Big Sky Cowboy

by Jennifer Mikels

  Her car stayed on Main Street, then turned into the parking lot adjacent to Joe’s Bar. It looked packed with the expected Friday-night crowd. Did she know she was being followed? That was good. If she was scared, she’d back off.

  She’d better.

  Chapter Three

  Her heart pounding, Tessa rushed from her car with keys in one hand and her umbrella in the other. At the door of Joe’s Bar, she glanced at the street. The car drove by. Had she imagined she was being followed? No, don’t doubt yourself. She knew what she’d felt. She knew when to be afraid. And like it or not, she felt shaky. She needed to stay off the street until she’d calmed down.

  Inside, the smell of stale tobacco and alcohol hung in the air. The dog greeted Tessa first. A black rottweiler named Joe who liked women. Tessa had gone to the bar with its rustic, dark wood decor only once before with Marla.

  Wet from the run in the rain, Tessa dropped to her haunches to pet Joe. As she ran a hand over his silky black coat and patted his head, she scanned the noisy and crowded dimly lit room. She gave the dog a final pat, then weaved her way around tables toward an empty one near a dartboard and the pool table.

  “Do you play?”

  Instantly relief rushed through her. At the sound of Colby’s voice behind her, she stopped midstride. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d needed some one familiar, a friendly face.

  He flashed a smile at her. The rodeo champion smile, the smile that must have curled dozens of women’s toes. At the bar, two men whispered. Tessa raised her chin a notch when the buzz of voices increased. Wherever she went in town that happened. She hoped with time that people would get used to seeing her and the whispers would stop.

  In a fluid move, Colby passed the end of the bar and elbowed the stomach of a dark-haired cowboy who was perched on a bar stool. He wore the usual garb, a black Stetson, Western work shirt and jeans, but instead of boots, he had on black sneakers with purple stripes. In response to Colby’s good-natured jab, his friend grunted instead of finishing what he’d started to say to his buddy.

  “So do you play?” Colby asked again, bringing her attention to him.

  Smiling over his friend’s look of surprise, Tessa nodded. She liked the unpredictable and never turned down a reasonable dare. Striding by, she slid the pool stick from Colby’s hand, then leaned over the green felt table. “Are we playing for something?”

  Colby racked up the balls. “Beer and a pizza.” To her delight, his voice trailed off as she made the break and sunk a ball into a corner pocket. Two more dropped into a side pocket.

  Bent forward over the table, Tessa angled a smile over her shoulder at him. His gaze lingered on her backside in the tight jeans. “If I lose, I pay?” she asked.

  He was slow to answer, slow to meet her stare. A woman knew when she was presenting her best side to someone. “No, if I win, I pay,” he finally said.

  Tessa couldn’t help smiling even though she missed sinking the next ball. “And if I win?”

  “I pay.”

  She laughed. “That’s not too logical.”

  “Who said I have to be?”

  You, she thought, but kept the seriousness at bay. She played to win, and lost only because she was distracted by a waitress and the smell of pizza on a tray. As the aroma of tomatoes and basil and sausage permeated the air, her stomach growled with hunger. “Is that our pizza?”

  “You’re drooling,” he teased. “And yes, it’s ours.”

  “You won, then.” Tessa was already trailing the waitress to a corner table.

  Behind her, she heard his chuckle. “I think you let me.”

  He had a nice laugh. A great smile. “How could I do that?” She decided she was definitely in trouble.

  Lightly he placed a hand at the small of her back to urge her toward the table. “You didn’t distract me.”

  Tessa stifled a pleased grin. “How could I distract you?”

  “You moved.”

  “That’s your excuse?” With a tsk, she settled on a chair. “What kind of pizza?”

  “Cheese and sausage.”

  “In Billings, there’s a place that makes tofu pizza.”

  He straddled a chair beside hers. “Save me.”

  “I guess you don’t like dim sum.”

  His brows angled. “I’m a cowboy.”

  She couldn’t help laughing.

  “Bet you like arty-far—those foreign movies with subtitles, too?”

  “Romantic comedies. Sci-fi.”

  He made a face. If he’d been trying to find common ground, she thought he’d be wasting his time.

  “You’re not what I expected, you know. I thought you’d be—”

  “Wearing a turban, chanting mumbo jumbo to the air?” she asked, cradling a slice of pizza with the tips of her fingers.

  “You make it all sound stupid. But yeah, I guess that’s what I expected. You tried to convince me that was true.”

  She’d thought he’d go away.

  “Someone said you were born in Rumor. Where did you live after you left here?”

  “We did a lot of traveling.”

  “A Gypsy fortune-teller’s life?”

  “How exotic sounding.”

  Picking up a slice of pizza, he shifted his body toward hers. “It wasn’t like that?”

  She smiled wide. “In some ways, it was a really normal life. For a while, my mother worked in a bank to earn a living for the two of us.” She paused, glanced away as a cowboy in a black Stetson settled on a bar stool next to a fellow in a baseball cap. “She moved us away from Rumor when I was an infant.”

  “Now hometown girl returns. Why?”

  “Why not? I never knew any place as home. You were right about one thing. We lived like vagabonds, always moving someplace new.” Tessa saw no point in explaining how difficult her mother’s life had been. Alone with an infant, viewed as strange, her mother had constantly searched for new beginnings. Every move had been about starting over. After her death, Tessa had vowed no more. She’d chosen Rumor because her mother had once been a part of this town. She planned to stay, and nothing Leone Burton or anyone else did would weaken her resolve.

  “Why did you move so much?” He stretched long legs beneath the table.

  He appeared relaxed, but she felt tense—because of him. A quicker heartbeat, a slight flutter in her stomach, a twinge of need signaled just how much he affected her. “Because my mother would have a vision. Then people wouldn’t want us around. The ability to see is something all the women on my mother’s side share. It’s hereditary.” She spoke with pride. She wasn’t ashamed of her ability, but it made relationships difficult. Like her mother, she’d had trouble whenever she’d gotten too close to someone. It was better to keep a distance. That was a lesson she’d learned early. “I heard you retired from rodeo recently.”

  “Too many injuries. Like the dislocated shoulder.”

  There was more. He harbored something heavy, Tessa realized. Something far more painful than a rodeo injury. If she concentrated, she could have learned his secret, but she would never intrude on another’s pain without being asked. “How did it happen?”

  “After tossing me, the bull decided to give me a nudge.”

  He made it sound as everyday as crossing the street. “You’ve lived a dangerous life.”

  “It can be.”

  “So you quit to stay safe?”

  “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” Disturbingly his gaze swept over her face, settled on her mouth.

  “Yes,” Tessa said. She resisted an urge to wet her lips.

  “Have you thought about my offer?”

  “You made it impossible to resist.” The door opened, and Tessa looked to see who was coming in. Would she sense the person who’d been in the car behind her? “I looked at the photographs. Does your mother have a flower garden?” With his nod, she went on. “Are there lilacs?”

  “Lilacs?” His voice carried a trace of bafflement. “What do they l
ook like?”

  As a young boy, had he picked some for his mother? “A cluster of small, purple flowers.”

  “There used to be. What kind of flowers do you like?”

  Tessa ignored his question. “I had a sense of lilacs when I looked at one photo.” She’d thought that particular photo had been taken in Louise’s backyard.

  “That’s twice you’ve done that.”

  “Done what?”

  “We were talking about you, not me and not the photos. You deliberately dodge.”

  “The photos are why we’re together.”

  Unexpectedly he leaned forward, touched a strand of hair near her cheek.

  The casual touch was as good as a caress. He could make her feel all she’d avoided for years. She knew that as sensation slithered over her.

  “What else did you learn from them?”

  She’d show caution, wouldn’t make too much of his every touch. “I want you to know that I can never be certain I’ll be successful. But I’ll need your help. If it’s not too difficult for you, I need you to tell me about the murder.”

  As if taking a moment to formulate his words, he sipped his beer. “I don’t know how much you read about it in the newspaper. Chelsea estimated that Harriet was killed on June thirtieth, the night of the lunar eclipse. Harriet was shot with a twenty-two, her own. Chelsea thinks she was knocked around first.” His voice suddenly sounded tight.

  “You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to.”

  For a second, he looked away, then went on as if she’d said nothing. Tessa assumed he was sidestepping emotion. “My aunt was hit on the back of the head. She was found in a chair, so he must have moved her there. Her lip was split. There must have been quite a fight before he shot her.”

  “Are you sure it’s a man?”

  “That’s an assumption.”

  “You said that—” Tessa paused as Warren Parrish strolled in. Had he been the one following her?

  Colby swung a look over his shoulder to trace her stare. “Son of a—”

  Wearing a suit, Warren Parrish looked out of place among the casually dressed, mostly jeans-clad crowd.

  Across the room, his stare met Colby’s. Tessa wondered if the man had a death wish as he crossed the room to stop beside their table.

  Though Colby kept his eyes on her, they grew darker with anger. “What do you want?”

  Parrish looked pasty, almost sickly to Tessa. “I want to know when the lawyer will be reading Harriet’s will.”

  In a slow, deliberate way, Colby raised his head. “After you’re in jail.”

  “If you keep trespassing on what will be my property, you might be the one who ends up in jail.”

  Under his breath, Colby muttered a vile curse. For an instant, Tessa thought he would whirl Warren toward him and punch him. Instead he followed Parrish with his eyes as if willing him to get out of his sight. “Did you get any—whatever it is you get—vibrations when he was around?”

  Tessa wished she had. “No vibrations. Don’t you think it odd that Harriet never told her sister when she got married?”

  Some of the anger lingered in his voice. “Right now, we only have his word about his marriage to Harriet. It’s possible they weren’t. Holt’s checking on that,” he said, sounding less irritated.

  “You told me Chelsea had a personality profile. What is it?”

  “The killer is mature. She thought he might be military or in an elected position, a CEO or a cop. Someone with authority.”

  “Does that profile fit Warren Parrish?”

  “He was a sergeant in the army at one time.”

  Tessa watched him sprinkle Parmesan on a slice of pizza. “Who else is on the suspect list?”

  “An unknown lover. And an abusive husband of a woman my aunt helped. At least, my mother thinks he’s a possibility. Like Parrish, the guy was in the army. An MP. So he fits the profile.”

  She considered all he’d said. “Did the sheriff’s department come up with a motive for the killing?”

  “By Rumor standards, my aunt was fairly rich. I guess Warren’s motive would be an inheritance. He arrived in town to wait for the reading of the will. The lover? Who knows? The talk at the sheriff’s office is that Aunt Harriet was blackmailing him, demanding money for her silence about the baby. That doesn’t make sense to me. She had money. The other possibility was that she was demanding marriage, and he wanted no part of her or the baby.”

  “And the abusive husband? His motive is obvious,” she said absently. “Revenge because Harriet interfered in what he’d consider was his business.”

  “Right.” He wiped his hands on a napkin. “Tell me. When did this—the images—start?”

  She’d expected the question. Everyone, even those who didn’t believe in her, asked. “When I was a child.” She needed no images to remember childhood taunts. Some people had called her crazy.

  “Just like that, one day you woke up and saw things?”

  She wasn’t offended by the skepticism in his voice. Only someone with ESP understood. Some people felt only a vague foreboding, which they excused as intuition. But even they comprehended how overpowering the moment was when what was real was suspended by a world in the future. “It came in funny ways,” Tessa said. “I’d be playing with a friend, and I’d tell her the telephone was going to ring. She thought it was wonderful I could do that, but her mother looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head.” She paused with another memory. “When we were living in Texas, another friend’s mother called to tell my mother that I was a witch and she didn’t want me near her daughter. Different scares people.”

  “Why did she think you were a witch? What did you do?”

  He would believe what he wanted. Long ago she’d learned she couldn’t always convince people about her gift. “I was eleven when I told her daughter, a school-mate, that her dad was going to have a flat tire. No one paid attention until after he hit the streetlight because of a blowout. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the family was convinced I caused it, cast a spell.”

  “Jerks.”

  Had he said that because he didn’t believe in spells, or because they’d been so judgmental?

  “Chelsea said she met you in Chicago. Something about how you helped the police with a case.”

  Since Chelsea had revealed that much, Tessa had little choice except to tell him what had happened. “Several women had been killed in the same way. Everyone believed there was a serial killer. An employee at the mall where I was working was one of them. Because I was acquainted with her, I began to have dreams—nightmares.”

  “So the visions are dreams?”

  “Sometimes. It can happen in the middle of the day, too. But this time, the visions came at night. The last one I saw…” She stopped, made herself go on. “She was happy, laughing with friends. Tall, blond, lovely. She’d been dancing. I felt her fear and pain when he grabbed her, wrapped an arm around her neck.” She stopped, drew a hard breath. The feelings were almost on her again with the remembrance. “He was choking her. She was terrified.”

  “You saw her killed?”

  She met his stare. “No, I never saw her killed. That’s why I went to the police. I knew then that I was seeing something that would happen.”

  “Could you describe her? Where she was?”

  “No. Him. I saw him. Chelsea was the forensic expert on the case. She believed in me more than the detectives. She talked to an old-timer. He had me sit with a police artist, describe him. The police picked up a man who’d had a police record. I told Chelsea the fibers she found at two of the crime scenes were from a navy peacoat he owned. They’d find it stuffed in a steamer trunk in an uncle’s garage. They got a warrant, but there was no steamer trunk.”

  His brows bent in a frown.

  “You’re wondering why I’m telling you this. I’m not always successful.”

  “Did they ever convict him?”

  “Yes, they did. They couldn’t hold him, but after a f
ew weeks, he tried again. This time someone was around before he hurt anyone.” Tessa didn’t bother to tell him the woman was tall, blond, looked exactly like the one in her nightmare. He wouldn’t believe that really happened. He didn’t want to. And she didn’t tell him that they’d found the coat, just as she’d said in a steamer trunk, or that it was in the garage of a stepuncle in another state.

  “Why did you come here?”

  Tessa looked at him over the rim of a beer glass. “You mean in Joe’s Bar? Or to Rumor?”

  “Both.” She glanced at the door again. Could she have imagined someone following her? Laughing, a twenty-something couple wearing matching leather pants and spiked hairdos strolled in. “I came to Rumor because I want a home, I want to settle down.” She yearned for a place to belong, and she wondered if decades from now she’d still be longing for that.

  “What about here?” He held out a hand, palm up. Why did you come in here?” He gave her that slow, easy grin that had undoubtedly kick started a fair share of female hearts.

  Tessa rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t believe it. You think I came in here because I saw your truck?”

  “Did you?”

  “Your ego is showing,” she answered, but if she’d noticed the truck, she knew she might have stopped at Joe’s to see him again.

  “You’re bruising it.”

  She turned away to hide a smile. She didn’t want him to be too charming, too attractive.

  He took a hearty swallow of his beer. At a nearby table, a couple in cowboy hats called to him, mentioned a rodeo. The woman gave Colby a little flirtatious wave. While he shared a laugh with them, Tessa glanced toward the entrance for the umpteenth time.

  “Hey.” Colby waved a hand up and down in front of her. “Who are you looking for? You keep checking the door.”

  She mustered a smile. “Was I?”

  “Level with me. You look uneasy every time someone comes in. Why?”

  Tessa wanted to tell someone about the car. “I was followed here.”

  “Followed?” His brows bunched. “Someone was really following you?” Obviously he didn’t expect her to answer the question. “Who?”