by B. J Daniels
* * *
“I SAW YOU dancing with Drey,” Lillie said to her brother Hawk a while later. “Whatever happened with you two?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Exactly. Why not?”
He shook his head, smiling patiently at his sister. “Isn’t it enough that Darby is married now? Can’t you leave the rest of us in peace?”
“You still like her.”
“Lillie!”
“Oh my gosh, you’re actually blushing.”
“If I’m turning red, which I’m not, then it is out of fury. You are not going to play matchmaker with me. Do you understand? Stay out of my love life.”
“What love life?”
“I’m warning you, little sis.”
She grinned at him. “Now I’m more curious than ever what happened between the two of you.”
Hawk groaned. He knew how tenacious his sister could be once she set her mind to something. Out on the dance floor, he saw Junior Wainwright spin Drey. The two were laughing. He turned away, but not before Lillie had seen his expression.
He’d thought she would be grinning but instead she looked sad for him. That was the last thing he wanted, he thought as he stepped to the bar for a drink.
Drey was his past. Better to leave her there. Anyway, she’d come here with Wainwright, the most eligible bachelor in town.
* * *
FLINT AND MAGGIE stepped outside to stare up at the stars. The clear summer night smelled of pine as a light breeze whispered in the nearby trees.
He looked out across the wide valley for a moment. The lights of Gilt Edge rose up into the night like the aurora borealis. Then he turned to take in Maggie.
“Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, you did, but please don’t let me stop you,” she said with a laugh.
“I love that dress on you.”
She smiled and turned in a circle. “I thought you might like it. Someone told me that blue looks good on me.”
“Whoever they were, they were right,” he agreed as he pulled her closer. “You’re radiant tonight.” And she was. He knew part of it had to be that she felt good. Safe. He’d been worried that his ex-wife might do something to try to ruin this night, but he and Maggie had been dating for weeks and Celeste had done nothing.
He’d hoped that once Celeste realized that he was serious about Maggie, that would be the end of it. He was happy to have been right. Also, it probably didn’t hurt that he’d talked to Wayne. Celeste wouldn’t want to lose the money and prestige that came with being married to Wayne Duma.
Flint was just glad all that was behind them. He put his arms around Maggie and looked into her luminous brown eyes. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with this woman. He’d even thought about asking her to marry him tonight. He had the ring in his jacket pocket.
But this was his sister and brother’s night, he told himself. He and Maggie had many more beautiful nights. When the perfect time came around, he’d know.
The sheriff kissed his beautiful date as the band played and fireworks lit the sky.
* * *
THE RECEPTION WAS held at Lillie and Trask’s new home on the ranch he’d bought. Everything was perfect—just as Lillie had hoped. Tiny lights twinkled in the warm summer night as the band played on.
On the dance floor, Darby pulled his wife closer. His wife. He looked into Mariah’s dark eyes. Sometimes he thought he could see the future there as if he was the fortune-teller in the family. He saw a home on the land his father had given him for a wedding present. It was a nice piece on the ranch away from everyone with a great view of the four mountains ranges that circled the valley.
He saw himself and Mariah with a half dozen kids running around. Fortunately, in this future, they weren’t all theirs. Some were, but there were cousins galore. His and Mariah’s had their dark hair, a couple with his gray eyes, a couple with her deep brown ones. Two boys, two girls.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she said as they moved to the music of a slow love song.
“I was just thinking about our kids.”
She raised a brow.
“Two boys, two girls. The girls look just like you. The boys—”
“Let me guess, look just like you?”
He laughed. “I can see the house we’re going to build. We’ll need a lot of bedrooms and a huge area for the kids to play. Their cousins will be over all the time. You do like kids, don’t you?”
She smiled. “I love them. In fact...” Her gaze met his. “I was going to wait to tell you this...”
“Mariah?” His heart took off in a gallop.
She nodded and he let out a rip-roaring cattle call and swung her around, putting her down gently as the song ended.
“You might as well tell everyone,” Mariah said with a laugh. “I can see that you are busting your buttons to.”
He kissed her and then turned toward the crowd. “We’re going to have a baby!”
Applause, laughter and congratulations filled the room.
Darby caught his sister’s look and began to laugh. “Hold on, I think we’re about to have another announcement.” More applause, laughter and congratulations followed.
He watched his sister and Mariah, both laughing as they hugged each other. His heart soared with happiness as his family crowded around him.
Ely insisted they open more champagne because it wasn’t every day he found out he was going to be a grandfather.
“To the Cahills!” Flint said, lifting his champagne glass in a toast. “There is nothing like them.”
“Thank heavens!” someone called from the crowd.
The band began to play again as Darby took his wife in his arms. The luckiest day of his life was the one when he first saw this woman, he thought. The happiest was right now when the future spread out like a Montana summer day before them. “To luck and love,” he whispered as he pulled her close. “Together, we have both.”
* * * * *
SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM
The kidnapping of the McGraw twins devastated this ranching family. Twenty-five years later, when a true crime writer investigates, will the family be able to endure the truth?
Read on for a sneak preview of DARK HORSE, the first book in a new series from New York Times bestselling author B.J. Daniels, WHITEHORSE, MONTANA: THE MCGRAW KIDNAPPING
Keep reading for an excerpt from DARK HORSE by B.J. Daniels.
New York Times bestselling author B.J. Daniels takes you to the small town of Gilt Edge, Montana, in her captivating and compulsively readable Cahill Ranch series!
It’s been nine years since Trask Beaumont left Gilt Edge, Montana... Tired of running, this rugged cowboy is back in town and determined to uncover the truth of the past so he can hope for a future with the woman he’s never forgotten.
Renegade’s Pride
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Darby Cahill is the kind of guy who saves people and when he meets Mariah Ayres, he’s determined to protect her—and he’ll risk his life to do it...
Outlaw’s Honor
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When Sheriff Flint Cahill’s lover, Maggie, disappears, he knows his ex-wife is behind it. But with a winter storm coming, can he find her before it’s too late?
Cowboy’s Legacy
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“Super read by an excellent writer. Recommended!”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller on Renegade’s Pride
Can’t get enough? If you love strong cowboys, hot romance and thrilling suspense, then be sure to catch the thrilling Montana Hamiltons series!
Honor Bound
Into Dust
Hard Rain
Lone Rider
Wild Horses
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“[The Montana Hamiltons] should definitely be on the must read list...a great introduction for new readers to this amazing author.”
—Fresh Fiction
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Dark Horse
by B.J. Daniels
Their footfalls echoed among the terrified screams and woeful sobbing as they moved down the long hallway. The nurse’s aide, a young woman named Tess, stopped at a room in the criminally insane section of the hospital and, with trembling fingers, pulled out a key to unlock the door.
“I really shouldn’t be doing this,” Tess said, looking around nervously. As the door swung open, she quickly moved back. Nikki St. James felt a gust of air escape the room like an exhaled breath. The light within the interior was dim, but she could hear the sound of a chair creaking rhythmically.
“I’m going to have to lock the door behind you,” Tess whispered.
“Not yet.” It took a moment for Nikki’s eyes to adjust to the dim light within the room. She fought back the chill that skittered over her skin like spider legs as her gaze finally lit on the occupant.
“This is the wrong one,” Nikki said and tried to step back into the hallway.
“That’s her,” the nurse’s aide said, keeping her voice down. “That’s Marianne McGraw.”
Nikki stared at the white-haired, slack-faced woman rocking back and forth, back and forth, her gaze blank as if blind. “That woman is too old. Her hair—”
“Her hair turned white overnight after...well, after what happened. She’s been like this ever since.” Tess shuddered and hugged herself as if she felt the same chill Nikki did.
“She hasn’t spoken in all that time?”
“Not a word. Her husband comes every day to visit her. She never responds.”
Nikki was surprised that Travers McGraw would come to visit his former wife at all, given what she was suspected of doing. Maybe, like Nikki, he came hoping for answers. “What about her children?”
“They visit occasionally, the oldest son more than the others, but she doesn’t react as if she knows any of them. That’s all she does, rock like that for hours on end.”
Cull McGraw, the oldest son, Nikki thought. He’d been seven, a few years older than her, at the time of the kidnapping. His brothers Boone and Ledger were probably too young to remember the kidnapping, maybe even too young to really remember their mother.
“If you’re going in, you’d best hurry,” Tess said, still looking around nervously.
Nikki took a step into the room, hating the thought of the nurse’s aide locking the door behind her. As her eyes adjusted more to the lack of light, she saw that the woman had something clutched against her chest. A chill snaked up her spine as she made out two small glassy-eyed faces looking out at her from under matted heads of blond hair.
“What’s that she’s holding?” she whispered hoarsely as she hurriedly turned to Tess before the woman could close and lock the door.
“Her babies.”
“Her babies?”
“They’re just old dolls. They need to be thrown in the trash. We tried to switch them with new ones, but she had a fit. When we bathe or change her, we have to take them away. She screams and tears at her hair until we give them back. It was the doctor’s idea, giving her the dolls. Before that, she was...violent. She had to be sedated or you couldn’t get near her. Like I said, you go in there at your own risk. She’s...unpredictable and, if provoked, dangerous, since she’s a lot stronger than she looks. If I were you, I’d make it quick.”
Nikki reached for her notebook as the door closed behind her. The tumblers in the lock sounded like a cannon going off as Tess locked the door.
At your own risk. Comforting words, Nikki thought as she took a tentative step deeper into the padded room. She’d read everything she could find on the McGraw kidnapping case. There’d been a lot of media coverage at the time—and a lot of speculation. Every anniversary for years, the same information had been repeated along with the same plea for anything about the two missing twins, Oakley Travers McGraw and Jesse Rose McGraw.
But no one had ever come forward. The ransom money had never been recovered nor the babies found. There’d been nothing new to report at the one-year anniversary, then the five-, ten-, fifteen-and twenty-year.
Now with the twenty-fifth one coming up, few people other than those around Whitehorse, Montana, would probably even remember the kidnapping.
“There is nothing worse than old news,” her grandfather had told her when she’d dropped by his office at the large newspaper where he was publisher. Wendell St. James had been sitting behind his huge desk, his head of thick gray hair as wild as his eyebrows, his wire-rimmed glasses perched precariously on his patrician nose. “You’re wasting your time with this one.”
Actually he thought she was wasting her time writing true crime books. He’d hoped that she would follow him into the newspaper business instead. It didn’t matter that out of the nine books she’d written, she’d solved seven of the crimes.
“Someone knows what happened that night,” she’d argued.
“Well, if they do, it’s a pretty safe bet they aren’t going to suddenly talk after twenty-five years.”
“Maybe they’re getting old and they can’t live with what they’ve done,” she’d said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
He’d snorted and settled his steely gaze on her. “I wasn’t for the other stories you chased, but this one...” He shook his head. “Don’t you think I know what you’re up to? I suspect this is your mother’s fault. She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut, could she?”
“She didn’t tell me about my father,” she’d corrected her grandfather. “I discovered it on my own.” For years, she’d believed she was the daughter of a stranger her mother had fallen for one night. A mistake. “All these years, the two of you have lied to me, letting me believe I was an accident, a one-night stand, and that explained why I had my mother’s maiden name.”
“We protected you, you mean. And now you’ve got some lamebrain idea of clearing your father’s name.” Wendell swore under his breath. “My daughter has proved that she is the worst possible judge of men, given her track record. But I thought you were smarter than this.”
“There was no real proof my father was involved,” Nikki had argued stubbornly. Her biological father had been working at the Sundown Stallion Station the summer of the kidnapping. His name had been linked with Marianne McGraw’s, the mother of the twins. “Mother doesn’t believe he had an affair with Marianne, nor does she believe he had any part in the kidnapping.”
“What do you expect your mother to say?” he’d demanded.
“She knew him better than you.”
Her grandfather mugged a disbelieving face. “What else did she tell you about the kidnapping?”
Her mother had actually known little. While Nikki would have demanded answers, her mother said she was just happy to visit with her husband, since he was locked up until his trial.
“She didn’t ask him anything about the kidnapping because your mother wouldn’t have wanted to hear the truth.”
She’d realized then that h
er grandfather’s journalistic instincts had clearly skipped a generation. Nikki would have had to know everything about that night, even if it meant finding out that her husband was involved.
“A jury of twelve found him guilty of not only the affair—but the kidnapping,” her grandfather had said.
“On circumstantial evidence.”
“On the testimony of the nanny who said that Marianne McGraw wasn’t just unstable, she feared she might hurt the twins. The nanny also testified that she saw Marianne with your father numerous times in the barn and they seemed...close.”
She’d realized that her grandfather knew more about this case than he’d originally let on. “Yes, the nanny, the woman who is now the new wife of Travers McGraw. That alone is suspicious. I would think you’d encourage me to get the real story of what happened that night. And what does...close mean anyway?”
Her grandfather had put down his pen with an impatient sigh. “The case is dead cold after twenty-five years. Dozens of very good reporters, not to mention FBI agents and local law enforcement, did their best to solve it, so what in hell’s name makes you think that you can find something that they missed?”
She’d shrugged. “I have my grandfather’s stubborn arrogance and the genes of one of the suspects. Why not me?”
He’d wagged his gray head again. “Because you’re too personally involved, which means that whatever story you get won’t be worth printing.”
She’d dug her heels in. “I became a true crime writer because I wanted to know more than what I read in the newspapers.”
“Bite your tongue,” her grandfather had said, only half joking. He’d sobered then, looking worried. “What if you don’t like what you find out about your father, or your mother, for that matter? I know my daughter.”
“What does that mean?”
He’d given another shake of his gray head. “Clearly your mind is made up, and since I can’t sanction this...” With an air of dismissal, he’d picked up his pen again. “If that’s all...”
She’d started toward the door, but before she could exit, he called after her, “Watch your back, Punky.” It had been his nickname for her since she was a baby. “Remember what I told you about family secrets.”
