The Rancher--A snowbound Western romance

by Joanne Rock

  “Who else knows about Zach but us?” Desmond asked. “Moreover, who the hell would have known Chiara was asking questions within hours of her showing up at Mesa Falls?”

  Miles stared out the glass walls around the enclosed pool, watching the snow fall as he let the question hang there for a moment. He was certain Desmond must have come to the same conclusion as him.

  “You know it points to one of us,” Miles answered, rattling the last of the ice in his drink. “I texted Gage last night when I thought she was snooping in my office.”

  He didn’t want to think Gage would go to the length of hacking her accounts to protect their secrets, but every one of the partners had his own reasons for not wanting the truth to come to light. Gage, in particular, bore a weight of guilt because his influential politician father had kept the truth of the accident out of the media. Nigel Striker had made a substantial grant to the Dowdon School to ensure the incident was handled the way he chose.

  Quietly. Without any reference to Zach’s connection to the school. Which explained why Chiara hadn’t been able to learn anything about it.

  Desmond cleared his throat. “Gage could have shared that information with any one of us.”

  “I can’t believe we’re even discussing the possibility of a leak within our group.” The idea made everything inside him protest. They’d spent fourteen years trying to protect the truth.

  Who would go rogue now and break that trust?

  “Just because we’re discussing it doesn’t prove anything,” Desmond pointed out reasonably. “Chiara could have confided her intentions to someone else. Or someone could have tracked her searches online.”

  “Right. But we need to meet. And this time, no videoconferencing.” He remembered the way the last couple of meetings had gone among the partners—once with only four of them showing up in person, and another time with half of them participating remotely. “We need all six of us in the same room.”

  “You really think it’s one of us?” Desmond asked. Despite Desmond’s normally controlled facade, Miles could hear the surprise in his friend’s tone.

  “I’m not sure. But if it’s not, we can rule it out faster if we’re together in the same room. If one of us is lying, we’ll know.” Miles might not have spent much time in person with his school friends in the last fourteen years, but their bond ran deep.

  They’d all agreed to run the ranch together in the hope of honoring Zach’s life. Zach had loved the outdoors and the Ventana Wilderness close to their school. He would have appreciated Mesa Falls’s green ranching mission to protect the environment and help native species flourish.

  “Do you need help coordinating it?” Desmond asked, the sounds of the casino again intruding from his end of the call.

  “No. I think we should meet in Tahoe this time. But I wanted to warn you that Chiara is on her way there even now. She says she’s going to see Astrid, but I have the feeling she’ll be questioning Jonah, too. She might even show up at your office.” Miles couldn’t forget the look in her eyes when she’d said she wouldn’t back down from her search for answers about Zach.

  There’d been a gravity that hinted at the strong stuff she was made of. He understood that kind of commitment. He felt it for Rivera Ranch, the family property he’d inherited and would protect at any cost.

  Of course, he felt that way about Zach and Mesa Falls, too. Unfortunately, their strong loyalties to the same person were bound to keep putting them at odds. Unless they worked together. The idea made him uneasy. But did he really have a choice?

  The thought of seeing her again—even though she’d only walked out his door an hour ago—sent anticipation shooting through him. He’d never forget the night they’d shared.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for her,” Desmond assured him. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Miles disconnected the call and pocketed his phone. He would hand off the task of scheduling the owners’ meeting to his assistant, since coordinating times could be a logistical nightmare. But no matter how busy they were, this had to take priority.

  Things were coming to a head for Mesa Falls. And Zach.

  And no matter how much Miles didn’t trust Chiara Campagna, he was worried for her safety with someone threatening her. Which would have been reason enough for him to fly to Tahoe at the first opportunity. But he also couldn’t deny he wanted to see her again.

  She’d promised him a date. And he would hold her to her word.

  * * *

  That night, in her rented villa overlooking Lake Tahoe, Chiara tucked her feet underneath her in the window seat as she opened her tablet. The nine-bedroom home and guesthouse were situated next door to Desmond Pierce’s casino resort, assuring her easy access to him. The separate guesthouse allowed her to have her assistant and photo team members nearby while giving all of them enough space. Astrid and Jonah lived just a few miles away, and Chiara would see them as soon as she could. She’d already made plans to meet Astrid for a spin class in the morning.

  This was the first moment she’d had to herself all day. First there’d been the morning with Miles, then the flight to Truckee and drive to Tahoe Vista, with most of the travel time spent on efforts to stabilize her social media platforms.

  She should probably be researching cybersecurity experts to ensure her social media properties were more secure in the future, even though she’d gotten all of her platforms corrected by dinnertime. It only made good business sense to protect her online presence. But she’d spent so many years making the right decisions for her public image, relentlessly driving her empire to keep growing that she couldn’t devote one more minute to work today. Didn’t she deserve a few hours to herself now and then? To be a woman instead of a brand?

  So instead of working, she thumbed the remote button to turn on the gas fireplace and dimmed the spotlights in the exposed trusswork of the cathedral ceiling. Settling back against the yellow cushions of the window seat, Chiara returned her attention to the tablet and found herself scrolling through a web search about Miles Rivera.

  She’d like to think it was all part of her effort to find out more about Zach. Maybe if she could piece together clues from the lives of his friends during the year of Zach’s death, she would find something she’d overlooked. But as she swiped through images of Miles at the historic Rivera Ranch property in the Red Clover Valley of the Sierra Nevada foothills, pausing on a few of him at galas in Mesa Falls and at the casino on Lake Tahoe, she realized she had ulterior motives. Even on the screen he took her breath away.

  He looked as at home in his jeans and boots as he did in black tie, and not just because he was a supremely attractive man. There was a comfort in his own skin, a certainty of his place in the world that Chiara envied. She’d been born to privilege as the daughter of wealthy parents, but she’d always been keenly aware she didn’t belong. Her mother had never known what to do with her; she’d been awkward and gangly until she grew into her looks. As a girl, she’d been antisocial, preferring books to people. She’d lacked charm and social graces, a failure that confirmed her mother’s opinion of her as a hopeless child. So she’d been packed off to boarding school on the opposite coast, where she’d retreated into her art until she met Zach, her lone friend.

  Then Zach died, and her parents lost their fortune.

  Chiara transferred to public school and made even fewer friends there than she had at Brookfield. She fit in nowhere until she founded her fictional world online. Her Instagram account had started as a way to take photos of beautiful things. That other people liked her view of the world had shocked her, but eventually she’d come to see that she was good at being social on the other side of a keyboard. By the time she gained real traction and popularity, her awkwardness in person didn’t matter anymore. Her followers liked her work, so they didn’t care if she said very little at public events. Fans seemed to equate her reticence with the aloofness they
expected in a star. But inside, Chiara felt like a fraud, wrestling with impostor syndrome that she’d somehow forged an extravagant, envied life she didn’t really deserve.

  Her finger hovered over an image of Miles with an arm slung around his friend Alec Jacobsen and another around Desmond Pierce. It was an old photo, similar to the one she’d seen in Miles’s office at his house. She thought it was taken around the time the six friends had bought Mesa Falls. She’d known even before she’d restarted her search for answers that the men who’d bought the ranch had been Zach’s closest friends at Dowdon. One of them knew something. Possibly all of them. What reason would they have to hide the circumstances of his death?

  She’d contacted his foster home afterward, and years later, she’d visited the department of social services for information about Zach. The state hadn’t been under any legal obligation to release details of his death other than to say it was accidental and that issues of neglect in foster care hadn’t been a concern. She’d had no luck tracking down his birth parents. But Miles knew something, or else he wouldn’t have been so emphatic about protecting Zach’s privacy.

  Staring into Miles’s eyes in the photograph didn’t yield any answers. Just twenty-four hours ago, she’d been convinced he was her enemy in her search. Sleeping with Miles had shown her a different side of him. And reminiscing with him about Zach for those few moments over breakfast had reinforced the idea that he’d shared a powerful bond with their shared friend. What reason did Miles have to push her away?

  When she found herself tracing the angles of his face on the tablet screen, Chiara closed the page in a hurry. She couldn’t afford the tenderness of feeling that had crept up on her with regard to Miles Rivera. It clouded her mission. Distorted her perspective when she needed to be clearheaded.

  Tomorrow, she’d find a way to talk to Desmond Pierce. Then she’d see if Alec Jacobsen was in town. If she kept pushing, someone would divulge something. Even if they didn’t mean to.

  Turning her gaze to the moon rising over the lake through the window, she squinted, trying to see beyond her reflection in the glass. She needed to learn something before her anonymous blackmailer discovered she was still asking questions. Because while she was prepared to risk everything—the fame, the following, the income that came from it—to find out the truth of Zach’s death, she couldn’t help hoping Miles didn’t have anything to do with it.

  * * *

  “Dig deep for the next hill!” The spin class instructor kept up her running stream of motivational commentary from a stationary bike at the center of the casino resort’s fitness studio. “If you want the reward, you’ve got to put in the work!”

  Chiara hated exercise class in general, and early-morning ones even more, but her friend Astrid had insisted the spin class was the best one her gym offered. So Chiara had pulled herself out of bed at the crack of dawn for the last two mornings. She’d dragged Jules with her, and Astrid met them there to work out in a room that looked more like a dance club than a gym. With neon and black lights, the atmosphere was high energy and the hip-hop music intense. Sweating out her restlessness wasn’t fun, but it felt like a way to excise some of the intense emotions being with Miles had stirred up.

  “I can’t do another hill,” Astrid huffed from the cycle to Chiara’s right, her blond braid sliding over her shoulder as she turned to talk. A former model from Finland, Astrid had happily traded in her magazine covers for making organic baby food since becoming a mother shortly before Christmas. “You know I love Katja, but being pregnant left me with no muscle tone.”

  “I would have chosen the yoga class,” Chiara managed as she gulped air, her hamstrings burning and her butt numb from the uncomfortable seat. “So I blame this hell on you.”

  “I would be sleeping.” Jules leaned over her handlebars from the bike on Chiara’s left, her pink tank top clinging to her sweaty shoulders. “So I blame both of you.”

  “Please,” Chiara scoffed, running a skeptical eye over Jules’s toned legs. “You were a competitive volleyball player. I’ve seen you play for hours.”

  Chiara’s family had lived next door to Jules’s once upon a time, and the Santors were more like family to her than her own had ever been. When her business had taken off, she’d made it her mission to employ as many of the family members as she could, enjoying the pleasure of having people she genuinely liked close to her. Even now, back in Los Angeles, Jules’s mom was in charge of Chiara’s house.

  “Spiking balls and attacking the net do not require this level of cardio,” Jules grumbled, although she dutifully kicked up her speed at their instructor’s shouted command to “go hard.”

  Chiara felt light-headed from the exercise, skipping breakfast, and the swirl of flashing lights as they pedaled.

  “We owe ourselves lunch out at least, don’t we?” Astrid pleaded, letting go of her handlebars long enough to take a drink from her water bottle. “Jonah got us a sitter tomorrow for the first time since I had Katja, so I’ve got a couple of hours free.”

  “This is the first time?” Chiara asked, smiling in spite of the sweat, the aches and the gasping for air.

  Astrid had been nervous about being a mom before her daughter was born, but she’d been adorably committed to every aspect of parenting. Chiara couldn’t help but compare her friend’s efforts with her own mother’s role in her life. Kristina Marsh had handed her daughter off to nannies whenever possible, which might not have been a problem if there’d been a good one in the mix. But she tended to hire the cheapest possible household help in order to add to her budget for things like clothes and jewelry.

  “I hate leaving her with anyone but Jonah,” Astrid admitted, slowing her pedaling in spite of their coach’s motivational exhortation to “grind it out.”

  “But I think it’s important to have someone trained in Katja’s routine in case something comes up and I need help in a hurry.”

  “Definitely.” Chiara wasn’t about to let her friend hover around the babysitter when she could get her out of the house for a little while. “Plus you deserve a break. It’s been two months.”

  “That’s what Jonah says.” Astrid’s soft smile at the thought of her husband gave Chiara an unexpected pang in her chest.

  She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she envied Astrid’s rock-solid relationship with a man she loved and trusted. Chiara hadn’t even given a second thought to her single status in years, content to pursue her work instead of romance when she had difficulty trusting people anyhow. And for good reason. Her family was so good at keeping secrets from her she hadn’t known they’d lost everything until the headmistress at Brookfield told her they were sending her home because her tuition hadn’t been paid in months.

  Chiara shoved that thought from her head along with any romance envy. She cheered along with the rest of the class as the instructor blew her whistle to signal the session’s end. Jules slumped over her handlebars as she recovered, clicking through the diagnostics to check her stats.

  Chiara closed her eyes for a long moment to rest them from the blinking red and green lights. And, no surprise, an image of Miles Rivera appeared on the backs of her eyelids, tantalizing her with memories of their night together.

  She could live to be a hundred and still not be able to account for how fast she’d ended up in his bed. The draw between them was like nothing she’d ever experienced.

  Astrid’s softly accented words broke into Chiara’s sensual reverie.

  “So where should we meet for lunch tomorrow?” The hint of Finland in Astrid’s words folded “where” to sound like “vere,” the lilt as attractive as every other thing about her. “Des’s casino has a bunch of places.”

  Chiara’s eyes shot open at the mention of Desmond Pierce, one of Miles’s partners. She needed to question him and Astrid’s husband, Jonah, too. Subtly. And, ideally, close to the same time so neither one had a chance to
warn the others about Chiara’s interest in the details of Zach’s final days.

  “The casino is perfect.” Chiara slid off her cycle and picked up her towel and water bottle off the floor, locking eyes with another woman who lingered near the cycles—a pretty redhead with freckles she hadn’t noticed earlier. Why did she look vaguely familiar? Distracted, she told Astrid, “Pick your favorite place and we’ll meet there.”

  The redhead scurried away, and Chiara guessed she didn’t know the woman after all.

  “There’s an Indo-Mexican fusion spot called Spice Pavilion. I’m addicted to the tikka tacos.” Astrid checked her phone as the regular house lights came up and the spin class attendees shuffled out of the room. “Can you do one o’clock? Jonah has a meeting that starts at noon, so I can shop first and then meet you.”

  A meeting? Chiara’s brain chased the possibilities of what that might mean while she followed Jules toward the locker room, with Astrid behind them.

  “Perfect,” Chiara assured her friend as they reached the lockers and retrieved their bags. “Is Jonah’s meeting at the casino, too?”

  “Yes. More Mesa Falls business,” Astrid answered as she hefted her quilted designer bag onto one shoulder and shut the locker with her knee. “Things have been heating up for the ranch ever since that tell-all book came out.”

  Didn’t she know it. Chiara had plenty of questions of her own about the ranch and its owners, but she’d tried not to involve Astrid in her hunt for answers since she wouldn’t use a valued friendship for leverage.

  But knowing that Zach’s friends would be congregating at the resort tomorrow was welcome information.

  “Then you can leave Jonah to his meeting and we’ll gorge ourselves on tikka tacos,” Chiara promised her, calling the details over her shoulder to Jules, who had a locker on the next row. “Today I’m going to finish my posts for the week, so I can clear the whole day tomorrow. Text me if you’re done shopping early or if you want company.”