by Kat Martin
“What is it?” Kade asked, catching up with her again.
“Looks like a piece of red flannel.” She plucked it off the single strand of barbed wire that ran along the top of the fence. “He must have caught it as he was arriving or leaving.”
“Could belong to anyone.”
Ellie studied the direct line between the knoll and the road. “It could be, but I’m betting it doesn’t.”
Kade took the small red square out of her palm. His fingers clenched around it. “I’m going to find him. And when I do, he’s going to wish he had never trespassed on my land.”
CHAPTER FIVE
WITH THEIR TRIP TO TOWN CANCELED, ELLIE RETURNED TO THE kitchen while Kade phoned Eagle County Sheriff Glen Carver. He showed up an hour later, a broad-shouldered man in his late-thirties with thinning brown hair cut short. Ellie wandered out as Kade talked to him about the shooting. Carver asked all the right questions, said he’d take a ride out to look at the second steer, but there was something in his eyes when he looked at Kade that made her wonder about him.
She went back inside and worked with Maria to put supper on the table, a meal of ham and lima beans with cornbread and honey butter, apple cobbler for dessert.
When supper was over, Ellie went to her room to check her email. Her laptop sat on the pretty Victorian writing desk in the sitting area. She sat down in the small, ornately carved chair in front of the screen and pulled up her mail. Conn had sent her a copy of the police report, which dated to the time Heather’s body had been found, but there wasn’t much in it.
At the time, Sheriff Carver had interviewed some of the locals, but by then the case was cold. Two years earlier, everyone, including Kade, had assumed Heather had taken off for parts unknown and simply disappeared.
Needing a little fresh air, Ellie wandered outside, crossing the yard toward the barn, a big two-story, metal-roofed, wooden structure painted brown. Darkness had settled in. In the quiet, she could hear the soft sound of branches rustling in the breeze and horses moving around in the pasture.
Smoke trotted up beside her, and she scratched behind his ears as she walked through the open sliding double doors. The familiar smell of hay and horses greeted her, along with the shuffle of hooves in one of the stalls.
A dainty little bay mare nickered and stuck her head over the top of her enclosure. Ellie rubbed the velvety nose and straightened the horse’s topknot. “Aren’t you a pretty girl?” The mare nickered softly.
“Her name’s Buttercup.” Kade’s deep voice came out of the shadows. “The vet gave her a tetanus shot for a cut on her hock, but she’s almost healed. She’ll be fine in a couple of days. Maybe you’d like to ride her sometime.”
She couldn’t see his eyes beneath the brim of his hat, but she would have recognized that iron-hard jaw anywhere. A tingle of awareness slipped through her. She told herself to go back to the house, but her legs refused to move.
“I haven’t ridden since I left Wyoming,” she said, working to keep her voice even. “I used to love it. I had my own horse. His name was Rusty. The bank claimed him as part of the assets when they foreclosed on our ranch.”
Kade moved out of the shadows. The snaps on his denim shirt glinted in the moonlight coming in through the open barn windows. “That had to be tough. I know how I’d feel if I lost the Diamond Bar.”
“In a way, it killed my dad. I mean, he just got so depressed. Then he got sick and died.”
She didn’t tell him that she and her mother were left with nothing. That she had worked two jobs to help her mom pay the rent on the small apartment they’d been forced to move into. Or that after her mom finally got a decent job, Ellie had worked to put herself through college.
She didn’t say that the hardships they had faced were the reason her independence was so important. She had only given it up one time, when she had married Mark, and that had been a disaster. She wouldn’t let it happen again.
“I came to tell you I’d drive you into Coffee Springs tomorrow,” Kade said. “I can drop you off in town before I head into Eagle to see the sheriff. Hopefully this time nothing will happen to postpone the trip.”
“I’m looking forward to talking to some of the locals.”
“Remember to keep an eye open for a guy wearing a torn red flannel shirt.”
She glanced up at him. “You don’t really think . . . ?”
Amusement lifted a corner of that hard sexy mouth. Her insides curled as a thread of heat slipped through her.
Lust, she thought. It’s just a normal response. What woman wouldn’t lust after a handsome, ruggedly virile male like Kade Logan. “I’ll be sure to keep watch,” she replied with a smile.
She turned away and started back toward the barn door, and Kade fell in beside her, slowing a little to match his long strides to her shorter ones.
They crossed the yard, but he stopped her at the base of the steps leading up to the porch on this side of the house.
“I appreciate your insight on the shooting. You’ve got a good eye for analyzing a situation.”
“Thanks. It’s a learned but very useful skill.” She opened the door and stepped into the hall that led to the mudroom on the other side of the kitchen. She could hear the sound of Kade’s heavy boots behind her. Ignoring the uptick of her heartbeat, she turned into her room and firmly closed the door.
Ellie leaned back against it. Her pulse was throbbing, and heat tugged low in her belly. She hadn’t dated in months, hadn’t had a relationship serious enough to include sex in years. She would have to be careful. She couldn’t afford to indulge her off-the-charts attraction to Kade.
Ellie sighed. The last thing she needed was a controlling man like Kade Logan, a man used to running his domain with an iron hand. She needed to do her job and get back to Denver.
Before she made another mistake.
* * *
As he strode down the hall to his study, Kade’s mind went back to the moments he had spent with Ellie in the barn. Watching her with the mare, her gentle touch and the softness in her voice, he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her until her legs went weak.
It wasn’t like him. He didn’t mix business with pleasure. But as he’d followed her out of the barn, his gaze slid down to her hips, and his palms itched to cup that round behind. He was still hard beneath the fly of his jeans.
He sighed. He wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about Eleanor Bowman. He sure as hell knew he’d like to take her to bed.
He walked down the hall into his study and closed the door. It was past time he made a trip to Vail. He usually stayed at the Four Seasons when he needed to get away, needed a place to escape the burdens of running a ranch the size of the Diamond Bar. Or when he needed a woman.
The resort wasn’t cheap, but he didn’t indulge himself often, and he could afford it. Kade had never brought a woman to the ranch. The ladies he had sex with weren’t the kind you brought home.
Grace Towers was the exception. She was classy and smart, a woman he had met in the bar at the resort. Grace was thirty-four, wealthy, a pretty blond divorcée who lived in Denver but also owned a condo in Vail. He’d been up front with Grace from the start. He’d already had one disastrous marriage. He wasn’t interested in anything serious.
For almost a year, Grace was okay with that. They’d seen each other whenever their plans coincided, enjoyed a non-exclusive, no-strings relationship. Then she’d wanted more.
Three months ago, he had ended the affair. Since then, he’d slept with a couple of other women, ladies out for a good time in one of the trendy bars in Vail, women who thought it would be cool to sleep with a real Colorado cowboy. He was pretty sure he hadn’t disappointed them.
Taking a seat in the leather chair behind his desk, Kade scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling the roughness along his jaw. One-night stands really weren’t his style. And the truth, whether he liked it or not, was that Ellie Bowman was the woman he wanted, the first woman he’d been attracted to on
more than a physical level in years. Didn’t mean he was ready for anything of a serious nature.
Kade leaned back in his chair. From the vibes she was throwing, he didn’t think Ellie was any more interested in a serious relationship than he was. Which might just work in his favor. If she felt half the attraction for him that he felt for her, maybe they could enjoy each other for as long as she was there, keep things simple, then go their separate ways with no hard feelings.
He had plenty of time to wait, plenty of problems to keep him occupied while he let things play out. Maybe Ellie Bowman would be worth it.
CHAPTER SIX
WITH BREAKFAST OVER THE FOLLOWING MORNING, ELLIE WATCHED the last of the hands walk out the door, striding off toward their horses or one of the four-wheel ATVs. For a while, Smoke ran along beside them. Then the dog turned and trotted back to the barn to join his friend Billy.
Ellie had met the stable boy, Billy Harris, last night. He was fifteen years old, with light brown hair and blue eyes. The boy worked after school, on weekends, during school breaks and summers, mucking out stalls and doing general cleanup around the property.
According to Kade, his home life sucked, so he spent as much time at the ranch as possible, even stayed in the bunkhouse if the weather was too bad for him to ride his dirt bike back home or one of the hands couldn’t drop him off.
As Ellie watched Billy and Smoke through the window, memories arose of her years in Wyoming. In a lot of ways, ranching had changed since she was a girl. In other ways, the business was as rough and tumble, as grueling and demanding as ever.
Droughts, blizzards, cattle theft, disease, falling beef prices. Kade Logan faced those problems every day. She couldn’t help admiring him for the success he had made of the Diamond Bar.
He walked into the kitchen just as she and Maria finished cleaning up, and an unwanted flutter rose in the pit of her stomach. Not good.
“You ready to make that trip into town?”
More than ready, she thought. The sooner the mystery of Heather’s murder was solved, the sooner she could go back to Denver, get away from the temptation Kade Logan posed.
“I’ll just grab my stuff.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Kade pulled his dual-wheeled Ford into the parking lot in front of Rocky Mountain Supply, a big metal structure with a row of gas pumps out front. The only other businesses in town were the Coffee Springs Café, the Elkhorn Bar and Grill, Murray’s Grocery, the Coffee Springs Bed and Breakfast, and Fred’s Gun Shop and Dentistry.
A post office the size of a bedroom sat at the end of two-block-long Main Street, next to an old white, wood-frame house.
“I’ll be back in time to buy your lunch at the café,” Kade said as Ellie climbed down from the passenger seat.
“Okay, I’ll see you there.”
Kade touched the brim of the dark brown Stetson he wore for dress and drove off toward Eagle, thirty miles away. He wanted to talk to Sheriff Carver, he’d said. Ellie figured the trip there and back, plus time to take care of his business, gave her a couple of hours to order supplies and wander the tiny town to see if she could come up with any useful information.
Groceries were her first priority. She walked into Murray’s Grocery, which reminded her of the store in the small town of Grassy Meadows near their ranch in Wyoming, narrow and old-fashioned, the shelves crowded, but neat and very clean. She headed toward the man behind the front counter, who looked up as she approached. She noticed he had beautiful blue eyes and a handsome face.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“I’m Ellie Bowman. I’m new to the area. I just started working at the Diamond Bar Ranch.”
He smiled. “Welcome to Coffee Springs, Ms. Bowman. I’m Jonas Murray. I own the store.”
“Nice to meet you, Jonas. I’m taking over the kitchen while the regular cook’s on vacation. I came in to pick up supplies.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” His gaze went to her ringless left hand, then back to her face. He was in his forties, about six feet tall, a snug-fitting navy blue Henley hinting at an athletic body. “Coffee Springs is always happy to have new people. Where are you from, Miss Bowman?”
“It’s just Ellie, and I’m from Denver.” She glanced around the store. “Kade said the Diamond Bar had an account here. He said just to put whatever I needed on the bill.”
“No problem. Did you bring a list?”
“Sure did.” She dug the list out of the leather purse slung over her shoulder and handed it across the counter.
“All right, I’ll have my son, Sean, put the order together for you. He’s on his way in right now.”
“I’ve got some other shopping to do, so there’s no real hurry.”
He looked down at the list, sizing up the number of items. It was amazing how much a ranch crew could eat. “An hour should be plenty of time.”
“Thanks.” She shifted the purse up on her shoulder, which pulled her jacket open, and Jonas’s gaze went to her breasts. Interest crept into those blue eyes. Apparently he liked what he saw.
His attention returned to her face, and his smile returned. “You’re new in town. What do you think so far?”
Ellie shifted, letting the jacket fall open a little wider. In her line of work, a woman’s femininity was a valuable tool, something she had learned long ago. In Jonas’s case, apparently it was working.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said. “Unfortunately, I’ll only be at the ranch a few weeks, till Kade’s regular cook gets back from vacation.”
“Mabel mentioned she’d be gone for a while.”
“She’s visiting family in Phoenix.”
Jonas’s gaze drifted down then back up. “So . . . you and Kade are . . . friends?”
She shrugged. “Not really. We met in Vail a few years back. He said if I ever needed work to come see him.” Let him speculate, wonder if she had slept with Kade, if she might be easy prey, see where the idea led.
“Mabel came to town a couple of times a week,” he said. “She never missed. Maybe next time you come in, I could buy your lunch.” His smile widened. “We’ll be working together. Give us a chance to get to know each other.”
Falling into the part she’d decided to play, Ellie returned the smile and made it softly inviting. “I’d like that . . . Jonas.”
His blue eyes gleamed. “Then it’s a date.” He glanced toward the back of the store. “I think I heard my son walk in. I’ll give him your list.”
“I’ll be back later to pick everything up. Great to meet you, Jonas.”
His mouth practically watered. “You too, Ellie.” Jonas strutted off toward the back of the store, and Ellie walked out the front door, onto the wooden porch. There weren’t many men in Coffee Springs, even fewer who would attract a woman as beautiful as Heather Logan.
But Jonas Murray was a handsome man and clearly a player. He’d wasted no time in pursuing Ellie. Jonas had just found a place at the top of her suspect list.
From the market, she walked into the big metal building next door, Rocky Mountain Supply, which seemed even larger inside. The front section of the store was a minimart, with rows of candy bars and snacks, magazines and paperback books, a coffee bar and a beverage counter.
The rest of the space was a general store, with all sorts of farm equipment, saddles and horse gear, racks of clothing, including heavy Carhartt work clothes and western wear. There was a section of camping equipment and RV supplies.
She could see a sign that read FEED AND GRAIN above a door at the back. Rocky Mountain Supply was the only game in town, the only store for miles around that catered to ranchers, outfitters, tourists, and sportsmen.
A steady number of customers moved around inside.
“May I help you?” A stout, gray-haired older woman had noticed her wandering about.
“Yes, thank you. I’m new to the area. I just started working in the kitchen at the Diamond Bar Ranch.”
“I heard Mabel took off to vis
it her son and his family down in Phoenix.” The woman smiled. “I’m Frances Tilman. Everybody calls me Fran. Welcome to Coffee Springs.”
“I’m Ellie Bowman. It’s nice to meet you, Fran. I’m happy to be working at the ranch. It’s a beautiful place, and the people there all seem really friendly.”
“Oh, they are. I’ve known most of them since they were kids. Seth Ackerman is engaged to my niece.”
Ellie smiled. “That’s the nice thing about small towns. Everybody gets to know everybody.”
“True, and it’s one of the things that make Coffee Springs such a great place to live.”
“Sure seems like it.”
“So you aren’t married?”
“No. Though it would be nice to have a family someday.” If she could ever find a man she could trust, one who wouldn’t try to control her.
They chatted amiably for a while, talked about the weather, about the scenery. Fran showed her around the store, and Ellie selected a few items just to keep her talking: a pink paisley western shirt, a quilted down vest, and a pair of Montana Silversmith earrings.
“I just met Jonas Murray,” she said to test the waters.
Fran’s silver eyebrows pulled together. “I’m not surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re new in town. Not many gals around as pretty as you. Men like Jonas . . . sometimes they try to take advantage.”
“Really? Is he married?”
“Was till his wife left him some years back. I suspect Jenny caught him with his pecker somewhere it shouldn’t be.”
Ellie laughed. She wondered how long ago that was and if the woman he was having the affair with could have been Heather Logan. She’d take a look at county divorce records, figure out the timing.
“Jonas was very nice, and I’m not married either. He asked me to lunch. That ought to be safe enough, don’t you think?”
Fran shrugged her plump shoulders. “You’re both adults, both single. I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with it. Just remember what I said.”
