Isabella Trueblood made history reuniting people torn apart by war and an epidemic. Now, generations later, Lily and Dylan Garrett carry on her work with their agency, Finders Keepers. Circumstances may have changed, but the goal remains the same.

Lost

His first love. Mark Peterson had never gotten over Jillian Salvini’s desertion ten years ago. She and her family had left in the middle of the night. Mark’s heart hadn’t recovered. Now that she was back, was a second chance possible?

Found

Her son’s father. When Jillian and her son, Drew, reclaimed her family’s Panhandle homestead, she’d never expected there would still be a Peterson in residence next door. Of course, she’d never expected her ranch to be sabotaged. Or to find out what had terrified and made enemies of her father and Mark’s so long ago.

Finders Keepers: bringing families together

“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” Jillian said.

The dark despair of those days coloring her voice even now. The night they had made love, she had never intended to let things go so far.

“You sure as hell acted like you did.”

“Acted. I think that’s the operative word.”

“Are you telling me you were acting that night?”

She couldn’t truthfully tell him that. She hadn’t been. She had simply been swept away by what had been happening between them.

“No,” she said, willing to leave it at that.

“Then what the hell are you saying?”

“That…I wasn’t ready for what happened, I guess. I wasn’t prepared.”

“And you regret it,” he said. Statement and not question.

But of course he was unaware of all the tangled issues in regretting what had happened between them that night. She could never regret having Drew. He was her life. She opened her mouth, knowing it was past time to tell Mark the truth. Long past time.

Dear Reader,

I hope very much that you’ll enjoy The Cowboy’s Secret Son. This is a story close to my heart for many reasons, primarily because it concerns the reuniting of a family, a favorite theme in many of my books, both historical and contemporary.

Also, just like the hero of this novel, my husband is a former army helicopter pilot. He has over 5000 flight hours, many acquired during two tours of duty in Vietnam flying a gunship. While there, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, as well as an impressive variety of other medals. He is truly my hero, not only for his courage and dedication to country, but for his many acts of love, support and sacrifice for our family through the years of our marriage.

And finally, I loved writing this book because I love Texas. Although we never lived in the Panhandle, my family and I were fortunate to live along the Texas/Mexican border for several years. We fell in love with the beauty and grandeur of the desert Southwest and with the warmth of its people. It was very exciting for me to revisit another part of the state with which I feel such a connection. I hope you’re enjoying all the rich Texas diversity the Trueblood series showcases.

Best wishes for good reading!

Gayle

The Cowboy’s Secret Son
Gayle Wilson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Gayle Wilson is acknowledged as the author of this work.

To Marsha Zinberg for her endless patience and kindness.

And to Texas, my “other” home.

THE TRUEBLOOD LEGACY

THE YEAR WAS 1918, and the Great War in Europe still raged, but Esau Porter was heading home to Texas.

The young sergeant arrived at his parents’ ranch northwest of San Antonio on a Sunday night, only the celebration didn’t go off as planned. Most of the townsfolk of Carmelita had come out to welcome Esau home, but when they saw the sorry condition of the boy, they gave their respects quickly and left.

The fever got so bad so fast that Mrs. Porter hardly knew what to do. By Monday night, before the doctor from San Antonio made it into town, Esau was dead.

The Porter family grieved. How could their son have survived the German peril, only to burn up and die in his own bed? It wasn’t much of a surprise when Mrs. Porter took to her bed on Wednesday. But it was a hell of a shock when half the residents of Carmelita came down with the horrible illness. House after house was hit by death, and all the townspeople could do was pray for salvation.

None came. By the end of the year, over one hundred souls had perished. The influenza virus took those in the prime of life, leaving behind an unprecedented number of orphans. And the virus knew no boundaries. By the time the threat had passed, more than thirty-seven million people had succumbed worldwide.

But in one house, there was still hope.

Isabella Trueblood had come to Carmelita in the late 1800s with her father, blacksmith Saul Trueblood, and her mother, Teresa Collier Trueblood. The family had traveled from Indiana, leaving their Quaker roots behind.

Young Isabella grew up to be an intelligent woman who had a gift for healing and storytelling. Her dreams centered on the boy next door, Foster Carter, the son of Chester and Grace.

Just before the bad times came in 1918, Foster asked Isabella to be his wife, and the future of the Carter spread was secured. It was a happy union, and the future looked bright for the young couple.

Two years later, not one of their relatives was alive. How the young couple had survived was a miracle. And during the epidemic, Isabella and Foster had taken in more than twenty-two orphaned children from all over the county. They fed them, clothed them, taught them as if they were blood kin.

Then Isabella became pregnant, but there were complications. Love for her handsome son, Josiah, born in 1920, wasn’t enough to stop her from grow-ing weaker by the day. Knowing she couldn’t leave her husband to tend to all the children if she died, she set out to find families for each one of her orphaned charges.

And so the Trueblood Foundation was born. Named in memory of Isabella’s parents, it would become famous all over Texas. Some of the orphaned children went to strangers, but many were reunited with their families. After reading notices in newspapers and church bulletins, aunts, uncles, cousins and grand-parents rushed to Carmelita to find the young ones they’d given up for dead.

Toward the end of Isabella’s life, she’d brought together more than thirty families, and not just her orphans. Many others, old and young, made their way to her doorstep, and Isabella turned no one away.

At her death, the town’s name was changed to Trueblood, in her honor. For years to come, her simple grave was adorned with flowers on the anniversary of her death, grateful tokens of appreciation from the families she had brought together.

Isabella’s son, Josiah, grew into a fine rancher and married Rebecca Montgomery in 1938. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Trueblood Carter, in 1940. Elizabeth married her neighbor William Garrett in 1965, and gave birth to twins Lily and Dylan in 1971, and daughter Ashley a few years later. Home was the Double G ranch, about ten miles from Trueblood proper, and the Garrett children grew up listening to stories of their famous great-grandmother, Isabella. Because they were Truebloods, they knew that they, too, had a sacred duty to carry on the tradition passed down to them: finding lost souls and reuniting loved ones.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“I’LL BE DAMNED,” Dylan Garrett said under his breath.

Lily Garrett Bishop looked up from the work spread across her own desk, loving amusement lifting her lips as she watched her twin brother. His eyes were on one of two letters that had been hand-delivered to the offices of Finders Keepers.

“Something interesting?” she asked after a moment.

She stacked the report she had just finished and inserted it into its folder, which would eventually be filed with the others in the agency’s growing list of successfully completed cases. At her question, Dylan’s blue eyes lifted from the paper he held.

“A voice from the past,” he said.

“Are you deliberately trying to be mysterious, or is this ‘voice from the past’ strictly personal?”

“Personal? In a way, I guess it is. Part of it, anyway.”

“And the part that isn’t?” Lily asked patiently.

“Involves an assignment for the agency.”

The agency was the investigative venture the Garrett twins had recently formed, using skills developed in their previous occupations in law enforcement. The goal of Finders Keepers was to find people, especially those who had, for one reason or another, been torn apart from their families.

“Something you’re obviously interested in accepting.”

Lily believed she knew every nuance of her brother’s voice. This one contained a tinge of nostalgia. Perhaps even regret.

“Someone,” he corrected softly.

Lily’s smile widened. She knew him too well to be able to resist the opportunity that offered for teasing. “Oh, let me guess. Someone young and beautiful. And female, of course.”

“Young at heart, in any case. Or…at least she was.”

The past tense and the subtle shift in tone warned her, and Lily’s smile faded. “Someone I know?” she asked gently.

“Someone Sebastian and I met years ago.”

Dylan’s eyes fell again to the letter, and his sister waited through the silence, anticipating that eventually he would go on with the story he had begun. By now she understood it was one that had engaged her brother’s emotions as well as his intellect.

“Young at heart doesn’t sound much like one of your usual romantic encounters,” she ventured finally. “Or Sebastian’s.”

When Dylan laughed, Lily felt a surge of relief. Whatever this was, apparently it didn’t involve the disappearance of Julie Cooper, which had occupied her brother’s time and energy since his friend Sebastian had come pleading for help to find his missing wife.

Actually, Lily hadn’t heard this much interest in Dylan’s voice in weeks. Not for anything other than Julie’s disappearance. Whatever was in that letter, she could only be grateful for the distraction it was providing her brother.

“We had car trouble,” Dylan said, that subtle hint of nostalgia back. “Down in Pinto.”

“Pinto?” Lily repeated disbelievingly.

“Pinto, Texas, home of Violet Mitchum and not much else.”

“Violet Mitchum is your mystery woman?”

“There was no mystery about Violet. Except this, I guess.”

“This?”

“It seems I’ve been named as one of her heirs.”

“Should I congratulate you on your inheritance?” Lily teased, assuming that whatever her brother had inherited from a chance acquaintance in Pinto, Texas, wouldn’t be substantial.

Dylan inclined his head slightly, as if in polite acceptance of those congratulations. With the movement, the strong Texas sun shining through the wide second-story windows behind him shot gold through the light-brown strands of his hair.

“You may congratulate me along with the seven other recipients of Violet’s largesse,” he said.

“Too bad you have to share your inheritance with so many,” Lily mocked. “And is Sebastian another of Miss Mitchum’s heirs?”

“Mrs. Mitchum. And no, he’s not. Violet didn’t take to Sebastian,” Dylan said, the amusement suddenly missing from his narrative. “She said he had…an impure heart.”

That assessment of the handsome and charismatic Sebastian Cooper, especially by a woman, was surprising. Usually it was Sebastian who made an indelible impression on females, Lily thought with a trace of bitterness. Just as he had with Julie.

She had hoped for years that Julie would realize Dylan was the one who really loved her. The one who was so obviously right for her. She hadn’t, however, and when she and Sebastian had eloped, Dylan had continued to be a friend to both of them, despite what Lily suspected was a badly broken heart.

“But she took to you?” The mockery had been deliberately injected back into her question, hiding that swell of bitterness.

“Of course. After all, I took her riding,” Dylan said. “And part of my inheritance is the horse we rode on.”

“The horse we rode on?”

“She said she hadn’t been riding in years. I held her before me in the saddle so she could have one last ride on one of her beloved horses. It just seemed…the right thing to do.”

“Just exactly how old was Violet when you met her.”

“According to this, Violet was eighty-one when she died. The fishing trip was before Sebastian and Julie married….” The sentence trailed, and Lily felt unease stir. After a few seconds, however, her brother continued, his voice unchanged. “So, maybe…four years ago. Maybe a little more.”

The tough-as-nails Dylan cradling a fragile old lady before him in the saddle was not hard to imagine. Not if one knew her brother as she did. “And in gratitude, she left you the horse.”

“Considering its bloodlines, that would be no small bequest in itself. But it isn’t all Violet left me.”

Dylan walked across the room and laid both letters on the desk in front of her. Lily scanned the first one quickly, finding the initial paragraphs to be confirmation of what he had just told her. And in the third paragraph…

“Mitchum Oil? Your Violet was that Mitchum?” she asked.

“She and her husband Charles. They had no children. Only Violet’s horses and…that.”

That was a fortune, one of the largest in Texas, where millionaires were not rare. The size of the old Mitchum strike was justly famous even in this oil-rich state.

“And the other heirs?” Lily asked, after she had skimmed the rest of the first letter.

“People who meant something in Violet’s life. They’re all listed in the other letter. That one’s from her lawyer. There’s an old friend, Mary Barrett, who stayed in touch by letter, despite their changing circumstances. There are several who had done Violet favors, like Stella Richards, who sent meals out to the Mitchum house every day until Violet died. And Stuart Randolph, who loaned Charlie the equipment to dig his first well. John Carpenter, who tended her horses,” Dylan enumerated. “And then there are those, like me, who had a chance encounter with her that…changed their own lives.”

“Is that what Violet did? Changed your life?” Lily asked, hearing again the thread of emotion in his deep voice.

“She granted me absolution.”

“Absolution?” Lily asked, surprised at the word, which had such strong religious connotations. “Absolution for what?”

“For not being here when Mother died,” he said quietly.

“Dylan,” Lily said, pity intermingled in her equally soft protest. “I never knew you felt that way. You have to know she understood. She always understood. And she loved you so much.”

“That’s what Violet said. I guess she just said it at the time when I most needed to hear it. She reminded me that a mother’s love has no conditions,” he added. “Mom’s certainly didn’t. Somehow, stupidly, I had managed to forget that.”

Lily nodded, blinking back the sharp sting of tears those memories evoked. “You said there was an assignment for us in this,” she reminded him, not sure that reliving the pain of her mother’s death was what either of them needed right now. Not with Dylan so worried about Julie, and her own pregnancy—

“The other heirs,” Dylan said, interrupting the remembrance of that very private joy. “We’ve been asked to find them and to let them know about Violet’s bequests.”

“And those all involve sums like this?” Lily asked, her eyes again considering the amount that had been left to her brother.

“Some of them are much larger. And each is accompanied by a memento from their association with Violet. Does that sound like an assignment we’d be interested in taking on?”

“Changing lives,” Lily said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“That’s what this amounts to. Changing lives. Changing circumstances. Can you imagine what a gift like this could mean to some of these people? Do you know anything about them?”

“At this point, nothing but their names,” Dylan said, reaching over her shoulder to turn the page, revealing the names of the three still-missing heirs.

“Jillian Salvini, Sara Pierce and Matt Radcliffe.” Lily read the names aloud. “And if we agree to the lawyer’s proposal, we’re supposed to find these people?”

“And tell them what Violet has left them.”

“Do you suppose she meant as much to any of them as she did to you?” Lily asked, looking up from the letter into his eyes.

“If she did…then, despite the money, I would bet they’d rather not be found. I know I’d like to think about Violet still alive and vital, living in that Victorian monstrosity her husband built for her. Still watching her beloved horses and writing her endless letters. Frankly, I’d much rather be allowed to believe that than to have the money.”

“But you can’t speak for everyone. And this much money—” she began to remind him again.

“Can change lives,” Dylan finished for her. “Not exactly the purpose for which we started Finders Keepers, but still… I think I’d like to do this, Lily, providing you’re agreeable. And who knows, we might even manage to reunite a few families in the process.”

“Whether we do or not,” Lily said, “I think this is something you need to do. For Violet. To repay the debt you owe her, if for no other reason.”

“I think you’re right. For Violet,” Dylan agreed. And his voice was again reminiscent. For Violet.

CHAPTER ONE

LIKE A WHIPPED DOG with his tail between his legs, Mark Peterson thought, fighting the bitterness that always boiled up to the surface when he approached the ranch from this direction.

He dropped the chopper low enough that its powerful rotor kicked up dust from the arid ground below. There were no power lines or trees to worry about in this desolate terrain, and it had become his habit to low-level over the Salvini ranch whenever he was coming in from the west.

After a few pointless trips across the deserted ranch, which stirred up memories as well as dust, Mark had given up trying to figure out his motives for doing this. Maybe it was simply a form of masochism. Or maybe it was the fact that this was the last place on earth where he still felt a connection to Jillian. And that in itself was a totally different kind of masochism.

He had never forgotten her, of course, but since he’d come back to Texas, back to his family’s land, all those memories had become stronger. And much harder to deal with.

The For Sale signs were still up, he realized, which meant that the price on the property hadn’t yet dropped enough to make the co-op snap it up as they had most of the land around here. It would soon, of course, because the people who currently owned the ranch would be increasingly eager to get out of it whatever they could and move on with their lives.

The house had been unoccupied for a couple of months and was beginning to show the effects. Despite the fact that the last owners couldn’t afford to hold on to the ranch, they had at least kept it in good shape. Now…

Mark eased the cyclic back, bringing the nose of the helicopter up, and increased the pitch. As the chopper rose and then leveled out, he forced his eyes away from the familiar buildings spread out across the flat High Plains countryside below. He didn’t need to look at them. He knew every square mile of that ranch almost as well as he knew the one next door. The one where he had grown up.

It already belonged to the cooperation, as did most of those in the area that had come on the market in the last few years. Few individuals could afford the investment it took to make ranching up here a financial success. The cooperation had the backing of a couple of major banks and the monetary wherewithal to ride out the volatile ups and downs of the cattle market.

Families didn’t. They couldn’t afford to hold on through the hard times. That’s why more and more land was being sold to groups such as the one he now worked for. And as much as Mark hated to see that happen, he couldn’t blame anyone for choosing a less heartbreaking road than the one that had broken his father.

The thromping blades of the rotor startled an antelope into flight. It raced along under the shadow of the copter for a few hundred feet before it veered off to the right and disappeared beneath him.

Mark’s lips slanted with the pleasure of watching that brief display of grace and power. The country below was too dry and forbidding for much of the wildlife that flourished farther south. Of course, the High Plains were different enough from the rest of Texas that they were almost a separate entity—one Mark loved with a passion that rivaled his father’s.

Although the doctors had put his dad’s death down to a stroke, Mark knew that bitterness and failure had played as big a role as his physical condition. A longtime widower, deeply estranged from Mark, who was his only child, Bo Peterson had died a lonely and sour old man. And if he wasn’t careful, Mark told himself, coming in now over the ranch that had killed his father, that could be his own epitaph as well.

In contrast to the old Salvini place, the buildings below showed the effects of having enough money. There were only a few hands, including himself, living on the ranch now that the fall roundup was over, but it still had the well cared for air that all of the co-op’s properties possessed.

He wondered how his father would have felt about that. He sometimes wondered how he himself felt about it.

He set the chopper down with the ease of long practice. Even after he had completed the shutdown procedures, he remained in the comfortable warmth of the enclosed cockpit, delaying a moment because he dreaded the bite of the November wind, despite the protection of the leather jacket he wore.

There was nowhere in Texas as prone to bitter cold as the top of the Panhandle. The frigid gusts from the north swept ruthlessly across the flat landscape, chilling to the bone.

And his bones were a lot more susceptible than they had been before he’d left here ten years ago, Mark acknowledged. He remembered the pleasure he had once taken in a long day of hard physical labor or in the equally demanding leisure pastimes.

It had been a long time since he’d wrestled a steer or done any saddle bronc riding. And, he admitted ruefully, his lips quirking slightly, it would be a hell of a long time before he did either again.

He climbed out, feeling the jolt of the short step to the ground in every one of the damaged vertebrae of his spine. He gritted his teeth against the pain, trying to stretch out his back unobtrusively as he walked away from the chopper.

Too many hours in the cockpit without a break. He wasn’t making any complaints, though. Flying was the only activity he had ever found that he loved with the same passion he had once felt for rodeoing. He had been strictly an amateur, not nearly on a level to go pro, but he had been good enough to win some of the local prizes.

And good enough to win a few admiring glances from the women and slaps on the back from the men of the close-knit ranching communities of the Panhandle. Those had meant more to him than the money or trophies he’d won.

Especially at the last, when some of those glances had come from the doe-brown eyes of the once skinny little girl who had tagged along at his heels, hero-worshiping him the whole time they’d been growing up. Tagged along until in the space of one year, while he’d been away at college, Jillian Salvini had become a woman. A woman he’d seen with newly awakened eyes and fallen head over heels in love with.

“Back mighty late, boy,” Stumpy Winters yelled from the door of the bunkhouse. “Boss been calling you. He said for you to be sure and give him a ring when you get up to the house.”

Mark waved an acknowledgment to the old man, hunching his shoulders against a blast of wind that carried with it a stinging assault of dirt. Most nights he stopped at the bunkhouse to talk, delaying the lonely hours he would spend in his father’s house until it was time for bed. Tonight he needed to take a hot shower and stretch out his aching back more than he needed company.

Stumpy wouldn’t be offended. The old man had known him from the time he had ridden his first horse. Actually, he wasn’t sure Winters hadn’t been the one who’d put him up on that swayback.

Out of sight of the bunkhouse now, Mark slowed his pace, stretching his spine again. He climbed the three steps that led to the ranch house’s back stoop as if he were as old as Stumpy.

Once inside, he shut the door, blocking out the howl of the wind. Closing his eyes, he leaned back in relief against the solid wood behind him.

After a moment he straightened and walked across the kitchen, boot heels echoing on the vinyl-covered floor. He filled the glass standing beside the old-fashioned enamel sink and drank down the same clear, sweet well water of his childhood in a couple of long thirsty drafts. As he stood there drinking his water, he noticed that the shadows were beginning to lengthen over the yard, revealed through the windows above the sink.

He wondered idly what Tom Shipley wanted. Probably instructions about another errand to be run tomorrow. That was mostly what the chopper was used for during periods when cattle weren’t being moved. Bringing in supplies and shuttling guests from the airports in Amarillo and Lubbock out to the spread the co-op ran as a dude ranch. Or taking its owners, like Shipley, into market or meetings. Occasionally doing medevac duties for the few injuries that required more than the first aid available on the ranches themselves.

He put down the glass and turned to face the phone on the opposite wall. Make the call, get squared away with Shipley, and then grab a hot shower, he promised himself, imagining the heat relaxing muscles tensed by a long day in the air.

Maybe tensed even further by that little side trip into the past he took every time he flew over the Salvini place. Tensed every time he thought about Jillian. Which had been too often lately for his peace of mind. Especially since he’d come home.

Home, he thought, glancing around his mother’s kitchen. Not all that much had changed about it since she’d died. Just over twenty years ago, he realized with a small sense of disbelief.

There was a different color of paint on the walls. New curtains on the windows he’d been looking out. But the scarred wooden table and four chairs were exactly the same. He could still remember the night he’d brought Jillian here so they could tell his dad—

He stopped the playback of that image, closing his eyes against the painful strength of it. Too damn many memories. Too many ghosts. And none of them, except maybe his mother’s, would rest easy with him living here. He pushed away from the counter and walked over to the phone.

After he’d dialed Shipley’s number, he stood listening to the distant ringing, his eyes once more considering the chair where Jillian had sat that night. When he realized what he was doing, he turned around, facing the wall instead. And he knew that action was a physical enactment of what he needed to do mentally. To turn his back on the past.

He had been here long enough to know that coming home had been a mistake. It was time to start looking for another job. Time to move on. Time to forget about what had happened here and to get on with the rest of his life.

After all, he thought, the bitterness surging relentlessly to the surface again, that’s exactly what she had done. Jillian Salvini had turned her back on him and everything that had been between them. In doing that, she had been wiser than he. Apparently Jillian had known, even then, that no matter how badly you might want to, you could never really go home again.

* * *

“VIOLET,” Jillian Sullivan said. “Oh, God, not Violet.”

She touched the edge of her desk and, using it for support, eased down into her chair like someone who had suffered a hard blow to the midsection. Which was exactly what this felt like.

“I’m really sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” the man who had introduced himself as Dylan Garrett said.

Jillian forced herself to look up, taking a calming breath as she nodded. “I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea. I should have, I suppose. I had written her a couple of times and gotten no reply, which for Violet was so far from the norm…”

She shook her head, moving it slowly from side to side as she tried to assimilate the unwanted information that Violet Mitchum was dead. More unwanted than it would have been had they not had that silly argument the last time they’d met.

That was what those two letters had been about—an attempt to reassure Violet that she really did know what she was doing as far as marrying Jake Tyler was concerned. And as far as Drew was concerned as well, Jillian conceded.

That was what had eroded her confidence in her decision the most—Violet’s doubts about whether or not Jillian was doing the right thing for her son. The question of whether she was cheating him out of something that he was entitled to. And yet, one of the reasons she had agreed to marry Jake—

“Mrs. Sullivan?”

Dylan Garrett’s voice brought her back to the present, a present she was still having a hard time facing.

“I’m sorry,” she said blankly. “What did you say?”

“I was wondering if you had known Violet Mitchum long.”

Long enough to feel for her the kind of love usually reserved for family, Jillian thought. She didn’t say it aloud, but there was no doubt the old woman had assumed a parental role in her life. And therefore the loss was almost as devastating as if she had been one of Jillian’s parents.

Maybe even more so, she realized in regret. After she had left her family and ended up in Pinto, Jillian had desperately needed someone as supportive as Violet in her life. And through the years, she couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

“More than nine years. She was both a friend and a mentor.”

“A mentor?”

“She taught me a lot of what I know about this business,” Jillian said, glancing around the interior design studio. “When I came to Pinto, the only job I could get was in the local antique store. I learned a lot from the owner, who was a friend of Violet’s, but even more from Violet herself. Despite the rather…unusual appearance of her house, she had collected some really lovely things when she and Charlie traveled. Violet might not have had any formal education, but she had the eye, and the instinct, to discern quality and value.”

“And she shared those with you?”

Jillian smiled at him, thinking about all Violet had shared through the years. “That and far more. She paid for my classes in design and baby-sat my son so I could attend them. When I finished school, she helped secure this job for me by contacting a friend of hers who lived here in Fort Worth. I owe her more than I could possibly say, and now I discover that she’s gone, that she’s been dead for over a month. And I didn’t even know.”

Despite the depth of her grief, Jillian hated the catch in her voice when she spoke. Through the years she had learned the hard lesson of hiding her emotions. At first she had done it out of pride, and a determination that no matter what her father said to her, he would never see her cry. Then she had done it for Drew’s sake, keeping up a brave front for her son, despite the struggle those first years had been.

By now, guarding her feelings was a deeply ingrained habit. One that even a grief this profound apparently couldn’t break.

“I’m so sorry,” Dylan said again.

“Thank you. It’s just…such a shock.”

“And I have what will probably be another for you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Another shock. Not more bad news,” he clarified quickly. “Violet’s death was enough, I know.”

“What kind of shock?” Jillian asked carefully.

“Mrs. Mitchum remembered you in her will.”

Remembered you in her will. Which could mean almost anything. Violet had a lot of money, of course. Jillian had always known that. Not that it was evident in her person or in her treatment of others. It was simply that Violet loved to tell the story of her beloved Charlie’s strike. And considering how well-known Mitchum Oil was in Texas…

“She left me something?” Jillian asked.

“A couple of things, actually.”

Mementos then, Jillian thought, relieved. For the first time in years her financial situation was stable and promising, and much of that was due to Violet’s past generosity. She didn’t really want her to do more.

“What are they?”

“One I couldn’t bring with me,” Dylan Garrett said, smiling at her for the first time.

Again Jillian shook her head. “I’m not sure—”

“Violet left you her piano.”

Memories she had been fighting flooded Jillian’s brain. How many afternoons had she taken refuge in Violet’s huge Victorian house rather than go back to that dreary apartment over the antique store. It was all she could afford, and she was grateful for the owner’s generosity in making it available to her, but her loneliness for adult companionship had been almost unbearable.

At Violet’s, there had always been a welcome. Jillian remembered the long, happy evenings she’d spent there, her heart filling again with the warmth of the unconditional love she had felt emanating from the old woman for both her and her son. She would play the piano and Violet would hold Drew until he fell asleep. It had been idyllic. And a balm for the rejection Jillian had felt in every other aspect of her life.

“I can have it delivered whenever and wherever you want it.”

He meant the piano, Jillian realized. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she said softly.

“I’ll leave you my card, and you can think about it. Just give me a call when you’ve decided.”

“I used to play that piano for her.”

Even as she said it, Jillian realized this man couldn’t possibly care about that. Dylan Garrett was simply acting at the request of Violet’s lawyers. He had told her that at the beginning.

“She left me a horse,” he said.

Surprised, she looked up into his blue eyes, which were almost amused—maybe at Violet’s choice of mementos. And yet, at the same time, they exuded a sympathy that made Jillian feel as if perhaps he did understand what she was feeling.

“And she also left me one of these,” he added.

He laid something down on the desk in front of her. It took her a few seconds to break the strange connection that had grown between them to look down at whatever it was.

“My God,” she whispered when she did. And then she added truthfully, “I don’t want this.”

She didn’t. She would have given every penny this check represented to have had the opportunity to clear up the disagreement that had marred her last visit with Violet, the one where she had taken Jake Tyler with her.

That had been her mistake. It wasn’t that Violet hadn’t liked Jake. She had said as much herself. But she had also warned Jillian that there was too much “unfinished business” in her past. Too many things she had never put behind her. Violet had warned her that she must clear those up before she could hope to start a new life for her and Drew. A life with someone else.

“I’m afraid giving it back isn’t an option,” Dylan said, his voice amused. “The money’s yours to do whatever you want.”

“What I want is to see Violet again,” Jillian protested, knowing how childish that probably sounded.

“I know,” Dylan replied, and the way he said it somehow made Jillian feel that he didn’t think her plea was childish at all. “I felt the same way when I found out she was gone. I’d lost touch with Violet, and I’ll always regret that. She told me something very meaningful, something that made an incredible difference in my life, and…I never got the chance to tell her that. Or a chance to thank her.”

Something very meaningful… The words seemed to echo in Jillian’s heart. She had tried to ignore what Violet had told her. She had tried to dismiss the old woman’s wisdom as something that wasn’t feasible or realistic. But none of the advice Violet had given her through the years had been wrong. Jillian had known that, even as she had stubbornly denied the sagacity of what Violet had said to her the last time they’d met.

“She told me something, too,” she said in a low voice.

Dylan tilted his head a little, as if he were trying to read her tone. “And…?”

“And…I didn’t listen because I didn’t want to hear what she was saying. I didn’t want to believe it.”

“I certainly wouldn’t presume to try to tell you—”

“Violet would,” Jillian assured him.

Dylan laughed.

“I don’t know if she was right about what she said,” Jillian went on. Despite her grief over the way she had left things the last time she’d visited Pinto, she managed to smile at him. “But…she was right about most of the things she told me through the years. Maybe I owe it to her to try to find out if she was right about this one, too.”

Again her eyes fell to the check lying in the center of her desk. She wondered if Violet had intended her to use this money to do what she had suggested. Of course, it had come with no strings attached. No demands made. And what Violet had said had only been a suggestion. Still…

“I’ll let you know where to send the piano,” she said.

It was intended as a dismissal. Now that she had made the decision, Jillian found she was eager to get started. Maybe it was an eagerness to do exactly what Violet had said, and then put it all behind her. Or maybe… Maybe Violet had been right about the unfinished business of her life, she acknowledged.

There were too many things that Drew would have questions about as he grew older. Too many things, Jillian realized with a sense of surprise, that she herself still had questions about. And there was only one way to answer them. And really, only one place to start.

* * *

“YOU’VE LOST your mind,” Jake Tyler said.

“I know it must sound like that,” Jillian admitted.

His gaze held hers a long moment before he turned and paced to the other end of his enormous penthouse office, his fury apparent in every step. When he reached the wall of glass that looked down into the heart of Dallas’s financial district, he turned, meeting her eyes again.

His lips were compressed, and Jillian understood, because she knew him so well, that he was trying to gather control before he said anything else. His hands had been thrust into the pockets of the charcoal-gray suit he wore so that she wouldn’t see that they were clenched angrily into fists.

“I thought everything was set,” he said finally, the fury tamped down enough to allow him to speak almost naturally.

“I’m sorry, Jake, but this is something I have to do.”

“Because that crazy old woman told you to do it.”

Jillian suppressed her own anger at his characterization of Violet. Her grief was too new to shrug off Jake’s disparagement, although she recognized it was his disappointment speaking. And she couldn’t blame him for being annoyed. Any man would be.

They had all but set the date before she had taken him to Pinto that weekend. And since they’d returned, even before she had known about Violet’s death, she had been putting Jake off about finalizing plans for the wedding. The news Dylan Garrett had brought her, along with Violet’s legacy, seemed almost a sign that she had been right in postponing things a bit.

“And because of Drew,” she said, wondering as she spoke if she was using her son as an excuse for something she wanted to do. And that, too, created its own sense of guilt.

“A good private school and a father’s discipline,” Jake said. “Those are the only things he needs. You know that.”

“I’m not sure another school would be any better.”

“He needs to be with children who are bright enough to judge on something other than physical attributes.”

“Like how much money their fathers have?” she asked pointedly.

“Not all children bully those who are…different. That doesn’t have to be a part of growing up. It shouldn’t be.”

“He’ll be in a new school when we move.”

“And you think it’s going to be any different in the back of beyond? You think those kids are not going to bully him?”

There was no guarantee of that, and she knew it.

“There’s more to this than just Drew,” Jillian said.

“Then tell me. Explain to me why you’re giving up a client base you’ve worked so damn hard to build. Your career is just now starting to show the kind of success you said you’d always dreamed of. Why the hell are you throwing that all away?”

Unfinished business, Violet had said. And that about summed it up, Jillian thought. “It’s just something I have to do, Jake,” she said aloud. “If I don’t…”

“If you don’t, then…what?” Jake asked after the silence had stretched too thin between them.

“If I don’t, then I won’t be able to be your wife,” she said, looking down at the emerald-cut four-carat diamond she wore on her left hand. “If you still want that.”

“If I still want it? You know I do, Jillian. Is that what this is about? Is there someone else—”

He broke off when her eyes came up too quickly from the ring he’d given her. Again the silence expanded, filling the space between them. Finally, almost reluctantly, she twisted the engagement ring off her finger.

Holding it in her right hand, she walked across to the huge mahogany desk that was the focal point of the office she had designed for him a little less than two years ago. She laid the ring on the edge, allowing her fingers to rest on it a moment before she removed them, then clasped both hands together in front of her waist because they were trembling.

“I have to know,” she said softly. “We both have to know.”

“Don’t do this,” he said, his voice as low as hers.

“If we’re right—if this is right,” she amended, nodding toward the ring, “then I’ll be back. I’m not asking you to wait. But…whatever you decide to do, I have to go.”

“Are you telling me I won’t even be allowed to see you?”

“Are you sure you still want to?” she asked, smiling at him.

“Of course, I want to. I’m in love with you, Jillian. I thought you were in love with me.”

“So did I,” she said. “But that’s something we both need to be right about, and I promise you, what I’m doing is the only way I know to be sure.”

“And if you aren’t in love with me?” he asked, every trace of anger wiped from his tone. It held a note of uncertainty she had never heard in Jake Tyler’s voice before.

“Then…I guess that’s something we both need to know.”

CHAPTER TWO

“SOLD?” Mark repeated in surprise.

“Somebody bought it right out from under their noses,” Stumpy Winters said, grinning. “I guess they waited a little too long this time, trying to drive the price down to nothing.”

“An individual?”

“With enough money to get the paperwork done overnight. Seems like they even took Dwight Perkins by surprise.”

That wasn’t the way things normally worked around here. Most of the Realtors, like Perkins, were in the co-op’s hip pocket, which was pretty deep, giving them inside information on the market that allowed them to get the best deals.

Mark even understood why Stumpy was grinning with such unabashed delight as he told him about the sale. It did feel like a victory for the little man to have the Salvini place sold out from under the co-op’s nose. And to a family, apparently.

“Poor bastards,” Stumpy said, spitting tobacco juice into the five-pound coffee can that had been provided in the bunkhouse for that purpose. “They don’t know it yet, a’ course, but there ain’t nothing except bad luck and heartbreak waiting for ‘em.”

Stumpy would know. Although Mark hadn’t thought about it since he’d been back, that ranch had once belonged to Winters’s family, long before Tony Salvini bought it.

“Maybe it’ll be different this time,” Mark said.

Stumpy snorted, his disdain for the prediction clear. “And maybe pigs’ll fly, too, but I ain’t hanging around expecting it.”

“Speaking of which…” Mark said.

He threw the dregs of his coffee out the open bunkhouse door. Considering the strength of the brew the old man boiled up on the woodstove every morning, he half expected it to sizzle in the dirt when it hit the ground. Despite the taste, though, there was nothing guaranteed to clear the head and get the heart pumping faster than Stumpy’s coffee.

“You take care,” Stumpy said. “We’re gonna have us some weather ’fore the day’s out.”

Weather. In the vernacular of the High Plains that meant a storm, which this time of year could include sleet or snow. Like most old cowpunchers, Stumpy’s battered bones were a better indicator of the local conditions than the six o’clock news.

“See you tonight,” Mark said, taking the bunkhouse steps two at a time.

Whatever Stumpy’s bones were telling him, Mark’s back felt better than it had for a couple of days. Of course, that might be due to the fact that he hadn’t had any marathon sessions in the cockpit lately. And today wouldn’t change that pattern. A run over to Albuquerque to take one of the co-op’s owners to a meeting was the only thing on his agenda.

That could always change, but it looked as if he might have the afternoon free to take the résumés he’d been working on to the post office in town. He didn’t want to mail them from the ranch. That was something that his dad had drummed into him from childhood. The fewer people who knew your business, the better.

Not a bad philosophy, Mark admitted. Not in this case, anyway. Until he had another position lined up, he couldn’t afford to alienate the owners of the co-op. He’d keep his mouth shut about his plans to move on. After all, that decision was nobody’s business but his.

* * *

JUST A GLUTTON for punishment, he thought as he found himself easing the stick to the right.

Flying over the Salvini place hadn’t been a conscious decision, but on the return leg of his trip, Mark had ended up again on the northern boundary of the property. Although the distance this route added to his flight time would be no more than a few minutes, they could be critical on a day like this.

The old man had been right about the storm. The sky was low, the clouds were dark and threatening, and the temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees since this morning. He needed to get the chopper down before the storm hit, but the temptation to see what the new owners were doing was too strong to ignore. At least that was what he told himself as he headed south.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of movement on the tabletop flatness below. Hoping for something like the antelope he had startled into motion a few days ago, Mark looked down, carefully scanning the area. And when he found what had attracted his attention, it took a second or two for him to comprehend what he was seeing, because it was so unexpected.

Beneath him was a kid. On foot. And alone.

The impressions bombarded his brain, but it took another minute to adjust his course so that he was flying back over the spot where he’d seen the child. As he did, he realized that he hadn’t been mistaken about any of those things.

The kid looked up, watching the helicopter’s approach. As Mark drew nearer, details became apparent. Boy, he decided, although with today’s unisex clothing and hairstyles, gender could be hard to distinguish.

As soon as the child realized the chopper was coming back, he turned, too, heading off in the opposite direction. Although he was hurrying, he wasn’t really moving very fast. He was limping, Mark realized as he watched the uneven gait. And his limp was slowing down what was obviously supposed to be an escape attempt.

Despite the threat of the predicted storm, Mark’s lips tilted into a smile. He’d be willing to bet the kid was wearing new boots of a kind not designed for hiking in this terrain. He could visualize them in his mind’s eye. The pointy-toed tourist-variety cowboy boot, gaudy with decoration. And if the boy thought he could outrun him in those things…

Mark brought the helicopter alongside and just above the child, jabbing his finger toward the ominous cloud bank that lay above the horizon. He was near enough to see brown eyes widen in a pale face as the child looked up. Near enough that he could tell that the flapping windbreaker would not offer nearly enough protection from the cold that would come sweeping in across the plain.

He increased pitch, pulling up a little and moving in front of the kid, who was still trying to run with that loping awkwardness. Then, very carefully, he set the chopper down maybe thirty feet in front of the boy. As soon as he realized what Mark was doing, the child changed directions again, heading north this time. Right into the heart of the approaching storm.

“Damn it, kid,” Mark said under his breath.

He could lift off and land in front of the boy again. He could keep doing that until he’d worn him into exhaustion. Or he could get out and try to talk some sense into him. Maybe try to figure out what the hell he was doing way out here alone, a good five or six miles from the nearest habitation, which was…

New owners. New boots. The kid must belong to the family who had bought the Salvini place. He had probably set out to explore and gotten turned around. That wasn’t hard to do, given the unchanging sameness of the landscape. There weren’t any landmarks up here, and unless you had a compass…

Mark lifted the chopper off the ground again, closing the distance between them, and landed directly in the boy’s path. The kid’s lips were parted now, as if he were panting from the exertion of trying to outrun his pursuer.

Mark throttled down to flight idle and locked down the controls before he unfastened his seat harness and opened the door of the cockpit. By the time he’d stepped down, ducking under the blades, the kid had twirled again and was heading in the opposite direction.

It took Mark only a few strides to catch up. The boy must have heard him, although he never looked back. When Mark put his hand on his shoulder, the child twisted, pulling out of his grip.

He darted away to the left, and as Mark turned to follow, he felt a twinge of pain ripple through his back. He ignored it and ran after the boy, using the advantage of his longer stride to quickly lessen the distance between them.

When he was close enough, he reached out again, grabbing the boy’s upper arm. His hand closed around it hard enough to withstand the attempts the child made to pull away. The kid must be more panicked than he’d realized, Mark thought, holding on despite the frantic struggle the boy was making to escape.

“Calm down,” Mark said, his tone the same he had once used to gentle spooked horses. “I’m not going to hurt you. There’s a storm coming, and believe me, you aren’t equipped for the kind we get up here. I’m going to take you home.”

The boy’s efforts to free his arm ceased, but Mark didn’t release him. And for the first time, he got a good look at the kid’s face. There was a dusting of freckles across a slender nose. Dark eyes were fringed by equally dark lashes. And compared with the thick brown hair and those eyes, the skin that surrounded them seemed awfully pale.

City kid, Mark guessed. Any boy this age who had spent the summer out in the rural Texas sun would still have a pretty good residual tan. This kid didn’t.

Of course, part of that noticeable paleness might be put down to fright. Odds were the kid had never been chased by a stranger in a helicopter before. That would be enough to scare almost anyone, especially a kid who had gotten lost in unfamiliar territory. Mark was about to offer more reassurances, when the boy spoke for the first time.

“I don’t want to go home,” he said, jerking his arm free.

So much for the scared spitless theory, Mark thought, realizing only now that what he was seeing in those eyes wasn’t fear, but defiance.

“I told you, kid. There’s a storm brewing, and up here, that’s nothing to fool around with. Not in November.”

The eyes changed a little, holding Mark’s a moment before they cut back to consider the line of clouds. When the boy looked back, he seemed less certain—and less antagonistic—than he had only seconds before. “My mom send you?”

“I don’t know your mom. And nobody sent me. I didn’t have any idea you were out here. Not until I saw you.”

The boy stared hard at Mark, obviously trying to decide whether to believe him or not.

“You running away?” Mark asked into the silence.

After a few more seconds of scrutiny, the kid nodded. Apparently Mark had passed the test for trustworthiness that had just been administered.

“I’ve done that a couple of times myself,” he said easily, smiling in memory. “And I can tell you from experience, it never solved anything I wanted it to.”

“I didn’t want to come here,” the boy said. “I told her that. There’s nothing out here.”

His tone was almost plaintive, and Mark laughed, provoking a flash of resentment in the dark eyes.

“Well, you aren’t wrong about that,” he admitted, attempting to regain the ground that unthinking laughter had lost. “Nothing at all, unless you’re partial to sky and dirt. We’ve got plenty of that. And cows, of course. Horses.”

“She said I could have a horse.”

Those words were less defiant, but there was something beneath the surface Mark couldn’t quite read.

“That’s good,” he ventured.

“I don’t like horses.”

“You ever been around any?”

“No,” the boy admitted after a brief hesitation.

His gaze skated again to the line of clouds, a little anxiously this time. Mark realized that the wind had picked up as they’d been talking. It was whipping the boy’s hair into his eyes and billowing inside the back of the light cotton jacket he wore.

“Your mom’s probably worried sick about you,” Mark said, bringing the boy’s eyes back to his face.

“You like horses?” the kid asked.

“Always have. Since long before I was your age.”

As he said the word, he tried to estimate how old the child was. He hadn’t really been around enough kids to make it an accurate evaluation, but…six or seven, he guessed. He wondered why the boy wasn’t in school. Maybe with the move and all—

“I don’t,” the boy said. “They smell.”

Mark laughed again, unable to argue with that assessment.

“You get used to it. After a while, that smell will seem like perfume. Cookies baking. Something good, anyway.”

He resisted the urge to reach out and ruffle the dark hair that was blowing around the pale, freckled face.

“She likes them.”

“Your mom?”

“Yeah. I told her I didn’t want a horse. Then I told her I didn’t want to be here, and she got all upset.”

“So you left.”

“She worries about me,” the kid said.

I’ll bet she does, Mark thought. He put his hand on the back of the narrow shoulders, directing the child toward the waiting chopper. There was no resistance this time, and as they walked, Mark noticed the uneven stride again. He glanced down at the boy’s feet, which were shod in ordinary sneakers.

“Blister?” he asked, still using his hand to direct the kid around to the other side of the helicopter.

He opened the door on the passenger side of the cockpit and put his hand under the boy’s elbow, preparing to help him inside. The kid squirmed away, the move almost like the one he’d made to throw Mark’s hand off his shoulder. And it was as effective.

“I can do it,” he said, that hint of defiance back.

Again Mark refrained from arguing. After all, there was nothing wrong with wanting to stand on your own two feet, even if they were blistered. It took the kid a few seconds to assess the unfamiliar situation. When he had, he put one foot on the skid and grasped the leather loop above the door. He scrambled into the seat, shooting a triumphant glance downward at Mark.

Resisting the urge to smile at that rather obvious, if silent, “I told you so,” Mark closed the door and walked around the nose of the chopper. He climbed inside, automatically fastening his harness as soon as he was settled in the seat.

The boy watched and then began fastening his own, making quick work of the procedure. Since Mark occasionally had to help adults figure out how to work the device, his opinion of the kid’s intelligence edged upward a notch or two.

He reached behind the adjacent seat and pulled out a flight helmet. Very few of his passengers wanted to wear one, and given the fact that most of them were his employers, he didn’t insist.

“Put it on,” he ordered this time, handing the helmet to the boy. If he had expected resistance, he was disappointed.

“Cool,” the kid said with a touch of awe in his voice.

Mark hid his grin by putting the helicopter into the air. The wind had picked up quite a lot in the short time he’d been on the ground, but he’d be flying south, away from the storm. At least he would until he got to the Salvini ranch, which was, of course, no longer the Salvini ranch, he reminded himself.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever known the name of the last owner. If he had, he couldn’t remember it. And he didn’t think Stumpy had mentioned the new owner’s. “What’s your name?” he asked.

He had to raise his voice to be heard over the engine. The kid had been watching the ground whip beneath him, which was an awesome sight the first time you experienced it. He turned his head, the helmet sliding around despite the chin strap. He raised both hands to straighten it as his eyes met Mark’s.

“Andrew Sullivan.”

“Nice to meet you, Andy.”

“Drew,” the child corrected.

“Drew,” Mark repeated obediently. “Mark Peterson.”

“You live around here.”

“Next door.”

“Cool,” the kid said again.

Mark allowed the smile he had resisted before. He glanced over at the boy, receiving an answering one. Wide and unabashed, it lit up the narrow features and lightened the dark eyes.

After a second or two, the kid turned back to watch the scenery below. Mark found himself hoping their passage would stir up some wildlife. He thought the kid would like to see that. It, too, would probably be deemed cool.

He was a little surprised at how gratified he was to have won that appellation. It had been a while since anyone had approved of him with quite that much undisguised enthusiasm. And that was definitely cool, he thought, again fighting a grin.

* * *

“I WISH YOU’D called me earlier,” the sheriff said.

“If I’d known he was missing earlier, believe me I would have,” Jillian said, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm.

She hadn’t liked Ronnie Cameron when they had gone to school together. Nothing that had happened today had changed her opinion. All she wanted him to do was to organize some kind of search, and instead, he seemed determined to let her know what a bad mother she was. Right now she didn’t need anyone else telling her that. Her guilt over letting Drew out of her sight while he was still so angry was quite sufficient without Ronnie’s comments.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” the sheriff asked, flipping the pages in the small spiral-bound notebook he had taken out of the pocket of his suede jacket. He licked the point of his pencil in preparation and glanced up at her expectantly.

Jillian wondered, her irritation growing, how long it had been since she had seen anybody do that and what it was supposed to accomplish. What was any of this supposed to accomplish?

Apparently Ronnie intended to write down everything she had already told him before he did anything. Jillian gritted her teeth over the delay, working to keep her temper in check. Not that she had much choice.

When she’d discovered Drew was gone, she couldn’t think of anything else to do except appeal to the sheriff for help. She had given the dispatcher all the information. And then she had repeated it for the sheriff as soon as he’d shown up, almost thirty minutes after she’d called the emergency number.

And she had searched the ranch herself before she’d called. Once she had, she had realized there was just too much very empty territory surrounding it for her to investigate alone. Besides, she couldn’t be sure how long Drew had been gone.

“A little after ten,” she said, trying to hold on to her patience. “He was playing a computer game.”

“And you didn’t see him after that?” Ronnie asked, carefully writing something in his notebook.

“That’s right,” Jillian said, taking a deep, calming breath.

“And you think he might have gone out exploring?”

“I said it’s possible. We just moved in a couple of days ago. I thought maybe… I don’t know. Maybe he just decided to take a look around and got lost.”

“Uh-huh,” the sheriff said, still writing.

“But…”

She hesitated, hating to confess the strained relationship with her son this move had caused. Ronnie’s blue eyes had lifted from his notebook at the pause. They held hers, waiting.

“He might have run away,” she said softly.

“Run away from home?”

She resisted the urge to state the obvious, nodding instead.

“Got his dander up about something?” Ronnie asked.

“He wasn’t too thrilled about the move.”

The sheriff’s eyes drifted over the buildings clustered around the house before they came back to hers.

“Could be hiding,” he said. “Lots of hiding places around here for a boy.”

“I called him. I went inside every one of the outbuildings and called.”

“That don’t mean he’s gonna answer,” Ronnie said, smiling at her. He flipped the top of the notebook over whatever he’d written and stuck it back in his jacket pocket.

“And why would he do that?” Jillian asked. “Why would he not answer? Exactly what are you implying?”

“That maybe the kid don’t want to be found. He’s got himself a mad on, and he’s trying to rattle your chain. Seems to be working, too.”

The smile widened, and Jillian, the most nonconfrontational person in the world, wanted to slap it off his face.

“There’s a storm coming,” she said. “I don’t want my son out in it. I called you to help me find him.”

“I expect he’s curled up somewhere watching us right now. He probably liked the idea of you calling the county out to look for him. Liked seeing the cruiser coming.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Best guess,” Ronnie said, seemingly unaware of her anger. “Based on eight years’ experience in this business.”

“And you aren’t going to do anything to find him,” Jillian said flatly, finally realizing that he wasn’t.

“I’ll take a look around. Drive out a ways.”

“I’ve already done both of those things.”

“But you’re his mama. I’m the sheriff. Kids react differently to a uniform. To somebody in authority.”

“I thought you’d decided Drew was enjoying watching this.”

“One or the other. Let’s start with the barn,” Ronnie said.

He began to walk in that direction without waiting to see if she was coming. As a child, the barn had always been her refuge, Jillian remembered. Its horse-scented darkness had given her a sense of safety unmatched anywhere else on the ranch. Reluctantly, knowing this was nothing but a wild-goose chase and a waste of what might be valuable time, she turned to follow him.

As she did, she realized that the sheriff had stopped, seeming to study the clouds to the north. As she glanced in the same direction, she became aware of a sound disturbing the prestorm quiet.

Helicopter, she identified automatically. She put her hand up, shading her eyes from the swirling, wind-driven dust more than from the sun, which had been dimmed by the clouds.

The chopper grew larger as she and the sheriff watched. After a minute or two, it became apparent that it was preparing to set down in the yard. Now that it was this close, Jillian could see it wasn’t any kind of official aircraft. There were no markings that would indicate it belonged to law enforcement or to the military.

It was small and sleek, its body white with bright-red numbers. There was a logo of some kind on the door, but Jillian couldn’t quite make it out from here.

She shielded her eyes again, this time from the dust the rotor was stirring up. Whoever was flying the chopper set it down with hardly a bump and shut off the engine. The sudden silence made her realize how noisy the thing had been.

“Co-op,” the sheriff said.

“Co-op?”

“Outfit that owns most of the land around here. They wanted this place, but I guess you beat ‘em to it.”

She had been told someone else was interested in the property, which had helped her make up her mind very quickly that this was what she wanted to do with Violet’s money. Once she’d made that decision, writing the check for the full purchase price was all that had been required to close the deal. That and signing her name on the bottom line.

Foolishly, she had done that before she had approached Drew. Because her childhood here had been so idyllic, she had never expected that he’d react the way he had. After all—

The door of the chopper slid open and the pilot climbed down. Head lowered a little, he walked around to the other side and opened the passenger door. By now, Jillian had begun to suspect what this was all about. Still, her heart leaped into her throat when Drew came running around the nose of the chopper.

She fought the maternal instinct to shout a warning to him to be careful of the still-rotating blades. Biting the inside of her lip, she simply watched as he approached, so relieved to see him that her knees felt weak.

His steps slowed the closer he came, especially when he noticed the sheriff. You know you’re in trouble, Jillian thought, when you find out your mom’s called out the law.

“Hi, Mom,” Drew said, his tone wavering somewhere between apprehension and excitement.

The latter she could credit to his recent ride in the helicopter, something he’d never done before. And the former was self-explanatory. Drew knew from experience that she wasn’t going to put up with this kind of nonsense.

He knew that, and yet he had done it anyway, which proved exactly how upset he was about the move. And she felt like a fool and a failure for not having any idea about how he’d react.

“Where have you been?” she asked, giving him a chance to tell his side of the story. Besides, listening to his explanation would give her a few seconds to decide what she was going to do about his disappearing.

“I was leaving, but…I got turned around.”

“You were running away?”

“I was going back to Fort Worth,” Drew said.

He sounded almost as determined as he had when he told her how much he hated the ranch. She wished she’d listened.

“And you got lost instead,” she guessed.

He nodded, his eyes cutting back to the pilot, who was rounding the nose of the chopper.

“You’re a little old for that kind of thing, aren’t you?” Jillian asked, bringing his attention back to her. “You must have some idea of how worried I’ve been.”

As she talked, she was aware of the pilot’s approach. She wanted to thank him for bringing Drew home, but she also wanted to make the point to her son that something like this wasn’t going to happen again. This kind of escapade was not allowed.

“He says there’s a storm coming, so he brought me back.”

He glanced away again, focusing on the man who was walking toward them. Jillian raised her own gaze this time, noticing the man’s sun-streaked hair first, since he was in the act of pushing it away from his face by running long tanned fingers through it.

And when he looked up, hazel eyes meeting hers, her heart stopped. Skipped a beat. Did something different, at least. Whatever she called it, something strange and terrifying happened in the center of her chest as recognition washed over her in a scalding wave of emotion.

The same weakness that had invaded her knees when she’d seen Drew run around the chopper moved up to her stomach. And then lower. Its effect was so unexpected that for a second or two she didn’t realize what was happening. After all, it hadn’t happened to her in more than ten years. Not since the last time she had seen this man, whose eyes locked on hers and then widened with what looked like the same sense of shock she had just experienced.

He recovered first. Although she didn’t believe she could manage to utter a coherent sound, Mark Peterson’s voice seemed perfectly normal. A little deeper than she remembered it, but other than that, exactly the same as it had always been.

Exactly the same as the night he’d made love to her. The night Drew had been conceived.

“Hello, Jillian,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

CHAPTER THREE

JILLIAN TRIED to think of an appropriate response. What Mark had said was nothing less than the truth. It had been a long time. A damn long time, better measured in events than in years.

“It has been, hasn’t it,” she said, thankful to find that her voice still worked, although to her own ears it was thready, a little breathless. “How are you, Mark?”

It’s been a long time.

It has been, hasn’t it? How are you?

The merest commonplaces. Phrases either of them might have said to a chance acquaintance. But beneath lay all the memories she suspected neither of them had forgotten.

Or maybe she was wrong about that, she thought, watching him turn to Ronnie. Maybe that was just her fantasy—that what she and Mark had shared that summer had meant more to him than a quick roll in the hay.

“Ronnie,” Mark said, nodding at the sheriff.

“Looks like you did my job for me,” Ronnie replied. “Much obliged. I wasn’t looking forward to searching for the kid all afternoon in a storm. Probably would have been calling on you to help, so I guess you saved us both some trouble.”

Mark nodded again, his mouth flattening as if he had wanted to say something and then thought better of it. “Glad I could help,” he said finally, his eyes coming back to Drew.

“You know what’s good for you, young man,” Ronnie said to the boy, “you won’t ever pull a stunt like this again. Worrying your mama and wasting the taxpayers’ money. I got gas and time tied up in coming way out here. Ought to make you work those expenses out. And I will the next time you get the notion to send everybody off on a wild-goose chase.”

As much as she knew Drew was in the wrong, Jillian found herself resenting the sheriff’s lecture. Overprotective. Jake had accused her of that, and she had resented his lecture, too.

He needs a man’s discipline in his life, Jake had said. He needs a father. Maybe he did. After all, Violet had told her the same thing. Of course with Violet…

Involuntarily, her gaze found Mark’s face. Now that her shock had faded, she was able to evaluate it dispassionately. He was still looking down at Drew, so she allowed herself to examine his features more freely than she might have otherwise.

His skin was as darkly tanned as it had been since she’d known him. Although his hair was much lighter than hers, Mark never burned, not even when working all day in the grueling heat.

In the years since she’d last seen him, that exposure to the relentless Texas sun had etched its marks on his face. Faint lines fanned from the corners of his eyes. His lashes were as long and thick as she remembered them, and still tipped with the same gold the summer sun always brushed through his chestnut hair. A crease had begun to form in the center of his cheeks, which were no longer boyishly rounded.

A man’s face, she acknowledged. Hard, lean and tempered by the years. Whenever she had thought of him, she had pictured him exactly as he had been that summer. Young, strong and so beautifully male. He was different now. Certainly not less attractive. If anything—

“I’m sure Drew won’t head out without permission again,” Mark said. He smiled at Drew, whose eyes had shifted gratefully from the sheriff’s accusing ones to his. “We all make mistakes.”

As he added the last, Mark glanced up at Jillian. She wasn’t sure what he was implying, but then no one could argue with the sentiment. We all make mistakes.

Of course, maybe that phrase didn’t mean anything, she cautioned her volatile emotions. Maybe he was just making conversation. Just because he said something didn’t mean it was related to their shared past. Or to her.

“Well, you best not make this one again, young fellow,” Ronnie said pompously. “Nobody’s got time to be chasing down kids who don’t have sense enough to get in out of the rain.”

The word seemed a signal. The first drops began to splatter down around them, large enough to be audible as they struck the dry earth.

“Gotta go,” the sheriff said. “You mind your mama, boy. If you don’t, I’ll know about it, and then you and me’s gonna have to have us a talk. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Drew said.

The bravado with which he had told Jillian in no uncertain terms this morning that he hated this place seemed to have disappeared. Even his excitement over the chopper ride had evaporated, and as angry as she was with him for running away, Jillian found herself regretting that loss.

The three of them watched as Ronnie trotted to his car. As soon as he had gotten settled into the seat, he picked up the radio and spoke to someone. The exchange was inaudible and brief, maybe just a location report or the assurance that he was headed back into town. Then he put the car into gear, backing it into the yard before he headed out the dirt road. He lifted his hand in farewell as he drove past them.

“I have to get back, too,” Mark said. “I’ll see you later.”

She glanced up, an incredibly powerful surge of hope flaring inside her, to find he was addressing Drew.

“Promise?” her son said, brown eyes meeting hazel. And the same hope she had just felt was expressed in that single word.

“You can count on it,” Mark said.

He reached out and put his hand on top of the boy’s head, but he didn’t ruffle the darkly shining hair. That was something Jake did, and Jillian had never been sure Drew appreciated the gesture. Mark’s was more of a touch. A goodbye. Maybe even a benediction of sorts. As was his smile.

Without looking at her, he turned and began to retrace his steps. She realized then why it had taken her so long to recognize him. Just as his face had changed, so had his body. The shoulders were as broad, maybe broader than the last time she’d seen him. His hips and waist had narrowed, leading down to long, muscular legs, now eating up the distance to the chopper.

A man and no longer a boy, she thought again.

Before she had time to think anything else, Drew’s hand slipped into hers. That was unusual enough these days that she glanced down in surprise.

“I’m in big trouble, huh?” he said, his eyes still on Mark.

“What do you think?”

“I think…it was worth it,” her son said.

“Worth being in big trouble?”

“If I hadn’t been out there, I’d never had gotten to ride in the chopper. He let me wear a flight helmet,” he added.

Jillian shielded her eyes from the dust as the rotor began to turn. She didn’t particularly want to be standing out here, watching Mark Peterson leave, but she didn’t seem to be able to do anything about the fact that she was.

“You think he meant what he said about seeing me again?”

At least Drew hadn’t asked how she knew Mark, she thought with gratitude. But she understood how her son’s mind worked well enough to know that he would put two and two together soon enough. After all, Mark had called her by name.

“Who knows?” she said softly, forcing the words between lips that felt stiff. And not just with the cold.

Once she had been foolish enough to think she could predict what Mark would do in any situation. And she had been wrong. This time she wasn’t going to make any predictions. Not even for Drew’s sake. Especially not for Drew’s sake.

* * *

JILLIAN, he thought, going mindlessly through the motions of flying without any conscious awareness of what he was doing. He didn’t seem capable of thinking about anything other than the woman he had left behind him, standing out in the rain. Jillian Salvini.

Sullivan, he reminded himself. The kid had said his name was Sullivan. He wondered briefly about Jillian’s husband, feeling nausea stir in the pit of his stomach at the thought.

And then, deliberately, he blocked out images he didn’t want to deal with. Couldn’t deal with. Images from their past followed by images of Jillian married to someone else. Sleeping with someone else. Conceiving another man’s child. His head moved slowly from side to side in denial. A pointless denial.

What the hell did you think she’d been doing for the last decade? he asked himself angrily. So she was married and had a kid. Big deal.

In the back of his mind he had always known that was a possibility. A probability, he amended. After all, Jillian was almost thirty now. Twenty-eight, he calculated.

And she still didn’t look much older than she had that summer when she was seventeen. Not with her hair pulled back like that. Her skin was still pale and smooth, but without the ever present tan of her childhood. The freckles that had always decorated the bridge of her nose, unless it was the dead of winter, were no longer visible.

Except they were, he realized. Those same freckles were splayed across her son’s equally delicate nose. He wondered how he had missed noticing the resemblance.

He shouldn’t have. Drew Sullivan was a masculine replication of the skinny little tomboy, that other sometimes lonely only child who had followed at Mark’s heels throughout his childhood.

Jillian’s son. Who might also have been his son. That thought was as sickening as the images of Jillian lying in the arms of another man, sated and fulfilled. Just as she had once lain in his. Once. A long time ago.

If there was one thing Mark had learned in the last ten years, it was that there was nothing more damaging than thinking about the “what might have beens” of your life. That’s what his father had done. And after the crash, he himself had indulged in more than his share of those kinds of thoughts.

It certainly wouldn’t do him any good to think about what might have been as far as Jillian Salvini was concerned. And he realized he’d been doing that on some level since he’d been back.

Now he knew with unwanted clarity what she had been doing since the last time he’d seen her. A reality that included a husband, a son and a life that had nothing to do with the girl who had given herself to him with the same sweet innocence with which she had lived her entire childhood. A girl who had then disappeared as completely as if she and her mother and father had been wiped off the face of the earth.

His father had muttered bitterly about Tony Salvini’s Mafia ties and had cursed Jillian’s father until the day he’d died. A man broken by life, who had owned nothing at the last but the shirt on his back and an unquenchable hatred for Salvini.

It was an animosity that had been born the morning he’d discovered the Salvinis and their daughter had fled in the middle of the night, leaving everything behind them, including the unpaid loans Bo and Jillian’s father had signed jointly.

And Mark had never seen Jillian again. Until today. Until he had stepped around the nose of the chopper and come face-to-face with the woman who had haunted his dreams for the last ten years. Especially since he’d come back here. And now, so had she. Perhaps if things had been different…

Except they weren’t different, he reminded himself as he started the familiar descent to the land that had belonged to his family for three generations. Your birthright, his dad used to say. A birthright his father believed Tony Salvini had stolen.

Whatever the truth of what had happened between their fathers ten years ago, Jillian was married, and Mark was leaving. And those were the only two things he ought to be thinking about. Not about all those what might have beens.

Unbidden, the thin face of Drew Sullivan appeared in his mind’s eye, looking up at him as he begged for that promise Mark had foolishly given before he’d left. An eerie reflection of a little girl who had once pleaded with Mark not to leave her behind.

I didn’t, Jilly, he thought bitterly. I never did. You’re the one who left me. And it’s too late to even ask you why.

* * *

WHY THE HELL can’t I sleep? Jillian thought.

She turned on her side, pushing the old-fashioned feather pillow into a more comfortable shape. It wasn’t really that she didn’t know why, of course. It had more to do with an unwillingness to admit how disturbed she had been by seeing Mark again. She just hadn’t been prepared, she’d told herself. It had been the shock combined with her worry over Andy that had thrown her. Drew, she corrected herself, remembering the sound of that single syllable spoken in Mark’s deep voice.

Andrew had been her maternal grandfather’s name, and Jillian had loved the strong Scots sound of it. It had seemed too grown-up, though, too serious for the minute scrap of an infant—a preemie with so many problems, including that tiny twisted and misshapen foot—that they had placed in her arms. Although she had written Andrew on the birth certificate, from the beginning she had called her son Andy.

Then last year, he had declared that Andy was a baby’s name and that the kids at school made fun of him because of it. And he had been right, she admitted. The diminutive did make him sound like a baby, and he was growing up. Despite the maternal urge to keep him small so she could hold him close and make him safe, she knew this was the way things were supposed to happen.

She sighed, the sound an outward expression of all the frustrations she had felt since her encounter with Mark this afternoon. She turned over again, trying to find a cool spot on the pillowcase to rest her cheek. There wasn’t one. The pillow had been turned and poked and restlessly prodded into shape until it was as worn-out with the long hours of this night as she was.

And it was nowhere near dawn, she thought, judging by the lack of light seeping in through the east-facing window. She sighed again, wondering if she should just give up and go unpack another box, when she heard a noise that sounded like something falling.

Or someone, she thought, that same mother instinct she had just acknowledged kicking into overdrive. Had Drew gotten up to go to the bathroom and stumbled over something in the unfamiliar darkness?

She threw the covers off and slid her feet into her slippers. As she hurried across the room, she pulled on the robe that she had tossed on the foot of the bed. Normally she wouldn’t have taken time for that, but the house seemed strangely cold, a damp, pervasive chill left from the afternoon storm.

She hurried down the hall to Drew’s room, the same one that had been hers when she was growing up. She had given him his choice, and that’s the one he’d chosen, which for some reason had pleased her. Of course, the window seat her father had built to her specifications, and which doubled as a toy chest, had undeniable appeal.

The door to his bedroom was open to allow the old-fashioned heating system to circulate the air better. She stopped in the doorway, looking inside. The small mound of her son, sleeping in a near fetal position as he had since he was an infant, was clearly visible. Nothing in the room seemed disturbed. Nothing had fallen. Obviously, whatever she’d heard hadn’t originated here.

Turning, she looked back down the dark hallway, and was again conscious of the cold. Maybe she should check to see if the pilot light on the furnace had gone out. After all, she was up, and it didn’t seem likely that she would go back to sleep now. Especially since she hadn’t been sleeping before.

She walked past the door of her own bedroom, which had been her mother and father’s room. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around her body, rubbing her hands up and down the sleeves of her robe. Maybe it was just jumping out of a warm bed so quickly—

As she stepped out of the hall and into the main room of the house, which her mom had always called the den, she realized that the front door was standing wide-open. Her first inclination was to rush across and close it, but the trickle of ice that was now in her veins had nothing to do with the cold air rushing in from outside.

She had locked that door before going to bed. She was sure of it.

During the last ten years, Jillian had become accustomed to living in apartments. To having neighbors. To law enforcement that responded in much less than half an hour. The kind of isolation inherent in living on a ranch was no longer familiar. It had made her nervous enough to be cautious and to double-check that lock and all the others. The fact that the door was now standing open…

Her gaze examined the shadows, moving slowly along the perimeter of the room. Although she couldn’t see behind each piece of furniture, nothing seemed out of place.

She glanced back at the door. Had the wind been strong enough during the night to blow it open? Except she’d been lying awake for at least an hour, and she hadn’t heard any wind. She hadn’t heard anything at all, but that one noise.

The door hitting the wall? Or someone hitting the door?

Again she was conscious of the cold. She ought to at least close the door, she thought, turning toward the kitchen now. Given the angle of the wall, she couldn’t see into that room, and she directed her gaze back to the front door.

For the first time in her life she wished that she had a gun. Although she had grown up around them, she had never thought she was the kind of person who would ever want or need a firearm. Faced with the realities of where she was living now…

She forced herself to move across the den, tiptoeing so that her slippers made only a slight shuffling noise on the hardwood floor. When she was near enough, she could stand behind the protection of the open door and look through it into the yard. Maybe there would be enough moonlight to allow her to take a look around without leaving the house.

Taking a deep breath, she took the final step to the door and grasped the knob in her right hand. The metal was cold under her palm, and for some reason, now that she was here, she couldn’t seem to make herself move any closer to the opening. If there was someone waiting outside—

Idiot, she chided herself. Why kick in the door to a house and then wait around outside? If someone was that eager to get inside, they’d already be here. A thought that was hardly more comforting.

So why hadn’t she turned on the lights? Why didn’t she now? The switch that controlled them was just on the other side of the doorway. All she had to do was step across, closing the door in the process, and flick it on. All she had to do, and yet she seemed paralyzed, unable to act.

She drew in another deep breath, gathering her courage, and in the silence she heard movement out on the porch. As if released from a spell, she pushed the door hard, and as it swung closed, she reached across the narrowing opening, intending to flip up the switch.

A dark shape loomed before her, seeming to spring up from the floor of the porch. The terrifying image lasted only a split second—too short a time for identification—before the door slammed closed. Quickly she turned the lock, putting a barrier, however fragile, between her and whatever—whoever—was out there.

CHAPTER FOUR

“PE-EW,” Ronnie Cameron said, wrinkling his nose in disgust and drawing the sound out. He hurriedly closed the black garbage bag, pulling the plastic strings tight.

A little late for that, Jillian thought.

“What in the world is in there?” the sheriff asked, carefully laying the bag back on the floor of the front porch.

“It seems to be roadkill,” Jillian said. “Aged roadkill from the smell. Armadillos and a few less recognizable victims.”

Her voice was very quiet. Anyone who knew her well could have told the sheriff that she was exerting enormous self-control. Which she was. Now that it was daylight, her fear had been replaced by anger, and much of it was self-directed because she had let herself be so terrified.

“You’re saying somebody dumped this on the porch and then kicked in your door?”

“The door was open when I got up to investigate,” she clarified. “I’m not sure it was kicked in. I would think there would be some damage if it had been. But it was open.”

“You see who it was?”

“I saw a shape. Nothing else. Certainly not enough to make an identification.”

She didn’t confess that she had been too frightened last night to realize that if she’d turned on the outside lights and opened the door, she might have been able to do exactly that—make an identification. Instead, she had turned the lock and sagged against the door, trembling all over. It wasn’t until the running footsteps outside faded into the distance that she’d even thought about opening it again and looking out.

“I plain don’t know what to tell you,” the sheriff said, shaking his head and looking down again on the foul-smelling bag in disbelief. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I’ve been in office. Never heard of anything like it since grammar school.”

“So who was responsible for this kind of thing back then?” Jillian asked, the edge still in her voice.

“I didn’t mean that literally. It’s just that this business seems so…juvenile.”

That was the perfect word, Jillian thought. Juvenile.

“Any idea why somebody would do this?” Ronnie asked.

“That’s why I called you,” she said. “Because I don’t have any idea. I thought maybe you did. I was also hoping you could get fingerprints off the bag or something.”

“That’s not likely. I can guarantee you that whoever put this together was wearing gloves. And not just because everybody who’s going to commit a crime nowadays knows enough from television to do that, but for sanitary reasons. Trust me, nobody would handle the stuff that’s in there with their bare hands.”

He was probably right, Jillian acknowledged bitterly. She had known that finding usable fingerprints would be a long shot.

“Not much of a welcome home, I guess,” Ronnie said.

“You think that was the message this was supposed to convey? That I’m not welcome?”

“A lot of folks don’t remember your family any too kindly.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“When your daddy ran off, he left a lot of people holding the bag.” He glanced down at the sack at his feet.

Involuntarily Jillian’s gaze followed his. She wondered if he had meant to suggest there was some connection between that metaphoric “bag” and this.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“He left here owing a lot of people money.”

Reluctantly, Jillian dredged up the memories of that time. She had thought her life was ruined because she had been forced to leave Mark. And her father had forbidden her to even speak his name. Just as he had forbidden her to write or call him.

She had, of course. None of the things her father had threatened her with could have kept her from doing that, especially not after she had discovered she was pregnant.

“My dad left here owing people money?”

The sheriff studied her closely a moment before shifting his attention to the vista that spread in front of them.

“Your old man and Bo Peterson had taken out loans with just about everybody within a hundred miles. By the end, they didn’t own a cow or a teacup that wasn’t hocked or mortgaged.”

“Are you saying my dad took out a mortgage on his ranch?”

That didn’t sound like her father.

“A couple of them, or so I heard. Course, you could hear just about anything around here after your family run off in the middle of the night. Believe me, there were a lot of explanations offered for that.”

“He had lost the ranch,” she said softly.

It was only now that she realized that this loss, and not her relationship with Mark, was the reason her entire life had changed in the course of one night.

“They both did. Lost everything. Bo held on a little while longer, but even when your place was sold at auction, it didn’t bring in enough to pay off both mortgages and the rest of the loans. That’s when they foreclosed on the Peterson ranch.”

“The Petersons lost their land, as well?”

“Bo never got over it. It killed him in the end.”

“I thought Mark was still living there.”

“Not in years. He was in the service for a while. Just came back here a couple of months ago. He’s working for the people who own his daddy’s ranch now.”

That must have been a bitter pill to swallow for someone with as much pride as Mark had always had. Jillian wondered why he had come home at all. But of course, so had she.

“Bo and my dad signed loans together?” she repeated, trying to make sure she understood what Ronnie was saying. “For what?”

This wasn’t something she had heard before. And frankly, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why would her dad and Mark’s father have taken out joint loans?

Ronnie shook his head. “Nobody knew. Maybe they were going in together on some kind of hybrid. Bo was always talking about finding the perfect breed for raising beef cattle up here.”

“So they borrowed this money, and then my father leaves. He ran out on the loans he’d signed. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Peterson was pretty steamed. Musta come as a shock.”

It had come as a shock to her, too. There had been no warning. Her father had simply awakened her in the middle of the night and demanded she get dressed. Her mother was already in Jillian’s bedroom, folding her clothes and putting them into a suitcase.

She had always believed that her dad had discovered what was going on between her and Mark. Although he hadn’t said that the night they’d left, he had had plenty to say when he’d found out she was carrying Mark’s baby. Now the sheriff was implying there might have been another explanation for that midnight exodus.

“You think whoever put this here,” she asked, touching the bag with her shoe, “is angry because my father owed him money?”

“It’s a possibility. You think of any other reason somebody would want to harass you?”

“Is that what you call this? Harassing me?”

“I figured that’s what you’d call it,” Ronnie said with a grin. “What I’d call it is a sack full of dead varmints. You want me to get rid of ‘em for you?”

Jillian hesitated, not wanting to be in Ronnie Cameron’s debt. And that sounded like something her father might have said, she realized. He never wanted to be beholden to anyone. Which made the story the sheriff had just told her even more bizarre.

“I’d really appreciate that, Ronnie. If you don’t mind,” she said. The tone of her agreement sounded grudging and ungracious, despite its surface politeness. “What about my door? You think it’s possible someone has a key to the house?”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose. You just bought the place. You have the locks changed?”

“I never even thought about it. Not out here.”

She would have in the city, of course. She had foolishly thought that because her family had never had to worry about crime while she was growing up, she wouldn’t have to, either.

“You can do that,” Ronnie said. “Or you can just get yourself a dead bolt. A big one.”

The sheriff picked up the garbage bag, holding it gingerly. He walked down the steps and over to the patrol car he’d parked in the yard. When he reached it, he opened the trunk and dropped the sack inside, closing it quickly. Then, still standing behind the car, he looked back at her.

“Maybe this has nothing to do with that money. But it looks to me like somebody isn’t too happy you’ve come back. You know how folks are around here. Memories are long, and grudges are held even longer. But one thing’s for sure, whoever did this was trying to get your goat. If I were you, I wouldn’t make too much of it. At least not in public. Don’t give them the satisfaction of knowing they’ve succeeded in making you nervous. Or they might try it again.”

She nodded, realizing he was probably right. But it made her furious not to have any recourse. Ronnie touched the brim of his hat and walked around to open the door of the cruiser. He settled into the seat, again making that brief radio report before he turned the car around and drove down her road.

Despite yesterday’s rain, she could track his progress for quite a way by the plume of dust that followed the cruiser. She stood on the porch and watched it for a long time, maybe because she wasn’t sure what she should do next.

One thing she was sure of was that this stunt wasn’t going to make her do what her father had done. If they expected her to leave in the middle of the night, they had better think again.

As she stood there, she realized that the aroma from the sack still permeated the air. She’d put some disinfectant in a bucket of water and mop the porch, even though the contents of the bag hadn’t touched the wooden boards.

With that thought, she acknowledged that this all could have been much worse. Those poor, long-dead creatures could have been dumped on the porch itself. Or even inside the house, which would have been a real pain in the neck.

That hadn’t happened. Apparently, somebody wasn’t thrilled there was a Salvini living here again, but as pranks went, this one was relatively minor. She could only hope that whoever had done it had gotten whatever animosity that had precipitated it out of his system.

* * *

“MOM,” Drew whispered, tugging on her elbow.

“What?” she said absently, trying to decide between the only two brands of coffee that the small rural grocery store carried, neither of which she had heard of before.

She would have done much better—especially pricewise—to have gone into town. Exhausted from losing sleep last night and from another long day spent unpacking boxes and trying to get their belongings into some sort of order, Jillian had instead opted for shopping at Herb Samples’s convenience store, which had been here long before she’d been born. She planned to pick up only enough to tide them over for a few days, and then she would drive into town to stock the pantry and the freezer.

“It’s him,” Drew said, still sotto voce.

“It’s who?”

She selected the more expensive of the two brands, reasoning that cost might be some guarantee of quality, and reminding herself that after Violet’s legacy, she didn’t have to be quite so diligent about looking for bargains anymore.

As she put the red foil package into the child-seat section of her shopping cart, she turned to look at Drew. His eyes were focused toward the back of the store. With her worries about getting the shopping done and something fixed for supper, his words had barely registered. As soon as she realized who he was talking about, she wished they had.

Mark Peterson was considering the array of items in the freezer cases, his back to them. Like Drew, she recognized him immediately. There was something about the set of his head and the way he carried himself that was unmistakable, despite the changes the years had wrought.

She pulled her gaze away from those broad shoulders, which stretched the chamois-colored twill shirt he wore tightly across his upper back. During that brief examination she had also managed to notice that he was again wearing jeans, either the same ones he’d worn yesterday or a pair that was equally worn and faded. And equally snug across his narrow hips and thighs.

Although she hadn’t finished selecting her purchases, she turned and began pushing her buggy toward the front. The decision to put as much space between them as possible was automatic. Unthinking. She was too tired to deal with another meeting. Too proud to put up with his cool disinterest.

“Aren’t you going to speak to him?” Drew asked.

Her son hadn’t moved. Instead he had raised his voice to carry across the distance she had put between them. She glanced back at him, intending to gesture him to silence. As she did, Mark turned his head, his eyes meeting hers. She felt as guilty as if she’d been discovered in some clandestine act. Maybe running away from the past couldn’t be considered clandestine, but it was certainly cowardly.

The hazel eyes held hers for a long heartbeat, and then they moved, without seeming to hurry, to focus on Drew. Her son’s beaming smile of greeting was answered—a little reluctantly, she thought. But it was answered nonetheless. She would have to give Mark credit for that. Just then, his gaze came back to her.