He rubbed his eyes, wondering if the booze had made him woolly-headed, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he wasn’t the only one in that small private room who kept secrets.
Or that the ones he sensed might be as dangerous as his own.
Chapter One
They’d been driving for what felt like forever, but that wasn’t the real problem. It seemed to Echo De Gris that her stepfather’s anxiety had increased with every advancing mile into Wyoming and now that they were on Open Sky Ranch land, it was almost suffocating.
This made no sense because he was the one who had insisted moving back here soon after Echo’s mother’s long illness had finally claimed her life. Echo had been surprised when, at the last minute, he’d asked her to come along on the trip—they had never really been close and she was in the middle of life-changing events of her own. But how could she deny him?
“There it is,” he said, his voice anxious. He shifted around and flashed her a nervous smile, then peered back out the window. His voice barely a whisper, he repeated himself. “There it is.”
She’d been so involved maneuvering the big truck and rented trailer along the gravel road that wound its way through the rolling hillsides of tall grass that she hadn’t looked very far ahead. She did now as they topped a peak, and caught a glimpse of a large log house nestled near a pond in the valley below. Aspens surrounded the house while the uncompromising Rocky Mountains ringed the valley. A dozen barns and outbuildings fanned into corrals and fenced pastures while an airstrip ran more or less parallel to a stream. There were several black cows in evidence, their lowing riding on a gentle breeze. Horses, some with foals at their sides, dotted the hillsides.
She’d lived here as a small girl but everything looked bigger now than she remembered. High white clouds, brilliant blue skies, jagged peaks.
And talk about remote…
“Herd must be up at the summer pastures,” Pete Westin mused and there was a wistful tone to his craggy voice. She wasn’t sure why he’d sold out and moved her and her mother to the West Coast twenty-some-odd years before; she was just grateful he had. Imagine growing up someplace like this. Even the thought of a day or two in such a spot made her itchy.
A few moments later, she drove into the yard, pulling the rig to a stop beside a half dozen other trucks, most of them with dusty ATVs roped into the beds. All she had to do now was help her stepfather get settled, then she was free to catch a ride to Woodwind and buy a ticket on the first plane headed back to civilization.
“I wonder where everybody is. I expected them to be mowing the fields by now, but it doesn’t look as though they’ve even started,” Pete said as he opened his door.
Echo scooted out from behind the wheel. “I’ll take a look around,” she said. It was a big truck with a long drop to the ground and her full skirt caught in the retracting seat belt. She ended up with bare thighs in a swirl of cotton.
“Never mind, here comes someone,” Pete called from the other side of the truck.
As Echo battled with her clothes she looked up to see a man approaching.
There was something about a cowboy, even to a city slicker like her. Maybe it was the snug jeans or the shirt stretched across strong, broad shoulders; maybe it was the way a guy moved when he didn’t spend a lot of time sitting. Or the hat—black in this instance—shading the eyes, squaring the jaw. Whatever it was, whew. Some of them just had “it” and you knew what “it” was when you saw it.
He looked away from her predicament, but not before she saw the speculation in his silvery eyes. Damn—she was nearly naked from the waist down. With a final yank, she reclaimed her skirt.
His gaze moved to her face, then away as he appeared to notice her stepfather on the far side of the truck. He looked quickly back at Echo and speculation turned into surprise. “Either Uncle Pete got himself a pretty young wife or you’re my little cousin Echo,” he said as they shook hands.
She narrowed her eyes and looked him over again. Too young to be Cody…gray eyes…
She’d seen his college graduation picture a few years earlier, taken with his dad, a herd of cattle behind them. “You’re Adam,” she said.
His smile tipped handsome into gorgeous. “I didn’t know you were coming with Uncle Pete.”
“It was sort of last-minute. I’ll be gone before you know it.”
“She’s got herself a new job in New York City,” Pete grumbled. He’d made no bones about his opinion of her moving across the country.
Adam released her hand. “New York, huh. You’ve turned into a big city girl.”
“I grew up in San Francisco,” she reminded him. “I mean, after we left here.”
“Well, it’s nice to see you. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, it has.”
Adam continued on around the truck to greet his uncle. “First Pierce comes home and now you. It’s getting to be like the old days around here. Welcome, Uncle Pete.”
Pete Westin looked genuinely pleased as he delivered a manly clap on the shoulder to Adam. “Where is Pierce?”
“Still in Chatioux. Analise’s father took a turn for the worse. They’re getting ready to crown her brother king so Pierce extended his stay. He should be home next week.”
“I read about what happened here last winter in the newspapers. They made it sound like Pierce was going to marry this Princess Analise.”
“That’s the rumor.”
“How about that? The troublemaker gets himself a princess. How about Cody? Is he around?”
“He and Jamie are working on the mowers. We were supposed to start haying yesterday but everything went wrong. With any luck we start tomorrow bright and early. Dad is out in the barn with a couple cronies you might remember.”
“I’ll head on out there,” Echo’s stepfather said.
Adam nodded across the yard. “No need, they’re on their way.”
Echo turned to see three men. She’d assume she’d recognize her uncle, but the fact was she wasn’t sure which of the men was Birch Westin. All three of them appeared to be in their sixties and cut from the same Western cloth, all imposing in their own way, all about the same size. She looked at their hats—the most recent picture she’d seen of her uncle had him in a black Stetson with silver disks on the band. No help there: they all wore tan hats, two of them straw.
That’s when she remembered Uncle Birch had had knee surgery last winter followed by a series of setbacks that had delayed healing. One man limped, plus, the closer he got, the more he reminded her of Adam if you looked past the wear and tear of time.
“So, you made it,” Birch growled at Echo’s stepfather.
Echo’s stepfather’s shoulders grew rigid. “Yeah,” he said.
Birch nodded, then turned to Echo. His voice softened. “This is a nice surprise. I didn’t know you were coming, too.”
“I’m just here for a day or so,” she explained, moving to accept a perfunctory hug. Birch was as stiff a hugger as her stepfather—neither was the warm, cuddly type. Were all the Westin men like that? Her gaze flicked to Adam. Was he?
Birch took up introductions. “Pete, you remember J. D. Oakes,” he said, gesturing at the man with the white handlebar mustache and a piercing gaze. J.D. held between two fingers what appeared to be a hand-rolled cigarette. It smelled foul. “And this here is Del Halverson. I don’t know if you and Del ever ran into each other way back when.”
Pete shook both men’s hands. “Sure, I know these two. Del, I think you bought your place a year or two before