Promise from a Cowboy

by C. J. Carmichael

  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 w
ay 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.”

  Later, the medical examiner had confirmed that death had been caused by smoke inhalation. A crazy-high blood alcohol level explained why the unidentified young man hadn’t woken when the fire started.

  Despite the “official story” there had been rumors. Most of them centered around Hunter Moody, who everyone agreed had always been a shady sort—just like his father.

  B.J. couldn’t do much about the rumors. But he’d kept his promise to his father and remained mum about that night, never telling anyone that Hunter had been up in the loft and must have seen the vagrant.

  He could have put all the blame on Hunter, but he hadn’t. He’d protected the other guy out of a sense of responsibility. He should have figured out Hunter was up to something and stopped him.

  He’d kept quiet for Savannah’s sake. She had enough problems with her family. He hadn’t wanted to add another.

  “You’re still not going to tell me what happened, are you?”

  Mind reader. “Better ask your brother.”

  She made a sound of frustration, then gave up on him and resumed her inspection of the barn. “I’d like to get a look at that loft,” she said.

  He glanced up. Light was coming through gaps in the wood. “It’s probably not safe.”

  “Just a quick once-over.”

  “I’ll go.” He leaned some of his weight on the ladder, which was on the opposite side of the barn from where the fire had started. It didn’t feel very solid.

  “Let me try it,” Savannah said. “I’m lighter.”

  He gave her a “get serious” look, then, despite his better judgment, put a foot on the second rung. Half expecting the lumber to crack apart under his boot, he took another step, and another.

  Anxiously Savannah gripped the bottom of the ladder. “Be careful, B.J.”

  He grinned. “How many times have I heard you say that?” Glancing down, he thought he could see her smile in return. He was just about at the top now. He reached one hand from the ladder to the floor of the loft, and was about to take the final step u
p when he heard a loud crack and his left foot fell through rotten wood.

  “B.J.!”

  He grasped desperately with his free hand, managing to secure a two-hand hold on the loft, while the rest of his body swung free as the ladder disintegrated beneath him.

  “Hang on, B.J.!”

  “Believe me, I am.” He grunted as he worked at shifting his body weight up to the loft. “You okay down there?” He hoped she hadn’t been struck by any of the falling wood.

  “I’m fine. Try swinging your legs. If you get some momentum...”

  She’d no sooner said the words than he was putting them into action. And the extra momentum did help. He grunted again, pushed hard and finally was able to drag his body up to the second level.

  “Look out. I’m tossing you the flashlight,” she called. He heard a thud a few feet to his right.

  “Don’t stand, in case the wood is rotten up there,” Savannah added.

  “Roger that.” He crawled toward the torch and, once he had it securely in hand, switched on the light and played it against the far wall. Slowly he surveyed the space, but saw nothing except a few bales of moldering hay and a pile of blankets in the far corner.

  “Any signs of fire up there?”

  He studied the rafters and roof for several minutes before admitting, “No. I can see where the guy died, though. There’s still a pile of blankets in the corner.”

  Savannah hesitated. “I don’t imagine there can be any physical evidence worth salvaging at this point. But want to take a closer look?”

  He did and was already crawling toward the corner. When he arrived, he carefully set down the torch, then picked up first one blanket, then the other. He saw nothing, but heard the clink of something metal falling to the wooden surface.

  Savannah heard it, too. “What was that?”

  He flashed light over the area. Something gold sparkled. “It’s some kind of coin. Should I leave it here? Or take it?”

  Savannah didn’t answer for a long time. Then in a quiet voice she said, “Take it.”