He didn’t have the heart to tell her how wrong she was. “What are you doing in town? I thought you were helping with branding?”
“Shelby sent me in to check on you and tell you that you’re expected at dinner tomorrow night.” Dusty rolled her eyes. “Who knows what big bombshell she’s planning to drop now.”
Shelby was their mother, but it was complicated as all hell. Just a few months ago, out of the blue, Shelby Ward McCall had shown up at the ranch. What made that unusual was that Cash thought his mother had died when he was just over a year old.
Shelby had not only announced that she was alive, but that she and their father Asa had cooked up her demise. It seemed they had thought it would be better for Cash and his three brothers to believe she had died rather than just left. Shelby and Asa couldn’t live with each other and didn’t want the children to have the stigma of divorce hanging over them.
At least that was their story and they were sticking to it. But to make matters worse, he and his brothers had always thought that their little sister Dusty was the result of an affair their father had nineteen years ago. Asa had brought Dusty home when she was a baby with some cock-and-bull story about her being orphaned. He’d legally adopted her and Cash guessed he thought his sons didn’t notice how much she looked like them.
Turned out that Dusty was the result of Asa and Shelby getting together years ago in secret to “discuss” things.
Well, now Shelby was back at the ranch and tongues were wagging in four counties. Cash was trying to keep both of his parents from going to prison for fraud and Dusty was hardly speaking to either parent.
His family had always been the talk of the town for one reason or another. Cash knew that was partly why he’d become sheriff. He was tired of being one of the wild McCall boys.
“Say you will come to dinner,” Dusty pleaded. Dusty had taken the betrayal the hardest. It didn’t help that she looked so much like her mother. She’d also been the closest to their father and felt betrayed by him. But she was especially angry with her mother. While Dusty could possibly understand how Shelby might walk away from four sons, she couldn’t forgive her mother for giving up a daughter.
Since Shelby’s astonishing reappearance, the family undercurrents were deadly. She never had explained why she’d returned to the living. But it was obvious a lot more was going on between her and Asa than either had let on. Cash had seen the looks that had passed between them, seen Shelby crying and Asa hadn’t been himself since she’d come back. Their father, a cantankerous, stubborn, almost seventy-year-old man who’d alienated all four of his sons on a regular basis, was actually trying to be nice.
It worried the hell out of Cash.
So it was no wonder that the last thing he wanted to do was attend one of the McCalls’ famous knock-down-drag-out family dinners—especially now.
But he knew that an invitation to a family dinner was really a summons to appear. If he sent word back that he wasn’t coming, Shelby herself would drive into town to try to change his mind. He didn’t need that.
“I’ll be there.” He hated to think what new surprises might be sprung at dinner tomorrow night.
Dusty sighed in relief at his acceptance. “I think the dinner is probably about Brandon. You know he’s been acting weird lately.”
Cash had noticed a change in his brother, but didn’t think it weird. Brandon, at thirty-three, seemed to have finally grown up. He’d taken on more responsibility out at the ranch, had really seemed to have settled down. He was talking about attending law school next fall and, according to their older brother J.T., had opened an account at the bank to save for it. “Isn’t it about time Brandon grew up?”
Dusty didn’t seem to be listening. “He comes in really late at night. I think he has a girlfriend, but he denies it.”
Cash laughed. “If you’re right, he’ll tell us when he’s ready.”
She made a face at the “if you’re right” part. It was a given that a McCall was always right, especially a female one. “Aren’t you even curious why he would try to keep a girlfriend secret?”
“No, we’re a family of secrets,” Cash said, realizing just how true that was. He thought of his own secret, pushed for years into some dark corner of his heart.
The problem with secrets was that they didn’t stay that way. It was only a matter of time, now that Jasmine’s car had been found, before his came out.
Somewhere outside St. George, Utah
AFTER LEAVING THE CAFÉ, Molly found a newspaper stand and bought a copy of the paper. She ripped out the article and sat behind the wheel of her car, studying the photograph of the missing woman.
On closer inspection, the woman didn’t look that much like her. The resemblance was in the shape of the face, the spacing and color of the eyes, the generous mouth. The hair was different, long, straight and white-blond compared to Molly’s curly, short, darker blond locks.
But with some makeup, a few highlights in her hair and the right clothes… The clincher was that the woman was close to her age—just a year and a half older—and about her height—an inch taller and ten pounds heavier.
As Molly looked into the woman’s face, she felt a chill at just the thought of what she was thinking of doing. Talk about bad karma.
According to the article, Jasmine Wolfe was last seen at a gas station on the outskirts of Bozeman seven years ago. The clerk at the station had noticed a man approach the blond woman driving the new red sports car. The man was about average height wearing a dark jacket, jeans and cap. The clerk didn’t see his face or note his hair color.
When the clerk had looked up again, the man was holding the woman’s arm and the two were getting into the car. They appeared to be arguing. The clerk hadn’t thought much about it, just assumed they were together, until she’d read about the search for the missing woman and remembered Jasmine, the new red sports car and witnessing the incident.
It was speculated that Jasmine had been abducted by an unknown assailant who had forced her into her car at possibly knife-or gunpoint. That theory was heightened a month later when a man was arrested outside of Bozeman trying to abduct a woman at another gas station in the same area.
The man was sent to prison and, while he never admitted to abducting Jasmine Wolfe, he was believed to have been involved in several other missing persons’ cases in the area, including hers. The man had committed a murder in prison and was still serving time there with little chance of parole.
That was good news. But not as good news as who Jasmine Wolfe was—the daughter of Archibald Wolfe, a furniture magnate from Atlanta, Georgia. Archie, as he was known to his friends and employees, had offered a sizable reward for any information about his daughter. The reward had never been collected.
Molly let out a low whistle. “You’ve just hit the jackpot, kiddo,” Max would have said. “All you have to do is convince the sheriff that you’re the missing woman, then the family will be a snap. Seven years. People change a lot in seven years.”
Maybe, she thought. But Antelope Flats Sheriff Cash McCall would definitely be the one she’d have to fool. Jasmine had been engaged to him, according to the newspaper. A man would know his former fiancé. Except if she kept him at arm’s length, which shouldn’t be that hard to do.
