Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon

by RaeAnne Thayne

  * * *

  She was running away.

  Maybe it was rationalizing but she preferred to look at it not as the act of a coward but as self-preservation.

  Taylor loaded the last shopping bag into the back of her Subaru, then turned to whistle to Belle, who was saying her goodbyes to Wyatt’s border collies, circling and sniffing one last time.

  It was a gorgeous morning, crisp and clear with just the hint of a breeze. Though the sun hadn’t completely cleared the mountains yet, she could tell it would be a beautiful day, the kind of Sunday perfect for a good brisk walk through the backcountry.

  The air smelled sweet and clean and Taylor indulged herself for a moment just breathing it into her lungs. A pair of horses raced through a pasture at the base of the driveway, mane and tail catching the early morning sunlight, and she felt a pang at having to leave this beautiful ranch.

  She had no choice, though. She couldn’t stay here. There was too much at stake to risk it. She needed time and distance to rebuild the defenses that had shattered the night before in his arms.

  No, they had shattered long before that, she acknowledged. She had been careless about protecting herself from hurt. Somehow when she wasn’t looking, Wyatt McKinnon had mounted a sneak attack and she was still reeling from it.

  “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go,” she ordered more firmly, and the dog snuffled reluctantly but clambered into the back seat.

  Taylor opened the driver’s door but before she could climb in she heard the squeak of the front door and turned to find Wyatt striding out onto the porch.

  His hair was damp as if he had just stepped out of the shower and he wore faded jeans and a polo shirt that stretched across his muscles. She swallowed hard, wishing she could have made her escape five minutes earlier and avoided this encounter.

  “You’re off early.”

  She hated this defensiveness, especially as she knew how rude and ungrateful she must seem by her departure.

  “Yes. I left you a note on the table. I appreciate all you’ve done. You and your family have been more than kind to me but I’ve got hours’ worth of work to do to open up the cabin in Little Cottonwood Canyon and to catch up with course work. I thought an early start would be best.”

  “Why do you need to open the cabin? You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”

  That would be a nightmare, staying here day in and day out and trying to pretend she wasn’t developing feelings for him that terrified her.

  “It’s at least an hour commute from here to the university. I can cut that substantially by using my family’s home.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you being up there alone. Did you forget that threatening note—not to mention the minor little detail that someone just burned down your house?”

  She blew out a breath. “I haven’t forgotten. How could I? But I won’t hide away up here with you. Whoever is doing all this wants me to cower and cringe and forget about helping Hunter. I can’t. Anyway, I won’t be alone for long. Kate is cutting her trip short and should be back by Tuesday. In the meantime, I’ll have Belle. She’ll be a good watchdog.”

  “I still don’t like it. Look, I told you I have an apartment in Salt Lake I use when I’m traveling or working late in the city. It’s only a few minutes from the university. Just use that. At least you would have neighbors around in an emergency.”

  The offer was tempting. She had to admit she still wasn’t thrilled about staying at the cabin alone, even for the few days until Kate’s return. But staying at his apartment wasn’t so very different from staying here at the ranch. It would only be another thread between them that she would eventually have to snip.

  “There are other year-round homes close to the cabin,” she answered. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Taylor—”

  She cut him off. “Thank you again for rescuing Belle and for everything else these past few days.” She didn’t want to argue with him—nor did she want to remind him that he had no say in the matter.

  His mouth—that wonderful, sensuous mouth that she knew entirely too well—tightened into a hard line. “Nothing I say will change your mind, will it?”

  “I know you’re concerned and I appreciate it, but I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Right. You’re walking completely unprotected back into what could be an extremely dangerous situation and you expect me to just sit back and accept it.”

  Why did he sound so angry? The man ought to be doing cartwheels to see her taillights in the distance! She had dragged him into this mess, had cried all over him, had invaded his home and his brother’s wedding, for heaven’s sake.

  She did appreciate his help—and she was honest enough to admit she had desperately needed the time he offered her to cope with the trauma of losing her home and her belongings. But now she needed to return to the business of real life—before she was left forever scarred.

  He went on. “Somebody torched your house, Taylor. What do you think his next step will be?”

  She swallowed down a tremor of fear. “I don’t know. Maybe the bastard will get careless and show himself so that I can prove who really killed Dru and Mickie.”

  “That knowledge is not going to do your brother or anybody else a whole hell of a lot of good if you’re dead.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she repeated, wishing she could believe it herself.

  A muscle worked in his jaw, and by the ferocity of his features, she had the feeling he would be more than capable of wresting her from the car and locking her in one of his guest rooms.

  For one charged second, he gazed at her, then he growled a low, pungent oath. “I want to hear from you every day, understand? Every day. If I don’t get a phone call, I’m coming to get you and drag you back here.”

  She nodded tightly.

  He studied her for another moment, then pulled her to him for one swift, devastating kiss. “Be careful,” he murmured.

  She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she only nodded again and slid behind the wheel. As she drove down the long, winding driveway of his ranch, she saw him in the rearview mirror, watching after her.

  Be careful, he had said. She was terribly afraid it was far too late for that.

  At least where her heart was concerned.

  * * *

  Three days later, Taylor sat in the university law library poring over citations for her civil procedure class. This was the hardest part of law school for her. She didn’t mind the work, didn’t mind researching old cases. Parts of it, she had to admit, she actually found interesting.

  But the sometimes dry isolation of it bothered her. During her med school days, it seemed she was always surrounded by people. Professors, other students. Doctors, nurses, patients. She disliked sitting here alone with only her law books for company.

  “Hey, Taylor. I finally found that docket number you were looking for earlier.”

  Grateful for the interruption, she glanced up to find Barbara Langley standing by her carrel. In her late fifties, with striking salt-and-pepper hair and a warm smile, Barbara was Taylor’s favorite librarian. Unlike some of the others, she gave her help generously and enthusiastically.

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed. In the chaos of the past few weeks, she had forgotten she had even asked the librarian earlier in the month. “This will be a big help.”

  “Is it for one of your classes or for your brother’s appeal?”

  Taylor stared at her, nonplussed. She had known Barbara for a year, since her terrible early months as a first-year, but this was the first time the librarian had made reference to Hunter. Had she known all along that Taylor was his sister?

  She wasn’t ashamed of her brother—far from it—but while her connection to him wasn’t a secret, she tried not to advertise it. Things seemed easier that way, especially as she didn’t enjoy answering unwanted questions. And the questions inevitably came. Hunter was almost as infamous in Utah as another native son, Butch Cassidy.

 
; “Both, I guess,” she said, answering the librarian’s question. “I thought it might be on point for a paper I’m doing in my evidence class but I was also interested in its relevance to Hunter’s case.”

  Barbara smiled and handed her the paper. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  She started to walk away, paused for a moment as if trying to make up her mind about something, then turned back to Taylor. “I should probably tell you, I followed your brother’s trial closely.”

  Taylor held her breath. This was the point where people usually looked at her like she was next of kin to the devil himself.

  Barbara’s expression didn’t change from her usual pleasant smile, though. “I’m not usually a trial junkie but I was interested in it mainly because I knew Mickie Wallace-Ferrin when she was plain old Mickie Wallace, struggling law student.”

  “Why haven’t you said anything before?”

  Barbara shrugged. “I figured if you wanted to talk about your brother’s case you would have brought it up.”

  Taylor thought of those terrible days of the well-publicized court proceedings when she couldn’t seem to walk into the grocery store without having to listen to trial commentary given by everyone from the produce manager to the bag boy.

  “You know, Mickie was in here just a few weeks before she was murdered,” Barbara said.

  The information surprised her. Mickie hadn’t been in good health for weeks before her death. Why would she have dragged herself out of her deathbed to the university law library?

  “She looked awful. The poor woman could hardly walk and looked as if she would fall over if somebody so much as coughed in her direction, but she seemed mighty determined. For two hours she barely looked up from the cite she was studying.”

  “Do you remember the case?” Taylor asked, intrigued.

  Barbara looked vaguely affronted. “Of course I do! How could I not? It was one of the most terrible murder cases the state has ever seen. State of Utah v. Martinez. I think it was 1974 or ’75. Long before your time, of course. I started in 1972 and I’d only been here a few years when it happened. I do remember that Mickie was in for the prosecutor’s office at the time and worked on the case.”

  Taylor frowned. “Why would Mickie want to scour through thirty-year-old case files? The woman was dying. I would think she’d have better things to do with her time remaining on earth.”

  “Beats me. Maybe she was reliving past victories. As I recall, the jury only took an hour or so to render a guilty verdict, and this was a death-penalty case like your brother’s.”

  Her voice trailed off and her attention fixed on something over Taylor’s shoulder. Barbara gave an appreciative smile wide enough that Taylor had no choice but to turn around and see what had caught her attention.

  Her mouth went as dry as the humidity controlled air in the library and her train of thought completely derailed when she saw Wyatt approaching the table.

  He wore tan Dockers, a slate-blue sweater and a leather jacket and he looked so gorgeous for a moment, all she could do was stare.

  Though he hadn’t been out of her mind for long, she hadn’t seen him since that morning at his ranch four days earlier. As he had so sternly ordered, she had called him every day to check in, but she had kept her side of the conversation quick and impersonal.

  The night before, he had reminded her on the phone that he was coming to the city and had insisted on meeting her for lunch, but she had thought she had at least another half hour to work.

  With effort, she tried to kick-start her brain again and by the time he reached them, she almost thought she could string together a complete sentence.

  “Wyatt! I thought we were meeting at the Broiler.”

  “I had some time after my interview and thought I’d come find you, see how things have been going.”

  Taylor glanced at Barbara and realized the librarian was looking on avidly. She was about to introduce them when Wyatt stepped forward and kissed the librarian’s cheek warmly.

  “How are you, Barb? I still owe you those Jazz tickets for all the help you gave me on Blood Feud. I haven’t forgotten, I promise. I just need to know what game you want to see.”

  “Jazz–Lakers, of course. Who else?”

  He laughed. “Deal. I’ll get them to you by the end of the week.”

  “My grandson loves basketball,” Barbara explained to Taylor. “We go every chance we get.”

  She was embarrassed to realize she hadn’t even known the woman had a grandson, let alone that she was a basketball fan—and yet Wyatt knew. She had figured out that he was the type of man who observed people around him, who tried to find out their likes and dislikes.

  “I’d better get back to work,” Barbara said to them both, then to Taylor she added, “Let me know if you need any more help.”

  “Thank you for this,” Taylor said.

  “I talked to the fire marshal this morning,” Wyatt said after the librarian walked away. “He said he talked to you last night about the contents of his report.”

  She nodded grimly. “Definitely arson. The fire was started with gasoline, just as he suspected last week. It probably ignited only moments before we arrived.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Nothing concrete. He wondered if it might be the same serial arsonist who torched houses across the valley all summer, but the pattern on this one was different.”

  She hated knowing there was some unknown threat out there, some nameless faceless person she couldn’t even identify who had such malice toward her that he would burn down her house. She felt helpless, terrified.

  “Did your roommate make it back into the country?”

  “Yes. I picked her up last night.” She fidgeted with the strap of her bag. “In fact, I hope you don’t mind but I invited her to lunch. She’s meeting us at the restaurant.”

  Taylor didn’t add that she had to beg Kate to join them. She hadn’t been able to face the idea of spending time alone with Wyatt, not when her emotions were so raw. She needed a buffer between them, and Kate had reluctantly agreed.

  If Wyatt was surprised by the unexpected addition to their lunch plans, he didn’t show it. “Great. I look forward to meeting her. It’s beautiful outside—why don’t we walk?”

  Taylor decided she could use some fresh air after being cooped up in class and the library all morning—not to mention that she wasn’t looking forward to sharing the close confines of a vehicle with him.

  “Great,” she answered. “I just need to put these books upstairs in my carrel.”

  * * *

  Wyatt followed her to her study desk on the second floor. He had used the law library enough while researching his books that he knew second- and third-year law students were assigned their own study carrels in the library or the connected law building.

  Some students personalized their small study desk with cartoons and sayings, favorite photographs, funny little knickknacks or even their own leather chairs.

  Taylor’s had nothing but a calendar and a half-dozen law books locked into the glass-fronted bookcase above the desk.

  She quickly added the books she’d been reading to the others in the cabinet, slipped on a suede jacket that had been hanging over the back of a plain wooden chair, then followed him outside into the fall afternoon.

  Rain the night before had left everything fresh and clean, and Wyatt watched her inhale deeply as if she’d been a prisoner in an airless dungeon for days.

  She looked far too pale, as if she hadn’t spent nearly enough time outside, and he wanted to pick her up, stuff her into his Tahoe and take her back to his ranch for a week or two until her skin lost that pallor.

  He had missed her these past few days. He didn’t like thinking about how much—how anxiously—he waited for her brief, stilted phone call each night.

  Every day, it was all he could do to keep from driving down here and dragging her home with him, where she would be safe. He didn’t realize just how worrie
d he had been for her until he walked into that library. The wave of relief that had washed over him—and of tenderness, he acknowledged grimly—had just about knocked him to his knees.

  It didn’t take them long to walk to Market Street Broiler, just a block from campus. The restaurant was busy as usual, with a bustling lunchtime crowd.

  Market Street and its downtown sister served the best seafood along the Wasatch Front and was perennially crowded. Wyatt asked for an upstairs booth, a request granted immediately by a friendly hostess.

  “Kate said she might be a little late,” Taylor said when they were settled at a table. “She had some things to do at the hospital this morning and wasn’t sure exactly when she could get away.”

  She said the words with no bitterness, but still he wondered if it bothered her, watching her friend live the life he knew Taylor wanted.

  He thought of her study carrel, dry and lifeless. That’s what she would become if she continued on this course. Somehow he needed to work harder to help her find the truth about the murders, so she could stop this senseless self-sacrifice.

  “My interview this morning was with a cousin and close friend of Dru’s, Candy Wallace,” he said when they were seated.

  “I think I saw her at the trial. How did it go?”

  “It took a little prodding but Candy finally admitted Dru had confided in her that the baby’s father was a married Salt Lake City cop.”

  Taylor’s features lit up. “Just as we thought! Did Candy know his name?”

  “Nothing concrete. She only heard Dru ever use his first name—John—so that’s all she knows.”

  The animation on her features turned to dismay. “There must be a dozen men on the police force with that first name. Even Hunter’s partner, John Randall.”

  Wyatt knew that in law enforcement, no one knew a man’s strengths and weaknesses better than his partner. If someone wanted to twist evidence to make an innocent man look guilty, his partner would certainly know what would do the trick.

  “It’s not much,” he said about the new information from his interview, “but at least it’s a starting point.”