Her Cowboy Distraction

by Carla Cassidy

  * * *

  It had been almost three hours since Lizzy had left, and Daniel’s heart had never felt heavier, the house had never seemed so empty.

  He’d done what he could to make her stay. He’d filleted his heart on a stone before her, but she’d chosen her bucket list over him. There had been nothing more he could do.

  She’d been a temporary gift in his life, an awakening that he’d desperately needed, and now she was gone and his heartache was almost unbearable.

  But, instead of the weight of guilt and heartache that had kept him housebound and isolated before Lizzy came to town, he felt the need to surround himself with people and noise.

  He grabbed his hat and car keys and headed for his truck and the Cowboy Café, where he knew he’d find food and noise and good friends and neighbors.

  As deeply as his heart ached with the loss of Lizzy, he no longer believed he was a man who was meant to be alone, who deserved to be alone and miserable.

  Eventually he would find his life partner, the soul mate who would help him fill his big house with children, who would stand beside him through the hard times and celebrate with him the good ones.

  He’d wanted that woman to be Lizzy. He’d believed her to be Lizzy, and right now he couldn’t imagine the woman in his life being anyone else but Lizzy.

  He pulled into the café parking lot. As usual it was a fairly full house, and he suspected he and Sam and the drama last night with Lizzy was probably the hottest topic of conversation.

  He entered the café, and as he hung his hat on one of the hooks, he glanced toward the counter. A piercing ache resounded in him as he saw Mary, not Lizzy, standing there. He made his way to a stool and sat.

  “Where’s your better half?” Mary asked.

  “She left town a couple of hours ago.”

  “Without saying goodbye?” Mary asked with obvious disappointment.

  “I think saying goodbye would have been too hard on her.” Daniel heard the hollow ring in his voice.

  “I’m so sorry, Daniel,” Mary said as if she knew his heartache.

  “Yeah, so am I.” He drew a deep sigh. “She never lied about her plans. From the very first she met me, she told me that this was just a temporary stop along her way. We all just borrowed her for a little while, but she was never really ours to keep.” The words shot another layer of pain through his heart.

  He felt a small edge of relief as the conversation turned to the events of the night before. It still felt like a strange dream…the cabin and Sam and Lizzy.

  He’d never forget that moment when Sam’s knife had pricked the tender skin on Lizzy’s neck and blood had appeared. If he hadn’t been afraid of hitting Lizzy, Daniel would have shot Sam then and there, and he wouldn’t have aimed for his leg.

  It would have hurt him, to shoot a man who had been his friend since childhood, but Adam was right when he’d said that man in the cabin the night before hadn’t been the real Sam. The real Sam had been lost to grief when his sister died.

  The night of that accident, grief and guilt had transformed Daniel into an isolated, self-punishing man, and apparently that same accident had turned Sam into a seething monster wanting revenge. As long as Daniel had remained a miserable soul, the monster had been satisfied. But when Lizzy had entered Daniel’s life and transformed it, Sam’s seething need for revenge, his desire to see Daniel miserable forever, had exploded.

  He gave Mary his dinner order and then found himself inundated with people stopping by his stool to find out all the details of what had happened the night before and to offer their support.

  He realized how much people cared about Lizzy and about him, and he was reminded once again about the things he loved about Grady Gulch. This was his home and, even though he knew it would take months before the loss of Lizzy stopped piercing his heart, at least he had friends and the Cowboy Café to ease some of that pain.

  He was halfway through his meal when he smelled her, that slightly exotic fragrance that always tightened his muscles with desire. For a moment he thought he was fantasizing it, that his grief over the loss of her was playing games with his senses. Then she was there, standing next to him, that bright, beautiful smile curving her lips. His heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

  “Mind if I sit here, cowboy?” she asked as she slid onto the stool next to his.

  “Don’t mind a bit,” he replied and scooted the small plate with a slice of apple pie on it that he had ordered in front of her.

  She gasped in surprise. “You were expecting me?”

  His heart had accelerated in pace the moment he’d smelled the scent of her, the moment he’d turned to see her standing next to him. “Not exactly expecting you. I just couldn’t let go of a little bit of hope. So, tell me, Elizabeth Wiles but everybody calls you Lizzy, how you happen to be in Grady Gulch eating my piece of apple pie?”

  “A funny thing happened on the way to my bucket list.” She picked up a fork and took a bite of the pie and then continued. “I got an hour out of town, and with each mile that passed I kept thinking about everything you’d said to me and all that I was leaving behind.”

  She set the fork down and turned in the stool as he did the same, her knees coming to stop between his. “You were right about everything, Daniel. I was afraid. I was willing to climb a mountain all by myself, to wander the streets of New York City alone, but I was absolutely terrified to reach out and grab on to the love you offered me.”

  All the clatter of the diners in the café fell away, all the talking and noise completely disappeared as Daniel focused solely on the woman in front of him. At that moment it was as if the two of them were completely alone. All that mattered was her.

  “Anyway, I finally pulled to the side of the road and started to cry.” Those beautiful whiskey-colored eyes of hers held his gaze intently. “I thought about the bucket list and I thought about you, and then I thought about my mother and what she would have wanted for me.”

  He couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to touch her in some way. He reached for her hand, and she took it and squeezed as if she never wanted to let it go.

  “I think Mom’s goal with wanting me to do the bucket list was really a ruse to make me stop and take stock of the life I was leading when she died. She worried about me having nothing but work in my life, worried that I was getting closer and closer to thirty and didn’t have any hint of a meaningful relationship with anyone. I know now exactly what Mom wanted for me, and it wasn’t singing on a corner in Times Square. It’s you, Daniel.”

  “That’s nice, but I need to hear what you want, what you need,” he replied. He’d waited for what felt like a lifetime for the words to come from her, the words he’d longed to hear.

  The light that shone from her eyes was near-

  blinding and he fell into the flames, loving her so much he wondered how he’d lived a day of his life without her.

  “I love you, Daniel, and I’m not afraid anymore. I trust in our love. I need you. I want to share your life with you, fill that house with babies and be with you to watch our grandchildren play in the yard.”

  For a moment he couldn’t speak. His chest was so filled with his heart it held the air in his lungs captive. He released her hand and stood and then pulled her up and into his arms, and their lips met in a kiss that tasted of cinnamon and apples, of passion and laughter and, most of all, love.

  The people in the café cheered, and as the kiss finally ended Lizzy looked up at Daniel and smiled. “I’m home, Daniel. I’m finally truly home.”

  Epilogue

  Mary Mathis gasped for air and sat up, her heart pounding a thousand beats a minute. Anxiety pressed tight in her chest, a familiar but unwanted enemy.

  Telling herself to relax, to breathe in and out in slow, measured breaths, she felt her heart slowing to a more normal pace, the sickening anxiety beginning to fade.

  When would these episodes fade? When would the dreams of the past finally leave her alone? Allow her
to sleep and stop worrying?

  She got out of bed and as always went to the doorway of Matt’s bedroom, comforted by the sight of him sleeping soundly. She returned to the living room, turned on the end table lamp and curled up on the sofa.

  It had been almost a month since Candy’s death and still nobody was in jail for the crime, and Mary couldn’t stop the faint niggling feeling that something else bad was coming.

  She’d dismiss it as nothing more than a foolish woman’s intuition, but at one time years ago Mary had been quite adept at forecasting danger. She’d been able to feel it in the air, taste it in the terror that welled up in the back of her throat.

  She felt that now, but this time the terror didn’t have a name, it didn’t have a face, and that scared her as much as anything.

  Think about something positive, she commanded herself as she pulled an afghan from the back of the sofa and covered her bare legs.

  She’d managed to hire a new waitress, a young woman named Lynette Shiver, who was taking Lizzy’s place and had the same kind of bright, cheerful personality.

  A smile curved Mary’s lips as she thought of Lizzy. Although she missed her working in the café, it had been wonderful watching Daniel and Lizzy’s love grow stronger every day. They came into the café twice a week for dinner, and it was obvious a wedding was in the near future.

  A wave of loneliness struck Mary. Most of the time she stayed too busy to miss the presence of a male in her life. She had her work at the café and Matt to keep her busy, but there were moments when she longed for something she could never have, for somebody to wrap her in his strong arms and talk to her of love.

  But, the actions she’d taken years ago, the decisions she’d made for herself and for Matt, made it impossible for her to invite a man in, especially the man who looked at her with desire.

  Sheriff Cameron Evans had made it clear in a million ways that he was interested in her. But, even though the sight of him created a warm pool of desire inside her, even though she admired him more than anyone else she’d ever met in her life, he was off-limits now and forever.

  A shiver whispered through her, and it had nothing to do with her thoughts of Cameron Evans. Rather, it was the feeling that evil had come to Grady Gulch, and it wasn’t about to move on any time soon.

  * * * * *

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  Chapter 1

  The Wyoming woods atop the tall mountains that cradled the town of Cold Plains were just beginning to take on a fall cast of color. This worked perfectly with the camouflage long-sleeved T-shirt and pants that Micah Grayson wore as he made his way through the thick brush and trees.

  Although a gun holster rode his shoulder, he held his gun tight in his hand. Despite the fact that he had only been hiding out in the mountainous woods for two days and nights, he’d quickly learned that danger could come in the blink of an eye, a danger that might require the quick tic of his index finger on the trigger.

  Twilight had long ago fallen but a near-full moon overhead worked as an additional enemy when it came to using the shield of darkness for cover.

  As an ex-mercenary, Micah knew how to learn the terrain and use the weather to his advantage. He knew how to keep the reflection of the moonlight off his skin so as not to alert anyone to his presence. He could move through a bed of dry leaves and not make a sound. He could be wearing a black suit in a snowstorm and still figure out a way to become invisible.

  The first twenty-four hours that he’d been in the woods he’d learned natural landmarks, studied pitfalls and figured out places he thought would make good hidey-holes if needed. He’d also come face-to-face with a moose, heard the distant call of a wolf and seen several elk and deer.

  He now moved with the stealth of a big cat toward the rocky cliff he’d discovered the night before. As he crept low and light on his feet, he kept alert, his ears open for any alien sound that might not belong to the forest.

  Despite the relative coolness of the night, a trickle of sweat trekked down the center of his back. During his thirty-eight years of life, Micah had faced a thousand life-threatening situations, the latest of which had been a bullet to his head that had sent him into a coma for months.

  When he finally reached the rocky bluff he looked down at the lights dotting the little valley, the lights of the small town of Cold Plains, Wyoming. His brother Samuel’s town. Micah reached up and touched the scar, now barely discernible through his thick dark hair on the left side of his head, the place where Samuel’s henchman, Dax Roberts, had shot him while Micah had sat in his car. Dax had left him for dead.

  Fortunately for Micah he hadn’t died, but had come out of a three-month coma with the fierce, driving need for revenge against the fraternal twin he’d always somehow known was a dangerous, narcissistic sociopath.

  Unfortunately, Samuel was also charming and slick and powerful, making him a natural leader that people wanted to follow.

  Five months ago Micah had been sitting in a small-town Kansas coffee shop where he’d landed after his last mission for a little downtime when he’d seen a face almost identical to his own flash across the television mounted to the wall.

  Stunned, he’d watched a news story unfold that told him his brother Samuel was being questioned by the FBI and local police in connection with the murders of five women found all across Wyoming. All the women had one thing in common: Cold Plains, the town where his wealthy, motivational-speaker brother wielded unbelievable influence and power.

  Micah had immediately contacted the FBI and been put in touch with an agent named Hawk Bledsoe. The two had made arrangements to meet the next day but, before Micah could make that meeting, he’d caught the bullet to his head.

  He’d been in the coma for ninety-three long days and it had taken him another two months to feel up to the task he knew he had to do—take out Samuel before he could destroy any more people and lives.

  Which was why he’d spent these last two days and nights in the woods adjacent to Cold Plains.

  Minutes before he’d made his way to the bluff, he’d met with his FBI contact, Hawk. Hawk had grown up in Cold Plains and after years of being away from his hometown had returned to discover that the rough-around-the-edges place where he’d grown up as son of the town drunk had transformed into something eerily perfect. A town run by a group of people who others referred to under their breaths as the Devotees and their leader, the movie-star handsome, but frightening and dangerous Samuel Grayson.

  For the past two nights Micah and Hawk had met at dusk in the woods so Hawk could keep Micah apprised of what was going on in town and how the FBI investigation into Samuel’s misdeeds was progressing.

  As he thought about everything Hawk had shared with him over the last two days, a dull throb began at the scar in the side of his head. He drew in several deep, long breaths, attempting to will away one of the killer migraines that the bullet had left behind.

  He turned and started off the bluff, deciding to make his way down the mountain, closer to town. The only time he dared to do a little reconnaissance of the layout of the town was at night. He knew that if anyone caught sight of him it would be reported back to Samuel, and the last thing Micah wanted Samuel to know was that he was not only still alive but he was also here and working wi
th the FBI to bring him down.

  As always, he moved silently, knowing that the woods held many secrets. Just the night before, he’d stumbled upon two women amid the brush and trees. Darcy Craven had fainted at the sight of him, assuming he was his brother, but the woman with her, June Farrow, had recognized that he wasn’t Samuel and had taken him to the safe house located in an area called Hidden Valley.

  The safe house and surrounding land, only accessible by hiking or helicopter, had become an important haven for those trying to escape Samuel and his minions. The woods weren’t just filled with those trying to escape the small town, but also dangerous hunters tracking them down.

  Samuel had to be stopped. The words had reverberated in his head the moment he’d awakened from his coma and that thought was the driving force that got him up each morning, his final thought before falling asleep at night.

  He froze as he thought he heard a sound someplace to his left. It sounded like a baby’s cry; there for just a moment and then gone as if stolen from the gentle night breeze. He remained still, his index finger ready to fire the gun gripped tight in his hand if necessary.

  Micah wasn’t given to flights of fantasy. He knew he’d heard something. It was possible that it had been some sort of animal, but there was no way he intended to leave this area until he found the source of the sound.

  There were hunters in the woods, but Micah was one, too, and if he managed to get to one of the men who worked for Samuel, he’d turn them over to the FBI to help them build a case against the man, hopefully a case that would avenge the deaths of the five women Micah knew in his heart his brother was responsible for killing.

  The noise came again…a quick cry that was just as quickly gone. The darkness of the night seemed to press in around him as he targeted in on the area where he thought the sound had originated.

  The moon slivered through the tree branches here and there, filtering down enough illumination to be both a little bit helpful and definitely dangerous. Micah kept to the dark shadows as he made his way toward the noise.