CHAPTER FOUR
ALEX ROSS COULDN’T HELP worrying about the young woman who’d come into Big Timber Java coffee shop this afternoon. Normally she had a smile for him, her blue eyes bright as stars and her laugh...well, he’d fallen for her laugh the first time he’d heard it—even before he’d connected the laugh with the tattooed, pierced young woman.
Not that he hadn’t been surprised when he’d finally put the laugh with the face of the young woman now mulling over her coffee. She was nothing like he’d expected and certainly not his type. That’s why he’d never talked to her, even though he’d wanted to since the first day he’d heard her laugh.
Now, though, unable to stop himself, he quickly picked up a dishrag from behind the counter and headed for her table.
“Usually all it takes is coffee to put a smile on your face,” he said as he pretended to clean her table. “It looks as if you’ve barely touched yours today, so maybe that’s the problem.” He wondered if he could sound any more lame.
She looked up at him, startled as if she’d been deep in thought. He wondered what she’d been thinking about. Probably a man—maybe the same one who often came in with her on her coffee break. Or maybe the one he’d seen sitting across the street in his car watching her the past couple of days. A jealous boyfriend?
As she blinked those big blue eyes at him, she gave him a wan smile instead of her usual dazzling pierced lip grin, the one that made his day the few times she’d turned it on him. Not that she’d ever really seen him, he suspected. To her, he was just the barista behind the counter.
“You work here,” she said as if finally realizing who he was.
“The apron was the dead giveaway, right?”
She looked embarrassed. “Sorry. My mind was a million miles away. I recognize you now. I haven’t seen you that much behind the counter. You must work here part-time.”
He smiled at that. Actually he owned the place and another five like them across the state. “Alex Ross. Part-time barista. That’s me.”
“Emily Calder.”
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Calder. How about I get you another coffee?” He took the disposable cup of cold coffee in front of her. “The usual?”
She quirked one pierced dark eyebrow. “You know what I drink?” Her smile was brighter and the worry in her eyes a little less noticeable.
He rattled off her usual. “One Montana Mocha Grande with an extra shot of espresso, topped with whipped cream, a drizzle of caramel and a little shaved chocolate.”
She laughed. “Do you know all your customers’ favorites?”
Only the ones who made his day. He grinned. “I just happened to remember yours.”
* * *
BO’S SCREAM ECHOED across the narrow ravine, the dense pines seeming to smother the sound.
The man laughed as he held her tighter. “Ain’t no one around gonna hear ya so you might as well shut your trap.”
She screamed again as his fingers dug into her side.
“Keep that up, though, and I’m gonna cut ya good,” he said next to her ear.
She felt the dull blade press into her throat, the scream dying on her lips. She could smell his rank unwashed body, his breath nasty. He slowly turned her as if to get a good look at her. His fingers bit into the flesh of her arm as he held her with one hand and brandished the knife with the other.
“I’ll be damned. Yer a fine one. Where’d ya come from?”
When she didn’t speak, couldn’t with her heart lodged in her throat, he gave her arm a rough shake.
“I asked ya where ya come from.”
Her mind, like her body, had frozen in astonishment when he’d first grabbed her. Panicked, her thoughts whizzed from one to the next too quickly. The only one she could catch and hold on to was This isn’t happening.
She swallowed. “Down in the valley.” From the time she was a young child, she had known that she was a Hamilton and what that meant. When your family was wealthy—especially if your father was a senator—there were apparently people who could hurt you, kidnap you and demand ransom. But growing up in Montana not far from the ranch, she and her five sisters had always felt safe. Their father had seen to that.
“Down in the valley,” he mocked her. “I gathered that. You got a name?”
She hesitated. “Bo.”
“Bo?” He let out another harsh laugh. “Like Bo-Peep?”
She’d been told that her older sisters had been allowed to name her and that it had been three-year-old Kat who’d come up with the name. Who let a three-year-old name the latest child? Her mother, apparently.
“Bo what?” the man asked when she didn’t respond to the tired joke.
“Calder.” The name popped into her head. With it came a stab of pain. Her name really would have been Calder if she had married Jace five years ago. Why hadn’t she said Smith or Jones or anything except Calder?
Instinctively she’d known she couldn’t give the man her real name. Something told her that would have been a mistake. But thinking of Jace made her remember his sister, Emily, and her daughter, Jodie, and why she desperately needed to get off this mountain.
It was almost as if he’d seen what she was thinking. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Bo-Peep, ’cept with me.” He smiled. “I been up in these woods for weeks. It’s damned lonely, but not no more.”
“If I don’t get back, they’ll come looking for me,” she blurted.
“That right?” He studied her for a full minute before he turned her arm so he could get a good look at her left hand. “You ain’t married. So who’s gonna be lookin’ for ya?”
It was a good question. Did anyone even know that she’d left? One of the wranglers had seen her leave Saturday, but he might have no reason to mention it to anyone. Surely someone would eventually notice her SUV parked over by the “bunkhouses” her father had built for his daughters as they got older. They weren’t really bunkhouses. That’s just what he called them. They were actually condos, six of them with a connected large communal area. Her father had hoped it would keep his daughters on the ranch. It hadn’t. Bo rented an apartment twenty miles away in downtown Big Timber near the Sarah Hamilton Foundation office. It was easier than driving in from the ranch five days a week.
“My family,” she said with more assurance than she felt. “They’ll be looking for me. They expected me back this morning. If I don’t show up...” She let the rest hang, hoping he would loosen his steely grip on her arm and put away the knife.
The look in his eyes said that wasn’t going to happen. “Then we best get movin’,” he said. “Nice of ya to provide me with a horse. I about wore out my boots in this damned rugged country.”
She looked down and saw he was right. His boots had definitely seen better days. He’d been living up here for weeks? That’s when she noticed the metal bracelet-like loops on his wrists. Realization hit her like a horseshoe to the head.
Her gaze shot up to his face. He was much dirtier, his hair longer, his beard fuller, but in an instant she knew she’d seen his mug shot on television. This was the escaped fugitive from Livingston. The one believed to have killed a man during the robbery of a local convenience store. She’d seen it on the news but hadn’t paid much attention, and yet she now recalled the name because law enforcement had been looking for him for weeks.
Spencer. Raymond Spencer. Her pulse thundered in her ears. There was no doubt. She’d ridden into the camp of a violent criminal, and now she was his captive.
* * *
SARAH COULDN’T HELP being nervous as the doctor came into the room. What was she afraid he was going to tell her? That there was a physical reason for her memory loss? Or was her greatest fear that whatever had caused it was psychological?
Dr. Turner introduced himself before taking a chair across from her, but it was clear that he knew who she was. Anyone with a television would have heard about her.
He was a small man with such a neat appearance that she wondered if he suffered from OCD. Even his movements felt too precise, too careful.
She looked away. He made her feel uncomfortable. Had she always been this sensitive to other people’s...idiosyncrasies? Or was she overly observant because she’d lived too long not knowing whom she could trust? That thought did nothing to relieve her anxiety.
“You’ve experienced some memory loss?” he asked as he looked at what his nurse had written on the chart, seemingly unaware of her discomfort.
She glanced around his office rather than at him. Like him, it, too, was compulsively neat. She fought the urge to move something just to see what he would do. “I can’t remember the past twenty-two years.”
His head came up with a start. “But you remember before then?”
She nodded. “I remember giving birth to my twin daughters. They recently graduated from college.”
He leaned back in his chair for a moment to study her. “When and where did you come to?”
“Four months ago I woke up on a dirt road just outside of Beartooth. I was confused. My only thought was that I had to see my daughters. I have six. The twins are the youngest.”
The doctor picked up his pen and turned it slowly in his fingers as if inspecting it for even the slightest of smudges before asking, “Why did you wait four months to come see me?”
“I’m not sure I want to know why I can’t remember.”
He frowned. “Were you involved in any trauma that you know of such as an assault or car accident or violent collision in, say, a sporting event?”
“I’m told I crashed my car into the Yellowstone River in the middle of winter before I...disappeared.”
He studied her again for a long moment before jotting down the information in her chart. “Does anything help improve your memory?”
She hesitated. “I get flashes like shadows that fade in and out sometimes, but they make no sense, so I can’t be sure they’re even memories.”
“You don’t have any short-term memory loss?”
“No.” She watched him write.
“So you don’t know why or how the memory loss began?”
“No.” She answered questions about her medical history—at least the years she recalled.
“Drugs? Alcohol?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of,” she said, remembering the taste of vodka even though she couldn’t recall ever drinking it.
“I’m going to do a physical exam along with some cognitive testing. Then we’ll see about a CT scan to rule out damage or abnormalities to the brain. We’ll take blood to check for an infection...”
Sarah felt like a sleepwalker as she went through the process. Later she found herself back in the doctor’s office. She moved several things on his desk before he joined her.
When he came back into the room, he stopped before sitting down and asking, “Did you move something on my desk?”
“Why would I?”
He nodded. “Good question.” He quickly replaced both items she’d moved to their original locations before he sat. “Yours is a very interesting case,” he said once behind his desk again. “I can see no medical reason for your memory loss, no damage to the brain, no infection...” He closed the chart and steepled his fingers as he peered at her. “That leaves another possibility.”
“That my memory loss might be psychological,” she said, voicing her worst fear.
He nodded slowly. “I can give you the name of a psychiatrist...” She said nothing as he scribbled the name on a prescription pad he pulled from his top drawer. She took the sheet from him, folded it and put it into her pocket.
As she stood to leave, he said, “I would be interested to see how it turns out.” His gaze locked with hers, and she saw that he’d made up his mind about her.
The moment he’d realized that she’d moved items on his desk, he’d known she’d done it to mess with his mind. Just as he’d known she was lying when she’d denied it. Now he was probably wondering why a woman would lie about losing twenty-two years of her memory.
* * *
CURIOUS, EMILY WATCHED Alex Ross head behind the counter to get her another coffee. He’d been flirting with her! The thought surprised her. He was not the kind of man who normally gave her a second glance.
He wore an apron with Big Timber Java printed on it over his button-down shirt and chinos. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing surprisingly muscled tanned arms. She wondered what he did when he wasn’t working here in the coffee shop. Then she shook her head as she imagined what her ex Harrison would have thought of the guy.
She instantly felt defensive on Alex’s behalf. While he wasn’t her usual type—not in the least—he was nice and kind of cute in his way-too-straightlaced clothes. He’d been so sweet when he’d come over to the table. He wanted her to feel better. Harrison had never cared how she was feeling one way or the other.
Just the thought of the man who’d gotten her arrested made her go cold inside. He’d been mean, taking out his temper on her with hard words and fists. But that was all behind her, she told herself as the barista returned with another cup of coffee. She reached for her purse.
“It’s on the house. Your smile was payment enough,” he said. “I was worried about you. You looked so serious. Can’t have one of my favorite customers looking so sad.”
Yep, he was definitely hitting on her. She grinned, more amused than anything. She certainly wasn’t taking any of this seriously as she accepted the coffee. “Thanks.” She took a sip. “Nice job.”
He shrugged. “I try. I’ve seen you in here with Jace Calder. Any relation?”
“My brother.”
He looked pleased to hear that. Had he thought Jace was her husband? “So...” His gaze went to her ring finger as if he was double-checking to make sure there wasn’t a wedding ring.
“I’m not married,” she said, even more amused.
He raised his gaze, his grin broadening into an embarrassed smile. “But you do have a boyfriend.”
“Nope.” She joked that she couldn’t have a boyfriend until she could keep a houseplant alive. In truth, her priority was her daughter and had been for the past four years.
“Really? No boyfriend, huh?” One eyebrow shot up. “I thought... Never mind.”
“I have a three-year-old daughter,” she blurted out. If he was thinking of asking her out, which he probably wasn’t, she wanted him to know up front. So many men weren’t interested in a woman with someone else’s kid.
“I’ve seen you with her. She’s adorable.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip of the coffee, surprised how nervous she was. Alex was so not like the men she’d known. He had a job! True, it apparently was only part-time, but still...
She debated telling him she’d done jail time, but she reminded herself he hadn’t asked for her life history. Or for a date. And yet, if her daughter hadn’t scared him off...
“Would you like to go to a movie this weekend?”
“Really?” She hadn’t meant to sound so shocked. The word had just slipped out. But she couldn’t believe he was actually asking her out.
“You do go to movies, don’t you?”
She laughed nervously. “Sure. I mean, yeah, I’d like to.”
“Great. We can go to Bozeman and see one that’s rated for kids if you don’t want to get a sitter.”
Who was this man? “You’d be all right with Jodie coming along?”
“Sure. Or we can see something else if you’d rather. I’m new at this, but I’d be happy to pay for the sitter.” He sounded as nervous as she felt.
She laughed, and he seemed to relax. When he smiled, his brown eyes shone. “Maybe it should be you and me the first time.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized what she’d said. She felt her face flush with embarrassment. “I mean—”
“Then it’s a date.” He smiled broadly and asked for her number. She watched him type it into his phone. A moment later she heard her phone ping, alerting her to a text. “I just sent you my phone number. Text me with what night would work best for you, and we’ll come up with a time. Might as well have dinner before the show. Do you like Italian, Asian, Mexican or all-American?”
“All of the above,” she said. Then, looking at her phone, she realized what time it was and shot to her feet. “I need to get back to work.” Even with Bo gone and things in a panic at the office, she didn’t like taking more time than she should have for her coffee break.
“Talk to you soon,” he said as she rushed out the door, smiling to herself.
* * *
RAYMOND JAY SPENCER JR. couldn’t take his eyes off the woman for more reasons than one. He hadn’t believed it when he’d first seen her. It was as if his prayers had been answered—if he’d prayed. Praying had gotten him nothing as a kid when his old man was beating the crap out of him. He’d known then that there was no God. No teacher or neighbor or anyone had saved him from his father. He’d come to realize that all he had was the old man. Maybe he really did deserve what he got, like his father kept telling him.
“Bo-Peep,” he said, trying the name and tuning out her pleas and reasons she needed to get back to town. The first time he’d crossed her tracks, he’d stared at the fresh horseshoe prints in the trail for a long moment. He’d spent the past three weeks making sure his path hadn’t crossed another soul’s.
This morning, though, his feet hurting, hungry and ill-tempered after all this time hiding out in the mountains, he couldn’t help himself. Mostly he was sick of walking after he’d lost the horse he’d stolen. The damned animal had gotten spooked by a grizzly, thrown him and taken off, never to be seen again. The fall could have killed him, so he’d promised himself that if he ever did see that nag again, he would shoot the horse on sight.
He’d been on foot ever since. If his old man wasn’t going to be bringing him supplies and horses soon, he would have headed off these mountains in a heartbeat. But he’d learned the hard way over the years not to cross his father, Raymond Jay Spencer Sr., or RayJay, as he was known.
The prints in the dirt had looked like one horse, one rider. Damned tired of walking, he’d told himself maybe he would get lucky and could steal the horse without killing the rider. Or maybe not. He’d been in one of his moods, aching to hurt something or someone. So when he’d seen the horseshoe tracks, he’d looked at his worn-thin boots and told himself he would be riding soon.
But what was he going to do with the woman? He had some ideas. He gripped her soft flesh and let his imagination run wild as she went on again about how he really needed to let her go.
He didn’t give a rat’s ass about what she was saying. The problem was that his daddy wasn’t going to like this.
Then again, maybe by the time the old man arrived, there wouldn’t be any trace of little Bo-Peep.
* * *
THE SUN MADE its slow arc over the top of the pines, sinking behind the peaks as Jace rode into the mountains. As he felt the day waning, he grew more anxious. He’d thought he would meet her on the trail. The fact that he hadn’t made him even more convinced that Bo was on the run.
A magpie landed in a pine limb high over his head in a flurry of black-and-white wings. It called down to him, breaking the silence of the forest. He stopped to rub the back of his neck, his hair damp against his skin. Ahead he could see a band of rocks that formed a steep cliff.
Where are you, Bo Hamilton? Are you watching me right now? Do you have the crosshairs of a rifle trained on my heart at this very moment?
He spurred his horse, worried that just might be the case. If she was on the run with the money and she had a male accomplice, anything was possible. He’d picked up only one recent horse trail, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been planning to meet someone here, someone who’d been waiting for her. It was the reason he’d brought his rifle as well as a pistol, a knife and a length of rope.
Bo was going back with him even if he had to tie her to her horse. But what would he do if she wasn’t alone?
Jace told himself he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Right now his thoughts were with his kid sister. He worried about Emily all the time as it was and had for years. She’d been a rebellious little thing after their parents were killed. He’d been eighteen and didn’t know squat about raising a kid, so he probably hadn’t made things easier for Em.
When she’d gotten older, he’d hoped for a long time that she might meet some nice man. But most nice men were put off by a woman who looked and dressed the way Em did. She didn’t seem to realize the image she projected.
“Sorry, but this is me,” she’d said defensively when he’d broached the subject. “If a man can’t see beyond the tattoos and the piercings, he isn’t the man for me.”
But her looks had also made it hard for her to get a job. He’d been surprised that Bo had seen beyond the image and hired her. Emily was smart and talented and a good mom. He’d seen the change in her since she’d come back here. She appeared tired of being that defiant, angry, wild girl she’d been. He saw that the job was responsible for the change in his sister. She loved her job and Bo. She looked up to Bo, wanted to be more like her.
The only shadow on the horizon was her criminal ex-boyfriend, Harrison Ames. Fortunately he was still locked up in prison. Jace dreaded the day the man got out. Ideally Em would have her life together and wouldn’t even be tempted to get involved with the man again. Jace had never understood the attraction to begin with. Some women thought they didn’t deserve any better. But his baby sister sure as hell did.
That was why he couldn’t allow Bo to let Emily down any more than she already had.
* * *
ALEX WATCHED EMILY hurry across the street, smiling to himself. He’d wanted to ask her out for weeks but hadn’t gotten up the nerve.
His cousin Jeff, who worked for him, had tried to talk him out of it.
“You’re not her type,” Jeff had said.
“What do you think her type is?” Alex had wanted to know.
“Someone cool like a musician, an artist, a gang member—maybe a known criminal.”
“Very funny. You’re judging her by her looks.”
His cousin had stopped working to stare at him. “Not just that. I heard she’s done time.”
“So she’s turning her life around.”
Jeff had shaken his head. “Also, she has a kid.”
“I know. I’ve seen her with Jodie.”
“Jodie? You know the kid’s name?”
“I happened to hear her call her daughter by name. You’re making too much out of this.”
“Am I? I know you, remember? When was the last time you went out on a date?” Jeff had lifted a brow. “Exactly. You haven’t dated since Carmen.”
“Cathy. You know her name was Cathy.”
Jeff had laughed. “How could I forget? All I heard for months was Cathy this, Cathy that. The woman broke your heart—just as I predicted. Didn’t I try to warn you about her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you listen? No.”
“This woman is different.”
“Boy howdy!” His cousin had laughed. Then, sobering, he’d shaken his head. “If you want to take a ride on the wild side, go ahead. But don’t be surprised if this girl isn’t interested.”
“Why wouldn’t she be interested?”
His cousin had laughed again. “Seriously? Because you’re so boringly...normal. You’re a computer geek who owns coffee shops and wears khakis and button-down shirts with loafers.”
“You’re that convinced that she’ll turn me down if I ask her out?”
“Aren’t you? Isn’t that why you haven’t asked her?”
He had been afraid she’d turn him down. But he hadn’t let that stop him today, had he?
“So you finally did it,” his cousin said now as Alex joined him behind the counter. Business had slowed enough that they could talk. “Did she let you down easy?”
“We’re going to a movie this weekend.”
His cousin raised an eyebrow. “Good luck.”
“I like her.”
“It worked for Beauty and the Beast. I suppose it could work for Goth girl and the geek. Maybe they’ll make a movie.”
Jeff was a cowboy, born and raised on the ranch. He liked women who wore Wrangler jeans and rode bareback.
While Alex had grown up with his share of girls like that, he found himself more intrigued by Emily Calder. She’d been raised here on a ranch just as he had. But she hadn’t become a cowgirl or a cowboy’s wife. Like him, she’d escaped to experience life beyond the state of Montana. But also like him, she’d come home.
She’d made her share of mistakes, from what Alex had heard. Now she was trying to do better for her daughter. He admired that about her. He found her interesting, and he was looking forward to getting to know her better.
If he could get past the first date, he thought as he watched her disappear into the Sarah Hamilton Foundation office across the street.
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw the now familiar car that was parked down the block. The car was a beater, and the man behind the wheel didn’t look much better than the car.
Alex had gotten only glimpses of him. Long, dark hair, tattoos on his neck and arms, a battered black cowboy hat.
The man waited until Emily left the coffee shop and returned to the foundation office before he drove off—just as he had done the other day when Alex had noticed him.
As he watched the man now, he was left with no doubt about the man’s interest in Emily Calder.