B.J. Daniels - Rustled

As the dust settled, Dawson got his first good look at the rustler.

He blinked. The rustler had lost his hat exposing a head of curly blond hair. A pair of big Montana sky blue eyes glared up at him from a face that left no doubt.

A woman rustler?

“You have to let me go,” she snapped as the roar of the stampeding cattle died off in the distance.

“So you can finish stealing my cattle? I don’t think so.”

“You don’t understand.”

“The hell I don’t. Where are they taking the cattle?”

She tested her left shoulder and grimaced.

“I think you’ll survive,” he said sarcastically.

She shot him a dirty look. “You could have killed me.”

“It crossed my mind.”

“Even after I saved you?” She narrowed those eyes at him like a gun.

“I beg your pardon?” He couldn’t believe this woman.

“Do you think those cattle just happened to turn on their own?” She raised her chin as she said it, her gaze full of challenge. “I saved your life. Now you owe me.”

USA TODAY bestselling author BJ DANIELSwrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a four-and-a-half-star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA, or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website at www.bjdaniels.com.

Rustled

BJ Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is for a good friend and fellow writer who is

a huge fan of cowboys. My hat’s off to Joanna Wayne,

the woman who keeps those cowboys down in Texas

finding the loves of their lives.

Dawson Chisholm reined in his horse to look back at the ranch buildings in the distance. This was his favorite view of the Chisholm Cattle Company. He’d always felt a sense of pride and respect for the ranching empire his father had built.

Today, though, he felt the weight of responsibility on his shoulders for the ranch and feared for his father—and the future. Someone wanted to destroy not only what Hoyt Chisholm had built, but Hoyt himself.

“I’m going to ride up into the high country and check the cattle on summer range,” he’d told his five brothers. They knew him well enough to realize that as the oldest brother he needed some time alone after everything that had happened.

They’d been at the main house sitting around the kitchen table this morning, avoiding the dining room since their father had been arrested for murder and their stepmother, Emma, had taken off to parts unknown.

The house had felt too empty, so they had all moved back in even though they had their own houses on the huge ranch. When their father’s new bride, Emma, had come to the house two months ago, she’d required them all to show up freshly showered and changed for supper every evening.

No one questioned Emma’s new rules, which included no swearing in the house and bowing their heads in prayer before supper. In the weeks since she and Hoyt had wed, she’d made a lot of changes at Chisholm Cattle Company.

That was until the body of Hoyt’s third wife turned up and he’d been arrested.

Dawson still couldn’t believe it. There was no way his father was a murderer. Unfortunately, given the evidence against him and his wealth, the judge had denied bail and Hoyt was now sitting in jail in Whitehorse awaiting trial.

Emma … Well, she’d packed up and skipped town with only a short note saying she couldn’t do this. It had broken their father’s heart. Hoyt Chisholm had looked older than his fifty-six years when Dawson had visited him yesterday evening. He’d taken the news about Emma even worse than Dawson had thought he would.

“Emma wouldn’t just leave,” his father had argued. Emma had been nothing like his father’s other wives. Redheaded with a fiery temper, plump and annoyingly cheerful. Her stepsons hadn’t wanted to like her. But she’d won them all over and their father clearly adored her.

“She left a note, said she couldn’t do this and packed up all her stuff and was gone when we got home,” Dawson said, unable to hide his own anger—and not just at Emma. His father had gone off to a cattleman’s meeting in Denver two months ago and, after a quick stop in Vegas, had come back with a wife. Why was his father surprised the woman would leave, under the circumstances?

“Listen to me,” Hoyt said, leaning forward behind the thick piece of bulletproof glass as he spoke into the phone provided for inmates to talk to visitors. “Emma wouldn’t leave. You have to find her.”

Dawson didn’t need this. He and his brothers were having a hard enough time running the ranch without their father. He had a lot more important things to do than find his father’s fourth wife.

But, he had to admit grudgingly, he’d liked Emma and maybe that was why he was so angry with her for bailing on their father.

“Where would you suggest I look? Is there family I can call? Friends? Is she even from Denver?” When his father didn’t answer any of the questions, he said, “You really don’t know anything about her, do you?”

“I know she wouldn’t leave me,” Hoyt had snapped.

Dawson sighed now, took one last look at the ranch and spurred his horse into the thick cool darkness of the pines. The ride up from the main house had taken most of the day. The big blue sky overhead was tinted pink to the west where the sun had dipped behind the Bear Paw Mountains.

He breathed in the sweet scent of pine. Since he was a boy, he’d always come to the high country when life got to be too much down on the prairie. Having five brothers, all of them adopted by Hoyt years ago, not even a ranch as large as this one felt big enough sometimes.

“I need one of you to see if you can find Emma,” he’d told his brothers before he’d ridden out.

“Dad just doesn’t want to believe that she deserted him,” Marshall had said. “What’s the point in finding her? She won’t come back.”

“I’ll go,” Zane had said, speaking up. When they all looked at him as if he was crazy, he said, “Dad loves her. He has enough problems without worrying about Emma. I’ll see if I can find her. Did he give you any place to start?”