For Always (A Donovan Friends Novel)

by AC Arthur

  “We used to sit out here some nights,” Tyler spoke. “Me, Jagger, Mom and Dad. Of course we didn’t sit in these chairs. We’d dubbed them ‘old people’ chairs back then.”

  He laughed and Gabriella smiled. She liked hearing him laugh. He didn’t do it often.

  “My dad would be tired after the day’s work. He’d sit back with a glass of lemonade, his dark brown hair ruffled because he never paused during the day to comb it. My mom would be wearing one of her pretty dresses. She always wore dresses, except for the days she went down with the horses. And she always cooked a big dinner. I used to wonder why I wasn’t fat as one of the pigs in the pen, I used to eat so much. But then getting up at four every morning and working straight through until the noon break for lunch, only to start back for another three or four hours, was plenty of exercise.”

  “You liked growing up on a ranch,” she said.

  “It was my life,” he replied. “My dad said it was my future.”

  “But you didn’t want it.”

  He sounded so much like her. Marvin Bennett had expected all of his children to grow up, go to college and work at his family’s company. It hadn’t worked out that way.

  “I didn’t want to risk having a family and separating them the way I felt this ranch did.”

  “You’re talking about you and Jagger,” she said.

  Tyler finished his smoothie. He leaned forward and set the glass on the porch floor beside the rocker before sitting back again.

  “We used to be close,” he continued. “We were brothers, only two years apart in age. We even shared a room until I was ten. Jagger packed up and moved to his own room saying he needed his space. My mom thought it was funny. My dad didn’t think too much of Jagger by then, so he rarely commented on what he was doing. I didn’t want to be the better brother. I just thought it was easier to do what my dad said and to do it right. Jagger was more independent I guess. He did what he wanted, when he wanted. And had a better time of it, I believe.”

  Gabriella drank more before deciding she was done with the smoothie. She followed Tyler’s lead and set her glass down before tucking her legs under her in the chair.

  “Maybe he didn’t,” she replied finally. “I used to think that Adriana had the best life ever. She started modeling when she was young and she traveled. My mother went with her of course, in the early years. I couldn’t go because I had school. But every time I saw a picture of her I thought she was beautiful. Her smile was so big and so bright she had to be having a great time. Just a couple of years ago I learned that those times weren’t all good for her. She had run-ins with some pretty mean-spirited people and she even battled with an eating disorder. I wished then that I hadn’t been so naïve that I’d looked a little harder to see what was really going on with her.”

  “The modeling industry can be tough, especially on young girls. But I don’t know that you could have done anything to change what she was going through,” Tyler told her.

  “Not change it,” Gabriella said with a shrug. “But at least be there to help her through it.”

  “Yeah,” he said and leaned forward again, this time resting his elbows on his knees. “I left Jagger here. I left my parents and this ranch and I didn’t look back.”

  “You went to live your life. You don’t have to penalize yourself for that.” Gabriella sighed. “I spent the first years of my college life feeling so guilty every time the professor handed me a paper with a big ‘ole ‘C’ as a grade. I thought about how much my parents were paying for me to go to school and get a good education and I was totally blowing it. But eventually I realized it was because going to a great college and getting a good education was their dream for me. It wasn’t my dream for myself.”

  “You’re a lot smarter than you look,” he said.

  Gabriella glanced over to find him staring at her. “Gee, thanks. Pretty girls aren’t expected to be smart, huh? Thought we were years past that.”

  “No, that’s not it. I knew you were intelligent when you walked into the equestrian center that day. I could hear it in your tone as you resisted cutting me down when I was being so rude to you. You were about your business so I assumed you’d studied well and prepared for your meeting. But to me, that’s different than being smart. You get people and you react to them accordingly. I watched you do it with Brooke and then with Hannah.”

  “I won’t call them anything other than their given names, but those two are quite a pair.”

  “You’re so much more,” he said. “So much more than either of them could ever imagine.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Like it actually did some type of thump and stop action in her chest as she stared at him.

  “You’re more too, Tyler. More than you’ve been giving yourself credit for. You’re keeping this ranch in the family when you have a thriving business that you should be tending to. And you’re taking the time to learn how to do it right, when you could have easily returned to your business and let Stephen run the day-to-day operations here.”

  “I may have to do that at some point,” he told her. “My manager’s going crazy with the emails and Skype calls. They want me on the road promoting the sportswear line and I’ve been pushing off meetings to discuss the gym franchise.”

  “Because a part of you is still here on this ranch. It’s still your home.”

  “I can’t leave until I know what happened to them and why,” he said solemnly.

  “I understand.” And she did. If it were her parents Gabriella knew that she would want answers to.

  They fell into a comfortable silence again. It was comfortable, she realized, because she hadn’t once thought about reaching for her phone to check for messages—the good or the bad. She hadn’t thought about the work she needed to get done before Monday morning or even the scrambled eggs and bacon she’d been craving when she woke up. She’d been content just being with Tyler, drinking that concoction that wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be, and sitting on this porch the way his parents had.

  It was probably a quaint looking scene, one that Gabriella had never pictured for herself. But it was about to be interrupted, she thought as she heard footsteps coming from in the house.

  “There you are,” Dessie said as she made her way out onto the porch.

  Clyde was right behind her, and the sheriff was with them too.

  “Good morning,” Tyler said.

  His demeanor had changed. In just those few seconds, he’d stood up, his jaw set, eyes going a bit steely. Gabriella stood too and without thinking, went to stand beside Tyler.

  “What happened?” she asked because from the way she and Tyler were being stared at, something was definitely going on.

  “There was an incident in the middle of the night,” Dessie said.

  “What kind of incident?” Tyler asked.

  “I’m going to need to speak to Ms. Bennett privately,” Sheriff Alvarez announced.

  “Not without her attorney present,” Clyde stated evenly.

  Alvarez frowned. “You gonna represent them all, Clyde?”

  “Until they tell me otherwise, yes,” Clyde replied and looked to Gabriella.

  She didn’t know what was happening, but her hands had already begun to shake. “No. I mean, yes, he’s right. He’s my attorney,” she said with a nod to Clyde. “What do you need to speak to me about, Sheriff?”

  Alvarez’s brow was creased. He stood with his legs slightly spread, and hands on his hips. It was meant to be an imposing stance and it was. Tyler’s hand on her shoulder calmed Gabriella instantly.

  “I want you to tell me why someone would break into your room at the resort and tear it to shreds? You leave some secrets behind in Connecticut that might have followed you here?” he asked.

  That calm that she’d felt was brief. The gorgeous landscape she’d just been marveling at, the wonderful man she’d slept with last night and spent valuable time with this morning, it all melted away. So that fear and despair could return.<
br />
  Austin Sterner was here in Hobbs Creek.

  * * *

  Tyler slammed the door to the office.

  “She is not a suspect in any of this!” he yelled at the sheriff and Clyde. “She works here, dammit! And you are not going to treat her like she’s some half-witted female or some big time criminal.”

  “Nobody’s treating her that way, Tyler,” Clyde said calmly. “Let’s just take a seat and talk over the facts.”

  “The fact is I’m sick and tired of feeling like we’re in the wrong here. You call me and tell me my parents were found dead in a burning truck. Shot in the back of the head! That sounds like a hit!”

  Tyler didn’t keep still. He stalked across the office pushing one of the ridiculous zebra-print chairs out of his way.

  “We’re talking about the vandalism at the resort,” Alvarez stated evenly. “That’s the matter at hand.”

  He whirled around to glare at the sheriff whom he was also tired of dealing with. “All of this is connected. I’m not a cop and I can see it. So I’m having a hard time digesting the fact that you can’t connect those dots, Sheriff.”

  “Now you hold on a minute, son,” Alvarez chided.

  He walked across the room and came to a stop at the edge of the desk.

  “You don’t come into my town, telling me how to do my job.”

  Tyler stood firm. “Then maybe you should start doing your job!”

  “Let’s just calm down,” Clyde said, coming to stand at the other end of the desk, between Tyler and the sheriff.

  “If you want to officially question my clients, Sheriff, we can schedule a time for them to come down to the station. But I’ll tell you right now they won’t be answering any questions that may or may not implicate them in any of these incidents. Incidents for which my clients have solid alibis.”

  Clyde was speaking in his official tone, which probably sounded much better than Tyler’s yelling. But damn if he cared. Alvarez had looked at Gabriella like he actually thought she’d walked off the ranch and went to the resort to vandalize that room herself. It was ridiculous.

  “I ain’t accused either of them of anything. But I gotta say they’re acting pretty guilty,” the sheriff said.

  “Of what?” Tyler asked. “I couldn’t kill my parents when I was thousands of miles away.”

  “But you could have hired someone to do it for you,” Alvarez countered. “You’re rich enough to do so and inheriting this ranch is a damn good motive.”

  “Why would I vandalize the property? How would that fit into my grand plan?” Tyler asked through clenched teeth.

  Alvarez leaned back on his heels and folded his arms over his chest. “Well, let’s just see, when that happened you and your brother hadn’t decided on whether or not you would sell or keep this ranch. So maybe your plan all along was to own this place by yourself. So you hire those same folk that did the killing of your parents for you, to come back and tear some things up. This way, your city slicker brother won’t want to be bothered with the prospect of having to fend off violence on the property and he’ll sell his half of the ranch to you. Which, as a matter of fact, is exactly what ended up happening.”

  “Then, you take Ms. Bennett out for a ride that you say nobody else knew about but the two of you. How hard would it have been to pay those same criminal folk you’re in cahoots with, to stand out there and take a shot at her? Now, on the face of that I’m not sure what you have against Ms. Bennett. But then, somebody goes into the resort and tears up Ms. Bennett’s room. Somebody that probably knew she wasn’t there. If I ask you who knew Ms. Bennett was staying at the ranch last night, are you going to tell me nobody but you?”

  Tyler’s fingers clenched by his side. He wanted to punch somebody or something because everything Alvarez said made sense. It wasn’t true, but it made sense.

  “You don’t have to respond, Tyler,” Clyde told him.

  “But I will,” Tyler said. “You can write this down, Sheriff. I loved my parents and before they died I could care less about this ranch. I didn’t know what it was worth or half the things that went on here. I hadn’t seen my brother in years and hadn’t spoken to him since last year on his birthday in September. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I would ever do to hurt Gabriella Bennett.”

  Sheriff Alvarez continued to glare at Tyler.

  “You want to check my alibis, fine. I’ll have them typed up and sent to your office. You want access to my cell phone records so you can trace who I have dealings with. I’ll give you that too. Because I didn’t do any of this and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get on to finding out who did.”

  “I think this meeting is over,” Clyde stated. “I’ll walk you out, Sheriff.”

  Tyler sat heavily in the chair behind the desk and turned so that he was now facing the window.

  “That’s fine,” he heard the sheriff say. “And just to be clear, I don’t think Ms. Bennett was involved in what happened at the resort. I do, however, think she may know who was. I get that you’re fond of your little interior designer, Tyler. But she’s hiding something. Don’t you want to find out what that is before someone else is killed?”

  Seconds later, Tyler heard the door closing. He swore at that moment and rubbed his hands down his face. He hated that all of this was happening and he hated that a small part of him thought Sheriff Alvarez was right. Gabriella was hiding something.

  While Tyler in no way believed that had anything to do with what was going on here, the way she’d run back into the house and locked herself in the room upstairs, said she was upset. Now, Tyler wasn’t a trained law enforcement expert but he had enough sense to know that’s not how a normal person reacted to hearing that a room they’d been renting had been vandalized. That part he did know because it wasn’t how he’d reacted when he found out his ranch had also been hit. He’d been angry and more than eager to find out who had come onto his land and destroyed his property. The look on Gabriella’s face had been full of fear. And that wasn’t the first time he’d seen her look that way. So Tyler was certain there was something in her past that still frightened her. Something, that maybe she thought could follow her here.

  This wasn’t what he planned for when he came back to Hobbs Creek. None of this was. Not becoming a ranch owner, staying in this town longer than it took to bury his parents and certainly not becoming romantically involved with a woman. A woman who he would be damned if he let anybody harm. Especially not her ex, because that’s exactly who Tyler thought Gabriella was afraid of. It was who she was having nightmares about and who she now thought was here in Hobbs Creek.

  But Tyler was certain Gabriella was wrong about that. There’s no way her ex could have gotten onto this property yesterday morning to shoot at them. And if he had, then he certainly would have known she hadn’t returned to the resort. So if he wanted her, why wouldn’t he have simply come back to the ranch? Not to mention the fact that he’d had so many other chances to get to her. When she was in town shopping with Naomi. Or when she was at the resort working on the new designs there. Plenty of opportunity, he thought with a sigh.

  No, this was about the ranch. It was about his parents’ murder. Tyler was sure of that and was now ready to take matters into his own hands. He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. Sheriff Alvarez wasn’t going to like this, but Tyler didn’t give a damn. Sheriff Alvarez hadn’t lost anyone he loved, and Tyler wasn’t about to lose anyone else. He was scrolling through his contacts for the number when his phone rang. The number that popped up was a surprise, but he answered anyway.

  “Hello?”

  “Tyler? I need your help.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, Tyler pulled up in front of the hotel. He replied to a text message from Clyde and got out of his truck. He bypassed the front desk and went straight to the elevators. Getting off at the eighth floor, he walked down the hall until he saw the room number Jagger had given him over the phone. He knocked and waited
.

  Jagger came to the door, eyes bloodshot, shirt hanging outside of his pants.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “You were right,” he said, his words slurred. “You’re always right.”

  Tyler stepped inside, pushing Jagger back out of his way and closed the door behind him. Jagger had landed against the wall, which he needed to keep from falling to the floor.

  “Have you been here for the last three weeks? Sitting in a hotel room drinking?” Tyler asked after he helped his brother into the room and let him fall as gently as possible onto the couch.

  “We were gonna leave when you kicked us off the ranch, but then Brooke said she wanted to look around town some more. Maybe see if we could find a place to have the wedding here. She thought with Mom and Dad being gone now, we might want to have something that family and their friends could come to,” Jagger said.

  His brother looked like crap. He’d leaned back on the couch, his head falling back to rap against the wall. He lifted an arm and dropped it over his eyes as he continued to speak.

  “Does Brooke look like a woman who wants to get married in a town like Hobbs Creek?”

  “Brooke doesn’t look like the type of woman you should be marrying,” Tyler answered honestly.

  Jagger hadn’t said what he needed help with over the phone and Tyler hadn’t needed to know. Just as he’d told the sheriff, no matter what happened between them he and Jagger were brothers. They were blood. And as such, Tyler would always be there to help. But he wouldn’t sugarcoat whatever fresh hell Jagger had clearly gotten himself into where that woman was concerned.

  “You’re right again,” Jagger said, letting his arm drop down to his side.

  He stared at Tyler through half-slit eyes.

  “She tried to take my money,” Jagger told him. “Can you believe that? Even before I could marry the conniving bitch she had her hands in my pockets.”