Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

by Anna J. Stewart

Jessica blinked. She loved a challenge and getting this small space right would be one. Every detail would matter because of the limited space to set a mood and make an impression. Light-colored woods would brighten up the space. She could lay a hardwood floor diagonally to trick the eye...

  She looked up, blinking. “Since I’m already redoing the space in my mind, I guess you’ve got yourself a designer. When can I come up and see the space and measure it?”

  “Anytime. No one’s staying there since my son, Chase, moved to Sunny Creek to be with his fiancée. They’re renovating a house she bought a few months back.”

  “I’ll have to pick up my car before I can drive out to see you. I got snowed in at the Outlaw Ranch last week. I’m hoping the snow has melted enough with this warm snap the past few days for me to go get it soon.”

  “Outlaw, you said?” Miranda asked sharply.

  Jessica winced. Crud. The whole point had been to avoid nosy questions about her and Wes. She said quickly, “I didn’t realize how fast snow could accumulate in the mountains, and I got stuck up that way. Wes was kind enough to take me in for a night. But then I sprained my ankle and haven’t been back to pick up my car.”

  “Wes took you in? As in he was actually sociable with you?” Miranda asked in surprise.

  “Well, more or less. He wasn’t thrilled to have me show up at his door unannounced. But he was certainly courteous about letting me spend the night until the storm blew out.”

  “Huh. Interesting.”

  Now why on earth would his mother find that interesting?

  Miranda continued, “Runaway’s property adjoins the Outlaw Ranch. It’s right by where I live. How about I give you a ride to my son’s place? You can pick up your car and then follow me to Runaway Ranch. I’ll show you where the cabin is.”

  Charlotte came out of the back room just then, and Jessica asked to borrow a measuring tape and the design pad. Charlotte grinned. “Only if you’ll throw a little of the furnishing business from your project my way.”

  Jessica gave her a quick hug. “I promise.”

  In short order, Jessica’s crutches were put in the back seat of a sleek German sedan, and Jessica was installed in the passenger seat. Miranda took off driving for home, speeding like a Formula 1 driver and taking the winding mountain roads like she was in a race. Jessica liked to drive fast, but she had nothing on Wes’s mother in the vehicular-daredevil department.

  Jessica’s knuckles were white as she gripped the door handle, and she held her breath for most of the ride to Outlaw Ranch. When the grimy arch over the driveway came into view, she actually sighed in relief to have made it there alive.

  Miranda sped across the pasture on the gravel drive and pulled up in front of the house, which looked even more decrepit in bright sunlight. “Now there’s a house I’d love to see you redo. I can’t believe Wes insisted on buying it. But he was determined to make it on his own. My husband offered him the position of ranch manager at Runaway, but that stubborn boy was having no part of it.”

  “How long has Wes owned this place?”

  “Just a few months. He bought it when he left the military and came home to live.”

  “I imagine he’ll fix the place up as he has time, then. He struck me as a rather organized and neat person.”

  Miranda’s eyes darkened with pain. “He used to be that way. I don’t know anymore. His military career changed him, and not for the better. I’m sure something bad happened to him, but he won’t talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jessica said softly.

  Miranda shook herself out of her worried reverie. “Don’t mind me. Wes will be fine. We Morgans always bounce back from adversity.”

  Jessica wasn’t so sure about that. She’d done a heck of a number on Wes. She sighed. “Let me go see if Wes is home. If not, maybe he left the keys in my car.”

  Just then, the front door opened and Wes jogged down the front steps. Jessica noticed that the missing one had been replaced by a new step that was bright, fresh wood, yellow in contrast to the weathered gray of the other steps.

  He wore jeans, cowboy boots and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms. He looked like a model out of a television commercial.

  “Lord, I hate that beard,” Miranda muttered.

  Jessica hid a smile. She preferred Wes clean-shaven, too, but she could still see the strong jaw and lean cheeks in her mind’s eye and tended to look past the dark, shaggy beard.

  He came across the yard to stand beside Miranda’s car window, one hand on the roof of the car, leaning down to peer inside. “Well. This is a surprise.”

  He didn’t sound as if he found it a particularly pleasant one.

  “What brings you here, Mother?”

  “Can’t a parent stop by to check on her son and say hello?”

  “They can. But you didn’t come here for that and we both know it.”

  Jessica was startled by the anger in his voice. Not happy to see Mommy Dearest, was he? Had Miranda been included in the big falling-out with his father that Patricia at the diner had mentioned?

  “I just came by to drop off Jessica so she can pick up her car.”

  That was her cue. Jessica stepped out of the German sedan and fished her crutches from the back seat. Wes stared at her over the roof of the car, an entire unspoken tirade turbulent in his dark blue eyes. Nope. Still not the least bit happy to see her.

  As for her, however, her stomach was jumping nervously and she felt the pulse pounding hard in her neck. How was it he still had that effect on her after all this time? She knew it was over with him. But her body totally hadn’t gotten the memo. She still reacted like a girl in the presence of her first crush when he was around.

  “How the hell did you two meet?” he demanded suspiciously.

  Jessica answered quickly lest Miranda reveal more than was prudent to Wes, especially in light of their shared past of which Miranda knew nothing. “We met at the new antiques store in Hillsdale. We struck up a conversation and your mother ended up offering to bring me here to get my car since it was on her way home.”

  Wes looked dubious of that explanation and included her in the general scowl he was shooting at his mother. “Should you be driving on that ankle yet?”

  She took off on crutches toward the small barn where her car was parked, and Wes kept pace beside her. She answered, “I just had a follow-up visit with Ben Cooper, and he told me I could drive a little if I was careful and took it easy.”

  He snorted. “Since when do you know how to take it easy in a car?”

  She snorted back. “Have you ridden in a car with your mother? She’s a menace!”

  “That’s why my father insists on her driving that German tank. He figures if she crashes she has a better chance of survival in a well-made car. She has actually slowed down some in her latter years.”

  That was a scary thought. They walked in silence for a minute, and then Jessica asked, “How are the cows doing? Any calves yet?”

  “Nah. It’ll be three more weeks or so before calves start dropping.”

  “At least it’s warming up before they get here.”

  “Don’t be fooled. We’ll have at least one more big snowstorm, if not two, before spring really arrives.”

  “Crazy weather you people have out here.”

  “It’s the mountains. They make the weather unpredictable.” He pushed back a big sliding door and revealed her little car parked in the barn. It was clean and waxed and polished.

  She looked over at Wes in surprise. “You washed my car for me?”

  He shrugged. “I was bored, and it had salt on it from the road. If you don’t get that stuff off, it’ll corrode the paint right off. It’s a nice old car, and I didn’t want Montana to ruin it.”

  “That was so thoughtful of you!” She smiled at her vint
age 1960 Corvette fondly. “She is a sweet ride. Thanks for taking care of her.”

  His scowl was back, even deeper and darker than before. “Trust me, I didn’t do it for you. I did it for the car.”

  Hurt speared into her. When would she stop feeling his jabs like this? With previous boyfriends, when she’d been done with them, she was done with them. Their opinions ceased to matter to her. But for some reason, she still cared—deeply—what Wes thought of her.

  Weird. Did it have something to do with him being a Marine like her father, or something else? Except, she didn’t care what her father thought of her for the most part, either. He’d smothered her as a kid and controlled her far too aggressively as she’d gotten older. She had long ago given up on ever pleasing the man and had committed to living her own life.

  Of course, look where that had gotten her. Rebelling against the Old Man hadn’t turned out so well.

  She sighed and climbed into her car, awkwardly positioning her bandaged ankle. Wes put the crutches in the passenger seat, leaning from the floor up to the passenger headrest.

  Without a single word of farewell, he moved over to the barn door to wait for her to leave. She blinked back tears that took her by surprise. He really did hate her.

  CHAPTER 6

  Wes watched Jessica drive away, his gut roiling wildly. Why in the hell did he still react so strongly every time he saw her? If only he was sure it was just hatred tying his stomach in knots like this. But he feared it wasn’t. And that ticked him off. He had to get her out of his head!

  He’d dreamed of her again last night. A hot, sexy dream of lust and love, naked bodies and naughty deeds. The kind of dream that he woke up from restless and horny and with a huge chip on his shoulder.

  And what the hell was his mother doing palling around with his ex, anyway? God knew what Jessica was saying about him to his mother. Not that he cared, of course. But Miranda always had been a meddler of the first water.

  Well, she and his father could just get the hell out of his life and stay out. Irritated, he turned to face his house. Its decrepit state grated on his nerves, but he didn’t have the money to do anything about it yet. The first order of business was to establish a high-quality herd of cattle, care for them and then put decent facilities around them—solid fences, a good barn and improved pasture.

  He’d vowed to himself not to touch his trust fund that came from his share of the proceeds of Runaway Ranch. This was about doing something on his own for himself, by himself. No politics, no favors traded, no ties or debts to anyone. He was done with all of that. It was bad enough to be forced to come home with his tail between his legs. He’d be damned if he came crawling back to his family for a handout, too.

  And Jessica Blankenship was to blame for it all.

  Irritated at the world in general, he loaded up the bucket of the tractor with tools for repairing fences and headed out to work on the fence line between the Outlaw Ranch and Runaway Ranch. It was a warm afternoon, and he knew that particular fence had been in bad shape when he bought this place. Hard winter had come before he could repair all of it, however.

  Sure enough, as he headed up into the high pasture above the barns, he found a whole stretch of fence that was completely down. Worse, there were plenty of fresh tracks in the mud around it. Crud. Had some of his cows wandered through the broken fence to join the herd at Runaway? He would have to take a head count when he got back to the barn.

  This was, of course, why ranchers still branded cattle. It was the only way to know which animals belonged to which ranch when something like this happened.

  Sure enough, when he drove back to the barn and banged on the metal feeder to call in the cows for food, only about half his herd showed up. Great. He counted heads and was down forty-six cows. Like it or not, he was going to have to make a trip over to Runaway.

  It galled him to have to get in contact with his father to ask if he could come over and retrieve cows that had managed to slip off his ranch. It made him look like an amateur who couldn’t control his own herd. He might hate the idea of being reduced to being a cattle rancher, but, by God, if he was going to be one, he wanted to be a good one.

  He should have known when Jessica showed up earlier that this day was going to suck from top to bottom. He finished feeding the remaining cows, stomped up to the house and jumped in his truck. He hooked it to his cattle trailer and reluctantly drove next door to Runaway Ranch.

  He couldn’t help being envious of the miles of steel fences, the manicured pastures and the massive log-and-stone mansion that proclaimed the ranch’s wealth and success. Not to mention the sprawling, handsome barns and neat row of farm equipment parked under an open-sided shed. His father had close to two million dollars’ worth of tractors, plows, hay balers and other equipment, alone. The real wealth of the ranch was in the land and animals, however. John Morgan kept one of the best cattle herds in this part of the country.

  Someday, Outlaw Ranch would be every bit as successful. He would work day and night until it was. And he would do it on his own, dammit. He would show his father. He would show everyone.

  As he passed the main house, he got a nasty shock. What the hell was Jessica’s car doing parked here? What plot was she hatching against him now? Hadn’t it been enough to destroy his career? Was she going after his family, too? Or maybe she was just trying to poison his relationship with his family. News flash: he’d already done that for himself.

  Scowling ferociously, he parked his truck beside her sports car and stormed into the main house to give her a piece of his mind.

  Willa Mathers, daughter of the long-time ranch foreman, Hank Mathers, looked up from a desk tucked into a corner of the massive kitchen. She’d grown up alongside the Morgan children and was, for all intents and purposes, one of them.

  “Hey, Wes. What brings you here? I thought you and John were on the outs.”

  He scowled at his surrogate little sister. “We are. But I had a fence line go down and some of my cattle appear to have wandered onto Runaway land.”

  “Oh, man. That sucks. How many cows are you missing?”

  “Forty-six.” Which was more than half of his herd and a bigger loss than he would be financially able to absorb. Not that he was about to admit that to anyone over here. Runaway’s herd numbered in the many hundreds, and forty-six cows would be an annoying inconvenience to them. “Do you know where my father is?”

  “Last I heard, he was down in the cattle barn checking out a couple of new bulls.”

  He didn’t want to ask the question, but he couldn’t resist. “What’s Jessica Blankenship doing here?”

  “Is she the girl on crutches that your mother was talking to earlier?”

  “That would be her.”

  “Miranda’s taken her up to the old hunting cabin.”

  “What the hell for?” he blurted.

  “Miranda’s redoing the place. I got the impression that Jessica is some sort of interior decorator or something.”

  “She is.”

  “Well, there you have it. Miranda must have hired her to redo the cabin.”

  If possible, his scowl deepened. Leave it to Jessica to worm her way into his family and continue making his life a living hell.

  “Want me to give her or your mother a message when they get back?” Willa asked.

  “No!” He glared at her fiercely. She was far too damned observant for her own good.

  She grinned at him unrepentantly as if she’d known she was poking at a sore spot by asking.

  “Twerp,” he grumbled.

  “Jerk,” she retorted fondly.

  “How’s school coming?” he asked her, relenting.

  “Almost done with my dissertation. Anna has given me the last piece I needed for it. I used the way she helped Chase recover from his combat experiences as a case study.”

  “What are y
ou going to do with this PhD of yours when you finish it?”

  “I’m going to help ex-military buttheads like you learn to reintegrate with civilian society to lead productive—and socially pleasant—lives.”

  “I’m socially pleasant!” he exclaimed in response to her obvious dig.

  “Ha. And I thought Chase was a curmudgeon when he came home! You’re grouchier than Attila the Hun, Wes.”

  Offended at the comparison, Wes retorted, “Chase had PTSD from a mission gone wrong. I don’t.”

  “And yet, you’re possibly more messed up in the head than he was. Why is that?”

  “Don’t try to play amateur shrink with me, Willa.”

  “In a few months, I won’t be an amateur. Will you answer me then?”

  “No. Keep your nose out of it.”

  “So you do admit you have issues.”

  He threw up his hands in disgust and marched out of the house. He wasn’t interested in arguing in tricky circles with his almost-shrink, almost-sister. He jumped back into his truck and headed for the big cattle barn that would shelter upwards of a thousand heads of cattle if the weather got bad.

  Today, the barn was empty. His father’s main herd must be out in one of the back pastures taking advantage of the warm sunshine and first grass of spring. The next barn over was the calving barn, and he headed there on the off chance that some of his very pregnant cows had ended up being sorted out in the past day and sent there for supplemental feed and monitoring as they approached calving.

  As he stepped into the relative dark of the calving barn’s dim interior, his father boomed, “Well, well, well. The prodigal son has come home already?”

  Cursing mentally, Wes gritted his teeth and said evenly, “I’m short some cattle, and I found a stretch of busted fence this afternoon. Any chance forty-six of my cows have found their way into your herd?”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  A quick check of the cows munching hay and resting in the barn’s main loafing shed showed that about a dozen of his most pregnant cows were in here.

  John asked, “You want to leave these cows with me? I can have my guys oversee their deliveries. Make sure nothing goes wrong. I’ll have a vet here full-time starting next week until calving season is over.”