The Trailblazer

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to the True Love Ranch! And before you scoff and assume a real ranch would never have such a name, let me assure you it’s entirely possible. While I was researching old ranches and brands for this series, I discovered that cowboys are a sentimental lot. Unless you’ve studied old brands, you might be surprised at the number of them that incorporate hearts and even flowers! Out in the West, a man treasured a good woman, and although he sometimes had trouble putting his devotion into words, he could say it with something far more important to him—his official brand.

  That sort of touching gesture may be at the root of our continued love affair with cowboys. They work hard at presenting a tough-as-rawhide exterior, yet never quite disguise a heart warmer than a campfire and passion hotter than a branding iron.

  Most men have a little bit of cowboy in them, but the three men in the Urban Cowboys series have a lot. Although they were raised in the city, T.R., Chase and Joe can’t become the men they were destined to be until they head out West. I hope you have as much fun as I did watching three city slickers become transformed into bronc-ridin’, rope-slingin’, fast-lovin’ cowboys.

  Happy trails,

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  The Trailblazer

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  For David Santa Maria, who helped me build the True Love Ranch

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Prologue

  UST BEFORE the elevator reversed direction and plummeted to the basement, T. R. McGuinnes was thinking about going West. Golden opportunities awaited bold investors who could foresee the direction of growth in the Sun Belt and buy land in its path. As a commodities trader, T.R. prided himself on boldness, but he needed partners. Partners with cash. Without warning, a relay failed between the second and third floors, catapulting the elevator toward the bottom at a thousand feet per minute. T.R. had approximately three seconds to review his life and wish he’d scheduled his business appointments differently that morning. He looked around and met the startled gazes of the two men who shared the elevator with him, one in jeans, the other in NYPD blues. The man in jeans swore once, loudly, just before the elevator slammed into its concrete base. T.R. was tossed against the elevator wall, cracked his head on the handrail coming down and blacked out.

  THE GROAN of stressed metal eased into T.R.’s consciousness. He opened his eyes to blackness, breathed in dust and coughed.

  “Who’s that?” rasped a voice from the back of the elevator.

  “Name’s McGuinnes.” His head pounded. “T.R. McGuinnes. You?”

  “Chase Lavette. Are you the cop?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “I hope to God he’s not,” T.R. said. “Are you hurt?”

  “Yeah. Something’s wrong with my back. It hurts like hell. How about you?”

  “I hit my head.” T.R. put a hand to the side of his head, but he didn’t feel blood, just the jackhammer pain. “Listen, you’d better not move,” he said. “I’ll check the cop.” He got to his hands and knees, wincing at the viselike pressure against his skull. Crawling forward, he brushed something with his shoulder. He reached up and touched the warm surface of a fluorescent light that had been knocked from the ceiling.

  “It’s getting damned hot in here,” Lavette said.

  “Yeah.” Perspiration soaked his shirt, but it wasn’t only the heat making him sweat. It was the thought that he could be approaching a corpse.

  “They should be coming to get us out of here pretty soon,” Lavette told him.

  “Let’s hope so.” A pinpoint of light from the damaged ceiling allowed T.R. to make out a shapeless mass near the left side of the elevator doors. As he crept toward the body, his knee hit the edge of his briefcase and he wondered if his briefcase, flying through the air, could kill a man. The smell of blood made his gorge rise.

  When he reached the cop, he forced himself to place two fingers against the guy’s neck. It was wet and he couldn’t feel a pulse. Oh, God. He leaned closer. Breathe, damn you.

  “If you try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, you’re a dead man,” the cop said wearily.

  T.R.’s breath whooshed out in relief. “Never learned it, anyway.” He sat on his heels and reached in his back pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his hands. Then he shoved the handkerchief toward the cop. “Here. You’re bleeding somewhere.”

  “No joke. How’s the other guy?”

  “I’ll survive,” Lavette said.

  “Says his back hurts,” T.R. added. “I told him not to move.”

  “Good. Moving a back injury case and severing his spinal cord would top off this episode nicely.” The cop eased himself up to a sitting position and winced as he touched the handkerchief to his face. “That briefcase cut the hell out of my chin. What’s that thing made of, steel?”

  “Brass trim.”

  The cop snorted. “You got a cellular phone in it, at least?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you’d better use it. This has been great fun, but I’m due back at the station in an hour.”

  T.R. groped behind him for his briefcase. “I suppose almost getting killed is a big yawner for you, isn’t it?”

  “Killed in an elevator accident? You’ve been seeing too many Keanu Reeves movies. New York elevators are safer than your grandmother’s rocking chair.”

  “Tell that to my back,” Lavette said. “I can’t drive with a busted back, and if I can’t drive, I can’t pay off my rig.”

  T.R. opened his briefcase, found his cellular phone and snapped it open. “If you can’t drive, you’ll get an insurance settlement.”

  “And sit around doing nothing? No, thanks.”

  T.R. dialed 911, gave their location and problem and hit the Disconnect button. “They’re sending a team to get us out,” he said. As the news penetrated his numb brain, an adrenaline rush hit his system and he almost dropped the phone. He clenched his fist around it and fought the trembling just as the elevator rumbled and lurched to the right.

  “Damn!” Lavette cried out. “Aren’t we all the way down yet?”

  “We’re all the way down,” the cop said. “The blasted thing’s still settling, that’s all. Move your fingers and toes, see if you still have all your motor coordination.”

  Paralysis. The thought sickened T.R.

  Lavette rustled around a little. “I can move everything,” he said at last and T.R. sagged with the sudden release of tension.

  “Good,” said the cop. “What’s your name?”

  “Lavette. Chase Lavette.”

  “T. R. McGuinnes,” T.R. said, taking his cue.

  “Joe Gilardini,” the cop supplied. “I wish I could say it was nice to meet you guys, but under the circumstances, I wish I’d been denied the pleasure.”

  “Same here,” Lavette said.

  Sweat dripped down T.R.’s chin and he wiped it with the sleeve of his suit jacket. What they all needed was a distraction, he decided. He scrambled for ideas and came up with the last topic that had occupied his mind before the elevator had crashed. “Either one of you ever been out West?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Lavette asked.

  “I don’t, really. I just think talking is better than sitting here waiting for the elevator to shift again.”

  “Guess you’re right,” Lavette said. “No, I’ve never been out West. Eastern seaboard’s my route. Always wanted
to go out there, though.”

  The cop sighed. “God, so have I. The wide-open spaces. Peace and quiet.”

  “No elevators,” Lavette put in.

  “Yeah,” Gilardini said. “If I didn’t have my kid living in New York, I’d turn in my badge, collect my pension and go.”

  T.R. thought he should probably be locked up for the way his mind was working all of a sudden. Only a crazy person would start putting together a business deal at the bottom of an elevator shaft with his fellow crash victims. Or maybe not so crazy. He’d just been reminded that life is short, and you’d better grab what you can, when you can. A pension and an insurance settlement. It might be enough, with what he could raise. Of course, these guys probably didn’t know the first thing about investing, but maybe that was what he needed. His usual contacts knew so much, they’d turn gun-shy on him.

  “I just heard about this guest ranch in Arizona that’s up for sale,” he said. “One of those working guest ranches with a small herd of cattle. I’m going out there next week to look it over.”

  “No kidding?” Lavette said. “Think you might buy it?”

  “If it checks out.”

  “Running a guest ranch,” Gilardini mused aloud. “You know, that wouldn’t be half-bad.”

  “And after I’ve had some fun with it, I’ll sell it for a nice profit,” T.R. said, sweetening the deal. “Tucson’s growing in that direction, and in a couple of years developers will be crying out to get their hands on that land, all one hundred and sixty acres of it. I can’t lose.”

  “A hundred and sixty aces,” Lavette said with reverence.

  “I’m looking for partners.”

  The cop laughed. “Now I’ve heard everything. Only in New York would a guy use an accident as a chance to set up a deal.”

  The elevator settled with another metallic groan.

  “Would you rather sit here and think about the elevator collapsing on us?” T.R. asked.

  “I’d rather think about your ranch,” Lavette said. “I’d go in on it in a minute if I had the cash.”

  “You might get that settlement,” T.R. reminded him.

  “You know, I might,” Lavette said. “Listen, McGuinnes, after we get out of here, let’s keep in touch. You never know.”

  “I guarantee you wouldn’t go wrong on this investment. The Sun Belt’s booming.”

  “I think you’re both nut cases,” Gilardini said.

  “So you’re not interested?” T.R. asked.

  “I didn’t say that. Hell, what else is there to be interested in down in this hole? If the ranch looks good, just call the Forty-third Precinct and leave a message for me.”

  T.R. shook his hand. “Let me get some business cards out of my briefcase.”

  “I’d just as soon not think about your briefcase, McGuinnes. Let’s talk some more about the ranch. What’s the name of it, anyway? I always liked those old ranch names—the Bar X, the Rocking J. Remember ’Bonanza’?”

  “I saw that on reruns,” Lavette said. “The guy I liked was Clint Eastwood. I snuck in to see High Plains Drifter at least six times when I was a kid. Back then, I would have given anything to be a cowboy.”

  “Yeah, me too,” admitted the cop. “So what’s the place called?”

  T.R. hesitated. These guys were after macho images, and he wished he could give them one. “Well, this spread is named something a little different.”

  “Yeah?” Gilardini said. “What could be so different?”

  “The True Love Ranch.”

  * * *

  FREDDY SINGLETON hung up the phone and glared at her younger sister, Leigh, who was perched on the edge of the old pine desk. “Damn. That was Janine at Cooper Realty and she wants us to send the van for that T. R. McGuinnes from New York.”

  “Do we have to?”

  Freddy shrugged. “I’ll catch hell from the Westridge corporate types if I don’t. They want us to roll out the red carpet for him. They think he’s got money. Shoot. I was hoping he wasn’t serious. Then maybe Eb’s offer would stand.”

  “Fat chance,” Leigh said. “Westridge wants at least their original investment back.” She pushed away from the desk and walked over to study the gallery of framed photographs displayed on the office walls. “Maybe they’re hoping for a bidding war between Eb and this Easterner.”

  “Eb can’t go any higher.” Freddy tapped a pencil against the desk in frustration. “Just what we need, a greenhorn trying to run the place. Eb Whitlock would just leave me alone to do my thing.”

  Leigh turned back to her. “Maybe the guy won’t be interested once he sees the ranch. We are looking a little shabby in spots. And we’re low on guests this week. What have we got, eleven? That won’t seem like a money-making operation.”

  “Here’s a clue for you, Leigh. It isn’t. I’ve never seen it so slow in May.”

  “So we’ll convert our weaknesses to strengths. Maybe we can scare him off. Don’t forget to tell him about the old Indian curse that’s supposed to hang over this property.”

  “Yeah, Westridge has been on my case about all the little mishaps we’ve had lately. Sometimes I wonder if there really is a curse.” Freddy dialed the bunkhouse and asked Duane to make an airport run, then hung up and glanced up at Leigh. “We might as well go down to the corrals and get this morning’s chore over with. Are you ready to convince Red Devil that sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?”

  Leigh chuckled. “I don’t think there’s a male animal alive who would accept castration with grace, but I’ll do what I can. After all, that’s what a head wrangler gets paid for.”

  Freddy stood and reached for her hat hanging from a peg on the wall. “You know, I wonder if we really could discourage this T.R. person from buying the ranch.”

  “He’s a dude, right?” Leigh said. “We have ways of handling dudes.”

  “That we do.” Freddy adjusted her hat so the brim settled low over her eyes. “And I’d do just about anything to get rid of this particular tenderfoot.”

  * * *

  T.R. WASN’T SURPRISED when the guest ranch van that met him at the airport had steer horns on the hood instead of a standard hood ornament. With a ranch named the True Love, he was lucky the ornament wasn’t a valentine heart.

  Despite the air-conditioning, it was hot inside the van. He took off his sport coat, making sure Joe Gilardini’s home phone number was still tucked in the pocket. He and Joe had been released from the hospital emergency room the same day as the accident, Joe with a broken arm as well as the nasty cut on his chin, and T.R. with a mild concussion. Lavette was still in the hospital with lower back pain and no clear predictions from the doctors on whether he could resume his trucking career, but he was more eager to get in on that ranch deal than Gilardini.

  The driver of the van was a certified cowboy named Duane, grizzled and taciturn. His sun-weathered skin made judging his age difficult, but he was probably about forty-five. T.R. gave up on conversation after a few monosyllabic responses from the man and watched Duane navigate the heavy city traffic of Tucson. It wasn’t hard to picture him guiding a cutting horse through a restless herd of cattle with the same dedication.

  T.R. glanced out the window and grinned. He might be on a freeway, but there was no doubt he was in the West. Mountains surrounded the city, but the Santa Catalinas dominated it. It wasn’t a gentle range.

  As they drove, civilization loosened its grip on the landscape and T.R. gazed at hillsides covered with giant saguaros standing fifty-to sixty-feet high, their massive arms lifted toward a sky so blue T.R. took off his sunglasses to make sure the color wasn’t an optical trick. It wasn’t.

  The van turned off the main road where two battered rural mailboxes crouched, one marked Singleton in faded letters, and the other Whitlock. Near the boxes was a small white sign that read True Love Guest Ranch—2 miles. Beneath the lettering was a heart with an arrow through it. T.R. could imagine what Joe would say about that. He had to convince the cop that none of that m
attered. The name and the corny heart would disappear in a couple of years, anyway. They could even change the name immediately if Joe insisted on something more...manly.

  The van jolted along a dirt road that needed grading, sending a plume of dust behind it. A lane branched off to the right, and a wooden sign announced a turnoff to the Rocking W Ranch—Whitlock’s property, T.R. concluded. Several yards down the lane, a gaunt figure in a battered straw cowboy hat supported himself with an aluminum walker as he inched along in the direction of the ranch house. A plastic shopping bag filled with mail hung on one side of the walker.

  “Who’s that?” T.R. asked Duane.

  “Dexter.”

  As the van drew alongside, Dexter turned slowly and lifted one hand in a salute. Duane raised two fingers from the steering wheel and drove past.

  “Aren’t you going to give him a ride?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t aim to insult Dex.”

  T. R. glanced back at the old cowboy shuffling along the dirt road. “He picks up the mail every day?”

  Duane shifted his tobacco to the other side of his lip. “Yep.”

  “How long does it take him?”

  “Good days, an hour.”

  T.R. settled in the seat and tried not to think about Dexter’s daily trek to the mailbox. It was too personal, too human—the sort of information he’d rather not know, considering his plans for the True Love.

  The road forked again, and another sign appeared which read Main House—Registration, and pointed to the right. Beneath that was the word corrals and another arrow, this one pointing to the left. And below all that, the darned heart with an arrow through it. These people weren’t shy about their sentimentality.

  Duane slowed the van at the fork. “Freddy’s down at the corrals. I should probably take you there first.”

  T.R. was impressed that Duane was capable of making such a long speech. “Fine,” he agreed. He had to see all of it, so it didn’t much matter which end he started with. “What’s going on at the corrals?” he asked, not really expecting an explanation.

  ‘Last I heard, Freddy was fixing’ to use the emasculator on Red Devil.”