The Lawman's Last Stand

by Vickie Taylor

  Then picking up the book. Opening it. Touching that first page, the Ferrar Industries logo.

  “Fingerprints,” she said shakily, looking at Shane. “Bloody fingerprints, from when I looked at the book. My hands were still coated. I smeared it all over.”

  Branson shook his head wearily. “All this trouble, because she had to pick up the damn book without even wiping her hands.”

  “I was in shock,” she said as if she owed him an explanation. She looked to Shane for understanding, but his focus was on Branson, where hers ought to be.

  “I’d love to stay and reminisce some more,” Branson said, “But it really is time for me to be going. So what’s it going to be, Ms. Ferrar? You seem to be the only one with a play here.”

  “Watch him, Gigi. I’ll find something to tie him up with until we can get the law here.”

  “Don’t move, Hightower. I’m an excellent shot. At this range, I can’t miss.”

  “Don’t do it, Shane.” Her voice shook. Branson sidled toward the door.

  “Don’t let him go, Gigi,” Shane urged. “He won’t shoot me. He knows you’ll kill him if he fires.”

  Branson laughed, a sickly sound. “She won’t shoot me.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Shane growled.

  Branson sidled toward the door. “You can’t do it, can you sweetheart? You can’t shoot a man down like a dog.”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “Yes.” He smiled wickedly and took another step. “I did.”

  Gigi absorbed the evil gleam in Branson’s eye. Studied the nervous contraction of his fingers around the handle of the gun. He was going to kill Shane before he left, and then he was going to kill her.

  And she still couldn’t make herself fire.

  Frantically, she looked to Shane and saw understanding in his eyes. More, she saw love. He knew she couldn’t do it, and he forgave her for it. Loved her for it.

  In that moment, it was like the sun rose for the first time after an Alaskan winter. Her whole muddled life suddenly became clear.

  She loved him, too. Her heart burst with it; her mind rang with it. She loved Shane enough to die for him. She loved him enough to kill for him, if she had to.

  She took a cleansing breath and imagined the penny on the barrel of the gun, just like he’d taught her. She wouldn’t kill in cold blood, but she was ready to tell Shane to go ahead and find something to tie Branson up with. She’d protect him. If Branson so much as twitched when Shane moved, she would fire.

  Branson must have sensed that she’d made her decision, and with it become the stronger threat. He swung his gun toward her.

  Shane leaped into the air between them as two simultaneous gunshots boomed through the room.

  The world spun and went dark. She was aware she fell, but she didn’t know who was killed and who was alive.

  Branson. Her. Or Shane.

  Chapter 14

  A cold mist swirled and danced in Gigi’s head. Like the fog over the ice the first time she’d seen Swan Lake. It wasn’t the real ballet, but one of those ice-skating productions put on for kids. Her father had taken her for her seventh birthday, and she’d been enchanted. With the ballet and with him.

  For weeks afterward he’d called her his little ballerina and she’d pranced around the house, raising her arms over her head and twirling in clumsy, childish pirouettes, claiming to be Odette, the swan, waiting to be rescued by a man’s undying love.

  “Hey, beautiful.” Shane’s rich baritone voice cut through the fog. “Are you awake?”

  Something warm and slightly rough—his fingers?—stroked her forearm, waking her nerve endings one by one.

  “Mm, my prince,” she murmured, her mind still half caught in her Swan Lake dream.

  Shane’s laughter vibrated inside her like a cello’s low chord. “Hardly,” he said.

  The mist in her mind gradually cleared and she opened her eyes not to a cold ice rink, but to the searing heat of a lazy, heart-bursting, bone-melting, trust-me-baby blue-eyed smile.

  She closed her eyes a second, but when she opened them again, he was still there. “Am I dreaming?” she murmured.

  “No, darlin’. You’re awake.”

  “Where am I?” Her gaze roamed the room, trying to place the utilitarian furniture, the sea-foam green tile floor, the emergency exit directions posted on the back of the door.

  “In the hospital,” Shane explained.

  The memories crashed over her, sucked the breath from her chest. “Oh!” she gasped. Ignoring the lance of pain in her shoulder, she turned her head, scanning Shane’s body frantically. “Are you all right?”

  He soothed her forehead with his palm, gently pushing her head back to the pillow. “Shh. I’m fine. You were the one needing a doctor this time. I have to say, I much prefer being on the other end of the first-aid efforts. You scared the hell out of me, bleeding all over like that.”

  Her vision cleared enough to see the lines of exhaustion fanning out from his eyes. The bruise and butterfly bandage on his temple. “You’re really okay? Really?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “But you jumped in front of him! You—you—” She stopped resisting and fell back, gulping for breath, her eyes closed. “You weren’t supposed to do that. You weren’t supposed to die for me.”

  “And you weren’t supposed to kill for me, remember?”

  Her eyes flew open, suddenly heavy with tears. “Oh, God. Did I kill him?”

  “No.”

  “But I shot him?”

  “You didn’t hit anything vital. Unfortunately.”

  Her heart rapped at her breastbone like a woodpecker. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Fast, sharp little beats.

  “Don’t feel badly for him, Gigi. He made his choice. You did what you had to do.”

  “You knew, didn’t you?” she asked. “You knew it was him, and he was after me. That’s why you came back to Utah.”

  Shane stroked the hair back from her temple, his expression turning somber as he nodded.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Your father told me.”

  “My—?” A new pain knifed through her. She’d almost forgotten her father in all the confusion. She braced herself against the hurt that came with thinking of him in prison. “What did he do? Trade information for a lighter sentence?”

  “No. He traded his sentence for the truth.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  A smile broke across Shane’s face. “He didn’t do it. Any of it. Ben Carlisle was the one laundering money, not your father. It seems Uncle Ben had racked up some sizable gambling debts and was working for the mob to pay them off, though he never actually saw any of the men he was working for, or knew their names. Your father caught him and convinced him to turn himself in. Your dad figured it would go easier for Carlisle if he gave himself up than if someone else reported him.

  “But then, the next thing he knew, Carlisle was dead and you were missing. There were rumors that someone in law enforcement was involved in the whole scam. Your father didn’t dare come forward with what he knew, at least not until he was sure you were safe. So he put his top security men—along with a dozen private investigators across the country—to work finding you. They tracked us to Phoenix by following Branson’s moves.”

  Gigi absorbed Shane’s statement for several long moments, hardly daring to believe it. “But he confessed.”

  “To buy you time. He bribed the guards at the jail, tried to call you and warn you.”

  A rock fell to the pit of her stomach. “And I wouldn’t pick up the phone.”

  Shane cocked his head in subtle confirmation.

  “Why would he do it? Why would he protect me after all these years.”

  “Maybe he was protecting you all along.”

  Gigi frowned. Shane was still talking in riddles, and her head ached too much to solve puzzles.

  Her confusion must have been obvious, because he took her hand and explained be
fore she’d had a chance to ask. He told her about his talk with her father. About her father’s grief after her mother’s death, and how he thought his bitterness would taint Gigi, so he sent her away. He told her about wanting to change it later and not knowing how.

  By the time he finished, fresh tears had spilled over her eyelids and burned tracks down her cheeks.

  “All those years,” she said. “All the time I spent hating him and loving him at the same time. He needed me, and I didn’t see it.”

  “You were just a kid.”

  “Maybe at first. But later I should have seen what he was going through. What he was doing. But I just thought he didn’t love me.”

  “He loves you, Gigi. He always has. He just didn’t know how to show it.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut against the leakage. “I should have tried harder. When he pulled back, I shouldn’t have given up. I should have held on. But I just let him slip away.”

  “There was nothing you could have done.”

  She turned her grief into anger to stop the tears. “I should have tried. I was his family. His only family.”

  Shane stiffened like he was expecting a blow, then slowly relaxed as he blew out a long breath. “Family is just people, Gigi—people who love each other, but still people. And people make mistakes.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about family,” she grumbled.

  A hint of a smile curled up the corners of his mouth. “I don’t. But your father does. Those are his words. Not mine. He was talking about himself, and the mistakes he made when you were eight.”

  Her shoulders shook. The movement jarred her shoulder painfully, and it took her a long time to push the pain aside. “Then he’s free?” she finally asked.

  “Margo sprung him this morning. He’s on his way here.”

  Her father. Coming here. To see her. He’d never come to see her, in all the years she’d been away. She raised her hand to smooth her hair, stopping short when she felt the pull on the tube taped to her arm. “I—I can’t see him like this.”

  Vanity was ridiculous at that point, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t know what else to feel.

  Shane patted a curl down on the side of her head. “You look fine. Gorgeous as ever.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Start with hello and let him take it from there.”

  She picked at the fuzz on the blanket. She darted a look up at Shane, then lowered her eyes. “He really wants to see me? After I betrayed him?”

  “You didn’t betray him,” he said firmly. “I did.”

  “You couldn’t have known he was innocent.” She looked at him, fighting back her own anguish to quench his. “I didn’t. And I’m his daughter.”

  “But you gave him a chance to explain. Or at least you tried.”

  “Don’t blame yourself Shane. Blame Branson. You were just protecting me.”

  “No. I was protecting me. You were right about me. I was afraid.” He shook his head, twining his fingers with hers and holding on tight enough to hurt. But his voice seemed to draw strength from the bond, so she didn’t struggle. “I was afraid you’d choose him over me.”

  “Oh, Shane,” she said, her eyes misting up again. To hell with the pain in her shoulder. She reached up and caressed his jaw. His short, golden growth of beard stubble rasped her knuckles. “I choose you both.”

  “Smart girl,” a familiar baritone voice rumbled from the doorway.

  Shane and Gigi both jumped. Gigi looked up, her breath a wisp. “Hi, Daddy.”

  John Ferrar stepped into the room and hugged her—a gentle cupping of her shoulders and peck on the cheek, as if he thought she might crumble in his grasp.

  “How are you feeling, princess?” His voice was gruff, whether from years of use, or emotion, she couldn’t be sure.

  He’d aged. The crevasses beside his eyes were twice as deep as she remembered. Then he tweaked her nose and winked, and he was thirty-five again, with burnished hair and a crooked grin.

  She blinked, and the vision disappeared.

  Shane stood. “I’ll give you two some time.”

  “Stay put,” her father ordered. “You two were in the middle of a serious conversation, it sounded like.” He looked at Shane. “This the conversation we talked about on the phone this morning?”

  “Yessir.” Shane grinned.

  Gigi looked from one to the other, trying to decipher the messages passing silently between them and finally giving up.

  Men. Who could understand them?

  “Then I’m definitely in the way here right now. I believe I’ll head down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee,” her father said. “But when you’re finished, I’ll take my turn. My daughter and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Yessir,” Shane said again, still grinning as her father closed the door behind him. When he’d gone, Shane turned back to Gigi. “I think I like your father.”

  “I think I’m going to like him, too, once I get to know him.” She drew a breath as deep as her injuries would allow. “It’s going to be strange, having a dad again. I’m not sure I know how. But I’m looking forward to trying.”

  Shane turned serious. “You’ll be moving back to New York, then?”

  “No.” She answered before she really thought about it, but she knew it was the right answer. “I want to spend some time with him. But I told you before, my home is here now.”

  Did he look relieved, or was it her imagination?

  “How about you? Will you try to get your job back with the DEA?”

  He sighed. “No. I meant it when I said I was tired of trying to save the whole world.” He looked up at her through a golden forest of lashes. That sexy lock of hair fell over his eyes, hooding them even more. “But I think maybe I could handle saving one small piece of it.”

  A slow smile broke across her face as she guessed his meaning. “Maybe a piece in southwest Utah?”

  “Maybe.” He chuckled and flung the hair back out of his eyes. For a moment she wasn’t sure which she preferred, the sexy, roguish look, or a clear view of his cornflower blues.

  “I think I could get myself appointed interim sheriff. But sooner or later there’d have to be an election for the permanent position.”

  “You’d get my vote.”

  “I’d better,” he said. “How would it look if my own wife didn’t vote for me?”

  Gigi’s jaw fell slack. Her throat swelled shut and she couldn’t speak.

  Shane cleared his throat. “Something else your father said about family is that it’s about second chances. And third and fourth and fifth if that’s what it takes, but I’m hoping I won’t need that many.”

  “Sounds like you and my father had quite a talk,” she nearly croaked.

  “Several.”

  “Really?” She was intrigued. And outnumbered. The men in her life were ganging up on her already, she suspected.

  “In our first talk, he straightened me out on all this family stuff. In the second one, I straightened him out about it not being too late for the two of you and him getting his butt up here to see you. And in the third…”

  “Yes?” All this talk about her father was interesting, but she wanted him to get back to that wife thing…

  “In the third, I asked his permission to marry you.” Shane took a deep breath and slipped down to one knee beside the bed. “I love you, Gigi. Will you be my wife?”

  “Yes,” she croaked. “I love you, too. And yes.”

  He leaned over the bed, held her and kissed her. He was careful, but this was no fragile hug and peck. It was a full-blown, on-the-mouth, open, wet, hot, lovers’ embrace hug and kiss. A kiss that stole the last of her breath and left her dizzy.

  A kiss that promised to last a lifetime.

  Epilogue

  Careful not to snag the train of her gown, Gigi walked across the bedroom she and Shane had been sharing for nearly a month and sat before the oak dresser. Last week, Shane had bought
the cabin he’d been renting during his stay in Pine Valley, and they planned to make it their home.

  Out in the great room, she could hear voices, people milling about, laughter. A wedding should be a happy occasion. Until this morning, she had been certain hers would be.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Nerves buzzing in her stomach like a honeybee hive, Gigi straightened the pins that held her veil in place and studied her reflection in the dresser mirror one last time. Only the woman’s image reflected back to her wasn’t Gigi McCowan. She hadn’t been Gigi since news of all that had happened spread through the town after the shooting.

  But she didn’t feel like Julia Ferrar, either. She wasn’t the same woman who had left New York three years ago; she’d changed too much. Though she was happy to have her father in her life again, she couldn’t go back to the person she had been.

  Who she was wasn’t important anyway. Who she was going to be, Shane’s wife, was what mattered. So she’d put her energy into planning this wedding. But now that was in jeopardy, too.

  Before she could say her vows, she had to break the news to Shane.

  Three raps sounded on the door, and Shane poked his head in. “You wanted to see me? I thought it was bad luck or something.”

  Bad luck. She hoped not. She worried the strands of pearls her father had given her. They’d been her mother’s and were serving as the “something old” for the ceremony. The pearls had been a surprise this morning. She thought her father had given her all her mother’s jewelry years ago. He said he’d saved these just for this occasion.

  Shane came into the room, breathtaking in his black tux and tie, and closed the door behind him. “Is something wrong? If it’s about the chairs, don’t worry. I brought a few more in from the kitchen. Everyone will have a place to sit.”

  She’d almost forgotten about the chairs. She’d miscounted the number of guests and ordered too few from the rental agency. She’d been bustling about figuring out where everyone was going to sit when the call came in. After the call, she’d forgotten just about everything.