This cowboy isn’t so easy to catch!

When Mitch Garwood ran away with Bonnie O’Mara, he thought he’d found forever. But all his dreams crashed the morning he woke alone. Months later, he’s immune to her reappearance. Even if she’s now using her real name—Annabelle Irving—and ready to tell him her secrets, he’s done.

Too bad the situation is not that simple. Annabelle’s willingness to leave her money and position behind so she can work at Bell River Ranch and be near him surprises Mitch. Despite his resolve, the spark of attraction flares again. The most compelling part? Her determination to win him back!

Belle’s heart was beating so fast she wasn’t sure she could speak.

“I tried not to come,” Mitch said. His voice was dull, like a man in a trance.

“Mitch.” She moved in front of him, reached up and touched his cheek. “It’s all right. I wanted you to come.”

“It’s not all right,” he said. He shook his head slowly. His stubble was raspy, yet soft, against her fingertips. “It’s all wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m here for one thing only.” He looked at her with those glimmering eyes. “Do you get that? I’m here because I want to make love to you. I’m dying, Belle. I’m burning up with it.”

Her breath suddenly went shallow, as if her lungs were too small.

“I want that, too.”

Dear Reader,

Shakespeare once wrote that “what’s past is prologue.” William Wordsworth said, “The child is father of the man.” They, and probably a thousand other great thinkers, obviously believed your childhood sets the stage for your adult life.

But what if your childhood wasn’t all that great? What if you were horrified to be told old patterns must be repeated forever? That’s how Belle Irving—the mystery woman you met in earlier Bell River Ranch books as Bonnie O’Mara—feels. She’s haunted by memories, terrified she’ll never be able to shake off their shadows.

She’s been running from her past a long time. Now it’s time to stop. Time to fight. And where better to make her stand than at beautiful Bell River Ranch, where the indomitable Wright sisters have carved out a victory over their own troubled history?

And where Mitch Garwood, the man she’s loved and lied to for so long, has been waiting…she hopes.

From your emails and letters, I know that you (just like poor Mitch) have been impatient to learn the truth about Bonnie. It hasn’t been easy for me, either! I’ve been dying to reward this brave, lonely woman with her happily ever after.

Probably, like me, you believe we all have the power to rewrite our own stories and make them end more happily than they began. So I hope you’ll enjoy watching her find her courage and fight her way to the future she deserves.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

PS—I love to hear from readers! Come say hi at kathleenobrien.com, facebook.com/kathleenobrienauthor or twitter.com/kobrienromance.

Reclaiming the Cowboy
Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KATHLEEN O’BRIEN was a feature writer and TV critic before marrying a fellow journalist. Motherhood, which followed soon after, was so marvelous she turned to writing novels, which could be done at home. After decades of fun with her emotional counterpart—she’s the mushmellow, he’s the stoic—she’s convinced that opposites really do attract, even heiresses and cowboys. The scuffles that inevitably follow? They’re just part of the thrill!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

EXTRACT

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS A MEAN March midnight, the road a sludgy river of asphalt oozing in slow loops under an icy moon. Mitch Garwood’s mood was sour and his face frost-burned as he rumbled up to the back door of his cottage, one of the six they’d recently finished on the eastern edge of Bell River Ranch.

Tilting off his helmet with one hand, he twisted the key with the other, silencing the growling motorcycle before any of the adjoining guests woke up and complained. Although why they should sleep soundly when he knew darn well he wouldn’t...

Still astride the bike, he stared at the dark windows of the cottage, envisioning the cold, half-empty spaces within. A bed. A sofa. A bookcase. A refrigerator full of bottled water and blackening guacamole dip. Six hours of tossing and turning...alone...till dawn, when he could finally get up and distract himself with work.

This was a life?

It was his choice, of course. He’d never been forced to be alone, not since he hit puberty and discovered that rusty-brown hair and a few freckles over a goofy grin actually appealed to some females.

He definitely hadn’t needed to be alone tonight. At least fifty bored women from a cosmetics convention in Crawford had jammed into the Happy Horseshoe Saloon. Two-thirds of them were nice, half of them were hot and at least two of them were both.

But not one was interesting enough to take home.

He shoved his helmet into the storage bubble on the back of the bike, a little too roughly. He heard the fiberglass crack against the rim. He’d better watch out—he’d already fractured two helmets this way. He’d probably coil himself up so tight he’d break his own bones if he didn’t find a woman soon.

Problem was, the only woman he wanted was the one he couldn’t have.

Bonnie. His chest did a painful cramping thing, as if the two syllables were electric prods applied to his heart. Bonnie, he thought again, like the masochist he was, just to feel the reaction once more.

Bonnie O’Mara. If that was even her name.

For one amazing year, the beautiful mystery woman had seemed like his own personal miracle. Turned out she was a mirage instead. Nearly nine months on the road together, running from something only she could see, and then, one morning, Mitch woke up and she was gone.

That was six months ago. So yeah—he needed someone new.

He inhaled deeply, the Colorado frost stinging his lungs. Too bad he didn’t drink. His friends assured him that getting lightly buzzed could put a sparkle into even the dullest diamond.

But he’d tried that once, a few months ago, on his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d found a bottle of Johnnie Walker and a smart, lively redhead visiting from Crested Butte, and he’d mixed them together to see what happened.

He told himself it was allowed, darn it. He wasn’t ready to be a monk just because True Love had spit in his face. At the very least, he owed it to himself to make sure his machinery still worked, right?

But—get this—he’d been bored to death. Apologizing as politely as he could, he’d left the confused woman after about five minutes and five kisses, already feeling the hangover churning in his stomach. He’d spent the rest of the night chucking big ugly rocks to see if he could bust a hole in frozen Silverbottom Pond. He’d only succeeded in scaring the deer.

So no more nights like that. The machinery could shrivel up and fall off before he’d repeat that pathetic fiasco.

Mitch rocked the bike up onto its kickstand, then took the steps to the cottage two at a time. If he had to go in, he might as well get it over with.

But the minute he opened the door, he froze. Something felt...different.

The house wasn’t empty and still. Someone was here.

He left the lights off as he moved through the kitchen, using only the weak beams of the fingernail moon and the LED displays on the appliances to guide him. As he entered the living room, he picked up a poker from the fireplace, holding it over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

Then he heard a woman’s voice, softly, from the darkness.

“Mitch?”

His grip went numb. The poker clattered from his hand. “Bonnie?”

A shadow near the sofa stirred. It formed into a human shape and then became a blur as she ran blindly toward him.

It was. It was Bonnie. He knew her silhouette. He knew her scent. He knew the way she ran and the way her boots lightly tapped across the hardwood floor.

He was only ten feet away. She crashed into him hard, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his chest. He had to take a step backward to balance against the collision.

For a split second, he was reminded of the desperate embraces he sometimes got from his nephew, Alec, when the boy was in pain. When the poor kid had run over a squirrel with his bike or found a dying baby bird, fallen from the nest.

But then, as Bonnie lifted her pale, moonlit face to his and smothered his cheeks, his chin...and finally his lips...with kisses, all thoughts of Alec evaporated.

All thoughts of anything evaporated.

His brain shut down entirely, his body taking over.

“Is it really you?” He dug his hands into her silken hair and pulled her as close as he could, close enough to smell her, taste her, own her. Close enough to make the six months of loneliness go away.

“Bonnie,” he whispered against her mouth, and maybe she said his name again, or maybe she merely moaned. Her lips were wet where he’d moved over them and so warm. He dragged his kisses, hard and possessive, down the column of her throat and up again. His hands stroked her back, down to her hips, tracing the sweet curve he knew so well.

After so many dreams, so many ghost Bonnies that had come to tease him in the night, only to disappear just short of heaven, he had to convince himself she was real.

She was. He had no idea how this gift had come to him, but he was beyond questioning it now. He lifted her legs so that she nestled against the fire between his, and they both groaned, remembering.

He stumbled backward, not caring whether he was loud or clumsy. Not caring whether he broke everything in the cottage or whether he looked a fool. He kissed her as he walked. He bent his head to find her breasts, though he nearly killed them both as he keeled backward toward the wall.

He made his way, somehow, to the bedroom. He fell with her onto the bed. She was fumbling with his belt and with her own, and he was tearing buttons, hers and his, and shedding clothes and boots as fast as he could.

And there she was, open to him. The same—oh, heaven help him—exactly the same as his dreams. Her breasts were like snow in the moonlight, and he claimed them because they were his. They had always been his, whether she was in his bed or lost in some invisible nowhere.

He went lower, then lower still, as she wriggled under him, wrestling free of scraps of denim and lace. And then he couldn’t take it anymore. He rose swiftly up on the heels of his hands, ready.

She fumbled with him, and he realized she was covering him with a condom. He groaned. Even that light touch was torture. And did they need this? She was on the pill...or had been...

Somehow she got it on, though her fingers trembled. When she finished, she lay back with a soft gasp and lifted her legs again, clasping them around his hips.

He had to have her. He didn’t care why she felt they needed protection. Maybe she had been...or maybe she thought he had been...

He couldn’t think. He couldn’t slow himself down. He’d hungered for her so long. He’d been so unbearably alone.

He murmured her name once more. Then, though he knew it might be too soon, he drove into her, at once animal and poet. Master and slave.

Every inch of his body pulsed and burned. His rhythm was hard, fast, relentless, and he heard the tiny hitch in her breathing that meant she was ready. Her head tilted back, exposing her creamy throat. Her legs tightened. Her heels dug into him, asking for more.

He knew her. He knew what she wanted. A few deeper, more powerful thrusts, the wet nip of his lips against her hardening breasts—

Oh, yes, he knew her. She cried out, her back arching, her legs going limp. Seconds, minutes...no longer than that...and, with an agonized groan, he exploded, too. Liquid gold fire poured through his veins, dizzying him, weakening him, dislocating him from time and place.

It lasted forever, for both of them. Of course it did. The river of their passion had flooded behind the dam of separation. Six months of longing, pent up, roiling in powerful currents. Six months of heat and tension and pain.

Finally, he was empty, but amazingly she still shimmered around him, like a crystal bell that no longer rang but filled the air with an exquisite humming. She hadn’t opened her eyes, and her breath was still shallow.

His Bonnie. He knew her. Tenderly, he touched two fingers between her legs, closing over the wet heat and coaxing the last invisible tremors free.

She shuddered helplessly, every sensation written on her beautiful face. He held on, poised above her, until finally, finally, her fierce internal pulses stilled. And then, unable to hold himself up an instant longer, he collapsed onto the bed beside her.

They lay together, with braided legs and tangled arms, palm against belly, cheek against breast, until the air grew cool around their sweaty bodies. She moved only once, stretching up to lift the glass he kept by his bed and taking a deep drink from it, as if she was parched.

Then, with a hum of satisfaction, as though the tepid liquid had been sweeter than simple water, she dropped back to his side and laid her head against his chest.

As he breathed in the daffodil, yellow-sky perfume of her hair, something inside him began to relax for the first time in six months. It wasn’t just sex. Amazing as that had been, this was deeper than sex.

This was as deep as his soul. He smiled at himself, aware the poet lingered, even now that the animal was sated.

His soul had come back to him.

They dozed. Slept, even. Much later, he woke to a dark, frigid room. He closed his hand over her hip, just to be sure she was there. His fingers must have been icy, because she shivered. She must be freezing. They hadn’t even pulled a blanket over them.

He cursed himself for a selfish fool.

“I’m sorry. I’ll start a fire.” He raised himself on one elbow, extending his other arm, hoping he could reach the bedside light.

“Don’t.” She stopped his arm with gentle fingers. “No fire. No lights.” She rolled over, until her slim body was half on top of his. “We can make our own fire.”

“But...I want to see you,” he said. His voice sounded odd in the dark room. Why didn’t she want him to turn on the lights? The cold had stabbed his chest, and he suddenly felt very afraid.

Or very angry.

“I don’t think we should.” She spoke softly, and he felt the motion of her head as she glanced toward the window, as if to check to see if any of the neighbors were awake yet.

That was all it took. Suddenly, he knew.

“You’re not home to stay, are you?” Both the anger and the fear dripped from the question like icicles. “You’re going away again.”

She rolled even closer, until her torso was completely on top of him. Her hands tucked beneath his armpits, as she used her arms to lift her face several inches above his. Her eyes were cool, shining with blue moonlight. Her hair, which he now saw was still dyed that ridiculous shade of auburn-black, dangled like dark silk over her breasts and curled around her nipples.

In spite of his anger, he felt himself growing rigid all over again.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

Slowly, she nodded. “I am going away again. I have to leave at first light.” She paused. “I should go sooner, but...”

She shifted her weight, and, with the sweep of one pale, graceful leg, she straddled his hips. His erection hardened, readying itself without his permission.

“But there’s a little more time.” She leaned down and kissed his jaw. “There’s enough time, if you want it.”

She moved, tilting her pelvis so that she came so close... If she scooted two inches higher, it would be enough. In the old days, he would have cupped her velvet ass with his hot palms and made it happen.

“Enough for what?” He sounded so cold. He sounded like someone else, someone who didn’t love her. “For one more goodbye tumble?”

“Time to make love,” she whispered, and the sweet sensuality in that voice was meant for the real Mitch, the old Mitch—not for this scarred and angry man beneath her now.

“What about protection?” He stared up at her, his face immobile. “Did you bring extra condoms, just in case? I mean, obviously you can’t be sure where I’ve been these six months...who I might have slept with.”

“Mitch, don’t.” She put her fingers against his lips. “There’s so little time. Don’t spoil it by being angry.”

“But I am angry.”

He made a harsh motion under her, and she understood. Tilting to one side, she slid off him and sat on the edge of the bed. For the first time, she tugged at the hem of the sheet and pulled it up to cover her nakedness.

He stood, ignoring his own exposed body. Nothing there she hadn’t seen a thousand times. She’d seen it, possessed it, maddened it...and then rejected it.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said. “If you’re still here when I get out, it had better mean you’re ready to tell me what’s going on. It had better mean you’re ready to stay.”

She looked at him, her expression numb and slack with pain. “I can’t stay. You know that.”

The disappointment— He shook his head roughly. Disappointment? What a laughable word that was for the lava spill of hot fury and pain cascading through him now! Like any volcanic eruption, it left only a blasted devastation behind.

“But if you’re gone,” he continued in that same stranger’s voice. “If you’re gone, Bonnie, don’t ever come back.”

She whitened, whiter than the moonlight, whiter than the sheet. She stood, the bedclothes trailing behind her, and moved toward him. “You don’t mean that, Mitch.”

“The hell I don’t.”

She was close enough now he could see her eyes were filled with tears. Well, so was every single goddamn vein in his body. Tears were for children. They didn’t solve anything. They didn’t change anything.

“You can’t play with my life this way. If you have to go, then go. But don’t ever show up here like this again, looking for a midnight romp—or whatever it is you were after.”

She flinched, and he had a sudden terrible thought. Had she run out of funds? Was she alone out there, on the run, without food or shelter, or—

“There’s money,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s in my dresser. Top drawer. You can take it all, if you—”

“Money?”

Without warning, she reared back and slapped him. Hard. The crack of her hand across his cheek rang through the room like a gunshot.

He stood there a second, feeling the stinging ripple across his skin, abnormal waves of heat against the frigid air.

Then, laughing blackly, he put his hand on the bathroom door.

“Goodbye, Bonnie,” he said.

* * *

“YOU OKAY, HON? Anything wrong with those eggs?”

The snub-nosed, friendly waitress hovered over Bonnie, metal coffeepot in hand, frowning down at her uneaten breakfast with a maternal worry, which was ironic, really. Even though the two were probably about the same age—mid-twenties—right now Bonnie felt about a hundred years older than anyone in the restaurant.

“No, no, they’re great.” Instinctively, Bonnie flipped over the paper place mat she’d been doodling on. Her Florentine morning-glory vines weren’t exactly great art, but they weren’t your everyday scribble, either. She knew it was paranoid, but she never wanted anyone to remember, later, that the nervous young woman had seemed talented, an art student, maybe?

She picked up her fork and smiled as brightly as she could. The woman’s name tag read “I’m EDNA! How can I help you today?” and apparently Edna took her mission seriously.

If only she could help, Bonnie thought, spearing a forkful of eggs, then trying to swallow them around the rock in her throat. If only anyone could.

Apparently unconvinced by the bogus smile, Edna let her gaze flick expertly over Bonnie’s face. Bonnie’s cheeks grew warm. She’d spent so long trying to avoid attention that even this kindhearted scrutiny made her heart pound.

“You coming in from the back shift or heading out to the day watch?” Edna raised the coffeepot, as well as her eyebrows. “Maybe I should top you off, unless you’re headed straight to bed. You look about done in.”

That was probably an understatement. Bonnie had stopped here not because it looked appetizing, but because she simply couldn’t make it another mile.

The old-fashioned diner squatted on the side of U.S. 24, just outside Colorado Springs. Judging by the crowd at 7:00 a.m., Bonnie figured one of the big defense employers must be located nearby. Or maybe one of the technology companies. She probably should be flattered that Edna considered her capable of holding down a real job like that.

She felt more like a piece of muddy flotsam tossed up by a river flood. She’d been driving almost all night, ever since she left Silverdell—and Mitch. The days before Mitch blurred, but for a week, at least, she’d known nothing but driving, driving, driving...and death.

Her mother’s serene face rose in her mind’s eye—Bonnie was so glad, so profoundly relieved, that, as her poor, troubled mother faced death, the woman had finally found peace. And Bonnie was so glad that she’d returned to Sacramento, that she’d sneaked into the nursing home that last night. She wasn’t sure how she’d known the end was near...but she’d felt the urgency, as clearly as if she’d heard her mother’s voice calling her.

She’d stayed only long enough to say goodbye. As she’d left, she’d taken—stolen—the silly quilted-calico mobile that hung in her mother’s window. “Heather,” the flowered cloth letters said. Her mother’s hands had made it, though probably one of the aides had helped, since her mother had no longer been able to spell her own name.

The lumpy letters were in Bonnie’s purse right now. She’d reached in and touched them, every hour or so, as she drove. Going back to California had been risky, but she was glad she’d done it. She couldn’t have endured learning of her mother’s death online...even though she’d been checking every day for two years.

Was she glad, too, that she’d driven to Silverdell afterward to see Mitch? Or had that been a terrible mistake? Had it been the final straw?

A month from now, she would have been able to come to him openly. She would have been able to tell him everything. She should have been strong enough to wait.

But she’d been so bereft, so desolate. Even though her mother had been as good as lost to her for years, there was something about the finality of death that hurt Bonnie in a way she couldn’t have imagined. Now she was truly alone.

She’d needed his arms around her.

She touched her fingers to her inner brows, shoving down both images—her mother’s empty face and Mitch’s cold, hard eyes. She was too tired right now to think about any of that. When she found a hotel, when she got some sleep...then she’d allow herself to grieve.

“Actually, I’ve just arrived in town,” she told Edna. “I was hoping to find a decent hotel, not too far off the highway. Reasonable, if possible.”

Edna, bless her motherly heart, looked relieved that Bonnie wasn’t trying to go to work in this condition. Or maybe simply thankful this bedraggled customer was only passing through and wouldn’t be a regular.

“Marley’s is just what you need,” Edna said brightly. “About a mile down the highway, toward town. Respectable, if you know what I mean. No frills but clean as a whistle.”

Bonnie nodded gratefully. “Sounds perfect,” she said. Smiling again, she forked another small lump of eggs and made sure her posture was upright enough to help Edna feel free to tend other customers. “Thanks so much!”

Slowly, the waitress moved away. Bonnie fought the urge to let her shoulders slump back down. It wasn’t enough to fool Edna into thinking Bonnie had adequate starch and courage to face this day. She needed to fool herself, too.

She turned her place mat over again. Inside the border of morning-glory doodles, she slashed quick crisscrossing lines, creating a grid of empty squares. Then she numbered the squares—one through thirty-one.

She leaned back, looking at the makeshift calendar. Thirty-one days. That wasn’t so long, was it? And one of them was over already. She took her pen and drew a large X inside the first square. She traced over the mark, then traced it again and again, until the X was the darkest spot on the whole paper.

One down—thirty to go. She closed her eyes, then dragged them open, for fear she’d fall asleep and do a face-plant in the eggs. She blinked, squared her shoulders again and stared out the window, trying to get her bearings.

The sun had come up an hour ago—she’d been driving toward it, watching through the dusty car windshield as the golden ball had lifted itself sleepily over the horizon. The light had mesmerized her, then nearly blinded her, which was why she’d decided to pull over.

At first, she’d been too exhausted to notice much of anything. But now she saw that, right across the street, a huge nursery had blinked to life—electric lights illuminating the large metal-and-glass building. Behind the structure, sunlight sparked off sprawling rows of open-air plants and garden sculptures.

Crystal Eden, the nursery was called. She spotted several workers moving around, readying the place for opening. Lucky people! Her fingers closed over her palms, itching to hold a trowel or burrow into cold, reluctant earth.

They sold a lot of trees, she noticed. The effect was primarily green. But when she looked carefully, she spied the sprinkles of color.

Crocus, forsythia, daffodil...

Bulbs, already? Nervously, she glanced at the sky. March was a dangerous month. Spring was so close. You could smell the promise of warmth, floating behind the chill. The temptation to rush the planting was almost irresistible. But frost and snow remained a threat for at least another couple of months, and gardeners who forgot that often regretted it.

A little like her own situation, wasn’t it? Her winter of exile had lasted almost two years. Now she was down to thirty days, and she could feel her impatience rising. She could feel herself wanting to rush, to let down her guard, to take risks and dream of spring.

She wondered whether Crystal Eden was hiring. Sometimes, in spring, nurseries added staff as customers poured in, hungry for rebirth. She’d worked at other nurseries along the way. Once, she and Mitch had both landed jobs at the same tree farm.... Virginia, she thought, or maybe it had been in Kentucky. Summer...June or July. Every day, they’d come back to their hotel hot, sweaty and half-mad from working alongside each other, forbidden to touch.

She shook away the thought. She didn’t need a job, of course. When she first went on the run, she’d brought enough money to see her through five years, if she were careful. She’d had no way of knowing how long the ordeal would last.

But it had lasted only two. How was that possible? Just two short years, and already her mother was dead. Most of the money she’d started with was untouched.

Still, she wanted to work. What else would she do with her days, with her mind? How else would she feel a part of the living world? What else would keep her from going mad?

“Someone picking you up?” Edna was back, and her expression warned Bonnie she’d been letting her emotions show on her face. “You’re not driving, are you?”

“Just as far as the hotel.” Bonnie tried to sound reassuringly competent. “Then I think I’ll sleep all day.”

As Edna turned, Bonnie called out impulsively. “What’s the weather report, do you know? Are they calling for any snow this week?”

Edna shrugged. “Don’t think so. But you know March. At least if you’re from around here, you do.”

Her curious eyes invited Bonnie to share, but no amount of tired could ever make Bonnie be that foolish.

“Good,” Bonnie said. She wondered how crazy Edna would think her if she knew she was worrying about those vulnerable forsythia and crocus across the street. “I hate driving in the snow.”

Edna laughed and, giving up, moved on. Bonnie transferred her gaze back to the window. She’d hoped to get farther away before she hunkered down to serve her remaining days. Ohio, maybe. Or, even better, New England. Every mile was safety, another layer of protection.

But Colorado Springs was a decent-size town. Sacramento was already eighteen hours behind her, and even if Jacob was looking for her, he couldn’t be sure which direction she’d headed.

She stopped herself. If he was looking for her? There was no “if” about it. Her mother’s death had lit the fuse. The end would come, one way or another, in thirty days. Jacob knew that just as well as she did.

But maybe sprinting to the other edge of the map was the chess move he expected her to make and paradoxically would be the least secure.

Oh, God. She rubbed her face hard with both hands, unable to bear the twisted, looping logic. For two years, she’d second-guessed every decision this way.

She couldn’t think straight anymore. Her brain was dazed, as if the pain of the past few days were the equivalent of blunt force trauma.

She folded her place-mat calendar into a neat rectangle small enough to fit in her purse. Picking up her check, she slid her chair back and headed for the register. As she paid—cash, of course—she kept her eyes on the landscape boulders and evergreens in the Eden across the street.

Someone opened the door, and she heard a wind chime blow in the breeze, its notes wafting easily across the clean, crisp air. The sound reminded her piercingly of Bell River—though she couldn’t quite say why.

But suddenly she had her answer. She was tired of running. Every mile took her farther from Mitch. Whether he wanted her or not, he would always be the fixed foot of her life’s compass. Everywhere she went, forevermore, she would measure it in terms of how far it was from Mitch.

This was far enough. Any farther and she might not be able to breathe. If she could get a job, she’d stay.

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU’RE JOKING.” Mitch stared down at the dense paragraphs of legal mumbo jumbo, knowing he should be trying to read the document he held but unable to register anything except the ludicrously large number. It was such a big number it seemed to pulse and glow slightly on the page.

“You’re trying to tell me somebody already wants to buy and make the stupid thing? And they want to pay...”

He couldn’t even say the number out loud. This absolutely had to be a joke. He wasn’t an inventor or an overnight success story. He was the younger Garwood boy. The party boy. The goof. The one who had resisted growing up so long his big brother, Dallas, secretly feared he never would.

Surely this was a prank. If he fell for it, Dallas would jump out from behind the door and die laughing.

But Indiana Dunchik, Mitch’s well-respected patent lawyer—also known as Ana, though not to Mitch—hadn’t cracked a smile. She was a gorgeous blonde he’d hired because she worked out of Grand Junction, not Silverdell. Therefore, she was less likely to think it was by definition preposterous that Mitch Garwood, screwup extraordinaire, might’ve invented something worthwhile.

Okay, that, and she was a gorgeous blonde.

Obviously, he hadn’t hired her for her sense of humor. She seemed bewildered that he was chuckling.

“Of course it’s not a jest, Mr. Garwood. Nor is it, in my opinion, a stupid thing.” She laid her slim pink-tipped fingers flat on her desk. “We’ve spent months getting these patents because we believed your jacket was a marketable and useful product. I’m not surprised we have an offer. In fact, I’ll be surprised if this is the only offer we receive.”

Ordinarily, he disliked the royal “we,” but the truth was, this patent-application process had been such a drawn-out bore, and Ms. Dunchik had wrestled with so many searches, claims, actions and appeals, that he knew full well it had been a joint effort. In fact, she’d had the more difficult half, because when he’d designed the Garwood Chore Jacket he’d mostly been—what else?—screwing around and having fun.

It had all started almost two years ago, when he’d said, “These coats should come with a cheat sheet for the feed formulas. And somewhere to put my phone that I can actually reach it.”

Dallas had rolled his eyes—Mitch was always trying to find a way to do less work. His last “invention” had been a gravity feeder to eliminate all those trips from the loft with buckets. Dallas had laughed at that, too, but it worked.

However, Alec, Mitch’s nephew, had agreed about the jacket wholeheartedly. “We need somewhere to put Tootsie Rolls, too,” he’d added with feeling.

That really got everyone laughing. Bell River Ranch was a family venture—and not even Mitch’s family, except by marriage. Dallas had married Rowena Wright, the oldest of the Wright sisters, who had inherited the gorgeous spread and decided to turn it into a dude ranch.

So everyone assumed that Mitch was just hanging on, working with the horses, his first love, while he decided what to do when he grew up. But, later, Mitch kept thinking about the jacket. He had another idea, for a more comfortable back vent. And then some thoughts about a better, warmer lining.

Still, he’d just been fooling around—as evidenced by the fact that Alec, a ten-year-old, was his only cheerleader.

Well, Alec and Bonnie.

Reflexively, Mitch thought about how thrilled Bonnie would be to hear that he’d actually followed through and applied for the patent.

And now this offer. She’d squeal and leap into his arms and say “I told you so” a thousand times, between kisses. She’d always insisted his ideas were genius, and, though he knew she was blowing sunshine, it would be pretty nice to tell someone who wouldn’t be insultingly shocked.

But then he remembered. He wouldn’t be telling Bonnie anything anymore. Two weeks ago, he’d put paid to that possibility, once and for all. Even if she ever stopped running, she wouldn’t come back to him.

He glanced down at the contract again, and the number no longer glowed. It didn’t represent freedom or validation or kisses in the romantic places he’d promised to take her someday, places like Ireland or Spain. It was just money. And Mitch hadn’t ever really cared much about money.

He glanced at the woman behind the desk. “So what do we do now?”

The lawyer tightened her lips, which Mitch had learned was her thinking face. “In my opinion, we should wait. Of course, if you would like to have the cash in hand sooner, we can have our contracts department look this over and make recommendations. But...unless you need capitalization now...I think waiting will be fruitful.”

Fruitful. He almost smiled, thinking of his preacher father, a fire-and-brimstone bastard, and how often the old man had reminded Mitch and Dallas that the line about being fruitful and multiplying wasn’t a mandate to go around making babies all over Silverdell. The brothers had wasted an absurd amount of time creating other comic interpretations of the quote.

Suck lemons in math class, my son. Stuff like that. Mitch had thought it was hilarious. No wonder his father had always warned him he’d never amount to anything.

For the first and only time in his life, Mitch momentarily thought it was too bad the old tyrant wasn’t around anymore. It might be fun to shove this contract in his face and see what he thought of the number.

How about them multiplying fruits, Dad?

“I’m not in need of immediate capitalization,” he echoed, unable to resist playing Ms. Dunchik’s multisyllabic elocution game.

“Good.” She nodded regally and began scooping papers into a neat stack. “We’ll wait a few weeks, then. We have a department that can bring your design to the attention of some likely candidates, and we’ll see what happens. But I’ll be very surprised if we can’t end up doubling this. At least.”

More money than he needed, times two. He shook his head, trying to imagine what he’d do with that much “capitalization.” He drew a blank. Every plan he’d made for a long, long time had revolved around Bonnie.

So no, waiting for the money wasn’t a problem. Obviously, he could use an extra few weeks just to invent a new plan. A new reason to live.

“Smile, Mr. Garwood.” The lawyer leaned forward, and her eyes twinkled, as if she really saw Mitch for the first time. “You’re going to be a moderately wealthy man.”

He tucked one corner of his mouth up. It was the best he could do.

“Well, then,” he said. “Hurray.”

* * *

A WEEK LATER, Mitch sat in the back booth of a shadowy restaurant on the far side of Silverdell, feeling a little like Al Capone. The small cardboard box on the bench seat beside him didn’t have drugs or dirty money inside, but he couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if it had.

A few minutes later, Dallas slid in opposite him and shrugged off his jacket. Though Dallas was Silverdell County’s sheriff, he wasn’t in uniform today. Mitch had deliberately chosen an off-duty moment to ask his brother to break the rules.

Dallas waved away the hovering waitress, then faced Mitch with a half smile. “I have to admit, your message intrigued me.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks for coming.” The perfunctory words felt stiff on Mitch’s lips. They hadn’t seen each other in a couple of days, but they were close and didn’t usually waste time on pleasantries.

Dallas raised an eyebrow, noting the formality.

“I wanted to talk to you alone, away from the ranch.” Mitch ran his hand through his hair. “And away from your office, too. What I want... It’s personal. Not official, if you know what I mean.”

“I get the general idea.” Dallas’s smile broadened. “You know, you’re the only person I know who would actually leave the words I want you to do something unethical for me on an answering machine.”

“Well, I do, so why lie?” Mitch shrugged. “If you weren’t willing to consider it, there wasn’t any point wasting your time. Besides, I’m not much for sugarcoating.”

Dallas’s other eyebrow went up. “Might be splitting hairs there. No lying, but you want to do something unethical?”

“No. I want you to do something unethical. A very important distinction.”

Dallas laughed, as Mitch had known he would. The one thing he could always do was make his brother laugh. The one thing he could rarely do was make Dallas take him seriously.

He’d also never been able to make Dallas fudge the rules. Not in years, anyhow. Once, way back in their childhood, Dallas had been a little wild. Mitch remembered that clearly, if only because it had caused such violent rows with their dad. But in his midteens Dallas had gone straight. Super-straight. Even before he’d started wearing a star, he’d strutted around Silverdell with a halo.

Since he’d gone into law enforcement, even worse. He’d never so much as helped Mitch wriggle out of a parking ticket. So Mitch didn’t really hold out a lot of hope that Saint Sheriff Garwood would help him with this far-more-unprincipled request.

“Go ahead, then.” Dallas leaned back. “Out with it.”

Mitch put the box on the table. It looked innocent enough. Three weeks ago, it had held a pair of binoculars Rowena’s sister Penny had ordered for bird-watching classes at the ranch.

“I’ve got her fingerprints on a water glass. I thought maybe you’d be willing to get them ID’d for me. Discreetly.”

Dallas didn’t answer right away. At least he didn’t ask anything as dumb as whose fingerprints? Everyone at Bell River knew there was only one female on the planet Mitch cared about—and certainly only one who needed to be identified through fingerprints.

Finally, Dallas sighed, as if his little brother, who had always been so annoying, was continuing the tradition. “Why now?”

It was a sensible question, and Mitch didn’t mind answering.

“I saw her again. Three weeks ago. When I got home, she was in the cabin.”

“Really.” Dallas always kept his face and his tone under control, but Mitch knew him well enough to recognize true shock. “Did she explain where she’d been?”

“No. Nothing. She explained nothing. I didn’t ask at first, because—” Well, that part didn’t need sharing. “Anyhow, it wasn’t long before I realized she wasn’t home to stay. I...I was pretty upset. I told her if she ran away again, I didn’t ever want her to come back. But she left anyhow.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” Mitch was glad, finally, to talk to someone about it. Especially someone like Dallas, who would really get it. He knew Mitch better than anyone, and he’d hear all the things Mitch couldn’t bring himself to articulate, like how much it hurt.

Dallas’s eyes were thoughtful. “Did you mean it?”

“Damn straight I did. Look, I’m trying not to be a jerk here. She has the right to make her own decisions, and if she feels she can’t trust me, fine. But I can’t do this anymore. I—”

He stopped himself as he reached the invisible stoic-guy boundary. He couldn’t whine. But...he’d carried around his fury, mixed up in a big, boiling, nasty stew that included both heartbreak and terror, for three weeks now. He had to bring closure to this mess. He had to, or he’d lose his mind.

Not that he ever said words like closure out loud.

“Anyhow, I know it’s technically against the rules to run prints for me. But who else can I ask? I thought about Jeff—”

Dallas smiled. Jeff Shafer and Dallas had been deputies together, under old Sheriff Granton, before Jeff left for wider pastures, explaining that he needed to solve more interesting crimes than cow tipping and jaywalking. Jeff had always been the rebel of the two young deputies. He was a good guy, but, unlike Dallas, he believed that sometimes the greater good required breaking a rule here and there.

“Okay. You thought about Jeff.” Dallas cocked his head. “But?”

“But I can’t bring anyone else into this.” Mitch put his hands over the box, instinctively protective, then moved them again when he realized how transparent that body language might be. “I don’t think Jeff’s got loose lips, but who knows? She’s really scared, Dallas. You saw that. She’s running from something—or somebody—and I can’t risk putting a spotlight on her.”

“Then why ID her at all? Why not just let her go? She clearly believes we can’t help her. Maybe she’s right.”

“Maybe. But...” Mitch’s hands balled on the table, and his neck grew hot. “Damn it, Dallas. I would have thrown my body under an oncoming train for that woman.”

Dallas’s gaze softened slightly, though not enough to qualify as pity, which would have made things worse.

“I know you would have,” he said. “And she knows it, too. Problem is, how does that help her? You’re dead, and the train’s still coming.”

Mitch heard the logic. He really did. But it didn’t stop the helpless anger from radiating across his body in hot waves.

“Fine. I get that. But if I am going to move on, I have to know I did everything I could. I need to close this book, Dallas. I need to type The End on this stupid story. And I need you to help me.”

Sitting as straight as a fireplace poker, he gave his brother a hard, unblinking glare. “So. Bottom line. Will you do it or not?”

“Sure.”

Mitch dropped back against the cushioned booth, and the padding let out a whoosh of air that sounded just like the sigh of relief he felt in his chest.

“You will? Even though it’s against the rules?”

Dallas shrugged. “I won’t be advertising that I did it. But you’d be surprised how often it’s done. I bet Sheriff Granton’s daughter never dated a single guy who wasn’t innocently offered a Coke while he waited, for this very reason. Drinking glasses are good for fingerprints. So are the hoods of patrol cars.”

Mitch chuckled. Dallas never ceased to surprise him. He shoved the binocular box across the empty table. “Take it, then. I picked it up with a paper towel, so the prints are probably all still there.”

But Dallas made no move to claim the box. He simply smiled at Mitch, then lifted a hand to summon the waitress. “How about we get some coffee?”

Mitch nodded roughly, though he didn’t want coffee or anything a waitress could bring. All he wanted was for Dallas to grab that box, hustle it back to the sheriff’s department and force some miracle machine somewhere to spit out an identity.

“Take it,” he said again, glancing down at the box.

“Don’t need it.” Dallas waited, not speaking, while the waitress poured their coffee, then gave her a warm “thanks.” Waitresses always loved Dallas. They even flirted with him until they noticed the ring. Sometimes even after they noticed it.

When she left, Dallas shook his mug in small circles, letting some heat escape, then took a sip.

The display of serenity drove Mitch nuts. “Dallas. What the devil do you mean, you don’t need it?”

“Exactly that. I don’t need it. I’ve already got a set of her prints on a glass. Ro gave me one a year ago, and it’s been locked in my bottom desk drawer ever since.”

“Ro gave you one what?” Mitch frowned hard. “A glass with Bonnie’s fingerprints on it?”

“Yeah. Apparently, she’d saved one, right from the start, thinking she might need to probe further someday. She gave it to me while you and Bonnie were on the road. She thought I might want to try to track you down, to be sure you were okay. She thought it might help the search if we could find out who Bonnie really was.”

“Is.” Mitch said the word hotly, like a threat. “Who Bonnie really is.”

“Of course.”

Mitch could tell Dallas was clearly making a conscious effort to keep his tone calm, to prevent Mitch’s frustration and fear from escalating.

Too late. Mitch felt his lungs tighten, as if they didn’t want to send him air. “You’ve had it a year? And you haven’t run the prints? What on earth have you been waiting for?”

“Hey. I don’t break the rules for fun. Or to satisfy my curiosity.” Dallas shrugged. “You sent postcards, so I knew you were alive. You knew how to get in touch with me if you needed help, so I didn’t have any good reason to invade Bonnie’s privacy. Then, since you got home, I’ve been waiting for a sign from you.”

“From me?”

“Of course.” Dallas met his gaze steadily. “Bonnie O’Mara, or whoever she is, is your mystery, Mitch. Only you can say when you’re ready to solve her.”

* * *

BONNIE’S HOMECOMING, after two years on the run, could have been a splashy, trashy, conspicuous celebration. If she’d wanted to, she could have chosen to appear in sequins, sparkles and feather boas, holding a neon sign that said “Surprise, sicko! You lose!”

Instead, as she slipped into the large elegant hotel ballroom where her mother’s charity auction was being held, Bonnie wore head-to-toe black. It seemed fitting, somehow, since she hadn’t been able to attend the funeral.

Missing that service had been very painful. She’d even dreamed, briefly, of sneaking back here to Sacramento, just for an hour. She’d imagined herself standing unobtrusively in the rear of the church, with glasses, maybe, or a veiled hat.

But that would have been suicide. No disguise would have been adequate. Jacob undoubtedly had anticipated her showing up, and he would have been ready.

So instead she’d marked the day, privately, at her nursery job at Crystal Eden back in Colorado Springs. When the church bells down the block had rung the noon hour, she’d stopped right in the middle of hauling potting soil, dropped the handles of her wheelbarrow and shut her eyes.

She’d said a prayer. And when she’d glanced up, a tangerine cloud shaped like a ballerina had been executing a grand jeté across the sky. She liked to believe it was a message from her mother, letting Bonnie know she’d found freedom and peace at last.

After that, her wait had been easier. She loved the nursery job, and the days flew. All thirty-one of them.

A month and a day. That was how long had passed, between the night her mother had died and this clear April afternoon when Bonnie had finally come home.

If she could even call Sacramento home anymore. She’d lost so much over the past two years. But somehow she had survived. That was all that really mattered now.

She had outwitted Jacob. She couldn’t really absorb that fact, even now that she saw him, up there, so sanctimonious and self-important in the first row. It was the first time she’d laid eyes on him since she had left, nearly two years ago.

It was the first time she’d seen any of these people since then. The auction house was filled with friends of her grandmother, collectors, critics, other artists and other Sacramento bigwigs—people she’d known all her life.

They didn’t recognize her yet, of course. They weren’t expecting her. Most of them probably thought she was dead and assumed her body would never be located, or that if she ever were discovered, she’d be pathetic and half-mad in some art colony somewhere, as her mother so often had been found.

The stylish black hat she’d bought yesterday covered her hair, which she’d had stripped back to its natural color, but pinned tightly to her head, so that it wouldn’t give her away too soon.

She took a seat quietly at the back of the auction room, attracting little attention from anyone except her attorney, who had technically known she’d be coming but had still looked relieved when she’d appeared.

Everyone else was focused on the oil painting that had just been brought out. A low rumble of appreciation moved through the audience as they caught their first glimpse of the portrait, the girl with the legendary cascade of red-gold hair.

It was, indisputably, one of the most beautiful of the Annabelle Oils, a series of paintings done by the California portraitist Ava Andersen Irving. Sixteen complete oils, all with only one subject—Ava’s Titian-haired, blue-eyed, fairylike granddaughter, Annabelle Irving.

The series had begun when Annabelle had been just a year old and had continued until Ava died, when Annabelle was fifteen. The paintings and adjunct sketches had made Ava rich...well, richer, given that she’d already married into money.

And they had made little Annabelle famous. It had made a million people think they knew her, made them romanticize and misunderstand her, as if she were Ophelia or Alice in Wonderland. Somewhere along the way, Annabelle Irving had stopped being a normal child and had started being a myth. Strange, ethereal, otherworldly, elfin, odd...just a few of the adjectives art critics loved to apply to her.

The portraits were officially known by numbers only. This was Fourteen, which didn’t correspond with the subject’s age, because Annabelle had been only twelve the year this one was painted. Twelve, and so tired of sitting still. Her grandmother had positioned Annabelle next to a window, where the light hit her hair just right. Out of the corner of her eye, Annabelle caught a tantalizing hint of buttercups dancing in the wind, but she wasn’t allowed to look. She was barely allowed to breathe.

That particular year, Annabelle had rebelled, briefly, the way preteens sometimes did. The slight puffiness beneath the famous blue eyes was proof of the storm of tears, the refusal to cooperate, the desperation to be set free.

Ava had been furious, at first, but eventually she had announced that the hint of sadness added pathos to the painting, which was ultimately priceless.

With a start, Bonnie came back to the present, realizing the bidding had begun. She didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t want this painting. She hated it. But she was glad to see the price rise higher and higher. Her mother had owned Fourteen outright, and she had left instructions in her will that it, along with a small pencil sketch of Annabelle, the only two pieces from the series that legally belonged to her, should be auctioned after her death. The proceeds were to be donated to the women’s shelter that had taken in Heather Irving so many times during her troubled life.

Jacob was bidding, too. Bonnie smiled grimly behind her black-dotted Swiss veil, watching him lift one elegant finger, then let it drop, then lift it again. Was he using his own money, she wondered, or hers?

He didn’t win. When the figure sailed too high, he shook his head discreetly at the auctioneer, then turned around to see who had beaten him. Recognizing an elderly California art collector whose goodwill he obviously needed to keep, he threw a smile of graceful surrender.

As his smarmy gaze raked the crowd, Bonnie froze, wondering if he’d see her. It no longer mattered, not as it once had. She wasn’t in danger anymore. He didn’t have anything to gain by hurting her now.

But she wanted to do this her way.

The drawing was up next. Only nine-by-twelve, and unframed, it looked like the unloved stepsister of the larger oil. But Bonnie adored this picture, a practice sketch for Nine. In it, a seven-year-old Annabelle was in profile, one arm thrown over the back of a straight wooden chair, and she gazed longingly out the window. It was an odd little thing, drawn mostly to help Ava get the flowers right. Annabelle herself was rendered in simple charcoal, while the blooming gardens outside the window were bursting with vibrant color.

Bonnie remembered that summer so well. It had been one of the few times she’d been posed looking through the window. Being able to watch the bees buzzing around the roses and the butterflies dipping into the penta plant... It had made the hours so much easier to bear.

It had been almost as good as being free.

She raised her hand. The auctioneer glanced at her, too professional to show surprise at a new bidder this late in the game. Her attorney remained utterly still and impassive, giving nothing away prematurely.

She had many competitors. She wasn’t the only one who could see the special joy in this sketch—one of the few pictures in which the infamous Annabelle looked like a normal child.

But she didn’t care if everyone in the room bid against her. She would have this sketch, whatever the price. She was a rich woman now, and if she ended up donating every dollar of her inheritance to the women’s shelter, that was fine with her.

She raised her hand again and again. Quickly, people began to stare at her. Jacob himself had turned half a dozen times.

He was merely curious at first. Then she saw him squinting, confused. And then a slowly dawning alarm.

His posture tightened, all the easy insouciance evaporating. Eventually, when the bidding had come down to Bonnie and one other, Jacob didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t staring. He sat permanently swiveled toward her, his neck uncomfortably twisted. He gripped the seat of his chair with both hands, as if he had to hold himself down.

Finally, her last competitor dropped out. The price was absurd, even for an Annabelle sketch. As the bid assistant bent over her, Jacob obviously couldn’t endure the suspense another minute. He stood and started moving toward her, dark and malevolent, like the California mudslides that coursed down hillsides blindly, burying everything in their paths.

The bid assistant hesitated, confused and slightly startled by the frigid waves of fury suddenly pulsing through the air around them.

Jacob’s face said it all. He knew. He had to know. He had to understand, at that terrible moment, that he’d lost. That all his attempts to outwit her, to ruin her... No, no euphemisms. Just state it baldly, like the hideous truth it was.

All his attempts to kill her had failed.

As Jacob approached, Bonnie stood, too. She lifted the veil from her face and smiled. Only five feet away, he froze, as if she were a gorgon, a Medusa—as if one look from her blue eyes had turned him to stone.

A murmur spread through the room. Good. She wanted everyone, from the millionaires to the janitors, from the journalists to the guards, to know her. She removed her hat with one motion, then pulled the clip that had held her hair in its tight twist. A cascade of red-gold hair fell around her shoulders, and the murmur rose to an excited buzz.

“Annabelle!” Jacob lunged forward.

Abruptly, her lawyer jerked to a standing position, as if to block whatever the crazed man might have in mind. But Jacob pushed past him, rearranging his face as he came toward her. By the time he touched her, he was affection incarnate, the epitome of cousinly love.

He reached out and enveloped Bonnie...Annabelle...in his arms.

“Belle, Belle!” He was so smooth, so good, that if she didn’t know better, she’d believe he was overjoyed. “Oh, Belle, thank God you’re alive!”

CHAPTER THREE

IT SHOULD HAVE been a peaceful Monday afternoon at the ranch. Instead, having counted every single second in the week since his meeting with Dallas, Mitch was going crazy.

On TV it took about thirty seconds to get a fingerprint match. Even factoring in reality, and the need to do this through back channels, what could possibly be taking eight whole days?

And then, just as Mitch was winding up the training session with Rusty, one of Bell River’s newest ponies destined to take the littlest guests on trail rides, he saw his brother coming toward him.

Hell. Dallas had news. And it wasn’t good news.

Mitch could sense that much from a hundred yards, just watching the way Dallas walked, framed in silhouette through the doorway of the indoor paddock. The first clue was the tight, squared-off position of his shoulders. And when Dallas cleared the door and the overhead lights hit him, Mitch could read the grim evidence on his face.

“Scat, Alec,” Mitch said to his nephew, not roughly but flatly, without sugarcoating. “Go help Rowena with the baby. Your dad and I are going to need some privacy.”

Alec made an irritated snicking sound between his teeth. He’d been having fun helping Mitch, and he didn’t want to quit. “Privacy for what?”

Mitch rolled his eyes. Seriously?

“We’re making plans to sell your scrawny body for spare parts. We can’t have you listening, so scram.”

Alec started to protest again, but then he glanced over at his dad, and apparently the kid could read body language, too. When Dallas had a face like that, Alec wanted to be somewhere else.

So did Mitch, who was suddenly as terrified as if he, too, were a kid. He tried to stop his heart from thumping so fast. He tried to stop his mind from imagining all kinds of horrors. Okay, the news was bad. How bad?

Bonnie was married. Bonnie was a criminal, a nutter...

Or even worse, she was still a mystery. If her fingerprints hadn’t turned up a match, then they were no closer than before to finding out who she really was.

Or... The thumping inside his chest stilled viciously.

Or Bonnie was dead. Whatever she’d been running from had caught her.

“Hey, there.” Dallas reached Mitch just as Alec disappeared through the side doors, leaving a trail of kicked sand behind him. Dallas patted the new pony’s neck. “How’s Rusty doing?”

“He’s fine.” Mitch stroked the pony’s flank approvingly. “But don’t make small talk. You know something. Tell me.”

Dallas continued to rub the pony’s glossy coat. He hadn’t yet met Mitch’s eyes, which was truly unnerving. Dallas was rarely daunted by uncomfortable truths. It was one of the traits that made him a good sheriff. He could deliver bad news with as much composure as he delivered the good.

“Dallas.” The drumming against Mitch’s ribs sped up. “You’re killing me here.”

Dallas finally looked straight at him. “We should probably sit down.”

Mitch didn’t argue. He waved a finger to one of the stable hands who was in the corner viewing room, talking on a cell phone. He pointed to Rusty, and the young man scurried out to take the pony away.

“Okay. Let’s go over here.” With the horse disposed of, Mitch led the way to the far side of the paddock. He opened one of the latches on the kickboards and took the first of the spectator seats on the first row of bleachers.

Dallas left an empty seat between them when he sat. He laid his hat down there with a sigh.

“We found her,” he said. “She’s alive and well. She lives in Sacramento. But...her name’s not Bonnie.”

At first, all Mitch could feel was the relief. Alive. Well. Damn, those were beautiful words.

But then the rest of Dallas’s sentence sank in. Her name’s not Bonnie. It shouldn’t have shocked him. He’d known she must’ve been using a fake name—nothing else made sense. But, as he heard it confirmed, he was glad he was sitting, as if the solid floor might have turned to swamp.

He thought of all the times he’d said her name. Laughing. Whispering. Crying into the night air.

Damn it, Bonnie, where are you?

Bonnie, Bonnie, please...

“No, of course not.” He sat up straight. “What is her name, then?”

Dallas eyed him for a minute before speaking. Mitch felt as if he were being measured, like a horse being fitted for a bit, to see how much of the truth he could take between his teeth at once.

“Annabelle Irving.”

The name was oddly anticlimactic. It meant nothing to Mitch. It was the name of a stranger.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But who is Annabelle Irving?”

Dallas smiled. “I didn’t know, either. Apparently we’re just a couple of dumb cowboys. But with the cultured crowd she’s somebody. Her grandmother was a well-known artist, and Annabelle was her favorite subject. There’s a whole set of paintings of her called the Annabelle Oils, and collectors go nuts for them.”

Okay... Mitch rubbed the knee of his jeans. That was okay, right? An artist’s model. He could live with that. And instinctively, he could believe it. He remembered how unnaturally still and self-contained Bonnie could be. She didn’t even change her expression, sometimes for many minutes at a time. He’d once wondered whether she’d been a nun, because she seemed so accustomed to sitting in silent immobility.

But why would an artist’s model need to go on the run under an assumed name? It wasn’t as if your average person had ever heard of her. She could have shouted, “I am Annabelle Irving” from the rooftops of Silverdell, and no one would have so much as blinked.

He narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute. To match her fingerprints, you have to have a set on file, right? I mean...her prints as Annabelle Irving had to be in the system. How does an artist’s model get her prints into the database?”

One of the trainers had just brought a palomino into the paddock on a lead line. Mitch wished he could yell at her to get out and come back later. But Bell River was a working dude ranch, humming with staff, guests and wall-to-wall activities. He wasn’t going to find complete privacy anywhere.

Dallas flicked a glance toward the young woman, then bent forward, his elbows on his knees, and lowered his voice.

“She was in the system because about seven years ago, when she was eighteen, she stabbed a man with a pair of pruning shears.”

Mitch drew back. “Bullshit.” He said it too loudly, and the trainer glanced their way for one split second before studiously returning her attention to the horse. Mitch wasn’t technically anyone’s boss, but the family tie was close enough to make employees reluctant to cross him.

Dallas frowned, and Mitch shook his head roughly. “Sorry, but...stabbed a man? Like hell she did.”

“I’m afraid that part isn’t even disputed. There’s a police report. She admitted stabbing her cousin, a lawyer named Jacob Burns. She says it was self-defense, because he tried to molest her. He says they were arguing over management of the estate, which, upon her grandmother’s death, had been left to an executor.”

Mitch felt a touch of nausea roll through him. “Her cousin tried to... What the devil do they really mean by ‘molest’? He tried to rape her?”

Then he realized that, instinctively, he’d already decided Bonnie was telling the truth, not this disgusting Jacob whatever. “I mean...come on. The guy’s her cousin? That’s just sick.”

“If it happened that way.” Dallas sounded patient. “But clearly the cops didn’t buy her story. Apparently, she had a history of erratic behavior, though this is the only episode that occurred after she turned eighteen. Earlier records are sealed, because she was a juvenile. And, no, I’m not going to try to get someone to pry them open.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to.” Mitch glared at his brother, his mind going a mile a minute. “So...what? What’s the bottom line here? You think she was running from her cousin?”

Dallas lifted his shoulders. “Don’t know. I didn’t dig any deeper. You asked for a name, and I got one. At the time, no charges were brought, so even if she thought she was running from her cousin, there’s no evidence that...”

“That what?” Mitch’s lips felt stiff.

“That Jacob Burns is dangerous. He was never arrested. He was about twenty-five at the time, just out of law school. He practices in Sacramento now, and apparently he’s a big deal. Annabelle, on the other hand...” He hesitated. “The authorities sent her for psychiatric evaluation, and she spent some time in a mental-health clinic. Just a few weeks, but—”

“But you think she’s nuts. What the hell, Dallas? You knew Bonnie. We all did. You think she’s insane?”

“No.” Dallas spoke slowly, and pity dripped from the word. He pitied Mitch, because Mitch had fallen in love with a kook. “Not insane. But maybe...troubled. You know? Maybe she’s trouble.”

Mitch thought his blood pressure must be about a thousand—he could feel his heart beating behind his eyes. He wanted to punch someone or something. He’d punch Dallas, except that he’d learned better about twenty years ago. Dallas might be a saint, but he had a right hook like a demon.

“Yeah, well, I remember what Dad said about Rowena, back in the day,” he countered acidly. “That she was trouble was the least of it.”

The minute the words came out, Mitch felt himself flushing. That was a low blow. It wasn’t fair. Mitch liked his brother’s wife, always had. And Rowena had had her reasons for acting wild. But why couldn’t Dallas see that Bonnie must have had her reasons, too?

“I’m on your side here, Mitch,” Dallas said mildly. “I thought you were through with her, anyhow.”

“I am.” Mitch stood. “I am. But just because she broke my heart...that doesn’t mean I have to pretend she’s a monster. She’s not. And she’s not a liar.”

Dallas raised his eyebrows.

“She’s not,” Mitch repeated. “A hundred times, when I was trying to make her tell me what was going on, it would have been easier for her to invent any old story, just to shut me up. But she didn’t. She didn’t want to tell me the truth, but she was too good to tell me a lie.”

“Okay.” Dallas nodded slowly, though he clearly wasn’t convinced. “But there’s one other thing you ought to know. If you look her up, you’ll see. She’s rich.”

“I don’t give a damn about that.”

“I know. I just want you to be prepared. When I say rich, I don’t mean comfortable. I mean really rich. Dripping, Rockefeller rich.”

Mitch hesitated, looking down at his brother’s somber face. “I see. What you’re trying to say is that she’s out-of-my-league rich.”

“More or less, yeah.” Dallas didn’t mince words. “I’m saying she’s trouble, and she’s out-of-our-league rich. Look, she left you. You had a grand adventure, but it’s over. She’s gone back to her real life. You need to let it go, Mitch. You need to let her go.”

* * *

MAYBE JACOB AND the rest of them were right, Annabelle thought as she knelt, here at this fork in the bricked path of Greenwood’s butterfly garden, oddly paralyzed and unsure where to plant the final daffodils. Maybe she was crazy. Divorced from reality, dysfunctional, paranoid—just as her mother had been.

Because the way she felt, now that she was back home at Greenwood...

She felt like her own ghost.

So maybe they were right. Maybe it was loony to feel that her invented alter ego, Bonnie O’Mara, was more real than Annabelle Irving could ever be.

Maybe it was bonkers to insist on living in the Greenwood gardener’s cottage and refuse to spend a single night in the elegant, twenty-two-room Italianate mansion where she was born and raised.

Maybe it was daft to dream of taking the Irving fortune, every hellish dollar of it, and burning it in a bonfire down by the creek.

But the truth was...being back here, being the heiress to all this had paradoxically stolen any hope of being happy. It had reduced her once again to an object, a thing, a possession, instead of a woman.

All her life, Annabelle had understood she wasn’t a person. She was an idea. An arrangement of colors on canvas. A mythical, imaginary creature who came to life only in the minds of the people who romanticized her pictures. When the lights were off, when the museums were closed, she was supposed to sink back into the ornate frame, frozen in place, until another art lover came to imagine her into existence all over again.

“The irises will be coming out any day now.”

Annabelle looked up as Fitz, the elderly gardener who had tended Greenwood since Annabelle was a little girl, came limping toward her, his wheelbarrow rumbling before him. She forced herself to smile. Fitz had been the one person she could honestly call a friend. Drawn together by their mutual love of growing things, he’d come to be like a father to her through the years.

And yet, in the end, even he had betrayed her.

“Yes, the irises will be gorgeous. And I’m so glad you put in day lilies.” Shading her eyes with the knife blade she held in one palm, she peered up at him. Only about five-three, with a face turned to tree bark by the California sun, he looked even browner with the light behind him, casting him in shadow. “They’re a wonderful addition.”

He reached into his wheelbarrow and lifted out a straw hat. “Here,” he said. “You don’t want to end up a grizzled old piece of shoe leather like me.”

“Don’t I?” She took the hat, but she didn’t put it on. She raised her face toward the sun. No one cared anymore—no one would punish her for getting dirty fingernails or letting the sun freckle her pale skin. And yet it still felt like the most luxurious act of defiance, to be out here at noon, with her hands in the earth and the heat on her face.

“No. You don’t.” Fitz plucked the hat from her hands and stuffed it on her head. “I bet you didn’t even use sunscreen. You know, BonnyBelle, you don’t always have to do the opposite of what your grandmother would have wanted you to do. Sometimes she was right.”

She looked down at her grimy fingernails, realizing the truth of his words. She could have put on sunscreen first, and she could have enjoyed her gardening without courting skin cancer. As it was, she’d be red as a watermelon by nightfall.

“You’re right, Fitz—I’m acting silly, and—” But she couldn’t complete her sentence. One of the maids was scurrying down the brick path toward them, her hand held up, waving urgently.

“Ms. Annabelle,” she said as she reached them. “I’m sorry. There’s a man, and he won’t go away. I told him you weren’t at home, and so did Mr. Agron, but the man says he isn’t leaving till he talks to you. He’s been here half an hour, and Mr. Agron said we should call the police, but—”

Annabelle’s heart hitched. Could it be Jacob?

The maid stopped to catch her breath and maybe to find the right words. “I don’t know if we should. He’s not doing anything, and he’s obviously not a reporter. He’s kind of like...a cowboy or something.”

Annabelle dropped her trowel and, without thinking it through, rose from her knees. She wiped her earthy palms on her jeans, then raised a hand to her hair, which was flyaway and tangled and probably littered with leaf debris and vermiculite.

“A cowboy?”

“Well, sort of. I don’t know exactly. He doesn’t have a horse or a hat or anything, but—” She shook her head. “Anyhow, he says you know him. He says if we’ll just tell you his name—”

“What is his name?” Annabelle’s voice came out tight, threaded with tension. She already knew the answer, of course. She knew because the maid was flushed with a pretty confusion, a heightened female awareness caused by a gorgeous young cowboy.

“Mitch,” the maid said, her lips curving into a small, puckering smile as she formed the word. “Mitch Garwood.”

* * *

MITCH HAD DECIDED he’d give her an hour. He’d wait out here, on one of the benches around the front fountain, till the sun disappeared behind the mansion’s fancy white colonnades.

If Bonnie hadn’t come out by then, he swore to himself, he’d go back to Silverdell and to hell with her.

But as the minutes dragged on, and it seemed likely he’d have to make good on the threat, he wondered whether he could really do it. Could he just hop on his motorcycle and head east, flipping the bird to Greenwood—and Bonnie—in his rearview mirror?

Because...if he did, what then?

He tried to imagine going the rest of his life without an explanation, without hearing from her lips what the whole crazy running thing had been for. He hadn’t been able to unearth anything that made sense, though he’d combed the internet and studied every single photo of the Annabelle Oils till he could probably paint one himself.

The prim, lace-draped Annabelle Irving was Bonnie, all right. But not his Bonnie. The Annabelle Oils girl was straight out of a fairy tale, with floating clouds of red curls so pale they were almost gold and huge blue eyes that looked haunting and strange, as if you’d never be able to see what she saw, not if you stared at the same spot forever.

His Bonnie wasn’t one bit strange. His Bonnie’s eyes were smart, clear and friendly. She didn’t wear lace, and she was too sexy to be allowed in a fairy tale. She was a normal, red-blooded woman. She hummed off tune and didn’t care who heard her. She ditched her shoes the minute she got inside, and sometimes her fuzzy socks didn’t match. She cooked a steak so tender it melted between your teeth. She bit her fingernails and looked killer in blue jeans.

So if he never found out what had happened—if he never found out how Annabelle became Bonnie, and then, like an evil magician’s cabinet trick, turned back into Annabelle again...

Well, if he never found out, he’d be so angry and bitter inside he’d rot like a wormy apple.

On the other hand, he wasn’t sure getting an explanation would make much difference. He might be doomed to sour from the inside out, no matter what.

He kicked the oyster-shell driveway beneath the bench and glared at the mansion, as if it were to blame. As if it had swallowed his Bonnie whole and was refusing to spit her out again.

But then he saw the big carved front door opening. He was on his feet in a flash. Even if it was just the stuffy butler coming out to warn him the police were on their way, anything was better than sitting here stewing.

A woman emerged. At first, in the shadows of the portico, she was barely visible. White shirt, long pants... Not the maid, then...

When the sunset caught her hair, he knew. Bonnie. His heart did that reflexive thing it always did, and his thighs flooded hot, thrumming with the urge to run toward her.

But he shoved his hands into his pockets and forced himself to wait. Not Bonnie, really. Not anymore. Annabelle.

She walked slowly. Carefully, as if she balanced an egg on her head. Her pace was measured, ceremonial, like a princess pacing down the wedding aisle. Or a queen walking to the guillotine.

Maybe she was buying time so that she could get her story straight.

Or maybe she was waiting for him to close the distance first.

He dug his heels a little deeper into the powdery shells of the driveway. Not going to happen.

“Hi,” she said as she reached him. Her voice sounded rusty, as if she didn’t use it anymore. Her eyes raked his face, clearly searching for clues to his mood.

He didn’t respond. “Hi” seemed laughable, and everything else he could think of felt as if it came from some entirely inappropriate script. From a melodrama where people yelled things like “How could you?” or some slapstick comedy where the dumb cowboy went all “Shucks, ma’am” around the elegant lady.

Or, even worse, from that pathetic script where someone gushed, “You had me at hi.”

He set his jaw and refused to let any of that spill out. Let her do the talking. She was the one who had the explaining to do. She was the one with the secrets.

She cleared her throat and tried again. “How did you find me?”

He raised his shoulder. “Fingerprints.”

“Fingerprints?” Her eyes widened, and he realized they did look a bit strange, now that they were set against the fantasy rose-gold of her real hair. The size of them, and the color... Nothing in the natural world should be that mesmerizing mix of blues, as if robins’ eggs and sapphires and summer skies had magically melted together.

“Fingerprints,” she repeated, her voice dropping slightly, as if she were disappointed in him. “Of course. The water glass.”

He could have defended himself. He could have explained that Rowena had been the one to supply the fingerprints, not him. Technically, that was true. But it would have been a lie in its heart, if not in its facts.

He hadn’t come all this way just to have another useless conversation laced with lies. So he simply stared at her, calmly defiant.

“I see.” She clearly had taken the measure of his anger, and she now knew he hadn’t come in peace. “All right, then maybe the more pertinent question is...why did you find me?”

He laughed harshly. “Come on.”

“I mean it.” She raised her chin. “You said you never wanted to see me again.”

“No, I didn’t. I said I was tired of thumping my head on the sidewalk while you used me like a yo-yo. I said I wasn’t interested in being your quickie next time you snuck into town.”

Her pale cheeks flamed red. To tell the truth, he felt a little flushed, too. He hadn’t intended to sound quite so nasty.

“But I never said I didn’t want answers, Bonnie. Because I damn sure do. And what’s more, I deserve them. I think you owe me that much, after—”

After what? After she’d broken his heart? He swallowed those words and gave her another hard, unblinking stare instead.

She was breathing fast. Her lips were parted a fraction of an inch, and he noticed suddenly she had a smudge of dirt right where a movie star might put a beauty mark. He glanced down, realizing she held a trowel in her left hand, its gleaming silver tip speckled with mud, too.

So at least that part hadn’t been a sham—she really did love gardening. Back at Bell River, she’d always wanted to be outdoors, always wanted to be rooting around in the dirt. Once, before they’d fled from Silverdell, they’d planted a white fir sapling on the abandoned Putman property, partway up Sterling Peak. They didn’t have the right—the property was in some kind of divorce dispute and couldn’t be sold or occupied—but they’d liked to hike out there and dream of owning it someday.

He’d talked about the house they’d build, complete with his ridiculous inventions. She’d laid out the fantasy gardens, describing them so clearly he might as well have been looking at a painting.

He’d swallowed the dream whole, fool that he was. He was surprised he hadn’t choked to death on it. She’d just been playing a game, playing house, as if she’d love to be the queen of the simple log lodge he was happily designing. Ha. All the while, she’d been keeping the secret of—he glanced at Greenwood, its marble arches slightly pink-gold in the sunset—the secret of this.

“I guess we should sit down,” she said. “If you really want to hear the whole story, it’s going to take a while.”

She didn’t seem to have any intention of inviting him into the mansion, so he dropped onto the garden bench where he’d been waiting the past half hour. He leaned against the scrolled iron back and waited some more.

She sat, too, and stared down at the trowel, which she’d rested in her lap, for several seconds. Then she looked up, met his gaze and shook her head slightly.

“I’ve thought about telling you all this so many times you’d think I’d have a speech ready. But it’s complicated. The whole thing is so weird, so convoluted...”

“And I’m just a simple cowboy who couldn’t possibly understand?”

Her eyes narrowed, and he saw her fingers close tightly around the trowel. “That’s cheap, Mitch. You’re not simple, and you’re not even really a cowboy. And I’m not a snob. You can be angry, but you can’t pretend we’re strangers. I won’t let you act as if all those months we spent together weren’t real. I won’t let you pretend we weren’t real.”

“We?” He shrugged, tapping his hand against the bench’s cool wrought iron armrest. “Who exactly is we? Do you mean me and Bonnie O’Mara? Problem is, I don’t see Bonnie here—not a shred of her. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t quite know what’s real and what isn’t.”

She flushed again—and he, who knew every nuance of her face, knew that shade of mottled red meant anger. Her flush of embarrassment was seashell-pink, and the flush of sexual desire was...

He tightened his jaw, trying to force those memories away. Forget all that—this look was pure anger. Well, fine. He might not be turning red, but he was mad, too. They were both mad as hell. Desire was a thing of the past.

She took a long breath, as if to steady her voice before she spoke. “Look, Mitch, if you want to tell me off, you should go ahead and do it. You have every right, and I won’t stop you. But if you want to know the truth, you need to let me talk.”

He nodded tightly. “Go ahead. I won’t interrupt again.”

She looked skeptical, but after a cautious second she started again. “As you can see, my grandmother, Ava, had a lot of money—some from her painting and some from her family. She left everything tied up in a life estate for my mother’s use.”

“Why? Why tie it up?”

“My mother had...problems.” Bonnie looked away briefly. “She wasn’t terribly responsible, and my grandmother obviously didn’t trust her to inherit outright. But she did want to provide for her, so the lawyers suggested the life estate. I was the first remainderman. That meant if I outlived my mother, I would inherit everything.”

Mitch shook his head without really meaning to. How complicated could you get? Rich people were nuts.

Or maybe it was the lawyers who were nuts. He thought of his patent applications and the documents Indiana Dunchik had drawn up so he could sell his chore jacket to the highest bidder. The papers provided for every imaginable contingency and some that Mitch could never have imagined, not in a million years.

So of course the lawyers for the rich Ava Andersen would provide for the remote possibility that a perfectly healthy young woman might get hit by a bus or a meteor and die before her mother did. If Bonnie was the first “remainderman,” there probably were ten other remaindermen behind her, just in case...

And then, finally, the lightbulb went on.

He got it. He felt like an idiot that he’d been so dense.

“Ahh,” he said slowly. “So who was the second remainderman?”

“My cousin Jacob.” She leaned back, as if she were suddenly tired. “I assume you know who Jacob is, since you found me through my fingerprints. He’s my first cousin. His mother, my mother’s sister, died giving birth to him, and his father, a lawyer in San Francisco, worked himself into a heart attack when Jacob was only twelve. That’s when Jacob came to live at Greenwood and began to make my life hell on a regular basis, instead of just in the summers.”

Mitch took a breath, but he didn’t say anything.

“And—this is the part I assume you found when you looked up my prints—when I was eighteen, I was arrested for stabbing him with the pruning shears.”

She didn’t even glance at the trowel she held, so Mitch tried hard not to do so, either. But it wasn’t easy. It was weird, almost freaky, to be sitting here with this woman who was half stranger, half lover and to be talking about wealth and violence.

Wealth and violence. He supposed those two things fit together in some sick way. People did crazy, terrible things over money. But neither word fit with Bonnie.

She paused, as if she expected him to interrupt again, probably to demand an explanation of the arrest, but he didn’t. He was itching to know the truth about that, but right now he wanted her to finish telling him why she’d been on the run.

“Anyhow,” she continued after a minute, “the will stipulated that if I died before my mother did, Jacob would inherit everything. No one expected that to happen, of course. My mother wasn’t old, but she was very, very sick. Everyone knew she didn’t have long to live. So it was almost impossible to imagine any way I would go first. Not naturally, anyhow.”

Not naturally, anyhow. How calmly she said such a thing.

“And if you didn’t die first, Jacob got nothing.” Mitch took a breath, still sorting it out. His mind balked at the implications. “Are you saying your cousin wanted to kill you so he’d inherit your grandmother’s fortune?”

She didn’t answer for a long second. Finally, she looked him directly in the eyes. “Yes.”

“Bonnie.” He raised a hand, correcting himself. “Annabelle. Look, how much money are we talking about here? For a man to kill...”

“Enough. More than enough.” Her voice dropped low and took on a harsh edge. “For pity’s sake, Mitch, people kill each other every day. Over a bar tab, over a pair of sneakers, over a purse, a cash register, a car. Why is it so difficult to imagine that a man would kill to inherit thirty million dollars?”

“Thirty...” His jaw dropped, and he had to tell himself to shut it. “Okay. It’s a lot of money. Still. Your cousin isn’t exactly a pauper. And he’s not a thug. I looked him up. He’s a big-time lawyer, doing just fine for himself. Why would he risk all that—”

“So you don’t believe me, either.” The angry flush had drained entirely from her cheeks, leaving a chilled porcelain ivory behind. She sat so still she might have been a wax figure, not a woman.

“I didn’t say that.”

Her lips curved slightly. “You didn’t have to. I know that look. I know that tone.”

Of course she did. He mustn’t forget that she was as familiar with every square inch of his skin as he was with hers. “Well, it does sound kind of...” He tried to think of a nonjudgmental word. “Kind of extreme.”

“Crazy, you mean?” She lifted her chin. “Don’t worry. You aren’t the first to hint at the possibility. He is, as you say, a big-time lawyer. I’m just this spoiled, troubled heiress, the daughter of a suicidal drug addict. And I’ve already tried to stab him once, so it’s obvious I have some paranoia issues.”

“No, I don’t mean crazy. But maybe...maybe just exaggerating the danger? I’m sure he was envious you got everything, and he probably gave off some fairly hostile vibes.”

She laughed darkly. “Yeah. He tried to overdose me with barbiturates, so I’d say hostile is a fairly accurate description of his feelings for me.”

“He did? How?”

“New Year’s Eve. Jacob always gives a big party, and of course he had to invite me—otherwise people would talk. He must have slipped the drugs into my drink somehow. I woke up the next day in the hospital. On a ventilator.”

Mitch’s body temperature had dropped about ten degrees in ten seconds. The balmy California air moved over his skin like ice. “Are you sure? I mean...how do you know he was the one who did it?”

“Well, I knew I didn’t do it. And, contrary to popular opinion, I’m not paranoid enough to think I have two different people looking to get rid of me.”

Mitch frowned. “But how did he expect to get away with it?”

“Oh, that would have been easy. No one would have doubted it was suicide. It was public knowledge that my mother had tried to kill herself. Twice.”

He made a low shocked sound, but she ignored it.

“And it wasn’t as if he expected me to be able to deny it. He gave me a huge dose. If I really had been drinking alcohol, as everyone assumed I was, I would have died that night.”

Mitch stared at her, speechless. Her own cousin didn’t even realize she wasn’t a drinker? He remembered all the times she’d carried a glass of soda water around at the Bell River events. She never made a thing of it, never got sanctimonious in front of people who did drink. He’d always figured it was simply a healthy-living kind of decision. Now he knew better.

The child of an addict would obviously avoid taking any risks. And her caution had saved her life, though not in the way she’d expected.

“What about when you did wake up? Did you tell anyone? Did you tell the police?”

“No.”

“For God’s sake, Bonnie. Why not?”

“Because I’d been down that path before. Accusing Jacob. And I ended up in a mental-health clinic. No one was going to believe me this time, either, and while I was trying to convince them, he would have tried again. Eventually, he would have succeeded. So I ran.”

“But...” He couldn’t wrap his mind around any of this. “Surely the police...your friends...other family members. Hell, even a lawyer—”

“No.” She shook her head implacably. “No one. There was no one I could trust.”

He felt himself stiffen. “Not even me, apparently.”

The sun had almost touched the western horizon, and he suddenly realized her face was almost entirely in shadows. Now, when he wanted desperately to be able to read her expression, he could hardly see a thing.

“No,” she repeated. “Not even you.”

It shocked him, the hot knife blade of pain that sank into him when she spoke the words. It shouldn’t have been a surprise—couldn’t have been a surprise. He wasn’t a fool. He knew that if she’d trusted him, she would have confided in him months ago.

And yet, hearing her dull monotone confirm it...

“Well, that’s direct.” He leaned back, trying to project a detachment he didn’t come close to feeling. “Guess there’s no point in sugarcoating anything, not now.”

“Mitch, be fair. How could I trust you? How could I trust anyone? My life was at stake. Even more importantly, my mother’s life was at stake. Once he’d gotten rid of me, how long would he have let her stand between him and the inheritance? How long would he have let her live?”

“Did it ever occur to you,” he asked slowly, “that I might have been able to help?”

She hesitated, then swallowed and shook her head. “No.”

Heat radiated across his shoulders and down his arms. He couldn’t decide whether it was anger or shame coursing through his buzzing veins. No? No? Damn it...he would have died for her. Literally. He would have killed for her.

But she hadn’t believed him capable of providing any security. She hadn’t seen him as up to the task of protecting her.

“Jacob is ruthless,” she said, bending forward as if she could close the emotional distance between them by shrinking the physical gap. “He’s vicious and such an expert liar. You have no idea—you can’t imagine. And I’m glad you can’t. You’ve lived with love all your life, surrounded by a family that adores you. You’re sunny, and you’re kind, and you think the world is good. You aren’t consumed by ambition and greed. Those were the things about you I most...”

She stopped, swallowing the next word oddly. “I mean...that’s what drew me to you in the first place. You were light, when all I’d known before was darkness. You understand laughter and joy. You don’t understand cruelty and greed.”

He made a harsh scoffing noise. “You make me sound like the village idiot.”

She straightened up, as if scalded by his sardonic tone. “I’m sorry you take it that way. That isn’t even remotely what I meant.”

“Sure it is.” He was so angry he could hardly keep his voice steady. He was doomed, wasn’t he? He would eternally be the dopey younger brother. The likable goof. The good-time Charlie. He was used to being written off as a gadfly by Dallas, but he’d imagined that Bonnie was the one person who saw him differently.

Wrong again, moron. Maybe that just proved how naive and gullible he really was.

“Mitch, that isn’t what I meant at all—”

“It’s exactly what you meant. You meant that I’m good for a few laughs. I can provide a little comic relief on a boring road trip. And I’m not bad in the sack, of course, so that part was fun, too. But I’m not the kind of guy you take seriously. I’m not the person you’d trust with your secrets, your problems.” He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not the man you’d trust with your life.”

She was shaking her head. “No. You’re twisting my words. This struggle with Jacob doesn’t have anything to do with my real life or my real feelings. I just had to get through this one dangerous moment, and then—”

“And then what? Don’t be so naive. Do you really think this is the last terrible thing you’ll face?”

He stood. Coming here had been a mistake. There wasn’t any such thing as “closure.” There was only loss and more loss. If he’d never seen her here, with her Titian-red hair and her backdrop of opulence, he could at least have kept the memories of his Bonnie intact.

Now Bonnie and Annabelle would be forever tangled in his mind. And he would always know that neither of them had really respected him. Neither one of them had loved him. Not the way he’d dreamed.

“Mitch.” She didn’t move, but she looked up at him with those complicated, beautiful, haunted blue eyes, overflowing now with unshed tears. “Mitch, please.”

“Troubles come to everybody, Bonnie,” he said roughly. “If you live long enough. People, even careful people, occasionally end up in dark places—in a courtroom, in a wheelchair, in chemotherapy, in disgrace. In tears, in therapy, in pain—all that’s part of life. And it should be part of love, too.”

“Yes. And it is.” She held out one slim lily-pale hand. It trembled. “It will be.”

“No, it won’t. You don’t think of me as a partner. You think of me as a plaything. And I have no interest in settling for that role in any woman’s life.”

She made a choking sound. He shrugged, thankful that, finally, numbness had set in and the pain had eased off, allowing him to come up with one final smile.

“Goodbye, Bonnie.” He cast one last glance at the purpling sky, lowering itself over her mansion like a shroud. “Have a good life.”

CHAPTER FOUR

TEN DAYS LATER, when Annabelle arrived at Bell River Ranch with three suitcases in the trunk of her cheap rental car, she was carefully dressed—costumed, really—in worn jeans, faded flannel and scuffed boots. It was the way she used to look when she’d lived here before.

Except for one thing. Her hair had been dyed dark back then, and she’d quit coloring it long ago. Today, the red flame was tucked away in a coiled knot.

And her heart was in her throat.

She parked as far from the house as she could, giving herself time to adjust. She hadn’t set foot on Bell River land in almost a year and a half, if you didn’t count that night...the night her mother had died.

That night had been different. It was one thing to steal back in darkness as Bonnie O’Mara, to be seen by only Mitch, to spend a few secret hours in the comfort of his arms and then run away again.

It was quite another to show up in broad daylight, to announce herself to the whole family as Annabelle Irving and to face their questions...and, quite possibly, their hostility and rejection.

She’d decided not to approach by the front door, but to look around outside, hoping she’d find Rowena at work. Maybe she’d even find her alone.

Luck was on her side. There Rowena was, standing by a fancy structure that must be the new stables. Her black hair flew in the spring breeze as she talked animatedly to a crowd of people...guests, judging from their too-expensive brand-new Western wear.

Ro must be matching the riders to the horses they’d use during their stay at the ranch. Annabelle had left before the dude ranch opened, so she’d never actually seen her friend do this. But they’d talked about it so often. Annabelle would be cooking or ironing, and Rowena would be dreaming out loud, building the ranch in the air. She’d made it real enough to touch.

Annabelle put her fingertips against the rough splintered side of the old barn, unable to move for a minute, overcome by a rush of emotion. She’d been gone so long. Maybe too long.

She could already see how much the ranch had changed. When she was last here, Bell River had been a scrappy start-up business, struggling to lay its ghosts to rest and build a future as a dude ranch. Now it was sleek and polished under the bright spring sun, beautiful against its jagged mountain backdrop. They’d expanded the main house and put up at least a dozen new outbuildings.

And everywhere she looked, so many people. Guests and staff and...

So much change. What if it wasn’t just the physical space that was different? What if it was the people, too? They’d been kind to her once, especially Rowena. They’d taken her in as unguardedly as they’d shelter a stray kitten. But she’d repaid them by breaking Mitch’s heart. Mitch, the family darling, who could charm the rogue out of any horse or any woman. Any man, for that matter. His smile made the room sparkle. His veins seemed to be filled with laughter instead of blood.

Were they likely to forgive an interloper like Annabelle for lying to him, leaving him and, by doing those things, turning off all that sunlight?

She swallowed hard and tilted her face toward the sun, trying to breathe in courage. Maybe Bell River no longer had a place for her, but she must try. She needed to explain, partly because they deserved an explanation and partly because she intended to set things right. No matter how hard it was, no matter how long it took, she was going to get Mitch Garwood back.

Brave words, considering she had frozen in place, half-hidden behind the old barn and paralyzed with fear. Darn it, this wasn’t how she’d intended to start her new life. She tightened her jaw and moved her leaden legs forward, crunching the last patches of spring snow under her boots and arranging a confident smile on her lips.

Rowena was so engrossed in sorting the guests and horses she didn’t notice Annabelle until she was at the edge of the crowd. Ro glanced over, started to glance away, then did a subtle double take. Her green eyes grew very wide, but she maintained her professional composure.

That made Annabelle’s lips curve in a genuine smile. Composed and Rowena weren’t words used together very often. Or at least they hadn’t been, back then. Ro was all fire and energy, and she never had seemed to pull any punches.

Now, though, she finished pairing up the current guest with a lovely young paint, then smoothly excused herself and strode calmly to where Annabelle stood, waiting.

When she got close enough, she fisted her hands in her riding jacket’s pockets and planted her feet several inches apart. She looked Annabelle over slowly, studying every inch of her face.

Annabelle had to fight to keep from lifting her chin defensively. Whatever Rowena was going to say, she probably deserved it, and she’d take it without complaint.

Several awkward seconds passed, and then Rowena finally spoke, with that wry, throaty voice Annabelle remembered. “Well,” she said cryptically.

Annabelle took a breath. She met Rowena’s eyes. “Well?”

Rowena chuckled. “Well...well, nothing, really. I’m just surprised, that’s all. Mitch said you looked like a completely different person, but then, he’s in a major snit, so obviously he was overstating.”

A snit? Was that what Ro called Mitch’s intractable anger? That was definitely understating it a bit.

Annabelle wanted to break the awkward silence, but she hardly knew where to start. She had so much to say, so many apologies to make. She wanted to explain why she’d come, how she hoped she might be able to make Mitch understand and forgive, but how to begin?

“The red hair is a bit startling,” Rowena said, tilting her head to continue her appraisal. “But otherwise you look exactly the same. Well, not exactly, but almost. You look a little sadder, but then...why shouldn’t you? Mitch says your mother just died and your cousin is a homicidal, moneygrubbing sociopath.”

Annabelle laughed in spite of her nerves. Rowena never had been a fan of sugarcoating.

“A sociopath who tried to kill you, for God’s sake. Nearly getting murdered is enough to make anyone sad, and—” As Rowena’s words broke off, she wrinkled her nose sheepishly. “And... Oops! I’m suddenly realizing we should have this conversation somewhere more private. Come on. I’ll ditch work, and we’ll talk. I’ll make you some tea.”

She moved toward the house, but then stopped so fast that Annabelle, following closely, almost ran into her. Her feet tangled and Annabelle reached out to steady herself on Ro’s elbow. Again, she had to laugh. How could she have forgotten how mercurial, how tempestuous Rowena’s emotions were?

“Hey.” Ro smiled. “It just occurred to me. Didn’t we skip an important step?” And then, with a graceful simplicity, she held out her arms.

A hug. Such an easy thing, but everything Annabelle had hoped for was written in Rowena’s dazzling smile. Ro was offering her the embrace of friendship, of forgiveness, of understanding.

Her chest muscles relaxing in a flood of relief, and her eyes welling with tears, Annabelle simply nodded, unable to form words.

“Well, okay, then!” Rowena enveloped her in an enthusiastic bear hug that left no doubt. Whether she arrived as Annabelle or Bonnie, brunette or redhead, enigma or heiress, she was still welcome in this corner of Bell River Ranch.

When they finally pulled apart, Annabelle felt a hundred years lighter.

“Come on. Tea and talk. It’ll be like old times.” Still smiling, Rowena took her hand and headed for the house.

The big stone-and-wood two-story structure had been so thoroughly renovated Annabelle was a little disoriented at first. But Ro plowed on, up the back porch and then through the charming, busy rooms, giving Annabelle hardly enough time to take it all in.

Ro stopped for nothing. She smiled at guests but didn’t pause to chat. She waved away a dozen staffers with questions until finally they reached a newly built wing, separated from the public areas by a small hall and a door.

“Our quiet, private Garwood haven,” Ro said, putting her hand on the doorknob. “Although I’m not sure you can call a place ‘quiet’ when both Alec and a newborn live in it.”

Annabelle pulled up, shocked. “A newborn? Is it...?” She began to smile. “Oh, Ro! You and Dallas had a baby?”

Rowena laughed as she flung the door open. “Well, frankly, I think I did all the work, but yeah. We named her Moira, after my mother. Moira Rose. Rosie for short. She’s gorgeous, but she’s a pistol. She’s almost two months old now, and she’s got us all wrapped around her fussy little fingers.” She paused. “Didn’t Mitch tell you?”

Annabelle shook her head. “We didn’t talk about anything but—well, we argued, mostly.”

Rowena groaned. “Oh, Mitch. You idiot.”

“He’s so angry, Ro.” Annabelle could hear the fear in her voice. Fear that, this time, his anger might never go away. “He’s angry because I never told him the truth. Because I left him.”

“Oh, heaven spare me from Garwoods,” Rowena growled. “They are the most stubborn men on the planet. Anyone with half a brain could figure out you only left Mitch to protect him.”

Annabelle inhaled sharply, as if she could truly breathe for the first time in months. Rowena understood. Rowena loved Dallas, probably just as much as Annabelle loved Mitch. So she knew how impossible it would be to think you’d put the man you loved in danger. She knew you’d give up anything, even your chance at happiness, just to keep him safe.

“He doesn’t see it that way,” Annabelle said. “He thinks— I don’t know. He’s taking it personally, as if I underrated him. As if I didn’t see him as man enough to trust in a crisis.”

Rowena’s green eyes flashed as she thought that through. “Yeah, that sounds like Mitch. Idiot.” But her tone was affectionate. “And you’ve come back to see if you can change his mind?”

“Yes.” Annabelle was grateful Rowena made it all so easy to explain. “I’ve come to Silverdell to stay, and...if you’ll have me back, I’d like to work here, at the ranch. I’ll do anything, and I wouldn’t want any pay. I just want to be here. I’ll need chances to talk to him. To show him. And maybe I can...maybe he’ll see...”

She let the words dwindle off, realizing how naive they sounded. How half-baked this plan truly was. It wasn’t even a plan. It was the flailing of a drowning person, trying to splash her way back to shore.

But apparently the idea didn’t sound dumb to Rowena. She narrowed her sparkling eyes and nodded. “Excellent. Okay, I’ll have to think. We’ll have to see what kind of work we can find. Can you start today?”

“Today?”

“Of course. In fact, yesterday would have been better.” Rowena tugged Annabelle into the room and closed the door firmly behind them. Annabelle got a general impression of warm elegance, blues and creams and flowers everywhere. But she couldn’t focus on anything except the female pillar of determination and grit in front of her.

Rowena was a force to be reckoned with—and, Annabelle realized with sudden gratitude, she would be a terrific ally. Ro put her hands on her hips, a sure sign she was ready to go to battle, and studied Annabelle, her eyes focused fiercely.

“Look, Bonnie. Or Annabelle. What do you want to be called?”

“Annabelle, I suppose,” she said slowly. She’d thought about this a lot. She didn’t want Mitch to think she was still playing games. “Or Belle. Our gardener, one of my closest friends growing up, always called me BonnyBelle. I guess that’s where I came up with Bonnie in the first place.”

Rowena absorbed that a moment, then, with her usual pragmatism, moved on. “Fine. Belle works. So anyhow, Belle, I suspect you’re not going to want to hear this, but there’s a lawyer lady over in Grand Junction who’s been hanging around Mitch for the past couple of months.”

Annabelle steadied her nerves. “Well, I knew he would date. I didn’t expect him to be—”

“This isn’t just dating. Indiana Dunchik is her name. She’s gorgeous, and she’s ambitious, and she helped him patent one of his goofy inventions. A jacket that has magical properties or something.”

Annabelle’s mouth opened. “The chore jacket? Oh, that’s wonderful, Rowena! I knew that one was a winner!”

“No, it is not wonderful.” Rowena shook her head, as if she were talking to a child. “Focus, Belle. Believe me, I know Ms. Dunchik’s type. She’s trying to corral him, pure and simple. She wants to saddle him up and ride him all the way to the altar.”

The altar? Annabelle’s heart took slow dragging paces, as if it had hit an unexpected patch of molasses. She felt momentarily light-headed. The altar.

Had she waited too long?

“But surely Mitch isn’t... He won’t...”

“He might.” Rowena shook her head again, but Annabelle glimpsed a soft gleam of understanding behind her eyes. “He doesn’t love her, but she’s clever. She knows he’s wounded. And like any predator, she recognizes when it’s time to close in for the kill.”

Rowena sighed, as if the thought hurt her, too—or maybe she just knew how much it would hurt Belle.

“Anyhow,” she said, rallying. “What I’m saying is...if you really want that idiot man back, there isn’t a minute to lose.”

* * *

MITCH KNEW THE dinner date was in trouble when he found himself playing the anti-Bonnie game. The game’s rules were simple: every time he noticed something that was the opposite of Bonnie O’Mara, he took a swig of iced tea.

He’d played the game on every date for months right after Bonnie left, but he’d given it up a while back, finally recognizing that even the anti-Bonnie game was just one more way of obsessing about her.

Here he was, though, doing it again. By the time the bill came, he was on his fourth glass, and the waiter was looking at him funny. But Indiana made it so easy. The differences were endless. She was the epitome of the anti-Bonnie.

She wore three-inch heels, where Bonnie refused to be uncomfortable and always went for flats. Drink. She wore all kinds of expensive jewelry, including those ridiculous dangly earrings, where Bonnie had one pair of pearl studs she never took off, even to shower. Drink. She ordered the most expensive thing on offer, where Bonnie always shopped from the right side of the menu. Drink.

Indiana laughed at his dumb jokes, but she made refined chuckle noises through pursed lips, where Bonnie had found him so funny she sometimes had to cover her mouth to keep from spitting her tea everywhere. Drink.

The waiter smothered a sigh and strode over to refill his glass again.

Indiana waved the man away. With a smile, she reached her hand across the snowy tablecloth and touched Mitch’s knuckles lightly. “How about we go to my place for coffee?”

Mitch summoned an answering smile, surprised at how un-thrilled he felt. Supposedly, the more points a woman scored in the anti-Bonnie game, the better. By that measure, Indiana was an A-plus. Her body was darn near perfect, too. And look at that face! The earrings kept swinging against her elegant jawline, sending out sparks of light that accented her blue eyes. Normal blue, nothing otherworldly, cryptic and mystical like Bonnie’s.

Drink.

“Coffee sounds great,” he said. Though he couldn’t possibly swallow coffee, or anything else, as he was swimming in tea already, he knew she had no intention of brewing anything. Coffee, said in that particular tone, with that dimpling curve of the lips, was just another word for sex.

In fact, sex had been the foregone conclusion of this evening from the get-go. This was probably their fifth dinner, and they liked each other. A lot. Tonight, as he was leaving her office, she’d suggested a restaurant only two blocks from her condo here in Grand Junction. Their eyes met, and she had smiled with an honest, confident candor that said it all. She might as well have slapped a condom on the desk.

And so what? He really did like her, and not just because she was helping him make a lot of money. She was smart, beautiful, worldly, divorced and straightforward. He was tired of being alone.

If he said no to a woman like Indiana, he might as well go get fitted for a hair shirt...or a shroud.

The starry night was cool, so he gave her his jacket. Her hand was warm in his, but her long, immaculate nails grazed his skin, so unlike...

For crying out loud! No more of that. He was finished playing that game. If they were going to have sex, he owed it to her to be making love to Indiana Dunchik, not just the anti-Bonnie.

But he couldn’t help thinking how different her fingers would be on his skin. Some men had fantasies about long, predatory red nails tickling across intimate parts. But he’d developed a preference for scruffy, hardworking hands.... In fact, some of the best sex he’d ever had was the minute they got in the door from work, before either of them even showered to wash the mud off.

Suddenly, Indiana swiveled into his arms, and her face was so close it would have been rude not to kiss it. So he did. He dimly realized, by the warm temperature around them, that they must have entered the condo while he’d been distracted. He peeked between his lashes and noticed a lot of red and beige. Okay, not bad. A little impersonal, maybe, but a lot of elegance and a lot of clean.

Her eyes were firmly shut, so he risked looking more thoroughly. Yeah, her living room was superneat and tidy. Not a speck of dust anywhere, not a cushion out of alignment. If she had hobbies or quirks, she kept them out of sight.

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