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She knew almost nothing about him but suspected there were interesting stories about how the former rodeo star became the owner of a successful horse ranch. Now wasn’t the time to push for details, but she was curious.
When they pulled up in front of the house, she saw that Charlotte had been busy in her absence. She’d moved the suitcases and boxes from the back of Gabby’s car to the front porch of the house, and she’d gotten dressed. In her jeans and puffy vest with her long hair tied back and a navy blue Denver Broncos baseball cap on her head, she looked like a teenager—a teenage boy. When it came to clothing, Charlotte was definitely the “before” version—sorely in need of a makeover.
She tromped through the mud to Gabby’s side of the truck and yanked the door open. “I’m sorry.”
Gabby noticed the red splotch on the side of her face where she’d hit her with the pepper spray. “I’m sorry, too.”
When she climbed down from the cab of the truck, Gabby couldn’t help but notice Charlotte’s discomfort. The thin girl shifted her weight back and forth. Her eyes were downcast. Her arms folded around her middle, and her shoulders hunched as though she was expecting to be beaten. This behavior wasn’t the way to make friends. Gabby’s second lesson—after she showed Charlotte the wonders of moisturizing—would be on how to meet people without curling into a ball of nervousness.
“Come here.” Gabby pulled her close and gave her a hug. “I truly, deeply appreciate everything you did for my great-aunt.”
“You got it backward,” Charlotte said. “Michelle took me in and gave me a place to live.”
“And you cared for her. All I know from the lawyer was that she died from heart failure. Was she in the hospital?”
“Only once.”
Charlotte tried to pull away, but Gabby held her. “Can you tell me about it? What did the doctors say?”
“They put in a stent.” Her voice was a little shaky. “They found other medical problems. With her lungs and her liver. The doctors said she didn’t have long to live. They wanted her to stay at the hospital and rest, but...” Her voice trailed off into silence.
“I didn’t know my aunt well,” Gabby said, “but I know she made her own choices and lived her life the way she wanted. I expect she chose the way she wanted to die.”
“At home.” A sob trembled through Charlotte’s narrow shoulders. “As soon as she could walk, she got out of that hospital bed and hired a nurse to come back to the Roost with us and take care of her medication.”
“You did everything you could to help.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
Charlotte collapsed against her. Though her body was wrenched with powerful emotion, she didn’t make a sound. Her silent tears touched Gabby’s heart. This poor girl had no support system whatsoever. There had been times in Gabby’s life when she’d felt alone and bereft of family, but her experience was nothing compared to Charlotte’s abject loneliness.
Gently, Gabby stroked her back. The girl was so thin that her ribs stuck out. She felt as delicate as a baby bird. Looking past Charlotte’s shoulder, Gabby saw Zach watching them from the porch. His expression was oddly gentle, and he almost seemed to be smiling.
“It’s okay,” Gabby murmured. “We’re going to take care of each other. Do you think you can stay here with me?”
“Yes,” Charlotte said quickly. She broke away from the hug, sniffled and looked Gabby in the eye. “I’m really glad I didn’t shoot you.”
It went without saying that Gabby was also happy about that outcome. “We need to talk about that gun.”
With her sleeve, Charlotte wiped the moisture from her cheeks in a gesture that couldn’t have been less feminine. “I need the rifle. There are these guys who are trying to break into the house. Treasure hunters.”
“But I’m here now,” Gabby said. “Nobody will try to break in with both of us here.”
“What if they do?”
“We call the police.”
“It’ll take them at least a half hour to get here.”
She hadn’t thought of the timing. Living at the end of a rutted road without street signs was different than being in Brooklyn. “I don’t like guns.”
“Because you don’t know how to use them,” Zach said. “If you’re going to live here, you need to learn how to defend yourself and your property.”
“Zach can show you,” Charlotte said. “He’s a really good teacher. Maybe tomorrow you can have a lesson.”
“Great,” she muttered. “Until then, can we at least put the gun away somewhere? Leaving it on the stair landing seems dangerous.”
“Yes, it does.” Zach gave Charlotte a puzzled look. “Have you got an explanation?”
“I couldn’t sleep, and I was going upstairs and then back downstairs. If I was all the way down in the kitchen, my rifle wasn’t going to do me much good if it was up in my bedroom closet. So I left it in the middle.”
“You know better,” he said. “You don’t leave a loaded weapon out where anybody could pick it up and use it.”
She scowled. “I know.”
“Gabby could have stumbled over the rifle and caused an accident.”
“I get it.” Charlotte rolled her eyes. “It’s lucky that both Gabby and me are going to be staying here. If you put the two of us together, you have one smart person.”
Before Gabby could object to being labeled as Tweedle-Dee to Charlotte’s Tweedle-Dum, she heard a confirming woof. On the porch, sitting beside her pile of belongings, was a black-and-white dog with pointed ears. One eye was blue and the other brown. The dog seemed to be grinning at them. “Daphne?”
“What’s she doing here?” Zach asked.
Charlotte went to the dog and scratched behind her ears. “Right after Gabby took off, Daphne showed up and started following me. She hasn’t let me out of her sight. It feels like she’s herding me.”
“Keeping you safe.” Zach looked over his shoulder, scanning the darkness that surrounded the house. “Daphne senses things we don’t see.”
A psychic collie? Gabby would have laughed if she hadn’t felt a prickling on the back of her neck. She didn’t want to think about the coyotes and other possible dangers that Daphne might be seeing with her two-colored eyes.
* * *
ABOUT A MILE from the front porch of the Roost, a man in black crouched beside a fence post and peered through the night vision scope mounted on his rifle. He wanted a better look at the new girl. In spite of the three times magnification, he couldn’t make out details at this distance. She was taller than average and kind of clumsy in the way she walked. And she was a hugger. When she’d wrapped her arms around Charlotte, a flicker of envy had gone through him. He’d been keeping an eye on sweet little Charlotte for the past month and had developed an interest in her, even though the girl was as plain as a female sage grouse.
Having another person at the Roost would make his search more complicated, and time was running out. He needed a new tactic, needed to be smarter. The more he thought about it, the more he suspected that Michelle had hidden what he was looking for. At this point, he didn’t care as much about the money as he did about the potential prison time. He wouldn’t let himself be locked away. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades. His knit cap was itchy on his ears. He wasn’t going to let anyone take away the expensive goodies he’d been buying for himself. He’d taken the risk and deserved those things.
Had that old bitch Michelle told Charlotte where she’d hidden her secrets? Had she left instructions for the new girl?
He shifted his scope and focused on Zach Sheffield. If the neighbor decided to get involved with these women, it was going to be trouble. Zach liked to pretend that he was upright and honest—a rodeo hero and a role model. But there was a time, not so very long ago, when he’d been desperate and angry, prone to lashing out first and asking questions later.
As the man in black watched, his finger twitched on the trigger. Life would be easier if he eliminated these obstacles. Pop, pop, pop. Three shots. Three dead bodies. Sheriff Burton would never figure out who did it.
Chapter Four
The next morning when Gabby awoke, sunshine was pouring through the two bedroom windows, assaulting her with blinding force. With a groan, she curled into a fetal position and covered her face with one of the down pillows on her queen-size bed. What was the deal with the light in Colorado? Either it was pitch-dark or glaring like a laser.
“Nature,” she grumbled into her pillow.
These annoying variances in the weather were natural phenomena—something you had to live with when you were in the mountains. In the city, the temperature wasn’t consistent, but you didn’t have to deal with the ups and downs. Life could be arranged to minimize your time outdoors. You could stay inside for days and survive by ordering pizza and Chinese, two options that probably weren’t available at the Roost. No Chinese? It took a moment for that loss to sink into her early morning consciousness. No crispy egg rolls. No General Tso’s chicken.
Another groan harmonized with a growl from her stomach. Eating nothing but her own cooking was a miserable thought. Could she live with that? Did she want to? Gabby needed to make a decision about whether she wanted to stay in Colorado or go back to the place she still considered home.
Peeling back the corner of the pillow, she checked her wristwatch. Already after nine o’clock? No, wait, her watch was still set on Eastern Time. In Brooklyn, it was nine and the corner bakery would already be running low on her favorite almond muffins and the kids would be dashing down the sidewalks to school and the commuters would be waiting to catch the D train.
Here, in the middle of nowhere, the time was fifteen minutes past seven, and it was unbelievably quiet. Nobody was rushing anywhere. Cell phones weren’t ringing. The only tweeting came from the birds outside the window.
She’d heard somewhere that country people were early risers but hoped that Charlotte didn’t follow that code. They hadn’t gotten to bed until nearly midnight after dragging her suitcases and boxes into this upstairs bedroom at the top of the stairs. Charlotte had called this one of the guest rooms, but the space was large enough for a master suite. In addition to the queen-size brass bed, there was a dresser and a standing wardrobe, both of which were painted a deep coral and decorated with faux antiquing. The hand-stitched quilt on the bed used some of the coral mixed with greens and yellows in a zigzag pattern. The walls were a clean, crisp white with a stucco finish. It was a pleasant room, homey but not cluttered.
Opposite her bed, above the dresser was a large canvas that she suspected had been done by her great-aunt. The painting showed a bedroom where a bare-legged girl with her hair falling forward to cover her face sat reading a book. She was reflected in a standing mirror that made her smaller and that mirror was reflected in another and another until the girl vanished.
The style was fascinating, realistic but also surreal. Gabby knew quite a bit about fabric and textile, but she wasn’t an art expert. Her great-aunt’s work made her think of what might happen if Norman Rockwell hooked up with Salvador Dali. The subject matter of this picture was more interesting to her. It could be an allegory of going deeper and deeper inside yourself until you completely disappear. Or maybe the other way around, starting from nothing and getting bigger and bigger. Either way, the painting gave a sense of secrecy as though there was more than met the eye.
In the somewhat sketchy history of the Rousseau family, Great-Aunt Michelle was a woman of mystery. There must have been an important reason why she left Brooklyn and moved West, but Gabby didn’t know what it was. When she had asked her other great-aunt—Michelle’s sister—the response was always evasive. If she stayed at the Roost, Gabby wanted to uncover those family secrets. If she stayed...
She tossed the quilt aside, got out of bed and went to the window that looked down on the bumpy driveway leading to the house. A flash of sunlight glinted off the roof of her little car, and she offered up a quick prayer to the Universe that it would start up with no problem this morning. Last night, there had been a lot of sputtering and clunking, and she really needed to take the car in for servicing.
Beyond the road that bisected Michelle’s property and Zach’s ranch, she saw the evil barbed wire fence that attacked her last night. His cozy house was in the distance, but he was already out and about, riding across the field on a black horse with a coat that glistened as though it had been polished with lacquer.
Though Gabby had never been a big fan of Westerns, she was mesmerized by the vision of a broad-shouldered, long-legged, masculine cowboy in a black hat and denim jacket. Beyond gorgeous, he was iconic and, at the same time, utterly original. He dismounted near the place where she’d gotten tangled up last night and sauntered to the fence with a cool, loose-limbed stride. When he pushed his hat back on his forehead and looked toward the house, she stepped back behind the curtain so he wouldn’t see her staring.
Their meeting last night hadn’t been under the best of circumstances, and he certainly hadn’t done anything since then to make her think he was glad to see her. But she’d sensed chemistry between them. Maybe she and Zach would never have a relationship, but she could easily imagine some kissing in their future. Peeking around the edge of the curtain, she watched him walk back toward his horse. At this distance, she couldn’t really judge the way he looked from behind, but she’d noticed last night and he was fine. She wouldn’t mind sticking around at the Roost long enough to see where things with Zach might go.
There was a tap on her bedroom door. Charlotte poked her head inside. “Glad you’re up. I was thinking about breakfast.”
“Usually I just have coffee.”
She came all the way into the room. “That’s a real pretty nightgown.”
“I love fancy lingerie.” Gabby ran her fingers along the flowing lines of her lavender satin chemise with the ivory yoke. “A woman should feel glamorous at least once a day, even if she’s alone in bed. And nightwear is one of the easiest things to make.”
“You made that?”
“I had some scraps left over from a prom dress I did for one of the girls in the neighborhood. I stitched it together and voila!” She came toward Charlotte whose long hair was fastened in two tight braids that made her look twelve years old. “I could make something for you.”
“It’s not practical. That silky material isn’t warm.”
“Which is why you have a robe.” From the rail at the end of the bed, she picked up a long black satin kimono that she’d embroidered with silver roses and slipped it over her chemise. “I saw your nightgown last night—very Little House on the Prairie. You might like to try something different, just for a change.”
Charlotte couldn’t resist stroking the smooth fabric of the kimono, but her forehead pinched in a scowl. “I’ve got no need to dress up.”
“Fashion isn’t about need. It’s about desire and dreams.” Gabby needed to be careful not to push this odd, shy girl too far. Charlotte needed a friend more than a makeover. “Let’s go downstairs. I think I changed my mind about breakfast.”
She slipped into a pair of sparkly ballet flats that were going to be totally useless at the Roost, except for using as slippers and followed Charlotte out the door. If she decided to stay, a shopping trip for footwear would be absolutely necessary.
* * *
ZACH GLANCED AT Daphne, who was sitting in the passenger seat of his truck. The black-and-white dog raised an eyebrow and shook her head as though she was worried about the current situation. So was he.
Earlier this morning, he’d been riding the fence line along his property to make sure Gabby hadn’t torn the barbed wire apart, and he’d discovered a footprint. The grass beside a fence post was tamped down, and he could see the clear outline of a boot heel. Someone had been standing at this spot—about a mile from the front porch of the Roost—for long enough to make an impression. Though Charlotte’s theory about treasure hunters still seemed as far-fetched as a pirate ship sailing over Mount Sopris, the footprint indicated that someone had been watching the house, spying on them. Combined with the break-in during Michelle’s memorial, Zach had reason to be concerned.
Gabby’s arrival made the situation worse. While Charlotte was a nervous little thing who might get herself into trouble with her misplaced handling of her rifle, Gabby was a loose cannon. The first time he’d seen her, she was wearing a leopard bra and not much else. How the hell could he predict what she’d say or do?
As they approached the house, Daphne’s ears pricked up and she made a grumbling noise deep in her throat.
“You’re right, girl. This could be trouble.”
Though Zach knew he couldn’t really talk to his dogs or his horses, he’d always felt like he could communicate with animals. He respected their intelligence and their instincts, which were a hundred times sharper than his own. When Daphne sensed danger, he paid attention.
Reaching over, he scratched behind her ears. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on them. Michelle would have wanted it.”
Daphne’s mouth dropped open in what looked like a grin. The dog had liked being around Michelle and spent a lot of time curled up at the base of her easel while she painted. Zach couldn’t help wondering if Daphne understood that Michelle was gone and not coming back. More likely, the dog would always approach the Roost with the expectation of greeting the former owner. And who was Zach to say Daphne’s instincts were wrong? Michelle Rousseau might still be here in spirit.
He parked his truck and went to the front door, which stood wide-open in a blatant invitation to intruders. The smell of smoke hung in the air. He stepped inside. “What’s going on?”
Gabby rushed down the hall from the kitchen. In a pair of tight red jeans and a loose jacket striped with neon colors, she looked like an urban butterfly. “I was baking.”
Clearly, that wasn’t the whole story. “And?”
“Charlotte made breakfast this morning, and it was really good. Scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon. So, I thought I’d help out, and I remembered those yummy cookies Rhoda gave me last night. I was cooking. Everything was going fine. And then this dish towel caught fire.”
“Uh-huh.”
“All under control,” she said with a confident smile.
“Uh-huh.”
Today, she had on makeup—a bit of lining around her dark eyes and pink lipstick that emphasized the fullness of her mouth. With her dark hair framing her face, she was striking, almost beautiful. He had an urge to tell her, to caress the delicate lines of her face and to taste those pretty lips.
“Zach, can I ask you a favor?” Before he could respond, she continued, “I made an appointment to see my great-aunt’s lawyer at two o’clock this afternoon. His office is in Aspen, and I need to take my car in for a checkup. It would help if you came with me, in case I have to leave my car overnight.”
“Sure.” He had already cleared his appointments for today, anticipating problems at the Roost.
“I appreciate it.”
When she reached over and casually patted his arm, a current of electricity shot up to his shoulder and spread across his chest. He enjoyed the effect she had on him but hated feeling out of control. The time had come to get a grip. “There’s something important we need to discuss.”
“Anything, you can talk to me about anything.”
From the top of the staircase, he heard Charlotte’s voice. “Here I come,” she shouted, “ready or not.”
The feminine creature that descended the stairs had Charlotte’s long hair and her nervous blue eyes. Otherwise, she was unrecognizable. The makeup she was wearing didn’t cover the hot red blush on her cheeks. Her legs were encased in fishnet stockings, and she wore a short, tight skirt. Her blouse was long-sleeved, lacy and showed curves he never knew Charlotte had.
At the bottom of the stairs, she spun in a clumsy circle, clearly having trouble maneuvering in her high heels. With a huge smile, she looked up at him. “What do you think?”
“You’re real sparkly.”
“Glitter makeup,” Gabby said.
“Me and Gabby wear the same size. She’s a couple of inches taller, but we’re pretty much the same. I don’t know about these shoes, though. They’re kind of big.”
