Reclaiming the Cowboy

“Actually, I’ve just arrived in town,” she told Edna. “I was hoping to find a decent hotel, not too far off the highway. Reasonable, if possible.”

Edna, bless her motherly heart, looked relieved that Bonnie wasn’t trying to go to work in this condition. Or maybe simply thankful this bedraggled customer was only passing through and wouldn’t be a regular.

“Marley’s is just what you need,” Edna said brightly. “About a mile down the highway, toward town. Respectable, if you know what I mean. No frills but clean as a whistle.”

Bonnie nodded gratefully. “Sounds perfect,” she said. Smiling again, she forked another small lump of eggs and made sure her posture was upright enough to help Edna feel free to tend other customers. “Thanks so much!”

Slowly, the waitress moved away. Bonnie fought the urge to let her shoulders slump back down. It wasn’t enough to fool Edna into thinking Bonnie had adequate starch and courage to face this day. She needed to fool herself, too.

She turned her place mat over again. Inside the border of morning-glory doodles, she slashed quick crisscrossing lines, creating a grid of empty squares. Then she numbered the squares—one through thirty-one.

She leaned back, looking at the makeshift calendar. Thirty-one days. That wasn’t so long, was it? And one of them was over already. She took her pen and drew a large X inside the first square. She traced over the mark, then traced it again and again, until the X was the darkest spot on the whole paper.

One down—thirty to go. She closed her eyes, then dragged them open, for fear she’d fall asleep and do a face-plant in the eggs. She blinked, squared her shoulders again and stared out the window, trying to get her bearings.

The sun had come up an hour ago—she’d been driving toward it, watching through the dusty car windshield as the golden ball had lifted itself sleepily over the horizon. The light had mesmerized her, then nearly blinded her, which was why she’d decided to pull over.

At first, she’d been too exhausted to notice much of anything. But now she saw that, right across the street, a huge nursery had blinked to life—electric lights illuminating the large metal-and-glass building. Behind the structure, sunlight sparked off sprawling rows of open-air plants and garden sculptures.

Crystal Eden, the nursery was called. She spotted several workers moving around, readying the place for opening. Lucky people! Her fingers closed over her palms, itching to hold a trowel or burrow into cold, reluctant earth.

They sold a lot of trees, she noticed. The effect was primarily green. But when she looked carefully, she spied the sprinkles of color.

Crocus, forsythia, daffodil...

Bulbs, already? Nervously, she glanced at the sky. March was a dangerous month. Spring was so close. You could smell the promise of warmth, floating behind the chill. The temptation to rush the planting was almost irresistible. But frost and snow remained a threat for at least another couple of months, and gardeners who forgot that often regretted it.

A little like her own situation, wasn’t it? Her winter of exile had lasted almost two years. Now she was down to thirty days, and she could feel her impatience rising. She could feel herself wanting to rush, to let down her guard, to take risks and dream of spring.

She wondered whether Crystal Eden was hiring. Sometimes, in spring, nurseries added staff as customers poured in, hungry for rebirth. She’d worked at other nurseries along the way. Once, she and Mitch had both landed jobs at the same tree farm.... Virginia, she thought, or maybe it had been in Kentucky. Summer...June or July. Every day, they’d come back to their hotel hot, sweaty and half-mad from working alongside each other, forbidden to touch.

She shook away the thought. She didn’t need a job, of course. When she first went on the run, she’d brought enough money to see her through five years, if she were careful. She’d had no way of knowing how long the ordeal would last.

But it had lasted only two. How was that possible? Just two short years, and already her mother was dead. Most of the money she’d started with was untouched.

Still, she wanted to work. What else would she do with her days, with her mind? How else would she feel a part of the living world? What else would keep her from going mad?

“Someone picking you up?” Edna was back, and her expression warned Bonnie she’d been letting her emotions show on her face. “You’re not driving, are you?”

“Just as far as the hotel.” Bonnie tried to sound reassuringly competent. “Then I think I’ll sleep all day.”

As Edna turned, Bonnie called out impulsively. “What’s the weather report, do you know? Are they calling for any snow this week?”

Edna shrugged. “Don’t think so. But you know March. At least if you’re from around here, you do.”

Her curious eyes invited Bonnie to share, but no amount of tired could ever make Bonnie be that foolish.

“Good,” Bonnie said. She wondered how crazy Edna would think her if she knew she was worrying about those vulnerable forsythia and crocus across the street. “I hate driving in the snow.”

Edna laughed and, giving up, moved on. Bonnie transferred her gaze back to the window. She’d hoped to get farther away before she hunkered down to serve her remaining days. Ohio, maybe. Or, even better, New England. Every mile was safety, another layer of protection.

But Colorado Springs was a decent-size town. Sacramento was already eighteen hours behind her, and even if Jacob was looking for her, he couldn’t be sure which direction she’d headed.

She stopped herself. If he was looking for her? There was no “if” about it. Her mother’s death had lit the fuse. The end would come, one way or another, in thirty days. Jacob knew that just as well as she did.

But maybe sprinting to the other edge of the map was the chess move he expected her to make and paradoxically would be the least secure.

Oh, God. She rubbed her face hard with both hands, unable to bear the twisted, looping logic. For two years, she’d second-guessed every decision this way.

She couldn’t think straight anymore. Her brain was dazed, as if the pain of the past few days were the equivalent of blunt force trauma.

She folded her place-mat calendar into a neat rectangle small enough to fit in her purse. Picking up her check, she slid her chair back and headed for the register. As she paid—cash, of course—she kept her eyes on the landscape boulders and evergreens in the Eden across the street.

Someone opened the door, and she heard a wind chime blow in the breeze, its notes wafting easily across the clean, crisp air. The sound reminded her piercingly of Bell River—though she couldn’t quite say why.

But suddenly she had her answer. She was tired of running. Every mile took her farther from Mitch. Whether he wanted her or not, he would always be the fixed foot of her life’s compass. Everywhere she went, forevermore, she would measure it in terms of how far it was from Mitch.

This was far enough. Any farther and she might not be able to breathe. If she could get a job, she’d stay.

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU’RE JOKING.” Mitch stared down at the dense paragraphs of legal mumbo jumbo, knowing he should be trying to read the document he held but unable to register anything except the ludicrously large number. It was such a big number it seemed to pulse and glow slightly on the page.

“You’re trying to tell me somebody already wants to buy and make the stupid thing? And they want to pay...”

He couldn’t even say the number out loud. This absolutely had to be a joke. He wasn’t an inventor or an overnight success story. He was the younger Garwood boy. The party boy. The goof. The one who had resisted growing up so long his big brother, Dallas, secretly feared he never would.

Surely this was a prank. If he fell for it, Dallas would jump out from behind the door and die laughing.

But Indiana Dunchik, Mitch’s well-respected patent lawyer—also known as Ana, though not to Mitch—hadn’t cracked a smile. She was a gorgeous blonde he’d hired because she worked out of Grand Junction, not Silverdell. Therefore, she was less likely to think it was by definition preposterous that Mitch Garwood, screwup extraordinaire, might’ve invented something worthwhile.

Okay, that, and she was a gorgeous blonde.

Obviously, he hadn’t hired her for her sense of humor. She seemed bewildered that he was chuckling.

“Of course it’s not a jest, Mr. Garwood. Nor is it, in my opinion, a stupid thing.” She laid her slim pink-tipped fingers flat on her desk. “We’ve spent months getting these patents because we believed your jacket was a marketable and useful product. I’m not surprised we have an offer. In fact, I’ll be surprised if this is the only offer we receive.”

Ordinarily, he disliked the royal “we,” but the truth was, this patent-application process had been such a drawn-out bore, and Ms. Dunchik had wrestled with so many searches, claims, actions and appeals, that he knew full well it had been a joint effort. In fact, she’d had the more difficult half, because when he’d designed the Garwood Chore Jacket he’d mostly been—what else?—screwing around and having fun.

It had all started almost two years ago, when he’d said, “These coats should come with a cheat sheet for the feed formulas. And somewhere to put my phone that I can actually reach it.”

Dallas had rolled his eyes—Mitch was always trying to find a way to do less work. His last “invention” had been a gravity feeder to eliminate all those trips from the loft with buckets. Dallas had laughed at that, too, but it worked.

However, Alec, Mitch’s nephew, had agreed about the jacket wholeheartedly. “We need somewhere to put Tootsie Rolls, too,” he’d added with feeling.

That really got everyone laughing. Bell River Ranch was a family venture—and not even Mitch’s family, except by marriage. Dallas had married Rowena Wright, the oldest of the Wright sisters, who had inherited the gorgeous spread and decided to turn it into a dude ranch.

So everyone assumed that Mitch was just hanging on, working with the horses, his first love, while he decided what to do when he grew up. But, later, Mitch kept thinking about the jacket. He had another idea, for a more comfortable back vent. And then some thoughts about a better, warmer lining.

Still, he’d just been fooling around—as evidenced by the fact that Alec, a ten-year-old, was his only cheerleader.

Well, Alec and Bonnie.

Reflexively, Mitch thought about how thrilled Bonnie would be to hear that he’d actually followed through and applied for the patent.

And now this offer. She’d squeal and leap into his arms and say “I told you so” a thousand times, between kisses. She’d always insisted his ideas were genius, and, though he knew she was blowing sunshine, it would be pretty nice to tell someone who wouldn’t be insultingly shocked.

But then he remembered. He wouldn’t be telling Bonnie anything anymore. Two weeks ago, he’d put paid to that possibility, once and for all. Even if she ever stopped running, she wouldn’t come back to him.

He glanced down at the contract again, and the number no longer glowed. It didn’t represent freedom or validation or kisses in the romantic places he’d promised to take her someday, places like Ireland or Spain. It was just money. And Mitch hadn’t ever really cared much about money.

He glanced at the woman behind the desk. “So what do we do now?”

The lawyer tightened her lips, which Mitch had learned was her thinking face. “In my opinion, we should wait. Of course, if you would like to have the cash in hand sooner, we can have our contracts department look this over and make recommendations. But...unless you need capitalization now...I think waiting will be fruitful.”

Fruitful. He almost smiled, thinking of his preacher father, a fire-and-brimstone bastard, and how often the old man had reminded Mitch and Dallas that the line about being fruitful and multiplying wasn’t a mandate to go around making babies all over Silverdell. The brothers had wasted an absurd amount of time creating other comic interpretations of the quote.

Suck lemons in math class, my son. Stuff like that. Mitch had thought it was hilarious. No wonder his father had always warned him he’d never amount to anything.

For the first and only time in his life, Mitch momentarily thought it was too bad the old tyrant wasn’t around anymore. It might be fun to shove this contract in his face and see what he thought of the number.

How about them multiplying fruits, Dad?

“I’m not in need of immediate capitalization,” he echoed, unable to resist playing Ms. Dunchik’s multisyllabic elocution game.

“Good.” She nodded regally and began scooping papers into a neat stack. “We’ll wait a few weeks, then. We have a department that can bring your design to the attention of some likely candidates, and we’ll see what happens. But I’ll be very surprised if we can’t end up doubling this. At least.”

More money than he needed, times two. He shook his head, trying to imagine what he’d do with that much “capitalization.” He drew a blank. Every plan he’d made for a long, long time had revolved around Bonnie.

So no, waiting for the money wasn’t a problem. Obviously, he could use an extra few weeks just to invent a new plan. A new reason to live.

“Smile, Mr. Garwood.” The lawyer leaned forward, and her eyes twinkled, as if she really saw Mitch for the first time. “You’re going to be a moderately wealthy man.”

He tucked one corner of his mouth up. It was the best he could do.

“Well, then,” he said. “Hurray.”

* * *

A WEEK LATER, Mitch sat in the back booth of a shadowy restaurant on the far side of Silverdell, feeling a little like Al Capone. The small cardboard box on the bench seat beside him didn’t have drugs or dirty money inside, but he couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if it had.

A few minutes later, Dallas slid in opposite him and shrugged off his jacket. Though Dallas was Silverdell County’s sheriff, he wasn’t in uniform today. Mitch had deliberately chosen an off-duty moment to ask his brother to break the rules.

Dallas waved away the hovering waitress, then faced Mitch with a half smile. “I have to admit, your message intrigued me.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks for coming.” The perfunctory words felt stiff on Mitch’s lips. They hadn’t seen each other in a couple of days, but they were close and didn’t usually waste time on pleasantries.

Dallas raised an eyebrow, noting the formality.

“I wanted to talk to you alone, away from the ranch.” Mitch ran his hand through his hair. “And away from your office, too. What I want... It’s personal. Not official, if you know what I mean.”

“I get the general idea.” Dallas’s smile broadened. “You know, you’re the only person I know who would actually leave the words I want you to do something unethical for me on an answering machine.”

“Well, I do, so why lie?” Mitch shrugged. “If you weren’t willing to consider it, there wasn’t any point wasting your time. Besides, I’m not much for sugarcoating.”

Dallas’s other eyebrow went up. “Might be splitting hairs there. No lying, but you want to do something unethical?”

“No. I want you to do something unethical. A very important distinction.”

Dallas laughed, as Mitch had known he would. The one thing he could always do was make his brother laugh. The one thing he could rarely do was make Dallas take him seriously.

He’d also never been able to make Dallas fudge the rules. Not in years, anyhow. Once, way back in their childhood, Dallas had been a little wild. Mitch remembered that clearly, if only because it had caused such violent rows with their dad. But in his midteens Dallas had gone straight. Super-straight. Even before he’d started wearing a star, he’d strutted around Silverdell with a halo.

Since he’d gone into law enforcement, even worse. He’d never so much as helped Mitch wriggle out of a parking ticket. So Mitch didn’t really hold out a lot of hope that Saint Sheriff Garwood would help him with this far-more-unprincipled request.

“Go ahead, then.” Dallas leaned back. “Out with it.”

Mitch put the box on the table. It looked innocent enough. Three weeks ago, it had held a pair of binoculars Rowena’s sister Penny had ordered for bird-watching classes at the ranch.

“I’ve got her fingerprints on a water glass. I thought maybe you’d be willing to get them ID’d for me. Discreetly.”

Dallas didn’t answer right away. At least he didn’t ask anything as dumb as whose fingerprints? Everyone at Bell River knew there was only one female on the planet Mitch cared about—and certainly only one who needed to be identified through fingerprints.

Finally, Dallas sighed, as if his little brother, who had always been so annoying, was continuing the tradition. “Why now?”

It was a sensible question, and Mitch didn’t mind answering.

“I saw her again. Three weeks ago. When I got home, she was in the cabin.”

“Really.” Dallas always kept his face and his tone under control, but Mitch knew him well enough to recognize true shock. “Did she explain where she’d been?”

“No. Nothing. She explained nothing. I didn’t ask at first, because—” Well, that part didn’t need sharing. “Anyhow, it wasn’t long before I realized she wasn’t home to stay. I...I was pretty upset. I told her if she ran away again, I didn’t ever want her to come back. But she left anyhow.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” Mitch was glad, finally, to talk to someone about it. Especially someone like Dallas, who would really get it. He knew Mitch better than anyone, and he’d hear all the things Mitch couldn’t bring himself to articulate, like how much it hurt.

Dallas’s eyes were thoughtful. “Did you mean it?”

“Damn straight I did. Look, I’m trying not to be a jerk here. She has the right to make her own decisions, and if she feels she can’t trust me, fine. But I can’t do this anymore. I—”

He stopped himself as he reached the invisible stoic-guy boundary. He couldn’t whine. But...he’d carried around his fury, mixed up in a big, boiling, nasty stew that included both heartbreak and terror, for three weeks now. He had to bring closure to this mess. He had to, or he’d lose his mind.

Not that he ever said words like closure out loud.

“Anyhow, I know it’s technically against the rules to run prints for me. But who else can I ask? I thought about Jeff—”

Dallas smiled. Jeff Shafer and Dallas had been deputies together, under old Sheriff Granton, before Jeff left for wider pastures, explaining that he needed to solve more interesting crimes than cow tipping and jaywalking. Jeff had always been the rebel of the two young deputies. He was a good guy, but, unlike Dallas, he believed that sometimes the greater good required breaking a rule here and there.

“Okay. You thought about Jeff.” Dallas cocked his head. “But?”

“But I can’t bring anyone else into this.” Mitch put his hands over the box, instinctively protective, then moved them again when he realized how transparent that body language might be. “I don’t think Jeff’s got loose lips, but who knows? She’s really scared, Dallas. You saw that. She’s running from something—or somebody—and I can’t risk putting a spotlight on her.”

“Then why ID her at all? Why not just let her go? She clearly believes we can’t help her. Maybe she’s right.”

“Maybe. But...” Mitch’s hands balled on the table, and his neck grew hot. “Damn it, Dallas. I would have thrown my body under an oncoming train for that woman.”

Dallas’s gaze softened slightly, though not enough to qualify as pity, which would have made things worse.

“I know you would have,” he said. “And she knows it, too. Problem is, how does that help her? You’re dead, and the train’s still coming.”

Mitch heard the logic. He really did. But it didn’t stop the helpless anger from radiating across his body in hot waves.

“Fine. I get that. But if I am going to move on, I have to know I did everything I could. I need to close this book, Dallas. I need to type The End on this stupid story. And I need you to help me.”

Sitting as straight as a fireplace poker, he gave his brother a hard, unblinking glare. “So. Bottom line. Will you do it or not?”

“Sure.”

Mitch dropped back against the cushioned booth, and the padding let out a whoosh of air that sounded just like the sigh of relief he felt in his chest.

“You will? Even though it’s against the rules?”

Dallas shrugged. “I won’t be advertising that I did it. But you’d be surprised how often it’s done. I bet Sheriff Granton’s daughter never dated a single guy who wasn’t innocently offered a Coke while he waited, for this very reason. Drinking glasses are good for fingerprints. So are the hoods of patrol cars.”

Mitch chuckled. Dallas never ceased to surprise him. He shoved the binocular box across the empty table. “Take it, then. I picked it up with a paper towel, so the prints are probably all still there.”

But Dallas made no move to claim the box. He simply smiled at Mitch, then lifted a hand to summon the waitress. “How about we get some coffee?”

Mitch nodded roughly, though he didn’t want coffee or anything a waitress could bring. All he wanted was for Dallas to grab that box, hustle it back to the sheriff’s department and force some miracle machine somewhere to spit out an identity.

“Take it,” he said again, glancing down at the box.

“Don’t need it.” Dallas waited, not speaking, while the waitress poured their coffee, then gave her a warm “thanks.” Waitresses always loved Dallas. They even flirted with him until they noticed the ring. Sometimes even after they noticed it.

When she left, Dallas shook his mug in small circles, letting some heat escape, then took a sip.

The display of serenity drove Mitch nuts. “Dallas. What the devil do you mean, you don’t need it?”

“Exactly that. I don’t need it. I’ve already got a set of her prints on a glass. Ro gave me one a year ago, and it’s been locked in my bottom desk drawer ever since.”

“Ro gave you one what?” Mitch frowned hard. “A glass with Bonnie’s fingerprints on it?”

“Yeah. Apparently, she’d saved one, right from the start, thinking she might need to probe further someday. She gave it to me while you and Bonnie were on the road. She thought I might want to try to track you down, to be sure you were okay. She thought it might help the search if we could find out who Bonnie really was.”

“Is.” Mitch said the word hotly, like a threat. “Who Bonnie really is.”

“Of course.”

Mitch could tell Dallas was clearly making a conscious effort to keep his tone calm, to prevent Mitch’s frustration and fear from escalating.

Too late. Mitch felt his lungs tighten, as if they didn’t want to send him air. “You’ve had it a year? And you haven’t run the prints? What on earth have you been waiting for?”

“Hey. I don’t break the rules for fun. Or to satisfy my curiosity.” Dallas shrugged. “You sent postcards, so I knew you were alive. You knew how to get in touch with me if you needed help, so I didn’t have any good reason to invade Bonnie’s privacy. Then, since you got home, I’ve been waiting for a sign from you.”

“From me?”

“Of course.” Dallas met his gaze steadily. “Bonnie O’Mara, or whoever she is, is your mystery, Mitch. Only you can say when you’re ready to solve her.”

* * *

BONNIE’S HOMECOMING, after two years on the run, could have been a splashy, trashy, conspicuous celebration. If she’d wanted to, she could have chosen to appear in sequins, sparkles and feather boas, holding a neon sign that said “Surprise, sicko! You lose!”

Instead, as she slipped into the large elegant hotel ballroom where her mother’s charity auction was being held, Bonnie wore head-to-toe black. It seemed fitting, somehow, since she hadn’t been able to attend the funeral.