Carbon Copy Cowboy

“That’s what we was hoping you could tell us,” the sheriff pointed out, adding, “you’re gonna need to stick around until we figure this thing out. I’ll see if there’s any stolen car reports or missing persons in the area that fit.”

“Stolen!” she gasped. “B-but I would never... That is, I can’t imagine...” Yet, how could she know what she’d do when she didn’t even know her own name?

“It’s just a formality,” Jack Colby assured her, looking pointedly at George, who waved a hand.

“SOP. Standard Operating Procedure. Now, why didn’t I think to bring along a camera? Doc, you got any way to take her photo so I can circulate it around?”

“Here, I’ll do it,” Jack said, pulling out his phone. While he snapped the photo, George grumbled about the city refusing to buy him and his deputies the latest smartphones. “What’s your email address?” Jack interrupted, saving the picture to his phone. George told him, and the cowboy sent the photo off with a swooshing sound.

“That’ll sure make things easier,” George told him. “Won’t even have to scan it up before sending it out.”

The subject of the photograph didn’t know whether to hope someone recognized her or not, considering that her likeness would be going out to law-enforcement agencies.

As if he sensed her dilemma, George smiled and patted her hand. Then he ruined the gesture by saying, “Just don’t leave the county, little lady, until I tell you it’s okay.”

Her eyes widened as a whole new problem emerged. “Where am I going to stay? Do I even have any money?”

“Didn’t find any,” Jack murmured sympathetically.

“You’ll be staying right here for the time being,” the doctor decreed. “I want you here for observation at least for tonight.”

“That’s good enough for now,” George decided. Turning to leave, he doffed his hat, saying, “I’ll be in touch.”

Her mind whirling, she closed her eyes. “Lord, help me,” she whispered fervently. “Lord, help me.”

She felt a warm, gentle touch at her throat and looked up to find Jack Colby fingering a small gold cross at the end of a delicate gold chain looped about her neck. Looking at that cross gave her a small sense of peace; yet she couldn’t recall ever having seen it before this moment.

“Well, you’re a believer,” Jack said, smiling crookedly. “That’s a help.”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “Yes, that’s a help.”

He dropped the cross. “I’ll say a prayer for you, then.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “Uh, f-for everything.”

“Aw, I didn’t do anything special,” he said, moving toward the open doorway. Pausing, he swept back his hair with one hand and plunked his hat down over it with the other. “I wouldn’t worry too much if I was you,” he said kindly.

“Your memory’s apt to return on its own at any time,” the doctor added helpfully.

“But what if it doesn’t?” she had to ask.

“George will figure it out,” Jack reassured her, “or somebody will come looking for you.”

She gulped, wishing that made her feel something less than terrified.

* * *

Well, that was that. Jack stepped out onto the graveled parking lot of the medical center. Car wrecks and amnesiac blondes made for an exciting first Monday of the month. He hoped this wasn’t a sign of how the rest of September would go, though. July and August had been dramatic enough, what with his mother’s accident, his sister Violet meeting her previously unknown twin Maddie, his own still-unknown twin Grayson off on an undercover assignment, their supposed father disappearing, a half brother he’d never met overseas with the military... Jack had more questions now than he’d had the day of his mother’s accident.

If all that weren’t enough, Violet had become engaged to Maddie’s former fiancé, and now Maddie was going to marry the Colby Ranch foreman, Ty. Jack couldn’t imagine why anybody in his right mind would get entangled in a romance under such circumstances—or any other, when it came right down to it. That way, as he well knew, lay heartache.

Automatically, his thoughts went to his former girlfriend Tammy Simmons, but then another face flashed before his mind’s eye. Taking out his phone, he tapped the photo icon. Her image instantly came up. She looked small and frightened with that bandage on her forehead and her big, deeply set hazel eyes begging him to tell her who she was. He didn’t think he’d ever forget how horrified she’d looked when she’d realized that she couldn’t recall her own name.

He knew a little of what she was feeling. He and his sisters had gone to Fort Worth in search of answers about their past. They all needed to understand why their parents had split up the family and kept it a secret from them. According to an old neighbor, Patty Earl, her late husband, Joe, was his and Grayson’s real father. It didn’t make sense for Brian to raise Grayson in that scenario, but Brian’s disappearance felt awfully convenient to Jack. A doctor, Brian had supposedly gone to South Texas on a medical mission trip and had somehow fallen off the face of the earth—just when there were questions to be answered.

If only his mother would wake from her coma and give them those answers. Jack doubted that he could accept them from anyone else, not even Brian Wallace. Now Jack had more questions than ever, and he had to wonder if he even knew who he was. Obviously, his last name wasn’t Colby, but it might not be Wallace, either. Jack found the whole situation maddening.

But maybe not as maddening as amnesia. Jack gazed down at the blonde whose photo he’d taken with his phone.

His heart went out to her. Even if she turned out to be a car thief or an escaped mental case, not knowing the truth had to be awful. And there again, he could relate.

He dropped the phone back into his pocket and walked out to the truck that he’d driven in from the ranch. After the accident, he’d ridden Tiger back to the barn at the main compound then come straight here to the Grasslands Medical Clinic.

Everyone around town referred to the clinic as a hospital, but in truth, it was nothing more than a converted house with a pair of examining rooms, a small lab, a couple of offices and four or five beds in a dormitory-type setting. Serious cases got transferred to Amarillo with long-term ones going to the skilled nursing center here in Grasslands, otherwise known as Ranchland Convalescent Home. It was more or less an old-folks’ home, a place where his vibrant, forty-three-year-old mother did not belong, but he was glad to have her closer to home now.

At least he and his sisters could function somewhat normally, and one or the other of them visited Belle almost daily. Jack stopped in there as soon as he left the clinic, anxious to tell her about his unusual day.

He could only hope that she would hear him.

Chapter Two

They had seen to it that Belle had a private room with all the monitoring equipment and nursing care that she needed, but if she even knew those things, no one could tell. Jack spoke to her as if she could hear him, telling her about the day’s adventure. She appeared to sleep peacefully through his monologue, her long auburn hair spread out on the pillow beneath her head, the gentle rise and fall of her chest the only sign that she lived. As always, Jack sat beside her bed and prayed.

Oh, Lord, please let her wake up and be well. Please. And the blonde lady, too. She obviously needs a helping hand right now.

He added pleas for clarity on the issues troubling the family before rising to kiss his mother’s smooth forehead.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered, for perhaps the thousandth time. “Please come back to us. We need you more than ever.”

Feeling low, he trudged out to his dirty, white pickup truck and slid behind the steering wheel. Then he started the engine and drove out to the ranch. As he turned the truck through the massive gate with its rock columns and metal arch displaying the Colby Ranch brand, Jack thought again of the lovely blonde back there in the hospital.

No doubt, she worried about where she would stay and how she would live until her memory returned. Without money, she really had no options. Grasslands didn’t have a homeless shelter because it didn’t have any homeless. She couldn’t stay at the clinic for long, either, but someone would surely take her in—someone with plenty of room.

Sighing as the imposing ranch house came into view, Jack mentally cataloged the house that he, his mom and two sisters occupied. There was room for her. That didn’t mean that he had to offer a bedroom to the pretty amnesiac, though, even if he had been the one to rescue her from a car wreck.

Of course, it didn’t mean that he shouldn’t, either.

He supposed they could open one of the old, unoccupied cabins on the place, but it didn’t seem wise for a woman with a head wound serious enough to cause amnesia to stay alone. Too bad the hotel in town was closed temporarily because the couple who owned and operated it had been called away on a mission of mercy to help family members who had been burned out by wildfires in the central part of the states. Jack went so far as to consider calling the pastor at the Grasslands Community Church to see if he could find a host for the woman, but in the normal course of things when temporary shelter was needed, the first phone call that the good reverend would make would be to the Colbys.

“Aw, come on, Lord,” Jack grumbled aloud. “Don’t we have enough trouble as it is?”

Unfortunately, the Lord, as was His habit, didn’t say a word. Jack heard Him, nevertheless.

Jack turned the truck through the gate in the wrought-iron fence that separated the main house from the rest of the compound, parked and climbed out, trudging into the house through the carport door. He’d barely set foot in the back hall before Lupita, the housekeeper and cook, stuck her head out of the kitchen.

“Dinner in five minutes.”

“Already?” he asked, hanging his hat on a peg fixed to the wall. He pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time. Man, this day had flown. “I’ll wash up,” he muttered, heading for his room.