by Adrianne Lee
“Little girl.”
“Pardon?”
“I have a little girl.” Luanne was a single parent, forced to move back in with her mother after her divorce. She beamed at him. “Jess.”
Beau grimaced. “My sexist attitude is showing. I assumed Jess was a boy’s name.”
“That’s okay. You aren’t the first.”
Beau bade her goodbye and headed outside to talk to Heck, but couldn’t help wondering if Luanne realized how lucky she was to have a little girl. Stupid thought. One only had to look into her eyes as she spoke of the child to know that. Beau thought of Callie, of the way he’d always lighted up when speaking of her, and his heart bled. “God, Deedra, where are you?”
WISHING SHE HAD a heating pad and a fistful of Extra Strength Tylenol, Deedra Shanahan rubbed at her lower back. She wanted to reach inside herself and extract the pain, toss it away and restore the well-being of a body that had betrayed her, that had sent her mentally spiraling into some dark place where family and friends could not reach.
It amazed her that something as small as a noncancerous uterine fibroid tumor could cause such vast physical and mental distress. The doctors had said a hysterectomy could resolve the problem and drag her from the edge of insanity.
But could it?
She’d come close to finding out. Been on the surgery table. Prepped. Anesthetized.
An IV needle away from being infused with the wrong blood.
Deedra shuddered at how close she’d come to not surviving this latest attempt on her life. She cast a wary gaze over the cars behind and ahead of her rented Subaru, aware of a slight tremor in her hands. She’d felt safe, anonymous on Interstate 90, but turning off at Butte and heading southeast on SR2 brought back not only familiar scenery, but the sense of dread she’d awakened with that morning.
Had it been only two months since she’d gone? Since she’d thought running away would end the constant threat? The constant fear. She’d run as far as she could and begun to build a new life, a false life based on lies. But he had kept looking. Had found her. Had tried killing her…again.
Floyd Mann.
Although Beau hadn’t believed it, she knew. Mann wanted Beau to suffer the way he was suffering. To that end, he’d taken the one thing that mattered most to her and Beau. That hadn’t been enough for Mann. It hadn’t been enough that he’d driven her and Beau further apart, that he’d pushed her to an act of desperation that probably had ramifications she couldn’t even imagine.
Didn’t want to imagine.
Mann wouldn’t be happy until Beau’s wife was as dead as his own.
There had been too much death. It had to stop. Deedra had to stop it. Not by running away, not by falling back on tactics of deception, of bait and switch, but by facing up to all that had occurred and dealing with it. By coming back to the small town of Buffalo Falls, coming home to the S bar S ranch. Facing Mann head-on. Facing her grief.
Facing Beau.
Making him believe. Making him help.
Another shudder swept her body, drawing an inconsolable ache through her heart and a slash of pain through her lower back. She needed to reschedule the surgery as soon as possible. But the medical procedure wouldn’t cure the worst of what ailed her. She rubbed her back again. The largest part of her pain wasn’t physical, wasn’t hormonal upheaval, but unrelenting grief. For all that she’d lost—from her newfound belief that she actually deserved something good in life—to Beau, to Callie…
Callie’s image sprang into her mind. Plump, rosy cheeks, cherry-bowed mouth, curly black hair and round green eyes so like Beau’s. Her chubby fingers reaching out with trust, her laugh a musical chime. Deedra breathed in the cloying scent of fresh roses from the bouquet on the back seat and swallowed with difficulty, tears stinging her eyes at the thought of her little girl…the only baby she would ever have.
She would have been two years old today.
“Oh, Callie.” She touched her lips, holding in the sob. Her daughter had been the one thing Deedra had never been—wanted by her parents. Callie had been conceived in love, a rich, lush love that Deedra had once believed nothing could destroy. But the love she’d counted on had been as fragile as their little girl, as vulnerable to outside influences and enemies as Deedra herself had once been.
She tried shaking off this dark musing, but it seemed an impossible task. Could anything really ease the pain of grief and loss? Counseling hadn’t done a damned bit of good. Passing time? Hah! Sure, today the shock wasn’t as raw as last month. As startling. But the ache in her heart never left. Like a fresh wound the pain throbbed so intensely she wanted to cry out from the hurt.
As she exited the main road and started down the slope to the river, a wide expanse of green water and white rapids curiously called “the creek” by everyone in Buffalo Falls, Deedra thought of her counselor’s theory. The searing heartache was God’s way of reminding Deedra of the precious gift she’d been granted in Callie, a way that ensured she’d never forget.
The suggestion still infuriated her. As if I’d ever forget Callie.
She slowed the car, accommodating the speed limit as she crossed the bridge into the town she’d called home since marrying Beau Shanahan three years ago. “Population twenty-five hundred give or take,” a hand-painted sign proclaimed. The business section was laid out like a tic-tac-toe game with three main arteries running its twelve-block length and three more its width. Two-story, brick-fronted buildings with picture-size glass display windows made up Main Street, offering everything from insurance to ladies’ dresses to auto parts and Granny Jo’s Home Cooking.
Most of the vehicles angled against the stretch of sidewalks this Monday morning consisted of battered and dusty pickup trucks or SUVs—the work force of this ranching and farming community. None of the vehicles would be locked. Some would have keys dangling from ignitions. Before moving here, she’d never known the kind of trust Buffalo Falls citizenry took for granted.
The town had become her haven, her sanctuary…until Mann.
She hit the outskirts, drove past the new grocery store and Wally’s Hamburger Shack, picking up speed as the road wound through rolling fields of golden hay and rocky pastures, dotted with scrub pines and Angus cattle.
For every good memory this town embodied, it also roused her saddest, most dire nightmares—the worst of which was the sense that Callie lived and needed only to be found. She’d prayed she’d put that crazy notion behind her. She had purposely driven the long way to the S bar S, through town, to avoid the accident site.
And yet, every familiar inch of road that stretched beneath her tires brought the awful hope, the terrible post-traumatic sensation that if she could relive that day she could change its outcome.
Turn back the clock. Relive the past. Yeah, right. That was crazy talk. Absolute madness.
The fact that she could even think such things squelched the teeny doubt she’d still harbored about facing Beau. She needed his help to accept Callie’s death. To get on with her life.
To get Mann out of their lives.
Headstones loomed ahead, rising in an irregular pattern from the hillside. She slowed to a crawl and drove between two whitewashed brick pillars. A paved roadway spread like a network of veins through the cemetery, allowing access to several different areas of burial ground.
As she approached the final resting place of the Shanahan clan, she spied a man hunkered down before a pink marble marker. His wavy raven hair glistened in the sunlight. Her pulse gave a sudden leap of recognition, and her heart accelerated to a mixed beat of joy and fear. This wasn’t what she’d envisioned, not how she’d imagined their initial encounter, but fate seemed to have other ideas.
Ready or not, the time had come.
She parked, gathered the bouquet from the back seat and began wending her way through the tombstones. She cautiously scanned the cemetery for Mann, forcing her resistant feet to move toward the lone figure, knowing he was standing before the grave she sou
ght.
Callie’s grave.
Her empty grave.
BEAU FEATHERED his fingers over the tombstone he’d had erected for his baby daughter, her life cut short in its eighteenth month. All of their futures altered irredeemably with her disappearance; all of their dreams and hopes as gone as she. He felt his heart in his throat, and his mind filled with the image of that damned Jeep on its side, of Deedra near dead behind the wheel, of Callie’s baby seat empty.
Beau raised himself on his cane. His leg ached with renewed vengeance, as if he hadn’t taken anything to alleviate the pain.
His heart ached worse.
He deserved to face this day alone. He should have shown Deedra compassion. Tried to understand her need to believe Callie was still alive…instead of insisting she accept that a toddler couldn’t have survived in those woods at night. Damn it all. He should have anticipated her reaction to his emotional distancing, should have realized she’d take it as abandonment…given her history.
He should have known she was so depressed, so distraught, she’d take herself out of the misery. He had no idea where she’d gone. Had heard not one word from her since she’d left. For all he knew, she was dead too.
He choked on the thought.
“Beau?”
He froze, a shiver scraping his spine. God, he was losing it, missing Deedra so much he was actually hearing her speak his name. He wanted it to be her so much, he couldn’t swallow. He clutched the handle of his cane harder, needing balance, both mentally and physically.
He blamed Mann for her leaving, but in truth, the blame was his. He’d been so obsessed with running that lowlife cop killer to the ground, so wrapped up in his grief at losing Callie, he hadn’t had anything left for Deedra.
“Beau?”
This time he jerked around and almost went down on his bad leg. A woman stood not five feet from him, holding a bouquet of pink baby roses. He blinked trying to focus, but couldn’t believe what he saw. He rubbed at his eyes and looked again. It was Deedra’s face, her wide, heavily lashed gray eyes, her slightly freckled, upturned nose, her lush full lips, her dimpled chin. But there were also differences. No wild mane of wavy burnished-copper hair—only a snowy-blond cap with wisps feathering her temples and forehead. And she was thinner than Deedra, the hollows beneath her cheekbones pronounced.
It wasn’t her.
“Beau, I—”
That distinct, throaty voice shredded through his denial like claws through sheer gauze. No woman he’d ever met shared Deedra’s raspy, sexy drawl. His heart jolted.
“Deedra? Oh, God.” Dropping the cane, he lurched forward, grasping her, fearing she’d disappear beneath his hands like so much smoke. But he gripped solid flesh. He yanked her to him, his arms circling her in a bear hug. It was her—not something conjured from his desperation and need. As proof, her heart slammed beneath his palm.
She was real.
Alive.
“I thought I’d lost you…like Callie… Oh, babe, where have you been?”
Deedra stiffened. He would never understand why she’d run away. Never believe that Mann had tried to kill her. He wasn’t going to help. Coming here had been a mistake. Facing him, a bigger one. She tried squeezing a hand between them, tried shoving free from his embrace, but he held her tighter, as though needing to pull her into him, inside himself, as though releasing her would cause her to vanish.
Like Callie.
His mouth cut off her protest, taking hers in a kiss of hungry, possessive need. She’d forgotten the power of his touch, his kiss. How they could wipe out every other concern, no matter what else occurred in the rest of their lives. Her body leaned into his as if by its own will, all resistance melting. Her blood sang through her veins, slowly rousing need in the deepest part of her as if it were coming awake from a long hibernation. Flint sparked against flint, catching fire, flaring heat that chased the chill from her very soul.
He pulled back, his ragged breath caressing her lips. “Why?”
She flinched, finally wedging that hand between them, flattening it against his chest—his strong rock-hard chest—where she felt the thunderous thrum of his heart beneath her fingertips, each beat imbuing her with an awful guilt. He knew why. They’d grown so far apart emotionally she’d felt like a stranger in her own home. Alone in the battle against a mad killer. I did what I had to do in order to survive.
Beau eased back, still holding her tight, his gaze searching hers. “Why didn’t you contact me?”
She glanced away, unwilling to see what her actions had done to him, not wanting to know.
He caught her chin and made her look at him. His raven eyebrows locked in a stormy scowl. And now she could see that investigator’s mind of his churning, seeking explanations since she wasn’t providing any. “Why did you cut and bleach your hair?”
“We need to talk.” Her mouth was so dry the words seemed to stick on her tongue. “Can we go to the ranch?”
He was quiet for too long, his eyes darkening to a feral green. Wild cat eyes. Suspicious eyes. Interrogation eyes.
Damned detective eyes.
Deedra’s stomach dipped toward her toes. The bouquet slipped from her hand. Vaguely she felt it brush her ankle, and she knew the petals were as crushed as the relationship she’d once had with this man. She braced for the force of his fury.
But Beau’s words held more hurt than anger. “Had we really reached a point where you thought I wouldn’t care if you were alive or dead?”
Chapter Two
Deedra could have stood his anger, could have taken his accusations, his disgust. But Beau Shanahan vulnerable was a thing she’d seen only once before.
The day he’d had to tell her their daughter…
She felt her every sense respond to this baring of his soul, this glimpse inside to the man she’d loved and never really reached. She swayed toward him, drawn by her lifelong need to be cherished and protected. The betrayal, the hurt, the crumbling of her dreams were forgotten in the possibilities of the moment.
But exposing his truest heart was apparently the one thing Beau could bear less than losing their child. The shutters dropped, and his expression hardened into the mask she’d seen far too often before she left. The face of the stranger who called himself her husband. The face of the detective obsessed with catching a cop killer.
The face of the daddy who blamed the mommy for the death of his beloved child.
He’d never said it. But she felt it every time he looked at her…as he was looking at her now.
Deedra’s chest squeezed, and she took a step back from him, shrinking from the unspoken accusation, from the unrelenting guilt that she had not kept her child from harm. Her foot landed on something solid and round. A stick? The ground slipped out from under her.
Beau’s strong hand grasped her wrist. Flesh on flesh, his on hers. Her heart began to hammer, her blood to heat. She recovered her balance as their gazes collided.
His detective eyes narrowed. “Why did you run away?”
She blew out a hard breath and tugged free of his grip, breaking the spell. “Someone was trying to kill me. You didn’t want to believe it.”
He stiffened as though she’d slapped him.
At the sound of voices, she glanced around. A couple was approaching a nearby grave. She lowered her voice. “Beau, please, this is hardly the place to discuss…this.”
He cleared his throat, his own gaze slipping to the new arrivals. “I’ll follow you back to the ranch.”
Follow her. Cop tactics. Making sure she didn’t run away…again.
Beau hopped back from her, bent at the waist and recovered the stick from beside her foot. A cane, she realized, as he leaned the bulk of his weight on it.
“Beau, what happened?”
He glanced sideways, then turned toward the car. “Not here.”
He hobbled away from her. She started after him, but her foot crunched the bouquet and brought her up short. Deedra squatted and gathered cr
ushed rose petals into her hand, then glanced at her daughter’s pink headstone, at the engraved lettering. Oddly, she felt nothing, and she realized she’d come to this cemetery expecting to feel…something. Heartache. Or anger. Or acceptance. Something that would allow her to let go. Some kind of release from the insane notion that her daughter still lived.
“Are you coming?” Beau called over his shoulder.
She jerked and gazed around at the couple who were now watching her. The Hermans, she realized, Arne and Kate. They owned the small spread next to the Shanahan land. They were eyeing Beau and her with curiosity. Buffalo Falls was a small and friendly town, and Beau hadn’t even acknowledged his neighbors. They were likely wondering why. Wondering who she was.
She turned away before either of them got a good look at her face, placed what was left of the bouquet against the cold marble gravestone and hurried after Beau.
He had yet to reach his Jeep, hitching along with the gait of a man twice his age. But that was the only thing about him a woman might find unattractive. He had a sculpted backside that drew female glances wherever he went, shoulders as wide as a Montana sky, a waist whittled by hard work and the lean strong legs of a race horse.
Horse. Maybe he’d been kicked by one of their horses, she mused, pulling her gaze from Beau as she veered to her rental car. God knows, he spent as much time in the barn as he did in his cop car.
True to his words, he pulled up behind her and let her lead the way. She tried not to peer into the rearview mirror, but she felt his stare like a touch on her neck, down her spine, and the two-mile drive to the S bar S seemed hours long.
The familiar arched entrance rose from the hard-packed ground high and broad enough to accommodate a truck transporting a triple-wide mobile home. It had been carved from rough-hewn pine in Beau’s great-grandfather’s time and had withstood a good century’s worth of broiling summer heat and paralyzing winter freeze. It would stand here long after she and Beau were gone.
