Big Sky Standoff - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,24

me, Arlen?”

“About what?” he asked, looking scared.

“Did you happen to be at Halsey Waters’s funeral?”

All the color left his face. “What does that have to do with—”

“Yes or no? Or can’t you remember that, either?”

He had the good grace to flush. “I was there, just like all his other friends.”

She detected something odd in his tone. Today was the first time she’d heard anything about Halsey Waters. But then, she wasn’t from this part of Montana. “How did Halsey die?”

Arlen looked down at his boots. “He was bucked off a wild horse. Broke his neck.”

ALL THE OLD DEMONS that had haunted him came back with a vengeance as Dillon rode out with Arlen and Jacklyn, across rolling hills dotted with cattle and sagebrush. He breathed in the familiar scents as if to punish himself. Or remind himself that even four years in prison couldn’t change a man enough to forget his first love. Or his worst enemy.

The air smelled so good it made him ache. This had once been his country. He knew it even better than the man who owned it.

They followed the fence line as it twisted alongside the creek, the bottomlands thick with chokecherry, willow and dogwood. Jacklyn slowed her horse, waiting for him.

The memories were so sharp and painful he had to look away for fear she would see that this was killing him.

Or worse, that she might glimpse the desire for vengeance burning in his eyes.

“I’ve always wanted to ask you,” she said conversationally. Arlen was riding ahead of them, out of earshot. “Why three university degrees?”

Dillon pretended to give her question some thought, although he doubted that’s what she’d been thinking about. She’d made it clear back at the ranch house that she thought he and Arlen used to rustle cattle together. It hadn’t helped that Arlen had lied through his teeth about the good-luck coin.

Shoving back his hat, Dillon shrugged and said, “I was a rancher’s son. You know how, at that age, you’re so full of yourself. I thought the last thing I wanted to do was ranch. I wanted a job where I got to wear something other than jeans and boots, have an office with a window, make lots of money.”

She glanced over at him, as if wondering if he was serious. “You know, I suspect you often tell people what you think they want to hear.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Nope, that’s the real reason I got three degrees. I was covering my bets.”

She cut her eyes to him as she rode alongside him, their legs almost touching. “Okay, I get the engineering and business degrees. But psychology?”

He wondered what she was really asking. “I’m fascinated by people and what makes them tick. Like you,” he said, smiling at her. “You’re a mystery to me.”

“Let’s not go there.”

“What if I can’t help myself?”

“Mr. Savage—”

He laughed. “Maybe before this is over I’ll get a glimpse of the real Jack Wilde,” he said, her gaze heating him more than the sun beating down from overhead.

He could see that she wished she hadn’t started this conversation when she urged her horse forward, trotting off after Arlen Dubois.

As Dillon stared after her retreating backside, he suspected he and the real Jacklyn Wilde were more alike than she ever wanted to admit—and he said as much when he caught up to her.

JACKLYN PRETENDED NOT TO hear him. His voice had dropped to a low murmur that felt like a whisper across her skin. It vibrated in her chest, making her nipples tighten and warmth rush through her, straight to her center.

Dillon chuckled, as if suspecting only too well what his words did to her.

She cursed her foolishness. She should have known better than to try to egg Dillon Savage on. He was much better at playing head games than she was.

In front of her, Arlen brought his horse up short. She did the same when she noticed the cut barbed wire fence. Dismounting, she handed the cowboy her reins and walked across the soft earth toward the gap.

There was one set of horseshoe tracks in the dirt on the other side of the cut fence, a half-dozen on this side, obliterating Tom’s horse’s prints. Sheriff McCray and his men. She could see where they had ridden all over, trampling any evidence.

But she no longer thought McCray had planted the lucky gold coin. Not after both Dillon’s and Arlen’s reactions. She just didn’t know what a coin belonging to the deceased Halsey Waters had