HER CALLAHAN FAMILY MAN

by Tina Leonard

  Jace frowned. “You can’t understand the calling of the spirit.”

  “Blah, blah, blah.” Wolf laughed, pulled his black cowboy hat down over his eyes. “I understand the calling of money. Cash is king. If you were a smarter man, you’d learn that lesson. And that wife of yours—”

  “Tread carefully,” Jace warned.

  “That wife of yours is just like her uncle, always trying to do the right thing. Gets folks in trouble every time. You see, when you believe that people are inherently good, you fail to understand their dark side. Everyone has a dark side, Jace. Sawyer hasn’t seen yours. But it’s there. Eventually, it will trip you up.”

  Jace’s skin chilled despite the hot sun. “And then what? You think we’ll join your cause?”

  Wolf shrugged. “Either that or I’ll just keep picking you off, one by one. Or two by two, in your case, right? You have two little babies by that sweet bodyguard wife—”

  Jace’s fist slammed into Wolf’s jaw so fast he didn’t see it coming. Wolf lay crumpled by the fire, stunned for a moment, before he got to his feet.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Jace shrugged. “Whatever trouble you have with me, you stay away from my wife.”

  “Everyone has a dark side, and she’s shown hers,” Wolf said, rubbing his jaw. “She’s fair game now.”

  It was too easy. Jace could kill his uncle right here, and no one could stop him. Wolf didn’t think he’d do it; that’s why he’d come alone. He knew quite well that Running Bear had said none of the Callahans were to harm their uncle.

  But Wolf was right: Jace did have a dark side.

  And killing Wolf would be so sweet.

  * * *

  “WHERE HAVE YOU been?” Sawyer asked anxiously when he walked inside the bunkhouse.

  “Out checking on a few things. Everything good?” He glanced at the babies, snug in the laps of Ash and of Fiona. Recently released from the hospital, Fiona moved more slowly now, and complained that they were making her sit around too much for no reason at all. Ash stayed very close to her, so close that only Burke ever really got any time with his wife without Ash hanging around.

  “Everything’s fine.” Sawyer put on a hat and her boots while he watched her suspiciously. He looked at the tight black leggings and long-sleeved T-shirt she wore—pretty warm stuff for weather that was as hot as a pistol outside. Not to mention that she looked as if she was on her way to a raid.

  “Are we supposed to be going somewhere?” Jace asked.

  “You’re going shopping for the grand wedding I’m throwing,” Fiona said, beaming. “You realize I got up off my deathbed for your marriage, which will be the event of the year.”

  Sawyer glanced at him. “She’s very excited about us saying our vows again.”

  Now that sounded better. For a moment, his wife’s serious face had puzzled him; he thought he’d forgotten something important. “Shopping it is.” He looked at Sawyer’s clothes a bit doubtfully, thinking his wife really looked more like she was in recon mode than shopping mode. “I really don’t like you to be out long. You should still be resting.” He kissed both his babies on their small downy heads.

  “Yes, but you don’t like me to be out without you, either, so I have to wait for you to bring your muscles home. And you were gone longer than I expected,” Sawyer said, glancing out the window, though he wasn’t sure what she was looking for. “So now we have to hurry. The sun will go down in about an hour.”

  What the sun’s positioning had to do with wedding preparations, he couldn’t have said, but he kissed his babies again, kissed his aunt, tugged his sister’s platinum ponytail and took his wife’s hand to lead her out the door. “We’ll be back in a bit,” he told his family. “Wedding stuff should be a piece of cake.”

  Ash laughed. “Keep thinking that, brother.”

  Sawyer hurried to the truck. She hopped in and buckled her seat belt. “We’re making a detour to the house you bought from my uncle.”

  That wasn’t so strange, he supposed. Though the Callahan conglomerate now owned Storm’s ranch, maybe she wanted to return for sentimental reasons. He backed up the truck. “I thought we were going to do fantasy bride stuff?”

  She shook her head. “You can call this fantasy bride stuff if you want to. Just hurry. We don’t have much time, because if we don’t get to the stores to pick out the stuff Fiona wants us to, she’ll know we didn’t go. But we have a very small errand to run first.”

  “I guess all wisdom will be revealed to me in due time,” Jace said, heading for Storm’s old ranch. The place was probably thick with Feds, and cartel thugs, too, since it was practically deserted these days. He wanted no part of his family being over here until the ranch was cleaned up.

  Storm had been right to move away.

  Sometimes Jace thought Ash was right, and that they should dynamite the land across the canyons, cover it over with concrete and turn it into Callahan Rodeo Land, to flush out the bad guys.

  “Speaking of fantasy bride stuff, you sure did look like an angel in Fiona’s magic rag.”

  Sawyer gasped. “You can’t call it that! Your aunt would be appalled if she thought you were making fun of the magic. And anyway, you aren’t supposed to see me wearing the gown before the big day. I’m pretending you didn’t, and that you were just my special Callahan vision.”

  He laughed. “It was very good luck for me. In fact, it was all I could do not to make that fairy-tale frock disappear from your goddesslike body and make princely love to you.”

  “Every Callahan bride has supposedly seen the man of her dreams when she’s worn the gown.”

  “You did see me. Only it was even better, because I was there in the flesh.” He reached for her hand, raised it to his lips, kissed her fingers. “You can’t believe everything my aunt tells you. Most of it’s wonderfully childlike, romantic tales, to get us to do what she wants us to do.”

  “What she believes is best for you,” Sawyer amended. “Her track record is pretty amazing so far.”

  “I know. So what’s this we’re going to see?”

  “Remember when Ash commandeered the treasure-hunting equipment from the trespasser?”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot all about that.” Jace laughed out loud. “My sister has nerves of steel. Did the guy come wanting his equipment back?”

  “No, surprisingly. And that got my curiosity up. Remember how Uncle Storm got used by Wolf to buy this ranch, so Wolf could get access to the land through him? Obviously, Wolf didn’t want to buy it. He doesn’t have the resources, and the land he really wants is Rancho Diablo. Which he wanted access to.”

  “Through your uncle’s land, and this land.” Jace parked the truck. “I’m with you so far.”

  “I was thinking about why he wanted my uncle to help him so much, and then got so mad at me when he felt I’d betrayed him. And I thought it was odd that the man from whom Ash took the equipment never made a stink about it. Plus I remembered Uncle Storm telling me that Wolf was always asking him a lot of questions about selling horses, buying horses, etc.”

  Jace followed his wife as she pulled the metal detector from the back of the truck. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to have that out here. Wolf’s thugs have eyes on everything.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t really care.” She took off at a good clip across the ranch, carrying the equipment.

  She was scaring the hell out of him. A tingle hit him, a sense of karma colliding—and suddenly, he remembered the dream he’d had in the hospital, which had seemed so much like a vision. He and Sawyer had been here—only she’d been atop a mesa, and he’d been far away, riding a Diablo. It was an impossible dream, because the Diablos hadn’t been seen or heard in a long time—but a sudden premonition told Jace there was danger here. He followed Sawyer quickly, glad
he was armed, wishing he had backup.

  Once Sawyer reached a particular destination—he happened to know that it was near the cave Galen had been held in some months ago, but didn’t want to say so to Sawyer, because with his luck, she’d decide to go spelunking—she stopped and looked toward Rancho Diablo. “It’s beautiful, no matter where you stand to look at it.”

  He eyed the seven chimneys of the main house, rising in the distance. “It is.”

  “If you stood here and looked at that long enough, you might wish you lived there.”

  “I do live there.”

  She ignored his lame attempt at humor. “One day I’m going to take our babies riding on this land,” Sawyer said, “and it’s going to be free and safe.”

  He hoped she was right, yet his scalp prickled all the same. “Let me carry this thing. It’s too heavy for you.” He took the metal detector from her, still not sure why they needed it, but not about to interrupt his wife when she was on a mission. Everyone had a holy grail, and if this was hers, far be it from him to throw a wrench in the works. He glanced around, made certain they weren’t being followed as she strode toward the canyons.

  When Sawyer stopped at the edge, looking over, he gulped. “Please don’t do what I think you’re going to do.”

  “That’s where the Diablos run,” she whispered. “This is the yellow brick road.”

  “Yes, but we haven’t seen them in months.”

  “I know.” She looked across the canyons at the burned-out farmhouse, then turned back to stare at Rancho Diablo. “If you had always lived there, and looked across these canyons, you might have wished life had gone differently for you.”

  “Maybe, but Rancho Diablo’s been built up over many years. Three, four decades?”

  “And all those years, that farmer watched. And you know who else watched?”

  “Wolf,” Jace said.

  “That’s right. The man who lived in that house was a friend of Wolf’s. All those years, he was a spy for him, until Wolf was ready to put his plan into action.”

  “How do you know all this?” Jace’s heart began an uncomfortable thumping.

  “Because I asked him. I looked at the property deed at the county courthouse and found the gentleman’s name, and after I got out of the hospital and had time to think things through, I went and asked him everything I wanted to know. When you were shot, I knew we hadn’t heard the whole story, and I knew someone else had to have pieces of it.”

  Jace swallowed hard. “You were supposed to be resting.”

  “And you were supposed to stay alive so you could be my husband,” Sawyer told him. “I knew it wasn’t my uncle who’d given up information. He didn’t know anything. So someone had been feeding information to Wolf. The only person who could have kept a closer eye on things than my uncle was the man who owned that land over there. And that’s exactly what happened. He was quite willing to tell me everything, because Wolf reneged on his promise of land and Rancho Diablo silver.”

  “Still, why are we standing out here with Ash’s nefariously acquired equipment?”

  “Because,” Sawyer said, “we both know the silver is important, but it’s not the ranch’s most prized possession. Life according to Running Bear states that the most important part of the ranch is the spirit. The spirits. And that’s what your uncle simply can’t get through his thick skull.”

  “I just love how your mind works,” Jace said admiringly. “All this time I thought you were just a gorgeous face, a redhead with a body to drive me mad.”

  “You thought nothing of the sort.”

  “I swear I did.”

  “Good. Hang on for the ride, cowboy. I’m about to drive you really mad.”

  And with that, she disappeared off the side of the canyon. Jace cursed, looked over the edge, knew that the only woman he could ever love had figured out there was a stairway of rocks leading downward.

  Which meant she’d been hanging around over here by herself, with no Callahan protection, because she was determined to clear her uncle’s name—and hers.

  She still didn’t accept that she was a true Callahan.

  “We’re going to fix that,” he muttered, checking his gun. “And somehow I don’t think we’re going wedding shopping today.”

  So he followed her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It seemed they’d walked for miles in a tunnel Sawyer had found. Jace didn’t even want to think about the fact that his wife was basically charting unknown territory in a recently dug maze leading from Storm’s ranch to a point unknown.

  “I should send you home,” Jace said. “You’re taking ten years off my life.”

  “Shh,” Sawyer said over her shoulder. She’d pulled a flashlight from a holster he hadn’t realized she was wearing, and shone it in front of them. “Walls have ears, they say.”

  It was definitely true at Rancho Diablo, but he wasn’t sure if these dirt-packed walls had any listening devices. “So when you were supposed to be home resting and taking care of our children, you were playing detective?”

  “I am a bodyguard,” she reminded him. “Just because we had children doesn’t mean I stopped trying to protect the family.”

  “Remember when we had that discussion about you being a stay-at-home mom?”

  “And you volunteered to be Mr. Mom? Hold this.” She handed him the flashlight, bent down to put her ear against the dirt floor.

  “I don’t think it’s going to work,” Jace said. “I can’t stay at home with the kids and keep an eye on you, too.”

  “This is the easy part. Learning to breast-feed was much harder. Rewarding, but harder.”

  “What are we looking for? I sense you aren’t playing underground Miss Marple just for fun. We lugged this treasure-hunting device with us for a reason.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m looking for. It just seemed like a good thing to have, since someone was on the property using it. For all I know, Wolf’s found the fabled Callahan silver treasure.” She rose, pushed on a cave wall. Something moved slightly, and he helped her push, and a crude door opened.

  And there, fenced off from the canyons they so loved, were the black Diablo mustangs. A lone silver mare was enclosed in a pen, and several stallions had tried to kick their way to her. There were bloody marks along the pen walls and the fencing that blocked them from the canyons. The stallions stayed close to the mare—a trap to keep them from trying to escape. The Diablos were hidden away from the sun and the wind and the independence they loved.

  “Oh, no,” Sawyer murmured under her breath, and before Jace could stop her, she was in the middle of the herd, little more than her red hair visible among the black horses. He threw down the metal detector and followed her, his gun at the ready.

  Suddenly, as if someone had shouted “Freedom!” the Diablos surged past him. They bolted for the wide-open spaces beyond the mouth of the tunnel as Sawyer held open a heavy wooden gate. A few stallions stayed tight to the pen of the silver mare, but after a moment, even they gave in to the desire for liberty. Soon the underground corral was empty.

  “Come on!” Jace muttered to Sawyer. “As soon as those mustangs hit the canyons, Wolf’s going to know we freed his stolen treasure.”

  “Just a minute.” She approached the silver mare, which was looking patiently over the pen wall at her. “Come on, girl.”

  “Sawyer,” Jace said, “we don’t have time. We’re on stolen time, in fact.”

  “Don’t leave the metal detector behind. Ash will want her equipment back.” Sawyer swung up on the silver mare and he opened the pen. “See you at home, husband.”

  “You’re not going without me. I’m riding shotgun this time,” he said, grabbing the metal detector and whistling at the cave entrance. A lone mustang stallion danced nearby, nervous, ready to run,
and Jace swung up on its back. “Head for home and don’t look back for any reason at all.”

  They shot out of the underground maze and tore across the land toward Rancho Diablo. Jace glanced behind them to see if they were being followed. Not yet, not yet.

  He heard hooves behind him. “Go!” he yelled at Sawyer, glancing over his shoulder again. Running Bear rode a hundred lengths back, before wheeling his horse to protect their departure. Jace rode hard to cover Sawyer, praying that she’d make it at least to the perimeter of Rancho Diablo. A moment later, the sight of his five brothers and Ash galloping toward them nearly stopped his heart.

  It was going to be all right.

  In fact, it was going to be even better than all right.

  He and Sawyer were finally home.

  * * *

  “JUST SO YOU know, you nearly gave me heart failure,” Ash said to Jace as she stood beside him two days later at the altar. He’d chosen Ash to be his best man because she simply was—and Sawyer had agreed, saying Ash could also be her maid of honor. If anyone could handle both honorary duties, it was her sister-in-law.

  Ash had spied the Diablos running in the canyons, and from her perch on the bunkhouse roof, she could see that the horses were wild with some kind of pent-up panic. She’d told her brothers that something was wrong, that the mysticism felt weak and somehow almost invisible, and they’d instantly ridden for the canyons.

  Jace had never been so glad to see his family in his life. At that moment, as he’d spotted them riding to the rescue, he’d known Sawyer would make it home. With Running Bear at their back, they stood a chance.

  Somehow, incredibly, Wolf’s men never even put up a fight. Which was a warning in and of itself: Wolf had never suspected that they would find the underground corral that shut the Diablos away from the canyons they called home. He’d planned to sell them over the border, no doubt, which was why he’d asked Storm the questions about horse trading, and why he’d wanted Storm’s ranch available to him to hide the Diablos—except that Storm had sold the ranch to the Callahans, thus dashing Wolf’s hopes to make a huge fortune.