least he didn’t think she did.
Either way, she had something equivalent to a bomb in her purse. That book was his ticket out of this miserable existence he’d been living. There was only one problem. If the book fell into the wrong hands, he was a dead man.
Earl Ray let out a string of expletives. If he could have gotten his hands on Jerilyn, he would have wrung her neck. The good news was that she couldn’t get far in that pile of rusted junk.
As he started back toward the room, he realized he should have known she was going to take off. In the past when she became weepy drunk, she’d take out that little coin purse of hers and look at a scrap of faded paper. Lately, she’d been looking at it more and more.
The first time he’d seen her crying over the note, he’d waited until she passed out and dug the damned thing out of her purse, thinking the dumb broad was crying over some man.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the note was about—or where Jerilyn was now headed. This had been coming for some time, and Earl Ray prided himself on knowing women.
He limped into his motel room and closed the door behind him. Luckily, he knew where he could scrape up some money and help. He picked up the phone and dialed his associates Bubba and Dude, his anger ebbing a little as he realized the three of them could beat Jerilyn to Montana.
Earl Ray smiled. He couldn’t wait to see her face.
Chapter Two
“I say we settle this with a horse race.”
“The hell we will,” Dalton Corbett said, pushing his brother Jud out of the way in order to get to the bar in the main house on the Trails West Ranch.
Jud might have been the youngest of the Corbett brothers—three minutes behind his fraternal twin, Dalton—but in no way was he the smallest. Not at six foot three! The Hollywood stuntman was like all the Corbett brothers: tall and broad-shouldered, handsome as sin and wild as the West Texas wind.
Jud shoved Dalton back, and the two commenced pushing and jostling just as they’d done as boys.
“Hell, let’s just shoot it out,” Shane said. He stepped past the two to grab a glass and a bottle of bourbon from behind the bar before settling into one of the deep leather chairs. He looked out a bank of windows onto the rolling prairie of Montana. Only the purple silhouette of the Little Rockies broke the wide expanse of open range.
Shane wondered what the hell his father had been thinking, moving here. Grayson Corbett hadn’t been thinking clearly, that was the only thing that could explain it. That and the fact that his father, at the ripe old age of fifty-five, had fallen in love again.
“The only fair way to do this is to have the oldest brother go first,” Lantry Corbett suggested, since he was the second to the oldest and the divorce lawyer.
Russell stood up from where he’d been sitting. “We’ll draw straws.” He was the oldest of the five Corbett brothers and considered the least wild of the bunch, which wasn’t saying much.
Jud and Dalton quit wrestling to look at Russell. “Straws?” they asked in unison.
“Why not beans?” Shane suggested, thinking of the Texas Rangers who were caught in Mexico back in the 1800s. “A white bean, you’re spared. A black bean, you’re not.”
“Drawing straws is the only fair way,” Russell insisted, ignoring Shane’s sarcasm. “We leave it up to chance.”
“Or destiny,” Jud added.
“Destiny? You’ve been hanging out with those Hollywood types too long,” Lantry said. He grabbed a beer from behind the well-stocked bar and pulled up a chair in front of the window next to Shane.
“What do you say?” Lantry asked him.
Shane was disgusted with the whole mess. He poured himself a glass of bourbon and downed it before he finally spoke. “This is emotional blackmail, and I don’t want any part of it.”
His brothers all looked at him in surprise.
“It was our mother’s dying wish,” Russell said.
“Yeah, and bad karma if we ignore it,” Jud said.
“Destiny? Karma?” Shane scoffed.
“It isn’t just about Mom,” Russell said quietly. “Can’t you see what this is really about? Dad wants us here in Montana with him. He’s not always going to be around.”
“Well, I think he was a fool to leave Texas,” Shane said.
Russell shook his head. “He did it for Kate. He loves her and would do anything for her. Look how happy Dad is. All those years of being lonely without Mom. I’m glad he found Kate.”
“Kate found him,” Shane corrected. “Just to keep the record straight.”
This marriage and the move to Montana had been all her doing. Anyone could see that. She’d gone to Texas to find their father, playing on the one thing they had in common—Grayson’s deceased wife. Kate and Rebecca had grown up together on this ranch.
No one was fool enough to think that buying the Trails West Ranch in Montana hadn’t been Kate’s idea. The ranch had been in her family for decades, until her father died and it was lost.
“Kate isn’t the only one with history here,” Russell argued. “Let’s not forget that our mother was born and raised here.” Rebecca Wade’s father had been the foreman of the ranch. She and Kate had been like sisters. “This place means a lot to both Dad and Kate and should to all of us, as well.”
“We’re doing this for Dad,” Russell continued. “And Mom. It’s what she wanted.”
Shane shook his head as he watched Russell step over to the bar, pick up the knife their father had used to slice up limes for margaritas, and proceed to cut five straws into five different lengths.
Taking another drink, Shane swore under his breath as a hush fell over the room. He couldn’t believe they were really going to do this.
Russell mixed up the pieces in his hand, leveling off the cut straws at the top, hiding their lengths in his massive fist.
“This is crazy,” Lantry said, looking to Shane for help. Shane knew that he was considered the sensible brother. After all, he was the Texas Ranger. Or at least had been.
Russell held out the cut straws. “Who wants to go first?”
“Not me,” Jud said quickly. “I’m leaving mine up to destiny. I’ll take the last straw.”
“Hell, I’ll go first,” Dalton said, and drew one, palming it until the others had drawn.
Lantry went next, although he didn’t seem any happier about it than Shane. Part con artist and charmer—if there was a way out of this, Lantry, the lawyer would find it.
“Shane?” Russell held his closed fist out to him.
“I
