Renegade's Pride

Lillie didn’t know what to say. She’d first heard about her father’s abduction by aliens in the school yard from Ronnie Eckert. He’d taunted her until she’d slugged him and bloodied his nose. “Take it back!” she had yelled at him. “Take it back or I’ll hit you again.”

A teacher had broken them up. Lillie had run home fast as the wind to tell her mother what had happened before the school called home. One look at her mother’s face and she’d known it hadn’t just been Ronnie making up stories.

“Your father claims he was abducted by aliens near the missile silo on our ranch,” she’d said. “It’s old news.”

“But is it true?” she’d demanded.

“Your father believes it was.”

Of course, Lillie had questioned him, both fascinated and horrified by the idea that it might actually have happened. Often she had lain in the tall grass at night and stared up at the stars wondering if there were other beings out there.

His story about his abduction was a little disappointing, though. Men in white space suits, their faces obscured by their helmets, had grabbed him. He’d thought they communicated telepathically, but he also remembered them talking to each other. He’d seen their lips moving but hadn’t been able to hear them because of their huge helmets and the swishing sound of the breathing systems.

“What did they do to you?” she’d asked, holding her breath.

“They conked me out with some kinda gas. I woke up in the pasture starin’ up at the stars. But I remember being in a small cramped place before that. I still taste somethin’ metallic when I think about it.”

She’d known then why everyone in the county believed that Ely Cahill no longer had all his ducks, let alone had them in a row. He’d always been part mountain man, disappearing into the mountains in search of gold or wild animals he could kill for meat for his family, even though they raised beef.

His father had been a rancher, but Ely had never taken to it and was glad when two of his sons had taken the place over. “Rather have a nice whitetail buck any day over a slab of beef,” he often said. “Lost my taste for beef after them aliens took me.”

“He’s made our family a laughingstock,” her brother Tuck had said not long before he’d left for good. That had been right after high school. Tucker said Gilt Edge was just too small for him, gave him claustrophobia. But she’d always suspected something had happened to make him leave.

Lillie forced those thoughts back into a dark corner along with others she kept locked up there as she parked in front of the Stagecoach Saloon.

“Home sweet home,” she said as she admired the historic two-story rock building. She never tired of looking at it. It had been a stagecoach stop back in the 1800s when gold had been coming out of the mine at Gilt Edge. Each stone, like the old wooden floorboards inside, had a story, she thought with pride. If only this building could talk.

With her twin brother, they’d restored it. The lower floor had been turned into a bar and café, while the upstairs had been remodeled into a home for herself. She’d furnished it with restored pieces she’d picked up at garage sales and junk shops and loved every one of them.

She also had the best view in the county. From her living room window she could see three of the four mountain ranges surrounding the area. She loved this old building and the life she and Darby had built with it. But deep in her heart there was always that feeling of something missing. Someone. Even when she didn’t say his name or imagine his face, there was always that ache of something lost, something she feared she would never have again.

“Come on, let’s see what we can cook up for you,” she said to her father.

He smiled over at her. “Could use some breakfast now that you mention it.”

She laughed. His appetite was legend. “What do you say to chicken fried venison steak, eggs, hash browns and biscuits and milk gravy?”

“That’s my girl,” Ely said.

But as she started to open her door, she saw something...someone move along the side of the building. Her brother Darby wasn’t here yet or his pickup would have been parked in the spot next to the big old pine tree. She’d gotten only a glimpse of what she thought was a man hiding in the trees.

She handed the keys to the place to her father. “Here, you go on in and I’ll be right with you.” She waited for him to climb out before she reached under the pickup seat and pulled out the .45 pistol she kept wrapped in a piece of an old blanket.

Slipping from behind the wheel, she unwrapped the gun, tucked it into the waist of her jeans and covered the weapon with the hem of her T-shirt.

Her father had made it as far as the front door. He turned and looked back at her. “Everything all right, Lillie Girl?” he called.

“Fine, Dad. Just need to check something.”

He nodded, hesitating as if worried about her. Say what you will about Ely Cahill, he wasn’t as far gone as her brother wanted her to believe, she thought.

“I’m fine. You make yourself at home. I’ll join you in a minute.”

As he unlocked the front door of the bar and disappeared inside, she moved to the pine trees that flanked the stone building on three sides.

Stepping to the edge of the building, she began to work her way carefully along the side, keeping to the shadows. Even as she did, she told herself she had imagined the broad shoulders, the slim hips, the glimpse of dark wavy hair under the Western straw hat as she had so many times over the years.

She’d gone only a dozen yards when she saw him. She felt a tremor move through her. With shaking fingers, she reached under her T-shirt and pulled the gun to level it on the broad back of the man standing only feet away.

“Don’t move!” she ordered, surprised that her voice sounded so unruffled when her heart had taken off like a wild horse in the wind at the sight of him.

“You wouldn’t shoot a man in the back.”

The deep resonance of his voice sent her pulse thundering in her ears. She’d heard that voice only in her dreams for the past nine years. The ache she felt was laced with hurt and anger, not to mention the hit her pride had taken.

“In your case, I’ll make an exception,” she said, easing her finger onto the trigger. Her thoughts whirled like tumbleweeds in the wind. Trask Beaumont had the nerve to show his face around her after all this time? After all that he’d done?

He raised both hands in the air and turned slowly as if he hadn’t lost all of his good sense during those years away. He’d known her like no other man, like no other man ever would because she’d never let another get that close again.

Staring at him, she couldn’t believe it. How many times had she told herself that she would never see that face again, a face so handsome it had to be crafted by the Devil himself.

Her finger twitched on the trigger of the pistol as she reached into her jeans pocket for her cell phone.

“Easy, darlin’,” he said, taking a step toward her. “You don’t want to shoot me. You don’t want to call your sheriff brother on me, either.”

“You sure about that?” She thought of the night she’d waited for him until the sun rose and she’d realized he wasn’t coming back for her.

Trask Beaumont’s lips curved into the grin that had haunted her sleepless nights for years. That grin had not just let this man into her jeans but into her heart. “Damn, Lillie. I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you.”

“What are you doing here?” She hated the tremor she heard in her voice. She had her cell phone out. All she had to do was hit 9-1-1. Her brother would be there in a heartbeat. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

Before he could answer, a vehicle roared up on the other side of the building. She recognized the sound of the engine. Engine cut, the driver’s-side door opened and slammed. She listened as her brother Darby entered the bar, then yelled her name.

She glanced over her shoulder, afraid he’d come looking for her and catch the two of them out there. Knowing how her brothers’ felt about Trask, she hated to think what would happen. It was one thing to have him arrested. It was another to let one of her other brothers at him.

When she turned back, Trask was gone. Lillie blinked. It was as if he hadn’t been there at all. And yet her heart still thundered in her chest. If she dialed 9-1-1, Flint would come running.

She stood, the gun in her hand growing heavy, the phone just one keystroke away from the sheriff’s department dispatcher. Trask. He’d come back.

And now he was gone. Again. Had she not been sane, she might have believed that she’d conjured up his image from a desire she’d spent years trying hard to bury. But she hadn’t dreamed him. He’d left behind his boot prints in the dirt, and even if her eyes had deceived her, her heart had not.

Trask was back. Conflicting emotions warred inside her. Trask, after all these years. She pocketed her phone and slowly lowered the gun as she began to shake all over. Tears burned her eyes. Why would he come back now? How could he come back, knowing how dangerous it was for him?

“Lillie?”

Tucking the gun into the waistband of her jeans and covering it with her shirt again, she turned to find her brother standing a few yards away. Had he seen Trask?

“Have you lost your mind?” Darby demanded, making her fear she had. Before she could respond, he continued, “You leave Dad alone in the bar? Alone in a bar stocked with bright shiny bottles of booze? Didn’t you just get him out of jail?” He stopped his rant to frown. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”