by B. J Daniels
“About what?” he asked, looking scared.
“Did you happen to be at Halsey Waters’s funeral?”
All the color left his face. “What does that have to do with—”
“Yes or no? Or can’t you remember that, either?”
He had the good grace to flush. “I was there, just like all his other friends.”
She detected something odd in his tone. Today was the first time she’d heard anything about Halsey Waters. But then, she wasn’t from this part of Montana. “How did Halsey die?”
Arlen looked down at his boots. “He was bucked off a wild horse. Broke his neck.”
ALL THE OLD DEMONS that had haunted him came back with a vengeance as Dillon rode out with Arlen and Jacklyn, across rolling hills dotted with cattle and sagebrush. He breathed in the familiar scents as if to punish himself. Or remind himself that even four years in prison couldn’t change a man enough to forget his first love. Or his worst enemy.
The air smelled so good it made him ache. This had once been his country. He knew it even better than the man who owned it.
They followed the fence line as it twisted alongside the creek, the bottomlands thick with chokecherry, willow and dogwood. Jacklyn slowed her horse, waiting for him.
The memories were so sharp and painful he had to look away for fear she would see that this was killing him.
Or worse, that she might glimpse the desire for vengeance burning in his eyes.
“I’ve always wanted to ask you,” she said conversationally. Arlen was riding ahead of them, out of earshot. “Why three university degrees?”
Dillon pretended to give her question some thought, although he doubted that’s what she’d been thinking about. She’d made it clear back at the ranch house that she thought he and Arlen used to rustle cattle together. It hadn’t helped that Arlen had lied through his teeth about the good-luck coin.
Shoving back his hat, Dillon shrugged and said, “I was a rancher’s son. You know how, at that age, you’re so full of yourself. I thought the last thing I wanted to do was ranch. I wanted a job where I got to wear something other than jeans and boots, have an office with a window, make lots of money.”
She glanced over at him, as if wondering if he was serious. “You know, I suspect you often tell people what you think they want to hear.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Nope, that’s the real reason I got three degrees. I was covering my bets.”
She cut her eyes to him as she rode alongside him, their legs almost touching. “Okay, I get the engineering and business degrees. But psychology?”
He wondered what she was really asking. “I’m fascinated by people and what makes them tick. Like you,” he said, smiling at her. “You’re a mystery to me.”
“Let’s not go there.”
“What if I can’t help myself?”
“Mr. Savage—”
He laughed. “Maybe before this is over I’ll get a glimpse of the real Jack Wilde,” he said, her gaze heating him more than the sun beating down from overhead.
He could see that she wished she hadn’t started this conversation when she urged her horse forward, trotting off after Arlen Dubois.
As Dillon stared after her retreating backside, he suspected he and the real Jacklyn Wilde were more alike than she ever wanted to admit—and he said as much when he caught up to her.
JACKLYN PRETENDED NOT TO hear him. His voice had dropped to a low murmur that felt like a whisper across her skin. It vibrated in her chest, making her nipples tighten and warmth rush through her, straight to her center.
Dillon chuckled, as if suspecting only too well what his words did to her.
She cursed her foolishness. She should have known better than to try to egg Dillon Savage on. He was much better at playing head games than she was.
In front of her, Arlen brought his horse up short. She did the same when she noticed the cut barbed wire fence. Dismounting, she handed the cowboy her reins and walked across the soft earth toward the gap.
There was one set of horseshoe tracks in the dirt on the other side of the cut fence, a half-dozen on this side, obliterating Tom’s horse’s prints. Sheriff McCray and his men. She could see where they had ridden all over, trampling any evidence.
But she no longer thought McCray had planted the lucky gold coin. Not after both Dillon’s and Arlen’s reactions. She just didn’t know what a coin belonging to the deceased Halsey Waters had to do with this ring of rustlers. But she suspected Dillon and Arlen did.
Bending down, she noted that there was nothing unique about the trespasser’s horse’s prints. She could see where Tom had followed the man toward the creek bottom.
Arlen Dubois had tracked Tom and found him. At least that was the cowboy’s story. Unfortunately, McCray and his men had destroyed any evidence to prove it.
She swung back into her saddle. “Show me where you found Tom,” she said to Arlen. Turning, she looked back at Dillon. He seemed lost in thought, frowning down at the cut barbed wire.
“Something troubling you?” she asked him.
He seemed to come out of his daze, putting a smile on his face to cover whatever had been bothering him. If he was the leader of the rustlers, then wouldn’t he feel something for a man who might die because of him and his partners in crime?
She followed the trampled tracks in the dust, feeling the hot sun overhead. It wasn’t until she reached the trees and started up the hillside that she turned, and wasn’t surprised to see Arlen and Dillon sitting astride their horses, engaged in what appeared to be a very serious conversation below her.
At the top of the ridge, she found bloodstained earth and scuffed tracks—dozens of boot prints. There was no way to distinguish the trespasser’s. Had that been Sheriff McCray’s intent? To destroy the evidence? Her one chance to maybe find out who the rustlers were? McCray would do it out of spite.
But there was another explanation, she realized. McCray might be covering for someone. Or even involved…
She couldn’t imagine any reason Claude McCray would get involved in rustling. But then, she wasn’t the best judge of character when it came to men, she admitted as she looked down the slope to where Dillon and Arlen were waiting.
By circling the area, she found the trespasser’s tracks, and followed them to where he’d made a second cut in the barbed wire to let himself and his horse onto state grazing land.
Then she headed back to where she’d left the two men. As she approached, she noticed that Dillon had ridden over to a lone tree and was lounging under it, chewing on a piece of dried grass, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his hat tilted down, but his eyes on her. He couldn’t have looked more relaxed. Or more sexy. She couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been talking about with Arlen.
Back at the ranch, she let Dillon unsaddle their horses while she went out to the barn, where Arlen was putting his own horse and tack away. He seemed surprised to see her, obviously hoping that she’d already left.
“Thanks for your help today,” she said, wondering what he would do for a job if Tom Robinson didn’t make it. “Looks like you could use a new pair of boots.”
Arlen looked down in surprise. “These are my lucky boots,” he said bashfully. He lifted one leg to touch the worn leather, and Jack saw how the sole was worn evenly across the bottom.
Lucky boots. Good-luck coin. Cowboys were a superstitious bunch. “You’ll be walking on your socks pretty soon,” she said. “I saw you talking to Dillon. Mind telling me what you two were chatting about?”
Arlen gave a lazy shrug. “Nothin’ in particular. Just talking about prison and Tom and—” he dropped his gaze “—you. Don’t mean to tell you your business, but if I were you, I’d be real careful around him. When he’s smiling is when he’s the most dangerous.”
DILLON WATCHED JACK COME out of the barn, and knew Arlen had said something to upset her.
Dillon had loaded the horses into the trailer and was leaning against
the side, waiting for her in the shade. He hadn’t been able to get Halsey’s good-luck coin off his mind.
“Get what you needed?” he asked as Jack walked past him to climb behind the wheel.
He opened his door and slid in.
“I saw you and Arlen talking. Looked pretty serious,” she said, without reaching to start the truck.
“Think we were plotting something?” He laughed.
“You said yourself that the rustlers might work for the ranchers they were stealing cattle from.”
Dillon let out a snort. “Arlen? That cowboy can’t keep his mouth shut. If he was riding with the gang, you’d have already caught them. The guy is a dim bulb.”
Maybe. Or maybe that’s what Dillon wanted her to believe. She looked back at Arlen. He was standing in the shade of the barn, watching them.
Dillon sighed. “I was asking him what he was going to do now. He said even if Tom regains consciousness, his injuries are such that he won’t be running the ranch anymore. Waters has offered Arlen a job.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Jacklyn asked, as she heard Dillon curse under his breath.
“Arlen? He’s worthless. Tom just kept him on because no one else would hire him. The only reason Waters would make the offer is so Arlen keeps him informed on everything that’s going on with Tom and the ranch.” At her confused look, Dillon added, “Waters has been trying to buy the Robinson ranch for years.”
“Tom is in no condition to sell his ranch—”
“Tom has a niece back East, his only living relative. In his will, apparently he set it up so if anything happened to him and he couldn’t run the place or he died….”
“You think she’ll sell to Shade Waters.”
“Waters will make sure she does.”
Jacklyn could understand how Shade might want Tom Robinson’s ranch. With it, he would own all the way to the Missouri on this side of the Judith River. The Robinson spread had been the only thing standing in his way.
Chapter Seven
Jacklyn followed the county road as it wound around one section of land after another, until she saw the sign that marked the various directions to ranches in the area.
At one time there’d been a dozen signs tacked on the wooden post. But over the years, most ranches had been bought out, all of them by Shade Waters.
Now there were only three signs on the post, pointing to Shade Waters’s W Bar Ranch, Tom Robinson’s ranch and Reda Harper’s RH Circle Cross.
Jacklyn saw Dillon glance at the signs, his gaze hardening before it veered away. Not far up the road, she turned to drive under an arched entry with W Bar Ranch carved into the graying wood.
“I’ll stay in the pickup,” he said as she pulled up in the ranch yard.
She looked at him, then at the sprawling ranch house. Shade Walters had come out onto the porch. Always a big man, he wasn’t quite as handsome as he’d been in his younger days, but he was still striking. He stood in the shadow of the porch roof, an imposing figure that demanded attention.
The front door opened again and his son Nate came out, letting the door slam behind him. She saw Shade’s irritated expression and the way he scowled in Nate’s direction.
Nate was in his early thirties, big boned and blond. Unlike his father, his western clothing was new and obviously expensive. Shade Waters looked like every working rancher she’d known, from his worn western shirt to his faded jeans and weathered boots.
She couldn’t help but think that whoever had attacked Tom Robinson had come by way of the W Bar, Shade Waters’s land.
Nate was staring toward her passenger, and it dawned on her that Dillon and he were close in age and must have gone to school together. The old Savage place had been up the road. Had they once been friends, as had Dillon and Nate’s brother, Halsey?
Nate’s frown and the intense silence coming from the man next to her made it clear that the two were no longer friends, whatever their relationship had been in the past.
“You won’t get out of the pickup no matter what happens?” she asked quietly, without looking at Dillon.
“Nope.”
As Jacklyn started to open her door, a pretty, dark-haired woman joined the two men on the porch. Jacklyn felt Dillon tense beside her. The woman looped her arm through Nate’s and gazed out at the pickup, as if daring anyone to try to stop her—including Shade Waters. Judging from his expression, he wasn’t happy to see the woman join him, any more than he had been his son.
But it was Dillon’s reaction that made Jacklyn hesitate before she climbed out of the truck.
Dillon knew the woman. Not just knew her. His left hand was clenched in a fist and his jaw was tight with anger.
She knew he blamed Shade Waters for what had happened not just to his family ranch but to his father. But was there more to the story? Was there a woman involved?
This dark-haired beauty?
“Holler if you need me,” Dillon said as she started to climb out of the truck.
She shot him a look as he drew the brim of his hat down over his eyes and leaned back as if planning to sleep until she returned.
Right. As if he wouldn’t be watching and listening to everything that was said. She noticed that he’d managed to power down his window before she turned off the pickup engine.
“Enjoy your nap,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t.
His lips tipped up in a smile. He wasn’t fooling her and he knew it.
As Jacklyn closed the truck door, she noticed that the woman had her own gaze fixed on the passenger side of the pickup. On Dillon.
Jacklyn knew there’d been women in Dillon’s life. Probably a lot of them. Had he turned to crime because of one of them? Maybe this one?
Jacklyn approached the porch slowly, afraid all hell was about to break loose. She just hoped Dillon Savage wasn’t going to be in the middle of it.
MORGAN LANDERS. Dillon couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d heard she’d gone to California. Or Florida. That she’d snagged some old guy with lots of bucks.
But as he watched her lean intimately into Nate Waters, Dillon knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that Morgan had come back—or why.
What did surprise him was his reaction to seeing her. He hadn’t expected ever to lay eyes on her again. Especially not here. It felt like another betrayal, but then he suspected it wasn’t her first. Or her last.
What bothered him was that he knew Jack had seen his reaction. She missed little. Now she would think he still felt something for Morgan.
From under his hat, he watched Jack walk to the bottom step of the porch. Clearly, Shade Waters wasn’t going to invite her inside the house. Manners had never been the man’s strong suit. No, Waters wanted to intimidate her. How better than to stand on the porch, literally looking down on her?
Dillon smiled to himself. He’d put his money on Jack anyday, though. Not even Shade Waters could intimidate a woman like Jacklyn Wilde.
The rancher glanced at the pickup, no doubt seeing that Dillon had has side window down. Another reason Waters wouldn’t invite Jack inside. He’d want Dillon to hear whatever he had to say. And Dillon was sure Waters had a lot to say, given that he’d demanded Jack stop by to see him.
Also, Dillon thought with a grin, Waters wouldn’t want to go in the house knowing that a Savage was on his property, alone. Waters would be afraid of what Dillon might do.
As Dillon shifted his gaze from Morgan Landers to the elderly man he’d spent years hating, he thought Waters was wise to worry.
JACKLYN LOOKED UP at the three standing on the porch. They made no move to step aside so she could enter the house—or even join them in the shade.
“I can handle this,” Shade said, scowling over at his son. But Nate didn’t move. Nor did the woman beside him.
Jacklyn couldn’t help being curious about the woman, given that Dillon obviously had some connection to her. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. “I’m Jacklyn Wilde.”
The brunette h
ad the kind of face and body that could stop traffic, but that had nothing to do with the dislike Jacklyn had felt for her instantly.
“Morgan Landers.” She flicked her gaze over Jacklyn dismissively, her brown eyes lighting again on the pickup and no doubt the passenger sitting in it.
“If we’re through with introductions…” Shade Waters snapped.
Jacklyn waited. She could see how agitated the rancher was, but wasn’t entirely certain it had anything to do with her.
“Do you people have any idea what you’re doing?” he finally demanded, tilting his head toward the pickup and Dillon.
“You want the rustlers caught?” she asked, resenting him trying to tell her how to do her job.
Waters smirked. “The rustler was already behind bars. That is, until you got him out. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Dillon Savage is my problem.”
“You’re right about that,” the big man said angrily. “You going to try to tell me he doesn’t know anything about what’s been going on?”
She wasn’t. Nor was she about to admit that she suspected the same thing he did when it came to Dillon Savage.
“It’s his boys who are stealing all the cattle,” Waters said with a curse. “That bunch he used to run around with. He’s been orchestrating the whole thing from prison, and now you go and get him out so he can lead you in circles. You don’t really think he’s going to help you catch them, do you?”
“What bunch are we talking about?” she asked, ignoring the rest of what he’d said.
“Buford Cole, Pete Barclay, Arlen Dubois—that bunch,” Waters snapped.
“What makes you think it’s them? Or are you just making unfounded accusations? Because if you have some evidence—”
Waters let out another curse. “Hell, if I had evidence I’d take it to Sheriff McCray and the rustlers would be behind bars. Everyone in the county knows that Buford Cole and Arlen Dubois were riding with Savage before he went to prison.”
“There was never any evidence—”
