A killer in a sleepy Texas town?

A Cavanaugh Justice romance

Worn-out homicide detective Sullivan Cavanaugh’s looking for some peace and quiet in Forever, Texas. But once Sully meets feisty ranch foreman Rachel “Rae” Mulcahy, it’s clear that quiet isn’t in the cards. Especially when one of Rae’s wranglers turns up dead. Can Rae and Sully outrace the killer to crack the case—and could Sully’s stint in Forever be one for keeps?

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

Also by Marie Ferrarella

Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

Cavanaugh on Duty

A Widow’s Guilty Secret

Cavanaugh’s Surrender

Cavanaugh Rules

Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard

Cavanaugh Fortune

How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

Cavanaugh or Death

Cavanaugh Cold Case

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Cavanaugh Cowboy

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09394-1

CAVANAUGH COWBOY

© 2019 Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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To

Jessica,

Who Still Hasn’t Read

A Single One Of These.

All My Love,

Mom

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Prologue

“Something wrong, boy?” Seamus Cavanaugh asked. He was the long-retired police chief and currently the head of a small but thriving security firm, as well as the official patriarch of an extremely large clan that was firmly entrenched in the law enforcement community. He lowered himself into a love seat beside Sullivan Cavanaugh, one of his nephew Angus’s sons.

Angus was one of his late younger brother Murdoch’s sons. Despite the fact that there were enough Cavanaughs within Aurora, California, to populate their own small town, and Seamus was far from spending his days sipping a scotch and watching shadows elongate themselves across his front porch, he felt it his duty to watch over each and every one of them. From the oldest—his son Andrew, a retired police chief like himself—to the youngest, Dugan and Toni’s daughter, who was about to reach her first birthday, Seamus took an interest in all of them.

At first, Sullivan Cavanaugh didn’t realize that his great-uncle was speaking to him. There were a lot of people at this gathering and consequently a lot of noise. It was another one of his uncle Andrew’s typical impromptu gatherings—nobody cooked like Uncle Andrew—and every inch of the house and grounds was stuffed with members of the Cavanaugh family as well as other friends, all of whom, in one way or another, dedicated their lives to keeping the good citizens of Aurora safe.

Sully had hoped that coming here would be enough to erase this burned-out feeling he’d been carrying around, a feeling that had unexpectedly descended over him even as he had wound up almost eighteen months’ worth of following cold leads and circular trails before finally finding the murderer he’d been so relentlessly pursuing.

Usually, once a case was put to bed, he would feel buoyed up, invigorated and ready to start again on a new case.

But not this time.

This time, the burned-out feeling remained, growing only more oppressive, preventing him from going on.

Still, he hadn’t thought it was that obvious.

Sully blinked, shifting his body toward his great-uncle.

“Nothing’s wrong, sir,” he answered, doing his best not to sound the way he felt.

Steel-gray eyebrows drew together over exceedingly penetrating dark eyes.

“Don’t give me that, boy. I’ve seen that look before. You just solved the Gilmore case, didn’t you?” It was a rhetorical question.

“My team and I did, yes,” Sully replied.

Everyone in the room was aware of that, he thought. Aware, too, that it had been a team effort even though for some reason, Sully felt unaccountably alone at this point. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling this way.

“That was rather an important case,” Seamus commented. “Even the mayor took an interest in it. And yet here you are, looking like your favorite dog just died.”

Sully shrugged. “I guess it’s all those long hours finally catching up to me. Maybe I just need to go home and get some rest.”

But Seamus didn’t appear convinced.

“It’s more than that,” the onetime police chief said. Seamus scrutinized the man seated beside him in silence for a moment before asking, “Burnout?”

There was no sense in lying, Sully thought. Even though he was in his early seventies, the old man was too sharp to try to fool.

“I guess maybe,” Sully acknowledged with a careless shrug. “But I’ll get over it.” He said it more to convince his great-uncle than himself.

“I’m sure you will,” Seamus told him with the confidence of a man who had seen and lived through a great deal in his lifetime. “But in the meantime, maybe you need a little extra help.”

“Extra help?” Sully repeated, not sure what his great-uncle was telling him.

His guess was that the man was going to suggest possibly a temporary closer acquaintance with Johnnie Walker.

But he didn’t.

Instead, Seamus nodded and said, “A change of scenery.”

Sully didn’t see how that could help and dismissed the suggestion. “I’m not sure if a vacation—”

Seamus continued as if Sully hadn’t said anything. “What do you think about Texas?”

“Texas?” Sully echoed. He’d never been to that state, nor did he have any desire to change that. “I don’t really think anything about Texas,” he began but just like before, he got no further.

“I have this old friend who runs a diner in Forever, Texas. She’s also got this small horse ranch,” Seamus told him. “I’m sure if I contact her, Miss Joan’ll let you stay there.”

Sully looked at his great-uncle, bemused. Everyone knew that the man could be a bit eccentric.

“You call your old friend Miss Joan?” Sully questioned.

Seamus saw nothing unusual about that. “Everyone does,” he said. “All I have to do is pick up a phone and call her—”

“That’s okay, really,” Sully replied, cutting his great-uncle off. He began to rise. “I don’t need a change of scenery.”

Seamus caught his wrist. For a man in his seventies, he had an exceptionally strong grip. Sully sank back down.

“Yes,” Seamus insisted with emphasis, “you do. And as I seem to recall, wide-open spaces don’t intimidate you. You ride, don’t you?”

The old man’s memory was as sharp as Uncle Andrew’s. And, like all his uncles, he also had all the answers before he asked the questions, so there was no point in pretending that he didn’t know his way around a horse, Sully thought. He did. Riding tended to relax him. That went all the way back to his childhood and summers spent with his father, enjoying wide-open spaces.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Good,” Seamus pronounced. “Nothing left to do but pack your bag.”

Sully eyed the older man uncertainly. Seamus was assuming a lot here.

“But you haven’t even called your friend yet,” he pointed out.

Seamus leaned in closer to him.

“The good thing about old friends, Sully,” Seamus said in a low, confidential voice, “is that you know their answer even before you ask the question. Another good thing is that you can always count on them for a favor.” As he sat back, the older man’s smile widened. “Now, stop arguing with me, boy, and pack your bag.”

Chapter 1

Miss Joan knew the minute that Sully Cavanaugh walked into her establishment.

She wasn’t looking toward the diner’s entrance at the time, but she saw the suddenly dazed expressions of utter admiration on her waitresses’ faces. The two young women, Mandy and Beth, appeared to have been suddenly struck speechless.

Mandy recovered first. Sighing deeply, the dark-haired young woman murmured, “That is one tall, cool drink of water.” Sheer appreciation rang in her voice.

“There’ll be no sipping from that glass,” Miss Joan informed both the young women sternly. “He’s the great-nephew of a friend of mine.”

“I’ll say he’s great,” Beth pronounced with enthusiasm.

Miss Joan frowned and waved the two young women toward their work areas. “You two have tables to bus,” Miss Joan reminded the mesmerized duo. “I suggest that you get to them before the piles get too large.”

As a police detective, Sully was used to walking into unfamiliar places, his every footstep carefully observed, with only seconds for him to assess whether or not his life was in jeopardy. This situation wasn’t that serious, but he was still aware of the fact that he was being closely scrutinized.

Probably because he was a stranger, Sully guessed. From what he’d gathered from his great-uncle, Forever was, for the most part, a small, tightly knit community.

The thin older woman at the counter made him think of an eagle, dissecting his every step as he drew closer to her. She was trim, narrow shouldered and a redhead, most likely a natural one once, but given her age, he guessed that she sought out a little artificial help to maintain the deep red color.

She’d been beautiful once, he thought. And he could see that back in the day, she had definitely been the type who had caught his great-uncle’s eye.

“Excuse me,” Sully said, clearing his throat.

The redheaded woman looked at him, and then at his hat.

Belatedly, he remembered to take off the black Stetson that his great-uncle had gifted him with when he’d left Aurora, bound for Forever. He wasn’t accustomed to wearing a hat, but the sun outside made it almost a necessity.

Running the brim along his fingers, he said, “I’m looking for Miss Joan.”

Miss Joan stopped wiping down the small counter space directly in front of her. Leaning slightly forward on the hand that was against the counter, she informed him, “You found her.”

Sully put out his hand. “I’m Sully Cavanaugh. I think that my great-uncle called you to say that I was coming out.”

Miss Joan glanced down at the offered hand but waited a beat before finally shaking it.

“No, he said he was sending you out for your own good,” she corrected. “He said something about you needing a place to regroup.”

Sully was accustomed to being a private person and waiting before offering any information beyond the bare minimum. This woman already seemed to know more about him than he was happy about.

“I don’t know about that—”

“He did,” Miss Joan continued, cutting him off. Hazel-green eyes slowly slid over the length of his torso, making no secret of the fact that she was assessing what she saw. “You look a lot like Seamus,” she told him. “Back when he was young and good-looking,” she added. “I imagine he’s rather old, craggy and fat by now.” Her voice rose slightly at the end of her statement, a silent invitation to be contradicted.

“He’s still pretty trim,” Sully told her. “And I think he sees himself as wise, not craggy.”

“But he is old,” Miss Joan said, noticing that the young man before her hadn’t said anything to contradict that.

“Old?” Sully corrected that impression now. “Not so you’d notice.”

Miss Joan waved a hand at his words. “You’re his family. You have to say that.”

Rather than protest, Sully took out his cell phone. He pressed the app where he kept family photographs and found the one he’d taken of his great-uncle earlier in the year.

He held it up for her to view. “Judge for yourself, Miss Joan.”

Rather than taking the phone from him, she took hold of Sully’s hand to steady it. Miss Joan peered intently at the photograph he had pulled up.

She pursed her lips and asked suspiciously, “When was this taken?”

Sully thought for a moment. “Around the first of the year.”

Her eyes narrowed, looking at him like a seasoned interrogator. “This year?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My, my,” she murmured under her breath, releasing his hand. “If I wasn’t already spoken for, I might think about looking Seamus up again, see if some of that old magic was still there.”

Sully slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Old magic?” he echoed.

Although Sully had always considered himself to be pretty open-minded, it was hard picturing someone his great-uncle’s age having anything that even remotely resembled a love life.

Miss Joan gave him a somewhat impatient look. “Use your imagination, boy. I’m not going to spell it out for you,” she informed him. “I’m a lady.”

Sully chose to avoid the subject altogether by changing it. “You and Uncle Seamus have the same way of addressing me.”

Miss Joan raised her eyes to the handsome, rugged young stranger’s face.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. Saying ‘boy’ is a lot easier than remembering everyone’s names. Although I do,” the woman added authoritatively as a coda, just in case he thought she didn’t.

Sully smiled at this woman who apparently had once known his great-uncle extremely well. “I never doubted it, ma’am.”

Miss Joan surprised him by frowning. “Don’t keep calling me ma’am,” she chided. “Makes me feel like I’m a thousand years old.”

“No way, ma’—Miss Joan.” Denying her assumption, Sully quickly corrected himself before he wound up slipping again.

She nodded. “Keep practicing, boy. Meanwhile, sit down and take a load off,” she instructed, nodding at the stool that was directly to his right. When he did as he was told, she pulled out a menu from beneath the counter and slid it directly in front of him. “What’ll you have? We’re serving lunch, but I can have Angel whip up breakfast for you if you’d rather have that.”

Sully didn’t bother looking at the menu. He left it right where it was. “No need to go to any trouble,” he told Miss Joan. “I just wanted to stop by to say thank you and to pay my respects—”

“If you want to pay your respects,” Miss Joan informed him, cutting Sully off, “you’ll eat something like I said. Can’t have you wandering off with an empty belly.” She stopped and peered at him. “What are you grinning about?”

Sully did a little self-editing before answering the woman. “Uncle Seamus said you had a way about you.”

Miss Joan laughed and took a guess at the exchange between Seamus and his great-nephew.

“Probably said I was like a stubborn mule,” she corrected. Seeing that Sully was about to deny her assumption, she said, “And he’s right. I am. So stop sitting there, giving me lip, and order something. The sooner you eat, the sooner we can get you out to the ranch.”

“Then I can stay there?” Sully asked.

He knew that his great-uncle had said that the woman had extended the invitation, but Sully still had his doubts that the invitation had actually been tendered. He really didn’t want to impose if she didn’t want him staying at the ranch. After all, from start to finish, this had all been Seamus’s idea, not his.

“That’s what Seamus and I agreed on,” Miss Joan replied with an air of finality. And then her eyes bored into the young man before her. “Why, you change your mind about staying?”

“No, ma’—Miss Joan.” Sully caught himself at the last moment again. “It’s just that I am surprised,” he admitted.

“How so?” Miss Joan asked.

She was aware that not just her two waitresses, but almost everyone within the diner at this point was paying attention to this handsome, dark-haired young man with the liquid green eyes. That he was oblivious to the attention he was garnering spoke well of him.

“You don’t know me from Adam,” Sully replied. He was used to friendly people, but they all knew him. This situation was different.

“Maybe I don’t,” Miss Joan admitted. “But I know Seamus, and he wouldn’t send me someone who wasn’t trustworthy, even if that someone turned out to be a relative of his.” And that was that in her book. “You got any other doubts that you’re wrestling with that I can put to rest?”

A small hint of a smile curved the corners of Sully’s mouth. He shook his head. “None.”

“Okay, then,” Miss Joan declared. “Let’s get your order out of the way and then, while Angel makes it for you, you can tell me all about what that sly devil of a man is up to these days.”

Sully had a feeling that once he got back to Aurora, Seamus would ask him the same questions about Miss Joan. “Well, Uncle Seamus said to be sure to thank you for putting me up.”

Miss Joan waved a thin, slightly blue-veined hand dismissively.

“He already said that on the phone when he called. I’m interested in what he’d been doing for the last forty years before that phone call.” Then, because he didn’t begin to immediately answer, Miss Joan switched subjects like a rerouted runaway train and nodded at the menu she had placed in front of him. “Made up your mind yet?”

The woman jumped around from topic to topic like a frog landing on hot lily pads, Sully thought. But even though he’d been in her company for less than ten minutes, he knew better than to make that observation to her. So instead, he made his selection.

“I’ll have today’s special,” he told Miss Joan, pushing the menu to the side.

Miss Joan didn’t bother turning the menu around. Though it changed every day, she knew the selections by heart.

“Mandy,” she called over her shoulder, “tell Angel we need her special.” She fixed Sully with a look. “Rare, medium or well-done?”

He preferred rare, but he knew that to some cooks, that meant almost raw, so he went the safe route. “Medium.”

Miss Joan nodded, obviously approving his selection. “Good choice,” she pronounced. Glancing at the waitress she’d summoned, she saw that the young woman seemed rooted to the floor. Mandy was staring at Sully as if he was the most tempting ice cream sundae she had ever encountered. “Well, you heard the man, Mandy. Get a move on.”

Coming to, Mandy mumbled, “Yes, Miss Joan.” The brunette spun on her heel and made her way through the kitchen’s double doors.

Miss Joan didn’t bother suppressing the sigh that escaped her lips. There were times when the young women she took under her wing and into her employ could be a trial.

Turning back to Sully, she said, “All right, that gives us a little time to kill. Tell me what that old man’s been up to.”

The diner had slowly been filling up since he’d first walked in. Sully was aware of the way each and every one of the patrons who came in stared at him before they went to either a booth or one of the stools at the counter. But more than that, he was aware of their growing number.

“Don’t you have to see to your patrons?” he asked Miss Joan, hoping to redirect her attention toward something else.

The expression on Miss Joan’s face told him she knew exactly what he was up to. And she had an answer for that.

“I own this place, Sully. That means that I get to do what I want whenever I want—within reason. Since I’ve got two girls taking orders and bringing them back, plus a third girl coming in about fifteen minutes from now, that means that right now, I get to ask questions and find out what that old Romeo is doing these days.”

“Romeo?” Sully repeated incredulously.

He had been just about to take a sip of the coffee Miss Joan had poured for him, and now he was glad that he hadn’t. Otherwise he was certain that he would have wound up choking on it. Or, at the very least, spitting that coffee out in a spray and making unplanned, unwanted contact with the man he’d just glanced at sitting on his left.

“Your great-uncle,” Miss Joan clarified. “He might look like a harmless old man to you, but unless I miss my guess, there’s nothing harmless about him.” She fixed Sully with a deep, probing look. “Am I right?”

She had that right, Sully thought, recalling Seamus’s recent history. His great-uncle was more active than men half his age.

“Well, he gave retirement a try,” he told Miss Joan. “But then a few years back he showed up on Uncle Andrew’s doorstep one evening, saying that he just really wasn’t the retiring type and what he really wanted was to get back in the game.”

Miss Joan didn’t seem surprised by the revelation. Despite her earlier question, she had never envisioned Seamus Cavanaugh quietly sitting in a rocking chair, watching life passing him by.

“And did he?” she asked.

“Well, since he couldn’t get back into the police department because of his age, he decided to start up his own firm,” Sully told the older woman. “At first, it was going to be a detective agency, but he realized that that might require a lot of stealth, undercover work and although he really hated to admit it, he wasn’t as quick or as spry on his feet as he once was. Running a security firm suited his needs far better.”

Miss Joan’s deep, rich laugh echoed through the diner. “That sounds just like Seamus,” she said with something that sounded like affection. And then her tone shifted just a little as she asked Sully, “So what does his wife have to say about this newest undertaking of his?”

“Nothing,” Sully answered. He saw Miss Joan’s expertly drawn-in eyebrows rise in a silent query, so he answered her question before she asked it. “His wife died more than ten years ago. That’s what prompted him to pack up and go live in a retirement community to start with. But a few years into that, Uncle Seamus decided that kind of life was just too stagnant for him.”

“Humph,” Miss Joan reflected. “A retirement community would be too inert and soul killing for a man like Seamus,” she declared. She leaned in a little closer again. “So, how’s his firm doing? Really.”

His great-uncle had just taken on another operative and he was still turning away business. Sully had to admit that the man was happier than he’d seen him in a long while. But that was something for Seamus to share with Miss Joan on his own.

So Sully just replied, “Keeps him busy.”

Miss Joan nodded, thinking. “Maybe once you’ve sorted out whatever it is that brought you down here, Harry and I will invite Seamus to come on out for a visit.”

“Harry?” For a moment, Sully drew a blank. Was this someone in Forever, or from Seamus’s past?

“My husband,” Miss Joan clarified, adding, “the man who finally wore me down and pushed a ring on my finger. Technically, the ranch you’ll be staying on is Harry’s. But the man’s got no more use for it than I do. So now we’ve got a foreman running things, and every once in a while,” she added like a recently remembered footnote, “we sell one of the horses bred there.”

Mandy appeared at her elbow with a tray. “Angel sent out the lunch you asked for.”

“I didn’t ask for it. He did,” Miss Joan corrected. Taking the tray from the waitress, the diner owner quickly distributed what was on there and placed it in front of Sully. “Here’s your lunch, boy. Hope it meets with your expectations.”

The statement was politely worded, but there was no mistaking the confidence that was behind it. Miss Joan was expecting nothing short of a euphoric response from the first forkful to the last.

Well, Sully thought, half amused, half bemused, he could always fake it if need be.

He cut into the steak and eased the first piece into his mouth while Miss Joan watched him, waiting for his response.

When flavor exploded in his mouth, he was slightly surprised and deeply relieved.

“It’s good,” he told his great-uncle’s friend.

“Of course it’s good,” Miss Joan answered. “I told you it would be. Were you expecting that it wouldn’t be?”

“No, Miss Joan,” Sully answered politely, “I wasn’t expecting anything else except what you said.”

Miss Joan merely smiled, knowing that he was humoring her. But given who he was and who his great-uncle was, she didn’t mind. She nodded her head. “You’ll do, boy. You’ll do.”

Chapter 2

Miss Joan smiled and nodded with approval as she cleared away the empty plates.

“Well, for a man who didn’t want to eat anything, you certainly did justice to that steak and apple pie,” she commented, then swiped a cloth along the counter, getting rid of any lingering crumbs. Finished, she asked, “Can I get you anything else?”

“Only if you want to watch me explode,” Sully answered.

He placed his hand against his stomach as if he was trying to keep the contents inside from suddenly emerging.

“Wouldn’t want to see that,” Miss Joan told him with a puckered expression. “All right then, if you can wait here for a while—no more than an hour—Harry said he can come by and bring you up to the J-H Ranch.”

Sully saw no reason why he needed to be taken by the hand and escorted. “I don’t want to put you out any further,” he told Miss Joan. “I’m sure I can find the ranch on my own. Just point me in the right direction and tell me approximately how many miles the ranch is from here.”

The lines along Miss Joan’s forehead furrowed, forming a skeptical pucker.

“Are you sure?” she asked. She was used to townspeople finding their way around, but this was a tenderfoot, and she had no knowledge about his innate skills. “Because Harry won’t mind. The man loves company and he loves to talk. Says he doesn’t get much practice with me around. Something about sucking up all the oxygen in the room,” she added, shaking her head and dismissing her husband’s words.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Sully told her. He noticed that Mandy reached under the counter to take the dishes that Miss Joan had cleared away. The waitress lingered just long enough to look at him longingly. “Once I get settled in, I would love to meet with your husband, Miss Joan, but right now, I’m anxious to see where I’ll be hanging my hat for the next few weeks.”

“You’re not just going to be hanging your hat,” Miss Joan informed him. She eyed Sully, trying to decide if he was just talking or if he was serious. If it was the latter, he needed to be set straight. “You understand that you’re going to be working for your keep once you’re at the ranch. My foreman doesn’t have much patience with people who don’t pull their own weight or are waiting to be served,” she told Sully.

“Oh, I understand,” he answered, not wanting there to be any misunderstandings. “Uncle Seamus made the terms of this arrangement very clear, and to be honest, I’m really looking forward to working with my hands.”

Miss Joan studied him for a moment, decided he was being honest and then nodded. “All right then, about those directions you wanted.”

Flipping over the menu she had just used earlier, Miss Joan took out the pencil she had in her apron pocket. Using a minimum of strokes, she drew a very basic map for Sully that took him from the center of the town to edge of the ranch that she and Harry owned.

Finished, she put the pencil back into her pocket with a flourish and let him have the map.

“You sure you don’t want to wait for Harry?” she asked, looking at him somewhat dubiously.

“No, this’ll do fine,” Sully assured her, tapping the map she had drawn for him.

Miss Joan had never accepted anything at face value. This was no exception. “How often do you get lost?”

“I don’t,” he said simply. “I just keep on going until I get there.”

Her expression was only partially skeptical at this point.

“All the same, I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for losing one of Seamus’s great-grandkids, even if he does have a bunch of them to spare,” Miss Joan said.

“You won’t be.” His tone was final, indicating that the discussion was at an end. Sully reached into his pocket again, this time to take out his wallet. He was about to flip the folded leather open. “How much do I owe you for lunch?”

Miss Joan’s face darkened, like clouds gathering in the sky just before a storm. “You take your hand out of your pocket, boy, or your journey’s going to be over before it ever gets started,” she warned him. Under her watchful eye, Sully did as he was told—for now. “Nothing was said about there being a charge for lunch.”

Still, Sully’s hand lingered by his pocket. “I’d feel better paying my own way.”

“And I’d feel better if I were twenty years younger, but we can’t all get what we wish for,” Miss Joan snapped. “Now get going. And be sure to tell Rae I sent you.”

“Ray?” Sully asked.

Miss Joan nodded. “That’s the foreman. Rae Mulcahy. Otherwise you might find yourself being shot for trespassing.”

He should have known, Sully thought. People out here stripped things down to the basics.

“Right. I’ll introduce myself first thing,” he promised the woman. “Thank you for lunch, Miss Joan. It really was every bit as good as you said.”

She accepted her due. “Of course it was. You don’t stay in business as long as I have by lying to people. Don’t let Rae work you too hard,” she told him as an afterthought as Seamus’s great-nephew began to leave the diner.

Sully’s mouth curved a little as he took in her warning. “Not possible,” he replied just before he took his leave.

* * *

The twenty-some-odd mile trip to the J-H Ranch went by so quickly, Sully found that he was there before he realized it. If it weren’t for the tall wooden gate proclaiming the ranch’s name, he wouldn’t even have known that he had reached his destination. He would have just thought he was out on the open range.

Part of the problem was that the land had a sameness to it that didn’t set apart one area from another.

Getting out of the 4x4 truck he had rented at the airport when he had landed here in Texas, Sully opened the gate. Getting back in, he drove through to the other side, then got out a second time in order to close the gate behind him. He didn’t want to accidentally allow one of the horses to escape, although right now, he saw no sign of any kind of life forms in the vicinity.

Well, you said you wanted a change, right? Sully asked himself. And this is certainly a change.

While Aurora wasn’t a bustling metropolis the way Los Angeles and San Francisco were, it was definitely not anywhere nearly as deserted-looking and desolate as the land just outside of Forever was.

A person really had to be comfortable in their own skin to live out here, Sully thought. Otherwise, they could easily go stir-crazy inside of a day and a half.

Maybe two if they were particularly well-adjusted, he mused.

For a moment, he seriously considered turning the truck around, returning to the airport and catching a flight back to civilization.

The moment passed.

He was here, he silently argued, and Seamus seemed to think that being here would help him get through this unsettled part of his existence. He might as well at least meet this ranch foreman who was going to put him to work the second he set foot on the property.

He glanced at Miss Joan’s map that he had placed on the passenger seat in the truck. It looked as if the ranch house was straight ahead—wherever that was.

Sully drove more than a mile beyond the gate before he finally caught sight of the ranch house. There looked to be another structure some distance behind it. He guessed it was either the barn or the stable.

He still didn’t have all these ranching terms straight, he thought and wondered if Miss Joan’s foreman would cut him some slack until he got oriented. He hoped the man didn’t turn out to be one of these smug characters that built up his ego on the carcasses of workers he put down.

“Can’t worry about that,” Sully muttered. He was here, and he had to make the most of it. He hadn’t traveled all this way looking to make new friends. He just wanted to get back his zest for life. The zest he’d lost along the way while tracking down a serial killer.

Sully decided that he might as well pull his vehicle up in front of the ranch house and see if there was anyone there who could tell him where he could find the ranch foreman. He didn’t want to wander around aimlessly—for all he knew, that could get him shot out here.

Sully smiled grimly. He supposed that would be one way to deal with the funk he had slipped into.

After parking the truck, he got out of the cab. For now he left the one suitcase he’d packed where he’d put it, in the back seat. No sense in lugging it around until he found the foreman.

Sully smiled to himself as he approached the ranch house. The outside looked as if it had come straight out of one of those old Westerns he used to watch with his father. According to his dad, Angus, the Westerns had been old when he was a kid watching them with his father. That just made them classics in his book, his father had said.

Smiling to himself as he recalled the old memory, Sully knocked on the door.

When there was no answer, he knocked again. And again after he’d let a couple of minutes pass.

After the fourth time, he decided that no one was home and he was going to have to search for this elusive ranch foreman somewhere else.

Sully looked around. Maybe the man was in the large structure located some distance behind the house. It was worth a shot.

Sully had just turned away and gone down the three steps off the front porch when the front door suddenly opened.

Finally! Sully thought turning back around.

The single celebratory word faded instantly as the person he found himself looking up at turned out not to the foreman.

It wasn’t a man at all.

Instead, it was a slender young woman who appeared to be in her twenties. She had long straight black hair pulled back into a ponytail, prominent cheekbones and the most incredible blue eyes he had ever seen.

For a moment, the blue eyes held him captive, melting time and space into a single entity.

It took concentrated effort for him to finally come back to his senses.

“Yes?” One hand on her hip, the woman fired the single word at him like a bullet. Rather than friendly, she seemed exasperated.

Sully found himself wondering why. “Um, Miss Joan sent me.”

“Of course she did,” the slender young woman in jeans and a work shirt said with a sigh, looking more harassed. “You got any gear?”

He hadn’t the slightest idea what she was talking about. “Gear?”

Her impatient look grew only more so.

“Things,” she told him. “Your possessions, clothes, whatever.”

He felt like an idiot, but then, people didn’t talk the way she did back home. And they didn’t snap their questions unless they were interrogating someone.

“Oh, in the truck,” he said, then to make sure he was being clear, he jerked a thumb in the direction of the vehicle parked close by.

The woman’s expression looked no friendlier. “You can park your car behind the house and your gear in the bunkhouse.”

“Bunkhouse?”

“Behind the stable,” she said. Since it was obvious that didn’t clear anything up, she said, “C’mon, I’ll show you.” In a second, she was down the steps and striding toward the rear of the house ahead of him.

They were not starting off on the right foot, Sully thought. Hell, he’d encountered friendlier criminals. Raising his voice, he called after her. “Wait!”

The woman swung around on her heel, still looking as if her supply of patience was seriously depleting by the second. She didn’t say anything, but her entire countenance let him know that she was waiting for him to say something.

Obviously, conversation was not at a premium around here.

“I’m looking for the foreman,” he told her. Since she was still standing where she’d stopped, he crossed to her. “Ray Mulcahy.”

She continued looking at him as if waiting for something to dawn on him. When it didn’t, she said, “You found her.”

“Where?” he asked, looking around. And then the pronoun she’d used suddenly echoed in his brain. “Her?” he asked incredulously.

She opened her mouth, and he had a feeling she was about to say something less than flattering, but then she closed it again. Regrouping, the woman said, “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

Blowing out a breath, she spread her hands wide and said, “Here.”

Sully stared at the shapely woman, dumbfounded. So much for the sanctity of old Westerns. “You’re the foreman?” he questioned in disbelief.

It wasn’t the first time one of the down-on-his-luck drifters Miss Joan had decided to take in looked appalled at the idea of having a woman giving him orders.

“I am. Something wrong with that?” Rae asked.

“No, no,” Sully denied, trying not to trip over his own tongue.

He had grown up in a house of capable females. He had no problem with the idea of a woman running the ranch and issuing orders—he just really wished he’d been briefed about that ahead of time so he wouldn’t have come across like a dolt.

Belatedly, he said, “I’m fine with that.”

Rae took a deep breath, silently telling herself not to get on her soapbox. Scrutinizing the man in front of her, she decided that he didn’t really look as if the idea of having a woman telling him what to do went against his grain. But the guy did look stunned.

She came to the only conclusion she could. “Miss Joan didn’t tell you, did she?”

Sully allowed himself a hint of a smile. “That she did not.” Then, because he could be seen as partially to blame, he said, “In all fairness, I didn’t ask. She just said to go find the foreman, Ray Mulcahy.”

And therein lay the problem, Rae thought. “Rae’s short for Rachel,” she told him.

“Oh. Never thought of that,” he confessed.

And then, for the first time in a while, Sully started to laugh.

Rae’s eyes narrowed, and she felt her back going up again. She’d worked hard to get and keep this position. Miss Joan was charitable, but the woman was also tough and gave nothing away that hadn’t been earned.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

It took Sully a second to catch his breath. “My sisters are really going to get a kick out of this when I tell them about how I put my foot in my mouth.”

“You have sisters?” she asked.

The drifters who came through professed to be loners and kept to themselves for the most part. They hardly ever volunteered any details about themselves, and certainly never this soon.

Maybe this one wasn’t just a drifter, she thought.

“And brothers,” Sully told her.

Somehow, it felt comforting to mention his family. That surprised him, because all he’d wanted to do in the last few weeks was just detach himself from everyone and everything.

“And a whole bunch of cousins,” he added, “almost half of whom are female.” He offered her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was insulting you before.”

“You weren’t,” Rae replied.

Even if he had, it wasn’t the sort of thing she admitted. To do so would have been to expose her own feelings, and she never did that.

Rae examined him more closely. He had a tired look about him, she decided. But he didn’t appear as if he’d been knocked down one too many times or lost one con too many. That raised questions for her.

“Why are you here again?” Rae asked.

He wondered if she was trying to trip him up. “Miss Joan sent me.”

“To work?” she questioned.

Sully thought for a second, wanting to get the wording just right. “She said something about earning my keep.”

Rae studied the man next to her, trying to work this out in her head. He didn’t look like a wrangler, but then, neither did Rawlings or Warren, the men who were currently working on the ranch.

But there was something different about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She didn’t like not knowing. Not knowing made her feel as if she wasn’t fully prepared for whatever might come down the road.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Aurora. California,” Sully added when the young woman who was Miss Joan’s unlikely foreman continued looking at him blankly.

“California,” she repeated. “And you worked your way here?”

“I flew,” Sully told her, not really sure just what the woman was asking him.

This was still not really making any sense to Rae. “To Forever?” she asked skeptically.

Sully still didn’t see what the problem seemed to be. “Yes.”

Rae’s eyebrows drew together over penetrating blue eyes. “On purpose?”

He nearly laughed at the disbelieving expression on her face but instinctively knew that would not go over too well with this woman.

So instead, he told her, “Seamus, my great-uncle, thought I might like it here.”

“This great-uncle of yours, Uncle Seamus,” she said, wrapping her tongue around the man’s name. “He doesn’t like you very much, does he?”

The way she said it, it wasn’t a question—it was a conclusion.

Chapter 3

Sully looked at the woman, wondering if Rae was trying to goad him or if this was actually her opinion. He couldn’t help wondering what Seamus would have thought of this feisty five-four embodiment of womanhood.

He probably would have liked her, Sully decided. His great-uncle liked women with fire in their blood who weren’t afraid to speak their mind.

“Never had a reason to believe that before,” Sully finally replied.

Rae shrugged, her shoulders moving carelessly beneath her checked work shirt.

“Have it your way. Anyway, you’re in luck,” she told him. “Early this morning I found a whole length of fence that needs to be replaced and you look more able-bodied, like you could probably do a better job of it than the two wranglers I’ve got here working on the ranch now.”

Leading the way to her truck so she could drive him over to the location, Rae stopped walking for a moment. She decided it would be more prudent for her to ask rather than just to assume. “You do know how to dig post holes and swing a sledgehammer, don’t you?”

There was a fifty-fifty chance she wasn’t trying to insult him, Sully thought. In either case, he answered, “I think I can manage.”

Rae nodded. She’d thought as much. “Good. At any rate, you probably can’t be any worse at it than Rawlings and Warren are.”

“Rawlings and Warren?” he echoed. He was trying to keep all the names straight, having a feeling that Rae Mulcahy wasn’t much for repetition.

Rae nodded. “Those are the current two drifters that Miss Joan okayed to work on the ranch. Actually,” she reflected, “Mr. Harry was the one who gave the okay in this case.”

“Mr. Harry, that would be Miss Joan’s husband?” Sully asked.

He was fairly certain that Miss Joan’s husband and Mr. Harry were the same person, but he didn’t want to take anything for granted and make a mistake. He had a feeling that people around here were pretty touchy. He wasn’t really familiar with the names and dynamics of this hamlet yet, and he didn’t want to step on any toes if he could help it.

This time Rae didn’t stop walking as she spared him a quick glance. “Is that just a lucky guess on your part or are you bucking for sharpest tool in the tool box?” she asked.

He got the feeling that he was attempting to maneuver across a chasm walking on a tightrope and trying not to lose his balance—while his foreman was rooting for the rope.

“Why don’t we split the difference and just move on?” Sully suggested diplomatically.

“Get in,” she told him, indicating the truck. When she got in behind the steering wheel, she waited for him to sit down on his side before she asked, “What’s your name, anyway?” Rae had suddenly realized that while this new man knew her name, she hadn’t bothered finding out his.

“Sully,” he answered just as she started up the truck.

Rae frowned, obviously rolling the name over in her head. “What kind of a name is Sully for a man?” she asked.

“What kind of name is Ray for a woman?” he countered.

“It’s Rachel,” she reminded him pointedly. “But men don’t seem to be able to take orders very well from a Rachel out here. They will, though, take orders from someone named Rae.”

Sully nodded. “Point taken. And it’s Sullivan,” he told her after a beat. “My full name,” he added when she made no response.

She ran the name through her mind. “Sully’s faster to say.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You got a last name, Sully?” she asked, sparing him a glance now that they were out in completely open country. “Or is that it?”

“Cavanaugh,” Sully told her. “My last name’s Cavanaugh.”

“Sullivan Cavanaugh,” Rae repeated. He wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or trying it on for size. “That’s quite a mouthful. Anyway, when you get a chance, you can store your gear in there,” she told him, indicating the single-story structure they were passing at the moment. “You can sleep in there at the end of the day, too.”

The structure wasn’t very much to look at, he thought as they made their way to the open range. “Was that the bunkhouse?”

“You guessed it. It’s closer than the hotel,” she told him drily. “I’ll introduce you to Rawlings and Warren—they should be working on the fencing by now—and then you can get started. Dinner’s at six—unless the job runs over. It’s served in the main house,” she told him, then in case he wondered about the logistics, she explained, “There’s no kitchen in the bunkhouse.”

He figured as much. “Understood.

“You got work gloves?” she asked as the question suddenly occurred to her.

“No.” He’d noticed a general store in town. He could always get a pair there.

Rae frowned slightly.

“It figures.” And, even though she was driving, she paused to take a closer look at his hands. Taking one of his hands in hers, she gave it a cursory glance. “No gloves,” she repeated. “Your hands are softer than Miss Joan’s. Let me guess, you’ve never done any physical labor before.”

“I have,” Sully contradicted. He didn’t care for the woman’s way of passing quick judgments. “I just didn’t think to bring any gloves when I packed.”

“Left in a hurry?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question she didn’t expect him to answer. “Well, we’ll see if we can find you a pair. Wouldn’t want you to mess up those soft hands of yours any more than you really have to.”

Foreman or not, he had had just about enough of the woman’s goading attitude. “Just show me the area that you want me to fix and I’ll worry about my hands.”

She drove to a section of the fence that was clearly in disrepair. It appeared to be about a hairbreadth away from falling over.

Sully noticed the frown on her face was growing more pronounced the closer they came to their destination.

“Something wrong?” he finally asked the woman.

“Yes, there’s something wrong,” she snapped, although this time it didn’t sound as if her annoyance was directed at him or his question. “There should be two people over here.”

She pulled up abruptly, parking the truck. Getting out, she got up into the back of the flatbed and then turned 360 degrees around, trying to get a wider view.

It didn’t help.

Rae started to climb down from the flatbed and was surprised when Sully suddenly offered her his hand.

At first she started to ignore it, then, blowing out a huff of angry air, she wrapped her hand around his and got down.

“Thanks.” Begrudgingly, she all but bit off the word.

He wondered if she had always been this angry, or if it was something she had developed working out here. Either way, he wondered what she looked like when she smiled.

“I take it your two wranglers are supposed to be here,” he surmised.

“They’re not my wranglers,” she corrected. “And yes, they’re supposed to be here. They’re supposed to be working to fix the damn fence.” She let out an exasperated huff. “I had a bad feeling about those two from the minute each of them first set foot on the ranch. Mr. Harry just got too big a heart.”

Having said that, the foreman looked at Sully accusingly.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said by way of denial. “I only met Miss Joan, and she didn’t really strike me as a pushover.”

“That’s because she’s not—that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a good heart,” Rae quickly interjected in case he was going to comment on that.

“Never said she didn’t,” Sully replied.

Standing next to the truck, she looked around again. There was still no sign of either one of the two men who were supposedly currently involved in earning their keep on the ranch.

This was going to put fixing the fence seriously behind schedule, Rae thought irritably.

“Well, those two had better show up if they know what’s good for them. In the meantime, I need you to get to work before this whole fence falls down.” She paused, assessing the man before her. “You want me to show you what to do?”

Amusement curved his lips. He resisted the temptation to tell her to go ahead and demonstrate. “I think I can handle it.”

“For all our sakes, I hope so,” she told him. “I’m going to take the truck and go back to the bunkhouse.” Surveying the work that had to be done, she wasn’t sure if she was making a mistake. “You sure you’ll be all right if I leave you here?”

“Yeah.” As she started to get back in behind the steering wheel, Sully told her almost conversationally, “But if you happen to see buzzards circling this area, I’d take it as a personal favor if you came back.”

Rae looked at him. “By then it’ll probably be too late,” she answered matter-of-factly.

The next moment, the sound of the truck’s engine starting up pierced the otherwise quiet atmosphere. Two minutes later, she was gone.

Sully looked at the posts that were lined up on the ground beside carefully cut lengths of lumber, a sledgehammer, a shovel and what appeared to be enough boxes of nails to build a small city.

It looked as if he had everything he needed, he thought. Time to earn his keep. Sully picked up the shovel and got started.

* * *

This work was hotter than he’d thought it would be. Sully held out as long as he could, but when rivulets of sweat all but sealed his shirt to his body, he peeled the shirt off and then continued working on the fence bare-chested.

That was the way Rae found him when she returned a little while later.

Her breath involuntarily caught in her throat as she absorbed the sight: the stranger’s body glistening with perspiration, the muscles in his upper arms straining with each movement he made. The man had abdominal muscles that looked as if they had been chiseled out of rock, and for the first time since she was fifteen years old, Rae’s mind suddenly went numb.

The next moment, because there was someone else in the truck with her, she managed to slowly regulate her breathing and collect herself.

“Who’s that?” Jack Rawlings, the passenger in the truck, asked.

“Someone who’s not afraid of work,” she replied, taking no pains to hide her displeasure with her passenger.

Getting out of the truck, she strode up behind Sully. “Maybe you should put that shirt back on, Cavanaugh,” she told him.

Caught off guard, Sully swung around. He looked at Rae and then at the man with her. “You have a dress code out here?” he asked the woman, keeping an innocent expression on his face.

“No, other than making sure you keep your pants on,” she informed him. “But that sun is pretty merciless around this time of day. If you don’t put your shirt back on, you’re probably going to watch your skin start peeling off before evening.”

He shrugged off her so-called concern. “Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty resilient.” Sully looked around the foreman’s shoulder at the man standing just behind her, taking all this. He made an assumption. “I thought you said there were two other men working on the ranch.”

“There were. There are,” Rae said, correcting herself. “But apparently the other one—Warren—decided to take off, at least according to Rawlings here.”

“He did,” the other man, a rather dusty, jowly-looking man who appeared to be somewhere in his late forties, said. The years hadn’t been kind to him, and he looked as if he knew it and resented the fact. “When I woke up this morning, he was gone.”

Taking a time-out, Sully leaned against his shovel. “Are his clothes gone?”

Jack Rawlings looked at him blankly. “What?”

“Warren’s clothes,” Sully repeated. “Are they gone, too?”

The man looked irritated. “I dunno. I guess so,” he mumbled. And then he seemed to take offense. “Hey, I don’t go looking through a man’s things,” he protested, looking at Rae rather than this offensive newcomer. “That’s private.”

“You’re right,” Sully agreed. “I just meant that if this missing wrangler didn’t take his things with him, maybe he’s not really missing. Maybe he’s just somewhere else on the ranch.” He directed his conversation to Rae. “It’s a big ranch.”

That was all relative, Rae thought. “Not compared to the other ranches around here.”

He wasn’t familiar with the area, but he supposed that she would know better than he did. But that didn’t change his initial assumption.

“Still, a man could go somewhere and not be seen.” His eyes swept over the wrangler Rae had brought back with her, and then returned to Rae. “You’ve got several structures from what I can see, not to mention all this wide-open acreage. Could this Warren be on another part of the ranch, doing something you assigned him to do?” Sully asked.

Rather than answer him, Rae turned her eyes on Rawlings. The wrangler raised his shoulders in complete frustration. “I don’t know. Maybe. All I know is he wasn’t there when I woke up and he didn’t leave me no note to tell me where he was at. Not that he would,” the wrangler added in what Sully took to be disgust.

“Maybe someone should look around for him before deciding that the man just took off for good,” Sully suggested to Rae, picking up his shovel again. “But that’s just my opinion.”

“And a pretty good one. You heard the man,” Rae said, turning toward the wrangler. “Start looking.”

“What, he’s my new boss now?” Rawlings asked resentfully, jerking his thumb at Sully and looking disgruntled.

“No, but I am, and I just gave you a direct order,” Rae pointed out, looking at Rawlings expectantly.

“That’s going to take me forever on foot,” Rawlings protested.

Rae took off a key from her key ring and then held it out to the wrangler. “Go back and get the other truck. And try not to drive it into a ditch,” she warned. “It belongs to Miss Joan.”

“What she gonna do if something happens to it?” Rawlings asked sarcastically.

“Trust me,” Rae answered, looking up into his eyes. “You do not want to find out.”

Rawlings frowned as he took the key from her. “I’ll be careful.”

“Wise decision,” she told him.

Taking the key and putting it into his pocket, Rawlings started to go off in the direction of the bunkhouse. Just before he left, the wrangler glanced over his shoulder and glared at the newcomer. When Sully glanced his way, Rawlings ducked down his head and quickened his pace.

“I don’t think I made any points with your man,” Sully told her as he got back to digging holes for the posts.

Although she didn’t want to, Rae found herself staring at the way the man’s muscles strained and seemed to bulge with every movement he made with the shovel. It took considerable effort to draw her eyes away.

She replayed what he had asked earlier when Rawlings had told her that the other man had taken off. It raised questions in her mind.

“What did you say you did before you came here?” she asked.

“I didn’t say.” Pausing for a second, he spared her a glance. “You didn’t ask,” he reminded her in case Rae thought he was being flippant.

“I’m asking now,” she told him, waiting.

“A little of this, a little of that,” he said vaguely.

Some people reacted strangely when they found out that he was a detective with the Aurora police department, so it wasn’t the first thing he volunteered when he was asked.

“Do this and that have a name?” Rae asked him pointedly.

“Yes,” he answered, his breath growing a little short as he dug yet another hole. He was grateful that there were only two more holes left to dig.

“So are you going to tell me what you did, or are you waiting for me to say ‘pretty please?’” Rae asked. When she saw his mouth curve in a deep smile, she decided she’d had enough of playing games. “What the hell were you?”

“A detective,” Sully answered. Crossing his arms and resting them on top of the shovel handle, he added, “I still am.”

Chapter 4

Rae looked at the man who was working up another sweat before her with renewed interest. “A detective?”

Because of what he was doing, it took Sully a second before he could answer. “Yes.”

She tried to reconcile the image of the man before her with the one he’d just told her about.

“You’re one of those people other people hire to find someone?” she questioned.

“No,” he explained patiently as he continued digging the last post hole. The ground around here felt as if it was made out of clay. Hard clay. Trying to dig a hole in it was both a challenge and at times felt like exercise in futility.

With every move he made, he could feel the muscles in his arms vigorously protesting. “I’m one of those people who works for the police department,” he answered.

That made even less sense to her than her first assumption. “You work for the police department,” she repeated.

“That’s...what... I...said.”

Maybe he was in worse shape than he thought, Sully decided. Digging shouldn’t be taking this kind of a toll on him. He stopped for a minute longer to catch his breath and then resumed digging.

Rae moved around so that she was directly in front of this so-called police detective in wrangler’s clothing. “If you’re telling the truth—”

He stopped dueling with the cement-like soil to look at her. At this point, he was up for only one battle at a time. It was either digging or matching wits with this foreman.

“Why would I lie about that?” Sully asked.

“Okay,” she amended. “You’re a police detective.” She granted him that, although part of her was still dubious. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

He looked accusingly at the shovel and then decided maybe he was better off digging. With luck, Rae would get tired of this and leave him to do the work.

“Right now, trying to dig a hole in this soil and wondering what the hell is in it to make it almost completely impenetrable,” he answered.

Rae frowned, waving away his response. She could see what he was doing, and that wasn’t what she meant. “Sections out here in this area are really hard to dig in, but that’s not the point right now.” Taking hold of the handle of his shovel, she held it fast so he was forced to stop digging altogether—not that he minded all that much. “What are you doing here, Cavanaugh?” she repeated with more feeling. It didn’t make any sense to her, and she hated things that didn’t make sense. “Forever isn’t exactly on the map as a prime vacation spot.”

“I’m not out here on a vacation,” Sully informed her. “I’m out here to clear my head.”

“You said you were from California. There have got to be places you could do that in that are closer to home,” Rae pointed out.

His eyes met hers. She continued looking at him, waiting for an answer. The woman was pushy, he’d give her that. She was also getting on his nerves.

“Maybe I don’t want to be closer to home,” he countered. “Now, if you’re through interrogating me, I’d like to get back to work.”

That wasn’t entirely true, he thought, but it was better than butting heads with this woman.

But Rae refused to back off. “Why don’t you want to be closer to home? What happened?”

If she still had a home—and a family—nothing would have made her leave. She would have fought to stay. She couldn’t understand someone willingly abandoning his home.

Okay, he’d been polite enough. Time to mark his territory, Sully thought. “That, Ms. Mulcahy, is none of your business. It has nothing to do with how well I work or how fast I can get things you need done.”

Annoyed, Rae decided to back off for the time being. She could be patient. She’d get the information she wanted another way.

“Prickly sort, aren’t you?” she commented. “All right, I’ll leave you to it, then. And when you finish digging that hole, start putting the poles up. I’ll be back later.”

“Looking forward to it,” Sully told her. There was no emotion in his voice to give her any indication how he actually meant that.

Rae opened her mouth to make a retort, then decided there was no point. Instead she got into her truck without another word and drove back to the bunkhouse.

* * *

After considerable effort, Sully finished digging the last hole. Taking a five-minute break, he next turned his attention to properly sinking the new posts into the holes he had dug.

He quickly discovered that doing that on his own was a lot more challenging than he’d initially thought. The problem arose because the object was to make sure that the post was straight once the dirt was firmly packed around it.

After two failures, he tried a third time.

Sully once again leaned the pole against his shoulder as he grappled with refilling the hole. He had finally gotten the first pole in position when he heard the sound of a truck approaching.

He blew out a breath, not sure if he was relieved or annoyed at the interruption.

“Looks like the boss lady’s checking up on me,” he muttered under his breath.

He would have preferred getting at least one—if not more—of the poles up before Mulcahy came back, but obviously there was nothing he could do about it now, Sully thought.

However, when the truck pulled up next to him, it wasn’t Rae who got out of the cab. Instead, it was the man she had introduced as Jack Rawlings and another, taller man who got out on the driver’s side.

Pausing, Sully dragged the back of his wrist across his forehead in an effort to wipe away the sweat before it dripped into his eyes and stung.

He did a quick assessment of the man next to Rawlings. He was about half a head taller than Rawlings, but he looked even more out of shape. Soft and pudgy-looking—in Sully’s estimation the so-called wrangler appeared as if he would have been more at home behind a desk.

“I take it you’re the missing wrangler,” Sully said to Rawlings’s companion.

“Missing?” the man repeated, confused. When he squinted, looking from Sully to Rawlings, his eyes all but disappeared. “I wasn’t missing. I just had something to do, that’s all.” He glanced again at the man beside him, clearly annoyed and yet somewhat afraid of showing it. “You told this guy I was missing?”

It was apparent that Rawlings didn’t do well with blame. “You weren’t in your bunk when I woke up. How’m I supposed to know you didn’t take off?”

“The last time I looked, you weren’t my ex-wife,” John Warren all but snapped. He backtracked a little as he added, “I don’t have to ask your permission to go somewhere.”

In Sully’s estimation, this could turn ugly given enough fuel. He didn’t want to get caught up in the middle of that.

“Hey, guys, I could use a hand here,” Sully said, calling the wranglers’ attention to the pole that was still propped up against his shoulder. “If one of you could just hold this upright and straight, the job would go a lot faster.”

It was plain by the look on Rawlings’s face that everything was going to rub the man the wrong way no matter what was said. “You her junior foreman now?” Rawlings challenged belligerently.

“I’m just trying to get the job done,” Sully answered. Thinking that being nice to the wrangler wasn’t working, he had nothing to lose by putting Rawlings in his place. “Maybe if you put down that giant chip on your shoulder, you could move a little faster.”

Rawlings looked incensed, and for a split second, it seemed as if the wrangler was going to launch himself right at him, Sully thought.

But obviously at the last moment, common sense—and the fact that Sully was close to a foot taller than he was—prevailed.

Rawlings frowned, glaring at Sully. “This isn’t over, you know,” he warned.

“Didn’t think it was,” Sully replied mildly. It took effort, but he forced himself to get back to the immediate problem he was dealing with. “Now can one of you hold this?”

It was obvious that Rawlings wasn’t about to make an effort, so Warren stepped up. “I’ll do it,” the no-longer-missing man volunteered.

“Thanks,” Sully said.

When Warren wrapped his arms around the post, Sully picked up the discarded shovel. Within moments, he was attempting to evenly shovel dirt around the pole. Although this job was a lot less taxing than digging the holes had been, Sully could swear he felt calluses forming on the palms of his hands.

“Hey,” Warren called over to the man who had supposedly gone looking for him. When Rawlings, who had just sunk down on the ground some distance away from them, looked in their direction, Warren told him, “We could use some help over here.”

But Rawlings didn’t budge. “Looks like you’ve got it all under control to me.”

“Then maybe you should get your eyes checked,” Sully told the inert man in an even voice, one that gave every indication that he expected to be listened to.

He wasn’t here to win any popularity contest, Sully thought. Right now, he just wanted to get a job done, one that Miss Joan’s foreman had assigned to him. He had no idea what Rawlings’s problem was, but he wasn’t about to let it get in the way of their getting this job done.

“Now get over here and help Warren hold this pole in place so that it looks straight and I can get it put into the ground properly.”

“C’mon, Rawlings,” Warren appealed to the other wrangler. “The sooner you help, the sooner we’ll get all these posts in the ground so we can all get back to the bunkhouse.”

Again Rawlings wasn’t about to take the blame. “Hey, I’m not the one who took off,” he snapped.

“You’re also not the one who did any work today,” Sully reminded the antagonistic wrangler. His voice was low and civilized. But there was no mistaking that the man behind the calm voice could only be pushed so far and no more.

Swearing and muttering some unintelligible things under his breath, Rawlings joined them and grudgingly put his back into it.

* * *

After she’d made sure that both Rawlings and the “missing” Warren were on their way to help Cavanaugh, Rae made a beeline for town and Miss Joan’s diner. She had questions that needed answering, and it seemed that she was only going to get those answers from one source.

The moment she walked into the diner, she saw the person she needed to talk to.

“Miss Joan, about that new guy you just sent me,” Rae said as she crossed to the counter that ran along the back of the diner.

Miss Joan had just served one of her regular customers. She looked up the moment she heard her name. Despite the fact that she recognized the young woman’s voice, Miss Joan was still surprised to see Rae at the diner.

Collecting herself, she assumed a dour expression as she asked, “What happened to ‘hello’?”

“Hello,” Rae said with just a touch of impatience before she got back to her question. This time she phrased it differently. “What’s that’s guy’s story?”

“What do you mean?” Miss Joan asked. Innocence did not look at home on the woman. The best she could do was display a poker face.

Rae had a feeling that Miss Joan knew exactly what she meant, but she answered the question anyway. “He said he’s a police detective.”

Miss Joan nodded. “That’s what I heard, yes,” she confirmed.

Rae pressed her lips together. She was accustomed to having down-on-their-luck cowboys or wannabe cowboys working on the ranch as well as other men whose previous vocations were usually of the nondescript variety.

The one thing the men all had in common was that they were just passing through Forever and the J-H Ranch because life had ridden roughshod over them.

But even so, there appeared to be something rather different about this latest man who had popped up at the ranch.

He wasn’t like the others.

Miss Joan indicated the counter stool with her eyes, but Rae felt too wired to sit down.

“Why would a police detective be out here?” Rae asked.

“Maybe he just needed a little peace of mind,” Miss Joan suggested. “Police detectives are people, too, you know, Rae.”

“I know that.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to gather strength. “Are you sure he really is a police detective? Did someone vouch for him?”

“Yes,” Miss Joan answered simply.

She wasn’t prepared to have Rae challenge her statement. “Who?”

Miss Joan looked at her in stony silence for a moment before finally answering. “The best person I know outside of Harry,” Miss Joan assured her. “Why? Is there something about him that’s bothering you?”

Rae shook her head. “He’s not the usual type who works on the ranch.”

“As I recall, neither were you at first when I decided to put you in charge of the J-H,” Miss Joan reminded her foreman. “More than one person told me not to do it.”

“That’s different,” Rae protested. “You knew me.”

Miss Joan raised her eyes to Rae’s. “I didn’t put you in charge because I knew you. I did it because I had a gut feeling that you could do the job and that being in charge at the ranch was what you needed in your life to finally get you on the right track.”

Rae wanted to argue with the woman, to insist again that it wasn’t the same thing. But Miss Joan had an aura about her that transcended logic, and she knew that almost better than anyone. When her father had died, leaving her alone, and she had felt so lost, so hopeless that she just couldn’t go on, it was Miss Joan who had been her lifeline. Miss Joan who had bullied her into not giving up and continuing to live.

Maybe, in her own way, she was doing the same thing for this man, this police detective she had sent to her to work with.

“And you have a gut feeling about this Sully?” Rae asked.

“Let’s just say he’s not anyone that I’m going to be worried about when it comes to working out. Now, if you have a problem with him,” Miss Joan continued, looking at Rae intently, “I suggest you talk it out with him. Best way to resolve things,” she told the girl she had taken in and watched blossom over the years. She eyed Rae for a moment when the latter made no comment. “We okay?”

“Yes, Miss Joan,” Rae replied dutifully. To try to go against the woman’s wishes would just be ungrateful.

“All right then.” Miss Joan took out a pie that was in the display case and placed it on the counter. “Why don’t you take a piece of one of Angel’s pies with you and get back to overseeing the ranch while I get back to doing my job?” she suggested, slicing a piece of the peach cobbler on the counter and placing it into a small white container. Snapping the lid into place, she pushed the container toward Rae.

Rae picked up the container and smiled her thanks at the woman. “I’ll have this after dinner.”

“Warm it up. It’ll taste better that way. You might also think about sharing it,” Miss Joan added. “I cut a big enough piece for that.”

Rae looked down at the container in her hand. She didn’t have to ask Miss Joan whom she wanted her to share the piece of pie with. That was silently implied.

“Maybe I’ll do that,” Rae answered, not wanting to commit herself to anything one way or another.

Turning on her heel, she made her way out of the semi-filled diner.

Just who was this new man to Miss Joan? Was he a relative? A relative of a person who had once figured prominently in Miss Joan’s life? Miss Joan had said that the person who had vouched for Sully was someone she considered to be the most decent man she knew after her husband.

Rae frowned to herself as she got into her truck. She tucked the container on the floor beneath the passenger seat.

Her conversation with Miss Joan had raised more questions for her than answers. The one thing she was certain of was that she was going to approach this police detective with caution as she continued to assess the situation. She was determined to find an answer as to what someone like that was doing digging holes and putting up posts on a small, run-of-the-mill ranch instead of taking a vacation at some showy resort or, at the very least, some trendy beach in his home state.

Something had made that man come out here, and she intended to find out what.

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