by Karen Hughes
Jackson braced himself as he flipped through the pages. Even before he saw the signature, the sick feeling in his gut told him it would be close to his. It was. Nearly identical.
He replaced the policy on the table. At this point, he would have advised any person in his same situation to keep his mouth shut and seek counsel.
“This isn’t my signature,” he said.
“Looks like yours.”
“It’s not.” The anger already heating his blood intensified. “Apparently the man who purchased the policy disguised himself to look a great deal like me, too. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to set me up.”
Law cocked his head. “Why would someone do that, Mr. Colton?”
“To divert suspicion away from himself. Someone wants my uncle dead. It will be a lot easier to make that happen if your attention is focused on me.”
“An interesting theory.”
“It’s more than a theory, it’s the truth. I know, because I didn’t try to murder my uncle.” Jackson stared at Law, his jaw rigidly set while his mind worked. “There’s no way you stumbled onto that policy,” he said after a moment. “And you didn’t just happen to find out I’m the attorney of record on the Amalgamated case. Someone tossed all that into your lap. Suppose you tell me who that was? That will go a long way in telling me who’s behind this.”
Law kept his gaze locked with Jackson’s. “I can’t give you information acquired during an interview or through investigative procedure. As an attorney, you know that.”
“I also know if you were going to charge me with anything, you’d have done so by now.”
“That law degree of yours is coming in handy. You’re right, I’m not charging you with anything. Not yet.” Law plucked the policy off the table, refolded it. “You planning on leaving Prosperino anytime soon?”
Jackson slid his hands into his pockets, then clenched them into fists. At this point, he wasn’t charged with anything, nor was he a material witness to a crime. Therefore, Law had no power to keep him in Prosperino. If he walked out the door, climbed into his Porsche and headed back to San Diego tonight, the cop couldn’t do anything about it. Legally.
Jackson exhaled a slow breath. All that could change later on. If he did leave town, Law might be able to use his departure as circumstantial evidence that he’d fled the jurisdiction after becoming aware he was a suspect in two attempted murders. Law had the taped proof he’d made his suspect aware of that fact.
“I’m staying in Prosperino,” Jackson said evenly. He turned and headed for the door. Pausing, he looked across his shoulder. “I’ll be at my aunt and uncle’s until I find out who decided I should take the fall for this.”
Law nodded while reaching for the tape recorder. “If your travel plans change, give me a call.”
The anger he’d strapped in broke free as Jackson walked out of the building and into the adjacent dimly lit parking lot. He took exception at being accused of trying to murder a man he loved and respected. And he had one hell of a problem with being set up!
He unlocked the Porsche, climbed inside; the engine roared to life when he twisted the key. Hands clenched on the steering wheel, he pulled out of the lot, swung in and out of evening traffic, then punched the Porsche into high gear when he reached open road.
Dammit, he didn’t need this. He had stayed in Prosperino after his sister Liza’s wedding to decide if he wanted to continue working with his father. Now, here he was, contemplating a future that might involve jail.
Jackson shoved a hand through his dark hair as the red Porsche slashed up the highway like a bolt of fiery lightning. To his way of thinking, things were either right or unquestionably wrong; he disliked intensely any murky in-betweens. This evening, Detective Law had shoved him into dark, murky water. He didn’t intend on getting sucked under.
He was an attorney. He knew how to tear apart a case to get to the facts. His case was no different. All he needed was to figure out where to start.
As he drove, he began to sift his conversation with Law around in his head—pulling it apart, dissecting it. He liked things to fall neatly into place, in their proper order, according to consequence. Habitually, he worked puzzles out through long, quiet contemplation. Slow and meticulous. Over the years, he’d discovered he did his best thinking in the flickering shadows of a movie theater.
Since his very future now lay on the line, Jackson figured the faster he settled in front of a movie and decided on a game plan, the better.
Blowing out a breath, he steered the Porsche around a corner, then headed toward the Cinema Prosperino.
Cheyenne James had better things to do that evening than take in a movie. Gripping the ticket she’d bought—and had yet to use—she glanced around the red-carpeted lobby of the Cinema Prosperino, vaguely aware of the murmur of conversation and warm, buttery scent of popcorn that filled the air.
She knew that the case files on the three adolescents she’d counseled in private that morning sat on her small desk at home, waiting her attention. Her late-afternoon meeting with her boss, Blake Fallon, had resulted in her obtaining permission to submit a grant for funding of a vocational work-training program for several of the teenagers who, like her, lived at Hopechest Ranch.
She had planned on starting a draft of a proposal for the grant later tonight when she finished updating her case files. What she hadn’t anticipated was turning her back on her work and driving to the remodeled movie theater nestled between an espresso bar and art gallery on Prosperino’s main street.
After the vision came, nothing could have kept her away.
Her visions were her legacy, a gift from her mother of the blood through the blood. A gift she had embraced years ago and learned never to discount. The pictures she saw in her mind’s eye were not always pleasant, but had always proved accurate. When they came, she accepted them, and responded. Just as she had nearly an hour ago when the vision of the man’s eyes slid, cool and clean, into her head.
Closing her eyes, Cheyenne pulled back the memory. Her breath shallowed as she pictured again gray eyes with the same hardness as rocks hacked out of a cliff. Her vision had revealed only the man’s eyes, not his face. She didn’t know his name. She had sensed only that he was in trouble and needed her help. And that she would encounter him at the movie theater.
Flipping her heavy braid behind one shoulder, she watched as the doors to the still-darkened theater swung open. Several couples emerged, tossing empty popcorn sacks and soda cups into the container outside the door. A pair of teenage girls strolled out, whispering to each other as if trying to keep a secret from the two tall, gangly boys who trailed just behind them.
Seconds later, a lone man emerged from the theater’s dim depths, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his khaki slacks. Cheyenne’s heart took a hard leap into her throat and snapped it shut.
Jackson Colton looked tall, rangy and intimidatingly fit, like a long-distance runner at his peak. His sharpfeatured face, full of planes and angles, looked as darkly handsome now as it had at his uncle’s birthday party. Yet, she noted the changes in him. Eleven months ago he’d stood relaxed, gazing down at her with smoky silver eyes while he oozed charm and sex appeal with an easy smile. Now his shoulders looked wire-tense beneath his deep-blue linen shirt, his mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were no longer the color of cool smoke, but the gray, rock-hard agates from her vision.
The instant his gaze met hers, recognition flashed across his face. His chin rose. Turning with catlike fluidity, he veered from the exit and strode toward her.
Cheyenne’s pulse raced with the knowledge that fate had brought her to the man who had filled her thoughts so often since that long-ago night.
“Cheyenne.” He said her name soft and low, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was there.
“Hello, Jackson. How are you?” Just his nearness had her pulse thudding at the base of her throat.
“Surprised to see you. Especially now.”
“Now?”
He raked his fingers through his jet-black hair. “After so long,” he amended. “It’s been nearly a year since my uncle’s party.”
“Yes.” Once or twice, she had even caught herself wondering if he would come back to Prosperino again this year to help celebrate his uncle’s birthday. And if she would see him if he did.
His gaze dropped to her hand. “I see you have a ticket for the next show.”
“That’s right.”
His gaze swept the lobby. “Are you here with someone?”
“No.”
“Meeting someone, then?”
“I didn’t make plans with anyone.”
“You haven’t used your ticket yet. We could get you a refund.”
She tilted her head. “Was the movie that bad?”
“No.” His smile came and went. “To tell you the truth, I was working something out in my mind. I didn’t pay attention to what was on the screen.”
“That alone doesn’t say a lot for the movie.”
“I guess not.”
Her vision had brought with it the sense that he was in trouble, yet his eyes had cleared and told her nothing. He knew how to keep his thoughts to himself, she realized.
As did she. Her gift might have brought them together again, but she was under no obligation to tell him that. There was a richness to her power, as well as bitterness. Her heart had learned well just how devastating relationships could be when people were unable to accept others for what they were.
“At my uncle’s party,” Jackson continued, “I promised you I’d be back so we could have a drink together. That didn’t happen.”
She arched a brow. “What happened was someone fired a shot at your uncle. I didn’t hold your not keeping your promise against you.”
“How about if I keep it now? I hear the espresso bar next door brews a mean latte.”
The same warm, musky scent that had infused a pang of desire into her blood so long ago slid into her lungs. Jackson Colton was attractive, magnetically sexual and she had lost count of how many times she had thought about him since they’d met. Now, as she always did, she reminded herself she was giving far too much importance to a man in whose presence she’d spent so little time.
Yet, tonight fate had brought her to him. She didn’t know why. The answer would come. It always did. Until then, she would not—could not—turn away from him.
“I’d love some coffee.”
“Great.” When he reached and slid the ticket from her grasp, his fingers grazed hers. “I’ll see about getting you a refund.”
“Fine,” she said, struggling to ignore the quick jumpiness in her stomach. “I’ll wait here.”
When he walked away, she closed her eyes and waited for her system to level.
Two
What were the chances, Jackson wondered, that just hours after his being questioned by the police, the one woman would walk back into his life whose testimony could put him behind bars? He had left her and dropped out of sight moments before someone took a shot at his uncle. Cheyenne James had seen him in almost the exact spot where the shooter stood. If she told Law that, the cop would have one more piece of circumstantial evidence against him.
An important piece.
Jackson gazed across the small table they’d settled at in the cozy espresso café that was cluttered with people and thick with noise. He had forgotten nothing about her, he confirmed as he watched Cheyenne sip a latte from an oversize cup. Not the high curve of her cheeks, her softly defined mouth, the dark eyebrows above those arresting brown eyes, or the jet-black hair that tonight was pulled back into a loose braid.
As he sipped his cappuccino, it occurred to him how striking the resemblance was between her and her brother, River.
“Marriage to River has made Sophie happier than I’ve ever seen her. That and motherhood.”
At the reference to her niece, Cheyenne’s smile tipped into a grin that sent heat into Jackson’s stomach and made him wonder if her mouth tasted as passionate as it looked. He didn’t make a habit out of wanting the hell out of a woman the minute he laid eyes on her. Yet, that was the very thing that had happened at his uncle’s party. He felt the same way tonight. He didn’t know exactly why. He had no idea what made Cheyenne James different from any other woman he’d met. He just knew she was.
“Sophie has promised to let me baby-sit soon for Meggie,” Cheyenne said. “I can’t wait.”
“That’s understandable. That kid’s a real charmer. All it took was one of her dimpled smiles, and Meggie had me hooked.”
Laughing, Cheyenne tossed her braid across her shoulder. “You sound like River. He goes around, grinning like an idiot day and night. He’ll have Meggie spoiled rotten before she can even crawl.”
“I don’t blame him.”
Jackson caught the whiff of Cheyenne’s warm scent and thought of the tea roses that bloomed in his aunt’s garden. His gaze dropped to the hand Cheyenne rested on the table beside her cup. Her fingers were long and as wand-thin as the rest of her. Her nails were oval and perfect, with the gleam of clear polish. She had hands made for rings, he thought, but wore none.
“It’s a shame you and I didn’t meet until my Uncle’s party. And that I was out of the country on business when River and Sophie got married. I would have liked to have seen you again.”
Cheyenne arched a brow. “Actually, you and I met years ago, Jackson.”
“We did?”
“Yes. River and I grew up apart. He was nearly sixteen when he came to live on your family’s ranch. That was the same year he and I reunited. Your uncle used to pick me up from the reservation on the weekends and bring me to Hacienda de Alegria so I could spend time with River. You and your sister stayed at the ranch on some of those same weekends.”
Jackson narrowed his eyes. “I have the image of a skinny girl with long legs and a dark ponytail trailing around the stables on River’s heels. That was you?”
“Yes.” Cheyenne tilted her head. “I was about eleven years old when you and I first met. You were in high school. Some of your friends used to come to the ranch to ride horses when you were there. Your taste seemed to run to voluptuous blond cheerleaders.”
Chuckling, Jackson leaned his forearms on the table. After the hours he’d spent in Detective Law’s presence, it was hard to believe someone could make him laugh. “Miss James, are you implying I have a reputation to live down?”
“It depends on if what I heard about you when I got to high school is to be believed.”
“What did you hear?”
“Among other things, that you always dated a handful of girls at the same time. You had a Monday night girl, a Tuesday night girl and so on. One time you got your days confused and showed up at your Tuesday girl’s house on the Wednesday girl’s night.”
“Although I’ll point out all that is hearsay, I’d better plead the fifth,” Jackson countered, resting one of his hands near hers. “With the stipulation that things get blown out of proportion over time.”
But not too much out of proportion, he thought wryly. He’d learned early not to take relationships seriously. After experiencing firsthand his parents’ farce of a marriage, then watching his aunt and uncle’s relationship slowly disintegrate, he’d resolved to never bring that kind of misery down on his own head. Even in high school he’d made a point to get involved only with females who knew how to laugh and to love without undercurrents. Whatever emotions came into play in those associations only skimmed the surface. That was the way he’d always wanted things. Nothing had happened over the years to change his thinking.
Until now. Now, he found himself incomprehensibly drawn to a woman who seemed to hold some underlying mystique for him.
Although that knowledge sent a stab of unease through him, Jackson pushed it back. Those moments he’d spent with Cheyenne at his uncle’s party had played in his mind too often for him to shrug off her having walked back into his life.
“I’m rememberi
ng something else about that skinny little girl who followed her brother around like a shadow.”
“That she was desperately shy?”
“That, and she read palms.” He creased his brow in thought, trying to bring back the long-ago memory. “Or maybe it was minds?”
The words were barely out of his mouth when her eyes went cool and remote. Her chin angled like a sword. “I don’t do either.”
“My mistake.” He’d hit a nerve. Which nerve, Jackson had no idea. All he knew was that it was a sensitive one. Judging from the absolute stillness about her, he knew it would be wise to change the subject.
“You said my Uncle Joe used to pick you up at the reservation. Do you still live there?”
“No.” She looked away, her gaze settling on a glass display case that bulged with cakes and cookies. Beside the case, a waiter worked a hissing espresso machine while steam rose from the metal pitcher he held.
Jackson laid his hand on hers. “Cheyenne,” he said quietly, and waited until her gaze re-met his. “I apologize if I offended you.”
“You didn’t. You reminded me of something important. To answer your question about where I live, I’m a counselor at Hopechest Ranch. I live in one of the small staff houses there.”
“Hopechest.” His thumb moved lightly up and down the length of her finger. “My aunt and uncle used to be involved with the kids there. They’ve probably lost count of how many kids from Hopechest Ranch they’ve been foster parents for over the years.”
“One of those kids being my boss, Blake Fallon. He thinks a lot of your Uncle Joe. The exact term he uses is ‘walks on water.’”
“I agree with Blake.” Jackson paused. At one time, most people had also held his Aunt Meredith in equal esteem. That was years ago before she’d undergone a personality change that had the whole family wondering what had happened to transform the once sweet, sensitive wife and mother into a woman whose severe mood swings could on occasion rock the entire household.
For Jackson, living half the state away in San Diego had insulated him from the majority of the family tremors caused by his aunt. That is, until his recent discovery that Meredith had blackmailed his father into paying her two million dollars to keep secret the fact he’d fathered her son, Teddy. The revelation had been even more bitter for Jackson because he remembered the caring, generous Meredith who had lavished love and attention on himself and his sister when their own parents left their upbringing in the hands of nannies and housekeepers.
