by B. J Daniels
“Whatever ill wind set you in this direction, I suggest you turn around and leave while you can,” she said, hoping to remind him of the last time they’d seen each other. Only now she wasn’t armed. Yet.
Jake grinned. There’d been a time when just that grin would have been an open invitation into her jeans. “The judge sent me, which means I’m staying, so you might as well welcome me with open arms.”
“You wish,” she said as she reached around him to grab her suitcase and wheel it toward the door of the ranch house. Looking in through the front window, she glimpsed enough of the living room to know it, too, hadn’t changed. She shoved her suitcase inside before closing the door and turning back toward her pickup.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked. “I hope it wasn’t anything I said.” He was still grinning.
Without looking at him, she said, “There’s a twelve-year-old boy in the hospital with a broken arm because one of my father’s buffalo got out. I’m going to town to see if there is anything I can do for the family.”
“I’d think twice before I did that.”
At the sudden seriousness in his tone, she stopped walking and with a sigh, turned back to look at him. Damn the man. Just the timbre of his voice was enough to make her ache. They often agreed on little. But reason had little influence when passion came into play. Together she and Jake were a lit fuse of dynamite.
“If you came here to give me advice—”
Jake held up both hands as if in surrender, but she could tell he was far from giving up. “When I came through town, I got the feeling that the townspeople are riled up enough over the murder. Now one of their sons was hurt because of your father’s buffalo? They won’t be glad to see you, Blaze.”
“They never were.”
He nodded. “Somehow, I doubt they’ve forgotten you.”
She groaned. “I was a teenager. I could have burned down half the town, but I didn’t. Most of the stories about me aren’t even true. Well, at least some of them.”
He let out a chuckle. “It’s the ones that are true that I think you need to worry about.” His expression turned serious again. “You left. You’re not one of them anymore.”
Blaze looked down at her scuffed Western boots. “I’m going into town to see that boy and ask what I can do to help. It’s the right thing to do and I’m going to do it.”
He shrugged. “Well, I tried,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Now you can wash your hands of me,” she said as she jerked open the driver’s-side door of her pickup. “It won’t be the first time.” She’d take care of this first, then come back to face the house before deciding where to begin on investigating the murder. The judge had asked her to investigate, worried that her father couldn’t get a fair shake in this county. Then again, the judge didn’t know Monte like she did. Or did he?
Jake grabbed the top of the door, interrupting her thoughts. “At least let me drive you,” he said behind her.
She closed her eyes, intensely aware of his body so close to hers. He smelled like sunshine even on this cold November day. Her body reacted to him as it always had, sending her heart racing. She held her breath, half-afraid of what she would do if he touched her.
“Blaze?” He said it like a caress.
“What are you doing?” she demanded on a ragged breath, refusing to turn and face him for fear that she would weaken. It had been so long and yet she remembered every whispered word, every touch, every quickened heartbeat.
“I’m going with you to save you from yourself,” he said.
She counted to ten before she turned.
Jake must have taken it for acquiescence because he chuckled and said, “I can tell you’ve missed me. Hop in and slide over. It is always safer when I drive.”
He was too close, his arm resting on the top of her open door. While her pulse thrummed in her ears, he looked calm. Maybe seeing her again wasn’t throwing him off balance like it was her.
She ground her teeth and shot him an impatient look. “Seriously, Jake, I don’t know what the judge was thinking sending you. I have enough going on without you here. You don’t know how hard this is for me.” She eyed him suspiciously. “If he really did send you. Maybe I should give him a call.”
“First off, if anyone knows how hard this is on you, it’s me.” His voice had softened to that seductive tone that reminded her of warm nights lying naked under the stars with him.
She shook off the reminder as she felt her blood begin to heat. “Are you forgetting how we left things between us?” she asked as if reminding herself, as well.
“Not likely. I believe you had a knife to my throat.”
“You’re making me wish I’d used it.”
He shook his head, his grin broadening. “I knew you wouldn’t. Just as you and I both know you can’t send me away. On second thought, let’s take my pickup. You were already seen in town when you stopped for gas, so they know your rig.”
She frowned. Had he been following her? “How do you know that?”
He stepped away to walk to the back of her pickup. She followed, glad to have more space between them. He pointed to the sticker pasted on the back bumper of her truck. It was almost entirely covered by dirt kicked up from her drive into the ranch, but still readable. She swore as she read Don’t Buffalo Me! She reached to pull it off but Jake stopped her.
“You might be safer with it there. Come on, if you’re determined to do this...” He motioned toward his pickup.
She cursed under her breath but relented. As they walked to his truck, they matched stride for stride. He’d always loved her long legs. He used to comment on them, usually when he had a hand on her thigh. Another memory she didn’t need right now.
He opened the passenger-side door for her. She hesitated, but only for a moment, annoyed with him for acting like a gentleman. They both knew he was anything but. There’d been a time she would have fought his taking over like this. She hated men bossing her around—especially this one. But she liked to think that she’d mellowed since she and Jake had last seen each other. She also liked to think that she was smart enough to pick her battles.
She slid in and he closed the door. Buckling up, she watched him saunter around to the driver’s side. “I still hate you.”
“I know,” he said as he climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. “And I still love you.” He glanced at her. “Appears nothing has changed.”
CHAPTER THREE
SHERIFF WILLIAM “BUD” FRASER leaned back in his office chair, folding his hands over his abundant belly as he smiled. He hated how smug he felt. He was tempting fate and he knew it. His German grandmother’s words felt like a jab in his ribs. She’d been dead for years and yet at times like this he could hear her voice clear as day.
“Pride cometh before the fall.” He didn’t feel overconfident, though. He felt justified. Surely that wouldn’t jinx things.
Montgomery McClintock was behind bars. He’d been caught standing over the victim with the murder weapon still in his hand. When arrested, the man hadn’t even tried to defend himself. Nor had he wanted a lawyer. That was because Bud had him dead to rights. Monte was as guilty as hell.
So why couldn’t he feel a little smug? It was an open-and-shut case. Monte was about to spend the rest of his life in prison. It wasn’t the murder Bud had hoped to get the man on, but it would have to do.
Nor would it bring Bethany Reynolds McClintock back, but at least it would get her husband what he deserved. Every time he thought of Monte’s wife, who’d disappeared sixteen years ago, he envisioned her as she’d been that day standing on the platform as the passenger train pulled to a stop in Saddle Butte.
He had gotten discharged from the army and was finally coming home, anxious to be back in Montana, back in the small town where he was born and raised. When he’d stepped off the train, the first perso
n he’d seen was Bethany.
At twenty-two, she was a vision. He’d seen her a few times when he’d come home on leave, but only in passing. Every time, his heart beat a little faster. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. He could admit it now... He’d wanted her since as far back as he could remember. But she came from one of the more well-to-do ranch families while he was the son of the local sheriff.
But that day, dressed in his uniform, he’d felt as if he was finally somebody. He figured now that he’d seen some of the world as an MP in the army, maybe she might want to go out with him.
She spotted him, recognizing him, and raised her hand to wave. But it was her smile that gave him the courage to head in her direction.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to even talk to her before Montgomery McClintock came off the train wearing his big Stetson. Monte made a beeline for her, grabbing her and swinging her up off her feet as he spun her in the air. Bud could still hear her laugh. As Monte set her down, saying something about having been to Chicago for some cattleman’s convention, Bethany looked up into his eyes, an enamored expression on her face. And Bud had known he would never stand a chance. Not with McClintock around.
Bud still ground his teeth at the memory. While he’d been off protecting his country, Monte had gone to college and come home to ranch after his father had died. It made Bud angry since he hadn’t been able to afford college without the GI bill—unlike Monte.
Now, so many years later, they were both old men. He’d resented Monte for more than thirty-five years. Not long after Bud had returned to Saddle Butte, Monte had married Bethany. Blaze had come a few years later.
Bud always thought he could have made Bethany happier than Monte had. He recalled seeing her in town and thinking something was wrong. He’d even asked her once after he became a deputy if things were all right out at the ranch. She’d smiled and pretended that everything was fine, but he’d suspected otherwise.
When he’d heard that she’d left Monte and taken off, he’d been overjoyed to hear it. He’d always hoped she would come back to divorce Monte. He’d thought maybe he might have a chance with her then. But she’d never come back. No one heard from her or anything about her again. It was as if she’d fallen off the face of the earth.
In his imagination, he’d seen her go on to do great things, free of Saddle Butte, but mostly free of Monte McClintock. But as time went on and there was no word from or of her, he’d feared that she’d never left the county. Not alive anyway.
That was when he’d known that Monte had to have killed her. He just couldn’t prove it. Rumors circulated for a while, but after sixteen years, Bethany Reynolds McClintock had been forgotten by most people in the county.
Except for Bud Fraser, who’d never been able to forget her standing next to the train that day, the sun shining in her long auburn hair and that smile on her face. It was the kind of memory that haunted his dreams.
* * *
JAKE GLANCED OVER at Blaze as they left the ranch for the drive into Saddle Butte. She had her long auburn hair plaited in a single braid that hung over one shoulder, almost to her breasts. The Western shirt she wore was blue checked and matched her eyes—and the Montana sky. Her jeans hugged curves he knew only too well. He thought she couldn’t have looked more beautiful.
But worry creased her brows. He knew how difficult this was for her and doubted he was making it easier. And yet there was no place he’d rather be.
“You look good,” he said. “It feels as if no time has passed since I last saw you.” He laughed when she merely glared at him for a moment before she turned again to look out the side window. He’d known this wouldn’t be easy given the way they’d parted, but if he was anything, it was determined.
He glanced over at her as he drove. He knew this woman inside and out. He told himself to give it a little time and hoped he would have it, now that he was here. Turning back to his driving, he concentrated on navigating the narrow dirt road that cut through rolling hills and sagebrush-filled prairie. He could appreciate this country even though most people preferred the western part of the state with its mountains, pine trees and clear trout streams that stretched out like blue ribbons. The rolling prairie was something that grew on a person. All that wide-openness wasn’t for everyone.
But for him, there was something comforting about all the space. The cloudless blue sky overhead felt huge this morning and the late-November day seemed brighter. He thought of Christmas and wondered where the two of them would be.
Being around Blaze again, he longed to be curled up in front of a fire with lights sparkling on a tree and presents waiting to be opened on Christmas morning. He remembered that feeling of expectation. The same feeling he had when he was around Blaze, he thought, and looked over at her and smiled.
“What?” she demanded as if she’d been watching him out of the corner of her eye. She turned to look at him, impatience written all over her.
“Just thinking. About Christmas.”
“Christmas?” She shook her head as if unwilling to go down that familiar trail with him. “This won’t take long. I’ll be long gone by then.” They’d been together last Christmas, curled up in bed after being thrown together on one of the judge’s projects. He hadn’t realized that there were others like him, teens who had been saved and now would do anything for WT.
Then he’d met Blaze and he’d had a newfound admiration for the judge.
“We’re good together,” he said to her. “We’ll figure this out. I’m sure that’s why the judge put us together on this.”
“I have no idea what he was thinking.” She looked over at him and narrowed her eyes. “I’m still not sure he did.”
Jake grinned. She’d threatened to call to find out if WT really had sent him. He wasn’t worried that she would. Questioning the old judge was always a bad idea.
“I’m assuming you haven’t talked to your father yet,” he asked, trying to find some solid ground with her. Talking about why she was here, he figured, would do the trick.
“The arraignment and bail hearing are in the morning. No way is he going to get bail.”
“Probably not,” Jake agreed. He’d had his own brush with the law in his youth. After a string of breaking and entering charges, he’d ended up before Judge WT Landusky. He could laugh about it now, but the judge had scared him straight. Now he had nothing but respect for the man.
“From what the judge told me,” he said to Blaze now, “your father hasn’t said one word since he was arrested. That’s got to help.”
“Wait,” she said, turning in the seat to stare at him. “You think we’re here to get him out of this?” She shook her head. “No, the judge was clear. He just wants to be sure that the sheriff didn’t rush to judgment. Once we know for sure that he committed the crime, we walk away and let the justice system deal with my father. Which means he’s going to prison for murder.”
He glanced over at her, surprised by the conviction he heard in her voice. “You’re that convinced he killed the rancher?”
She groaned. “My father has been fighting with Frank Anson for as far back as I can remember—even before my father decided to raise buffalo. I suspect he did it just to piss off Frank and everyone else.”
“What was the problem between them before the buffalo?” Jake asked as the town of Saddle Butte, Montana, appeared on the skyline. There were only a few buildings tall enough to be seen from this distance. The water tower, the elevator grain bins next to the railroad tracks and the courthouse. Saddle Butte didn’t even have a stoplight. It was what he’d heard called a one-horse town.
It was definitely a town that had forgotten its past, he thought. In its heyday, thousands of pounds of buffalo bones had been shipped from this small town for fertilizer as the free-ranging wild buffalo were killed off by the millions. He remembered seeing a photo of a pile of bones higher than
any building in town. The bones were sent back East to a fertilizer plant.
“Did you hear me?”
He realized that he’d been lost in thought and mentally shook himself. “Sorry.”
“Thinking about some old girlfriend of yours?” she asked.
He grinned over at her. “I’m always thinking about you.”
She shook her head. “You are a terrible liar.”
“Or maybe you just don’t want to accept the truth. I was thinking about you, but then the town came into view and I couldn’t help thinking about the wild buffalo that used to roam this part of the state in huge herds. They said it was like a dark wave over the prairie. I was wishing I could have seen that. It’s hard to imagine that many.”
“Buffalo? You and my father,” she said with a groan. “I was saying that the trouble between him and neighboring rancher Frank Anson was his young wife, Allie. My father took a liking to her and vice versa.”
“After your mother left.”
Blaze shrugged. “According to my father, but maybe it was going on before that and it’s why my mother left.”
He heard the bitterness in her voice. Her mother had said she would come back for Blaze, but she never had. Once she’d driven away, that was the last Blaze had heard from her mother.
“Your father and Allie Anson?”
“If the stories are true, Frank said if he ever found Monte on his property again, he’d kill him.”
“So you think all of this is over a woman?” Jake chuckled. “What am I saying? Isn’t it always about a woman?”
She shot him a narrow-eyed glare, but then turned her attention to the small Montana town as he slowed at the city limits sign. The sign read Population 759 and 2 Old Soreheads. The 2 had been crossed out and someone had replaced it with a 1. Next to the sign was a “don’t buffalo me” poster on a stake. Welcome to Saddle Butte, Montana.
