As our daughter...
What was that expression about one’s cup overflowing? A wild joy rose up inside her. Tears welled over and spilled down her cheeks. She smiled tremulously.
Cody took her flushed, exhilarated face between his palms and rested his gaze there. Just looking at her made his throat ache. No artist had the talent to paint such a face, so beautiful and open and brimming with love—for him, for his child. He couldn’t believe he’d almost been fool enough to let a second chance at love slip past him. And this time, he knew exactly what he was getting into. This time love wouldn’t be fueled by youth’s brash tendencies. What he and Danielle were destined to share was a love tempered by seasons and heartache, fired by an inferno of passion that left him fevered and hungry.
He kissed her until her lips were puffy and sore with the wanting of oh, so much more.
“Is it possible to manage two maids of honor or is that against the rules or something?” he whispered into her ear.
Danielle wound her arms around his neck and hugged him for all she was worth. “If that’s a proposal, cowboy, the answer is yes. As to the question of proper etiquette, I’m afraid I’m past caring about what Miss Manners has to say about my wedding. We’ll just have to ask the girls if they would mind sharing the honor,” she said with the warm, natural smile that Cody was counting on waking up to for the rest of his life.
It didn’t take long to discover that the girls were missing. By the time Cody and Danielle tracked down the note left in Ray Anne’s care, a thunderstorm was rumbling ominously in the distance. Dark, heavy-bottomed clouds billowed across a sky that had only moments before been clear and blue.
Lynn penned most of the script in her distinctive flowery scrawl, but both girls had signed boldly beneath the final line. “And we intend to stay ‘lost’ until you two come to your senses...”
The hand squeezing Cody’s arm left marks on his skin. “How long do you think they’ve been gone?” Danielle asked.
“Only about a half hour and in that direction.” Ray Anne pointed.
Clearly uncomfortable being placed in the middle of a family squabble, the girl assured them she had tried in vain to talk her friends out of what she thought was a foolhardy plan.
The roll of thunder echoed across the plains.
Cody’s face looked ashen as he turned to Danielle. “Can you ride a horse?” he asked.
Before committing herself to an answer, she demanded to know why.
Cody didn’t hesitate. He was thinking about the six inches of rain that had fallen in less than a couple of hours a few years back in Cheyenne. If his memory served him right, a dozen people died in that sudden deluge. It was a little known fact that flash floods were the number one weather-related killer in the United States. A raindrop echoed off the brim of his hat.
“We need to find them—fast.”
The expression he wore left little doubt as to the seriousness of the situation. Reading his fear, Danielle knew she had to be with him. She was not the kind of mother who could sit patiently behind wringing her hands while her man went out alone to rescue their children.
“I can ride,” she assured him. Although not very well.
Danielle hadn’t lied. She merely omitted the fact that it had been years since her father had enrolled her in an equestrian class.
Jagged lightning tore at the sky, touching down not more than a quarter of a mile away. There was no time for quibbling; they quickly mounted up.
It was unfortunate that Cody and Danielle’s reconciliation occurred just moments too late to stop the girls from putting their far-fetched plan into action. Assuming that parental love would supersede any silly squabble, Lynn and Mollie had decided to run away. Not really run away, just duck over the next convenient hill and wait to be rescued by parents who were certain to be so overjoyed at finding them that their anger with one another would quickly dissipate. And thus prompted by their good intentions, nature would take its due course.
As Lynn and Mollie wandered away from the wagon train under the guise of gathering flowers, they joked about earning Cupid badges for their ingenuity.
Their ruse took an urgent turn as the onslaught of heavy rain changed their lighthearted, adventurous tone.
A mere three hills away from the wagon train, two girls huddled beneath a scrub pine, the poor scraggly tree doing little to shield them from the sudden downpour.
“I bet the plan’s worked by now. Let’s go back,” Lynn urged, her eyes widening as a bolt of lightning shook the ground beneath them.
“I think we’d better just find low ground and wait to be found,” Mollie suggested. Remembering her father’s adamant advice about staying put whenever one was lost, she knew he would eventually come looking for them.
Figuring it would be best if their charred remains not be found beneath a tree acting as a lightning rod, the girls ran toward a nearby spot that not only looked promising as protection from the elements but as a lookout for spotting anybody who might be looking for them.
Danielle’s horse tossed his head nervously. The creature instinctively knew better than to be caught out in the middle of a Wyoming storm. The rain hit the dry earth like BB’s and ran off before having a chance to penetrate. Visibility was poor as Danielle tried to keep Cody in sight. As he had directed, she had swung out to the left in an attempt to cover more ground.
Such a stupid stunt, she fumed. I’ll kill them when we find them. I’ll hug them both to death...
Her tears mingled with the rain. Surely the girls would not have to give their lives in an attempt to bring their bullheaded parents together.
Though the rain, Danielle was barely able to see a blurred figure waving his hat. Cody had found them.
Low ground proved to be the bottom of a dry gully. An overhanging dirt embankment provided temporary shelter from the rain that by now was coming down in blinding sheets. The girls took turns every five minutes poking their heads above the ravine to search for riders.
Cody caught sight of the cowboy hat he had bought his daughter for Christmas. The wind caught it and carried it up the gully where it landed in the rising torrent rushing toward them. The girls had no way of knowing that the gully washer was coming. The rumbling of the oncoming water could easily be mistaken as the sound of thunder.
Danielle and Cody raced to the ravine. The rain was coming down so hard that it was hard to tell exactly where he had first sighted them. They dismounted at the edge of the embankment.
Looking up the gully, Cody could see the flood coming. It was a dirty, swelling monster intent on devouring everything in its path. The arroyo was filling quickly. He knew that only a foot or two was powerful enough to pick up a vehicle and carry it away. Many a luckless rancher had been swept away by such strong-moving current, his body later found miles away.
Every second counted.
Cody directed Danielle to remain on the bank as he wrapped one end of his rope around Champion’s saddle horn and the other around his middle.
The bank was slippery. Once he lost his footing. Cursing, Cody swung beneath the embankment and grabbed hold of Lynn. Desperately she clung to him, and he gave a hard tug to indicate to Danielle that she was to back his horse up.
“You stay put!” he told Mollie. He had visions of this feisty tomboy trying to scramble up the slippery bank and falling deeper into the gully.
A few moments later Lynn was in her mother’s arms. Drenched, sobbing, and contrite. Cody didn’t have time to enjoy the reunion. An enormous wall of water suddenly appeared a hundred yards above them. Swinging himself over the edge of the embankment again, he went back for Mollie. Despite her instincts to climb to safety, she had followed her father’s orders and remained exactly where he had left her. Over the roar of the water, he directed her to grab hold of a tree root protruding from the wall of the gully. She did, and he braced himself as best he could against the strain of the rope and the mud beneath his feet.
Danielle backed Champion up a
gain, then raced back to the edge of the ravine where Cody was lifting his daughter up to safety. Danielle threw herself upon her belly. She reached out a hand to Mollie. Fingers, wet with mud and rain, connected. With a tremendous joint effort, Danielle pulled as Cody pushed Mollie over the embankment. Together Mollie and Danielle rolled away from the edge of the gully.
Cody was just pulling himself to the lip of the bank when the wall of water hit. The rope tied around his waist snapped taut as he went under, and everything turned black.
The thoughts that raced through Danielle’s mind would stay with her for a lifetime. Could God be so cruel as to take Cody from her just when they had overcome all other obstacles in their way? With sudden clarity she understood why he had been so frightened to trust his heart to another. Danielle had only been able to imagine the horror he must have experienced watching his wife die in front of his eyes. Now that she was experiencing it firsthand, she wasn’t about to give up without a fight.
She was up on her feet, running, slipping in the mud toward Champion. Taking the reins in her hands, she pulled backward as hard as she could, beseeching him to drag in the cowboy suspended in a raging. current by a slender thread of hope. Once again she lay on her belly, calling out Cody’s name in prayer.
A hand emerged from the mud to clasp hers by the wrist. With a superhuman surge of adrenaline, Danielle assisted a mud-covered bundle onto the bank of the ravine. Wiping the muck from Cody’s face, she kissed him over and over again. She wasn’t sure he was all right until he started kissing her back.
Two muddy urchins fell to their knees beside them. Amid the crackling of lightning and the roar of raging water, a family was formed from the clay of the land that had claimed their hearts.
There was an odd blend of emotions carried in the smoke of the campfire on the final night of their fateful sojourn: triumph, loss, joy, sorrow, endings, new beginnings...
Looking around at “her” girls, Danielle couldn’t help but feel proud. With grit and determination, they had taken on the real West and ended up conquering the most formidable opponent of all: their own fears. She hoped that when they returned to Denver they would carry with them the sense of pride and friendship that had marked so much of their way along the Oregon Trail. Like the courageous woman in Matty O’Shaw’s diary, who herself had taken a second chance on love and ultimately discovered happiness in California with her stubborn, persistent wagon master, these young ladies would be a cherished part of her forever.
A new face graced the camp that evening. Cody’s agent, Arnie Fullerton, had arrived like the cavalry intent on saving his star from what the tabloids had dubbed the Dalliance With The Demented Den Mother. The front page blowup of Danielle slapping Cody across the face at the Pioneer Days Rodeo was still hot copy and had done his client little harm in the free advertising department. Still, Arnie maintained with a catch in his voice, it just wasn’t right of Cody to run off like that without a word to his trusted agent as to his whereabouts.
After about ten minutes of Arnie’s self-aggrandizing, Danielle had had enough. Money and fame were all well and good in and of themselves, but, like Mollie, she already resented the ulcerous little man who had laid claim to the past few years of his client’s life. No wonder Cody had snuck away and donned anonymity like a warm, safe cloak.
Danielle smiled to think of the horrified expression on Arnie’s face when they had arrived back at camp after the flash flood looking less like human beings than zombies who had just crawled out of their graves. Rather than tending to their immediate needs, everyone’s attention had been focused on keeping Arnie from fainting.
She had to give the man credit, however. When his best efforts failed to convince Cody to call an early end to the expedition, he had sacrificed his expensive Italian boots to the trail. One thing was for certain: he wasn’t about to let Cody out of his sight again.
For a short man, Arnie cast a long shadow over Danielle’s thoughts. She found herself wondering just how much of his life Cody was willing to devote to being a father and a husband. She didn’t see much future in being a Roadie Mom, but she couldn’t possibly ask Cody to give up his stardom on her account. Unfortunately it wasn’t something she had given much thought to when she had accepted his hasty proposal.
As if reading her thoughts, Cody pulled out his guitar and with that winning, self-effacing grin he knew she couldn’t resist, asked, “Care if I serenade you tonight, Red?”
Danielle’s face grew hot as the girls all hooted their approval. Cody bent down on one knee and poured his heart and soul out the best way he knew how—in a song.
“The One for Me” was more than just another Cody Cameron original destined to soar to the top of the charts. It was his commitment to all that he held dear in his life, the tender lyrics reaffirming his love and desire to raise a family out of the limelight. It was the kind of eloquent proposal he could put to words only if accompanied by a sweet melody. And it was his way of telling Arnie that his career would be based out of his Wyoming ranch, that his years of blind commitment to the industry were over.
Danielle stared into the universe of Cody’s gentle blue eyes. Love was as mystical as a haunting song, as strong as the cord that bound them together as a family. As they kissed beneath the light of the waning moon and the entire assemblage of Prairie Scouts erupted into cheers, Lynn and Mollie shared a wink that was to foreshadow years of impish mischief.
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Chapter One
Tiffany saw him in the distance, riding the big black stallion. It was spring, and that meant roundup. It was not unusual to see the owner of the Lariat ranch in the saddle at dawn lending a hand to rope a stray calf or help work the branding. Kingman Marshall kept fit with ranch work, and despite the fact that he shared an office and a business partnership with Tiffany’s father in land and cattle, his staff didn’t see a lot of him.
This year, they were using helicopters to mass the farflung cattle, and they had a corral set up on a wide, flat stretch of land where they could dip the cattle, check them, cut out the calves for branding and separate them from their mothers. It was physically demanding work, and no job for a tenderfoot. King wouldn’t let Tiffany near it, but it wasn’t a front row seat at the corral that she wanted. If she could just get his attention away from the milling cattle on the wide, rolling plain that led to the Guadalupe River, if he’d just look her way...
Tiffany stood up on a rickety lower rung of the gray wood fence, avoiding the sticky barbed wire, and waved her Stetson at him. She was a picture of young elegance in her tan jodhpurs and sexy pink silk blouse and high black boots. She was a debutante. Her father, Harrison Blair, was King’s business partner and friend, and if she chased King, her father encouraged her. It would be a marriage made in heaven. That is, if she could find some way to convince King of it. He was elusive and quite abrasively masculine. It might take more than a young lady of almost twenty-one with a sheltered, monied background to land him. But, then, Tiffany had confidence in herself; she was beautiful and intelligent.
Her long black hair hung to her waist in back, and she refused to have it cut. It suited her tall, slender figure and made an elegant frame for her soft, oval face and wide green eyes and creamy complexion. She had a sunny smile, and it never faded. Tiffany was always full of fire, burning with a love of life that her father often said had been reflected in her long-dead mother.
“King!” she called, her voice clear, and it carried in the early-morning air.
He looked toward her. Even at that distance, she could se
e that cold expression in his pale blue eyes, on his lean, hard face with its finely chiseled features. He was a rich man. He worked hard, and he played hard. He had women, Tiffany knew so, but he was nothing if not discreet. He was a man’s man, and he lived like one. There was no playful boy in that tall, fit body. He’d grown up years ago, the boyishness driven out of him by a rich, alcoholic father who demanded blind obedience from the only child of his shallow, runaway wife.
She watched him ride toward her, easy elegance in the saddle. He reined in at the fence, smiling down at her with faint arrogance.
“You’re out early, tidbit,” he remarked in a deep, velvety voice with just a hint of Texas drawl.
“I’m going to be twenty-one tomorrow,” she said pertly. “I’m having a big bash to celebrate, and you have to come. Black tie, and don’t you dare bring anyone. You’re mine, for the whole evening. It’s my birthday and on my birthday I want presents—and you’re it. My big present.”
His dark eyebrows lifted with amused indulgence. “You might have told me sooner that I was going to be a birthday present,” he said. “I have to be in Omaha early Saturday.”
“You have your own plane,” she reminded him. “You can fly.”
“I have to sleep sometimes,” he murmured.
“I wouldn’t touch that line with a ten-foot pole,” she drawled, peeking at him behind her long lashes. “Will you come?”
He lit a cigarette, took a long draw and blew it out with slight impatience. “Little girls and their little whims,” he mused. “All right, I’ll whirl you around the floor and toast your coming-of-age, but I won’t stay. I can’t spare the time.”
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