Yet the whole time, he was thinking that he was taken aback by how sweet and innocent she looked. Not beautiful by classical standards. Instead, cute from the button nose to the bow-shaped mouth. And those eyes, they seemed bottomless as fog, and yet there was a glint in them that made him wonder what he’d roped.
She hadn’t struggled. Hadn’t even tried to release herself from the rope now cinched around her slim waist. Nor had she tried to run or make any attempt to get away from him. Instead, she moved toward him.
Brand suddenly realized that he just might have roped in more than he could handle. But by then it was too late.
AS SHERIFF STUART LAYTON pulled into the McKenna Ranch, he caught only a glimpse of the driver racing past toward the county road in one of the ranch trucks. Duffy? He’d been afraid it might be Holden taking matters into his own hands. He hated to think where the young McKenna might be headed or why. At least Holden hadn’t left. With relief, he spotted the rancher waiting for him, standing on the front porch.
Patriarch Holden McKenna was a distinguished, large, physically fit man in his midfifties with salt-and-pepper hair and intense blue eyes. But as Stuart parked, he could see the weight of this scare already taking a toll on the bigger-than-life man.
Stuart had no idea what he was about to face. On the way to the ranch, he’d wondered if this wouldn’t turn out to be something the girl had cooked up. He’d known that Holly Jo had tried to run away when she’d first been brought to the McKenna Ranch. His best friend, Cooper McKenna, had told him that the girl was smart as a whip and headstrong. He’d thought, though, that lately she’d been happier with the McKennas. Maybe he’d been wrong.
Kidnappings often ended up being family abductions where a member of the family took the child. But as far as the sheriff knew, Holly Jo didn’t have any other family. That was why she’d come to live at the McKenna Ranch.
Her addition to the family hadn’t gone over well with several members of the family, according to Cooper. That their father had brought the girl home without even an explanation hadn’t helped. Had one of them taken her?
If a true kidnapping, the sheriff knew it could be a nonfamily abduction where an unknown person had seen an opportunity and run with it.
Until he knew what he was up against, Stuart tried not to speculate. It was just hard to believe that Holly Jo had been kidnapped. In all the years he’d lived in Powder Crossing, all the way back to when his father was sheriff, he’d never heard of a local kidnapping.
Crime in the Powder River Basin had been on the rise, though, he reminded himself as he parked in front of the McKenna Ranch house and the man waiting there. Seeing the place still made him feel a little guilty. Growing up, he’d wanted his best friend Cooper’s life. He’d imagined what it must be like to live in this house and be the son of the owner of this huge ranch. He’d always thought of it as being worry-free. As an adult, he knew better.
But he was still a little jealous. Stuart still lived in the same small house in town he’d grown up in. He’d always felt that he’d been dealt the wrong hand and had no choice but to play it out, fair or not. He was the son of the former sheriff and had followed in his footsteps. It seemed too late to change horses in the middle of the stream, as his father would have said. He didn’t know anything else. Nor had he dreamed of being anything else—except being the son of Holden McKenna.
As he climbed out of his patrol SUV, he hoped to hell Holden was wrong about Holly Jo having been kidnapped. He was just a small-town sheriff who often questioned if he was up to the job—but never more than at this moment.
Even under all this stress, Holden still looked like the powerful man he was. Stuart couldn’t believe that anyone in his right mind would mess with the ward of Holden McKenna. Not if they knew the family—let alone the patriarch. Holden was the kind of man who would track down the kidnapper himself and kill him without a second thought, Stuart realized.
As he walked toward the rancher, he reminded himself that maybe the kidnapper did know the family, did know Holden. Maybe this was personal. Stuart preferred that over the other, that someone outside the community had taken Holly Jo Robinson, a pretty young teen, to ransom her for money or worse.
There was another possibility, he reminded himself. With social media, Holly Jo wouldn’t be the first young girl to get roped in by an online predator without realizing the danger she’d put herself in.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Holden said, motioning him inside. “We have to find her.”
Stuart could only nod. There was no question that the girl had to be found as quickly as possible. The clock had been running since the moment she was last seen early this morning. He was familiar with the rancher’s steel-hard determination. It was the fear he also recognized in the big man’s face that worried him. He’d never seen Holden McKenna running scared before. He had a bad feeling it would make him all the more dangerous.
Stuart opened his mouth, started to reassure Holden, telling him that everything was going to be all right. They would find Holly Jo. She would be fine. She would be safe.
But he knew better than to lie to this man, so he only said, “Let me see the note,” and let Holden lead him into his office.
CHAPTER THREE
ONE MOMENT BRAND STAFFORD was looking into those glinting gray eyes in that angelic face.
The next he was lying flat on his back in the dirt, and she was dropping his coiled lariat onto his bare chest as she stood over him. It happened so fast that he wasn’t even sure how.
“Which one are you?” she demanded as she peered down at him.
He squinted up at her, the sun in his eyes as he tried to catch the breath she’d knocked out of him. “Which what?”
“Charlotte Stafford’s sons. Or are you one of the hired hands?”
“What—” He started to get up.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she warned.
“Seriously?” He leaned back on his elbows. She wasn’t honestly threatening him on his land, was she? He reminded himself that he’d just let this snip of a woman kick his butt. He blamed the hangover along with everything else he had going on right now for why he was finding himself in this situation.
He couldn’t help sounding indignant as he said, “I’m Brand Stafford,” and tossed the lariat aside. He got to his bare feet. She’d stepped back to let him rise, but there was still a challenge in her gaze. He met those gray eyes feeling as if they were locked in a standoff.
But it was the smile on her face that told him she’d known who he was all along. “Who are you?” he demanded. “And what are you doing trespassing on Stafford Ranch property?”
For a moment, she looked as if she didn’t plan to answer. He debated what he would do if she took off running. Or whether he even wanted to try to stop her. She didn’t appear to have stolen anything. He couldn’t imagine what she’d been doing sneaking around the place, but he told himself she hadn’t really done any harm—at least, not to anything but his ego.
He noticed that she was wearing a black T-shirt, designer jeans and a pair of new-looking cowboy boots. Everything about her looked expensive and well cared for. He was asking himself who this woman was when she decided to tell him.
“I’m Birdie Malone,” she said, her chin rising and those gray eyes shining with open defiance. “My father was Dixon Malone, your mother’s second husband, the man whose body was found in a well near here recently after he supposedly disappeared years ago.”
She could have knocked him over with dandelion fluff. He had heard a private detective, hired by Dixon’s daughter, had been around asking questions before the body was found. But the young woman standing before him was not what Brand would have expected.
“Which doesn’t explain why you’re trespassing on my ranch.”
“Doesn’t it?” She looked amused again. “If you were me, wouldn’t you be curious about the woman who killed your father? Even curious about her...offspring, Brand,” she said, as if trying out his name and finding it distasteful. “My father told me about all of you, you especially. That’s why I followed you last night from the bar. Nice of your friends to give you a lift home. You always drink like that?”
“No,” he snapped, shocked to hear that she’d followed him. “Not that it is any of your business.” He must have really been out of it last night not to have noticed her at the bar since she’d more than noticed him.
Given the way he felt, she really shouldn’t be messing with him. A thought elbowed its way through his foggy brain. Frowning, he said, “Don’t tell me that you’ve been here since last night.”
“You really should lock your doors at night,” she said. “Slept in the room next to yours. Are you aware that you snore when you drink? Your difficult childhood must have driven you to it,” she said sarcastically.
