Cowboy Swagger

by Joanna Wayne

  The sheriff had won the battle he’d come here to fight, but he may have lost the war with Collette.

  DYLAN HAD BEEN GONE for just over an hour when Collette picked up the dreaded stack of letters her mother had given her and walked to the weeds, briars and thorns that had once been Helene’s beloved garden.

  After being shot at on the porch the other night, she didn’t trust any outside area open to sniper fire. Tucked between the stone wall and two added extensions of the meandering ranch house, the garden felt safe and protected. On the other hand, the letters she held felt like explosive contraband.

  Using a tissue from her pocket she brushed leaves and dirt from the rusting metal bench and dropped onto it. Nothing she held in her hand would bring her mother back. Yet the yellowed letters that had stayed in the top of Collette’s closet for years without notice were suddenly begging to be opened and have their secrets revealed.

  The larger envelopes were all addressed to Helene Martin.

  Collette’s chest constricted painfully as she stared at the name. Helene Martin, Dylan’s mother. Surely her father had not been involved with Helene. Her hands began to shake, and she struggled with a wave of nausea.

  Below the stack of letters, one note-size square envelope was addressed to Glenn McGuire in neat, precise penmanship. Dread eating away at her, Collette opened it first, took a deep breath and started reading.

  Dear Glenn,

  Please do not write me again as it is time for both of us to move on with our lives. I never meant to lead you on. We had great times together, but it wasn’t love, at least not for me.

  I know you feel that both Troy and I have betrayed you since he was your friend long before you introduced him to me. But if you must blame someone, blame me. It was I who pursued him.

  I love Troy with all my heart, and I know that he loves me, too. We’re getting married in May, as soon as graduation is behind me. I am returning your letters so that you can destroy them and put that part of your life behind you.

  I wish you all the best in life and hope that one day you and Troy can be friends again. I know he would like that.

  Warmly,

  Helene

  Collette trembled as full awareness of what she’d just read seared into her mind. That friendship had clearly never come to be. But had the perceived betrayal led to her father framing Troy Ledger for Helene’s murder while he let the real killer go free? Nagging suspicions ground in the back of Collette’s mind. She had to know the truth.

  An unexpected chill settled deep inside her as she reread the letter, and she had the eerie sensation that she was no longer alone in the garden. Could it be that Helene was reading over her shoulder? Oddly, the possibility did not disturb her.

  She read the rest of the letters one by one, feeling her father’s loss, yet hurting for her mother. She could imagine her mother’s heart breaking at the vows of love Glenn McGuire had written to another woman mere months before they were married. Tears burned and filled Collette’s eyes until she could barely make out the words.

  The letters were full of the angst her father was experiencing, but they were also informative enough to give her an idea of the circumstances surrounding his breakup with Helene.

  Her father had also been a senior at UT at the time. Apparently he and Helene Martin had been dating for over a year when Glenn brought her home with him for the weekend. He’d introduced to her his best friend, wild and reckless Troy Ledger, a cowboy who hadn’t gone to college and who was riding the rodeo circuit and saving every cent of his winnings to buy his own spread. That trip was the beginning of the end for Glenn and Helene and the beginning for Troy and Helene.

  There was not one mention of Collette’s mother in the letters, though judging from the dates, Glenn must have turned to Mildred during this time. No wonder Collette’s mother had been so hurt when she read them. She became pregnant with Glenn’s child while he had been touting his love for another woman and begging her to take him back.

  And yet Collette’s parents had made a life together—until a frayed stack of yellowed letters and a tragedy had ended it.

  Footsteps on the old stone walkway startled Collette. This time the visitor was flesh and blood.

  “I cooked some stew,” Troy said, staring at her red-rimmed eyes, but not asking her what was wrong. “I can’t vouch for its quality, but food with any flavor tastes like gourmet to me.”

  “I should have offered to help,” she said.

  “You’re a guest.”

  “Some might say an intruder,” Collette countered.

  Troy didn’t argue the point. He was surely no more enamored of her relationship with Dylan than her father was, albeit for different reasons.

  “I’m sorry my father is being so hard-nosed about this,” she said, hoping to smooth the moment.

  Troy didn’t respond, but she could see his features harden.

  “If the sheriff has issues with me, he should take them up with me, not with my son.”

  “I agree, but I can’t speak for my father.”

  “Right, so let’s just drop that subject. Now what’s this about new information that you and Dylan tracked down?”

  Collette explained the findings. “I think all of the talk of love and soul mates may have been a ruse. I think the stalker’s real motives may stem from something else.”

  “Did he try to blackmail you?” Troy asked.

  “No. He just seemed to delight in upsetting me. I think he could be seeking revenge.”

  “Who would have that kind of grudge against you?”

  “I think the grudge may be against my father.” Even now in the garden haunted by Helene, Collette didn’t mention that the ghost of Troy’s dead wife had put her on that track. She definitely didn’t mention the letters she’d just read.

  “I suspect there are lots of people with grudges against your father.” Troy reached down and pulled one weed from the multitude that clogged the beds. “I should get this area in shape. Helene would hate seeing it this way. She liked pretty things. I provided so few, but she never complained. She claimed she didn’t need trinkets or luxury to be…”

  A gravelly quake in his voice swallowed the last of his words. Coming home to life without Helene was clearly tearing him apart. “She had you and the boys,” Collette said. “That’s worth far more than inanimate possessions.”

  “Her parents never saw it that way. They wanted her back in Boston to be part of the elite circles they moved in. They wanted her to have expensive clothes and jewels and to send the boys to private schools.”

  “If Helene’s family was from Boston, how did Helene end up at the University of Texas?”

  “She was a bit rebellious, wanted to live where it was warm and she liked cowboys.” Finally, Troy smiled, deepening the creases around his eyes. “The real miracle is that she ended up with me.”

  “The miracle was love.”

  A love so strong that all these years later Collette could still feel it in this garden. Feel it as surely as she could feel the breeze that tousled her hair and danced across her cheeks.

  She’d never really believed in that kind of love before. Now that she knew it existed, she wanted it. She could see herself having it with Dylan.

  But Dylan could never love a woman whose father had been instrumental in sending the only parent he had left to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

  DANGER WAS IMMINENT. The reality of that echoed in Dylan’s mind as he stepped from the deputy’s car and walked toward the ranch house. He had a sixth sense about looming disaster. It had saved his life more than once in Iraq.

  Like the time he’d been leading his squad into a trap. At the last minute his instincts for pending catastrophe had forced him to pull back. Only later had they discovered how close they’d come to being blown to bits.

  This time the fear was for Collette, and he had more than his gut feeling to rely on. He had the land mines she’d narrowly missed.

  She’d mi
ssed being attacked and likely killed the other night by a matter of minutes—possibly because he’d stopped by her house on an impulse. She’d missed having her brains splattered over the porch by a matter of inches. The man who was masterminding the situation with claims of infatuation and gifts of flowers wanted Collette dead. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t strike again.

  If Dylan was going to keep her safe, he had to stay out of jail himself. The sheriff had other ideas, and his reason for wanting to discredit Dylan was clear: for protection Collette had chosen the “murderer’s kid” over her sheriff father.

  Yet McGuire had taken the photo from the security-camera footage, and Dylan was sure he’d check it out. The man was vindictive to a fault, but he wanted his daughter safe.

  Troy was waiting on him in the kitchen when Dylan walked in. A sheaf of papers was sitting on the table in front of him.

  “How’d it go?” Troy asked.

  “In redundant circles.”

  “That’s McGuire’s way of trying to trip you up.”

  “I don’t trip,” Dylan said, “and the sheriff doesn’t have a shred of evidence against me. He just wants me out of Collette’s life.”

  Troy pushed his chair back from the table. “It is strange that Collette’s turned to you when she hardly knows you.”

  Dylan had no answer for that. All he knew was that he and Collette had connected instantaneously from some kind of uncanny chemistry that defied reason. And right now he couldn’t wait to see her again. “Has Collette gone to bed?”

  “She went to her room after dinner. I saved you some stew. I’ll heat it for you while you take a look at those printouts.”

  Dylan scanned what looked like articles downloaded from the computer. Surely Troy hadn’t left Collette here alone and unprotected while he went somewhere to get on the Internet.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “My friend Able Drake looked it all up for me. He forwarded it to Bob Adkins who was nice enough to print it out and run it over to me.”

  “You’ve been busy while I’ve been out.”

  “Collette suggested the stalker’s motivation could be a grudge against her father,” Troy said. “That makes sense to me. These are names of people and reasons why they might seek payback against McGuire.”

  Seeing Collette would have to wait a few more minutes. Dylan had to read the articles. “Thanks, Dad. And the stew sounds good.”

  He dropped to the chair and started reading, making note of the people who looked the most suspicious. Billy Sikes topped the list. He’d been arrested ten years ago for running a car-theft ring, stripping the vehicles and selling the parts. He’d been released from jail this past January and arrested again in March for robbing a liquor store. He was now out on bail and claiming that he was being framed by McGuire.

  Alan Riggins was also suspect. He’d been accused of stalking the daughter of one of McGuire’s deputies. He’d been nonfatally shot by said deputy. He’d filed charges against the deputy and the sheriff, saying McGuire had covered for the deputy, calling it self-defense when it was a clear case of police brutality. The deputy and the sheriff were cleared of all charges.

  Then there was the case of Fancy Granger. The sheriff’s office had been called by a neighbor to settle a domestic dispute in the mobile home Fancy shared with her live-in boyfriend. The anonymous neighbor reported screaming and feared the argument had grown violent.

  Sheriff McGuire took the call along with one deputy. When he tried to arrest the boyfriend who was high on cocaine, Fancy Granger, also stoned, had pulled a gun on the sheriff. Gunfire had ensued, and Fancy Granger had been killed.

  Dylan continued down the list. Eighty percent of the people in the county might love Glenn McGuire for being tough on crime, but he definitely had his share of enemies, especially among the criminal population.

  He talked of the suspects with his father while he finished off the stew. His father was clearly concerned about him and willing to go to a lot trouble and the expense of hiring an attorney when his funds had to be extremely limited.

  All of this now that Dylan was an adult. Yet he’d never once contacted Dylan or his brothers when they were growing up without him.

  No excuse would satisfy Dylan, but still he needed to hear some kind of explanation for why Troy had denied him all those years.

  He stood up and carried his bowl to the sink. “Why didn’t you ever answer my letters?”

  Troy twisted around in his chair. “What are you talking about? I answered all your letters, all nine of them. I wrote you and your brothers every week for years until Wyatt wrote and told me that none of you ever wanted to hear from me again.”

  “I never received a letter from you. Not one, Dad. Not one. Neither did Wyatt or any of the rest of us.”

  Troy banged his right fist into his left palm, over and over, as if he were kneading bread with his knuckles. “I wrote, son. The letters were mailed to your grandparents every week. I never knew you didn’t receive them.”

  “Why would you mail the letters to them? Only one of us ever lived with them after the trial.”

  “I was under court order to go through them anytime I corresponded with any of you. I even tried to call whenever I had phone privileges. They never allowed me to speak to you. They said you didn’t want to talk to me.”

  Troy walked over and put an arm about Dylan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, son. I should have pressed for more information. I should have tried harder. But your grandparents were right. I really didn’t have anything to offer you but grief.”

  “They weren’t right,” Dylan said. “We lost Mother. We were kids. We needed our dad.”

  “I failed you. I’m sorry. I don’t know anything else to say.”

  There was actually nothing to say. The hurt was still buried deep inside him. He’d missed his mother so much, he’d wanted to die. And then when he hadn’t heard from his father, he’d felt lost and betrayed. He’d tried so hard to be strong. He never had been.

  Maybe that’s the real reason he’d joined the army, from a need to prove himself a man when he ached for the boy he’d never gotten to be.

  “I’m sorry, Dylan. I kept up with you. I kept up with all of you. I knew when you graduated college and when you joined the army. I prayed for you every day. But I let you down. I should have found a way to get past your grandparents.”

  “You should have.” He stared at his father, part of him wanting to lash out at him for not being the father he’d needed. Lashing out wouldn’t change anything.

  To get past this would take time. Yet for the first time in eighteen years, Dylan believed he and his father would find a way to be a family. He gave his father a hug, one that felt as if they were reaching across a huge gulf. Bridging it would be hard, but for now, this was enough.

  “I wish we could start over, Dylan, but now is all I can offer.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. It helps to know you tried. It doesn’t erase the pain, but it helps. We’ll get there in time, but right now we should probably get some sleep.”

  But instead of going to bed, Dylan went in search of Collette.

  COLLETTE HAD JUST STEPPED from the shower when she heard the soft tapping at her door.

  “Are you decent?”

  Dylan. Her pulse quickened at the sound of his voice. She quickly pulled on her robe and then grabbed a towel to turban around her dripping hair.

  “Come in.”

  He stepped through the door. Fatigue had settled in his broad shoulders. Her first impulse was to step into his arms, but knowing what she had to tell him held her back.

  “Was the interrogation tedious beyond endurance?” she asked.

  “Let’s just say I’m not your father’s favorite citizen. We Ledgers have a fearsome reputation.”

  And a history of trouble that started with the sheriff long before Helene’s murder. “How did Dad react to the photo taken from the security footage?”

  “He reminded me I’m not
an officer of the law and have no business requesting security-camera evidence.” Dylan mocked her father’s stern tone.

  She smiled in spite of the anxiety that was pulsing inside her. “Does nothing drag you into despair, Dylan Ledger?”

  “The Cowboys losing a playoff game.”

  “You grew up in Boston.”

  “But I was born a Texan.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “However, I get the feeling that something is bothering you.”

  She walked to the dresser, reached into the top drawer and removed the telltale correspondence. “I read the letters Mother gave me.”

  He took her hand and tugged her down beside him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I think I should.”

  His hand roamed her back. “Only if you want to.”

  “They could affect you, too.”

  He looked at her questioningly. She dreaded hitting him with this tonight, but with all her father was throwing at him, he deserved to know the full truth.

  She met his gaze, and the quake inside her shook her control. “The woman my father was in love with when he married my mother was Helene Martin.” She pressed the handwritten note into Dylan’s hand.

  He winced as he started reading. By the time he was finished, his shoulders were squared, his back ramrod straight.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Dylan. I had the same thoughts, but nothing in those letters proves or even suggests that my father misused his power as sheriff when he arrested Troy.”

  “When my father went to prison, it didn’t just steal seventeen years of his life, Collette. It ripped me and my brothers from him, from our home and from each other. Losing our mother broke our hearts. Losing our father as well destroyed our childhood and life as we knew it.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.” Tears burned her eyes. She stood and walked away from the bed.

  “I don’t blame you for any of this,” Dylan said, “but if I learn that Glenn McGuire framed my father for murder because of a college crush he had on my mother, I’ll find a way to make him pay, Collette. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”