AS THE BATCH of brownies came out of the oven, Billie Dee made a plate to take into the bar to Ashley Jo. She didn’t know how much longer she could wait for the DNA results. Every day being around Ashley Jo, she saw more of her daughter in the young woman.
Picking up the plate of brownies, she fought to get control of her emotions as best she could and walked out to the bar.
Ashley Jo was busy cleaning a table of four that had just left.
Billie Dee took a seat at the bar, her knees knocking. “I thought you might need a treat,” she called to the young woman.
“Brownies? The smell coming out of the kitchen was about to do me in,” she said as she finished washing the table and returned behind the bar with the dishes and cleaning supplies.
Billie Dee watched her wash her hands and dry them. She’d always heard that you can tell a lot about a person by their hands. She realized Ashley Jo’s weren’t the hands of a professional bartender or barmaid. Far from it. They were manicured, not red and chapped from being in water all the time. While Ashley Jo had learned how to make drinks and serve them, she hadn’t been doing this long.
“These look wonderful,” the young woman said. She picked up a brownie but, before taking a bite, said, “Are you all right?”
Billie Dee started. “Sorry, woolgathering. How are you today?”
The young woman met her gaze as she took a bite of the brownie. She swallowed and grinned. “Billie Dee, these are amazing. Can I get your recipe?”
“Ashley Jo, there’s something I’ve been meaning to—”
“I forgot to tell you.” She reached in her pocket and brought out a folded piece of newsprint. Wiping her hands on a bar rag, she unfolded what appeared to be something she’d torn out of a magazine.
“It’s a cooking contest,” Ashley Jo announced. “When I saw it, I thought of you. You don’t have to actually cook. You just have to send in a recipe to win. I thought your chili would win hands down.”
Billie Dee couldn’t help being touched. “That is sweet of you, but I couldn’t—”
“Are you kidding? The way you cook? You will win this.”
“That is sweet of you, really. Ashley Jo, I can’t help but notice that when you get excited your Texas accent comes out. It makes me a little homesick. You said your father was in the military, but you must have spent quite a bit of time there to pick up such a distinct accent.”
The young woman froze for a moment, then laughed. “You caught me. I thought I hid it so well... So much for that fancy finishing school my mother sent me to. But then again, you’re from Texas so of course you recognized it. Like I said, I was a military brat, but I’m Texas born and bred. Leave it to you to spot it. Between the fancy finishing school and university—”
“Where did you attend?”
“Texas A&M. Go Aggies!” She let out a nervous laugh. “I thought I’d gotten rid of my accent. Guess no one can get all the Texas out of a person, huh.”
“Where in Texas were you born?”
“San Antonio. I’m sure you’ve been on the river walk there.”
“I have.” San Antonio.
“How about you?” Ashley Jo asked conversationally.
“Houston.”
“I have friends from there. I love the old part of town. Can I get you something to drink?”
Billie Dee shook her head. “So what brought you to Gilt Edge?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I was just traveling through.”
Ashley Jo smiled, a look in her eye that Billie Dee couldn’t quite read. Was that a wariness? “Another thing we have in common. Unfortunately, I never learned to cook, though. I was hoping you might give me some pointers. I know you don’t have much time, like, to give lessons, but I was wondering...”
“I would be happy to,” Billie Dee said. “Any morning, just come by the kitchen before your shift or on your days off. Up to you.”
“Thank you. I’m excited and probably hopeless when it comes to the kitchen, but it will be fun spending time with you,” Ashley Jo said. “Since we seem to have so much in common.”
Billie Dee smiled but wondered about that. What had Ashley Jo really come to Gilt Edge, Montana, hoping to find? Certainly not cooking lessons. But she had seen the young woman eyeing Cyrus Cahill. Maybe she’d come looking for a cowboy...?
* * *
TUCKER WASN’T ONE to sit around and wait. He never doubted that he’d be seeing Madeline again, now that he knew she was alive. But he also figured she wouldn’t be coming alone. Madeline was the kind of woman who had a man doing her bidding for her—just as he suspected she had nineteen years ago.
Had it been Madeline who’d been waiting for Misty downstream that night? Or had Madeline sent the other person Kate had been looking for all these years?
Tucker walked into his lawyer’s office, right past the empty receptionist’s desk, as he followed the sound of raised voices.
He pushed open Jayce’s office door and stopped—just like the conversation did in the room in front of him.
Cal, Lonny and Jayce all turned abruptly. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see Jayce in his office with the two men. After all, the three of them had been best friends back in high school. So why had it sounded like they’d been having a heated disagreement?
More to the point, why did Tucker sense they’d been talking about him?
“I’m curious,” he said as he looked into their surprised and guilty-looking faces. “Do you have a receptionist, Jayce? I’ve yet to see anyone sitting out there.”
“She’s on leave. To go back to college for a few months. I promised to keep her job for her.”
“That was awful nice of you.”
Cal let out a snort, making him think that Jayce had something other than the young woman’s education going on with his receptionist.
Jayce rose. “Come on in. We’re through here. Cal and Lonny were just leaving.”
Cal looked as if he wasn’t finished, but he took his cue and said, “Come on, Lonny. I guess we better get back to work.”
Lonny didn’t even give him a look as he passed, but Cal gave a quick nod and the two were gone. Tucker closed the door behind them.
“What’s going on, Jayce?”
His friend shook his head and sat back down.
He couldn’t help asking, “You still want to represent me, don’t you?”
“Of course. What makes you ask that?”
“Just when I came in...”
“The guys.” Jayce sighed. “You know what gossips they are. There’s a lot of stories going around.”
“Like what?”
Jayce motioned to a chair across from his desk, but Tucker declined with a shake of his head. “Your leaving nineteen years ago has people speculating that you killed her and ran. Now you’re back. Your brother is the sheriff. Madeline is nothing but bones...”
Tucker nodded. “They really think I killed her?”
“She was holding you up for money. The whole jumping-into-the-river thing, that sounds like someone planned to blackmail you for years.”
“I don’t believe I mentioned her jumping in the river,” Tucker said, his stomach sinking.
Jayce’s eyes widened in alarm. He swore under his breath. “You must have. How else would I know that?”
“My thought exactly.”
His friend held up both hands. “Easy, Tuck. It isn’t what you’re thinking.”
“Maybe you’d better tell me what it is you think I’m thinking. Or maybe just tell me what you and Lonny and Cal were arguing about.”
Jayce looked away for a moment. “We were arguing about how stupid it was to fix you up with Madeline.”
“I thought we already agreed on that. There something new I should know about?”
“Lonny. That’s how I knew about her jumping in the river or the creek or the lake after pretending she had a baby.”
“Lonny?”
“He’d gone through the same thing with Madeline.”
“And you still set me up with her?” he demanded, afraid he was going to reach across the table and thump Jayce at any minute.
“I had no idea. Not until all this shit with you went down. Lonny just told me. Only he went to Rip and Rip handled it so nothing ever came of it.”
Tucker studied Jayce for a long moment. “So Rip knew how to find her, how to...handle it? And Rip was how the three of you found out about Madeline to begin with, right?”
“I know. Lonny should have spoken up, man. He shouldn’t have let you walk into that, especially after he knew how bad it could get. But you know Lonny.”
Yes, he did. Lonny had obviously carried more resentment than any of them had known during high school.
Tucker turned to leave.
“Wait, that’s it?” Jayce asked behind him.
“I’ll be back. Let’s just hope your story checks out.” He slammed out of the lawyer’s office with every intention of going straight over to Rip’s body shop even though he figured Cal and Lonny were probably there and it might get ugly.
But as he reached his pickup, he saw that the truck was sitting at an odd angle. He swore as he bent down and saw that his right front tire had been cut. He glanced around, wondering who could have done this. Cal? Lonny?
Swearing, he opened his pickup to get out his tools but stopped short. The sweet scent hit him first. Jasmine. Then he saw the dusky-rose-colored teddy hanging over the bottom of his steering wheel.
His gaze shot up. He’d half expected to see Madeline standing on the curb laughing. But as he looked around again, he didn’t see her. But he suspected she was somewhere watching him and enjoying this.
He hoped she enjoyed watching him change his tire. For the time it took him, he cursed her black heart, telling himself he couldn’t wait until they met again.
* * *
KATE LEFT HER father’s hospital room feeling a little better than when she’d arrived. Earlier he’d looked so pale. He’d always been a large man, but it was as if he’d shrunk in that big white-sheeted bed with all those wires and tubes running from him.
But his color was better and the doctor had assured her he was resting peacefully. This time, he really had had a heart attack.
“He’s going to have to make some changes in his lifestyle,” the doctor had told her mother before Mamie had to leave for a social engagement she couldn’t cancel.
“Don’t worry,” her mother had told the doctor. “Kate will be joining her father in Washington, DC. She’ll see that he slows down, won’t you, dear?”
Kate had said nothing as she’d watched her mother leave. Now, as she walked toward the exit, she just wanted to go home and get some needed sleep. She’d tried to call Tucker but his phone had gone straight to voice mail. She’d left a message updating him on her father’s condition and telling him she was going to stay a few more days.
As she came around a corner in the hallway, she almost collided with her father’s personal assistant.
“I feel as if you’ve been dodging me,” Peter said. “You’ve been to see your father?”
“He’s better. I was just headed home to get some sleep.”
He raised a brow. “What’s going on, Katie?”
She grimaced at the use of her father’s pet name for her. “Peter, I don’t want to get into this here in the hospital hallway.”
“Fine, let’s go to dinner. But you can’t expect me to—”
“No dinner. Like I told you, I need sleep.”
“Yes, I can see that. Any reason you haven’t been getting enough, Katie?”
“My name is Kate. My father calls me Katie...” She took a breath and let it out. “Peter, I thought I made myself perfectly clear the last time we talked.”
“I’ll make a dinner reservation for tomorrow night because I haven’t had my say yet,” he said, pulling out his phone.
She groaned, not wanting to sit through a dinner with him. Nor did she want to get into it here in the hospital hallway.
“Katie—excuse me—Kate, your father’s heart attack isn’t a good time to make any big decisions.”
“Thank you for that expert advice. But, Peter, if this is about me going to DC to work for him—”
“Your head is in the wrong place right now.”
“Oh, I think I’ve never seen things more clearly,” she snapped. “You seem to think that we have some kind of...arrangement that is leading me to DC and to you as if my marrying you is some political deal you’ve made with my father. But we don’t.”
“It’s what your father wants. It’s what I want. You’ll see things differently once we’re in DC together. And once we’re engaged.” He started to go down on one knee, but she grabbed him and pulled him back up, amazed he would try this again.
“Listen to me,” she said, lowering her voice and looking around to make sure no one was watching. She’d spent her life in the public eye. Her father didn’t need any negative publicity right now.
“We are not a couple. We will never be a couple. I’m in love with someone else.” There, she said it.
“That cowboy from Gilt Edge?” He laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Katie. This is just some romantic fantasy that will quickly grow old. Like I said, you aren’t in the right frame of mind right now. Once you get over this silly quest of yours... Wait, where are you going?”
Kate had let go of him and now started past him for the elevator. “I’m not going to change my mind,” she said over her shoulder.
“At least let me walk you to your car.”
“Don’t bother.” As she reached the elevator, she changed her mind and took the stairs down the few floors, anxious to get out of the hospital and away from Peter and the demands her father had been making on her for years. She’d felt she couldn’t let her father down because she was all he had with her brother, Clay, gone.
Once past the outer door, she took a deep breath of the late-evening air. She was angry at herself because Peter’s words made her question herself. Her father wanted her in DC with him. He’d always said that was where her future career was waiting for her. A part of her had been excited about the prospect. Until she’d met Tucker.
Could she be happy in Gilt Edge as a cowboy’s wife?
She couldn’t believe how foolish that thought was. She reminded herself that Tucker was still in love with Madeline, who might be alive. Also, it wasn’t as if she and Tucker were at a place where she should even be thinking about being his wife.
Kate started for her car, telling herself she was too exhausted to even think, let alone plan her future with so much up in the air. The visitors’ part of the lot was empty this late at night. She hadn’t realized it was so late or so foggy. The streetlights cast an eerie glow in the fog that now blanketed the city.
As she walked toward her SUV, she couldn’t help still being angry with Peter. How dare he try to tell her when she should make decisions. Her father would be fine. Her mother... Well, Mamie always managed somehow. But things had changed.
Not for her parents. She doubted either of them could change even if they wanted. But Kate wasn’t the old Kate who’d stayed around, believing she had to fill in where her brother should have been.
When the time came, she’d decide what she wanted to do. Right now all she could think about was Tucker curled up in some warm soft bed. She hurried toward her SUV, anxious to reach home and her own bed. It surprised her. All these years of planning her retribution... She still wanted justice for her brother, but it was no longer the force that drove her each day.
What she wanted now was Tucker. The memory of being with him... For a moment she was back in that cabin, the fire crackling in the woodstove, her body wrapped in Tucker’s strong arms.
She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t paid any attention to the footfalls behind her until this moment.
The steps had quickened and were now right behind her. She spun around, thinking it would be Peter. The moment she realized it wasn’t, her hand went to her shoulder bag, but not quickly enough. The blow to the side of her head dazed her.
As she groped for her gun, her purse was jerked away. She struggled, kicking and fighting, as a second man came out of the trees and grabbed her from behind. Her lips opened, but her scream was muffled as a large hand clamped over her mouth. Like the first man, he wore a ski mask over his face.
“What you got in here you want so bad?” the first man asked. “What’s this? A gun?” He sounded shocked and offended that she would even think about pulling it on him.
“I could use some help here,” the second man said as she struggled to get free with every ounce of her strength.
“All right, all right.” The first man, the larger of the two, stepped forward and jabbed her arm with a needle. She fought as if her life depended on it because she had a bad feeling it did. But the drug was too powerful and so were the men.
As her body went limp, the darkness closed in and all she could think was, Tucker. I need you.