Unmasking The Maverick (Montana Mavericks: The Lonelyhearts Ranch Book 4)

by Teresa Southwick

  She hasn’t had an easy time of things but she’s a fighter. Hardworking and eager to learn, Frank had said the other night when Ruben asked how things were working out, now that Dani and her girls had been in town a few months. You just have to get to know her.

  Frank apparently didn’t see how diligently Dani Capelli worked to keep anyone else from doing just that.

  She wasn’t unfriendly, only distant. She kept herself to herself. It was a phrase his mother might use, though Myra Morales seemed instantly fond of Dani and her girls.

  Did Dani have any idea how fascinated the people of Haven Point were with these new arrivals in their midst?

  Or maybe that was just him.

  As he followed her down the hall in her white lab coat, his dogs behaving themselves for once, Ruben told himself to forget about his stupid attraction to her.

  Sure, he might be ready to settle down and would like to have someone in his life, but he wasn’t at all sure if he had the time or energy for that someone to be a woman with so many secrets in her eyes, one who seemed to face the world with her chin up and her fists out, ready to take on any threats.

  When they walked into the clinic waiting room, they found her two girls there. The older one was texting on her phone while her sister did somersaults around the room.

  Dani stopped in the doorway and seemed to swallow an exasperated sound. “Mia, honey, you’re going to have dog hair all over you.”

  “I’m a snowball rolling down the hill,” the girl said. “Can’t you see me getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

  “You’re such a dorkupine,” her sister said, barely looking up from her phone.

  “I’m a dorkupine snowball,” Mia retorted.

  “You’re a snowball who is going to be covered in dog hair,” Dani said. “Come on, honey. Get up.”

  He could tell the moment the little girl spotted him and his dogs coming into the area behind her mother. She went still and then slowly rose to her feet, features shifting from gleeful to nervous.

  Why was she so afraid of him?

  “You make a very good snowball,” he said, pitching his voice low and calm as his father had taught him to do with all skittish creatures. “I haven’t seen anybody somersault that well in a long time.”

  She moved to her mother’s side and buried her face in Dani’s white coat—though he didn’t miss the way she reached down to pet Ollie on her way.

  “Hey again, Silver.”

  He knew the older girl from the middle school, where he served as the resource officer a few hours a week. He made it a point to learn all the students’ names and tried to talk to them individually when he had the chance, in hopes that if they had a problem at home or knew of something potentially troublesome for the school, they would feel comfortable coming to him.

  He had the impression that Silver was like her mother in many ways. Reserved, wary, slow to trust. It made him wonder just who had hurt them.

  “How are things?” he asked her now.

  For just an instant, he thought he saw sadness flicker in her gaze before she turned back to her phone with a shrug. “Fine, I guess.”

  “Are you guys ready for Christmas? It’s your first one here in Idaho. A little different from New York, isn’t it?”

  “How should we know? We haven’t lived in the city for, like, four years.”

  Dani sent her daughter a look at her tone, which seemed to border on disrespectful. “I’ve been in vet school in Boston the last four years,” she explained.

  “Boston. Then you’re used to snow and cold. We’re known for our beautiful winters around here. The lake is simply stunning in wintertime.”

  Mia tugged on her mother’s coat and when Dani bent down, she whispered something to her.

  “You can ask him,” Dani said calmly, gesturing to Ruben.

  Mia shook her head and buried her face again and after a moment, Dani sighed. “She wonders if it’s possible to ice-skate on Lake Haven. We watched the most recent Olympics and she became a little obsessed.”

  “You could say that,” Silver said. “She skated around the house in her stocking feet all day long for weeks. A dorkupine on ice.”

  “You can’t skate on the lake, I’m afraid,” Ruben answered. “Because of the underground hot springs that feed into it at various points, Lake Haven rarely freezes, except sometimes along the edges, when it’s really cold. It’s not really safe for ice skating. But the city creates a skating rink on the tennis courts at Lake View Park every year. The volunteer fire department sprays it down for a few weeks once temperatures get really cold. I saw them out there the other night so it shouldn’t be long before it’s open. Maybe a few more weeks.”

  Mia seemed to lose a little of her shyness at that prospect. She gave him a sideways look from under her mother’s arm and aimed a fleeting smile full of such sweetness that he was instantly smitten.

  “There’s also a great place for sledding up behind the high school. You can’t miss that, either. Oh, and in a few weeks we have the Lights on the Lake Festival. You’ve heard about that, right?”

  They all gave him matching blank stares, making him wonder what was wrong with the Haven Point Helping Hands that they hadn’t immediately dragged Dani into their circle. He would have to talk to Andie Bailey or his sister Angela about it. They always seemed to know what was going on in town.

  “I think some kids at school were talking about that at lunch the other day,” Silver said. “They were sitting at the next table so I didn’t hear the whole thing, though.”

  “Haven Point hosts an annual celebration a week or so before Christmas where all the local boat owners deck out their watercraft from here to Shelter Springs to welcome in the holidays and float between the two towns. There’s music, food and crafts for sale. It’s kind of a big deal around here. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it.”

  “I’m very busy, with the practice and the girls, Deputy Morales. I don’t have a lot of time for socializing.” Though Dani tried for a lofty look, he thought he caught a hint of vulnerability there.

  She seemed...lonely. That didn’t make a lick of sense. The women in this town could be almost annoying in their efforts to include newcomers in community events. They didn’t give people much of an option, dragging them kicking and screaming into the social scene around town, like it or not.

  “Well, now you know. You really can’t miss the festival. It’s great fun for the whole family.”

  “Thank you for the information. It’s next week, you say?”

  “That’s right. Not this weekend but the one after. The whole thing starts out with the boat parade on Saturday evening, around six.”

  “We’ll put it on our social calendar.”

  “What’s a social calendar?” Mia whispered to her sister, just loud enough for Ruben to hear.

  “It’s a place where you keep track of all your invitations to parties and sleepovers and stuff.”

  “Oh. Why do we need one of those?”

  “Good question.”

  Silver looked glum for just a moment but Dani hugged her, then faced Ruben with a polite, distant smile.

  “Thank you for bringing in Ollie and Yukon. Have a good evening, Deputy Morales.”

  It was a clear dismissal, one he couldn’t ignore. Ruben gathered his dogs’ leashes and headed for the door. “Thank you. See you around. And by around, I mean next door. We kind of can’t miss each other.”

  As he hoped, this made Mia smile a little. Even Silver’s dour expression eased into what almost looked like a smile.

  As he loaded the dogs into the king cab of his pickup truck, Ruben could see Dani turning off lights and straightening up the clinic.

  What was her story? Why had she chosen to come straight from vet school in Boston to set up shop all the way across the country in a small Idaho town?r />
  He loved his hometown, sure, and fully acknowledged it was a beautiful place to live. It still seemed a jarring cultural and geographic shift from living back east to this little town where the biggest news of the month was a rather corny light parade that people froze their asses off to watch.

  And why did he get the impression the family wasn’t socializing much? One of the reasons most people he knew moved to small towns was a yearning for the kind of connectedness and community a place like Haven Point had in spades. What was the point in moving to a small town if you were going to keep yourself separate from everybody?

  He thought he had seen them at a few things when they first came to Haven Point but since then, Dani seemed to be keeping her little family mostly to themselves. That must be by choice. It was the only explanation that made sense. He couldn’t imagine McKenzie Kilpatrick or Andie Bailey or any of the other Helping Hands excluding her on purpose.

  What was she so nervous about?

  He added another facet to the enigma of his next-door neighbor. He had hoped that he might be able to get a better perspective of her by bringing the dogs in to her for their routine exams. While he had confirmed his father’s belief that she appeared to be an excellent veterinarian, he now had more questions about the woman and her daughters to add to his growing list.

  Don’t miss Season of Wonder

  by RaeAnne Thayne,

  available October 2018

  wherever HQN books and ebooks are sold!

  Copyright © 2018 by RaeAnne Thayne

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Almost a Bravo by Christine Rimmer.

  Almost a Bravo

  by Christine Rimmer

  Chapter One

  When Jaxon Winter entered the waiting room, every nerve in Aislinn Bravo’s body snapped to high alert. The housekeeper and the grouchy old foreman from Wild River Ranch followed in his wake. Aislinn hardly noticed them. All she saw was Jax.

  He saw her, too. How could he miss her? She was alone in the waiting area and gaping right at him. He gave her that crooked smile, the one she’d never forgotten, the one that tucked a sexy little crease into his left cheek. Too bad there was a crease between his eyebrows, too—a crease that signaled the beginnings of a puzzled frown.

  Aislinn shrank in her chair. She not only knew his crooked smile. She knew that almost-frown of his. He didn’t remember her. And he had no idea why she was gawking at him.

  Stop staring, you idiot!

  She tore her gaze free of his and focused hard on a large framed print of the Cape Disappointment lighthouse mounted on the wall opposite her chair. It was one of those mass-produced prints, the solitary lighthouse silhouetted against a wide, gray sky.

  The print was dead boring in execution, but Aislinn focused on it anyway to keep herself from sneaking another glance at the tall, broad-shouldered rancher with the thick dark hair.

  She heard the brush of footfalls on the carpet as he moved behind her. He spoke quietly to the receptionist. Aislinn stared blindly at that print—until Jax, the ranch foreman and the housekeeper filed into her line of sight and settled into chairs right below the lonely lighthouse.

  Now she was staring over their heads, which felt totally awkward all over again. She shifted her gaze once more—downward this time. To her purse, which she grabbed and switched from her left side to her right.

  That monumental task accomplished, she crossed her legs and smoothed the skirt of her short-sleeved summer-weight dark blue dress with its cute scattering of tiny white polka dots. The dress had taken her forever to choose. She’d settled on it because the conservative cut and dark color paired with the cheery polka dots said “serious, but with a touch of merriment” to her.

  Okay, maybe the merriment part wasn’t exactly appropriate in this situation. But a girl had to have a sense of humor, especially at a time like this.

  Was her face flaming red? It had better not be.

  Stop being weird, she scolded herself. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.

  At least her past obsession with Jaxon Winter was her secret, one she’d shared only with her closest friend, Keely, who would never betray a trust. Unfortunately, old Martin Durand, Jax’s uncle by marriage and also his adoptive father, had known, too.

  That unforgettable summer five years ago, Martin Durand had seemed to make it his personal business to keep an eye on her. He used to watch her as if he suspected she might have a criminal past or something. At the time, she’d had no idea that Durand had somehow figured out how she felt about Jaxon.

  She’d remained blissfully unaware that the old man knew about her desperate crush until a couple of months ago when Durand had called her out of the blue and announced that Jax’s divorce had been final for a year—just in case she hadn’t heard.

  “He’s free now,” the old man had said. “You can go ahead and make your move.”

  So bizarre.

  At least Martin Durand was never going to say another word about what he knew. According to the letter from his lawyer, he’d died peacefully in his sleep ten days ago. And as for Jaxon, he clearly had no clue that she’d once imagined herself to be hopelessly in love with him.

  He doesn’t know.

  And he would never know.

  And it was going to be fine. It was five years ago—yeah, okay. Back then, she’d shamelessly fantasized that he cared, too. But in real life?

  Uh-uh. The man had been married. He’d been all about keeping his wife happy and he’d hardly known she existed.

  As for her, she was so past all that, so over him.

  Unwisely, she glanced up—and caught him looking at her with that same perplexed frown he’d worn when he walked in the door. Like she was a puzzle piece and he had no idea where she fit.

  This was absurd and she’d had enough of it.

  She rose, squared her shoulders and circled the waiting room’s central coffee table. Jaxon and the old guy, the foreman—Burt, wasn’t it?—got up as she approached. She held out her hand. “Good to see you, Jaxon.”

  His baffled frown got more so. “I’m sorry,” he said in the lovely, low rumble that made her think of tangled sheets and sweaty skin. His eyes were the most beautiful blue swirled with gray, like the sky over the Pacific when the clouds start to gather. He took her hand—just long enough for an utterly unacceptable shiver to slither up her arm. “Do I know you?”

  Her smile felt wide enough to crack her face in half. “Of course, you don’t remember me. I’m Aislinn Bravo. I worked for you one summer...” She turned to the foreman. “Burt, isn’t it?”

  The old guy muttered, “Hiya,” squeezed her fingers in his rough paw and sat back down.

  She aimed a smile at the housekeeper. “Erma, right?”

  “Yes,” said the housekeeper. “Hello.” The older woman reached up and took Aislinn’s hand, too, quickly releasing it.

  “Wait a minute,” said Jax. “I remember now. Ashlinn, but spelled in that odd way...”

  “It’s Irish,” she replied, just as she had that first day five years ago. “People pronounce it several different ways. But yes, I prefer Ashlinn.”

  Jax asked, “Aren’t you the one who just disappeared?”

  Defensiveness made her draw her shoulders back. She faced him squarely. “I left a note.”

  “Yes, you did.” He looked way too damn pleased with himself that he’d actually recalled some college girl who’d spelled her name oddly and then ran off without giving notice. “It’s all coming back to me now. You said in the note that there was a family emergency, that you had to go.”

  “And, um, I did.” Not because of any family crisis, though.

  “I hope it worked out all right?” he asked, his tone sincere and gentle now. Because he was not only hot and manly, he was also a good person who cared about others.

  “Absolutely.
Calamity resolved. Nobody died. Everything’s fine now.”

  His frown reappeared. “So you’re here to...?”

  She really didn’t get why she was here. But she shared what she did know. “I got a certified letter from one of the firm’s partners, Kip Anders, to attend the reading of Martin Durand’s will.” Truthfully, that she’d been summoned to the Astoria offices of the old man’s lawyer had made no sense at all to her. First off, she hadn’t known that he’d died. She felt sorry for that, as she would when anyone died. But why would he put her in his will? He hadn’t even liked her—or if he had, he’d had a really strange way of showing it.

  She’d considered just blowing the whole thing off, not coming. If Martin Durand had left her something, somebody could mail it to her.

  Plus, coming here had meant she was setting herself up for just what was happening now: seeing Jaxon again. It shouldn’t be awkward. They’d hardly known each other. Still, she’d had no doubt she would feel uncomfortable. She’d been so right.

  And yet she couldn’t help but be curious. So here she was.

  Burt muttered something under his breath and glared up at her. His unfriendliness didn’t surprise her. During those eight weeks she’d worked at Wild River, the foreman had been almost as squinty-eyed and suspicious of her as old Mr. Durand.

  “I didn’t realize you knew Martin.” Jax eyed her warily now.

  “I didn’t, not really.” She felt overwhelmingly defensive, though she had zero reason to be—at least not concerning Martin Durand. “I met him that summer at the ranch, that’s all. After I quit, I never saw him again.” It was true, but it wasn’t what you would call full disclosure. There’d also been that recent unnerving, out-of-nowhere phone call.

  “Mr. Winter?” Saved by the receptionist. The pretty blonde stood in the arch that led to the inner sanctum. “Everyone.” She beamed a professional smile in their general direction. “Mr. Anders is ready for you now. This way, please.”

  Jaxon gestured Aislinn ahead of him, so she went first. The receptionist led them back to a conference room with a large oval table and a credenza against the wall on which there was a coffee service, including a tray of pastries and doughnuts.