Wyoming Christmas Ransom

A killer has been hiding for two years.

This Christmas, he’s ready to finish what he started.

He didn’t need her to care, so why did Wyoming loner Will Cooper’s world implode when Gracie Delaney quit helping him solve his estranged wife’s murder? Despite her ties to a rival family, the beautiful coroner had been the stubborn recluse’s one link to humanity—and his last chance to clear the cloud hanging over him. But when Will and Gracie become the killer’s next target, reviving their platonic partnership is the only option. If only Gracie’s lips weren’t so tempting...

Carsons & Delaneys

NICOLE HELM grew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons and dreams of someday owning a barn.

Also by Nicole Helm

Wyoming Cowboy Justice

Wyoming Cowboy Protection

Stone Cold Texas Ranger

Stone Cold Undercover Agent

Stone Cold Christmas Ranger All

I Have

All I Am

Falling for the New Guy

Too Friendly to Date

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Wyoming Christmas Ransom

Nicole Helm

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07959-4

WYOMING CHRISTMAS RANSOM

© 2018 Nicole Helm

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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To my husband, who also almost always answers my

questions with “That wouldn’t happen,” but indulges me

when I say “But could it happen?”

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Gracie Delaney didn’t care for the nickname “Angel of Death,” but in Bent, Wyoming, it was something of the truth. If she came to a person’s door unannounced, they knew what was coming.

The fact that she was young, maybe a little girl-next-door looking, no longer fooled people. As the coroner for Bent County, Gracie’s work was death.

It wasn’t as bad as some people made it out to be. Considering her parents had died in a car crash when she’d been six, and she was the lone survivor of said crash, she’d been intimately acquainted with death her whole life.

Funny, life was a lot harder than death. Death was easy, and it was final. The cause might occasionally be a mystery, but it was a mystery she always solved.

Gracie blew out a breath as she parked her car in Will Cooper’s yard. Life, meanwhile, had a hundred mysteries she couldn’t figure out. Like why two years after she’d informed Will Cooper of his wife’s death, she still came to check in on him routinely.

She’d informed a lot of people of their loved ones’ deaths over the course of two years, and while some reactions stuck with her, maybe a few even haunted her, only Will’s reaction had ever caused her to act outside a professional capacity.

She supposed it was the fact he couldn’t accept his wife had simply skidded off the road and crashed into a tree. He insisted the detectives had missed or overlooked things. He’d become obsessed with proving foul play.

Gracie had felt sorry for him and his inability to accept the truth. So, she’d let him have access to records she shouldn’t have let him have access to. She’d shown him, over and over again, how the only thing that had killed his wife was an icy road and a tree.

Still he pushed into this theory that whoever his wife had been having an affair with had been the one to kill her.

Gracie got out of the truck and stared at the ramshackle cabin Will currently lived in. He still owned the pretty little two-story he and his wife had shared in Bent proper, but rented it out to a family with kids. He claimed it was because up here he could do his metalwork without any neighbor complaint, but Gracie figured it was something more isolating than all that.

He wasn’t a Bent native. He’d moved here after marrying Paula Carson and though he’d lived in town and been building a name for himself with his metalwork, Paula’s death had changed him. He’d isolated himself and since he had no family in Bent, no natives had been too worried about a stranger’s hermit behavior.

Except Gracie. For all intents and purposes, she was his only link to the outside world.

God, she wished she could help him.

“You’re going to,” she said to herself. “Right here. Right now.” She’d been playing into his obsession for too long, and it had to stop. No more looks at old reports. No more trips to that road to study curves and angles. She’d still be his friend, but that was it. Like a drug dealer refusing to continue to deal an addict their drug of choice.

Will was going to have to go cold turkey or solo. Her chest tightened and for the briefest second she considered retracing her steps. He’d go solo. She knew he would, and she didn’t want him to.

She wanted to fix him. To help him. And yes, maybe she was a little inappropriately hung up on the guy, but that only factored into it a little.

She shook that thought away and started for the cabin. No Christmas lights, not a hint that it was December and even rough-and-tumble Bent had brought out its Christmas decor. But not for Will. She wasn’t certain he celebrated anything anymore.

She heard the faint strains of music and bypassed the cabin door, instead walking around the cabin to the back. He had the doors open on his shed, and inside he worked on a metal project.

He’d once had a blacksmith shop down in town, something both local ranchers had used and tourists had gotten a kick out of. But he’d closed it after Paula’s death. In fact, he hadn’t worked for a year after, living off the rent from the house.

Slowly over the past year he’d gotten back into metalwork. Little artistic projects he made custom for ranches, or occasionally sold to the antique store in town.

Gracie had been hopeful it was a sign he’d give up obsessing over the mystery of Paula’s affair and death. Like so many times with him, her hopes had been dashed.

And you are done being a silly, too-hopeful girl.

She nodded to herself as she crossed the yard. He worked, mask over his face, black T-shirt clinging to his chest even with the cold air around them. He was working with some tool that shot a flame out of it in one hand, clamps in another as he heated and twisted metal. Faint lines of grime and sweat streaked across his impressive forearms and his biceps strained against the sleeves of his T-shirt.

She allowed herself a dreamy sigh, because he wouldn’t hear her over the noise of the tools. Because this was it. She was cutting ties. Well, she was cutting off the supply of information. She just had a sinking suspicion that meant he’d cut ties with her, too.

He turned off the blowtorch thing, nudging the mask up on his head to reveal his face. A few trickles of sweat dripped down his square jaw, and she didn’t know why she found that appealing.

“Hey,” he offered. “You bring those pictures?”

Gracie shook her head. “No, Will. I didn’t.”

He frowned, setting down the tools and pulling the mask completely off his face. “Then why are you here?”

Ouch. She forced herself to smile. “I always come hang out on Friday afternoons.”

“Usually with the thing I asked you for, though.”

“I’m not...” She cleared her throat. “I can’t keep bringing you stuff.”

He frowned, eyebrows drawing together as he stared at her. Not just anger, but confusion, as if it didn’t make any sense to him.

How could it not make sense? “For two years I’ve helped you try to undermine both my investigation and the police’s. I’m...” She swallowed at the nerves flapping around in her chest and throat. “I’m done,” she said, wishing it had come out more forcefully and not so wobbly.

“Done,” he said flatly.

“I’m still your frie—”

“I don’t need a friend. I never did.”

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. “Okay.” She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She couldn’t allow herself to show the hurt. It was so stupid. She’d all but forced her company on him for two years. He might be the obsessive one, but she was pathetic.

She turned, blinking back the tears that burned in her eyes as she forced her lead-like legs to move back toward her car.

“Where are you going?” he called after her.

“Home,” she said, hoping he couldn’t read that squeak in her voice. Oh, who was she kidding? He didn’t care. If it didn’t have to do with the case, he did not care. She’d been a means to an end, and she couldn’t be anymore.

“Why?”

She laughed, surprised at the way bitterness could grow just as large as sadness. “You don’t want a friend, and I can’t keep being your supplier. So.” What else was there to say?

Apparently nothing, because Will didn’t try to stop her after that. She got to her truck, didn’t bother to look back and drove away.

It was time she moved on. Not just for Will, but for herself.

* * *

WILL WATCHED GRACIE get into her truck. He had no idea what had just happened. And damn if it wasn’t at the worst possible time.

After two years of combing through everything, he’d found a secret file on Paula’s computer within an old grocery list. It didn’t name the man she’d had an affair with, but it gave some clues. Will thought maybe a few pictures of the accident might unearth a clue that was connected.

Of course, he had those pictures memorized at this point. He had everything memorized. Losing Gracie’s help didn’t really matter one way or another. Though it was nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

Nice to have someone who didn’t look at him like he was crazy, especially on days when he thought he was a little crazy. After all, what man investigated the death of his cheating wife for two years? Especially after every law enforcement agency involved had found no reason to believe foul play was involved.

But he felt it. Knew it. Maybe his marriage had been a mess, but that didn’t mean he could just let it go. Someone had murdered her, he was sure of it. They had to be brought to justice.

Justice would bring him peace. He was sure of that, too.

Regardless of whether or not it was crazy, this was the man he was. Had been for two years, so it didn’t make sense Gracie was quitting out of the blue.

Will cleaned up his tools, frowning at the custom order he was making. It wasn’t turning out how he would have liked. He was going to have to start over, but right now wasn’t the time. He had to work through this thing with Gracie first or his concentration would be shot.

Something had to have happened. Maybe a friend or family member had warned her off him? Gracie was part of the Delaneys, all law enforcement and politicians and upstanding citizens.

Paula, who’d grown up in the Carson clan, had always said that—upstanding citizens—with such disdain because Carsons and Delaneys didn’t seem to have much between them besides disdain and bitterness.

Will hadn’t much cared one way or another about the silly feud so many Bent citizens held such stock in. Land disputes and romantic tragedies that happened over a century ago didn’t really interest him, but he’d sided with the Carsons if asked out of loyalty to Paula.

But Paula was dead, and he wasn’t building any monuments in her honor. Their marriage and relationship had gone sour before her untimely death.

He hated to think that was what drove him—the tangle of screwed-up emotions that came with losing someone you’d once loved and then had grown to hate.

He shook his head. It wasn’t that. It was that he knew something was wrong. For starters, Paula had been on the road to his cabin, a place she never went to even when their marriage hadn’t basically been over. She hadn’t had her purse, and she hadn’t been wearing shoes. Which was the opposite of the nearly anal woman he’d been married to for five years.

Now she’d been gone two, and whoever her lover had been was a mystery no one seemed to care to solve.

Except him. Occasionally Gracie suggested it was some warped sense of pride, needing to know the man his wife had chosen over him, more than it was his concern over her death being wrongful.

Wouldn’t that make this easier?

He just knew Paula too well for her wreck to make sense, and he couldn’t live with himself thinking there might be a murderer out there.

It was likely more emotionally complicated than that, but he chose to focus on the case, on the facts, over those messy emotions that plagued him from where he’d shoved them deep down.

He frowned over at where Gracie’s truck had been parked, trying to go through the whole interaction. He’d been a little curt with her, but she knew how he could get when a project wasn’t going the way he wanted.

The truth was, Gracie was about the only human contact he had on a regular basis these days, and he’d gotten to taking for granted that it would always continue.

She had to be bluffing. She’d be back tomorrow morning with coffee, an apology and those pictures.

He was sure of it. Certain.

Except the next morning came and went, and so did the next, and by the time an entire week had passed without one peep from Gracie, Will was downright pissed. Where did she get off just cutting him off like that? Abandoning him just like...

He grimaced at that thought as he studied the keys hanging from the hook in his kitchen. He needed food and supplies. Usually Gracie brought him everything he needed so he had to go into town only once a month.

Or less.

Truth be told, everything in his life had narrowed, incrementally, over the past two years. Without Gracie to take his mind off it, this past week had been a glaring reminder.

He didn’t like to leave his little mountain. He didn’t like to drive. He didn’t like to face Bent with its people who knew him and his story. Poor widower. The man who couldn’t let the past go.

He didn’t trust that world out there, but if he didn’t get over it, he was going to starve. He grabbed the keys and started for his door.

But about halfway through he turned around and headed for his—well, Paula’s—computer. He could stand to go over the secret file one more time.

He pulled up the document he’d found after meticulously going through every file in her computer, no matter how innocuous the title. This particular file was listed as Grocery List 5/16.

The first page was even a list of groceries. He’d bypassed it he didn’t know how many times over the years because it was clearly a grocery list even after a few scrolls. Then he’d decided to not just skim through every file, but to read through every word in case some clue was hidden in the midst of some article about tax law or a random to-do list.

He hadn’t found it in any of her files from her job as a CPA, but he had found something in this grocery list. He’d noticed just last week that the list repeated itself after ten vegetables. Which was weird. Why would a grocery list need to repeat itself?

So he’d scrolled. For ten pages. Just the same ten vegetables repeated, and then there was what he’d been looking for.

They appeared to be emails with the to/from stripped out of them, but Paula had kept the dates and the subject lines. Love letters. Well, more like sex letters if Will was honest with himself.

It had been hard to read them, knowing his wife had received them while they were still trying to work things out. Sickening really, but he’d needed a clue.

He still needed a clue. So he read them again, sick to his stomach and angry all over again. But he did it. Focusing on every detail, every word choice, every mention of meeting.

He jotted down the referenced meetings this time, then cross-referenced with the computer calendar based on the dates of the email.

And that was when he found his pattern.

Chapter Two

Gracie plastered a smile on her face as the party around her was hitting full swing.

Usually a Delaney wouldn’t be caught dead in Rightful Claim, a Carson bar, but the whole town had made an exception to the normal way of town feud bitterness with the engagement party of Gracie’s cousin Laurel to the bar’s proprietor, Grady Carson.

Gracie was happy for Laurel, probably happier than most of the other Delaneys, who thought the Carsons were a vortex of evil, but the happy couldn’t smother her self-absorbed worry over Will.

She hated that she was worried about him when he clearly saw her as nothing, but she didn’t think he’d come off his little mountain, and he had to be running low on food.

It’s none of your business if he starves to death. That’s his own problem.

She wanted to believe that, but whether he cared back or not, Gracie did care about Will. Even if it was one-sided. Even if it was stupid or pathetic, she cared about him.

Gracie made a beeline for the bar. She usually didn’t drink, didn’t like the way it made her feel a little dizzy, a little out of control, but maybe it would shush some of this endless circling her brain was doing.

It’s not your brain. It’s your heart.

Yeah, she really needed to shut that voice up, but before she made it to the crowded bar, she glanced at the door as it opened.

Will stepped in. Underneath a cheerful swath of Christmas lights that looked out of place in this rough-and-tumble, Wild West–themed bar, but also somehow perfect.

For a second she figured she was seeing things she wanted to see, and berated herself for being an idiot. But Will was striding through the room, ignoring any looks or comments, and heading straight for her.

She could only stare for a moment. Will rarely came into town, and when he did it was only to the general store, the gas station or the post office. And he never went anywhere when there might be a crowd.

“Will, what are you—”

“I found something out,” he said resolutely. “I need your help.”

Gracie glanced around the bar. More than a few pairs of eyes were on them. She knew what they all thought, too. Will Cooper was crazy, and silly Gracie Delaney placated him because she didn’t know any better.

Well, she’d figured out how to know better, but she didn’t need to prove it to the group.

“Let’s talk outside,” she whispered, not wanting to draw more attention. She hesitated a second, then brazened through. She linked her arm with his as if they were friends, or more, and headed for the door.

Will came easily, and if she wasn’t totally imagining things, a tremor went through his arm, maybe his whole body.

She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, or be drawn into whatever help he needed, but surely it was important if Will was facing Bent and Rightful Claim and a party.

He pulled his arm from hers after they pushed through the swinging front doors of Rightful Claim. He took a few steps down the boardwalk, raking his hands through his hair, which needed a trim. Even in the warm glow of the town’s twinkle-light-wrapped streetlights, he somehow looked a little wilder, a little more desperate than the last time she’d seen him.

Or that’s what you want, idiot.

“I didn’t know Rightful Claim got so busy,” he offered, and though the sounds of the party drifted out into the cold night, it was mostly quiet out here.

“It’s a party. Laurel and Grady’s engagement party.”

“Oh. Guess that explains your truck being here.” He blew out a breath, looking away from the bar and out at the night sky, which was a sparkling, vast thing. “It’s December,” he said, as if he hadn’t known.

“Yes. Hence the Christmas decorations.”

He looked around. Tinsel-lined candy canes Gracie suspected had been around since before she was born hung off the streetlight poles just as they had when she’d been a kid.