The Rancher--A snowbound Western romance

by Joanne Rock

  A voice from over her right shoulder startled her.

  “Looking for someone?”

  The deep rasp that could only belong to Miles skittered along her nerve endings.

  Her body responded instantly, thrilled at the prospect of this man’s nearness. But she battled back those feelings to turn toward him coolly.

  “You’re not much for traditional greetings, are you?” She eyed his perfectly tailored blue suit, the jacket unbuttoned over a subtly pinstriped gray shirt with the collar undone. Her attention snagged on the hint of skin visible at the base of his neck before she remembered what she was saying. “Most people open with something like hello. Or nice to see you, Chiara.”

  A hint of a smile lifted his lips on one side as he stopped just inches from her. With any other man getting this close, Stefan might have come to her side, but her security guard had been at the party in Mesa Falls the night Chiara stayed with Miles. Stefan didn’t intervene now.

  “Maybe other people can’t appreciate the pleasure I find in catching you off guard.” Miles lingered on the word pleasure.

  Or else she did. She couldn’t be certain. She was too distracted by the hint of his aftershave hovering between them.

  “I’m joining Astrid for lunch while Jonah attends another super-secret Mesa Falls meeting.” She glanced at her nails and pretended to inspect her manicure. She’d far rather he think her superficial than affected by his nearness.

  Miles studied her. Keeping her focus on her hands, she felt his gaze more than saw it. She wouldn’t have a chance to speak to Jonah now. Not without Miles being present, anyway. While she considered her plan B, a group of women in tiaras and feather boas strolled past, with the one in the center wearing a pink sash that said, “Birthday Girl.”

  “How did it go at the police station?” Miles asked, his fingers alighting on her forearm to draw her farther from the thoroughfare that led to the second-floor shops.

  There were two couches in front of the high-roller suite and a low, clear cocktail table between them. Miles guided her to the area between the couches and the door to the suite, affording them a little more privacy.

  “I had some other things to take care of this morning, but I’ll call after lunch.” She’d been so consumed with finding out the identity of the woman in the yearbook photo, she’d forgotten all about reporting the harassment.

  Miles frowned. “I can’t in good conscience let you put it off. After the meeting, I’ll take you myself.”

  She bristled at his air of command. “I don’t need an escort. I’ll take care of it.”

  He pressed his lips together, as if reining in his emotions for a moment before he spoke. “Remember when you told me you had to be a one-woman content creator, marketing manager and finance director?” He clearly recalled how she’d defended her hard work when he’d been dismissive of her job. “Why don’t you let someone else give you a hand?”

  His thoughtfulness, underscored by how well he’d listened to her, made her relax a little. “It does sound better when you say it like that,” she admitted.

  “Good. And this way, you can ask me all the questions you want about the meeting.” He nodded as if the matter was settled.

  “Any chance you’ll actually answer them?” She wasn’t sure it was wise for them to spend more time alone together, but maybe she could find a way to ask him about the photo of the unidentified woman without putting his guard up.

  “I’ve said all along we should be working together.” He took her hand in his, holding it between them while he stroked her palm with his thumb. “Where should I look for you after I finish up here?”

  Her breath caught from just that smallest of touches. Her heart pounded harder.

  “Spice Pavilion,” she answered, seeing Astrid and Jonah heading toward them out of the corner of her eye.

  “I’ll look forward to it.” Miles lifted the back of her hand to his lips and kissed it before releasing her.

  Skin tingling pleasantly, she watched him disappear into the high-roller suite and wondered what she’d just gotten herself into. She noticed his brother followed him a moment later, while Astrid and Jonah gave each other a lingering goodbye kiss nearby. The blatant public display of affection seemed all the more romantic considering the couple were new parents.

  What would it be like to have that kind of closeness with someone day in and day out?

  Not that she would be finding out. Although her recent night with Miles reminded her how rewarding it was to share passion, she owed it to Zach not to let the connection distract her from her goal. She would spend time with Miles because he was still her most promising resource for information. And despite the coincidental timing of the threats against her, she’d had time to realize Miles was too honorable a man to resort to those tactics. She was safe with him.

  She just had to find a way to get him talking.

  Seven

  Restless as hell, Miles prowled the perimeter of the high-roller suite, waiting for the meeting to get underway. Weston and Desmond were deep in conversation on a curved leather sofa in the center of the room, while a server passed through the living area with a tray of top-shelf bottles. Gage stared down into the fire burning in a sleek, modern hearth, a glass of his preferred bourbon already in hand. A massive flat-screen television was mounted over the fireplace, but the display was dark. In the past, the group had used the screens to teleconference in the missing Mesa Falls owners, but today all were present in person. Even Jonah, the new father, and Alec Jacobsen, the game developer who spent most of his time globe-hopping to get inspiration for the complex world-building required for his games. The two of them lounged near the pool table.

  On either side of the fireplace, windows overlooked Lake Tahoe, the clear sky making the water look impossibly blue. Miles paused by one of them, waving off the offer of a beverage from the bow-tied server. He’d need his wits sharp for his meeting with Chiara afterward.

  Hell, maybe he needed to worry more about having his instincts honed for the meeting with his friends. The possibility of a traitor to their shared cause had kept him up at night ever since Chiara had been threatened. He’d never doubted the men in this room before. But who else even knew about Zach to make a threat like the one Chiara had received?

  “Are we ready?” Miles stopped pacing to ask the question, his back to a mahogany bookcase. He wasn’t usually the one to spearhead discussions like this, but today the need for answers burned hot. “I know you’re all busy. The sooner we figure out a plan, the sooner we can all go home.”

  Desmond gave a nod to the server, who left the room quickly, closing the door to the multilevel suite behind her. As the owner of Excelsior, Desmond commanded the operations of the resort and served as their host when they met on the property.

  Weston cleared his throat. “Can you bring us up to speed on what’s happening?”

  The fact that his brother was the first to respond to him surprised Miles given the enmity between him and Wes that had started when they’d been pitted against one another at an early age by their parents. The tension had escalated years ago when they’d briefly dated the same woman. But they’d made strides to put that behind them over the last year. Miles suspected Wes had mellowed since finding love with April Stephens, the financial investigator who’d discovered where the profits of Alonzo’s book were going.

  * * *

  “Chiara Campagna has been digging around to find out how Zach died. She knew him in school,” he told them bluntly, fisting his hands in the pockets of his pants as he tried to gauge the reactions of his friends. “She attended Brookfield before she became an internet sensation, and she met Zach through the school’s art program.”

  There were no murmurs of reaction. The only sound in the room was the clink of ice cubes in a glass as a drink shifted. But then, they’d known the meeting was called to discuss this issue b
efore walking in the door. So Miles continued.

  “She wants to know the circumstances of Zach’s death, suspecting some kind of cover-up since there was no news released about it.” As he explained it, he understood her frustration. And yes, pain.

  Just because she’d been a fifteen-year-old with a crush on a friend didn’t diminish their connection. He recognized the power and influence those early relationships could hold over someone.

  Near the fireplace, Gage swore and finished his drink. His influential father had been the one to insist the story of Zach’s accident remain private. The gag order surrounding the trauma had been one more complication in an already thorny situation.

  “But why now?” Alec asked, spinning a cue ball like a top under one finger while he slouched against the billiard table. He wore a T-shirt printed with shaded outlines of his most iconic game characters, layered under a custom suit jacket. “Zach’s been dead for fourteen years. Doesn’t it seem strange that she’s taken a renewed interest now?”

  “No.” Gage stalked over to the tray the server had left on the glass-topped cocktail table and helped himself to another shot of bourbon, tattoos flashing from the cuffs of his shirtsleeves as he poured the drink. “Chiara told Elena that she’d given up searching for answers about Zach until the Alonzo Salazar story broke at Christmas. With Mesa Falls and all of us in the spotlight, Chiara saw an opportunity to press harder for the truth.”

  Miles mulled over the new information about Chiara, interested in anything he could gather about the woman who dominated his thoughts. Elena Rollins was a lifestyle blogger who’d visited Mesa Falls to chase a story on Alonzo, but she’d ended up falling for Gage and had backed off. The two women had developed a friendship when Chiara had lent the power of her social media platform to bolster Elena’s following.

  “But that opportunity is going away now that we’ve given the public a story about where the profits from Alonzo’s book went,” Alec chimed in again, using his fingers to shoot the eight ball into a side pocket with a backspin. “Media interest will die out, and we’ll go back to living in peace. No one needs to find out anything about Zach.”

  Even now, it was difficult to talk about the weekend that Zachary Eldridge had jumped to his death off a cliff into the Arroyo Seco River. The men in this room had once argued to the point of violence over whether Zach had planned to take his own life or it had truly been an accident. Eventually, they’d agreed to disagree about that, but they’d made a pact to keep their friend’s memory away from public speculation. It had been tough enough for them to deal with the possibility that Zach had jumped to his death on purpose. The thought of dredging all that up again was...unbearable.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Miles returned slowly, turning it over in his head, trying to see what they knew from another angle. “But just because the public doesn’t know about the mystery benefactor of the book profits doesn’t mean we should just forget about him. We know the boy is thirteen years old puts his conception around the time of the accident. The last time we met, we were going to have a detective track the boy and his guardian.”

  He didn’t remind them of the rest of what they needed to know—if there was a chance any of them had fathered the child.

  Around the holidays, a woman had worked briefly at the ranch under the alias Nicole Smith and had claimed that Alonzo’s book profits were supporting her dead sister’s son—a boy born in a hospital close to Dowdon School seven and a half months after Zach’s death. But before any of the ranch owners could speak to her directly, Nicole was abruptly fired. When they’d tried to track down the supervisor responsible for dismissing her, they learned the guy had quit the next day and didn’t leave a forwarding address.

  All of which raised uncomfortable questions about the integrity of the group in this room. Had one of them ordered the woman’s dismissal? Had Nicole been too close to the truth—that Alonzo Salazar had been helping to support Nicole’s nephew because he knew who’d fathered the boy? They’d learned that the woman’s real name was Nicole Cruz, and they’d obtained some basic information about the boy, Matthew. But they were trying to find her to meet with her in person.

  “I’m handling that.” Weston sat forward on the couch to flick on the huge wall-mounted television screen controlled by a tablet in front of him. “A detective is following a lead to Nicole and Matthew Cruz in Prince Edward Island. He’s supposed to land tonight to check out the address.”

  Wes flicked through a series of photos on his tablet that then appeared on the TV screen, images of Nicole and Matthew—neither of whom they recognized—followed by grainy security system footage from when Nicole had worked at the ranch, as well as some shots of the boy from his former school. The different angles didn’t do anything to help Miles recognize the boy.

  “With any luck, the detective finds them.” Miles turned his attention back to his colleagues. “And brings them to Mesa Falls so we can speak to the guardian at length and request permission to run a DNA test on the boy.”

  “Right.” Wes clicked to another slide labeled “instructions for obtaining DNA.”

  “In the meantime, I’ve sent you all the file and collection kits by courier service. Most of you have already submitted yours, but we still need samples from Gage and Jonah. I’ve got a shipper ready to take them before you leave the meeting today. Alonzo’s sons have already provided samples.”

  The silence in the room was thick. Did Jonah or Gage have reasons for dragging their feet? It had taken Miles two seconds to put a hair in a vial and ship the thing out.

  Jonah blew out a sigh as he shoved away from the pool table and wandered over to a piano in the far corner of the room. He plunked out a few chords while he spoke. “That’s fine. But none of us is going to be the father. Alonzo would have never stood by idly and paid for the boy’s education if any of us were the dad. He would have demanded we own up to our responsibility once we were old enough to assume that duty.”

  “Maybe he was a mentor to the boy’s mother, and not the father,” Gage mused aloud, not sounding convinced. “This kid might not have anything to do with us.”

  “Possibly,” Wes agreed. “But the kid was important to Alonzo, and that makes him important to us. Let’s rule out the more obvious connection first.”

  “Agreed.” Miles met his brother’s hazel eyes, trying to remember the last time they’d been on the same page about anything. “But the more pressing issue today is that Chiara’s social media accounts were hacked and she received an anonymous text threatening more attacks if she kept pursuing answers about Zach’s death.”

  Recalling that morning at his house, Miles felt anger return and redouble that someone had threatened her, a woman who’d gotten under his skin so fast he hasn’t seen it coming. That it had happened while she was in his home, as his guest, only added to his sense of responsibility. That it could be one of his friends, or someone close to them, chilled him.

  “Anyone remember her from when she attended Brookfield?” Gage asked as Wes switched the image on the screen to show a school yearbook photo of Chiara. “When she was known as Kara Marsh?”

  Wariness mingled with suspicion as Miles swung around to face Gage. “You knew?”

  He’d texted Gage that night to ask him what he knew about Chiara, and he’d never mentioned it.

  “Not until two days ago.” Gage held both hands up in a sign of his innocence. “Elena told me. She and Chiara have gotten close in the last month. Apparently Chiara mentioned she used to go by a different name and that none of us remembered her even though she attended a school near Dowdon. If she confided in Elena, she obviously wasn’t trying to hide it. And Astrid must be aware.”

  Miles studied Gage’s face but couldn’t see any hint of falseness there. Of all of them, Gage was the most plainspoken and direct. The least guarded. So it was tough to envision the big, bluff New Zealander keeping secrets.

&
nbsp; From across the room, Alec’s voice sliced through his thoughts.

  “I remember Kara Marsh.” Alec’s eyes were on the television screen. “She came to Dowdon that Christmas asking questions about Zach.”

  Of all the friends, Alec had been closest to Zach. After the accident, he had retreated the most. To the point that Miles had sometimes feared the guy would follow in Zach’s footsteps. He’d wondered if they’d wake up one morning to find out Alec had stepped off a cliff’s edge in the middle of the night. Alonzo Salazar had shared the concern, speaking privately to all of them about signs to look for when people contemplated suicide. Alec came through it, as they all had. They were good now. Solid. But it had been a rough year.

  “Did you talk to her?” Miles asked, needing to learn everything he could about Chiara.

  He’d called this meeting out of a need to protect Zach’s memory. And yet he felt a need to protect Chiara, too. To find out if any of his partners were the source of the leak that led to Chiara’s getting hacked. He’d been watching them all carefully, studying their faces, but he hadn’t seen any hint of uneasiness in any one of them.

  “No.” Alec shook his head as he stroked his jaw, looking lost in thought before his gaze came up to fix on Miles. “But you did. She spoke to you, and then she went to Gage. I was hanging out under the bleachers near the football field with—” he hesitated, a small smile flashing before it disappeared again “—with a girl I knew. Anyway, I was there when I saw Kara sneak onto the campus through the back fence.”

  “You followed her?” Jonah asked, dropping onto the bench in front of the piano.