“I was so glad Jonas killed him.”
“Jonas killed someone?”
She closed her eyes tight. “You probably think I’m crazy.”
John let himself smile. “Yeah. But that’s okay. I’ve thought that for a long time.”
She opened her eyes and gave him a mock glare. “It’s just a good book. And it’s getting better. Mary talked Jonas into leaving, and he went to work on a ranch in South Dakota, waiting for her to write to him and tell him that she’s settled things with the sheriff. In the meantime, Mary tells the sheriff what happened, saying that Matthias slipped, and now she’s running the ranch, which is starting to turn a profit since Mary let all the tenants run the land with the smallest cut for herself. She’s a pretty smart businesswoman.”
“Hmm,” John said. “Reminds me of someone.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “The thing is, Mary won’t send for Jonas. And since he’s afraid of pushing her before she’s ready, he won’t return without her word. But now he’s going to war!”
“Calm down, Lolly. I’m sure there’ll be a happy ending.”
She threw the dishrag at him. “How do you know? He could die—and Mary will be heartbroken.”
She would? For a second, John couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He swallowed, wishing with everything inside him that she wasn’t talking about the book but . . . herself. Finally he found his voice. “What do you think will happen?”
Her hair had started to whisk out of her ponytail, and she tucked it behind her ear. “I . . . don’t know. Sometimes life doesn’t turn out happily. I guess I need to be prepared for that.”
Oh no you don’t, Lolly. He folded his hands on his lap and cleared his throat, not sure exactly how to respond. He knew she blamed herself for the curve ball life had thrown her. But she hadn’t the slightest inkling that he knew her secrets . . . so how was he supposed to speak the truth he longed to say? Words! He was a master of them, yet there they were, piling up in his throat, bottlenecked.
She deserved to be happy, but she didn’t believe it. Just like Mary didn’t.
“So, how is any of this my fault?” he choked out.
Lolly took a deep breath, then looked away. “Jonas reminds me . . . of . . .”
John’s world stopped as he watched her, praying, holding his breath, wanting to reach his hand out to her. Yes, Lolly?
She put her hand over her eyes. “Nothing. I’m being silly. It’s just a story; that’s all. I’m tired and probably reading too much into it. It feels like I know her—the main character—even though it’s set in the Depression, and I feel all the things she feels. Hope the things she hopes.”
John looked at Lolly, and deep inside he ached to tell her how he’d written the book, how he’d wanted to be Jonas. Her hopes could become reality. In fact, he felt the words breaking free. . . . “Lolly, I have to tell you—”
The door jangled as it opened, and Lolly turned. “We’re closed.”
“Oh, sorry,” said a tall, wide-shouldered man, perhaps in his early thirties, with blond hair that hung long enough to scrape his shirt collar and a layer of dark, three-day whisker growth. He looked like a lost trucker, but he wore sunglasses despite the late hour, and something about him struck a chord of familiarity inside John.
He realized why at the same moment Lolly got to her feet, gaping. The same moment the man removed his glasses and gave the woman John loved a slow, movie-star smile.
“Good evening, ma’am,” said Lincoln Cash.
And with that drawl, John knew that any words from him were already too late.
Bradley had been worried. Now he just felt anger. Or, perhaps, panic. Katherine had all but disappeared off the planet, with her millions in inheritance and his future at stake.
He had to find her before she did something stupid. Like donate everything she owned to charity. Or worse, decide that she didn’t want to marry him.
“I don’t know,” Bradley repeated to Walter Breckenridge, hoping his voice held steady over the phone. He lay on the bed, still in his clothes. Light sliced through the dark velvet curtains, evidence that he’d slept long and probably hard.
In fact, he couldn’t remember exactly when he’d returned to his room. He recalled leaving the gaming table flat broke. Things got bleary from there.
Bradley cleared his throat. “I left countless messages on her machine and her cell phone. I’ve even e-mailed her. She’s not answering, not picking up her mail. I don’t know where she is.”
“Find her,” Walter said. “I don’t know what has gotten into her, but all these trips to Mexico and now she’s gone and disappeared. I’m afraid . . .” Behind his sigh, Bradley heard history and Walter’s deepest fears that Katherine might follow in Felicia’s unstable footsteps. “It’s the stress of this confounded foundation. She’s bent on seeing it through until it breaks her.”
“I agree, sir,” Bradley said, putting believability into his voice. Walter Breckenridge saw only what he wanted to see, which could work in his favor. “When I find her, maybe I should take her away on vacation, something to soothe her nerves.”
“You need to find her first. But, yes,” Breckenridge’s voice softened. “Anything to keep her from . . .”
“I understand, sir. I’ll take care of her. I promise,” Bradley said.
“I knew you would, son,” Walter said, enough relief in his voice for Bradley’s hopes to soar.
He couldn’t ask for a more perfect scenario. Breckenridge giving him permission to disappear with his granddaughter. His very valuable granddaughter, whose mother had once had a very convenient breakdown. Like mother, like daughter.
Bradley closed his cell phone and ran a hand through his hair, noticing again how thin it had gotten. Another fallout of the past year.
He walked to the bathroom and stared at the mirror. He’d barely slept in two days, and it showed on his face, in his red-rimmed eyes.
Two days holed up in a hotel room in DC had netted him roughly . . . zero. Actually about three hundred thousand zeros if he did the math.
What if Katherine was hiding from him? What if she knew?
His bourbon glass sat on the counter, half full, and he downed it fast, then wiped his mouth with his shirt. One way or another he’d find her and end this.
Katherine, where are you?
Sweat slicked Rafe’s body as he twisted in his sheets. It was just a dream. Just a dream.
But it felt, tasted, and smelled so frighteningly real. He could hear the crowd gasp, smell the earthy odor of animal sweat, taste panic welling up in his throat.
Manuel’s face hovered above him, his eyes wide as he tugged Rafe’s protective vest. “Get up, man!”
Then memory cut into fragments, each moment sliced out and driven into his soul to elicit the most pain.
PeeWee’s hooves centering above them. Slamming down. Pounding into Manuel at the base of his skull, separating his brain stem from his spine.
Manuel slumping against Rafe.
Rafe throwing his arms around Manuel as another jackhammer hoof found Manuel’s temple, grazing Rafe’s protective vest.
The screams from the crowd as PeeWee spun away, distracted by the other bullfighters.
Rafe, rolling over, his head still swimming, not sure what had happened, sickened by the blood that wet the dirt, his hands, his clothes. Seeing then that it belonged to Manuel.
He forgot any other pain. Forgot the explosions inside his chest, the burn in his knee. He just hunkered over Manuel, trying somehow to put him back together, hold back the blood, or shake him to consciousness. Manuel’s lifeless eyes looked up at him. Through him. Shattering Rafe to the core.
Rafe stumbled out of the ring on his own power—or the power of his grief—and followed Manuel’s stretcher to the ambulance. He came to life when Lucia threw herself at Manuel’s body and screamed. Rafe grabbed her, held her with everything he had in him, wishing he could come unglued too and that someone might hold him.
/> Lucia crumpled and he went with her to the ground, holding her as she shook. He wanted her to hit him, to call him names, to hurt him. Please.
“No!” Rafe’s own voice woke him, and he lay there in his room in the quiet predawn, listening to his heart beating against the walls of his chest. The images lingered, and he opened his eyes, orienting himself.
Oh, what have I done?
Rafe pushed himself to a sitting position with a groan. His shoulder had since stopped throbbing, and his neck felt nearly normal, although stiff. His knee, however, could blind him with pain if he focused on it.
He headed to the open window. The sun hadn’t yet scaled the horizon to the east, and shadows outlined the gullies of Buckle land. A hint of rain scented the air; Rafe drew that into his lungs, wishing it could wash away the despair that dogged him.
Manuel’s death hadn’t exactly been his fault, but it felt like it. Rafe had done a stellar job of making himself suffer, right up to the point where he’d managed to rack up charges for reckless driving. Notification of his court date had arrived in the mail yesterday, courtesy of his agent—or rather former agent, according to the letter attached to the police report—along with the bill for services and the legal documents suing him for breach of contract and loss of income from said agent.
He had also received a packet from his attorney that not only cataloged his outstanding to-date fees but included a list of the irate victims and their claims. Starting with the Breckenridge Hotel.
Unless he got back on a bull, he could kiss his life—the fans, the bright lights, the cars, the clothes, the ranch in Texas, all of it—good-bye.
Then again, did he want that life, anyway?
After pulling on a pair of track pants, he went downstairs. At this hour, the house was quiet, reminding him of the days before he turned eighteen. He’d rise early for a weekend rodeo trip, then gather his boots and hat and tiptoe down the stairs, hoping not to wake Stefanie or his dad.
He usually found his father sitting in his reading chair, in the nook of their family room, with his Bible open and his glasses perched on the end of his nose. Sometimes wearing his ratty red bathrobe or a pair of jeans and a shirt. But always with his Bible.
Rafe stood in the silence of the family room, seeing in his mind’s eye the great Bishop Noble looking up from his reading, giving his son a long look, and saying, “Remember, Rafe, you’re not out there alone.”
For some reason Rafe had always thought that his dad had meant that in some ethereal way, that his father would be with him. How he’d hated that. Bull riding belonged to him, not his dad or any of the other Nobles. Rafe alone could muscle past his fear to hang on to a bull. He didn’t need his dad’s help—through his thoughts or prayers or otherwise.
He’d usually held back that stream of words, nodded, put on his hat, and hit the road, heading for freedom and a life away from the Silver Buckle.
Now, Rafe limped over to his father’s corner, noticing the pictures stacked on the side table. One of his mother, Elizabeth, sitting in the leather chair in front of the giant stone fireplace, an enigmatic smile on her lips. Another of Stefanie on one of the stock horses she’d trained and a picture of Nick from his graduation.
Rafe picked up the fourth photo, one he’d never seen before. He was on a bull and wearing the turquoise chaps that he’d thought made him a rhinestone cowboy. He must have been nineteen. Funny, the shot looked like it might have been taken at the Cripple Creek Invitational during the long stretch of time he’d barely spoken to his dad. Confused, Rafe put the picture down.
Bishop’s black leather Bible sat on the seat of the chair as if he had just left it there. Rafe hesitated, then picked it up. It felt soft and even heavy in his hands. He sat in the chair and flipped the book open to where Bishop had laid his last bookmark, noting the scribbles in the margins, the highlighted portions of Psalm 35.
Without thinking, Rafe sat down and read the passage. “O Lord, oppose those who oppose me. Fight those who fight against me.” He stared at the page a long time before noticing Bishop’s cross-reference scrawled above it: Romans 8:1.
Curious, he turned to it. “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”
Rafe had been a Christian most of his life, thanks to his early Sunday school years, and he felt plenty of condemnation. Kitty’s words had only confirmed it. If God had a purpose for Rafe’s life, he’d done a spectacular job of ignoring it. For him, there was nothing left but condemnation.
He closed the Bible and set it on the table, accidentally knocking his picture to the floor. He picked it up and turned it facedown on the book as he pried himself out of the chair.
“Remember, Rafe, you’re not out there alone.” His father’s voice thrummed in his thoughts as Rafe balanced himself along the long leather sofa, then shuffled into the kitchen. His father had been wrong. Rafe had been alone. Very alone. Even here, when he’d returned to the ranch. He’d never been a part of this land, this life.
All the same, somehow over the past week everything had changed. No longer did the Buckle seem like a noose around his neck. Rafe had begun to see it with a new freedom. With new eyes.
Kitty’s eyes.
He’d seen the lavender beauty of the pasqueflower tucked into Kitty’s hair and the funny expressions of the prairie dogs as they poked their heads above their holes. He saw the joy of learning to understand a horse for the first time and even the old thrill of landing a lasso around a steer’s horns. “I caught him, Rafe!”
Yes, she certainly did.
When he’d kissed her—despite her cut-and-run reaction—he’d felt something open in his heart that both scared and exhilarated him. Then she’d added tease and her smile, forgiving him and—so shoot him—he couldn’t get Kitty out of his mind.
Rafe dumped out the old coffee filter, added new coffee grounds and water, and sat down at the table waiting for it to brew.
What if he really didn’t go back to bull riding? Despite his words to Stefanie, he hadn’t seriously considered it. What if . . . what if he . . . stayed here and helped his brother and sister ranch, built a new life? That had a sort of purpose, didn’t it?
And what if that life included Kitty?
He’d gotten hit in the head one too many times. What did a guy like him have to offer the heiress of the Breckenridge fortune?
That thought brought him up short. Exactly why was she here, if she had a trust fund of millions?
The bigger question might be: did he want her to leave? Maybe he should trust her and her little plan. With her excitement—he still smiled at the image of her dancing—and spunk, they could pull it off; he knew it. At the core she was every bit Bobby Russell’s kid, which meant that she had the inner fiber to tackle what life put in front of her.
Including starting over with a broken cowboy. Didn’t she say she loved it here in Montana?
If a guy was patient, perhaps he could get her to stay.
Rafe got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. Black, just in case all his synapses weren’t firing. As he sipped it, leaning against the doorjamb, the sunrise gliding over the prairie grass, the idea found firm soil.
Rafe would talk Kitty into staying. Then maybe, finally, the nightmares would slink back into the night.
For the first time since his life crashed down around him, he knew exactly what to do.
“I think I was kidding.”
“No, you weren’t.” Rafe stood behind Kat, blocking her quick escape, so she just froze in the entrance to the Buffalo Saloon.
“I am not riding that.”
Across the room, the bar owner inflated the cushion around a rawhide-covered mechanical bull, one of the few nods toward the twentieth century in this whiskey- and smoke-saturated room. In the corner, a jukebox whined out a country song.
“Yes, Kitty Breckenridge, aka Russell, you are. You have it in your bones. And I believe in you.”
“Okay, so a small part of me wanted to lear
n to ride a bull, but really, Rafe—”
“Hey, if you want, we’ll add it to our list of activities for our high-paying guests.” He wound his arm around her waist and pulled her into the room.
Daylight streamed through the windows, and at this hour, only two weary guys looked up from their beers. She’d never even been in a real-life bar before, especially one that looked like it should have spittoons on the floor. Bradley would be horrified.
That thought made her yield to Rafe’s pressure. Maybe she didn’t want to do everything expected of her. Maybe she wanted to ride a bull, just like her dad.
“Can you make it not throw me off?”
Rafe raised one dark eyebrow.
“Okay, but if I get hurt—”
“You won’t get hurt. I’ll be with you.”
“What, are you going to ride behind me?”
He led her around the tables, carrying a small bag. “Do you want me to?”
Kat stopped, stared at him. “Would you?” Despite the fact he’d ditched his crutches and his neck brace and looked rather sturdy—not to mention cute in a pair of well-worn jeans, a denim shirt, that ratty hat pushed back on his head, contrasting with his clean-shaven chin—she could probably knock him over with two fingers.
“Of course.”
She didn’t know why, but those words found all the places in her heart she’d been trying to bulwark and ripped them to shreds. “I think I can do this alone.”
He dropped the bag he carried on a table. “Me too.”
Kat blew out a breath. “What’s in the bag?”
“Supplies.” Rafe opened the bag and pulled out a long rope with a sort of handle loop in the middle, a bell attached at one end. “This is the bull rope. The bell is so that it’s weighted at the end and falls off easily when it’s loosened. The mechanical bull has one, but I thought you should know what you’ll use and what to do when you face a real bull.”
Right. Hardy har har.
He handed her a leather glove. “Put it on.”
“Only one?”
“You only need one hand. And you’re right-handed, so . . .”
She put it on. It swam on her.
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