She knew what he was asking. “I’ll miss you. I thought it was better to pretend I was happy instead of wanting to wring your neck.”
Todd’s face still looked as solemn as ever, but his eyes were laughing at her. “I don’t like your chances of doing much wringing.”
“Is that so?”
He took a step closer. His blue eyes were sparkling. “I’m taller than you are. It makes it hard to get a good hold of my neck.”
Heat traveled through Sally’s body. She tried to look indignant, even mildly annoyed would have helped cool the situation down. “Are you flirting with me, Todd Randall?”
“Tilting your nose in the air isn’t going to help you.”
“I thought it might give me a few extra inches of wringability.”
Todd smiled and Sally’s world shifted. “You’re leaving Montana,” she whispered.
His smile disappeared.
“I don’t want you to go.” Sally blinked away the tears in her eyes. She wasn’t going to show him how worried she was. A drug lord and his merry gang of villains were looking for him. He didn’t need her falling apart.
Todd took another step forward and kissed her. His lips were light and gentle, nudging her mouth open until she thought she’d pass out from the need building inside of her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. He pulled her close, until she didn’t know where his body began and her body ended. With a weary sigh, she gave into the emotions filling her to overflowing.
For now, Todd was in Montana. Tomorrow would look after itself.
CHAPTER TEN
Charlie’s Bar and Grill was full of men and women enjoying a Saturday night in town. Sally, Rachel, Molly, and Tess had joined their next bride-to-be for a night of fun, Bozeman style.
“Earth calling, Sally. Are you there?”
Sally blinked at Rachel. “Sorry. I was a million miles away.” She nudged her glass away from the edge of the table. Spilling red wine over her dress would put a dampener on any bachelorette party.
“You can’t mope around for the rest of your life. Live a little. You never know, you might meet someone else.”
Sally couldn’t imagine anything worse. “Let me wallow for a little bit longer before you give me a pep talk.”
“There’s nothing peppy about it. Believe me, most men don’t think twice about leaving a woman with more scars than happy thoughts.”
“You sound like someone who’s been scorned in love?”
Rachel shrugged her shoulders. She used to change boyfriends quicker than most women painted their nails. But over the last eighteen months, her boyfriend count had been practically zilch. “You’d think I would have learned a lot earlier to be more discriminating.”
Sally smiled at Rachel. “That’s a big word for ten-thirty on a Saturday night.”
“I’m increasing my vocabulary. My class has got a spelling bee coming up and we’re building word lists.”
“You’re competing against your nine-year-old students?”
Rachel shook her head. “No. I’m competing against Bill.”
Sally grimaced. Rachel was a teacher at the same elementary school she worked at. Each year, Bill Nicholas applied for their school’s Teacher of the Year Award. Anything he could do to look good in front of the principal was a bonus. “If you need someone to practice with, let me know.”
“You might regret that offer,” Rachel said with a rueful grin. “My students have got high expectations.” She glanced across the dance floor, smiling at Tess and Molly. “They look so cute.”
Tess and Molly had dressed up as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, not quite the superhero themed costumes Sally had been expecting. “Do you think their mouse ears are going to last all night?”
Molly tossed her head to the left, then to the right as she boogied to the music blasting from the jukebox. She grabbed hold of her ears as they slipped over her eyes.
“They’ll be lucky if they last to the end of this song,” Rachel said. “Let’s join them.”
Sally slid out of the booth and followed Rachel onto the dance floor. “This has got to be the craziest bachelorette party I’ve ever been to.”
Rachel wiggled her Wonder Woman hips as Billy Idol cried, “More, more, more.”
“I love music from the eighties,” Rachel said as she twirled in a circle. “Let’s rock it, Superman.”
Sally did her best superhero moves and started enjoying herself. Abby, their petite, blonde bride, was in full party mode with her equally petite sisters.
As one song merged into the next, Sally was grateful she was wearing boots with no heels. There was enough bumping and grooving going on without having to worry about sore feet.
“Howdy, Supergirl,” Colin O’Grady, Police Sergeant extraordinaire, said from beside her.
“Superman,” Sally yelled over the music. Colin laughed as she pointed to the “S” on her chest. “I’m an equal opportunities superhero.”
Rachel pulled Colin closer and started dancing. Before too long, Colin, his friend Dave, and Dave’s wife, Natalie, were all dancing with them. Unlike the superhero bachelorette partygoers, Colin was wearing his Sunday best jeans and blue plaid shirt.
“Where’s Alastair?” he asked Sally.
She leaned forward, trying to increase the odds of hearing Colin. “What did you say?”
“Where’s Alastair?”
She looked around the room and saw him leaning against the far wall, watching what she was doing. He saluted her with his can of pop before shifting his attention to the brunette standing beside him.
“He’s over there.” Sally pointed across the room.
Colin followed the direction of her arm and smiled. “Lulu looks as though she’s mighty interested in your bodyguard.”
Sally looked around to make sure no one had heard Colin. “Don’t tell anyone about Alastair.”
“I don’t like your chances of keeping it a secret. Half the town have been talking about what happened at the wedding.”
Sally decided to concentrate on dancing and not talking. She didn’t want to know what everyone had been saying about Carolyn’s wedding. She’d caught enough of the gossip to know that Todd and Alastair had become heroes. Sally had gained brownie points for her running prowess and rope ladder finesse. She was glad no one knew she’d stabbed a woman in the throat. It wasn’t the type of thing she wanted to explain to her students.
After another couple of songs, she pulled Colin back to the booth she’d been sitting at. “I want to ask you something…”
“Have I heard how Todd is?”
Sally blushed. “I just want to know if he’s okay?” She didn’t want to sound desperate, but Alastair hadn’t told her anything. Dominique had been discharged from the hospital and had already been reassigned to another case. With Mitch Zambezi locked away for the foreseeable future, her options for knowing what was going on were limited.
Colin slid along the bench seat and leaned forward. “Has Dylan heard how he is?”
“He said he’s arrived in Wyoming, but he hasn’t heard from Todd for the last two weeks.”
“I can’t help you.”
Sally frowned. “Can’t or won’t?”
Colin didn’t look the slightest bit uncomfortable. “Can’t. I haven’t heard from him either. How long is Alastair staying with you?”
“Until next Friday.”
“You’ll be okay after that?”
Sally didn’t want to go anywhere near that question. Her brothers had been pestering her to go back to her parents’ ranch after Alastair left. If they thought there was any reason she wouldn’t be safe she’d never be left on her own again. “Do you know what’s happened to the two people who tried to kidnap me?”
“Apart from their trial, you won’t see them again. I don’t imagine anyone’s going to be lenient when it comes time for their sentencing.”
“That’s good.”
Colin looked at her carefully. “Are you s
ure everything’s okay?
Sally wasn’t going to tell Colin how worried she was about Todd. He hadn’t called her, hadn’t done any of the things she thought he would have.
“Move over, you two,” Tess said from beside Sally. “Mickey and Minnie need to rest their paws.”
Molly leaned against Tess, fanning her flushed face with her tail. “Next time I’m choosing a costume with short sleeves. It’s hot work on the dance floor.”
Colin slid out of the booth and pointed to the bench seat. “After you. I’ll go and get everyone a drink. What would you like?”
Mickey and Minnie chose Long Island Iced Tea. Sally stuck with water. Half a glass of red wine was enough alcohol for one night, especially if she was the superhero driving everyone home.
“Don’t worry,” Colin told her as he left. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
Sally wasn’t worried about herself, she was worried about Todd. If she’d learned anything about him in the last few weeks, it was that he was one of the best men she’d ever met. If Mitch Zambezi was still after him, she hoped he didn’t do anything stupid and get himself killed.
***
Todd kneeled on the grass at his parents’ ranch. He made a loop in one end of the barbed wire he was holding, then twisted the ends together. The fence he was fixing was on the northern boundary, far enough from the road not to make a difference, but close enough to their neighbor’s to let their cattle through.
For two weeks he’d been working with his dad, turning into a regular ranch hand instead of a fugitive on the run from a drug lord.
His dad unraveled a roll of barbed wire and dropped it beside him. “Do you need the pliers?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
Between the two of them they’d worked hard, moving around the ranch, checking fences, and moving cattle. They were in the middle of another drought and Todd’s dad was worried.
Todd took the pliers out of his dad’s hand. “Did you talk to John about buying more hay?” John Granger was his dad’s foreman. He’d worked on their family ranch for ten years, helping to build a herd of cattle that had been his dad’s pride and joy - until the second drought in three years undid all of their hard work. Their breeding program had taken a serious hit, and Todd didn’t think they’d ever recover.
“We’ve placed an order. It’s damn expensive, but we’ve got no choice. I can’t afford not to have enough food for the winter.”
Todd thought about his own ranch. Copper Creek provided him with enough water to keep most of his land green and healthy.
They’d considered trucking water into Worland, using Copper Creek to irrigate the worst of his dad’s property. But the cost had been more than the water was worth. So instead of using his water, Todd helped his mom and dad pay for what they needed.
That help hadn’t been easy for his parents to accept, but they’d done it anyway, knowing the future of their ranch was at stake.
Todd picked up the fence stretcher and caught one end of the broken fence around a clamp. “What did mom say about the vacation you’ve planned?”
His dad shook his head. “A frivolous waste of money.”
“So you booked the tickets, anyway?”
David Randall chuckled. “You know me too well, son. We’re off to New York in one month’s time.”
Todd twisted the old and new barbed wire together. Five days in the big apple wasn’t a long time, but it would be the first vacation his parents had taken in years. They deserved the break and needed it more than ever.
Todd finished the fence, then wiped the sweat from his forehead. He got more satisfaction from being out here, on his dad’s ranch, than he ever did from the cockpit of an airplane. He wouldn’t say his career as a pilot was over, but he’d never fly a commercial aircraft again.
“You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Todd glanced at his dad. “I’m trying to keep my mind empty at the moment.”
“How’s that working for you?”
“Not that well.”
Todd’s dad threw the roll of barbed wire on the back of his truck. “There’s another break further down that needs to be fixed. It’s too far to walk.”
They drove together along the fence line, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Todd looked around his parents’ ranch. The land was flatter than Todd’s. Water parched pasture stretched out as far as his eye could see.
“Is this visit all about the man who’s in prison, or is there more to it?”
Todd glanced quickly at his father. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re restless. I haven’t seen you like this since Emma and Josh died.”
“A lot has happened in the last few years.”
His dad didn’t say anything for so long that Todd thought the conversation was over.
“You’ve been here two weeks and you haven’t been to the cemetery.”
Todd had never liked the local cemetery. Even as a young boy, when he’d left flowers on his grandparents’ grave, there was something about the eerie silence, the weight of the grief hanging over the land. It made him uneasy. And when Emma and Josh died, he’d felt the same sense of wrongness, a fear of things that weren’t meant to be.
“Going to the cemetery’s not important.” He should have known it was the last thing his dad would want to hear. Todd had deliberately kept away. It brought back too many memories, too many questions that he’d tried desperately to answer over the last four years. “Not visiting the cemetery hasn’t got anything to do with how I feel about Emma and Josh.”
“I think it’s got everything to do with how you feel. It’s okay to grieve. It’s part of letting go.”
Todd leaned against the door of the truck and looked out the window. He’d grieved for so long that it had taken over his life, made him into a person he wasn’t proud of. And then he’d met Sally and everything had changed.
He didn’t know how to tell his dad about Sally, about the life he was building that was so different to the one he’d built with Emma.
“Have you met someone, son?”
Todd gazed along the fence line. “It’s not…I haven’t…” He felt like a bumbling idiot. “The man I’ve been watching, Mitch Zambezi, has been watching me. I met Sally a couple of months ago. She was looking for a home for a shelter dog.”
“Max?”
Todd nodded. He’d brought Max with him to Wyoming and he’d been an instant hit in the Randall household. Todd’s mom was constantly finding treats for him. She’d even knitted him a vest to wear once winter hit Montana. “Mitch sent two people to kidnap Sally. I guess he wanted to tell me to back off. I don’t want to think about what they would have done if they’d caught her.”
“Have they arrested the people that were responsible?”
Todd heard the worry in his dad’s voice. Emma and Josh’s death had hit them in different ways. They wouldn’t be the same again, but they tried. They tried so hard that sometimes Todd worried that Emma and Josh’s death overshadowed everything else.
“They arrested them not long after they tried to kidnap Sally. I’m still worried.”
“That’s why you came home?”
Todd nodded. “I care about her dad. I don’t want her to get hurt.”
His dad sighed. “You can only do your best. Tell me about your girl.”
“She’s not my girl, dad. She’d probably box my ears if I called her that.” Warmth snuck through Todd’s body. Sally might not like it, but the thought of her being his girl made him wish for a whole lot of things that would never happen. “She’s a good person.”
“Any woman you loved would be a good person.”
“But I don’t…I don’t…”
“Love her?”
Todd stared out of the window. “I care about her.”
“Isn’t it time you showed her, then? Hiding here isn’t going to change what’s happened. We enjoy your company and appreciate your help, but you have a life to live.” Tod
d’s dad stopped the truck. “While you’re figuring out what to do, you can help me with the next fence. Bring the barbed wire.”
Todd got out of the truck. For the last four years, his days had begun and ended with memories of his wife and son. It had been so long since he’d simply lived, that he didn’t know where to start.
And he didn’t know if he was ready.
***
Sally pulled another student’s workbook closer and opened it to the last entry. The writing was large and round, filling each line with the wandering thoughts of its owner. The little girl who owned the book had a personality that matched her writing. Elizabeth was like a big, glossy, bubble, drifting through each day in a ray of sunshine.
“Would you like another refill?”
Sally looked up at Caitlin, the teenager Tess had employed to help in her café. “No, thanks. One cup of coffee is enough for me.” She shouldn’t have been drinking coffee at all, not with Tess’ wedding only a few weeks away. But she hadn’t been sleeping, and she needed something to keep her awake during the day.
She glanced at the clock on the wall and realized she’d been in the café for more than an hour.
“Your face looks better,” Caitlin said. “I didn’t think the bruising would ever go away.”
Neither had Sally. The cut on her face had been bad enough, but the bruising kept shadowing her face. It had changed color each day, going from crimson red to jaundice yellow. And until yesterday, that’s where it had decided to stay.
“Are you trying to make Sally feel better or worse?” Doris Stanley poked Caitlin with her walking stick. “A girl doesn’t like to be told that she looked like a train wreck.”
Caitlin bit her bottom lip. Sally knew she wanted to tell Doris that she’d never mentioned the word ‘train’ in her conversation. Sally also knew that Caitlin was studying psychology at College. Doris and her friend Jessie would make an interesting case study.
“You’re right, Doris. It was rude of me to mention it. Would you like a refill?” Caitlin held the coffeepot toward Doris.
Without any hesitation, Doris moved her and Jessie’s cups to the edge of the table. “In my day we wouldn’t go out in public if our faces were bruised and beaten. Violet Hanning would have kept the gossip tree entertained for days, isn’t that right, Jessie?”
Head Over Heels (The Bridesmaids Club Book 3) Page 18
