911 operator answered and Cimarron summoned help, keeping the line open. He matched Ron stride for stride into the stately foyer of the refurbished house. Through the arched entry to the dining room bright sunlight flooded the floor-to-ceiling windows, making the wet paint on the moldings glisten.
Several workers gathered around the base of the high scaffolding that had been erected to reach the twenty-foot ceilings. Cimarron handed the phone to Ron and pushed his way through.
“Oh my God,” he whispered, kneeling beside his motionless brother, who was lying faceup on the hardwood floor. “R.J.?”
Cimarron laid his fingers against R.J.’s neck, finding a weak, halting pulse.
“R.J., can you hear me?” He glanced up at the men surrounding him, their faces drawn with concern. “Anybody see what happened?”
A young painter spoke up. “We’d finished and I was getting the brushes and pails ready to go. He was going down to catch them at the bottom. I heard him grunt and when I looked around he was falling. I don’t know what happened. Yesterday he was complaining about the fumes making him light-headed and he said living in Louisiana was messing up his sinuses, but he didn’t mention anything today. He was just in a big hurry to get done.”
R.J.’s eyes fluttered, then opened. He squinted up at Cimarron and managed a lopsided grin. “I must have missed a step,” he whispered.
“Just stay still. You’ll be okay,” Cimarron said with more confidence than he felt.
“Little bro,” R.J. said. “You take care of Wyatt, you hear?”
“Come on, R.J., you’re going to be around to do that.”
“Don’t…think…so,” he managed to say with effort. Cimarron tried to keep him quiet, but he insisted on speaking. “I made a will…before I came down here. Meant to tell you.” He attempted to grin again, but failed. “I made you Wyatt’s guardian…”
Cimarron stared at his brother in shock. “What?”
“You’re the only one I trust…to see that he’s done right by. You gotta do it for me, little bro. Give him a good life.”
“R.J.—”
R.J.’s eyes rolled back. Cimarron’s probing fingers found no pulse this time.
“R.J.!”
No sign of breathing.
“Don’t you die on me!”
By rote, Cimarron started CPR, his own heart pounding, drumming out every other sound. Breathe, breathe, pump, pump, pump…
His expression fixed, his face turning blue, R.J. looked just like their mother had when Cimarron turned her over that night so long ago. Sweat poured down his body as the panic grew. He glanced in the direction of the construction office, where a little boy sat waiting…Cimarron would be the one who had to tell him his daddy wasn’t coming to get him after all.
No way. No way in hell!
“Damn it, R.J. Don’t you die and leave me with that child!”
CHAPTER TWO
Little Lobo, Montana
July
OKAY, WHAT DID I DO to deserve this?
Sarah James ducked her head to check the big black knobs on the industrial griddle again. All on and set to Medium-High. So why was half of her first pancake crusty brown and the other runny goop? She muttered under her breath and twisted one of the knobs to Off, then back to High, hoping by some miracle the malfunctioning burner would begin to heat.
A customer tapped his menu impatiently on the counter. The pancake was a no-go. She scraped it into the waste bucket that she used to save scraps for a local farmer’s pig slop. An apt description, too. Pig slop.
Pushing a damp lock of red hair off her forehead, she turned to the impatient customer. “Sorry. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“I ain’t got all day, shug,” Big Buck Flannigan said. A bull of a man, with a face that was weathered like cowhide, beefy bare arms and a ten-gallon hat perched high on his head, Buck delivered goods from a Bozeman feed distributor to regional hardware stores. He stopped in every few weeks when he came over the pass from Bozeman.
“I know. I’m really sorry. Problems with the griddle.”
“I gotta git back on the road. Think you can scrape me up two eggs over easy, order o’ linked sausages, some hash browns scattered and slathered, biscuits with gravy and orange juice?”
Sarah jotted down the order, wondering how in the world these foods were going to materialize on her haphazard griddle. Her helper Aaron Dawson would pick a morning when the café was filled to capacity to go AWOL. Sometimes he could make the ancient appliance function when she couldn’t. She didn’t have time to try to run him down right now, but, boy, when she did find him…
She quickly brought Buck’s juice and surveyed the room for other impatient customers. Normally she served and Aaron cooked on the large range in the kitchen. She was finding it almost impossible to do both, with the café so crowded. Now she wished she had hired that high-school kid who was looking for a part-time job last week, instead of trying to cut corners and save money.
A stranger opened the door and glanced around until he spotted the only vacant booth left, a table for two tucked into a narrow alcove at the far end of the room. He motioned behind him and a young boy came in. The man lifted the child onto the booth bench, then sat down opposite him. Sarah gave them a cheery “Good morning, be right with you” that she hoped masked her frustration. She noted the resemblance between the two—dark curling hair, striking brown eyes, and the man had a nice smile. But before she could get to them, another customer demanded her attention.
“Look, Miss Sarah, you need to decide if you want me to do the work for you or not. I got other jobs lined up.” Harry Upshaw raked his food onto his fork with a piece of biscuit.
He’d been the first to come in this morning and he’d ordered eggs over easy, so that hadn’t been too bad. Then half the griddle quit on her, and now she was forced to cook a lot of food on an extremely limited surface. Her only alternative was to cook in the kitchen, but that meant leaving the front and the cash register unattended.
“I do want you to work for me,” Sarah said, wishing they could discuss this another time. Like after her customers were gone. “But first we need to sit down and go over the plans and talk about my ideas for the place.”
“Now, missy, you know I’ll do the job right.” He winked. His blue eyes were set in a face roughened and baked by long hours in the sun building houses and running a small cattle operation on the outskirts of town. An ample belly attested to his love of food—he was in the café several times a week.
“I know you will, but I want to be sure that we’re on the same track. I have some ideas sketched out and—”
“I don’t need no sketches. You just tell me what you want done and I’ll
