Rugged Defender. B.J. Daniels

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СКАЧАТЬ doubt Bert Calhoun would feel that way,” TJ said. “He lost his wife at a young age and apparently now he’s lost both sons.”

      “You know what I mean,” Annabelle said. “Wealth-wise.”

      “But Justin always felt as if he didn’t matter,” Chloe said. “I would imagine Nici felt the same way.”

      Edna began barking orders so they went to work, but Chloe couldn’t help thinking about Justin and what she’d learned had happened to him and his family after she’d left. She knew that he and his older brother hadn’t gotten along, but she refused to believe Justin had anything to do with Drew’s death.

      * * *

      IT DIDN’T TAKE Justin long to pack. Quitting his job hadn’t been that hard either. Saddle tramps like him were a dime a dozen. The rancher would be able to pick up help easily before calving season when he really would need it.

      After throwing everything into his pickup, he slid behind the wheel wondering why he hadn’t done this sooner. The reason was staring him in the face. He hadn’t wanted to know the truth about his brother’s death. It had been easier to run away.

      He sighed as he started the truck and pointed it west. Why now? It was the question that had been nagging at him all morning. Tell me this isn’t about some kiss that was so long ago it was like another world.

      Justin laughed to himself as he left the dirt road and hit the two-lane blacktop. Hearing Chloe’s voice had brought it all back. Those few weeks of happiness before his life had gone to hell in a handbasket. Maybe he was trying to relive those moments—as crazy as it sounded. He was too much of a realist to think he could.

      But he’d been hiding out from the past for too long. He was going home—to all that entailed. Just the thought of seeing his father set his teeth on edge. But he was no longer afraid of the past. It was the truth that woke him in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. What had happened the day his brother was killed?

      * * *

      “GRANDMOTHER WOULD BE so proud,” Annabelle said as they tossed their hairnets in the trash, pulled on their coats and left the now-clean soup kitchen.

      “You’re being awfully quiet,” TJ said as Chloe climbed into the back seat of Annabelle’s SUV and TJ took shotgun. She turned in her seat to look back at her. “Are you angry with me for calling Justin?”

      “No. It was nice talking to him. But that ship sailed a long time ago.”

      “Don’t say that,” Annabelle cut in as she slid behind the wheel and started the motor. “Look at me and Dawson. I left him even when he worked so hard to buy me an engagement ring and roses to ask me to marry him. I thought he’d never forgive me. He said I broke his heart.” Her voice cracked with emotion and tears flooded her blue eyes. “But we found our way back to each other.”

      “I wonder why Justin didn’t marry Nici,” Chloe said.

      “Who knows if they were even really engaged,” Annabelle said and scoffed. “That’s just what Nici said after they broke up. As far as I know that’s as close as she’s gotten to marriage.”

      “Maybe she spends too much time in jail,” TJ joked.

      “You two have certainly gotten caught up on local gossip,” Chloe said. Thinking of Nici made her uncomfortable. The woman was her own worst enemy. But weren’t they all that way sometimes?

      “So are you going to tell us what is going on with you?” TJ asked as she buckled her seat belt and looked at Chloe in her side mirror.

      “Why?” Annabelle said. “What’s going on with Chloe?” She shot a questioning look in the rearview mirror at her oldest sister.

      “I lost my job,” Chloe said, glad to have the secret out.

      “What do you mean you ‘lost it’?” TJ said.

      “I was laid off with a bunch of others.” She looked out the window as Annabelle drove through the small western town of Whitehorse. It wasn’t that long ago that she was here for her grandmother’s funeral. Before that, she’d seldom returned except for quick visits. Like her sisters she’d wanted to conquer the world—far from Whitehorse, Montana.

      Annabelle had become a supermodel with her face on the covers of magazines—until recently giving it up to be with her old high school boyfriend, rancher Dawson Rogers. The two were perfect for each other. Chloe wondered why it had taken her sister so long to realize it.

      As for TJ, she’d become a New York Times bestselling author who also only recently left the big city life after falling in love. She now lived in a tiny cabin in the woods until she and her fiancé could get a larger place built up in the Little Rockies.

      Chloe had become an investigative journalist and had worked her way up through bigger papers until she’d found herself working for one of the largest in Southern California. But with the way print newspapers were going recently, she’d been laid off with a dozen others and the thought of looking for another newspaper job... She said as much to her sisters.

      “I’m so sorry,” Annabelle said. “What are you going to do?”

      Chloe let out a bark of a laugh. “I have no idea. I have enough money saved that I don’t have to worry about it for a while.”

      “You can stay in grandmother’s house as long as you want,” Annabelle said.

      Grandmother’s house. She had to smile at that. Their grandmother Frannie had left the house to only Annabelle, which had caused friction between them but ultimately brought them together.

      “It’s funny how things work out,” she said as her sister pulled up in front of the house in question. Annabelle, with help from friends, had refurbished the house. It did have a feeling of home, Chloe had to admit, since the three of them were raised in this house. It was a large two-story with four bedrooms, two up and two down. It sat among large old cottonwoods and backed to the Milk River in an area affectionately called “Millionaire’s Row.”

      Not that any houses in Whitehorse were even close to a million. The homes were conservative like the rural people who lived in the area. And right now, Chloe had to admit, the town looked almost charming with its mantle of fresh snow and holiday lights.

      “Would you mind if I borrowed your SUV?” Chloe asked as her sister pulled up into the driveway of their grandmother’s house. “There’s somewhere I need to go.”

      * * *

      JUSTIN DROVE ACROSS eastern Montana trying to imagine the rolling prairie landscape when thousands of buffalo roamed the area. Unfortunately, they’d all been killed off. He’d seen photos of their bones stacked in huge piles next to the railroad at Whitehorse.

      His great-great-grandfather had been on one of the original cattle drives that brought longhorns to the area from Texas. He’d heard about how lush the grass was back then. His father’s family had settled the land, giving birth to the Calhoun Cattle Company. He still got a lump in this throat when he thought about his legacy.

      It hadn’t been easy to give it up and simply walk away. Kind of like ripping out his heart. He loved the land, the ranch history, the feeling СКАЧАТЬ