Hitched!

by B. J Daniels

  Jack bit back an angry retort. It was one thing to come after him, but it was another to go after his wife. Even his pretend wife.

  The irony didn’t escape him. He was defending a woman he’d picked up on the highway. A stranger he didn’t know beans about. But then, neither did his aunt.

  “Josey likes antiques and comes from money,” he said, feeling that might be true. “I can assure you, she isn’t interested in Grandmother’s.”

  “You don’t look anything like Angus,” Virginia said, changing tactics.

  Jack laughed, determined not to let his aunt get to him. “I’m not going to argue this with you. My grandmother knows the truth, that’s all that matters.”

  “Your grandmother is the reason you’re a bastard. She didn’t think your mother was good enough for Angus.”

  He tried to rein in his temper, but Virginia had pushed him too far. “Pepper never approved of any of the women her sons fell in love with. Or her daughter, for that matter. She controlled you all with money and a cushy life on this ranch. All except Trace. Is that why you hated him so much—because he couldn’t be bought?”

  The color had washed from Virginia’s face. She stood trembling all over, her lips moving, but nothing coming out.

  “But the truth is I wasn’t the only bastard to come out of this house—was I, Aunt Virginia?”

  JOSEY WALKED UP the narrow dirt road to a small hill before she stopped to look back at the sprawling lodge and the tall cottonwoods and the sparse pines that made the place look like an oasis in the desert.

  The lodge was far enough off the main road that she felt relatively safe. From what she’d seen earlier, the main road got little use, not that the lodge could be seen by anyone just happening to drive past.

  No one knew she was here. That was the beauty of it. So why couldn’t she relax? Because her mother wouldn’t be safe until she sent the money and got her moved.

  Jack had said they would stay for the week, but Josey knew she couldn’t make it that long. If there was just some way to send the money without having to leave here—or let anyone know where she was, she thought, as she walked back down the road in the diminishing daylight. It would be dark soon, and she had no desire to be caught out here alone.

  But she wouldn’t involve Jack any more than she had. She couldn’t.

  As she entered, she didn’t hear a sound from down the hall. The door to the parlor was closed. She assumed Jack was still in there talking to his aunt, though she couldn’t imagine what they might have to talk about. Unless Virginia was trying to talk him into doing away with Pepper and splitting the take.

  They’d better cut Enid and Alfred in, Josey thought with a wry smile. The two gave her the creeps. If anyone was plotting to knock off Pepper it was one or both of them.

  As she opened the door to the bedroom, Josey realized that Jack could have finished his talk with his aunt and be waiting here for her.

  She was relieved to see the bedroom unoccupied. She closed the door behind her and stood looking at the large canopied bed. Playing married was one thing. But where was Jack planning to sleep?

  The door opened behind her as if on cue. She turned to look at him, and he grinned as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.

  “I’m sorry, where did you say you would be sleeping?” she asked.

  “I was thinking we could negotiate something.”

  She smiled back at him. “Think again.”

  “I suppose sharing the bed is out of the question?”

  “You suppose right.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Not as far as I can throw you.”

  “Now, honey,” he said, reaching for her, “we can’t let Enid catch us sleeping separately on our honeymoon.”

  Josey stepped away from him. “We can if we have a fight.” She picked up a cheap vase from a nearby table, tossing it from hand to hand. “A lover’s quarrel. You know newlyweds.”

  He was shaking his head, but still smiling. “No one will hear it if you break that.”

  “But Enid will see the broken glass in the morning when she comes with the coffee and catches you sleeping in that chair over there.”

  Jack launched himself at her and the vase, but he wasn’t fast enough. The vase hit the floor and shattered like a gunshot. Jack’s momentum drove them both back. They crashed into the bed and onto it, with Jack ending up on top.

  “Now this is more like it,” he said, grinning down at her.

  Josey could feel the hard beat of his heart against her chest as she looked into those amazing blue eyes of his. The man really was adorable.

  “I want to kiss you,” he said quietly. He touched her cheek, his fingers warm.

  She felt a small tremor. He could be so gentle that it made her ache.

  “What will it cost me?”

  “You want to pay for a kiss?” she asked, raising a brow, trying to hide her disappointment that he hadn’t just kissed her.

  “Is there any other way you’d let me kiss you?”

  She hated that he made her sound cheap and mercenary. She’d only agreed to take his money for this week because it would have made him suspicious if she’d turned it down. Did he really think she was doing this for the money?

  “I really—” The rest of her words caught in her throat as she realized he was untying her scarf. She grabbed for the ends to stop him—just not quickly enough.

  “What the hell?” He pushed off her to a sitting position on the edge of the bed next to her, his expression one of shock and horror as he stared at her. “Josey…what—”

  “It’s nothing.” She quickly sat up as she tried to retie the scarf to cover up the rope burn on her neck.

  “Like hell,” he said, reaching out to stop her as he took in the extent of her injury. “How did this happen?”

  She didn’t answer as she tried to take the ends of the scarf from him and retie them. “Please.”

  He held the scarf for a moment longer, his expression softening as he lifted his gaze to hers. “Who did this to you?” There was an edge to his voice, a fury.

  “It has nothing to do with you.” She pulled away, getting to her feet and turning her back to him as she clumsily tied the scarf with trembling fingers.

  “This is why you were on the highway,” he said, rising from the bed to come up behind her. “This is what you’re running from.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  “I don’t understand why—”

  “No, you don’t, so just forget it,” she snapped. She finished tying the scarf and swung around to face him. “I took care of it.”

  He stared at her. “The only way to take care of it is to kill the person who did this to you.”

  Josey didn’t dare speak into the dense silence that fell between them.

  Jack seemed to be waiting for her to explain. When she didn’t, he let out a curse.

  She watched him grab one of the pillows and a quilt that had been folded up on the end of the bed. He brushed past her and dropped both the pillow and quilt onto the chair before leaving the room.

  It was much later that she heard him return to the dark room and curl up in the chair across from her. She could hear him breathing softly and feel his gaze on her. She closed her eyes tight and told herself she didn’t give a damn what Jack Winchester thought of her. It wasn’t the first night she’d gone to sleep lying to herself.

  She woke up just after two in the morning to find Jack gone.

  Chapter Six

  It was late by the time McCall reached her office in Whitehorse. She had brought evidence from the crime scene that needed to be sent to the lab in Missoula first thing in the morning.

  Deputies had discovered a bullet on the outside of the car pulled from the river and in the headrest on the driver’s side. Both were .38 slugs. Someone in camp had been armed. Deputies would continue their search in the morning for the weapon—and any more victims.

  But McCall wasn’t ruling out that at l
east one person had gotten away—possibly armed—from the crime scene.

  “Any chance you’ll be coming down to my place later?” Luke had asked as he rubbed the tension from her shoulders before she’d left the crime scene.

  McCall had leaned into his strong hands, wanting nothing more than to spend the night with Luke in his small trailer curled against him. He was staying in the trailer out on his property until he completed their house. He planned to have it done before their Christmas wedding so they could move in together.

  She couldn’t believe how lucky she was that Luke had come back into her life.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d told him. “I’d better stay at my place near town tonight. This case—”

  “I know.” He’d turned her to smile at her, then kissed her.

  He did know. He knew how much this job meant to her even though she’d fought taking the acting sheriff position. He’d encouraged her to run for sheriff when the time came.

  “You sound like my grandmother,” she’d said.

  “Yeah? Well, we both know you aren’t finished with your father’s death, don’t we?”

  It was the first time he’d mentioned what he’d overheard the night he’d saved her life at her cabin. She hadn’t had to answer, since there was no point. He was right. She wasn’t finished, and she had a bad feeling her grandmother wasn’t, either.

  McCall pushed aside thoughts of her fiancé as she went to work.

  George had assisted with taking their Jane Doe’s prints. McCall entered them now into the system and waited. The chance of getting a match was slim at best. The Jane Doe would have had to been arrested, served in the military or had a job where her prints were required for security reasons.

  That was why McCall was amazed when she got a match.

  Her prints had come up from a prostitution charge. She’d served eight months and had only recently been released. Her name was Celeste Leigh of Palm City, California. No known address or place of employment. She was twenty-two and believed to be living on the streets.

  McCall put in a call to Detective Diaz in Palm City and wasn’t surprised to find him still at work. Apparently he was getting a lot of pressure on the Ray Allan Evans Sr. murder because Evans had been the husband of Ella Vanderliner.

  “I’ve got an ID on our Jane Doe,” she said and proceeded to tell him about Celeste Leigh.

  “Prostitution? I’m not surprised. From what we’ve discovered investigating his father’s homicide, RJ was involved in a string of shady ventures that lost money, and his daddy had to bail him out. He was also known to frequent the lower end of town.”

  “Celeste was wearing a diamond engagement ring with a big rock on it. We found the receipt for it in the glove box of the car. It set RJ back a large chunk of change. Which might explain why her ring finger appeared to have been broken. I think RJ changed his mind about any upcoming nuptials.”

  Diaz swore. “The bastard broke her finger trying to take back the wedding ring? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given that he later hung her from a tree.”

  “Apparently, he’d been abusing her for some time.”

  “That fits with what we know about him. He’d been accused by other prostitutes of abuse, but they always dropped the charges. So what about the other noose?”

  “We found Josephine Vanderliner’s purse downriver from where RJ and Celeste were believed to have been camped. We’ll continue dragging the river in the morning. Given the three sets of tracks, the two nooses and her purse, we’re fairly certain Vanderliner was there with them.”

  “Keep me updated. I’ll see if I can find some next of kin that need to be notified of Celeste Leigh’s death.”

  McCall hung up and studied the photograph of Ray Allan Evans Jr. again. He was blond, blue-eyed, movie-star handsome, but there was something about him that unnerved her, and would have even if she hadn’t known anything about him.

  It was in the eyes, she thought, as she pushed away the photograph and looked instead at the copy she’d made of Josephine Vanderliner’s photo.

  Vanderliner was pretty in a startling way. In the photo, she had her long, ginger-colored hair pulled back and wound in a loose braid. Her eyes were aquamarine, and she was smiling into the camera as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  That had apparently changed, McCall thought, as she sighed and made another copy of the photographs to take to the Milk River Courier office come morning.

  If there was even a chance that either RJ Evans or Josephine Vanderliner were still in the area, then residents needed to know and be on the lookout for them.

  If they were in Whitehorse, the town was small enough that any stranger stood out like a sore thumb—especially this time of year. During summer a few tourists would past through on what was known as the Hi-Line, Highway 2 across the top part of Montana. But it was a little early for tourist season.

  As McCall locked up and headed for her cabin beside Milk River, she glanced at the vehicles parked diagonally at the curb in front of the bars. None from out of state. Only one from out of town.

  She left the mostly sleeping little Western town and headed home, praying neither suspect was anywhere near Whitehorse, Montana.

  WHERE WAS JACK? Josey felt a chill as she glanced around the empty room. The door to the bathroom was open, the room empty.

  She sat up, listening. The house seemed unusually quiet. Eerily so. She had a sudden urge to get out of there while she had a chance. What was wrong with her?

  From the open window next to the bed, she heard one of the horses whinny, then another. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and hurried to the window.

  A wedge of moon and a zillion tiny stars lit the black night. She could make out the horses moving around the corral as if something had set them off. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, surprised that the floodlight near the barn was out.

  It had been casting a golden glow over the ranch yard earlier when she’d gone to bed. Her pulse quickened.

  A breeze rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods, casting eerie shadows in the direction of the lodge.

  Among the shadows, something moved.

  Jack.

  He crept along the dark edge of the buildings like a man who didn’t want to be seen. He had something in his hand that occasionally caught the moonlight. A crowbar?

  Josey watched him reach the end of the far wing, the one she’d noticed was older than the rest and had boards over the windows and doors. He disappeared around the corner.

  Where was he sneaking off to at this time of the night and why? Apparently, she wasn’t the only one with secrets.

  JOSEY WOKE THE NEXT MORNING to the sound of running water. A few minutes later Jack came out of the bathroom wearing only his jeans and boots. His muscled chest was suntanned and glistening. He smelled of soap, his face was clean shaven, his blond hair was wet and dark against the nape of his neck.

  She’d felt a wave of desire wash over her.

  “Morning,” he said, seeing she was awake. He seemed to avoid her gaze.

  “Good morning.” Well, if he wasn’t going to say anything, then she was. “Jack—”

  “I’ll let you get ready and come down with you for breakfast,” he said quickly. “Can you be ready in half an hour?”

  She nodded, sensing the change in him. She’d hoped things would go back to the way they were yesterday, when he’d been playful and affectionate. It had been a game, this pretend marriage. But apparently yesterday had changed that after he’d seen the rope burn on her neck. Or did it have something to do with his late-night exploration?

  She’d heard him come in just before daylight. He hadn’t turned on a light. She’d listened to him stumbling around in the dark and caught a whiff of alcohol. Had he been drinking?

  Now he didn’t give her a second glance as he pulled on a Western shirt and left.

  She lay in bed, hating this change in him. She knew he must be regretting picking her up on the highway
, let alone proposing marriage, even a fake one. She touched the rope burn on her neck. What he must think of her.

  If he only knew.

  Well, what did he expect? she thought angrily, as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and headed for the bathroom. He didn’t know a thing about her. He hadn’t wanted to know a thing about her. All he wanted was a pretend wife to fool his grandmother. And she’d done her job just fine.

  She took a quick bath and was ready when he returned.

  He again gave her only a glance, his gaze pausing for a moment on the new scarf she had tied around her neck. She couldn’t wait for her neck to heal enough that she could dispense with the scarves.

  As they descended the stairs, Josey missed his warm hand on her back. She missed his touch almost as much as she missed the way he had looked at her.

  Jack’s grandmother glanced up as they entered the dining room, her gaze narrowing. The old gal didn’t miss much. She must see that there was trouble in honeymoon paradise.

  Josey felt uncomfortable, as if she was under scrutiny throughout breakfast. Even Virginia seemed to pick up on the fact that something was different between Josey and Jack.

  “The two of you should take a horseback ride,” Pepper Winchester said as they finished breakfast. “Show her the ranch, Jack. I know how you love to ride.”

  Josey started to say that wasn’t necessary, that she didn’t know how to ride, that the last thing the two of them needed was to be alone together, but Jack interrupted her before she could.

  “I think that’s a great idea,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll go saddle up two horses and meet you in the barn.”

  JACK WAS ALMOST SURPRISED when he turned to find Josey framed in the barn doorway. He wondered how long she’d been standing there watching him. A while, from her expression.