In a Cowboy's Arms

She’d gone to the reservation with him several times over the years and once with his sister, Avery. Everyone in his Crow family had made her feel welcome.

“Remember—you’ll be eighteen. I’ve made all the preparations for our wedding with my uncle Charlo. As one of the tribal elders, he’ll marry us. There’ll be at least a hundred of the tribe gathered.”

“So many!”

“Yes. Our marriage is a celebration of life. You’ll be eighteen and your father will have no rights over you by then.”

She stared into his piercing black eyes. “What about your grandparents?” Sadie had loved Ralph and Addie Bannock the moment she’d met them. “How do you think they really feel about us getting married?”

“You have to ask? They’re crazy about you. I’ve already told them our wedding plans. They’re helping me any way they can. Earlier today my grandmother told me she can’t wait for us to be living under the same roof with them until we can build our own place. Don’t forget they loved your mother and like to think of you as the daughter they were never able to have. Surely you know that.”

The words warmed her heart. “I love them, too.” Sadie shivered with nervous excitement. “You really haven’t changed your mind? You want to marry me? The daughter of the man who has hated your family forever?”

“Your father has something wrong in his head, but it has nothing to do with you.” His dark brows furrowed, giving him a fierce look. “I made you an oath.” He kissed her throat. “I’ve chosen you for my wife. How could you possibly doubt I want to marry you after what we’ve shared?”

“I don’t doubt it,” she said, her voice trembling. “You know I’ve loved you forever. Having you as my husband is all I’ve ever dreamed about. Oh, Jarod, I love you so much. I can’t wait—”

He caressed her hair, which cascaded to her waist, and then his hands fell away. “Tomorrow night we’ll be together forever. But you’ve got to go while I still have the strength to let you go.”

“Why don’t we just leave for the reservation now?”

“You know why. You’re still seventeen and the risk of getting caught is too great.” Jarod reached into his pocket and pulled out a beaded bracelet, which he fastened around her wrist. “This was made by my mother’s family. After the ceremony you’ll be given the earrings and belt that go with it.”

“It’s so beautiful!” The intricate geometric designs stood out in blues and pinks.

“Not as beautiful as you are,” he said, his voice deep and velvety soft. “Now you have to go.” He walked her to her horse. Once she’d mounted, he climbed on his stallion and rode with her to the top of the hill. They leaned toward each other for one last hungry kiss. “Tomorrow night, Sadie.”

“Tomorrow night,” she whispered against his lips.

Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. Her heart pounded the message all the way home.

* * *

REMEMBERING THAT NIGHT now, Sadie felt the tears roll down her face. Their love affair had turned into a disaster, permanently setting daughter and father against each other. She was forced to leave for California and never saw Jarod again. And the Hensons had been left to deal with their drunken boss until the bitter end. Guilt had swamped Sadie, but she’d had no choice except to leave the ranch to prevent her father from carrying out his threat to kill Jarod.

While her mind made a mental list of what to do first before she and Zane left for Montana, she hung up the phone and took a clean cloth to wash Ryan’s face and hands. “Come on, sweetheart.” She kissed his light brown hair. “Lunch is over. Time for a nap.”

While she changed his diaper, she looked out the upstairs window of the house she’d lived in with her mother and Tim on Potrero Hill. The view of San Francisco Bay was spectacular from here.

But much as she loved this city where her mother had been born and raised—where she’d met Daniel when he’d come here on business—Sadie was a Montana girl through and through. With her father’s death, her exile was over. She could go home.

She longed to be back riding a horse through the pockets of white sweet clover that perfumed the land in the spring. Though she’d made friends in San Francisco and had dated quite a bit, she yearned for her beloved ranch and her oldest friends.

As for Jarod Bannock, eight years of living away from him had given her perspective.

He was a man now, destined to be the head of the Bannock empire one day. According to Liz he had a new love interest. Obviously he hadn’t pined for Sadie all these years. And she wasn’t a lovesick teenager who’d thought her broken heart would never heal after her father’s treachery against Jarod. He’d been the one behind the truck accident that had put Jarod in the hospital. But that was ancient history now. She was a twenty-six-year-old woman who couldn’t wait to take her half brother back to Farfields Ranch where they belonged.

Ryan might end up being her only child, which made him doubly precious to her. One day Ryan Corkin Lawson would grow up and become head of the ranch and make it a success. In time he’d learn how to do every chore and manage the accounts. She’d teach him how to tend the calves that needed to be culled from the herd.

That had been Sadie’s favorite job as a young girl. The sickly ones were brought to the corral at the side of the ranch house. Sadie had named them after the native flora: yellow bell, pussytoes, snowberry, pearly. Ryan would love it!

Before she left his room, she hugged and kissed the precious little boy. While she waited for Zane, she went into the den and phoned the Methodist Church in White Lodge, where she and her mother had once attended services.

In a few minutes she got hold of Minister Lyman, a man she didn’t know. Together they worked out the particulars about the service and burial. The minister would coordinate with the Bitterroot Mortuary, where the hospital would transport her father’s body.

To the minister’s credit he said nothing negative about her father. He only expressed his condolences and agreed to take care of the service. After thanking him, she rang off and sat at the computer to start writing the obituary. She could do everything online. Within a couple of hours the announcement would come out in the Billings Gazette and Carbon County News. How should she word it?

On May 6, Daniel Burns Corkin of Farfields Ranch, Montana, passed away from natural causes at the age of fifty-three after being the cruelest man alive.

Too many words? On second thought why not make it simpler and put what the munchkins sang when Dorothy arrived in Oz.

“Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead!”

* * *

“HEY, BOSS.”

“Glad you came in the truck, Ben. I need you to get this new calf to one of the hutches before a predator comes after it. She has a broken foot from being stepped on.” There was no need to phone Liz Henson, White Lodge’s new vet. Jarod’s sister, Avery, could splint it. “Would you help me put her in the back?”

“Sure.” Together they lifted the calf, careful not to do any more damage, but the mother bellowed in protest.

“I know how you feel,” Jarod said over his shoulder. “Your baby will be back soon.”

Ben chuckled. “You think she understands you?”

“I guess we’ll find out the answer to that imponderable in the great hereafter.” Jarod closed the tailgate and then shoved his cowboy hat to the back of his head, shifting his gaze to the new foreman of the Hitting Rocks Ranch. The affable manager showed a real liking for his sister, but so far that interest hadn’t been reciprocated. Ben needed to meet someone else. “You were going to tell me something?”

“Avery sent me to find you. I guess your phone’s turned off.”

“The battery needs recharging. What’s up?”

“She wanted you to know Daniel Corkin died at White Lodge Hospital early this morning of acute liver failure.”

What?

Jarod staggered in place.

Sadie’s monster father had really given up the ghost?

“The Hensons were with him. They got word to Liz and she phoned Avery.”

The news he hadn’t expected to come for another decade or more sent a great rushing wind through his ears, carrying painful whispers from the past that he’d tried to block out all these years. They came at him from every direction, dredging up bittersweet memories so clear they could have happened yesterday.

But Jarod managed to control his emotions in front of Ben. “Appreciate you telling me.” After a pause he said, “If Avery can’t tend to the calf, I’ll call Liz. You go on. I’ll follow on my horse Blackberry.”

Ben nodded and took off.

Long after the truck disappeared, Jarod stood in the pasture to gentle the calf’s mother, adrenaline gushing through his veins. Sadie would show up long enough to bury her father. Then what?