Note to Readers
As Dan Whitlock pulled his pickup to a stop in the middle of the quiet Oklahoma cemetery, his cell phone buzzed against his chest for the third time. He fished it out of his shirt pocket and checked the screen. Sure enough, he had two missed calls and a text from rancher Colton McAllister.
Call me.
Dan looked out the truck window at the snowy cemetery and weighed his options. He’d planned to get this private errand over and done with before he touched base with Colt, but the new boss of the Bar M Ranch wasn’t known for his patience. Might as well go ahead and call him back. Then maybe Dan could tend to his personal business in peace.
Colt answered the phone on the first ring. “About time.”
“I was driving. Sorry, Colt, but my advice is pass on these heifers. They look a lot better on paper than they do in person. I know how bad you want to get in on the Shadow Lady bloodline, but trust me, these aren’t your girls.”
Colt made an irritated noise. “I should have figured as much. Price was too good. I’ll start looking in a higher dollar range and see what I can find.”
The Bar M didn’t have that kind of money to play around with right now. Dan started to argue but thought better of it.
Not my call, he reminded himself, not anymore. As the elderly Gordon McAllister’s foreman, Dan had overseen the day-to-day ranch operations. But now that Colt’s grandfather had passed on, Colt had shifted from being Dan’s friend to being Dan’s boss. The younger McAllister preferred to handle things on his own.
“Anyway,” Colt said, “I appreciate you taking a look. You about ready to head home?”
Dan’s gaze drifted back to the scattered gravestones, sparkling icily in the brittle January sunlight. “Yeah, shortly. I have something I need to do first.”
“No rush on this end. Take your time.”
Dan could barely hear his friend’s muffled words over the whistle of the Wyoming wind and the sound of cattle lowing. Colt probably had his phone clenched between his chin and his shoulder, which meant his hands were busy with something else.
“You out choring? I thought you were supposed to be helping Angie take care of those new twins of yours.”
“I’m fixing that section of fence in the south pasture. I was going stir-crazy in the house, so Angie finally shooed me outside. Oh yeah. She said you had a phone call yesterday.”
“Who from?”
“Some girl, Angie said. She wanted to talk to you, wouldn’t say why. Angie thought it might be something important, though, because the number came up Pine Valley, Georgia. Isn’t that your hometown?”
Dan tightened his grip on the phone. “This girl. She give Angie a name?”
“Yeah. Bailey somebody, I think it was.”
Bailey. Dan’s skin prickled in a way that had nothing to do with the sharp air finding its way into the truck cab. “Bailey Quinn?”
“That sounds right.” Something in his tone must have alerted Colt, because his friend added, “You sound like you just took a punch in the gut. Who’s this Bailey girl to you?”
Dan didn’t answer. He stared through the fogged windshield at a nearby tombstone, darkened with age, the name barely visible.
Who was Bailey to him?
At one point in his life—everything.
Now? She was a memory so full of regret that the pain could reach across more than a decade of time and stop his heart cold. And she definitely wasn’t somebody he wanted to talk about. Not with Colt.
Not with anyone.
After a second or two of silence, Colt went on, “Angie told her you weren’t here, and she left a number. Said she needed to talk to you, please, as soon as possible. Nice-sounding girl, Angie said.”
“Text me the number.” He tried not to ask, but he couldn’t help it. “Did Bailey say anything else?”
“Not that Angie mentioned. Is this girl one of your folks, Dan? Because if you want to go back to Georgia and see about her, you go ahead. You’re not needed here, so there’s no reason for you to hurry back.”
“Well, that’s never a good thing to hear from an employer.”
Colt made a frustrated noise. “You know what I mean. And you also know I don’t think of you as an employee. You’re family to me and Angie, just like you were to Grandpa. Maybe your last name isn’t McAllister,