by Joanna Wayne
Matt McQuaid was the epitome of a Texas lawman. All action, few words.
Letter to Reader
Title Page
Acknowledgments
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Copyright
Matt McQuaid was the epitome of a Texas lawman. All action, few words.
The Texas lawman was handsome, strong and apparently as hardheaded as Heather was. What more could a woman want?
“You should have asked me about spending the night before you announced that I would.”
“I don’t like to offer choices when none exist. You need watching over tonight. I’m available.”
And that was it. Matter of fact. Cut-and-dried. No “I’m glad to be of service.” No wonderful, witty, heroic phrases. Just “I’m available.” For some reason, she didn’t find his manner offensive. It was almost comforting on one hand, and more than a little seductive on the other.
“Since I’m here for the night, I think I’ll turn in. Which bedroom do you want me to use?”
“That’s easy,” he said, finally smiling. “There’s only one.”
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the McQuaid famity—three brothers who are easy to love and hard to forget. They live their lives the way their father taught them—by THE COWBOY CODE.
This month meet Matt McQuaid, brought to you by Joanna Wayne. Joanna makes her home in steamy Louisiana but feels equally comfortable in the neighbor state of Texas. As a child she loved reading stories of the West and now, as an adult, she visits a ranch owned by friends in south Texas. “The romance of the West is still alive and well,” she reports.
You’ll want to be sure you don’t miss any of these sexy cowboy brothers. If you did, you can still order McQuaid’s Justice by Carly Bishop and A Cowboy’s Honor by Laura Gordon by sending $3.99 ($4.50 CAN.) plus 75¢ postage ($1.00 CAN.) to Harlequin Reader Service, 3010 Walden Ave., Buffalo, NY 14269.
Regards,
Debra Matteucci
Senior Editor & Editorial Coordinator
Harlequin Books
300 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
Lone Star Lawman
Joanna Wayne
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
With special thanks to my friend, Linda Lewis, for sharing her wonderful Texas family with me and traveling with me on great research trips. To my own family for all the support they’ve given, and to Wayne, always, for keeping romance in my life.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Matt McQuaid—The youngest son of Jake McQuaid. He’s like his father in many ways though he resents the man who drove his mother away.
Heather Lombardi—She’d never intended her search for her birth mother to tear the town of Dry Creek apart.
Edna and Rube Lawson—Owners of the motel where Heather has rented a room, but what do they really know about the murder that happened right under their noses?
Cass Purdy—She worked at the orphanage where Heather was abandoned, but is her memory accurate after all these years?
Gabby—The town sheriff. Is he part of the past that someone in Dry Creek will kill to keep secret?
Billy Roy Lassiter—He was murdered twenty-five years ago. Is his death connected to the disappearance of Heather’s birth mother?
Logan Trenton—One of the wealthiest ranchers in south Texas. He’s charming, but can he be trusted?
Sylvia—Logan Trenton’s stepdaughter and an old friend of Matt’s.
Paul Ridgely and John Billinger—Local ranchers who consider Matt’s dad a friend and a legend.
Chapter One
Heather Lombardi jerked upright and gulped a breath of stale air. For a second, she didn’t recognize her surroundings, but slowly her sense of place came back to her. She was in a dingy motel room in Dry Creek, Texas, hundreds of miles from her cozy apartment in Atlanta, Georgia.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes, then circled the room with her gaze. Pale moonlight filtered through the window, highlighting the shadowy images that crept across her walls. But in spite of the moonlight, the room was darker than usual. Evidently, the harsh outside light that had glared into her room for the last few nights had burned out.
A square of white caught her eye. She stumbled sleepily to the door and picked it up. Her mind still groggy, she tore open the sealed envelope and hurried back to the bed, flicking on the lamp so she could read the note.
Forget Kathy Warren and get out of town. Now. Leave before your welcome wears out and you find yourself wishing you’d never heard of her or Dry Creek.
It took a minute for the meaning to sink in. When it did, the words were still bewildering. There was no earthly reason why anyone should care if she stayed or left this town. She’d come here on a quest, in search of information about her real mother, the woman who’d given her up for adoption mere days after her birth twenty-five years ago. But so far no one she’d talked to admitted to having ever heard of Kathy Warren.
Heather reread the note, her mind struggling to make sense of the warning. She walked back to the window, pushing hard to force it open. She needed fresh air to clear the last dregs of sleep and help her think rationally. The note was probably some teenaged prank, kids out of school for the summer and bored.
Minutes later, she closed and locked the window and went back to bed, jumping at the sound of the squeaky bedsprings beneath the impact of her hundred and twenty pounds. The truth was she’d like to heed the note. She was tired and more than a little homesick. She missed her apartment, missed her own soft bed, missed chatting with her friends.
But she couldn’t give up and go running home. Not yet. Questions that had haunted her for a lifetime were still unanswered.
MATT MCQUAID shoved the white Stetson back on his head and let his booted foot grow heavy on the accelerator. A straight yellow line, miles of smooth Texas highway and two weeks of well-deserved vacation stretched out before him. Fence-mending, windmills to check, and some quality time getting to know his own small spread. At least small by South Texas standards.
He’d saved and bought the place while he was assigned to this area, but he’d been promoted last year, uprooted from his land and plopped down in a city apartment a hundred and thirty miles away.
San Antonio never quite felt like home, but he liked the job. So, he was left to commute every chance he got and scuff his boots on cement streets when he couldn’t.
The Lone M, a plot of mesquite-dotted, drought-hardened dirt that beckoned to him like a pot of spicy chili on a cold Texas night. Not that anyone but him ever called it the Lone M. The other ranchers referred to it simply as “McQuaid’s country,” an old South Texas usage, defining the land by the man who owned it. Matt didn’t mind. Any name you called it, the wind blew free across wide-open spaces, and it was his.
Damn, but life was good.
No bloody crime scenes to be dissected. No district attorneys demanding evidence that didn’t exist. Best of all, there would be no reporters in his face ragging him for information for the news media to twist and enlarge to suit their own purposes.
; After the hellacious case he’d just wrapped up in San Antonio, nothing could be nicer than two weeks of conversing with nature and cud-chewing critters. Not that he’d ever willingly give up all the aggravation and challenge of being a Texas Ranger. Being a lawman was in his blood, as necessary as air or food.
Fingering the dial of his radio, he worked until a country song blared from the contraption. He rolled down the window of his pickup truck and sang along, enjoying the sting of the dry wind in his face and the sound of his own voice blending with the whining twang of the female singer. Another ballad of love gone bad. Woman trouble, one problem he didn’t have now and had no intention of acquiring.
Matt slowed as he entered the town limits of Dry Creek. The sun hovered low on the horizon, making it difficult to see the road, but painting the shabby town in shades of gold and red that glistened off tin roofs and sparkled on iron cattle gaps. A fitting homecoming, he decided.
Matt turned into the drive of Ridgely’s Feed and Hardware Store and parked between a tractor and John Billinger’s new truck. He’d already stopped for groceries, but he needed to pick up some supplies so he could start work in the morning with the sun. He might as well let the locals know he was home for a couple of weeks while he was at it.
His boots clattered against the wooden boards of the porch and heralded his arrival even before he walked through the open door.
“Well, look who’s back, the Texas Ranger who just stuck it to Clemson Creighton like a June bug to a screen door.” Billinger’s voice boomed across the store as Matt stepped into sight.
“Just doing my job, Billinger. Trying to make sure you Texans get what you pay for.”
“Yep.” Paul Ridgely spit a long stream of brown goop into a tin can and then stepped from behind the counter. He extended a hand. “Of course, it took a McQuaid to nail him. Those pretty boys up in San Antonio let the man walk around right under their noses for ten years. You done your pa proud, Matt.”
Matt took Ridgely’s callused hand and shook it firmly. “I’m sure Jake could have done it better and faster.” The men laughed but nodded in agreement without guessing at the sarcasm that rode beneath the surface of Matt’s words.
It had been almost a quarter of a century since Jake McQuaid had been sheriff around here, but his legend lived on. Who was Matt to disturb the image with suggestions of imperfection in their hero?
“Didn’t much get by old Jake McQuaid,” Billinger added. “So, you here for Logan Trenton’s big shindig next weekend, or do you even aim to stay long enough to do a little honest labor?”
“Two weeks. Plenty of time to get my boots dirty.” Matt hadn’t known Logan Trenton was throwing a party. Now that he did, he hoped he could escape an invitation. “I’m going to spend my time catching up at the ranch.”
“Well, I hope you make enough time to come by the house,” Billinger said. “I’m smoking some brisket tomorrow, and the wife would love to have you over. Might even bake up one of those apple pies for you and I’d get a piece of it. She’s read another of those tomfool articles on cholesterol and heart attacks and has me eating my apples from around the core now.”
“I don’t know about your cholesterol, Billinger,” Ridgely joked, “but that roll of fat around your middle ain’t too appealing. She’s probably tired of trying to reach around it.”
“Don’t you be worrying about my middle. I can handle my woman.” He leaned over for a better look out the door. “Of course I don’t know if I could handle one like that.” He nodded his head in the direction of the door and a view of a compact rental car that had just pulled up in front of the greasy-spoon joint across the parking lot.
All three of the men watched as a shapely young woman climbed out. Her short, straight skirt inched up, revealing just enough thigh to assure the onlookers that her legs were as fine as the rest of her.
“Forget the apple pie,” Billinger said, rocking back on his heels. “Just watching that woman walk has my blood pressure soaring. She’s too much for me, but I bet the Ranger here could handle a woman like that.”
“Don’t count on it.” Matt studied the woman with the practiced eye of a man who had built a reputation of never missing a detail. Her hair was sandy blond, bouncing about her shoulders as she walked. The blue suit fit her to perfection, simple, but probably expensive, and the shoes on her feet would never make it in a cow pasture. Her skin was creamy smooth and not bronzed by the South Texas sun.
To sum it up, she was as much out of place in Dry Creek as quiche at a Texas barbecue.
“What do you say, Matt? Is that a looker or what?”
“She’s not my style,” Matt said, pulling his eyes away from her with a severe expression.
“Maybe not, but my guess is you’re going to get a chance to get up close and personal before you leave town,” Billinger said. “Then you can find out for yourself if she’s your style.”
“How’s that?” Matt asked, hating to admit even to himself that the woman had aroused his curiosity.
“She’s been questioning everyone in town. Seems her momma ran out on her when she was just a baby, and now she’s looking for her.”
“Who was her mother?” Matt asked, in spite of himself.
“A woman by the name of Kathy Warren. Ever heard of her?”
“Nope.” Matt turned his attention to a notice of an upcoming auction.
“No one else in town has either,” Ridgely said, still standing and staring even though the woman under discussion had already disappeared behind the doors of the café. He scratched a bald spot on the back of his round head. “I think she’s barking up the wrong tree. I’ve lived in Dry Creek all my life, and if a woman good-looking enough to birth a young’un like that had come around even for a little while, I’d dang sure remember her.”
“Someone would anyway,” Billinger agreed. “This town is short on pretty women and long on memory. All the same, I can’t help but feel sorry for Miss Lombardi. It’s got to be tough knowing your mom just walked off and never came back. I can see why she’d want to find her.”
Matt let the subject lie. Life was tough, and Miss Lombardi should have learned that by now. Mothers did just walk away, and maybe they had their reasons. Or maybe they didn’t. Either way the kids they left behind didn’t get a vote in the matter. “Do you still run a store here, Ridgely, or is this just gossip central?” he asked, pulling his list from his pocket.
“I’ll take your money,” Ridgely said, his deep laughter rumbling through the store as he stole a peek at Matt’s list.
“Yeah,” Billinger threw in, “but if you were half smart, you’d be next door about now offering to help out a damsel in distress. You might just get lucky and wind up with a real looker like your dad did. They don’t make many like Miss Susan, but that Heather Lombardi might run her a close second.”
“You’re right. They don’t make many like Susan Hath-away.” Matt gave one last look out the door. “But I’ll leave luck alone tonight and settle for supplies.”
“Yeah, well, I’d say you’ll be spending your luck tonight on a full moon with nothing but the wailing of coyotes to keep you company.” Billinger fingered a can of mosquito repellent someone had left on the counter. “Personally, if I were in your boots, single, available and some hotshot Texas Ranger, I’d be finding a way to share that moon with Miss Lombardi.”
“Chasing down a long-lost mother? No, thanks. I’m on vacation. I’ll stick with rounding up cows. They’re a lot less trouble.”
“I agree with Matt,” Ridgely said, already walking toward the back of the store to get the first item on Matt’s list. “He don’t need to go messing around with the likes of Miss Lombardi. Women like that are nothing but trouble.”
The door swung open and a couple of hands from a neighboring spread walked in. Billinger started a new conversation, and Matt caught up with Paul Ridgely. A few minutes later, Matt was loading supplies and some sacks of feed onto the back of his truck. Delicious odors drifted from t
he café, and his stomach gnawed at his backbone, fussing about the fact that he’d missed lunch.
He glanced at his watch. It was already seven-thirty. If he ate in town, he wouldn’t have to bother with cooking tonight. He knew just what he wanted: a big, juicy hamburger, smothered in sautéed onions and dripping with mustard and mayo.
Ridgely and Billinger would notice him walking into the café and make a few salty comments about his chasing after the slick city woman, but he could take their good-natured ribbing.
Heather Lombardi, or whoever the heck she was, held no fascination for him beyond the fact that she was a gorgeous woman. He could look and enjoy without the need to own or even to rent. After all, he knew his limitations and his strengths. And right now, he had life in the palm of his hand, just the way he liked it. He didn’t need a thing.
HEATHER NURSED HER cup of after-dinner coffee and watched as the young señorita poured a tall glass of iced tea for the newest cowboy to enter the café. The girl lingered to flirt and he rewarded her efforts with a crooked smile guaranteed to set a young heart fluttering.
The effect on Heather was somewhat milder, but she had to admit the man was attractive. His face was a mixture of rugged planes and distinct angles, but the overall impression was both masculine and distinctly Texan, that indefinable quality that separated him and his cronies in town from the few urban cowboys she’d met growing up in the big city.
Heather stared at the man, struck by a sudden impulse. Joining strangers at their table wasn’t her usual style, but at this point she didn’t have much to lose. Another wasted day was coming to a close. She picked up her coffee cup and headed his way before she had a chance to change her mind.