“Cole!” Rayleen barked. “That cowboy’s long gone.”
“What?” Grace asked in utter confusion. How did Rayleen know they weren’t seeing each other anymore?
Rayleen rolled her eyes. “I hope you two weren’t serious.”
“We weren’t,” Grace answered quickly.
“Good news, because Cole took off.”
“For where?” Jenny asked after a few heartbeats of awkward silence.
“Not sure. He paid rent early and said he’d be gone for a couple of weeks. But considering the timing, I’d guess the boy went back to California for a little more time in paradise.”
“What?” Grace breathed. “More time?”
“He lived in L.A. for a couple of months when he was young,” Jenny said. “It was a long time ago.”
Grace’s mind was spinning. He’d lived in L.A.? That couldn’t be right. Why wouldn’t he have told her that?
Rayleen snorted. “There’s more to the story than that. Rumor has it he was shacking up with Ms. Madeline Beckingham in her Hollywood mansion.”
Jenny gasped. “What? I’ve never heard that.” Her gaze slid nervously toward Grace. Grace found herself looking blankly into Jenny’s worried eyes.
“Oh, the talk died down when he came back so quickly. I don’t even know if it was true. He said it wasn’t.”
“Then it probably wasn’t,” Jenny cut in.
Rayleen shrugged. “Maybe not. But he left with her last time, and he’s gone again. I’m just saying, it’s suspicious. That’s all.”
Suspicious. No, that wasn’t the word for it. Because Grace knew he was sleeping with Madeline. And now she knew why he’d never mentioned his time in L.A. He’d let Grace tell stories about her life there as if he knew nothing about L.A. He’d let her talk about it like a fool. No, the timing wasn’t suspicious. It was damning.
“Who cares about him?” Jenny said brightly. “All the more reason to go out and have fun with the girls. We’ll flirt with more men than we could ever need. Right? Let’s go!”
“No,” Grace said softly. Everyone froze. Even Aunt Rayleen lost her scowl and finally seemed to realize that her gossip might have been unwelcome.
“Eh,” she muttered. “I’m sure it’s not true. He’s probably camping.”
“No,” Grace repeated. She blinked her eyes, trying to clear the dizziness from her brain. When her vision cleared, she found herself looking at her aunt and seeing her with new eyes. Rayleen looked worried and a little guilty. And, truth be told, she looked frail without her scowl and her whiskey sour and her unlit cigarette. She was lonely. She was alone. Because she’d done too good a job of protecting herself from love and hurt.
That might be Grace someday, but even if it wasn’t, she could understand what Rayleen had done. She could admire that the woman had had a tough life, and she’d had to make herself hard. But Rayleen deserved more than that. She deserved to be happy someday, and not hurt. Just as Grace did.
“Grace…” Eve started, but Grace shook her head.
“That’s not what I meant. I meant, we need to do Aunt Rayleen’s makeup first. That’s all. She’s one of the girls, right?”
“Oh, poo,” Rayleen scoffed. “Nobody’d notice my makeup even if you made me look like a whore.”
“What about Easy?” Grace asked.
Rayleen’s eyes went wide as saucers.
Grace couldn’t help but smile, despite the hurt banging around inside her. “Would Easy notice if you looked especially whorish?”
Her papery cheeks flushed. “What?”
Jenny giggled. “Oh, come on. We’ve all noticed the way you two flirt.”
“Flirt? I wouldn’t flirt with that old cowhand if he was the last man on earth.” She cleared her throat. “Why? You think he’s flirting with me?”
“I think he is,” Grace said. “But even if he’s not, I’d love to do your makeup.”
“Makeup,” she huffed. Then she shrugged as if she didn’t care. “Sure. Knock yourself out. But don’t make me look like some old fool.”
“Got it.” She used a creamy foundation to hide fine lines without looking cakey, and a bit of concealer to brighten under her aunt’s eyes. But as Grace moved on to powder and blush, her mind wandered back to Cole. She’d felt betrayed before, and told herself she had no right to. But this…this felt worse. As if she’d known nothing about him from the start. He wasn’t who he pretended to be. She might not be a wonderful person, but at least she’d warned him right away.
Biting back the hurt, Grace smudged a neutral color over Rayleen’s eyelids to cover the pink that showed through her thin skin, then she carefully dusted a dark gray shade along her lash line and finished up with mascara.
“There. Easy as pie.”
Rayleen scowled, as usual, but when she turned to look in the mirror, her scowl fell away. She didn’t smile, but her eyes lit up. Just a little. “All right,” she finally conceded. “It’s fine.”
Eve and Jenny exchanged amused looks. It was more than fine. Rayleen looked almost ten years younger, and her white hair only looked more beautiful against the careful palette of coral and gray.
Rayleen didn’t smile, but she did look at herself for a long time before she finally slapped her knees and stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Jenny shouted. “I need to take a picture. Girls’ night out!”
Grace made herself smile for the picture, but as they left the condo, her heart was sinking. She couldn’t do this. Go out and act as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
It was stupid to feel so betrayed. He was a man she’d had sex with. He couldn’t betray her, because he hadn’t promised anything. So maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was herself. There’d been a connection. A chemistry. Something that had made it feel different. But it hadn’t been different. It had been the same in the very worst possible way.
She realized that she was planning excuses with every step. Planning a way to escape from these women and lock herself in her apartment to lick her wounds alone. But what if she didn’t? What if she swallowed all this strange grief and went to the saloon?
Despite the short length of time she’d known them, Jenny and Eve had given her a chance. They seemed to like her, or at least to want to like her. They might be friends. Actual friends. If they didn’t want sex or money or connections, maybe they just wanted her.
Grace crossed one arm over her chest in defense. She held tight to her opposite elbow and tucked her head, startled at how frightening it felt to consider having friends. To trust that they genuinely liked her.
They turned the corner and Grace realized they were coming up on the Crooked R. “I need to drop off my makeup kit,” she said.
“Sure,” Eve said. “We’ll wait for you.”
“No, go ahead and go in. I’ll meet you there.”
Jenny rolled her eyes, and everyone kept walking past the saloon and toward the Stud Farm. “Don’t be silly. We’ll wait here and then go in together to make an appearance. Four beautiful women walking in at once? They won’t know what hit them.”
This was Grace’s chance to make an excuse. To say she wasn’t feeling well and she wanted to turn in. But instead, she nodded. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”
But as she headed up the sidewalk toward the porch, headlights flashed over the lawn and she glanced back to see a sheriff’s truck pulling up to the curb.
Oh, God.
The SUV stopped and two deputies got out. As Eve and Jenny and Rayleen watched, the men started up the walk toward Grace.
Oh, no.
It was an apartment building with four apartments. They might not be here for her. Or maybe it was something that didn’t have anything to do with—
“Grace Barrett?” the shorter deputy asked.
“Yes,” she breathed. Her pulse suddenly swelled to a booming beat inside her skull. Her entire body went tight and numb.
“We have a warrant for your arrest,” the same guy said.
/> And there it was. This was it. “Oh,” she said, not really speaking, just letting air escape from her lungs. They hadn’t turned their lights on, at least, but she could still see flashes at the edges of her vision. “Oh,” she said again as the deputy approached with his hands raised in a calming gesture.
She glanced toward her new friends, though she tried not to meet their gazes. All three women stood wide-eyed, lips parted in shock. “Can I set down my kit?” Grace rasped.
The deputy nodded, and she set it down slowly, more than familiar with how jumpy cops could be. But these officers were a little more Zen than the average L.A. cop. When she held her arms up, the deputy didn’t snatch her wrist and twist it behind her back. Instead, he calmly slipped the cuffs over one wrist, and then the other. Grace couldn’t help but wonder if he would have been kind enough to cuff her hands in front if she’d still had purple hair and wild makeup.
The thought of her hair brought tears to her eyes. Despite everything—the misguided affair with Cole, the knowledge that she was moving on soon—this had felt like a new beginning. A new start. She’d been shedding her skin. Letting go of her defenses. And she’d meant it. But now…
She dared one last look at Eve and Jenny and Aunt Rayleen, but they were blurry. She was protected from whatever she’d see in their faces.
“Grace?” Jenny called tentatively.
Grace just dropped her head and let the deputy lead her to his truck. She wondered if anyone else was watching. Wondered if half the saloon had come outside to watch her perp walk. It hardly mattered. All the important people were right there with front-row seats.
She felt the deputy’s hand on top of her head guiding her into the truck. Grace just closed her eyes and let him push her under.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
HE’D MEANT TO BE GONE for weeks. Meant to stay away until his CT scan. What was the point, after all? Why work at the ranch toward something he might not have again? So he’d driven away, meaning to stay gone. To take a roundabout way toward California. To consider whether that was what he wanted. Maybe even what he needed.
But that first night, he’d stopped at a campground in Idaho, and he’d slept under the stars on nothing more than a pallet and a sleeping bag. And as he’d stared up at the same sky he’d seen a thousand times before, he hadn’t seen the stars at all. What he’d seen was fear. The new fear of what he’d do if he couldn’t ride, sure.
But old fears, too. The nagging fear of becoming his father. That was part of what had driven him to L.A. the first time. And then the awful fear of letting his dad down, which had come after the possibility had passed with a startling finality.
The fear of letting down a dead man. Is that all that had driven him for the past thirteen years? It didn’t seem possible.
No, it wasn’t possible. He loved the work. Loved the land and the sky. The beautiful days and the weeks that were so brutal you wished you could lie down and die. He loved the men he worked with and the simple dignity of the work.
But now…
Now there was a new fear.
And as he’d lain under those stars praying for sleep to claim him, he’d remembered the first time he’d let Grace see it. That moment when he’d confessed that he might not ride again. She’d reached for him. Reached for a connection. It wasn’t the sex he remembered now. It was that moment when she’d looked at him. When she’d understood. She knew what it was to face fear, and she’d wanted to take it from him. Or share the burden, at least.
She’d been afraid before. She was still afraid.
Cole felt ashamed now. Hard as she was, she’d seen his fear and felt compassion. But when she’d turned her defenses on him, he’d lashed out. He’d hurt her more, and that was exactly what she’d expected. What she’d wanted, even. Because if he hurt her, she didn’t have to fear it anymore. It was done.
The second day, Cole had turned north instead of west. He’d camped in Montana that night. A different forest. The same stars. This time next to a creek that danced through the dark, adding enough sound to the night that he hoped it would let him sleep.
His hip had recovered more quickly from the ride than he’d expected, and it was back to the familiar dull ache that had slept with him every night since the accident. It shouldn’t keep him up, but he couldn’t close his eyes.
In the end, his insomnia had finally made itself useful. By the next morning, Cole had figured it out. He’d faced the reality of where he was and he’d made a decision. If his ability to ride was what made him a man, then he wasn’t much of a man at all. And if he couldn’t keep Grace from leaving, at least he could let her go with the respect she deserved. He needed to step up to the plate and be the kind of person he could be proud of. Nothing to do with his dad or Easy or the ranch. Just himself.
He took the long way home, stopping for one more night along the Gallatin to let everything settle in his mind. For once, the ranch felt far away. But California had ceased to exist as anything but a harmless memory.
His dad had been wrong.
Whether it had all been a grand mistake or not, it had been Cole’s to make and his to live with. He only wished he’d found a way to say that without screaming. He wished he’d made his peace with his father. But better late than never.
That night he slept for eight hours straight. And then he headed home to Jackson. Maybe even to Grace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“SHE’S NOT THERE.”
Cole looked up to see Shane coming down the stairs. “Hey, man.” He dropped the hand he’d raised to knock for the third time on Grace’s door. “She’s probably still at work,” he murmured.
“Um…” Shane’s gaze slid from Cole to the front door, then down to his feet. “Did you just get back?”
Cole shifted and narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on?”
Shane grimaced.
“Where’s Grace?” Cole pressed.
“You should ask Rayleen.”
“Ask Rayleen what?” he growled.
Shane finally stepped off the last stair and stood there awkwardly. “I’m pretty sure Grace is gone.”
“No. She was supposed to stay another week or two.”
“Right.” Shane ran a hand through his hair and glanced at the front door as if he wanted to bolt. “Something happened.”
All the peace he’d managed to gather over the past days crumbled and slipped through his hands. He could almost hear it crash onto the wood floor. “Jesus Christ, Shane, do I have to beat it out of you? What the hell is going on?”
Shane took a deep breath. “Fine. Grace was arrested on Sunday night.”
“What?”
“I gather that whatever the charges were, they were dropped. She was released this morning. She packed up and left a few minutes later. That’s all I know.”
Cole cursed and headed for the door.
“I’m sorry, man,” Shane said, the words barely audible over Cole’s pounding heart.
Cole pushed out the door and rushed to the saloon. Jenny and Rayleen were both behind the bar, their backs turned to the room. Jenny was hammering a nail into the wall, but they both spun to face him when he called Rayleen’s name.
“Cole!” she said in surprise, nearly dropping the framed picture she held. She set it down carefully on the bar and crossed her arms. “What are you doing here? Thought you’d taken off for California.”
“What?” He shook his head, then squinted at Rayleen. She looked different somehow. Younger? He waved the stupid thought away with an impatient hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where’s Grace? I need to speak to her.”
“Probably in Montana by now.”
“Montana? You let her go?”
“She wanted to leave.”
He ground his teeth together, unable to see the connection between those two things. “How did she get from here to Montana?” he made himself ask calmly. “She doesn’t have a car.”
“I dropped her off at Flagg Ranch thi
s morning for the Yellowstone bus.”
“So. You drove her. All the way up to Flagg Ranch. So she could leave. This morning.”
“Cole,” Jenny said. “Something happened with—”
“I heard about that. I don’t give a shit. I just need to talk to her.”
“The charges were apparently dropped, but she wouldn’t listen to us. Eve thinks it has something to do with an issue in California. Grace just wanted to leave. She didn’t—”
“Just—” He held up a hand to stop her from talking. “Hold on.” His heart beating too hard, he called up her number on his phone and hit Call. He couldn’t stop picturing how small she’d looked on the side of the road that day, when she’d been so worried about getting the car back to Eve. I can’t be late.... Not after that. She’ll think…
An arrest. Everybody knowing. She must be devastated.
He held his breath as the phone clicked. Then a mechanical voice told him the subscriber wasn’t available.
“Shit,” he ground out. “Where’s she going? Vancouver?”
“Yes,” Rayleen said quietly. “She said something about going through Bozeman.” She looked up finally, meeting his gaze. “I’d guess the bus follows I-90.”
The bus follows I-90. Right. Of course. It probably only left once a day. Bozeman wasn’t exactly a hot travel spot. Maybe he could…
“If she gets in touch, call me,” he tossed over his shoulder as he headed for the door.
“Tell her we miss her, okay?” Jenny shouted.
He should’ve come straight home yesterday. He should’ve at least called.
If Grace needed to run, he could let her. He was almost sure of it. But not like this. Not when she thought he’d been sleeping with Madeline. Not when she was convinced that what she and Cole had meant nothing.
Because it had meant something. Something so big that it filled him up until he could barely breathe.
Cole got into his truck and headed north, hoping he could manage to catch a girl who meant to disappear for good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE DINGY FLUORESCENT LIGHTS twitched around her as Grace struggled to keep her eyes open. She’d been on three buses already today and the fourth one wouldn’t arrive until 1:00 a.m., which was… She flipped open her phone. Three hours from now.
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