She took a deep breath. “It smells incredible out here. I always dreamed about the smell, but I never imagined it would be so fresh. I can’t get enough of it. Thanks for showing me around, giving me a chance to get to know you.”
Sure, he could ride a foaming-at-the-mouth bull, but put him next to a nice woman and he wanted to run for the hills.
Rafe urged his roan past her, unsure what to do. When he looked back, she smiled at him, and a cold sweat prickled on his neck.
He’d known her only four days. No one could change a person’s world in that short a time, regardless of how beautiful and positive and easygoing. What’s more, he wasn’t the kind of man who fell in love. Infatuation, yes. But not the kind of love that makes a man do stupid things. Like ride bareback through a field of wildflowers with a busted-up knee.
Oh, brother.
His world had been shaken; that’s all. Kitty and her mystery plan served as a very healing distraction from his miserable life. Which was exactly why his heart suddenly double-timed in his chest. He swallowed away the tinny taste and angled their path toward another gate, not exactly sure where to lead her next.
Kitty opened and closed the gate again without asking. When she remounted, she said, “You mentioned something about ancient burial grounds.”
The ancient burial grounds. Yes, yes! He forced his voice to idle. “Yeah, right. They’re over this knoll.”
“I read that this area isn’t too far from where Custer had his last stand.”
The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky, right over the Bighorns, pushing through the pine trees, between shadows. He pointed west. “Custer National Forest is off in that direction. And beyond that is where the Battle of Little Bighorn took place.”
“I’ve never been there.” The wind knocked her hat back on her head.
“I have. I can hear the ghosts sometimes. It’s a somber, very . . . dark place.”
She turned to him. “Do you have any ghostly places here? any battles that took place on Noble land?”
Rafe gave a wry chuckle. “You don’t know the half of it.” He instantly regretted his words. Some territories weren’t open to exploration, and he meant to keep it that way. He clicked to his roan, rode down the ridge.
Kitty said nothing as she followed. The shadows deepened as they rode into the gully, and nothing passed between them but the sounds of a meadowlark and the horses’ hooves on rocks.
He led her up a hill to a small grove of pine trees. “When we were kids, we’d find arrowheads and other Blackfoot artifacts here.”
She dismounted and handed Rafe the reins, then began walking slowly, hunched over.
“What are you doing?”
Kitty looked at him, and the sun caught the twinkle in her eyes. “Finding an arrowhead, of course.”
Of course. Because ancient relics concealed by time and weather could be easily dug up. “This spot has been picked clean of any old memories.”
He heard whistles and saw below them a small herd of cattle moving slowly in the direction of Cole’s land. Nick and Cole came into view, followed by CJ, on drag. Poor kid. After Bishop had finally let Rafe ride with him, Rafe had spent plenty of time behind the herd, eating cattle dust.
Rafe lifted a hand. Cole waved back.
Nick, however, broke away from them and trotted up the knoll.
“Hey,” Kitty said to Nick as he came close.
He tugged on the brim of his hat. “Ma’am.” Then he turned to Rafe. “What are you doing out here?” He looked pointedly at his braced leg. “I thought you were supposed to stay off that.”
Rafe felt about six-years-old, lying in the dirt while his brother laughed at him. “Unless you’re blind, I’m off it.”
Nick lowered his voice. “I can appreciate what you’re doing here. But don’t wear yourself out.”
“Yes, sir,” Rafe snapped.
They stared at each other for a long time until Nick turned his horse and trotted back down the hill.
Kitty stood there, petting her horse’s nose. “He seems worried about you.”
“He’s not worried. Just bossy. He doesn’t like the fact that I might have a life off this ranch.” In the settling silence Rafe heard his anger. Old battles indeed.
She ran the reins through her fingers. “Why did you start bull riding?”
Her question caught him off guard, and at first, he didn’t answer, just let the smells and colors of the approaching dusk fill the silence. But maybe because it had taken her so long to ask, he found an answer.
“First time I rode a bull, I was eight. I made Stef rope a steer and fastened a bull rope around his chest and hopped on. Landed in the dirt in about point-six seconds. In that blink of time, I felt . . . strong.”
Kitty met his eyes, her face solemn. “Like a cowboy.”
More like a man. But he nodded.
“So are you going back to bull riding?”
“No. I’m done.” The words, said aloud instead of rolling around his chest, bit at him. The sooner he accepted it, the better. His bull-riding days—his life—were over.
“Because you’re hurt?”
Rafe guessed that was one way to look at it. He certainly hadn’t been responsible with his successes, and deep down, he wondered if he simply didn’t deserve to do what he loved anymore. Maybe this was God’s way of punishing him, of reminding him he was truly just a runt. “Doc says that if I ride I could get . . . well, it’s not if I get hurt, it’s when. And how bad.” He turned his gaze on Nick, Cole, and CJ as they herded the cattle from view.
“You going to help run the Silver Buckle?”
And spend his days following in Nick’s shadow? “No, I don’t think there’s room here for me.”
Kitty resumed her search for arrowheads. “Seems like a pretty big place. A place to find peace, even some grace. Maybe heal you enough to start over, do something with your life that makes a difference.”
He took a breath. “Even all this can get crowded. The land might look peaceful, but the winter storms rattle you down to the inside.” The honesty in his own words surprised him. Then again, Kitty was unlike any woman he’d ever met. “Most of all, the Buckle isn’t mine. Never was. My dad brought up Nick to run it, and I just . . . don’t fit.”
She bent over and dug into the soil with her finger. “Is that why you left? Because Nick was in charge?”
Rafe watched as Cole and Nick disappeared into a draw. The shadows seemed longer now; the sun a ball of fire, dying as twilight stretched out overhead.
“Nick wasn’t even around when I left.” He patted his horse’s neck. “Actually, I left because—” he wasn’t sure why, but he suddenly wanted to tell her—“my mother died, and the place felt so . . .” Ghostly.
She stood, a sad look on her face. “Quiet?”
He lifted one side of his mouth. “Maybe. Or maybe I didn’t have a reason to stay anymore. I needed to find my own way. And I was good at bull riding.”
“It gave you the room you needed to make your own name.”
Rafe glanced at her, startled by her words. They made it worth the risk he’d just taken. “I guess I wanted to live up to the name I had.”
He saw her ponder his words. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
He frowned, ready to ask her what she meant.
“Hey, I found one!” Kitty pried up a small, flat, chipped stone. “It’s not perfect, but I think it’s a real arrowhead.” She handed it to him.
He took it and ran his thumb over it, then met her gaze. Fear coursed through him when he saw a gentleness in her eyes that made him feel like he’d gotten thrown from a bull—disoriented and undone.
“See, I told you I’d find one. You never know what treasures you might find if you look hard enough.”
The sun had come down enough to fill the gullies and bring out the gold in her eyes, and for a second he was caught right there, unable to breathe when she looked at him like that.
Yeah, treasures.
&n
bsp; Lolly didn’t need an episode of Dr. Phil to spot the signs of infatuation in the way Kat arrived home, glowing and buoyant. Lolly would have liked to wrap both her hands around Rafe’s neck and squeeze.
When Kat came out of the bathroom, she looked so young standing there in the hallway that Lolly had a hard time remembering she was twenty-five and old enough to fall in love and have her heart broken by a reckless, bent-for-destruction cowboy.
Just like her mother.
“I don’t suppose anyone answered my ad for Laura Russell yet, did they?”
Kat had put up an ad on the diner bulletin board: Searching for any information pertaining to the whereabouts of Laura Russell. Please leave message with Lolly Stuart. Lolly had to stare at it every hour of the day.
Laura had vanished twenty-some years ago, hadn’t been heard from since. And she wasn’t going to reappear, if Lolly had anything to say about it.
“Sorry, kiddo. Nope.”
“Oh, well.” Kat stretched her arms over her head. “It’s funny. I’m so tired, but I’ve got energy like I haven’t felt for months. I guess it’s getting away from the stress back home, but it’s as if I’ve been freed from a cocoon.”
Lolly looked at Kat’s tanned cheeks, her wavy hair hanging in carefree tangles. Yes, maybe she did look as if she’d metamorphosed from the pale, upset, one-nerve-shy-of-unraveling woman who’d appeared in her diner to strong and healthy.
“I can’t remember the last time I didn’t go to bed with a headache nagging in the back of my head.”
“That’s the Big Sky for you. Takes away the knots,” Lolly said, remembering her own knots. “How goes your big project?”
Kat smiled. “I’ve got Rafe champing at the bit. I knew if I let him get to know me, know that I’m not an impulsive, desperate woman, he’d listen. And it always helps to have an aura of mystery. I’m going to spring it on him tomorrow.” She stood up. “Good night, Lolly.”
Lolly stretched out on the sofa as Kat disappeared into the bedroom, then grunted at a bump between the cushions. She reached for it and shook her head. That stupid book. She’d seen it at the diner, but how had it migrated to her sofa?
She snuggled into the pillows, opening the book to a random page. Two lines. She’d give it two lines, and if it didn’t hook her by then . . .
Mary knew that someday Jonas would have enough. That he’d escape the ranch and find his own way in the world. She just hoped—falsely, it appeared—that he’d take her with him.
She loved him more than the very breath in her body. From sunup to sundown, she lived for their snatches of conversation, the moment when he’d look up from his work and smile at her, his blue eyes warming, humming a new song, one that told her more than she’d ever dreamed.
For the times you’ve heard that you were nothing,
For all the wounds that you thought God couldn’t see,
For all the ways I’ve tried to tell you that you can count on me,
Please believe you’re worth the love you see.
Jonas had never actually said he’d written the song for her, but she knew it. She saw it in the small gestures, like the way he swept her kitchen and brought in the eggs. In the carved horse he’d made for Rosie and the flowers he left on the sill.
Thankfully, Matthias hadn’t noticed. He never noticed anything but if she served his breakfast late or went to bed without him, even if he was passed out on the sofa. He didn’t notice the clean house—an impossible task—or his clean spittoon. Didn’t notice how Rosie ran from him, hiding herself and her doll. How she no longer cried for her mother in the night.
He also never noticed Mary’s plans for escape. How she’d secreted away egg money for years. How she learned to drive. How she’d packed an old carpetbag and hidden it in the barn, waiting. Waiting for this day, when he was soundly drunk, and she was smarting from the marks he’d left on her arm last night.
Why hadn’t she told Jonas of her plan? She’d thought . . . well, he noticed everything. He noticed when she hid her face from crying, noticed when Rosie wandered off into the fields. He’d even seen her drive the car into the flower bed that day Matthias went to Sheridan on the train. Certainly Jonas noticed the bag in the barn.
“Mommy?” Rosie said from the kitchen table. “Is Daddy sick?”
It made her ill to hear Rosie speak of Matthias as daddy. Charlie had been her daddy. And she wanted Jonas to be her daddy. “Yes, baby. Shh . . . eat your porridge.”
Mary knew that when Matthias drank whiskey, he slept for hours, even more than his gin nights. “Stay here,” she said and opened the back door. Perhaps Jonas was sleeping late in the barn.
But when she climbed to the loft, her heart fell. His spot had been cleaned out. She gritted her teeth against a rise of fear. She’d made it this far without him. . . .
Screams from the house made her jerk, and she nearly fell off the ladder. She ran to the house.
Matthias had her little girl by the arm. “She woke me.”
“I’m sorry.” Mary went to her, but he yanked the five-year-old away.
Rosie hit the doorway like a rag doll and cried out.
“No, Matthias, please!”
“I’ve had enough of her noise and your blubbering. This time, she’s going to learn to obey.” He raised his fist.
Mary leaped at him with a cry she didn’t realize she had in her.
Surprised, Matthias whirled, eyes wide. He backhanded her and she hit the table. He turned back to Rosie, struggling against his grip, her tiny fingers raking to free herself.
“No!” Mary shouted.
Matthias made a fist and swung.
She didn’t hear the screen door squeal. And she felt, more than heard, the anger as Jonas roared. He launched himself at Matthias. They went down with a house-shaking thud.
Mary ripped Rosie from Matthias’s grasp. She tucked her daughter close to her body, hiding her eyes. Yet Mary watched, horror filling her in small gasps.
Jonas slowly backed away from an unmoving Matthias. He turned to her, breathing hard, saying nothing.
“What . . . ?” She looked at Matthias. His head was tilted at a strange angle. “Oh . . . my . . .”
A beat passed as realization sunk in. A crow cawed from outside. The early morning birds chirruped. But inside Mary, everything turned shadowed and deathly still.
Jonas crouched before her. “Are you okay?”
“Is he . . . is he dead?”
Jonas wet his lips, his breathing uneven. He glanced back at Matthias. “I didn’t—”
Mary put a hand over his mouth. “That’s right. You didn’t. He fell. Maybe I pushed him. You weren’t here.”
Jonas touched her wrist, then gently pulled her hand away from his mouth. He put his other hand on Rosie’s back. “Mary, no . . . this isn’t right.”
Something inside her snapped. She could even hear it—the band of control that had kept her from taking a frying pan to Matthias’s head. “He tried to kill me over and over, and . . . and . . . he would have succeeded. If not me, then Rosie!”
She began to crumple, and Jonas was right there, taking her into his arms, wrapping her tight in the embrace she’d longed for.
He rocked her, shaking slightly himself. “It’s going to be okay, Mary. I promise.”
She closed her eyes, holding on to him, needing to believe him now more than ever.
Finally, she blew out an unsteady breath and backed away from him. She turned away from Matthias, from the last five years. “Why didn’t I just leave him?”
Jonas framed her face with his hands. “Mary, . . . listen, I was going to ask you today to . . . to come with me. I’m ashamed of myself, but I couldn’t watch anymore. I had to do something, and the only thing I could think of was taking you and Rosie away from here.” A line of sweat filmed his forehead, trickled down his face. “You’re going to call the sheriff and tell him what’s happened. I’ll turn myself in.”
“No!” With the word, something inside M
ary shifted. As if dormant, the inklings of her old self—the suffragette she’d been in Chicago, the woman of strength Charlie had met and married—awoke and began to break through the parched soul she’d become. She heard her old voice returning and, with it, her dream of running her own ranch, owning her own land. Creating a life for herself and her child. In fact, her brain conjured up a scenario so quickly that it frightened her. “You’re leaving, all right, just like you planned.”
“I’m not leaving without you.” Jonas took her hand. “I want us to start a new life, away from here and all this desolation and pain. Come with me . . . please?”
Mary stared at him, this man who had saved her life, and felt the tender shoot of hope wither under the hot breeze. “I . . . can’t.”
He flinched.
Tears filled her eyes, and she pushed his hands away. “If I leave with you, trouble is only going to follow. They’ll blame you or me, and we’ll never have a life.”
“No—”
“I can’t marry you, Jonas. And I think you should leave . . . now.” Everything inside her wanted to scream, No! Take me with you! But running would only lead to suspicion. Maybe even to prison. And to Rosie without a mother. Or worse, Jonas in the electric chair. “Leave, Jonas. Go live your life.”
He stood, staring at her with so much hurt on his face that she wanted to howl. “I’ll be back for you, Mary. Believe that.”
She closed her eyes. And she held on to his words with all her strength.
Lolly closed the book, angry that she’d let herself get hooked this far into the story. The clock read 3 a.m., and she wanted to read more. But her eyes felt gritty, her body buzzing with exhaustion.
She could kill that B. J. King for evoking in her the exact emotions she’d been trying for twenty-plus years to escape. Helplessness. Fear. A misplaced guilt. It was as if he—or she, the author’s gender wasn’t listed—had crawled inside her heart and knew her story.
Once upon a time, she’d had a dream. Like Mary, she’d been sidetracked by a man. She hadn’t dreamed of ranching, however—far from it. Her dreams had bright lights and fame attached to them. They even had a name: Hollywood.
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