B.J. Daniels - Intimate Secrets

But the view from the second-story deck off the back was her favorite. She often stood there, looking over the pines to the pale yellow band of sandstone known as the Madison Buffalo Jump. For years, before the Native Americans had horses, the site was used to harvest buffalo on foot.

Josie couldn’t imagine a time when buffalo roamed this river valley. She especially couldn’t imagine a time before horses. She’d had a horse since birth and had been riding almost as long. She loved horses and understood them in a way she’d never understood men.

Ivy was already out of the car and headed up the steps by the time Josie reached the cabin. She stopped at the car to help Mildred carry in the groceries. A widow, Mildred often stayed over. They’d fallen into the habit of having dinner together, with Mildred surprising them with her favorite dishes.

“Your daughter causes a commotion everywhere she goes,” Mildred said, laughing as she lowered a bag of groceries to the table.

“A commotion?” Josie asked, eyeing Ivy as she let the screen door slam behind her.

The cabin was narrow, built tall rather than wide. It ran shotgun style from living room to kitchen with a set of open stairs on the left up to the second-floor bath and two bedrooms.

Josie heard Ivy let out a squeal as she took off across the living room after Millie.

“What did Ivy get into now?” Josie asked with a pretend groan as she set down her armful of groceries, then turned to grab her daughter as she toddled past. She scooped Ivy into her arms and hugged her tightly. She couldn’t seem to hug her enough. Everything about the child filled her with awe. Josie never knew she could feel like this. It was the second revelation in her life.

“She was an absolute angel!” Mildred said in Ivy’s defense. “It’s not her fault that she’s so adorable that even good-looking, smooth-talking cowboys can’t resist her.”

“Good-looking cowboys?” Josie asked, feeling the first prickle of unease as she put the wriggling Ivy back down.

“Even at the store,” Mildred continued as she began putting Josie’s groceries away. “He just couldn’t take his eyes off her. He finally had to come over and say hello.”

Josie felt a wave of anxiety flood her.

Mildred looked up and saw her reaction. “Oh, it wasn’t like that. He was perfectly adorable. Polite with an accent like yours.”

Josie felt the floor buckle under her. Blood drained from her head. Her ears rang. “A Texas accent?”

Mildred looked scared, too, now. She’d paled, her fingers nervously kneading the edges of a box of macaroni and cheese.

Josie could barely form the words. “What did he look like?”

“Oh, Josie, I didn’t really pay him much mind,” she cried. “He was just a nice-looking cowboy in jeans, boots and a Stetson. I guess he was tall and dark and—” She realized what she was saying. “—and yes, as corny as it sounds, handsome. But he didn’t do or say anything…inappropriate, and with tourists coming through town all the time—”

“What did he do and say?” Josie asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. Trying not to scare Mildred any more than she already had.

“He said something like ‘Oh, what a beautiful little girl.’ Ivy was giggling. She liked him. Then he said, ‘She looks just like someone I used to know. The spitting image. Except for the eyes.’ Something like that.”

A chill raced up her spine like a Montana blizzard blowing in. She tried to tell herself it was nothing. Just like thinking she saw Odell in the pines yesterday.

This had only been a cowboy in a grocery store. Ivy always attracted attention with that pale blond hair of hers and her angelic face. And those startling dark eyes. So why did Josie find herself shaking, fear making her heart pound and her knees weak with worry?

She saw Mildred frown as if she’d remembered something that disturbed her. “What is it?”

“He did ask her name. I didn’t think it would hurt anything.”

Josie found breath to ask. “You told him her name was Ivy O’Malley?”

Mildred quickly shook her head. “I just told him her name was Ivy.”

Josie tried to breathe. She’d kept her name when she’d left Texas. She’d wanted something of her family to take with her, something to give her child, and after Odell’s death, she’d believed that no one would ever come looking for her.

But now she realized keeping her name had been a silly, sentimental and very foolish thing to do. If someone from Texas was looking for her, she’d made it easy. So didn’t that mean if the man had been looking for her, he’d have already found her? He wouldn’t be watching her from a stand of trees. Or chasing after Ivy in some grocery store.

“I’m sure it was nothing,” she said, trying to reassure Mildred. Trying even harder to reassure herself.

Mildred looked more worried. “Do you think you might know him?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Tall, dark and handsome definitely ruled out her brothers. They were tall, handsome and quite the ladies’ men with their Irish charm, but they were blond like her.

Unfortunately, tall, dark and handsome did fit both Odell Burton and Clay Jackson. But Odell was dead. And Clay… Well, he didn’t know where she was and didn’t have any reason to come looking for her. At least not one he knew about.

Don’t panic. Mildred’s right. It all sounds innocent enough. So what if he had a Texas accent? Texas is a big state. So what if he took an interest in Ivy?

But Josie knew what she really feared. That the man was somehow connected to Odell Burton and what had happened in Texas two years ago.

“Did you happen to see what he was driving?” Josie asked.

Mildred shook her head. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” she assured the older woman. “It might be someone I know from Texas. You see, no one back home knows where I am. I left in a hurry.” She smiled at Mildred. “I found myself pregnant and knew if I stuck around, my father would either demand a shotgun wedding or shoot the man. The truth is, he’d have probably shot him.” How could she explain the Texas law of the West when it came to daughters? Or for that matter, Texas cowboys and their codes of honor?

“It’s none of my business,” Mildred said. “I didn’t mean to pry—”

“I want to tell you,” she said. Mildred needed to know the truth—well at least some of it—to keep Ivy safe. “I didn’t want anyone to know about Ivy or who her father was. He was the last thing Ivy and I needed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mildred said. “Then you think this man I saw might be looking for you?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. But she intended to find out. If the man was still in town. “Would you mind watching Ivy for a little while tonight?”

Mildred readily agreed. “He really did seem like such a nice man.”

THERE WEREN’T MANY PLACES to stay in a town the size of Three Forks, Montana. As Josie left in one of the old ranch trucks, instead of her own truck with Texas plates, she was thinking about where the cowboy stranger with the Texas accent might be staying.

She figured it wouldn’t take much to find him—if he was still around. There was the Sacajawea Inn, a white, wood-framed historic hotel on the north edge of town. Or several motels.

She decided to start with the Broken Spur on the south end of town, but a block before the motel, she spotted a newer black Dodge pickup parked on a side street with the silhouette of a cowboy behind the wheel and Texas plates.

Distracted, she barely missed hitting an older model Lincoln Continental that sped out of the Broken Spur motel parking lot and pulled in front of her, headed for Main Street.