by B. J Daniels
Parked along the main street that faced the railroad tracks were always more pickups than cars. This was ranching country and the talk in the cafés and the bars always came back to the price of wheat and beef, the promise of rain, the threat of hail.
Dalton was considering stopping in the Great Northern for a cup of coffee when someone caught his eye. Just up the street a woman stood in front of a shop window. She appeared to be interested in something in the window.
He’d seen Nicci stand like that when she knew she was being watched. Her head was turned away slightly—just as it had been on the late-night television news. Even though she was no longer wearing the baseball cap, he could see that it was the same woman.
Dalton felt himself stagger as if a crushing weight had been dropped onto his chest. Fighting to catch his breath, he stopped under the shade of the hardware store’s awning to get control. The woman wasn’t Nicci. She just reminded him of Nicci enough to take him back to when he was eighteen and thought he knew everything.
Nicci had taught him how little he knew, a lesson that had almost gotten him killed and left him more than a little distrustful of women.
She stood in front of a small shop called In Stitches according to the sign. He’d never paid much attention to the store since it sold yarn.
Determined to get a better look at the woman and put this foolishness to rest, he stepped from under the awning into the morning sun.
As he drew closer, the woman slowly turned her head toward him. Her look said she’d known he’d been watching her the whole time.
She wore a large pair of dark sunglasses that hid part of her face and obscured her eyes. Still he could feel her green-eyed gaze, cold as the Arctic.
Before he could react, she turned and ducked into the yarn shop.
GEORGIA HAD JUST OPENED another box of yarn when she heard the click of heels on the floor as someone hurried into the shop.
“Be with you in just a moment,” Georgia called from behind the stacked boxes of yarn. She started toward the counter with a skein of cerulean-blue mohair yarn in her hand. The wool was soft and beautiful. She was smiling, pleased at the quality of her order, when she looked up to see the blond woman rushing toward her.
“Please, help me,” the woman whispered. “There’s a man chasing me.”
Through the open front door, Georgia heard the sound of someone running down the sidewalk in their direction. She took a step around a display table toward the front door, thinking she could reach the door and lock it before—
A tall, broad-shouldered man of about thirty, wearing a gray Stetson, jeans, boots and a Western shirt, rushed in. She’d seen the cowboy before somewhere, but couldn’t place him.
“A blond woman just came in here. Where is she?” he demanded between ragged breaths. He would have been handsome had his face not been twisted in such anguish.
Before Georgia could answer, he spotted the open back door and rushed through the shop to the alley. She held her breath as she looked around the shop and didn’t see the woman anywhere.
The cowboy quickly returned from the alley, looking even more upset as he entered the shop and seemed to sniff the air.
“I know she came in here, so you had to have seen her. Blond, big sunglasses.”
“I’m sorry but I was busy putting away yarn.” Georgia held up the skein in her hand, indicating the stack of boxes piled in the corner against the wall of shelves with cubbyholes that displayed each type and color of yarn.
He glanced at the stack of boxes, then at her. His face was flushed and he was breathing hard. “You had to have seen her. Just tell me which way she went.” He looked as if he wanted to shake the truth out of her.
“I already told you…” Georgia noticed that the man’s big hands were balled into fists. She backed toward the counter where the landline phone sat. “Please, I think you should leave now.”
“You don’t understand. I have to know where she went.” His gaze went to the door leading up to the second floor. “Where does that go?”
“Upstairs, but I keep that door locked. I would have heard if someone had tried to go up there.”
“You wouldn’t lie for a woman you don’t even know, would you?” He moved to the door to the second floor and tried it. Locked.
“If you don’t leave, I’ll have to call the sheriff,” Georgia said, putting down the yarn to pick up the phone. She punched in 911, watching him as she did.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, taking a step toward the front door. “I’m sorry I bothered you.” He turned, gaze scanning the shop again, and left with obvious reluctance.
Georgia hung up the phone before the sheriff’s office answered as the man passed the shop’s front window. She waited a few moments, then went to the front door to peer out. From down the block, he looked back once, but kept going.
She watched until he reached the feed store at the end of the street, went inside and came right back out to climb into a large truck with the words Trails West Ranch printed on the side.
It wasn’t until she saw him drive by and disappear around the corner that she said, “You can come out now.”
Chapter Two
The blonde rose slowly from behind the stack of boxes where she had been crouched. There was high color in her cheeks and her light eyes shone with an unnatural brightness.
“Is he gone?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.
Georgia nodded. “I saw him drive away.”
The woman tentatively stepped out from behind the boxes. She was stunning, the kind of female who made men’s heads turn and women catty with jealousy. She wore strappy sandals with tangerine-orange capri pants and a matching short-sleeved jacket over a crisp white blouse.
Her skin was deeply tanned. Around her neck hung a silver necklace with a tiny sailboat on it and on her slim wrist, three slim silver bracelets that jingled softly.
Everything about the woman seemed exotic.
Georgia stared at her, thinking she should know her because surely the woman was a model or an actress. She definitely wasn’t from Whitehorse, which was small enough that if Georgia didn’t know everyone by name, she knew them by sight.
“I can’t thank you enough,” the woman said. “You saved my life.”
Was she serious? Georgia thought of the cowboy who’d just left. He must work for the Corbetts out on the Trails West Ranch. He’d definitely been upset, but murderous? She wondered what possible connection this obviously sophisticated woman and that rough-edged cowboy might have.
The blonde glanced around the shop before settling her gaze on Georgia. She had the most luminous green eyes that Georgia had ever seen. “I didn’t mean to involve you in my troubles. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course,” Georgia said quickly, trying to place the accent. European? “I’m glad I could help.”
She stepped to Georgia, laid one cool hand on her arm and smiled brightly. “Thank you again. Would you mind if I went out the back way?”
“Of course not. But do you have a place to stay? I saw you looking at the Apartment for Rent sign.”
“I was interested in the apartment.” She bit down on her lower lip, those green eyes filling with tears. “I do need a place to stay and a motel is out of the question since that would be the first place he’d look for me.”
Georgia could only assume she meant the cowboy. “I doubt he would look for you here again.”
“I suppose not.”
“It’s none of my business but—”
“No, you have a right to know why that man was after me. Especially if I rent the apartment.”
“Would you like to see it?” Georgia asked, changing the subject temporarily.
She brightened. “Oh yes, please.”
NICCI WAS ALIVE! Dalton pulled the truck over at the edge of town, got out and threw up his breakfast in the weeds. He was shaking, his mind refusing to admit what his senses knew as truth. Nicci had somehow survived. Not just survived but was now
in Whitehorse. And he knew what that meant.
If she was here after nine years of letting him believe she was dead, then he was in serious trouble. As if just crossing paths with Nicci wasn’t trouble enough. His heart hammered at the thought. Knowing Nicci the way he did, he could only assume she’d come to finish what she’d started.
But why, if she’d been alive this whole time, had she waited nine years to come after him?
Shaking his head, he tried to make sense of this and couldn’t. He knew he’d acted like a crazy man back there at the yarn shop. He’d scared that poor young woman so badly she’d been ready to call the sheriff on him—might even have called after he left.
He cursed under his breath. He’d done insane things from the first moment he’d met Nicci nine years ago and it had only gotten worse. Why did he think now would be any different?
He had to get control of himself. But how could he?
Nicci was alive and in Whitehorse and playing some game he knew would only get deadly given their history.
Lightning splintered the sky in an explosion of light that made him jump. The clap of thunder immediately following it reverberated through him, making the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He glanced at the greenish blackness of the clouds moving across the prairie toward him. Hail.
Quickly, he put the truck in gear and looked for the largest tree he could find. The feed was covered with tarps in the back, but the truck itself…Slushy raindrops sounding as hard as hail pelted the hood and roof, drowning out all other sound.
Dalton pulled the truck under a large overhanging limb and cut the engine just as pebble-sized hail began to bounce off the pavement next to him. The hail tore through the thick green leaves of the tree he’d parked under, pinging off the truck and covering the ground in icy white.
He turned his thoughts from Nicci, to the apparent owner of the yarn shop. The young woman was the classic girl next door with her short curly chestnut brown hair, big brown eyes and glowing skin. The kind of woman who would protect another.
He recalled the determination he’d seen in her gaze and cringed remembering how he’d called her a liar. But she had helped the blonde disappear. He wasn’t sure how, just that she had. Understanding why didn’t help given who they were dealing with.
Tomorrow he’d go back to the shop and apologize. Maybe he’d take her some flowers. Anything to get her to tell him where Nicci had gone.
With a start, Dalton came out of his thoughts to silence. As quickly as the hailstorm had begun, it was over, having moved on. He sat for a moment, listening to water drip from what was left of the tree’s leaves onto the truck roof before he pulled out and headed for the ranch, knowing what he had to do. It was something he’d put off far too long.
Dalton hated asking. Grayson Corbett had raised five overly independent sons. All of them would rather chew nails than admit they needed help.
As hard as it was going to be, he dialed his brother’s cell phone number and said without preamble when Lantry answered, “I need a lawyer. I’m in trouble. Serious trouble and I need your help.”
AGNES PALMER hurried home after her knitting class, praying she could beat the storm. The weather service had updated the forecast and was now calling for hail.
Agnes’s pride and joy was her tomato garden. She was known all around the county for growing the biggest, beefiest and most beautiful tomatoes anyone had ever seen and had been for years.
This year she’d outdone herself. Her tomatoes would win blue ribbons at the fair and have people talking for years, although that wasn’t why she did it. She raised tomatoes because her husband, Norbert, God rest his soul, had loved tomatoes. It was her way of never forgetting the man she had married and loved for more than fifty years.
As she drove up in her yard, she saw the thunderhead at the edge of her field. Ignoring the weatherman’s advice to stay inside and away from windows, she hurried to the back porch for her plastic tubs and hightailed it out to her garden.
She could hear the thunder rumbling. Flashes of lightning lit the darkening sky. The air smelled of rain, which would be bad enough, but hail would destroy her tomato crop and Agnes wasn’t going to let that happen even if it killed her.
Clouds obscured the light, pitching the day into a premature darkness as she began to pick. She’d filled half a tub when a bolt of lightning lit the darkness in a blinding flash of light. Agnes glanced up at the angry sky and considered the danger.
But she still had too many tomatoes to pick. She wasn’t leaving them to this storm. More determined than ever, she began to pick more rapidly, filling one tub after another and dragging them over to the oak tree her grandmother had planted so many years ago.
Her roots ran deep in this part of Montana and she took a certain pride in that just as she did in her tomatoes.
As she scurried back to the garden to save the rest of her precious tomatoes, the first drops of rain slashed down from the dark heavens. Large, heavy and icy, the raindrops hurt as they struck her thin back and shoulders.
She bent her head against them and thought of something pleasurable—her knitting classes. While she enjoyed knitting, it was Georgia Michaels who made the classes so enjoyable. Never having had any children of her own, Agnes thought of the loving, caring woman the way she might have a daughter or granddaughter.
Not that she didn’t find something to like in everyone. She’d gotten that from her mother, who always said, “People are like gardens. While they need sunshine, water and a healthy dose of prayer, grace grows good gardens and people. Mind you remember that.”
Agnes had remembered.
The rain soaked her to the skin, beating her slim back and running in rivulets off the brim of her garden bonnet.
She glanced at her watch. Only a few more tomatoes to go. A bolt of lightning lit the garden in a blaze of white light. The thunderous boom was deafening and directly overhead.
Agnes reached for one perfect, large tomato, perhaps the one that would take the blue ribbon this year. She never saw the lightning bolt that hit her.
GEORGIA PICKED UP her keys for the apartment from where she’d thrown them on the counter earlier before her class and opened the door to the second floor.
Leading the way, she climbed the stairs to the landing and unlocked the one-bedroom apartment door across the hall from her own. Stepping back, she let her prospective renter enter.
“Oh, it’s wonderful,” the blonde exclaimed. “Did you decorate it yourself? Of course you did. I saw how you decorated the shop downstairs. You have a real talent for it.”
The woman moved through the small apartment admiring the things Georgia had done, making her flush with embarrassment and pleasure. She’d hoped to rent the apartment to someone who appreciated what she’d done to make it more comfortable and homey.
Georgia watched the woman step to the front window that looked out over the main street. Directly across the street was a small city park and past that the old train depot next to the tracks. The depot wasn’t open, but you could still catch a passenger train from here that would take you to Seattle or Chicago and all points in between.
The woman stared out at the street for a long moment as if looking for the cowboy, but when she turned back to Georgia, her face was glowing. “It’s perfect.”
“I’m so glad you like it.”
“I love it,” she said excitedly. “You’re sure you won’t mind renting it to me? But you don’t even know me.” She took a step toward Georgia and, smiling, extended her hand. “Forgive me, I should have introduced myself before. I’m Nicci. Nicci Corbett.”
“Georgia Michaels,” she said, taking the woman’s hand, her eyes widening as she recognized the name. “Corbett?”
AGNES PALMER came to lying in the soft dirt, soaked to the skin and staring up at the rain. She blinked and sat up, relieved to see that when she’d fallen, it had been between her tomato rows and she hadn’t hurt either her plants or her tomatoes.
“Ho
w odd,” she said as she saw the overturned tub of tomatoes and saw where her body had left an imprint in the freshly turned earth. What had happened?
She glanced at her watch, shocked to see that she couldn’t account for the last twenty-two minutes.
“Strange indeed,” she said as she bent to pick the largest of the tomatoes and felt a little dizzy. Holding the tomato she stared at it, seeing it more clearly than she felt she’d ever seen anything in her life.
Hail began to pelt the cabbage patch, tearing through the leaves before bouncing along the ground toward her.
Agnes quickly righted her tub of tomatoes and lifting it into her arms, skedaddled over to the old oak. She wormed her way back in against the trunk, pulling her tubs of tomatoes with her and sat down, suddenly tired but content.
Smiling to herself, she reached into one of the tubs, took out a fat, juicy tomato and took a bite as she watched hail as big as gumballs ravage her garden.
It wasn’t until later, when the storm passed and she went inside with her tubs of tomatoes that she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror.
Her salt-and-pepper short brown hair was completely white—and curly. She’d stood staring, stunned, then she’d smiled at herself in the mirror. She’d always wanted curly hair.
GEORGIA COULDN’T HIDE her surprise as she shook Nicci’s hand. Everyone in town had heard about the five Corbett brothers. In fact, two of Georgia’s friends had fallen for Corbetts.
“That man who was chasing me was Dalton Corbett,” Nicci said. “He’s my husband. Soon to be ex-husband if I have anything to do with it.”
Instantly Georgia regretted offering the apartment. The last thing she wanted to do was get involved in a squabble between a husband and wife in the middle of a less than amicable divorce. From the look on Dalton Corbett’s face earlier…
Nicci must have seen her doubts. “I love the apartment and appreciate the offer, but I can’t chance that Dalton will come back here under the circumstances and upset you.”
