Cowboy Alibi

by Paula Graves

  So she was twenty-six, just as she’d told Joe. Good to know there was something she hadn’t lied about. “What about my mother?” she asked. “Where’s she?”

  “Buried next to her mama in Gallup, New Mexico. She didn’t stop bleeding after you were born.”

  Joe touched her again, his hand warm against her spine. This time she let it stay, needing the feel of him beside her just to stay upright. She struggled against a powerful, unanticipated sense of loss. “How long has it been since you saw me?” she asked, her voice strangled.

  “About eight years. You hit the road once you were legal and never looked back.”

  “Did I leave with someone?”

  Harlan’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose there was a fellow. Isn’t there always?”

  “But you never met him?” Joe asked.

  “No. I suppose I’m not the sort of daddy a girl would want to take a boy home to meet.”

  “Ever heard of a man named Clint Holbrook?” Joe’s hand pressed more firmly against Jane’s back as he asked the question she’d been dreading.

  “No,” Harlan answered quickly. Too quickly. He rose to his feet. “I think you had the right idea, kitten. You were smart to get outta here the first time. You’d be smart to do it again. The sooner the better.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say to your daughter?” Joe stood to face Harlan, his body radiating with anger. “God, you’re a piece of work.”

  Harlan ignored him, leveling his dark gaze with Jane’s. His voice held an urgency that made Jane’s nerves hum. “Get outta town. You hear me? There’s nothing here for you anymore. Take the next plane out of here and go have yourself a nice life.”

  Jane stood, her knees wobbly. She caught Joe’s hand as he took a step forward. “You know who Clint Holbrook is,” she said to Harlan. “I need you to tell me everything you know about him.”

  Harlan paused with his hand on the knob. He turned to look at her, letting his gaze linger as if imprinting her in his memory. “Good luck, kitten,” he said.

  He opened the door and left.

  Joe took a step toward the door, as if to follow him, but Jane caught his hand. “No. Let him go.”

  Joe threaded his fingers through hers, crouching to look her in the eyes. “I’m sorry…Shannon.”

  She shook her head, tightening her fingers around his. “I’m not Shannon Dugan. Not anymore. Please don’t call me that, okay?”

  He lifted his other hand to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “What do you want me to call you?”

  She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “Jane. Just call me Jane.”

  CLINT HOLBROOK glanced at the display panel on his ringing phone. Arching one eyebrow at the name, he pushed Receive. “Holbrook.”

  “You were right. She showed up.” Harlan Dugan’s voice was tinny and hesitant through the phone receiver.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She found me at the Lady Luck. She wouldn’t tell me where she’s staying.”

  Clint could tell the man was lying. His lips curved in a half smile. Who would have figured the old bunko artist would have some residual affection for his daughter?

  “She said she was heading out of town soon. I tried to get her to tell me where she was going next, but she doesn’t trust me,” Dugan added.

  “Not a problem,” Clint assured him, thinking through his next options.

  “You’re still gonna pay me the five grand, right?”

  Clint smiled again, finding pleasure in knowing once again a man’s price. “Of course. My associates will be in touch.” He rang off and dialed another number.

  A deep voice answered. “Gibb.”

  “I have a job for you,” Clint said. “I need you to deliver $5,000 in cash to Harlan Dugan. You will find him at the Lady Luck Tavern tonight after seven. Please give him the money and a message from me.”

  Quietly, deliberately, he told Gibb exactly what message he wanted delivered to Harlan Dugan.

  “I GUESS that didn’t quite go as you expected,” Joe drawled softly from somewhere behind her.

  Jane’s lips curved in a grim smile. “Actually, it did.” She let the curtains drop and turned to face him, her eyes adjusting slowly to the darker room. “It went exactly as I expected.”

  He patted the mattress next to him. She hesitated a moment, her instincts leaning heavily toward isolation rather than comfort. But finally she crossed to the bed and sat beside him.

  He took her hand and enfolded it in his own. “I’m sorry your mother’s dead.”

  “And that my father’s a self-centered bastard?”

  “That, too.”

  She rested her temple against his shoulder. “When I first realized I didn’t know anything about my past, I imagined all sorts of scenarios to fill in the blanks. My parents were professors. Doctors. Spies.” She chuckled bleakly. “But I knew better. Deep down, I knew.”

  “Have you remembered anything else?”

  “Nothing new. But there’s something I didn’t tell you about my earlier memories.” She withdrew her hand and shifted on the bed to face him.

  He returned her gaze, his expression wary.

  “The reason I remembered Reno at all was because I remember being arrested by an undercover Reno police officer,” she said. “For my part in Harlan’s shell game.”

  His expression softened. “You must have been a kid,” he said. “We didn’t get any hits on your fingerprints until you showed up in Trinity, but maybe a closed juvenile record wouldn’t have been in the system.”

  “If I left here at eighteen, I guess I didn’t have time to rack up a record as an adult.”

  “You probably never got arrested again, since you didn’t show up anywhere on our search.” He brushed the back of his knuckles against her cheek. “But we have a name now to help us find out more about who you are.”

  “I don’t want to know who I was.”

  He cupped her chin in his palm and turned her to look at him. “You can’t run away from it, Jane, or you’ll spend the rest of your life running.”

  “I wish I could,” she murmured, her heart racing as his fingertips traced the curve of her cheek. “I wish I could keep running until I found a place that feels safe.”

  “Running away from Wyoming didn’t make you safe.” His voice dipped lower.

  She closed her eyes, unable to think with him sitting so close. “Tell me how we met.”

  “Tommy introduced us.”

  She waited for him to withdraw, the way he always did when he mentioned his brother. But she still felt the heat of his body next to hers, the warmth of his breath stirring her hair and warming her cheeks.

  With her eyes still closed, she turned her face toward him. “Tell me how. Where were we? What did you say? What did I say?”

  His breathing quickened. “All I remember,” he whispered, “is wanting to do this.”

  His mouth brushed over hers, soft and hot.

  She opened her eyes, startled. For a brief moment, she was too surprised to react. By the time that moment passed, any thought of pulling away disappeared.

  She parted her lips, returning the gentle pressure, and curled her fingers into the crisp cotton of his shirt to pull him closer. He cradled her face in both hands, slanting his mouth over hers with greater urgency.

  Blistering need scorched through her at his touch, catching her off guard. Entangled by desire so fierce she couldn’t catch her breath, she fought for control, as frightened by what she was feeling as she was enthralled.

  This was memory, she realized, as much as instinct. She remembered these sensations, the feel of his hands as they traced a path of sexual heat down the side of her neck to the curve of her breasts. She remembered the taste of him-rich, dark and bittersweet.

  He shifted on the bed and she followed, ending up on his lap, her thighs straddling his hips to bring their bodies flush and hard against each other. Threading his fingers through her hair, he broke off their k
iss and made her look at him. “If we do this, I won’t be able to let you go,” he warned, his gray eyes dark with hunger.

  “I won’t let you go.” Clint’s voice was hard, full of warning. His grip on her wrist tightened, just short of painful. “You know that.”

  He released her and she forced herself not to rub her wrist where he’d touched her. She couldn’t let him see her distress. He enjoyed it too much.

  She tightened her hands into fists and watched him leave the room. The sound of the lock clicking into position was loud in the silence of her bedroom prison. She dropped wearily onto the side of her bed, pressing her hands against her roiling stomach.

  She had to get out tonight. Before he found out.

  Jane pulled away from Joe’s arms, stumbling a little as she slid off his lap and took a few steps away from him. Her heart raced from a double dose of desire and fear.

  Joe stared at her from his seat on the edge of the bed, his eyes dark with frustration. “Guess that’s a no?”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, edging past him toward the bathroom. She shut herself inside and stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  Gazing back at her was a person she barely recognized as herself, a well-dressed woman with long, dark hair twisted in a coil at the base of her neck and light but perfectly applied makeup. The only thing familiar was the hunted look in her green eyes and the determined set of her mouth.

  She had to get out of there.

  The night was dark, which served her purpose. Miguel had risked everything by providing the code for the back gate. She couldn’t let him down by getting caught.

  Outside, the air was cool and dry, with a faint salt breeze coming from the Pacific a few blocks west. Clint had gone to a party-something political, she thought, though he’d long since stopped informing her of the details of his comings and goings.

  It would be her last chance to get away before…what? Why was tonight the night she had to leave? She knew the answer was there somewhere, in her fuzzy head, but she just couldn’t pull it out.

  Jane blinked and the image in the mirror was gone, replaced by the bottle redhead with tired, sad eyes.

  Everything she needed to know about herself lay hidden somewhere behind those eyes. She couldn’t run from her memories. They would follow her wherever she went, daring her to suck up her courage and face them.

  A knock on the bathroom door made her whole body jerk. She steadied herself with both hands on the sink counter.

  “Jane, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied, staring at the mirror as if she could will another memory into being. But her other self remained stubbornly elusive.

  She turned on the faucet and splashed water on her hot face, wishing she could return to the moment when all she wanted in the world was to be in Joe Garrison’s arms.

  But how could she offer herself to him when she didn’t even know what she was offering? What kind of woman was she, really? Why was Clint Holbrook willing to kill to take her home with him? Joe couldn’t give her those answers. And until she knew the truth about herself, the last thing she could afford to do was give her heart to a man who might never be able to trust her.

  SOMETHING HAD to give, Joe thought, staring bleakly at the closed bathroom door. He wasn’t the kind of man who sat around waiting for things to happen.

  He made things happen.

  What he needed was home-field advantage. He knew every inch of Canyon Creek, Wyoming. And more important, there were people in Canyon Creek who’d known him since birth, who knew the kind of man he was and what he was-and wasn’t-capable of doing.

  He needed to go home.

  But getting there undetected was the hard part. His earlier call to his deputy chief-and Riley’s quick ring off-had made it clear the authorities were watching his friends and associates. His credit cards were probably flagged, too. Another long bus ride seemed the best option, but it left them at the mercy of the driver and other passengers.

  He was tired of being at anyone else’s mercy.

  The bathroom door opened, and Jane walked into the bedroom, carrying first-aid supplies and a plastic garbage bag she’d apparently taken from the bathroom trash can. She slanted a wary look at him. “Time to change your bandage.”

  The last thing he trusted himself to do at the moment was take off his shirt. But the unadulterated challenge in her eyes left him with no option. He tugged the hem of his T-shirt upward, wincing as it snagged on the surgical tape holding his bandage in place.

  Jane laid her supplies on the bed beside him and helped him slide the shirt over his head. He felt her hands trembling but her expression was all business. She sat by him on the bed, keeping a careful distance. He didn’t know whether to laugh or feel insulted.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured as she removed his bandage, taking pains to be gentle. “About what happened before.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for the kiss or for cutting it short. He went with the former. “It’s my fault. You were trying to make sense of what your father had told you and I…changed the subject.”

  She smiled wryly and tossed the soiled bandage into the plastic bag. “You weren’t exactly alone in that.”

  “Maybe we should talk about that, too.”

  “I know we had a relationship before, but I don’t remember it,” she said quietly as she dabbed at his healing wound with some antiseptic wash.

  He winced. “I know.”

  She looked at him. “You don’t trust me anymore.”

  “I don’t trust anybody,” he admitted, regretting the words as soon as they spilled from his lips.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

  “Forget it.”

  She pressed her lips together, clearly not happy about letting such a cryptic remark go unexplained, though she remained quiet as she finished cleaning the wound. But as she squeezed some antibiotic cream onto a soft sterile pad, she broke the silence. “Did someone hurt you?”

  A bubble of bleak laughter rose in his throat. “You never could just let things go.”

  She met his gaze. “You told me before?”

  “Yeah,” he said, old, bitter pain settling deep in his chest. As reluctant as she’d been to share the mysteries of her hidden past, she’d been a bulldog when it came to wheedling his secrets out of him. She’d made him want to share his pain, to let her help him bury it in the past.

  “I’m sorry I don’t remember,” she whispered.

  He closed his eyes, trying to resist the pull of her. It was stronger than ever, despite all the lies he’d uncovered since her disappearance.

  “Was it a woman?”

  “Please, Jane-let it go.”

  “I must have seemed just like them. Running off, leaving you with more questions than answers.”

  “You were just like them,” he said, more bitterly than he’d intended.

  She fell silent. He opened his eyes and saw that she was sitting hunched beside him, her cheeks damp with tears.

  Something inside him cracked and spilled. “You and I are more alike than you know,” he said.

  She slanted a look at him, knuckling away her tears.

  “I lost my mother when I was a baby, too,” he said when she remained silent. “She died in a car accident, leaving my father to raise me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I guess I had it pretty good compared to what your father did to you.”

  “Was your father a cowboy like you?” she asked with a slight smile.

  “He owned a ranch.”

  “Did he raise you by himself?”

  “Mostly. When I was two, he remarried. For a while.”

  She reached for the gauze pad on the bed next to her and resumed bandaging his side, a sideways glance inviting him to continue talking.

  “Her name was Melissa. She was beautiful and sweet. She’s the only mother I really remember, you know? My own mother was just pictures in an album. Melissa was real.”
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br />   Jane smiled. “Someone to tend your scrapes when you fell down and hug you when you cried?”

  He nodded. “I loved her.”

  “What happened?”

  “My father was a difficult man to love. And life on a ranch is hard. There’s a lot of isolation. Melissa was a woman who needed to be around other people. She wasn’t cut out for life on the ranch, and my father would have died before moving into town. So she left. And she took my little brother with her.”

  “Tommy?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “He was four when she left. I was seven. She changed their names back to her maiden name and moved a couple of towns over. That’s why his last name was Blake.”

  “I wondered.” Jane laid her hand on his arm. “That must have been so confusing for you.”

  He sighed. “I got over it. I found Tommy later, when we were both grown. They’d moved back to Canyon Creek while I was away at college. We had some time together before-”

  When he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, Jane’s fingers tightened on his arm. “I wish I could remember what happened that night. I honestly do.”

  For the first time in a long time, he believed her.

  “Did your father ever try to find your brother?”

  “No.” He’d never forgiven the old man for that, especially when he’d discovered how easy it was to find Tommy when he was old enough to do it himself. “He died while I was in college. I found Tommy on my own. He was right there in Canyon County, working on a ranch in Addison. He was a born rancher.”

  “And you weren’t?”

  “I knew I wanted to be a policeman the first time I rode in a cruiser, lights flashing and siren blaring.”

  Her smile carved dimples into her freckled cheeks. “Were you in the front seat or the back?”

  He laughed. “It was a ride-along for career day at my elementary school. When I came home babbling about wanting to be a policeman, my father threatened to have my teacher and the Canyon Creek Chief of Police fired.”

  “What happened to the ranch after your father died?”

  “I deeded it over to Tommy. It always should have been his. Now it belongs to Melissa, as far as I know.”