by Christa Wick
From everything I had witnessed, Walker’s family worked and played together, the attribute carried from generation to generation.
“Sage has a line on a great doctor,” Adler said as his wife pulled out her cell phone.
“Here.” Sage handed the device to Siobhan.
“Thorne took a scholarship for his last few years of study and residency that he will have to pay back unless he does three years at a rural clinic. Willow Gap is as rural as it gets.”
“Call him right now!” Siobhan squealed.
I choked on my drink, the mint burning the soft linings of my nose as I snorted some of the liquid.
“That’s a lot of enthusiasm,” I said once I recovered.
“Look at him,” Siobhan crooned as she rotated the phone to reveal a picture of a towering male with shaggy red hair and a full beard.
I shrugged. I would never say it out loud, at least not at this point, but every male I saw or called up from memory paled in comparison to how Walker made me feel. There was “Walker Sexy” and then there was every other guy in existence.
Siobhan responded with a snort. “What am I thinking? You’re as lost as Sage.”
Cheeks growing hot, I risked another sip of the cooling mint drink.
The doors to the dining room swung open. Lindy passed through carrying a long dress folded over her arm. Approaching the couch, she shooed Siobhan down to the far end and took a seat in the middle to show me the costume.
“I was even able to find some matching thread,” the woman beamed as she pointed out where she had altered the dress to fit my curves and hide the leg cast for the festival. “And I have Royce looking for some old time crutches from the loft above the stables.”
“I can do your hair up, Ashley,” Siobhan offered.
“Oh, the hair,” Lindy bemoaned, her hand creeping up to tug at one of her short tresses. “I wasn’t thinking about the festival when I got mine cut in April. I’ll have to wear one of the wigs. Be glad you have enough of your own!”
“Who did you get stuck with?” Siobhan asked.
“Mary Ronan,” I answered.
“Interesting life,” Siobhan said. “I suppose your boss picked her because she was married to an Indian Agent—closest thing he could find to early female law enforcement in the state, I guess.”
“For those days, yes.”
“Mama’s representing our Sarah,” Sutton put in. “The suffragette who left Chicago and arrived in Montana as Corryn Turk’s mail order bride.”
I felt the sides of my face pull in opposite directions.
“Really?” I asked, eyes watering as I tried not to choke on the mint water again. “That’s what the dynasty was built on?”
Walker must have snuck into the house because he was suddenly behind me, leaning over the couch so that his words caressed my ear.
“If you read Sarah’s diaries, you’ll know it was built on love,” he countered. “Love, and a Turk male who was a hopeless romantic.”
“All Turk males are hopeless romantics,” Lindy sighed.
Planting a kiss along the edge of my ear, Walker whispered just for me.
“I know I am.”
21
Walker
I waited until I could get a moment alone with Ashley. I hadn’t lied when I said I needed to check on the crew’s progress while I was away. But once I was out of my truck and walking around, I had been just as busy on the phone, calling or texting.
“So,” I started, lifting her bag onto the bed and unzipping it. “I was thinking about your furniture situation.”
Ashley closed her eyes and shook her head, the overall expression one of benevolent indulgence.
“I know you want to buy your own.”
Opening her eyes, she shot a warning look. “I am buying my own.”
Pulling out one of the long t-shirts she slept in, I nodded. “I only mentioned that to bring up interim options.”
Her shoulders relaxed a little, but her gaze remained wary.
“Like I have a sleeper sofa in my home office. And there’s extra seating in the upstairs library. The chaise would be perfect for having your leg up and the pieces would only be a little mismatched because they are all the same basic color scheme and material.”
“What you’re suggesting,” she started, her voice a soft tiptoe around the offer. “Is a lot of effort for a short—”
“Six weeks isn’t a short period, Ash. I know the doctor said three to six weeks, but, with the level of pain I see when you walk around, three weeks with the cast isn’t going to cut it. He also said you shouldn't be on it near as much as you have been. So it could wind up being a lot longer than six.”
Clasping my hands behind me, I fought the urge to brace them against my hips, a habit I had developed watching my daddy when the man felt like he had to lay down the law to one of his kids.
“It would be a kindness to me,” I added, “having the pull out there.”
“No,” Ashley said, shaking her head so hard I realized I had a much bigger problem ahead of me than getting her to accept a loan of furniture.
“You can’t be considering driving yourself this week,” I rumbled, my hands finally finding my hips.
“I was going to arrange something on Uber or…”
She stopped talking as I prowled from the foot of the bed to where she sat with her back against the headboard. With little more than a hand’s width of mattress between her body and the edge of the bed, I sat down and placed a palm on each side of her, my face just far enough back from hers that neither of us went cross-eyed meeting the other’s gaze.
“No,” I rasped. “I don’t care if you’ve got a gun strapped to your hip, that’s not safe.”
“You have a business to run,” she countered.
“Something I’ve been doing for going on five years, day after day.”
Her hands moved between us, coming to rest against my chest, palms open, the fingertips hypnotically stroking at my collarbone.
“With someone trying to sabotage it?”
I shook my head, dislodging the spell her touch created.
“That’s over. We both know it was all about the park. Those guys have moved on.”
With a snort, she gave a soft push against my chest.
“You’re starting to sound like Moske.”
“Play nice, baby.” I leaned in, my breath reflecting off her cheek. “I understand you still investigating, but those men at least know their original plan has been burned.”
Circling Ashley’s wrists, I brought her arms up around my shoulders. My hands slid behind her back, pulling and holding her to me. My mouth found the shell of her ear and took a soft bite.
“Mama and Daddy had six kids.” I took another nibble and felt some of the fight leaving Ashley’s body. “Each one of us learned how to work the ranch and run timber.”
My teeth brushed a line to the edge of her jaw, the light scraping sending a shiver through her body that I could feel.
“We don’t put up with incompetent employees,” I coaxed. “Kostya’s been logging for almost as long as I’ve been alive.”
I finished the argument with my lips on hers, her mouth opening to release a shaky breath. She arched in my arms as my fingers ran down her spine.
A groan left Ashley, her body going limp for a second.
“You win,” she whispered, pushing me away but catching and holding my gaze. “I’ll accept the furniture loan and you can drive me this week if that’s what you want to do.”
“And the festival,” I demanded with a wink and a grin. “I can always throw on a lumberjack outfit and blend in.”
“And the festival,” she relented.
Leaning in again, I brushed the back of my fingers against her cheek.
“I know it’s hard, Ash, but thank you for letting me take care of you.”
She nodded, eyes misting and the muscles of her throat tightening.
Sensing I was close to pushing too hard, I plant
ed a soft kiss on her forehead before retreating to the bedroom door.
“I’ll let you get some sleep.” I pointed to the wall the headboard rested against. “I’m just two doors—or a text—away.”
“Thank you.”
I dipped my head, but not before seeing the brief smile she forced. Slipping into the hall and pulling the door shut behind me, I wondered—how was I going to get someone as independent as Ashley to let me take care of her forever?
22
Ashley
Day one of the festival started with a complimentary breakfast for the museum’s “living exhibits” and the extra volunteers. Walker was there in contemporary clothes with a blue smock marked STAFF in yellow and deep pockets to hold information cards.
When breakfast was over and the exhibits were given their briefing for the day ahead, Walker helped clear the tables. Finding me frequently peeking over my shoulder to watch him work, Lindy patted my hand.
“He’s still there, dear,” she whispered. “He’s a Turk. He will always be there.”
After that, I didn’t look over my shoulder again until the briefing finished. I wasn’t trying to keep our relationship secret—that cat had jumped out of the bag with Walker spending his second week in a row at my apartment. But I didn’t know how to explain what was going on with us. We didn’t discuss our feelings beyond both of us wanting the relationship to progress at the right time.
For me, that was the absolute truth, but I knew better than to trust that a man’s words always aligned with what went on inside his head.
Stuck in a weird kind of limbo, Walker tucked me into bed each night with a kiss then slept on the pullout couch.
That didn't mean every kiss was chaste. Far, far from it. Some nights proved almost impossible for one or the other of us not to push a little further, to caress a spot we hadn’t dared to touch before.
My palm cupping the front of his jeans while Walker sucked at my throat. His fingers caressing high up on my thighs as his lips whispered over the fabric covering my breasts. Parting my thighs as he palmed my mound, only a wisp of fabric separating my flesh from his.
I shut the memories down almost as soon as they rose up. Combined with the elaborate hairdo I wore for the exhibit, the dress was already a mobile sauna. Thinking about some of those nights that Walker had put me to bed could easily ignite the fabric.
As the coordinator finished setting out the rules for the exhibits, Walker came over with a bottle of water in each hand and one in the pocket of his smock.
“Mrs. Danver said you could slip these in your skirt pockets.”
Lindy and I murmured our thanks.
“And, unless you signal me for a refill earlier,” he said. “I’ll grab you another bottle at the end of my first shift.”
“Sounds good,” Lindy answered.
We had agreed that he would spend the first two hours in the main exhibit with us, his duties consisting of handing out pamphlets. Then he would take a short break before assisting with the group tours for another two hours, followed by an hour of his own choice before we gathered in the staff break room and left for the day.
“Here,” Lindy said, stopping in front of a map on our way to the exhibit. “Restrooms, drinking fountains, staircase, and elevator.”
Turning to Walker, she squeezed his shoulder.
“Sadly, that covers more than ninety percent of the questions visitors will ask you.”
Entering the exhibit room, I wanted to groan. Catching the direction of my gaze, Walker chuckled.
“It’s not all knitting baskets, washboards and butter churning,” he whispered. “This is Mama’s.”
Representing Sarah Bradley, the matriarch of the Turk family who had arrived in the early 1880s, Lindy’s stage included a large desk with an original Remington typewriter, a small printing press and, within arm’s reach of the high-backed office chair, a cradle.
“She never stopped doing her pamphlets on women’s rights,” Lindy explained. “But she also started the first newspaper in Willow Gap and one of the first national newsletters for the cattle industry. She educated her children and grandchildren, boys and girls studying the same subjects. You might even say she was an early forensic accountant.”
“Your stage,” Walker said, pointing across the room.
A painted backdrop displayed tipis, covered wagons, and mining operations.
“I feel guilty for just glossing through her biography,” I whispered as I hobbled up the steps and took my place.
“That’s why they provide a cheat sheet,” he said. “And you were pulling twelve-hour days all this week. Nothing to feel guilty about.”
My face screwed up as tight as if I was sucking on a lemon wedge. For all the time I had spent at work trying to find some lead on the man who had rented a space at Joyce Franco’s camp, I had come up empty. So had Thomas and Siobhan. Worse than no leads, I now had more puzzle pieces that probably meant nothing.
“They are long gone,” he whispered. “Relax and try to have fun.”
Fun! I forced a smile to my face, but a growl rumbled in my head. Moske was punishing me with the exhibition assignment. It was the kind of thing a far newer agent or intern would be saddled with if the agency even bothered sending a representative.
I put my antique crutches behind the traveling trunk filled with the only personal items a young Mary Ronan was allowed to take on her trip out west. Settling into a chair, I picked up the book with the loose sheets of notes about Mary’s life tucked between its pages. I gave the notes another quick read as a tour group entered the room.
The first question came from a skeptical child.
“Did you really come here in a covered wagon?”
No, I came in a quad cab diesel truck driven by a really hot lumberjack.
“Yes,” I answered. “It was pulled by horses and I often had to walk behind the wagon to keep from overtiring the animals.”
By the end of the second hour, I had explained a dozen times over that there were no restaurants or hotels on the route, no phones or electricity, few doctors, and plenty of danger.
Always, there was danger.
At the end of two hours, the volunteers closed the doors to the exhibit for a short break. The fifteen minutes allotted was just enough time to figure out how to use the restroom in a heavy, voluminous dress further hampered by the soft cast on my left leg.
That, and steal a kiss from Walker before the doors opened once more and he left to assist one of the tour guides.
The kids that came through the room during the second block had less energy. They asked fewer questions. The littlest among each group often demanded one of the adults carry them. Lindy had warned me about the difference between the morning and afternoon crowds and how half the exhibits would find themselves struggling to stay awake from lack of engagement.
The woman hadn’t been exaggerating.
I powered through the boredom by studying the visitors, categorizing their appearance just as I had that day I looked through the window of my Jeep at Walker Turk for the first time.
Big picture first—hair and skin color, height and basic dress. Then narrow down to the finer details, like how long or wavy the hair was, whether lips were thick or thin and the nose small or bulbous.
I was halfway through cataloging a man’s discrete details before I zoomed out again and realized the stranger reminded me of a slightly younger, sparer version of the fake Michael Abbot—the male who had rented a space at Joyce Franco’s campsite.
“This is so stupid!” the child with him complained.
I glanced at the kid, a girl, maybe nine or ten, old enough to have her own cell phone and snap a selfie with a finger pointed at her head, the hand held like a gun.
Reaching into my skirt pocket, I retrieved my own phone and turned the video camera on as the man peeled away from the tour group, his hand roughly squeezing the back of the girl’s neck.
The man and his young charge headed for the main hall.
I flashed the camera toward the tour guide they were abandoning so I knew which guide to question later, then signaled to one of the volunteers that I had to take a break.
Leaving my crutches on stage because there was no time to grab them, I hobbled down the steps and into the main hall, my gaze and the phone’s camera scanning the crowd for the man.
I spotted them leaving through the front entrance. I followed, each step fresh agony.
By the time I pushed through the glass doors into the sunshine, sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes. More than perspiration blurred my vision. Pain sank its claws through muscle and bone, forcing me over to a bench with the threat that I was about to pass out.
That’s where Walker found me fifteen minutes later, my head still reeling from the sensations shooting through my tortured leg.
“He’s waiting for me to leave,” Siobhan whispered from her side of the bed where she had her computer propped on her lap. She’d just sent a copy of the video from my phone to Sheriff Gamble and Emerson.
“He’s furious with me,” I whispered in return, parts of me quailing with the knowledge that I had jeopardized my relationship with Walker by chasing after the fake Michael Abbot’s lookalike.
Siobhan shook her head then typed a few words on her computer, showing them to me just long enough to read before deleting them.
That’s the way he looked when Dawn and Uncle Brody died. Believe me—it's not fury.
Guilt wrapped its hands around my throat and squeezed hard.
Siobhan shut her computer down, slid it into her oversized purse then opened the door. Her lips parted, like maybe she wanted to chirp something annoying at her cousin, but then her mouth slammed shut. Raising up on tiptoes, she kissed his cheek instead.
She glanced at me. “I’m heading back to the office. I’ll get a list going of potential matches for the partial plate. Hopefully it wasn’t stolen like the RV plate.”