  She was a little surprised at his easy demeanor. She would have expected more…reserve from a Texas Ranger. But he wasn’t one anymore. Or maybe he’d been like this then, too. It would make him easy to talk to.

  “Not unless that sounding board happens to know one Keller Rafferty.”

  She didn’t think she’d mistaken the flicker of surprise in the man’s dark eyes. “As it happens, I do. Rather well, in fact.”

  “You do?” Well, now, wasn’t that lucky?

  “I do.” His expression shifted slightly, as if he were remembering something painful. “I was with his mother, Maggie, when she got the news her husband had been killed in action. Keller was seventeen. That boy stepped up like no one I’ve ever seen, except maybe Shane Highwater.”

  The name caught her attention. “Is that…Mr. Rafferty’s friend Shane?” The one he practically threatened me with?

  The man nodded. “It’s no wonder they’re close friends. They’ve got the same spine, the same rock-solid values.”

  “Oh.” That sounded so lame she winced inwardly. But she didn’t know what else to say.

  “What’s your business with Keller?”

  Was it her imagination, or had his tone changed? Become sharper, as if the easygoing host had been replaced by the Ranger? “I…do you know the boy who’s living there?”

  “The kid Keller’s fostering? I do.” He frowned. “If you’re with some agency looking into that, I can tell you firsthand that boy’s come a long way, with Keller’s help. He couldn’t be in a better place.”

  Except with his own flesh and blood—She cut off her own thought. She of all people should know flesh and blood didn’t always mean what it should.

  “I understand he’s there because they couldn’t find any family.”

  “Wasn’t any to find, to my knowledge.” His frown deepened. “And before we go any further, you’d best tell me how you’re involved in this. With some identification, preferably.”

  Sydney sighed inwardly. She had a feeling her effort at identifying herself to this man would go about as well as it had with Keller Rafferty. Or maybe not. At least this man didn’t make her feel like Rafferty had, as if every nerve had gone on alert, tearing her between the urge to run and the urge to…she wasn’t sure what.

  And that alone made her feel as wary as she had been as a child when she’d had to ford that stream in Argentina right after hearing horror stories about the piranha that lived in it.

  “That didn’t go so well with Mr. Rafferty. I showed him my passport and he still didn’t believe me.”

  “Not usually the first form of ID around here,” he said, sounding interested. She didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  “I don’t have a valid US driver’s license at the moment. My old one expired because I wasn’t here.”

  “And where might you have been?”

  She gave him a sideways look. “You want a list?”

  “Let’s just start with, say, the most recent three.”

  Was he laughing at her? She couldn’t tell. Which she supposed was a benefit, or had been when he’d had the badge on. “Australia, the UK, Sweden. Working backward,” she clarified. “I was on a buying trip for my company.”

  “And those stops are on that passport of yours?”

  “They are.”

  “How long have you been back stateside?”

  “Only a couple of weeks. I flew back as soon as I…found out.”

  “Found out what?”

  She had to decide whether to trust this man, and she had to decide now. She went with her gut, which had only occasionally steered her wrong, and those times had usually been when she’d lacked some crucial piece of information.

  She drew in a deep breath. “When I found out my aunt and uncle had been killed.”

  His brow furrowed. “What does that have to do with Keller Rafferty?”

  “My aunt and uncle were Jessica and David Bro
ck. Lucas’s parents.” He drew back sharply, and she finished it. “And now I know both they and my parents apparently lied to Lucas and me, all our lives.”

  Chapter Six

  “You believe her?” Keller frowned as he moved out onto the back porch of the ranch house to get a better cell signal.

  “I’m saying she has a story worth checking out. It’s…interesting to say the least.”

  Keller tapped a finger restlessly on the back of his phone. He trusted Frank Buckley completely; the man was a fixture in Last Stand, and his reputation with the Rangers was among the highest. He probably would have ended up heading the area Ranger company, if not the whole darned operation, if he hadn’t been shot and refused to take an offered desk job. Instead he’d come home to Last Stand, to the family property, which he and his wife had then converted into the quickly successful Hickory Creek Inn.

  I had my run, and she stood up to being a Ranger’s wife for twenty years. It’s her turn now, time for her dream.

  Keller remembered hearing that part of his mother’s conversation with the man, at the party celebrating the opening of the inn. And how it had moved his tough, cool mother to tears, a rare enough occurrence that Keller had always remembered it. He’d asked her about it afterward, and the answer had nearly brought him to tears in turn.

  It’s what your father said. That I’d served just as he had, and when his last deployment was up he’d quit, that it would be my turn.

  He hadn’t a clue what to say, so he’d merely hugged her and held her, marveling yet again at the Texas-sized strength in that small woman. And aching inside for the father who had, even in the short seventeen years he’d had him, taught him so much.

  “You want to hear her out?” Frank asked, snapping him out of the memory.

  Always hear them out, son. Then you’ll know for sure if you need to take action.

  Odd, how Frank hit right on one of those things his father had taught him, right after that memory. If he believed in signs from the universe and that sort of rot, he might think this had been one.

  “Maybe,” he said cautiously.

  “Should I send her back out to your place?”

  “No! I don’t want her anywhere near Lucas until I’m sure she’s who she says she is.”

  Nor would he say a word to the boy; he couldn’t imagine anything worse piled onto his already badly damaged life than thinking maybe he did have a relative only to have it turn out to have been a lie. Keller wasn’t sure what she would be after if that were the case, but he wasn’t about to let her get to the kid until he knew if she was for real.

  And if she wasn’t, he’d make damned sure she got what she deserved for playing that kind of game with a boy whose life had been practically destroyed.

  “I get that,” Frank answered, and Keller thought there was a note of approval in his tone. “Then come here. Tomorrow. And maybe call out the troops. The chief, and maybe Ms. Leclair, since she was part of this?” A chuckle came into his voice then. “I seem to remember another formal meeting she put together here that turned out all right.”

  Keller smiled in spite of himself. “You mean the one that turned out with her about to marry your handyman?”

  He heard Frank chuckle. “Yeah, that one.”

  Keller let out a long breath. “Let me talk to Lark first. I’ll call you back.”

  Lark was as shocked as he had been when he gave her the digest version of what had happened, and Sydney Brock’s claim. “But it was specifically mentioned in the Brocks’ will and papers that there were no other surviving relatives.”

  “Did anyone look beyond that?”

  “Other than a standard name run, probably not. There was no reason to—Lucas verified there was no one else and never had been. His father had been even younger than Lucas when his brother died, only six I think it was. Then the parents, Lucas’s grandparents, died a few years ago. His mother had lost both parents some time ago. It was a real only child of only children of only children situation.”

  “So his father did have a brother?”

  “Yes, we found the birth records. He was ten years older than Lucas’s father, but reportedly died when he was sixteen.”

  “Reported by who?”

  “More than one person.” Lark sounded worried now. “Several friends, and Lucas, they all had the same story, and it was actually mentioned in the instructions his parents left that there was no one else. I’ll admit they didn’t backtrack thirty years to look for a death certificate, because it was so cut and dried, nobody was arguing the basic facts.”

  “And why would they?” Keller said, afraid she was feeling she’d made a misstep when it had nothing to do with her really; all she’d done was help out a lost kid and a friend.

  “But if she’s lying, what is she after? Money? There’s life insurance—they were good about that since there was no one else to look after him, or so they said—and the money from selling the house, but it’s not all that much, and it all went into a trust fund with a court-appointed trustee. He can’t get to it yet, and neither could she.”

  “Good question.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He explained Frank’s offer, and Lark immediately offered to be there too, if he wanted. “Please.”

  “Can you give me until eleven? I have an appointment at nine that might take some time.”

  “Sure.” His mouth quirked. “I’ll make Frank feed us, since he butted in.”

  She laughed, and they ended the call on a less urgent note.

  Keller felt thoughts and questions piling up in his mind. So he did what he always did when he had too much swirling in his head to even decide what to tackle first. He saddled up and went for a ride.

  His brain was a little too occupied with the memory of the moment he’d opened the door to a pair of golden eyes that seemed to glow in the Texas sun. Well, that and the unusual bicolored hair. Which maybe he didn’t dislike as much as he’d thought at first. Or maybe those eyes, that lovely shape, that mouth outweighed it.

  Not to mention the silky voice that emerged from that mouth.

  Don’t call me honey unless you mean it.

  He yanked his brain off that fruitless path, one that he most definitely did not want to travel.

  By the time he and Blue—a to him logical but to his mother, who’d started a train of number names, boring name he’d chosen for obvious reasons, since the horse he’d raised from a foal was a blue roan—reached the upper pasture, he wasn’t much further on motive. He inspected his mother’s prized Angus, an experiment she’d waited years to try, who were grazing there, but his mind was back on the visitor with the two-tone hair. Had she really thought she could simply waltz in here and they’d let her just grab Lucas and go? Even if she was who she said she was?

  And if she wasn’t, what the hell was her game? Was there some hidden inheritance they didn’t know about that she was after? But how would she know when none of the agencies involved in putting him into the system had uncovered it? He wasn’t one with utter faith in that system, but something like that seemed pretty basic.

  The lack of a logical explanation was the determining factor. He pulled out his phone, checked the signal, decided the flickering one to two bars he got out here was enough for a text, and typed one out. Then he reined Blue around and headed back. Just as he topped the last rise and was in view of the ranch house, his phone rang. As he’d expected, it was Shane.

  “Hi Highwater.” He said it without pause, as he always had back in school, so it sounded like Hi-Highwater. Shane chuckled. “You in the middle of something? Or is that a stupid question?” The man was the police chief, after all.

  “Depends how much time you need.”

  “Just a minute or two now. But maybe longer tomorrow.”

  “I’ll work it out. What’s up?”

  He explained again, as he had to Lark. And as he’d expected, Shane grasped the implications, including at least one he himself had not.


  “Is Lucas at school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Might want to call them and warn them not to release him during school hours to any stranger. It’s policy anyway, but a heads-up wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Damn. I didn’t think of that. I’ll do that right away.”

  “Good. I’ll do some digging on the family, although it sounds like if there is anything, it’s old and hidden deep. Which means I should put Sean on it.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Keller said fervently, knowing the tenacity of the detective who also happened to be Shane’s younger brother.

  “It’ll do him good, to have to track something back to the paper ticket days. And I’ll tell him we need whatever he can find by eleven tomorrow morning.”

  “Don’t,” Keller said with a laugh. “He’ll be up all night, chasing through that rabbit hole.”

  The call ended with Shane’s promise to be there tomorrow, which was golden in the way few promises were.

  Now he just had to keep all this from his too-observant mother.

  Chapter Seven

  “You did this?” Sydney stared at Frank Buckley. “You set this up?” She was reeling a little. A meeting with Keller Rafferty, his good friend the police chief, and the former Child Protective Services worker who had helped him become Lucas’s foster parent? Seemed a little one-sided to her.

  “Eleven o’clock tomorrow,” the man said, “and you can hash this all out on neutral ground.”

  “Neutral ground? You say that like we’re at war. And I’ll be outnumbered.”

  “You may well be at war,” Frank said quietly. “Keller won’t surrender that boy unless he’s certain he should. And that’s if Lucas wants it. If that boy says no, Keller will fight you to the end.”

  “You make him sound like…like…”

  “A Texan? He is, to the bone. His mom’s family has been here since the revolution.” Her brow furrowed, but before she could ask, he added, “That’s the Texas Revolution, of course. Keller’s mother is a direct descendant of two of the most famous fighters at the last stand.”