Wyoming True - Diana Palmer

CHAPTER ONE

JAKE MCGUIRE WAS happy for Mina. She’d married a Texan, Cort Grier, who turned out to be a wealthy cattle baron; quite a surprise when she’d known him only as a working cowboy who was helping out on his cousin Bart Riddle’s ranch outside Catelow, Wyoming.

It had been an odd love story. Mina was a famous author of romance novels, who actually went on commando missions with a bunch of mercenaries who’d taken her under their wing for research. Cort Grier hadn’t known that. But he was wearing a mask, too, pretending to be a poor cowboy. It was only after she’d married him that she knew who he really was. And he found out about her profession in a totally unexpected way, when she went to live on his ranch and her mercenary group helped round up a gang of drug smugglers on the border of his property. Many adjustments had been made, but the two seemed destined for happiness. They had a brand-new son named Jeremiah, and while Mina kept the family ranch in Catelow, which her father was now managing, she lived with Cort and Jeremiah at Cort’s enormous family ranch, Latigo, in West Texas.

Jake was glad for her. But he was miserable. He’d had a real case on her, and it had hurt to realize that even his own wealth and status wasn’t enough to attract her. It was the first time in his life that he’d ever been truly smitten with a woman, and she turned out to be in love with someone else.

Well, he could go back to the cattle station he shared with Mina’s cousin Rogan in Australia, but fires in the outback were seriously impacting their vast herds of cattle. Along with hundreds of wildfires, many set deliberately, there was drought and lack of feed. Rogan had already mentioned that they’d have to sell off a lot of their purebred stock to break even. Jake had come back to the States to help get their finances on target and send assistance to get the fires out on the large property and the surviving livestock shipped to a safer location.

The wildfires had hit Rogan even harder than Jake. Mina’s cousin loved the Australian property. He owned a big ranch outside Catelow, as well, but he hated snow, so he only came home in warm months, leaving his manager in charge. Well, unless Jake was there to hold the reins.

Less and less did Jake like being out of the country. He missed Catelow. While he was squiring Mina Michaels around town and to various far-flung five-star restaurants in other states, he’d become accustomed to being back in the States. He was reluctant to leave the country.

Stupid, really, because he’d lost Mina and he had no other female interests here. He sipped coffee in the café and glared into the cup. He felt more alone than he had since the deaths of his parents long ago. He was an only child. There had been an older brother, who’d died tragically, but no other siblings. He missed his mother, although he never spoke of his father. He had no family left.

He’d have loved a child. The thought of it had sustained him while he was courting Mina, hoping against hope that he could win out over the Texas rancher. But that hadn’t happened. He was nursing a broken heart and trying not to let it show. Meanwhile, the social lions of Catelow, especially Pam Simpson, had been pouncing, trying to set him up with widows and divorcées. He had no interest in any of the local women now. He’d had his share of brief affairs, but he felt jaded, used. Women wanted what he had. He could, and did, bestow his favors generously on the women he dated. Diamonds, five-star hotels and restaurants, travels abroad on his own private jet. But more and more, he felt he was buying them. Or, he thought facetiously, renting them.

He made a sound deep in his throat as the thought processed, drawing an interested glance from people at the counter waiting for orders to take out.

One of them was glaring. That local divorcée, Ida Merridan. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Short, thick black hair, blue eyes, impossibly long eyelashes and a killer figure. The problem with her was that she was promiscuous, he thought irritably. Everybody knew she collected men like dolls and tossed them aside when she’d had her fill. She was twice married, gossip said. Her first husband had