by B. J Daniels
Thinking about AJ distracted her from thinking about Cyrus—or what awaited her at the ranch outside of Gilt Edge. From her phone call earlier with Flint Cahill, it was clear that she wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms. He’d practically hung up on her.
She reminded herself that she wasn’t just the woman who’d stolen Cyrus Cahill’s heart but she had swept him away on a Caribbean cruise where he was lost at sea. And now she suspected she was also the other woman.
Just how close had AJ and Cyrus been? Close enough that he’d confided in the woman?
The thought shook her to her core. Juliette hadn’t even considered that Cyrus would have shared anything with his family, not to mention his now-former girlfriend. He’d agreed not to say anything to any of them.
Not just that. She’d thought that all of his attention was on what was going on between them. Could she have been wrong?
It surprised her that she could still feel jealous, especially under the circumstances. It made her angry, angry with herself and even angrier with Cyrus who apparently had kept some things from her. She was going to have to find out just how tight he’d been with this AJ woman. AJ’s very life depended on it.
* * *
BILLIE DEE WIPED her eyes as she heard the back door of the Stagecoach Saloon open. She thought it might be her fiancé, Henry Larson. He came by most mornings she worked for a cup of coffee, but he’d already been by earlier.
She was glad to see that it was AJ. She’d been worried about her. Now the young woman came in, stomping snow off her boots and looking as if she’d been crying.
“I thought you were still upstairs asleep,” Billie Dee said, turning from the stove where she’d been cooking up a pot of chili. “It’s snowing again?” A winter storm–warning alert had been issued, but she’d hoped it wasn’t as serious as they were anticipating.
It was one of the reasons she’d made chili. Lillie and Darby had closed the bar temporarily so the family could meet here for updates. Billie Dee knew they’d be hungry. There was still chicken and dumplings left from yesterday, but they were Cyrus’s favorite, so none of the family wanted them right now.
She wiped her hands on her apron and moved to the young woman. To see AJ so brokenhearted was tearing her up inside. She wanted to comfort her and yet knew there was nothing she could say. She’d seen the way AJ had looked at Cyrus when he came around the saloon. Had he really run off and gotten married knowing the way AJ felt about him?
Well, when he was found, Billie Dee planned to give him a piece of her mind. Dang fool.
“His wife called Flint,” AJ said. “She wanted to know about Cyrus’s funeral.” Her voice broke. She wiped angrily at her tears.
Billie Dee could only stare for a moment. “His funeral?”
AJ choked out the words, “I overheard Flint say something about the search possibly being called off,” before she burst into tears.
Billie Dee took her in her arms. “Oh no.” She thought of the handsome cowboy. Shy, adorable, sneaking glances at AJ. She’d wanted to prod him with a cattle iron at times. Didn’t he see this beautiful young woman was in love with him? Hadn’t he taken her horseback riding? How could he get married to some stranger he just met?
And now he was gone. Billie Dee fought her own tears as she tried to soothe AJ. There was nothing she could say.
AJ pulled out of her arms. “I have to pack.”
“Wait. Where are you going?” She couldn’t bear losing her too. “You aren’t going back to Texas, are you?”
“I’m going to find Cyrus.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Billie Dee could see no good coming of this. “He’s gone. If they called off the search—”
“He’s not dead. If he was dead, I would know it.” AJ shook her head adamantly. “He’s still alive.”
“If that were true, wouldn’t we have heard something? Maybe if you give it a little more time...”
“All I know is that something is wrong, really wrong, and I have to find him.” She started toward the stairs that led up to the apartment over the saloon.
Lillie Cahill had designed the upstairs apartment when she and her brother Darby bought the old stagecoach stop building to preserve it. Lillie had loved it but had moved out after her marriage to Trask Beaumont. Other family members had lived there before AJ. But AJ had made it her own and Billie Dee loved having the young woman up there since she spent so much time in the kitchen here. AJ had become like a daughter to her. Not to mention AJ was best friends with Billie Dee’s birth daughter, Gigi. It had been AJ who’d brought them together.
“I’m scared for you,” Billie Dee cried before AJ could disappear upstairs.
“Don’t be,” the young woman assured her, coming back down the steps to give her a quick hug. “I’ll be back. With Cyrus.” With that she was gone, leaving Billie Dee in fresh tears as she reached for her phone.
* * *
WHEN AJ CAME downstairs dragging her hastily packed suitcase, she found Flint waiting for her. He was dressed in his uniform coat, jeans and boots along with his Stetson, which he’d taken off and now held by the fingertips of his right hand. There was melted snow at his feet where he’d been waiting by the door. She shot a look at Billie Dee, who quickly avoided her gaze. Of course her friend had called him to try to stop her.
“You can’t talk me out of this,” she told the sheriff.
“The highway south is closed between Eddie’s Corner and Harlowton. Also the road from Grass Range to Roundup,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere today.”
She stared at him, feeling sobs of frustration rising in her chest. “Cyrus is out there. Alone. He needs me.” As she began to cry, Flint pulled her into his arms.
His cell phone rang. He pulled it out to glance at the screen, and then at AJ. “I need to take this.”
Billie Dee quickly moved to AJ, took the rolling suitcase from her and led her into the bar area of the establishment. “Would a drink help?” she asked, stepping behind the bar.
AJ shook her head. Nothing would help. She looked toward the front windows. It was snowing and blowing so hard that she couldn’t see across the road out front. She pulled up a stool and plopped down as Billie Dee slid a glass of cola in front of her. She smiled at the older woman, knowing that she was just trying to help.
“I could put a shot of rum in it,” the cook offered again.
“Don’t tempt me.” It was a temptation to lose herself in anything that would take her mind off Cyrus for even a few moments. The saloon wouldn’t normally open for another hour. But AJ had seen the closed sign posted outside blowing in the storm when she’d returned from the sheriff’s office. By now, the news about Cyrus would be racing like wildfire through the county.
“At least the water in the Caribbean is warm,” she said and took a sip of the cola and shivered.
They both turned as Flint came back into the room. AJ looked at the sheriff expectantly as she tried to read his expression. Had the phone call been about Cyrus? Was there news?
“That was Juliette on the phone,” he said as if he didn’t want to call her Cyrus’s wife any more than AJ wanted to hear it. But at Billie Dee’s confused look, he said, “Juliette Cahill.” He turned back to AJ. “Apparently she was just outside of Gilt Edge when she called me earlier. She’s at the local hotel.”
“She’s in town?” AJ cried and looked around as if there was somewhere to run from all of this.
“I’m sorry,” Flint said. “I know how hard this is for you. But she wants to meet the family.”
AJ started to slide off her stool to leave, but he stopped her. “She said she especially wanted to meet you since Cyrus had talked so much about you.”
She dropped back on the stool as if she’d been shot through the heart. Cyrus had told this woman all about her? This woman he’d run off and married?
Flint shook his head, looking just a
s surprised and upset as she felt. “You don’t have to do this. But I thought you’d like to hear what she has to say.”
For a moment, she’d just wanted to run. Meet Cyrus’s wife? Meet the woman he’d fallen for in the snap of her fingers when he’d taken forever to ask AJ on a horseback ride and hadn’t even kissed her? How could he marry someone he just met?
She took a deep breath and let it out. Both the sheriff and cook were staring at her, waiting for her answer. The lawyer in her, and her suspicious nature that’d made her good at her job before she’d quit to run off to Montana, wanted nothing more than to size up this woman and decide for herself exactly what had happened in Denver to make Cyrus Cahill do something so rash and so out of character.
“You’re right. I want to meet her,” AJ said.
“And pull out her bleached-blond hair a handful at a time,” Billie Dee said.
Flint shot her a disapproving look. “I think we should try to keep this civil. We need to know what happened and this woman is probably the only one who knows.”
“Except for whoever threw him overboard,” AJ said.
Flint didn’t bother trying to correct her. “Are you going to be all right?”
She nodded and listened as he got on the phone to the rest of the family. It wasn’t until he hung up that Billie Dee said, “I should get back to my chili.” None of them had questioned her cooking up a batch even though the saloon wasn’t going to open. It was what the woman did. She fed people. It was the way she loved those she cared for.
“You’re family,” the sheriff said to Billie Dee. “And I know that you’re going to want to meet her too. I also suspect that your chili won’t go to waste, although don’t expect me to have much of an appetite.”
Billie Dee nodded, smiling and touching his shoulder as she passed on her way to the kitchen. “We all still need to eat. Especially now.” She added, “You know we’re going to hate her.”
Flint gave her a sad smile. “I know.”
* * *
JULIETTE CAHILL PARTED the curtains and stared out at the falling snow, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. It was her childhood all over again, she thought. Small rural western town in the middle of nowhere. Snow and cold. She’d buried the memory of the pain and hardship of her childhood deep, but not deep enough apparently. This place brought it all back.
As she’d driven through the town of Gilt Edge, she’d half expected to see her father coming out of the hardware store in his blue overalls, his dirty, worn canvas jacket pulled awkwardly around him, that permanent scowl on his cross face.
It had seemed so real and she’d been staring so hard at the door into the store that she’d almost run a red light. She’d hit the brakes, sliding on the icy, snow-packed road. The car had finally come to a stop in the middle of the intersection. Her heart had been pounding hard, all of it too familiar, all of it a nightmare she’d thought long behind her.
Fortunately, no one hit her rental car. Not that there was much traffic. All the way to this godforsaken town, she’d seen few cars. Anyone with a brain would be far from here.
Now, as she looked outside, she knew she had to pull herself together. But she couldn’t help think of the way Cyrus had talked about this place. She supposed a town like this was easier to love when you had money.
Where did you grow up? he had asked her.
In the big city, she’d said, lying through her teeth. As a girl, that had been her dream. Anywhere but on a dusty dilapidated farm in the middle of Idaho where her father barely eked out a living enough to keep his large family fed. She thought of the threadbare dresses she’d worn to school, handed down from her sisters. She’d never had a new dress until she ran away.
Even now, she couldn’t shake the image of her mother’s red, chapped hands as she’d sewed the worn places in the rotting cloth to make the dresses last just a little bit longer. And always that same admonishment when she complained, You should count your blessings that you have anything to wear at all.
The taste of humiliation in her mouth, she let the curtain fall back into place. This rural town, this state, brought it all back. The nightmare of her childhood as well as her girlhood dreams of escaping that life. Her sisters hadn’t, but she’d known that if she stayed past sixteen, she’d be married to some good ol’ boy like her father and have a half-dozen hungry mouths to feed.
The night she ran away, she kept telling herself that she would never go hungry again. Never wear someone else’s discarded clothing. Never again know the defeating, soul-stealing grip of poverty, no matter what she had to do.
When she’d left that dusty farm, the dilapidated paint-bare house, she’d left poor little Julie Barnes behind and never looked back.
Juliette fumbled out the keys to her rental car, dreading the drive. Sheriff Flint Cahill would be waiting with the rest of Cyrus’s family, including his former girlfriend AJ. She wasn’t looking forward to the drive out to the Stagecoach Saloon on the edge of town. For a woman who left little to chance, she hadn’t counted on a winter storm. On the way up, she’d heard about the highway closures. Now she was snowed in here and had no idea how long before she would be able to leave.
All she could think was that this trip had better be productive. She was anxious to see the Cahill Ranch, but after what she’d seen of the tiny rural town of Gilt Edge, she feared Cyrus had been exaggerating about not just the place, but the size of the ranch.
She hadn’t been interested in the town and hadn’t really been listening when Cyrus had told her about it. What she’d wanted to know about was the ranch.
“I know it’s rude to ask, but how many cattle do you run?” Juliette had asked anyway—once she had a few drinks into Cyrus. When he’d told her, she’d thought, not bad. “And land?” Also not bad. It had made her think of her family’s pitiful little plot.
She’d told Flint that it had been love at first sight for both of them. That hadn’t been exactly true. A cowboy wasn’t her type under normal circumstances. Even one dressed as if he had money.
But that night in Denver hadn’t been under normal circumstances, she reminded herself. Beggars can’t be choosers, her mother used to say. It certainly fit in this case. If there had been anyone but the cowboy in the bar that night who looked like a more likely prospect, she would have steered clear of Cyrus, leaving him to his one drink on his way to bed. Clearly he hadn’t wanted company. All he could talk about was getting back home and eating Billie Dee’s chicken and dumplings—whoever Billie Dee was.
But the moment she heard from the man with him that Cyrus had bought himself a three-hundred-thousand-dollar bull, she’d gone for him straight as a bullet. If he could afford a bull that cost that much...
But Montana was all he talked about. It was clear that he couldn’t wait to get back here. Even then she’d suspected there was a woman. No man was that antsy to return to his horse.
Which made Juliette all the more anxious to meet AJ and find out just how much this woman and Cyrus had shared.
She took another breath and let it out slowly. She was Mrs. Cyrus Cahill, the grieving widow. Still, she felt a shiver of apprehension. Too bad Cyrus hadn’t mentioned that one of his brothers was the sheriff. But she’d dealt with small town law before. Why would this one be any different?
* * *
WHEN THE CAR pulled up in front of the Stagecoach Saloon, Darby hurried to the front door to open it. They had all gathered again in the saloon after Flint had given Juliette the directions to the establishment just outside of town.
“I already hate her,” Lillie said, sounding near tears.
Her sister-in-law Mariah had taken her hand. “Let’s not forget that Cyrus fell in love with her and married her.”
How could any of them forget that? AJ thought. She stared at the door, trying to see through the falling snow as a figure emerged from the car and heade
d toward the entrance. Her heart felt as if it would beat from her chest. She kept saying the words in her head. Cyrus had married this woman. But no matter how many times she said it, her next thought was always the same. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
Now though, she was finally going to meet the woman and decide for herself if it was possible that Cyrus had really fallen for her, married her and then died after falling off a cruise ship in the Caribbean. It all felt surreal, like a nightmare she just wanted to end. She’d wanted Cyrus to drive up to the front door of the saloon—not his wife.
Darby opened the door for the woman and ushered her inside. She came in on a gust of wind and a flurry of snowflakes. She stopped just inside. She wore a long red wool coat, sleek black boots and a scarf that hid most of her blond hair and part of her face. Everything about her said privileged, AJ thought, having grown up the same way. But she wasn’t quite believing it. That something-is-wrong feeling even stronger.
As Juliette Cahill took off her scarf, she raised her gaze to them gathered around the bar. Her blue eyes sparkled with unshed tears and for a moment, she looked as if she might faint. Darby grabbed her arm to steady her and Flint moved toward the two of them.
AJ stood frozen in place. Was it possible that all of it had been real? That the only thing that was wrong was that Cyrus had fallen in love? She could actually see how that might have happened. Juliette was a striking beauty, slim and graceful as she slipped out of her coat and let Darby take it.
Flint led her over to the family and began to introduce each one. By the time he got to her, AJ could barely speak. Juliette had been polite and gracious to each member of the family, even Lillie, who everyone could see took an instant dislike to her—just as she’d said.
But when Flint got to AJ, Juliette grasped her hand in both of hers and drew her closer.
“Cyrus told me so much about each of you, but especially you, AJ,” the woman said. “I feel as if I already know you.” She released her hand and pulled AJ into a quick hug. “I hope we can be friends.”
