by Stacy Finz
“I liked her a lot. She was smart, pretty, and from what I could tell, a terrific cop. But we were both young and not looking for permanent situations.” Was there a way of candy-coating the fact that he and Ellie’s mother had only been scratching an itch when he was talking to an innocent child?
“So you guys were just hooking up?”
Okay, not so innocent. Apparently, Ellie had learned more at her private Catholic school than Cash wanted her to know.
He blew out a breath. “We liked each other, Ellie.”
“Just not that much?”
“I guess not.” They were having a frank conversation and he wanted to be honest. He’d been twenty-four at the time, not ready for love or commitment.
“What if she had liked you?” She swatted a fly away from Sugar’s neck.
“Then she would’ve called me, Ellie. She knew where I worked and where I lived, but she never did.” Not even when she was pregnant with their daughter. “Look, there’s no one to blame here. I told you because I didn’t want you to think for all those years I didn’t want you, that I didn’t want to be your father.”
Ellie measured everything he said. Cash could see her analyzing his words in her head the same way he did when he was trying to figure something out.
“I don’t know why my mother would’ve kept you from me.” She frowned. When he started to respond, she stopped him. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay,” he said, pulling his cowboy hat lower to shade his face from the sun. “Think about it for a while.” It was a lot to digest. “I’m here for you any time you want to talk or have questions. For now, let’s ride.”
He took off, kicking his gelding into a gallop. Ellie caught up, and he tightened up on the reins because he didn’t want her to go too fast until she learned the trail. Dry Creek Ranch wasn’t an equestrian arena. The land was uneven, the trees had low-hanging branches, and there were plenty of distractions to spook a horse.
“I don’t know about you, but after this I’m planning to jump in the creek,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Are there fish in there?”
“Yep, but they won’t bother you, and you don’t have to eat them.”
“Ew.” Her nose wrinkled up, making him laugh.
They rode for another hour, and Cash showed Ellie some of his old haunts, including a small pond where he, Jace, and Sawyer had built a raft out of dried logs and inner tubes to make it float. To test its buoyancy, they’d first sent it into the water with Grandpa Dalton’s Australian shepherd, Ranger. The dog successfully made the voyage from shore to shore.
On their way home, they stopped by the big barn where Grandpa’s ranch hands had once stabled their horses. Like his cabin, the old building was half rotted and looked like it would blow down in a strong wind.
“The place used to be something,” he said reverently.
“What happened to it?” Ellie shielded her eyes from the sun and stared out over the brown fields, parched from lack of irrigation in the summer, a luxury they couldn’t afford.
“Money. Your great-grandfather ran out of it.”
He swung his leg over the side of his gelding and got down to check Ellie’s cinch. Or rather girth, because it was an English saddle. Among the clutter in the tack room, he’d managed to find the old thing—probably a leftover from years ago, when Angie used to visit the ranch and ride the fancy show jumper her parents had bought her.
Cash planned to eventually teach Ellie how to ride using a Western saddle. It was how Cash’s grandfather had taught them to ride from the time they were tykes, and no self-respecting cowgirl would use anything else. But if Ellie wanted to continue with dressage, he’d get her whatever she needed.
“Are you going to fix it up?” she asked curiously.
Her interest surprised Cash. Until this point, she’d seemed indifferent to the ranch, a place that never failed to make his chest fill with pride. There was something about the land, its sheer expanse of rugged beauty, that enthralled him and captured his soul. Grandpa Dalton used to say that Dry Creek Ranch ran through them like blood in the veins, yet none of his surviving children had seen it that way. That was why Jasper had left the ranch to his grandkids. Would he turn over in his grave knowing Cash wanted to sell?
“I’m not sure.” He climbed back into his saddle. “Jace and Sawyer want to, but I don’t know that we can actually afford it.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you want to fix it up?”
Again, he was struck by her sudden inquisitiveness. “It’s not a matter of whether I want to, it’s a matter of coming up with the money.” He eyed the barn some more, giving it a thorough examination. “It’s a big place that requires a lot of upkeep and it’s been badly neglected. You ready to head home?”
She nodded, and he lifted his reins and clicked his tongue. They continued on the trail leading back to the corral where Jace kept his horses. Both horses, sensing their day was coming to a close, picked up the pace. Cash tightened the reins. He was in no rush. It was a pretty afternoon and he and Ellie were making strides, even if they were small ones.
They didn’t talk for a while, just letting the peacefulness of the countryside settle over them. Though Ellie was a skillful rider, she wasn’t used to an open trail in the middle of nowhere and was taking it all in.
“You having fun?” He hoped their earlier discussion hadn’t tainted the ride. But if things were going to work between them, if they had a shot at a real father-daughter relationship, she needed to know the truth.
“I guess,” she said, and quickly turned from him as if not to give away any of her true feelings. “It’s better than the pool. And it’s better than TV, because you don’t even have HBO or Showtime.”
“HBO?” He lifted a brow. Surely her mother hadn’t given her free rein to watch movie channels. “Basic cable must be pretty bad if you’d rather slum it with me.” Cash gave her ponytail a tug.
When they arrived at Jace’s barn, Ellie asked for her phone. Cash hadn’t let her carry it, wanting her to focus on her horse and the ride. He retrieved it from his saddlebag and waited for her to dismount before handing it to her.
“I wanted to take a picture of me on Sugar and send it to Mary Margaret,” she said.
“I’ll take it.” He tried to find the camera feature on her phone, but the screen was locked. “What’s your password?”
She rattled off a number, which sounded like someone’s birthdate to him, and he snapped the photo. It was at the top of his mind to tell her to change the code when three police vehicles sped up the road toward Jace’s house.
He swung Ellie off her horse, impatient to check what was going on. Jace wasn’t typically home this time of day, but the boys and their babysitter were, which worried him.
“You think they’re here because of Aubrey’s car?” Ellie stared across the field where the three SUVS had parked in Jace’s driveway.
“I don’t think so,” he said, more to himself than to Ellie. “Can you finish up with the horses? Unsaddle and groom them?”
“Okay.” But she seemed reluctant to stay alone.
“Only for a few minutes, sweetheart. Just long enough for me to make sure the boys are fine.” He took off at a jog, calling behind him for her to go inside the barn.
By the time he reached the house, there was a small confab on the front porch. Jace was there, and Cash searched his face to get a read on the situation. Jace was in deep conversation with two deputies and a man in plainclothes, but Cash didn’t see anything in his cousin’s body language to suggest any harm had come to Travis or Grady.
Jace bobbed his head at Cash in acknowledgment, then motioned for him to come up on the porch.
“This is my cousin, the former federal agent,” he told the others, who stuck out their hands to shake his.
; “Everything okay?” Obviously it wasn’t, judging by the grave expressions on the deputies’ faces.
“Beals Ranch was hit early this morning,” Jace said. “The fence was cut and two hundred head were loaded into a trailer with at least three ATVs. We found tire tracks.”
That was a lot of cattle, worth a lot of money. Hopefully, the thieves hadn’t snatched Bealses’ breeding stock. A rancher spent years collecting extensive performance data on his cows and bulls, the animals responsible for building a herd. There was no way to quantify that kind of damage.
“Sorry to hear it,” Cash said.
Beals Ranch was only a few miles away. Grandpa Dalton and Scott Beals had been longtime friends. Last Cash had heard, Scott’s son, Randy, and Randy’s wife were running the ranch now. “I’ve gotta get back to Ellie, just wanted to make sure the boys were all right.” He started down the stairs.
“You want to help us on this?” Jace scrubbed his hand under his hat, where a streak of sweat had stained the band. “Red’s got his hands full planning his own retirement party.” The two deputies and the man Cash assumed was Red—he had auburn hair—chuckled.
Cash wasn’t a cop anymore. And Mill County wasn’t such a backwater that Jace could just deputize anyone he wanted to, as if Dry Creek were the Wild West.
He shook his head, calling over his shoulder as he headed back to the barn, “I’d check with local slaughterhouses that have a penchant for shady business practices if I were you.” One look at Beals Ranch’s state-registered brand on each of the stolen animals and no legitimate auction house would take the livestock. And it wasn’t as if you could sell two hundred head of hot cattle on eBay. Either the thieves had a buyer already lined up or they were selling the meat on the black market.
Red threw back his head and laughed. “The boy knows what he’s doing.”
Nah. Cash was just using common sense. “I’d also talk to places that rent stock trailers. Call it a hunch, but I’m betting your culprits don’t own one.” And for that many stolen cows, they’d need a hell of a lot more than one trailer.
“He’s good,” Red said. “Jace thinks you ought to apply for my job, and by golly, I think he’s right.”
“Nope.” Cash rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. “My days in law enforcement are over.”
“Doesn’t seem like it,” Red called back.
Chapter 12
At five o’clock in the evening, four hours later than scheduled, Mama delivered Aubrey’s Volvo. She unceremoniously dumped the station wagon on Aubrey’s front lawn and stuck the bill in her face.
“You got cash?”
“No. I’ve got a credit card.” Aubrey turned from the door to find her purse.
“Credit card companies charge a fee.” Mama let herself in and looked around the cabin. “Nice place. A little fussy for my taste, but I could get used to it. Now that McMansion you shared with Mitch…well, that was just vulgar.”
Coming from a woman who wore grease-stained overalls and a bandanna tied around her stringy hair, Aubrey considered the source and tried not to take offense. She’d decorated that McMansion from wall to wall. At least Mama didn’t appear to be part of the Mitch cabal. No, she was rude to everyone. Aubrey’s mother liked to call her earthy. Aubrey’s take on Mama was that she was simply missing a filter. In any event, the tow-truck driver had been a staple of Dry Creek for as long as Aubrey could remember.
“Here you go.” Aubrey handed Mama her Visa.
“I’m gonna have to charge you a few extra bucks for the credit card fee.”
Aubrey wanted to argue that it was the price of doing business but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. The car had already put her in the hole. What was a few more dollars?
Mama returned to her tow truck to put the card through and Aubrey followed, hoping to hurry the transaction. She had a piece of leftover quiche in the oven.
“Stu must have it out for you real good.” Mama fumbled with the swiping machine, and Aubrey was tempted to tell her she ought to look in to Square or any other credit-card processing system invented in the twenty-first century. “In all my years, I’ve never seen him have someone towed from that market.”
“I guess I’m just special.” Aubrey flashed a cheesy grin. “You could’ve refused, you know?”
Mama pulled the bandanna off her head and wiped her neck with it. “If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been someone else.”
She had a point. Still, Mama could’ve stood on principle. “You knew Stu was being vindictive…you know what this is really about.”
Mama handed Aubrey her credit card and eyed her up and down. “You don’t look any worse for wear. As far as I’m concerned, you got the long end of the stick. Despite what everyone thinks, Mitch Reynolds is no angel. But as far as you and Jace Dalton”—she cackled—“he ain’t ever getting over that awful ex-wife of his.”
For hell’s sake, did Aubrey really have to say it again? “I didn’t leave Mitch for Jace. Jace and I aren’t together.”
“It’s no business of mine.” Mama lifted her shoulders. “And if I were you, I’d tell this whole town to stick it where the sun don’t shine.” She climbed up into her tow truck, slammed the door shut, and took off down the driveway, raising enough dust to choke a person.
Aubrey went back inside the cabin and pulled her quiche out of the oven before it burned. Instead of sitting at the table, she ate in front of the TV. Nothing on but the news. She looked outside the window for Cash’s SUV. Sometime around four, he and Ellie left, probably to get food. Aubrey would’ve fed them but didn’t want to interfere with their father-daughter time.
He’d looked good in a black felt cowboy hat and a matching T-shirt. She’d enjoyed watching him wait for Ellie by the side of his truck, his muscular arm resting on the rooftop.
She remembered his hand on her thigh when they’d driven to the ranch after getting her station wagon out of car jail. It had been big, warm, and callused, and she’d nearly agreed to his suggestion that they pull over so she could thank him properly for his help.
That certainly would’ve gone over well with the prying eyes in this town. She could hear it now: What’s with Aubrey McAllister and those Dalton men? There was no plural; there was only one Dalton who made her want to have car sex. And it wasn’t Jace.
Hmm, that gave Aubrey an idea. Something that might put an end to the rumor about her and Jace once and for all. Like Jace had said, why not give the good folks of Dry Creek something to talk about?
* * * *
At nine the next morning, Aubrey found Cash syphoning gas out of her tank into an old bucket on the ground.
“Morning.” He raised his head from what he was doing and flashed her a grin that was better than a first cup of coffee, which, to Aubrey, was pretty much the best thing in the world.
“Good morning.” She sat down on the grass next to him, watching while he worked. “Where’s Ellie?”
“The boys don’t have a babysitter today, so Sawyer took them and Ellie to the waterslides in Roseville.”
It seemed early to Aubrey, but in the summer the water park got so crowded they had to turn people away. “That was nice of him.”
“More like brave.” Cash removed the syphon tube from Aubrey’s tank and nudged his head at a gas can a few feet away. “I want to let the tank dry completely before I add the new stuff.”
“Okay.” He seemed to know what he was doing and she didn’t have a clue. “Can you tell if what you took out is contaminated?”
“It looks like water to me.” He pointed at the bucket. “See the way the gasoline floats on top? That usually happens when there’s water on the bottom.”
She stuck her face over the bucket but pulled it away when the strong odor burned her nose. “It smells like gasoline to me.”
He nodded and reminded her that water was odorless
.
“How do you think the water got in there? A bad batch of gas?”
“Nope.” He held her gaze and silently conveyed what she already knew. Someone had intentionally poured the water down her tank. Perhaps it had happened while she was shopping at the Dry Creek Market or on one of her other trips to town, but the bottom line was, someone had wanted to mess up her car.
“I can’t freaking believe this.” She pressed her forehead against the Volvo’s door.
“You have any idea who could’ve done it?”
“Not a one.” She didn’t mention that Mitch had been back in town because she didn’t think he would do something like this. It wasn’t his style to lurk around, sabotaging people’s cars. He was too busy spreading rumors. Even his henchwoman Mercedes wasn’t devious enough. And Jill Tucker…what could trashing Aubrey’s car possibly accomplish?
“We need to go to Jace and report it,” Cash said.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head, adamant. “I don’t want to get him involved. I’ve caused him enough problems.”
“You at least need to put it on the record in case something like this happens again.”
She couldn’t afford any more acts of vandalism. If Cash hadn’t volunteered to make the repairs, she would’ve had to dig even deeper into her savings.
“I’ll just be more alert in the future,” she said so as not to pull Jace into the drama. He had more at stake than she did. Not only did he need his job to support his family, he loved being sheriff. “I don’t want people to think Jace is giving me special treatment.”
Cash folded his arms over his chest, and she couldn’t help noticing how his T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders, and the way his biceps bulged.
“You’re the victim of a crime and Jace is the sheriff,” he said. “I don’t see how reporting the incident gives you special treatment. It would be the same for anyone else in Dry Creek.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it.” She pretended to acquiesce because she knew Cash wasn’t going to quit until she agreed to go to the police. Aubrey turned her attention to the car. “How long do we wait for the tank to dry? I’d like to see if the car actually drives.”
