Carolyne Aarsen - Wrangling The Cowboy's Heart

“Driver’s license, insurance and registration, please,” he stated, sounding more brusque than he liked.

A reaction to her effect on him.

“Sure thing,” she said, handing the papers to him. “Can I ask why you stopped me?”

Her voice was formal, her mouth unsmiling. She didn’t seem to recognize him, but then he was wearing sunglasses himself.

“You were speeding, ma’am.”

“I understood that the speed limit didn’t change for another mile,” Jodie said.

“The boundary changed a couple of years ago.”

“Has Mayor Milton been digging into the town of Saddlebank’s tax coffers again that they need to be replenished with speeding tickets?” she joked, her left elbow resting on the open window, her attitude bordering on cocky.

Still the same boundary-pushing girl he remembered.

“I need your driver’s license, Jodie. I mean, ma’am.”

Her name slipped out. Most unprofessional of him.

She frowned, then took off her sunglasses.

Eyes blue as a mountain lake and fringed with sooty eyelashes stared up at him, enhanced by dark eyebrows. Her fine features were like porcelain, and combined with her thick, brown hair, it was enough to take his breath away.

Then Jodie glanced down at his chest and he saw the moment she recognized him. Her cocky smile faded away and for a moment, her lashes lowered over her eyes. Her shoulders lifted slowly, as if she was drawing in a calming breath.

“Hey, Finn. Or should I say Sheriff Hicks?” Her voice held a faintly taunting note, which bothered him more than he cared to admit.

“It’s deputy. Sheriff Donnelly is still around,” he said, unable to stop the confused flow of memories as he thought of her father sitting by himself at the dining room table of the ranch he owned, lamenting the fact that his three daughters never came to visit anymore. Keith McCauley had been a good friend and mentor to Finn, helping him through a rough time in his life after his father died when Finn was fifteen. Finn’s mother had retreated into herself after that, and then Finn had come home from school one bitterly cold March day to find out her gone. She had left a note on the table telling him she needed to focus on her musical career. That she would be back. She just wasn’t sure when.

Worried about his mother, Finn had called Keith, who’d been a deputy at the time. Keith had come and driven him to his house. The next day he’d brought him over to the Moore family, who had taken him in. Finn’s mother had come home four months later, and he’d moved back in with her. But a week later she’d left again.

Though she’d popped in and out of his life after that, he’d stayed with the Moores until he could move out on his own.

Keith had encouraged him and helped him through that difficult time. It had been Keith who’d introduced him to his fiancée, Denise. Keith who had encouraged him to date her after Keith had met her at the hospital in Bozeman.

“Hate to rush the long arm of the law,” Jodie said, her voice holding a surprisingly tight note, “but am I getting a ticket or...?”

Finn mentally shook off the sad memories. “In honor of your father, a man I admired, I’ll let you off today,” he said, meeting her gaze. “He was a good man.”

She looked up at him, her blue eyes flat now. Expressionless. “I’m sure he was good to you.”

Her cryptic comment confused him, but he guessed her emotions were volatile on a day like today, so he let it go. He had heard from Keith that his three daughters had planned to visit him after his cancer diagnosis. But before that happened Keith had been killed when his truck rolled upside down.

Finn stood aside as Jodie rolled up the window, started the car.

He half expected her to peel off, tires spinning, but she slowly pulled away, keeping to the speed limit this time.

Her car topped the rise, the heat shimmering up from the pavement, distorting it, and then it dropped into the valley, disappearing from view.

Now he had to finish his shift, clean up and try to get to the funeral on time. But as he drove to his last call of the day, all his thoughts were of those blue, blue eyes.

* * *

Jodie clutched the single rose she held, staring at the casket bearing the remains of her father as the pastor read from the Bible. With her other arm she clung to her sister Lauren as a flock of ravens whistled overhead. The birds were a funereal black against the blue Montana sky that stretched from one mountain range to the other, cradling the basin the town of Saddlebank nestled in.

She took in a deep breath, slowing her still-racing heart, memories as raucous as the birds above them swirling through her mind. The service in the church had been mercifully brief and surprisingly difficult. Jodie’s own emotions were so mixed as she listened to the pastor talking about her father’s life. She wondered if they knew the same person.

Do not speak ill of the dead.

Her grandmother’s words resounded in Jodie’s mind. Her dear grandmother, who had also passed on, like Jodie’s mother had. So many losses, she thought.

Only half her attention was on the casket and the pastor. The other half was on the man who stood toward the back of the sparse crowd assembled around the grave.

He was taller than the last time she’d seen him. Which wasn’t a memory she enjoyed pulling out.

That summer had been both wonderful and awful. She’d dated Finn, and lost her chance at her audition for the music conservatory.

After her parents’ divorce and their subsequent move to Knoxville with their mom, she and her sisters had spent their summers in Saddlebank with their father. He’d never approved of her seeing Finn. Keith McCauley thought Finn Hicks was too good for her.

But at the beginning of that summer Jodie had felt her life was coming to a good place. She was falling in love with a wonderful guy. Which had scared her, and led her to do something very stupid.

She was still dealing with the repercussions of that decision and her father’s reaction to this day. After that summer, she’d never seen Finn again.

Until a couple hours ago.

Seeing Finn in the same uniform her father always wore, a uniform that evoked too many bad memories, was a shock, and yet not a surprise. Finn had always been a solid, salt-of-the-earth guy. Which was what had attracted her to him initially.

She wondered what he would think of her now, working as a waitress during the day, playing piano in bars at night.

Jodie sneaked another glance at Finn, dismayed to catch him returning her gaze. But he looked quickly away, his hazel eyes now focused on Keith’s coffin. Finn had grown from an appealing teen into a handsome man, his strong features, square chin and broad shoulders granting him an authority that seemed ingrained. His dark brown hair, worn longer than her father’s regulation haircut, curled just enough to soften his face.

She shouldn’t have been surprised that Finn had followed in her father’s footsteps. The eulogy Finn had delivered a few moments ago was lavish in his praise of a man he’d said had been a mentor to him. A shining example of Christian love in quiet action.

It had been a difficult funeral, Jodie thought, clenching and unclenching her right hand. Leaning on her sister as she so often did.

Lauren wore a sensible black dress, a stark and suitable contrast to her own bright red one. Jodie had refused to wear black, reasoning that with her dark hair she’d look washed out, but now she felt a touch of regret at her choice. She looked as though she didn’t care, when, in fact, her emotions concerning her dad were complex and confusing.

For better or for worse, he was still her father, and now he was gone.

Her older sister stared at the coffin, her pale face framed by her long blond hair, her blue eyes blinking, her narrow shoulders hunched protectively. She pressed Jodie’s arm to her side.