The Cowgirl in Question Part 3

He was making her angry, but she hated to show it, hated to let him know that he was getting to her. She also didn't like the fact that he thought he knew her. In fact, was wise to some of her methods when it came to men.

"You're afraid of Rourke," she challenged, wondering if she'd hit a nerve or if it was just simple jealousy. "Is there something you wanted to tell me about that night?"

Easton shot her a pitying look. "I had no reason to kill Forrest Danvers. Can you say the same thing?"

"I couldn't kill anyone," she cried, but right now the thought of shooting Easton did have its appeal.

"Take my advice," he said, going back to the work at his desk. "Stay away from Rourke. It isn't going to make me jealous, but it might make you regret it."

"That almost sounds like a threat."

"I'm trying to save you from yourself, Blaze," he said with a bored sigh. "But I'm not sure anyone can do that."

Blaze turned her back on him again, wondering what she saw in the man. Little, other than what he could afford her, she told herself. And he'd always wanted her. No matter what he said, he'd been jealous of her and Rourke.

She turned her attention back to the Longhorn Cafe and her cousin Ca.s.sidy.

Easton was right about one thing. Blaze had had danced with Forrest to make Rourke jealous-and to see what he would do. She hadn't expected Forrest to fight him. Nor had she expected Rourke to kill Forrest up at Wild Horse Gulch. At least that was her story and she was sticking to it. danced with Forrest to make Rourke jealous-and to see what he would do. She hadn't expected Forrest to fight him. Nor had she expected Rourke to kill Forrest up at Wild Horse Gulch. At least that was her story and she was sticking to it.

But what if Rourke wasn't that hotheaded bad boy McCall anymore? She hated to imagine. No, Rourke would come back h.e.l.l-bent over the past eleven years he'd spent in prison, and he'd make a show of looking for the "real" killer, then he'd go berserk one night and end up back in prison. He wouldn't be here long enough to find out much of anything about the night Forrest was murdered.

She realized she could make sure of that-once she and Rourke took up where they'd left off. She would keep him so busy he would have little time to be digging into the past. And that way she'd know exactly what Rourke was finding out about the night Forrest was murdered. She'd make sure he didn't find out anything she didn't want him to. He wasn't messing up her future. She'd see to that.

She caught a glimpse of a pickup she remembered only too well from years ago. Her pulse jumped. Rourke McCall. That pickup brought a rush of memories as Rourke drove slowly up Main Street.

As the pickup pa.s.sed her window, all she saw of him was his silhouette, cowboy hat, broad shoulders, big hands on the wheel, but there was no doubt about it. Rourke was back in town.

She waved excitedly, but unfortunately he was looking in the direction of the Longhorn Cafe-and Ca.s.sidy. Blaze let out an unladylike curse.

Wasn't this what she wanted? Rourke back? Rourke set on getting even with Ca.s.sidy? But just the thought of Rourke interested in Ca.s.sidy for any reason set her teeth on edge.

"What?" Easton said impatiently behind her.

She turned to smile at him. "Rourke. He's back."

Easton couldn't have looked more upset and she realized she had him right where she wanted him. Soon she'd have Rourke where she wanted him, too.

If Easton didn't ask her to marry him by the end of the week then her name wasn't Blaze Logan.

But as she looked at her future fiance, she had a bad feeling he was hiding something from her.

HOLT VANHORN PICKED UP one of his father's prized bronzes from the den end table and hefted it in his hand. The bronze was of a cowboy in chaps and duster, a bridle in his hand as if headed out to saddle his horse, his hat low on his head, bent a little as if against a stiff, cold breeze. Holt had little appreciation for art. What interested him was the fact that the bronze was heavy enough to kill someone.

"Holt?"

He turned, surprised he hadn't heard his father come into the den. Mason VanHorn was frowning and Holt realized his father's gaze wasn't on him but on the bronze Holt had clutched in his fist.

He put down the work of art carefully, avoiding his father's eye. For his thirty years of life he'd been afraid Mason could read his thoughts. It would definitely explain the animosity between them if that were the case.

"So what brings you out to the ranch, Junior?" Mason asked as he walked around his ma.s.sive oak desk to sit down.

Holt heard the bitterness behind the question. Mason had never gotten over the fact that his only son hated ranching and if he could get his hands on the land, would subdivide it in a heartbeat and move to someplace tropical.

Holt had moved off the ranch as soon as he could, living on the too-small trust fund his grandfather had left him and what few crumbs Mason had thrown him over the years.

His father didn't offer him a chair. Or a drink. Holt could have used the drink at least.

Mason VanHorn was a big man, broad-shouldered with black hair streaked with gray, heavy gray brows over ebony eyes that could pierce through you faster and more painfully than a steel drill bit.

Holt looked nothing like his father, something that he knew Mason regretted deeply. Instead, Holt had taken after his mother, a small, frail blond woman with diluted green eyes and a predilection for alcohol. His mother had been lucky, though. The alcohol had killed her by fifty. At only thirty, Holt didn't see an end in sight. At least not as long as his father kept the purse strings gripped in his iron fist.

"I need to go away for a while." Holt's voice broke and he saw his father's startled expression.

"Away where?" Mason asked.

Holt shook his head. The ma.s.sive desk was between them. He had the stronger urge to shove it aside and go for his father's throat but, he thought wryly, with his luck, the desk wouldn't budge and he'd crash into it and break something. He was good at breaking things. Clumsy as an oaf, he'd once heard his father tell his mother after he had managed to break another bone. If he hadn't been aware of his father's disappointment in his only son, he certainly was then.

"I..." The words seemed to catch in his throat as if barbed, and he hated his father even more for making him feel like a boy again in his presence. "I just need to get out of town for a while."

"Where?"

Anywhere. As far away as he could get from Antelope Flats, Montana. "I'd like to go down to Texas. Maybe go back to school." He was grabbing at anything he could think of.

"What is this really about?" Mason VanHorn demanded.

His father always saw through him. Mason VanHorn held the purse strings, so he also had a stranglehold on Holt's life.

"Please just give me enough money to-"

"Is this about Rourke getting out of prison today?" Mason demanded.

Holt heard the disgust in his father's voice, saw the worry in his face. No, not worry, the affirmation of what his father had suspected for years.

"All I need is enough money to tide me over-"

"VanHorns don't run like cowards," his father said through clenched teeth.

"Right." Holt saw then that his father would freeze in h.e.l.l before he'd help him get away from here. "Never mind. I should have known you wouldn't help me."

He turned too quickly, b.u.mping into the end table. The table overturned. The bronze cowboy hit the tile floor with a crash and a curse from his father.

Holt didn't stop to pick up the bronze or the table. He headed for the door, wondering how far he could go on thirty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents.

"If you run, everyone will know you have something to hide," Mason VanHorn yelled after him.

Chapter Three.

Ca.s.sidy had never run from anything in her life. But as she stood in the kitchen of the Longhorn Cafe smelling the freshly baked rolls that had just come out of the oven, every instinct told her to take off. Now.

Rourke was back. She could feel it. The rest of the town seemed to have given up on him. The cafe had cleared out as the day dragged on and he hadn't shown. Ellie was taking care of what few customers were left. Ca.s.sidy had gone into the kitchen to help Arthur, her cook, who was working on the nightly dinner special.

Trying to keep to her usual routine, Ca.s.sidy made the dinner rolls for that evening. She liked cooking and baking. Especially making bread. She could work out even the worst mood kneading dough.

But it didn't work today. Nothing worked. And she knew she had to get out of here. Out of the cafe. Maybe out of town. The state. The country. She couldn't face Rourke. Not today. Maybe not ever.

"I'm going to take off for a while," she told Ellie, who was sitting in an empty booth reading a magazine, waiting for Kit, the night-s.h.i.+ft waitress to come in.

"You all right?" Ellie asked.

"Yeah."

"He's not coming back to town. h.e.l.l, if I were him I'd head for Mexico or maybe South America," Ellie said. "I've seen pictures of it down there. It's nice." Ellie was always dreaming of going somewhere else. But at almost fifty, it wasn't looking like she would ever go any farther than a couple of hours away to Billings or the thirty-mile drive into Wyoming to Sheridan.

"Everything under control?" Ca.s.sidy asked Arthur as she stuck her head in the kitchen.

The cook was forty-something, tall, pencil thin, with a shock of dark hair beneath his chef's hat. He gave her a look filled with sympathy. It was the last thing she needed right now. "Take care of yourself, sweetie."

She smiled and nodded, taking off her ap.r.o.n and hanging it up before heading into the small office at the back. Retrieving her purse, she glanced around to make sure there was nothing she would need.

How could she know what she would need? She had no idea where she was going. Or if she was even going any farther than home. She was new to running and it already didn't suit her.

She turned out the office light and started down the hall toward the back door.

"Not planning to skip town, are you?" asked a strident voice behind her.

Ca.s.sidy froze.

"Not Ca.s.sidy Miller," the voice mocked.

She turned slowly, a curse on her lips as she met her cousin's blue-eyed gaze. "I'm going home for the day, not that it's any of your business."

Blaze Logan nodded, smiling as if she'd always been able to see through her.

Ca.s.sidy feared that might be true.

"No one would blame you if you turned tail and ran," Blaze said in her comforting, I'm-your-friend tone.

Ca.s.sidy had fallen for that act when she was young and stupidly confided in her cousin. She was no longer that young or naive. Normally she avoided Blaze when at all possible and Blaze hadn't gone out of her way, so their paths had crossed little in the past eleven years. Ca.s.sidy should have known that Rourke's return would change all of that.

"What would I have to run from?" Ca.s.sidy asked as she stepped toward her cousin.

Blaze laughed, a bray of a sound. "Rourke McCall."

"I have nothing to fear from Rourke." If only that were true.

Blaze eyed her. "I just saw his pickup go by."

Ca.s.sidy suppressed a shudder, hoping she hid her emotions as well. "Go away, Blaze. This doesn't have anything to do with you. Or does it? I've always suspected you knew something about Forrest's murder, something you don't want Rourke to know."

Blaze paled under the thick layer of makeup she wore. "That's ridiculous."

"Is it?" Ca.s.sidy raised a brow. "I wonder if Rourke will think so?"

"Don't you dare try to incriminate me," Blaze snapped. "You start telling Rourke a bunch of lies-"

"Oh, I'm sure Rourke has had a lot of time to think about the past. He's probably figured out by now why you danced with Forrest that night."

"How could I know that Rourke would try to cut in, let alone that Forrest would pick a fight with him?"

"Oh, Blaze, I think you knew exactly what you were doing. Everyone had heard the rumors going around about you and Forrest. And all the time Rourke thought he was the only one you were seeing. It certainly gave Rourke a motive for murder, didn't it?"

All the color had gone out of Blaze's face. "You started those rumors," she said on a whisper. "You would have done anything to break up Rourke and me."

Ca.s.sidy let out a laugh that was almost a sob. "It was a junior-high crush, Blaze. I much prefer his brother Cash." Cash had asked her out a few times. She'd declined.

But Ca.s.sidy knew Blaze was interested in Cash.

"Cash?" Blaze demanded in a choked cry. "You and Cash?" Blaze demanded in a choked cry. "You and Cash?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Ca.s.sidy said. "Are you interested in him, too?" She hated the cattiness in her voice. "You change McCall brothers the way you change shoes. It's hard to keep track. Whatever happened to J.T. McCall? Didn't work out?" J.T., the eldest and the one in charge of the ranch, hadn't given Blaze the time of day. Ca.s.sidy had seen him cross the street to avoid Blaze. Ca.s.sidy knew that feeling only too well.

Blaze glared, nostrils flared. "Be careful little cousin. If Rourke doesn't kill you just like he did Forrest, someone else might." With that, she spun around and stalked out of the cafe.

Ca.s.sidy stared after her, feeling weak and sick. Blaze always brought out the worst in her. But it was Blaze's last words that struck to her core. What would an embittered Rourke McCall do? Would he make good on his threat to see her pay for her part in sending him to prison?

She wondered now why she hadn't run the moment she heard Rourke was getting out of prison. Her stupid pride. She didn't want the town to think she was a coward. Or that she had anything to hide.

Both were a lie.

She took a breath, then went back into her office, turned on the light, put her purse away. She had work to do. As much as she wished otherwise, she wasn't cut out to be a runner.

ROURKE DROVE all the way through Antelope Flats, surprised at how little it had changed. There were a few new houses on the edge of town, a half-dozen different businesses, but basically in eleven years the town had changed little.

Antelope Flats was like so many other small Montana towns. There were more bars than banks, more churches than places to eat. There was no mall. If you wanted to buy clothes, you either went to the department store on Main that had had the same sign out front since the 1950s or you went to the Western store where you could also buy a rope or a hat or a pair of boots.