Accidental Heiress

by Lauren Nichols

  “That won’t tell us if someone has ordered one, only that they can if they want to.”

  “I know, and I’ve thought about that, too,” she said, walking up to him. She settled a hand on the oak banister. “I...I could pretend to be a wife whose husband has lost his. I could tell the shopkeeper I’m thinking of ordering a new one for him, but I want to make sure he hasn’t already done that himself, and could he check his orders.”

  “And when the jeweler says no, and asks if you’d like to place an order now, what then?”

  Casey frowned and sighed. “I don’t know yet, but I’ll come up with something.” She met his eyes again. “So what do you think?”

  Jess studied her for a long moment, mulling over her plan. The serious eyes beneath her silky blond bangs were the deepest shade of cobalt blue he’d ever seen. “I think,” he said finally, “that a man who lost a watch fob during the commission of a crime would be crazy to order another one this quick and take a chance on throwing suspicion on himself.”

  “Not if he wasn’t sure when he’d lost it. Besides, he might not realize a watch fob is even an issue in this case. It wasn’t in the paper, and it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge around town. Maybe Farrell decided not to release all the particulars—except for telling you.”

  “You think he couldn’t stop himself from needling me?”

  “Yes.”

  Jess felt his pulse quicken. It was a long shot, but if she was right, they might be able to locate the men behind the thefts and turn them in, despite Ross’s unwillingness to give up their names. Because if Ross kept refusing, Farrell wouldn’t look kindly on his withholding the information. Cy would make sure Ross paid dearly for his silence.

  “Just one question,” Jess asked quietly. “How can you be certain I’m not the man you’re looking for? What if you phone Belle Craw ford and she tells you I ordered a new watch fob recently?”

  Casey’s gaze slid away, and she hesitated uncomfortably. “That won’t happen. I know the fob Cy Farrell has in his possession isn’t yours.”

  Jess blinked in surprise, and a wave of hopeful relief swept through him. “How can you know that?”

  “You’re not going to like this.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “After you left, I went to Farrell’s office and asked to see it.”

  Jess stared incredulously. He had certainly been gone long enough for her to drive to town and back. But it was startling that she had taken it upon herself to see Farrell, when earlier he had refused to do it.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she went on self-consciously. “I’m afraid I stretched the truth a little when I was there, but I thought it was the only way he’d give me any cooperation.”

  “You lied to him?”

  “Kind of. I told him that after you’d admitted to having a criminal record, I’d lost my faith in you, and I was thinking about moving out. But first I planned to go through those snapshots you’d claimed to have, and I needed to know exactly what sort of trinket I was looking for. He assumed I would let him know what I found out.” Casey met his eyes. “I probably made his day.”

  No, she’d probably made his decade, Jess thought.

  “The fob at Farrell’s office is about the size and shape of a penny, with a three-dimensional elk head soldered in the center of it. Your grandfather’s looked nothing like that.”

  Jess drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, anxiety over what might have happened making his voice tight. “Things could have gone very differently. What if it had been mine? What then?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Jess didn’t press for a better answer. Right now, he didn’t want to know if she would have turned him in, because part of him was afraid that she might have. She’d said she’d “kind of” lied to Farrell. Which told him she probably had been having second thoughts about his trustworthiness.

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “No.” He sighed, wanting to pull her into his arms, but hesitating because he wasn’t sure how his actions would be received. “In fact... Thank you. I’m indebted. Again.”

  Although, Jess thought, with Ross’s involvement and imminent confession, Farrell would eventually have to drop his ridiculous harassment anyway. But he worried about Ross. Who knew how Cy would react when he realized Jess wouldn’t finally be punished for the unpardonable crime of touching Lydia? Which was why Jess had insisted Ross take attorney Mark Walker along when he made his statement.

  The low mood he’d been fighting most of the afternoon settled in again, and Jess gave up trying to shake it. He forced a smile for Casey and, glancing upward, said, “Maybe I’d better grab that shower now.” Then he trudged up the stairs to the bathroom.

  Casey stared after him, wondering why he wasn’t happier about being in the clear. The second they took his grandfather’s photograph into the sheriff’s office—and if Jess wouldn’t do it, she would—Farrell almost had to give up this witch hunt, didn’t he? Cy Farrell had struck out with the shell casings and the fob; he would have to look elsewhere for his thieves.

  So why was Jess still so obviously troubled?

  He’ll tell you if he thinks you need to know, a little voice said. For now, why not just try to get things back on an even footing? You love him. Show him. Prove to him that he can’t live without you. Make him admit to himself that he needs you as much as you need him.

  Yes, she could do that now. Her excursion into the basement this afternoon hadn’t shown anything out of the ordinary, and after she satisfied herself that there was no horrible secret lingering there, she’d examined their conversation again.

  She had to trust him, that was all there was to it. If he had a record—and he said he did—she knew there had to be a reason for his wrongdoing.

  Casey was in bed, wearing her Yankees dorm shirt, when Jess came in from his shower, a towel wrapped around his hips. She saw his surprise at finding her there, then watched a soft smile touch his lips as he took in the assortment of things on her side of the bed. There was a phone book, a newspaper, a tablet, pens, and a few pulp tabloids full of farm and ranching news and ads. He smelled of soap and shampoo, his hair toweled dry but still damp. A few black locks fell over his forehead, softening the strong, tanned angles of his face.

  He stretched out on the bed beside her. “What’s all this?” he asked, then added quietly before she could answer, “After what happened this afternoon, I figured you’d be moving back into the nursery.”

  “We had a disagreement,” she replied in the same quiet tone. “That doesn’t mean I don’t—” She bit back the words she wanted to say and finished with a more acceptable line. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you.” Leaning down, she stroked his face and kissed him softly, then straightened and gestured toward the stack of printed matter on the bed. “I thought we should start right away going through these listings for jewelry stores.”

  He stared at her blankly. “Now?”

  “Mm-hmm. Kind of like a working lunch.”

  Smiling, Jess shoved the stack onto the floor and turned off the bedside lamp, throwing the room into long, dusky shadows. He pulled her over on top of him. “Bad analogy,” he said huskily. “For it to be a working lunch, there has to be food. We don’t have any food.”

  Later, as he held Casey in the darkness, Jess said, “I want to tell you about my police record.”

  Faint moonlight pushed through the slatted blinds, laying shimmery stripes on exposed legs and midsections. “You don’t have to,” Casey murmured. “Whatever happened in the past is just that—the past.”

  “But I want to.” Jess’s hand moved lazily over her hip. “It was after my divorce. It had been a while since I’d had any freedom, and I started going out a lot—raising hell and drinking too much. One night I got the asinine idea to outlaw a mule deer and have a big barbecue back at the hot spring. Well, in the process, I got caught, got belligerent, and threw a few punches. Farrell threw the book at me.” />
  Casey pushed herself up onto an elbow and looked down at him. “Cy Farrell was the arresting officer?”

  “Basically. I’d been shooting off my mouth about having a deer roast, and he got wind of it, so he told a local game warden what was going down. The two of them waited for me at the hot spring. Some friends of mine got fined, but I landed in jail. Farrell printed me, did the whole mug-shot routine, and let me sit in a cell overnight. It was damned humiliating. Cy had his mouth going the whole night—Saint Jess this and Saint Jess that.”

  And the sheriff was still using the nickname, Casey thought.

  “I wised up after that. Thank God for Ross. He kept the ranch going during the three months I was running around half-cocked. He was at his wit’s end, chewing me up one side and down the other. I was supposed to be the reliable one.”

  He paused. “Not that he did anything heroic—the ranch was never at risk. But the day-to-day work had to be done, and decisions had to be made. Ross made the right ones. That has to be why I keep doling out second and third and fourth chances.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Casey replied. “You keep forgiving him because you love him. He’s family.”

  “Is that why you forgave your husband for leaving you up to your neck in debt? Because you loved him?”

  “Yes. Only, looking back now, I know that I never loved him the way he needed to be loved. The way he deserved to be loved.” Dane had deserved the same depth of emotion she felt for Jess. But that could never have happened. She hadn’t known what it was to love until she barged into Jess Dalton’s life and learned.

  Casey touched his face again, kissed his chin, his lips, his eyelids. “Hey,” she whispered, trying to lighten the mood, “let’s go downstairs and raid the refrigerator and take another shot at that working lunch.”

  “Hungry?”

  “Famished,” she admitted. “But I also want you free of Farrell’s outrageous claims, and finding those men is the only way to assure that.” She thought of all that Farrell had done to him in the past, and what he still hoped to do—all because of a woman who had decided on her own that marriage to Cy Farrell was not in her best interests. “Come on,” she urged with a smile. “Let’s do it. I don’t want that man ever hurting you again.”

  Casey had just hung up the phone and crossed the sixth jewelry store from her list the next afternoon when the phone jangled. Grinning, she joked in her mind that jewelry stores were now calling her to say they didn’t stock elk-head fobs.

  As she picked up the receiver and said hello, she frowned at the white paint still rimming her thumbnail. She’d thought she’d gotten it all off when she finished painting the shed a while ago.

  “Ross there?” It was a man’s voice, rough and vaguely familiar, though Casey couldn’t place it.

  “No, he isn’t,” she replied, “but if you’d like to leave a message, I’ll see that he gets it.” It wouldn’t have done any good to tell the man to phone the bunkhouse, because there was no one down there at this hour. Everyone was out checking for strays and doing the maintenance work that was required on all ranches.

  “No message,” the man growled, and slammed the receiver down.

  Casey winced and stared at the phone. Nice guy, she thought. Then she hung up, wondering again where she had heard that voice before. It wasn’t as though she’d met that many people since she arrived here. After another moment’s thought, she shrugged and put it out of her mind. She had more important things to do.

  It was astounding the number of places that sold jewelry in the area. But, as Jess had explained, a lot of people designed jewelry in their homes as a side business.

  She was almost through the list when she contacted a shop owner in Billings who told her something that took the wind out of her sails, and made her wonder how reliable the information that she’d gathered thus far was. The jeweler said she didn’t stock fobs, but she did have charms, and that was basically what a fob was, after all. Casey threw her pencil in the air, disgusted with herself for not thinking of that.

  When Jess came home around five, she was frustrated and grouchy. She hadn’t gotten an affirmative answer from any of the jewelry shops, and that strange man had phoned again for Ross. She decided not to share that information with Jess. According to Pruitt, who’d stopped to talk briefly while she was painting, Jess and Ross were at each other’s throats again. She would tell Ross about the phone calls sometime when they were alone.

  “Cheer up,” Jess said, taking her into his arms, “better days are coming.”

  “Clichés?” she grumbled. “I spend half the day trying to clear your name, and you hand me clichés?”

  “Okay, no more clichés. How about an invitation?”

  “To what?”

  “Founder’s Day. You must have seen the handbills and flyers in all the shop windows for the annual celebration in town.”

  “Well, yes, but after you passed on the Fourth of July celebration over in Livingston, I never imagined you’d want to go to this one.”

  “Well, I do. We always go.”

  “In that case,” she said, grinning, “I’d love to go with you.” They would walk Frontier Street like a real couple on a real date...share cotton candy...play silly games and tease like lovers. People would see them together and make assumptions. And if all her stars and planets were lined up right, maybe Jess would, too.

  Chapter 13

  Two days later, they were wandering sunny Frontier Street, hand in hand, dodging giggling children and sidestepping candy apples and billowing cones of pink cotton candy.

  Casey smiled, loving the hometown ambience and friendly atmosphere that surrounded her—and thinking how different Comfort’s parade had been from Chicago’s huge Saint Patrick’s Day affair.

  Ox-driven prairie schooners had rattled down Valley Street with sturdy men at the reins, while “pioneer women” in calico dresses and bonnets walked beside the wagons, their long skirts sweeping the street. Area high school bands had played songs from Montana’s gold rush days, and “prospectors” in felt hats and suspendered britches had danced along the sidelines with their picks and shovels, harmonicas and fiddles, celebrating a time when Comfort had been a boomtown.

  Now, as she and Jess moved from booth to booth, sampling foods and looking at crafts displays, Casey could hear the noise of carnival rides in the cordoned-off parking lot, could smell the wonderful aromas of french fries and barbecued ribs, hamburgers and funnel cakes.

  Draping his arm over her shoulders, Jess steered Casey to another booth. The table sparkled with jewelry, belt buckles, and colorful fetishes, and a sign read Designs by Nellie Eagle feather.

  Behind the table, an elderly Native American woman with long gray braids was putting out more earrings. A lovely squash-blossom necklace hung against her red calico dress.

  Jess picked up a leather choker strung with small chunks of blue-green turquoise and flat pewter birds. “Do you like this?”

  Casey examined the necklace. “Yes, it’s beautiful. It’s solid, but it’s still...delicate, somehow.”

  “Just like you,” he said, stunning her.

  Casey’s heart swelled as Jess turned to the pleasant woman, then pulled several bills from his jeans pocket. Maybe they weren’t the three little words she’d been hoping for, but for now, they were enough. He did care.

  “We’ll take it,” Jess said. “Wrap it u—”

  “No, wait,” Casey said quickly, then flushed when Jess turned in surprise and the vendor looked uncertain. “If it’s okay with you...I’d like to wear it.”

  Approval registered in two sets of dark eyes as she unhooked the gold chain she’d been wearing and slipped it in the pocket of her sleeveless white cotton romper. Then Jess paid for the necklace, took her hand and led her a few steps out of the way of browsing customers.

  . “Okay, blondie,” he said, moving behind her, “Lift your hair and I’ll see if I can get this catch—”

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Marshall,” Cy Far
rell said with a sneer as he strolled up to them. “Enjoyin’ the festivities?”

  Casey heard Jess’s muttered curse behind her, even as she swallowed her own disappointment that the moment had been spoiled. The sheriffs face was as red as Nellie Eaglefeather’s dress. And it didn’t take a mind reader to know that after Casey’s visit to the his office two days ago, seeing her with Jess infuriated him.

  Forcing a smile, Casey said, “I’m enjoying the celebration very much, thank you. I’m glad you stopped to ask.”

  “Really?” Farrell answered sarcastically. “Now why is that?”

  “Because I wanted to show you what I found when I dug through those photo albums back at the ranch.”

  Reaching inside the white crocheted bag slung over her shoulder, Casey retrieved the envelope she’d tucked into her bag earlier. Inside the envelope, protected between two pieces of cardboard, was the five-by-seven portrait of Jess’s grandfather. She saw surprise register in Jess’s eyes at her having thought to bring it along, and she hoped he wouldn’t say anything to set the sheriff off.

  She held out the picture for Farrell’s perusal. “If you’d like to look at this more closely, we could walk over to your office. But even without a magnifying glass, you can see that this piece of jewelry isn’t anything like the round fob you showed me.” She slid it back inside the envelope, then into her purse again. “I hope this clears up any questions you might be having.”

  And he probably had plenty of questions, Casey thought, still regretting the fact that she’d misrepresented herself.

  Casey held her breath while Farrell assessed them behind his sunglasses, his mouth clamped in a thin, unforgiving line. After a long moment, he tipped his hat and left without another word.

  When Farrell had melted into the crowd, Jess stared blankly at Casey. “What on earth possessed you to bring that picture along?”

  Casey shrugged. “Farrell’s office is nearby. When we decided to come to the celebration, I thought—if we had time or ran into him—I’d show it to him and put this nonsense to rest.” She smiled then, unable to hide her excitement. “And it is over, isn’t it? He didn’t say he wanted to see the photograph again, and he left without his usual snide remarks. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”