Francis still didn’t understand what had happened.

One minute she’d been looking up at the night sky, searching for the tail star of the Big Dipper. The next minute she’d felt someone put an arm around the small of her back. She hadn’t even been able to turn around and see who it was before another arm went behind her knees and she was lifted up.

Suddenly, instead of the night sky, she was looking square into the face of Flint Harris. For a second she couldn’t breathe. Her mind went blank. Surely it could not be Flint. Not her Flint. She blinked. He was still there.

Oh, my Lord, she suddenly realized. It’s true. And he’s kidnapping me!

JANET TRONSTAD

grew up on a small farm in central Montana. One of her favorite things to do was to visit her grandfather’s bookshelves, where he had a large collection of Zane Grey novels. She’s always loved a good story.

Today Janet lives in Pasadena, California, where she works in the research department of a medical organization. In addition to writing novels, she researches and writes nonfiction magazine articles.

A Bride for Dry Creek
Janet Tronstad

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death…. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it….

—Song of Solomon 8:6-7

Dedicated with love To my two brothers and their wives Ralph and Karen Tronstad Russell and Heidi Tronstad May God be with all of you Now and forevermore.

Dear Reader,

I should have my mother write you this note. She, having raised five usually wonderful children (of which I am blessed to be one), knows far more of the hope that goes into love than I do. Actually, most mothers know that kind of hope—the hope that their love will bear fruit, that their love will ease someone’s pain and that it will even give that person an anchor in life.

Love laced with hope is a useful kind of love. It sees beyond the romantic parts of love and looks to the future.

That’s why, when I chose to tell the story of Francis, I knew it had to be a story of hope. We never know when we love someone what our hopes will bring. Francis did not know. Flint did not know. Only God knew.

May this story of Francis and Flint encourage you to love with hope and to trust God for a happy ending.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter One

A single fly buzzed past Francis Elkton and swooped up to the bare lights that hung from the rafters of the old barn. Francis didn’t notice the fly, but on most nights she would have even though her eyes were now half-closed as she slow danced to an old fifties tune.

Francis was an immaculate housekeeper. And a first-class manager. She often said, in her job with the City of Denver, that the two went hand in hand. You only needed to look in someone’s top desk drawer, she’d say, to predict what kind of a city manager they would be. Whether it was paper clips or people or drainage pipes, everything needed an order.

She would never have tolerated an out-of-place fly if she hadn’t been so distracted.

But tonight, the fly was only one more guest at the wedding reception, and Francis was too busy trying to keep her unwanted memories in their place to give any attention to the proper place of a mere insect. Every time she opened her eyes she realized that things were not turning out the way she had planned.

She’d taken a three-month leave from her job and come back to Dry Creek, Montana, because she thought she’d be able to stand up to her past—to look her memories of Flint L. Harris square in the eye—and be free of him once and for all. She was mentally cleaning out her files, she told herself. Throwing away outdated papers. Putting her life back in order even if it had taken her twenty years to face the task.

The only reason she’d decided to do it now was that Sam Goodman, her neighbor in Denver, had said he would not wait forever to marry her. She’d realized suddenly that she could not give her heart to Sam, or any other man, until she got it completely back from Flint.

It had been a sentimental decision to come back to Dry Creek to purge herself. She reasoned that the memories had started here in this ranching community, in the shadows of the Big Sheep Mountains. And they would surely end here if she just screwed up her mind and willed them to be gone. It was like reaching deep inside herself to pull out the roots of an unwanted weed that had refused to die over the years.

But, for the first time since she’d come back, she realized her heart wasn’t bending to her will. The past had not grown dimmer because she’d stood up to it. No, the past was right here before her in living color whether she wanted to see it or not.

The pink crepe paper streamers coming down from the rafters were the same color her high school class had used twenty years ago for their prom. Back then her classmates had gone to Miles City to school and had decorated the gym there with their streamers.

Tonight, the dance was being held in the large old barn her brother Garth had built for loading cattle. He had not used the barn for his cattle for several years now, and the community of Dry Creek had scrubbed it clean for their annual Christmas pageant some months ago. On a cold winter night like tonight, the inside of the barn shone bright and the windows were covered with frost.

Dry Creek was fast making the barn into an informal center for all kinds of occasions. Like tonight’s dance to celebrate the wedding of Glory Becker and Matthew Curtis. The dance wasn’t a prom, but the music was the same. The same swaying music. The same soft laughter of other couples in the background.

Francis could close her eyes and almost imagine it was Flint who held her in his arms. Flint with his shy halting gladness to see her and the tall wiry length of his twenty-year-old body. Even back then, she should have known that dancing with him would come to no good

“Francis?” A slightly alarmed man’s voice growled in her right ear.

Francis blinked and then blushed. Jess, one of her brother’s older ranch hands, had invited her to dance, and it was his face that now looked at her suspiciously. She hadn’t realized until he spoke that her arms had crept up his back until she had him in an embrace that was more than friendly. She shook the memories from her eyes, cleared her throat and loosened her arms. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Jess ducked his head, apparently reassured once the sensible Francis was back. Then he added teasingly, “After all, your brother did tell me to stick close to you tonight.”

“He’s not still worried about that phone call?” Francis gladly diverted the conversation to her brother’s needless caution. “Just because some guy calls up and says someone might be out to kidnap me—it’s all nonsense anyway. Even if Garth did know something about the rustlers who have been hitting this area—which he doesn’t—well, it doesn’t make sense. Before they start making any threats, these rustlers should find out if Garth knows anything that’s a danger to them. Any manager would tell them that’s the first step. They might be criminals, but that’s no excuse for sloppy planning. You need to identify your problem and then verify how big it is before you can even hope to solve it.”

“Way I hear it, it wasn’t just some guy that called.”

Apparently Jess only heard the first part of what she’d said. Francis had noticed that the ranch hands who worked for her brother tended to let their eyes glaze over when she tried to teach them management techniques.

“The man never gave his name,” Francis corrected stiffly.

“Didn’t need to from the way I heard it,” Jess mumbled. “Begging your pardon for mentioning him. Still—can’t be too careful.”

No wonder she was having so much trouble getting rid of her memories of Flint, Francis thought. He seemed to have more lives than a stray alley cat. She’d bury him one day and he’d be resurrected the next. Did everyone in Dry Creek know about that phone call?

“I don’t believe it was Flint Harris on the other end of that phone call. For pity’s sake—he probably doesn’t even remember Dry Creek.” Lord knows he doesn’t remember me, Francis added silently. “He never had roots in Dry Creek. He only came here that one spring because his grandmother was ill. He hasn’t been back since she died.”

“Hasn’t sold her place yet, though,” Jess argued. “Even pays taxes on it. That’s got to mean something.”

“It means that it isn’t worth selling. Who would buy it? The windows are all broken out and it’s only got five acres with it. The only thing you could raise there is chickens and with the low price of eggs these days—”

Francis stopped herself. She didn’t need to be her own worst enemy. She needed to forget chickens. That had been their adolescent dream—that they would live with his grandmother and make their living by selling eggs. A fool’s dream. Even back then, it wouldn’t have kept them in jeans and tennis shoes. She cleared her throat. “The point is that Flint Harris is nowhere near here.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry to bring the louse up. If I’d have been here back then and met the boy, I’d have given him a good speaking to—treating a nice girl like you that way.”

Francis stopped dancing and looked at Jess. He seemed to expect a response. “Well, thank you, but that wouldn’t have been necessary. I could take care of myself even back then.”

“If you say so.”

Francis looked at him carefully. There it was. A steady gleam of pity in his eyes.

“Those rumors are not true.” Francis bristled. The one thing she didn’t miss in Denver was the gossip that flowed freely in a small community. “While it is true that he and I drove to Las Vegas after the prom and looked for a justice of the peace, it is not true that we were actually married.”

“Mrs. Hargrove says—”

“Mrs. Hargrove wasn’t there. I was. The man was not a justice of the peace. My father called down there and asked. They had no justice of the peace by that name. It doesn’t matter what words we said, those papers we signed were worthless.”

“You signed some papers?” The pity left his eyes. It was replaced by astonishment. “You still have them?”

“I didn’t say I have papers,” Francis said patiently. The last time she’d seen those papers, Flint had had them. She remembered the way he had carefully folded them and put them in his coat pocket. She hadn’t realized at the time that any young bride with any sense asks to keep the papers herself—especially when the wedding takes place in Las Vegas. That should have been her first clue.

“Besides, that is long ago and done with,” Francis said briskly. “As Mrs. Hargrove probably told you, even if it had been a marriage, it would have been the shortest marriage ever on record in Dry Creek—probably the shortest in all of Montana. I don’t even think it lasted forty hours. We had the trip back from Vegas and then he dropped me off at my dad’s to pack. Said he was going to Miles City to buy me some roses—every bride needed roses, he said—those were the last words I ever heard from him. He never came back.”

Francis believed in slicing through her pain quickly and efficiently with a minimum of fuss. She’d held her breath when she recited the facts of those two days with Flint and now she let it out slowly. “I’m sure it was one of the smoothest exit lines in the book and I fell for it. Five weeks later I made arrangements to graduate early from high school and I left for Denver. That’s all there was to it.”

“But no one knew,” Jess reproached her softly. “That’s the only reason the folks here still remember it. No one but your father knew and then you just left so suddenly. These were your neighbors and friends. They cared about you, they just didn’t know what was happening. Even now Mrs. Hargrove keeps trying to think back to something she could have said to make it better in those days for you—blames herself for not taking a more motherly role in your life—what with just you and your dad out there alone when Garth was in the service—keeps having this notion that Flint did come back in around that time and stopped at her place to ask for you.”

“She’s confused,” Francis said flatly. People meant well, but it didn’t help to sugarcoat the truth. “If he’d tried to find me, he’d have tried my father’s place. He knew where it was. He’d been there enough times.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

The dance ended and suddenly Francis felt foolish to be standing there arguing about whether or not a man had stopped to see her neighbor twenty years ago. “I think I’ll sit the next one out if it’s all the same to you. You can tell my brother I’ll be fine. I’ll just be taking a rest.”

Jess looked relieved. “I could use a break myself. My arthritis is acting up some.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? We could have sat the last two dances out—no need to be up and moving around on a cold night like this.”

“It is a blistering one out tonight, isn’t it?”

“All the more reason to forget about the kidnapping threat,” Francis agreed. “No one but a fool would be out setting a trap tonight. It’s too cold. No, I think the kids are right when they said it was that rival gang they have in Seattle calling to make mischief.”

Francis’s brother, Garth, had offered the use of his ranch to a woman who ran a youth center for gang kids in Seattle. At the moment, thirty of the kids were learning to be better citizens by spending a few weeks in Dry Creek, Montana. Garth had been in charge of teaching the boys how to be gentlemen, and Francis had been astonished at his patience. He’d had them out in the barn practicing how to dip and twirl their dance partners, and the boys had loved it.

A rich society woman from Seattle, Mrs. Buckwalter, was underwriting the cost of the trip to Montana, and Francis couldn’t help but notice how excited the older woman was tonight. Mrs. Buckwalter couldn’t have been prouder of the teens if she’d given birth to every one of them.

And Francis couldn’t blame her. The teenagers sparkled at this dance, the boys in their rented tuxedos and the girls in the old fifties prom dresses they’d borrowed from the women of Dry Creek. It was hard to believe that they were members of various gangs in Seattle. A few dance lessons and a sprinkling of ties and taffeta had transformed them.

“That’s really the logical explanation,” Francis concluded. If the other gang could only see the youth center kids now. She couldn’t help but think they’d be a little jealous of the good time these kids were having.

“Maybe.” Jess didn’t look convinced. “Just don’t take any unnecessary risks—your brother will have my hide. He’s worried, you know—”

“Even if Flint did kidnap me, he’d never hurt me—no matter what Garth worries about.” As Francis listened to herself saying the words, she realized how naive she sounded. She didn’t know what kind of a man Flint might be today. She’d often wondered.

Jess looked at her. “Still, things happen.”

“What could happen?” Francis waved her arms around. She might not know about Flint, but she did know about the people of Dry Creek. At least a hundred people were in the barn, some sitting on folding chairs along the two sides, a few standing by the refreshment table and dozens of them on the floor poised ready to dance to the next tune. A lot of muscle rested beneath the suits that had been unearthed for this party. “One little scream and fifty men would come to my rescue. I’m surrounded by Dry Creek. There isn’t a safer place in all the world for me.”

Jess grunted. “I guess you’re right. Maybe you should go visit with Mrs. Hargrove a bit. Talk to those two little boys that belong to Matthew Curtis. Find out how they like the idea of having a new mama.”

Francis smiled. She was fond of the four-year-old twins and liked to see them so happy. “Everyone knows how they feel about that. She’s their angel.

If their dad wasn’t going to marry Glory, I think they’d wait and marry her themselves.”

Meanwhile, outside in the dark…

Flint watched a fly buzz up to the headlight of the old cattle truck. Now, what was a fly doing in the middle of a Montana winter night so cold a man’s nose hairs were likely to freeze?

Flint slid into the niche between two cars and hunched down in his black leather jacket. The worthless jacket was nearly stiff. That fly didn’t belong here any more than Flint and his jacket did. He would bet the fly had made the mistake of crawling into that cattle truck when it’d been parked someplace a lot warmer. Say Seattle. Or San Francisco.

Even a rookie FBI agent would make the connection that the truck didn’t belong to anyone local. And Flint had been with the Bureau for twenty years. No, the truck had to belong to the three men he’d identified as cattle thieves. He’d call in their location just as soon as he had something more concrete to tell the inspector than that he’d listened to them talk enough to know they were brothers.

The last time he’d made his daily check-in call, one of the guys had said the inspector was grumbling about him being out here on this assignment without a partner. Flint told him he had a partner—an ornery horse named Honey.

The fly made another pass close to Flint’s face, seeking the warmth of his breath.

Flint half-cursed as he waved the fly away. He didn’t need the fly to distract him from the mumbled conversation of the three men. They’d been standing in front of the cattle truck arguing for several minutes about some orders their boss had given to deliver a package.

Flint sure hoped they were talking about which cattle to steal next.

If not, that probably meant his tip was accurate and they were planning to kidnap Francis Elkton. He hoped Garth had taken the phone call he had made seriously and was keeping Francis inside, in some controlled area with no one but the good ladies of Dry Creek around her.

Flint envied all of the people of Dry Creek the heat inside the barn. The warmest he was likely to get anytime soon was when he went to feed Honey some oats.

It hadn’t taken him more than a half hour on Honey’s back to realize that her owner must have had a chuckle or two when he named her. She was more sour than sweet. Still, Flint rubbed his gloved hands over his arms and shivered. Honey might be a pain, but he missed her all the same. She was the only breathing thing he’d talked to since he came to Montana.

By now Honey would be wondering when they’d go home. When he’d ridden her to town tonight, he’d tied her reins to a metal clothesline pole in a vacant lot behind Mr. Gossett’s house. The pole was out of the wind, but Honey would still be anxious for warmer quarters. Last night, he’d bedded her down in an abandoned chicken coop that still stood on the farm he’d inherited from his grandmother when she died fifteen years ago. As far as he knew, no one but gophers ever visited the place anymore.

He was half-surprised the men hiding by that cattle truck didn’t use horses. The terrain on the south slopes of the Big Sheep Mountain Range wasn’t steep, but it also wasn’t paved. There were more fences than roads. The long, winding strings of barbed wire and aging posts did little in winter except collect snowdrifts. Flint had followed a dozen of those fences to reacquaint himself with the area last night and didn’t see anything more than a thick-coated coyote or two.

But then these men probably didn’t know how to ride a horse. Which meant they weren’t professionals. If they had been pros, they would have learned before heading out here on a job like this. A pro would realize a horse would be a good escape option if the roads were blocked. Yes, a pro would learn to ride. Even if he needed to learn on a bad-tempered horse like Honey.

Flint’s observations of the men had already made him suspect that they were not career kidnappers. They were too careless and disorganized to have lived long if they made a habit of breaking the law. But Flint knew that the crime syndicates liked to use amateurs for some jobs—they made good fall guys when things went sour.

Granted, the Boss—and the Bureau didn’t know who he was yet—had other reasons to use amateurs here. A pro would look so out of place in this rural community he might as well wear a red neon sticker that said Hired Killer—Arrest Me Now.

The fact that the men were too tender to ride horses made Flint hope that they would give it up for tonight and go home. The night was clear—there was enough moonlight so that Flint could see the low mountains that made up the Big Sheep Mountain Range. But it was ice-cracking cold and not getting any warmer.

The little town of Dry Creek stood a few miles off Interstate 94, which ran along the southern third of Montana from Billings on through Miles City. The town was nothing more than a few wood frame houses, an old square church, a café called Jazz and Pasta that was run by a young engaged couple, and a hardware store with a stovepipe sticking up through the roof. The pipe promised some kind of heat inside. Flint had not gone in to find out if the old Franklin stove he remembered was still being used. He hadn’t even tried to find an opening in the frost so he could look in the window.

The memories Flint had of his days in Dry Creek were wrinkled by time, and he couldn’t be sure if all the details like the Franklin stove were true or if he’d romanticized them over the years, mixing them up with some old-fashioned movie he’d seen or some nostalgic dream he’d had.

He realized he didn’t want to know about the stove so he hadn’t looked inside the hardware store.

Flint had only spent a few months in Dry Creek, but this little community—more than anywhere else on earth—was the place he thought of as home. His grandmother had lived her life here, and this is where he’d known Francis. The combination of the two would make this forever home to him.

None of the chrome-and-plastic-furnished apartments he’d rented over the years could even begin to compete. They were little more than closets to keep his clothes out of the rain. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cooked anything but coffee in any of them. No, none of them could compete with the homes around Dry Creek.

Even old man Gossett’s place looked as though it had a garden of sorts—a few rhubarb stalks stuck up out of a snowdrift, and there was a crab apple tree just left of his back porch. There were no leaves on the tree, but Flint recognized the graceful swoop of the bare branches.

The trash barrel that the man kept in the vacant lot had a broken jelly jar inside. Flint suspected someone was making jelly from the apples that came off the tree. It might even be the old man.

Flint envied the old man his jelly and Flint didn’t even like jelly. The jelly just symbolized home and community for him, and Flint felt more alone than he had for years. Maybe when he finished this business in Dry Creek, he should think about getting married.

That woman he’d started dating—Annette—he wondered if she could make apple jelly. He’d have to find out—maybe he should even send her a postcard. Women liked postcards. He hadn’t seen any that featured Dry Creek, but maybe he’d stop in Billings when this was all over. Get her something with those mountains on it. In the daylight the Big Sheep Mountain Range was low and buff-colored with lots of dry sage in the foreground. Looked like a Zane Grey novel. Yes, a postcard was a good idea. That’s what he’d do when this was all over.

From the sounds of the ruckus inside that old barn, the whole community of Dry Creek, Montana, was celebrating tonight. All eighty-five adults and the usual assortment of children.

Flint had checked the vital statistics before he headed down here. The place didn’t have any more people now than it had had that spring he’d spent at his grandmother’s place. The only new people that had come to the community were the busload of Seattle teenagers who were there for a month to see that all of life wasn’t limited to the city streets. As long as Francis stayed with the people inside the barn, she would be safe.

That thought had no sooner crossed his mind than the side barn door opened. A woman stood silhouetted in the golden light from inside the barn. Flint felt all breath leave his body. It was Francis.

Francis let the winter air cool her. The ruby red material of her dress was thin, but it had still suddenly gotten much too hot inside the barn. The rumor that Flint had been the one who made the phone call to Garth this afternoon had opened up all of the speculation about her and Flint. She saw it in the eyes of her neighbors. They were asking themselves why she’d never married, why she’d moved away so quickly all those years ago, why she’d never come back to live in Dry Creek until now—why, why, why. The questions would be endless until they’d worried her heart to a bone.

She only wished the asking of the questions would help her find an answer, she thought ruefully. Because, even if no one else had been asking those questions, she would be asking them.

But not tonight, she decided. Tonight she would just breathe the crisp night air and look at the stars that were scattered across the sky like pieces of glitter sprinkled over velvet. She used to love to go out on a winter’s night like this and find the Big Dipper.

Now where is it, she asked herself as she stepped through the open door and outside. The barn was hiding the constellation from her. But if she went over by that old cattle truck she could see it.

She suddenly realized she hadn’t gone looking for the Big Dipper in many years.

Flint swore. No wonder being a hero had gone out of style. His leg still stung where Francis had kicked him in her glittery high-heeled shoes, and one of his toes could well be broken where she had stomped on it.

Next time, he’d let the kidnappers have her. She was more than a match for most of the hired toughs he’d seen in his time. She’d certainly hold her own with the men in the cattle truck.

And thinking of his toes, what was she doing with shoes like that, anyway? Women only wore shoes like that to please a man. That meant she must have a boyfriend inside that old barn. That was one statistic he hadn’t thought to check before heading out here.

Flint’s only consolation was that his horse seemed to know he needed her and was behaving for once.

“Now I know why they call you Honey,” Flint murmured encouragingly as he nudged his horse down the dark road.

“Hargh.” An angry growl came from the bundle behind him, but Flint didn’t even look back. Except for being temporarily gagged, Francis was doing better than he was. He’d even tied his jacket around her. Not that she had thanked him for it.

“Yes, sir, you’re a sweetie, all right,” Flint continued quietly guiding his horse. Honey knew the way home even if it was only a humble abandoned shed. That horse could teach some people the meaning of gratitude.

Or, if not gratitude, at least cooperation, Flint fumed.

If it wasn’t for his years of training as an agent, Flint would have turned around and told Francis a thing or two. What did she think?

There was no time for niceties when he knew those two hired thugs were waiting for Francis. He’d heard them repeat their instructions about kidnapping Garth’s sister in her black jacket with the old high school emblem of a lion.

Early on in the evening, the two men made a decision to wait for her by the bus—parked right next to that old cattle truck they’d come in. They hoped Francis would tire of dancing and come to sit in the bus. Flint had winced when he heard the plan. The two men were clearly amateurs, unfamiliar with Montana. No one, no matter how tired, would come to rest in a cold bus when the engine wasn’t running.

But he saw their dilemma. They couldn’t face down the whole town of Dry Creek or even the busload of kids that would be going back to the Elkton ranch. That’s why he wasn’t surprised, after the men had waited a few hours and gotten thoroughly cold themselves, to hear them start talking about going home and waiting until the next day to kidnap Francis.

Flint was hoping they’d leave soon. And they would have, except who should come outside for a late night stroll but Francis. She wasn’t wearing the black jacket, but Flint couldn’t risk the thugs getting a close look at her and realizing who she was, even without the jacket.

There was no time for fancy plans. The only way to protect Francis was to grab her first and worry about the men later.

Flint knew the men might be a problem if they realized what he was doing, but he hadn’t counted on Francis’s resistance. He thought once she knew it was him she’d come quietly. Perhaps even gratefully. But the moment he saw recognition dawn, she fought him like he was her worst enemy. He hadn’t planned on gagging her until she made it clear she was going to scream.

And all the while she was kicking and spitting, he’d been doing her a great service.

Yes, he sighed, he could see why being a hero had gone completely out of style. It wasn’t easy being the knight on the shining white horse. Not with the women of today. Come to think of it, it wasn’t even easy with the horses of today. Honey made it clear she’d rather be eating oats than rescuing a damsel in distress.

“Tired, that’s what you are,” Flint said softly as he leaned over the horse’s neck. Honey sighed, and he gave the horse another encouraging nudge. “We’re both tired, aren’t we? But don’t worry. We’re almost there. Then I’ll have something sweet for you.”

The bundle behind him gave an indignant gasp and then another angry growl.

“I was talking to the horse.” Flint smiled in spite of himself.

Chapter Two

Francis wished she had worn those ruby silk flowers in her hair like the teenagers had urged her to do. At least then, when the horse shook her, the petals would fall to the ground and leave a trail in the snow for someone to follow when they searched for her in the morning. Maybe if she were lucky, some of the sequins on her long evening dress would fall to the ground and leave a trail of reddish sparkles.

She still didn’t understand what had happened.

One minute she’d been looking at the night sky, searching for the tail star of the Big Dipper. The next minute she’d felt someone put an arm around the small of her back. She hadn’t even been able to turn around and see who it was before another arm went behind her knees and she was lifted up.

Suddenly, instead of seeing the night sky she was looking square into the face of Flint Harris. For a second, she couldn’t breathe. Her mind went blank. Surely, it could not be Flint. Not her Flint. She blinked. He was still there.

She was speechless. He was older, it was true. Instead of the smooth-skinned boy she remembered, she saw the face of a man. Weather had etched a few fine lines around his eyes. A tiny scar crossed the left side of his chin. His face was fuller, stronger.

Oh, my Lord, she suddenly realized. It’s true. He’s kidnapping me!

Francis opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out. She took a good breath to try again when Flint swore and hurriedly stuffed an old bandanna into her mouth. The wretched piece of cloth smelled of horse. She understood why it smelled when Flint slung her over his back like she was nothing to him but a sack of potatoes in a fancy bag. He then hauled her off to a horse tied behind Mr. Gossett’s house.

Once Flint got to the horse, he stopped to slip some wool mittens from his hands and onto her hands. The mittens were warm inside from his body heat, and the minute he slid them onto her hands, her fingers felt like they were being tucked under a quilt.

But she didn’t have time to enjoy it.

There was a light on in old man Gossett’s house, and Francis struggled to scream through her gag. She knew the man was home since he never went to community gatherings. He was a sour old man and she wasn’t sure he’d help her even if he knew she was in trouble. Through the thin curtains on his window, she saw him slowly walking around inside his kitchen. Unless he’d grown deaf in these past years, he must have heard her. If he did, he didn’t come outside to investigate.

Flint didn’t give her a second chance to scream. He threw her over the back of the horse, slapped his jacket on her shoulders and mounted up.

Ever since then she’d been bouncing along, facedown, behind his saddle.

Finally, the horse stopped.

They had entered a grove of pine trees. The night was dark, but the moon was out. Inside the grove, the trees cut off the light of the moon, as well. Only a few patches of snow were visible. From the sounds beneath the horse’s hoofs, the rest of the ground was covered with dried pine needles.

The saddle creaked as Flint stood to dismount.

Francis braced herself. She’d been trained to cope with hostage situations in her job and knew a person was supposed to cooperate with the kidnapper. But surely that didn’t apply to criminals one knew. She and this particular criminal had slow danced together. He couldn’t shoot her.

She’d already decided to wait her chance and escape. She had a plan. Flint had made a mistake in putting the mittens on her. The wool of the mittens kept the cord from gripping her wrists tightly. When Flint stepped down on the ground, she would loosen the tie on her wrists, swing her body around and nudge that horse of his into as much of a gallop as the poor thing could handle.

Flint stepped down.

The horse whinnied in protest.

“What the—” Flint turned and started to swear.

Francis had her leg caught around the horn of the saddle. She’d almost made the turn. But almost wasn’t enough. She was hanging, with one leg behind the back of the saddle and one hooked around the horn. She’d ripped the skirt of her ruby sheath dress and all she’d accomplished was a change of view. Her face was no longer looking at the ground. Instead, she was looking straight into the astonished eyes of Flint L. Harris.

Francis groaned into her gag. She’d also twisted a muscle in her leg.

And she’d spooked the horse. The poor thing was prancing like a boxer. Each move of the beast’s hooves sent a new pain through Francis’s leg.

“Easy, Honey,” Flint said soothingly as he reached out to touch the horse.

Francis saw his hands in the dark. His rhythm was steady, and he stroked the animal until she had quieted.

“Atta girl.” Flint gave the horse one last long stroke.

Flint almost swore again. They should outlaw high heels. How was a man supposed to keep his mind on excitable horses and bad guys when right there—just a half arm’s length away—was a dainty ankle in a strappy red high heel? Not to mention a leg that showed all the way up to the thigh because of the tear in that red dress. He was glad it was dark. He hoped Francis couldn’t see in his eyes the thoughts that his mind was thinking.

“She’ll be quiet now.” Flint continued speaking slow and calm for the horse’s benefit. “But she spooks easy. Try to stay still.”

Even in the darkness inside the pine grove he could see the delicate lines of Francis’s face behind the gag. Her jaw was clenched tight. He hadn’t realized—

“I know it’s not easy,” he added softly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

A muffled protest came from behind the gag.

Francis had worn her dark hair loose, and it spilled into his hands when he reached up to untie the gag. Flint’s hands were cold, and her hair whispered across them like a warm summer breeze. He couldn’t resist lingering a moment longer than necessary inside the warmth of her hair.

“It’s not how I meant to say hello again,” Flint said as he untied the bandanna. And it was true. What he’d say when he met Francis again had gone from being a torture to a favorite game with him over the years. None of his fantasies of the moment had involved her looking at him with eyes wide with fear.

“Don’t pretend you ever meant to see me again.” Francis spit the words out when the gag was finally gone. Her voice was rusty and bitter even to her own ears. “Not that it matters,” she quickly lied. “I—”

Francis stopped. She almost wished she had the gag in her mouth.

“That was a long time ago,” Francis finally managed.

“Yes, it was,” Flint agreed as he finished unraveling the cord he’d used to tie Francis’s hands behind her. It might seem like a long time ago to her. To him it was yesterday.

“Cold night out,” Flint added conversationally as he stuffed the cord into his pocket. He needed to move their words to neutral territory. Her wrists had been as smooth as marble. “Is it always this cold around here in February?”

“It used to be,” Francis answered. She’d felt Flint’s fingertips on the skin of her wrists just at the top of her mittens. His fingers were ice cold. For the first time, she realized the mittens on her hands must have been the only ones he had. “Folks say, though, that the winters lately have been mild.”

“That’s right, you don’t live here anymore, do you?” Flint asked as he put his hand on Francis’s lower leg. He felt her stiffen. “Easy. Just going to try and unravel you here without scaring Honey.”

Flint let his hand stay on Francis’s leg until both his hand and that section of her leg were warm. He let his hand massage that little bit of leg ever so slightly so it wouldn’t stiffen up. “Don’t want to make you pull the muscle in that leg any more than it looks like you’ve already done.”

Flint had to stop his hand before it betrayed him. Francis was wearing real nylon stockings. The ones like they used to make. A man’s hands slid over them like they were cream. If Flint were a betting man, he would bet nylon like this didn’t come from panty hose, either. No, she was wearing the old-fashioned kind of nylons with a garter belt.

This knowledge turned him first hot then cold. A woman only wore those kind of stockings for one reason.

“You won’t be dancing any time soon,” he offered with deceptive mildness as he pressed his hands against his thighs to warm them enough to continue. “So I suppose that boyfriend of yours will just have to be patient.”

“He has been,” Francis said confidently. “Thank you for reminding me.”

Francis thought of Sam Goodman. He might not make her blood race, but he didn’t make it turn to ice, either. He was a good, steady man. A man she’d be proud to call her boyfriend. Maybe even her husband. She almost wished she’d encouraged him more when he’d called last week and offered to come for a visit.

Flint pressed his lips together. He should have thought about the boyfriend before he took off with Francis like he had. It had already occurred to him that he could have simply returned her to the good people of Dry Creek. Instead of heading for the horse, he could have headed for the light streaming out the open barn door and simply placed her inside. If it had been anyone but Francis, he would have.

But Francis addled his brain. All he could think of was keeping her safe, and he didn’t trust anyone else—not even some fancy boyfriend who made her want to dress in garters and sequins—to get her far enough away from the rustlers. He had to make sure she was safe or to take a bullet for her if something happened and those two kidnappers got spooked.

Still, a boyfriend could pose problems. “I suppose he’ll be wondering where you are,” Flint worried aloud as he slowly turned the saddle to allow Francis’s leg to tip toward him.

Francis stared in dismay. Flint was helping her untangle herself, but he was obviously positioning her so that she would slide off the back of the horse and into his arms.

“I can walk,” Francis said abruptly.

“You’d have better luck flying at the moment,” Flint said as he put a hand on each of her hips and braced himself. “Put your arms around my neck and I’ll swing you around.”

“I don’t think—” Francis began. Flint’s hands swept past her hips and wrapped themselves around her waist. She took a quick, involuntary breath. Surely he could feel her heart pounding inside her body. The material on this wretched dress the girls had talked her into wearing was not at all good for this sort of thing. It was much too thin. She could feel the heat from Flint’s hands as he cradled her waist.

“You don’t need to think—just move with me,” Flint directed. He couldn’t take much more of this.

It must be the cold that made his hands even more sensitive than usual. He not only felt every ridge of beaded sequin on the dress, he felt every move of her muscles beneath the palm of his hands. He knew she was trying to pull herself away from him. That she was struggling to move her leg without his help. The knowledge didn’t do much for a man’s confidence. He remembered the days when she used to want him to hold her.

“You’re going to scare the horse,” Flint cautioned softly. Beneath the sequins, the dress felt like liquid silk. Flint had all he could do to stop his hands from caressing Francis instead of merely holding her firm so he could lift her off the horse.

“Where’d you get the horse, anyway?” Francis forced her mind to start working. Everything has a place, she reminded herself. If she could only find the place of everything, this whole nightmare would come aright. She could make sense and order out of this whole madness if she worked at solving one piece of the puzzle and then went on to the next piece. She’d start with the horse.

“A small farm outside of Billings,” Flint answered. His hands spanned Francis’s rib cage. He could feel her heart pounding. “They rent horses.”

“Why would you rent a horse?” Francis persisted. One question at a time. It helped her focus and forget about the hands around her. “You don’t live around here. They must usually rent to ranchers.”

Flint stopped. He could hardly say he needed a horse to rescue her. She’d never believe that. Then he remembered he didn’t need an answer. “That’s classified information. Government.” Flint had her circled, and there was no reason to stall. “Move with me on the count of three.”

All thought of the horse—and its order—fled Francis’s mind.

“One. Two.” Flint braced himself. “Three.”

When Flint pulled, his hands slid from the middle of Francis’s rib cage to the top. He almost stopped. But Honey was beginning to tap-dance around again, and he had to follow through.

Francis gasped. The man’s hands were moving upward from her rib cage. There was nothing for it but to put her arms around his neck and swing forward.

“Atta girl,” Flint murmured. Even he didn’t know if he was talking to Francis or the horse. And it didn’t matter. He had Francis once again in his arms. Well, maybe not in his arms, but she was swinging from his neck. That had to count for something.

Francis winced. Her leg was swinging off the horse along with the rest of her body, and her leg was protesting. But she gritted her teeth. “Let me down.”

Flint went from ice to fire in a heartbeat. He’d been without a jacket after he gave it to Francis, and his chest was cold. But the minute Francis swung against him, his whole insides flamed. His jacket had only been draped over her, and now it fell back to her shoulders. He felt the cool smoothness of her bare arms wrapped around his neck and the swell of her breasts pressed against his shirt.

“I can’t let you down.” Flint ground the words out. “You can’t walk through a snowdrift in those heels.”

“I can walk barefoot.”

“Not with that leg,” Flint shifted Francis’s weight so his neck didn’t carry her. Instead, he had his arms around her properly this time. There were no bad guys here. He could carry her like a gentleman. “Besides, you’d get frostbite.”

Francis didn’t argue. She simply couldn’t think of anything to say. She had been swiveled, swept up in his arms and now rested on Flint’s shoulder with a view of his chin. This was not the way anything was supposed to go. She was supposed to be forgetting him. “You nicked your chin the night of the prom, too.”

“Huh?”

“When you shaved—the night of the prom, you nicked your chin. Almost in the same place.”

“I was nervous.”

“Me, too.”

“You didn’t look nervous,” Flint said softly. He had tied Honey to a branch and was carrying Francis out of the pine grove. “You were cool as a cucumber.”

“I hadn’t been able to eat all day.”

“You were perfect,” Flint said simply. He was walking toward the small wood frame house. “Everybody is hungry at those things, anyway. You think there’ll be food and it turns out to be pickled mushrooms or something with toothpicks in it.”

Flint stopped. He was halfway to the house, and he knew someone had been here recently besides himself and Honey. A faint smell was coming from the house—the smell of cigars. He’d only known one man to ever smoke that particular brand.

“I’m going to set you down and check out the house,” Flint whispered. It could be a trap. The cigars weren’t a secret. “Be quiet.”

Francis shivered, and not from the cold. Even in a whisper, Flint’s voice sounded deadly serious. For the first time, she was truly afraid. And, for the first time, it occurred to her that if it were known by now that she was kidnapped—and it surely would be known once Jess checked around the barn—then someone would be out to rescue her. And if they intended to rescue her, they would also be out to hurt—maybe even kill—Flint.

The very thought of it turned her to ice. She could cheerfully strangle Flint herself. But seeing him hurt—really hurt—was something else again.

Think, Francis, think, she told herself as Flint slid her out of his arms to a dry space near a pine tree. The shade of the tree made the night darker here than anywhere. Even the light of the moon did not reflect off her sequins when she was sitting here. She could no longer see his face. He was a black shadow who crouched beside her.

“Be careful,” she whispered at his back as he turned to leave. The words sounded futile to her ears. And then she saw his black silhouette as he drew a gun from somewhere. He must have had a gun in the saddlebag. Or maybe he had a shoulder holster.

Francis didn’t want to be responsible for Flint being hurt. But anyone who was here to rescue her would think nothing of shooting Flint. Think, Francis, think. There had to be a solution. She couldn’t just sit here and wait for the gunfire to begin.

That’s it, she thought victoriously. She knew she could think of a solution. It just needed an orderly mind. If there were no kidnapping, there would be no need for any shooting.

Francis forced herself to stand. Her one leg wobbled, but it would have to do. She took a step forward, praying whoever was inside that wooden house would have sense enough to recognize her voice.

“Flint, darling,” she called in what she hoped was a gay and flirtatious voice. She was out of practice, but even if her voice wasn’t seductive she knew it was loud enough to be heard through the thickest walls. “I thought you said there was a bed inside this old house for us to use.”

There, she thought in satisfaction, that should quell any questions about a kidnapping. It would, of course, raise all sorts of other questions, but she could deal with that later. She wondered who of the many Dry Creek men had come to her rescue.

Flint froze. Only years of training stopped him from turning around to stare at Francis. The deep easy chuckle that rumbled through the walls of the house confirmed his suspicions about who had smoked the cigars. The cigars could be duplicated. The chuckle never. It was safe to turn around.

Flint could only see the silhouette of Francis, but it was enough. He walked toward her and said the only thing he could think to say. “I told you to keep quiet. That could have been anyone inside.”

“I didn’t want you to be shot on my account,” Francis whispered airily as she limped toward him. “If you just let me go now, there’ll be no kidnapping.”

“There never was a kidnapping. This was a rescue.”

“A rescue?” Francis turned the word over in her mouth and spoke low enough so that whoever was inside the house could not hear. “Don’t you think that’s going a bit far? I don’t think anyone would believe it’s a rescue— I think we better stick with the seduction story.”

Flint shook his head. No wonder being a hero was so difficult these days.

“Not that they’ll believe the seduction story, either.” Francis continued to whisper. Her leg was painful, but she found it easier to limp than to stand. “I must look a sight by now.”

The deep darkness of the night that had gathered around the pine trees lifted as Francis moved toward him. “I wonder which of the men from Dry Creek knew enough to drive out here and wait for us. Pretty quick thinking.”

Flint held his breath. In the night, he could look at Francis and not worry about the naked desire she would see in his eyes any other time. His jacket had fallen off her shoulders under the tree, and her arms and neck gleamed white even in the midnight darkness. The sequins of that red dress glittered as she moved, showing every curve in her slender body. She was beautiful.

“It’s not one of the men from Dry Creek,” Flint said softly. “It’s my boss.”

Francis stopped. She’d never thought—never even considered. And she should have—there’s an order to everything, she reminded herself blindly. One needed to know the place of everything. And a kidnapping, she noted dully, required a motive and, in this case, a boss.

Francis stared unmoving at the weatherbeaten deserted house that used to belong to Flint’s grandmother. The white paint had peeled off the frame years ago, leaving a chipped grayness that blended into the darkness. Gaping black holes marked where the glass had broken out of the windows.

“He must think I’m a fool,” Francis whispered stiffly.

Francis looked so fragile, Flint moved slowly toward her. She looked like a bird, perched for flight even with her sprained leg muscle.

“No, I’m sure he doesn’t think that at all,” he said softly.

When he reached Francis, Flint picked her up again. This time he cradled her in his arms properly, as he had wanted to each time he’d picked her up tonight. For the first time, she didn’t resist him. That should thrill his heart, Flint thought. But it didn’t. He knew Francis wasn’t warming toward him. She’d just given up.

“And that bit about the bed.” Francis continued to fret. “I’m a middle-aged woman. He must think I’m a featherbrain—especially because he knows why you have me out here.”

“He does, does he?” Flint asked quietly. It came as somewhat of a surprise to him that he’d rather have Francis kicking his shin with her pointed high heels than to have her lying still in his arms feeling foolish after having done something so brave.

The angle wasn’t perfect for what he needed to do, but Flint found that if he bent his knee and slowly lowered Francis until she was securely perched on the knee, he could crane his neck and do what he needed to do.

He bent his head down and kissed her. He knew his lips were cold and chapped by now. He knew that the quick indrawn breath he heard from Francis was shock rather than passion. But he also knew that they both needed this kiss more than they needed the air they were breathing.

Flint took his time. He’d waited twenty years for this kiss and, planned or not, he needed to take his time. He felt the stiffness leave Francis’s lips and he felt them move against him like they used to. He and his Francis were home again.

“Thank you.” Francis was the first one to breathe after the kiss ended. Her pulse was beating fast, but she willed it to slow. “At least now your boss won’t think I’m delusional—he’ll think you at least tried to seduce me. Middle-aged or not.” Francis stopped speaking to peer into the darkness of the broken windows. “He is watching, isn’t he?”

For the first time since he’d bent down on one knee, Flint felt the bone-chilling cold of the snow beneath him. He might be home again, but Francis wasn’t. “You think the kiss was for my boss’s benefit?”

“Of course. And I appreciate it. I really do.”

Flint only grunted. He must be losing his touch. He went back and picked up his jacket to wrap around Francis.

Chapter Three

“There’s trouble in Dry Creek.” The words came out of the other man’s mouth the moment Flint kicked open the door to the abandoned house and, still holding Francis, stepped inside. “Kidnapping.”

“I know,” Francis said stiffly. She was glad she’d have the chance to show she wasn’t a ninny. “That’s me.”

“Not unless you got here in the back of a cattle truck, it’s not,” the other man said mildly, a lit cigar in his mouth and a cell phone in his hand. The only light in the room was a small flashlight the man must have laid on the table recently. The flashlight gave a glow to the rather large room and showed some bookcases and a few wooden chairs scattered around the table.

“Well, surely there’s no point in kidnapping more than me.”

“It appears they have some woman named Sylvia Bannister and then Garth Elkton.”

“Oh, no.” Francis half twisted herself out of Flint’s arms. “I’ll need to go help them.”

“You can’t go.” Flint finished carrying her over to one of the chairs and gently sat her down.

“That’s right. I’m a prisoner.”

“You’re not a prisoner,” Flint said impatiently and then turned to the older man. “It better be me that goes. I’ve gotten a little acquainted with the guys responsible for this. Might have picked up a tip or two.”

While Flint was talking, he was rummaging through a backpack resting on another chair. He pulled out an ammunitions cartridge and put it in the pocket of a dry jacket that was wrapped around the back of the chair. Then he pulled out a pair of leather gloves.

“Mrs. B called it in.” The older man gestured to his cell phone. “Said to hurry. Some kids are chasing the truck in a bus as we speak. You can use my Jeep. Parked it behind the trees over there.” The older man jerked his head in the opposite direction they had ridden in from. “It’ll get you there faster.”

“Not faster than Honey,” Flint said with a smile as he walked toward the door. “She can beat a Jeep any day. She makes her own roads.”

Flint opened the door and was gone in a little less than five seconds. Francis knew it was five seconds because she was counting to ten and had only reached five when the door creaked shut. Her teeth were chattering and she didn’t know if it was because she was near frozen or because she was scared to death. She hoped counting would force her to focus and make it all better. It didn’t.

“I’ve got one of those emergency blankets in here someplace,” the older man said as he turned to a backpack of his own leaning in the corner of the room. “Prevents heat loss, that sort of thing.”

“I’m okay.” Francis shivered through the words. She felt helpless to be sitting here when someone had kidnapped Sylvia and Garth.

“Not much to that dress,” the older man said as he walked over to her and wrapped what looked like a huge foil paper around her. “Especially in ten below weather.”

The paper crinkled when she moved, but Francis noticed a pocket of warmth was forming around her legs. It would spread. “I didn’t plan to be out in it for so long without my coat.”

“I expect you didn’t.” The man went back to his pack and pulled out a small hand-cranked lantern. He twisted the handle a few times and set the lantern on the table. A soft glow lit up the whole room. “Something must have gone wrong.”

“Flint kidnapped me.”

That fact seemed to amuse the older man. “Yes, I forgot. You mentioned that earlier. Sorry to spoil your plans.”

“They were hardly my plans. You’re the boss. They were your plans.” Francis knew it wasn’t always wise to confront criminals. But the old man seemed fairly harmless, and she did like to keep things clear.

“Sounded more like a lover’s tryst to me.” The man sat on one of the chairs.

“Humph.” Francis didn’t want to go into that.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” the man continued and looked around the room. “Although I can assure you that if Flint told you there was a bed, he lied.”

“Humph.” Francis was feeling the warmth steel up her whole body. She could almost feel cozy. “We don’t really need a bed.”

“Good.”

The man sat for a few minutes in silence and then got up and went to his pack and drew out a can. “Peaches?”

“I’d like that.”

The man opened the peaches with the can-opening edge of a Swiss knife.

“Handy thing,” he said as he flipped the blades into the knife and put it in his pocket. “Flint gave me this one almost fifteen years ago now.”

“You’ve known him for that long?”

The man nodded. “Almost as long as you have if you’re who I think you are.”

Francis wondered if this were a trick to find out who she was. But then, she reasoned, it hardly mattered. Flint certainly knew who she was, and he would be back soon to tell his boss anyway.

“I’m Francis Elkton.”

The man nodded again. “Thought you must be. But I guess I’ll share my peaches with you anyway. Figure you must have had your reasons for what you did.”

“Reasons for what?”

The man shrugged. “It’s old history. Flint went on and so did you. I wouldn’t even have remembered your full name if I hadn’t seen that.”

There it was. The man was pointing to a faded family Bible. One of those with the black leather cover stamped, Our Family With God.

“I’m in there?” Francis moved outside the warmth of the foil blanket to stand up and walk to the bookcase. The Bible was closed, but she saw that a ribbon marker had been left through the center of the book. Curious, she opened it.

The man was right. There was her name. Francis Elkton.

The words read, “United in Holy Matrimony Flint L. Harris and Francis Elkton on the day of our Lord, April 17—”

“Who wrote that there?” Even the temperature outside could not match the ice inside her. She’d never seen the words like that, so black and white.

The man shrugged. “It was either Flint or his grandmother.”

“His grandmother didn’t know we—” Francis gulped. She could hardly say they had gotten married when the most they had done was perform a mock ceremony.

“Then it must have been Flint.”

“He must have stopped here before he left that day.”

The man nodded. “I expect so. A man like Flint takes his marriage vows serious. He’d want to at least write them down in a family Bible.”

“There were no marriage vows,” Francis corrected the man bitterly. “We said them before a fake justice of the peace.”

The man looked startled. “There was nothing fake about your vows.”

Francis felt a headache start in the back of her neck. “I’m afraid there was. The justice of the peace was a phony.”

“I checked him out. He was pure gold.”

“You can’t have checked him out. He didn’t even exist. Phony name and everything.”

Francis still remembered the smug look on her father’s face when he got off the phone with a city official in Las Vegas and informed her there was no such justice of the peace.

The peaches were forgotten. The older man looked cautiously at Francis and said softly, “I did a thorough check on Flint myself before he came into the Bureau. I knew he had potential and would go far. I wanted to be sure we did a complete check. I talked to the justice of the peace personally. And the county sheriff who arrested Flint on that speeding ticket.”

Francis felt her headache worsen. “What speeding ticket?”

The old man looked at Francis silently for a moment. “The day after you were married, Flint was arrested on a speeding ticket just inside the Miles City limits. Thirty-eight in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone.”

“No one gets a ticket for that.”

“Flint did. And because he didn’t have the hundred thousand dollars cash to post bail, he did ninety days in jail.”

Francis put her hand to her head. “That can’t be. No one does that kind of time on a traffic ticket—and they certainly don’t have that kind of bail.”

The man kept looking at Francis like he was measuring her. Then he continued slowly. “I talked to the sheriff who made the arrest. He was doing a favor for someone. The arrest. The high bail. The ninety days. It was all a personal favor.”

“Flint never hurt anyone. Who would do that?”

The silence was longer this time. Finally, the man spoke. “The sheriff said it was you. Said you’d changed your mind about the marriage and didn’t have the nerve to tell Flint to his face.”

“Me?” The squeak that came out of Francis’s throat was one she scarcely recognized as her own.

The man looked away to give her privacy. “Not that it’s really any of my business.”

Francis needed to breathe. Reason this out, she said to herself. Reason it out. Put the pieces in their places. It will make sense. There’s an order to it all. You just need to find it.

“But I hadn’t changed my mind.” Francis grabbed hold of that one fact and hung on to it. The whole story revolved around that one piece, and that one piece was false. That must make the whole story false. “I wanted to be married to Flint.”

The man lifted his eyes to look at her. With the soft light of the lantern on the table, Francis could see the pity in the man’s eyes. “I’m beginning to think that might possibly be true.”

Francis was numb. She’d fallen into a gaping hole and she didn’t know how to get out of it. She couldn’t talk. She could barely think. “But who would do such a thing?”

Francis knew it was her father. Knew it in her heart before she had reasoned it out with her head. He was the only one who could have done it.

Her father had been upset when she and Flint had driven up and announced their marriage. She hadn’t expected her father to be glad about the marriage, but she thought he’d adjust in time. She’d been relieved when Flint had suggested he drive into Miles City to buy roses for her. If she had some time alone with her father, Francis had thought, she could change his mind.

She and her father had talked for a while and then she went in to pack. There wasn’t much she needed to take. Some tea towels she’d made years ago when her mother was alive to help her. The clothes she’d been wearing to school. A few pieces of costume jewelry. The letters Garth had written her when he was overseas.

She’d filled up two suitcases when her father came in to say he’d called Las Vegas and found out that the justice of the peace was a fake.

At that moment, Francis had not worried about her father’s words. If the justice of the peace was a fake, she’d calmly reasoned, she and Flint would only find someone else to marry them again. Flint had made a mistake in locating the proper official, but they would take care of it. They’d marry again. That’s what people in love did. She started to fold the aprons her mother had given her.

When she finished packing, Francis went down to the kitchen to prepare supper for her father. It was the last meal she’d make for him for awhile, and she was happy to do it. She decided to make beef stew because it could simmer for hours with little tending after she left.

Four hours later her father invited her to sit down and eat the stew with him. She knew Flint could have driven into Miles City and back several times in the hours that had passed. Francis refused the stew and went to her room. He must have had car trouble, she thought. That was it. He’d call any minute. She stayed awake all night waiting for the phone to ring. It was a week before she even made any attempt to sleep at nights.

“It was my father,” Francis said calmly as she looked Flint’s boss in the eyes. “He must have arranged it all.”

“I’m sorry.” The man said his words quickly.

The inside of the cold house was silent. Francis sat with the open Bible on her lap, staring at the page where her marriage vows had been recorded and a scripture reference from Solomon had been added. As she looked at it closely, she could see that the faded handwriting was Flint’s. She wished she could have stood with him when he recorded the date in this Bible. It must have had meaning for him or he wouldn’t have stopped on his way into Miles City to write it down.

“Surely Flint—” she looked at the man.

He was twisting the handle that gave energy to the emergency lantern on the table. He didn’t look up from the lantern. “He didn’t want to tell me about you. Didn’t even mention your name. But he had to tell me the basics. I was only checking out his story. Part of the job. We needed to find out about the arrest. It was on his record.”

“So he thinks it was me who got him arrested.”

The temperature of the night seemed to go even lower.

The man nodded.

Francis felt numb. She had never imagined anything like this. She had assumed Flint had been the one to have second thoughts. Or that he had never intended to really marry her anyway. He wasn’t from around here. She never should have trusted him as much as she did. She repeated all the words she had said to herself over the years. None of them gave her any comfort.

“He should have come back to talk to me.”

“Maybe he tried,” the man said. He’d stopped cranking the lantern and sat at the table.

The silence stretched between them.

“Mind if I smoke?” the man finally asked.

“Go ahead,” Francis said automatically. She felt like her whole life was shifting gears and the gears were rusty. She’d spent too much of the past twenty years resenting Flint. Letting her anger burn toward him in the hopes that someday her memories would be light, airy ashes that could be blown away. But instead of producing ashes that were light, her anger had produced a heavy, molten chunk of resentment that wouldn’t budge in a whirlwind.

There had been no blowing away of old, forgotten memories. These past weeks in Dry Creek had already proven that to her. She was beginning to believe she would be forever shackled by her memories. But now it turned out that the whole basis for her anger was untrue. Flint had not left her. She had, apparently, somehow left him.

A rumbling growl came from the man’s coat pocket.

“Excuse me,” he said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “That’ll be Mrs. B.”

The conversation was short, and all Francis heard were several satisfied grunts.

“Flint’s got them in custody,” the man said when he put his phone back in his pocket. “He’s holding them in something he called the dance barn in Dry Creek. Said you’d know where it was. Told me to bring you with me and come over.”

“So I’m free to go?” Francis asked blankly as she looked up. She’d been so distressed about everything the man had told her she hadn’t realized her first impressions of him must not be true.

“Of course,” the man said as he stood and put his backpack on his shoulders.

“But who are you?”

“Inspector Kahn—FBI,” the man said as he fumbled through another pocket in his coat and pulled out an identification badge.

“But—”

“The cattle business,” the man explained as he showed the badge to Francis. “It’s interstate. Makes it a federal crime.”

“So the FBI sent someone in.” Francis took a moment to look at the badge so she could scramble to get on track. She had heard the FBI was working on the case. They had asked Garth to help. “So you really didn’t need Garth, after all.”

Inspector Kahn grunted. “Not when I have a hot-head like Flint working for me.”

“Flint works for you?”

Inspector Kahn grunted again and started walking toward the door. “Sometimes I think it’s me working for him. I’d place money that the reason he’s so keen for me to get there is because he wants me to do the paperwork. Flint always hated the paper side of things.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “You coming?”

“Yes.” Francis certainly didn’t want to stay in this cold house any longer than she needed to. She pulled the jacket Flint had given her earlier over her shoulders and picked up the Bible.

The inspector looked at the Bible. “I expect you’ll need to talk to Flint about this marriage business.”

“I intend to try.”

The inspector smiled at that. “Flint isn’t always an easy man to reason with. Stubborn as he is brave. But you know that—you’re married to him.”

“I guess I am, at that.” The ashes inside of Francis might not be blowing away, but she could feel them shifting all over the place. It appeared she, Francis K. Elkton, had actually been married to Flint L. Harris some twenty years ago.

For the umpteenth time that night, Flint wondered at the value of being a hero. He had saved Garth Elkton’s hide—not to mention the even more tender hide of the attractive woman with him, Sylvia Bannister—and they were both giving him a shoulder colder than the storm front that was fast moving into town.

In his jeans and wool jacket, Flint was out of place inside the barn. Not that any of the men there hadn’t quickly helped him hog-tie the three men who had kidnapped Garth and Sylvia and attempted to take them away in the back of an old cattle truck.

But the music was still playing a slow tune and the pink crepe paper still hung from the rafters of that old barn. And Flint felt about as welcome as a stray wet dog at a fancy church picnic.

“There, that should do it.” Flint checked the knots in the rope for the third time. He’d asked someone to call the local sheriff and was told the man was picking up something in Billings but would be back at the dance soon. He hoped the sheriff would get there before the inspector. Maybe then some of the paperwork would be local.

“Who’d you say you were again?” Garth Elkton asked the question, quiet-like, as he squatted to check the ropes with Flint.

“Flint Harris.”

“The guy who called me the other night about the kidnapping?” Garth sounded suspicious.

“Yes.”

“Still don’t know how you knew about it.”

“Because I’ve been freezing my toes off the past few nights following these guys around.” Flint jerked his head at the men on the floor. Flint could see the direction Garth was going with his questions and he didn’t appreciate it. “If I was one of them, don’t you think they’d at least recognize me?”

Flint looked at the three men on the floor. They looked quarrelsome and pathetic. He didn’t appreciate being lumped in with them. But at least it was clear that none of them claimed to have ever seen him before now.

“They didn’t seem too clear about who their boss was,” Garth continued mildly. “Could be they wouldn’t recognize the man.”

“I can’t tell you who their boss is, but he’s using a local informant,” Flint said in exasperation. “We’ve got that much figured out. And I’m not local.”

“You were local enough for my sister.”

Ah, so it’s come to that, Flint thought. It seemed he’d never get a square break from an Elkton. “Let’s leave your sister out of it.”

The mention of his sister made Garth scan the room. “Where is she, anyway? Thought she’d be back inside by now. I heard Jess was looking for her.”

“She was with me.” Flint resigned himself to his fate.

“With you? What was she doing with you?”

“Don’t worry. She’ll be back here any minute now.”

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