“Dulcy?”
She didn’t bother to move from where she was sitting at the computer. “You’d better call Ethan.”
Noah walked up right behind her and let his fingers stray to her hair. Dulcy pulled away. His touch was just too intimate, too familiar. Dulcy was having too much trouble controlling her tears as it was.
Noah walked around to where she could see him and knelt down at eye level. She loved his eyes. They were so dear, so alive, so compelling. They could tell her so much before he ever spoke.
She couldn’t bear to see what they were telling her now, so she faced the information on her screen.
“I’ll kill him,” Noah said, and she knew he meant it.
“Two acts of violence in the same day,” she responded, still not facing him, her voice as tight as her chest. “I’m a great influence on you. I’m about to get Mr. Grumman from the bank on the phone up here. Our accounts were all closed. You might want to call Ethan on the house line and see if that’s what he’s been trying to call and tell you about.”
“Damn Ethan,” he snapped, grabbing her arm. “Talk to me.”
Dulcy tried so hard to be reasonable. To be logical and strong. She couldn’t when he was this close, when the tears clogged her throat with useless recriminations. So she pulled away from him. “I have to do this now, Noah. Please. We’ll talk later.”
“Then we’ll do it together. Get the bank on the phone. I’ll wait.”
It took her three tries to dial the right number. Her fingers wouldn’t work. Her voice wasn’t doing much better. In the end she got the answers for her call to Ethan. Dulcy knew how hard it was for Noah to do, but he walked on downstairs to listen on the other line. She thought that was the first breath she’d taken since Josh had slammed out of the house.
“Well, what the hell have you two been up to?” Ethan demanded. “I’ve been trying to get you for four days.”
The silence was taut and damning. Finally it was Noah who managed to participate. “Taking the herd up to summer pasture. Now, what the hell’s going on?”
“Somebody’s been siphoning money out of your account again, that’s what. We closed it before anything else could happen.”
“That account was brand new,” Dulcy protested. “We changed it all when this happened the last time. You signed the papers.”
“And I probably would have liked to know the real reason you changed everything over,” he retorted.
“That’s not a topic of discussion,” Noah said with a finality that brought silence from the other end.
“Okay.”
“We set up elaborate safety measures in the computer system,” Dulcy continued. “Mr. Grumman swore we wouldn’t have any more trouble.”
“Unless somebody knew the safety measures.”
Dulcy knew she should be thinking about that. She couldn’t pull anything together past the fact that Noah’s scent still clung to her skin. She could still hear his laughter, his surprised sighs of delight.
She should have known better. She should still know better. She should just quit the damn job and work for a rodeo.
“Dulcy? Any ideas?”
“Oh…um, I haven’t seen any conspicuous consumption around here recently. Can you trace any of it anywhere?”
“Not really.”
“You want to ask your Aunt Cordelia who she didn’t sell this ranch to, Dulcy?” Noah asked. “That might be a shorter suspect list.”
“Okay,” she acknowledged, trying so hard to get her brain to work, to push its way past the last few minutes, the last few hours. She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at them, trying to force away the ache of tears. “Uh, how ‘bout we work with Bart Bixby and Mr. Grumman to check the bank’s records. See if the discrepancy might show up anywhere else. A mistake or maybe a cranky employee.”
“Who’s Bart Bixby?”
“Sheriff.”
This time the pause was telling. “You sure you want to involve him?”
The same question everyone in town would ask. For the very same reason.
“Apologize, Ethan,” Noah suggested in steely tones.
“I’m not saying it’s Dulcy. She stopped it the last time.”
“Okay,” Dulcy said, rubbing a couple of fingers between her eyes. “For now, let’s do this. Accounts are closed. I’ll call all the businesses tomorrow and say we’re going back to the normal method of business. The town’ll be thrilled. It considers itself progressive as hell for hooking into this system.”
“It is,” Ethan assured her. “It just has a good hacker screwing it up. You want me to deal with the banker?”
“Please. He’s a nice man, but he’s not real fond of me.”
“Who’s he related to?” Noah asked.
Dulcy could almost afford him a smile. “Actually, he’s not related to me. He’s Walt Stewart’s nephew. Doesn’t matter, though. Since I’m the one who talked the town into computerizing in the first place, he might as well be Aunt Mary herself.”
“You did that?” Ethan demanded.
“Yep. I guess I just figured it was a lot easier to embezzle the town’s money that way. Only I just stole Noah’s.”
“Dulcy, stop it,” Noah snapped. “Let’s get on it, Ethan. I’ll start playing on the computer from here.”
“No, you won’t,” Ethan disagreed. “You’re going to call your friend Marshall.”
“Marshall?” Noah retorted, suddenly sounding cautious. “Why?”
“Because something went wrong and he needs you back. Right now. He’s been driving me nuts.”
“Wrong? Wrong? There shouldn’t be anything wrong. I busted my ass on that!”
“Talk to him about it,” Ethan suggested dryly. “I’m just the messenger. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Dulcy.”
Dulcy hung up the phone and stared at it. Stared at the screen. Thought about what was coming and wondered where the heck she was going to get the strength to go through this all over again. Wondered what she was going to do to protect Hannah from it.
Hannah. Oh, God, what was going to happen to her baby?
What was going to happen to them both?
Dulcy sat at her desk and stared down the road that stretched over the valley. Pretty soon Sally’s compact would top the rise that led to the front gate. She and Hannah would be back, full of news about the storm, full of enthusiasm and noise. Full of life. Dulcy watched and waited and ignored the raised voice from the floor below, where Noah was arguing with somebody named Marshall about a screwup in production scheduling. She watched the sun settle behind another bank of clouds to the west and the shadows slide east. She listened to the birds and the cattle and the distant water, and she thought she was going to die without it.
And she knew it was going to get worse. Because she wouldn’t only lose the ranch. She’d end up losing Noah, too.
“Dulcy?”
She didn’t turn. “I think I’m going to have to leave. Would you like me to train Hank before I go?”
Noah crouched before her, a hand on hers. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She tried to draw breath and ended up making an awful, sobbing sound. “I just can’t go through it again.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he objected, cradling her hands in his. “I’ll go into town—”
“No!” She turned to see the pain in those soft gray eyes, and it made her hurt all the worse. “Don’t do that.”
“But, Dulcy, I can’t let Josh get away with this.”
“No, Noah. Don’t you see? It would only make it worse.”
“Tell me how.”
Dulcy wanted to smile for him, to lessen the impact of her words. “People are funny. They believe what they want. And if you went around town defending my honor against the truth, people would just be all the more convinced that Josh is right. That I’m a scheming bitch who’s doing her best to take all your money and thumb my nose at the people who knew better all along. Besides, don’t you have to get back to work?”
“There’s no way I’m leaving you right now.”
“Ethan and I will work it out. I promise. If you want to make people think you trust me absolutely, going about your business is the best argument.” She saw him begin to protest. “Really.”
“We need some time, Dulcy,” he insisted, his face taut with distress. “Just you and me. I need to explain some things.”
“You don’t need to explain anything to me.”
Dulcy laughed, but it sounded as sore as Dulcy’s heart. “Oh, yes I do. I’m a coward, because I won’t do it now. But I want to tell you when we can focus on just that. On just us.”
Just us. How could it possibly hurt worse? “You’re married in that other life and your wife has a big ax?” Dulcy asked, trying so hard to be lighthearted.
His smile took it all away. It was the saddest, loneliest smile she’d ever seen. “No,” he answered, rubbing at her hands with gentle fingers. “No wife. We’ll get through this, Dulcy. I promise.”
Dulcy almost ran right out the door just on the weight of those two words. Dulcy had been promised before. By selfish people, by sincere people, by people who walked in righteousness. She thought she’d never wanted to believe a promise as much before in her life. But she didn’t remember how anymore.
“You won’t do anything stupid while I’m gone, like walk out?”
Dulcy did manage a smile this time, although it cost her more than almost anything she’d done in her life. “Now, why would I do something like that?”
“I quit, Hank,” she said three days later.
“You can’t let people run you off this ranch,” Hank protested.
“I can’t let them hurt Hannah anymore. This afternoon three different people in town refused to talk to her because they were sure I’d set up the computer system to defraud the valley. Somebody else threw a rock through the windshield while we were in the bank.”
“Aw, Hannah’s tougher than you think. She don’t wanna leave here.”
“Neither do I. But I just don’t think I have a choice.”
“And that little girl? What are you gonna do with her?”
“She’s having a vacation with Sally’s parents.”
“So, you’re not tellin’ her she ain’t comin’ back.”
“Not yet.”
Hank delivered his judgment in absolute silence. If Dulcy weren’t already so numb, that would have hurt, too.
She’d finally made her decision the night before, late, when she’d been on the phone again with Ethan. They weren’t getting anything accomplished. The call Dulcy had made to Aunt Cordelia had just netted the information that bids for the Lazy V had come in from every rancher in the area and two businesses, Montana Inc. and International Investments Partners, both listed as California corporations, which would have explained on a dime why Aunt Cordelia hadn’t sold to them. Noah’s bid had come in behind the IIP people, Uncle Mike and, of all people, Cletus Wilson.
Cletus had disavowed any knowledge of the running iron, and the bank any knowledge of where Noah’s money had gone. Dulcy’s authority at the ranch was disintegrating, and her reputation was in tatters. She decided she had to act before there was nothing left to salvage.
She had to leave before Noah was forced off the land he’d learned to love almost as much as she did. Land, she was beginning to realize, he needed even more.
“I’ve talked to Mr. Campbell,” she told Hank. “He’s going to leave things in your hands for right now and find a replacement when one of them can get back to supervise it.”
Dulcy didn’t bother to tell him which Mr. Campbell. Let Hank think Noah was in on it all.
“I hate that damn computer.”
“Let Sally help you.”
“What about you? Where are you going?”
Dulcy shrugged. “I don’t know. For right now, I’m just going to take a vacation. I’m taking Colorado with me.”
“Only fair. You brought him with you.”
She’d brought a lot of things with her she didn’t have anymore. And she’d found something she’d lost again.
Oh, God, Noah. Noah with his heartbreaking smile and his lonely eyes. Noah who hadn’t believed he could fall in love in a week.
You can fall in love in a week, Dulcy wanted to tell him. In a day. In a heartbeat—the first time you see a tousled, hung-over, unmade bed of a man open his eyes.
She’d brought her isolation with her when she’d come to the ranch. Her careful common sense and independence. Noah had taken them back home with him, and Dulcy didn’t know what to do.
She didn’t know what to do but leave, so he could save what was his.
Sally tried to talk Dulcy out of it, too. She didn’t have any better luck than Noah had.
“Do you know what you’re about to give up?” she demanded, hands on flour-dusted denim-clad hips.
“I’ll find another job.”
“I’m not talking about the job,” Sally insisted, leaning closer, bright blue eyes as intense as Dulcy had ever seen them.
So Dulcy faced her, and Dulcy told her the truth. “Yes,” she said simply. “I know. I also know that within ten minutes of stepping off that plane back home, he’ll forget just what was so fascinating about the cute little ranch girl he left back in Montana. So I’m not giving up that much, anyway.”
“Dulcy, don’t be stupid…”
“There is one thing,” Dulcy said, getting to her feet and reaching for the last of her suitcases rather than face Sally with tears in her eyes. “I like him better with gray eyes.”
Dulcy lasted three days before calling Hannah. Four until she called Sally. The person she really needed to talk to was Noah, but she couldn’t. Not now. Not yet. It didn’t matter that when she managed to catch some sleep she dreamed of him. It didn’t matter that she kept expecting to see him when she turned around. It didn’t matter that everything she did was to help him find his home. She couldn’t tell him.
She took Colorado up and rode the high meadows to work off some of the boredom of sitting in an economy motel at the edge of town. She took her meals in paper bags and did her laundry in the sink. And she worked hard, with only one thing in mind.
Only one.
Noah.
When she walked into town she heard the whispers that she was drinking herself to death in that motel, even though nobody had seen her bring in a bottle. When she called Sally it was to hear that her friends were afraid she was suicidal. When she talked to Hannah, she just laughed and assured her daughter that they were going to try and go home soon.
Some of the people in town did still talk to her, and that was where she gleaned her best information.
“Cletus and his wife are havin’ trouble,” Miss Etta mourned with a sad shake of the head. “There’s a rumor he’s seein’ a young waitress over from Livingston.”
“I heard that Josh finally got hisself a job,” the owner of the gas station confided as he collected Dulcy’s money. “Workin’ for Walt Stewart. You know he’s talkin’ about you.”
Dulcy knew.
“Can you imagine that ole Pete Dunn is learning how to ski?” demanded the owner of the stable where Dulcy had to keep Colorado. “I can just see him on those skinny legs of his, chawin’ tobacco, with Vera yellin’ at him to get back to the store where he belongs, the old fool. Seems Bob Grumman’s been trying to get him to ski for a while, finally did it. Now, of course, Bob can’t go because of the problems at the bank, which wouldn’t be there if a certain somebody hadn’t gone and tried to prove herself smarter than the rest of the world by talking us all into computer billing.”
They weren’t necessarily all kind, but they were talkative. Dulcy took all their stories and opinions and information back with her when she sat down with her computer and her modem and her phone to Ethan, who really had the statistical world at his fingertips. And then, far into each night, the two of them tried to find some kind of pattern.
A week later, Dulcy was riding up in the high plains when she came across something interesting. Surveyors. Out in the middle of nowhere. No roads, no public access, no reason to be there. And yet, there they were.
She didn’t ask. She just looked around her at the steep slopes, the mantle of pine, the clear, sweet, blue sky. She looked down into the far valley and saw the backside of Westridge. And she wondered if she was right about just whose property she was on.
When she got back to town, the first thing she did was climb in the Jeep and head over to the county courthouse to check plats. She looked up titles and requests and especially the environmental impact studies of the area. Then, smiling for the first time in two weeks, she headed back and talked to Ethan about just who it was who had put in the bids for the Lazy V those months ago and why. And then she called Cletus Wilson’s wife and asked her if she could stop by for coffee.
Dulcy heard the phone ring as she stepped out of the shower. After getting back from the Wilsons’ she’d put in a call to Ethan. He’d probably gotten the information she needed. She hopped over unpacked suitcases to get to the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mom. Can you come get me?”
“Hannah?”
“You need to come get her.”
Dulcy sat hard on the edge of the bed. The voice wasn’t Sally’s father’s. It wasn’t a voice she knew.
“Who is this?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is simple. We have your little girl. If you want to see her, you’ll meet with us. If you say a word to your cousin the sheriff, she disappears.”
“Please…” Dulcy couldn’t make her voice work. She couldn’t make her brain work. Hannah. Oh, sweet God, not her baby. “I don’t have any money.”
“We just want to talk. You have a horse. We’ll tell you where to meet us.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“No police.”
“None.”
They told her. She listened, even as her heart ran away with her. Even as she fought to keep from running out the door. Noah, she thought instinctively. God, Noah, help, they have my baby.
“Don’t hurt her,” Dulcy begged, who never begged.
“Behave and we won’t. You have two hours.”
Dulcy tried to call Sally’s parents, but they weren’t home. She tried to call Bart, but it was the dispatcher who answered. The dispatcher who’d been known to spread rumors faster than Aunt Mary. She railed over the fact that she couldn’t call Noah, but there was no way to get hold of him.
So she called Ethan and left a message before grabbing her keys and running out the door. She didn’t even remember to lock up.
Four hours later, a riderless Colorado trotted into the barnyard of the Lazy V and butted a startled Hank for his dinner.
Noah couldn’t seem to concentrate. It was a simple scene. All he had to do was kiss the girl and make her cry, something he’d done in at least ten films so far. Something he’d already done in this film three times. He just hadn’t done it at the end of the movie, which was what the test audience had wanted him to do. So Marshall Wellman had called the entire cast back for a week’s shoot to finish two new scenes and then loop them for postproduction.
So far today, he’d kissed Mitzy Parker half a dozen times and still hadn’t gotten it right.
“Cameron, you want a break?” Marshall asked, impatience edging his voice.
Noah scratched at the pancake makeup they’d had to apply to match continuity with the scenes shot before he’d spent two weeks in the high Montana sun. “I wouldn’t blame Mitzy if she needed a break from me,” he admitted ruefully.
Mitzy, busy puffing on her between-takes cigar, waved a hand in dismissal. Her motto was Anything You Can Do, I Can Do, Too.
“How ‘bout ten?” Marshall decided, mopping his own forehead.
Cameron Ross was legendary for being the easiest actor in town to work with. It was unheard of to need more than three takes, unless the director was playing around. Noah knew that ever since he’d walked back in the studio, he’d been disassembling his good reputation at the speed of light.
But he couldn’t keep his mind on the job at hand. All he could think about was a freckle-faced woman with cotton shirts and boot-cut jeans. Honesty and courage and the chance to end the subterfuge. He’d expected to think of windswept valleys and broad-shouldered mountains. He thought of constellations instead. Trumpet lessons and cows who walked backward.
He thought of a world-famous actor who was too chicken to tell the truth.
“Okay, ma’am, now you can go in.”
“I told you it was an emergency, you idiot!”
Noah snapped to attention like a flag in a thunderstorm. He was on his feet so fast the rest of the crew stopped dead in their tracks.
He was either hallucinating or in more trouble than he knew.
“Don’t you take your phone calls?” she was demanding as she stormed past two security guards and the AD, like Carrie Nation searching for a saloon.
Come on, Campbell, Noah goaded himself, faced with a female intruder on full steam. Say something. Protect yourself. Protect the lie you’ve worked so hard to set up your entire adult life.
“I’m talking to you,” she persisted, planting herself not two feet from him, security guards trailing in her wake like ineffectual satellites.
“Do you know her, Mr. Ross?” one asked, reaching for his gun.
The other one tried to grab her arm. “She said…”
She shook him off like a bug.
“No,” Noah demurred, hand up, eyes on his visitor. “It’s okay. She’s…”
“His cousin, Sally,” she said, still focused entirely on Noah.
Sally.
Sally, who recited gossip magazines like poetry, who could name the birthdate and shoe size of every celebrity in Hollywood. Who had drooled over the pictures of Cameron Ross in his kitchen.
Who was supposed to be at least twelve hundred miles away at this very minute.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded instinctively.
Sally planted herself close enough to him to exclude everybody else on the set, even Mitzy Parker, who was the hottest ingenue to hit town since Julia Roberts.
“You and I need to talk,” she said. “Now.”
Noah didn’t bother to say a word to anybody. He just grabbed her hand and headed for his trailer.
“Now, what’s going on?” he demanded, shutting the door behind them.
Sally took a quick look around the Spartan furnishings. “I kind of expected more,” she admitted.
“How did you get here?” Noah demanded. “How’d you know who I was?”
That actually got a laugh out of her as she dropped a purse the size of a trash bag on one of the chairs. “Every woman in the valley’s known who you were since the moment you pulled Miss Retta out on the dance floor.”
Noah found he was having trouble closing his mouth. “But…but you didn’t say anything.”
Sally scowled now. “You didn’t shut down the roads, either. You just lived there like one of us. Counts for something.”
Noah opened his mouth to ask the next question. The most important question.
“Yes,” Sally accused, before he even had the chance. “She knows. But I guess it just didn’t occur to you that that kind of thing doesn’t mean anything to Dulcy.”
Noah sat down, hard. All that fear, all that worry and work. All for nothing.
All so he could sit here and wonder just what the hell Dulcy had seen in him, anyway.
“She knew.”
Sally shrugged. “She figured it out. I think you could have given her a little credit, movie star.”
“Yeah.” He dropped his gaze to his hands that were suddenly so restless. “I guess I should.”
“Ask me again what I’m doing here.”
Noah lifted his attention right back to her. “What are you doing here?”
That quickly her expression changed. She started pacing, which in a trailer that size wasn’t comfortable. “Ethan,” she said. “He was going to get in touch with you and let you know.”
“He didn’t.”
“You told them to hold your calls.”
Noah waved off the truth. He’d been trying to escape several persistent agents and a producer, who knew he was back in town. All he’d wanted to do was this week of work and then get the hell back to the ranch to finish sorting things out. To clear things up with Dulcy.
Sally’s hands were clenched. Her cheeks, usually so pink, were pale. “Noah,” she said. “We need your help.”
“Dulcy,” he said, somehow knowing.
Sally dragged in a breath. “She’s been kidnapped.”