Renegade's Pride

by B. J Daniels

  But she needed more. She closed her eyes again. She’d gotten only a glimpse of his face when he’d grabbed first her scarf and then her arm. Her eyes flew open as she had a thought. He must have been onto her immediately. Had she botched the pick that badly? She really was out of practice.

  She closed her eyes again and tried to concentrate over the sound of the two teens still arguing over the T-shirt. Yes, she’d seen his face. A handsome, rugged face and pale eyes. Not blue. No. Gray? Yes, with a start she realized where she’d seen him before. It was the same man as the one from the bandstand, the one who’d thrown the T-shirt and hit her. She was sure of it.

  “Excuse me, I’ll buy that T-shirt from you,” she said, catching up to the two teens as they took their squabble off toward a burger stand.

  They both turned to look at her in surprise. “It’s not for sale,” said the one.

  The other asked, “How much?”

  “Ten bucks.”

  “No way.”

  “You got it free,” Mariah pointed out, only to have both girls’ faces freeze in stubborn determination. “Fine, twenty.”

  “Make it thirty,” the greedier of the two said.

  She shook her head as she dug out the money. Her grandmother would have given them the evil eye. Or threatened to put some kind of curse on them. “You’re thieves, you know that?” she said as she grabbed the T-shirt before they could take off with it and her money.

  Escaping down one of the side streets, she finally got a good look at what was printed across the front of the T-shirt. Stagecoach Saloon, Gilt Edge, Montana.

  * * *

  LILLIE CAHILL HESITATED at the back door of the Stagecoach Saloon. It had been a stagecoach stop back in the 1800s when gold had been coming out of the mine at Gilt Edge. Each stone, like the old wooden floorboards inside, had a story. She’d often wished the building could talk.

  When the old stagecoach stop had come on the market, she had jumped at purchasing it, determined to save the historical two-story stone building. It had been her twin’s idea to open a bar and café. She’d been skeptical at first but trusted Darby’s instincts. The place had taken off.

  Lately, she felt sad just looking at the place.

  Until recently, she’d lived upstairs in the remodeled apartment from the time they’d bought the old building. She’d made it hers by collecting a mix of furnishings from garage sales and junk shops. This had not just been her home. It was her heart, she thought, eyes misting as she remembered the day she’d moved out.

  Since her engagement and the completion of the home on the ranch with her fiancé, Trask Beaumont, she’d given up her apartment to her twin, Darby. He had been living in a cabin not far from the bar, but he’d jumped at the chance to live upstairs.

  Now she glanced toward the back window. She’d left the curtains. One of them flapped in the wind. Darby must have left the window open. She hadn’t been up there to see what he’d done with the place. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, since she’d moved most everything out, leaving it pretty much a blank slate. She thought it might still be a blank slate, knowing her brother.

  Pushing open the back door into the bar kitchen, she was met with the most wonderful of familiar scents. Fortunately, not everything had changed in her life, she thought, her mood picking up some as she entered the warm café kitchen.

  “Tell me those are your famous enchiladas,” she said to Billie Dee, their heavyset fiftysomething Texas cook.

  “You know it, sugar,” the cook said with a laugh. “You want me to dish you up a plate? I’ve got homemade pintos and some Spanish rice like you’ve never tasted.”

  “You mean hotter than I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Oh, you Montanans. I’ll toughen you up yet.”

  Lillie laughed. “I’d love a plate.” She pulled out a chair at the table where the staff usually ate in the kitchen and watched Billie Dee fill two plates.

  “So how are the wedding plans coming along?” the cook asked as she joined her at the table.

  “I thought a simple wedding here with family and friends would be a cinch,” Lillie said and took a bite of the enchilada. She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the sweet, hot sauce before all the other flavors hit her. She groaned softly. “These are the best you’ve ever made.”

  “Bless your heart,” Billie Dee said, smiling. “I take it the wedding has gotten more complicated?”

  “I can’t get married without my father and who knows when he’ll be coming out of the mountains.” Their father, Ely Cahill, was a true mountain man now who spent most of the year deep up in the mountains either panning for gold or living off the land. He’d given up ranching after their mother had died and had turned the business over to her brothers Hawk and Cyrus.

  Their oldest brother, Tucker, had taken off at eighteen. They hadn’t seen or heard from him since. Their father was the only one who wasn’t worried about him.

  “Tuck needs space. He’s gone off to find himself. He’ll come home when he’s ready,” Ely had said.

  The rest of the family hadn’t been so convinced. But if Tuck was anything like their father, they would have heard something from the cops. Ely had a bad habit of coming out of the mountains thirsty for whiskey—and ending up in their brother Sheriff Flint Cahill’s jail. Apparently, Tuck had avoided getting arrested, wherever he was. Lillie didn’t worry about him. She had four other brothers to deal with right here in Gilt Edge.

  “I can see somethin’s botherin’ you,” Billie Dee said now.

  Lillie nodded. “Trask insists we wait to get married, since he hopes to have the finishing touches on the house so we can have the reception there.”

  Trask, the only man she’d ever loved, had come back into her life after so many years that she’d thought she’d never see him again. But they’d found their way back together and now he was building a house for them on the ranch he’d bought not far from the bar.

  “Waitin’ sounds reasonable,” the cook said between bites.

  “I wish we’d eloped.”

  “Something tells me the wedding isn’t the problem,” Billie Dee said, using her fork to punctuate her words.

  “I’ll admit, it’s been hard giving up my apartment upstairs. I put so much love into it.”

  “Darby will take good care of it.”

  She couldn’t help shooting a disbelieving look at Billie Dee. “He’ll probably just throw down a bedroll and call it home. You know how he is. Have you seen what he’s moved in so far?”

  Billie Dee gave her a sympathetic look. “I know it was your baby, but once you took out your things, it didn’t feel so much like yours, right?”

  Lillie nodded. “Still, it was my home for so long. I thought maybe Darby might need my help decorating it.”

  The cook laughed. “I’d say ‘decorating’ is probably the last thing on his mind. So how is the new home?”

  “Beautiful. Trask is great about letting me do whatever I want. But it still isn’t like my apartment. I put so much of myself into that place. I miss it.”

  “And you will put so much of yourself into your home with Trask. It’s going to take time. How long did it take you to get the apartment upstairs to your liking?”

  “Years.”

  “Exactly.” Billie Dee studied her for a moment. “You aren’t gettin’ cold feet about the weddin’ and marryin’ Trask, are you?”

  “No.” Lillie shook her head adamantly. “Never.” She thought of the day when she and Trask would have a family and she wouldn’t even be working at the bar anymore, but pushed that away. “I guess change is hard for me. I feel like I’m giving up the bar even though I’ll still be half owner and still work until the babies come.”

  “Babies?”

  “I’m not pregnant yet, but Trask and I want a big fami
ly.”

  “So who is coming to your wedding? I’m still waiting for you to introduce me to some big, strong Montana cowboy,” Billie Dee joked as she had often before. “I want one like Trask.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Lillie said with a laugh. Trask was handsome as the devil, sweet, loving, wonderful. “Guess I’ll have to rope you up one.”

  “I can do my own ropin’, thank you very much. Just point me at one.”

  “You have someone in mind?”

  “Might. Ain’t tellin’.” She gave Lillie a knowing wink.

  “By the way, speaking of handsome cowboys, where is Darby? I thought he’d be back by now from the festival.” She’d barely gotten the words out when they heard a vehicle pull up under the tree next to the building where Darby always parked. A few moments later, her brother came in the back door, took a whiff and said, “Billie Dee’s famous enchiladas.”

  She and the cook both laughed. “Don’t worry. We left plenty for you and our customers tonight.”

  Darby tossed his hat onto the hook by the back door and hung up his keys on the board along with the extra keys to the bar and the upstairs apartment. Not that Lillie would need to use the spare key. She still had an apartment key on her key chain. She just hadn’t used it.

  “I was just asking Billie Dee if she’d seen what you did with the apartment,” Lillie said.

  Her twin brother scoffed. “If you’re so curious, go on up. But I warn you, you won’t like it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a firm believer in less is more.”

  She groaned. “You haven’t done anything.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I have a bed, chest of drawers, the lamps and rug you left me, the television you left me and a chair I bought for myself.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I need, little sis.” As he took off his jean jacket and hung it, Lillie heard something make a clinking sound in one of the pockets. He heard it too and reached into the pocket to pull out his cell phone and shove whatever had “clinked” deeper into the pocket.

  He really was handsome, she thought as she studied her brother. A real catch for some woman. The problem wasn’t Darby. She got the feeling he was open to a relationship, but that he hadn’t found a woman who was interested.

  The cook motioned toward the stove. “Help yourself. But I thought you would have eaten at the festival.”

  “Wasn’t hungry,” he said, his back to them as he pocketed his phone and went to the stove to fill a plate.

  Both women looked at him in stunned silence, then at each other. Darby was always hungry. He stayed too busy to gain weight, but there was never anything wrong with his appetite.

  “You didn’t even have any fry bread?” Lillie asked. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  He shrugged, still not looking at them.

  She felt a stab of guilt for making him go to the festival. In truth, she could have covered it. But she thought he ought to start doing it, since she didn’t know how long she would be able to. She and Trask were planning to start a family right away.

  “That was the only thing I was looking forward to,” he said. “But the line was too long.” He looked away.

  Lillie wondered what her brother was leaving out. He never missed a chance to have fry bread. “But otherwise everything went all right?”

  “I said a few words. Tossed the T-shirts into the crowd and got out of there before I had to take part in the pit-spitting contest,” he said and stabbed a bite of enchilada. He mugged a face at her. “Did you know they were going to try to rope me into the pit spitting?”

  She laughed. “No, but I would have paid money to see that.” Still, as she studied her twin, she got the feeling something had happened to upset her usually unflappable brother. She and Darby had always been close. They’d shared the same womb together. But she couldn’t put her finger on what it was about him that made her think he wasn’t telling her everything.

  “Did you run into our brothers while you were there?” she asked.

  “Didn’t see Hawk or Cyrus, but Flint was walking around looking like a Western lawman,” Darby said.

  “He is a Western lawman,” Lillie said of her brother Sheriff Flint Cahill, the black sheep of the family. Flint had always played by the rules. Now he followed the letter of the law, while the rest of them had never minded bending the rules or the law. Needless to say, they often butted heads over it—especially when he arrested their father on those occasions when Ely came out of the mountains and had too much to drink.

  “Hawk and Cyrus stopped by earlier,” Billie Dee said as she got up to put her plate in the dishwasher. “They said they were moving cattle today and skipping the festival and all that craziness. I asked if they were going to the dance tonight. No surprise, they weren’t.”

  “They are going to stay old crotchety bachelors forever at this rate,” Lillie said and saw that her brother had stopped eating. He was picking at the spicy pinto beans distractedly, frowning as if his mind was miles away. Or maybe just back downtown where the festival was still going strong.

  Lillie felt worse about making him take care of their promotion at the Chokecherry Festival. Now something was bothering him that hadn’t been this morning before he’d left.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, bringing him out of his trance.

  Darby smiled, complimented Billie Dee on the food and dug back into his meal before he said, “Couldn’t be better.”

  But she sensed that wasn’t true. Something was definitely different about him.

  Since he and Lillie had traded shifts today, Darby had the rest of the day off. He almost wished he was working, though. At least that would help keep his mind off the woman at the festival.

  “Thanks for dinner,” he said to Billie Dee as he put his plate into the dishwasher. “You sure you can handle it tonight without me?” he asked his sister.

  “It will be slow with everyone at the festival and street dance,” she said. “I’ll probably close early, but thanks for the offer. What are you going to do the rest of the day?”

  He shrugged. “Probably just take it easy.” Retrieving his Stetson and jacket, he headed upstairs, glad his sister hadn’t asked to see what he’d done with her old apartment. As he unlocked the door and looked around, he admitted there wasn’t much to see.

  When it had been Lillie’s, the place had such a homey feel. Now it was anything but. He’d bought a bed, taken his chest of drawers from his room at the ranch complete with the stickers from his youth on the front and found an old leather recliner at a garage sale.

  Other than that, the apartment was pretty sparse. Fortunately, Lillie had left the rug on the living room floor and a couple of lamps, along with a television. The place was definitely nicer than where he’d been living in an old cabin, so it was just fine with him. More than fine. He’d never needed much for creature comforts.

  As he closed the door behind him, he felt bad, though. He’d have to be a complete fool not to know that Lillie was dying to help him “decorate.” He cringed at the thought. She’d fuss and bring in plants he’d forget to water, a bunch of pillows he didn’t have a place for and knickknacks he’d end up breaking. No, she had her big house on the ranch to do her magic. He wouldn’t bother her. At least that would be his excuse.

  He hung up his hat and was about to do the same with his jean jacket when he remembered the bracelet. Taking it out, he turned it in his fingers. It was fancy enough looking. Heavier than it appeared too, the surface buffed to a rich patina. He brushed his fingertip over the round black stone on one side of the wide cuff bracelet. Probably plastic. The whole bracelet was no doubt made out of some cheap metal and not worth anything. Otherwise, why would the woman have to resort to stealing?

  As he started to put it down, he no
ticed that the clasp was broken. It must have happened when he’d pulled it from her arm. With a start, he remembered the tan line on her wrist, a wide white patch of skin where her bracelet had been as she was hurrying into the crowd. Surprised, he realized this was a piece of jewelry she wore all the time. If it was nothing but cheap costume jewelry, then it must have sentimental value. He frowned, as curious about the bracelet as he was about the woman who’d worn it.

  His mind whirling, he looked at his phone to check the time. The local jewelry store was still open. If he went the back way and entered the store from the rear, he could avoid the crowds still on the main street.

  There was, of course, a temptation to look again for the woman. But he told himself that she wouldn’t have hung around. After what happened, wouldn’t she be worried that he’d alerted the sheriff about her?

  Now that he thought of it, why hadn’t he? What if she’d been picking pockets all day at the festival? He let out a groan, realizing that he’d been so captivated by her that he hadn’t even thought about reporting her.

  Maybe it was enough, he told himself to relieve some of his guilt, that she would think the sheriff was searching for her after her botched pickpocketing with him and leave. If he was right, there would be no reason to look for her in the crowd.

  Darby knew what he was really looking for—something that would tell him about the woman who’d worn the bracelet. He was still curious. Still shaken by the effect she’d had on him for that second when their eyes had met.

  The piece looked unusual enough, he told himself. The fact that it must have been a favorite of hers piqued his interest even more. He stuffed the bracelet back into his jacket pocket and, Stetson on his head, headed for the door.

  * * *

  THE ELDERLY JEWELER put the loupe to his eye and slowly studied the bracelet Darby had handed him. “You say you picked it up at a garage sale?”