Jack lifted his brows, narrowed his eyes. Suspicion was fully awake behind them. Kiley knew that look and her heart sank. He smelled a con. There was no way he’d go through with it now.
“Dad,” Kendra said. She was still standing in the doorway, and she nodded toward the front of the reception area. “That guy is back. I’m telling you, I think he’s a Fed.”
“I’m obligated to report crimes or intended ones,” Caleb said. “I wouldn’t say too much more than that in my presence.”
“I told you he was following me,” Kendra went on, ignoring Caleb as if he hadn’t spoken.
Jack got up and looked where she was staring. “Hell, Kendra.”
Kiley jumped to her feet, her heart in her throat. Her sister had faked her own death. Her father was an ex-con on probation. And some kind of federal law enforcer was parked outside. They’d both end up in prison unless she did something. She went to the office door and opened it, but her eyes were still on the computer.
Kendra said, “Will you just sign, Dad, so we can get out of here?”
Jack looked past his daughter and apparently, saw Kendra’s pursuer. Kiley couldn’t see the road from Caleb’s office. Her father nodded grimly. Then he went back to the table, scribbled his name across both documents, and then signed the check. “Send a copy of the paperwork here.” He scribbled an address on a notepad and shoved it across the table. “Where’s the back door?”
“Around to the right,” Caleb said.
Jack nodded, then took hold of Kendra’s shoulders. “Wait here. Stay out of sight. I’ll pull the car around back.” Then he released her and headed out of the conference room. Kiley turned to watch him stride through the reception area, through the slightly open door.
The second he was outside, she burst out of the office and grabbed Kendra’s hand just as she came out of the conference room. “Come on.” She tugged her through the reception area, around the corner to the back door, pushed it open.
But her sister planted her feet.
“Go on, Kendra,” Kiley said. “I’ll go out front and distract the cop. Let him think I’m you, give you time to get away.” As she spoke she glanced toward the front door in case anyone was coming. But all she saw was Dax Russell sitting out front in his pimped-out Charger. He gave her a nod.
Frowning, she looked back at her sister. “But…but that’s—”
“He’s a great guy. I owe him a lot. When I asked him to follow me around the past two days, he didn’t even argue.”
“But…but why?”
“Had a feeling I might need to rush Dad out of town. But mostly, to help my sister get the life she deserves.”
“You mean…you knew?”
She made a face. “Pssh. Of course I knew. I can always tell when you’re lying, Kiley.” Then she shrugged. “You’re not entirely hopeless at the game after all, are you? I mean, Dad didn’t really just buy Rob’s share of the ranch. Did he?”
“No. He bought that land he was pretending to raise money to buy, just as promised, for a reservoir project for the town.”
“And he gave you the power to do whatever you want with it.” She nodded when Kiley said nothing. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet. You just conned the best grifter in the business.”
“If he was the best, then why did he fall for it? You didn’t.”
Kendra nodded. “He was about to catch on, Kiley. I had to play the Dax card.” She put her hands on Kiley’s shoulders. “Always have a Plan B, Sis. Always have an exit strategy.” Kiley nodded. Then Kendra said, “He’s gonna be pissed. But I don’t think he’ll turn you in for The Legless Chihuahua. If he seems like he’s going to, I think I can talk him out of it.”
“I’ll have every donor paid back by the time he figures out what happened. You tell him that. I’ll be a productive and beloved Big Falls resident by then. I’ll have prevented the entire town from being robbed by then, too. Don’t think for a minute Betty Lou isn’t gonna tell this story. I’d get a slap on the wrist.”
“Wouldn’t be worth his effort,” Kendra said. “You did good, Sis.”
A sob caught in Kiley’s throat and she hugged her sister. “I love you, Kendra. I’ll make sure Betty Lou keeps your name out of it.”
“Thanks. I love you too.” In the distance, a horn blew. They pulled apart. “I’ll call when we get somewhere, okay?”
“You better.”
Kendra turned and went outside. She got in the passenger door and the car sped away in a haze of red Oklahoma dust.
Kiley stood there, staring at the dark cloud her family had left behind. Her father would never forgive her once he realized he’d been duped. He’d been starting to get suspicious, would have thought to double check the tax map number if he’d had a few more minutes. But Kendra had played the Dax card, as she’d put it. Kendra had helped her to do the right thing.
“You okay, babe?” Rob asked.
She turned around. It registered on her that he wasn’t alone, but she didn’t care, because he opened his arms and she fell right into them. “We did it,” he whispered. “We actually did it.”
Betty Lou and Caleb were standing behind him. Over his shoulder, Kiley saw Dax driving away.
“Well, there’s just one more order of business,” Betty Lou said. And turning, she all but skipped back into the conference room. Everyone followed, and she quickly slid another document in front of Kiley. “Sign here to sell the property your father just purchased, to the town of Big Falls Oklahoma for the sum of one dollar. Everything’s exactly as you asked,” she said softly.
Everyone in the room was looking at her. And not the way she used to feel people looked at her. Not judging or condemning or mistrusting. But kind, loving, and kind of admiring.
She had to blink away tears to see where to sign and as she scratched her name on the dotted line, one of them fell from her cheek and blended with the ink.
* * *
Kiley and Rob sat on the riverbank, under the biggest full moon she thought she’d ever seen. It painted the river in white that glittered like a Kincaid painting. They’d spread a blanket on the grass and the boulder was their backrest. She strummed her guitar and sang Sunshine on My Shoulders, but substituted Moonshine instead.
When she finished, Rob said, “That was amazing. You have to play at The Long Branch.”
She blushed and set the guitar aside.
“It was pretty cool, what your sister did. What Dax did, too, considering.”
“I think he’d do anything she asked him to. I think he’s still in love with her.”
Kiley took a deep breath, leaned back against the boulder and said, “I think I’ve done everything I need to do here, Rob. I proved to myself that I could be a good person. That I could do the right thing. And Mrs. Terwilliger called today. The bank is happy to approve my mortgage. I just have to go in tomorrow to finalize everything. But if you want to buy me out of my half of the ranch, I’ll sell to you, instead. I can pay those people back either way. I understand if you don’t want to be in business with me. A guy as honest as you—”
He pressed a finger to her lips and stared into her eyes. “I love you.” Her eyes widened. “And no matter what you do or what you’ve done, I’m still gonna love you.”
“How… do you know?”
“Cause I tried not to love you already.” He shrugged. “A couple of times. Didn’t work. Still love you. Doesn’t seem like I have any choice in the matter, and if I did, I think I’d choose to keep on loving you anyway.”
She let those words sink in, then suddenly leaned up and kissed his mouth over and over, talking in between. “I love you…too. It’s the biggest thing… I’ve ever felt. And it keeps… getting bigger… all the time.”
“It’s good we…both feel the same.” Then he shoved his hand into his jeans pocket. Her head was angled across his chest so she saw it. When it came out, it came out with a ring. Its gold and breathtaking diamond winked in the moonlight.
She sucked in a sh
arp breath and stared at him, stunned. “Robby!” And then, “Robby?”
He got up and pulled her to her feet. Once she was standing, he took her hand and dropped down onto one knee. “Kiley Louise Kellogg, I want us to be partners in everything, not just in Holiday Ranch. I want to fall asleep and wake up with you in my arms every night and day for the rest of my life. What do you say?”
She stared down into his eyes and felt the strangest sensation she had ever experienced. She realized that she was living the very moment when all her dreams were coming true. It was surreal.
“I say yes,” she said. She tugged him until he stood up, then stood on tiptoe and whispered against his lips. “Oh, Rob, we’re gonna be so happy.”
“Gonna be? Nah. We’re already there,” he said.
And then he kissed her and she knew that her brand new life had finally, truly begun.
–THE END–
Look for book 2 in the McIntyre Men series
Oklahoma Starshine.
Coming Christmas 2016!
Continue reading for an excerpt from book 1 of The Oklahoma Brands:
The Brands Who Came for Christmas.
The Brands Who Came for Christmas
* * *
Prologue
* * *
Maya
Most people in Big Falls, Oklahoma, thought it must have been a case of immaculate conception when they saw me, Maya Brand—eldest of the notorious Vidalia Brand’s illegitimate brood—with my belly swollen and my ring finger naked.
Personally, I thought it was more like fate playing a cruel joke. See, all my life, I had struggled to be the one respectable member of my outrageous family. I went to church on Sundays. I volunteered at the nursing home. I wore sensible shoes, for heaven’s sake! I never aspired to notoriety. I just wanted to be normal.
You know. Normal. I wanted a husband, a home, a family. I wanted to be one of those women who make pot roast for Sunday dinner, and vacuum in pearls while it simmers. I wanted a little log cabin on the hillside behind my family’s farm, with a fenced-in backyard for the kids, and a big front porch. I wanted to sit down in one of the pews on Sunday and not have the three women beside me automatically slide their butts to the other end.
And it had been starting to happen—before the big disaster blew into town. Bit by bit, I’d felt it happening. The PTA moms and church ladies in town had been slowly, reluctantly, beginning to accept me. To see me as an individual, rather than just another daughter of a bigamist and a barmaid. And it wasn’t that I didn’t love my mother dearly, because I did. I do! I just didn’t want to be like her. I wanted to be like those other women—the ones who were always asked to bake for the church picnic, who did their grocery shopping in heels, and who drove the car pools. The ones who slow-danced with their handsome husbands on anniversaries and holidays, and who took golf or tennis lessons with groups of their friends. They have minivans and housekeepers, manicured lawns and manicured nails, those women.
What they do not have are mothers who own the local saloon, or sisters who ride motorcycles or pose for fashion magazines in their underwear.
Still, I was certain my background was something that I could overcome with effort. And, as I said, my efforts had actually been working. Once or twice, one of those other women had smiled back at me in church. The ladies on the pew hadn’t moved so far away, nor quite as quickly, and one of them had even returned my persistent “good morning” one Sunday.
Things had been going so well! Until that night….
That night. He ruined everything! Made me into the biggest (literally) and most scandalous member of my entire family! The good people of Big Falls have stopped gossiping about Kara being a jinx—then again, none of her boyfriends have wound up in the hospital from any freak accidents lately, either. They’ve stopped whispering about Edie, who found the success she chased to L.A. when she became a lingerie model for the Vanessa’s Whisper catalogue. Mom just about had kittens over that one. The locals used to speculate on Selene, because of her oddball customs and beliefs. Vegetarianism and Zen and dancing around outdoors when the moon was full, were not big in Big Falls. And Mel used to generate gossip for being too tough for any man, with her motorcycle and her unofficial job as bouncer at the OK Corral. That’s our family’s saloon; the OK Corral. Because we live in Oklahoma. Cute, huh?
But the point is, no matter how much I wished that my sisters would conform, or that my mother would suddenly cut that wild black hair of hers to a style more fitting for a woman her age, and maybe convert the saloon into a restaurant like that nice Haggerty family a town away—none of their antics did as much damage to my standing in the community as that one night of insanity with that man. That drifter with the eyes that seemed to look right through my clothes. Right through my skin.
I suppose, if I’m going to tell you about all this, I should probably start with him, and that night.
See it all started just short of nine months ago….
* * *
Caleb
How was I to know that one night of insanity would change my life forever? I mean, I was respectable, responsible, highly thought of. The Montgomerys of Oklahoma were known far and wide. We had money, and we had power. The name Cain Caleb Montgomery had a long and proud history. My father, Cain Caleb Montgomery II, served two terms as a U.S. senator. His father, Cain Caleb Montgomery I, served five.
I am, as you have probably guessed by now, Cain Caleb Montgomery III. And already my political career was well underway. I had just stepped down from my second term as mayor of a medium-sized city. On the day all this insanity began, my entire future was being planned for me. My father and grandfather, and a half dozen other men—men whose faces you would recognize—sat around a large table plotting my run for the U.S. Senate.
They discussed when and how I would declare my candidacy nine months from now, just a little before New Year’s Day. They discussed what I was going to stand for and what I was going to stand against. They didn’t discuss these things with me, mind you. They discussed them with each other. I was an onlooker. A bystander. They went on, telling me what I was going to wear, eat, and do on my vacations, as I sat there, listening, nodding, and growing more and more uneasy.
And then they went too far. There we all were, in my father’s drawing room. Eight three-piece suits—seven of them straining at the middle—seated around a long cherry wood table that gleamed like a mirror. The place reeked of expensive leather, expensive whiskey and cigars of questionable origin. And all of a sudden, one of the men said, “Of course, there will be a Mrs. Montgomery by then.”
“Of course there will!” my father agreed, smiling ear to ear.
And I sat there with my jaw hanging.
“Got anyone in mind, son?” A big hand slammed me on the back, and a wrinkled eye winked from behind gold-framed glasses. “No? Great. Even better this way, in fact. We can start from scratch, then.”
And suddenly they were all talking at once, growing more and more excited all the time.
“She should be blond. The latest analysis shows that blondes hold a slight edge over brunettes or redheads in public opinion polls.”
“Of course, there’s always dye.”
“Medium height. Not too tall.”
“Yes, and not too short, or she’ll have to wear heels all the time.”
“And of course, she has to be attractive.”
“But not too attractive. We don’t want any backlash.”
“Educated. Not quite as well as you, though, but that goes without saying.”
“Well versed. She should have a good voice, nice rich tones. None of those squeaky ones. And no gigglers.”
“Oh, definitely no gigglers!”
“Sterling reputation. We can’t have any scandals in the family. That’s probably most important of all.”
“Absolutely. No scandals.”
“We can run background checks, of course. Just to be sure. And—”
“Wait a minu
te.”
They all fell silent when I finally spoke. Maybe it was because of the tone of my voice, which sounded odd even to me. I placed both my palms on the table and got slowly to my feet. And for the first time in my entire adult life, I let myself wonder if this was what I really wanted. It had been expected of me, planned for me, even from before I was born. Everything all laid out, private school, prep school, college, law school. And I’d gone along with it because, frankly, it had never occurred to me to do otherwise. But was it what I wanted?
It shocked me to realize I wasn’t sure anymore. I just…wasn’t sure. Giving my head a shake, I just turned and walked out. They all called after me, shouting my name, asking if I was all right. I kept on going. I felt disoriented—as if, for just one instant there, a corner of my world had peeled back, revealing a truth I hadn’t wanted to see or even consider. The fact that there might be more for me out there. Something different. Another choice.
Anyway, I went out that night looking to escape my name. My reputation. My identity, because I was suddenly questioning whether it was indeed mine. Everyone who knew me, knew me as Cain Caleb Montgomery III. CC-Three for short. Hell, without the name and the heritage, I didn’t even know who I was.
I shed the suit. Dressed in a pair of jeans I used to wear when I spent summers on my grandfather’s ranch. God, I hadn’t been out there since my college days, and they barely fit anymore. I borrowed the pickup that belonged to our gardener, José. He looked at me oddly when I asked but didn’t refuse.
And then I just drove.
Maybe it was fate that made me have that flat tire in Big Falls, Oklahoma, on the eve of Maya Brand’s twenty-ninth birthday. Hell, it had to be fate…because it changed everything from then on. Although I wasn’t completely aware of those changes until some eight and a half months later.
Oklahoma Moonshine (The McIntyre Men #1) Page 19
