The Heiress and the Sheriff

by Stella Bagwell

  A hundred feet or more from their hidden position at the edge of the thick woods, a row of mailboxes lined one corner of the intersection. Beside the post of the last box, Wyatt had placed the brown bag holding several million dollars.

  So far no one had driven past them, much less stopped to collect the cash. Wyatt was beginning to get an uneasy feeling about the whole setup. However, he kept the negative notion to himself. Matthew was already about to break apart from the strain.

  “What if someone comes by, spots the bag and stops out of curiosity?” Matthew asked worriedly. “You can’t allow just anyone to take it. If the kidnapper doesn’t see the money, we might never get Bryan back.”

  “Damn it, Matthew, don’t start losing your grip now,” Wyatt ordered sternly. “I’m not about to let just anyone pick up the ransom bag. If a baby isn’t first set out of the vehicle, the driver better be ready to answer to me.”

  Matthew wiped a nervous hand over his face and let out a shaky breath. “And what if he or she does put Bryan out?”

  Wyatt tried to hide his impatience, because he knew his friend was close to being out of his mind with worry for his child. “We’ve been all through this, Matthew. We’re going to grab the baby and make sure he’s Bryan, while my deputies and the FBI follow the kidnapper.”

  “Yes. Okay. But…oh, God, Wyatt, I just don’t think I can take much more of this!”

  “You can if you have to,” he told him firmly. “It’s a quarter to twelve now, and the note said twelve midnight would be the pickup time. Think of it this way, Matthew—in fifteen minutes you could possibly have your son back.”

  Several miles west, on the outskirts of the small town of Leather Bucket, Lily’s daughter, Maria Cassidy, paced back and forth in the tiny living room of a shabby trailer house. The continual thrust of her fingers into her long dark hair had left it hanging in limp hanks around her thin face. Her brown eyes darted frantically to the corner of the room where a playpen was shoved against the wall. The sleeping toddler was worth millions. The money would be waiting there at the mailboxes by now. All she had to do was drive to the lonesome intersection of dirt roads and get it.

  But who would be waiting there for her? she asked herself. More than likely that damn Sheriff Grayhawk. Knowing him, he wouldn’t be content to sit back and let those bumbling FBI men handle the switch on their own. Maria feared the local sheriff far more than she did the government men. He was a shrewd, mean bastard. If anyone could put two and two together and figure out that she had Bryan Fortune, it would be Grayhawk.

  But so far he hadn’t managed it, and now the money was there for the taking. Just the idea brought a savage glow to her dark eyes. She could finally get out of this dump, buy all the clothes and jewelry she wanted, travel and live the life of a queen—instead of working her butt off in a slimy café, waiting on men who wanted to get their hands on her, get her into bed and give her nothing in return.

  But even more than what the money could buy her, she would finally see the Fortunes pay for all they’d done to her mother. Lily might be all soft and forgiving, but her daughter sure as hell wasn’t going to let them off so easily. Her mother was still stupid enough to believe Ryan Fortune was really going to marry her.

  Snorting with contempt, Maria snatched up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from a wobbly end table. Once she had the tip glowing, she sucked the nicotine deep into her lungs. “Marry her,” she spat mockingly under her breath. Ryan Fortune wasn’t going to do anything but use her mother as a bed partner. Just the way one of the Fortune men had used Lily all those years ago.

  She paced over to the playpen and glanced down at the sleeping toddler. Claudia and Matthew had baby James now. The child they called Taylor. They were raising her kid! No one had the slightest suspicion that Maria had given birth to the little boy. The idea had her stifling down a high cackle.

  From the bits of information she’d gleaned from her mother and sister, Sheriff Grayhawk had discovered Matthew was James’s father, and Claudia was giving her husband hell over the fact. The stupid woman believed her husband had had an affair. Maria could have told her the fool doctor was too goody-goody to look at another woman sideways, much less make a baby with her.

  But none of that mattered at the moment, Maria reminded herself. Right now, she had to decide whether or not to pick up the money.

  Puffing heavily on the cigarette, she hurried across the room once again and into a cluttered kitchen where a clock on the wall showed 11:55.

  Cursing, she flopped down in a plastic chair and drummed her fingers on top of the card table that served as a dinette. Five minutes! In five minutes she was supposed to be sitting Bryan out by the mailboxes and getting the money. Her money!

  But what if Grayhawk or the FBI grabbed her when she stopped to put the baby out? There were woods nearby, her mind raced on, with plenty of trees and underbrush to hide a whole posse.

  No, she had to think of some other way to handle this. She couldn’t spend the money if she was rotting away in jail! And besides, she thought as her gaze drifted through the open doorway to the playpen, the longer she kept the kid, the more the Fortunes would suffer.

  With that gleeful thought, she took one last drag on the cigarette, crushed it out in a jar lid, and decided to make herself a sandwich.

  Three hours passed before Matthew would accept the fact that the kidnapper wasn’t going to show. On the way back to the ranch, the young doctor was so devastated he could hardly choke out one word. As for Wyatt, he wanted to bust something, anything, to vent the anger he was feeling.

  Ryan met them at the door, his face mottled with fear and frustration. “What the hell happened? Didn’t anyone show up?”

  Matthew’s head swung from side to side, and Mary Ellen appeared at that moment and quietly took her nephew by the arm and led him into the great room.

  Wyatt stayed where he was to answer Ryan’s questions. “No one showed. Just a rancher driving home with a trailer load of horses. Two of my deputies and the FBI are still out there keeping vigil. I told them to give it another hour, then pick up the money and bring it back here to you. I don’t want to leave the bag out in the open after daylight.”

  “No,” Ryan agreed. “It wouldn’t do any good anyway,” he added, then cursed at the helplessness of it all.

  “I have more money than I can spend, Wyatt, but that isn’t enough to get my grandson back.”

  Wyatt had never had a child, but he knew what it meant to lose someone. It wasn’t hard to imagine what this man was feeling, what the whole family was going through, at this moment.

  “There’s no way of telling what happened with the kidnapper, or why he or she didn’t show,” Wyatt told him.

  “But this whole incident makes me lean toward the culprit being a woman. For some reason the kidnapper doesn’t want to give the baby up. A woman is more likely to make those sort of attachments than a man.”

  “You believe it’s a woman. And you still think she’s close by?” Ryan asked sharply.

  “I also believe she isn’t going to harm the baby. Not after this length of time.”

  “Hell, Wyatt, if you know all this, why can’t you catch her?”

  Wyatt released a weary breath. “I’m trying, Ryan. That’s all I can tell you.”

  With a sigh of resignation Ryan clapped Wyatt on the shoulder, then nudged him toward the great room. “If I sound like I’m blaming you, Wyatt, I’m sorry. I realize you’re a sheriff, not a miracle worker. I was just so hopeful…and I feel so damn helpless.”

  “Well, I can tell you, Ryan, I feel pretty damn inept right now. And Matthew is crushed. I’m worried about him. Especially now that Claudia isn’t standing behind him.”

  As the two men stepped into the large room filled with other family members, Ryan said in a voice just for Wyatt’s ears, “Frankly, I’m worried about him too. He truly believed he was going to get his son back tonight. I don’t know how much more he can take.”

  Pau
sing beside Ryan, Wyatt took a quick survey of the large room. The atmosphere was grim. Everyone was talking in hushed tones, the way people do when they receive word of a death and are stunned by the news. He noticed Claudia had returned to the ranch for tonight, and was for the moment sitting beside her husband. She was dabbing a handkerchief at her eyes. Obviously she was devastated that the negotiations with the kidnapper had fallen through. As for the young doctor, he was clutching Taylor close to his chest as though he were afraid to let the boy get more than an inch away from him.

  At least Matthew had one child, Wyatt thought. But one son had been traded for another. And Wyatt didn’t see the interchange as coincidence. That’s why he had to find Taylor’s mother. And once he did, he believed Bryan wouldn’t be far behind.

  “If I could find out who gave birth to Taylor, it would certainly help matters.” He spoke his thoughts to Ryan.

  Ryan Fortune slanted him a keen glance. “You don’t believe my son had an affair, do you?”

  “Not in a million years.”

  Ryan rubbed a weary hand over his face. “He has Fortune blood in him, Wyatt. You should remember that.”

  “I realize some of the Fortune men are known for their philandering. But Matthew is like his father. He’s not an adulterer.”

  Ryan squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks for that much, Wyatt. Now I think I’ll go have a word with the FBI agent who’s been watching the house. The way Fortune luck is going tonight, he’s probably asleep.”

  Wyatt watched the older man walk away, wishing for the thousandth time that there was something he could do to end this family’s misery.

  “Wyatt, would you like coffee?”

  Gabrielle’s voice sounded behind him, and before he could even glance over his shoulder at her, his heart drummed with pleasure. Damn fool, he silently cursed himself.

  Slowly he turned to see her carrying a tray loaded with an insulated pot, several mugs and coffee fixings. Grinning faintly, his eyes met hers.

  “Are you taking Rosita’s place tonight?”

  “She’s gone home. And I thought most everyone could use something to revive them.”

  He took the heavy tray from her and carried it to a small wooden table situated in an out-of-the-way corner of the room. Gabrielle followed and quickly poured each of them a cupful.

  Wyatt accepted the mug, then watched her stir cream into hers. He hadn’t seen her since he’d brought her home the morning after the storm, more than two days ago.

  During that time he’d thought of nothing but her. Even tonight as he’d sat with Matthew watching and waiting for the kidnapper to make an appearance, images of Gabrielle kept straying into his mind. For the past two days he’d fought with himself to keep from driving out here to the ranch. To see her. To take her to some secluded place where he could make love to her again.

  The notion caused a strange mixture of emotions to ball in his throat, making his voice unusually husky when he spoke. “All you have to do is look around this room to see it was a no-show tonight.”

  “Yes,” she said with a sad sigh. “I was sitting with the family when you called from your truck. I thought Claudia was going to faint, poor thing. All the while you and Matthew were gone tonight, she kept staring at the picture the kidnapper sent of Bryan and talking about all the things she was going to do with her son once you brought him home. Dallas finally took the thing away from her. Zane thought he was being cruel, but I think he was just trying to spare her any more pain.”

  Something in her voice said she truly cared about these people, thought Wyatt, that she hated seeing them or anyone in pain. Or was that just something he wanted to hear?

  As his eyes explored the length of her, it suddenly dawned on him that she was a different woman from the one who’d collided her rental car with a tree. She seemed less West Coast than Texan now. Tonight she was dressed in indigo blue jeans and a yellow short-sleeved shirt. The color matched the buttery streaks in her hair, which was piled atop her head in a loose mass of curls. Her skin had paled to light golden from its original beach-burned brown.

  Yet it wasn’t exactly her appearance that made her seem different. Her voice had slowed and softened, along with her mannerisms. She’d come here to Texas with her inner motor racing at full throttle; now it was simply idling, waiting. For what, he didn’t know. Over the past few days there had been brief moments when the very deepest part of Wyatt wanted Gabrielle’s waiting to be for him.

  But as soon as the thought flickered inside him, he squashed it. He wasn’t going to let any woman get a hold on him. Not even one as beautiful and delicious as Gabrielle.

  “Claudia no doubt loves her son and wants him back,” Wyatt finally replied. “I’m just wondering if she feels the same about Matthew.”

  Gabrielle glanced across the room to where the couple still sat talking on the couch. Taylor was on the verge of falling asleep in his father’s arms. For the moment, they appeared to be a regular family. “Claudia believes her husband has had an affair. That would be a hard pill to swallow.”

  One of Wyatt’s brows cocked upward at the sharpness in her voice. “You sound like you might be a jealous woman.”

  She glanced at him, her expression full of conviction. “Not of you. I already know you wouldn’t love a woman, much less be true to her.”

  Though it shouldn’t have, her opinion riled him. “Believe me, Gabrielle, if I was ever crazy enough to love a woman, she would be all I’d want.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you have morals?”

  He actually grinned. “I am the sheriff of this county.”

  She sipped her coffee as she felt her insides begin to quiver. Seeing Wyatt again, standing this close to him, smelling his skin as his shoulder brushed against hers, was like standing at the gates of heaven looking in on the pleasures inside.

  “Does that mean you always do what’s right?”

  “I try. But I am human,” he drawled.

  Her eyes lifted and met his. The dark glow she saw there made her breath catch in her throat. The desperate urge to taste him and touch him had been building from the moment she’d seen him walk into the room, and she wondered if he could read on her face what she was feeling.

  “Wyatt, I—”

  Suddenly she didn’t have to wonder anymore. His hand clamped around her upper arm. “Let’s go outside.”

  She didn’t say anything as she set her coffee down and allowed him to lead her across the large room to the curved glass doors leading out to the courtyard. Along the way, she felt certain all eyes were on the two of them, but a quick glance as they went out told her no one had even noticed their exit.

  Wyatt didn’t stop until they were deep into the shadowed recesses of the courtyard, where tall pampas grass hid them from view, and the night blossoms of moonflower vines filled the air with their scent.

  “Wyatt—” she began again, but stopped when he jerked her into the hard circle of his arms.

  “Dammit, do you know how much I’ve been wanting you?” He breathed the words against her neck.

  She swallowed and closed her eyes as the sweet sensations of having him next to her swamped her. “You make it sound like a sin.”

  “It is!”

  His teeth sank into her earlobe, and his hands delved beneath the hem of her T-shirt and didn’t stop until they were on her breasts, kneading their fullness, teasing the nipples to hard buttons.

  “You said you were a man of morals,” she reminded him between gulps for air.

  “Not where you’re concerned. I’ve been fighting with myself for nearly three days to stay away from you and this. I can’t!”

  “Why would you want to?”

  Her simple question made him groan and crush his mouth over hers.

  “You taste so good. So good,” he whispered, his teeth nipping at her lips, her tongue, her cheeks.

  She clung to him, her legs shaking, her body on fire. “I’ve missed you, Wyatt. You can’t know how much.”
/>   Yes, he knew. But he could hardly admit it to himself. Much less to her.

  His hands splayed across her bottom and jerked her hips up against his arousal. “I want you, Gabrielle. God, how I want you!”

  She groaned and searched for his mouth in the darkness—

  A few feet away, the sound of a man clearing his throat drifted to their hidden alcove. Wyatt instantly put her from him and cursed under his breath. “I forgot about the men guarding the house. We’ll have to leave.”

  “Wyatt! We can’t leave the ranch tonight. Not after what’s happened! The Fortunes might need you later on.”

  “I need you right now!” he growled.

  To underscore his words, he kissed her fiercely, his tongue plunging into the warm wetness of her mouth. Gabrielle was lost long before he lifted his head.

  Taking her by the hand, he led her out of their dark, fragrant lair and down the walkway, until they reached the door leading into her room. She quietly opened the glass enclosure, and Wyatt followed. There was a small lamp burning on a desk near the bed. But dark shadows filled the sitting area where they stood.

  Wyatt carefully locked the door behind them, then nodded toward the door that opened onto the hallway leading back into the house. “Can that door be locked?”

  For an answer, Gabrielle crossed the room and twisted shut the dead bolt. Then, with her heart throbbing in her chest, she returned to him.

  “Wyatt, what if—” she began in a whisper.

  “Don’t worry. Don’t talk,” he interrupted thickly as his hands spanned her waist. “Just let me love you.”

  With his lips on hers, his hands still on her waist, he propelled her backwards until her back met the wall. Then his fingers were on the front of her jeans, releasing the button and tugging down the zipper. Once he got the denim down past her hips, the jeans fell to her ankles and were quickly followed by her panties.