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Intimate Secrets
B.J. Daniels
She had the kind of secret no woman could keep…When Josie O'Malley found herself pregnant, she knew her father would surely mete out the Texas law of the West–and shoot the no 'count before he'd demand a shotgun wedding. What her dad didn't know was the Josie has been with the one man he'd respected above all others. Clay Jackson.He'd never guessed he fathered her child…Two years ago Josie left Texas in a hurry for the solitude of Montana. Now Clay knew why. But it boiled his blood that she'd had anybody's baby but his. It burned him even more that a thief led Clay to her doorstep. So what was Josie hiding besides a child? And what would Clay's investigation reveal about the toddler's father…and the woman he'd never stopped loving?
“We need to talk,” he said. “But first, I want to make love with you.”
Clay reached out to cup her cheek in the palm of his hand, his thumb brushing across her lips, her soft, smooth cheek. Her gaze never wavered. What he saw in her eyes almost leveled him. She kissed the pad of his thumb, her eyes filled with a need that mirrored his own.
He swept Josie up into his arms and carried her up the stairs to the bedroom, all reason and logic and suspicion discarded as quickly as he planned to discard their clothing. He wanted her. And he planned to have her. Right now. Later he’d deal with whatever she had to tell him.
She sensed his body heat draw her to him. The masculine scent of him mixed with the smell of leather and horses. Intoxicating. Her body felt alive, everything magnified as if this were the first time….
He was close. Too close. To her. To the truth.
Intimate Secrets
B.J. Daniels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one’s for LuAnn Rod, who shared her love of horses with me, and shares my love of snowboarding. See you on the slopes, girlfriend!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Houston, B.J. Daniels is a former Southern girl who grew up on the smell of gulf sea air and Southern cooking. But like her characters, her home is now in Montana, not far from Big Sky, where she snowboards in the winters and boats in the summers with her husband and daughters. She does miss gumbo and Texas Barbecue, though! Her first Harlequin Intrigue novel was nominated for the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for best first book and best Harlequin Intrigue. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Heart of Montana and Bozeman Writers Group. B.J. loves to hear from readers. Write to her at: P.O. Box 183, Bozeman, MT 59771.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Josie O’Malley—When her secret past comes looking for her, it brings the two men she fears most back into her life.
Clay Jackson—He’s chased a thief all the way from Texas to Montana in search of priceless jewels. But what he finds is more precious than any jewel.
Ivy O’Malley—She’s the spitting image of her mother—except she’s got her daddy’s eyes.
Raymond Degas—He disappeared two years ago. Why has he resurfaced now of all times?
Odell Burton—He swore revenge—even from the grave.
Mildred Andrews—The elderly woman would do anything to protect the baby left in her care. But would it be enough?
Brandon Williams—He just wanted his jewels back.
Ruth Slocum—The tough old ranch woman passed on what she’d learned about horses—and men—to Josie. Now it was up to Josie.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
He looked like the rest of the tourists as he bought a ticket at the small booth on the mountainside. The next tour started in ten minutes. It would be the last tour of the day.
Perfect.
The rays of the sinking sun slanted across the top of the mountain, painting the buildings with bronzed heat. Below, the Jefferson River snaked emerald green through the rocky canyon. On the mountainside, the sagebrush stood dusty gray in a ground already gone dry.
He killed time in the gift shop, passing up a cold beer, ice cream and the usual curios for a schematic of the caverns. With five minutes to spare, he went back to wait by the ticket booth, anxious. Anxious to get deep in the cool darkness of the caves. Anxious to confront an old enemy he knew would be waiting down there for him. But mostly, anxious to find the one thing he needed, the perfect hiding place.
He’d been bowled over when he’d seen the sign just outside of Three Forks, Montana. Lewis and Clark Caverns 15 Miles. It had been more than fate or good fortune. It had been divine intervention.
A young guide called his tour group, explaining they would have to hike up to the cave entrance. There used to be a small train, but now visitors had to walk. He didn’t mind walking the half mile, even uphill along the paved trail, a trail easy enough for his grandmother.
Once inside, there was a two-mile trek and a three-hundred-foot descent, into the bowels of the cave, ending with six hundred rock-carved stairs to the exit.
Perfect.
He quickly got ahead of everyone else, anxious to get inside the mountain. But he also liked the view down the steep mountainside and wondered how many tourists had fallen. Sweat broke out under his arms, ran down his sides.
But it wasn’t from exertion. It was pure expectation. He hated confined places. Hated anything that reminded him of the root cellar back at his grandmother’s farm. The dark, cool, raw earth. The musty, wet-smelling air. The darkness pressing against him, squeezing the life from him. The taste and smell and feel of fear.
Claustrophobia. It was his only failing. But also the only thing that still aroused him to the point of rapture. The ultimate. The little death. It gave him an edge other people didn’t have. Would never understand.
He couldn’t wait to get inside. He couldn’t wait to find exactly what he was looking for. A hole. Something small enough he would have to squeeze through. A space beyond the hole, far enough off the tour route that no one could find him. A place where he could finish what he’d started.
At the top, he had to wait for the rest of the group. He tried not to be impatient as he stood at the mouth of the entrance and gazed down into the confining darkness. Soon, he thought, soon.
The tour guide led the group through the caverns, pointing out stalactites and stalagmites, flowstone and dripstone. He paid little attention. He knew all about caves. He did listen, though, when the guide spoke about one of the first explorers getting lost, losing his candle and spending three days in the dark, unable to move. The man had been temporarily blind and completely disoriented from the days in total blackness.
More than five hundred feet into the cave, he found what he was looking for. The perfect place to disappear into the blinding darkness.
He hung back in the small room, pretending to admire the iciclelike lime deposits, wondering if the tour guide would miss him. He doubted it, out of a group of more than a dozen. They were all more interested in the rock formations than some nondescript tourist.
The group began to move on. He waited behind a large stalagmite. “Do we have everyone?” the tour guide inquired. No one said anything and the light diminished as the tour moved on, leaving him alone in the dark.
He waited, standing in the dizzying darkness, his face frozen in fear. He loved this part the best. The absolute blackness. The chilling silence. The disorientation that set in within seconds. He thought of the explorer down here without his candle. Trapped. Unable to see anything. Unable to move. And no one to hear his cries for help.
When he couldn’t take another second of it, he snapped on the tiny flashlight he’d brought and shone it into the hole he’d found. Small. Just enough room to barely get through. He got down on his hands and knees, then his belly, and taking a ragged breath, wriggled into the narrow tunnel.
He slithered like a snake, deeper and deeper into the confined cavity, squirming around the tight blind corners. Five minutes in, the tunnel ended in a solid rock wall.
He froze. He couldn’t go on any farther. Nor could he turn around. This would do just fine. The perfect place to hide a small child.
He started to back out, but his body stuck, now suddenly too large for the cramped rock channel he’d wormed through. Instantly, sweat cloaked his already-clammy body. The constant fifty-degree air raised goose bumps, chilling him. He fought for each breath, but let the panic come, the euphoria of fear.
He tried backing out again. If he’d come through it, he could get out, right? Except he’d come through headfirst, and since there wasn’t enough room to turn around, he had no choice but to go out feet first. Feet first like a corpse.
Prostrate, he dug in with his toes, inching backward, squeezing through the tight, constricting passage, the claustrophobia taunting him: “You’ll never get out. The rocks are compressing, the hole contracting, the mountain closing in on you.”
His mouth went dry as dust. He gasped for breath, his heart lunging in his chest. Minutes ticked off like hours. The tiny flashlight banged against a rock, dimmed, almost went out.
He was breathing hard now, but the air seemed too thin. Maybe he’d made a wrong turn. But he knew better. He struggled for each breath, each inch backward, the hole now endless as eternity. Or hell. His hell.
Then suddenly his toes lost purchase. Nothing but air. Air and space. He shoved himself backward with his hands and slipped through the opening, scrambling out of the hole.
Free.
For a few more desperate moments, he stood in the room where the tour group had left him behind, shining the light across the ghostly rock formations, forcing back the claustrophobia the way he forced back the dark.
He didn’t have much time. He gripped the flashlight, suddenly afraid he might drop it. That he might be the one who ended up trapped down here in the deafening darkness.
The irony amused him as much as the bitter taste of his own fear. He stood, just long enough to catch his breath, then hurriedly wound his way through the cold cavity until he was within earshot of the tour group, the worn trail easy to follow. He waited until the guide moved on to the next item of interest before he caught up and fell in with the others.
Then it was over. One last rock-carved wide tunnel and he was back outside again, more than three hundred feet below the entrance, walking down another paved path, smiling smugly, feeling triumphant.
But the euphoria never lasted long.
Fortunately, he’d be back. For the cave’s dark, confined allure. For a well-deserved ending to the two years he’d lost. He’d make up for it. In spades. Once he’d snatched the kid, he’d finally get what was rightfully his.
He chuckled to himself as he looked across the mountainside toward Three Forks, Montana. Wouldn’t Josie O’Malley be surprised when she saw him. Soon, Josie. Real soon.
Chapter One
Josie reined in her horse and looked out at the valley that ran spring green to the still-snowcapped mountain peaks.
“Look at that, Ivy,” she whispered as she hugged the toddler in front of her, resting her chin on top of her daughter’s blond head. “Isn’t it pretty?”
The sun slipped behind the mountains, turning the Montana sky a brilliant orange that radiated across the horizon, making the last of the day glow as warm and bright as any Josie had ever seen.
“Pwetty,” her fourteen-month-old repeated.
Ivy’s hair still had that baby smell, the loose curls a pale blond and down-soft, so much like Josie’s own. Ivy looked just as Josie had at that age. Except for her eyes. Instead of being the color of bluebonnets, they were a startling deep, dark brown—just like the baby’s father’s.
Because of that, Josie never looked at her daughter without being reminded of him—and Texas. Each brought an ache of its own.
As beautiful as Montana was, it wasn’t Texas. This time of year, the Texas hill country would be alive with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush against a backdrop of live oak. The air would be scented with cedar.
So different from Montana. She stared out at the lush landscape and breathed in the sweet scent of pine. The Buffalo Jump Ranch, surrounded by snowy peaks, towering pines and rocky bluffs, was thousands of miles from Texas—and the past.
But more important, she’d found what she wanted to do with her life here in Montana. For the first time, Josie O’Malley felt truly at peace.
The realization startled her. She’d always felt at odds with the diminutive flaxen-haired sprite with the bright blue eyes she saw staring back at her from the mirror. They said she looked like her mother, but her father and brothers assured her she was nothing like sweet-tempered, soft-spoken Katherine Donovan O’Malley had been.
Instead, Josie had a wild spirit, as wild as the Texas land she’d grown up in, with a rebellious temperament her father said came from her namesake, her great-grandmother Josephine O’Malley.
Josie didn’t mind the comparison to her great-grandmother, who’d been a Wild West rodeo trick rider. In fact, Josie had clung to her rebellious spirit when her father and older brothers had tried to break it the same way they broke their horses—by trying to break her will. In the end, they’d only succeeded in driving her away.
As she hugged her daughter in the fading light, Josie realized with more than a little surprise how far she’d come—and not in miles. For the first time, she really did feel…ready. Maybe now she could do what she’d sworn on her great-grandmother’s memory she would do.
The horse nickered softly beneath them, his ears coming up as he raised his head and sniffed the warm breeze. Suddenly his ears lay back as if he saw something in the trees.
Josie tensed as well, her gaze going past the aspens to the dark edge of pines that bordered the horse ranch to the north. The first shadows of evening had settled in the trees, but she was close enough that she could see him. A man. Standing not fifty feet away. Looking right at her. Watching her and Ivy.
Startled, Josie jerked the reins, making the horse jump to the side, making her lose sight of the man as she held Ivy to her. She steadied the horse, upset with herself for treating the mare with such roughness, and focused again on the pines.
An icy shaft of fear sliced through her, bone-deep, as she stared into the shadows, frantically searching for the man she’d seen. A man she’d recognized.
But no one looked back at her from the shadowed darkness of the trees. Nothing moved. Not the thick, dark branches of the pines. Not the silver-sided, coinlike leaves of the aspens. Certainly not the man she’d thought she’d seen standing there, watching her and Ivy.
The sun slipped behind the mountains, shadows deepening. Suddenly the day no longer felt warm. Or safe.
Josie reined the horse around and, hugging her daughter to her, rode toward the small cabin that had become her home, afraid to look back. At the pines. Or the past.
Afraid to acknowledge who she’d thought she’d glimpsed watching her from the shelter of the trees.
A man who’d been dead for more than two years.
JOSIE WOKE WITH A START, jerking upright, heart pounding, her gaze at once darting to the crib in the bedroom across the hall.
Sun streamed in the window, blinding her. The crib appeared empty. In that instant, the memory of the man she’d seen yesterday in the trees came back, as dark and ominous as an omen.
