The New Cowboy

A year in advance of MDT’s planned highway reconstruction, a data recovery excavation within the right-of-way limits and on adjacent private land has uncovered significant information, including thousands of artifacts that reveal glimpses into the everyday life of the Crow people more than a century ago.

Avery was intimately associated with this project. She would have invaluable information about the handpicked crew assembled to excavate sacred Crow ground. Things couldn’t be working out better. He was jubilant to be armed with a legitimate plan to get close to her through his first case. Tomorrow couldn’t get here soon enough. He turned off the computer and wandered through the house to the bedroom he’d turned into a nursery for Ryan.

Now that his nephew was growing up, Zane needed to buy him some new toys for when he slept over. He wanted to take him shopping for some outfits. He ached for children of his own. To Zane, the greatest tragedy in his failed marriage was the fact that Nedra lost interest in having children.

He’d married her at twenty-three when he was already a SEAL. Though he’d warned her of the pitfalls, she’d begged for the marriage and promised to remain strong and independent when he had to be deployed in a war zone. She had a great job with a pharmaceutical company and promises of rising higher.

They’d mapped out their future. He’d assumed the stability of marriage and a family had been her driving force. Unfortunately, she’d never conceived. The fertility specialist they’d consulted hadn’t found anything wrong with either of them. Perhaps the stress of Zane’s job had prevented conception. He’d suggested they get therapy to help them, but Nedra wanted none of that.

It wasn’t until the bitter end of their marriage that she admitted she’d been on the pill for two years without telling him. Her sin of omission was the biggest shocker for him to face.

When she’d finally admitted what she’d done, he’d reached the breaking point. With that hope gone, there was nothing more to fight for. Clearly she’d wanted out of the marriage with no pregnancy issues so she could have fun and excitement with the new man in her life who worked nine to five and then came home. She’d met someone at her job who was going places.

But that was old baggage. After turning out the light, Zane went back to his bedroom. At this point he was in a new phase of his life. He’d had a year to think about it and planned to reach out for what he wanted. Zane wasn’t twenty-three anymore, a time when he’d worried that getting married might be a mistake while he was in the SEALs.

This time he knew exactly what he wanted. He knew the woman he wanted. Zane had glimpsed Avery from a distance tonight. He was still sizzling from the bolt of electricity that had traveled through him at the sight of her in that green shirt and jeans.

Tomorrow he planned to seek her out, and would use official business as the reason he wanted to talk to her. It was a springboard to the relationship he intended to have with her. One day soon he would find out why she did her best to avoid being alone with him. He knew in his gut there was chemistry between them that was growing stronger every time they saw each other. You could hide a lot of things, but not the kind of sensual tension that picked up on every breath and heartbeat.

Chapter Three (#ulink_64c30e51-19d7-5767-a251-9fc31dad4544)

Friday morning Avery got up early and dressed in jeans and a fresh holster shirt. Over it she wore a short-sleeved blue denim Western shirt. In case of an emergency, the snaps made it easier to access her pistol without tearing her shirt.

She slipped out of the ranch house without eating breakfast. Normally she ate with her grandfather, but this morning she was in a hurry and didn’t want to hear the news about last night’s welcome-home party for Zane. It would hurt too much to know what she’d missed. Pretty soon Ralph would inquire about her date. That was something she would just as soon forget.

She started up her truck and took off for the shooting range outside White Lodge where she put in a half hour’s target practice, but last night’s events still haunted her. Avery hadn’t liked hurting Mike, but she’d had no choice and told him the truth: the man she’d thought she could forget had come back into her life unexpectedly. Though she didn’t know what would come of it—maybe nothing—she knew it wasn’t fair to use Mike. That was a terrible thing to do to anyone.

Naturally she’d mentioned no name, so Mike couldn’t possibly know about her feelings for Zane, who’d been away for close to a year and had only come home periodically. But it was painful how stone-cold quiet Mike had gone on the drive home. Who could blame him? When they reached the ranch house, she’d jumped out of the truck before he could come around. “I’m truly sorry, Mike. Thank you for dinner. Please forgive me.”

By the time she made it to the porch, he’d peeled out of the driveway. She could hear the screech of tires even after she’d let herself in the house. The unpleasant moment, compounded by guilt of another kind she’d been carrying around for eight years, had made her sleep fitful.

After picking up a snack, she headed for Little Big Horn College in the town of Crow Agency, Montana. The two-year community college chartered by the Crow Nation offered eight associate of arts degrees. Though the majority of the students enrolled were members of the Crow Nation, it was a public college and she’d been enrolled in Crow language classes on Fridays for a long time.

The hour and a half drive from the ranch put limits on her time so that she could only attend classes once a week. It would take years to achieve any kind of mastery, but she’d always had extra help from Jarod and his Crow family. While she’d been away at college in Bozeman she’d hired a tutor to keep teaching her the language. Because of that ability, she’d won a fellowship to Berkeley.

If she hoped to publish important works in the future, it was vital she be able to communicate with the elderly Crow people on the reservation who could help her with her folklore research. This was her focus, the only thing that was going to help her keep her distance from Zane.

After three hours of classwork, she grabbed a sandwich, left campus and headed for Absarokee. Near the town was an archaeological site that was the former site of Crow Agency along Highway 78. She was part of a crew uncovering part of the foundation of the original agency compound. They’d been compiling a growing collection of artifacts.

She’d found a blue bottle, the ceramic arm of a doll, a pottery shard and the cylinder of a cap-and-ball revolver. The fantastically rich artifact record and archaeologically intact nature of the site made it unique on the high plains of Montana. Actual objects used by the Crow formed a bridge between the past and present. Every piece of evidence excited her because the site was a window into a very transformative time in Crow Nation history.

By midafternoon she pulled up next to some other trucks parked in a field near the ongoing excavation of the foundation of a Crow cabin building that was over a hundred years old. Some kind of meeting was in progress. Paul Osgood, the auburn haired fiftyish professor who headed the dig, waved her over to him and four other archaeologists.

“Hi. What’s going on?”

“We’re glad you’re here. As you can see, vandals were busy again during the night. I called the police yesterday. They’ll do what they can, but it isn’t possible for them to patrol this area all the time. They don’t have the manpower. Last night someone desecrated part of this foundation we’d marked and tagged into units. The loss of animal and fish bone fragments comes as a real blow.”

When Avery looked down, she could see what he meant. The fragments told so much about the changing Crow diet: how they went from living on bison, antelope, deer, elk and cutthroat trout to subsisting on government-provided beef.

“Do you think this is a case of pure and simple looting out of greed? Or malicious vandalism by a bunch of out-of-control teenagers?”

“I have no idea.”

“We need a guard dog,” she muttered.

“I agree. Unfortunately the benefactors who’ve funded this project aren’t about to give us more money for protection like that.”

Ed Meese spoke up. “I could camp out here tonight.”

“Not alone,” Paul exclaimed.

Ray Collins volunteered to keep watch with him.

Paul shook his head. “I can’t allow you to do that. For one thing, it could be dangerous. You don’t know what you could be dealing with. I promised the authorities we’d let them handle this, but I’ve been asked to get some pictures proving the damage. Why don’t we walk around the site and take photos of anything we find disturbed? We’ll send them to the police and call it a night.”

They worked together till six before disbanding. Avery drove back to the ranch totally frustrated by the damage done. For the culprits, it was like taking candy from a baby. Her crew was helpless in the face of the wanton destruction happening after dark.

She pulled in at seven, heartsick over the situation. Avery was just about to pull the key from the ignition when someone walked up to her truck.

Suddenly her heart had another problem. Zane.

Avery had been so upset, she hadn’t noticed his Volvo sitting next to some of the other vehicles. He was dressed in a dark gray pullover and jeans. His hard-muscled physique standing in cowboy boots made him a good six-three. Between dark fringed lashes, his intelligent eyes glowed like twin blue suns.

With shaky fingers she lowered the window. Now if she could just catch her breath. “I understand congratulations are in order for a lot of reasons. Welcome home. You didn’t have to wait until the Fourth of July after all.”

A ghost of a smile hovered around his mouth. “Even better, I’m here to stay. You missed a great party last night.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

He raked a suntanned hand through hair that looked like rich brown loam. “Do you have another date tonight with the same man as last night?”

She blinked. “How did you know about that?”

“I saw the two of you together while I was driving in from Glasgow.”

Avery couldn’t believe it. She’d been so upset with herself for having made a second date with Mike, she hadn’t been aware of anything else. Biting her lip she said, “I have no plans for tonight. It’s been a long day.”

“Too long to go out on a case with me tonight? The police alerted the BLM law enforcement to a new problem in the area.”

Her head flew back, causing the hair to resettle around her shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“Now that I’m permanently stationed here, my first undercover assignment is to catch the vandals desecrating the dig site at Absarokee.”

A small cry escaped her throat. “That’s where I work!”

“Sadie told me.” He cocked his dark head. “After all these months of working at opposite ends of the state, imagine my surprise. When I saw my orders, it reminded me of a poem that says, ‘God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.’”

The words, and the way he’d said them, sounded like bits of prophecy, making their way to her soul where she’d tried to hide from him. She averted her eyes.