by B. J Daniels
He laughed. “Neither of them holds water without proof.”
“So, what are we going to do?”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and grinned over at her. “You mean after lunch?”
“I need to get ready for my exhibit. What about you?”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Don’t you need to work?”
“I do,” he said seriously. “There are a couple of stories editors I’ve worked with would like me to chase. I wouldn’t be gone long, but...”
“You should go.” She could feel his gaze on her face.
“You are trying to get rid of me.”
“No,” she said just as serious. “I know how I feel about you. I think I know how you feel about me.”
“Which means?”
“We aren’t ready for...a big commitment.”
“Speak for yourself,” Max said.
“My sister Bo is getting married in a few months. I’d like you to be my date. In the meantime, I thought we’d both go back to work and see each other every chance we get.”
“You think we might change our minds about each other, is that it?” he asked.
She met his blue gaze. It was like falling out of a plane into nothing but sky. “No. So some time won’t change anything, right?”
“Not a thing.”
She smiled at him. “Good, I thought we’d...wing it for a while and just see if this is as amazing as we both think it is.”
He laughed as he reached across the table to cup her cheek with his warm hand. “I can wing it with you. But it’s not going to change how I feel. You’re it for me, like it or lump it.”
“I like it.”
EPILOGUE
MAX STRAIGHTENED HIS TIE. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a tuxedo. But it had been worth it to see Kat’s face when she’d gotten her first look at him.
He’d gotten a haircut, just not short, and shaved all but a little of his designer scruff. He was still that Max Malone, but he had a good feeling Kat didn’t want him to change.
“Wow,” she’d said and smiled as she’d rushed to him.
“Back at you!” He’d caught her and spun her in his arms. He swore she’d gotten more beautiful since the last time he’d seen her. The months apart had been good for both of them, he’d thought as they moved toward each other. Kat was her own woman again. No more too-large clothing, no more fears. There was a new confidence about her.
She wore a deep red velvet dress that fit her perfectly. Her hair dropped in dark tendrils around her beautiful face. “You make a gorgeous bridesmaid.” She would make an even more beautiful bride one day, he thought.
He’d planted a kiss on her check, so as not to mess up her makeup, and then whispered, “I can’t wait to get that dress off of you later.” She’d laughed as he’d put her feet back on the ground, but he’d been able to see that she was as anxious as he was to get together.
He’d been on assignment out of the country for the past few months and had only gotten back late last night. He’d wanted desperately to see her, but with her whole family home for Bo’s wedding, he’d restrained himself.
Max had been honored when her fiancé, Jace, had asked him to be one of his groomsmen at the Christmas wedding. Bo did make a beautiful bride. All five of her sisters were her bridesmaids.
“Those Hamilton girls are somethin’,” Max had joked.
“Aren’t we,” Kat had said.
He loved seeing how close they all were. They made him feel like family already.
Max saw that one of the groomsmen was Brody McTavish, the man he’d met at the bar who was in love with one of the twins. He caught him looking at Harper several times during the ceremony and had to smile.
The truth was that Max hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Kat throughout the wedding. He’d finally gotten her in his arms at the reception for a couple of dances. Bo and Jace had their reception in the big barn on Hamilton Ranch. Now he stood back as Bo was about to throw the bouquet. She’d made all her single friends and sisters join her for the traditional toss.
Kat’s first gallery exhibit was next week. Max had already bought the rain photo. It was in his bedroom at the beach house. He was hoping that the two of them would be able to get away for a few days after the wedding. He had something he wanted to ask Kat.
“Ready?” Bo called, laughing as she looked over her shoulder, then lifted the bouquet into the air and threw it behind her. The bouquet, tiny white roses with even smaller red berries, rose high into the air.
Max watched it arc upward, the bouquet skimming the barn’s rafters, before it began its descent.
He watched it all as if in slow motion as the bouquet fell, not in the tight crowd of expectant women, but toward the back where Kat had moved out of the way. The bouquet literally plummeted into her hands.
Her expression was priceless as she looked down at it for an instant before her gaze shot to him. Max smiled and nodded as he mouthed, “We’re next.”
* * *
KAT FELT LIKE a princess at a ball. Every time she’d looked in Max’s direction, she’d found him watching her, a smile on his face and a lightness in his eyes. She’d missed him desperately but she felt she’d been right about the two of them doing their own thing for a while.
She’d needed time to be sure the feelings she had for him would last. If anything, she was all the more crazy about him. As the single women congratulated her on her “catch,” she took a moment to smell the roses. She could see Max making his way toward her. Behind him, the barn had been decorated in a wonderland of white.
Earlier, she’d danced with her father. She’d never seen him looking so relaxed or happy. She knew that was her mother’s doing. Now Kat spotted them both talking off to the side of the dance floor. Her mother looked beautiful, her father so handsome. They looked like two people in love.
Over the past few months, she’d seen more of her mother. She wanted to believe that Sarah Hamilton really wasn’t Red. Her father was convinced that the woman now facing trial had tried to frame her mother. Kat wanted to believe that once all of the Prophecy members were found and arrested, this nightmare would be over. But she still had too many unanswered questions.
Just as she’d feared, her parents had gotten much closer over the past few months. The senator had hired a public relations firm. They’d put a positive spin on Sarah Hamilton. And when it had come out that the two were seeing each other, most of the media had jumped on the bandwagon, portraying it as two lost lovers having found each other again.
Kat tried not to worry about it. Max had said that if her mother really was Red, they still had time to stop whatever the Prophecy might have in the works. Still, Kat found herself watching her mother closely when she was around her. She kept looking for signs, but so far she’d seen none.
Maybe her father was right and there was nothing to worry about.
Pushing those thoughts away, Kat let herself just enjoy this moment. It felt so good to have her family all here. Bo had been a beautiful bride. She looked so happy with Jace.
As Kat looked around the barn, it all felt so dreamlike. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this happy. Happy for Bo. Happy for her sisters, who all loved a good wedding. And happy for herself now that Max was here. She didn’t need to catch the bride’s bouquet to know that she would be spending the rest of her life with him. She’d seen it in his expression when he’d looked up and seen her before the wedding.
He loved her.
She had to swallow the lump in her throat. And she loved Max with all her heart. She had a feeling he already knew that as he stepped to her now, laughing as he looked at the bouquet and pulled her into his arms. Kat closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him. She couldn’t
wait to be alone with Max.
When she opened her eyes, she caught movement outside the barn door. A man had been standing in the shadows, but now he stepped away, moving into the light for an instant before he disappeared.
Kat felt her pulse jump as her eyes widened with recognition. The man who’d been standing out there... She recognized him. It was the same man who’d been standing next to Red in the Prophecy photo. He was older, more distinguished, but there was no doubt. He was the man who Max had said was Red’s lover—and the coleader of the terrorist group.
Kat’s gaze flew to her mother, who she saw was standing nearby—staring at the now-empty, open barn doorway and looking as if she’d seen a ghost. All color seemed to drain from her face just before Sarah Hamilton fainted.
* * * * *
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Wild Horses
by B.J. Daniels
PROLOGUE
January 27
LIFE CHANGED IN an instant. Olivia Hamilton knew that only too well. One minute her mother had been alive. The next gone.
Tonight, one minute Montana’s night sky had been clear, the next she found herself in the middle of a blizzard—fighting to stay on a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. Livie had driven in her fair share of winter storms, but this one was getting worse by the moment. She couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead of her through the driving snow. Add to that, she didn’t know the road or even exactly where she was.
All she knew for sure was that she was stopping at the next small town she came to and getting a motel for the night. She’d call home to let her family know where she was. As for calling Cooper Barnett...
Just the thought of her fiancé made her grit her teeth. If the man wasn’t so damned stubborn they would have been married by now and she wouldn’t have taken off after their latest fight and ended up on this road alone in the middle of Montana in the winter with the temperature dropping and—
The highway disappeared so quickly that she didn’t have time to react. Through the windshield all she saw was blowing snow as the SUV suddenly jerked to the right. The tires caught in the deep snow along the edge of the highway. In a heartbeat, the SUV plunged into the ditch. Snow washed over the hood and windshield. Her head slammed into the side window an instant before the airbag exploded in her face. Then everything stopped.
Livie sat for a moment, too stunned to move. She was still gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles white. It had all happened so quickly that she hadn’t had time to panic. Now, though, she began to shake, tears burning her eyes as she realized the desperate situation she’d put herself in. She could feel freezing cold air coming in around the cracks in the door. She hadn’t seen a house or a light in miles.
Pulling out her cell phone, she hoped she could get a tow truck this time of the night. But she quickly realized that, like a lot of areas of Montana, there was no cell service.
At the sound of the engine still running, she told herself that her situation was dire enough without carbon monoxide poisoning. With the SUVs tailpipe deep in the snow, it wouldn’t take long before she was overcome. She quickly killed the motor.
A deathly silence fell over the car as she considered what to do. The car was buried in snow in the ditch miles from anywhere. She’d always been told to stay with her vehicle, but she could feel the temperature dropping and she’d foolishly left in such a hurry that she hadn’t taken her usual precautions. She’d brought no sleeping bag or water or anything to eat and right now she had no idea how long it would be before anyone found her.
Cooper had begged her not to travel because the forecast called for a storm. But she’d been too angry with him to listen. She’d thrown her engagement ring at him and stormed out. All she’d thought about was distancing herself from him until she could cool down. She had a friend who lived in northwest Montana and, right then, going to see her seemed like a great idea. Let Cooper have a few days with her gone and see how he liked that.
When she’d left, the weather had been fine and she’d thought she could beat the storm. But when the skies darkened and flakes started to fall she’d taken a shortcut across the state. Except it wasn’t long before she couldn’t see the highway. She’d thought about turning around, but it was as bad behind her as it was ahead so she’d kept going. For the past twenty miles or so, she hadn’t even seen another car on the highway. For all she knew the road had now closed to all but emergency traffic.
She felt something run down the side of her face. Turning on the interior light, she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that she was bleeding from a cut over her left eye where she’d smacked her head on the side window.
But it was what else she saw in the mirror that sent her pulse hammering.
A single set of headlights appeared in a blur out of the storm.
She tried to open her car door. If she could get out and flag the person down... Her door wouldn’t open, though, because of the snow packed around it.
Knowing that the driver of this car might be her only chance at survival tonight, she shoved as hard as she could. But the door wouldn’t budge.
The lights were growing closer.
What if the driver didn’t see her? What if...
What appeared to be a large dark SUV slowed, and the headlights washed over her. The SUV’s flashers came on as the driver pulled to the edge of the highway directly behind the spot where she’d gone off.
She saw a man climb out and she began to cry with relief. Life could change in an instant, she thought again as she watched the man heading toward her through the storm. He appeared to be large, nice looking, wearing a cowboy hat and dressed in formal Western attire as if he’d been to a party somewhere.
Olivia “Livie” Hamilton had no reason not to believe the man had stopped to save her.
CHAPTER ONE
May 1
Three months later
SENATOR BUCKMASTER HAMILTON stood on the second-floor outdoor balcony of the sprawling Hamilton Ranch house and surveyed the engagement party going on below him. Tiny white lights twinkled in the treetops as candles glowed on the cloth-covered tables around the provisional outdoor ballroom. A sea of Stetsons bobbed as a country music band played. The sound of clinking crystal glasses mingled with the hum of cheerful voices. It was a beautiful spring evening.
It should have been a perfect night since the party was to celebrate the first of his six daughters’ engagements. All he’d ever wanted was for his daughters to be happy. That Olivia was the first to marry didn’t surprise him. He’d seen the way she’d looked at the wrangler the first day he’d come to work on the ranch. Cooper Barnett wouldn’t have been his choice f
or her, but what did he know about love other than it was blind?
He raised his own glass in a silent salute. No matter what happened after tonight, he couldn’t have been more proud of his daughters, or as they were known around Beartooth, Montana, the Hamilton girls.
God knew he’d spoiled them after their mother died. In the twenty-two years since, he’d been overprotective, he’d be the first to admit it. There were stories that he’d met their dates on the front porch with a shotgun. He smiled. Although untrue, it had taken courageous young men to even dare to ask his girls out.
It was his fault, no doubt, that all six had grown into headstrong, hard-to-please women. Buckmaster sighed, although he truthfully saw nothing wrong with that. His girls had grown up with the run of one of the largest ranches in their part of the state. They had wanted for nothing, he’d seen to that.
Except for the mother they’d lost.
He took another drink to wash down the bitterness.
“One of our girls is getting married, Sarah,” he whispered into the warm spring night. “You missed it all. Now you won’t even be there to see Olivia get married.” He let out a curse, furious with Sarah for leaving him. Even more furious with himself because he still ached for her after all these years, as if he’d lost a limb.
He didn’t want to think about her. Not tonight. Focusing on the party instead, he surveyed the growing crowd and spotted his oldest daughter, Ainsley, gathered with four of her sisters near the bar. She’d been ten at the time of her mother’s death and had become a little mother to the others. She even looked like her mother, a blonde beauty. Except that Ainsley was much stronger than her mother had been. She was the one everyone depended on, himself included.
His gaze moved to Kat, the daughter who’d taken after him the most. Strong willed, Kat had gotten his dark hair and his gray eyes. She looked rugged and unapproachable even as pretty as she was.
She’d been eight when Sarah had died. Kat, who’d become a photographer, was always in trouble growing up. He’d watched her pull away from the family first by becoming a vegetarian and demanding he quit raising cattle, and later by spending less time at the ranch and more time rebelling in every possible way. He worried about her and often wondered what it would take to make her happy.