The Cowgirl In Question

He turned at a sound and was struck by the sight of a pretty young woman coming out of the kitchen. She stopped, her eyes widening. A huge smile lit her face as she came running at him, throwing herself into his arms.

“Rourke,” she cried. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back.”

He stepped away to hold her at arm’s length to study his little sister. “Dusty? I can’t believe it.”

She’d been six when he’d left, a kid. Now she was a woman, although it was pretty well hidden. She wore boys’ jeans, a shapeless western shirt and boots. Her long blond hair was woven in a single braid down her back and a straw cowboy hat hung from a string around her neck. She wore no makeup.

“Dusty?”

Neither had heard the front door open. They both turned to find their father filling the doorway.

“We got fencing to see to,” Asa said, and turned, letting the door slam behind him.

Rourke listened to his father’s boots pound across the porch. “You best get going. We can visit later. I’ll let you know where I’m staying in town.”

“You’re not staying here?” Dusty cried.

Rourke gave her a look.

“Daddy is so impossible,” she said, sounding like the teenager she was. “I swear he gets more stubborn every day.”

Rourke could believe that. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Cash lives in town. You know he’s still the sheriff?”

Rourke nodded.

“J.T. is running the ranch now, but Daddy and I help. Brandon is hardly ever around. J.T. is probably still out riding fence this morning. Did Brandon leave?”

“He said he had business in town,” Rourke told his sister.

She nodded and frowned. “I hate to think what kind of business. Daddy says he’s headed for trouble and I’m afraid he might be right.”

Headed for trouble. That’s what Asa used to say about him, Rourke thought.

“I’m so glad you’re finally home,” Dusty said, and stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek before closing the front door behind her.

He watched Dusty join their father out in the yard, watched her walk past the old man. Rourke had to smile, recognizing the familiar anger and stubbornness in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. The old man shook his own head as she sashayed past him, giving him the silent treatment just as she’d done to them all when she was mad as a child.

When Asa finally followed after her, he looked older, almost sad, as if another defiant kid would be the death of him.

Rourke’s smile faded as he watched his father follow Dusty to one of the ranch pickups. He stayed there at the window until they’d driven away, then he turned and climbed the wide staircase at the center of the room. At the top, the second floor branched out in two wings. Rourke walked down the wood-floored hallway to his old room at the end of the west corridor. He tried the door, wondering if his stuff had been moved out, the room used for something else.

But as the door swung in, he saw that his room was exactly the same as it had been when he’d left eleven years before. He expected the room to smell musty, at least be covered in dust. But neither was the case. Asa must have had the housekeeper clean it each week. What the hell?

He dropped his duffel on the log-framed bed and looked around, spotting the small straw cowboy hat he’d worn the day he’d won his first rodeo event at the age of seven. His first real chaps, a birthday present for his first cattle drive at the age of nine. His first baseball glove. All gifts from his father, placed on the high shelf Asa had built to store memories.

“In the end, that’s what life comes down to,” his father had told him the day he’d built the shelf. “Memories. Good and bad, they’re all you will ever really own, they’re all that are uniquely yours and ultimately all you can take with you.”

“You think Mom took memories of us to heaven with her?” Rourke had asked, looking up at his father.

Asa’s weathered face had crinkled into a smile, tears in his blue eyes. “She could never forget her kids,” he said without hesitation. “Never.”

“Or you, Dad. I’ll bet she remembers you.” It was the one time he’d ever seen his father cry, and only for those few moments before Asa could get turned and hightail it out to the barn.

Rourke walked through the bedroom, past the sitting room, to open the patio doors that led to the small balcony off the back. Stepping out, he gulped the afternoon air, the familiarity of it only making the lump in his throat harder to swallow.

As he looked out across the ranch, he spotted his brother J.T. riding in. Rourke watched him until J.T. disappeared behind one of the red-roofed barns, then he turned and went back inside.

Too many memories. Too many regrets.

He looked up again at the high shelf and all his trophies from first grade through high school for every damned thing from best stick drawing to debate, basketball to bull riding, baseball to target practice. And not a lick of dust on any of them.

He shook his head, not understanding himself any better than he did his father. He’d been wild from the time he could walk, bucking authority, getting in trouble, but somehow he’d managed to excel in spite of it. He got good grades without trying. Athletics came easy as well. In fact, he thought, studying the trophies on the shelf, maybe that was the problem. Everything had always come too easily.

He glanced around the room suddenly wondering why he’d come back here. Not to get his things. He hadn’t left anything here he needed. His grandfather had left all of them money, money Rourke had never touched. He could buy anything he needed for this new life the warden had tried to sell him on. He didn’t even need his old pickup. Hell, it was fifteen years old.

But he couldn’t leave without taking something. He went to the chest of drawers, opened several and took out jeans, underwear, socks, a couple of once-favorite T-shirts he knew he would never wear again and stuffed them into the duffel bag, zipping it closed.

Then he picked up the duffel bag and started to leave the room. His throat tightened again as he turned and spotted the faded photograph stuck in the edge of the mirror over the bureau.

It was a snapshot of Blaze and Cassidy.

He dropped the duffel bag on the bed and walked to the mirror. Blaze with her mass of long, curly fire-engine red hair and lush body standing next to her cousin at the rodeo grounds. Blaze nineteen and full of herself, he thought with a smile.

His gaze shifted to Cassidy and the smile evaporated. Cassidy looked plain next to Blaze with her brown hair and big brown eyes peering out of the shadow of her cowboy hat. Blaze was smiling at the camera, her hat pushed back. She was smiling at him behind the camera, flirting, being Blaze.

But Cassidy was leaning back against the fence, head angled down, peering out at the camera and him from under the brim of the hat, not smiling. Not even close. Her brown eyes were narrowed in an expression he hadn’t even noticed. Probably because he’d only had eyes for Blaze.

Now, though, he recognized the expression. Anger. Cassidy Miller had been furious with him.

He swore and plucked the picture from the edge of the mirror, remembering when he’d taken it. Only a week before Forrest Danvers’s murder.

Stuffing the photo into the duffel along with the clothes, he zipped it closed again and walked out of the room as he’d done eleven years ago, slamming the door behind him. He’d waited eleven years for this day. He couldn’t wait to see Cassidy.

Chapter Two

Cecil Danvers woke that afternoon with the worst hangover of his life. He rolled off the soiled cot he called a bed and stumbled to the rusted refrigerator for his first beer of the day.

He’d downed most of the can when he remembered what day it was. He stood in front of the fridge, listening to it running, waiting for the sweet feel of justified anger.

For the past eleven years, he’d plotted and planned for this day, but now that it was here, he had trouble working up the murderous rage he’d spent years nurturing.

Rourke McCall was to blame for every bad thing that had happened to him since the night his brother Forrest was murdered.

A lot of people in the county didn’t understand; they just thought Cecil was lazy, that he’d lived off Forrest’s death all these years. They just didn’t understand what it had been like to lose his only little brother, especially one who’d always taken care of him.

Cecil finished his beer, burped loudly and smashed the can in his fist before hurling it toward the trash can.

No matter what anyone said, he knew his life would have been better if Forrest had lived. He certainly wouldn’t be living in this rat hole on the tiny patch of land his mother had left him, living in the old homestead cabin that was falling down around his ears.

Nope. Forrest would have seen that he was taken care of. After all, Forrest was the smart one, the strong one. Hadn’t their old man always said so?

“Forrest is going to make something of his life,” the old man would say. “And if you’re lucky, Cecil, he’ll take care of your sorry ass as well.”

Now he had no one, Cecil thought as he opened the fridge and downed another beer, his eyes narrowing, stomach churning. His father had died right after Forrest’s murder. A farming accident. Happened all the time. Cecil’s mother hadn’t been far behind him. She was always moping around, crying over Forrest as if Forrest had been her only son.

Cecil shoved the memories away and concentrated on Rourke McCall. Yep, if it hadn’t been for Rourke, Cecil wouldn’t be forced to work when he ran out of money, mucking out other people’s horse barns or swabbing the local bars after hours.

He downed the rest of the beer, crushing the can in his fist and throwing it in the general direction of the trash can. Everyone in town was going to say that Rourke McCall had paid his debt to society for killing Forrest.

They’d tell Cecil to forget it, just as they had for the past eleven years. But people had always underestimated him, he thought grimly. He was the last of his family. It was up to him now. Rourke McCall had ruined his life and Cecil wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

ROURKE HAD JUST PUT his duffel on the seat of his pickup and was about to climb in when he saw his brother J.T. lead a large bay mare into the barn.

“Might as well get it over with,” he said under his breath, and walked toward the barn.

J.T. looked up as Rourke entered the cool darkness of the horse barn. The smell of horseflesh and leather, hay and manure filled his senses, sending him back to those cold mornings when he was barely old enough to walk. He and his father would come out here.

Asa would saddle up a horse, then lift Rourke in one strong arm and swing up into the saddle. Together they would ride fence until long after the dew on the grasses dried, the sun rising high and warm over the ranch and the sound of the breakfast bell pealing in the air.

Rourke breathed in the memory as he watched his brother unsaddle the bay, more recent memories of the prison barn trying to crowd in.

“Rourke,” J.T. said, looking up as he swung the saddle off. “Welcome home. So you’re back.”

He’d heard more heartwarming welcomes. “Thanks.”

His brother studied him. “You staying?”

He shook his head.

J.T. made a face and started to walk past him.

“The old man doesn’t want me here. Remember? He disinherited me. I’m not his son anymore.”

J.T. sighed, stopped and turned. “He was upset. He didn’t even do the paperwork. You aren’t disinherited. You never were.”

Rourke tried to hide his surprise.

“You know how he is,” J.T. continued. “Says things when he’s mad that he doesn’t mean.”

“Yeah, well, I just saw him and I didn’t get the impression he’d changed his mind.”

“He also can’t say he’s sorry any better than you can,” J.T. said.

Rourke had been compared to his father all his life. He hated to think he might really be like Asa McCall. As if he didn’t have enough problems.

“I assume you heard he had a heart attack,” J.T. said. “He can’t work the ranch like he used to. I’m doing the best I can with Buck’s help, hiring hands for branding, calving and moving cattle to and from summer range. But Dad’s going to kill himself if his sons don’t start helping him.”

Buck Brannigan was a fixture of the ranch. Once the ranch foreman, he was getting up in age and probably didn’t do any more than give orders.

Rourke looked out the barn door, squinting into the sunlight. “Dad would rather die working than rocking on the porch. Anyway, he’s got other sons.”

J.T. swore. “I’d hoped you might settle down, move back here and help out.”

Rourke shook his head. “Even if the old man would let me, I’m not ready right now.”

“You’re determined to stir it all back up, aren’t you?”

“Someone owes me eleven years,” Rourke said.

“Well, even if you do prove that you were framed, those years are gone,” J.T. said. “So how many more years are you going to waste?”

“I didn’t kill Forrest.”

“Don’t you think Cash tried to find evidence that would have freed you?” J.T. demanded. “Hell, Rourke, a team of experts from the state marshal’s office were down here for weeks investigating this case, but you think that, after eleven years, you’re going to come home and find the killer on your own?” J.T. shook his head in disgust, turned and walked off.

Not on his own. He was going to have help, he thought as he rubbed the mare’s muzzle and thought of Cassidy Miller. He’d kissed her right here in this barn when she was thirteen.

Another memory quickly replaced it. Cassidy on the witness stand testifying at his trial.

“SO THE DEFENDANT READ the note that had been left on his pickup windshield and then what did he do?” the prosecutor, Reece Corwin, had asked her.

Cassidy hesitated.

“Remember you are under oath. Just tell the truth.”

Rourke could see that she was nervous, close to tears. Her gaze came to his, then skittered away.

“He dropped the note, opened his pickup door, got in and drove away,” she said.

“Oh, come on, Miss Miller, didn’t the defendant ball up the note, throw it down, jerk open his pickup door so hard it wouldn’t close properly the next day and didn’t he drive out of the bar parking lot spitting gravel? Didn’t he almost hit several people coming out of the bar?”

“Objection!” Rourke’s lawyer, Hal Rafferty, had cried, getting to his feet. “He’s telling her what to say.”

“Overruled. We’ve heard this from other witnesses. Answer the question,” the judge instructed Cassidy. “And Mr. Corwin, please move on.”

“Yes,” Cassidy said, voice barely audible.

“And what did you hear him say before he left?” the prosecutor asked. This part was new. This part would put the nail in Rourke’s coffin.

Cassidy licked her lips, her eyes welling with tears as she looked at Rourke. “He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’”

“Speak up, Miss Miller.”

“He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’ But he didn’t mean it. He was just—”

“Thank you. No more questions.”

Cassidy had left out one important point his lawyer had been forced to remind her of on cross-examination.

“Who wrote the note that was left on my client’s pickup windshield, Miss Miller?” Hal Rafferty had asked.

Again tears. “I did.”

“And what did that note say?”

Cassidy twisted her hands in her lap, eyes down. “Blaze is meeting Forrest up Wild Horse Gulch.”

“You sent my client to the murder scene?” Rafferty demanded.

“Objection. There was no murder scene until your client got there.”

“Sustained.”

“Why did you write that note, Miss Miller?” the attorney demanded.

She stared down at her hands, crying now, shaking her head.

“What did you hope to gain by doing that?” Rafferty asked.

Again a head shake.

“Answer the question, Miss Miller,” the judge instructed.

“I don’t know why I did it.”

“Did someone instruct you to do it?” the attorney asked.

Her head came up. Rourke saw her startled expression. “No. I…just did it on impulse. I thought he should know what Blaze was…doing.”

“You a friend of Rourke McCall’s?”

She looked at Rourke, then the attorney, and shook her head.

“You were just trying to do him a favor?” the attorney asked. “Or were you trying to set him up for a murder?”

“No.” Cassidy had burst into tears. She’d been just a girl, sixteen going on seventeen, shy and gangly. The jury hadn’t believed that anyone like Cassidy Miller could have set him up.

“Who put you up to it?” the attorney demanded. “Who?”

“No one did.”

But Rourke knew better. Cassidy had left the note. He would never have gone up to Wild Horse Gulch if she hadn’t. He wouldn’t have been framed for murder.

What he didn’t know was why. Or who’d put her up to it.

But he was finally out of prison, finally back, and he was finally going to get the truth out of Cassidy Miller.

AS THE AFTERNOON DRAGGED ON, Blaze Logan found herself pacing in front of the Antelope Development Corporation window or ADC as it was known around the county.

“Sit down, Blaze,” Easton Wells finally snapped. “You’re making me nervous as hell.”

She turned from the window to look at her boss. Easton Wells was thirty-nine, a little old for her in more ways than the nine years between them. He had dark hair and eyes, not bad-looking but nothing like Rourke McCall. Nothing at all. And that was part of Easton’s charm. He had a good future, was divorced—no alimony or children, his ex-wife on another continent and not coming back, and Easton thought Blaze was the hottest thing going.

What could she say? She loved it.

But he didn’t want to marry her. Not yet, anyway.

“What if Rourke doesn’t come back to town?” she lamented out loud.

“I wouldn’t blame him,” Easton said, not looking up from the papers on his desk. ADC was small, a reception area and the larger office that she and Easton shared.

Blaze shifted her focus from across the street to her own reflection in the large front window. She turned to get a side view, liking what she saw, but she wasn’t getting any younger. She was thirty. Almost thirty-one! She needed to think about marriage. And soon. And Rourke’s getting out of prison had given her the answer.

“Rourke will bring a little life to this town,” she said, trying to get a rise out of Easton. “I, for one, think the diversion will be good. I know I’m getting tired of the status quo.”

Easton looked up and shook his head. “I know what you’re trying to do and it isn’t going to work.”

“What?” she asked innocently. She’d been dating Easton for years now off and on. Believing a woman should always keep her options open, she’d also seen Sheriff Cash McCall a few times. She’d had to initiate the impromptu dates with Cash. Like all the McCalls, he was stubborn and dense as a post. She’d had to practically throw herself at him to even get him to notice her.

Easton wasn’t dense. He just didn’t want to get married again. But she intended to change that. And Rourke was going to help her. He just didn’t know it yet.

“You’re trying to make me jealous,” Easton said.

She smiled and stepped over to his desk, placed both palms down on the solid oak surface and leaned toward him, making sure her silk blouse opened at the top so he got a tempting view of the cleavage bursting from her push-up bra.

“East, we both know there isn’t a jealous bone in your body,” she said in her most seductive voice.

He looked up, halting on the view in the V of her blouse appreciatively before looking up into her face.

“It would be a mistake to fool with Rourke,” he said, looking way too serious. That was another problem with Easton. He took everything too seriously, like work. He often got mad at her because she was late in the mornings or took too long at lunch or didn’t finish some job he’d given her or spent too much time on the phone.

“If I were you, I’d steer clear of Rourke,” Easton said.

“Would you?” she asked, lifting a brow as she studied him. “Why, East, you and Rourke used to be best friends.”

He nodded. “A long time ago. I’m sure Rourke has changed. I know I have.”

Not for the better necessarily, Blaze thought.

“I think you’re just mad at Asa. You wouldn’t even be in business if he’d gotten his way.” Asa had campaigned with all his power and money against coal-bed methane drilling in his part of Montana. “But you beat him.”

Easton shook his head. “Asa McCall is never beaten. All I did was make an enemy of him, which is a very dangerous thing to do.”

“And just think how much money you’ve made because of it,” she purred.

“Like I said, I wouldn’t mess with any of the McCalls if I were you. You don’t want that kind of wrath brought down on you.”

She studied him, a little surprised. Easton didn’t scare easily. “You make it sound as if the McCalls have done something to you.”

“I just wouldn’t want any of them to have a reason to come gunning for me,” Easton said.

Blaze straightened, a frown furrowing her brows. “Is there any reason Rourke would come after you?”

He looked up at her. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“If anyone should fear Rourke it’s my cousin Cassidy,” she said, going over to the window to look out at the Longhorn Café again.

“You aren’t on that kick again.” He groaned. “You can’t believe that Cassidy set him up for murder.”

“Does it matter if she did or didn’t as long as Rourke thinks she did?”

“It might to Rourke,” Easton said behind her. “You’re counting on him being that hothead who left here. But it’s been eleven years, Blaze. He isn’t going to come back the same man who left. He just might surprise you. Instead of going off half-cocked, he might have had time to figure out some things about the night Forrest was murdered.”

“You think Rourke is going to blame me?” She let out a laugh and turned to look at him. “Rourke was crazy in love with me.”

“Was being the key word here,” Easton said without looking up at her.

She glared daggers at him. “I take it back. I think you are jealous. Or afraid that Rourke might find out something about you. Let’s not forget that you’re sleeping with me now. Are you worried that Rourke won’t like that?”

Easton laughed without bothering to look up. “I think Rourke probably learned his lesson with Forrest.”

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

“It means Rourke won’t be killing any more men who you’ve slept with. Anyway, where would he start?” Easton laughed.

She continued to glare at him, but he didn’t look up. “Let’s not forget that you were at the Mello Dee too the night Forrest was murdered.”

Easton finally looked up at her, his eyes dark. “Yes, I witnessed the way you work men, Blaze. I saw how you got Forrest to dance with you to make Rourke jealous. I know how you operate.”

He was making her angry, but she hated to show it, hated to let him know that he was getting to her. She also didn’t like the fact that he thought he knew her. In fact, was wise to some of her methods when it came to men.

“You’re afraid of Rourke,” she challenged, wondering if she’d hit a nerve or if it was just simple jealousy. “Is there something you wanted to tell me about that night?”

Easton shot her a pitying look. “I had no reason to kill Forrest Danvers. Can you say the same thing?”

“I couldn’t kill anyone,” she cried, but right now the thought of shooting Easton did have its appeal.

“Take my advice,” he said, going back to the work at his desk. “Stay away from Rourke. It isn’t going to make me jealous, but it might make you regret it.”

“That almost sounds like a threat.”

“I’m trying to save you from yourself, Blaze,” he said with a bored sigh. “But I’m not sure anyone can do that.”