by Stacey Kayne
He brushed her fallen blond hair away from her tear-streaked face. “I’m okay, sis.”
She pressed her face to his coat and sobbed. He’d never seen his usually stoic sister so distressed. He looked up at the approaching Morgans, their expressions identically mournful.
Tucker put a hand on his wife’s shoulder and tugged a brown Stetson over his blond hair. “You had us worried,” he said to Garret.
“You’ve been up in the high country,” Chance said, glancing at the snowshoes tied to his backpack.
“Yeah. The storm. I was snowed in.”
Skylar sniffed and eased back. Like a mother who’d just found her missing child, she smoothed her hands over his whiskered face.
“I’m okay,” he assured her, her grief-stricken expression tearing at his heart.
She managed a trembling smile.
“Only your horse returned the day after you and Duce rode out,” said Chance. “A couple of your men came to our ranch.”
“We’ve been here for four days,” Tucker told him, “dividing up terrain and riding out as high as we could manage with the snow. Your sister was ready to shovel her way into those mountains.”
“I’m just grateful you’re well.” Skylar grabbed him for another tight squeeze.
“Sorry I worried you.” Garret returned her firm hug. “I had to wait out the storm.” He looked again toward his ranch hands beginning to amble toward them, and the mound of fresh dirt now visible in the distance. “Tell me that’s not a grave.”
Fresh tears hazed his sister’s blue eyes.
“We found Duce and his horse yesterday,” Tucker said, his arm sliding around Skylar. “A couple of miles shy of the snow line. He’d been dead a few days.”
They’d been attacked. He hadn’t reached Duce in time. He shut his eyes, willing himself to remember something, anything about his attackers. It was no use. The last he could recall was staring down at muddy tracks being washed out by the rain.
“How’d he die?” he said to Tucker, steeling himself for details.
“Hard to say. He was broken up real bad.”
“He’d been dragged,” said Chance. “No way to tell how he got hung up in the stirrup.”
The thought of Duce suffering such a violent death ripped through his shock. Rage burned inside him. “He was killed by whoever knocked me out. The ranch hasn’t had any other trouble?”
“Nothing aside from searching for you,” said Tucker.
“You were attacked?” Skylar asked, alarm straining her voice.
“When Duce didn’t ride in I went looking for him. Someone must have drawn him up into that high country. When the rain began washing out his tracks I had to dismount to find them. That’s the last I recall before being pulled from the snow.”
“Any idea about who hit you?” Tucker asked. “Have you been having trouble with rustlers?”
“We noticed all your men ride armed,” said Chance.
“Anyone with a herd fights to keep it,” he said, knowing the Morgans didn’t share the same struggles on their horse ranch in a neighboring valley.
“Why haven’t you said anything?” asked Tucker.
“There isn’t a rancher in these hills who hasn’t had trouble. What I don’t understand is why Duce would have been riding up the mountain. We weren’t keeping stock in that high country. Something drew Duce up there.”
“Where’s Boots?” asked Chance.
“I left him with, uh…the woman who helped me,” he said, keeping his voice low, mindful of the approaching men.
“Man, are we glad to see you!” Everett, a fourteen-year-old cowhand he’d taken in last spring rushed up and smacked his shoulder. “We thought you must have froze up there on that mountain.”
“Not I,” Kuhana said, his hard amber eyes narrowed as he scowled at his young co-worker. “I know you live.”
“Where you been for five days?” asked Clint, nudging his way into the crowd of men gathering around him.
“Snowed in.” He shifted his focus to an older man standing off to the side. Reverend Keats waited patiently, a bible in his frail hand. He’d known the retired preacher for quite a few years. He’d been a regular guest in his sister’s house. “Reverend Keats. Did I miss the service?”
“No, my boy. I’ve only read a few verses. Now that you’ve returned, Duce can rest in peace.”
Drawing a deep breath, he started toward a reality he wasn’t ready to face.
The sun had been down for hours by the time Garret left the bunkhouse. Discussing local ranchers and possible motives with his men hadn’t led to anything solid. The few shots of whiskey he’d consumed hadn’t done anything to ease the weight bearing down on his chest and his mind. He paused at the base of the back step, his gaze drawn to the cross they’d fashioned, the carved wood barely visible in the darkness.
Duce’s death didn’t seem real. Even as he’d sat on the benches talking to his men, he kept expecting to hear Duce join in with one of his wisecracks, to see his red hair when he looked around the room.
Exhausted, he turned back to the house—a house that had never really felt like his home. Without Duce for company, he’d likely be better off staying in the bunkhouse. The moment he stepped through the back door, his sister’s presence was apparent in the polished wood floor and scrubbed surfaces across his large kitchen. Even the pink wallpaper seemed brighter. He’d hoped the ugly stuff would fade over time but the original owner clearly spent a fortune on durable wall covering.
Chance and Tucker sat across from each other at the table centered in the room. Skylar stood at the stove on the far side of the kitchen. The sizzle and aroma coming from the frying pan reminded him that he hadn’t eaten anything since the bread and venison Grace had packed for him.
He sat at the end of his scuffed kitchen table and wished he was back in the warm serenity of Grace’s cabin. His gaze moved over the plates and platters already spaced across the clean, dull surface. Unlike his sister’s home, bachelors maintained his house. Not a single surface shone unless one of them spilled something and took the time to wipe it up, inadvertently creating a clean spot. He and Duce had tried hiring a housekeeper, but they couldn’t find any willing to stay on a ranch full of men in the middle of Wyoming wilderness.
His gut churned with renewed anger as sorrow rolled over him. “We got to find who did this.”
Chance’s side-glance reflected the raw anger twisting through Garret. He gave a slight nod of agreement.
“He had a will.” Chance pushed a platter of fried potatoes his way. “He left his portion of the ranch to you.”
Garret didn’t give a damn about any shares in the ranch. Duce had been more of an older brother to him than a business partner. Unlike the other riders in his father’s outfit, Duce had been willing to give a ten-year-old the time of day, offering pointers and advice instead of berating his lack of skill. Even Skylar had liked him, and that was saying a lot. Back then his older sister didn’t warm to anyone. Duce had been different—he’d been family.
“Was there anything in his will about sending his belongings to a relative?”
“Nope. Guess he didn’t have any other family. Besides you, three ladies are mentioned by first names only. Five hundred dollars is to go to each of them.”
Garret chuckled despite the grief weighing on his soul. “Daisy, Tulip and Maxine?”
A smile curved the other man’s lips. “I take it you’ll know where to deliver their, uh, tokens of Duce’s affection?”
His sister glanced over her shoulder, her stern gaze making him feel like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“I couldn’t point them out,” he admitted, “but he talked about his girls at the Gilded Lady often enough.”
Skylar placed a plate of fried steaks on the table and sat beside her husband. “Speaking of ladies, who’s the woman you mentioned earlier? You said she helped you?”
Garret was surprised they’d waited so long to ask him, but then
, this was the first time he’d been alone with the three people he trusted most.
“Grace. I’d be dead if she hadn’t hauled me from the snow and dragged me up to her cabin.”
“Grace?” said Chance, his eyebrows arched in question.
“Yeah.”
“You can be straight with us, kid. The only woman I know who’d live up on that mountain is Maggie Danvers. I’ve been wondering if she had moved into those northern ranges.”
“You been shacked up this past week with Mad Mag?” asked Tucker.
“No,” Garret said with a grimace. “I’ve been within smelling distance of that trapper woman.” Grace was as fresh and clean as a spring rain. “Grace is clean.”
“So is Maggie when she’s not trying to repel folks.”
“Not the same woman,” Garret insisted. “Grace can’t be older than—”
“Twenty-five or so,” said Chance. “Short little thing with black hair and piercing blue eyes. Quick mind, sharp tongue. She wears a long blade sheathed at her hip and a white fur coat over winter. Blends with the snow. Light as she is on her feet, you’d lose her in a patch of aspen.”
Garret’s stomach dropped at Chance’s thorough description of “Grace.”
“Same woman?”
“I can’t believe it. I mean, I might have thought it for a split second, but…she didn’t have anything in her cabin to lead me to think she was a trapper.”
“You didn’t get a look at her hands?”
Chills pricked across his skin. “I did.”
“Her skill might have been slow coming but she mastered her craft. I’ve seen that woman wield a blade with a refined finesse to make any man mind his footing while in her company.”
His mind refused to absorb that soft, compassionate Grace could be Mad Mag.
“Don’t feel duped, kid.” Chance slapped him on the shoulder.
The nickname grinded on his nerves.
“Maggie makes sure people see what she wants them to see.”
“I’d be worried about your hound if I were you,” said Tucker as he cut into his steak. “Poor Boots might be skinned out by spring.”
Low chuckles drew his gaze to the others sitting at the table. Even his sister fought a smile.
He’d heard all the Mad Mag rumors and legends, but they’d actually met her. How could they not want to help her? They’d known Grace was on that mountain, and they hadn’t told him?
“She wouldn’t hurt Boots. She saved my life.”
“He’s teasing,” Skylar said, casting a reproachful glare at her husband. “Cora told me how Maggie helped her on the day of her wedding. “
“All of you knew she lived up there?” he demanded, outrage building inside him. “And none of you offered to help her?”
“Help her with what?” asked Chance. “Maggie’s one of the most inhospitable people I’ve ever met. She don’t take kindly to favors.”
Last time I had unexpected visitors I moved… “You’ve known she was up there all these years? Why hasn’t anyone ever told me she lived so close to my ranch?”
“Not for me to tell,” Chance said, and took a bite of his steak.
He couldn’t believe his ears. They knew and had just turned a blind eye?
“Besides,” Chance added, “she abandoned her place on the ridge between our two valleys years ago and I wasn’t sure where she’d relocated. Star still shows up in my north pasture for winter housing, so I figured she hadn’t gone too far.”
“You sold her Star,” he said, recalling now what Duce had told him that day in town.
“Maggie expressed an interest in the mare when she helped Cora Mae. She’s saved my hide more than once. Not that our run-ins have made Mag the least bit cordial. She flat don’t like people.”
“Exactly how long have you known her?”
Chance gave him a measuring stare, likely put off by his short tone. “I came upon her and her man years ago on my first ride into our valley.”
Maggie Danvers…wife of Ira Danvers. His mind somersaulted over the recollection. “You’ve met Ira Danvers?”
Reluctant to answer that question, Chance Morgan stared at Garret. His shaggy state and bloodshot eyes resembled more of a mountain man than a cattle rancher. On the one occasion Chance had met Ira Danvers, the grizzly-size trapper had been dead for several days. He’d no sooner spotted the body when he’d been knocked to his knees and had Mag’s knife pressed to his throat. Had he tried to reach for that knife, he had no doubt he’d have died. It was his offer to finish the grave she’d started that finally convinced her to release him.
Chance’s first glimpse of Mag had been an unsettling sight; her hair a mess of black tangles, her coat smudged with blood and mud. She’d been struggling to dig a grave in frozen ground. Her eyes cold and expression viscous, she appeared as wild as the scavengers she’d been fighting off for days.
He’d helped her bury her man and she’d guided him into his valley he’d been trying to find for a week, a disconcerting alliance to say the least. She’d sworn him to silence about Ira—an oath he hadn’t broken, not even to his wife. Wasn’t his secret to tell and he respected Mag’s privacy. Rumors of Ira still inhabiting those mountains was another level of protection for her—one she needed. If Mag wanted Garret to know about her dead husband, she’d have told him.
“I’ve met him. Not surprised they weren’t together. I’ve run into Maggie on occasion, though she’s never been what I’d call friendly. Must have been a precarious week for you.”
Garret could hardly believe her deception. No wonder she’d been in such an almighty hurry to be rid of him.
My God. He’d committed adultery.
“She couldn’t have been too rough with you,” said Chance, “for you to think she’s some little flower in need of shelter.”
Tucker choked on a laugh and Garret glanced up at identical grins. Their visible humor was another blow. She’d made him care about her, and she’d used him. She knew damn well what she was doing, shoving her hand up his shirt like she had.
The realization turned his stomach. Garret shoved away from the table and headed for the back door.
“Garret?” Skylar called after him. “You haven’t eaten anything.”
“I need some air.”
His history with women had been nothing but a joke. If they caught wind that even Mad Mag had kicked him from her bed, the ribbing would be endless.
She’d been so damn convincing.
Maggie Danvers.
Not only had she duped him, but she still had his dog!
He walked toward the hillside where his best friend lay beneath the ground. He crouched at the edge of the upturned dirt and reached out, touching the broken earth.
“You’d get a kick out of this one.”
He stared at the tethered feathers twisting in the wind Kuhana had tied to the cross. One-sided attractions seemed to be his curse in life. Twice he’d given his heart to a woman, and twice she’d handed it right back. It wasn’t a lesson he needed to learn a third time.
He had bigger issues to be fretting over than a promiscuous mountain shrew. His partner had been killed. The moment he found out which cattle-grubbing bastard was responsible for Duce’s death, there’d be hell to pay.
Chapter Nine
H e ought to cut the damn thing down.
Reclined against a pile of satiny pink pillows, Garret stared at the dusty lace canopy above his large four-poster bed. Rays of light pierced through lace curtains in the window, announcing the dawn of anther spring day. The increasing glow of daybreak burned shadows away from a suffocating concoction of frilly lace, pink satin and dried flowers. Widow Jameson’s new husband had been a smart man to cart off his wife, leaving behind the fancy furnishings of her oversize Victorian dollhouse.
He’d once thought his future wife would enjoy such ladylike surroundings and he wasn’t usually in the house long enough to be bothered by all the feminine frills. In the past two months sleep hadn’t
come easy. Dreams of Grace merged into nightmares about Mad Mag, his mind melding rumors with memories of the passionate woman he’d come to know.
No one’s ever wanted to kiss me before.
The woman he’d met in town wouldn’t have welcomed any such advances.
Nor had the defensive woman who’d emerged from the storm, he reminded himself. She’d done all she could to avoid him in that tiny cave. He’d been the one who’d dumped her into bed with him, despite her protests. He’d been the one who’d given her the kisses they’d both been craving.
While he had tamed the mountain shrew, Duce lay dead. That knowledge tore at his conscience. He’d spent several days with the sheriff in Bitterroot Springs, a man overwhelmed by the violence running rampage across the county. The lawman had too much ground to cover, every cattleman was a suspect and no one had been brought to justice.
With the spring drive closing in and his time constrained, he’d resorted to hiring his own investigating attorney. An expense that had amused his crew and resulted in more questions, more worry and too many sleepless nights of staring at the useless fancy weave above his bed.
His muscles bunched, anger boiling, he surged up and swung his feet to the floor. He stood and grabbed the pile of clothes he’d tossed onto a pink-and-white-striped settee the night before. In the past few days he’d ridden through the northern pasture, surveying his stock, but he’d wanted to ride up that mountain.
Stuffing his shirttails into his pants, he strode toward the window. If he could see across the miles, he’d be looking right into her hideaway. The snowline had receded to the highest peaks. And yet his elusive mountain woman hadn’t surfaced. As much as he wanted to ride into that high country and flush her out, he’d promised to leave her be.
Cursing that bit of stupidity, he shifted his gaze to the long, patchy roof across the yard, a bold reminder that he was the sole owner of his ranch and wasn’t free to simply ride range. The barn roof was about to collapse. He and Duce had talked about doing the needed repairs in early fall but had put it off. Rains would be coming soon and he couldn’t risk the loss of grain. None of his men wanted to spend a day out of their saddle any more than he did. Everett was sure to grumble at the news that he’d be on the roof today instead of riding out with the others.