slightly crumpled from being balled in his fist—back into her hand and went to his truck, jerking open the door.
“Reggie?” he heard her mutter behind him. Then she called after him: “Perhaps you should discuss it with your wife Jenny.”
His wife? He shook his head. “Good girl, Jennie,” he said, patting the mutt before pushing her over to her side of the pickup seat. “What would make the woman think I was married to a mongrel dog?” He had a feeling he should be even more insulted.
Glancing back as he pulled out onto the highway, he saw that Regina Holland was standing in the middle of the road, looking as lost as when he’d found her. His irritation dissolved and he chuckled to himself as he shifted into second and put some distance between him and the red sports car.
No, he thought shaking his head, no one was going to believe this. Not that anyone would ever hear about it. He sure had no intention of ever telling a living soul now that he realized what the woman wanted. Perfect behind, his butt. He’d never live down the razzing he’d get. Never in a million years.
He topped a rise in the road and Regina Holland disappeared from his rearview mirror. Gone, if not forgotten.
All morning he’d been trying not to stew and he had a hell of a lot to stew over. Something was going on at the ranch and had been even before his mother returned. For almost all of his thirty-six years, he’d been led to believe that his mother was dead. Hell, he and his brother Cash, the only two of the McCall kids who actually remembered their mother, had been putting flowers on her grave every Sunday.
Then out of the blue, Shelby McCall shows up at the ranch and announces she’s not only alive, but that she and Asa cooked up her demise because they couldn’t live with each other and yet didn’t want the kids to have the stigma of divorce hanging over them.
J.T. had never heard such bull in his life. On top of that, he and his three brothers had always thought that their little sister Dusty was the result of an affair their father had had years ago.
Turned out, Dusty was the result of Asa and Shelby getting together to “discuss” things.
Well, now Shelby was back at the ranch, tongues were waggling in three counties, his brother Cash, the sheriff, was trying to keep them both from going to prison for fraud, Dusty wasn’t speaking to either of their parents and something was up between Shelby and Asa.
J.T. hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. But he’d seen the looks that passed between them. He had a bad feeling they had another secret that would make the first pale in comparison.
If all of that wasn’t bad enough, his brother Rourke had gotten out of prison a few months ago, come home, stirred things up good when he not only fell in love, but also cleared his name by finding the real killer who’d helped send him to prison eleven years ago.
The McCalls had always been the talk at the Longhorn Café in town. J.T. knew it was one of the reasons his brother Cash had become sheriff. He was tired of being one of the “wild” McCalls.
Of the bunch, J.T. looked like a saint. Probably because he’d had to take over the running of the ranch after Asa’s heart attack. Rourke had been in prison, Cash was sheriff and his little brother Brandon was too busy sowing his oats.
Some days, J.T. resented the hell out of the family’s reputation because everyone still painted all the McCalls with the same brush. The McCalls were the cowboys that fathers warned their daughters about. Western born and bred, they were a rough-and-tumble bunch, no doubt about that. Always fighting amongst themselves like a den of wildcats, but joining together in times of trouble.
And J.T. had a bad feeling this was a time of trouble as he drove toward Antelope Flats.
This morning a neighboring rancher had told him he’d seen something “odd” on their adjoining summer range in the Bighorn Mountains a week ago.
“It was one of your cows,” Bob Humphries said after the two of them were seated in the Sundown Ranch office, the door closed. “Something had killed it.”
Losing cattle to mountain lions, grizzlies or wolves wasn’t that uncommon. He wondered why Bob had driven all the way out to the ranch to tell him this.
Bob met his gaze. “An animal didn’t kill that cow,” he said as if he could tell what J.T. was thinking. “It had been burned.”
J.T. sucked in a breath, pulse pounding, the weight on his chest like a Mac truck.
“It reminded me of what happened about ten years ago,” Bob said, worry furrowing his brow. “But those fellows are dead, right?”
J.T. could only nod.
“I suppose it could have been lightning,” Bob said, still looking worried. “But I thought I should tell you since you’re headed up there today.”
Now as he neared town, J.T. glanced toward the Bighorns. The long range of mountains glistened against the cloudless blue sky.
He’d always loved this time of the year and looked forward to leaving the heat of the valley for the cool of the cow camp miles from a road. He liked the hard work of gathering the cattle and driving them back down to the ranch, but it was the camp’s isolation that always appealed to him the most. No phone. No electricity. Nothing but the peace and quiet of the mountains, long hours in the saddle, sacking out at night in the line shack while the men slept in wall tents. The sound of the campfire, men talking cattle, the quiet that a man could find in the darkness of night up there.
But as he looked at the mountains where he would be spending the next few days, an icy chill skittered up his spine.
He shook it off and thought instead of the woman in red who’d wanted his butt. Much better than thinking about the dead men who had haunted his dreams for the past nine years.
REGINA STOOD in the middle of the blacktop, her face as red as her outfit. Jenny was a dog! The first time she’d glanced toward the truck, all she’d caught was a glimpse of red hair in the front seat. The back window was so muddy—
She felt sick. She knew she shouldn’t have tried to do business in the middle of the highway. But the cowboy was perfect and she’d just wanted to get him before he got away.
If he looked as good in a saddle as he did bent over her flat tire, he would launch the jeans line and she could write her own ticket. She’d known she wanted a real cowboy. Not one of those Hollywood models. No, she needed the real thing, shot in his environment with panoramic views of the real west, cattle and all, behind his perfect behind.
And she’d found just the man for the job.
And she’d just let him walk away.
Not a chance, she thought as she looked after the truck. She’d never backed down from a challenge in her life. And her life had been rife with challenges, she thought. Getting this man to do the commercial was child’s play given the other obstacles in her life that she’d overcome.
She’d been too confident that he’d accept her offer, she thought as she walked back to the rental car. She fought the urge to chase him down and set him straight on a few things. His rejection stung, especially when he’d thought she was offering herself. But she’d been rejected before. Not quite so offhandedly though.
She climbed
