Once Upon a Cowboy (2 page)

Jess sat on the sticky cab seat staring down at the envelope at her feet, but she didn’t dare lean down to pick it up. The lights of the tunnel glared against the cab’s windows, trying desperately to make people forget they were actually traveling undersea. She tried to do one of the breathing exercises she taught her yoga students, but her body was having none of that nonsense.

“You
okay back there? You’re not gonna hurl, are you?” The cabbie looked at her in the rearview mirror, his eyebrows drawn together.

“No. I’m not going to—hurl.” Jess pushed the button to open the window. It was suddenly really hot in the taxi.

She looked down at the envelope. The return address listed a town she’d left behind a lifetime ago, a street that housed only two things: a strip mall—and
the police station.

She thought back to a long-ago night—one of many that she’d spent ten long years trying to forget—and her stomach clenched. Somehow she’d known the nightmare would eventually catch up with her. She’d deluded herself into believing that after thirteen years, a new city, and a new name, the past would stay in the past.

But it looked like she’d been wrong. Evidence of that was
sitting here on a grimy cab floor, taunting her in a yellow envelope.

She shifted her legs and leaned down to pick it up. She had to open the damn thing and find out what was inside, or she’d never be able to go out her front door again without fearing her past would roll up to the curb with blue lights flashing.

With shaky fingers and closed eyes, she undid the clasp and slid her hand inside
to feel a sheaf of papers. She drew them out slowly and laid them on her lap, then took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

For a long moment she stared at the first piece of paper, then felt her eyes prickle. It wasn’t an arrest warrant. It wasn’t a court summons.

It was a check.

For twenty-five thousand dollars.

And it was made out to her—to the
her
she was today, not the
her
that had left
her clothes, her life, and her name back in grimy little Smugglers’ Gully thirteen long years ago.

She slid the check aside and picked up the next piece of paper, a letter that addressed her by her current name. Her breath hitched as her finger traced the letters.

We regret to inform you
, it began, and as she read the sentences, the words faded and blurred.
Funeral was last Saturday…he didn’t
want you to know…didn’t want to put you in a position to come home again…hopes you’ll accept this small token…regrets that he wasn’t able to help when you most needed it…but maybe now.

Jess read the words over and over again, hardly breathing.

Grampy. Her one bright buoy in a sea of whiskey-soaked years.

Dead.

Her mind flashed back twenty-two years to when she was eight, riding in the backseat
of Grampy’s car with a fresh ice pop melting down her sticky fingers.

“We gonna strike it rich this week, princess?” Grampy smiled in the rearview mirror. “I got a dollar for you and a dollar for me. What say we get a couple o’ scratch tickets and try our luck?”

They walked into Mack’s convenience store hand-in-hand and looked through the glass counter, picking their tickets. With a to-go
cup of coffee for him and a root beer for her, they sat at Mack’s little picnic table, scratching their tickets slowly, reverently.

This could be the one. You never knew.

Grampy’s hand stilled hers as she scratched, and she flinched, then felt sorry for the hurt she saw in his eyes.

“Whatcha gonna do if you win a million, honey?”

She bit her lip, still raw from last night. Then, in a whisper,
she said, “I’m gonna leave, Grampy. Gonna go west.”

An old refrain—his.

He nodded, then indicated the ticket with his chin. “Me, too, baby. Me, too.”

After they’d scratched their tickets and lost, she’d sat there, letting her freeze pop melt, willing its purple juice to slide down her wrist and mask her new bruises before Grampy could see them and ask questions.

Jess shook her head, knocking
the memory loose. She looked at the check shaking in her fingers. Looked like Grampy had finally picked a winning ticket.

So this was his gift to her—his apology, really—for never doing more? For never loading up that Chevy with groceries and clothes and taking off for Colorado with her in the backseat?
Would
he have taken her away sooner if he’d known?

This had to be why her aunt had called
earlier. Why else would she have bothered to track Jess down after all this time? Jess glanced at the date in the letter. Grampy had died four weeks ago.

She sighed. No, Luanne wasn’t calling to inform her of his death. Luanne must have figured out he’d left Jess some money. And when Luanne smelled money, there wasn’t a bloodhound in South Carolina who could track it better than her.

Fear snaked
her gut as she realized if Luanne knew about the check, then so did Roxie. And Jess’s mother would stop at nothing to get her grubby paws on money she thought should be hers, even if it’d been left to her own daughter.

Heck, if Roxie knew that her daughter had just inherited twenty-five thousand dollars, she was probably already on a bus headed to Boston.

Jess looked out the window, breathing
the tunnel exhaust. Good thing, then, that in two hours, she’d be thirty thousand feet in the air, headed to Montana.

Let Roxie try to find her
there
.

“Okay, look to your left.” Kyla pointed toward the stable as she adjusted her camera later that afternoon. “And stop growling at me. Grumpy cowboys do not sell calendars, Cole.”

“Don’t they have models who do this kind of thing?”

“Yes, but
they’re not authentic. You guys are the real deal.”

Cole raised his eyebrows. “The real deal is sweat and dirt and stink.”

“We’re going for
pseudo
real deal, then. Dirt and stink don’t sell calendars, either.” She motioned at him again. “Lift the brim of your hat up a little, okay? Your eyes are in shadow.”

“Kyla.”

“No growling.”

He raised his hat the obligatory half-inch, and of course as
he did, Decker strolled out of the barn.

“Lookin’ good, Cole. Gonna get a little scratchy with those buttons undone, though, don’t you think?”

“Shut up, Decker. Don’t get any horse shit on those fancy shoes.” He looked toward Kyla. “Are we done here yet?”

“I was actually hoping to get a few more in the—”

“Sorry. Union rules. I can only be photographed for an hour a day.”

“Just a few more?”

Cole started doing up his buttons. “I have work to do, Kyla. Go play shutterbug with somebody else for a while, wouldja?”

Christ. Stupid calendar.
Real cowboys didn’t run around with their shirts open, aiming for the best light so their eyes wouldn’t be in—
shadow
. He shivered. At least she hadn’t suggested waxing.

“You could do worse, you know.” Decker grinned as he watched Kyla walk back up
to the main lodge. “Maybe she can post those pics online or something. Might help you get a date for Daniel and Hayley’s wedding.”

Cole executed a middle-finger salute, then leaned down to pick up a rope Kyla’d insisted on using for a prop. “Don’t need a date. We have any early guests coming in today so I can be very, very busy next time she comes around with that damn camera?”

“Just Jess.”

Cole stopped coiling the rope. “Oh. Right.”

“Trying to make like you forgot? I’ll pretend I haven’t seen you check your watch about eighty times today.” Decker laughed. “Gonna get up the nerve to actually take her out while she’s here this time?”

“I’ve got plenty of nerve.”

“Right. She’s been out here three times now, and every single time, you’re like a parched man looking at a desert mirage,
but—”

“Shut up. I’m hardly—parched.”

Decker eyed him in that way he had, the look that stripped the lies right off your face and made you tell the truth whether you wanted to or not. “I don’t know. Word in the bunkhouse is that your rep in town is getting a little rusty.”

“I’m not—rusty. And we don’t have a damn bunkhouse.”

“Want to know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think ever since you met Jess,
you can’t help but compare everybody
to
her. And nobody quite measures up.”

Exactly
. “Not true.”

“Well, true or not, she’ll be here by dinnertime. Kyla’s leaving for the airport in a while to get her.”

Cole rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like he’d been counting the days or anything. Not like he’d gotten a haircut yesterday or had thoroughly checked out Jess’s cabin this morning to be sure it was
shipshape and ready for her.

He shook his head, trying to get visions of Jess’s long dark hair and deep brown eyes out of his brain. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around Daniel and Hayley getting married in a week. I feel like we live and breathe weddings around here these days.”

“We’re gonna have a lot more if Kyla’s Bridal Bliss package thing works out.”

“I suppose that means we’d better
finish the spa so she can start selling the packages.” Cole shook his head. How in the world had their working ranch become a wedding-slash-spa-slash-getaway place? “Your woman makes a hell of a lot of work for us, you know.”

Decker laughed. “She makes a hell of a lot of money for us, too. I think the only reason she’s not haranguing us to get the spa done is she’s hoping Jess will help with
the design. I have a feeling she’s going to dangle it out as a carrot to get Jess to stay out here.”

“
Out here
out here? Like, for good?”

“Yep.” Decker nodded. “She’s been planting seeds for months. Getting Hayley to move to Montana got her all puffed up about her abilities. Now she’s turned her sights on Jess.”

“Poor Jess.” Cole shook his head.

“Pretty sure she can handle herself.” Decker
tossed a beaten-up leather briefcase into the cab of his truck. “I gotta go charm the home buyers. Hold down the fort.”

As Decker headed out the driveway, Cole turned up the hill toward the new lodge, half of which was Whisper Creek’s new childcare facility and petting zoo. The other half was still rough-framed inside, but by fall was supposed to be ready for duty as a full-service spa.

He strolled
toward the building, letting himself in the spa door. He inhaled, loving the scent of fresh lumber and drywall putty. Decker was the acknowledged brainiac of the family, working with his design software for half the night, but Cole preferred to be the guy with his hands right in the mud—literally.

Morning sun came through the east-facing windows and skylights, and he tried to picture what the
spa would look like once it was finished. They had fifteen hundred square feet to work with, which might be an architect’s dream—if the architect was ever at the ranch long enough to figure out what to do with all this emptiness. Cole sure didn’t have a clue.

But then he pictured Jess in the warmly lit space, gliding around with one of her yoga outfits on, flashing her warm smile his way, tying
up that long, long dark hair into a ponytail he’d just itch to take back down.

He shook his head, trying to erase the vision. Fantasizing about Jess before she even got here was only going to torture him more.

And her kind of torture was the kind that only left a man wanting what he could not have.

Papers still on her lap, Jess was nervously counting the lights between the taxi and the end of the Ted Williams Tunnel when the cabbie flipped his radio over to some country-oldies channel. Her breath hitched as she heard the first notes of one of Grampy’s favorite songs—from one of the CDs he’d had playing in his car that long, last morning…the last time she’d ever seen him. Always
before, the song had comforted her, but this morning?

This morning it helped bring forth a rush of memories she couldn’t stop.

“Come on, jellybean. In the car, now. Come on.” Grampy helped Jess out of the hospital wheelchair, settling her into the front seat of his Chevy. He was exceedingly gentle—and it had been five days—but even through a haze of painkillers, she winced.

He reached over
her to clip the seat belt into place. “Oh, baby,” he sighed. “Look at you.” He used his roughened thumbs to brush tears from her cheeks. “What happened?”

Jess clammed up. She couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t risk her one ally knowing how badly she’d screwed up this time.

“I’ll be okay, Grampy.”

“Bullshit.” His eyes narrowed, and Jess saw a spark she thought Grams had tamped out long ago. “You look
like someone used you for target practice.”

Jess sighed, pressing her fingers to her eyes to try to stop the tears.
That’s not the half of it, Grampy.

“I’ll have that punk-ass idiot Billy’s head.” Grampy closed her door and walked around to the driver’s side of the car.

Jess let out a short, bitter laugh, then cringed as her split lip burned. It was nothing compared to the other pain, but she’d
be damned if Grampy ever found out about
that
.

He slid into his seat and put the key into the ignition, but didn’t turn it.

“So where do you want to go, honey?” He touched her cheek, eyes sadder than she’d ever seen them before.

“West, Grampy. I want to go west.”

He smiled sadly. “How about the police station?”

“I already talked to them. As it turns out, when somebody tosses you out of a
car in front of the emergency room, the cops get interested.”

“They going to help you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

No, Grampy. They’re not. Because I wouldn’t tell them who did it. Or about Mack.

“I’m not taking you home, jellybean. He’ll find you.”

“No. Not home.” She touched her bottom lip briefly, wrinkling her nose when she saw the blood on her fingers. “Definitely not home.”

“Okay.
Then I know a place.” He turned the key. “You gotta trust me on this. We need to get you out of here. But first we gotta make a quick stop.”

Grampy steered carefully out of the parking lot, casting glances her way every few seconds. He pulled onto the highway and drove toward the airport, and for a delusional moment, she thought maybe he was going to put her on a plane.

But long before the airport
exit, he signaled and pulled into Mack’s store, which opened at the crack of dawn. Her eyes widened as she slunk down in her seat. Oh, no. Anyplace but here. He pulled into a parking spot right near the door, then got out. “Stay put for a sec, okay? Don’t leave.”

He didn’t need to worry. She wasn’t in any shape to flee. She pulled her hood over her dark hair, just in case Billy or his minions
went by. She prayed he thought she was still in the hospital, prayed he wasn’t looking for her yet. Her hands tightened on her stomach as nausea threatened.

Two minutes later, Grampy came back to the car and handed her a paper bag, and she took it with shaky hands.

Grampy shook his head. “Some punk held up Mack last week. Shot him!”

She gulped. She already knew that. “Is he—okay?”

Please let
him be okay. Please let him not be dead.

“Got only his shoulder, thank Christ. He’s going to be all right.”

Oh, thank God.
Billy hadn’t killed him.

But another fear made her chest hurt.

“Does he—does he know who did it?”

Grampy shook his head again. “I keep telling him he needs one of those security camera things, but he keeps saying, ‘Security’s for folks who’re afraid. I’m not afraid.’
 ” He sighed. “I bet you ten bucks he’ll be putting in a camera by the weekend.”

“Thank God he’s all right.” Her voice shook, and she tried to cover it with a cough.

“Can’t believe what this world’s coming to.” Grampy shook his head again. “Used to be you didn’t have to worry about punks coming in with a gun just because they wanted a case of Bud, you know?” He pointed at the paper bag as he
turned the key. “Open it.”

She squeezed her hands into fists, trying to stop the shaking, trying to stop feeling like she was going to throw up. Then she took a deep breath and peeked inside the brown bag. A root beer, a donut, and two scratch tickets.

She smiled sadly as she pulled out the tickets and gave him one.

“This could be the one, right? This could be our go-west ticket.”

They both
scratched away the silvery coatings, and Jess sighed as she saw the words Try Again. Really? This one freakin’ time, there couldn’t be a winning ticket?

Grampy held his up as well, and they shook their heads in unison. “Maybe next time,” he said, sighing. Then he reached into the backseat. “I brought you something.”

In his hand was the one book she’d ever finished—
Little Women
.

He tapped the
spine, where the silvery print of Louisa May Alcott’s name stood out in the morning light. “Remember how you used to say when you grew up, you were going to go west, and you were going to be Jessalyn Alcott?”

“I was twelve, Grampy.” She sniffed, waving a hand down her dirty T-shirt and ripped jeans. “And delusional. I picked that first name out of a magazine at Mack’s.”

“I always thought it
was great that you had a new name for yourself all picked out.”

“Well, it sure has a nicer ring than Star Smith. Can you imagine filling out a job application with my name? I might as well just write ‘Trailer-trash Tracy.’ Nobody will ever take me seriously with this stupid name.”

He shook his head. “I like Jessalyn better, too.” He looked at her long and hard, his hand on the shifting lever.
“You can get out of here, jellybean. You don’t have to be Star Smith anymore if you don’t want to be. I’m going to take you to a safe place where you can get better, get help, and get out of here forever.”

He reached over, grabbing her hand with surprising strength. “This is your chance, honey. You run away now, you’ll live. You stay here, you’re going to die. If not your body, then your spirit.
You have to go. It’s the only way.”

She couldn’t speak, emotion clogging her throat like a gas-soaked rag. Then another wave of nausea shot through her midsection.

She was silent as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed east. She’d been in denial for months, but Grampy was right. If she stayed here, she was going to be nothing more than a sad statistic.

Two hours later, they pulled into
a spot in front of a converted Victorian with a small sign on the front. “Safe Haven,” it said, and she tried hard to believe it was true. Grampy helped her out of the car, and she leaned on him as they climbed the porch steps. At the top, he stopped and faced her.

“They’ll help you here. You can get better. You can have a clean slate. Nobody here knows you, nobody knows where you came from,
and all you gotta do is show them where you’re going. You can leave Star Smith right on this porch and become Jessalyn Alcott, just like you always dreamed.”

She sniffed, looking into his eyes.
Was it really possible to make that kind of a change? Leave the nightmare behind and start fresh?

“Do you really think so?”

“I know so.” He handed her a folder. “If you want to make it legal, everything
you need’s in here. Birth certificate, social security card, the works.”

Her eyes widened. “How’d you get hold of this stuff?”

“Your mother bowls every Monday night. And she never locks the damn trailer door.”

She swallowed hard, trying not to let her tears leak out. “Thank you, Grampy. Thanks for picking me up—for bringing me here.”

“I wish there was another way. I do. But I think this is
the best way to keep you—safe.” He swiped at his eyes. “Damn. I’m gonna miss you, jellybean.”

“I’m going to miss you, too.” The conversation felt surreal, but so had the past week, really.
Was he really leaving her on a stranger’s porch at the crack of dawn? Was she really letting him, not having any idea what came next?

“Will you come visit me?”

He shook his head. “If I come, then somebody
else might find out where you are. And you know who that somebody is.”

“Will you write, at least? Or call?”

Grampy shook his head. He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed softly. “No, honey. I’m not going to write to you.”

“Why not?” Her voice shook as her stomach roiled. “Please?”

“Because, jellybean.” He took both of her hands now, squeezed them inside his big ones. “You need to break
free. No strings, no ancient grandpas tying you down. Nobody back home’s got any right to know how you’re doing. Or know where you are. Nobody. And if we have contact, somebody’s bound to find out.” He took a shaky breath. “And we both know how that could end up.”

“But Grampy—”

“Shh. I shoulda done a lot more than I ever did, and if I’d known all what was going on, I’d have opened my damn eyes
wider and gotten you out of that hellhole sooner. I just didn’t know. It kills me to say so, but it’s true. I didn’t know.”

“I know.” She sniffed again. Dammit. “I was pretty good at hiding it.” Then she saw something in his eyes that scared her more than anything ever had. It was a finality—a feeling of defeat. He really meant it. He was leaving her here, and she had no idea when she’d ever
see him again.

“You’re sixteen. Now’s your chance to make a new life you’re proud of. I’ll find you someday. I will. But don’t you ever go back to Smugglers’ Gully. Don’t show your face in that town. Don’t let your mother ever know where you are or what you became, because she doesn’t deserve to know.”

He took a shaky breath. “And don’t ever—I mean
ever
—contact that Billy again. He is bad news,
and he will take you down with him.”

“God, Grampy.” Tears were streaming down her face for real now, but she had forgotten to care whether anyone was looking.

“This hurts me more than you, honey. You’ll understand that someday when you’re older. But this is how we gotta play this. You gotta go, and I gotta stay. And someday—someday I’ll find you again, okay?”

He stepped toward the door, and
for the first time, she noticed he put a hand out for balance. Grampy was getting older, and here she was leaving, and here he was telling her to go—but all she wanted to do was leap up into his arms like she was still three and he was still strong enough to spin her around.

He took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and gave it to her. “It isn’t much, but it’s what I managed to squirrel
away while your grandmother wasn’t looking. You take it and use it for whatever you need—whatever, okay?”

She wrapped her arms around his midsection and buried her head in his chest, and then sobbed as his arms came around her and held her tight.

“I love you, jellybean.” His voice was gruff, and she knew he was crying, too. “Dammit, I love you. You go make me proud, okay?”

She nodded miserably,
her tears soaking his jacket. She looked up, and his watery eyes matched her own.

“Thank you—for saving me.”

He brushed the tears off her cheeks as he shook his head. “I didn’t save you, honey. You saved yourself. You called me instead of him. You didn’t go back.”

He dropped his arms slowly, then braced his hands on her shoulders again. “Don’t ever go back, honey. Promise me you won’t ever
go back.”