Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

by Anna J. Stewart

  “She. Called. Me,” he ground out. “Surely the Pentagon has records of it.”

  But she had likely called on an unsecured public line. No log was made of calls to or from those lines.

  His own lawyer was gestured forward to cross-examine Jessica, and he asked, “Did you call anyone for help on the night in question, Miss Blankenship?”

  “No.”

  Wes stared at her. What in the hell was she doing? She refused to look at him and was staring fixedly at his lawyer instead.

  “Did you contact anyone at all while you were in the nightclub?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask Captain Morgan to help you? To rescue you from your date? To interfere in any way between you and the man you were with on the night in question?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have any communication at all with Captain Morgan prior to his assault upon the victim?”

  Jessica did glance up at Wes then, for just an instant. Her gaze seemed agonized, and then it hardened. Became determined. Shifted back to the questioning lawyer. “No, I had no communication with him.”

  Wes burst out, “You called me! Begged me to save you? How would I have even known where you were if you hadn’t called me and told me where to find you?”

  The judge pounded his gavel and glared at him. Wes got the message loud and clear. This hearing wasn’t about justice. It was about railroading him in the name of protecting the reputation of Blankenship’s precious daughter.

  Hell, didn’t it count for anything that the guy he’d beat up hadn’t pressed any charges against him at all? Didn’t that speak to the man’s guilt in drugging Jessica and trying to sexually assault her?

  Wes sat back, flabbergasted. Jessica had just single-handedly destroyed his career. He was going to be thrown out of the Corps at a minimum, or even sent to Fort Leavenworth for assaulting that bastard. Was she really that pissed off that he’d broken up with her last summer? Or was Blankenship himself behind this travesty? What had he threatened Jessica with to get her to perjure herself like this?

  Wes would refute her testimony, of course. But the fact remained that he’d beaten a civilian man half to death, and her word would be taken over his as to why he’d done it. Not to mention Daddy Dearest was one of the most politically connected officers in the entire Marine Corps. The Blankenships had thrown him under the bus but good. The general might be behind this, but Jessica was bloody well going along with him in this travesty.

  What. A. Liar.

  Cold rage built in his gut until it consumed his entire being. He literally shook with it. The hearing proceeded around him, and he heard none of it. Only the stark truth that Jessica Blankenship had destroyed him remained in his mind. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

  The judge called a recess for lunch and they reconvened afterward in chambers. It was just Wes, the two lawyers and the judge in the meeting. There was no sign of Jessica or her father in the halls leading to the courtroom.

  The judge informed him that, in light of his exemplary service record and heroic service to his country in time of war, he would generously be offered an opportunity to resign his commission before court-martial proceedings were initiated against him.

  His lawyer looked at him in open pity. “Take the deal, Wes. Otherwise you’ll have a criminal record and a dishonorable discharge that will follow you the rest of your life.”

  Numb, stunned and utterly devastated, he nodded. A couple of official documents were shoved at him. He signed where indicated and, just like that, his distinguished career was over. He was no longer a Marine. He was...nothing.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jessica drove her 1960 red Corvette into Sunny Creek, Montana, wearily. Main Street looked like a picture postcard of an Old West town, with square storefronts of various heights, some brick, some clapboard. Hanging signs were labeled with old-fashioned lettering, hitching posts stood in front of some stores and wagon wheels stood upright in planting beds along the street.

  She guided her little sports car down the broad avenue, and it banged along over what felt like cobblestones. How...quaint.

  Sunny Creek actually looked like a friendly sort of place. She only prayed it was a friendly sort of place with a hotel. She was exhausted after driving for three days nonstop with only brief pauses for naps and to get more coffee. Her car was a classic, but it was not designed for long road trips.

  The happening place on Main Street seemed to be a diner called Pittypat’s. She parked in one of the diagonal parking spaces lining each side of the broad street and headed inside. And entered a time warp from the 1950s. It was all turquoise and peach with vinyl booths and the front end of a vintage car coming out of the back wall. There was even a jukebox across from the soda fountain.

  “You look ready to drop, sweetie,” a gray-haired woman said kindly. “Would you like a booth and a cup of coffee?”

  “I’m all coffeed out. What I need is food.”

  “We have plenty of that around here. Take a look at the menu and let me know what looks good to you. Everything’s tasty.”

  “I could really use some comfort food. What do you recommend?”

  The woman laughed. “My sister makes a mean beef stew. We could add some of her homemade yeast biscuits to that, and finish it off with a piece of pie, and you’d have a nice meal.”

  “Sold.”

  “What’s your favorite kind of pie? Petunia’s the best baker in these parts. Her pies are famous.”

  She must have been more exhausted than she realized, for all of a sudden Jessica was back in the lake house, about age five, sitting at the kitchen table with her mother—who was only a vague, beautiful ghost of a memory—digging into a piece of made-totally-from-scratch lemon meringue pie, so tall and fluffy she could barely see over it.

  “Do you have lemon meringue?” she asked wistfully.

  “Sure do. I’ll save you back a piece for when you’re done with your supper.”

  The stew was hot and thick, savory and bracing. She had a second bowl of it, and a second satiny-soft yeast roll the size of her fist to go with it.

  When the waitress, whose name tag declared her to be Patricia, put the pie in front of Jessica and she bit into the tart lemon filling and airy, sweet meringue, she surprised herself by tearing up.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Patricia asked quickly.

  “It tastes just like my mother’s. She died when I was a little girl.”

  The waitress slid into the booth across from her and reached out to hold her hand. “Well, I’m glad we could help you conjure up a memory. Tell me about her.”

  Jessica blinked, startled at the woman’s kindness. “I don’t remember much. Only a few images of her laughing. She was tall and elegant and beautiful.”

  “Do you take after her?”

  “My father says I do.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised. You look like an old-time movie star.”

  Jessica smiled. “I get that a lot. I suppose it’s the way my hair waves.”

  “It’s more than that. You’ve got good bones. Breeding. If you’ll forgive my saying it, you look like old money.”

  Which wasn’t wrong. Her mother’s family had been East Coast money from way back, complete with summers in the Hamptons and a mansion on the Hudson River. Her father had been a handsome young Marine officer who’d swept her off her feet and hauled her off to be a military wife. But apparently, she’d always insisted on living off base in beautiful old homes she restored to their former glory. Jessica took after her in that, too.

  Jessica said, “I remember her picking me up and spinning me around. Oh, and she used to go swimming with me in the lake. She wore a red one-piece bathing suit. She drowned when I was six.”

  Patricia patted her hand sympathetically, which almost made Jessica cry again. She dug into
the pie to distract herself.

  “What brings you to Sunny Creek, dear?”

  “I’m looking for an old friend. We have some unfinished business to attend to. His name is Wes Morgan. Perhaps you know him?”

  “Everyone in this town knows the Morgans. They own Runaway Ranch, up in the high country north of town.”

  “Do you know where I can find Wes? Is he at his family’s ranch?”

  Patricia leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Wes came home from the Marines a few months ago. He and his papa had a huge falling-out and aren’t speaking to each other. Way I hear it, Wes has bought himself some land adjoining his daddy’s ranch and is setting himself up in the cattle business. Gonna go up against his daddy, supposedly. That boy always did have a lot to prove.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “His father’s a hard man. Demanding of his boys. Wes is the only one who followed his daddy into the Marine Corps. John Morgan was a war hero in Vietnam, and he expected Wes to live up to the family name.”

  Jessica winced. She knew what came next in this tale because she’d caused it.

  Patricia continued, “John was mighty miffed when Wes left the military under a cloud. Nobody around here knows what happened, but it was some kind of scandal.”

  “Is that why Wes and his father argued?”

  Patricia shrugged. “Who knows with those Morgan men? They’re a stubborn bunch, they are.”

  God. Yet another sin to atone for. She’d destroyed Wes’s career, and now she’d ruined his relationship with his family, too.

  “Where can I find Wes’s house?”

  “It’s north of town on the Westlake Trace Road. But you don’t want to head up there, now. It’s getting dark, and there’s a storm coming.”

  Jessica glanced out the window into the twilight and was startled to see that while she’d been eating, it had started to snow. Small crystalline flakes fell in deep silence, floating down gently to kiss the earth like diamond dust.

  “I’ll be all right. And I’m in a hurry to see Wes. My business with him is urgent.”

  Patricia looked dubious but gave her directions across town and up into the mountains. Jessica settled her bill, left a big tip for the kind woman and headed out of town.

  On her way out of Sunny Creek, she drove down a street lined with a dozen grand old Victorian mansions—and every last one of them in sad disrepair. Her restoration designer’s soul perked up.

  The Westlake Trace turned out to be a decent road, but it twisted and turned up into the mountains and forced her to go slow and pay close attention to her driving. Which was hard because vast vistas of towering mountains and deep valleys kept opening up beside her, drawing her eye to them.

  The mountain peaks disappeared into a blanket of clouds as the last light faded and black, deep night fell around her. She had to slow down even more as the snow intensified and her headlights struggled to cut through the darkness. The road disappeared under a layer of snow, and she slowed to a crawl in order to stay on the road at all.

  Man, it was snowing hard. Snow was accumulating fast. There had to be three inches on the road already, and more piling up.

  She almost missed the turnoff to Wes’s ranch. A dilapidated arch crossed over the driveway, built of old gray wood rails. A name was burned into the wood in rough, black lettering that looked recently done. Outlaw Ranch.

  Her heart contracted in pain. Wes was the soul of law and order. He’d been a fast-burner up through the Marine ranks, and her father had said from day one that Wes was destined to be a general. Everyone who met Captain Wes Morgan admired and respected him. They all thought he was bound for greatness.

  And now he called himself an outlaw.

  God. She’d wrecked him.

  She’d had no choice. The voice on her phone had told her in no uncertain terms that Wes would die if she didn’t do what the voice said and testify against him.

  Tears choked her throat. She’d resisted at first. But then her pocket puppy, a sweet little Chihuahua named Paco, had died abruptly.

  He’d been sixteen years old, but he’d been in seemingly perfect health. One day he was fine, and the next, he was acting strange and died that night at the vet’s office. The veterinarian thought he might have ingested rat poison. But where? How? The little dog had never left the Blankenship house.

  And then the voice had called back. Told Jessica that the same thing would happen to Wes if she said anything about that night, about the assault and about her being drugged.

  A sob ravaged her chest, and she drew a shaky breath as she put the car back into gear.

  She had to find a way to make it right. To help him put his life back together.

  She rattled over a metal grate under the arch and then followed the gravel drive across what looked like a cattle pasture. It rose steadily toward a pair of mountains looming close like craggy giants. A light cut through the snow, and she pulled up in front of one of the saddest houses she’d ever seen. Once upon a time, it would have been a warm and inviting home. Now, it was falling into ruin.

  It was a sprawling one-story ranch house with a steeply pitched roof and a long, deep porch across the entire front facade. Gray vertical wood siding was split and badly weathered, and the metal roof was rusty, the remaining shutters sagging badly. Two stone chimneys rose up above the structure, both of them putting out a thin thread of smoke.

  Good Lord. Mr. Neat-and-Tidy lived here? How low had Wes sunk?

  An equally sorry-looking barn sagged behind the decrepit house. She thought she spied some outbuildings, though it was hard to tell in the darkness and snow. The light she’d seen came from a window at the far right end of the porch.

  She climbed out of her car, slipping and sliding through ankle-deep snow to the porch. A board for one of the steps was missing, and she stepped over the gap. The porch floor looked ready to collapse at any minute and she picked her way across it carefully.

  The front door stopped her in her tracks, and she paused to examine it in the faint glow from the window beside it. The panel looked made of solid oak, a rich golden color. The entire thing was magnificently carved with eagles and wolves and horses and buffalo. Mountains rose in relief behind the animals, and the vertical door handle was bronze, cast to look like an aspen tree whose branches spread up one side of the panel.

  She had never been a great fan of Western decor, but this carving rose to the level of art. The animals were so detailed and realistic she almost expected them to jump off the panel and head out into the wilderness.

  She felt the carving with her fingertips, marveling at how fine the texturing was. She couldn’t imagine how many hours the artist must have put into this. The carving was sharp. Fresh. Not weathered with time or age. Huh. A local artist must have made it. Maybe she could find him or her and commission some pieces for her design business back home—

  Oh, wait. That life was over. Gone. Turned out she’d wrecked herself nearly as badly as she’d wrecked Wes.

  It dawned on her that a frigid wind was cutting through her thin jacket, swirling snow around her feet and sending ice picks of cold into her body. She realized with a start that tears were freezing on her cheeks, or maybe that was just snow stinging them. Either way, she needed to get inside before she got frostbite.

  She lifted the burled knot of wood mounted in a brass fitting and knocked it firmly against the metal plate behind it.

  She waited a minute.

  No answer.

  She knocked again.

  This time she heard movement inside the house and waited, shivering, praying to get out of this biting wind.

  At long last, the door opened. A man wearing a bulky Aran knit sweater, jeans and heavy work boots stood there. His hair was thick and dark and shaggy, his face covered with a dark, thick beard.

  She stepped back, startled. She’d been ex
pecting Wes. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I must have the wrong house. I was told this was where I could find...”

  She trailed off, staring at the man’s eyes. They were dark, almost black in the dim light spilling out from behind him. But she still spied their sapphire hue, as deep as the ocean and more blue.

  “Wes?” she asked in disbelief.

  The door slammed shut in her face. Hard.

  She would take that as confirmation that she did, indeed, have the right house. And, furthermore, that Wes was no happier to see her than she’d expected. Guilt ripped through her, tinged with disbelief. That wild mountain man was the trim and sharp Marine she’d known for years?

  Temptation to turn and walk away coursed through her. He would never forgive her. She had ruined his life. It was insanity to even try to make up for what she’d done to him.

  Still, she’d vowed to try. At a minimum she owed him a face-to-face apology.

  She shouted through the door. “Please let me in! Just for a minute.”

  A muffled voice came back through the door at her. “Go away.”

  “Wes, we need to talk. I—” she added lamely “—need to apologize to you.” Which was the understatement of the century.

  The door cracked open again. “I don’t need your apology. I don’t want your apology. Go back to wherever you came from and don’t ever come near me again.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “I told you not to apologize!”

  She explained reluctantly, “It’s snowing really hard, and my car isn’t cut out for winter driving. I barely got this far. I don’t think I can make it back to town tonight.”

  “You drove the Corvette up here? Oh, for the love of Mike. You never did have a lick of sense.”

  She smiled sadly. “No, I never did. And I’m afraid I’m stuck up here.”

  The door remained almost closed for a moment more and then opened wide. “Get inside, then. But I’m not interested in hearing your tearful confession. You can spend the night, but you’re out of here first thing in the morning, even if I have to tow you down the damn mountain with my tractor.”