heard his voice rising as he said, “As long as those men are out there stealing cattle, this ranch is at risk. I won’t rest until they are all behind bars. And as for the man who’s leading this ring, I’d like to see him hanged from that big tree down by the creek, like he would have been if your grandfather was still alive.”
Nate chuckled and looked at Morgan, the two sharing a private joke. “As if he can be caught.”
“Do you know something I don’t?” the rancher asked between gritted teeth.
“The leader of the rustlers is already behind bars,” Morgan said. “Everyone knows it’s Dillon Savage. Who else could it be?”
“Really?” Shade looked at his son.
“Who else could it be?” Nate said. He had the irritating habit of parroting everything Morgan said.
“Well, for your edification, Dillon Savage is not behind bars anymore. Jacklyn Wilde got him out of prison.”
Nate had the sense to look surprised—and worried. “Why would she do that?”
“Supposedly to help her catch the rustlers. Isn’t that rich?” Waters said, and swore under his breath.
Nate looked upset, but Shade doubted his concern was for their cattle. No, he thought, looking over at the woman beside his son, Nate had other worries when it came to Dillon Savage.
“The whole damn thing was kept quiet,” Shade said, fighting his anger. “For obvious reasons.” He would have fought it tooth and nail had he known.
“Like I said, do we have to talk about this now?” Nate asked pointedly.
“Your guest might have more of an interest in the topic than you think,” he replied. “After all, she was Dillon Savage’s…” he looked at Morgan as if he wasn’t sure what to call their relationship “…girlfriend.”
Nate shot him a warning look as the cook came in with another basket of warm rolls. Morgan was picking at her salad. It galled Waters that while he and Nate were having beefsteaks, Morgan had opted for rabbit food. The woman was dating a cattle rancher, for hell’s sake.
The rancher cursed under his breath, angry at his son on so many levels he didn’t even know where to begin. Nate not only looked like his mother—blond with hazel eyes, and an aristocratic air about him—he’d also gotten her softness, something Shade had tried to “cowboy” out of him, although, regretfully, he hadn’t succeeded.
He wished he hadn’t let Nate’s mother spoil the boy so. Now in his early thirties, Nate stood to inherit everything Shade had spent his life building. Nate had no idea the sacrifices his father had made, the obstacles he’d had to overcome, the things he’d had to do. Still had to do. Nate, like his mother, would have been shocked and repulsed if he’d known.
Fortunately, Elizabeth had always turned a blind eye to anything her husband did, although Shade wondered if it wasn’t what had put her in an early grave. That and the loss of her firstborn son, Halsey.
While Halsey had loved everything about ranching, Nate never took to it. And just the thought of ever turning the W Bar over to him was killing Shade.
Nate leaned toward Morgan now, whispering something in her ear that made her chuckle coyly—and turned Shade’s stomach.
“I’m sorry, Morgan, is talk of Dillon Savage making you uncomfortable?” he asked innocently.
Nate shot him a warning look.
“It’s all right, Nate,” she said, smiling at the older Waters. “Yes, I knew Dillon…well.” Her smile broadened. “Do I care that he’s out of prison? Not in the least. Dillon and I were over a long time ago.”
Shade looked at his son to see if he believed any of that bull. Nate had never had any sense when it came to women. Apparently, he was buying everything Morgan told him, probably because he had a good view of the woman’s breasts in that low-cut top.
“Then you didn’t write him while he was in prison or go see him?” Shade asked, ignoring the look his son gave him.
“No,” Morgan said, her smile slipping a little. “We’d gone our separate ways long before Dillon went to prison.”
She was lying through her teeth. He suspected that she’d been keeping Dillon up on everything going on in the county, especially at the W Bar.
“Well,” Shade said, with exaggerated relief, “I guess the only thing Nate and I have to worry about with Savage out is losing our cattle.” He dug into his steak as he noted with some satisfaction that his son had lost his appetite.
AS JACKLYN WILDE DROVE east past one small Montana town after another, Dillon realized he didn’t have any idea where they were headed or what she had planned for him.
But that was the idea, wasn’t it? She wanted to keep him off balance. She didn’t want him to know too much—that had been clear from that first day she’d come to see him in prison.
He glanced over at her now. Back when she’d been trying to catch him rustling, he’d known only what he’d heard about her. It wasn’t until he’d come face-to-face with her and the gun she had leveled at him that he’d looked into her steel-gray eyes and realized everything he’d heard about her just might be true.
She was relentless, clever and cunning, cold and calculating. Ice water ran through her veins. In prison, anyone who’d crossed her path swore she was tougher than any man, but with a woman’s sense of justice, and therefore more dangerous.
He couldn’t argue the point, given that she was the one who’d put him behind bars.
“So when are you going to tell me the real reason you got me out?” he asked now.
Outside the pickup, the landscape had changed from mountains and towering, dark green pines to rolling hills studded with sagebrush. Tall golden grasses undulated like waves in the breeze and the sky opened up, wide and blue from horizon to horizon. It truly was Big Sky Country.
“I thought I made myself clear on that point,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road. “You’re going to help me catch rustlers.”
He chuckled and she finally looked over at him. “Something funny about that?”
“You didn’t get me out of prison to catch rustlers. You are perfectly capable of catching any rustler out there and we both know it.” He met her gray eyes. In this light, they were a light silver, and fathomless. The kind of eyes that you could get lost in. But then the light changed. Her gaze was again just a sheet of ice, flat and freezing.
“I need your expertise,” she said simply.
Right. “Well, I’ll be of little help to you if you keep me in the dark,” he said, smiling wryly as he changed tactics. “Unless you have something besides rustling on your mind. I mean, after what happened the first time we met…”
Her eyes narrowed in warning. “The only reason you aren’t still behind bars is because you were good at rustling. That’s the only talent of yours I’m interested in.”
He
