“Can we swing by Murdoch’s before we head to lunch?” Jeremiah asked. “They’re having a tool sale.”
“All that money burning a hole in your pocket?” Heather teased.
“Maybe a little.” He stopped the shopping cart at her truck and lifted the tonneau cover. “But I could really use a bigger compressor, and Murdoch’s has a good deal on one right now. Besides, I have two more custom-ordered offices to build, so I figure now would be a good time to invest in my business.”
“Two more? Wow. Guess my mother won’t have to worry about you resenting me for out-earning you.”
He eyed her with concern. “I hope you don’t think I’d ever resent you for making more money than me. Because if I was the kind of man who had a problem with powerful, independent women, I wouldn’t have been attracted to you in the first place.”
“Believe me, I know that.”
“Good. Your mother actually said that to you?”
She nodded. “Right before she blindsided you with that question about whether you’d be happy with a woman who would ‘refuse to give you children’.”
Jeremiah let out a guttural sound of disgust.
“So… you really meant what you said to my mother at dinner?” she asked tentatively.
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”
Why, after she’d realized and admitted to herself that if he wanted kids she would be willing to have them, was that such a relief? She suspected he’d meant every word he said, but hearing him confirm it somehow took the pressure entirely off. It was one more way in which she was free to be herself with him. It was also a slap in the face to her mother’s ever-present nagging voice in the back of her mind whispering that no man would want a woman who didn’t want children as if they couldn’t be a happy, complete unit with only the two of them. It made her realize that the only two people who could decide what was right for her and Jeremiah… were her and Jeremiah. It was such a simple concept—one that probably seemed like a no-brainer to most people—but she struggled to wrap her head around it.
“Sometimes I feel guilty for not wanting kids.” After she said that, her breath came out in a rush. She’d never admitted that before. Not out loud. Not even to herself. “So damned guilty. And selfish.”
“Why? Because your mother has pounded it into your head that you should want them?”
She nodded. “And because… I feel like I come across like I’m looking down on the women who do want kids. But I really don’t. I am just so tired of my parents and society saying I’m less of a woman because motherhood doesn’t appeal to me.”
“You’re definitely not less of a woman.”
Her lips twitched, but she couldn’t quite make herself smile when she was so close to hitting on the heart of why her mother’s incessant talks of babies and motherhood hurt her so much. She started to elaborate and explain that having kids just to have kids wasn’t enough of a reason for her, but Jeremiah spoke first.
“For the record, your self-awareness is damned sexy.”
He was doing more than complimenting her—he was giving her an out from an uncomfortable conversation. With a sigh of relief, she took it. This was undoubtedly something she still needed to talk about and analyze so it couldn’t control her anymore, but she’d made enough progress for one day, and she was grateful he recognized that.
“Thank you.” She kissed him as she set the last grocery sack in the truck, laughing softly. Recalling what he’d said to her at Christina’s house minutes after they’d made love in the shower and the way it had made her feel like the most admired and cherished woman in the world, she said, “I adore you.”
“Mmm.” He grinned. “You’re right. That is nice. Better than ‘I love you’, I think. Deeper and more meaningful somehow.”
“Definitely.”
They climbed into the truck and left the conversation behind in the Safeway parking lot. She turned right on Montana Street, drove almost to the northern edge of town, and pulled into the Murdoch’s parking lot. Murphy, who’d spent most of the trip to town sprawled in the back seat like the king of the four-wheel-drive castle, suddenly appeared between the front seats, his paws braced on the center console as he let out an excited whine.
“Yeah, maybe I’ll get you a special treat, too,” Jeremiah remarked, ruffling his dog’s ears.
Murphy replied with a louder whine.
Heather laughed. “I’d say you’re the most spoiled rotten dog I’ve ever met, but I’ve known a lot of spoiled dogs. Aaron and Skye’s black Lab, the Conners’ golden retrievers, every dog Nick and Beth have ever owned, Brodie and Celeste’s dogs….”
“There are some majorly spoiled dogs in that list,” Jeremiah chuckled.
They headed into the ranch supply store hand in hand, but as soon as they stepped inside, Heather released him and headed over to the Montana Silversmith case to look for something special to commemorate Jessie’s upcoming rodeo while Jeremiah headed toward the back of the store to drool over tools.
She couldn’t decide between a horseshoe necklace and matching earrings or the gorgeously ornate belt buckle with the barrel racer on it. On the one hand, Jess would probably get more wear out of the belt buckle because Heather couldn’t recall seeing her wearing much jewelry, but if she won next weekend as Heather believed she would, she’d end up with a better, more meaningful belt buckle.
Just as she stepped away to find an employee to unlock the case for her, her phone rang. She glanced at the screen before she answered and was surprised to see who was calling.
“Hey, Aaron,” she greeted. “What’s up?”
“Have you guys eaten lunch yet?”
“No, we sidetracked to Murdoch’s first. We’re heading to Papa T’s after this, though.”
“I’ll meet you there. Fifteen minutes long enough?”
“Should be. What’s up?”
“I have some news for Jeremiah.”
“All right, I’ll go drag him out of the tools. See you in a few.”
She ended the call and headed back to the tool section. She found Jeremiah talking with one of the associates, making arrangements to have a compressor and a brad nailer brought up to the front of the store and asking about a couple other pneumatic tools on sale. There was a boyish joy about him that both contrasted and complimented the calculating businesslike inquiries about what brads the store had in stock, and it was fascinating to watch him. He was usually so easygoing that it was easy to forget just how competent he was.
“Find this fascinating?” he asked when the associate stepped away to locate a specific brand and gauge of brads he’d inquired about.
“Not this. You.”
He rewarded her with an adorably shy lop-sided smile.
“I hate to cut your frolicking through the tool department short, but Aaron just called. He wants to meet us for lunch, said he has some news for you.”
“Good or bad?”
“He didn’t say.”
He snagged a couple more things off the shelves, flagged the associate down, and started for the front of the store, detouring to the pet section to grab a hedgehog dog toy for Murphy. Heather excused herself for a moment to find someone to help her with that necklace and matching earrings for Jessie.
“Those are beautiful. Who are they for?” Jeremiah asked when she joined him at the register.
“Jess. I wanted to get her something special ahead of her rodeo next weekend. For good luck.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you.” He smiled, took her hand, and pressed his lips to her knuckles, holding her gaze the whole time. “See? Who needs kids when we have nieces and nephews to spoil. How many between us? I have Nick and Beth’s three boys, Jessie and Eric, and Noah and Archer.”
“And I have Ethan and Blake, Sebastian, Rosalie, and Joseph, and Hannah and Owen, plus another one coming. How many is that?”
“I count fourteen, soon to be fifteen.”
“Good lord. How are we supposed to keep track of them?”
“No idea, but you know the best part thing about nieces and nephews?”
“No. What?”
“We get to spoil them rotten and send them home to their parents.”
She glanced at the box holding the necklace and earrings. “I like that. All the fun, none of the hassle.”
“Exactly.”
They completed their purchases and loaded everything in the back of her truck. With Murphy happily mouthing and squeaking his new hedgehog in the back seat, Heather drove across town to Papa T’s.
It was the tail end of the lunch rush, and when they walked into the restaurant, it was packed with diners lingering over their meals. Aaron, dressed handsomely in his brown and tan uniform, waved them over to a table on the left wall, and they made their way carefully between the tables, dancing around the children scampering between the arcade games and their chairs. Heather smiled when one crashed into her, brushing off the startled little girl’s apologies.
I love kids. I just don’t want any of my own. Why can’t my mother understand that?
“Isn’t this the same table you and Pearl were sitting at that day?” Jeremiah asked, dropping into the chair across from Aaron and mercifully derailing her train of thought before it had a chance to leave the station.
“I believe it is,” Aaron replied.
“What day?” Heather asked.
“The day Aaron offered me a job on the Lazy H instead of rightfully slapping the cuffs on me for a third time.” Jeremiah grinned. “Thankfully he saw a hurting kid in need of a second chance instead of a menace to society bound to keep re-offending. He was in uniform that day, too.”
Heather lifted a brow. “Is this one of those times you wander off in your head to retrace steps and ponder the quirks of life and fate?”
He chuckled. “Not really. No more than to say this is a fitting spot to talk about the case. That is what your news is about, isn’t it, Aaron?”
The sheriff nodded. “We have a ballistic match. All three bullets were shot from Cochran’s rifle.”
“And…?”
“And he sang like a songbird. All I had to do was mention that I knew he lied to me about not knowing Zach Neely. He was rather surprised that I knew exactly how and when and where they’d met and also that I knew he got busted for his DUI in a vehicle registered to Zach six months after that.”
Jeremiah’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking.”
“Nope. I was able to make a few more connections between them, thanks to that little piece of information you remembered. Including the fact that they both had memberships to the Devyn Rifle Range over the same period… which led me to discovering that they spent a fair amount of time out there together target shooting. Anyhow, he’s claiming Zach shot the cows, says he didn’t think anything of lending your cousin his gun after they went out shooting together earlier this summer. Said he figured Zach just wanted to do a little target practice in the hills behind Montana Tech. He says Zach had it for roughly the period between when the heifer was shot and when my buddy at the FWP thinks the calf was shot. Now, Zach has an alibi for the day the heifer was killed—he was at work. And the day the calf was shot, his roommate says they went to a movie that night. There’s a corresponding debit from the theater in Butte showing in Zach’s checking account.”
“The roommate could’ve used Zach’s card.”
“We’ve submitted a request for the surveillance tapes around the time the tickets were purchased. But in the meantime, those alibis make it look like Cochran is lying.”
Jeremiah frowned. “But he’s maintained this whole time that he didn’t shoot the cows.”
“Yes… and I believe him. For one, he’s not smart enough to come up with a plausible defense and for another, he looked genuinely furious and helpless.”
“You talked to him yourself?”
Aaron nodded.
“So what now?”
“We bring in Zach for questioning at the earliest opportunity, probably Friday. Because our friend Randall had more to say. He says Zach may be planning something else—something big. Said killing the deer and leaving it at the cabin was Zach’s idea and that Zach had told him to leave the whole deer but Randall didn’t want to waste the meat. Which I also believe.”
“So the deer was meant to be a threat,” Heather said flatly.
“Heather…” Jeremiah murmured. “It’s okay.”
“She’s right to be upset, Jere,” Aaron said. “And I’m glad to see it, actually. It means she cares about you. But for the record, I never said it wasn’t a threat.”
“Did Randall say anything else?” Jeremiah asked.
Aaron nodded. “Seems your cousin may be planning to retaliate against not only you but me, Rogers, and the county attorney who prosecuted his case.”
“Randall said that?”
“No, but he said I should watch my back because Zach mentioned me and Jeremiah and Rogers and the county attorney enough times to stand out.”
“No surprise there,” Jeremiah muttered.
“No, not really. Cochran’s been helpful, I’ll give him that. Now we’ve just got to be very careful what we ask Zach and how we ask it. I don’t like this situation at all, but maybe, if he doesn’t think we’re on to him, it’ll be all right. Somehow.” He sat back in his chair and studied Jeremiah for a long time. “That’s it. Mostly I wanted you to know so you’ll be extra careful. I have no idea what Zach will do. For now, he’s still playing the model parolee, and as long as he is and as long as I have nothing concrete proving he shot the cows, there’s not much I can do.”
“Feels like JP all over again,” Heather murmured. “The helplessness.”
“It does,” Aaron agreed. “And I hate it.”
A waitress finally came by to take their orders, and they spent the rest of their meal talking about happier things, mostly Jeremiah’s booming portable office business and the tools he’d picked up today and Jessie’s upcoming rodeo. Afterwards, she and Jeremiah bid Aaron farewell until dinner with the Hammond clan, something Heather was thoroughly looking forward to. She always enjoyed spending time with Jeremiah’s surrogate family; it reminded her of what normal, healthy family relationships looked like and bolstered her growing intolerance for her own family’s toxic interactions. And made it easier to see that she wasn’t the problem.
They had just one more stop to make before they headed home to the store, and Heather drove across the train tracks running parallel to the street in front of Papa T’s to the saddle shop to pick up the show saddle Ty had brought in for repairs on Monday. Jeremiah waited in the truck with Murphy, and she couldn’t blame him for needing a few minutes alone to wrap his head around everything Aaron had said.
It was nice to see some progress toward linking Zach to the events of the summer, but it still wasn’t enough. As Aaron had said, there was nothing concrete yet, which made the situation scarier. Zach still had the upper hand. What was he planning? Was Randall Cochran telling the truth about Jeremiah’s cousin planning something big? Would he really try to kill Jeremiah and Aaron and Steven Rogers and the county attorney?
“I’m sure he’s not planning to thank them for his lovely stay in the Montana State Prison,” she muttered as she walked up the path to the saddle shop.
What else besides murder would satisfy a psychopath’s need for revenge?
“Everything okay, Heather?” the young man behind the counter greeted.
Starting, she glanced up and realized she was inside the shop and standing at the counter with the shop’s owner regarding her with a welcoming but concerned smile.
“Everything’s fine, Jack. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Dunno. But I said hello three times and you didn’t seem to hear me.”
“Sorry. I may be a little distracted. Is Ty’s saddle ready?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She dug out the check Ty had sent with her while she waited and tried not to be dragged back into her ponderings about Jeremiah’s cousin and what he was or wasn’t up to. Jack hauled the saddle out to her truck for her and thanked her for the payment when he returned.
With that task completed, she hopped back in her truck and glanced over at Jeremiah. The change in him from the time she’d left him to now was remarkable.
“All right. What happened? When I left you, you looked like Aaron told you that you had six months left to live, and now you look almost serene again.”
“Aren’t you the one who told me I can’t let him control me?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Well, I’m not going to let this get to me. I’m going to keep living my life. And if he shows up looking to make me pay for ratting on him….” He shrugged. “Whatever happens happens. Worrying about it won’t stop it.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s still scary, though.”
“It is. But fear is poison.”
With her hand gripping the steering wheel, she stared at him. “You’re absolutely right, but it might take me a little longer to get to where you are right now.”
She started to add something else, surprised by the intensity of the thought even though she’d caught the first inkling of it the day Jeremiah had caught Randall Cochran with the poached buck. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then you won’t.”
“I’m serious, Jere.”
“So am I. I’m not going anywhere. I’m yours as long as you want me.”
“Unless your psycho cousin gets a hold of you.”
“Aaron won’t let that happen, and neither will I.”
“That’s so easy to say, but you’ve said he’s smart. Repeatedly.”
“Yeah… and who brought him down last time?”
“You did.”
“Yep.”
“Don’t go getting cocky on me.”
“I’m not. But I’m done being afraid of him.”
Letting out a breath, she pulled away from the saddle shop and headed toward the Interstate, wishing she could quiet her trembling fear as easily as he had. They didn’t talk as she drove out of town, and she was nearly to the spot she’d found him pulled off on the side of the highway on her birthday when she understood the full implication behind her fear and his response to it.
I’m yours as long as you want me, he’d said.
And what if I want you forever?
She didn’t dare ask the question. It was too new, too fragile, and even though she knew he would understand, she couldn’t share it even with him yet.
Instead, she let out a breath and said, “Well, if you can do it, I guess I can, too.”
He took her hand from the gear shift and kissed her knuckles, grinning as he did so. “That’s my woman.”
* * *
It was a typical, noisy evening in the main house of the Lazy H, and that made it easy to hold to his vow to ignore the fear and focus on living. Heather’s admission on the drive home from town made it even easier. That was what he lived for now—the promise that this might last not only a few months or even a few years but for the rest of their lives.
I don’t want to lose you.
He still had no idea if this was real or if it would truly last, but he was no longer afraid she’d scorch him with her burn-the-world down fire. He wouldn’t say it had cooled and he hoped it never would, but it had turned into a different kind of blaze—the kind of slow, hot fire that fueled her passion for life rather than the explosive inferno that would destroy her and anyone close to her.
To have a woman like her to warm his heart, he was a lucky man.
He watched her playing with Archer, helping him build a gargantuan city out of wooden blocks in the corner of the living room. Caleb and Cade and Eric were hilariously trying to pretend they were too old and too cool to play with the blocks, but Heather was making it look like so much fun that Jeremiah suspected it wouldn’t be long before the older boys gave in.
“Someone grab a camera,” Henry teased. “That is the dopiest smile I’ve ever seen.”
“Not even close,” Jeremiah replied. “You forget we were all present to watch you fall head over heels for Lindsay.”
“Dopey’s not my style. I was dashing.”
“Ha!” Lindsay replied, returning from the kitchen. She sat beside her husband and draped herself around him. “It was your dopey smile that won me over.”
“I thought it was my smooth dance moves.”
“Mmm,” she purred fondly. “Those certainly helped.”
“I still think Jere’s got me beat in the dopey department,” Henry remarked.
“Probably so,” Heather said. “I made him wait a lot longer than Lindsay made you wait. He’s got more reason to be dopey.”
“Gee, thanks,” Jeremiah said flatly. “You’re as bad as the rest of them.”
“She is, so you might want to quit yer bitchin’,” Henry retorted. “That means she fits in with this family like the missing piece of our puzzle.”
Heather beamed at the compliment. She didn’t say it, but Jeremiah suspected Henry’s casual comment meant a lot more than he could’ve ever suspected. She did fit in with the Hammonds… far better than she fit in with her own family. Jeremiah knew how good it felt to be welcomed and appreciated when, following his arrest, everyone else he’d met had been more inclined to shun him without bothering to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Tracie and Beth wandered in from the kitchen to join the rest of the family.
“Well, dinner’s ready as soon as Aaron gets home,” Tracie said, sliding on to her husband’s lap.
Jeremiah smiled. The heads of the Hammond clan were now in their late sixties, but their romance showed no signs of slowing down. Between them and their three sons and daughters-in-law, Jeremiah had a very high bar to meet, but it was ridiculously easy to imagine himself flirting shamelessly with Heather in front of the entire family three decades from now.
He wanted that picture to become a reality so much his chest ached.
“There’s that dopey smile again,” Henry teased. “Seriously. Someone get a camera.”
“Oh, leave the poor boy alone,” Tracie told him.
“Can’t. He might think I didn’t love him if I didn’t tease him.”
“He has a point, Mom,” Jeremiah sighed. “I expect it.”
Conversation shifted to the ranch and Jessie’s upcoming rodeo and Heather’s new clients. Eventually, she came over to sit with him on the couch, sandwiched between Nick and Beth and Henry and Lindsay. The kids—even the teenagers—were relegated to the floor, but no one seemed to mind.
Time wore on, and when Aaron still hadn’t arrived, talk turned to the possible reasons why he was late. No one was too worried; this wasn’t the first time his job had made him late for dinner, and Jeremiah did his best to shrug off the increasingly heavy sense of foreboding.
I will not be afraid, he reminded himself.
“I guess we’d better eat without him,” Tracie sighed.
The family gathered around the dining room table, and the conversation turned to the football camp coming up. Jeremiah momentarily forgot his concern listening to Will and Noah talk about it. This would be Will’s final season, and to hear him and Noah, who’d graduated last summer, bemoaning the end of their glory days was borderline comical.
“What do they know about the glory days ending, eh?” Heather whispered.
“Sadly, more than I do,” Jeremiah replied. “I missed out on all that.”
“Oh, you poor thing.”
“Go ahead and patronize me. I’d rather my glory days be now and in the future than fading away behind me.”
“Good point.”
Everyone had finished dinner and was well into Tracie’s incredible apple pie when Aaron finally arrived. And the ashen, drawn expression on his face silenced the relaxed chatter. Skye was the first on her feet, and she strode across the dining room and into the kitchen to embrace her husband. Tracie was next.
“What happened?” Skye asked.
Aaron didn’t immediately answer. Instead, he clung to his wife with his face buried against her neck.
Jeremiah rose slowly from his chair and stepped quietly into the kitchen. Sensing his presence, Aaron finally looked up.
“You’re not going up to the cabin tonight after dinner,” the sheriff croaked.
Jeremiah jerked his head back. He couldn’t recall ever seeing Aaron so distraught. “Why? What happened?”
“Rogers is dead.”
He felt like someone had poured ice water into his veins. “How?”
“Shot dead. Bullet between his eyes like that damned buck. His poor wife found him this afternoon when she returned home from visiting her sister.”
“Zach?”
Aaron shook his head. “Couldn’t have been. He was at work in Butte when it happened.”
“You’re positive of that?”
“I have it straight from his boss.”
“Then someone Zach knows.”
“Rogers made quite a few enemies with the way he handled his cases,” Nick said quietly, joining them in the kitchen. He embraced his brother. “It probably wouldn’t be hard for Zach to find someone happy to kill him.”
“No, probably not. I know Rogers wasn’t the most popular man, and I only have to remember how he treated you and Luke to know why.” Aaron pinched his eyes closed. “But who shoots a seventy-six-year-old man already on dialysis for the rest of his life?”
The adults abandoned their half-eaten slices of pie and wandered into the living room, leaving the teenagers to ride herd on the younger kids. Jeremiah pulled Heather into his lap, needing to hold onto her as Aaron’s news sank in.
He had no love for Rogers—no one in the Hammond or Conner families did. The former sheriff had handled Nick’s arrest pompously and poorly, slapping him in cuffs in front of half the university, and to Jeremiah’s knowledge, he’d never apologized even after it was proved Nick had acted in defense of Beth and the assault charge had been dropped. Jeremiah hadn’t been in Northstar when JP had killed Mike Thompson and Carol Landers, and he had only met Luke a couple times in passing at school—he’d been a senior when Luke was a freshman but had dropped out shortly after the start of the school year—but he knew Rogers hadn’t won any friends in this valley when he’d blamed Luke, however indirectly, for the deaths of his teammate and girlfriend.
He studied Aaron, noted the strain and exhaustion and grief on his surrogate brother’s face. Of all of them, Aaron had the most reason to mourn the death of his old boss and rival. Rogers might’ve been a monumental pain in his backside, but Aaron had worked with the man most of his career. Regardless of whether or not he’d liked the man, his death was a hard blow.
“I should’ve stayed longer,” Aaron said after a while. “But I had to let the deputies take over. God knows Rogers was a pain in my ass—”
“He was a pain in a lot of asses,” Henry remarked.
“—but I never would’ve wished this on him. To die like this….”
Jeremiah waited for the fear to rebound, but it didn’t. Instead, anger curled through him, slow-burning and ravenous. Zach might not have pulled the trigger, but he’d found someone to do it for him.
Go ahead, he could hear his cousin whispering. Try to prove it’s me.
He clenched his jaw. This was Zach all the way, taunting him and reminding him how helpless he was.
Heather tightened her arms around him and let out a breath. “Here we go again.”
“He’ll make a mistake again,” Jeremiah whispered. “That’s his one fault—his arrogance. There has to be some way to prove what Randall said—that Zach shot the cows.”
An inkling that he was overlooking something tickled his brain, but it eluded him, and the harder he tried to chase it down, the faster it escaped beyond his reach. So he let it go for now, kissed Heather, and focused attention on supporting Aaron. He’d remembered where he’d met Randall, so he was sure this would come to him, too, if he relaxed and coaxed it back.
He just hoped he would remember before Zach moved on to the next step… before someone else died.