The Cowboy

by Vonna Harper, P. J. Mellor, Nelissa Donovan

  Once she’d turned off the main highway and began winding her way down the cracked and patched back roads, it was plain to see why the government, in conjunction with the Wilderness Preservation Coalition, had chosen this spot for the wolf release. Cassie’s eyes drifted to the rim of granite spears that rose to the north like an imposing citadel. All rights to the thirty thousand acres had been given to the coalition by a foreign investor, and when the coalition had approached Fish and Wildlife about possibly using the area for a release, they’d jumped at the opportunity.

  It was near perfect. Or so everyone had thought. Simon Alistair, the coalition’s chairman, had volunteered to oversee the project himself, which had surprised Cassie. She’d met the man on a few different occasions and never figured him for a field controller. He struck her as more of a big-bash fund-raiser and PR events type of guy.

  The pack had been ensconced in their new home for nearly five months now, and from the reports she’d read, the small community of Granite Hollow hadn’t raised much opposition to the release until recently. Cassie needed to find out what their concerns were, investigate both sides, and hopefully make a recommendation that would ease tension. It didn’t help any that the agent assigned had quit a month ago without giving notice. Her bosses hadn’t even realized he was gone until one of the coalition members had called to ask if Peter was coming back.

  Peter had never been a reliable guy, in Cassie’s opinion, but her opinion hadn’t been asked when Peter was assigned.

  “Holy shit!” Cassie slammed on her brakes and the T-Bird screeched to a halt. She squinted to see past the glare on her windshield. Something big. In the middle of the road. Thank god she hadn’t been the one to hit it.

  The car door creaked as she stepped out into the night, and then silence washed over her as if she had dove into the deep end of a pool. She could hear the strange echo of her own labored breath and imagined her heartbeat was nearly as loud.

  “Oh,” Cassie said as she drew closer and knelt. It was a deer. The metallic tang of blood hit her at the same time she spotted the deer’s belly. Entrails were splattered across the asphalt, along with other parts and chunks.

  A tingle vibrated up from the base of her spine to the top of her head, and Cassie’s gaze snapped to the inky darkness that lined the roadway to her left. The silvery reflection of several pairs of eyes blinked back at her from the dense foliage. Cassie’s jaw tightened, and beads of sweat broke out across her chest and back.

  “No problem, Cass,” she whispered to herself. Wolves didn’t attack people, and they weren’t about to fight her for rights to the roadkill. She scanned the dead animal with a practiced eye. Taking advantage of roadkill was a dangerous and lethal habit for the wolves to have established, and as Cassie backed up confidently to her car and slipped inside, she was certain this roadway wasn’t part of the preserve. The one thing the government and wildlife conservationists had had to concede to citizens in each release area was boundaries. Invisible lines the animals were not allowed to cross, or they risked capture, relocation, or worse.

  A low rumble reached Cassie’s ears through her open window, and she leaned out to look up and down the dark road. Nothing. She could have sworn it had sounded like a car engine. Actually, like an old Jeep. Her father had owned one for twenty-five years, and Cassie would never forget that telltale rumble. In her mind it always signaled that trouble was on its way.

  She looked at the corpse again and tried to relax the death grip she had on the steering wheel. “Bet you never figured I would be doing this, Dad.”

  2

  C assie bumped her front tire into the cracked curb as she parked. She squinted up at the badly faded marker, lit only by a weak garden up-light. “Flanagan’s Place,” she said aloud. Looking down at her Blackberry, she used the stylus to scroll forward and sighed in relief. “This is it.”

  Finally. It might have taken her an extra hour, but hopefully it wasn’t so late she couldn’t grab a bite to eat before bed. She’d taken about fifteen minutes on the side of the road by the downed deer to write a quick account and to take pictures. She would have to report the incident to the sheriff and the ranger assigned to this district in the morning.

  Slinging her briefcase over her shoulder, Cassie exited the car and closed the door behind her. She breathed in deeply. The air was crisp, clean, so different from the LA smog she was used to. And was that—yes—she could smell flowers of some sort, and pine, and other earthy aromas that reminded her of Wisconsin, where she grew up.

  “No time for old memories, Cass,” she said aloud to herself, smoothing a hand down her A-line skirt and then tugging her form-fitting jacket into a more professional position.

  It was too dark to get a solid impression of the small town, but Cassie was certain she’d not passed more than six or seven businesses lining the main street, with maybe a home or two sprinkled in between, their lights burning softly through faded curtains.

  If not for the faded sign, the two-story farm-style home in front of her—the only registered hotel/bed-and-breakfast within fifty miles—would be indistinguishable from the other homes scattered around. In fact, there weren’t even any lights on inside. She checked her watch again: 8:05 PM. Surely they wouldn’t have turned in this early. She had said she wouldn’t be in until around seven.

  After several knocks and phone calls with no answer, Cassie rubbed tired eyes and conceded that they must be out. “Okay … guess I’ll go find something to eat and come back.”

  “They’re at the meeting.”

  Cassie cried out and spun around. A broad figure filled the space at the bottom of the porch steps, arms crossed, face in shadow.

  “I didn’t hear you,” Cassie stammered, working to compose herself. She swallowed and walked forward. “Do you know what time they’ll return?”

  “Depends.”

  Cassie’s feet slowed as the man’s deep tone set off alarm bells. She stopped at the top of the stairs. If she were to walk down, she would end up directly in the man’s face, and he looked about as intent on moving as a mountain might. “Depends on?”

  “On whether or not the result of the meeting sends them to Callahan’s for a stiff drink.”

  Cassie’s heart thrummed, and her mouth went dry. “And you are?”

  His head came up, and he pushed his hat back on his forehead. “Just a concerned citizen, ma’am.”

  The dim porch light left much of the man’s face and body in shadow, but there was no shadowing his eyes. They glowed like golden torches, and Cassie had to force herself not to step backward. Golden eyes. She’d only seen eyes like that on one other creature—

  “They were concerned you would show up late without any clue where to go.”

  Cassie couldn’t stop staring. The man was huge, six-four or maybe -five, with powerful arms and dressed like he’d stepped straight out the screen of Hondo or Deadwood—literally. Leather boots, a gnarled and dusty Stetson, and—was that a gun on his hip?

  “Something wrong?”

  Her gaze snapped up from her perusal back to his face. He stepped forward. The light from the porch illuminated a weather-toughened face grounded by an authoritative jaw and, again, those eyes.

  And something else.

  It wasn’t until he tilted his head a fraction that Cassie noticed the scar. It ran from the middle of his ear down his cheek to nearly his chin. It looked old, the skin softly ridged and tanned a shade lighter than the brown skin on the rest of his face.

  “What hap—?” Horrified at what she’d almost asked, Cassie cleared her throat and tried to find something neutral to look at. Like the stinkbug that was scuttling across her Milani pumps. “Uh, where did you say the proprietors are?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Cassie looked up to find his eyes narrowed, his gaze resting intently on her face. “My gun makes you nervous?”

  His words were soft, and Cassie couldn’t control the shiver that ratcheted down her spine. She couldn’t decide if he w
as hitting on her or ridiculing her. “Not really. Should it?”

  He smiled, and a powerful wave of desire hit Cassie. She felt the tips of her breasts tingle and her clit tighten. What is wrong with me?

  “It is loaded, but so are a lot of things in life. Like thinking our government always works in its citizens’ best interests.”

  Cassie ignored the strange sensations that pulsed through her and forced herself down the flight of stairs to stand directly in front of the rugged cowboy. She stopped on the bottom step, and, even elevated six inches, she was dwarfed by the man’s bulk. She thrust out a hand. “Cassandra Darling. You should know I work for that very government.” She smiled, hoping to put him at ease. Hoping to erase the inexplicable curl of desire that had somehow harnessed itself to her at the cowboy’s arrival.

  He didn’t take her hand. Silence stretched between them, and Cassie dropped her arm to her side, her stomach churning. Only inches apart, Cassie could sense the tension in his shoulders, and the twitch of a rather prodigious muscle in his neck confirmed it. Even so, she kept her cool. She was all about cool. Offend no one, and reserve judgment until you have all the facts. It was the mantra she’d lived by in her job, and it had served her well.

  “Do you have something you would like to say to me?” Cassie looked him directly in the eyes, which was hard to do, as her gaze wanted to stray to his fine pecs or to the chiseled outline of his broad chest through his denim shirt. “I’ll listen if you do, and if not, I’ll kindly ask you to step aside so I can go find something to eat.”

  His golden eyes never flinched, nor did he look away. Cassie found herself breaking eye contact first, as staring into their warm amber depths left her a little light-headed and her mouth so dry she doubted she could say another word without choking.

  “They’ll be back in an hour.”

  Cassie looked up, her mouth open and ready to reply—but the cowboy had already started walking down the street. “Wait!” she called, wondering if she’d lost her mind to be yelling at an angry mountain man with a gun. “You didn’t tell me your name!”

  Without turning, she heard, “Dean McCabe. Might be good to remember it.”

  A cupie doll. They’d sent a goddamn cupie doll.

  Dean yanked off his hat and pounded it against his jeans before running a hand through his dark hair and shoving the hat back onto his head. When Carla and Floyd had told him they were expecting a boarder—the new agent sent to mediate—he was sure it would be the typical park-ranger-turned-bean-counter like they’d had before. Dean had never received a straight answer as to why the agent had left abruptly or who was supposed to be replacing him. And his recent calls to Washington hadn’t gotten him anything other than the message that things were “being handled.”

  He’d planned on giving the new agent the lowdown before the coalition whack jobs got their hooks in him—and then he’d spotted her.

  Silhouetted on the shadowed porch, she looked a hell of a lot like Jessica Rabbit, minus the furry sidekick. For some reason, as soon as he’d set eyes on her, Dean was angry all over again. Furious, actually. While he’d intended to engage whoever they’d sent in an open discussion of the issues they’d been facing and the government’s total lack of response, all he could think of when faced with the petite, knockout blond was how kissable her soft, pink lips looked and how her tits would feel in the palms of his hands. She looked more like a high-powered mortgage broker than a US Fish and Wildlife agent, and she smelled a hell of a lot better than Peter had, too.

  Dean closed his eyes as her scent came back to him—honeysuckle. Sunshine and toasted sugar. “Damn,” he murmured, his thoughts now shifting from her scent to her curvaceous body, pixie face, and wide blue eyes. He’d gotten an instant hard-on when she had sashayed down the steps to stand directly in front of him, her tits pointing at his chest like an open invitation to see if they tasted as good as they looked.

  And even though he’d been a total asshole, she’d been as cool as a six-pack stashed in the creek in January. For some reason, that knowledge filled Dean with a flush of hot pleasure and then, just as quickly, foreboding. Maybe it meant she would have enough common sense to see through the coalition’s slipshod excuses, or it meant she’d already been paid off and was just biding her time to tell the good folks of Granite Hollow to go fuck themselves.

  Dean ground his teeth and tried to shake off the play-by-play of their encounter as he walked toward the double doors of the meeting room. The heavy oak smacked the back of the wall as Dean entered. Twenty-something heads turned, and the yelling died down.

  “They’re saying it’s not the wolves that’re doing it, Dean!”

  Dean stared at the red, shiny face of his closest neighbor, Ted Cochran, before his gaze cut to the dais where four people sat. “Mayor? You believe that?”

  The mayor stood, his jowls jiggling with the force of his shifting bulk. “Take a seat, Dean. We were just discussing what the experts have told us regarding the latest attack.”

  “I can listen standing up,” Dean said, his gaze arrowing to the profusely sweating grad student sitting on the mayor’s right side. Their qualified “expert.”

  Mayor Grimble raised caterpillar-sized eyebrows. “Well, say it again, Calvin.”

  Calvin swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork in a storm-driven sea. “Well, uh, like I was saying…the attacks aren’t consistent with the pack’s normal behavior.”

  “Was Cochran’s sheep killed by a wild animal?” Dean asked.

  “It appears as though—” His head came up as Dean moved to stand directly in front of him. “Yes. Yes, it was definitely killed by some animal, but it could have been a wildcat or a cougar or even a badger—”

  “A sheep-killing badger?” Dean said, eyebrows arched. Snickers broke out through the room.

  Calvin flushed crimson and looked to the mayor for help. If they actually had a qualified animal behaviorist monitoring the incidents, Dean wouldn’t feel the need to torment the coalition so mercilessly—maybe—but how they were running things was a joke. A slap in the face to the citizens of Granite Hollow, who had at first been, if not supportive, at least tolerant of the release. His gaze rested on the coalition’s leader, Simon Alistair. The rumpled, finger-tapping businessman always seemed distracted, and it was obvious the man was way out of his depth. Dean had tried to discuss the issues with Simon, but somehow he always seemed to slip just beyond Dean’s reach.

  “Listen,” the mayor said as he cleared his throat and sat back down. “The coalition is doing what they can to track the pack’s movements. So far they’ve seen no indication that they’ve been in town at all.”

  Ted stood up again. “Then what in the hell’s been after our livestock and pets, Mayor? Explain that!”

  The mayor lumbered back up, rattling the entire table. “We don’t know, Ted. If we did, we would already have taken care of the problem.”

  “What about the prints, Mayor? Anyone with half a damn brain could see they were canine, not a goddamn mountain lion or badger.” Ted slammed his hat against the seat in front of him and then leveled a finger at the coalition leader. “No more games, Alistair. If your people won’t do something about it, then we will.”

  Shouts of assent filled the room as the faces of the coalition members paled, which was when Dean spotted Jake. He was all the way to the side of the dais, his face creased with worry, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

  Dean held up a hand and silence fell. “Simon, why the hell aren’t you tracking the wolves? We know they’re collared.”

  Simon cleared his throat and shook his head. “We are. But we don’t know where they are every second. We don’t have that kind of man power or equipment.”

  Jake stepped forward. “We’ve never seen any of the pack below Rustler’s Ridge. And think about it, Dean, if it were wolves they would be eating what they killed. You wouldn’t have found any parts of the Flanagans’ cat—” He tipped his head to the older redhead in the
front row and said, “Sorry, Carla,” before his gaze came back to rest on Dean—“let alone the body. Same with Cochran’s sheep. It’s got to be something else.”

  Dean wondered at the narrow gaze Simon threw his little brother’s way. As though he didn’t want Jake to divulge even that small of a detail, which was one of the reasons Dean had been so pissed off about Jake siding with the coalition. Something just wasn’t right about the entire operation.

  After Jake had walked out earlier that night, Dean had thought long and hard about what this might mean for them. For the ranch. But so help him, if the kid was sure enough to stand opposite him on this issue, he’d better be prepared to defend his position. “So, are you the new expert on the pack’s behavior, Jake?”

  “He might not be, but I am.”

  All heads shifted toward the doorway and the strong, unfamiliar female voice.

  3

  C assie forced her pulse back to a reasonable level as she scanned the room. Dean McCabe was squaring off with a younger, lighter, and definitely smoother version of the hulking cowboy. The young man was nearly as handsome as the intimidating Mr. McCabe. Even so, Cassie found her herself wanting to examine every inch of her gun-toting cowboy, now that she had him in a well-lit room, but there wasn’t time for that.

  She strode forward. “Good evening.” She moved past Dean, her arm brushing his as she passed. A thread of electricity pulsed through her at the contact, and Cassie suppressed another shiver as she stopped at the front of the room and turned. “My name is Cassandra Darling, and I’m with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.”

  Her eyes lighted on Simon, and Cassie nodded almost imperceptibly. It wouldn’t be prudent for her to seem too friendly with anyone involved with the coalition. He nodded back, his expression neutral. Cassie turned back to the twenty-some people who were crammed into the small room. “I look forward to meeting each of you individually to discuss your concerns—”