The Wrangler's Bride

by Justine Davis

“Nick always said she was a cool head.”

  “Maybe if he’d been more of one, he’d still be alive.”

  Biting her lip, Mercy moved hastily back into the office and shut the door she’d quietly opened. The utter lack of condemnation, the casual approbation of the men who had watched the preliminary, moved her beyond words. And she had to admit that hearing Nick’s actions laid out in cold, merciless detail, step by step, made them sound beyond reckless to the point of being foolhardy.

  She sat there in the empty conference room for a long time, wondering why she hadn’t been able to see it before, why she had simply accepted the guilt her grieving mind had foisted on her. Had she just been too close to it to think clearly? Too dazed and emotionally traumatized to think it through before?

  Or had it taken the quiet peace Grant’s world gave her for her to see the truth?

  She knew that wasn’t the answer, not really. She knew that the real reason was Grant himself, that the solid strength of him, his unwavering faith in her, was what had brought her to this, this healing realization that he’d been right, that had she acted, the only thing she would have accomplished was her own death.

  Perhaps she’d had to step outside herself to realize it. And she’d done that, when she fell in love all over again with Grant McClure.

  A sound at the door made her rise to her feet; it seemed that it would soon be over, but perhaps the judge had called for a break. When the door swung open, Mercy wanted to sink back into her chair; she’d been expecting the attorney, or perhaps one of the officers. Certainly not Nick’s widow.

  Allison came toward her swiftly, and before Mercy knew what to expect had engulfed her in a fierce hug.

  “Thank you,” she said fervently. “They’re going to pay for what they did, and it’s mainly thanks to you.”

  “I…” She swallowed and tried again. “It’s not enough. It should never have happened.”

  “I know that.” Allison smiled sadly. “But I also know Nick was never…quite rational about those awful people after Charlie Parness was killed. He was obsessed. He got calls and went out in the middle of the night. He took chances, crazy chances…but you know that.”

  She had known, but she’d just seen it as another sign of Nick’s dedication to his work. She’d even reassured Allison on occasion, when she expressed her worry.

  “I’m sorry, Allison,” Mercy said now, meaning it more than ever. “So very sorry. I should have listened to you, back then. Maybe I could have—”

  Allison interrupted her sharply. “Meredith Cecelia Brady, you aren’t still thinking this was somehow your fault?”

  Mercy drew back, startled. “I…”

  “Kristina told me she sent you off to get over that silly idea. Haven’t you?”

  Kristina had known this, too? Sometimes, Mercy thought, her charmingly spoiled friend was just too full of surprises.

  “I loved Nick, loved him dearly, but he brought this on himself,” Allison said, with the unwavering common sense that had first drawn Mercy to her. “I’d been afraid of something just like this for months. Ever since Charlie was murdered, it was like I knew he was…on borrowed time.”

  Mercy shivered. “I just felt so helpless. And useless.”

  “You listen to me, girlfriend,” Allison went on sternly. “No one knew Nick better than I did, and I know he had a world of respect for you, as an officer, as well as a friend. It would hurt him horribly to know you were tearing yourself up over this out of some mistaken idea you could have done something to stop it. And it hurts me, too, Meri. Please, don’t. Don’t blame yourself. No one else does. Least of all me.”

  Mercy felt something let go inside her, a tightness that she’d carried for so long she almost got used to it. She had faced her demons, and four of them would pay the penalty they deserved, because of her. Even the judge had given her an approving look after the steady, unshakable statement she gave. Her old confidence came rushing back to fill the void that ugly knot had left. And with it came the knowledge that she could go back to her old life, to her job, with all the faith in herself and her abilities that she’d once thought lost forever.

  She stared at the friend whose quiet strength astounded her.

  “Allison, are you all right? Really?”

  “I’m getting there. Matt and Lisa help. You can’t fall apart when you’ve got them depending on you.”

  “Are they…?”

  “What they are, is missing their godmother. So when are you coming to see them?”

  “They…want to see me?”

  “Of course they do. They’ve lost their father. They need the rest of us to hold together for them. And they’re worried about you, because they haven’t seen you. They need to see that you’re all right.” Allison eyed her assessingly. “You are all right, aren’t you?”

  Mercy took in a deep breath. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I think I am.”

  “Good. Then you can spend New Year’s with us.”

  “I…don’t think so. I’ll come by to see the kids, but then…I have something else I have to do. Something very important.”

  The moment the words came out, she knew even that was an understatement; nothing in her life could be more important than what she had to do.

  Yes, she could go back to the life that had been so brutally interrupted. She could go back to her work with full confidence. But she couldn’t go back with full dedication. Nor with her whole heart and soul. She’d left too much of both, too much of herself, back on a ranch in Wyoming.

  Grant slung a bale of hay onto the flatbed truck, resigned to starting the long haul of winter feeding. If he was prone to such excesses, he’d hire a helicopter to come in and drop the darn stuff, and have it done in a couple of hours, instead of putting in two days of miserable driving through heavy snow and pure manual labor, only to turn around and start it all over again.

  He heard Gambler’s welcoming bark split the silence; Walt must be back from taking the leopard mare and her baby out for her first short exercise period outside the big corral. He’d watched them go, smiling at the little filly’s delicate steps through snow until they reached the roadway, which was fairly free of drifts. And he’d realized as he did it that it had been a long time since he had smiled.

  Shoving that realization out of his mind, he wrestled with the next bale, questioning the wisdom of having insisted on doing what would normally be a two-man job by himself. But then, he’d taken to doing a lot of things alone of late, and the hands had learned not to question him about it. Even the irrepressible Chipper and the redoubtable Walt had steered clear of him after he ungraciously snarled at them a few times. He wasn’t happy with his own behavior, but he couldn’t seem to control it, which made him even angrier.

  He heard Joker’s trumpeting whinny from the barn. The sound startled him; the horse had been nearly as snarly as he’d been feeling of late, and that particular lighthearted sound had been long unheard around here. He leaned forward to peer toward the barn, then the house, but saw nothing, and went back to work.

  “Happy New Year,” he muttered to no one in particular, and shoved the next bale onto the slowly growing stack. Then the next, and the next, his mood turning uglier by the minute.

  He swore under his breath when realized he’d put a little too much of his angry energy into slinging the last bale; it was headed off the other side of the truck, to hit the floor and have to be picked up all over again, if it didn’t fall apart and scatter hay everywhere, which he would then have to clean up. He grabbed for it, even knowing it was futile.

  The bale stopped before he even touched it. And came back the other way, landing neatly atop the stack.

  “Thanks,” he muttered to Walt, who had to have come in just in time to save the wayward bale.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He froze in the act of pulling off his gloves. God, he was really losing it, thinking he was hearing Mercy’s voice, when he knew—

  She stepped out from b
ehind the shelter of the stack of hay. He stared at her as she walked around the truck toward him. Her expression revealed nothing to him, and he wondered why she’d come. And how—he hadn’t heard a vehicle, although she looked as if she could have hiked down from the main road, where the bus went by. Unlike the polished city girl he’d seen on television, she was in jeans and boots and sheepskin jacket and a dark green flannel shirt that turned her eyes the same rich shade. Only the ponytail was missing; her pale blond hair was down and free, and his body tightened instantly at the sight, remembering too clearly the silken brush of it over every intimate part of him. He fought it, and the strain made his voice harsh.

  “I heard about the hearing,” he said abruptly. “And the indictment. Congratulations.”

  She stopped a bare two feet away from him, shrugging, as if the thing that had so occupied her now meant nothing. “There’s a chance they may plead out and there won’t be a trial. They know the mob doesn’t want the attention, and that if push comes to shove, they’re expendable.”

  “So you did what you had to do.”

  “Yes. Just like you said I would.”

  “You were the only one who thought you couldn’t.” He finished yanking off his gloves. “Are you…all right?”

  “Yes.” He looked up at the quiet steadiness of her voice. “You were right. There really was nothing I could have done. Even Allison knew that. But I…had to get there by myself.”

  “Sometimes you have to,” he conceded. “So when do you go back to work?”

  “Right away, I hope.”

  Something quietly died inside him, a last hope he hadn’t even known he was harboring. He looked away from her as he shoved the gloves into his back pocket, not at all sure of his ability to keep his expression even.

  “At least,” she added softly, “if the boss of the M Double C is hiring.”

  His head snapped back around. “What?”

  She gestured at the stack of hay bales. “It does look like you could use some help.”

  He knew he was gaping at her, but he couldn’t help it. He saw her take in a long, deep breath, and she put a hand on the bed of the truck, as if she needed the support.

  “There could be a problem, though,” she went on, the slightest of tremors in her voice. “I’m looking for a permanent job.”

  Grant swallowed tightly, sure he had to be misunderstanding her. “You…already have one. Don’t you?”

  “I did. A job I loved, for a while. But I finally realized it was taking away more than it was giving. Taking away more than I could afford. So I quit.”

  He blinked. “You quit?”

  She nodded. “Foolish of me, I suppose. But you know how city girls are. Crazy. But once I…faced my doubts, once I knew that I could go back, I didn’t have to. And I realized I didn’t want to. Whether I had…someplace else to go or not.”

  He didn’t miss the undertone in her voice when she said “city girls,” just as he so often had. But he was so startled, he said only, “You really quit?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Yesterday. She’d quit yesterday? And then come straight here?

  “Mercy,” he said, then stopped, still afraid he was somehow misinterpreting her.

  She picked at a splinter on the wooden bed of the truck. And picked at it again, staring at it now, as if it were utterly fascinating. And Grant realized suddenly that she was as nervous as he was. Then her chin came up, and he was looking at the sassy, courageous Mercy he’d always known. And perhaps always loved.

  “Did you really name the filly No Mercy?”

  He blinked; she’d obviously run into Walt. “I…Yes.”

  “Is that…what you want?”

  Grant swallowed tightly. He owed her this. She’d come here, clearly uncertain of her reception, and that alone had taken so much nerve it made him ache a little inside.

  “The name,” he said, “wasn’t a wish. It was more of a…lament.”

  Her breath caught audibly. Her green eyes widened, and the hope he saw flaring there told him what he needed to know. And suddenly he knew even more, knew that Mercy had something Constance hadn’t had, something even his mother hadn’t had, a fierce, determined independence. An independence that assured that if she stayed, it would be because she wanted to.

  “If you really want that job, it’s…open. If you’re sure you know what you’re getting into.”

  “I’m sure,” she whispered. “Oh, I’m sure. If you are.”

  Joy leaped in him, but in this last instant he was almost afraid to reach out for it. “You handle Joker pretty well,” he said, “and you did a good job when the filly was born.”

  “I hope there are a dozen more little ones,” Mercy said, sounding a bit reckless. “This place needs them.”

  Grant heard his own breath catch. “Just what kind of little ones did you have in mind?”

  She met his gaze steadily. “I love you,” she said simply. “What kind do you think?”

  Grant’s eyes closed for an instant. “I…love you, too.”

  “I know,” she said easily. His eyes snapped open. She smiled lovingly at him, the kind of smile he’d been afraid to believe in for far too long. “I figured that out when you came charging into the city, even though you hate it, just to be sure I was all right.”

  Grant’s mouth curved into a rueful smile. “Gave myself away, huh?”

  “I just didn’t know if you…loved me enough to forgive me.”

  “Forgive you?”

  “For being a city girl.”

  “You’re not,” he said solemnly, “a city girl anymore.”

  “And our children won’t be city kids, either.”

  Grant couldn’t stop the grin that spread over his face at the thought of a couple of rambunctious youngsters with Mercy’s dauntless spirit running amok around the place.

  “I’m beginning to think,” he said, still grinning, “that a filly by Fortune’s Fire deserves a more appropriate name.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  He reached for her then, at last, the fire that leaped in him at the feel of her tempered by a new tenderness he’d never dared let himself feel before. “Mercy’s Fire,” he suggested.

  Before she could answer, he kissed her, and showed her exactly what he meant.

  Epilogue

  “That’s the kind of blood this family needs,” Sterling Foster said approvingly as he walked into the room, his slight drawl doing nothing to detract from the decisiveness of his words.

  “Whatever do you mean?” Kate Fortune rose gracefully out of her chair as the tall lawyer with his thick shock of white hair, the man who had stood by her through all the ups and downs of the past couple of years, spoke.

  “That McClure boy.”

  Kate smiled. She wasn’t about to dispute Sterling’s assessment, even though she often disagreed with him just for the sake of the entertaining argument. But in this case, she utterly agreed. She’d met Barbara’s son only a few times, but she’d heard much about him from the daughter-in-law she’d come to love like her own blood.

  And she’d heard a great deal more from her beloved granddaughter; Kristina had never been able to say enough about her wonderful big brother, and the fact that she never categorized the relationship as anything else, never called him her half brother, told Kate a great deal about how Grant regarded her in turn. And that would have been enough for Kate, even if she hadn’t liked and admired him for himself. And Sterling had agreed with her, after he met Grant, when he informed him that Kate had left him the Appaloosa stallion in her will.

  “He didn’t let me intimidate him,” was all he’d said, but Kate knew that for Sterling that said a great deal.

  “What’s he done now?” she asked.

  He gestured with a rolled-up copy of what Kate recognized as a stock sale catalog. “Sold that first get of Fortune’s Fire for more money than any horse is worth.”

  Kate smiled; horses were not Sterling’s cup of tea. “You t
hink any amount is more than any horse is worth.”

  “True enough. But I appreciate a good businessman when I see one. He’s done well with that gift of yours.”

  “More than you know,” Kate said, still smiling. Some amazing things had happened, and her gifts to her family had accrued some results she’d never dared to hope for.

  “At this rate, by the time he’s got a few more of those to sell, that ranch of his will be on the map.”

  Kate’s smile turned rather mysterious. “I think there will be at least one he’ll be hanging on to. A little filly named Mercy’s Fire.”

  “Mercy’s Fire? How do you horse people come up with those names?”

  “Mercy,” Kate said composedly, “is Grant’s nickname for his wife.”

  Sterling blinked. Kate laughed; she wasn’t often able to surprise him, and she enjoyed it immensely when she could.

  “He went and got married? I thought Kristina swore he never would, after that Carter woman. Who did he marry? Wait—” Kate’s smile widened as Sterling’s quick mind made the jump “—that friend of Kristina’s who went out to Wyoming? The one who helped put that slime in jail a while back?”

  “Meri Brady,” Kate confirmed. “Although I think Mercy is going to be her name from now on. She’s a wonderful girl. Brave, gutsy, bright.”

  “I always liked her,” Sterling conceded. “She was a good influence on Kristina.”

  “Who made a lovely maid of honor,” Kate said, fighting a tug of emotion. Would her beloved granddaughter someday take her own trip down an aisle? Perhaps, if she went to deal with her own inheritance, if she went to California and got away from all the chaos that was happening here… Stranger things had happened, and more than once in the time since her supposed demise, her legacies to her loved ones had somehow served as the turning point in their lives.

  Sterling frowned suddenly. “And just how did you find that out? You didn’t go out while I was gone, did you? I’ve told you, you have to be more careful—you’ve almost been spotted a dozen times.”

  “I have my ways,” Kate said, still smiling. But then the smile faded. “But this can’t go on much longer, Sterling. Jake is in so much trouble, he needs all the support he can get. This whole mess with Monica’s murder, and waiting for the police or that investigator of Rebecca’s to turn up the real killer, is bad enough, but to find out…the truth about his father on top of everything… My plans were to stay dead until I could figure out who tried to kill me. Well, now we know who it was, and she’s dead. And my family needs me more than ever. I just have to figure out how to come back from the dead without killing them with the shock!”