Promise from a Cowboy

“Who’s Aubrey?”

“She feeds you dinner every evening, remember? The nice woman with the smile you say reminds you of Goldie Hawn?”

Actually, aside from her dyed blond hair and winning smile, Aubrey looked nothing like the winsome movie star. But the association seemed to help her mom’s failing memory.

“Oh, yes, Goldie Hawn. Do you remember when she—”

“Mom, I’ve got to go now, okay?” If she let her ramble on, her mother would spend the next thirty minutes rehashing the plot of some old movie. “I’ll be home again in a few days and I’ll visit you then.” She closed her phone, hoping B.J. hadn’t heard any of that. His pity about her down-and-out family was the last thing she needed.

A few steps away from her truck, Savannah pulled out her keys and clicked the unlock button. She’d just slid behind the steering wheel, when B.J. plopped himself right next to her.

She stared straight ahead, trying to adjust to his presence. But even without looking she could sense his long, muscular form beside her.

B.J. was too tall to be a cowboy, but that hadn’t stopped him from being a success at it. He had a high forehead and a strong jaw and chin, and intense gray eyes that hinted at green when the light was right.

From the first time she’d met him—at age fifteen when she’d walked into class as the new kid in town—she’d thought he was the best-looking guy she’d ever seen.

She still thought that.

Reluctantly.

Asking him to come to her truck had been a mistake. She’d thought a restaurant would be too intimate. But her cab had never felt so small, and if there’d been a table between them, at least she wouldn’t have had to sit so close that their shoulders practically touched.

The table also would have hidden the long line of his jean-clad thigh. And surely, in a restaurant, she wouldn’t have been able to hear the sound of him breathing.

“This is real cozy, but an open window would be nice.”

Quickly she inserted the key, then powered down both windows. “Sorry. This is awkward.”

“It doesn’t have to be, Savannah.”

Was he serious? She had to check his expression to be sure, but he didn’t seem to be mocking her.

“I heard your mom was in the care home in town now. How is she adjusting?”

So he had heard the call. Damn.

“Pretty good. Half the time she doesn’t really understand where she is, anyway.”

“That’s got to be tough.”

Savannah shrugged. Life with her mother had always been tough. Francine had been a flighty parent and an erratic housekeeper. But only recently had she crossed the line and become careless to the point of causing harm. Two years ago she’d flooded the main floor bathroom of their home on a twenty-acre plot of land just outside of town. The next month she’d almost set the house on fire.

“Do the doctors think she has Alzheimer’s?”

“No. She remembers some things just fine. She can tell you the exact year she planted each of the perennials in the garden at home. She’s just got...really bad judgment when it comes to everyday decisions. Her doctor insisted that she needed round-the-clock care, and since I can hardly afford that, there was no option but to send her away.”

Savannah did her best not to sound bitter. But it wasn’t easy, knowing that if Olive Lambert ever got really sick, her kids would have no trouble affording top-notch medical care.

At one time the discrepancy between the Lamberts and the Moodys hadn’t bothered her at all.

But that was before her brother’s future had been compromised by a prank that had turned into a full-blown disaster. On the surface it didn’t seem that bad. A bunch of foolish high school kids trespassing in an old barn and having an underage drinking party.

It wasn’t their fault the storm had blown in. Or that lightning had struck, setting the barn on fire.

But the presence of that vagrant in the loft troubled Savannah. It seemed too much of a coincidence. There had to be more to the story than either B.J. or her brother was letting on.

“What about Regan?” B.J. asked, continuing his polite inquiries about her family. “I heard she graduated from the University of Montana this year, same as my sister, Cassidy.”

Savannah couldn’t help but perk up at the mention of her ten-year-younger sister. “She sure did. She’s applied to medical school, too.” Every day Savannah checked the mail with a hope that bordered on desperation. She so much wanted her baby sister to have the success and respect that she deserved.

Unlike their brother, Regan had always been easy to manage. She excelled at school, never broke the rules that her sister set for her and was helpful at home, doing most of the cooking—a job Savannah disliked.

“She’ll make a great doctor,” B.J. said. “Remember how she was always trying to patch up those dolls of hers?”

Savannah started to smile as she recalled the makeshift beds with their bandaged dolls that Regan would line up on the porch railing when she played “hospital.” But the memories, although happy, only reminded her of the special role B.J. had once played in her life.

He’d been around a lot in those days. Regan had almost considered him a second brother. While she...well, she had considered him something a lot more intimate than that.

She rubbed her temple. Last thing she wanted was to rehash the night everything had changed. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a choice. “Like I was saying, I had a visit from a private investigator from Los Angeles last week.”

“Yeah?” B.J. sounded cautious.

“The investigator—her name is June Savage—was hired by a wealthy man named Morgan McBride eighteen years ago to find his runaway teenage son, Travis.”

B.J. twisted, spreading out his left arm along the back of the seat. She had his full attention now. “So we’re talking about our last year of high school?”

He’d done the math and come up with the right answer.

“Yes. Savage never did find the kid—well, not exactly a kid, he was nineteen years old when he went missing. But a few weeks ago a watch came up for sale on eBay. The watch was a McBride heirloom that hadn’t been seen since Travis ran away.”

“This is sounding complicated.”

She agreed. “Savage went to talk to the man who was selling the watch. Turns out he’d bought it at a pawn shop in Lewistown. Want to guess the year?”

“Our graduation year?”

“Right on the first try.”

B.J. frowned. “Are you saying this kid was the man who died in the fire?”

“Might be.”

“I’ve always wondered who he was.” B.J.’s voice sounded raw.

Savannah nodded. So had she. “Finding that watch caused June Savage to reopen her investigation. Previously she’d been concentrating her search in Mexico, since there had been signs pointing in that direction. This was the first time they considered Montana.”

“Montana is one thing. How did Savage narrow it down to Coffee Creek?”

“She was thorough. A search of death records for the year in question turned up the John Doe who died in that fire on Silver Creek Ranch. When she discovered that the body was roughly the same age and size as the missing McBride kid, she drove down to check it out.”

“Hell.”

“Yes. You realize, of course, that your aunt’s barn is less than an hour’s drive from Lewistown—where the watch was pawned. Here’s where it gets really interesting.” She paused a second. “The watch was sold to the pawn shop the day after the boy died.”

“How is that possible?”

“It must have been stolen. But less than twenty-four hours had passed between the time he ran away from his home in California and his death in the loft of that barn.” Which left a really short window of time when the watch could have been stolen.

B.J. swore softly. “Do you think they’ll exhume the body?”

“Shouldn’t need to. They ought to have dental records and a DNA sample on file. I’ve put through some paperwork to see if we’ve got a match. If we do, I’m guessing a state investigator will be appointed to reopen the investigation.”

“I see.”

Savannah studied his eyes, looking for more than he’d given her so far. But B.J. didn’t say anything further. Finally she’d had it.

“Damn it, B.J. Don’t you think it’s time you told me what really happened that night?”

Chapter Two

“Why?” B.J. felt sick and angry all at the same time. He’d thought about that vagrant a lot in the passing years. Who was he? What had he been doing in a barn that was so far off the beaten track, most people in Coffee Creek didn’t even know it existed?

He’d assumed the guy must be homeless. And that he had no family. It seemed logical, since no one had ever come looking for him.

But if he turned out to be this Travis McBride, then he had been someone’s son. And he’d been missed.

The pain the McBrides must have gone through just didn’t bear thinking about.

And now Savannah was on his case. “You never asked me what happened before. Never wanted to hear my side.”

She looked shocked. “That isn’t true.”

“It is.”

She shook her head. “I had to come to the sheriff’s office to pick up Hunter. I heard the reports you gave to Sheriff Smith. Your parents were there, too. We got the whole story from both you and Hunter.”

Yeah. She’d heard the “official” stories. But she’d never asked him privately about what had happened. He’d expected Savannah, of all people, would understand that he would do what he could to protect her brother. He’d done it for her, because he loved her and knew how much she worried about Hunter.

But that had been a long time ago. They were different people now.

“Right. And what makes you think I have anything to add, eighteen years after the fact?”

Savannah’s gaze faltered. She glanced down at her hands, which were clenched in fists on her lap, then back at him. “It was just a hunch.”

He shrugged. “I hear you’re a good sheriff. You should be proud of that. But you and me—we really don’t have anything to talk about. If you want to rehash what happened that night, maybe you should track down your brother.”

* * *

SAVANNAH WATCHED AS B.J. got out of her truck and started walking away. She felt empty inside, drained and tired. It had taken a lot of emotional energy to talk to him again after so many years.

He’d been so closed to her. And mad. She hadn’t expected the anger.

She glanced at her reflection in the side mirror. She looked rough. It had been a long week. Some vacation. She’d booked the time off to drive out to Oregon in the hopes of meeting up with her brother.

Besides questioning him about the fire, she’d hoped to reassure herself that he’d cut down on his drinking and was putting aside a portion of his winnings the way she’d advised him to do the last time she’d seen him.

Which had been about six months ago now.

The fact that he hadn’t shown up as expected should not have surprised and disappointed her.

Yet it had.

She knew most everyone in the world had given up on her brother. But she couldn’t. Maybe it was because they were twins and shared a special bond? But no—she and Hunter had never been especially close. How could they be when she’d always felt more like his mother than his sister?

She shifted in her seat, and now, instead of her own reflection in the mirror, she could see B.J. He had turned around to look at her. For a second their eyes met. Then he shook his head and resumed walking away.

She’d known he was registered at the Wild Rogue, too, when she’d made her plans. Maybe all along it had been him she’d wanted to see...?

“Could I really be that stupid?” She jerked the truck into gear and started to drive. It was a long way back to Coffee Creek and she had only two days of vacation left.

* * *

B.J. DIDN’T GO for the steak dinner he’d been craving. Instead, he sat in his truck and thought. He had a lot on his mind.

His brother Brock, how much he missed him and what a loss his death had been for the family ranch.

The dead guy in the loft—if Savannah was right, he now had a name and a family that was mourning his death, the way all of them were mourning Brock.

And Savannah.

She’d made him angry tonight, but their conversation had also woken up a longing deep inside him. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He didn’t understand why, after so many years, she could still make him feel this way.

Another half hour went by before he realized what he needed to do. He hitched his trailer to his truck then wheeled up to a drive-through, where he ordered a burger, fries and a large coffee. While he waited for the food, he left a message for his mother and his sister, letting them know that he’d decided to head back to Coffee Creek.

They’d be surprised, to say the least. He was booked for two more rodeos this month and Coffee Creek was definitely not part of the plan.

But his plan had just changed.

He was going home.

It was time.

* * *

TWO DAYS LATER, Savannah pulled into the acreage where she and her family had lived since they’d first moved to Coffee Creek when she was fifteen. It was a run-down, twenty-acre parcel of land with several rusty cars that her father had planned to fix up and sell, as well as an old log home in desperate need of staining and a new roof.

Once, there’d been piles of trash everywhere, too, but over the years she’d carted most of it away, either for recycling or to the dump.

She hadn’t had time to do any landscaping, though, and no money, either. For the past few years her paychecks had been divided between the monthly fees for the care home and her sister’s college. Thank goodness Regan had qualified for almost a full scholarship or the ends of her paychecks never would have met.

When people asked Savannah about the stress of being a sheriff, she never told them the truth. Her family caused her a hell of a lot more anxiety than her job.

For as long as she could remember, it had been this way.

She parked her SUV and went inside, trying not to notice the cracked lino in the kitchen and the dull walls. A coat of paint would make all the difference.

Maybe that was how she should have spent her week off work. At least then she’d have had something to show for her efforts.

A picture on the fridge showed her mother and father during happier times—Regan was sentimental and liked keeping such things. That was back before children had been on the scene and her father had been gainfully employed at his father’s oil and gas company in Dallas.

Drinking and gambling—once only occasional dalliances—had become a way of life for her dad after her grandfather died. He’d quit his oil and gas job, sure he could live off his inheritance for the rest of his life. But by the time they moved to Coffee Creek he’d squandered almost all of his investments. He’d had just enough left to buy this small acreage outside town. The idea had been to open a bed-and-breakfast.

What a laugh.

The endeavor had never gone beyond a few scribbles on a notepad.

While her mother didn’t drink or gamble, she had her own way of coping with her husband’s foibles and that was by withdrawing into her own little world—a pretty garden and her late-night movies were all Francine Moody ever seemed to care about.

Then when Savannah was sixteen her father passed away from a diseased liver. She’d already been providing most of the care for her brother and sister. But at that point she started taking care of her mother, too.

Savannah popped a frozen pasta entrée into the microwave, then gobbled it down between sips of water. She knew she should head to town and visit her mother.

But she was feeling a pull to a different place, and since there were still several hours left to the long June day, she decided to give in to it.

Rather than get back in her truck, she decided to ride the Harley that Hunter had almost finished fixing up the last time he was home.

She’d taken it to the shop to get it road-worthy, and then bought herself a leather coat and helmet. She’d always wanted a horse—something most of her neighbors took for granted—but horses were expensive to keep and the motorcycle was a close second. She enjoyed taking it out for a spin now and then.

Thirty-five minutes later, she turned the bike off the road onto a dirt boundary access lane that divided Maddie Turner’s Silver Creek Ranch from Olive Lambert’s Coffee Creek property.

The two sisters had long been estranged—for reasons even B.J. had claimed not to understand.

For about a mile Savannah drove on a track that was almost overgrown until she came to the creek that divided the Lamberts’ property from the Turners’.

The barn sat on the Turner side of the boundary, in the middle of nowhere. Once used for branding, it was now listing to one side. Most of the wood was charred from the fire, but the rain from the storm that night had saved it from being completely destroyed.

She nudged her boot under the kickstand, then left her bike parked beside an old ponderosa pine. Wading through grass that was almost waist-high in places, she heard rustling from the willows growing close to the creek.

And then she heard the distinctive sound of a horse snorting. She moved closer to the trees, to make sure.

And there he was—a handsome black gelding, all tacked up for riding and tethered to a tree near the water. “Hey, gorgeous. Where’s your owner?”

She scanned one side of the creek then the other, before turning to inspect the barn. Just then a cowboy dressed in faded jeans and a blue shirt stepped out into the sunlight.

“Well, Sheriff. Two times in one week makes for some kind of record, doesn’t it?”

She felt her heart give a leap. What the hell was B. J. Lambert doing back in Coffee Creek?

Chapter Three

B.J. had been a rodeo cowboy for almost as many years as he’d spent growing up in Coffee Creek. He’d met a lot of women in those eighteen years. None of them had ever meant to him what Savannah Moody had.

Was it because she’d been his first girl? He’d fallen for her the moment she stepped into the classroom, already beautiful at age fifteen in an unstudied, slightly exotic way that made her stand out from the crowd. Lots of the girls in Coffee Creek were blondes or toffee-colored brunettes, while Savannah’s hair was thick, wild and nearly black.

Her eyes, smoky and dark, had a mysterious, watchful quality, and her smooth olive skin and generous, full lips sent a sultry invitation that belied her cautious nature.

Her brother had similar coloring, was also tall and naturally thin, but beyond that, the resemblance ended. Hunter had been cocky, belligerent, on the lookout for trouble. In contrast, Savannah was almost always serious, never one to break a rule or stretch a boundary.

B.J. and Savannah had dated for more than two years, and in all that time she’d never let him do more than hold her hand or kiss her modestly. At parties she’d avoided drinking and smoking, which meant she’d always been the designated driver.

Her high standards had carried over into everything she did—whether it was studying or working at a part-time job, or looking after her baby sister. His friends had teased her at first, but Savannah had remained steadfast and eventually she was accepted and even respected.

He’d wanted to marry her.

And now, looking at her as a grown woman, all those old feelings were surging again.

He’d heard her motorcycle approaching and had been watching her for a while. She looked great in a fitted leather jacket and dark jeans that hugged her long, lean physique. She was almost as tall as he was.

As she walked toward him she pulled off her motorcycle helmet and her thick hair cascaded down her shoulders. He swallowed, fighting an urge to reach out and touch.

“Find anything in there?”

He caught a whiff of a fresh orange-blossom scent as she walked past him on her way to the barn. The big doors had long since fallen to the ground, leaving a gaping opening into the building. The walls sagged to the east, so much so that he felt as if one shove would topple the entire structure.

But it was sturdier than it appeared. It had to have been to have survived this long.

“Funny thing, having a barn in the middle of nowhere.”

She’d never been here before today. And until today, he had felt no wish to revisit the place where a man had died. “It was used for branding in the spring,” he explained. “Back in the days when the Turners were big into cattle, before my grandfather died.”

“When was that?” Savannah asked.

“He had a massive stroke the year before I was born. A day later, he was gone. According to his will, the land was divided between his two daughters. Mom inherited a parcel of good grazing fields that butted up to my dad’s property. Maddie Turner was left with the rest, including the house, barn and all the outbuildings.”

“Is that when the feud between them started?”

“Their relationship was already rough. But it did get worse then. Mom told Corb that Aunt Maddie didn’t let her visit their dad after he had his stroke. Twenty-four hours later he died without her having had a chance to say goodbye.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah. If it’s true.” B.J. knew he was supposed to be on his mother’s side, but he couldn’t help feeling skeptical.

“After her father’s death, didn’t Maddie keep raising cattle?”

“She tried. But she soon had to scale down operations. Apparently Maddie doesn’t have my mother’s head for business and she made one bad decision after another. From what I hear, she only has about fifty head now, as well as a few dogs and some chickens.”

“So this barn hasn’t been used in a long time.”

“No.”

Savannah pulled a flashlight out of the breast pocket of her jacket. “Strange she never had it torn down.”

B.J. hung back near the entrance. He’d been wishing he had brought his own flashlight and admired her foresight. She traced the beam along the building’s foundation until she came to a corner where the boards were almost entirely black: the obvious starting point of the fire.

“I guess Maddie’s had bigger problems to worry about than a falling-down barn in the middle of nowhere. But if you hadn’t shown up when you did, I might have rectified her oversight.” He pulled a pack of matches out of his pocket.

Savannah’s light flashed a line across the ground, ending up at his boots, then his face. “No way. You wouldn’t have.”

But he could tell she wasn’t sure. Fact was, neither was he. Burning down this building once and for all would have solved a lot of problems.

And he wasn’t thinking about himself here. Though she would never believe that.

Savannah returned to her investigation, trailing the light over the charred boards that led up from the corner and spread out along both the north and east walls of the barn. A good section of both had been severely burned, though the fire had never reached as high as the loft area above them.

“I wonder if Sheriff Smith had an arson team out here to investigate. There was no mention of it in the file.” She examined the blackened boards more closely. “You’d think lightning would strike at the roofline, but it doesn’t always happen that way.”

“When did you find out a man died here?” Savannah asked him.

“Not until the day after the fire.”

“That’s what Hunter said, too.”

He could see the skepticism in her gaze and he glanced away. He was remembering the morning after the fire, when his father had come into the cattle barn to give him the news about the death.

B.J. had been shocked. And afraid. He’d started to tell his dad the truth then, but Bob Lambert had shaken his head. “Don’t talk, son. I’ve been over this with the sheriff and we’ve agreed there was no way you or Hunter could have realized that guy was in the loft. Unfortunately, that poor vagrant was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”