Return to the Black Hills (6 page)

“Or really bad luck on your part.”

Cade reached around her with his free hand and ran two fingers across her hot orange tank, an inch or so above her left breast. There wasn’t anything sexy or suggestive about his touch but a shiver passed through her lower abdomen. A definite I-am-woman kind of shiver.

“I don’t know, Hank. This doesn’t look like soda to me.” To the paramedics, he made a come-here motion with his chin. “I think her foot should be elevated. It’s swelling.”

Jessie shifted her gaze downward and gulped, loudly. He was right. She glanced at Remy and sighed, giving her a look only her twin would understand.

Before she knew it, she was on her back on the gurney with a blood-pressure cuff attached to her left arm and a fresh cold pack on her ankle. The pain she’d managed to block returned with a vengeance, but she made herself pay attention to the deputy, who seemed to be giving her declaration of foul play some credibility.

“So, this Zane guy? Where’s he staying?”

“No idea. He wasn’t at our motel. But you can’t miss his bike. It’s got a skull for a headlight.”

The man scribbled something in his little notepad. “And what about the other guy? Cade said there was a third stuntman who took off after you fell.”

“His name is J. T. Feathering.” Jessie felt a pang of guilt for even hinting Dar’s son might have had something to do with the sabotage. “Both of their numbers are on my phone. Remy, could you grab my backpack for me? I think I have an address book in it somewhere.”

She watched her sister walk away, then added, “J.T. and I used to date but we broke up after a couple of months.”

“You broke it off?”

She nodded. “We weren’t that close. But his mom kept pushing us together.”

“His mother?”

“Darlene Feathering. My ex-business partner. J.T.’s a decent cameraman. He works a lot of the same jobs I do. But he’s not into the physical side of things. If he did climb the tower to put something on the ropes, it was payback for Dar.”

“For what?”

She looked at Remy, who was returning with the backpack. Jessie hadn’t told anyone in her family about the financial meltdown she’d returned to after their mother’s funeral. “Dar embezzled from Girlz on Fire—the nonprofit corporation she and I started three years ago. We provided a safe harbor for at-risk young women. Dar was the hands-on manager. I was in charge of fund-raising. I collected pledges tied to Team Shockwave’s performance.”

“What’s Team Shockwave?”

“Our eight-member Parkour team. Zane and I are co-captains. We…um…didn’t do so hot at our last event,” Jessie said softly. “I was eliminated earlier than I should have been.”

She stared at the sky to avoid seeing the look on her sister’s face. Remy was smart enough to put two and two together. “When I got home, Dar accused me of throwing the game. She said I’d sabotaged Girlz. Claimed she was going to have to file for bankruptcy.” She closed her eyes, wishing she could forget the ugly confrontation that came so close on the heels of her mother’s funeral. “Something about that didn’t feel right to me, so I hired an independent auditor.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

“Half a million dollars, give or take.”

The cop whistled.

“Dar claims it’s all a mistake. I’m not worried. She’ll land on her feet. She always does. When I left L.A., I heard she was negotiating a plea bargain. She has a lot of support in Hollywood. She was one of the first female stuntwomen in the biz. When she was injured on the job, the outpouring of donations was pretty substantial. She says that generosity is what made her want to give back. I doubt very much if she’ll go to jail.”

And, honestly, Jessie had never wanted that. Dar had been like a second mother to her. Being a burn victim, too, Dar had seemed to understand Jessie in a way her family never had. But apparently that empathy and camaraderie and love came at a price.

“Ahem. We need to get going, sir,” one of the paramedics said. “Could you finish this interview at the hospital? We’re taking her to Sturgis General.”

The two men started pushing her toward the ambulance. Cade rushed ahead to stop traffic. There wasn’t much, thankfully. But watching him brought her gaze in line with her car—parked on the space directly below a prominent No Parking sign.

“Yota,” she cried, lifting up on her elbows. “What about—”

“I told you,” Remy interrupted, “I’ll drive it.”

That was hardly reassuring. Remy had a terrible sense of direction. “Are you sure you won’t get lost? And what about the keys?”

Remy, who was walking beside her, held up a familiar key fob. “Somebody put the mail sack on the driver’s seat. I’ll be right behind the ambulance. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry?
That was like telling her not to run. Jessie always worried. It was her job. Especially where members of her family were concerned.

Not that she was able to take care of the people she loved and keep them from dying. Her mother had proven that. But she never stopped worrying about them.

“One second, guys.” Cade joined them. He leaned over so Jessie could see his eyes.
Someone should name a color of contact lenses after those eyes.
A silly thing to think, she realized about the same time he said, “I’ll follow Remy to make sure she gets to the hospital safely. And I’ll hang around until we hear what the verdict is on your ankle. Even if you decide not to stick around the Hills to train, you and your sister are welcome to stay at the ranch for as long as you need.”

Not stick around…?
What did he think was going to happen? Surgery? Amputation? Before she could say a word, the two men in uniform unlocked the wheels on the gurney with a loud clang and shoved the whole unit into the back of the ambulance, then closed the doors.

The blood-pressure cuff on her arm filled up, pinching her skin. “A little high,” the man sitting beside her said. “How’s the pain? Give me a number. If ten is the worst pain you could possibly imagine and one is no pain at all, what’s yours?”

“Four,” she lied. The steady throbbing in her foot and ankle was probably closer to an eight, but she could handle it without drugs. She’d survived weeks upon weeks of ten and worse. This was manageable.

Besides, she needed her mind to stay sharp if she was going to figure out who sabotaged her stunt…and why.

“I guess it’s closest. I don’t know. Maybe Jessie told them she was planning to move into Buck’s place.”

Mac had blinked in surprise. “You’re renting your dad’s house to Jessie Bouchard?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Mac put up his hands defensively. “No reason. She’s cool. Coop and Shane were talking about some spectacular rollover that put her in the hospital a few weeks ago. Most people seem to think it was her fault. I heard she lost her mother a while back. Maybe she’s lost her edge.”

“She looked pretty damn sharp when she kept my daughter from falling off that climbing tower and possibly breaking her neck.”

“Shiloh did that?” Mac made a face. “Damn. Kids never think, do they? Speaking of kids, I gotta run. Good catch today, buddy.”

Cade didn’t know why he felt the need to defend Jessie’s reputation. He was certainly no fan of reckless behavior and risky jobs. Hell, he’d lost his wife to exactly that sort of self-centered, all-eyes-on-me job. He’d never understood Faith’s decision to put her career over the good of her family. That choice had cost her everything. But it had cost him, too.

And their daughter.

Speaking of Shiloh…once he had Jessie’s funky blue box of a car in sight, he used his Bluetooth to call his sister. “Hey, Kat, how’s Shiloh?”

“Great. The kids are out back with Jack, assembling our new barbecue. I’m thinking it’s about time to order pizza.”

Her happy laugh made him smile. She was the good part about moving back. Buck…not so much. “Will you buy enough for Shiloh? I’m on my way to the hospital. I would have swung by and picked her up but Jessie seems to think her sister could get lost following an ambulance.”

“She told you that?”

Her pretty, mostly very unexpressive face had still communicated loud and clear. Cade had learned at a very young age to read the nuances behind the words. Probably a skill most children of alcoholics learned. “I read her silence.”

“Oh.” Kat seemed momentarily lost for words. Not surprising, Cade thought, she’d grown up with Buck for a father, too. But she was nearly ten years younger than Cade. With a different mother. Helen. The woman who recently passed away and whose death sent his father into an emotional tailspin.

“How’s her foot?”

Ugly. “Don’t know. I’ll call you as soon as I hear something, okay?”

“Sure. Don’t worry about Shiloh. She and the boys are having a blast. Just like you hoped when you moved back here.”

Nothing was exactly as he’d hoped it would be when he returned to the Black Hills, but Kat and her sons were a start. Maybe Shiloh would act her age again if she spent more time with her cousins. And Kat was bound to be a good female influence on her, too.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. Tell Jessie I hope her leg is okay.”

“I’ll keep you posted.” He pushed the disconnect button and let out a deep sigh.

Cade turned on the radio and settled into driving. Today was his first day off in two weeks and he was spending it chasing after a complete stranger who may or may not wind up living across the yard from him. Was he crazy? Probably. But that’s what happened when you had a father like Buck Garrity.

What did he have to lose?

He’d made a helluva lot of mistakes in his life. He’d loved and lost two good women. Of his four children, only two were still living. His oldest son passed in the prime of his life—angry. Mad at Buck. Mad at life. A sad way to leave things.

His eldest daughter was gone, too. At least as far as Renata had been concerned. She lived on the East Coast. Married. No children. She might as well be living on the moon. She’d formally resigned from being Buck’s daughter the day she left for boarding school—a choice she made completely on her own when she was fourteen.

“I’m never coming back, Daddy. Just so you know. The ranch is not my life. It wasn’t Mommy’s, either. She wouldn’t want this for me.”

She was wrong. Her mother had loved living in the Black Hills. She called it her spiritual home. It’s where she wanted to die—although not so young and from a disease no one completely understood. Especially not Buck. Bulimia. A hateful word. Almost as detestable as
drunk.
That was his claim to fame.

He’d been too weak, too big a coward, to face raising three kids alone, so he’d left his poor, grieving family with a housekeeper and drove west looking for someone to ease his pain and tell him it was going to be okay again.

He met Helen. The second love of his life. A single mom with three kids of her own.

He married her too fast. He figured his word alone would make the two families mesh. His word was a joke. The children hated each other and hated him more. All except for Cade. His bighearted youngest son. Cade tried to get along. And he loved baby Kat when she was born.

But in the end, Buck managed to drive Cade away, too. Determined to make his own way, Cade turned his back on his sister, the ranch, his inheritance, but, most of all, his father. Buck bided his time, keeping the lines of communication open via Kat. Fishing, hoping for a miracle.

And six months ago, he got a nibble.

Slowly, with finesse—the way you landed a fifteen-pound trout on a five-pound line—he and Cade worked out an arrangement. Cade and Shiloh would move home. At long last, Buck was going to have a chance to get to know his granddaughter. With any luck, he’d die a happy man on the ranch he’d built, his family around him.

Perhaps even be partially forgiven.

But then Helen died. The woman he’d been divorced from longer than he’d been married to. They’d loved each and hated each other. They’d made a daughter together and then fought over her for so long Kat claimed to feel like the knot in a giant tug-o’-war.

Helen died after a long and difficult illness. Everyone knew the end was coming. Buck thought he was prepared. He wasn’t. Her funeral brought all of his losses crashing down upon him. Their faces. Their pain. The multitude of mistakes he’d made. The lost opportunities when he could have said “I love you, son. I love you, dear.” But he didn’t. And those chances never came again.

So, he did what he always did when life got too hard to handle without a stiff drink—he ran. This time, he left the bottle in the cupboard. Two years sober. He planned to stay that way. Instead, he ran to a sanctuary that promised to help him come out of his pain a better man. Wiser.

Forgivable.

He hoped.

“Sir, we have a short break before yoga. You’re welcome to use the phone if you’d like.”

Buck looked at the serene face of his tutor—that’s what they called the person who helped guide a novice practitioner through the early days of the retreat. “Thank you, Matthew. Not today. My family is probably getting along much better without me. I think I’ll keep it that way for the time being.”

He would call Cade soon. He’d talked to Kat, once, but had asked her not to mention the call to her brother. She’d told him about Cade’s plan to rent Buck’s house for the summer. “He needs an extra set of eyes on Shiloh,” she’d explained.
To fill in for Shiloh’s missing grandfather.

Buck stood, stretching slowly. He wondered if he’d ever get used to this slow pace. Running a ranch was a 24/7 sort of job. Having a resident grandpa on staff was supposed to be part of the plan.

Plans changed.

Cade knew that better than anybody.