Texas Heroes_ Volume 1(3)
Her voice was pure sex, low and throaty.
He bent to her, all but growling. “You don’t climb into pens with animals you don’t know. That cow weighs over a thousand pounds. She could crush you without even trying.”
She didn’t back up an inch. “I called for help, but no one answered. Only a total jerk would leave that poor thing to suffer.” Her tone went frosty. “You’ll have to excuse my inexperience. There aren’t many cattle in Manhattan.”
“You’re from New York.” An accusation, not a question.
“Most recently. I’ve lived all over.”
A city girl. Just like his wife, who had hated every second spent in this place. At least his wife hadn’t thrown herself into dangerous situations, though. Not here, anyway.
In the end, he’d still lost her, and the memory turned his voice sharp. This woman shouldn’t be here. He wanted to know why she was.
“Who are you? What are you doing on my ranch?”
Gray eyes went wary, studying him for a long moment that made Boone’s spine tingle with unease. Fringed with thick dark lashes, a striking black ring around the irises, her eyes softened.
“Are you Boone or Mitch?”
He stared at her. “I’m Boone,” he replied, frowning. “How do you know my name?”
She stuck out one slender hand to shake his, her eyes still soft. Too soft. Almost like an apology. “I’m Maddie Collins. Your father mentioned you in his letter.”
He forgot the extended hand. “What letter?” Boone had only gotten a telegram, and that only after Sam was dead and buried.
“You didn’t—?” Her eyes darted to the side, looking toward the house. “He didn’t…?”
“Didn’t what?” His stomach clenched. “Why are you here?”
The woman named Maddie swallowed, then straightened, shaking her dark brown hair back over her shoulders as if preparing herself. In the sunlight, it glowed hints of red like the sky’s warning of storms to come.
Then her next words wiped out all thoughts of silky dark hair and husky voices.
“Your father left the house to me.”
“He…what?” But even as he waited for her reply, he believed her, this stranger in too-bright gypsy colors who didn’t belong here. He’d been crazy to hope that anything might have changed between him and his father, that Sam had regretted abandoning his sons.
“I’m sorry. I—I thought you would already know.”
Her regrets didn’t help. At that moment, he knew only one thing. He wasn’t through losing things that mattered. He’d been a fool to think otherwise.
Even in death, the man who’d been barely a father still denied him the only place he’d ever thought of as home.
Maddie watched the shock of her words reverberate through Boone’s tall, rangy body.
He turned away, a muscle in his jaw flexing. The wind stirred his tawny hair. Rugged and muscular, he could have been formed from the harsh earth beneath him.
He belonged here, and she didn’t. But she was here, and she would stay for the thirty days Sam had required of her. Maddie Rose Collins wasn’t a quitter, and she needed this place for a while. She turned her own gaze to follow his.
Crowning the low green hill dotted with pale limestone outcroppings, the house looked like everything a home should be. A place to cherish and shelter, nurture and enfold.
And it was hers, if she wanted it.
At this man’s expense.
“Do you know why he did it?” she asked.
His laughter was a harsh bark. “I don’t even know what he did yet.” He shook his head. “Like a fool, I hoped he’d changed.” Then he shot her a sideways glance. “Why did he leave the ranch to you?”
“He didn’t leave me the ranch, just the house and one acre. He left the land to you and your brother.”
Boone stared at her as if deciding whether to believe her. “I don’t understand.”
She tried to figure out how to explain what she didn’t really understand, either. She had been given a few facts, yes, but learning that the man who had fathered her had lied to her all of her life wasn’t something you just accepted. He was not Edward Collins, as she had known him, but a man named Dalton Wheeler who had vanished from Morning Star thirty years before.
“He said it was a debt he owed my father.”
“Who’s your father?”
“He was known around here as Dalton Wheeler.”
“Dalton Wheeler?” Blue eyes opened wide in shock. “He killed his stepfather.”
People think he killed his stepfather, but he didn’t. He confessed and then vanished to save his mother from the consequences of what she’d done.