Whirlwind Cowboy

“Yes, you’ve been here. Do you remember?”

“No.” Frustration thickened her voice as her gaze met his. “Your reaction made me wonder.”

He didn’t tell her this was where she had informed him that she was leaving. And ripped out his heart.

Yes, she’d sworn she would return to him, but his ma had said the same and she had never come home. When he had finally tracked down Frannie Ross, she hadn’t even recognized him. Just as Deborah didn’t now.

That realization made Bram’s anger flare to life again.

“Did something bad happen here?” she asked tentatively.

Tightening his grip on the reins, he thought about not answering, but what did it matter? “Guess it depends on your point of view. This is where I proposed.”

She was silent for a long moment. So long that he thought maybe she hadn’t heard him. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” The memory still had the power to make him wince.

Bram fought the urge to knee Scout into a run, get away from Deborah as quickly as possible. But the last thing he needed was for her to be plastered to him, holding on for dear life.

Especially after being cooped up with her overnight and feeling her lithe curves against him all during the ride. She was too near, her eyes too soft with a vulnerability that made him want to take care of her.

He ground his teeth so hard his jaw ached, and he urged Scout forward.

The packed trail gave way to hilly grassy pasture. Evergreen trees and brush spotted the rolling landscape. Vibrant patches of wildflowers bloomed across the field.

In the distance, he spotted two of his ranch hands rounding up stray cows. After stopping to speak to them and leave Cosgrove’s injured mare, he and Deborah continued on.

When they finally topped the rise near her home, Bram pointed to the log structure at the bottom of the slope. “There’s your house.”

Her hand tightened on his waist. “I don’t recognize it,” she said tremulously.

He looked over his shoulder at her, his hat grazing the top of her head. Her pert nose was slightly sunburned, but it was her eyes that held his attention.

The sharp disappointment in the blue depths razored through him. She appeared lost and he saw hope seep out of her, like water from a leaky pail.

When her gaze met his, tears welled in her eyes.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that I really thought I would remember my own house.”

“It’s okay.”

“I— What if they don’t want me?”

Bram stared at her. She had likely been thinking such things during the entire ride. The more distance he had put between them and the cabin, the more heaviness he had sensed from her.

A strange feeling unfurled in his chest. “Of course they’ll want you.”

“Thank you for bringing me … here. And for helping me.” She made as though to slide off.

Bram grabbed her wrist. “What are you doing?”

“You said this was my house.”

“Yes, but you don’t have to go down there alone.” He couldn’t just deposit her like a bag of laundry and leave. His voice was gruff. “I’ll explain everything.”

“You will?”

He nodded.

“Thank you,” she said softly, relief plain on her face. “Thank you.”

The small whisper of her breath teased his lips and his gaze dropped to her mouth.

He was aware of the rapid flutter of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. The black satin of her hair gathered back in a ponytail that slid over her shoulder. Hair he wanted to free and bury his hands in. Mixed in with that awareness was the infernal protectiveness he couldn’t shake.

It frustrated the hell out of him. Pulling his attention from her, he guided Scout into the yard. Bram threw one leg over the gelding’s neck and slid to the ground, then turned to help Deborah dismount.

He lifted her down, his hands closing on her taut waist. Her breasts brushed his chest and her hips pressed to his as he slowly set her on her feet. Bram bit his cheek against the urge to pull her full into him. He couldn’t let himself get tangled up in their past.

For a long moment their eyes held. A rosy flush stained her cheeks.

She looked away, appearing confused and overwhelmed. And frightened, Bram realized. She had worn the same expression when he had come upon her in the cabin.

His chest ached as he asked quietly, “You okay?”

“I think so.”

He lifted his hand to brush a strand of hair away from her face.

“Deborah!”

She started and so did Bram. Together, they turned to face the tall woman rushing toward them.

“That’s your mother, Jessamine.”

Three younger women burst out of the house, excitement and relief plain on their faces as they moved in Deborah’s direction.

“Oh, thank you for bringing her home, Bram!” Mrs. Blue said. “I didn’t know you were going after her.”

“I didn’t.” He removed his hat. “I found her at the cabin on the other side of the Circle R.”

“The cabin? Why?” Jessamine frowned, her blue gaze shifting to her oldest daughter. “Your note said you were going to Abilene.”

“There’s an explanation,” Bram said. He wondered if her family would have as much trouble with it as he had at first.

“I should hope so.” The older woman leveled a look on Deborah. “You’ve never lied to me before.”

Deborah’s fingers curled into the loose shirt fabric at Bram’s waist. He glanced at her. If she was holding on to him so tightly, she had to be afraid. He noted the paleness of her skin and the alarm on her face. She didn’t recognize her mother or sisters.

Without thinking, Bram stepped slightly in front of Deborah, shielding her. “Hold up a minute, Mrs. Blue. We have a problem.”

The older woman stilled, as did Deborah’s sisters. Jessamine’s dark hair was threaded with gray, but the younger women were all raven haired like Deborah. Jordan’s eyes were the same sky-blue, but the two younger sisters, Michal and Marah, had silver eyes like their older brother. All of them fixed anxious gazes on him.

“Something’s happened,” he said.

Jessamine looked around him to her daughter. Her eyes widened. “You’re hurt! How badly?”

“She’s bruised some.” Bram couldn’t stop a fresh rush of fury at Cosgrove.

As succinctly as possible, Bram explained how he had been on Cosgrove’s trail and tracked the thief’s horse from Monaco to the Ross cabin. There Bram had found Deborah instead of the outlaw. He ended with the information that Deborah had no memory.

“No memory?” Confusion clouded the older woman’s eyes. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Neither have I.” Bram dragged a hand down his face. “But I think it’s true.”

Deborah’s fist tightened on his shirt.

Jessamine asked quietly, “Is Cosgrove the one who hurt her?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jordan, closest in age to Deborah, looked at Bram, her gaze steady and troubled. “She doesn’t remember anything or anyone?”

He shook his head.

“She’ll remember me.” The youngest girl stepped forward. “I’m Marah and this is Felix.”

The girl reached into the pocket of the apron covering her yellow dress and pulled out a field mouse. Bram knew she had made the animal her pet more than a year ago. Cupping it in her hand, she held the rodent up to Deborah. The mouse blinked.

Deborah’s eyes filled with tears and she pressed closer to Bram. “I don’t. I apologize.”

“But …” Marah’s gray eyes flashed with uncertainty as she looked at their mother.

Michal stood quietly, her eyes wide and watchful.

Bram was hit with the need to ease Deborah’s way. “She’s been through hel—an ordeal. Give her some time, okay?”

“Of course,” Jessamine said. “Oh, my dear girl, I’m so sorry.”

She came forward slowly and held out a hand to her daughter. After a moment, Deborah released her hold on Bram, stepping up beside him.

“Come inside,” Jessamine coaxed. “We’ll get you a bath. After that you can sleep or eat, whatever you want.”

Deborah glanced up at Bram, her eyes clouded with doubt.

His chest tightened. He shifted, lightly cupping her elbow. “It’s okay.”

Skirts brushing the tops of his boots, Deborah let herself be drawn into the circle of women.

Michal gave a small smile and squeezed her arm.

“Go with the girls, honey,” Mrs. Blue said. “They’ll get you a bath.”

As the women walked off, Deborah gave Bram a last pleading look over her shoulder. A look that pierced him right in the heart.

Jessamine turned to him. “She doesn’t remember anything?”

“No.” His gaze traced the slender, taut line of Deborah’s back as she walked away. “And that’s not the worst of it. You need to know that Cosgrove will likely show up here.”

“What? Why?”

Bram explained about the stolen bank money and his belief that Cosgrove would hunt Deborah down for it.

Alarm pinched the woman’s thin features. “If he does that, he could hurt her again!”

“I won’t let that happen.” Bram might intend to use her as bait—that didn’t mean he would let anything happen to her.

He shared his plan to provide protection for Deborah. “I’m headed into Whirlwind to tell Davis Lee everything.”

Hearing hoofbeats, he looked across the prairie, recognizing the roan gelding loping toward them. “That’s Duffy Ingram, one of my hands. I told him to follow me over here. He’ll stand watch until I return tonight.”

“Do you really think that’s necessary?”

“Yes, ma’am. In fact, I’ve arranged for someone to be here around the clock.”

Her eyes widened.

“Duffy will share daytime duties with Amos Fuller, another of my ranch hands. They’ll each take an eight-hour shift and I’ll be here at night.”

“I’ll let the girls know we need to be aware. And armed.”

Bram nodded. One advantage of having a Texas Ranger son was that Jericho had taught all of the Blue women to shoot. And to hit what they aimed for.

Once he had introduced Duffy to Mrs. Blue and left instructions that the ranch hand not let Deborah out of his sight, Bram mounted up. His gaze went to the house, and he hoped she would soon feel at ease.

Now that it was time to go, he didn’t feel right about leaving her. He snorted. What a half-wit. Hadn’t she planned to do that very thing to him?

He had to remember that. Had to remember she was his way to Cosgrove and that’s all she was.

Deborah watched Bram ride away. He didn’t go in the direction they’d come, but instead guided his mount past the house.

She had remembered the place where Bram had proposed. Not the way he had remembered, with details, but when they had paused at the water, she had been overcome by anger followed by a heavy sadness. Then an image, a flash of … something. And a pounding in her head.

His explanation of what had happened there accounted for the suffocating sadness that had rolled over her. That piece of memory had left her half expecting to remember her family. But she didn’t.

As she had stared at them, the realization had hit her like a blow. For a moment she hadn’t been able to breathe. Panic and crushing disappointment slammed her hard enough that she had wanted to lean into his wide chest, let him shelter her from a dark bitter crush of emotion. But she hadn’t.

“Bram’s going into Whirlwind.” Mrs. Blue—her mother—joined the others on the porch and looked at Deborah. “Oh, that’s a nearby town.”

She appreciated the information even though this was something she actually knew. “He told me about Whirlwind.”

“Good.” The other woman smiled softly.

As Bram kneed his horse into a lope, Deborah tore her gaze from his broad shoulders and turned to her family.

Mrs. Blue continued, “He plans to talk to the sheriff and explain what’s going on.”

“Did he tell you about the money?” she asked. “And Cosgrove?”

“Yes.”

“Cosgrove!” Jordan frowned. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“I don’t like him, Deborah,” said the girl with the mouse.

Deborah recalled her name was Marah.

“What money?” Michal asked, pulling her long black hair over her shoulder.

Jordan watched Deborah somberly. Almost warily. “Do you really not remember Bram?”

“No.”

“You’re completely smitten with him.”

Mrs. Blue herded them toward the door. “Let’s go inside. Your sister might like to eat or bathe. And we can talk.”

Sister. Deborah looked at the women around her. All raven haired, all pretty, all showing the same puzzlement that she felt. And she didn’t recognize a single one of them.

Any more than she recognized the man who had asked her to marry him. The man she was supposedly in love with.

Chapter Five

“What do you mean, you found Deborah Blue and forty thousand dollars?” Whirlwind’s sheriff, Davis Lee Holt, shoved a hand through his dark hair, his blue eyes narrowed on Bram.

Bram pointed to the saddlebags he’d brought inside the jailhouse and dumped beside the other man’s scratched oak desk. “Take a look in there.”

Sunlight glittering off his badge, Davis Lee knelt and flipped open one pouch, then the other. He let out a slow whistle. “Forty thousand dollars. This is from the Monaco robbery.”

“Yeah.”

His friend rose. “What’s this about Deborah? I didn’t know she was missing and needed to be found. When you left Whirlwind and headed to Monaco, I thought you were going after Cosgrove.”

“And that’s what I did,” Bram said. “But he isn’t who I found.”

Staring out the window toward the smithy next door, he explained how he had come upon the woman he’d hoped to marry. The woman who didn’t even know who he was!

Davis Lee eased down on the corner of his desk. “Deborah’s note said she was going to Abilene to meet with the school board about her teaching position. How did she end up with Cosgrove?”

“She says she doesn’t know.”

The lawman barked out a laugh. “Then who would?”

“She can’t remember anything or anyone.”

“Not even her family?”

Bram shook his head, lifting a hand to greet Ef Gerard, the black man who owned the smithy. Ef gave a broad smile and returned the greeting.

“Or you either?” Sobering, Davis Lee eyed Bram consideringly.

“That’s right.”

“How can that be?”

“Evidently I’m not all that memorable,” Bram muttered. Which blistered him up good.

“How does someone lose their memory?”

“I have no notion.”

“Have you talked to Annalise?”

“Not yet.” Bram planned to visit the doctor before he left town. Annalise Fine was a lifelong friend who had recently returned from back East. She and Matt Baldwin had reunited after seven years apart.

Bram bet Annalise would never forget the man she claimed to love.

He turned back to the sheriff, bracing one shoulder against the wall beside the window. “Deborah’s hurt, too. She has a cut on her temple, and her face and back are bruised.”

Davis Lee’s jaw firmed. “Did Cosgrove rough her up?”

“Could be. She was with him.”

“Doesn’t sound like it was willingly.”

Bram wanted to believe it wasn’t. He shrugged. “Who knows?”

The lawman arched a brow. “I’d think you might know, seeing as how close you two are.”

“Were.” He didn’t know anything. “How close we were.“

“I thought the pair of you—”

“No.” Bram cut him off.

His friend studied him for a moment. “Cosgrove could’ve made her write the note to her family to keep anyone from knowing she was with him. And to keep anyone from coming after them.”

Three weeks ago Bram had been so furious upon reading her words that it hadn’t even entered his mind to wonder if things weren’t the way they seemed. Had he missed a clue because he was angry that she’d left? He didn’t think so, but he wanted to see the note again.

He glanced at Davis Lee. “Deborah also could’ve written the note of her own free will, too. For the same reasons.”

“True, but I don’t think she would go anywhere with Cosgrove willingly. Do you? I mean, do you really think so?”

Yes. But Bram didn’t want to get into an argument over this with the sheriff. “I’m keeping my mind open to the possibility until I get some proof one way or another.”

“She’s sweet on you. Why would she run off with that bastard?”

She’d been so sweet on him that she’d refused to marry him.

“She’s not all that sweet on me.” Done with talking about Deborah, he said, “I assume Jericho isn’t back from New York City or Mrs. Blue would’ve told me.”

“That’s right.”

Deborah’s sisters had overwhelmed her enough. Bram had no idea how she would’ve reacted to her older brother. Though quiet, the former Ranger was big and had an intimidating presence until you got to know him.

Davis Lee stroked his chin. “Do you think we should send a wire letting him know what’s happened?”

He thought a moment. “There’s no point in it. Mrs. Blue said she wrote him that Deborah had gone to Abilene to see the board about her teaching position. Jericho never knew his sister might have been in danger. All we could tell him is that she was possibly abducted and now she’s home safe. There’s nothing he can do about it.”

“You’re right. You can just tell him when he returns from New York.”

Bram nodded.

The other man’s gaze went to the saddlebags on the floor. “You planning to turn in this money? Want me to wire the Monaco Bank and let them know it’s been recovered?”

“No.”

Davis Lee studied him. “Cosgrove will come for that money.”

“I’m counting on it.” Bram’s voice hardened.

The lawman stood. “That will put Deborah in danger.”

“That’s why I’m sticking to her like a burr to a saddle blanket.”

“And when Cosgrove shows up, you’ll trap him.”

“Right.” Hate for the man bubbled up inside him.

“I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on the man,” Davis Lee said.

“First come, first served.”

“I don’t like the idea of the bank not knowing their cash has been recovered.”

“If I return the money, Cosgrove might not show unless he has another reason to.”

“You mean, if Deborah has or knows something he doesn’t want her to,” the other man finished.

“And until or unless she remembers what happened, we won’t know if that’s the case. The only way to make sure Cosgrove comes back to Whirlwind is to keep the money. Or let him think we have.”

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