I moved to Wyoming because of her, came to this part of the world because I found out that she made her life here. I could have stayed in Florida, could have worked with the DEA until I was shot down by some scum I was hunting, or got that gold watch all men in my job found distasteful. But I couldn't stop thinking about her.
I needed to see her. I didn't necessarily want to upset her world. I just wanted to lay eyes on her, wanted to make sure she was in a good place. On paper her life seemed solid, though a little sad. But paper wasn't good enough. I had to see with my own eyes.
I hadn't expected seeing her to make me feel the way it did.
I wanted to walk up to her and tell her the truth. I wanted... fuck! I couldn’t just walk away. Hell, I'd walked up to her and shook her hand, but she didn't know me. I don't know what I expected, but I thought there'd be a little recognition in those eyes of hers. But there wasn't.
Should I tell her the truth and risk her anger, her rightful sense of abandonment? Or should I allow her to continue living in denial, let her continue to believe I left her intentionally? Was I here just to soothe my own feelings? Had I thought enough about what my sudden reappearance in her life would do?
The private eye I hired to find her for me said that I should get a therapist. Said it'd been too long. Said I couldn't just walk into someone's life and turn everything they thought they knew about themselves upside down. But he was an asshole that didn't get it. He had no idea what it was like to live with this sort of burden.
He had no idea about the broken relationships. He had no idea about the obsessions. He didn't know about the sleepless nights and the nightmares on the rare occasions when I did sleep.
And now I was in the same room with her and I didn't know what to do.
Chapter 1
At the Ranch
Sutherland pulled up to the front of the house and the door was open, though she didn't see Bodhi's Land Rover anywhere. There were a couple of trucks, one belonging to Dan Packers, the local plumber. He'd spent a lot of time at her place this past fall working on the plumbing for the bunkhouse. She didn't recognize most of the other work trucks or the names advertised on the side. Must have been contractors from Casper.
She climbed slowly out of her truck, thinking about the last time she'd been here. A blush touched her cheeks, the memory as exciting as it was embarrassing. Twelve years she'd been a widow. Twelve years she'd kept warm at night remembering the brief time she'd shared with her husband. Twelve years she raised her beautiful daughter and worked hard to preserve the legacy her father and his family had left behind for her. Twelve years she was strong, independent. Then one weak night she let herself be vulnerable, allowed herself to lean on another human being.
Why she chose the Hollywood actor who bought the ranch next door when the family who'd owned it for generations were forced into foreclosure she would never know. He was incredibly handsome. He was sexy and exotic with his New Zealand accent. But he was also her daughter's crush.
She knew every bit of trivia there was out there about Bodhi Archer because he was the first man outside the ranch Elizabeth had ever shown interest in. When the child heard he was the one who bought the ranch, that he was their new neighbor, she was thrilled. She was over the moon when he came with his cowhands to help in the search for their missing friend last week. He took the time to talk to her and Elizabeth hadn't been able to think about anything else since. It only added to Sutherland's sense of betrayal against her husband and his memory to hear her talk about Bodhi that way knowing what she, Sutherland, had done with him that same night.
She was so afraid for her friend, Becky, who was running from a corrupt FBI agent at the time. She couldn't do it on her own anymore. And Bodhi... he was the first man since her husband who made her feel she could lean on him, the only man who she desired in the way she had her husband.
Sutherland had always had a problem trusting people. She was abandoned by her parents when she was little more than an infant. She moved from foster home to foster home, never staying in one place longer than six months after she reached school age and was no longer cute enough to be adored by foster parents or desired by potential adoptive parents. She never understood why she wasn't adopted as an infant, always assumed she had some fatal flaw that people didn't want. All that rejection, that inability to find some sort of family, made it impossible for Sutherland to trust.
When she joined the Army, she had an automatic family whether she liked any of them or not, whether they liked her or not. And when she met Mitchell, she was adopted by his entire unit. They were Green Berets. They were men whose lives depended on each other. Trust wasn't an option for them, it was a way of life. They taught her how important it was to recognize that. When Mitchell died over there... they were her family. They were there for her every time his memory was too much to handle. And when the ranch became a struggle she was finding it hard to handle on her own, they were here, bringing her new revenue through this security firm, helping her without making her feel as though they were giving her a helping hand.
She loved them, but they were Mitchell's brothers. Bodhi... he was different.
They'd shared one night and then exchanged words. She hadn't heard from him since, but there was a fire on her land last night that was crazy close to his. Her foreman was convinced someone on the Circle B was causing a rash of convenient accidents that had been happening on the border between their ranches. A fence was blown and fifty head of her cattle wandered onto his land. A stream was damned, causing her cattle to be without water for an unknown amount of time. And then the fire right about the same area. It was a lot of coincidence and it had all happened after Bodhi bought the place.
Shelby... he was an older man who'd worked on MidKnight Ranch since before Sutherland married Mitchell. He didn't believe in coincidences. Sutherland wasn't sure what she believed.
Was she blind to what was happening because of the way Bodhi made her feel? Or was it possible Bodhi was innocent and all these things were just a coincidence?
There was also the question of whether someone on MidKnight was behind these incidences, trying to make Bodhi look guilty. There were a few other things that had happened, too. Grain for the horses that was exposed to moisture and was mildewed, causing the horse to get colic. Deliveries that were made to other ranches even though they belonged at MidKnight.
Sutherland honestly didn't know what to think. But she wanted to talk to Bodhi about it, find out if there was something to Shelby's theories.
She crossed the yard and was halfway to the porch when the door opened and a small, rugged man came outside with a length of drywall over his shoulder.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"I'm Sutherland Knight from—"
"I know who you are, Mrs. Knight," he said, balancing the drywall against the tailgate of one of the work trucks. "If you're looking for Bodhi, he's not around."
"When will he be back?"
The guy shrugged his muscular shoulders. "He's gone back to Los Angeles to see his girl, so it could be a few days, could be a month. It depends on how they're getting on these days, if you know what I mean."
Sutherland could feel the blood draining from her face. He watched her, and she could feel his amusement in her reaction, adding to her mortification. She turned a little, glancing back at the house as others came and went, clearly the contractors working on the remodeling she'd noticed in the upstairs section of the house.
"If you were hoping for an exclusive relationship, I hate to break it to you, but that's not my brother's style."
"Your brother?"
The guy smiled, bending a little at the waist in a mock bow. "Don't worry, he's adopted. You weren't expected to catch the resemblance."
Sutherland tilted her head, this new information about Bodhi catching her off guard.
"I didn't know..."
"Not many people do. He doesn't like to divulge much about his past, especially to people he doesn't expect
to keep around for long."
The guy seemed incredibly cynical to Sutherland. She crossed her arms over her chest as she studied him, wondering how tough it must have been on him to grow up in the shadow of a star like Bodhi. Always second best, always ignored by those he admired. A part of her felt sorry for him, because she could relate on some level.
"I was just hoping to talk to him—"
"Take some advice from someone who's watched more than one woman's heart dragged through the mud for Bodhi Archer—once you fall into his bed, the interest is usually gone. So, don't expect any more flowers, no more special favors, no more late night visits. Bodhi has a pretty short attention span, if you know what I mean. Only one woman has ever kept his attention longer than a few dates, and that's not you."
Sutherland inclined her head, anger overshadowing the mortification. This guy was a real piece of work.
"That's not what I came over for," she said, her words steel. "I simply wanted to know what he knew about the grass fire down on our south pasture last night. It was started on your side of the fence."
His eyebrows rose, surprise lighting them up. "Wasn't aware of a fire."
"I wouldn't suppose you would be. Too busy putting your nose in other people's business."
Sutherland walked off, annoyed with him, annoyed with herself. Annoyed that she'd let herself have feelings for a man who was clearly too available, too handsome to be tied down to just one woman. Annoyed that she'd come to that man for comfort. She should have known better, known that it would never lead to anything good. There were very few men out there who were like her Mitchell. It was stupid to believe a Hollywood hunk like Bodhi Archer would be one of them.
Not that she'd expected long term. She told him the next morning that it was just a onetime thing. But that didn't mean she liked hearing that he was two timing bastard, though.
"Wait!"
Bodhi's brother ran up behind her and grabbed her arm. She turned, finding herself face to face with this unpleasant man, amused to see that they did have the same dark blue eyes, though this man's hair was lighter, almost a dark blond, not unlike hers.
"Look, I shouldn't have said all of that. I'm just annoyed at Bodhi for leaving me with the supervision of all this work. He was supposed to take the next few weeks off, but his agent called and he was out the door quicker than he would probably move if it was our mother who'd called, you know?"
Sutherland studied him a second, wondering if this was what it would have been like to have a sibling. Did they never outgrow this sort of tattling on each other?
"Let's start again," he said, holding out his hand to me. "I'm Jonah Archer, Bodhi's brother."
"I'm Sutherland Knight."
She accepted his handshake, finding his strong and brief, just as a man's handshake should be.
"I'll let him know you stopped by. And I'll send someone down to take a look at the fire damage."
"I appreciate it."
Sutherland left, aware of Jonah still watching her as she drove off, her thoughts already moved on from him. She was thinking about Bodhi, about everything she didn't know about him, wondering about his adoption. Was he an orphan, adopted by family friends or something heartwarming like that? Or had he been abandoned as she had?
It was funny that they might have more in common than the location of their ranches.
She was barely out of the truck back at her own ranch when Mabel Parish, her new office manager, stepped out onto the porch.
"Ash needs you down at the Gray Wolf offices."
She wanted to go inside and lock herself in her room, wanted time to digest what Jonah had told her. But the look on Mabel's face told her ignoring Ash Grayson's summons was not an option. Not that she would, of course. Ash was Mitchell's closest friend and the one trying to help her save MidKnight Ranch from the fate so many other ranches had suffered in recent years. Cattle ranching was a difficult business to get into, let alone attempt to survive in this commerce driven economy. Small ranches were being absorbed by larger ranches. Larger ranches were being bought out by big corporations. Individual families were finding it harder and harder to survive against the corporations who were driving prices down. That combined with the failure of her show horses to place the past few years was causing MidKnight to struggle. Ash's Gray Wolf office he asked her to open here on the ranch was one of the things that was finally pulling the ranch out of the red and pushing it into the black.
She just nodded. "Alright. I'll be back."
Mabel just smiled as she turned to go back into the house.
Ash was lounging in one of the small conference rooms on the first floor of the new bunkhouse, his arms behind his head as he listened to two gentlemen in dark suits speak. They all turned as Sutherland let herself in the room. Ash sat up, his still bulky figure—he looked almost as he had the day she first set eyes on him nearly fifteen years ago, when he was in his heyday in the Green Berets—moving with amazing grace.
"Sutherland, thank you for joining us," he said, standing, and pulling out a chair for her.
Ash had been in Wyoming from his home in Santa Monica for almost two weeks. Gray Wolf was working a case that involved the Mahoney Cartel, an organized crime family from back east that had moved part of its organization to Wyoming a little less than a year ago. This case was part of the reason Ash wanted a branch of Gray Wolf here, a place where he could strategize, a place where there would be trained people ready and waiting to help with whatever he needed. The case came to a head when the FBI was prepared to bust the cartel during a drug exchange in a warehouse in Cheyenne. However, the Mahoneys were tipped off by a corrupt FBI agent who just happened to be one of Sutherland's longest employees and her good friend.
"We've located the Mahoneys," Ash announced as he helped her into the chair. "They've set up shop in a small building on the northern side of Casper."
"You're kidding!"
Ash shook his head, studying her closely. "We have reason to believe part of the reason Grant Kennedy was in this area was to help set up the new operation."
Grant Kennedy. That was a name that sent a small thrill of fear through Sutherland. He'd killed himself in a motel room after his former wife told him she wasn't going to go back to Chicago with him. He was the reason Sutherland had never lost her friend, the reason for the wild search for her in the north pasture, the reason she'd fallen into Bodhi Archer's bed a few days ago.
"Why Casper? Cheyenne had made sense... it's a big city, easy to hide their activity. But Casper is smaller, fewer places to hide."
"Real estate," one of the FBI agents said. "We believe the building is another owned by a Cheyenne rancher, the same rancher who owned the warehouse in Cheyenne."
"Why don't you go after the rancher?"
"Can't prove he knew what they were doing in his warehouse."
Sutherland studied Ash's face. "We're going after them again?"
He nodded. "The FBI task force, the local police department, and Gray Wolf."
Sutherland nodded slowly, her mind already going to the logistics of such an operation and the level of danger to her operatives. She had four operatives now plus herself and her managing partner, Kirkland Parish. They were a small group still getting to know one another, but the loss of one would be devastating to the others. And after what happened last week with Grant Kennedy... she wasn't counting out any possibility.
"We need a good plan."
"Gray Wolf will simply act as backup," one of the FBI agents said.
"Yes, well, we don't go in in any form without a strong plan," Ash said, his eyes settling on Sutherland. "And you have two of the best logisticians here: Sutherland Knight and Lance Griffin."
She inclined her head to accept his praise even though she hadn't actually planned an operation since she left the Army twelve years ago.
"The local police captain will want to be in on any planning."
"He's welcome here," Sutherland informed him.
"Then we'll make thi
s our base of operations." The FBI agent moved forward and held out his hand to Sutherland. "I'm Jeremiah Johnson. This is my partner, Kelsey Beatrice."
She shook both their hands, amused by the open curiosity in the woman's eyes. The curiosity grew when Ash stood up and moved behind Sutherland, resting his hands heavy on her shoulders. He leaned close and whispered, "Thanks" in her ear.
Agent Beatrice seemed to think there was something more between Sutherland and Ash than just friendship. Sutherland had never thought of Ash that way—he was with Mitchell the day she met him, but her thoughts had never wandered to Ash once. Besides, Ash was incredibly happy these days, married to a sweet woman named Mina, and father to two children. Sutherland would never do anything to endanger that. But it looked like Agent Beatrice wouldn't think twice.
Maybe there was more danger in the world for Sutherland and her people than she'd ever imagined, and maybe it didn't always come from the bad guys.
Chapter 2
Ryan
I tucked my feet under my ass and pretended to be staring at my computer screen, but my eyes were roving from face to face, admiring all those gorgeous men in uniform. Most of them were watching me, too, most with a little gleam in his eye, my reputation having already proceeded me. I knew it was stupid, this little fetish I had, knew I should have left it behind me in Seattle, but I couldn't help myself. I was a sucker for men in uniform.
Hadn't done me much good in the Marines.
My favorite movie when I was a kid was An Officer and a Gentleman. I wanted to be Paula, Debra Winger's character. I wanted to be the girl that dated the guys in uniform just to get them to marry me and take me away from my bleak existence. But there weren't a lot of uniforms where I grew up in small town Oklahoma, just cops and boys in ROTC. And they weren't all that inviting, if you know what I mean.
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