Atonement
B.J. Daniels
Just how far are people willing to go to keep their secrets?Protecting the citizens of Beartooth, Montana, is never an easy job. One year later, sheriff Dillon Lawson still feels guilty that he couldn’t save his twin brother Ethan. But the biggest test of his bravery comes when Tessa Winters arrives, claiming to be pregnant…with Ethan’s baby. At first, Dillon can’t decide if this beautiful woman is a con artist or a victim. If Ethan didn’t die in that car crash, then where is he—and why is he hiding?Now, Dillon is prepared to do anything to uncover the truth…anything except admit his growing feelings for Tessa. But with violence threatening, Tessa and Dillon must trust in each other to save not only themselves…but also Tessa’s unborn child.
Just how far are people willing to go to keep their secrets?
Protecting the citizens of Beartooth, Montana, is never an easy job. It’s been one year, and Sheriff Dillon Lawson still feels guilty that he couldn’t save his twin brother, Ethan. But the biggest test of his bravery comes when Tessa Winters arrives, claiming to be pregnant…with Ethan’s baby. At first, Dillon can’t decide if this beautiful woman is a con artist or a victim. If Ethan didn’t die in that car crash, then where is he—and why is he hiding?
Now, Dillon is prepared to do anything to uncover the truth—anything except admit his growing feelings for Tessa. But with violence threatening, Tessa and Dillon must trust in each other to save not only themselves…but also Tessa’s unborn child.
Praise for B.J. Daniels
“A well-written, Western-themed romantic suspense novel that will keep readers guessing throughout.”
—RT Book Reviews on Forsaken
“Action-packed and chock-full of suspense.”
—Under the Covers on Redemption
“Unforgiven is B.J. Daniels at her finest.”
—Under the Covers
“Daniels, as usual, proves she’s as adept with family relationships as she is with deep intrigue and suspenseful action.”
—RT Book Reviews on Cardwell Ranch Trespasser
“The mystery and danger thickens from the first page, weaving a spell around readers.”
—RT Book Reviews on Justice at Cardwell Ranch
“An explosive tale of love, trust and the twisted ties among an embattled family.”
—RT Book Reviews on Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch
Atonement
B.J. Daniels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
I happily dedicate this book to my two favorite quilt clubs: Hands All Around and Quilting by the Border. These talented ladies inspire me—
and they’re a whole lot of fun. And yes,
I can see a book set at a quilt retreat in the future.
Contents
PROLOGUE (#uaffde446-50c8-52e1-aae0-4acd32334746)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5eeda868-9b45-5a1a-8be9-786d9f94aa1e)
CHAPTER TWO (#ufe5bb18d-756e-54c3-a87f-9086e479a24c)
CHAPTER THREE (#u374cc96d-60ef-557d-88e2-7523869cc71f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u9a7549b5-da07-5c37-827c-0852fa34dec6)
CHAPTER FIVE (#uf7a71124-e8c1-55e8-a958-4aead94ec3be)
CHAPTER SIX (#u1b1aade8-b322-5af3-a504-f52efa8f21b3)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u2ae8603c-df9f-5315-963c-4741b0a589a4)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
SO THIS IS how it ends.
It was his first thought when he opened his eyes and found himself tied to the steering wheel of a speeding car, reeking of alcohol—worse, dead drunk with it—and about to die.
Through the windshield he saw that he was barreling along a rutted desert road lined with cacti bathed in moonlight. Sobered by the realization, he slammed his foot down on the brake. Nothing. Panic washed over him like an ice shower.
He stomped on the accelerator only to find it tied down, as well. With his hands roped to the steering wheel, he couldn’t turn the car off the dirt track he was now bumping along. Nor could he grab the emergency brake—let alone open the door and bail out.
Bailing was the one thing he’d excelled at in life. That, however, was no more than a fleeting thought as he hit a jarring rut in the road, the speedometer wavering just this side of eighty.
Ethan thought of all the mistakes he’d made, the people he shouldn’t have double-crossed and the few he’d actually cared about. He didn’t have long to mourn his misspent youth, though. Ahead the dirt road made a ninety-degree turn to the left to avoid a deep rocky ravine. It was a turn he realized he wouldn’t be making.
That was when the hair rose on the back of his neck as he realized he wasn’t alone. He knew the smell of death, would have noticed it sooner had it not been for the reek of his own fear the moment he’d opened his eyes and seen what was happening.
As the car hit another rut in the road, the body in the backseat rose with it. He saw the man’s face and let out a shocked curse of regret and pain. Buck Morgan. The gangly wrangler hadn’t known what he was getting into. Buck’s body dropped with a sickening thud as the car came down hard.
Ethan felt something give. The ropes that bound his wrists suddenly felt looser. He freed one hand, but still couldn’t reach the emergency brake or the gearshift. He remembered the small knife he always kept in his right front pocket. Even if they hadn’t taken it, what were the chances he could get it out of his pocket before...
It was there. In an instant, it was in his hand. He thumbed the blade open and frantically sawed at the rope around the steering wheel as car roared toward the cliff.
The wheels bounced out of the road ruts and wiped out several large cacti before the dark chasm opened up before him. A scream tore up out of his throat as the knife ripped through the last of the rope. He grabbed for the door handle.
Seconds later the car left the road and soared out through the moonlit night. He watched in a kind of sick awe as the vehicle seemed to hang suspended in midair over the abyss. A bubble of laughter buoyed up, but not for long. He was a fool if he thought he could cheat death the way he had cheated everyone in his life.
CHAPTER ONE
FROM THE MIDDLE of the corral, Dillon Lawson tugged gently on the halter rope, urging the filly in a circle. She was a beauty and he couldn’t help feeling a sense of pride in her. The filly was smart, too. He’d known that the moment he’d looked into her eyes after she was born.
He’d named her Bright Beauty, struck dumb by the miracle of birth and the courage he’d seen in the foal as she’d stumbled to her feet for the first time.
Now as she trotted the tight circle around him, he could feel her gaze on him. The breeze lifted her red mane and she seemed to prance as if wanting to please him.
His heart swelled. His father wouldn’t have approved of the way he’d gentled her. Burt Lawson “broke” his horses, the same way he’d tried to break his sons. The thought brought with it fresh pain. For whatever reason, their father had always been meaner to Ethan. It was why Dillon had spent years trying to protect his brother—only to fail him in the end.
Not even this beautiful Montana spring day or the filly he’d nurtured since birth could keep his mind off his brother—and the upcoming one-year anniversary of Ethan’s death. Dillon wasn’t sure what was worse, the guilt that he’d let his brother down or the grief of having lost the last member of his family.
“Ethan!”
With his mind on his brother, Dillon thought he’d only imagined the voice. He looked over, surprised to see a woman he didn’t recognize at the corral fence. He lived so far out of town he seldom had strangers come in off the highway. Nor had he heard anyone drive up. He did a quick glance to the yard. No vehicle. Where had she come from?
His gaze returned to the woman. She’d climbed up the corral fence and now clung to the top rail. A mass of curly dark hair floated around a face dominated by huge blue eyes. That was all he was able to take in before she spoke again.
“Ethan.” She said the name like a curse. He’d thought he must have heard her wrong the first time she’d said his brother’s name. This time he heard anger in that one painful word. Anger and disappointment.
A chill ran the length of his spine.
She thought he was his brother.
That realization came like a kick to his gut. He slowed the filly to a stop and pushed back his Western straw hat. A warm sun slipped toward the west, making the breeze that blew down from the Crazy Mountains suddenly feel cold. The snow-fed breeze was a reminder that this was Montana in the spring and, like life, it could change at a moment’s notice.
Dropping the halter rope, he took off his hat and, stepping toward her, tried to clear his throat. A lump had lodged there. If this woman had mistaken him for Ethan, then she must not know about his death.
As he drew closer, the woman’s eyes narrowed. Her anger confused him. But then again, who knew what his brother had been up to before he died? Ethan had always attracted trouble like a magnet to metal, and Dillon had known little about his brother’s life the past few years. That was the way Ethan had wanted it.
He was within a few feet of her when he saw her eyes fill with tears, then all the color suddenly bled from her face. She teetered on the corral railing for a moment before starting to slump backward in a faint.
Dillon took two long strides, bounded over the corral fence and managed to catch her before she hit the ground. Holding her in his arms, he looked down at her and felt his eyes widen.
The woman was pregnant. Very pregnant.
Her thick lashes fluttered. Those big blue eyes opened and zeroed in on him.
The roundhouse slap she gave him was hard and did more than surprise him.
“You bastard.”
“You’ve made a mistake,” Dillon said.
“The mistake was ever falling for you.”
He shook his head sadly. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“You’re telling me? Put me down.”
Dillon did as she’d ordered and watched her struggle to get her feet under herself. Seeing him had been a shock for her, that much was clear. And yet she’d come here looking for him, as if...
He frowned as he tried to make sense of this. Ethan had been dead a year tomorrow. Why would she think he was Ethan? Not to mention... He stared at her swollen belly. The woman looked as if she might deliver that baby at any moment.
“You knew my brother?” he asked suspiciously.
She had dropped her large shoulder bag. She now bent to pick it up from the dirt before turning to glare at him. “I just want my money,” she said as she slung the bag over her right shoulder.
“Your money? Are you talking about the insurance money?” The check had come only a few days ago. Apparently his brother had taken out a half-million-dollar policy on himself and made Dillon the beneficiary. Ethan had always been full of surprises. This woman was apparently another one.
“Insurance? Is that what you call it? Just give me what’s mine and I’m out of your hair for good,” she said, and glanced toward the mountains as if she couldn’t bear looking at him any longer.
Sweetgrass County was rimmed with snowcapped mountain peaks, making some people think it was paradise. Dillon was one of those people. The moment he’d seen the Crazy Mountains, he’d known this was where he wanted to settle—rather than the logging town in western Montana where they’d grown up. His brother, Ethan, had hightailed it the moment he turned eighteen and apparently had never looked back.
When her gaze returned to his, Dillon saw that she hadn’t been admiring the breathtaking Montana scenery. She’d apparently been trying to tamp down her anger—and failing.
“Why don’t we go into the house?” he suggested. “I think we can settle this easy enough. Just let me get the halter rope off my horse—”
“If you think you can sweet-talk me, you’re dead wrong. And you sure as the devil aren’t seducing me. Not again.” Her hand went to her stomach and he felt his heart drop.
She wasn’t really going to try to convince him that she was carrying Ethan’s baby, was she? He’d never been the brightest kid in school, but this one was a math no-brainer. Even if the woman did look as if she could give birth any moment, his brother had been gone twelve months tomorrow.
“Look, I’m not sure what your story is, but that baby you’re carrying? It isn’t—”
“If you dare say it isn’t yours...” Her right hand dipped into her shoulder bag. An instant later he was staring down the barrel of a .45.
CHAPTER TWO
DILLON RAISED HIS hands and took a step back. “Take it easy. Like I said, if you’ll come in the house, I can take care of this. But first, put down the gun. There’s no call for any gunplay.”
This was not her first rodeo, Tessa Winters thought as she took in the cowboy. She’d come all this way on a hunch that Ethan might have gone to Montana, but she’d still been shocked when she’d actually tracked down the lying bastard.
“You won’t be charming your way out of this.”
He shook his head. “Not my intention. If you put away the gun, I’m sure we can resolve this.”
She eyed him warily, torn between her anger and his apparent calm. There was a time when she would have weakened. That time had long since passed.
Her gaze narrowed as she realized that he must have come straight here after he’d run out on her. His big hands were callused and his skin was tanned, as if the man had actually been doing some honest physical labor.
Looking at him now, she couldn’t help but think about the first time she’d seen him. With his tousled sandy-blond hair and big blue eyes, he’d been the most handsome cowboy she’d ever run across. Like now, he’d been wearing a Western shirt that accentuated his broad shoulders and slim hips, and jeans that— Tessa shook off those dangerous thoughts and reminded herself what was at stake here. He might look good—the physical Montana lifestyle had made him even more attractive—but under the facade was a liar, a coward and a thief.
“Please.” He motioned to the gun. “You’re making me nervous.”
“You should be nervous.” But she lowered the gun.
“Okay,” he said, slowly putting down his hands. “Let me see to my horse and then we’ll go up to the house and take care of this.” He climbed the corral fence and approached the wary filly slowly.
Tessa could hear him talking softly to the horse as he removed the halter rope, then stroked the filly’s neck. Her ire rose as she saw how gentle and loving he was to the horse. It hurt even more to think of how easily he had abandoned her and their child.
When he finished with the horse, he climbed back over the fence and motioned toward the house. She followed. Distrustful as to what he was up to, she kept her fingers around the grip of the .45 in her bag. He thought he knew her, but he had no idea who he was dealing with. Pregnancy had changed her in more ways than one.
Tessa felt like a loose cannon, and knew a large part of it was the hormones her doctor had warned her about. Given the way she was feeling, it surprised her that more pregnant women didn’t kill the men in their lives.
Truthfully, she was so angry with Ethan that she didn’t know what she would do. She’d spent six months telling herself to let it go. Forget about him and the way he’d conned her. Finally, she’d given up kidding herself. She had to look him in the eye one more time before she could let it go. Probably bringing the gun hadn’t been her best choice, though. But she wanted him to know that she was dead serious.
The cowboy mounted the steps of the house and pushed open the door, holding it for her. Now he was going to act like a gentleman? She gave him a withering look as she entered. Behind her, she heard him step in and close the door.
“How about we discuss this over a cup of coffee?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer as he moved past her.
She sighed, wondering how long he thought he could stall before she lost her temper. Since becoming pregnant, she’d found herself on a roller-coaster ride shifting between tears and anger, which had left her exhausted. But she was nonetheless determined. It was bad enough Ethan had seduced her with his lies, knocked her up and then taken off on her. Stealing her money, though? That had been the last straw.
Tessa looked around the old farmhouse, surprised to see how neat and clean it was, as she told herself that once she’d settled things with Ethan, she would get back to being calm, confident and in control of her normal self again. At least she hoped so.
“Who cleans your house?” she asked suspiciously as she stepped toward the kitchen doorway.
“I do,” he said over his shoulder.
She watched him set about making a fresh pot of coffee. When had he learned to make coffee? Or maybe he’d known all along and, like everything else, had played her. Just when she thought he couldn’t make her any angrier.
Looking away to keep from pulling the pistol and shooting him, she was shocked that the kitchen was as clean and uncluttered as the rest of the house. This was not the Ethan Lawson she knew.
Until that moment she hadn’t considered that the reason he’d left her and the baby she was carrying was because he had another family back in Montana. The thought felt like one of his horses standing on her chest. She fought to take her next breath—and worse, not cry.
Was it possible the reason he was always broke was because he’d been sending the money he made home to a family? She hadn’t thought he could hurt her any more than he had, but she’d been wrong.
“Who else lives here?” she asked, her voice breaking.
He turned to look at her. “Just me and a couple cattle dogs. Why don’t you have a seat? Have you had breakfast? I could make—”
“I’m fine.” She didn’t even want coffee. And since when had Ethan learned to cook? She just wanted her money and she’d be on her way. Well, not quite. There was that other small matter, she thought, her hand going to the shoulder bag again.
He motioned her into a seat at the table and placed a mug of coffee in front of her. “I made decaf because of the...” He waved his hand toward her pregnant belly.
“Baby. It’s a baby, Ethan, and stalling isn’t going to do you any good. Just give me my money—”
“Hang on a second.” He left the room and she half expected to hear the sound of his pickup engine revving up outside as he pulled another disappearing act.
To her surprise, he returned a few minutes later with several photos and what appeared to be two newspaper clippings.
She watched him drop them on the table next to his coffee before he pulled out a chair across from her, turned it around and straddled it.
“Let’s see if we can clear this up,” he said, and shoved the photos and the folded newspaper clippings across the table to her.
She didn’t even give the items a glance, wondering what he was up to. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to work. Had she really thought that by coming here she could settle this? With a curse, she started to get up from the table, her hand going to the gun in her bag.
“Please. I think this will help.” He said the words almost as gently as he had spoken to the filly. Reaching over, he pushed the newspaper clippings aside to expose the top photo.
She gave him an impatient look. Then, settling back down with a sigh, she glanced at the snapshot lying on the table. Shock rippled through her. Her gaze shot up to him. He looked as if he was waiting patiently. She dropped her gaze to the photo again. Her fingers trembled as she picked it up to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
The boys were about ten in the snapshot. Both were grinning at the camera, their cowboy hats pushed back. They wore Western shirts, jeans and boots, and stood next to what appeared to be an old barn.
Her gaze moved to the second photo, an older version of them. She lifted it from the table, still shocked to see the two identical faces. They appeared to be in their teens in this shot. They were dressed much the same as they had been in the other photograph, but in this one, neither was smiling at the camera.
“Identical twins,” he said as if she hadn’t already figured that out.
She tossed the photos back on the table and glared at him. Did he really think she was going to fall for this? The photos appeared to be authentic. But she sure as the devil didn’t have him mixed up with some other cowboy—even an identical brother.
“Fine, let’s pretend you aren’t Ethan. Let’s pretend you’re his twin. But being identical and all, you know where he is, right?”
“I do.” His gaze went again to her stomach. He looked worried, as if he feared she was going to faint again. “Maybe you’d better look at the newspaper clippings.”
A feeling of dread washed over her as she reluctantly picked up the first clipping and unfolded it.
Her pulse roared in her ears. “What is this?” she demanded, even though it was clearly Ethan’s obituary.
He pushed the other clipping closer to her and waited.
Tessa swallowed, telling herself this was some kind of trick. She picked up the second clipping and unfolded it. The first thing that caught her eye was the photograph that ran with the article. It was a shot of what was left of a car that had crashed and burned in some ravine in what looked like the desert.
“Take a look at the date on the newspaper clipping,” he said.
Her heart plummeted as she saw the date—a year ago tomorrow. How was that possible? She was eight months pregnant! For a moment, she didn’t know what to make of it.
Then she looked at the cowboy sitting across from her. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“My brother’s death isn’t a joke. At least not to me.”
Tessa shook her head as she glanced again at the photos of the twin boys, then at the young men. She couldn’t tell the brothers apart. Nor could she be sure which of them was Ethan.
She raised her gaze and narrowed her eyes at him. “If your brother is really dead, then unless you’re a triplet...” Her hand went to her belly.
“Are we back to that?” he asked, sounding sad.
Tessa stood abruptly. “If it wasn’t Ethan who I met last year, then it was you masquerading as him. That means you’re the one responsible for this,” she said, her hands covering her stomach, “and for stealing my money.”
He shook his head. “My name is Dillon. Dillon Lawson. And you and I have never met before I looked up a while ago and saw you climbing my corral fence.” His eyes lowered to where the baby was growing inside her, and she saw his gaze soften. “But if I thought for a moment that you really were carrying my brother’s child...”
Tessa felt such a wave of sadness. She really had believed that when he saw her, saw how pregnant she was, he would do the right thing. “It’s my own fault. I knew the kind of man you were the moment I met you. A charming saddle bum who was as dependable as the weather. You said you were trying to change. I should have known better. As it turns out, you’re more despicable than even I could have imagined.”
Her eyes burned, but she angrily fought back the tears as she looked into his face. If his brother was dead, then this was the man she’d fallen desperately in love with, the man who had promised her the moon and stars, the man who’d lied to her from the word go. Ethan wasn’t even his real name. He’d used his dead brother’s first name, probably thinking that she’d never track him down, since he’d lied about his last name.
She hugged her stomach protectively. “Fine,” she said, hating the emotion she heard in her voice. “You want to pretend this isn’t your baby and that you don’t know me? Just sign this and we’re done.” She pulled the form from her shoulder bag and shoved it across the table at him.
He picked it up and took a moment to look at the form that would give him no rights to their child. When he’d finished, he looked up at her again. “I can’t sign this. I thought I made myself clear. I’m not the father of your baby. Believe me, I would remember if we’d ever...” His gaze locked with hers for a moment. He actually flushed. “If we had ever...met. And with Ethan dead a year ago tomorrow...” He raised a hand to keep her from interrupting him. “I should also warn you that I am undersheriff of Sweetgrass County, so if this whole charade is about extorting money from me or from my brother’s insurance policy...” He pushed the form back across the table toward her. “I also would suggest you reconsider whatever it is you’re planning to do with that .45 you’re reaching for in your bag.”
“Undersheriff?”
He nodded. “If you like, I would be happy to show you my star.”
She shook her head, hating what a fool she’d been, was still. She hadn’t expected much when she’d come all this way. Knowing Ethan, she’d realized there was little chance of getting back the money he’d stolen from her. But she’d expected him to be at least man enough to sign the form.
When he’d left without a word, he’d made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with his child. That hurt more than his leaving her. He knew how she felt about family, since she’d never had one.
Obviously, none of that mattered. He’d never planned to make this right, knowing he would never have to. It was her word against the county lawman’s.
Snatching up the paper, she shoved it back into her shoulder bag and fought not to cry. “I thought I saw something...good in you.” She met his gaze, losing herself for a minute in all that pale blue. Tears burned her eyes. She shook her head. Nope, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he’d hurt her. “I don’t ever want to see you again. If you ever come near my baby—” Her hand dropped into her shoulder bag.
“I would advise you not to threaten an officer of the law again by pulling that gun.”
“Just so we understand each other. You can take my money and hurt me, but never my baby. Never. Undersheriff or not.” She gave him one last look, turned and walked out. He didn’t try to stop her.
CHAPTER THREE
DILLON WATCHED THE young woman walk down the road to where she’d left her newer-model compact car. Apparently she’d wanted to surprise him. Well, she’d done that, all right.
He couldn’t make out the plate number from where he stood, but it looked like a California license plate. His brother had been killed in Arizona. Not that far away, possibly.
What Ethan had been doing down in Arizona, Dillon had no idea. Had this woman even ever met Ethan?
On the form she’d tried to get him to sign, he’d seen that her name was Tessa Winters. But that might have also been a lie, just like swearing that Ethan was the father of her baby. Hell, he realized with a start, the woman might not even be pregnant.
He half wished he’d arrested her for trying to scam him.
As the dust settled behind her car, Dillon felt as if he’d imagined the entire encounter, like a bad dream. And yet it nagged at him. He kept recalling her expression when she’d seen the photographs. There was no way she could have been acting. She’d been shocked, but not half as shocked as she’d been when she’d looked at the newspaper clippings.
She hadn’t known Ethan was dead.
Dillon shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe that was why it had left him so upset. When she’d gotten a good look at him earlier, she’d fainted. Or at least she’d pretended to.
He tried to brush off the whole incident. The woman had tried to run some kind of con on him. It hadn’t worked. Case closed.
Going back to the table, he gathered up the photos and clippings. The newspaper clippings were worn from looking at them so many times. It had been a horrendous accident. According to the coroner Dillon had spoken with in Arizona, speed and alcohol had been involved.
He was hit again with guilt for not saving his brother. The fact that he’d tried when they were younger didn’t count. He should have tried harder, he thought as he put the photos and newspaper clippings back in the drawer where he kept them. Ethan was gone. He had to accept that. Or at least try to live with it.
But the woman had left him stirred up. He couldn’t work with the filly now. The horse would sense his tension. He’d thought he was handling the one-year anniversary of his brother’s death fairly well—until the woman had shown up.
Gathering himself up, he decided the best thing he could do was some good, hard, physical labor. He headed for the horse stalls. Nothing like mucking stalls to wear himself out.
It had been a mild winter. Today the sun felt warm on his back as he walked to the barn, but the breeze had a nip to it, and he’d heard on the radio earlier that there was talk of snow in the mountains in the next day or so.
Spring in Montana could be a terrible tease. One day would be beautiful and the next as much like winter as a day in January. Dillon had seen thirty-six springs come and go. His father used to say a bad Montana spring after a long winter was what separated the men from the boys.
Maybe it was true. His mother certainly hadn’t fared well on those snowy spring days. She said an unpredictable spring broke not only its promise, but ultimately your heart. Dillon figured that might also be true of the man she’d married. It probably explained, too, why his mother had left on a snowy spring day.
He shook his head at the thought. His mother should have left the old man many springs before she did. Dillon had given up hope of her ever escaping, so he’d been as shocked as his father when she’d finally done it. Not by packing up and leaving, like she should have done years before. No, it had taken an aneurysm to free her of Burt Lawson. She’d died in her sleep in the bed next to him.
Burt Lawson was a heartless bastard. Anyone who’d ever met him would tell you that, including his two sons. That was why no one had expected that Erma’s dying would break the old man the way it had—especially not Dillon. Apparently Burt had had a heart after all. Her passing had killed him, turning him into an even more bitter old man before death took him.
Dillon pushed away thoughts of the past and, entering the barn, picked up a shovel and went to work.
He spent the rest of the day doing backbreaking labor, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the incident with the woman off his mind. He told himself she probably wasn’t even pregnant. There were forms a woman could buy to look that way. But his mind kept coming back to why she would come all the way to Montana when it was so easy to prove she was lying.
He hated things that made no sense. It was one reason why he’d been drawn to law enforcement. He liked to think that crimes could be solved with a cool, calm logic. He was a man who believed in justice.
Just thinking of the .45 in the woman’s shoulder bag made him sorry again that he hadn’t arrested her. She’d threatened an officer of the law with what he assumed was a loaded weapon, and she’d tried to extort money from him in the most egregious way.
Well, she’d realized her mistake once she’d seen the photos and Ethan’s obit, he thought. Her attempt to blame Dillon had failed, so she’d packed it up and left before even telling him how much money he’d allegedly stolen from her.
And that form releasing the biological father of any right to the baby... That, he was sure, had been for pure show.
After she’d learned that he was undersheriff of this county, she’d backed down quickly enough. Had she done her homework, she’d have known that. Nope, she wouldn’t be back to try to shake him down again.
So why was he wondering where she’d gone?
* * *
TESSA TRIED TO still the pounding of her heart as she drove into Big Timber. It had always been like this. The man evoked feelings and desires in her like no other man ever had. She’d seen something in him, a sweetness that he’d tried hard to hide. Wasn’t that why she’d overlooked her misgivings and let him into her heart?
She shook her head, furious with herself. After everything the man had done to her, part of her had been drawn to this rancher version of Ethan even more strongly than to the old Ethan. It was when she’d seen him working with the filly. She remembered the way his large, tanned, callused hands had stroked the horse’s neck, the soft words he’d uttered as he’d removed the halter rope.
Chastising herself under her breath, she couldn’t believe she’d let him sucker her in again, and now she was leaving without her money—or the signed form that would relinquish his rights to their child. She felt like pulling the car over and just sitting and bawling.
But Tessa swore that she wouldn’t shed any more tears for the man. She couldn’t believe he’d used his dead brother’s name. What kind of man did that?
If it was true and the real Ethan Lawson had been killed in a car wreck one year ago tomorrow, then no wonder the man she’d known hadn’t mentioned that he had an identical twin. He had stolen Ethan’s identity. Was it any surprise that a man like that would steal her heart and her money?
Sick to her stomach at the realization, she wished she’d asked for copies of the newspaper clippings. But she should be able to verify it online....
Part of her argued for putting it all behind her. How could she, though, when she was carrying the man’s baby? She couldn’t have him showing up one day and trying to take her child.
Ahead she slowed as she spotted a motel not far from the Yellowstone River just outside town. The small Western town of Big Timber, Montana, didn’t quite live up to its name. She didn’t see any big timber. The pioneers must have cut all the trees down when they’d built the town. How ironic, she thought as she pulled in front of the motel unit marked Office.
After checking in, Tessa used her phone to go online to verify Ethan’s death. She felt foolish. But when the man she’d known as Ethan had disappeared, even if he had given her his real last name, she still wouldn’t have thought to search for him online. A self-professed saddle tramp, he’d appeared to be a cowboy who worked on ranches where he got room and board. She had doubted he’d ever had an apartment, paid a utility bill or owned more than his old pickup and his saddle. Which meant no paper trail, so she hadn’t even bothered to look.
No, when he’d taken off without a word in the middle the night with her money and hadn’t returned, Tessa hadn’t gone to a computer to find him. She hadn’t planned on going after him at all. What would be the point? She certainly hadn’t wanted a man like that back.
But then she’d found a dog-eared snapshot he’d left behind, and very pregnant and running on emotions like gas fumes, she’d changed her mind about finding him. She’d wanted to look him in the eye one last time.
And now she had.
* * *
FRANK CURRY COULDN’T believe how much time had passed since he’d turned in his star and gun and walked away from the only job he’d ever loved. He’d been ready to quit being sheriff, furious with the system that couldn’t find his ex-wife, Pam Chandler, and put her behind bars.
Pam had attacked him, tried to kill the only woman he’d ever loved and done horrible things to the daughter he hadn’t known existed until a year ago.
Now as he stood looking at the calendar hanging on his kitchen wall, he was thankful that his undersheriff, Dillon Lawson, had insisted he take a leave of absence instead of quitting.
His six months were up today and he was anxious to get back to his job. He’d missed being sheriff and had come to realize how much he needed it. For months now, he’d been on a quest to find Pam and put an end to the horrible things she’d done to the people he loved. He’d been crazed and was now thankful he’d finally found peace.
Glancing up, he peered out the window at his ranch yard and realized what had caught his eye. A bird had landed on the telephone line that ran from his house to the barn.
Frank blinked, his pulse jumping with both surprise and pleasure. He froze, afraid to move for fear the bird would fly away. Or worse, that it would prove to be a pesky magpie instead of a crow. He’d studied crows for years, having had a family of them on the ranch.
The crows had been the one constant in his life, other than his job. He’d named the birds, could tell them apart by their calls and thought of them as family. He’d been more than heartbroken when last year one of his crows had been killed. The family had left, warning other crows of the danger. For months he hadn’t seen a crow on his property.
Until now.
He told himself it was sign that the worst was behind him.
* * *
AFTER A RESTLESS night, Dillon was surprised to get a call from Frank Curry. “Frank, it’s good to hear from you.” It was early, but he was up, dressed and ready to go to work.
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” the sheriff said.
Frank’s six-month administrative leave was coming to an end. Dillon hoped the sheriff was calling to say he was ready to come back to work. Frank had been the best sheriff he’d ever run across—that was, until Frank’s ex-wife had done everything possible to break him. Dillon had feared that the woman was going to succeed.
“How I’m doing?” Dillon said with a laugh. “Shouldn’t that be what I’m asking you?”
“I’m fine. I’ve been doing a lot of repairs around the ranch, riding my horse up in the Crazies some and, of course, visiting my daughter.”
“How is Tiffany?” Dillon asked.
“Okay.” In other words, the same hateful girl who’d tried to kill her father. Dillon knew that the sheriff had spent a lot of time at the state mental hospital, visiting her. Recently he’d heard that a court date might be set for Tiffany’s hearing. If found competent, she would stand trial as an adult even though she’d been only seventeen when, allegedly brainwashed by her bitter mother, she’d tried to kill Frank.
“Guess what? There’s a crow sitting on my phone line to the barn,” Frank said.
Dillon could hear how that cheered Frank. He knew Frank needed something positive in his life. The sheriff had always enjoyed watching the crows that had taken up residence in his yard.
“They are so much like humans,” Frank had once told him. They’d been on a stakeout, and Frank had pointed out the way the crows reacted to each other. Dillon had never paid much attention to the birds before that. He’d always thought a crow was a sign of death or some dark omen or another.
But Frank saw the birds as good luck. He’d watched his family of crows grow on his ranch and had become very attached to them. Then Frank’s daughter, Tiffany, had killed one out of spite. The rest of the birds had left and hadn’t returned. Until now. Maybe.
“One of the crows saved my life that day,” Frank had told him. “It flew at Tiffany, distracting her and allowing me to get the gun away from her, otherwise I wouldn’t be here today.”
Dillon wasn’t sure he believed the bird had purposely helped Frank, but as long as Frank did, that was all that mattered. He’d quit asking Frank if his crows had come back.
“Dillon, I was worried about you. I know what today is,” Frank was saying. “How are you holding up?”
It surprised him that Frank had remembered, with everything the man had been going through. “Ethan’s on my mind, of course, but I’m okay. Thanks for thinking of me, though. How are you doing?”
“I’m thinking I will come back to work today.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard yet,” Dillon said, and couldn’t help smiling. Frank sounded better. No, more than that. He sounded good. Had he finally accepted things?
While the entire country had been looking for Pam Chandler for months, she hadn’t turned up. It was as if she’d dropped off the face of the earth. Dillon had feared that Frank’s obsession with finding his ex-wife would be the downfall of not only his career, but also his life.
Even though Dillon had finally talked him into taking six months, he’d had little hope that Frank would return to the job if Pam wasn’t found. It had been so hard to see Frank go down that long, dark road. He’d feared Frank would end up finding Pam, killing her and going to prison.
“How was New Mexico?” Dillon asked now.
Frank laughed softly. “I should have known you were keeping track of me. I chased down a lead, but no one down there has seen Pam since she cleared out a year ago. How is the drug investigation going?”
A shipment of cocaine with a street value of over five million dollars had disappeared from a plane that had crashed in the Beartooth Mountains, south of Big Timber, early last summer. The pilot had been killed in the crash, and four others ended up dead before it was over, two of them murdered by an unknown assailant.
“No more leads,” Dillon said. “The DEA has the case. I assume you didn’t find a connection to the drugs in New Mexico?” He’d seen the phone numbers on one of the drug runner’s cell and had discovered, as he was sure Frank had, that the man had called the ranch where Frank’s ex-wife had been staying. It was a thin connection and apparently it hadn’t panned out.
“I couldn’t find anything that would suggest they knew each other in New Mexico, even though they’d lived in the same town. Nor did I find any connection to Judge Bull Westfall where Pam had been staying.”
“I’m sorry, Frank. As you know, we have an APB out on Pam. But we haven’t gotten any hits.” Normally an easygoing, excellent sheriff, Frank had been pushed to his limit by his ex. Pam was dangerous. She’d done terrible things to Frank since their divorce. One of the worst was not telling him she was pregnant when they’d split eighteen years ago, and raising her daughter, Tiffany, to hate the father she’d never even met—until last year. Since then, Frank had been working to keep the girl out of prison—and getting her the mental help she needed at the state hospital.
“I should let you go. You probably need to get to work. Speaking of work, I’m headed that way myself. See you at the office.” Dillon had been acting sheriff in Frank’s absence and realized how little he liked being the boss. “Your star and gun are in my desk drawer. It’s great to have you back.”
Dillon had almost mentioned the woman who’d shown up at his ranch yesterday, but figured he could talk to him about it later back at the office. Frank was a good sounding board, and he’d need it. The woman had thrown him for a loop.
He left the house and drove the twenty-five miles into Big Timber from his ranch out in the valley. He’d just crossed the Yellowstone River, the water a clear cool green, when he spotted Tessa Winters’s car. It was parked in front of a motel on the edge of town.
He slowed, telling himself there was no reason to stop. He’d said his piece yesterday. But it bothered him that the woman was still in town. She’d made this already hard day even tougher with her accusations. Just seeing her car put him in a foul mood.
What was she still doing here? He couldn’t bear the thought that she might go around town telling people that a man she thought was Ethan Lawson had not only impregnated her, but also abandoned her and stolen her money.
Against his better judgment, he swung into the motel parking lot, pulled alongside the woman’s car and got out.
All the curtains were drawn across the motel room windows. This time of the morning any guests from last night were long gone—except for Tessa Winters. Leaning down, he peered into her car. His brother’s vehicles had often been filled with fast-food containers and beer cans, growing up. Ethan had never been neat.
Wouldn’t a person expect Ethan’s “girlfriend” to be just as bad? The immaculate interior of her newer-model car seemed to prove she was lying about ever living with his brother. He tried the passenger-side door. Locked. He knew he should just walk away. More than likely the woman was just getting a late start this morning. She would clear out of town and he could put her accusations behind him.
But being the law enforcement officer he was, he walked around the car and took down the license plate number. He realized he was still upset that the woman had tried to shake him down. For all he knew, she might have a police record a mile long.
Stepping back to his own vehicle, he ran her plates. No priors. The woman was squeaky-clean. Even the car checked out.
There was only one red flag. The car was owned by Tessa Winters of Rancho Mirage, California—a town not that far at all from where Ethan had been killed near Parker, Arizona.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY loved her.
Nettie Benton felt a rush of heat as she watched Frank get out of his pickup and start up the steps to the Beartooth General Store.
She’d waited years to hear those words, and finally had six months ago. That knowledge was the only thing that had kept her going in the months since he’d confessed how he felt about her. She’d seen little of him during that time. She’d known he’d been trying to find his ex-wife, and she had lived in fear of what he would do when he did. She’d never seen him so angry, and while she didn’t blame him for wanting to kill Pam, she prayed he would come to his senses before he did anything that could land him in prison.
They would all sit easier if Pam was gone for good, Nettie especially, since the crazy woman had tried to run her down out in the street in front of the store. But that had been months ago, and there’d been no sign of Pam since.
The bell over the front door jangled, and Frank walked into the store. At just the sight of him, Nettie felt like she had as a girl. Frank Curry was a large broad-shouldered man who looked like an old-time sheriff. He had a thick, drooping, blond mustache flecked with gray, and a weathered Montana look that belied the gentleness in him. He wore jeans, boots, a uniform shirt and a gold star, his gray Stetson resting on a full head of graying blond hair.
To her he would always be that young man who’d shown up at her house on a motorcycle, wanting her to run away with him. His hair had been long and blond as summer wheat back then. He’d been wild and carefree and had made her heart race at just the sight of him.
No wonder her mother had talked her out of going off with Frank. Instead Nettie had married dull, safe Bob Benton. His parents had given them the store, which was something Bob had never had one iota of interest in running.
The store, though, had saved her during all those years of marriage to Bob. But now he was gone, and the ink on the divorce papers had dried a long time ago.
All water under the bridge, Nettie thought as she smiled at the sheriff. “Glad to see you back in uniform.” Like everyone else, she’d been worried he would never go back to being sheriff. Just as she had worried that he would never love her again. She’d broken his heart. Or at least that was what he’d told her all those years ago.
He gave a slight nod, his smile racing straight to her heart. “It feels good. I’m sorry I haven’t been by for so long—”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said as he made his way to her. “No apologies are necessary.”
“Yes, they are. You asked me to fix your office door months ago. Is it still sticking?”
She nodded and smiled. “I just don’t close it.”
“Otherwise you would be locked in?” He shook his head.
“It’s no big deal. I can always call Kate across the street to come get me out. Anyway, you’ve had more important things on your mind. The usual?” She was already getting him an orange soda from the cooler.
“I’ve missed you,” he said as she opened the bottle on an old-fashioned opener on the wall and handed it to him. Their fingers brushed and she felt that familiar thrill.
She didn’t want to tell him how much she’d missed him. Or how much she’d feared he would never come back. She’d survived on what he’d said before he left. He loved her.
“Is this your first day back at work?” she asked.
He nodded and took a drink.
He’d changed over the past six months. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, though, but he seemed reconciled. A man like Frank Curry believed he could “fix” most anything—or at least should be able to. He’d blamed himself for Pam being the way she was.
“I’m so glad you gave up on finding Pam,” Nettie said.
Again he merely nodded.
She thought of the man who’d taken off out of the store, murder in his eye, to find Pam. So what had changed? she wondered as she studied him. Pam Chandler was still dangerous. She was still out there somewhere. Nettie lived with that knowledge every day. She didn’t cross the street to the post office or the Branding Iron Café without looking around for the crazy, vindictive woman. She no longer walked down to the store at night unless someone was with her. At the house, she locked all her doors, even in the daytime, something pretty much unheard of in most of rural Montana.
“I’d better be going,” Frank said. He had a deep voice. It had always sent heat racing through her blood. His gaze met hers and she felt a catch in her throat. “I was thinking you might want to go to a movie tomorrow night.”
He was asking her for a date? It had been so long in coming that she didn’t answer at first, out of shock.
“That is, if you’re free.” He sounded not so sure of things between them. Understandably, since it wasn’t that long ago that she’d given up on him and had spent some time with another man.
She shoved that thought away. “I would love to go,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.
He smiled then and he was the Frank Curry she’d fallen so desperately in love with so many years ago. That love had lingered and only recently begun to bloom again, like a glacier lily coming up after a long, hard Montana winter.
Stepping down the hall, he took a look at her office door.
“Frank, I don’t want you to be late for work. The door can wait.”
“It looks as if I’m going to have to take it down and plane off some of the wood. The store must have shifted on its old foundation. I’ll fix the door this weekend. Just don’t get locked in.”
“I won’t.” His concern warmed her heart. She pushed aside her worries about him as he leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth. He tasted of orange soda and smelled of the outdoors. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him to her, but he was already drawing back, saying, “Don’t want to be late my first day back on the job.” And he was gone, the bell over the door jingling.
Nettie moved to the window to watch him leave, her fingers pressed to the glass, her heart pounding. She had waited so long for this.
Please don’t let anything spoil it.
* * *
TESSA STARTED AT the knock on her motel room door. Her first thought was, No one knows I’m here. No one but Ethan, or whatever the man wanted to call himself.
At the second knock, she moved to the door and asked, “Yes?”
“Ms. Winters, I’d like to have a word with you.” Ethan’s voice, though more authoritative. Just the sound of it hurt. “It’s Undersheriff Dillon Lawson.”
“I believe we said all we had to yesterday,” she called through the door.
“Not quite.”
She gritted her teeth and opened the door. For a moment she was taken aback by the uniformed man standing in her doorway. He wore a pale gray Stetson over his longish blond hair, a tan uniform shirt with his name tag and a gold star. A gun was strapped to his slim hips, over a pair of jeans that ran down his long legs to his boots.
Ethan was as handsome as any man she’d ever known, no matter what he was wearing. But in a uniform, he looked so responsible, so nice, so safe, that he threatened to break her heart all over again.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Just to talk. May I come in?”
Tessa hesitated. “I don’t see what talking—”
“Please.”
The break in his voice made her relent. She stepped aside to let him enter the room but left the door open. She’d made the bed, a habit her mother had taught her and one she couldn’t break even when it was a motel. The air smelled of pines and the Yellowstone River nearby. She breathed it in and braced herself for whatever was to happen next.
He saw the bed and looked surprised.
“I can’t stand an unmade bed and I wasn’t quite ready to leave yet.”
He’d removed his Stetson and now held the brim in his fingers. “Where are you going?”
“Not that it concerns you, but back to California. I have a job there, you might recall. I had a life there before I met you.”
“Do you have family there?”
She studied him. “Are you asking as undersheriff or as the father of my baby?”
He didn’t answer.
“As you already know, I don’t have family, but I have friends in California,” she said into the silence that stretched between them. She felt awkward standing in the small motel room. There weren’t a lot of places to sit in the room, other than the bed and one straight-backed chair by the desk. She wondered how long this was going to take. “I’ll be just fine, not that I think you honestly care about me or the baby.”
“You said you have a job. Where do you work?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Why are you—”
“Please, just humor me, all right?”
Tessa sighed. “I work as a supervisor for a landscaping firm.”
He seemed surprised, which only annoyed her. “How much money did you say my brother took from you?”
She ignored the brother part, wondering what he was doing here. Apparently he wanted to continue this pretense. But to what end? Yesterday he’d threatened her with arrest for pulling a gun on him and trying to scam him. Surely he hadn’t come here today to do just that, had he?
“All of my savings. Just under five thousand dollars, as if you don’t know that, too.”
He looked down at his boots for a moment. “I was thinking...” He slowly raised his gaze. “If you really knew my brother, then you should have some way to prove it.”
She put her hands on her stomach. “The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Anyway, why would I have come all the way to Montana looking for Ethan if I hadn’t known him? Or at least someone who’d pretended to be him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Truthfully, I can’t see you with my brother. You seem to have too much going for you to get involved with him.”
She chuckled at that. “I should have been smarter. Neither of us is denying that.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you and Ethan must have been together for a while before—” His gaze dropped to where her hands still rested on her stomach. “Before you say he left you.”
“Three months. I met him last April, three months before I got pregnant. That would have been a month after you stole his identity.” She couldn’t help being angry. What was he insinuating? That this wasn’t his fault because clearly she was just plain easy? Those were fightin’ words.
“Then you must have photographs of the two of you together.”
Tessa felt her pulse jump. “You know damned well I don’t.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do we really have to continue this charade? Ethan took everything that tied him to me and the baby when he left, including photographs of the two of us, along with my money. He even killed the ones on my cell phone, not that there were many. Ethan didn’t like having his photo taken.”
“Didn’t you find that strange?”
She laughed. “I did until I met you. Now we both know why you didn’t want me to have any proof, don’t we?”
“So you have no evidence that you ever even knew my brother.”
Tessa glared at him. “Isn’t that the way you planned it?”
“Then I guess we’re finished here.” He settled his hat on his head, tipped the brim and started for the door.
That was it? He was just going to walk out again? What had he really come here for?
And that was when it hit her.
“Aren’t you curious how I found you, since you lied not only about your first name but also your last? You were so careful not to leave anything that would tie me to you. You must wonder how I found you.”
The lawman stopped short of the door and turned to look back at her. She reached into her shoulder bag and saw him tense, but she didn’t pull the .45. “I was wondering why you stopped by here this morning. Did you just realize that you’d dropped something when you left me in the middle of the night? Of course you would want to make sure I don’t use it to embarrass you, to prove what you did.”
He frowned. “I don’t know what—”
“Admit it. You came for this.” She held up the dog-eared, faded photograph and let out a bitter laugh. “I’m so stupid. Of course this was why you asked me about photographs. You realized you must have dropped it in your hurry to get away the night you left.”
His frown deepened.
“I’ll bet you’ve been racking your brain, wondering how I could have found you. You never told me enough to lead me to you in Montana. So what could it have been? Then you remembered the photograph.” She looked at him, her expression filled with disgust. “Here, take it,” she said, thrusting it at him. “I’m not going to bother you again. I’m going back to California and you will never see me or my baby again.”
He seemed to hesitate for a moment before he stepped to her and took the photograph.
* * *
ONE GLANCE AT the photo and Dillon had to pull out the chair and sit down. He bent over the snapshot, tears blurring his eyes. “Where did you get this?”
“I just told you. You dropped it. I almost threw it away when I found it. I thought, how egotistical that he carried around a photo of himself. I remembered seeing you with it a few times when you didn’t know I was watching. Clearly it meant something to you, so I thought the sentiment must be about the place.”
“Why didn’t you show me this yesterday?” he asked without looking up.
“As if it would have made a difference.”
He glanced up then and met her blue gaze. He’d been in law enforcement long enough that he had gotten pretty good at telling if a person was lying. This woman had thrown off his instincts from the moment he’d met her because of his grief over his brother’s death. Her story hadn’t held water, and yet... “You said you found me through this photo?”
“I tried Hard Luck Ranch from the logo on the side of the pickup in the background, but there was more than one, so I just looked up the brand on the cattle in the pasture behind you in the photo.” She shrugged. “It led me right to your ranch.”
It surprised him that she’d been that clever, but clearly the woman was smart and very determined.
“Now that you have your photograph back...”
It was obvious she wanted him to leave. Her disgust tore at his insides. He hated to think that what she was saying about his brother’s stealing her money and leaving her might be true. But he feared it was.
Which meant what? That Ethan hadn’t died in that car crash? His heart leaped at the thought, but quickly plummeted. Ethan was dead. Unless somehow there’d been a mistake in identifying the body, since the vehicle had apparently exploded on impact—
“This photo isn’t mine,” he said. “That is me in the picture, though. Ethan took it the last time I saw him, almost two years ago.”
He could see that she didn’t know what to make of that. For once, she looked as confused as he’d felt from the moment she’d appeared at his corral fence. “Tell me about my brother.”
She let out a small laugh. “You have to be kidding.” Her gaze met his, challenging him to tell the truth.
He only wished he knew the truth. “You say you met him last April?” A month after he’d buried his brother. Or at least what was left of the man he’d thought was his brother. “Please, tell me about him.”
Tessa stared at him, her blue eyes firing with anger and pain. Ethan had hurt her badly—and she believed he had been that man masquerading as his brother.
“Tell you about him? You mean other than his being a liar and a thief and a coward?” she asked sarcastically.
“There must have been something you loved about him.”
* * *
TESSA HAD TO swallow the lump in her throat. Since Ethan had left her, the pain in her heart had dulled. Being this close to the man now made her recall something she’d sensed in him the first time she’d met him. A sadness born, she’d thought, of compassion.
He’d told her he’d made mistakes in his life. That he had wanted to change for her. He’d made her believe that her love could bring out the man she’d sensed was in him. She’d wanted to believe that. There’d been something about him....
Tessa sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the man sitting in her motel room. She told herself she wasn’t up to this charade. That was what it was, wasn’t it? This man was trying to confuse her, right?
And yet he looked heartsick, like a man who had lost his brother and thought she could bring him back.
She took a breath and let it out slowly. “He was...charming and funny and a little vulnerable. He made me feel...” She swallowed again and said, “Do we really have to do this? If Ethan was killed a month before I met the man I thought was him—”
“Where did you meet him?”
Tessa sighed and told herself to indulge him; whatever it took to get him to sign away his rights to the baby she was carrying. Even better, get him to write her a check for the money he’d stolen from her. Showing him the photograph had touched him in a way she hadn’t expected.
“At church.”
He actually looked surprised. “I would have thought—”
“A bar?” She could see that he wanted to think the worst of her. “Ethan was on a construction crew fixing part of the church. I had stopped by to bring some cookies I made for an upcoming potluck.... He asked me what kind of cookies I’d made and said they were his favorite.”
“Snicker doodles.”
She met his gaze. “Yes.”
“You gave him one, and that’s when he asked you out.”
Tessa hesitated a moment before she shook her head. “He didn’t ask me until a few days later at a church garage sale.”
“He must have liked you right from the start. Do you mind?” He took one of the plastic-wrapped cups and got up to fill it with water from the bathroom. He looked shaken, making her feel as if she, too, was on unfamiliar, unstable ground. Was it possible Ethan had fooled not just her, but also his brother and the rest of the world? She was no longer so sure this man was the one she’d known.
“So you fell in love with him.” It wasn’t a question.
She nodded. “We’d set a date to get married.”
That surprised him, she saw. “What happened?”
“You know what happened,” she said irritably, realizing she was buying into his act—and not for the first time. He’d played her for a fool once. She was determined he wouldn’t again. “You took my money and skipped town.” She stood up.
“You know it wasn’t me.” He said the words softly, his gaze holding hers.
She stared into his eyes for a long moment, then she lowered herself back onto the edge of the bed. She felt a small chill ripple through her. This wasn’t the man who’d hurt her. Hadn’t part of her known that the moment she’d seen the way he’d handled the horse yesterday?
“I don’t understand.” Her voice broke as her eyes welled with tears.
“There is only one explanation,” the undersheriff said. “If you’re telling the truth, then my brother is alive.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FRANK HAD WANTED to tell Lynette—he’d never called her Nettie—about the crow he’d seen on the telephone line at the ranch. But he already regretted telling Dillon. He knew it was silly, but he feared he’d jinxed it, and when he went home the crow would be gone.
He couldn’t explain it, but the crows gave him a feeling of well-being, as if everything was right with the world. The birds fascinated him, as well. He recalled one morning when he and Lynette had sat in his patrol pickup and watched two young crows playing on the main street of Beartooth.
It had been a game of tag, the young crows dancing around, teasing each other with a twig between them. Before that morning, Lynette hadn’t understood his fascination with the birds.
“They are like us,” she’d said after watching the young crows play.
He’d told her how they made extended families, taking in uncles and aunts, any crow that needed a place to stay. He still wasn’t sure exactly how they communicated among themselves, but they did. There was one thing he did know, though, for certain. Crows were better at making and keeping their families together than humans.
Frank shoved that thought away. He was in too good a mood to think about the past now. He and Lynette were going on a date. He smiled. And he was going back to work, back to a job he loved and had almost given up because of—
Nope, he wasn’t even going to think his ex-wife’s name. He’d put that all behind him. Over the past six months he’d worked hard at the ranch, filling his days so full that at night he couldn’t think. He would walk into the house, often too tired to eat, and would fall into his bed.
All that was in the past, he told himself, and yet he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to quit locking his doors at night or stop keeping his loaded gun within reach beside his bed. So maybe not everything could be put to rest in the past.
Frank had barely reached the sheriff’s department, retrieved his service gun and gold star, when he got his first call. A domestic dispute. Never his favorite. But it was nice to be back in the saddle, so to speak.
* * *
“WHAT ARE YOU saying?” Tessa demanded as she stared at Dillon. It was hard to look at him and not see Ethan. But more and more she was seeing subtle differences between the two men that had nothing to do with their looks.
“There is only one way you can be carrying my brother’s baby,” he said. “And that is if Ethan didn’t die in that car crash last March.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
She shook her head. “If the person behind the wheel wasn’t him, then why didn’t he come forward?”
Dillon let out a short, hard laugh. “He wanted everyone to believe he was dead.” He shook his head, as if amazed that his twin could be that cruel. A thought seemed to strike him. “What name was he going by when you met him? You said he’d lied about his last name.”
“Ethan Cross.”
He nodded. “That makes sense. It’s our mother’s maiden name.”
“You really are his twin brother.” She suddenly felt awful for calling him a liar. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
His smile was benevolent as he held out his hand. “Maybe we should start over. My name is Dillon Lawson.”
“Tessa Winters,” she said, her hand disappearing into his large, warm, callused one. She couldn’t tell which of them was trembling. Maybe both of them were, given what was becoming apparent. “Is it really possible?’
“With Ethan, anything is possible. Even probable.”
“Why would he let everyone think he was dead?”
“My guess is that he was in trouble and needed to disappear. How better than letting everyone believe he had died in the car wreck?”
“Everyone, including his twin brother?”
“We haven’t been close in years. Also, he’s apparently good at disappearing.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his checkbook. “You said he took five thousand dollars from you?”
“Not quite. But I don’t want your money.”
He raised a brow. “You wouldn’t have come all this way unless you needed it.”
“I’ll manage. More than anything I wanted to look into Ethan’s eyes one last time.” She hated to admit that she’d actually thought about giving him another chance. Not for herself, but for their daughter. She couldn’t bear the thought of her little girl growing up without a father.
How foolish she had been. The man had let everyone believe he was dead. He’d lied about more than she could have imagined. Now all she wanted was for Ethan to sign the form giving away his rights. The last thing she wanted was him coming in and out of their lives and bringing his troubles with him.
“I’m sorry.”
She met Dillon’s blue gaze and wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. They might be identical twins, but where Ethan had tried to be gentle and caring, Dillon just was.
“What I really want is for him to sign the form. He didn’t want this baby. I don’t want him showing up years from now and trying to lay claim to my daughter.”
“You’re having a girl?” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “I’m going to have a niece?” He smiled as she nodded, and she felt her heart lift at the joy she saw in his expression. She’d so wanted her daughter to have family, especially since she herself had grown up without any.
“I’ll see what I can find out about Ethan,” Dillon said, suddenly looking uneasy. “In the meantime, I would imagine you’ll be going back to California. I’ll let you know when I find him.”
Tessa shook her head. “I didn’t come all this way to give up that easily. If Ethan is alive, I’m finding him—with or without your help.”
* * *
“I DON’T THINK that’s a good idea, Tessa. Not only are you pregnant—when are you due?”
“Three weeks.”
“Very pregnant, and not trained for this sort of thing, and we have no idea what kind of trouble my brother is running from.” Even as Dillon said the words, he saw the stubborn lift of her chin. Determination burned in her blue gaze.
“You said you hadn’t seen him in two years,” she argued. “I, on the other hand, have firsthand knowledge of your brother during the past year. Between the two of us, we stand a better chance of finding him if we work together than alone.”
He studied her for a moment, remembering the .45 in her shoulder bag. He didn’t doubt that she could take care of herself under normal circumstances. But these weren’t normal. Whatever his brother was running from, it must be something big if it had forced him to fake his own death.
“You have to think about yourself and your baby,” he said. “If I’m right, my brother was involved in something bad. This could get dangerous.”
She crossed her arms on top of her stomach and stared him down. “Then I have already put myself and my baby in danger by finding you, haven’t I?”
Dillon worried she might be right about that. “Still—”
“You don’t owe me anything. You can wash your hands of me right now. But I will find Ethan. As hard as he tried, he left me somewhat of a trail. You are only one of my leads.”
“Leads you aren’t going to share unless we do this together.”
She smiled.
He considered the woman. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her, there had been something in her demeanor that had gotten to him. Her story had been preposterous, and yet... And yet he hadn’t been able to let it go.
He’d thought she was trying to con him when they’d first met. The lawman in him reminded him that he might be falling for the worst con of all, because he desperately wanted Tessa to be carrying Ethan’s baby—and she would know that.
He recalled how Sheriff Frank Curry had never opened the DNA test that had been run on the girl claiming to be his daughter, Tiffany Chandler. Frank had said he didn’t need to. Tiffany was his daughter.
Dillon knew Frank wanted to believe Tiffany was his daughter. Just as Dillon wanted to believe this woman had known his brother and was now carrying his child.
“You still aren’t sure about me,” she said as if reading his thoughts.
Did he believe she was carrying Ethan’s baby or did he only want to believe it? He thought of the photograph that Ethan had left behind and how he’d used their mother’s maiden name.
“I believe you knew my brother, and if you’re telling the truth...” His gaze went to her stomach. He saw something move across the surface. Before he could react, Tessa took his hand and placed it on her swollen belly.
His eyes widened as the baby kicked his hand. He felt its little foot just below the surface. The movement awakened some primitive emotion deep inside him, because he felt an instant connection to this child she was carrying. Ethan’s baby.
Tessa smiled. “That’s your niece.”
He nodded, praying she was telling the truth, because it would mean Ethan was alive—or at least had been only months ago—and part of his brother lived in this woman. Being his brother’s identical twin, Dillon felt as if he was part of this child, as well.
If what she said was true, Tessa had been close to his brother, something he himself hadn’t been for years. If true, she, too, had loved Ethan. No doubt still did. Because of that, he couldn’t let her go after Ethan alone. The only way he could protect her and this baby was to keep her close. If it was true, she might know more about his brother than he did. Between them, they might stand a chance of finding Ethan—if he really was alive.
He couldn’t help being skeptical. It came with the job. He met Tessa’s gaze. His brother was alive. But where was he now? And how was Dillon going to find him? Ethan hadn’t used his real name when he’d met Tessa. That must mean someone had been looking for him.
“I’ll see what I can find out through regular channels,” Dillon said. “In the meantime, I don’t want you staying in a motel.” Before she could argue, he quickly added, “Come stay out at the ranch. I have plenty of room. You’ll be more comfortable there.”
“And you can keep an eye on me.”
“And vice versa.”
She pretended surprise. “Did you think I might suspect you’d go after Ethan without me?”
He smiled. “In the meantime, I want you to have this.” He began to fill out a check for five thousand dollars.
“I already told you—”
“It’s just a loan until we find Ethan and he can pay you back what he owes.” He held out the check.
She glanced at him and the check for a moment before taking it. “A loan. Only until we find Ethan.”
Part of him called himself a damned fool. He could be five thousand dollars poorer tomorrow—if she didn’t steal him blind at the house before disappearing as quickly as she’d appeared in his life.
But once he’d felt that tiny foot against his palm, Tessa Winters had had him.
* * *
THE FIRST THING Dillon did was check to see if anyone had disappeared around the time of Ethan’s alleged death in the desert. He found what he was looking for in a short police report about a wrangler who’d been reported missing from a dude ranch near Palm Springs. The man had left behind his truck and some of his belongings.
There was just the one mention of the missing man. No follow-up. The man’s name was Buck Morgan. His former address, though, was Wisdom, Montana.
Dillon had a bad feeling the man was now buried in the local cemetery under Ethan’s headstone. He remembered the day he’d laid his brother to rest. There hadn’t been a funeral. No one in the area knew Ethan, and Dillon wouldn’t have taken his brother’s remains back to western Montana. Too many bad memories there for both brothers.
Had Ethan been watching the day Dillon had placed the ashes in the container at the grave site? That thought made him both angry and incredibly sad—and even more determined to find his brother, if indeed he was still alive.
The last Dillon had heard, his brother was working on a ranch over on the Powder River near Ekalaka, Montana. But that had been two years ago, and Ethan had never stayed in any one place long.
Dillon put in a call to the ranch just in case the owner might have known where Ethan was headed next. Possibly Wisdom, Montana?
When the ranch owner answered, he introduced himself as Undersheriff Dillon Lawson of Big Timber.
“Ethan Lawson, oh, you bet I remember him,” the female ranch owner said, giving Dillon a bad feeling he knew what was coming next. “He left here owing me money. Any chance you’re a relative?”
“Brother. How much does he owe you?”
“Two hundred.”
“I’ll put a check in the mail today,” Dillon said, wondering how much it was going to cost him by the time he was through looking for his twin. “Do you happen to know where he went after he left your ranch?”
“Not likely, since he left in the middle of the night. The two of them absconding in the night like the thieves they were. The other one got me for five hundred. I don’t suppose you want to pick up his tab, as well?”
“The other one?”
“Luke Blackwell. Running with him, your brother was headed for trouble. I hired Luke against my better judgment, since when I checked the ranch he’d worked for I was warned that he’d gotten involved with the rancher’s granddaughter. Luke gave me some song and dance about the girl chasing him. I weakened. Big mistake. Last I heard, Luke did some hard time in Deer Lodge. Not surprised.”
“Do you know what he went to prison for?” Dillon asked.
“Felony theft. He was caught stealing a backhoe. The bum actually tried to get me to give him a recommendation before the parole board hearing, promising to offer him a job when he got out. Like I would ever let him back on my ranch. If you’re looking for your brother, he’ll be wherever Luke went after he got out. The two were thicker than thieves.” She chuckled bitterly.
Dillon asked for her address, thanked her for the information and hung up. He quickly checked to see how Luke Blackwell had fared with the judicial system.
Luke had done only eighteen months in prison before his release. He had gotten a rancher by the name of Halbrook Truman of the Double T-Bar-Diamond to promise him a job when he got out.
The Double T-Bar-Diamond was in Big Hole country over by Wisdom, Montana. Dillon felt his heart beat a little faster. He’d never trusted coincidences. As he started to place a call to the ranch, he changed his mind. He hadn’t been to that part of southwestern Montana in years. It was only a half day’s drive, one he wouldn’t mind taking.
Also, he was curious why Halbrook Truman had hired Luke Blackwell. Felons had a hard time getting jobs. If the rancher had checked into Luke’s past at all, he would have found out just how unreliable the man was—not to mention that he’d gone to prison for theft. But maybe Luke had proved he could change and now still worked at the ranch.
With Sheriff Frank Curry back at work, there was no reason Dillon couldn’t follow up on this. He called the cell phone number Tessa Winters had given him before he’d left her at the ranch. She answered on the second ring, sounding breathless.
“Are you all right?” he asked alarmed.
“Fine, I left my cell phone on the porch. I was down at the corral admiring your horses.”
With relief, he asked, “Did Ethan ever mention working on a ranch called the Double T-Bar-Diamond?” He heard her start to say no just before he quickly added, “For a man named Halbrook Truman?”
“Halbrook,” she said. “I have heard that name. Who is he?”
“A rancher over in western Montana. I think Ethan might have worked for him before he left for Arizona. I’m going over there to talk to him.”
“Not without me.”
He smiled and shook his head, telling himself he should have known she wouldn’t sit tight for long. The woman was resolute. Look how she’d found him. He wondered if he would have ever known there was even a chance Ethan was alive if she hadn’t shown up at his door.
“In that case, how do you feel about a road trip? It will also give us a chance to talk.” There was so much he wanted to know. About Ethan—and whatever trouble his twin had gotten himself into.
But he was also very curious about Tessa Winters.
CHAPTER SIX
DILLON GLANCED AT the young pregnant woman in his passenger seat. Not for the first time, he saw her turn to look behind them.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
She seemed startled by the question and reticent to answer. “You’ll think I’m silly, but I’ve had the strangest feeling I was being followed.”
“All the way from California?”
“Crazy, huh?”
Maybe. Maybe not. Who knew what kind of people his brother had gotten involved with? It scared him, though, to think that the trouble might have followed her.
“You said on the phone earlier that you recognized the name Halbrook,” he said.
She nodded. “A man stopped by a day or two before Ethan left. Ethan went outside to talk to him, but I overheard them arguing. Ethan mentioned the name Halbrook. It’s unusual enough, I remembered it.”
“Did you ask Ethan what the argument was about?”
“He told me he owed the man money. I asked how much and suggested he use the money I had in savings to pay the man. I hadn’t liked the look of the man and didn’t want him coming back around.”
“Ethan didn’t jump at that?”
“He said he didn’t want my money, that it was for our house.” She scoffed at that now. “He knew I’d put the money in both our names. Talk about trusting.”
“Tell me about you,” Dillon said, and glanced over at her. “If you don’t mind.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’d like to share with me.”
* * *
TESSA THOUGHT ABOUT that for a moment. More to the point, what did she really know about Dillon? He wasn’t his brother—that much was clear. He was a man who worked both as an undersheriff and at his own ranch. He was kind and generous and compassionate, and he’d taken an entirely different route in life than his brother had.
What scared her was that in Dillon she glimpsed what she had wanted to see in his twin. She knew it was crazy, but Ethan had been just enough like his brother that she felt she already knew Dillon. She trusted him, and trust didn’t come easily to her. Ethan’s betrayal had only made her less trusting.
“I was born and raised in California. My parents were killed in a car wreck when I was two. I was in the car, but I miraculously survived. A neighbor lady took me in and raised me until her death, when I was sixteen. After that, I was on my own.” She’d purposely left out the part about the foster homes the county had put her in. She’d barely survived those with her life. That had been the real miracle.
Dillon studied her for a moment before turning back to his driving. He seemed to sense the parts she’d left out and was kind enough not to ask.
“You want more for your daughter,” he said after a moment.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I suppose that is the real reason I came all this way looking for Ethan. I wanted to give him another chance to be a father to our daughter.”
“What about another chance with you?”
She shook her head. “He used up his last chance when he left the way he did.”
* * *
DILLON COULD SEE what his brother had seen in Tessa. Ethan would have liked her independence, the fire in her, not to mention her beauty both inside and out. Ethan had chosen well. So why had he burned his bridges when he’d left?
Because he’d known he wouldn’t be back?
“I’m sorry my brother hurt you,” Dillon said as the Montana countryside blurred past, a tableau of shades of green from the new bright grasses to the deeper, richer shades of the cool pines. The mountains rose around them, most still snowcapped.
“It was my own fault.” She turned as if to gaze out at the passing landscape.
“You must have seen something good in him. Isn’t it possible he really did want to change? Really did want everything he said he did?”
She let out a sound that made him hurt inside. “Better to think that than I’m a fool who was taken in by a handsome cowboy, right?”
He could see that Tessa had thought herself smarter. She’d let herself be fooled by a man. She hadn’t yet learned that love was a heart thing, often with no brain involved.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t thought to check for a tail. Then again, he hadn’t thought he needed to. There were cars and pickups and a couple semis behind them. If they were being followed, he couldn’t tell.
“There was no warning?” he asked, hoping to get her talking about Ethan.
“The signs were there. I just chose not to see them.”
“Signs?”
“He’d been more moody in the days right before he left. Antsy and uncharacteristically impatient. More secretive, too. If I asked him where he’d been or what he was looking at on the computer—”
“He had a computer?” This surprised Dillon. Ethan had ranted about the new technologies on his visit two years ago. He’d said that was why he worked on ranches. He didn’t have to learn how to use a computer, let alone a smartphone.
Tessa’s chuckle had a bitter edge to it. “No, he didn’t own a computer. Other than his old pickup and his saddle, had he ever owned anything?”
“So he used yours. Do you still have it?” He could see that she understood at once.
“I checked it after he left. I thought...” She looked away.
He knew exactly what she’d thought. An online romance with another woman.
“He had said he was looking for a new saddle. I showed him how to use a search engine. He wasn’t dumb. He didn’t ask for my help after that.”
Dillon knew his brother wasn’t shopping on the internet for a saddle. So what had he been looking for? “Did he find a saddle?”
Another short laugh. “He wasn’t looking for a saddle. He was looking for a gun.”
“A gun?” Dillon asked.
“He had guns—a .357 he kept rolled up in its holster beside the bed, and a hunting rifle, a .30 Winchester, that hung on the rack in his pickup. Both were old. I suspect they meant something to him?”
“Our uncle Jack gave him the .357 before Jack died. The Winchester was our grandfather’s.” Dillon was a little surprised, given his brother’s lifestyle, that he’d somehow managed to hang on to them.
He’d never thought of Ethan as being sentimental. Nor had he seemed like someone who cared about possessions. More and more Dillon was realizing how little he knew his twin.
He cracked his window, needing air. The more he learned about his brother, the more sick at heart he became. The lush spring Montana landscape was a tapestry of contrasts, from the new bright green grass to the dark pines of the mountains, from the blinding white snow capping the peaks to the cloudless blue of the sky. The sweet scents reminded him of springs when they were boys.
The one thing he knew now without a doubt was that Tessa had known his brother. When and for how long? Well, that was still the question, wasn’t it? But he wouldn’t be looking for his brother unless part of him believed her, believed Ethan was alive.
“So what kind of gun was he looking for online?” He couldn’t fathom that, even if Ethan had wanted another gun, why he would look for it on the internet. Not when he could pick one up at a local gun show. Again, it didn’t sound like his brother.
“He’d deleted the sites he went to. But I hadn’t told him about how the computer kept a history of the sites visited.” She shrugged, giving away more than she probably meant to. Even back when they’d been talking marriage, she hadn’t completely trusted the man she’d fallen in love with.
“Why would he feel the need to lie about what he was looking for?” Dillon asked after a moment.
Tessa seemed to pull herself out of the past. She came out of it angry again, but he suspected it was more with herself than Ethan. “Why would he lie about everything? I have no idea. I just know that he was looking at antique rifles. I saw on one site that a similar rifle to the one he was viewing went for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“So he was just looking.”
“I guess so. He’d been saving his money. I thought for a house for us, but he could have been saving it to buy a rifle, for all I know.”
Odd. Again not like his brother. Dillon couldn’t see him wanting an antique rifle even if he could afford it. So what was that about?
“Did you ever ask him?”
She nodded. “He got defensive, said it didn’t have anything to do with me and that I should stay out of his business. It was the same day the man had stopped by whom he said he owed money to.”
“The day you heard Ethan mention the name Halbrook?”
She nodded. “Ethan stormed out, but came back later and apologized. He was gone the next morning with my money.”
“But he left the photo,” Dillon said.
“Only because he dropped it, he was in such a hurry to clear out.”
“Maybe. The thing is, if he was in trouble, which I think we can assume, then maybe he dropped it on purpose, knowing you would find me.”
* * *
TESSA SCOFFED AT that. “Why didn’t he just contact you himself if he wanted your help?”
“Because he’s too stubborn. Ethan likes to believe he can take care of himself. He wouldn’t ask for my help ever.” He looked over at her, something soft and tender in his gaze. “But he would want you to find me because he’d know I’d take care of you and the baby if anything hap—”
“You think he sent me to you?” She couldn’t help but laugh. “Ethan didn’t exactly seem worried about what was going to happen to me and our baby when he took my money and left.”
“I think you’re wrong about that.”
“Wouldn’t it have been a whole lot easier if he’d just left me your name and address?”
He turned his attention back to the road. She saw his jaw work. “Would you have come all the way to Montana to see his brother?”
She studied him for a moment. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. You strike me as an independent woman with a lot of pride. Ethan obviously knew you. He knew you’d track down the ranch from the photograph.” He glanced over at her. “He knew you were smart and resourceful. He knew you’d find me.”
Tessa let that sink in as she watched the countryside blur past.
She had never seen such beautiful, remote country. They had traveled along Interstate 90 through pine-studded mountains past Paradise Valley and over the Bozeman Pass. From there they drove along clear rivers, winding through more mountains to reach Butte, home of the huge open-pit mine, before leaving behind civilization again.
She hated reliving those last few weeks with Ethan. Worse, she hated to admit even to herself how badly he’d hurt her. How badly she’d let him.
Could Dillon be right? Had Ethan cared about her and the baby? He had an odd way of showing it. But if he was in trouble... She reminded herself that Ethan had apparently faked his own death and changed his name—pretty drastic behavior even for him. Which, according to his brother, indicated that he’d been in serious trouble.
And then he’d met her.
So why hadn’t he kept running? Surely a wife and baby hadn’t been in his plans.
As much as Tessa hated doing it, she stewed over the days before Ethan left. He’d been angry about her questioning his time on the computer. He hadn’t wanted her to know that he was looking for a rifle. That made no sense.
“Had Ethan gotten angry with you before?” Dillon asked, as if he’d noticed her chewing at her lower lip and glowering out the window.
“He was just looking for an excuse to cut and run,” she said.
“My brother has always been...complicated.”
She chuckled at that as she glanced over at Dillon. She couldn’t help remembering what he’d said about her being strong and smart, what he’d figured out about her after meeting her twice. She suspected he was a good undersheriff, good at dealing with most people. But not his brother, apparently. He’d said he hadn’t seen Ethan in two years, hadn’t even known where he was.
She couldn’t help being curious. The brothers were identical twins and yet one had become a lawman and the other an outlaw. “I take it you and Ethan weren’t close?”
He shook his head. “It’s a long story.” And clearly one he didn’t want to get into.
Ahead, a town appeared on the horizon. Tessa was relieved for a change in scenery as well as subject. At the edge of town, the sign read Welcome to Wisdom And the Big Hole Valley, Land of Ten Thousand Haystacks.
“Those are the Bitterroots,” Dillon said, pointing to the snowcapped mountains.
The whole scene was breathtaking. The Big Hole River wound through the valley, with the Bitterroot Mountains as a backdrop. There was a lushness to the country, a new-spring green that was almost blinding.
They followed the Big Hole River out of town, rolling along a gravel road, a jackleg fence on each side. In a field next to them a half dozen horses took off running through the tall grass, the wind blowing back their manes. Overhead, cumulus clouds floated on a sea of blue.
Not far down the road, she noticed the Posted signs. They were orange and stamped with the Double T-Bar-Diamond Ranch name.
“Is this ranch as large as it seems?” she asked, after they’d gone for miles with the Posted signs on both sides of the road.
“Montana has some huge ones,” Dillon said, and slowed as a massive log arch appeared on the right-hand side of the road ahead. The arch was made of log and metal. An ornate design of a huge elk had been cut into the metal.
Suddenly Tessa sat up straighter. “I think Ethan told me about this place.”
Dillon glanced over at her. “The Double T-Bar-Diamond Ranch?”
“Not by name. But if I’m right, there’s a large rock fireplace in the living room of the lodge with a huge elk mount over it. Ethan said the owner of the ranch was so proud of the elk because it was the first one he’d ever killed. Apparently he liked to brag about it and his other possessions. I could tell Ethan didn’t like the man. But when I showed an interest by asking about the ranch and when he worked there, Ethan said he didn’t want to talk about it. He said it wasn’t a place he wanted to remember and then he changed the subject.”
* * *
DILLON COULD HAVE told her that Ethan probably hadn’t wanted to talk about most ranches he’d worked, because more than likely he’d left under unpleasant—if not downright criminal—circumstances. Dillon thought of the one over on the Powder River and the two hundred bucks it had cost him. He wondered what it would cost him at this ranch.
He checked his mirror. Dust boiled up behind the pickup, obscuring anyone who might be following them. “What makes you think this is the ranch?”
“Its size,” she said. “I got the impression the man was very wealthy. But also that arch we just drove under? Did you see the elk artwork in the metal part?”
He already suspected Ethan had worked here. Now he was afraid of what they would find out about his brother as they came over a rise and a sprawling house came into view. Dillon hoped it hadn’t been a mistake bringing Tessa with him.
The house was a single story made of stone and log with a green metal roof. The roof and the house seemed to run forever along the river’s edge.
Dillon parked in front, bracing himself for more bad news as they got out and approached the gigantic carved wooden door.
A woman answered a few minutes after he’d pushed the doorbell. A military march song echoed through the house as she asked, “Yes?” She was dressed in a maid’s uniform.
“We’re here to see Mr. Truman.”
She nodded and led them into a massive living room. Dillon spotted the fireplace, a towering stone masterpiece, and the elk mount dwarfing the room. It looked like something out of Boone and Crockett. He and Tessa shared a look. It appeared he’d been right about his brother following Luke Blackwell here.
At the sound of boot heels on the stone floor, they both turned. One look at the man and Dillon knew this had to be Halbrook Truman, the ranch owner. He carried himself like a man in a hurry to get whatever he wanted with no doubt in his mind that he would succeed.
The fiftysomething rancher appeared distracted, so it took a moment before he looked up and actually saw them. His gaze went from Tessa to Dillon before he stumbled to a stop. “Ethan?” He started to laugh, shaking his head as if nothing surprised him anymore. “You’re the last person I expected to see—especially wearing a damned sheriff’s department uniform. Did you make Luke one of your deputies?” The man guffawed at his own joke.
For the second time in two days, someone had thought Dillon was Ethan. He’d lived so long separately from his brother that he’d forgotten what that was like.
“I’m Undersheriff Dillon Lawson. Ethan was my brother.” He couldn’t help using was. Part of him still wouldn’t let himself believe that Ethan really was alive. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing his brother all over again if not.
Halbrook let out a grunt. “Yeah, right. Call yourself whatever you please, since we both know that the rumors of your demise were greatly exaggerated. But you’d better be here to return my property.” The rancher glanced at Tessa. “All of it, including the ring I gave my fiancée. I hope to hell you didn’t knock up Ashley, too.”
So Halbrook had heard about Ethan’s death, but unlike Dillon, he hadn’t been fooled by it. “What property might that be?”
The rancher narrowed his gaze. “What the hell is this?” He laughed again but there was no humor in it. “You foolin’ with me, son? You should know better than that.”
“As I told you, I’m not Ethan. I’m his twin brother. I take it he never mentioned he had an identical twin.” Dillon tried not to let that hurt him. He remembered Ethan saying once that he felt like a carbon copy, not the real thing.
“You have some credentials on you?” Halbrook Truman asked.
Dillon produced his driver’s license, along with his badge and one of the photographs he’d shown Tessa, of him and his brother. For years he hadn’t had to explain about his twin because Ethan hadn’t been part of his life. It felt strange now.
The rancher’s eyes widened as he took in the photo. His gaze swept up to meet Dillon’s and narrowed. “He never said anything about having a twin.” Suspicion laced his tone. “If you’re not Ethan, then what are you doing here?”
“I wasn’t sure Ethan had worked for you. Now that I know he did, I’m hoping you might know where he is.”
Halbrook fidgeted with the coins in his jeans pocket for a moment before moving to a cabinet along the wall. A door swung open, exposing a built-in bar.
Before, the man apparently hadn’t thought he was really dealing with law enforcement. Now he seemed worried. Why was that, if Ethan had taken his property from him? Wouldn’t he be glad to have the law involved?
“You didn’t say what my brother took that you were hoping I was bringing back, along with your fiancée’s ring,” Dillon said to the man’s back as Halbrook poured himself a drink and took a gulp from the crystal glass. The alcohol seemed to fortify him.
“And you didn’t say why you’re really here, if you weren’t even sure your brother worked here or not,” the rancher said without turning around.
“Luke Blackwell.”
Halbrook turned slowly and raised a brow. “I didn’t know we were talking about Luke.”
“You offered Luke a job when he got out of prison,” Dillon said. “You were instrumental in getting him out.”
“I like to help a man who wants to change.” The rancher shrugged and poured himself another drink. “He also apparently lied when he vouched for your brother.” Dillon noticed that the man’s hands were shaking, but not from fear or nervousness. Halbrook Truman was furious.
“Luke doesn’t still work for you?”
Halbrook laughed in answer.
“When did my brother and Luke leave your employ?”
The rancher pretended to give that some thought. “Let’s see. I’d say it was in the middle of the night the first part of February a year ago, as I recall. I found my safe open and empty the next morning and my fiancée, Ashley, gone, along with some of my hired hands.”
“You called the sheriff?”
The man’s expression darkened. “It was a personal matter.”
Dillon didn’t like the sound of that, given that Ethan had allegedly died in a car accident a month after leaving this ranch. The wreck had been ruled an accident, since alcohol was involved. Dillon had had no reason to suspect anything. Until Tessa showed up. So who had been in that car? Who had really died that night?
He pulled out his notebook and pen. “If you could give me the name of the ranch hands who left with my brother...”
“I don’t see the point.”
“I need to find Ethan. One of the others might know where he is. Or I could talk to your current employees—”
“Luke Blackwell, Tom Grady and Buck Morgan. You want the name of my fiancée, too?” The alcohol seemed to have loosened his tongue. Or maybe he didn’t want Dillon talking to his employees. “Ashley Rene Clarkson.”
Dillon wrote down the names and asked, “Do you know where they went after they left here?”
The rancher cocked his head. “If I knew, I wouldn’t still be looking for them, now, would I?”
“You’re looking for them?”
Halbrook seemed to regret his words. He waved off the question with a dismissive sweep of his hand. “It’s no big deal. They took some money. I’d forgotten all about it until I saw you.”
He was lying. Dillon had seen the man’s fury. Halbrook Truman wasn’t a forgiving man. He thought of what Tessa had told him about the conversation she’d overheard with Ethan and some stranger. Had Halbrook hired a man to get back whatever the bunch of them had stolen?
“It would help if I knew what they’d taken,” he said. “If my brother owes you money—”
“I don’t need your money.” The rancher downed his second drink. He seemed calmer as he put down the glass. “I’m sorry, I would have offered you a drink but I’m assuming you’re on duty,” he said to Dillon. “And—” he turned to look at Tessa “—you’re—”
“I’m fine,” she said, her tone crisp. “But would you mind if I used your bathroom?”
“There’s one down the hall on the right. Help yourself,” Halbrook said, and watched Tessa until she disappeared around the corner. “That your doing?” His eyes narrowed. “Let me guess, she’s the one interested in finding your brother.” He laughed. “Ethan has been busy. Looks like you’d better hurry and find him.”
Dillon changed the subject, asking some general questions about the ranch while they waited. Halbrook was happy to talk about his “spread.” Apparently he hadn’t bragged about what he had to only Ethan. He was ready to brag to anyone who would listen.
“My great-grandfather made his fortune in the gold fields and started this ranch,” Halbrook boasted. “It has grown with each generation.”
“That’s a nice elk,” Dillon said, nodding to the mount over the fireplace.
“I killed him when I was twelve. One shot to the heart. Gutted him myself. Had to quarter him to get him back to the ranch. Scored four hundred on Boone and Crockett.” The man swelled with pride as he looked at the elk.
Dillon saw Tessa coming down the hallway. She looked pale. He feared coming here had been a mistake. Bringing her definitely had been. She didn’t need to hear more bad things about the father of her baby. He hated to even think how many ranchers his brother had ripped off or how many of them had a score to settle with Ethan.
At least now he had an inkling of why his brother might be on the run. Even on a good day, he suspected Halbrook Truman was a force to be reckoned with. What had Ethan stolen? Clearly something the rancher wanted back. Could it be the reason Ethan had faked his own death, if indeed that was what had happened?
Dillon had a bad feeling that he’d better find his brother before the rancher did.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ETHAN LAWSON WOKE in a cheap motel, hungover and depressed. He glanced toward the window. The curtains were closed, but through a thin space between them, he could see that it was too light outside. It was too quiet, too. Earlier he had been vaguely aware of vehicle engines starting, followed by a scraping sound.
He swore as he sat up. The motel room was hot, the window partially steamed over as he stood and walked to it to part the curtains. “Snow.” He cursed again. A good four inches had fallen overnight. What was he doing in this godforsaken country this time of year anyway?
As his head cleared, he remembered why he wasn’t down south in the desert. He let the curtain fall and turned, tempted to go back to bed. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and it would be dangerous to stay here any longer.
He moved into the bathroom, turned on the shower and while he waited for the water to warm, he relieved himself in the toilet. It was after he’d showered that he’d accidentally seen himself in the mirror over the sink. He’d known he probably looked the way he felt—terrible. But still, the image had been shocking.
A couple weeks’ growth of sandy-blond beard gave him a homeless appearance. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a haircut, as he ran his fingers through the curls at his neck. How long had it been since he’d even looked at himself in a mirror?
He let out a bitter laugh at the thought. He couldn’t even face himself, and with good reason. Forcing himself, he locked eyes with his image. They really were windows into the soul. What he saw broke his heart.
The irony didn’t escape him. Here he was trying so hard to stay alive, and part of him had already died. Those eyes looking out at him were those of a corpse.
“There is a faster way to kill yourself if you’re interested,” the barmaid had told him last night when he’d asked her to just leave the whiskey bottle. “I would think a cowboy like you would own a gun. Can’t afford a bullet?”
He’d chuckled. What did she know? Maybe he had a good reason to drink himself to death. That thought had made him take a drink straight from the bottle last night. But after that, he’d lost his taste for it and had left, angry and sick at heart.
Now he dressed and opened the motel room door, telling himself that he needed to pick up a razor and some shaving cream before the next motel. Maybe a pair of scissors to trim his hair.
His old pickup was capped with snow and now the only rig left in the motel lot. He glanced out, checking the street. He thought of that barmaid again. If only he could drink himself to death. He doubted he could stay alive long enough, though, for the booze to kill him.
Every morning he woke with the same thought. Things could be worse. A lot worse. Then he would remember what was at stake. The only way things could be worse was if he failed.
That thought usually brought back the vivid memory of being in a car, racing toward an abyss and a fiery death at over eighty miles an hour in the desert. Unconsciously he checked to make sure the knife was still in his pocket. His lucky knife, he called it since escaping that car. Bailing out of it would probably have killed him if he hadn’t been drunk and landed in sand. He’d rolled, ending up against a cactus. He was still pulling spines out of his backside almost a year later.
But that had been a whole lot better than what had happened to Buck Morgan, he reminded himself.
He went out to the pickup, made a swipe at the deep snow on the windshield, all the time watching the street. He probably wouldn’t even recognize the men who’d been paid to find him and kill him. He likely wouldn’t see them coming. Some days he wondered why he even bothered. He’d surely mess this up, too. Wouldn’t it be easier just to end this once and for all?
But then he thought of Tessa and was reminded of why he was doing this.
The street was still quiet in this part of Colorado. All the small mountain towns looked alike. The moment you drove out past the city-limits sign, there was nothing but miles of sagebrush and antelope until the next little burg.
It will be over soon, he thought as he went back inside the motel, picked up his duffel bag, then, making sure he hadn’t left anything behind, went out and started his truck.
His pistol was loaded, stuck in his waistband under his shirt and jacket, reminding him he wasn’t just the hunted, but was also the hunter. As he pulled away from the motel, he looked around for a store and an internet café.
Survival had now come down to only a matter of which of them found their prey first.
* * *
DILLON SEEMED LOST in thought as they left the ranch. Tessa could see that he was taking the news about Ethan maybe even harder than she was. She felt like such a fool. She’d actually thought that Ethan had panicked about marriage and fatherhood and that he’d only taken her money because...
Because he never had any of his own. What had he done with the money he’d made from his construction job? He’d often had a few beers at the local bar after work, but other than that he didn’t spend much. He’d given her a little to help with the rent after he’d moved in, and had promised her more when he could afford it.
What had happened to whatever money the three men had stolen from Halbrook Truman’s safe? For that matter, what had happened to the man’s fiancée?
“What do you think Ethan took from back there?” Tessa asked as they drove back toward Wisdom.
Dillon shook his head.
“Seems that if it was money, Halbrook would have jumped at the offer you made to repay it.”
“Does seem that way. I suspect this is less about what they took and more about the man’s pride.”
She couldn’t argue that.
“Tell me more about this rifle Ethan was looking at online,” he said.
“It was popular during the Civil War, a Henry .44-caliber rimfire, lever-action, breech-loading rifle.”
He glanced over at her. “You know a lot about rifles, do you?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Only because Ethan seemed so interested in this particular one. Are you thinking one of them was what Ethan helped steal from Halbrook Truman? But why, if Ethan was in on taking the rifle, would he be looking for it online?”
“I was just thinking about that. If an antique rifle was what they took, my guess is that someone else has it. Maybe Luke double-crossed him and he’s thinking Luke will try to sell it online. But we don’t even know if there is any connection between Halbrook and this rifle. That model definitely isn’t rare.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “I checked. Nine hundred of them were manufactured between the summer and October of 1862. By 1864, production had peaked to 290 a month. By the time production ended in 1866, approximately fourteen thousand had been manufactured.”
He laughed. “You do your homework.”
“The thing is, though, one in excellent condition can bring in a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Not peanuts, and yet not enough to kill someone over—especially if you were already rich.”
Dillon nodded. “Except that Halbrook Truman is angry and wants his property back. We don’t know that this rifle Ethan was looking for has anything to do with him or what was taken from him. Or that Halbrook had anything to do with why Ethan has pretended to be dead for a year. But it does make me wonder.”
The town of Wisdom appeared again on the horizon.
“I was thinking we’d stop at that café we saw in town and have something to eat.” He looked over at her. “You need to take care of yourself and my niece.”
She smiled, touched by his concern. “I’m not upset about what he said about Ethan.”
“Still, I’m sorry my brother—”
“You aren’t your brother’s keeper.”
He laughed and pushed back his hat to rub his forehead with his free hand as he drove. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I always tried to protect him.” He shook his head.
“Protect him?” She saw Dillon swallow.
“Our dad. He had this idea that you had to break the spirit of a wild horse—or a wild boy. I stepped between them enough times to take the brunt of it, but—”
“You were a boy yourself.”
Dillon looked away. “Ethan was always...too...tender. I think that’s why the old man went after him instead of me. Ethan felt things too strongly. It made him seem—well, at least in our father’s eyes—weak. The old man thought he could toughen him up. Instead...”
“Ethan’s a man now, capable of making his own choices in life,” she said firmly. “Just because he might have gotten a raw deal as a kid, he doesn’t get to spend his life blaming his behavior on that.”
Dillon glanced over at her, no doubt surprised by the fierceness of her words. “Was your childhood—”
“Fine. It was just fine.” His sudden compassion made her want to bite back her heated response. She looked away and was grateful he didn’t push the subject.
The café was small and rustic, like a lot of cafés she’d seen off the beaten path in Montana. Over lunch they talked about the magnificent country outside the café window. It was spectacular, especially in contrast to the desert of Southern California. As Tessa listened to Dillon talk, she could hear his love for this state. That love warmed her. She’d always longed for a place with deep roots but had never had it. Ethan had told her once that he’d left home at eighteen and professed he preferred to be rootless. So unlike his twin, who had planted obvious roots here.
After lunch, Dillon talked for a few moments with the elderly woman who had waited on them. Tessa stepped outside, needing to feel the sunshine on her face. The air smelled of pine and water. She breathed it in.
She’d lied to Dillon—and to herself. Hearing even more bad news about Ethan had upset her. She wondered which of the cowboys had “stolen” Halbrook Truman’s no-doubt-young fiancée.
“What did you find out?” she asked as they walked to the patrol pickup.
“Halbrook was engaged to, and I quote, ‘a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.’ The waitress estimated Ashley Rene Clarkson’s age as mid-twenties. ‘A pretty little gold digger’ was how she described her. Not that she had much good to say about Halbrook. Seems he isn’t the most popular man around the county, so when Ashley took off with some of the hired hands... Well, no one was very sympathetic.”
A pretty young woman in her mid-twenties. Tessa, who was now over thirty, didn’t want to think about it. But she had to ask, “So you’re thinking that if we find Ashley, we might find Ethan?”
He glanced at her as they climbed into his patrol pickup. “It’s a lead.” She nodded and he busied himself by starting the pickup.
“So how do we find her?” Tessa asked.
“I’ll run all their names when I get back to the office and we’ll see what comes up.”
“You don’t sound as if you hold much hope in finding them.”
He sighed. “The best place to hide when you’re like my brother and his cohorts is on a ranch outside town, where you get room and board and wages that are often off the books.”
“No paper trail,” she said. “But isn’t that the first place Halbrook Truman would look for him?”
* * *
AFTER MEETING THE rancher, Dillon could tell Tessa was as worried as he was about his brother. They drove toward Big Timber, the beautiful spring day now lost on them. He could see her stewing over on her side of the pickup—the same thing he’d been doing for miles.
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