Kathleen O'Brien - Reclaiming the Cowboy

He reached out and enveloped Bonnie...Annabelle...in his arms.

“Belle, Belle!” He was so smooth, so good, that if she didn’t know better, she’d believe he was overjoyed. “Oh, Belle, thank God you’re alive!”

CHAPTER THREE

IT SHOULD HAVE been a peaceful Monday afternoon at the ranch. Instead, having counted every single second in the week since his meeting with Dallas, Mitch was going crazy.

On TV it took about thirty seconds to get a fingerprint match. Even factoring in reality, and the need to do this through back channels, what could possibly be taking eight whole days?

And then, just as Mitch was winding up the training session with Rusty, one of Bell River’s newest ponies destined to take the littlest guests on trail rides, he saw his brother coming toward him.

Hell. Dallas had news. And it wasn’t good news.

Mitch could sense that much from a hundred yards, just watching the way Dallas walked, framed in silhouette through the doorway of the indoor paddock. The first clue was the tight, squared-off position of his shoulders. And when Dallas cleared the door and the overhead lights hit him, Mitch could read the grim evidence on his face.

“Scat, Alec,” Mitch said to his nephew, not roughly but flatly, without sugarcoating. “Go help Rowena with the baby. Your dad and I are going to need some privacy.”

Alec made an irritated snicking sound between his teeth. He’d been having fun helping Mitch, and he didn’t want to quit. “Privacy for what?”

Mitch rolled his eyes. Seriously?

“We’re making plans to sell your scrawny body for spare parts. We can’t have you listening, so scram.”

Alec started to protest again, but then he glanced over at his dad, and apparently the kid could read body language, too. When Dallas had a face like that, Alec wanted to be somewhere else.

So did Mitch, who was suddenly as terrified as if he, too, were a kid. He tried to stop his heart from thumping so fast. He tried to stop his mind from imagining all kinds of horrors. Okay, the news was bad. How bad?

Bonnie was married. Bonnie was a criminal, a nutter...

Or even worse, she was still a mystery. If her fingerprints hadn’t turned up a match, then they were no closer than before to finding out who she really was.

Or... The thumping inside his chest stilled viciously.

Or Bonnie was dead. Whatever she’d been running from had caught her.

“Hey, there.” Dallas reached Mitch just as Alec disappeared through the side doors, leaving a trail of kicked sand behind him. Dallas patted the new pony’s neck. “How’s Rusty doing?”

“He’s fine.” Mitch stroked the pony’s flank approvingly. “But don’t make small talk. You know something. Tell me.”

Dallas continued to rub the pony’s glossy coat. He hadn’t yet met Mitch’s eyes, which was truly unnerving. Dallas was rarely daunted by uncomfortable truths. It was one of the traits that made him a good sheriff. He could deliver bad news with as much composure as he delivered the good.

“Dallas.” The drumming against Mitch’s ribs sped up. “You’re killing me here.”

Dallas finally looked straight at him. “We should probably sit down.”

Mitch didn’t argue. He waved a finger to one of the stable hands who was in the corner viewing room, talking on a cell phone. He pointed to Rusty, and the young man scurried out to take the pony away.

“Okay. Let’s go over here.” With the horse disposed of, Mitch led the way to the far side of the paddock. He opened one of the latches on the kickboards and took the first of the spectator seats on the first row of bleachers.

Dallas left an empty seat between them when he sat. He laid his hat down there with a sigh.

“We found her,” he said. “She’s alive and well. She lives in Sacramento. But...her name’s not Bonnie.”

At first, all Mitch could feel was the relief. Alive. Well. Damn, those were beautiful words.

But then the rest of Dallas’s sentence sank in. Her name’s not Bonnie. It shouldn’t have shocked him. He’d known she must’ve been using a fake name—nothing else made sense. But, as he heard it confirmed, he was glad he was sitting, as if the solid floor might have turned to swamp.

He thought of all the times he’d said her name. Laughing. Whispering. Crying into the night air.

Damn it, Bonnie, where are you?

Bonnie, Bonnie, please...

“No, of course not.” He sat up straight. “What is her name, then?”

Dallas eyed him for a minute before speaking. Mitch felt as if he were being measured, like a horse being fitted for a bit, to see how much of the truth he could take between his teeth at once.

“Annabelle Irving.”

The name was oddly anticlimactic. It meant nothing to Mitch. It was the name of a stranger.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But who is Annabelle Irving?”

Dallas smiled. “I didn’t know, either. Apparently we’re just a couple of dumb cowboys. But with the cultured crowd she’s somebody. Her grandmother was a well-known artist, and Annabelle was her favorite subject. There’s a whole set of paintings of her called the Annabelle Oils, and collectors go nuts for them.”

Okay... Mitch rubbed the knee of his jeans. That was okay, right? An artist’s model. He could live with that. And instinctively, he could believe it. He remembered how unnaturally still and self-contained Bonnie could be. She didn’t even change her expression, sometimes for many minutes at a time. He’d once wondered whether she’d been a nun, because she seemed so accustomed to sitting in silent immobility.

But why would an artist’s model need to go on the run under an assumed name? It wasn’t as if your average person had ever heard of her. She could have shouted, “I am Annabelle Irving” from the rooftops of Silverdell, and no one would have so much as blinked.

He narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute. To match her fingerprints, you have to have a set on file, right? I mean...her prints as Annabelle Irving had to be in the system. How does an artist’s model get her prints into the database?”

One of the trainers had just brought a palomino into the paddock on a lead line. Mitch wished he could yell at her to get out and come back later. But Bell River was a working dude ranch, humming with staff, guests and wall-to-wall activities. He wasn’t going to find complete privacy anywhere.

Dallas flicked a glance toward the young woman, then bent forward, his elbows on his knees, and lowered his voice.

“She was in the system because about seven years ago, when she was eighteen, she stabbed a man with a pair of pruning shears.”

Mitch drew back. “Bullshit.” He said it too loudly, and the trainer glanced their way for one split second before studiously returning her attention to the horse. Mitch wasn’t technically anyone’s boss, but the family tie was close enough to make employees reluctant to cross him.

Dallas frowned, and Mitch shook his head roughly. “Sorry, but...stabbed a man? Like hell she did.”

“I’m afraid that part isn’t even disputed. There’s a police report. She admitted stabbing her cousin, a lawyer named Jacob Burns. She says it was self-defense, because he tried to molest her. He says they were arguing over management of the estate, which, upon her grandmother’s death, had been left to an executor.”

Mitch felt a touch of nausea roll through him. “Her cousin tried to... What the devil do they really mean by ‘molest’? He tried to rape her?”

Then he realized that, instinctively, he’d already decided Bonnie was telling the truth, not this disgusting Jacob whatever. “I mean...come on. The guy’s her cousin? That’s just sick.”