Rancher's High-Stakes Rescue

by Beth Cornelison

As Daniel slowly swiveled his chair, he realized the room had gone quiet and everyone was waiting expectantly, their gazes shifting from him to the counter and back again. When his own gaze got there, he saw why. There was the blonde, tall, pretty, not small—just a couple inches shorter than him—but slim and curvy and definitely looking like a California beach girl. Her hair was super short—last time he’d seen her, it was long enough to wrap his hands in—and to anyone who didn’t know her, she looked like a ray of sunshine on a dreary day.

  But he knew her.

  He’d been engaged to marry her.

  Until she’d dumped him in front of every single friend and relative they’d had.

  What in hell was she doing here?

  * * *

  Natasha Spencer would bet there wasn’t a person in the room who had any idea how much it was killing her to stand there and let them—let Daniel—stare at her. She used to have a lot of nerve—more then than now. Back then, she would have dared them to look their longest and hardest. She even would have done a few model-on-the-runway turns so they could form their impressions, back and front. Now she just stood, half a smile frozen on her face, and wished for a sudden case of amnesia. People always stared, but if she didn’t know why, she couldn’t care.

  She’d hoped Daniel would come to the counter, maybe walk off to a distant corner or even outside with her. There was an overhang out there that provided protection from the rain. But he showed no inclination to even rise from his chair. He was leaving it to her.

  She took a few more steps, until the counter blocked her way, and tried for a better smile. “Hello, Daniel. I was wondering if we could talk.”

  Her words echoed off the high ceiling, followed immediately by the swivel of eight or ten heads to look at him. His silence was going to be even more booming and echoey, the kind they could get lost in and never find their way out of, and the hell of it was, he was entitled.

  “We could always talk. Our problem was communicating.”

  Funny. The words were in what she considered his usual tone of voice: even, cool, rational, calm. Growing up the way she did, she’d always loved even, cool, rational and calm. It had soothed her every time he’d said something as benign as, Do you want seafood or Thai for dinner?

  But there was an edge to his voice that she’d heard so seldom she rarely remembered it, a sharp edge that passed for angry in his cool, calm world. It made her gut tighten. She lived with guilt all the time, and she hated it. Almost as much as she hated coming here.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say to that, especially nothing she wanted to say in front of his coworkers. She didn’t turn and slink out, though. Unless he’d changed tremendously in the past few years, he wouldn’t shut her out. He was too courteous to leave any conversation hanging like that and too curious to leave this one hanging. No matter what he felt, there was one question he would have to ask: Why the hell are you here?

  Yeah, this was a curse-inducing moment if he’d ever had one.

  Water was pooling around her shoes, and the air-conditioning gave her chills where her dress was damp from blowing rain. She’d left an umbrella next to the door, but it hadn’t proven much help when the wind brought the rain in sideways. She thought longingly of returning to the room she’d rented, taking a warm bath, having a bottle or two of wine and coming up with a new plan, because apparently this one wasn’t working.

  Then, with a heavy sigh, Daniel stood and walked toward the counter. His feet were bare, she realized, cute with his dark gray suit, white dress shirt and black tie. He looked more approachable barefooted...though that was just fantasy. Sometimes he was an easy man for mushiness and sentimentality. Other times, he was logic and pragmatism personified.

  He stopped with ten feet still between them. “What?”

  She caught a whiff of the cologne he’d worn since he was sixteen, when he’d filched a bottle from his dad’s bathroom. She never remembered the name, but she knew the bottle. She’d bought it often enough for him in their time together.

  “Archer and Jeffrey send their love.”

  His only response was a twitch in his jaw. He must have already figured out she’d located him with his fathers’ help. It wasn’t as if he and she still had any friends in common. With another man, she might have pleaded for him to not be angry with Archer and Jeffrey, but Daniel’s relationship with them was such that he would never blame them for giving him up to her.

  No, he would save his blame for her.

  “There’s a diner across the street from the courthouse. Could we go there for a cup of coffee?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, but she couldn’t tell what he was looking at: his desk, the clock on the wall back there or the big dark-haired detective whose desk was nearest his. Asking for permission to go or an excuse not to?

  After a moment, he said an ungracious, “All right,” and started to come around the counter. Halfway he turned back, went to his desk, pulled a pair of running shoes with socks stuffed inside from a drawer and tugged them both on. Running shoes with a suit. She would definitely have to tell Jeffrey about that.

  Finally he met her in the lobby, shrugging into his raincoat, while she picked up her umbrella. She waited until she was outside, beneath that little overhang, to shake the water away and then open it. Without speaking, she offered to share it with him. Without speaking, he moved far enough away to make his answer clear.

  She supposed the space between the police station and the courthouse qualified as a town square. A gazebo stood in pride of place, a grassy area around it, and a parking lot on the east side. She’d never heard of Cedar Creek until Archer had told her the name, and she hadn’t seen nearly enough, but it seemed a sweet town, with an old, well-preserved downtown, lots of stone and brick, a lovely mix of commercial and residential spreading about a mile along First Street.

  Natasha couldn’t think of anything she wanted to say that he might want to hear, so she grabbed the anxious, antsy Tasha in her brain around the throat and kept her quiet. Soon enough, she would have to talk, and she wouldn’t get a sympathetic reception, and it was going to be hard enough without Tasha running her mouth.

  Her legs were wet when they reached Judge Judie’s Diner. The woman who owned the hotel down the street had referred her there for lunch, and the coffee had been unusually good.

  She and Daniel reached for the door at the same time. He backed off before their hands touched. She’d forgotten he liked doing little courtesies like that. She pulled the door open, closed her umbrella and set it in a galvanized bucket for that purpose just inside.

  “Sit wherever you like, hon.” The waitress gave Daniel a warmer smile. “Good afternoon, Detective Harper.”

  She chose the last booth along the wall and started to slide onto the back bench. Daniel shucked his coat, draped it over a chair at the next table and shooed her to the opposite side, so he faced the waitress, though she doubted that was his sole intent. These days she was more comfortable sitting where she could see the door and who came through it. According to popular legend, so were most police officers.

  The flirty waitress came. Natasha ordered coffee. Daniel asked for pop and a piece of pecan pie. When the woman was back behind the counter, he folded his hands together in his lap and said, “Well?”

  Something sad settled in her stomach. She’d thought he might give her a break. Five years had passed. He’d moved on, moved up. He’d had other relationships. He’d probably even fallen in love again. She’d thought, for old times’ sake, he might bury the hatchet, and not in her.

  “How are you?” she asked hopefully.

  Irritation flared in his dark eyes. “You want chitchat? I’m fine. I like Cedar Creek. I like my job. I like it so much that I suggested my fathers consider moving here when they retire. How are you? Why are you here? Just making rounds of the people-I’ve-screwed-over club? Are you going in or
der? Kyle, Eric, then me? Did I miss anyone?”

  Heat warmed her face. The fact that it was well deserved didn’t make it any less embarrassing. And he did miss one. It was Kyle, Eric, Daniel and Zach. Opera had its Four Tenors, her mother teased, while Natasha had her Four Fiancés. Her older sister referred to Daniel as Runaway Bride, Third Edition.

  The waitress returned, giving them curious looks as she set down drinks and a dish of pie that looked incredible. “Can I get you anything else, Daniel?”

  He turned his attention to the waitress, and a sort of smile twitched into place. “No, thank you, Taryn.” The smile disappeared as soon as she walked away. He took a bite of pie and washed it down before scowling at Natasha. “Look, I have a body found in a burned-out car, an attempted murder where the victim’s still touch-and-go and a woman to interview in the morning whose husband just broke her jaw for the second time in two years, plus her arm and her shoulder and her eye socket and might have done enough damage to leave her blind, to say nothing about the rest of the cases piled on my desk, and it’s the second Thursday of the month. First responders’ league at the bowling alley, and the chief gets annoyed when his detectives don’t show up. Just say what you want to say, Natasha, then do your disappearing act again. Preferably for good this time.”

  This had been a stupid idea. There were a dozen different better ways to do what she needed, ways that didn’t involve laying eyes on Daniel or having to feel his bitterness and know she was wholly responsible for it. She dug ten dollars from her purse, laid it on the table and slid to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’ll find another way.”

  He didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t even watch her walk all the way to the door; she felt the instant his attention shifted elsewhere. When she stepped outside and turned to the right, toward her hotel down the block, she glanced back at the last possible second and saw Taryn sliding into the seat she’d vacated.

  Though she had no right to care, somewhere deep inside, it hurt.

  * * *

  By the time Daniel returned to the station, the shift change was over and Cheryl had gone home. Thank God for small miracles. He was surprised she hadn’t hung around to ask questions about Natasha—important ones like, Where did she get that cute dress? and OMG, don’t you love those shoes? A person would think, working in a police station, Cheryl understood the concept of You have the right to remain silent, but it didn’t register with her.

  He’d slid into his chair and started shutting down his laptop when Morwenna popped out of the dispatcher’s shack and zeroed in on him. She was a few years younger than him, had come to Oklahoma from a small village in Cornwall long enough ago that her British accent was hit or miss, and she had a rather unique fashion sense. She was the least annoying person in the office besides Ben and the chief, and she and Daniel had actually considered going out on a few occasions before deciding neither appealed to the other in the right way.

  She nudged one of his shoes before perching on the edge of his desk. “That’s some fashion statement you’re making, Detective.”

  “Don’t tell my dad. He’d be mortified.” When Natasha had seen his running shoes, she’d looked like telling Jeffrey was exactly what she had in mind. Of course, Jeffrey’s mortification would be feigned. It was the reaction people expected from a man in his business.

  “Eh, my mum’s mortified all the time by my clothes. She says I’m trying to embarrass her into an early grave.”

  “Yeah, didn’t I see your mum out on her twelve-mile run this morning in the rain? She didn’t look like she might drop dead anytime soon.”

  “Not unless it’s from exhaustion. She says she can’t skip her training just because of the weather. She’s got an ultramarathon coming up next month.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Something extreme and excessive.” Morwenna stretched out one leg, flexing her muscles inside the pink tights, and sighed. “Do you know what’s it like when your mum has a better body than you do?”

  Daniel frowned at her. “Remember Jeffrey? Been a model since before I was born?” A few of the people he worked with knew his fathers were gay, but only Morwenna knew much about them. She liked things that made people different. People who weren’t different, she sighed, were so much the same.

  “Ooh, yes, I forgot. I saw that last ad he did for Migliora cologne. Whew. If I didn’t know... Yeah, I can see how you’d feel second-best compared to him.”

  “I didn’t say I felt second-best,” Daniel protested. “He’s...”

  “Something to aspire to.” She slid to her feet and started back across the room.

  “Hey. I thought you were going to ask about...”

  “Natasha? I’ll get to it, all in good time.”

  “How do you know—I never told you her name.”

  She smiled smugly. “That’s some good detecting there, Daniel. Bet a clue never gets past you, does it?”

  Daniel scowled at her until she was out of sight, then began packing up his desk. If somebody offered him a nickel, he’d go home and to bed. But like he’d told Natasha, the chief didn’t like it when they skipped bowling night. With all his refined tastes, why couldn’t Jeffrey have insisted on teaching him to play polo or ride dressage or something like that?

  He made it out of the station without talking to anyone else, slogged his way through puddles and streams and reached the car with his feet soaked again.

  It was only a few blocks to the duplex he rented in one of Cedar Creek’s older neighborhoods. It was a nice house, built of deep-red brick and topped with green-clay roof tiles. The place had been built with a main entrance on the street it faced and a servants’ entrance on the street that sided its corner lot. Fifty-some years ago, the owner, with two spinster daughters, had made the servants’ entrance identical to the main one and divvied up the interior into two halves of a whole.

  Sad to think all that exacting work was easier than finding husbands for the daughters.

  He didn’t have to be at Thunder Lanes Bowling Alley until 6:30 p.m., so he showered, then sprawled on the couch to watch the news before heading out. When his cell phone signaled a text, he frowned. His parents had told Natasha where to find him. Had they also given her his cell phone number?

  It wasn’t her. That was relief he was feeling. He was pretty sure, even if it felt kind of strange. It was Jeffrey.

  Are you still speaking to us?

  Of course.

  Did you speak to her?

  No more than I had to.

  I hope you weren’t rude. Even if she deserved it.

  Daniel scrubbed his face. Sometimes he had trouble telling the difference between plain speaking and rudeness. He’d often been accused of the latter when he simply wasn’t mincing words. Had he been rude to Natasha? Yeah, the people-you’ve-screwed-over bit had probably crossed the line. He certainly could have phrased it better.

  Though he also could have phrased it the way Archer would have, with a few alphabets’ worth of f-words.

  I might have been. A little.

  Your father said we should ask you first, but it seemed really important to her.

  Daniel responded with one of the lessons Archer had taught him that Jeffrey had always tried to unteach: it’s easier to apologize later than to ask permission first.

  His dad prefaced his answer with a frowny face.

  Are you okay?

  He considered it. Yeah, he was feeling a little cranky, but he was always cranky. He leaned toward the serious-dour-cynical side on the best of days, and this day had already gone down the toilet before Natasha showed up.

  I’m good. I get to go bowl tonight.

  Hope you get nothing but strikes. Love you.

  Daniel typed the same, then tossed the phone aside. What excuse had Natasha given Jeffrey and Archer to get his whereabouts from them? What could possibly be
important about talking to him now, five years after she returned his engagement ring via her sister? The time for saying, Gee, Daniel, I’m having some doubts, was long past.

  Or, Sorry I broke your heart.

  Even, Sorry I didn’t have the nerve to humiliate you in person.

  Funny that she’d come all this way to talk and, after they left the police station, she’d said a total of nine words to him. How are you? I’m sorry. I’ll find another way.

  To do what? Clear her conscience? If she felt guilty about the way she’d ended their relationship, that was fine, but he had no absolution to offer. It was over and done with. He’d even learned something in the process: to not believe for a second that he could be the one to change her. She’d told him on their second date that she’d run out on two previous fiancés, but he’d been stupid enough to think this time would be different. He would be different. He would be the one who made her want to stay.

  Over and done with.

  He’d believed that for a long time, since he’d reached the point where he went entire weeks without thinking about her. Missing her. Wondering what he hadn’t given that made it so easy for her to leave. He’d believed it when he finally started dating again, when he’d thought he was falling in love again. It hadn’t happened—the falling in love—but he liked to think it would have if they had been at different stages in their lives.

  But if it was over and done with, why was he so darn irate?

  * * *

  The Prairie Sun Hotel, located a few doors from Judge Judie’s, was a three-story building with a sandstone facade and leaded-glass double doors leading into the lobby. It had begun life as a mercantile, later became a JCPenney, then an indoor antiques mall and now was a boutique hotel. It had been an easy choice for Natasha after seeing the cookie-cutter motels on the highways leading to Tulsa. Parking in the tiny lot out back was the only downside, but she could live with that.

  She could live with it easier if she wasn’t convinced both she and her car were going to sprout mushrooms if the rain didn’t stop soon.