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“Nicholas. You know you’re not supposed to come in here when I’m working.”
“I’m Nicky the Kid, the meanest bandito in the land.”
“Where’s Cheyenne? And where did you get that gun?”
He grinned, showing off the tooth he’d lost just the day before. “Grandma Peg gave it to me. She says a bandito ain’t no good to nobody unless he’s packin’ heat.”
“Isn’t any good.” How had his grammar managed to completely degenerate in the three weeks since they had been on the circuit? He was picking up all sorts of bad habits. The next thing she knew, he’d start chewing tobacco.
“Where’s Cheyenne?” she repeated.
“Right here.” Peg’s fifteen-year-old granddaughter poked her head through the doorway. “Sorry, Maggie. He got away from me.”
“I’m sure it’s not your fault. Nicky, stick with Cheyenne. No more running off. I mean it, young man.”
“Okeydokey, Mom.” He planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek, then hopped out the door. With another apologetic smile, Cheyenne set off in hot pursuit.
“My son,” Maggie said, when the dust cleared.
The injured cowboy grinned. “So the doctor has a criminal hiding out on the family tree.”
She stiffened and thought of Michael embezzling millions from his criminal clients. The cowboy was more right than he knew. After a few uncomfortable beats, she forced a smile. “That’s right. So watch your step.”
“I’ll be sure to do that,” he said.
Only after he had left and she was alone once again did she realize that for the first time in nearly a month she had forgotten to be afraid.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_40e7dee8-e10a-5256-96a9-317595fff500)
The sunrise edged the mountains east of Cody, Wyoming, with lavender and pale coral and just a sliver of gold. From his perch on the top step of the broken-down camper the Bureau had somehow managed to round up for him, Colt sipped at his coffee and savored the cool, clean morning air as the gold began to swallow the other colors.
Maybe this whole rodeo thing wouldn’t be such a bad gig after all. There was definitely something to be said for enjoying the morning, content with the knowledge that he would be catching the sunrise from a different place in just a few days.
He hadn’t even minded competing the night before, right up until the moment he dislocated his shoulder.
Last time he had been inside a rodeo arena, he’d been twenty-two years old, cocky as hell, and sure he could rope and ride anything that moved. In the intervening fourteen years, he had forgotten that hefty jolt of adrenaline that always hit right before the gate opened. He’d forgotten everything—the confusion in the chutes, the smells of leather and manure thick in the air, the heady cheers of the crowd.
He grimaced. The crowd hadn’t cheered too long after he’d wrenched his shoulder, although he doubted anybody else but him could tell it had been deliberate.
He had discovered that particular ability—to dislocate his shoulder on demand—when he’d been a kid. He’d used it a few times to get out of work on the Broken Spur, until he wised up and discovered it was less painful just doing the work.
In this case the results had been worth every second of pain. He had found the perfect chance to meet Dr. Maggie Rawlings, of the sexy voice and the cool, competent hands, to begin the process of gaining her trust.
After meeting her, he had no doubt he faced a chore as tough as roping the wind.
Colt’s gaze darted to the trailer he had purposely parked beside the night before, in the little campground adjacent to the rodeo grounds. She probably had no idea the scruffy cowboy she had just fixed up had slept only a few feet away from her.
If you could call it sleep. He rubbed his bum shoulder. The narrow bed—with its mattress that felt about as thick as a paper towel—had combined with his aching muscles to keep him tossing and turning most of the night.
He’d still been awake long after the rodeo announcer called the last event, when she finally came in with her kid’s blond head snuggled in the curve of her shoulder as he slept.
Colt had watched as she carried the boy inside her trailer, hooked to a rickety old pickup that had definitely seen better days. A few minutes later she came out alone. He had watched her open the door to the trailer and gaze up at the stars, tiny scattered pinpricks of light against the black sky.
She looked small and vulnerable standing there, with her shoulders bowed as if they could hardly bear the weight of her head anymore.
He’d watched her for a long time until she’d finally gone back inside her trailer, leaving him unsettled, restless.
Beckstead never mentioned the dirty accountant’s widow had the kind of beauty that could bring a man to his knees. Delicate, fragile, with soft, translucent skin, a lush, kissable mouth and huge dark eyes. She had pulled her hair—the exact shade of a Montana wheat field in July—back into a tight, efficient braid, but stray tendrils had escaped to wisp alluringly around her face.
The minor fact that she was the first woman he’d been attracted to in longer than he cared to remember shouldn’t make any difference in his investigation. He couldn’t let it make a difference.
He had been on assignments involving beautiful women before. Dozens of them. But this odd protectiveness clogging his chest was definitely something new. For a minute there the night before, as her smooth, slim hands had fussed over his injury and her clean scent of peaches and vanilla had drifted past him, he had caught the dark smudges of fear under her eyes, and he had battled a completely irrational desire to do everything he could to wipe that fear away.
She was the subject of an investigation, he reminded himself sternly. He had a job to do and he couldn’t let himself be distracted by a beautiful woman with big needy eyes, even if she did smell like heaven.
A small whisper of sound drew his attention back to her trailer in time to see the door open just a crack and a little figure sneak out. Her kid—what was his name? Nicholas, that was it—crept down the steps dressed in the same desperado attire he’d been wearing the evening before. With one foot on the ground, he paused and looked around furtively, as if he were preparing to rob the local bank.
“Your mom know where you’re goin’, partner?” he asked softly.
The kid whirled toward him, his eyes wide like he expected to find Wyatt Earp himself staring him down. When he spied Colt, his bony shoulders slumped in relief “Uh, sure she does.”
“Honest?”
A flush stole over the boy’s cheeks, making the freckles stand out like dots on a ladybug, and Nicholas looked down at the flattened grass. “Well, she’s still asleep. I figured I’d be back before she even woke up.”
“Where you headin’ this early in the morning?”
“To see the horses.” The boy walked closer, his dark eyes that were so like his mother’s bright with renewed excitement. “I’m gonna be a cowboy when I grow up. You a cowboy, mister?”
“Sometimes,” Colt answered, truthfully enough.
“You got your own horse and everything?”
He fought the beginnings of a smile. “Yeah. His name is Scout. He’s stabled over at the rodeo grounds.”
“Can I ride him sometime?”
Colt studied the boy’s eager little face. He didn’t know much about kids, but encouraging the boy’s budding hero worship might be the perfect way to find out more information about the mother.
A five-year-old probably wouldn’t exactly be bubbling over with information about embezzled money and phony books, but the boy might be able to provide him with a little bit of insight into their financial status, if nothing else.
It was exactly the kind of lead he should follow up on. He’d be a fool not to—a good undercover man capitalized on every advantage he could find. So why did the idea of using the kid make him feel so sleazy?
“Maybe later,” he finally said. “I think you ought to just stick around here for now. Your mom might worry if you’re not here when she gets up. Moms can be funny that way, you know.”
The boy nodded solemnly, glumly. “Yeah, I know. I’m supposed to stay with my mom or with Cheyenne all the time. Stupid, huh? I’m not a baby. Heck, I’ll be six in fifty-three days. Old enough to go plenty of places by myself.”
The impassioned speech was punctuated by a loud, mansize grumbling from the vicinity of the little boy’s stomach that had Colt biting the inside of his cheek.
“You take time for breakfast before you headed out this morning, partner?”
Nicholas shook his head. “Nope. We got nothin’ but bran muffins over there. Bran muffins stink.”
“I’d have to agree with you there.” He paused for only a moment, knowing he had no choice but to try to befriend the boy. The quicker he finished this job, the quicker he could return to the ranch to salvage what was left of his vacation.
It still left a sour taste in his mouth, but he ignored it
“I bought some doughnuts yesterday. Think you might be able to do me a favor and help me out by eating one or two?”
“What kind?”
“Powdered with raspberry filling.”
Clearly tempted, the boy looked first at his own trailer then back at him, chewing on his lip. Colt could just imagine the internal debate whirring through his head. Dr. Rawlings probably had a typical maternal—and medical—prejudice against the kind of sugary treats that lacked any nutritional value. Powdered doughnuts likely placed pretty high up on that taboo food list, which should make them damn near irresistible to a boy who would be six in just fifty-three days.
“Sure,” he finally said. “Raspberry filling’s my favorite.”
Ignoring the twinges of a conscience he thought had withered away from disuse years ago, Colt walked inside the camper and grabbed the box off the table, then as an afterthought, poured a glass of milk from the little refrigerator. Maybe the calcium in the milk would redeem him in Dr. Rawlings’s eyes for the doughnut.
Yeah, and just maybe before they rode tonight, Scout might up and decide to recite the Declaration of Independence.
Colt handed the plate and cup to the boy. “Here you go.”
“Thanks, mister.”
“You can call me Colt. I figure a guy ought to be on a first-name basis with somebody he shares a jelly doughnut with, don’t you?”
“Sure. I guess so.”
“What do folks call you?”
“My mom calls me Nicky, ’cept when she’s mad,” the boy said around a mouthful of doughnut. “When she’s mad, she calls me Nicholas Michael Prescott.”
Prescott, not Rawlings, the alias the embezzler’s widow was using on the rodeo circuit. Either she hadn’t explained to her son that they needed to use a different last name for a while or he was too young to grasp the concept. If the boy chattered this freely with everyone, DeMarranville and his crew would have no trouble tracking her down.
Maybe they already had.
A vague sense of unease scratched between his shoulder blades and he scanned the cluster of campers and horse trailers. No one else was out this early in the morning, but that still didn’t make him feel any better.
He turned back to the boy, shaking off the disquiet. “So you want to be a cowboy, do you?”
“Yep. My mom says maybe someday I can get my very own horse. Not back in San Fra’cisco, but somewhere else.”
“You lived in San Francisco? That’s quite a ways from here. You miss it much?”
Nicky nodded and bit off another chunk of doughnut. “I had a race car bed and a great big tree house, with a trapdoor and a treasure box. My mom helped me build it. She says maybe we can build another one at our new house.”
“Where are you moving to?”
His thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Don’t know. My mom says we’ll know when we get there. We’re playin’ gypsies this summer, she said.” He paused for a moment. “Hey, what’s a gypsy?”
“Somebody who travels around a lot.”
“That’s what we’re bein’, all right.”
“What about your dad? Did he help you build the tree house, too?”
A sad look crossed the little boy’s face. “No. I asked him to, but he never had time. He died.”
Before Colt could answer, the door to the trailer across the way banged open, hitting the aluminum skin, then ricocheting closed. It was instantly shoved open again and a frantic voice resounded in the morning air.
“Nicky? Nicky!”
Maggie stood barefoot in the doorway in an oversize T-shirt that just skimmed her knees. Her wheat-colored hair looked soft and crumpled, in direct contrast to her terrified gaze scouring the surroundings in every direction and her chest heaving in panic like she’d just outrun the meanest bull on the circuit.
Colt could tell exactly when she spied them, because a vast relief poured into those deep brown eyes, followed quickly by the beginnings of anger.
“Nicholas Michael Pres—” she faltered for just a moment “—Rawlings. What are you doing out here?”
“Eatin’ breakfast with my pal Colt.” The boy mumbled, taking another bite.
She sent a scathing look in Colt’s direction, whether at him or at the box of doughnuts in his hand he didn’t want to hazard a guess.
He nodded politely, deciding an aw-shucks demeanor might be the best course of action. “Mornin’, Doc.”
“Good morning,” she snapped, then turned back to her son. “We have talked about this, young man. You know the rules. I have to know where you are all the time.”
Nicky, in the middle of a swallow of milk that left a white mustache on his upper lip, sent her a bewildered look. “You know ’xactly where I am. Right here.”
“I didn’t know where you were when I woke up. All kinds of terrible things went through my head.”
A mischievous gleam appeared in his eyes. “Like that big ugly aliens came down in a UFO and grabbed me and took me back to their planet so I could be their slave and wash their dirty socks and stuff?”
“Something like that. A little less dramatic, maybe.” Her stern expression softened, and she pushed a lock of hair out of her son’s eyes. “You really scared me, bud. Don’t do that again, okay? Wake me up before you go outside next time.”
“Okay. Can I finish breakfast with Colt? He said maybe sometime he’d let me ride his horse. His name’s Scout.”
“I’m sure Mr. McKendrick has things to do this morning,” she said, her voice coated with a thin, crackly layer of frost.
“Not really. If the boy wants to see the horse, I’d be glad to take him down to the pens.”
“Please, Mom? I’ll come right back, I promise.”
“Not right now. Maybe I can find time to take you down to see the horses later.”
“But Mom... ”
“Later, Nicholas. You’re still in trouble for breaking the rules. Now go inside and wash your hands and face.”
