GRIFFIN
Winn. She’d told me her name was Winn.
Winn, the sexy woman with silky dark hair, deep blue eyes
and legs for days. Winn, the lady with Bozeman license plates. Winn, the tourist with freckles across her nose.
It happened sometimes, that a tourist would stumble upon Willie’s for a drink. It annoyed the fuck out of Willie—Junior and Senior—because neither liked outsiders in their bar. I’d considered myself one lucky bastard that I’d made the last-minute decision to swing in for a drink and pull up a stool beside Winn.
Except she wasn’t Winn.
She was Winslow Covington, a name I sure as hell would have recognized. Dad had been talking about her for weeks since the hiring committee had selected her as the new chief of police.
Not a tourist. Definitely not a tourist.
She was supposed to be a goddamn tourist.
“Fuck,” I muttered as the truck bumped and rolled down the gravel road toward Mom and Dad’s place.
“You okay, Griff?” Conor asked from the passenger seat in my truck. I grunted.
“Okay,” he drawled, turning his attention to the green pasture out his window.
What a fucking mess. It had been two days since lunch at The Eloise and I was still pissed at myself.
Winslow Covington.
Not someone I should have fucked in the backseat.
Maybe I should have put it together. Maybe I should have tied Winn to Winslow. But Dad had spoken so highly of her and her experience that I’d pictured an entirely different woman in my mind. Someone older. Someone harder. Someone rougher.
Winn was nothing but smooth edges and unrivaled desire. Two days and I was still struggling to fit Winn to Winslow. Those preconceived notions were a bitch to erase.
Dad had taken his role on the search committee as seriously as he had any job I’d seen him tackle, including managing the Eden ranch. He was the kind of man who took every responsibility to heart, no matter how big or small. It was a trait he’d passed to me.
Though the way he’d jumped into the search committee had been borderline zealous. Mom blamed boredom for his enthusiasm for a nonpaying position. Since Dad had retired and handed me the reins for the ranch three years ago, he’d been spinning his wheels.
There were other family businesses that still required his attention, like the hotel. But those mostly ran on autopilot these days. The time commitment was nothing like it was for the ranch. This land had been his priority for decades, second only to his family. Us kids were grown. The ranch was mine.
He’d needed that search committee almost as much as they had needed him.
I had to give my father credit. A lot of farmers and ranchers struggled to pass the baton to the next generation. I had friends from college who’d
abandoned their family’s operations to work a desk job simply because their parents refused to step away.
Not my dad. After his retirement, he hadn’t given me a single piece of unsolicited advice. If a hired hand asked him for input, Dad would send the man to me. He’d pitch in whenever I asked, but besides a few slips that first year, he’d stopped giving orders to everyone, including me. There were no critiques when I introduced a new idea. No muttered censures when I made a mistake. No guilt trips when I stopped doing something his way.
I loved my father. I respected him above any other man on earth. But for fuck’s sake, couldn’t he have mentioned, just once, that Winslow Covington was a beautiful, vivacious woman who was going to turn a hell of a lot more heads than just mine?
Instead, he’d praised her energy. He’d said twice that she’d outshined the other candidates. She was sharp. She had the tenacity to take the police department into the future.
In my mind, I’d pictured a brawny woman with a masculine haircut and narrow nose like her grandfather’s. Certainly not the bombshell who’d been sitting at Willie’s.
I’d been blinded by Winn’s looks, that smile and her wit. I’d come in for one drink and thought, what the hell? When was the last time I’d seen such a stunning woman?
I preferred to hook up with tourists because their time in Quincy was temporary. If she had brushed me off or not shown any interest, I would have walked away. But the desire in her gaze had matched my own, and I’d just . . . had to have her.
That was the most erotic night I’d had in years. Maybe ever.
I clenched my jaw and tightened my grip on the steering wheel to keep myself from glancing at the backseat. Winn’s scent was gone but it had taken all of yesterday for her sweet citrus to vanish.
Now it reeked like Conor.
Bless that kid and his sweat glands.
He’d started working for us in high school, stacking hay bales and doing odd jobs around the ranch. He’d tried college in Missoula for a year, but after flunking out, he’d come home to Quincy. Conor was the youngest full- time employee at the ranch and this kid moved nonstop.
There weren’t many men who could keep up with my stamina. At thirty-one, I felt just as fit as I had a decade ago. But the ten-year age gap between Conor and me, combined with his work ethic, meant he could run me into the ground.
He’d spent the morning cleaning out the barn by my place, and what normally took me three hours, he did in half that time. Sweat ringed his plaid shirt and the brim of his baseball cap. The hat was as sun-bleached as my own, the black fabric having faded to brown. The Eden ranch brand— an E with a curve in the shape of a rocking chair’s runner beneath—had once been white stitching and was now a dirty gray.
Conor was a good kid. But damn, did he stink. I hated that I missed Winn’s perfume.
“Nice day,” he said. “It is.” I nodded.
Rays of pure sunlight streamed through the cloudless blue sky. The heat had already melted away the morning dew, and as we drove, I could practically see the grass growing. It was summer days like this when, as a teenager, I used to find an open field, lie down and take a power nap.
I could use one of those naps today after waking up at four, hard and aching for the woman who’d invaded my dreams. Sleep was risky, so I’d settled for a cold shower and my fist before retreating to my home office. Paperwork had been a decent distraction. So had work in the barn. But it was moments like this, when the world was quieter, that she crept up on me again.
Try as I might, there was no shoving Winn out of my mind.
Her tight body. Her sweet lips. Her long, dark hair that had brushed over my bare chest as she’d straddled my lap and sunk down on my cock.
Hell. Now I was getting hard again.
A relationship with her or any woman was out of the question, hence my streak of one-night stands over the past year. My focus was my family and the ranch. By the time most days ended, I barely had time for a shower before my head hit the pillow. The bachelor lifestyle suited me just fine. I answered to no one but the land. If I needed company, I had five siblings to call. A woman would require energy I just didn’t have to spare.
Tourists didn’t ask for commitment. Except she wasn’t a tourist.
Had she known who I was at Willie’s? No way. She’d looked as shocked to meet me at lunch the other day as I’d been to see her. Whatever. None of it mattered. I had no intention of repeating Sunday night.
Winslow was an outsider, and though tempting, I’d keep my distance. There was work to be done.
“I’m going to drop you off at the shop,” I told Conor. “You can take the fencing truck and head out to the meadow that runs along the road to Indigo Ridge. We’ll be turning out cattle into that pasture in the next few weeks and I noticed some spots that need fixing when I was driving out there the other day.”
“Sure thing.” Conor nodded, his elbow sticking out the open window. “How far should I go?”
“As far as you can. By Friday, I’d like to have that whole area finished.” Ranch headquarters remained by Mom and Dad’s log house. Though my place saw more and more activity every year, the main shop and the
stables would probably always be here, where Dad had built them.
“Call me if you need anything,” I said, parking beside Mom’s Cadillac. “Will do.” Conor hopped out, then jogged across the wide, open lot that
separated my childhood home from the ranch buildings.
Mom walked out of her front door as my boots hit the gravel. “Hi, Conor.”
He slowed, spinning to tip his hat. “Ma’am.”
“That boy is a dear. Has been since he was in diapers.” She smiled at me as I climbed the steps to the wraparound porch.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, son. Got time for coffee or are you already off to the next thing?”
“I need to keep moving, but I wouldn’t say no to a travel mug.”
“I just brewed a fresh pot.” She waved me inside and headed straight for the kitchen.
Dad sat at the island with the newspaper spread across the granite countertop.
The Quincy Gazette came once a week, every Wednesday. When I’d been a kid, those weekly papers would have gone mostly unread because neither Mom nor Dad had had time to read them. Mostly, we’d used them to start fires in the wood stove. But now that Dad was retired, he spent hours poring over every printed word.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi there.” He straightened, taking his glasses off. “What’s going on today?”
There was an eagerness to his voice like he was waiting for me to extend an invitation for a project. As much as I enjoyed time with my father, today, I needed some time alone. Time to get my head straight and off a certain woman.
But maybe he could save me a trip to town. Going anywhere near city limits seemed risky today.
“I was hoping you might have time to run into town and pick up a bundle of steel fence posts at the Farm and Feed,” I said.
“Sure.” He nodded. “I’ll do it when I’m done with the paper.”
“He’s only read it twice already.” Mom rolled her eyes from the coffeepot.
“Just the one article about Winslow,” he argued. “The Nelsens did a piss-poor job on this one.”
I stepped closer to the island, leaning in to read over his shoulder. My gaze landed on her pretty face. The photo took up half the front page. Winn was dressed in a black uniform shirt, the top button choking her slim neck. Her hair was pulled back into a slick knot. Her expression was the definition of neutral.
The photo had to be ten years old. Maybe one taken at the academy. “They might as well have called her a child.” Dad huffed and pushed
the paper my way.
If the picture weren’t bad enough, the article certainly didn’t help. Below the headline—QUINCY CHIEF OF POLICE—was a column that read more like an exposé on small-town politics and favoritism.
No surprise, given the reporter listed was Emily Nelsen.
She loved to stir up drama. And when it came to the women in town who’d made it their mission to chase me, Emily was the leader of the pack. Good thing she didn’t know I’d hooked up with Winn. The article was bad enough already.
Emily’s parents owned the paper and the disdain for Walter Covington was as clear as the black-and-white ink on each page.
“Are you really surprised?” I asked Dad. “You know the Nelsens have always hated Covie. Ever since that squabble at the basketball game over the air horns.”
“That was seven years ago.”
“Does it matter? It could have been seventy and they’d still hold a grudge.”
The Nelsens had brought two air horns to a high school basketball game. My younger brother Mateo had been playing as a sophomore on the
junior varsity team along with the Nelsens’ son. They’d run those goddamn air horns in the gymnasium for an hour straight. Finally, Walter had asked them to pipe down.
Our mayor had taken the hit for everyone in the bleachers that day. The articles printed since hadn’t been kind to Covie. I guess the Nelsens had no plans to be kind to Winn either.
The article left out most of her experience, though her age had been mentioned three times. Along with the word preferential.
Thirty was young for a chief of police. Had Dad not been on the hiring committee, I would have called it favoritism too.
What kind of experience could Winn have this far into her career? If something disastrous happened, I didn’t want the chief dropping the oars in the water when we’d need a steady captain at the helm. Maybe, despite a shitty delivery, Emily Nelsen had a point.
But since I wasn’t in the mood to argue with my father, I took my coffee mug from Mom and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for the refill.”
“Of course.” She squeezed my hand. “Dinner tonight? Knox isn’t working at the restaurant and Mateo doesn’t have a shift at the hotel. Lyla and Talia both said they could come over around six.”
“What about Eloise?”
“She’s coming over after the night clerk arrives at the hotel, probably around seven.”
It was harder and harder to get us all under her roof and at the same table these days. Mom lived for the rare occasion when she could feed all six of her children.
“I’ll do my best.” This was a busy time on the ranch and the idea of a family dinner already made me tired. But I didn’t want to disappoint Mom. “See you later. Thanks again for picking up those posts, Dad.”
He raised his own coffee mug, his attention rapt on the paper and a scowl fixed on his face.
A calico cat darted across the porch when I stepped outside. It ducked beneath the bottom stair, and when I reached the ground, I bent to see her tucked into a corner, nurturing a chorus of tiny meows.
Kittens. I’d have to take a few of them to my barn when they were weaned. Mom had at least ten cats already. But since they kept the mice away, none of us had ever minded grabbing the occasional bag of dry cat food.
I set out across the gravel, heading for the shop. The mammoth steel building was the largest on the ranch. With the barn and stables at one corner of the lot, Mom and Dad’s home at the other, the shop was the third corner of the triangle.
Our hired hands came here to clock in and out of their shifts. My office manager and bookkeeper each had a desk here, though they both preferred to work at the office space we kept in town.
My boots echoed on the concrete floor as I walked into the cavernous space. One of the swathers was parked just inside the sliding doors.
“Hiya, Griff.” My cousin, who worked for us as a mechanic, poked his head out from beneath the machine.
“Hey. How’s it coming?” “Oh, I’ll get it fixed.”
“Good news.” I’d already bought two new tractors this spring. I’d prefer to bump another major equipment expense to the winter.
I kept walking as he went back to work on the machine. There was a mountain of office work for me to do today, either here or at home. We were short a man for the summer season and I was a week late on getting an ad into the classifieds with the paper. Avoiding Emily was the reason, but I couldn’t keep putting it off. Except one glance at my darkened office and I turned around for the door.
In total, the ranch consisted of ninety thousand acres. Most days, I was more of a business manager than an actual rancher. I still wore my boots
and the belt buckle I’d won from a bareback ride at a high school rodeo. But the business degree I’d earned was put to use more often than my fencing pliers.
Not today.
June was a beautiful month in Montana and the blue sky beckoned. There was a cool breeze coming off the mountains, carrying the scent of pine trees and melting snow into the valley.
Sunshine and sweat would do my head a lot of good. I needed a day of hard, manual labor. Maybe if I exhausted myself, I’d sleep without dreaming of Winn.
I’d just reached the tool bench, ready to load up on a fresh roll of barbed wire and galvanized post clips, when my phone rang in my jeans pocket.
“Hey, Conor,” I answered. “Griffin.”
My heart stopped at the panic in his voice, but my feet were already moving, jogging toward the shop door. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“It’s . . .”
“It’s what? Talk to me.”
“I started at Indigo Ridge. That corner post.”
“Yeah.” When I hit the gravel past the door, I was running. He might be young, but Conor didn’t get spooked. “Conor, tell me what happened?”
A sob escaped his mouth.
“I’m on my way,” I said but didn’t end the call. Instead, I got into my truck, let my phone connect to the Bluetooth and kept Conor on the line with me as I drove.
“Breathe, Conor.”
A whooshed breath escaped his lungs. My foot dug into the gas pedal as I raced to the turnoff.
“I’m just pulling off the gravel road,” I told him, taking the two-track path that ran along the fence line.
He didn’t respond other than to continue those heartbreaking, muffled sobs.
The truck rattled so hard my bones felt like they were shaking loose. These roads weren’t paved or smooth, just worn from the times we drove through the fields. The tracks were spotted with holes and rocks and dips. They weren’t meant for anything more than five miles per hour. I was going twenty.
My stomach twisted with every passing minute. God, don’t let him be hurt. If he’d cut his hand or arm or leg and was bleeding, it would take us time to get to the hospital. Too much time. And I’d sent Conor to one of the farthest ends of the ranch.
Finally, twenty minutes later, I spotted the fencing truck in the distance.
The mountains loomed on the horizon.
“I’m here,” I said, then ended the call. My tires skidded to a stop. A cloud of dust billowed from the road as I shot out of the truck and jogged toward Conor.
He was seated against a tire, his knees pulled up and his head hanging between them. One arm hung loose beside him. The other had the phone pressed to his ear.
“Conor.” I put my hand on his shoulder, doing a quick scan. No blood.
No apparent broken bones. All ten fingers. Two ears and two booted feet.
He looked up, his phone dropping to the grass. Tear tracks stained his tanned face. “It’s Lily.”
“Lily . . .”
“G-green,” he choked out. “Lily Green.”
Green. One of the nurses at the nursing home where my grandmother had lived before she passed was a Green. “What about Lily Green?”
Another tear dripped down Conor’s face. “Over there.” “Over . . .” I trailed off and my stomach found a new bottom. No. Not again.
I swallowed hard and stood, knowing without asking what I was going to find.
On leaden feet, I walked through the tall grass to the corner post and climbed the fence. My boots followed the same roughly trodden path that Conor must have taken.
Above me, the tower of Indigo Ridge rose into the blue sky. Its bold rock face caught the sun. This place was as intimidating as it was beautiful. A solid wall of rock that cut through the fields in such a harsh line that it was like the mountain had been cleaved from top to toe. The rocks at its base were as black and harsh as the cliff’s face.
I climbed toward the rocks I’d avoided for ages. I hadn’t been on this side of the fence in years. Not since I’d found the body.
The last body.
My gaze landed on a streak of blond hair. On a white dress. On mangled limbs. On a river of blood.
On Lily Green.
