The Cowgirl in Question
B.J. Daniels

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I dedicate this book to my editor, Denise O’Sullivan. Thank you for your faith, support and encouragement over the years. It’s a privilege to work with you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B.J. Daniels is a former award-winning journalist. Her book Premeditated Marriage won Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine’s Best Intrigue award for 2002, and she also received a Career Achievement Award for Romantic Suspense. B.J. lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, three springer spaniels, Zoey, Scout and Spot, and a temperamental tomcat named Jeff. She is a member of Kiss of Death, the Bozeman Writers’ Group and Romance Writers of America. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards in the winters and camps, water-skis and plays tennis in the summers. To contact her, write P.O. Box 183, Bozeman, MT 59771 or look for her online at www.bjdaniels.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Rourke McCall—Framed for murder, he’s out of prison and back in Antelope Flats determined to get even with the cowgirl who put him in jail.

Cassidy Miller—She must help the man she’s always loved find the real killer—and prove to him just how wrong he is about her.

Blaze Logan—She would do anything to get what she wants. But murder?

Forrest Danvers—Was he murdered because he was with the wrong woman? Or did Forrest have another secret that got him killed?

Cecil Danvers—Someone is going to pay for killing his brother and ruining his life.

Easton Wells—He stole Rourke’s old girlfriend while Rourke was in prison. But is that the only reason he’s running scared?

Asa McCall—The rancher has kept secrets from his family. But now his biggest secret of all is about to come out.

Holt VanHorn—He has a bad habit of stealing things and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gavin Shaw—He never thought he could know too much about anything. He was dead wrong.

Yvonne Ames—She finally wants to come clean about the night of Forrest Danvers’s murder. But is it too late?

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Prologue

Maybe if Forrest Danvers hadn’t been half-drunk or spitting mad, he might have seen it coming.

But then he wasn’t expecting any real trouble as he drove up Wild Horse Gulch in the late-night darkness.

The road cut through sheer rock cliffs, then opened to towering ponderosa pines before topping out on a sagebrush-studded bench that overlooked the Tongue River.

Forrest was a little uneasy, given his reason for being there in the first place. Nor did it help that the night was blacker than the inside of a boot and a storm was coming.

But he was feeling too good to go home yet. For the first time in his twenty-one years of miserable life, he felt he could be somebody. Somebody people respected. Not just another one of those no-count Danvers like his brother Cecil.

He parked his pickup on the bench above the river and rolled down his window, feeling closed in, anxious to hear the sound of the other vehicle coming up the narrow mountain road. She was late. As usual. Women.

The air had an edge to it, a kind of jittery current that set his nerves on end. He blamed the approaching thunderstorm and the lightning that flickered behind dark bruised clouds at the edge of the horizon.

It promised to be one hell of a storm. In this part of Montana, thunderstorms often swept across the vast open landscape, bringing wind that tore branches from the cottonwoods and rain as large and hard as stones that ran in torrents down the dry creek beds like rivers.

Beyond the closer smell of sagebrush and dust, he picked up the welcome scent of the coming rainstorm. It had been far too hot and dry this summer. The ground needed a good soaking and he needed to cool down in more ways than one.

It had been one hell of a night at the Mello Dee Lounge and Supper Club. At the memory, he flexed his right hand. It hurt like hell, the knuckles skinned and bloody. He smiled at the memory of his fist connecting with Rourke McCall’s face.

Forrest could feel his left eye swelling shut. At least the cut over his right had stopped bleeding. That was something. And, he thought taking a shaky breath, his ribs hurt where he’d taken a punch, but Forrest had got in a few good licks himself.

Rourke McCall had just been itching for a fight. Forrest saw that now. Saw that he’d been a fool to oblige the crazy bastard. But what else could he have done? Just let Rourke cut in on the dance floor when Forrest was enjoying himself with Blaze Logan?

That was the problem with Rourke. He thought he owned Blaze, had ever since junior high. What a fool. Anyone with a pocketful of money could have Blaze—at least until the cash ran out.

Forrest rolled a cigarette, lit it and glanced at his watch before tossing the match to the floorboard. In that instant between light and darkness, he looked out and thought he saw someone silhouetted against the storm.

He stared into the darkness, unnerved until lightning lit the horizon and he could see that there was nothing out there but clumps of silver sage and sun-golden grasses bent to the breeze.

Just the booze playing tricks on him. He crushed out the last of his cigarette, wishing now he’d just gone home. Leaning back, he pulled his cowboy hat down over his face and closed his eyes. He was tired and sore and already feeling a little hungover. This had been a bad idea, but if she’d ever get here…

The night air felt good coming in through his open window. He half listened for the sound of the vehicle coming up the creek road, half dozed.

He’d dropped off into a deep, alcohol-drenched sleep when he was startled awake. At first all he heard was the whine of a vehicle engine coming up the road and the low rumble of thunder. Lightning flickered across the horizon, then died, leaving the night even darker.

But as he listened, he realized that wasn’t what had awakened him.

He sat up a little, trying to place the sound. Then he heard it again. The soft scrape of boot leather brushing against sagebrush.

He sat up straight, pushed back his hat and, rubbing his hand over his face to wake up, stared out his open side window into the blackness.

The air seemed to change around him an instant before he saw the barrel of the pistol. Just a glint of blued steel appearing out of the night right next to him and the open window.

He stared at the gun, more than a little startled to realize that he really wasn’t alone, probably hadn’t been for most of the time he’d been sitting there.

He frowned, uncomprehending. In the distance, the sound of the vehicle coming up the road grew closer and closer.

For just a split second, the gun, the gloved hand holding it and the face of the person were illuminated in a flash of lightning. Just long enough for Forrest Danvers to face his killer.

“No!” The deafening boom of the gunshot drowned out his cry. He felt the burning heat as the lead entered his chest. The second shot exploded from the barrel of the gun. He barely noticed it. In the flare of the gunshot, he studied the killer’s face, wanting to hang on to every familiar feature until they met again in hell.

Chapter One

Eleven years later

A storm blew in the day Rourke McCall got out of prison.

At the Longhorn Café, Cassidy Miller brushed back an errant strand of hair from her face and tried to pretend it was just another day as she picked up the coffeepot and headed for the table in the corner now full of ranch hands from the VanHorn spread.

On the way, she made the mistake of looking out the window. The sky outside had turned dark and ominous, dust devils swirled in the street, the first drops of rain pelted the front window and streaked the glass.

Past the rain and dust, someone else was also staring out at the storm—and her. Blaze Logan stood at the window of the Antelope Development Corporation. Their eyes met across Main Street and Cassidy felt a chill rattle through her.

“I’ll take a little more of that coffee, Cass,” called Dub Morgan, the VanHorn Ranch foreman, from the table she’d been heading toward.

Cassidy dragged her gaze away from the window and Blaze, not realizing that she’d stopped walking, and took the pot of coffee over to the tableful of cowboys. But as she filled their coffee cups and joked and smiled, her mind was miles away in Deer Lodge, Montana, where Rourke McCall, the wildest of the McCall boys, would be walking out the gate of the Montana State Prison this morning.

None of her patrons had mentioned it, but everyone in town knew. That was one reason the café was packed this morning and she’d had to call in an extra waitress.

Everyone was wondering if Rourke would come back to town and make good on the threat he’d made against her eleven years ago.

As he was being dragged out of the courtroom in handcuffs, he had called back to Cassidy, “I know you framed me. I’m going to get out and, when I do, I’ll be back for you.”

The judge had given him twenty-five years but Rourke was walking out a free man after only eleven. For most of those years, Rourke had worked the prison’s cattle ranch. Ironic since he’d hated working the family ranch and done everything possible to avoid it in all the years Cassidy had known him.

Good behavior, the warden had told the parole board. “Rourke McCall is a changed man. A reformed man. He is no longer a threat to society.”

No, he was only a threat to Cassidy Miller—no matter what he told the parole board or the warden.

“You okay, honey?” Ellie whispered, slowing as she passed Cassidy with an armload of plates headed for the VanHorn Ranch table.

Cassie nodded and glanced outside again, trying to imagine what it would be like seeing Rourke after all these years. Maybe he really was a changed man. Maybe he was reformed. Maybe he’d forgotten his threat against her.

But even as she thought it, she knew better. Rourke McCall might have fooled the prison officials but he couldn’t fool her.

The bell dinged indicating that an order was up. She moved toward the kitchen, determined to keep up a good front. She didn’t want anyone to know she’d been dreading this day for eleven years. Or the real reason why.

ACROSS THE STREET, Blaze Logan stood at the window watching the crowd at the Longhorn Café and smiling to herself. How appropriate that one hell of a thunderstorm would hit town just before Rourke McCall did.

She could sense the change in the air, smell the rain and expectation, hear the hush that had fallen over Antelope Flats, Montana. She loved nothing better than a good knock-down-drag-out fight. She’d had that and more the night Forrest Danvers was murdered and she was ready for the hell Rourke was going to cause when he got back.

As she caught another glimpse of Cassidy Miller through the café window across the street, her smile broadened. Cassidy. The good girl and a thorn in Blaze’s side since they were kids. Her cousin Cassidy had always been the perfect one. She now owned her own business, was president of the chamber of commerce, helped with every damned fund-raiser in town. No one ever had a bad word to say about her.

“Why can’t you be more like Cassidy,” her father had said from as far back as Blaze could remember.

She and Cassidy competed against each other in regional rodeos and Cassidy always won, and Blaze always threw a fit when she lost.

“You could learn something about being a good sport from your cousin,” her father would say.

But Blaze knew she should have won, had to win, was expected to win because her great-grandmother had been a trick rider with a Wild West show. Her cousin Cassidy’s great-grandmother was nobody.

“Even when Cassidy loses, she’s gracious,” her father would say.

Yeah, well that was because Cassidy seldom lost at anything.

Except when it came to Rourke McCall. Blaze had felt not even a twinge of guilt when Cassidy had confessed back in junior high that her dream was to someday marry Rourke McCall.

Blaze had never paid much attention to Rourke before that. He was tall, sandy-blond with blue eyes and a temper. At the time, he’d been a teenager, moody and full of himself. She could tell by looking at him even back then that he would never amount to anything.

But Blaze was already developing and boys were noticing. Cassidy, on the other hand, was two years younger, and a tomboy.

Getting Rourke to notice her had been a piece of cake for Blaze, who hadn’t really liked him but wanted to win just once. As it turned out, she’d not only beaten Cassidy, she’d ruined any chance her cousin ever had of ending up with Rourke McCall.

Blaze stared across the street, catching glimpses of Cassidy as she worked. Blaze still resented her. Probably because Blaze’s father still threw Cassidy up to her.

The worst fight she’d ever had with her father was over Cassidy.

“My whole life you’ve compared me to Cassidy,” she’d cried. “I’m sick of it. I’m nothing like her and I’m glad.”

Her father had nodded ruefully. “No, you’re right, you’re nothing like your cousin. She’s doing something with her life. She doesn’t just live off her parents.”

“Her daddy ran off and her mother is poor,” Blaze had retorted. “We’re not.”

“I’m not,” John Logan had snapped. “You, my daughter, are going to get a job and start growing up.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m cutting you off. No more money. You’re on your own.”

Blaze hadn’t been able to believe her ears. She’d always been her father’s favorite between her and her stepbrother, Gavin Shaw. How could her father turn against her like this? “You’re doing this because of Cassidy.”

He just shook his head. “You’ve always put your cousin Cassidy down, but it wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more like her.”

Well, Blaze thought wryly, she was damned glad she wasn’t Cassidy now. She wouldn’t want to be in that woman’s shoes for anything. Not today. Not with Rourke getting out of prison and coming back to even the score.

No way was Rourke going to let Cassidy Miller get away with what she’d done to him. Blaze was almost rubbing her hands together in her excitement. Antelope Flats had been too dull for too long, but Rourke McCall was about to change all of that.

Unless he was the one who’d changed. Unless all that good behavior that got him released early wasn’t an act. The thought ruined her day. What if he didn’t come back? What if he really had put the past to rest?

No, not the Rourke McCall she’d known, she assured herself. He’d just sold all of that bull to the warden so he could get out early. Good behavior and Rourke McCall…the two had never gone together, she thought smiling again.

Poor Cassidy Miller. Blaze couldn’t wait. Finally her cousin was going to get her comeuppance. It couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

ROURKE MCCALL WALKED out of Montana State Prison, stopped and, looking up at the wide blue sky, took a deep breath of freedom.

Eleven years. Eleven years of his life.

He heard his little brother get out of the pickup and come toward him. Lowering his gaze from the sky, he took Brandon’s outstretched hand and shook it firmly, smiling at the youngest of his brothers. Of his family, only Brandon and their little sister Dusty had kept in touch with him on a regular basis, and Dusty only on the Q.T. since their father had forbidden it.

“You have any plans?” Brandon asked as he led the way to one of the ranch pickups.

Rourke stopped to study the graphic painted on the pickup door. The words Sundown Ranch were printed over the top of the longhorn in a stylized print. New. He liked the old, more simple script that had been on the trucks since his grandfather’s time much better, but he was sure that a lot of things had changed in the eleven years he’d been gone.

“I mean, if you don’t have any plans, I have a few things going I could let you in on,” Brandon said as he opened the driver’s side door and climbed behind the wheel.

Rourke got in the passenger side. Yeah, a lot of things had changed. He tried to remember if he’d ever ridden with Brandon, who was only nineteen when Rourke had gone to prison. Rourke had only been twenty-two himself. “What kind of things?”

Brandon smiled. “Moneymaking.”

Rourke shook his head and leaned back against the seat, adjusting his cowboy hat. “Thanks, but I have plans.”

He could feel Brandon’s eyes on him. Unlike the warden, Brandon wouldn’t even attempt to give him a pep talk about letting go of the past, starting over, looking at this as a new beginning, forgetting he’d been framed for murder and had just spent eleven years of his life in prison because of it.

He closed his eyes and let the sound of the tires on the pavement lull him. He was free. Finally. Free to do what he’d promised himself he would do all those nights in prison.

He didn’t wake up until the pickup left the highway and bumped onto the dirt road. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know exactly where they were. He’d been down this road enough times to remember every hill and turn and bump. How many times at night in his prison cell had he lain awake thinking about the day he would drive down this road again?

He opened his eyes and rolled down his window, realizing he’d forgotten the exact smell of the sage, the sun-baked earth and summer-dried grasses, the scent of the cool pines and the creek.

He’d forgotten too how much he loved this land. The red rock bluffs, the silken green of the ponderosa trees etched against the summer blue of the sky or the deep gold of the grass, tops heavy, bobbing in the breeze.

McCall Country. Miles and miles dotted with cattle that had been driven up here from Texas by his great-great-grandfather when this country was foreign and dangerous and full of promise.

His memory hadn’t done it justice. White puffs of clouds scudded across a canvas of endless deep blue as the pickup raced along the muddy dirt road, still wet from an earlier rain. Chokecherries, dark as blood, bent the limbs of the bushes along the creek as the summer golden grasses undulated in waves over the rolling hills. And above a narrow draw, turkey buzzards circled, black wings flapping slowly over something dead below.

Rourke fought that old feeling of awe and ownership. He stared out, feeling the generations of men before him who had fought for this land, feeling its pull, its allure and the price of that enticement. No matter how he felt about his old man or how Asa McCall felt about him, Rourke was a McCall and always would be.

The pickup dropped over a rise and he saw it. The Sundown Ranch house. It seemed a mirage shimmering in the afternoon sunlight.

Rourke caught his breath, surprised by the ache in his chest, the knot in his throat. When he’d left here in handcuffs, he hadn’t looked back. Afraid he would never see it again if he did.

“We had a hell of thunderstorm here this morning,” Brandon said.

Rourke could feel nervous waves of energy coming off his brother as they neared the ranch. No doubt Brandon was worried about the reception the two of them would get. Rourke doubted Brandon had told their father that he was picking up the first McCall to ever go to prison.

Brandon slowed the truck, pulled up in the yard and parked. Rourke sat for a moment after the engine died just looking at the ranch house, reliving memories, the good mixed with the bad, all treasured now.

The house seemed larger than even he remembered it: the logs more golden, the tan rock fireplace chimney towering above the roofline more majestic, the porch stretching across the entire front of the building, endless.

“I’ve got some business in town, but I’ll catch you later,” Brandon said, obviously anxious to get going. “Your pickup’s over there. Still runs good. I took care of it for you. Left the keys in the ignition.”

“Thanks,” Rourke said, looking over at his little brother, and extended his hand. “I appreciate everything you’ve done and thanks for coming up to get me.”

“No problem,” Brandon said, shaking his hand, then looking at his watch, fiddling with the band.

Rourke studied his little brother. “You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

“No,” Brandon said too quickly. “I’m fine.”

“These investments you were talking about, they’re legal, right?” Rourke asked, seeing something in his brother that worried him.

Brandon fiddled with the gearshift, seeming to avoid his gaze. “Hey, it isn’t like that, okay?”

It was something, Rourke thought. Something that equaled trouble, sure as hell. “If you need help for any reason—”

“Stop acting like a big brother,” Brandon said, then softened his words. “I’m okay. I can take care of myself.”

Rourke climbed out of the truck and Brandon took off in a cloud of dust. He watched him leave, wondering how deep Brandon was in. And to whom.

As the sound of the ranch pickup engine died off in the distance, Rourke heard the front door of the house open, heard the solid thump of boot soles on the pine floorboards and knew before he turned that it would be his father.

Asa McCall had always been a big man, tall and broad and muscular. He’d also always been a hard man, mule stubborn, the undisputed head of the McCall clan, his word the last one.

The years hadn’t changed him much that Rourke could see. He was still large, rawboned, still looked strong even at sixty-eight. The hair at his temples was no longer blond but gray, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, the sun-weathered face still granite hard and unforgiving.

They stared at each other as Rourke slung his duffel over one shoulder.

“So they let you out,” Asa McCall said, his deep voice carrying across the wide porch.

Rourke said nothing. There was nothing to say. He’d told the old man he was innocent eleven years ago and hadn’t been believed. Not Rourke McCall, the wildest McCall.

“Don’t worry, I’m not staying,” Rourke said. “I just came by to pick up my things.”

Asa McCall nodded. Neither moved for a few moments, then Rourke mounted the steps and walked past his father and into the ranch house without a word or a look, torn between anger and regret.

As he stepped through the front door, he saw that nothing had changed from the Native American rugs on the hardwood floors to the western furnishings and huge rock fireplace.

He turned at a sound and was struck by the sight of a pretty young woman coming out of the kitchen. She stopped, her eyes widening. A huge smile lit her face as she came running at him, throwing herself into his arms.

“Rourke,” she cried. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back.”

He stepped away to hold her at arm’s length to study his little sister. “Dusty? I can’t believe it.”

She’d been six when he’d left, a kid. Now she was a woman, although it was pretty well hidden. She wore boys’ jeans, a shapeless western shirt and boots. Her long blond hair was woven in a single braid down her back and a straw cowboy hat hung from a string around her neck. She wore no makeup.

“Dusty?”

Neither had heard the front door open. They both turned to find their father filling the doorway.

“We got fencing to see to,” Asa said, and turned, letting the door slam behind him.

Rourke listened to his father’s boots pound across the porch. “You best get going. We can visit later. I’ll let you know where I’m staying in town.”

“You’re not staying here?” Dusty cried.

Rourke gave her a look.

“Daddy is so impossible,” she said, sounding like the teenager she was. “I swear he gets more stubborn every day.”

Rourke could believe that. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Cash lives in town. You know he’s still the sheriff?”

Rourke nodded.

“J.T. is running the ranch now, but Daddy and I help. Brandon is hardly ever around. J.T. is probably still out riding fence this morning. Did Brandon leave?”

“He said he had business in town,” Rourke told his sister.

She nodded and frowned. “I hate to think what kind of business. Daddy says he’s headed for trouble and I’m afraid he might be right.”

Headed for trouble. That’s what Asa used to say about him, Rourke thought.

“I’m so glad you’re finally home,” Dusty said, and stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek before closing the front door behind her.

He watched Dusty join their father out in the yard, watched her walk past the old man. Rourke had to smile, recognizing the familiar anger and stubbornness in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. The old man shook his own head as she sashayed past him, giving him the silent treatment just as she’d done to them all when she was mad as a child.

When Asa finally followed after her, he looked older, almost sad, as if another defiant kid would be the death of him.

Rourke’s smile faded as he watched his father follow Dusty to one of the ranch pickups. He stayed there at the window until they’d driven away, then he turned and climbed the wide staircase at the center of the room. At the top, the second floor branched out in two wings. Rourke walked down the wood-floored hallway to his old room at the end of the west corridor. He tried the door, wondering if his stuff had been moved out, the room used for something else.

But as the door swung in, he saw that his room was exactly the same as it had been when he’d left eleven years before. He expected the room to smell musty, at least be covered in dust. But neither was the case. Asa must have had the housekeeper clean it each week. What the hell?

He dropped his duffel on the log-framed bed and looked around, spotting the small straw cowboy hat he’d worn the day he’d won his first rodeo event at the age of seven. His first real chaps, a birthday present for his first cattle drive at the age of nine. His first baseball glove. All gifts from his father, placed on the high shelf Asa had built to store memories.

“In the end, that’s what life comes down to,” his father had told him the day he’d built the shelf. “Memories. Good and bad, they’re all you will ever really own, they’re all that are uniquely yours and ultimately all you can take with you.”

“You think Mom took memories of us to heaven with her?” Rourke had asked, looking up at his father.

Asa’s weathered face had crinkled into a smile, tears in his blue eyes. “She could never forget her kids,” he said without hesitation. “Never.”

“Or you, Dad. I’ll bet she remembers you.” It was the one time he’d ever seen his father cry, and only for those few moments before Asa could get turned and hightail it out to the barn.

Rourke walked through the bedroom, past the sitting room, to open the patio doors that led to the small balcony off the back. Stepping out, he gulped the afternoon air, the familiarity of it only making the lump in his throat harder to swallow.

As he looked out across the ranch, he spotted his brother J.T. riding in. Rourke watched him until J.T. disappeared behind one of the red-roofed barns, then he turned and went back inside.

Too many memories. Too many regrets.

He looked up again at the high shelf and all his trophies from first grade through high school for every damned thing from best stick drawing to debate, basketball to bull riding, baseball to target practice. And not a lick of dust on any of them.

He shook his head, not understanding himself any better than he did his father. He’d been wild from the time he could walk, bucking authority, getting in trouble, but somehow he’d managed to excel in spite of it. He got good grades without trying. Athletics came easy as well. In fact, he thought, studying the trophies on the shelf, maybe that was the problem. Everything had always come too easily.

He glanced around the room suddenly wondering why he’d come back here. Not to get his things. He hadn’t left anything here he needed. His grandfather had left all of them money, money Rourke had never touched. He could buy anything he needed for this new life the warden had tried to sell him on. He didn’t even need his old pickup. Hell, it was fifteen years old.

But he couldn’t leave without taking something. He went to the chest of drawers, opened several and took out jeans, underwear, socks, a couple of once-favorite T-shirts he knew he would never wear again and stuffed them into the duffel bag, zipping it closed.

Then he picked up the duffel bag and started to leave the room. His throat tightened again as he turned and spotted the faded photograph stuck in the edge of the mirror over the bureau.

It was a snapshot of Blaze and Cassidy.

He dropped the duffel bag on the bed and walked to the mirror. Blaze with her mass of long, curly fire-engine red hair and lush body standing next to her cousin at the rodeo grounds. Blaze nineteen and full of herself, he thought with a smile.

His gaze shifted to Cassidy and the smile evaporated. Cassidy looked plain next to Blaze with her brown hair and big brown eyes peering out of the shadow of her cowboy hat. Blaze was smiling at the camera, her hat pushed back. She was smiling at him behind the camera, flirting, being Blaze.

But Cassidy was leaning back against the fence, head angled down, peering out at the camera and him from under the brim of the hat, not smiling. Not even close. Her brown eyes were narrowed in an expression he hadn’t even noticed. Probably because he’d only had eyes for Blaze.

Now, though, he recognized the expression. Anger. Cassidy Miller had been furious with him.

He swore and plucked the picture from the edge of the mirror, remembering when he’d taken it. Only a week before Forrest Danvers’s murder.

Stuffing the photo into the duffel along with the clothes, he zipped it closed again and walked out of the room as he’d done eleven years ago, slamming the door behind him. He’d waited eleven years for this day. He couldn’t wait to see Cassidy.

Chapter Two

Cecil Danvers woke that afternoon with the worst hangover of his life. He rolled off the soiled cot he called a bed and stumbled to the rusted refrigerator for his first beer of the day.

He’d downed most of the can when he remembered what day it was. He stood in front of the fridge, listening to it running, waiting for the sweet feel of justified anger.

For the past eleven years, he’d plotted and planned for this day, but now that it was here, he had trouble working up the murderous rage he’d spent years nurturing.

Rourke McCall was to blame for every bad thing that had happened to him since the night his brother Forrest was murdered.

A lot of people in the county didn’t understand; they just thought Cecil was lazy, that he’d lived off Forrest’s death all these years. They just didn’t understand what it had been like to lose his only little brother, especially one who’d always taken care of him.

Cecil finished his beer, burped loudly and smashed the can in his fist before hurling it toward the trash can.

No matter what anyone said, he knew his life would have been better if Forrest had lived. He certainly wouldn’t be living in this rat hole on the tiny patch of land his mother had left him, living in the old homestead cabin that was falling down around his ears.

Nope. Forrest would have seen that he was taken care of. After all, Forrest was the smart one, the strong one. Hadn’t their old man always said so?

“Forrest is going to make something of his life,” the old man would say. “And if you’re lucky, Cecil, he’ll take care of your sorry ass as well.”

Now he had no one, Cecil thought as he opened the fridge and downed another beer, his eyes narrowing, stomach churning. His father had died right after Forrest’s murder. A farming accident. Happened all the time. Cecil’s mother hadn’t been far behind him. She was always moping around, crying over Forrest as if Forrest had been her only son.

Cecil shoved the memories away and concentrated on Rourke McCall. Yep, if it hadn’t been for Rourke, Cecil wouldn’t be forced to work when he ran out of money, mucking out other people’s horse barns or swabbing the local bars after hours.

He downed the rest of the beer, crushing the can in his fist and throwing it in the general direction of the trash can. Everyone in town was going to say that Rourke McCall had paid his debt to society for killing Forrest.

They’d tell Cecil to forget it, just as they had for the past eleven years. But people had always underestimated him, he thought grimly. He was the last of his family. It was up to him now. Rourke McCall had ruined his life and Cecil wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

ROURKE HAD JUST PUT his duffel on the seat of his pickup and was about to climb in when he saw his brother J.T. lead a large bay mare into the barn.

“Might as well get it over with,” he said under his breath, and walked toward the barn.

J.T. looked up as Rourke entered the cool darkness of the horse barn. The smell of horseflesh and leather, hay and manure filled his senses, sending him back to those cold mornings when he was barely old enough to walk. He and his father would come out here.

Asa would saddle up a horse, then lift Rourke in one strong arm and swing up into the saddle. Together they would ride fence until long after the dew on the grasses dried, the sun rising high and warm over the ranch and the sound of the breakfast bell pealing in the air.

Rourke breathed in the memory as he watched his brother unsaddle the bay, more recent memories of the prison barn trying to crowd in.

“Rourke,” J.T. said, looking up as he swung the saddle off. “Welcome home. So you’re back.”

He’d heard more heartwarming welcomes. “Thanks.”

His brother studied him. “You staying?”

He shook his head.

J.T. made a face and started to walk past him.

“The old man doesn’t want me here. Remember? He disinherited me. I’m not his son anymore.”

J.T. sighed, stopped and turned. “He was upset. He didn’t even do the paperwork. You aren’t disinherited. You never were.”

Rourke tried to hide his surprise.

“You know how he is,” J.T. continued. “Says things when he’s mad that he doesn’t mean.”

“Yeah, well, I just saw him and I didn’t get the impression he’d changed his mind.”

“He also can’t say he’s sorry any better than you can,” J.T. said.

Rourke had been compared to his father all his life. He hated to think he might really be like Asa McCall. As if he didn’t have enough problems.

“I assume you heard he had a heart attack,” J.T. said. “He can’t work the ranch like he used to. I’m doing the best I can with Buck’s help, hiring hands for branding, calving and moving cattle to and from summer range. But Dad’s going to kill himself if his sons don’t start helping him.”

Buck Brannigan was a fixture of the ranch. Once the ranch foreman, he was getting up in age and probably didn’t do any more than give orders.

Rourke looked out the barn door, squinting into the sunlight. “Dad would rather die working than rocking on the porch. Anyway, he’s got other sons.”

J.T. swore. “I’d hoped you might settle down, move back here and help out.”

Rourke shook his head. “Even if the old man would let me, I’m not ready right now.”

“You’re determined to stir it all back up, aren’t you?”

“Someone owes me eleven years,” Rourke said.

“Well, even if you do prove that you were framed, those years are gone,” J.T. said. “So how many more years are you going to waste?”

“I didn’t kill Forrest.”

“Don’t you think Cash tried to find evidence that would have freed you?” J.T. demanded. “Hell, Rourke, a team of experts from the state marshal’s office were down here for weeks investigating this case, but you think that, after eleven years, you’re going to come home and find the killer on your own?” J.T. shook his head in disgust, turned and walked off.

Not on his own. He was going to have help, he thought as he rubbed the mare’s muzzle and thought of Cassidy Miller. He’d kissed her right here in this barn when she was thirteen.

Another memory quickly replaced it. Cassidy on the witness stand testifying at his trial.

“SO THE DEFENDANT READ the note that had been left on his pickup windshield and then what did he do?” the prosecutor, Reece Corwin, had asked her.

Cassidy hesitated.

“Remember you are under oath. Just tell the truth.”

Rourke could see that she was nervous, close to tears. Her gaze came to his, then skittered away.

“He dropped the note, opened his pickup door, got in and drove away,” she said.

“Oh, come on, Miss Miller, didn’t the defendant ball up the note, throw it down, jerk open his pickup door so hard it wouldn’t close properly the next day and didn’t he drive out of the bar parking lot spitting gravel? Didn’t he almost hit several people coming out of the bar?”

“Objection!” Rourke’s lawyer, Hal Rafferty, had cried, getting to his feet. “He’s telling her what to say.”

“Overruled. We’ve heard this from other witnesses. Answer the question,” the judge instructed Cassidy. “And Mr. Corwin, please move on.”

“Yes,” Cassidy said, voice barely audible.

“And what did you hear him say before he left?” the prosecutor asked. This part was new. This part would put the nail in Rourke’s coffin.

Cassidy licked her lips, her eyes welling with tears as she looked at Rourke. “He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’”

“Speak up, Miss Miller.”

“He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’ But he didn’t mean it. He was just—”

“Thank you. No more questions.”

Cassidy had left out one important point his lawyer had been forced to remind her of on cross-examination.

“Who wrote the note that was left on my client’s pickup windshield, Miss Miller?” Hal Rafferty had asked.

Again tears. “I did.”

“And what did that note say?”

Cassidy twisted her hands in her lap, eyes down. “Blaze is meeting Forrest up Wild Horse Gulch.”

“You sent my client to the murder scene?” Rafferty demanded.

“Objection. There was no murder scene until your client got there.”

“Sustained.”

“Why did you write that note, Miss Miller?” the attorney demanded.

She stared down at her hands, crying now, shaking her head.

“What did you hope to gain by doing that?” Rafferty asked.

Again a head shake.

“Answer the question, Miss Miller,” the judge instructed.

“I don’t know why I did it.”

“Did someone instruct you to do it?” the attorney asked.

Her head came up. Rourke saw her startled expression. “No. I…just did it on impulse. I thought he should know what Blaze was…doing.”

“You a friend of Rourke McCall’s?”

She looked at Rourke, then the attorney, and shook her head.

“You were just trying to do him a favor?” the attorney asked. “Or were you trying to set him up for a murder?”

“No.” Cassidy had burst into tears. She’d been just a girl, sixteen going on seventeen, shy and gangly. The jury hadn’t believed that anyone like Cassidy Miller could have set him up.

“Who put you up to it?” the attorney demanded. “Who?”

“No one did.”

But Rourke knew better. Cassidy had left the note. He would never have gone up to Wild Horse Gulch if she hadn’t. He wouldn’t have been framed for murder.

What he didn’t know was why. Or who’d put her up to it.

But he was finally out of prison, finally back, and he was finally going to get the truth out of Cassidy Miller.

AS THE AFTERNOON DRAGGED ON, Blaze Logan found herself pacing in front of the Antelope Development Corporation window or ADC as it was known around the county.

“Sit down, Blaze,” Easton Wells finally snapped. “You’re making me nervous as hell.”

She turned from the window to look at her boss. Easton Wells was thirty-nine, a little old for her in more ways than the nine years between them. He had dark hair and eyes, not bad-looking but nothing like Rourke McCall. Nothing at all. And that was part of Easton’s charm. He had a good future, was divorced—no alimony or children, his ex-wife on another continent and not coming back, and Easton thought Blaze was the hottest thing going.

What could she say? She loved it.

But he didn’t want to marry her. Not yet, anyway.

“What if Rourke doesn’t come back to town?” she lamented out loud.

“I wouldn’t blame him,” Easton said, not looking up from the papers on his desk. ADC was small, a reception area and the larger office that she and Easton shared.

Blaze shifted her focus from across the street to her own reflection in the large front window. She turned to get a side view, liking what she saw, but she wasn’t getting any younger. She was thirty. Almost thirty-one! She needed to think about marriage. And soon. And Rourke’s getting out of prison had given her the answer.

“Rourke will bring a little life to this town,” she said, trying to get a rise out of Easton. “I, for one, think the diversion will be good. I know I’m getting tired of the status quo.”

Easton looked up and shook his head. “I know what you’re trying to do and it isn’t going to work.”

“What?” she asked innocently. She’d been dating Easton for years now off and on. Believing a woman should always keep her options open, she’d also seen Sheriff Cash McCall a few times. She’d had to initiate the impromptu dates with Cash. Like all the McCalls, he was stubborn and dense as a post. She’d had to practically throw herself at him to even get him to notice her.

Easton wasn’t dense. He just didn’t want to get married again. But she intended to change that. And Rourke was going to help her. He just didn’t know it yet.

“You’re trying to make me jealous,” Easton said.

She smiled and stepped over to his desk, placed both palms down on the solid oak surface and leaned toward him, making sure her silk blouse opened at the top so he got a tempting view of the cleavage bursting from her push-up bra.

“East, we both know there isn’t a jealous bone in your body,” she said in her most seductive voice.

He looked up, halting on the view in the V of her blouse appreciatively before looking up into her face.

“It would be a mistake to fool with Rourke,” he said, looking way too serious. That was another problem with Easton. He took everything too seriously, like work. He often got mad at her because she was late in the mornings or took too long at lunch or didn’t finish some job he’d given her or spent too much time on the phone.

“If I were you, I’d steer clear of Rourke,” Easton said.

“Would you?” she asked, lifting a brow as she studied him. “Why, East, you and Rourke used to be best friends.”

He nodded. “A long time ago. I’m sure Rourke has changed. I know I have.”

Not for the better necessarily, Blaze thought.

“I think you’re just mad at Asa. You wouldn’t even be in business if he’d gotten his way.” Asa had campaigned with all his power and money against coal-bed methane drilling in his part of Montana. “But you beat him.”

Easton shook his head. “Asa McCall is never beaten. All I did was make an enemy of him, which is a very dangerous thing to do.”

“And just think how much money you’ve made because of it,” she purred.

“Like I said, I wouldn’t mess with any of the McCalls if I were you. You don’t want that kind of wrath brought down on you.”

She studied him, a little surprised. Easton didn’t scare easily. “You make it sound as if the McCalls have done something to you.”

“I just wouldn’t want any of them to have a reason to come gunning for me,” Easton said.

Blaze straightened, a frown furrowing her brows. “Is there any reason Rourke would come after you?”

He looked up at her. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“If anyone should fear Rourke it’s my cousin Cassidy,” she said, going over to the window to look out at the Longhorn Café again.

“You aren’t on that kick again.” He groaned. “You can’t believe that Cassidy set him up for murder.”

“Does it matter if she did or didn’t as long as Rourke thinks she did?”

“It might to Rourke,” Easton said behind her. “You’re counting on him being that hothead who left here. But it’s been eleven years, Blaze. He isn’t going to come back the same man who left. He just might surprise you. Instead of going off half-cocked, he might have had time to figure out some things about the night Forrest was murdered.”

“You think Rourke is going to blame me?” She let out a laugh and turned to look at him. “Rourke was crazy in love with me.”

“Was being the key word here,” Easton said without looking up at her.

She glared daggers at him. “I take it back. I think you are jealous. Or afraid that Rourke might find out something about you. Let’s not forget that you’re sleeping with me now. Are you worried that Rourke won’t like that?”

Easton laughed without bothering to look up. “I think Rourke probably learned his lesson with Forrest.”

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

“It means Rourke won’t be killing any more men who you’ve slept with. Anyway, where would he start?” Easton laughed.

She continued to glare at him, but he didn’t look up. “Let’s not forget that you were at the Mello Dee too the night Forrest was murdered.”

Easton finally looked up at her, his eyes dark. “Yes, I witnessed the way you work men, Blaze. I saw how you got Forrest to dance with you to make Rourke jealous. I know how you operate.”

He was making her angry, but she hated to show it, hated to let him know that he was getting to her. She also didn’t like the fact that he thought he knew her. In fact, was wise to some of her methods when it came to men.

“You’re afraid of Rourke,” she challenged, wondering if she’d hit a nerve or if it was just simple jealousy. “Is there something you wanted to tell me about that night?”

Easton shot her a pitying look. “I had no reason to kill Forrest Danvers. Can you say the same thing?”

“I couldn’t kill anyone,” she cried, but right now the thought of shooting Easton did have its appeal.

“Take my advice,” he said, going back to the work at his desk. “Stay away from Rourke. It isn’t going to make me jealous, but it might make you regret it.”

“That almost sounds like a threat.”

“I’m trying to save you from yourself, Blaze,” he said with a bored sigh. “But I’m not sure anyone can do that.”

Blaze turned her back on him again, wondering what she saw in the man. Little, other than what he could afford her, she told herself. And he’d always wanted her. No matter what he said, he’d been jealous of her and Rourke.

She turned her attention back to the Longhorn Café and her cousin Cassidy.

Easton was right about one thing. Blaze had danced with Forrest to make Rourke jealous—and to see what he would do. She hadn’t expected Forrest to fight him. Nor had she expected Rourke to kill Forrest up at Wild Horse Gulch. At least that was her story and she was sticking to it.

But what if Rourke wasn’t that hotheaded bad boy McCall anymore? She hated to imagine. No, Rourke would come back hell-bent over the past eleven years he’d spent in prison, and he’d make a show of looking for the “real” killer, then he’d go berserk one night and end up back in prison. He wouldn’t be here long enough to find out much of anything about the night Forrest was murdered.

She realized she could make sure of that—once she and Rourke took up where they’d left off. She would keep him so busy he would have little time to be digging into the past. And that way she’d know exactly what Rourke was finding out about the night Forrest was murdered. She’d make sure he didn’t find out anything she didn’t want him to. He wasn’t messing up her future. She’d see to that.

She caught a glimpse of a pickup she remembered only too well from years ago. Her pulse jumped. Rourke McCall. That pickup brought a rush of memories as Rourke drove slowly up Main Street.

As the pickup passed her window, all she saw of him was his silhouette, cowboy hat, broad shoulders, big hands on the wheel, but there was no doubt about it. Rourke was back in town.

She waved excitedly, but unfortunately he was looking in the direction of the Longhorn Café—and Cassidy. Blaze let out an unladylike curse.

Wasn’t this what she wanted? Rourke back? Rourke set on getting even with Cassidy? But just the thought of Rourke interested in Cassidy for any reason set her teeth on edge.

“What?” Easton said impatiently behind her.

She turned to smile at him. “Rourke. He’s back.”

Easton couldn’t have looked more upset and she realized she had him right where she wanted him. Soon she’d have Rourke where she wanted him, too.

If Easton didn’t ask her to marry him by the end of the week then her name wasn’t Blaze Logan.

But as she looked at her future fiancé, she had a bad feeling he was hiding something from her.

HOLT VANHORN PICKED UP one of his father’s prized bronzes from the den end table and hefted it in his hand. The bronze was of a cowboy in chaps and duster, a bridle in his hand as if headed out to saddle his horse, his hat low on his head, bent a little as if against a stiff, cold breeze. Holt had little appreciation for art. What interested him was the fact that the bronze was heavy enough to kill someone.

“Holt?”

He turned, surprised he hadn’t heard his father come into the den. Mason VanHorn was frowning and Holt realized his father’s gaze wasn’t on him but on the bronze Holt had clutched in his fist.

He put down the work of art carefully, avoiding his father’s eye. For his thirty years of life he’d been afraid Mason could read his thoughts. It would definitely explain the animosity between them if that were the case.

“So what brings you out to the ranch, Junior?” Mason asked as he walked around his massive oak desk to sit down.

Holt heard the bitterness behind the question. Mason had never gotten over the fact that his only son hated ranching and if he could get his hands on the land, would subdivide it in a heartbeat and move to someplace tropical.

Holt had moved off the ranch as soon as he could, living on the too-small trust fund his grandfather had left him and what few crumbs Mason had thrown him over the years.

His father didn’t offer him a chair. Or a drink. Holt could have used the drink at least.

Mason VanHorn was a big man, broad-shouldered with black hair streaked with gray, heavy gray brows over ebony eyes that could pierce through you faster and more painfully than a steel drill bit.

Holt looked nothing like his father, something that he knew Mason regretted deeply. Instead, Holt had taken after his mother, a small, frail blond woman with diluted green eyes and a predilection for alcohol. His mother had been lucky, though. The alcohol had killed her by fifty. At only thirty, Holt didn’t see an end in sight. At least not as long as his father kept the purse strings gripped in his iron fist.

“I need to go away for a while.” Holt’s voice broke and he saw his father’s startled expression.

“Away where?” Mason asked.

Holt shook his head. The massive desk was between them. He had the stronger urge to shove it aside and go for his father’s throat but, he thought wryly, with his luck, the desk wouldn’t budge and he’d crash into it and break something. He was good at breaking things. Clumsy as an oaf, he’d once heard his father tell his mother after he had managed to break another bone. If he hadn’t been aware of his father’s disappointment in his only son, he certainly was then.

“I…” The words seemed to catch in his throat as if barbed, and he hated his father even more for making him feel like a boy again in his presence. “I just need to get out of town for a while.”

“Where?”

Anywhere. As far away as he could get from Antelope Flats, Montana. “I’d like to go down to Texas. Maybe go back to school.” He was grabbing at anything he could think of.

“What is this really about?” Mason VanHorn demanded.

His father always saw through him. Mason VanHorn held the purse strings, so he also had a stranglehold on Holt’s life.

“Please just give me enough money to—”

“Is this about Rourke getting out of prison today?” Mason demanded.

Holt heard the disgust in his father’s voice, saw the worry in his face. No, not worry, the affirmation of what his father had suspected for years.

“All I need is enough money to tide me over—”

“VanHorns don’t run like cowards,” his father said through clenched teeth.

“Right.” Holt saw then that his father would freeze in hell before he’d help him get away from here. “Never mind. I should have known you wouldn’t help me.”

He turned too quickly, bumping into the end table. The table overturned. The bronze cowboy hit the tile floor with a crash and a curse from his father.

Holt didn’t stop to pick up the bronze or the table. He headed for the door, wondering how far he could go on thirty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents.

“If you run, everyone will know you have something to hide,” Mason VanHorn yelled after him.

Chapter Three

Cassidy had never run from anything in her life. But as she stood in the kitchen of the Longhorn Café smelling the freshly baked rolls that had just come out of the oven, every instinct told her to take off. Now.

Rourke was back. She could feel it. The rest of the town seemed to have given up on him. The café had cleared out as the day dragged on and he hadn’t shown. Ellie was taking care of what few customers were left. Cassidy had gone into the kitchen to help Arthur, her cook, who was working on the nightly dinner special.

Trying to keep to her usual routine, Cassidy made the dinner rolls for that evening. She liked cooking and baking. Especially making bread. She could work out even the worst mood kneading dough.

But it didn’t work today. Nothing worked. And she knew she had to get out of here. Out of the café. Maybe out of town. The state. The country. She couldn’t face Rourke. Not today. Maybe not ever.

“I’m going to take off for a while,” she told Ellie, who was sitting in an empty booth reading a magazine, waiting for Kit, the night-shift waitress to come in.

“You all right?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah.”

“He’s not coming back to town. Hell, if I were him I’d head for Mexico or maybe South America,” Ellie said. “I’ve seen pictures of it down there. It’s nice.” Ellie was always dreaming of going somewhere else. But at almost fifty, it wasn’t looking like she would ever go any farther than a couple of hours away to Billings or the thirty-mile drive into Wyoming to Sheridan.

“Everything under control?” Cassidy asked Arthur as she stuck her head in the kitchen.

The cook was forty-something, tall, pencil thin, with a shock of dark hair beneath his chef’s hat. He gave her a look filled with sympathy. It was the last thing she needed right now. “Take care of yourself, sweetie.”

She smiled and nodded, taking off her apron and hanging it up before heading into the small office at the back. Retrieving her purse, she glanced around to make sure there was nothing she would need.

How could she know what she would need? She had no idea where she was going. Or if she was even going any farther than home. She was new to running and it already didn’t suit her.

She turned out the office light and started down the hall toward the back door.

“Not planning to skip town, are you?” asked a strident voice behind her.

Cassidy froze.

“Not Cassidy Miller,” the voice mocked.

She turned slowly, a curse on her lips as she met her cousin’s blue-eyed gaze. “I’m going home for the day, not that it’s any of your business.”

Blaze Logan nodded, smiling as if she’d always been able to see through her.

Cassidy feared that might be true.

“No one would blame you if you turned tail and ran,” Blaze said in her comforting, I’m-your-friend tone.

Cassidy had fallen for that act when she was young and stupidly confided in her cousin. She was no longer that young or naive. Normally she avoided Blaze when at all possible and Blaze hadn’t gone out of her way, so their paths had crossed little in the past eleven years. Cassidy should have known that Rourke’s return would change all of that.

“What would I have to run from?” Cassidy asked as she stepped toward her cousin.

Blaze laughed, a bray of a sound. “Rourke McCall.”

“I have nothing to fear from Rourke.” If only that were true.

Blaze eyed her. “I just saw his pickup go by.”

Cassidy suppressed a shudder, hoping she hid her emotions as well. “Go away, Blaze. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or does it? I’ve always suspected you knew something about Forrest’s murder, something you don’t want Rourke to know.”

Blaze paled under the thick layer of makeup she wore. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Cassidy raised a brow. “I wonder if Rourke will think so?”

“Don’t you dare try to incriminate me,” Blaze snapped. “You start telling Rourke a bunch of lies—”

“Oh, I’m sure Rourke has had a lot of time to think about the past. He’s probably figured out by now why you danced with Forrest that night.”

“How could I know that Rourke would try to cut in, let alone that Forrest would pick a fight with him?”

“Oh, Blaze, I think you knew exactly what you were doing. Everyone had heard the rumors going around about you and Forrest. And all the time Rourke thought he was the only one you were seeing. It certainly gave Rourke a motive for murder, didn’t it?”

All the color had gone out of Blaze’s face. “You started those rumors,” she said on a whisper. “You would have done anything to break up Rourke and me.”

Cassidy let out a laugh that was almost a sob. “It was a junior-high crush, Blaze. I much prefer his brother Cash.” Cash had asked her out a few times. She’d declined.

But Cassidy knew Blaze was interested in Cash.

“Cash?” Blaze demanded in a choked cry. “You and Cash?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cassidy said. “Are you interested in him, too?” She hated the cattiness in her voice. “You change McCall brothers the way you change shoes. It’s hard to keep track. Whatever happened to J.T. McCall? Didn’t work out?” J.T., the eldest and the one in charge of the ranch, hadn’t given Blaze the time of day. Cassidy had seen him cross the street to avoid Blaze. Cassidy knew that feeling only too well.

Blaze glared, nostrils flared. “Be careful little cousin. If Rourke doesn’t kill you just like he did Forrest, someone else might.” With that, she spun around and stalked out of the café.

Cassidy stared after her, feeling weak and sick. Blaze always brought out the worst in her. But it was Blaze’s last words that struck to her core. What would an embittered Rourke McCall do? Would he make good on his threat to see her pay for her part in sending him to prison?

She wondered now why she hadn’t run the moment she heard Rourke was getting out of prison. Her stupid pride. She didn’t want the town to think she was a coward. Or that she had anything to hide.

Both were a lie.

She took a breath, then went back into her office, turned on the light, put her purse away. She had work to do. As much as she wished otherwise, she wasn’t cut out to be a runner.

ROURKE DROVE all the way through Antelope Flats, surprised at how little it had changed. There were a few new houses on the edge of town, a half-dozen different businesses, but basically in eleven years the town had changed little.

Antelope Flats was like so many other small Montana towns. There were more bars than banks, more churches than places to eat. There was no mall. If you wanted to buy clothes, you either went to the department store on Main that had had the same sign out front since the 1950s or you went to the Western store where you could also buy a rope or a hat or a pair of boots.

What was new was Antelope Development Corporation or ADC as Brandon had called it. Rourke hadn’t noticed the office the first time he drove past. He’d been too busy looking across the street at the Longhorn Café.

He’d always asked Brandon about Cassidy, afraid she might clear out of town before he got out of prison. So he knew that Cassidy had bought the Longhorn Café and it had been thriving under her management. She’d also bought the old Kirkhoff place at the edge of town.

“And Blaze?” Rourke would ask his brother.

“She’s working for Easton Wells. He started ADC across the street from the Longhorn.”

“What’s ADC?” he’d questioned, frowning.

“Antelope Development Corporation. Mostly they deal with landowners and coal-bed methane gas well leases.”

“Our old man must love all those wells everywhere around the property,” Rourke had said. Asa McCall would shoot anyone who even suggested doing anything to his land but farming and ranching it.

“There’s money in that gas,” Brandon said. “A whole lot of money. You can’t believe the wells that have gone in around the county.”

“Blaze seeing anyone?”

Brandon would shrug. “You know Blaze.”

Yeah. He knew Blaze, he thought as he pulled into a space in front of the Longhorn Café and sat for a moment trying to see inside the café through the front window. The afternoon sun made the glass like a mirror, reflecting him and his old pickup.

He’d been waiting for this day for so long he could hardly believe it had finally come. He got out, slammed the truck door and walked toward the entrance to the café. Town seemed a lot busier than it had eleven years ago.

He saw people he used to know, but he didn’t acknowledge them. Most just stared. He knew he’d changed in the past eleven years. He told himself maybe they didn’t recognize him. Or maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe they were afraid of him.

He pushed open the door to the Longhorn. The bell tinkled and he stepped into the café, and was hit by the mouthwatering smell of freshly baked bread.

His stomach growled and he realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He took a stool at the counter. The café was empty this late in the afternoon except for one couple he didn’t recognize at a booth. He could hear voices in back, the clang of pots and pans, the creak of an oven door opening and closing.

He picked up a menu, telling himself that Cassidy probably wasn’t even here. The menu covers were the same plastic with a local color photograph of red bluffs, tall blue-green sage and a longhorn steer in the foreground. It had been a shot of the McCall Ranch. He liked that she hadn’t changed it. And wondered why she hadn’t, given how at least one McCall felt about her.

The McCall Ranch was the only one around that raised longhorns. There was no money in anything but beef cattle, but his father kept some longhorns, raising them as his great-grandfather had. A reminder of what had started the ranch, a link to the past that Asa hadn’t been able to let go of.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cassidy come out of the back of the café. She didn’t recognize him at first. Not until he looked up from the menu and his eyes met hers.

CASSIDY STOPPED dead in her tracks. Although all day she’d been expecting to see him walk into the café, she was shocked to see Rourke sitting at the counter, shocked that after all these years, he really was free and home.

Her heart thudded in her chest so loudly she swore he had to have heard it. Except he wouldn’t know why. He’d think it was out of fear.

Her biggest shock was how much Rourke had changed. He’d been more of a boy than a man when he’d left, tall and lanky, not yet filled out at twenty-two.

Now there was no doubt that he’d become a man, from his strong jawline to his broad, muscular shoulders. But there was a coldness to him that showed in the pale blue of his eyes, a hardness that hadn’t been there before. Bitterness and anger showed in the hard set of his jaw, in the way he carried himself, a wariness, a spring-coil tension like a wild animal that knew he had predators nearby.

Her heart dropped at the thought. Rourke believed she was one of those predators. She shuddered to think what his life had been like the past eleven years in prison. And the part she’d played in sending him there.

“Rourke,” she said, and forced her feet to move toward him, careful to keep the counter between them. She put down the rack of glasses she’d been carrying, shoving her shaking hands deep into her apron pockets so he wouldn’t realize how much just seeing him affected her.

She glanced past him to the street and beyond it to the large window of the ADC where Blaze was standing, watching them. Her stomach churned. Blaze was hoping for a show. What did Rourke have planned?

“Cassidy.” There was a softness to his voice that belied the icy malice in his expression.

His voice was the only thing about this man that was the same as the boy she’d been unable to get out of her thoughts for years. She hated what just the sound of that voice did to her.

“I heard you were released,” she said, needing to say something. “I’m glad you’re back.”

He smiled at that. “I’ll bet.” He looked down at his menu.

“Rourke, I—”

“I’ll have the same thing I used to.”

A hot roast beef sandwich, a coffee and a salad with blue-cheese dressing.

She stared at him. “I was hoping—”

“You do remember what I used to order when your mother worked here, don’t you?”

Fumbling, she pulled her pen and order pad from her pocket and wrote down his order, writing fast so he wouldn’t see how her hands shook.

He smiled a smile that had no chance of reaching his eyes.

There was so much she wanted to say to him, but she could see he wasn’t going to let her.

Back when she and Rourke were teens, Cassidy’s mom would have taken Rourke’s order. Cassidy would have been bussing tables, lurking in the kitchen so Rourke wouldn’t see her, feeling ashamed to be caught sweaty, in her white uniform, her apron soiled from clearing dirty tables.

He was looking at her as if he knew her deepest, darkest secrets, knew that she hid in the kitchen when he came in, and listened to him talking and joking with her mother.

“Anything else?” she asked, looking down at the scribbled order on her pad, then up at him.

“No.” His expression was colder than the grave.

She stared at him, confused. She’d expected him to lay into her the moment he saw her. She wished he had. His silence was more frightening. Tension arced between them like a tightwire. She felt as if she were balancing on it, unsteady, ready to fall any moment.

“I’ll put your order in,” she managed to say.

He picked up the menu to look at it again, then without a word turned away from her to stare out the front window, toward ADC and Blaze? He was enjoying her discomfort. He wanted to make her suffer, drag this out.

She turned and walked back to put in his order, trying hard not to run. She wished Kit would come in for her shift, but Cassidy knew she wouldn’t leave anyway. She couldn’t escape Rourke. Not in a town the size of Antelope Flats. Not even in a state as large as Montana.

Needing desperately to keep busy and yet not wanting to hide in the kitchen, she returned to the counter with more clean glasses and utensils.

She could feel his attention on her, hard as stones, but he didn’t say a word. Nor did she try to talk to him. It was clear Rourke was calling the shots.

Kit came in finally, passing Cassidy and making big eyes at her as if to say, Did you see who’s sitting at the counter?

“You want me to wait on him?” Kit whispered on one of Cassidy’s trips to the kitchen.

“No. I have it covered,” she said, wondering if Rourke was straining to hear their conversation, just as she had strained to hear his so many years ago.

She returned to the counter to refill the sugar, salt and pepper containers. The one time she looked in his direction he was smirking at her as if he knew what she was up to and it didn’t fool him for a minute.

She should have picked another task to do. She spilled sugar, knocked over salt and pepper shakers, fumbled and dropped things. Come on, Rourke. Just get it over with.

The bell dinged that his order was up. She hurried back to get it, so nervous she felt nauseous.

She wiped perspiration from her forehead with her arm. Her skin felt flushed, then dimpled with goose bumps as a chill rippled over it. She blotted her hands on a clean towel, avoiding the sympathetic looks of Ellie, Kit and Arthur.

“Don’t you want me to call the sheriff?” Arthur said.

“No!” She lowered her voice. “Please. I can handle this.”

Picking up Rourke’s order, she hurried back out to the counter and put it down in front of him.

“Thank you,” he said, his eyes boring into her.

“Can I get you anything else?” Her voice only broke a little but she could see that he heard it, relished in the fact that he had her flustered.

“No thanks. I have everything I need. At least for the moment,” he added.

She was weary of this game and desperate to say the words she’d wanted to say to him for eleven years. “Rourke, I think we should—”

“I’ll let you know if I need anything else,” he said, cutting her off.

He didn’t want to hear her tell him how sorry she was for what had happened to him. Or how badly she felt about the part she’d played in it. He wanted to be angry. To make her suffer. Didn’t he know how much she’d suffered already?

No, she thought, looking into all that icy blue. He wanted to strike out at her for his own suffering. He wanted someone to pay. And he’d decided eleven years ago, who that person would be.

She stared at this hardened, cold, embittered man with only one thing on his mind: getting even with her. The realization left her feeling empty inside.

He’d never paid her any mind at all—except for one kiss when she was thirteen and then again after Forrest’s murder. He’d looked right through her before then.

She refilled his coffee cup. He thought she’d framed him for murder. That he’d been the only one to live his life under a cloud of suspicion for the past eleven years.

If he thought he could make her feel more guilty, he was wrong. She had blamed herself all these years.

Just do it, Rourke. Do whatever it is you’ve been planning to do to me for the past eleven years.

He must have seen the change in her. His eyes narrowed and he frowned as if suddenly confused.

There was a crash of pots and pans from the kitchen, followed by some mild cursing. Cassidy hurriedly returned to the kitchen.

Arthur looked up sheepishly. “Nerves,” he whispered.

She smiled at him, knowing how he felt, and bent to help him and Kit retrieve the clutter of pans that had fallen from the shelf. Ellie had finally left, it appeared. “These all have to be washed.”

“I’ll do it,” Kit volunteered, kneeling beside her on the floor. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

Cassidy nodded. She felt as if she’d just gotten the news that someone close to her had died. Only she and Rourke had never been close. Their only connection was his need for revenge. And her need to set things right.

She’d tried to just before Rourke was moved to the prison in Deer Lodge. She’d gone to the jail to try to talk to him but he’d been too angry to listen—let alone believe her.

Cassidy handed Arthur a pan as she rose. Hiding her tears, she made a swipe at them, then turned to go back out to the counter. Rourke would talk to her. And if he didn’t, well, she’d talk to him.

But when she reached the counter, she looked around in confusion.

He was gone.

She stared in surprise at the spot where she’d left him just minutes before. His plate was empty. He’d left the price of his meal and a generous tip on the counter.

She was torn between relief and regret. Both made her weak. She leaned against the counter, fighting back her earlier tears. She felt drained, bereft.

“Go on home,” Kit said as she scooped up Rourke’s empty dishes and wiped down the counter. “You’ve had a long day.”

Cassidy could only nod. It had been the longest day of her life.

She took off her apron, hung it up and went to her office to retrieve her purse again. This time, she didn’t hesitate. She opened the back door, trying not to run. She desperately wanted to go home, take a hot bath, mourn for all that had been lost.

The door swung open and she stepped out.

Rourke was leaning against his old pickup, arms folded across his chest, his cowboy hat pushed back, the last of the day’s sunlight on the face she’d dreamed about for eleven years. Some of those dreams had turned into nightmares.

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