The Maverick Cowboy

by Kate Pearce

  “You’re finished?”

  “For now.” She actually smiled at him.

  “Then come up to the house and have something cool to drink before Roy gets you out looking at those pigs again.”

  “Sure.”

  This time he didn’t even try and take charge of her bag and just started walking. Three of the dogs from the barn came along with him, running in circles and jumping like they were a circus act. Behind him, Jenna started to puff as the incline increased.

  He glanced back at her. “Why don’t you have a special truck like Big Mac for all your equipment?”

  “Because Dave inherited the truck, and there isn’t enough money to buy another one.”

  “Bummer.”

  He reached the porch, climbed the steps, and held open the screen door, which thanks to him no longer squeaked. “You can leave your boots in the mudroom if you like. It’s on the left next to the small bathroom.”

  “Thanks.”

  He turned right and went into the kitchen, where the heavenly smell of bacon still lingered. Roy and Ruth sat at the table with January. The three of them were making enough noise for a town meeting.

  He washed up and poured himself a cup of coffee and listened to the arguments, which were for the most part amicable. Despite the noise he didn’t think he was going to have to intervene and play peacekeeper. Not a natural role for him anyway. He’d always preferred to be the one causing the trouble.

  He spotted Jenna hovering in the doorway and held up his mug of coffee.

  “You want coffee or something colder?”

  Ruth looked around. “There’s lemonade in the refrigerator. Help yourself, Jenna, dear.”

  “Thanks, Ruth.”

  Blue pointed at the nearest chair. “Sit down. I’ll get it for you.”

  For a second he thought she might start arguing, but she nodded instead. “Thanks, that would be great.”

  The lemonade looked so good that he took a glass for himself and sat opposite Jenna at the table. Ruth pushed a plate of oatmeal cookies down toward Jenna and continued her animated discussion with Roy. Blue ate a cookie and reached for another one at the same time as Jenna did, resulting in a tangle of fingers and an unintentional fist bump.

  January looked over at him and pulled a face, rolling her eyes at Ruth, who was now having a long discussion about what the proposed site for the cabins had been used for back in the dark ages or something.

  Just as Blue was about to intervene and get the discussion back on track, Jenna cleared her throat.

  “I hate to be rude, Roy, but I have to get back before three to help with afternoon clinic, so if there is anything you want to ask me about the pigs, go right ahead.”

  Roy looked up, his gaze taking in Blue and Jenna.

  “Horses okay?”

  “Yes. Blue chose very well.”

  “Knew he would. I taught him.” Roy grinned, showing the crooked line of his teeth, which had come off the worst in a couple of bucking incidents. “The pigs are good. I was just wondering when their next round of shots is due.”

  Jenna frowned. “I’ll have to check with Dave. He was here last, right?”

  “Don’t you guys keep everything online now?” Blue had to ask. “It would make sharing information a lot easier.”

  “I know. It’s something I’d like to do, but Uncle Ron isn’t keen on keeping anything on the Internet in case it gets taken over by hostile forces or something.”

  Roy nodded. “Well, I can see his point. I don’t understand all that googling nonsense myself.”

  Jenna finished her lemonade and rose to her feet, wiping cookie crumbs from her lips. “I’d better be going.” She focused on Blue. “Unless there’s anything else?”

  “I’m good. I’ll give you a call when I’m planning on seeing some new horses. Maybe you could come out with me?”

  She blinked at him. “I’d like that.”

  Ruth gave him a pointed look, so he followed Jenna out to her truck, which he thought had once belonged to Dave and was perfectly suited to the rough terrain of the local ranches. He waited as she stowed her bag and got into the driver’s seat.

  She lowered the window and looked down at him consideringly.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re really okay about me coming out with you, or did you just say that to keep Ruth and Roy happy?”

  “I don’t say what I don’t mean.”

  “Then I’d love to come.” This time her smile transformed her face and left him staring at her mouth before she blew him a kiss and drove away.

  Chapter Three

  Blue braced himself and took the seat opposite his father at the table. Roy and Ruth had gone to check out the pigs, January was working on her thesis, and for once the ranch was quiet.

  “Can I talk to you about something?” Blue asked.

  “Sure.” Billy sat back, a wary expression in his blue eyes, which wasn’t surprising seeing as Blue spent most of his time trying to avoid acknowledging his father’s existence. “What can I do for you?”

  Blue opened the speckled black composition notebook he’d bought in Maureen’s store and uncapped his pen. “I’ve got a few questions for you about the night Mom and Rachel disappeared.”

  Billy frowned. “I thought Chase was setting some private detectives to finding out what happened to them?”

  “He will be once I get all the facts from you.” Blue wrote the date on the top line and underlined it hard. If he handled this like a military investigation, he wouldn’t need to get emotional about shit. “So let’s go over this again. The last time you saw Mom was in this kitchen when she attacked you with a butcher’s knife.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you didn’t see her leave.”

  “During the struggle I fell against the wall and was knocked out for a minute or so. By the time I opened my eyes, she was gone.”

  “And you didn’t realize she’d taken Rachel with her.”

  “No, I came to and ran straight out into the yard to see if Annie’s truck was still there. When I came back inside, Chase had come downstairs and I told him to call nine-one-one while I went and searched for your mom. I didn’t even think about Rachel sleeping in the crib by the fire.” Billy hesitated. “Do you remember much about that night yourself, BB?”

  “I remember the screaming and yelling and trying to distract the twins, who were getting upset, yeah.” Blue forced himself to meet his father’s gaze. He didn’t want to talk about himself in relation to anything. “It’s not one of the best memories of my life.”

  Billy briefly closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, son.”

  “So you said. Shall we move on? You’d already decided to take the blame, saying you attacked her, and made Chase lie to the cops for you.”

  Billy swallowed hard. “I thought it would give Annie the chance to be free of me and the ranch. I thought she was leaving by herself, you see.”

  “When did you realize Rachel was missing as well?”

  “Not until the sheriff started questioning me at the jail. And then I kind of lost my goddamned mind trying to get out of there . . .” Billy swallowed hard. “When I calmed down a bit I realized that if she’d taken Rachel, she probably hadn’t killed herself. She loved that little girl so much.”

  Blue wrote another note. “Eventually, after the seventy-two-hour mandatory hold the sheriff let you go due to lack of evidence of a crime.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So whatever happened—if you had murdered them—you would’ve gotten away with it.”

  Billy raised his chin. “I didn’t, BB. I loved them.”

  There were a million things Blue wanted to say to that, but he squashed the emotions down and concentrated on the cold, hard facts.

  “If you didn’t kill her and she didn’t kill herself, where did she go?” Blue tapped his pen against the paper. “She didn’t take her truck, so she must have walked off the ranch, which would have been difficul
t with a young baby in her arms, or she had help from someone here.”

  Billy nodded. “The sheriff’s men and the county rescue team searched the area pretty thoroughly, and there was no sign of her or any tracks.”

  “Then someone gave her a ride. How many hands did you have working on the ranch back then?”

  “About a dozen.”

  “And they all knew Mom, right?”

  “Yeah, because back in those days, we used to cook for the hands and the family three times a day, so they’d all come up to the house in shifts to eat.”

  “Ruth and Mom handled that, right?”

  “Mostly. It was a lot of work.”

  “I bet it was.”

  Blue wrote a note. Ask Ruth about the hands who came up to eat in the house.

  “Who did Mom talk to most?”

  “She was nice to everyone when she was in one of her good moods. After Rachel’s birth she got a lot quieter.”

  “But she must have talked to someone because he or she helped her leave you. If you had to take a guess, who do you think that was?”

  Billy rubbed a hand over his beard. “As I mentioned before, she liked Big Mike.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Larry Paquino and Red Williams.”

  Blue wrote the names down. “Roy has all the old ranch records at his place, doesn’t he?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll start there.” Blue closed his notebook and stashed his pen in his shirt pocket. “Anything else you can think of?”

  “Not right at this moment.”

  Blue half rose and then paused. “Did she take her purse with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ruth will.” He nodded brusquely at his father. “I’ll come and find you if I have any more questions.”

  Billy remained seated, his head lowered toward his clasped hands. “You can ask me anything you like, son. That’s why I’m here. To try and help.”

  “Until you disappear back to San Francisco?”

  “I’m not planning on going back there for a while,” Billy said quietly.

  “Why not? I’m sure if you asked him nicely, Chase would set you up in an apartment.”

  There was a long tick of silence. “I don’t want to be financially beholden to him.”

  There was a stubborn note in Billy’s voice that Blue recognized all too well.

  “So you’d rather hang out here. It’s certainly cheaper.”

  Billy looked up. “BB, I know you’re angry with me, and I know I deserve it, but this was my home, too. I grew up here just like you did, and I missed it more than I could ever have imagined.”

  “It’s always been here. You were the one who walked away from it, or should I say crawled?” Blue headed for the door. “You were probably too drunk to remember much about that.” Or about deserting your kids, letting four boys grow up without a mother or a father.

  He slammed the door like a teenager, marched over to the barn, and saddled up Messi with quick jerky movements. This was why he didn’t talk to his dad. It made him want to let all the rage out, and he was too old for that now. He’d learned to live with the betrayal and moved on with his life to become a strong and balanced individual. He rested his forehead against Messi’s rough neck and breathed in the reassuring scent of horse.

  The quicker he worked out whether there was a chance his mother and sister were alive, the sooner his father would be gone.

  That was one hell of an incentive to get the matter cleared up once and for all.

  * * *

  Jenna patted the mama pig on her ample backside and reversed out of the pigsty, her hands held high like she was in a hostage situation. The thing was, mama sows were super protective of their young, and this one had about twenty little piglets to keep an eye on. She’d grudgingly accepted Jenna in her space, but it wasn’t worth pushing her luck. Better vets than Jenna had ended up on the wrong side of a pig.

  “She’s doing great.” Jenna disposed of the syringes in the hazard waste receptacle and washed up in the bucket of hot water Roy put beside her. “And so are the little guys.”

  “She’s a good mother, that one,” Roy commented, leaning over the wall to contemplate his charge with some satisfaction. “I picked a fine-looking pig.”

  Jenna had nothing to say to that as she located her bag and looked for the paperwork that accompanied the shots.

  “Have you named her yet?”

  “I can’t decide whether she’s a Bertha or a Martha. Time will tell.”

  Jenna studied the pig. “She looks more like a Peggy to me, but I’m not sure I’d feel right naming my food.”

  “Vegetarians.” Roy chuckled. “Come out of the sun while you do all that necessary stuff,” Roy said as he walked upslope to his modest foreman’s cottage. “I’ve got iced tea.”

  “Sold,” Jenna called out as she followed him. In the distance there was a small cloud of dust getting bigger by the second. Squinting into the sun, Jenna tried to recognize the horse and rider.

  “BB’s coming.” Roy didn’t even need to look. “Not sure why.”

  “If you’re busy, I could just go home and do the paperwork there,” Jenna offered.

  “No need. I’d much rather look at your pretty face than BB’s. So come on in and take the weight off.”

  Jenna went into the kitchen diner, which comprised a third of Roy’s living space. It smelled of horse, leather, and wet dog, which was pretty much the same as the man himself. Jenna parked herself and her bag at the scarred oak table and got out her pen, trying not to listen as Blue and Roy had a low-voiced conversation outside, which resulted in both men coming through the door into the kitchen.

  “Hey.” Jenna smiled at Blue, who was wearing a green checked shirt and faded jeans that fit him like a glove. “I’m just finishing up some paperwork, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Jenna.”

  He didn’t look particularly happy to see her, and her heart sank. She hated people who couldn’t make up their minds about how to treat a person and changed direction like a squally sea breeze. It made her uncomfortable.

  Roy slapped Blue on the back and propelled him farther into the room. “You want the ranch records from when your mom vanished, right? Are you trying to work out whom she might have taken off with?”

  Blue raised an eyebrow. “I see Ruth’s keeping you up to date on our family business, then.”

  “Course she is. I am practically family. Been here longer than you, your brothers, and your grandma.”

  “True,” Blue conceded with a nod. “But I’m sure Jenna doesn’t need to hear our sordid family history.”

  Jenna met his gaze. “I know that your mother and baby sister disappeared, which must’ve been awful for you all. I’m quite happy to leave if it makes you uncomfortable talking about it in front of me.”

  Blue sighed and took off his Stetson, running his fingers through his military short brown hair. “It’s not a problem. I had to talk to Billy about what he remembers, and I’m in a foul mood. It’s not your fault.”

  Roy handed Jenna a glass of iced tea and offered one to Blue. “BB’s looking to see who was employed at the ranch back then because someone must have helped Annie to leave.”

  “If she did leave,” Blue murmured.

  Roy set the iced tea down on the counter in front of him. “I agree with your daddy on this one. If she’d meant to kill herself, she would never have taken the baby. She loved that little girl something fierce.”

  “I thought so, too.” Blue’s smile was strained. “She still could’ve been murdered.”

  “But they never found her body.”

  “Plenty of places to hide a body out here, Roy, when we have our own fricking mine on the premises.”

  Roy patted Blue’s arm. “Don’t give up hope, son.”

  Jenna had to look away from the sudden flare of emotion in Blue’s eyes. He might claim to be unaffected by what had happened, but it obviously wasn’t true. Pe
rhaps the big bad Marine really did have a softer side.

  “Let me find those records for you,” Roy offered. “I keep them in my office.”

  “You have an office here?” Jenna couldn’t help but ask.

  Roy shrugged. “Laundry room, office, feed store. It’s all the same to me. I use all the space I can find. It might take a while.”

  Jenna focused on her paperwork as Blue paced the small living space, snapping his hat against his thigh. It was kind of distracting, but it wasn’t her house and she was pretty sure he was too agitated to even realize he was doing it. Years of being her family’s peacemaker made her speak up.

  “Is your father going to stay on the ranch now?”

  He stopped pacing to look at her, his blue gaze assessing.

  “Technically, it’s his place.”

  “I thought Chase was in charge.”

  “Well, he is and he isn’t. Chase has the money and Ruth has the know-how to run the ranch, but I suppose my dad inherited the place from his father.”

  Jenna swung around in her seat. “Does that mean he gets a say in the future plans?”

  The dawning horror on Blue’s face made her wish she hadn’t started the conversation.

  “Holy crap. I hadn’t thought of that.” Blue rubbed a hand over his stubbled chin. “I’m going to have to talk to our family lawyer.”

  “I don’t get the sense that he’d want to interfere,” Jenna said quickly. “He seems like such a nice, quiet guy.”

  “You think so?”

  She regarded him warily. “You don’t like him, do you?”

  A muscle flicked in his jaw. “I find it hard to forgive him for falling into a bottle and walking out on his four kids who had just lost their mother as well.”

  “How long was it before you saw him again?”

  “He turned up about two months ago. Chase said he knew where Billy was all the time, but this was his first visit back to the ranch in twenty years.”

  “Wow, that’s a long time to be gone.” Jenna put down her pen. “Why do you think he came back? Did he find out about Chase’s plans for the ranch?”

  “Nah, it was kind of a coincidence.” Blue came to lean against the edge of the countertop and picked up his glass of iced tea. “Sort of a collection of things that ended up making him come home twenty years too late to ‘make amends.’”