“I…” The words seemed to catch in his throat as if barbed, and he hated his father even more for making him feel like a boy again in his presence. “I just need to get out of town for a while.”
“Where?”
Anywhere. As far away as he could get from Antelope Flats, Montana. “I’d like to go down to Texas. Maybe go back to school.” He was grabbing at anything he could think of.
“What is this really about?” Mason VanHorn demanded.
His father always saw through him. Mason VanHorn held the purse strings, so he also had a stranglehold on Holt’s life.
“Please just give me enough money to—”
“Is this about Rourke getting out of prison today?” Mason demanded.
Holt heard the disgust in his father’s voice, saw the worry in his face. No, not worry, the affirmation of what his father had suspected for years.
“All I need is enough money to tide me over—”
“VanHorns don’t run like cowards,” his father said through clenched teeth.
“Right.” Holt saw then that his father would freeze in hell before he’d help him get away from here. “Never mind. I should have known you wouldn’t help me.”
He turned too quickly, bumping into the end table. The table overturned. The bronze cowboy hit the tile floor with a crash and a curse from his father.
Holt didn’t stop to pick up the bronze or the table. He headed for the door, wondering how far he could go on thirty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents.
“If you run, everyone will know you have something to hide,” Mason VanHorn yelled after him.
Chapter Three
Cassidy had never run from anything in her life. But as she stood in the kitchen of the Longhorn Café smelling the freshly baked rolls that had just come out of the oven, every instinct told her to take off. Now.
Rourke was back. She could feel it. The rest of the town seemed to have given up on him. The café had cleared out as the day dragged on and he hadn’t shown. Ellie was taking care of what few customers were left. Cassidy had gone into the kitchen to help Arthur, her cook, who was working on the nightly dinner special.
Trying to keep to her usual routine, Cassidy made the dinner rolls for that evening. She liked cooking and baking. Especially making bread. She could work out even the worst mood kneading dough.
But it didn’t work today. Nothing worked. And she knew she had to get out of here. Out of the café. Maybe out of town. The state. The country. She couldn’t face Rourke. Not today. Maybe not ever.
“I’m going to take off for a while,” she told Ellie, who was sitting in an empty booth reading a magazine, waiting for Kit, the night-shift waitress to come in.
“You all right?” Ellie asked.
“Yeah.”
“He’s not coming back to town. Hell, if I were him I’d head for Mexico or maybe South America,” Ellie said. “I’ve seen pictures of it down there. It’s nice.” Ellie was always dreaming of going somewhere else. But at almost fifty, it wasn’t looking like she would ever go any farther than a couple of hours away to Billings or the thirty-mile drive into Wyoming to Sheridan.
“Everything under control?” Cassidy asked Arthur as she stuck her head in the kitchen.
The cook was forty-something, tall, pencil thin, with a shock of dark hair beneath his chef’s hat. He gave her a look filled with sympathy. It was the last thing she needed right now. “Take care of yourself, sweetie.”
She smiled and nodded, taking off her apron and hanging it up before heading into the small office at the back. Retrieving her purse, she glanced around to make sure there was nothing she would need.
How could she know what she would need? She had no idea where she was going. Or if she was even going any farther than home. She was new to running and it already didn’t suit her.
She turned out the office light and started down the hall toward the back door.
“Not planning to skip town, are you?” asked a strident voice behind her.
Cassidy froze.
“Not Cassidy Miller,” the voice mocked.
She turned slowly, a curse on her lips as she met her cousin’s blue-eyed gaze. “I’m going home for the day, not that it’s any of your business.”
Blaze Logan nodded, smiling as if she’d always been able to see through her.
Cassidy feared that might be true.
“No one would blame you if you turned tail and ran,” Blaze said in her comforting, I’m-your-friend tone.
Cassidy had fallen for that act when she was young and stupidly confided in her cousin. She was no longer that young or naive. Normally she avoided Blaze when at all possible and Blaze hadn’t gone out of her way, so their paths had crossed little in the past eleven years. Cassidy should have known that Rourke’s return would change all of that.
“What would I have to run from?” Cassidy asked as she stepped toward her cousin.
Blaze laughed, a bray of a sound. “Rourke McCall.”
“I have nothing to fear from Rourke.” If only that were true.
Blaze eyed her. “I just saw his pickup go by.”
Cassidy suppressed a shudder, hoping she hid her emotions as well. “Go away, Blaze. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or does it? I’ve always suspected you knew something about Forrest’s murder, something you don’t want Rourke to know.”
Blaze paled under the thick layer of makeup she wore. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Cassidy raised a brow. “I wonder if Rourke will think so?”
“Don’t you dare try to incriminate me,” Blaze snapped. “You start telling Rourke a bunch of lies—”
“Oh, I’m sure Rourke has had a lot of time to think about the past. He’s probably figured out by now why you danced with Forrest that night.”
“How could I know that Rourke would try to cut in, let alone that Forrest would pick a fight with him?”
“Oh, Blaze, I think you knew exactly what you were doing. Everyone had heard the rumors going around about you and Forrest. And all the time Rourke thought he was the only one you were seeing. It certainly gave Rourke a motive for murder, didn’t it?”
All the color had gone out of Blaze’s face. “You started those rumors,” she said on a whisper. “You would have done anything to break up Rourke and me.”
Cassidy let out a laugh that was almost a sob. “It was a junior-high crush, Blaze. I much prefer his brother Cash.” Cash had asked her out a few times. She’d declined.
But Cassidy knew Blaze was interested in Cash.
“Cash?” Blaze demanded in a choked cry. “You and Cash?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cassidy said. “Are you interested in him, too?” She hated the cattiness in her voice. “You change McCall brothers the way you change shoes. It’s hard to keep track. Whatever happened to J.T. McCall? Didn’t work out?” J.T., the eldest and the one in charge of the ranch, hadn’t given Blaze the time of day. Cassidy had seen him cross the street to avoid Blaze. Cassidy knew that feeling only too well.
Blaze glared, nostrils flared. “Be careful little cousin. If Rourke doesn’t kill you just like he did Forrest, someone else might.” With that, she spun around