Second Chance Cowboy

As he stepped into the house, he found himself whistling. He couldn’t remember a night he’d enjoyed more. Arlene was a fun date—once she relaxed.

They’d had dinner, then gone to the movie—the only one in Whitehorse. A comedy had been showing. That was something else he had in common with Arlene—the way they laughed.

“You bray like a donkey,” Bitsy had told him when they’d first gotten together. “You really need to do something about that.”

He’d quit laughing around her.

During the movie, he’d found himself simply enjoying the sound of Arlene’s laugh. It had felt so good, so natural.

Later, he’d thought about kissing her good-night but had chickened out. Coward. The desire had been there. He’d told himself he was just afraid of scaring her off. Clearly this dating thing was as alien to her as it was to him.

But he knew that he was the one who wanted to take it slow. That was another thing they shared—the feeling that when things were going too well, something was bound to happen to jinx it.

As he passed his office, he saw that the message light on his answering machine was flashing. He preferred an answering machine with small disposable tapes over voice mail. Just as he’d always periodically checked his house and car for listening devices. Even here on the ranch in Montana.

He would have liked to believe he’d dropped off his former associates’ radar. But he’d worked for the agency too long to pretend that was even possible.

Still, as he pushed the play button, he was startled to hear a familiar voice.

“Hank, it’s Cameron. Call me. We need to catch up. It’s been too long.”

He stared down at the machine, shaken. By the unexpected sound of his old friend and former boss’s voice as much as by the calmness of the words—and the underlying threat. Code words. They brought it all back, and for a moment it was as if he’d never left the agency.

He didn’t need to replay the message. He quickly deleted it, knowing it was futile to think that would be the end of it. The words echoed in his head. Code words that informed him there’s been a breach in security. He was in danger.

ARLENE EVANS WOKE smiling. That alone shocked her. Normally the blare of Bo’s music down the hall or the sound of Charlotte clamoring around in the kitchen started her day off wrong.

But this morning, after her date with Hank Monroe, nothing could ruin her good mood. They’d had a nice dinner. He’d been easy to talk to. The movie had been enjoyable. They’d stood out in the moonlight and talked afterward.

She been afraid he’d kiss her. And afraid he wouldn’t. He didn’t. But he’d asked her out again. She felt like a schoolgirl.

Just the thought seemed…foolish. She was too old to be having these feelings. Especially the ones Hank Monroe had sparked with just the brush of his fingers when they’d both reached for the popcorn at the same time. Or when he’d put his arm around her. Or touched her back with the palm of his hand as they’d left the theater. Desire after all these years of feeling nothing?

She rose and dressed, wrapped in the memory of the night before and the prospect of another date tonight. He’d also invited her to the county fair this coming weekend—his first county fair, he’d said.

She hadn’t told him, but she planned to enter in the baking division and almost always took blue ribbons. It was the one thing she excelled in, and normally she would be a nervous wreck worrying that she might not win this year. That she’d lost her touch.

But Hank Monroe had taken her mind off the fair this year.

Which, she reminded herself sternly, wasn’t good. Baking lasted. Men didn’t. “Stick to what you’re good at,” her mother had always said. “It’s little enough.”

Arlene felt her smile slip. She was making too much of one date with the man. Getting her hopes up was always a mistake.

She’d learned that the hard way, she thought, remembering high school dates that never showed while she waited by the window and her mother berated her for opening herself up to that kind of humiliation.

By the time Arlene reached the kitchen, she was no longer smiling. She yelled down the hall for Bo to turn down the music. He didn’t. She started to tell Charlotte to go down the hall and tell him when she noticed her daughter wasn’t lying on the couch, where she usually was this time of the morning. Nor was the television on or the kitchen counter a mess from where Charlotte had made herself a snack before breakfast.

More puzzled than worried, Arlene walked down the hall to her daughter’s bedroom and pushed open the door. The bed was just as it had been when Arlene made it the previous morning.

Charlotte hadn’t come home last night.

Stepping across the hall, she opened her son’s bedroom door. The room was bedlam—just the way he apparently liked it. He’d barred her from cleaning it, which she should have been grateful for. Instead the room was an embarrassment, a reflection on her.

“What if someone comes by and sees this mess?” she’d demanded time after time.

“No one comes by,” he’d said.

“Well, if anyone did, they’d think I was a terrible mother.”

Bo had laughed at that.

“Have you seen your sister?” she mouthed now over the horrible music blasting from his stereo.

He was sprawled on his bed, frowning at her and motioning for her to go away and close the door.

She reached over and grabbed the cord on the stereo and pulled hard. The music stopped, filling the room with an abrupt deafening silence.

“What?” he demanded.

“Your sister. She didn’t come home last night.”

“So?”

“She’s eight months pregnant.”

“I noticed. But I’m not my sister’s keeper.” He reached to plug the stereo back in, but she still held the cord and jerked it back out of his grasp.

“I want you to clean your room.”

He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“I’m serious, Bo.”

He mugged a face at her.

“I also want you to get a job.”

He let out a surprised laugh. “I have a job. I help you with your Internet dating service.”

“No, you don’t.” She tossed him the end of the cord and closed the door behind her, telling herself she shouldn’t be worried about Charlotte.

Actually, this was just like her daughter. Charlotte had been cranky yesterday and late for her doctor’s appointment. Arlene had tried to talk to her again about putting the baby up for adoption. Charlotte hadn’t come home just to punish her.

Arlene told herself she wasn’t going to rise to Charlotte’s bait. Not this time. But she worried about the baby. That poor, innocent baby was going to need a mother—and soon.

The phone rang. “Hello.” She just assumed it would be Charlotte making ultimatums before she came home.

“Arlene?”

Just the sound of Hank Monroe’s deep voice buoyed her spirits instantly. “Hank,” she said a little breathlessly.

“Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” she said too cheerfully, hoping he didn’t hear the slight catch in her throat.

“Arlene, you can be honest with me. What’s wrong?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was going to find out sooner or later anyway. Wouldn’t it be better if it came from her? “It’s my daughter. My youngest daughter. She’s pregnant. Not married. And she didn’t come home last night.”

“Maybe she’s with her boyfriend.”

“I don’t think there is a boyfriend. At least not one who’s free.”

“I see,” he said. “How about her friends? Have you tried them?”

“She doesn’t have a lot in common with her old friends anymore.” Arlene felt her throat close and fought back the tears. Most of the time she could stand what her life had become. But revealing the truth to Hank made it more real, more sad and tragic.

“I was just getting ready to call the doctor’s office and see if anything unusual happened during her visit yesterday.”

“All right. Let me know what you find out.”

She promised she would and called the doctor’s office, only to get a recording. It was too early. She’d have to wait. And the one thing she really wasn’t good at was waiting. Grabbing her purse, she headed for the door.

THE MOMENT SHE walked into the sheriff’s office Arlene knew it was a mistake.

“Arlene,” Sheriff Carter Jackson said as he got to his feet. He didn’t look happy to see her. But then, who could blame him given the other times she’d come in raging in defense of her children over whatever trouble they’d gotten into?

“It’s Charlotte,” she said, hating that her voice broke. She always tried so hard to be strong, believing a woman alone had to be strong or the world would crush her in an instant. “She’s missing.”

“Missing,” he repeated, then motioned to the chair opposite his desk as he dropped back into his. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Arlene took the chair but teetered on the edge, too nervous to relax. She hated being forced to come here.

“Yesterday afternoon, when she left for her doctor’s appointment. She didn’t come home last night and she never made her doctor’s appointment. I just stopped by the doctor’s house. No one has seen her.”

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his jaw as he studied her. “Is it possible she’s run away?”

“No. I mean, I can’t imagine. She’s eight months pregnant.”

He nodded. “Maybe she left with the baby’s father.”

Arlene felt sick. “I think he’s married.”

The sheriff picked up his pen and tapped it on a stack of papers on his desk. “You realize I can’t file a missing-persons report until she’s been gone for at least twenty-four hours, but I’ll tell the deputies to keep an eye out for her.”

“I’m afraid something has happened to her.”

“I can understand your concern.”

“Can you?” She hated the edge to her voice.

“I’ll admit, Arlene, that I can’t help but be skeptical. It isn’t like we haven’t been here before.”

She rose. “Well, thank you for your time,” she said, turning and stiffening her back, head high, as she headed for the door.

“Keep me apprised of the situation,” he called after her. “I’m sure you’ll hear from her soon.”

As she left, fighting tears of frustration, she passed Eve Bailey coming in. She hadn’t seen her neighbor for a while and was surprised how happy Eve looked, then recalled that Eve and the sheriff were to be married in the coming week.

Arlene nodded at Eve as they passed, not trusting her voice. She’d always wanted that for her daughters. A handsome, eligible man. A wedding where everyone in the county came to celebrate. A white wedding dress and the mother-daughter talk.

She’d wanted that desperately because she’d never had it.

She fought the tears all the way to her pickup. What had she done wrong? At the rate things were going, she’d never have to worry about buying a mother-of-the-bride dress or fussing over last-minute details with the caterer.

EVE BAILEY WASN’T getting cold feet. She was marrying the man she loved—had loved since she was a girl.

But now that the Fourth of July was coming up so quickly, she was anxious. She wanted this wedding to be perfect.

Her mother, with her new husband Loren Jackson, would be flying in. Her father, Chester Bailey, would be giving her away. He would be attending the wedding with his girlfriend Susie.

How did other families handle all this extended-family stuff? She just hoped there wouldn’t be any trouble. But that wasn’t what bothered her. Here she was with all this extra family and she wasn’t related by blood to any of them except for her twin, Bridger Duvall.

She had hoped by the time she married Sheriff Carter Jackson that she would know who she was. For years she’d yearned for someone who looked like her. Bridger had her coloring, but it wasn’t like being able to look at your mother and father and see yourself.

She had tried to accept that she would never have that because of the circumstances of her adoption. But still she wondered what her birth mother was like. Was she even still alive? On her wedding day, Eve would have loved to have her “other” family in the pews as well as her adopted family.

Unfortunately she and her adoptive mother had never been close. Eve blamed herself. She knew she had been a difficult child. From early on she’d known Lila wasn’t her “real” mother even though Lila had sworn differently. It didn’t seem to matter that Lila loved her and considered Eve her own.

Eve hoped to make up for that somehow. But looking for her birth mother had only made the chasm between her and Lila grow wider—and brought light to the illegal adoption ring.

“Is everything all right?” Carter asked as she stopped in his office doorway, hands on her slim hips, dressed in Western attire with a straw hat pulled low over her long dark hair.

“Yes. No. I think so.”

He laughed and came around his desk to take her in his arms. “Just a little longer,” he whispered against her ear.

She nodded, sick of thinking about nothing but the wedding. “Was that Arlene Evans I just saw leaving? She looked different somehow.”

“Charlotte seems to be missing,” he said as he motioned Eve into a chair and took one opposite her.

“The girl is about to have a baby any day, isn’t she?”

He nodded.

“Poor Arlene, those kids have put her through hell,” Eve said. “What if our kids turn out like that?”

“I’ll lock them up down here in the cells until they straighten up.”

Her eyes widened even though she knew he was kidding. “Seriously, there could be some bad gene in Bridger’s and my blood that we don’t know about.”

Carter’s face softened. “There is no bad gene. Look how well both of you turned out.”

“Right.” But Eve couldn’t help but worry. Soon they would be having children. The sooner, the better, since she was now thirty-four. At least their kids would be able to look at their parents and know who they were, even though their mother still probably wouldn’t have a clue who she was or where she’d come from.

“I’m okay,” she said, seeing the worry in her soon-to-be husband’s face. “Really. It’s just the wedding and everything.” She reached across to squeeze his hand.

She had one constant she could hang on to: she knew she belonged with Sheriff Carter Jackson. Now, if they could just get through the wedding without anything like sheriff business keeping him from the altar…

AS ARLENE CLIMBED behind the wheel of her pickup, she didn’t blame Sheriff Carter Jackson for being skeptical about Charlotte’s disappearing act. Arlene herself couldn’t help but believe he might be right.

She blamed herself. She’d failed miserably as a mother. It was the only explanation for the way her three had turned out. And even now she had no idea what she’d done wrong. Floyd had always been too busy farming—until recently, when he’d bailed out completely.

Drying her tears, she pulled herself together as she drove home. She had to believe that Charlotte would come back and that that innocent little baby was all right.

“Arlene?” Hank’s voice sounded like heaven when he answered the phone. “Any news on your daughter?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned her back to Bo, who was sprawled on the couch, watching television. “She never went to her doctor’s appointment yesterday, and I still haven’t heard a word. I’m worried sick.”

“I’ll come right out and help you look for her.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Bo. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Arlene, I want to help.”

She’d hoped to put this off. She took the phone outside to the porch and closed the door firmly behind her.

“The truth is, I haven’t been honest with you about my family.” The tears that burned her eyes surprised her. She hadn’t cried for years, and now all of a sudden she was a waterworks. “I’ve made a horrible mess of my life. Of my children’s lives. I have one daughter in a mental institution, another one pregnant and a son—” Her voice broke and she couldn’t continue.

“I haven’t told you about my family either,” Hank said. “I’ve made my share of mistakes, as well, Arlene. You know I told you I was widowed? It’s true. My wife and I never divorced but we hadn’t lived together for years. I’m walking out the door now. I can be at your place in fifteen minutes. Just give me the directions. We’ll find your daughter.”

Arlene cupped her hand over her mouth for a moment to keep from sobbing, her relief overwhelming her. She’d been handling things on her own for so many years, just the thought of someone wanting to help her…When there were problems, Floyd had always left it up to her to take care of them, blaming her no matter what the trouble was or the outcome.

“You need to drive south toward Old Town,” she finally managed to say.

“I’ll be right there.”

Chapter Three

Hank drove down the narrow dirt road, flying over the small rises, dropping down to creek bottoms and cattle crossings.

He hadn’t seen another vehicle since he’d left Whitehorse. Nor was there a house or fence in sight. The land rolled in waves of green grasses toward the badlands of the Missouri Breaks.

Of all the places he’d been in the world, none seemed as desolate as this right now. He’d heard this called one of the loneliest places in America. One hundred and fifty miles of country with only a few roads, none of them passable when wet, scores of townships without a town or even a house and, ripping a deep, twisted canyon through it all was the Missouri River, where the badlands rose up from the canyon floor in pre-glacial cliffs.

This country of purple-shadowed coulees filled with stands of scrub pine, spruce and cedar was what had brought him here. The river bottom was cloaked in thick stands of cottonwoods that reached for the big sky, and the prairie let him see for miles.

Montana was said to have a population density of six people per square mile. Out here that number dropped to zero-point-three people.

He had yearned for isolation. For open spaces. For freedom. Here in this part of Montana, one of the last lawless places, he had found it.

Had he blinked, he would have missed Old Town Whitehorse. A weathered sign was barely visible in the tall weeds beside the road. Whitehorse. Someone had added Old Town above the faded lettering in black paint.

Hank slowed as he passed a one-room schoolhouse, the Whitehorse Community Center, a few more old houses, the cemetery with its wrought-iron arch.

The railroad might have lured the first residents to the north, but a lot of Whitehorse apparently had remained right here.

He turned down the road as Arlene had instructed. Not far along he spotted the farmhouse. It was big and white with a wide screened-in porch. Behind it, a faded red barn with a horse weather vane that moved restlessly in the breeze.

He pulled in, parked. As he got out of his SUV, he saw Arlene waiting for him, on the front porch. Her face lit at the sight of him and he felt that pull inside him, his heart beating a little faster, the sky a little bluer.

What was it about this woman? She was far from beautiful. But there was a strength to her. An inner beauty that seemed to radiate from her face when he looked at her.

His grandmother would have said she came from good stock. A woman who’d never been pampered. A woman who he suspected had never been loved—at least not enough. And that, he thought, explained the vulnerability that she tried so hard to hide.

After the phone call from Cameron last night, he knew he shouldn’t be here. He didn’t want to bring his old life anywhere near this woman, who he suspected had enough problems without him becoming one of them.

But as he walked toward her and saw the determined set of her shoulders under the oversize shirt, the way she stood in boots and slim jeans that emphasized her height, there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could turn his back on her.

He’d help her find her daughter, then he’d make some excuse not to see her anymore until he knew what the hell Cameron wanted. A breach in security? That had nothing to do with him any longer. Even if his former enemies had learned who he was, he’d suspected long before he’d quit that all the bad guys knew the other bad guys. That’s why he hadn’t returned the call. He didn’t want any more to do with that spook stuff.

“I shouldn’t have called you,” Arlene said, coming down the porch steps toward him. “I’m sure this is just Charlotte being Charlotte. I don’t want you bothered with it. She likes to worry me.”

He smiled ruefully, thinking of his own daughter. “Kids do that.”

“Really, I shouldn’t have involved you in this,” she said nervously.

“Arlene, I want to help. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She made a swipe at them. “I made some lemonade.”

He didn’t need any lemonade, but he had a feeling she needed to keep busy. “Lemonade sounds wonderful.”

She glanced toward the house. “My son is home.”

“I look forward to meeting him.”

Her skeptical glance almost made him laugh as she angled back up onto the porch to open the front door.

He followed her inside. The place was immaculate right down to the plastic covers on the couch and chairs. The floors looked freshly scrubbed, and there wasn’t even a dust mote in the air.

The only thing out of place was the young man sprawled on the couch watching TV. He frowned when he saw Hank but didn’t move.

“Bo, this is Hank Monroe,” she said, biting off each word as she gave a jerk of her head that indicated her son should stand.

Bo ignored the gesture. “So you’re dating my mom?” he asked, his tone incredulous as he gave Hank the once-over.

“Bo,” Arlene snapped as she stepped into the living room to shut off the television.

Hank said nothing, his gaze locking with Bo’s. Bo looked away first, and Hank followed Arlene into the kitchen. He heard the television come back on, but Bo turned it down, obviously not wanting to miss what was going on in the adjacent room.

“I did teach him manners. He just refuses to use them. I’m sorry,” Arlene said as she poured Hank a glass of lemonade from a sweating glass pitcher.

“Don’t be.” He took a sip. The lemonade was wonderful and he said as much.

She beamed and offered him some ginger-snaps she’d made. “They take first place at the fair every year.” She glanced toward the living room, clearly anxious.

Hank motioned to the chair across from him. “Why don’t you tell me when you last saw Charlotte.”

Arlene pulled out the chair, brushing at nonexistent crumbs on the seat, and sat down. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I saw her just before she left for her doctor’s appointment. Her appointment was for three, but as usual she was running late. I was worried about her driving too fast on the road into Whitehorse. I offered to take her, but…” Her voice broke.

“You said you talked to the doctor and she didn’t make her appointment?”

Arlene nodded.

“Had she missed an appointment before?” he asked, pretty sure he already knew the answer.

“Yes, but she was getting so close to her due date I can’t imagine her just blowing this one off.”

“Okay. There is only one road into Whitehorse, right?”

Arlene’s eyes widened as she shifted her gaze to the living room. Bo was caught watching them and instantly got a don’t-look-at-me expression.

“Charlotte wouldn’t have taken the shortcut would she?” Arlene asked her son.

“Why do you keep asking me what Charlotte would do?” Bo demanded, raising his voice. “I have no idea. It’s not like we ever talk. You should know that.”

“I should know a lot of things,” Arlene snapped.

Bo shot to his feet, angrily snapped off the television and stalked down the hallway. A door slammed, and a few moments later Hank heard a stereo come on.