Hunting Down the Horseman. B.J. Daniels

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СКАЧАТЬ enough to make any twentysomething female nervous. For Faith Bailey it was pure torture. But she had no choice.

      This was a joint shower for the very pregnant Cavanaugh sisters, who Faith had grown up with.

      Laci Cavanaugh had married Bridger Duvall, and the two owned the Northern Lights Restaurant in downtown Whitehorse. Laney Cavanaugh had married Deputy Sheriff Nick Giovanni, and they had built a home near Old Town Whitehorse, where the girls’ grandparents lived. Both sisters were due any day now—and looked it.

      The shower was being held at the Bailey Ranch in Old Town Whitehorse, the only place Faith had ever considered home in her twenty-six years. Another reason Faith had to be here.

      But as she sat in her own ranch house living room, she couldn’t help feeling out of place. Almost all of her close friends were married now, except for Georgia Michaels, who owned the knitting shop in town, In Stitches. And everyone knew what followed marriage: a baby carriage.

      “Can you believe this population explosion?” her friend Georgia whispered. On the other side of Georgia, their good friend Rory Buchanan Barrow was fighting morning sickness even though it was afternoon.

      When they were all kids, growing up in this isolated part of Montana, they’d all vowed not to get married until they were at least thirty-five, and none of them was going to stick around Whitehorse. Instead, they’d sworn they would see the world, have exciting adventures and date men they hadn’t grown up with all their lives and dated since junior high.

      While some hadn’t married the boy next door, they’d all fallen hard for their men and totally changed their big plans for the future.

      Faith couldn’t help but feel annoyed with them as she looked around the crowded living room and saw so many protruding bellies and wedding bands. To make matters worse, they all looked ecstatically happy.

      A man and marriage just wasn’t Faith Bailey’s secret desire, she thought as she looked wistfully out the window at the rolling grassland and the rugged edge of the Missouri Breaks in the distance.

      “I had to add a baby bootie knitting class at the shop,” Georgia whispered to her. “Something about getting pregnant makes a woman want to knit. It’s really spooky.”

      Faith laughed, imagining her sister McKenna knitting booties in the near future. McKenna had started her Paint horse farm, and her husband, Nate, was busy building them a home on a hill overlooking the place, but neither had made a secret of their plans to start a family right away.

      It was her older sister, Eve, who Faith thought would be hesitant. While all three Bailey sisters were adopted and not related by blood, Eve was the one who was driven to find her birth mother. Before bringing a child into the world, Eve would be more determined than ever to know about her genes and the blood that ran through her veins.

      Faith watched Laci and Laney open one beautifully wrapped box after another of darling baby clothing and the latest in high-tech baby supplies, all the time wishing she was out riding her horse. After all, she was only home for the summer, and she’d promised herself she was going to spend every waking moment in the saddle.

      “If I see one more breast pump, I’m going to be sick,” she whispered to Georgia who laughed and whispered back, “Do you have any idea what some of that stuff is for?”

      Before Faith could tell her she didn’t have a clue, Laci’s water broke, and not two seconds later, so did Laney’s.

      Faith smiled to herself. She was going to get in that ride today after all.

      SHOWERED AND CHANGED, Jud came out of his trailer to find Chantal Lee waiting for him beside his pickup. He groaned under his breath as he noticed Nevada Wells sitting in the shade of his trailer with a half-empty bottle of bourbon on the table next to him. Nevada was watching Chantal with a look of unadulterated hatred on his face.

      The two stars had made front-page tabloid news for months beginning with their scorching affair, their torrid public shows of affection and their scandalous breakup—all in public.

      Jud wondered what director Erik Zander had been thinking, throwing the two together in this Western thriller, given their recent past. How were they going to get an audience to believe they were crazy about each other in this film and not just plain crazy?

      As Jud neared his pickup, Chantal sidled up to him in a cloud of expensive perfume and a revealing dress that accented her every asset. She looped her arms around his neck and smiled up at him.

      Across the compound, Nevada grabbed up his bourbon bottle and stormed into his trailer.

      “If you’re trying to make Nevada jealous,” Jud said to Chantal, “you can stop now. He’s gone back into his trailer.”

      “Don’t you read the tabloids?” she asked as he disengaged her from around his neck. “I’ve moved on. So,” she said, “how about showing me the town tonight?”

      “Whitehorse? As flattering as the offer is, I’m afraid I have other plans.”

      “Brooke.” Chantal made a face as she said the stuntwoman’s name.

      He shook his head, knowing whatever fueled this battle between the two women had started long before now. “I don’t date anyone I work with during filming. I’m having dinner with my family.”

      Chantal brightened. “Take me,” she pleaded. “I am bored beyond belief out here in the middle of nowhere. You’ll be saving my life.”

      “Sorry,” he said, thinking about what would happen if he took her home with him. He’d dodged a bullet by sacrificing his brother Shane to the marriage pact he and his four brothers had made. But he was still in the line of fire.

      It would be fun, though, to see his family’s expressions if he pretended interest in Chantal for a wife. But even he couldn’t do that to them.

      No, the last thing he wanted was to call attention to himself right now. He’d hoped that karma would be on his side when he and his brothers had drawn straws to see who would have to find a wife first. Then he’d drawn the shortest straw and known he had to do something fast, so he had. He’d found the perfect woman—for his brother Shane.

      That little maneuver had really only delayed the problem, though. Jud knew in his heart that what his father wanted wasn’t so much for each of his sons to marry but for them to settle in Montana closer to Trails West Ranch, the ranch Grayson Corbett had bought for his new bride, Kate.

      Grayson was no fool. He had to know that getting all his sons to settle down in Montana probably wasn’t going to happen, no matter what kind of carrot he dangled in front of them. But it was some carrot.

      Grayson’s first wife, the boys’ mother, had written five letters, one to each son, before she died. The letters, only recently found, were to be read on each son’s wedding day. Her dying wish in a letter to Grayson was that the boys would marry by the age of thirty-five—and all marry a Montana cowgirl.

      It was hard to go against the dying wishes of his mother, even a mother Jud, the youngest, couldn’t remember, since she’d died not long after he and his twin brother, Dalton, were born. Being a Corbett demanded that he go along with the marriage pact the five brothers had made—and eventually live up to the deal.

      The problem was that he’d never СКАЧАТЬ