In a Cowboy's Arms (Hitting Rocks Cowboys) (2 page)

“I don’t doubt it,” she said, her voice trembling. “You know I’ve loved you forever. Having you as my husband is all I’ve ever dreamed about. Oh, Jarod, I love you so much. I can’t wait—”

He caressed her hair, which cascaded to her waist, and then his hands fell away. “Tomorrow night we’ll be together forever. But you’ve got to go while I still have the strength to let you go.”

“Why don’t we just leave for the reservation now?”

“You know why. You’re still seventeen and the risk of getting caught is too great.” Jarod reached into his pocket and pulled out a beaded bracelet, which he fastened around her wrist. “This was made by my mother’s family. After the ceremony you’ll be given the earrings and belt that go with it.”

“It’s so beautiful!” The intricate geometric designs stood out in blues and pinks.

“Not as beautiful as you are,” he said, his voice deep and velvety soft. “Now you have to go.” He walked her to her horse. Once she’d mounted, he climbed on his stallion and rode with her to the top of the hill. They leaned toward each other for one last hungry kiss. “Tomorrow night, Sadie.”

“Tomorrow night,” she whispered against his lips.

Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night.
Her heart pounded the message all the way home.

* * *

R
EMEMBERING
THAT
NIGHT
now, Sadie felt the tears roll down her face. Their love affair had turned into a disaster, permanently setting daughter and father against each other. She was forced to leave for California and never saw Jarod again. And the Hensons had been left to deal with their drunken boss until the bitter end. Guilt had swamped Sadie, but she’d had no choice except to leave the ranch to prevent her father from carrying out his threat to kill Jarod.

While her mind made a mental list of what to do first before she and Zane left for Montana, she hung up the phone and took a clean cloth to wash Ryan’s face and hands. “Come on, sweetheart.” She kissed his light brown hair. “Lunch is over. Time for a nap.”

While she changed his diaper, she looked out the upstairs window of the house she’d lived in with her mother and Tim on Potrero Hill. The view of San Francisco Bay was spectacular from here.

But much as she loved this city where her mother had been born and raised—where she’d met Daniel when he’d come here on business—Sadie was a Montana girl through and through. With her father’s death, her exile was over.
She could go home.

She longed to be back riding a horse through the pockets of white sweet clover that perfumed the land in the spring. Though she’d made friends in San Francisco and had dated quite a bit, she yearned for her beloved ranch and her oldest friends.

As for Jarod Bannock, eight years of living away from him had given her perspective.

He was a man now, destined to be the head of the Bannock empire one day. According to Liz he had a new love interest. Obviously he hadn’t pined for Sadie all these years. And she wasn’t a lovesick teenager who’d thought her broken heart would never heal after her father’s treachery against Jarod. He’d been the one behind the truck accident that had put Jarod in the hospital. But that was ancient history now. She was a twenty-six-year-old woman who couldn’t wait to take her half brother back to Farfields Ranch where they belonged.

Ryan might end up being her only child, which made him doubly precious to her. One day Ryan Corkin Lawson would grow up and become head of the ranch and make it a success. In time he’d learn how to do every chore and manage the accounts. She’d teach him how to tend the calves that needed to be culled from the herd.

That had been Sadie’s favorite job as a young girl. The sickly ones were brought to the corral at the side of the ranch house. Sadie had named them after the native flora: yellow bell, pussytoes, snowberry, pearly. Ryan would love it!

Before she left his room, she hugged and kissed the precious little boy. While she waited for Zane, she went into the den and phoned the Methodist Church in White Lodge, where she and her mother had once attended services.

In a few minutes she got hold of Minister Lyman, a man she didn’t know. Together they worked out the particulars about the service and burial. The minister would coordinate with the Bitterroot Mortuary, where the hospital would transport her father’s body.

To the minister’s credit he said nothing negative about her father. He only expressed his condolences and agreed to take care of the service. After thanking him, she rang off and sat at the computer to start writing the obituary. She could do everything online. Within a couple of hours the announcement would come out in the
Billings Gazette
and
Carbon County News.
How should she word it?

On May 6, Daniel Burns Corkin of Farfields Ranch, Montana, passed away from natural causes at the age of fifty-three after being the cruelest man alive.

Too many words? On second thought why not make it simpler and put what the munchkins sang when Dorothy arrived in Oz.

“Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead!”

* * *

“H
EY
,
BOSS
.”

“Glad you came in the truck, Ben. I need you to get this new calf to one of the hutches before a predator comes after it. She has a broken foot from being stepped on.” There was no need to phone Liz Henson, White Lodge’s new vet. Jarod’s sister, Avery, could splint it. “Would you help me put her in the back?”

“Sure.” Together they lifted the calf, careful not to do any more damage, but the mother bellowed in protest.

“I know how you feel,” Jarod said over his shoulder. “Your baby will be back soon.”

Ben chuckled. “You think she understands you?”

“I guess we’ll find out the answer to that imponderable in the great hereafter.” Jarod closed the tailgate and then shoved his cowboy hat to the back of his head, shifting his gaze to the new foreman of the Hitting Rocks Ranch. The affable manager showed a real liking for his sister, but so far that interest hadn’t been reciprocated. Ben needed to meet someone else. “You were going to tell me something?”

“Avery sent me to find you. I guess your phone’s turned off.”

“The battery needs recharging. What’s up?”

“She wanted you to know Daniel Corkin died at White Lodge Hospital early this morning of acute liver failure.”

What?

Jarod staggered in place.

Sadie’s monster father had really given up the ghost?

“The Hensons were with him. They got word to Liz and she phoned Avery.”

The news he hadn’t expected to come for another decade or more sent a great rushing wind through his ears, carrying painful whispers from the past that he’d tried to block out all these years. They came at him from every direction, dredging up bittersweet memories so clear they could have happened yesterday.

But Jarod managed to control his emotions in front of Ben. “Appreciate you telling me.” After a pause he said, “If Avery can’t tend to the calf, I’ll call Liz. You go on. I’ll follow on my horse Blackberry.”

Ben nodded and took off.

Long after the truck disappeared, Jarod stood in the pasture to gentle the calf’s mother, adrenaline gushing through his veins. Sadie would show up long enough to bury her father. Then what?

He threw his head back, taking in the cotton-ball clouds drifting across an early May sky. With Sadie’s mother buried in California, it no doubt meant the end of Farfields. Sadie hadn’t stepped on Montana soil in eight years. The note he’d received in the hospital after his truck accident when she’d left the ranch had been simple enough.

Jarod,

You begged me to consider carefully the decision to marry you. I have thought about it and realize it just won’t work. I’m going to live with my mother in California, but I want you to know I’ll always treasure our time together.

Sadie.

For eight years Jarod had done his damnedest to avoid any news of her and for the most part had succeeded.
Until now...

By the time he rode into the barn, twilight was turning into night. He levered himself off Blackberry and led him into the stall.

“You’re kind of late, aren’t you?”

Jarod couldn’t remember when there wasn’t a baiting tone in Ned’s voice. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the youngest of his four cousins walking toward him. Ned’s three siblings were good friends with Jarod.

He scrutinized Ned, who was a year younger than him. Even that slight age difference upset Ned, but the rancor he felt for Jarod ran much deeper for other reasons. They were both Bannocks and lived in separate houses on the Hitting Rocks Ranch, but the fact that Jarod’s mother had been a full Crow Indian was an embarrassment to the bigoted Ned. He liked to pretend Jarod wasn’t part of the Bannock family and took great pleasure in treating him like a second-class citizen.

Ned was also still single and had always had a thing for Sadie Corkin, feelings that were never reciprocated. “It took me longer than usual to check out the new calves. How about you? Were you able to get the old bale truck fixed today or do we need to buy a new one?”

“If it comes to that, I’ll talk it over with my dad.”

Grant Bannock, Jarod’s uncle, was a good man. But he had his hands full with Ned, who’d been spoiled most of his life and did his share of drinking. Jarod often had to keep a close eye on him to make certain he got his chores done. Not even Tyson Bannock, Ned’s grandfather and Ralph’s brother, could control him at times.

Ned had always dreamed of marrying Sadie Corkin and one day being in charge of both ranches. But that dream was in no one’s interest but his own. Ralph Bannock, Jarod’s grandfather, was the head of the ranch and his closeness to Jarod was like pouring salt on Ned’s open wound.

Jarod patted the horse’s rump before turning to his cousin. “Was there something else you wanted?”

Ned had looped his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and stared at Jarod, who at six foot three topped him by two inches. Jarod saw a wild glitter in those hazel eyes that felt like hatred, confirming his suspicions that this encounter had to do with the news Ben had brought him earlier. Now that Sadie would be coming back for the burial, Ned wanted Jarod out of the picture.

“I thought you should know old man Corkin kicked the bucket early this morning.”

Jarod didn’t bother telling his cousin he was way ahead of him.

“If I were you,” Ned warned, “I wouldn’t get any ideas about showing my face at the funeral since he hated your guts.” Jarod noted the heightened venom in his voice.

There’d been a lot of hate inside Daniel that had nothing to do with Jarod. In that regard Sadie’s father and Ned had a lot in common, but no good would come of pointing that out to his cousin.

Jarod’s uncle Charlo would describe Ned as an “empty war bonnet.” The thought brought a faint smile to his lips. “Thanks for the advice.”

Ned smirked. “No problem. Because of you there’s been enough tension between the Corkins and the Bannocks. Or maybe you’re itching to start another War of the Roses and manipulate your grandfather into buying Farfields for you. To my recollection that battle lasted a hundred years.”

“I believe that was the Hundred Years War.” Ned’s ridiculous plan to acquire Sadie and the Corkin ranch in the hope oil could be found there was pitiable. “The War of the Roses lasted thirty years and the Scots only triumphed for ten of them. If my grandmother were still alive, we could check the facts with her.”

Addie Bannock loved her history, and Jarod loved hearing what she could tell him about that part of his ancestry.

Even in the semidarkness of the barn, he detected a ruddy color creeping into Ned’s cheeks. For once his cousin didn’t seem to have a rebuttal.

“Do you know what’s important, Ned? Daniel’s death puts an end to any talk of war between the two families, for which we can all be grateful. I have a feeling this news will bring new life to both our grandfathers. Those two brothers are sick to death of it. Frankly, so am I. Good night.”

As he walked out of the barn, Ned’s last salvo caught up to him.

“If you think this is over, then you’re as
loco
as Charlo.” It sounded like a threat.

Jarod kept walking. Daniel Corkin’s death had shaken everyone, including his troubled cousin Ned.

Chapter Two

“...And so into Your hands, O merciful God, we commend Your servant Daniel Burns Corkin. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech You, a sheep of Your own fold, a lamb of Your own flock, a sinner of Your own redeeming. Receive Daniel into the arms of Your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of those who have gone before. Amen.”

After the collective “amens,” Minister Lyman looked at Sadie before eying the assembled crowd. She hadn’t noticed the people who’d attended. In fact, she hadn’t talked to anyone yet.

“While they finish the work here, Daniel’s daughter, Sadie Corkin, and the Hensons, who’ve worked for Daniel all these years and are like a second family to Sadie, invite all of you back to the ranch house for refreshments.”

The house, with the extraordinary backdrop of the Pryor Mountains, was only a two-minute walk from the family plot with its smattering of pine trees. Sadie had already ordered a headstone, but it wouldn’t be ready for a few weeks.

She felt an arm slip around her shoulders. “Let me take Ryan for you so you can have some time alone.”

When she looked up she saw Liz Henson, her dearest, oldest friend. They’d been like sisters growing up. Even while Liz attended vet school at Colorado State, they’d stayed in close touch. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I am.” Liz kissed Ryan’s cheek. “Since you flew in yesterday, we’ve been getting to know each other, haven’t we?” She plucked him out of Sadie’s arms. “Come with me, little baby brother, and I’ll get you something to eat.”

At first he protested, but eventually his voice grew faint. Liz had a loving way about her. Sadie knew he was in the best of hands.

Zane walked up to her. She saw the compassion in his blue eyes. “It was a lovely service. Your father is being laid to rest with all the dignity he would have wanted.”

“He wanted Mother with him, but I’m glad she’s buried with Tim. He brought her the joy she deserved in this life.”

“You brought her joy the day you were born, and she’d be so proud you’re raising Ryan. I plan to help you any way I can. I hope you know that.”

“You’re a wonderful man, Zane. Ryan is so lucky to have you in his life.”

“He’s a little Tim.”

“I know. Those dimples get to me every time,” she told him, smiling.

“Yup. Don’t forget he’s my life now, too!”

“As if I could forget.”

Zane, she knew, had reached an emotional crossroads in his life and was still struggling to find himself. There’d been so many losses in his life, her heart went out to him. Thank heaven they had Ryan to cling to.

The afternoon sun caused Zane to squint. “Everyone’s gone inside the house. I’m going to help Liz. If you need us, you know where to find us.”

She nodded. The mortuary staff was waiting for her to leave so they could lower the casket and finish their part of the work, but she couldn’t seem to get up from the chair they’d brought for her. Since the phone call from Millie five days ago, her life had been a blur. She barely remembered the flight from San Francisco to Billings, let alone the drive in the rental car with Zane and Ryan to the ranch. Someone could use her for a pin cushion and she wouldn’t feel a thing.

Sadie counted a dozen large sprays of flowers around the grave site. Such kindness for a man who’d made few friends humbled her. The huge arrangement with the gorgeous purple-and-white flowers kept attracting her attention. For as long as she could remember that color combination had been her favorite.

Needing to know who’d sent the floral offering, she stood and walked around to gather the cards. She recognized every name. So many people who’d touched their lives and had loved her mother were still here offering to help in any way they could. When she pulled out the insert from the purple-and-white flowers, her breath caught.

Sadie,

Your mother and father’s greatest blessing. Let this be a time for all hearts to heal.

Love, Ralph Bannock and all the Bannocks—including the good, the bad and the ugly. Hope you haven’t forgotten I’m the ugly one.

She could hear Ralph saying it. He could be a great tease and she’d forgotten nothing.

A laugh escaped her lips as she put the cards in the pocket of her suit jacket. How she’d loved and missed him and Addie! Sadie had sent purple-and-white flowers when Addie had passed away, and today he’d reciprocated. She would have come for his wife’s funeral if there’d been any way possible, but fear of what her father would do to Jarod if she came back had prevented her from showing up.

There could have been so much loving and happiness in her family, but her father’s demons had put them through years of grief that affected the whole community. Suddenly she was sobbing through the laughter.

Needing to hide, Sadie hurried over to the granddaddy pine where she used to build nests of pine needles beneath its branches for the birds. She leaned against the base of the trunk while she wept buckets. How was she going to get through today, let alone tomorrow?

Her father’s flawed view of life, his cruelty, had occupied so much of her thinking, she didn’t know how to fill that negative space now that he was gone. She felt flung into a void, unable to get her bearings. And then she heard a male voice behind her. A voice like dark velvet. Only one man in this world sounded like that.

“Long ago my uncle Charlo gave me good advice. Walk forward, and when the mountain appears as the obstacle, turn each stone one by one. Don’t try to move the mountain. Instead, turn each stone that makes up the mountain.”

Jarod...

She hadn’t heard that voice since her teens, but she’d recognize it if it had been a hundred years ago. His sister, Avery, had once told Sadie he was known in the tribe as “Sits in the Center” because he was part white and straddled two worlds of knowledge.

Since he’d just picked up on Sadie’s tortured thoughts, she couldn’t deny he had uncanny abilities. But too many years had passed and they were no longer the same people. The agony of loss she’d once felt had been replaced by a dull pain that had never quite gone away. Wiping the moisture off her cheeks with the backs of her hands, she turned to face him.

He was a twenty-nine-year-old man now, tall and muscled, physical traits he’d inherited from his handsome father, Colin Bannock. But the short hair she remembered was now a shiny mane of midnight-black, caught at the nape with a thong. His complexion was bronzed by the sun and she picked out a scar near the edge of his right eyebrow she hadn’t seen before. No doubt he’d received that in the truck accident that left him unconscious.

He wore a dark dress suit with a white shirt, like the other men, but there was something magnificent about his bearing. The powerful combination of his Crow and Bannock heritage meant no man was Jarod’s equal in looks or stature.

She sensed a new confidence in him that had come with maturity. The coal-black of his piercing eyes beneath arched brows the same color sent unexpected chills down Sadie’s spine.

The whole beautiful look of him caused her to quiver. Once she’d lain in his arms and they’d made glorious love. Did he ever think about that night and their plans to marry the day she turned eighteen?

After she’d fled to California, she’d prayed he would ignore the words in her note and call Millie. Once he’d left the hospital and got her number in California from the housekeeper, she’d expected his call so she could explain about the traumatic episode at the ranch with her father.

But Jarod hadn’t called Millie, and there had been no word from him at all. Learning that he was out of the hospital and on his feet again, she’d prayed she would hear from him. But after a month of waiting, she’d decided he really was relieved they hadn’t gotten married, so she hadn’t tried to reach him.

That’s when she’d given him another name:
Born of Flint.
The Crow nation referred to the Pryor Mountains as the Hitting Rock Mountains because of the abundance of flint found there, which they chipped into sharp, bladelike arrowheads. Jarod’s silence had been like one of those blades, piercing her heart with deadly accuracy.

“It’s good to see you again, Sadie, even if it’s under such painful circumstances,” he said. “Ned warned me not to show up, but my grandfather’s been ill and asked me to represent him.”

And if he hadn’t asked you, Jarod, would you still have come?

“He’s too tired to go out. Do you mind?”

Did she mind that Jarod’s unexpected appearance had just turned her life upside down for the second time?

“Of course not. Liz told me Ralph has suffered recurring bouts of pneumonia. I love him. Always have. Please tell him the flowers he sent are breathtaking.” She plucked a white-and-purple flower from the arrangement and handed them to him. “These are from me. Tell him I’ll come to see him Tuesday evening. By then I’ll be more settled.”

He grasped the stems. “If I tell him that, then you have to promise you won’t disappoint him. He couldn’t take it.”

She sucked in her breath.
You mean the way you disappointed me after you said you would always love me? Not one word or phone call from you in eight years about my note? Surely you knew there had to be a life and death reason behind it.

“Sadie?”

Another voice and just in time.

She tore her gaze away from Jarod. Zane was walking toward her, holding a fussy Ryan. “Here she is, sport.” The moment he put the little boy in her arms, Ryan calmed down. This child was the sunshine in her life.

Zane smiled at them. “He was good for a while, but with all those unfamiliar faces, he missed you.”

Sadie clung to her baby brother, needing a buffer against Jarod, who stood there looking too splendid for words. She finally averted her eyes and kissed Ryan. “I missed you, too.” She cleared her throat, realizing she’d forgotten her manners. “Zane Lawson, have you met Jarod Bannock, our neighbor to the east?”

He nodded. “Liz introduced us.”

At a loss for words in the brief silence that followed, Sadie shifted Ryan to her other arm. “I’m sorry I left you so long, sweetheart. Come on. There are a lot of people I need to thank for coming.”

She glanced one last time at Jarod over Ryan’s head. “It’s been good to see you, too, Jarod,” she lied. Her pain was too great to be near him any longer. “Thanks for the wise counsel from your uncle Charlo. In truth I
have
come back to a mountain. Getting through the rest of this day will be like turning over that first stone.”

As Jarod grimaced, Sadie hugged her brother harder. “Please give Uncle Charlo my regards the next time you see him. I always was a little in awe of him.”

* * *

A
FTER
EIGHT
YEARS
Jarod finally had his answer. She’d meant every word in the note she’d sent him.
Not one phone call or letter from her in all that time.
It appeared the sacred vow he’d made to her hadn’t touched her soul.

Gutted by feelings he’d never experienced before, he watched the three of them walk back to the house. They looked good together, at ease with each other. Comfortable. Just how comfortable he couldn’t tell yet. Was there something in the genes that attracted the Corkin women to the Lawson brothers?

But the girl he remembered with the long silky blond hair hanging almost to her waist was gone. Except for her eyes—Montana blue like the sky—everything else had changed. Her mouth looked fuller. She’d grown another inch.

Blue jeans and a Western shirt on a coltish figure had been replaced with a sophisticated black suit that outlined the voluptuous curves of her body. The gold tips of her hair, styled into a windblown look, brushed the collar of a lavender blouse. And high heels, not cowboy boots, called his attention to her long, beautiful legs.

There was an earthy element about her not apparent eight years ago. He hadn’t been able to identify it until she’d caught the towheaded boy in her arms. Then everything clicked into place. She’d become a mother as surely as if she’d given birth. He’d seen the same thing happen in the Crow clan—they watched out for the adopted ones. The experience defined Sadie in a new way. It explained the hungry look in the uncle’s eyes.

Jarod was flooded by jealousy, an emotion so foreign he could scarcely comprehend it, and the flowers meant for his grandfather dropped to the ground. Not wanting to be seen, he stole around the side of the ranch house and had almost reached his truck when Connor caught up to him.

“Jarod? Wait a minute! Where’s the fire?”

His head whipped around and he met his younger brother’s brown eyes. Connor had been through a painful divorce several years ago, but his many steer wrestling competitions when he wasn’t working on the ranch with Jarod had kept him from sinking into a permanent depression. This past week he’d been away at a rodeo in Texas, but after learning about Daniel, he’d come home for the funeral.

“Avery and I looked for you before the service.”

“My flight from Dallas was late. I just got here. Come inside with me.”

That would be impossible. “I can’t, but Avery will be glad to see you got here.”

Connor cocked his dark blond head in concern. “Are you all right?”

Jarod’s lungs constricted. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. You seem...different.”

Yes, he was different. The passionate, stars-in-her-eyes woman who’d made him feel immortal had disappeared forever.

“I promised grandfather I wouldn’t be long. He wants to hear about the funeral and know who attended. He has great affection for Sadie.”

His brother nodded in understanding. “Don’t we all.”

“How’s the best bulldogger in the state after your last event?” The question was automatic, though Jarod’s mind was somewhere else, lost in those pain-filled blue eyes that had looked right through him.

“I’m not complaining, but I’ll tell you about it later. Listen—as long as you’re going back to the house, tell grandfather I’ll be home as soon as I’ve talked to Sadie. How is she? It’s been years since I last saw her.”

A lifetime, you mean.