Corralled

by B. J Daniels

  Fortunately, he didn’t get the chance. From the other side of the gate, he saw the flash of a small silver sports car convertible coming through the trees. The top was still down. He caught a glimpse of the driver.

  She’d done away with her cowboy attire, including the hat. Her hair blew free, forming a wave like a raven’s wing behind her as she sped toward the gate. She wore large sunglasses that hid most of her face, but there was no denying it was the woman from the bar.

  “Never mind,” Logan said to the guard and swung his bike around as the gate automatically opened on the other side of the guardhouse and the sports car roared out.

  Logan went after her.

  He couldn’t believe how fast she was driving, taking the curves with abandon. He saw her glance in her rearview mirror and speed up. Logan did the same, the two of them racing down out of the mountains and onto the narrow road along the lake.

  This woman is crazy, Logan thought when she hit the narrow two-lane highway and didn’t slow down. She wanted to race? Then they would race.

  He stayed right with her, roaring up beside her when there was no traffic. She would glance at him, then gun it, forcing him to fall behind her when an oncoming car appeared.

  They were almost to the town of Bigfork when she suddenly hit the brakes and whipped off the road onto a wide spot overlooking the lake. She’d barely gotten the car stopped at the edge of the rocky cliff, the water lapping at the shore twenty feet below.

  Logan skidded to a stop next to her car as she jumped out and, without a word, climbed onto the back of his bike. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she leaned into him and whispered, “Get me out of here.”

  After that exhilarating race, she didn’t need to ask twice. He was all the more intrigued by this woman. He roared back onto the highway headed north toward Glacier National Park. As she pressed her body against his, he heard her let out a sigh, and wondered where they were headed both literally and figuratively.

  Caught up in the moment, he breathed in the cool mountain air. It smelled of spring and new beginnings. He loved this time of year. Just as he loved the feel of the woman on the bike behind him.

  The sun was warm as it scaled the back of the Mission Mountains and splashed down over Flathead Lake. At the north end of the lake, Logan pulled into a small out-of-the-way café that he knew catered to fishermen. “Hungry?”

  She hesitated only a moment, then nodded, smiling, as she followed him into the café. He ordered them both the breakfast special, trout, hash browns, eggs and toast with coffee and watched her doctor her coffee with both sugar and cream.

  “Are you at least going to tell me your name?” he asked as they waited for their order.

  She studied him. “That depends. Do you live around here?”

  He shook his head. “East of here, outside of a town called Whitehorse.” He could tell she’d never heard of it. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, a part of Montana most tourists never see.”

  “You think I’m a tourist?” She smiled at that.

  “Aren’t you?” He still couldn’t decide if she was visiting the Grizzly Club or lived there with her rich husband. But given the way she’d left that expensive sports car beside the lake, he thought his present-day Cinderella theory might not be that far off base.

  Maybe he just didn’t want to believe it, but he was convinced she wasn’t married to some tycoon. She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring last night or today. Not only that, she didn’t act married—or in a committed relationship. Not that he hadn’t been wrong about that before.

  “Don’t you think you should at least tell me your name?” he asked.

  She looked around the café for a moment as if considering telling him her name. When those pale blue eyes came back to him, she said, “Blythe. That’s my name.”

  “Nice to meet you, Blythe.” He reached across the table extending his hand. “Logan. You have a last name?”

  Her hand felt small and warm in his. She didn’t clean houses at the Grizzly Club, that was definite, he thought, as he felt her silky-smooth palm. Several silver bracelets jingled lightly on her slim tanned wrist. But she could still be a car thief.

  “Blythe is good enough for now, don’t you think?”

  “I guess it depends on what happens next.”

  She grinned. “What would you like to happen next?”

  “I’m afraid I have to head back home today, otherwise I might have had numerous suggestions.”

  “Back to Whitehorse,” she said studying him. “Someone waiting for you back there?”

  “Nope.” He could have told her about his five brothers and his father and stepmother back at the ranch, but he knew that wasn’t what she’d meant. He’d also learned the hard way not to mention Chisholm Cattle Company. He’d seen too many dollar signs appear in some women’s eyes. There was a price to be paid when you were the son of one of the largest ranch owners in the state.

  “Someone waiting for you back at the Grizzly Club?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  Their food arrived then and she dived into hers as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. She might not have, he realized. He had no idea who this woman was or what was going to happen next, but he didn’t care. He liked her, liked watching her eat. She did it with the same kind of passion and abandon she’d shown dancing and driving.

  “I’ve never seen that part of Montana,” she said as they were finishing. She wiped her expressive mouth and tossed down her napkin. “Show me.”

  He raised a brow. “It’s a five-hour drive from here.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “What about your car?”

  “It’s a rental. I’ll call and have the agency collect it.”

  He considered her for a moment. “You don’t want to pick up anything from your house?”

  “It’s not my house, and I like to travel light.”

  Logan still wasn’t sure she was serious about going with him, but serious or not, he was willing to take her up on whatever she was offering. He liked that he had no idea who she was, what she wanted or what she would do next. It had been too long since a woman had captivated him to the point that he was willing to throw caution to the wind.

  “Let’s ride then.” As they left the café, he couldn’t help but notice the way she looked around as if afraid of who might be waiting for her outside. He was reminded of how she’d come flying out of the Grizzly Club. Maybe she really had stolen that car she’d been driving and now he was harboring a criminal.

  He laughed to himself. He was considered the rebel Chisholm brother. The one who’d always been up for any adventure, whether it was on horseback or a Harley. But as they walked to his motorcycle, he had a bad feeling that he might be getting into more than even he could handle.

  Chapter Two

  Sheriff Buford Olson hitched up his pants over his expanding belly, reached back into his patrol car for his Stetson and, closing the door, tilted his head back to look up at the hotel-size building called the Main Lodge.

  Buford hated getting calls to come out to the Grizzly Club. It wasn’t that he disliked the rich, although he did find them demanding and damned irritating.

  It was their private security force, a bunch of punk kids, who made his teeth ache. Buford considered anyone under thirty-five to be a kid. The “club” had given these kids a uniform and a gun and turned them into smart-ass, dangerous punks who knew diddly-squat about law enforcement.

  Buford always wondered why the club had to call him in if their security force was so capable. It was no secret that the club liked to handle its own problems. The people who owned homes inside the gates didn’t want anyone outside them knowing their business. So the whole idea was to sweep whatever trouble the club had under one of their expensive Persian rugs.

  Worse, the folks who owned the club didn’t want to upset the residents—or jeopardize new clientele—so they wanted everyone to believe that once they were behind these gates they were safe and nothing bad could happen.


  Buford snorted at the thought, recalling how the general manager had asked him to park in the back of the main lodge so he wouldn’t upset anyone. The guard at the gate had said, “Sheriff Buford, right? I heard you were here for a complimentary visit.”

  A complimentary visit. That had made him contrary enough that he’d parked right out front of “the Main Lodge.” Now, though, as he started up the wide flagstone steps, he wished he hadn’t been so obstinate. He felt his arthritis bothering him and, worse, his stomach roiling against the breakfast his wife had cooked him.

  Clara had read in one of her magazines that if you ate a lot of hot peppers it would make you lose weight. She’d been putting hot chile peppers in everything they ate—and playing hell with his stomach.

  The general manager he’d spoken to earlier spotted him and came rushing toward him. The diminutive man, whose name Buford couldn’t recall at first, was painfully thin with skin that hadn’t seen sunlight and piercing blue eyes that never settled more than a second.

  “I thought I told you to park in the back.”

  Buford shrugged. “So what’s the problem?” he asked as he looked around the huge reception area. All the leather, antler lamps and chandeliers, thick rugs and gleaming wood floors reminded him of Clara’s designer magazines.

  Montana style, they called it. The Lodge Look. Buford was old enough to remember when a lot of places looked like this, only they’d been the real McCoy—not this forced Montana style.

  “In here,” the general manager ordered, drawing him into a small, claustrophobic office with only one window that looked out on the dense forest. The name on the desk read Kevin Andrews, General Manager.

  Kevin closed the door and for the first time, Buford noticed how nervous the man appeared. The last time Buford had been called here was for a robbery inside the gates. That time he’d thought Kevin was going to have a heart attack, he’d been so upset. But once the missing jewelry, which turned out only to have been misplaced, was found, all was well and quickly forgotten.

  Buford guessed though that it had taken ten years off Kevin’s life from the looks of him. “So what’s up? More missing jewelry?”

  “This is a very delicate matter. I need you to handle it with the utmost care. Do I have your word?”

  Buford felt his stomach roil again. He was in no mood for this. “Just tell me what’s happened.”

  The general manager rose from his chair with a brisk “come with me.”

  Buford followed him out to a golf cart. Resigned that he had no choice but to ride along, he climbed on. Kevin drove them through the ritzy residence via the narrow paved roads that had been hacked out of the pines.

  The hotel-size houses were all set back from the road, each occupying at least ten acres from Buford’s estimation since the buildings had to take up three of those acres with guest houses of another half acre. Each log, stone and glass structure was surrounded by pine trees so he only caught glimpses of the exclusive houses as Kevin whipped along the main road.

  Finally he pulled down one of the long driveways, coming to a stop in front of a stone monstrosity with two wide wooden doors. Like the others, the house was all rock and logs with massive windows that looked out over the pines on the mountainside and Flathead Lake far below.

  Buford saw with a curse that two of the security force’s golf carts were parked out front. One of the garage doors was open. A big, black SUV hunkered in one of the three stalls. The others were empty.

  Getting off the golf cart, he let Kevin lead him up to the front door. Bears had been carved into the huge wooden doors, and not by some roadside chainsaw artist. Without knocking, Kevin opened the door and Buford followed him inside.

  He was hit at once with a familiar smell and felt his stomach clutch. This was no missing jewelry case.

  With dread, he moved across the marble floor to where the walls opened into a football field–size living room with much the same furnishings as the club’s main lodge. The two security guards were standing at the edge of the room. They had been visiting, but when they saw Kevin, they tried to act professional.

  Buford looked past them to the dead man sprawled beside the hearth of the towering rock fireplace. The deceased was wearing a white, blood-soaked velour robe and a pair of leather slippers on his feet. Apparently nothing else.

  “Get them out of here,” Buford ordered, pointing at the two security guards. He could only guess at how many people had already tromped through here contaminating the scene. “Stay back and make sure no one else comes traipsing through here.”

  He swore under his breath as he worked his way across the room to the fireplace and the dead man. The victim looked to be in his late fifties, but could have been older because, from the tightness of his facial skin, he’d had some work done. His hair was dark with distinguishing gray at the temples, a handsome man even in death.

  It appeared he’d been shot in the heart at point-blank range. An expensive handgun lay on the floor next to the body in a pool of drying blood. Clearly the man had been dead for hours. Buford swore again. He’d bet that Kevin had contacted the Grizzly Club board before he’d called the sheriff’s department.

  Around the dead man were two different distinct prints left in his blood. One was a man-size dress shoe sole. The other a cowboy boot—small enough that Buford would guess it was a woman’s. It was her prints that held his attention. The woman hadn’t walked away—she’d run—straight for the front door.

  AT THE MOTORCYCLE, BLYTHE tied up her hair and climbed on behind the cowboy. She didn’t think about what she was doing as she wrapped her arms around him. All she knew was that she had to escape, and wherever Logan was headed was fine with her. Even better, this Whitehorse place sounded like the end of the earth. With luck, no one would find her there.

  She reminded herself that she’d thought this part of Montana would be far from the life she wanted so desperately to leave behind. But she’d been wrong.

  Running didn’t come easy to her. She’d always been a fighter. But not today. Today she only wanted to forget everything, hang on to this good-looking cowboy on the back of his motorcycle, feel the wind in her face and put her old life as far behind her as possible.

  An image flashed in her mind, making her shudder, and she glanced down at her cowboy boots. She quickly wiped away a streak of dark red along the sole as Logan turned the key and brought the Harley to life.

  She felt the throb of the engine and closed her eyes and her mind the way she used to tune out her mother when she was a girl. Back then it was to close out the sound of her mother and her latest boyfriend arguing in the adjacent room of the small, old trailer house. She had learned to go somewhere else, be someone else, always dreaming of a fantasy life far away.

  With a smile, she remembered that one of her daydreams had been to run away with a cowboy. The thought made her hold on to Logan tighter as he shifted and tore out of the café parking lot in a shower of gravel.

  Last night dancing with Logan she’d thought she was finally free. It was the best she’d felt in years. Now she pressed her cheek into the soft warmth of his leather jacket, lulled by the pulse of the motorcycle, the feel of the wind in her hair. She couldn’t believe that he’d found her.

  What had she been thinking giving him that damned key? She’d taken a terrible risk, but then she’d never dreamed he would come looking for her. What if he had gotten into the Grizzly Club this morning before she’d gotten out of there?

  She shook off the thought and watched the countryside blur past, first forest-covered mountains, then wide-open spaces as they raced along the two-lane highway that cut east across the state.