Читать книгу Reclaiming the Cowboy - Kathleen O'Brien - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU’RE JOKING.” Mitch stared down at the dense paragraphs of legal mumbo jumbo, knowing he should be trying to read the document he held but unable to register anything except the ludicrously large number. It was such a big number it seemed to pulse and glow slightly on the page.

“You’re trying to tell me somebody already wants to buy and make the stupid thing? And they want to pay...”

He couldn’t even say the number out loud. This absolutely had to be a joke. He wasn’t an inventor or an overnight success story. He was the younger Garwood boy. The party boy. The goof. The one who had resisted growing up so long his big brother, Dallas, secretly feared he never would.

Surely this was a prank. If he fell for it, Dallas would jump out from behind the door and die laughing.

But Indiana Dunchik, Mitch’s well-respected patent lawyer—also known as Ana, though not to Mitch—hadn’t cracked a smile. She was a gorgeous blonde he’d hired because she worked out of Grand Junction, not Silverdell. Therefore, she was less likely to think it was by definition preposterous that Mitch Garwood, screwup extraordinaire, might’ve invented something worthwhile.

Okay, that, and she was a gorgeous blonde.

Obviously, he hadn’t hired her for her sense of humor. She seemed bewildered that he was chuckling.

“Of course it’s not a jest, Mr. Garwood. Nor is it, in my opinion, a stupid thing.” She laid her slim pink-tipped fingers flat on her desk. “We’ve spent months getting these patents because we believed your jacket was a marketable and useful product. I’m not surprised we have an offer. In fact, I’ll be surprised if this is the only offer we receive.”

Ordinarily, he disliked the royal “we,” but the truth was, this patent-application process had been such a drawn-out bore, and Ms. Dunchik had wrestled with so many searches, claims, actions and appeals, that he knew full well it had been a joint effort. In fact, she’d had the more difficult half, because when he’d designed the Garwood Chore Jacket he’d mostly been—what else?—screwing around and having fun.

It had all started almost two years ago, when he’d said, “These coats should come with a cheat sheet for the feed formulas. And somewhere to put my phone that I can actually reach it.”

Dallas had rolled his eyes—Mitch was always trying to find a way to do less work. His last “invention” had been a gravity feeder to eliminate all those trips from the loft with buckets. Dallas had laughed at that, too, but it worked.

However, Alec, Mitch’s nephew, had agreed about the jacket wholeheartedly. “We need somewhere to put Tootsie Rolls, too,” he’d added with feeling.

That really got everyone laughing. Bell River Ranch was a family venture—and not even Mitch’s family, except by marriage. Dallas had married Rowena Wright, the oldest of the Wright sisters, who had inherited the gorgeous spread and decided to turn it into a dude ranch.

So everyone assumed that Mitch was just hanging on, working with the horses, his first love, while he decided what to do when he grew up. But, later, Mitch kept thinking about the jacket. He had another idea, for a more comfortable back vent. And then some thoughts about a better, warmer lining.

Still, he’d just been fooling around—as evidenced by the fact that Alec, a ten-year-old, was his only cheerleader.

Well, Alec and Bonnie.

Reflexively, Mitch thought about how thrilled Bonnie would be to hear that he’d actually followed through and applied for the patent.

And now this offer. She’d squeal and leap into his arms and say “I told you so” a thousand times, between kisses. She’d always insisted his ideas were genius, and, though he knew she was blowing sunshine, it would be pretty nice to tell someone who wouldn’t be insultingly shocked.

But then he remembered. He wouldn’t be telling Bonnie anything anymore. Two weeks ago, he’d put paid to that possibility, once and for all. Even if she ever stopped running, she wouldn’t come back to him.

He glanced down at the contract again, and the number no longer glowed. It didn’t represent freedom or validation or kisses in the romantic places he’d promised to take her someday, places like Ireland or Spain. It was just money. And Mitch hadn’t ever really cared much about money.

He glanced at the woman behind the desk. “So what do we do now?”

The lawyer tightened her lips, which Mitch had learned was her thinking face. “In my opinion, we should wait. Of course, if you would like to have the cash in hand sooner, we can have our contracts department look this over and make recommendations. But...unless you need capitalization now...I think waiting will be fruitful.”

Fruitful. He almost smiled, thinking of his preacher father, a fire-and-brimstone bastard, and how often the old man had reminded Mitch and Dallas that the line about being fruitful and multiplying wasn’t a mandate to go around making babies all over Silverdell. The brothers had wasted an absurd amount of time creating other comic interpretations of the quote.

Suck lemons in math class, my son. Stuff like that. Mitch had thought it was hilarious. No wonder his father had always warned him he’d never amount to anything.

For the first and only time in his life, Mitch momentarily thought it was too bad the old tyrant wasn’t around anymore. It might be fun to shove this contract in his face and see what he thought of the number.

How about them multiplying fruits, Dad?

“I’m not in need of immediate capitalization,” he echoed, unable to resist playing Ms. Dunchik’s multisyllabic elocution game.

“Good.” She nodded regally and began scooping papers into a neat stack. “We’ll wait a few weeks, then. We have a department that can bring your design to the attention of some likely candidates, and we’ll see what happens. But I’ll be very surprised if we can’t end up doubling this. At least.”

More money than he needed, times two. He shook his head, trying to imagine what he’d do with that much “capitalization.” He drew a blank. Every plan he’d made for a long, long time had revolved around Bonnie.

So no, waiting for the money wasn’t a problem. Obviously, he could use an extra few weeks just to invent a new plan. A new reason to live.

“Smile, Mr. Garwood.” The lawyer leaned forward, and her eyes twinkled, as if she really saw Mitch for the first time. “You’re going to be a moderately wealthy man.”

He tucked one corner of his mouth up. It was the best he could do.

“Well, then,” he said. “Hurray.”

* * *

A WEEK LATER, Mitch sat in the back booth of a shadowy restaurant on the far side of Silverdell, feeling a little like Al Capone. The small cardboard box on the bench seat beside him didn’t have drugs or dirty money inside, but he couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if it had.

A few minutes later, Dallas slid in opposite him and shrugged off his jacket. Though Dallas was Silverdell County’s sheriff, he wasn’t in uniform today. Mitch had deliberately chosen an off-duty moment to ask his brother to break the rules.

Dallas waved away the hovering waitress, then faced Mitch with a half smile. “I have to admit, your message intrigued me.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks for coming.” The perfunctory words felt stiff on Mitch’s lips. They hadn’t seen each other in a couple of days, but they were close and didn’t usually waste time on pleasantries.

Dallas raised an eyebrow, noting the formality.

“I wanted to talk to you alone, away from the ranch.” Mitch ran his hand through his hair. “And away from your office, too. What I want... It’s personal. Not official, if you know what I mean.”

“I get the general idea.” Dallas’s smile broadened. “You know, you’re the only person I know who would actually leave the words I want you to do something unethical for me on an answering machine.”

“Well, I do, so why lie?” Mitch shrugged. “If you weren’t willing to consider it, there wasn’t any point wasting your time. Besides, I’m not much for sugarcoating.”

Dallas’s other eyebrow went up. “Might be splitting hairs there. No lying, but you want to do something unethical?”

“No. I want you to do something unethical. A very important distinction.”

Dallas laughed, as Mitch had known he would. The one thing he could always do was make his brother laugh. The one thing he could rarely do was make Dallas take him seriously.

He’d also never been able to make Dallas fudge the rules. Not in years, anyhow. Once, way back in their childhood, Dallas had been a little wild. Mitch remembered that clearly, if only because it had caused such violent rows with their dad. But in his midteens Dallas had gone straight. Super-straight. Even before he’d started wearing a star, he’d strutted around Silverdell with a halo.

Since he’d gone into law enforcement, even worse. He’d never so much as helped Mitch wriggle out of a parking ticket. So Mitch didn’t really hold out a lot of hope that Saint Sheriff Garwood would help him with this far-more-unprincipled request.

“Go ahead, then.” Dallas leaned back. “Out with it.”

Mitch put the box on the table. It looked innocent enough. Three weeks ago, it had held a pair of binoculars Rowena’s sister Penny had ordered for bird-watching classes at the ranch.

“I’ve got her fingerprints on a water glass. I thought maybe you’d be willing to get them ID’d for me. Discreetly.”

Dallas didn’t answer right away. At least he didn’t ask anything as dumb as whose fingerprints? Everyone at Bell River knew there was only one female on the planet Mitch cared about—and certainly only one who needed to be identified through fingerprints.

Finally, Dallas sighed, as if his little brother, who had always been so annoying, was continuing the tradition. “Why now?”

It was a sensible question, and Mitch didn’t mind answering.

“I saw her again. Three weeks ago. When I got home, she was in the cabin.”

“Really.” Dallas always kept his face and his tone under control, but Mitch knew him well enough to recognize true shock. “Did she explain where she’d been?”

“No. Nothing. She explained nothing. I didn’t ask at first, because—” Well, that part didn’t need sharing. “Anyhow, it wasn’t long before I realized she wasn’t home to stay. I...I was pretty upset. I told her if she ran away again, I didn’t ever want her to come back. But she left anyhow.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” Mitch was glad, finally, to talk to someone about it. Especially someone like Dallas, who would really get it. He knew Mitch better than anyone, and he’d hear all the things Mitch couldn’t bring himself to articulate, like how much it hurt.

Dallas’s eyes were thoughtful. “Did you mean it?”

“Damn straight I did. Look, I’m trying not to be a jerk here. She has the right to make her own decisions, and if she feels she can’t trust me, fine. But I can’t do this anymore. I—”

He stopped himself as he reached the invisible stoic-guy boundary. He couldn’t whine. But...he’d carried around his fury, mixed up in a big, boiling, nasty stew that included both heartbreak and terror, for three weeks now. He had to bring closure to this mess. He had to, or he’d lose his mind.

Not that he ever said words like closure out loud.

“Anyhow, I know it’s technically against the rules to run prints for me. But who else can I ask? I thought about Jeff—”

Dallas smiled. Jeff Shafer and Dallas had been deputies together, under old Sheriff Granton, before Jeff left for wider pastures, explaining that he needed to solve more interesting crimes than cow tipping and jaywalking. Jeff had always been the rebel of the two young deputies. He was a good guy, but, unlike Dallas, he believed that sometimes the greater good required breaking a rule here and there.

“Okay. You thought about Jeff.” Dallas cocked his head. “But?”

“But I can’t bring anyone else into this.” Mitch put his hands over the box, instinctively protective, then moved them again when he realized how transparent that body language might be. “I don’t think Jeff’s got loose lips, but who knows? She’s really scared, Dallas. You saw that. She’s running from something—or somebody—and I can’t risk putting a spotlight on her.”

“Then why ID her at all? Why not just let her go? She clearly believes we can’t help her. Maybe she’s right.”

“Maybe. But...” Mitch’s hands balled on the table, and his neck grew hot. “Damn it, Dallas. I would have thrown my body under an oncoming train for that woman.”

Dallas’s gaze softened slightly, though not enough to qualify as pity, which would have made things worse.

“I know you would have,” he said. “And she knows it, too. Problem is, how does that help her? You’re dead, and the train’s still coming.”

Mitch heard the logic. He really did. But it didn’t stop the helpless anger from radiating across his body in hot waves.

“Fine. I get that. But if I am going to move on, I have to know I did everything I could. I need to close this book, Dallas. I need to type The End on this stupid story. And I need you to help me.”

Sitting as straight as a fireplace poker, he gave his brother a hard, unblinking glare. “So. Bottom line. Will you do it or not?”

“Sure.”

Mitch dropped back against the cushioned booth, and the padding let out a whoosh of air that sounded just like the sigh of relief he felt in his chest.

“You will? Even though it’s against the rules?”

Dallas shrugged. “I won’t be advertising that I did it. But you’d be surprised how often it’s done. I bet Sheriff Granton’s daughter never dated a single guy who wasn’t innocently offered a Coke while he waited, for this very reason. Drinking glasses are good for fingerprints. So are the hoods of patrol cars.”

Mitch chuckled. Dallas never ceased to surprise him. He shoved the binocular box across the empty table. “Take it, then. I picked it up with a paper towel, so the prints are probably all still there.”

But Dallas made no move to claim the box. He simply smiled at Mitch, then lifted a hand to summon the waitress. “How about we get some coffee?”

Mitch nodded roughly, though he didn’t want coffee or anything a waitress could bring. All he wanted was for Dallas to grab that box, hustle it back to the sheriff’s department and force some miracle machine somewhere to spit out an identity.

“Take it,” he said again, glancing down at the box.

“Don’t need it.” Dallas waited, not speaking, while the waitress poured their coffee, then gave her a warm “thanks.” Waitresses always loved Dallas. They even flirted with him until they noticed the ring. Sometimes even after they noticed it.

When she left, Dallas shook his mug in small circles, letting some heat escape, then took a sip.

The display of serenity drove Mitch nuts. “Dallas. What the devil do you mean, you don’t need it?”

“Exactly that. I don’t need it. I’ve already got a set of her prints on a glass. Ro gave me one a year ago, and it’s been locked in my bottom desk drawer ever since.”

“Ro gave you one what?” Mitch frowned hard. “A glass with Bonnie’s fingerprints on it?”

“Yeah. Apparently, she’d saved one, right from the start, thinking she might need to probe further someday. She gave it to me while you and Bonnie were on the road. She thought I might want to try to track you down, to be sure you were okay. She thought it might help the search if we could find out who Bonnie really was.”

“Is.” Mitch said the word hotly, like a threat. “Who Bonnie really is.”

“Of course.”

Mitch could tell Dallas was clearly making a conscious effort to keep his tone calm, to prevent Mitch’s frustration and fear from escalating.

Too late. Mitch felt his lungs tighten, as if they didn’t want to send him air. “You’ve had it a year? And you haven’t run the prints? What on earth have you been waiting for?”

“Hey. I don’t break the rules for fun. Or to satisfy my curiosity.” Dallas shrugged. “You sent postcards, so I knew you were alive. You knew how to get in touch with me if you needed help, so I didn’t have any good reason to invade Bonnie’s privacy. Then, since you got home, I’ve been waiting for a sign from you.”

“From me?”

“Of course.” Dallas met his gaze steadily. “Bonnie O’Mara, or whoever she is, is your mystery, Mitch. Only you can say when you’re ready to solve her.”

* * *

BONNIE’S HOMECOMING, after two years on the run, could have been a splashy, trashy, conspicuous celebration. If she’d wanted to, she could have chosen to appear in sequins, sparkles and feather boas, holding a neon sign that said “Surprise, sicko! You lose!”

Instead, as she slipped into the large elegant hotel ballroom where her mother’s charity auction was being held, Bonnie wore head-to-toe black. It seemed fitting, somehow, since she hadn’t been able to attend the funeral.

Missing that service had been very painful. She’d even dreamed, briefly, of sneaking back here to Sacramento, just for an hour. She’d imagined herself standing unobtrusively in the rear of the church, with glasses, maybe, or a veiled hat.

But that would have been suicide. No disguise would have been adequate. Jacob undoubtedly had anticipated her showing up, and he would have been ready.

So instead she’d marked the day, privately, at her nursery job at Crystal Eden back in Colorado Springs. When the church bells down the block had rung the noon hour, she’d stopped right in the middle of hauling potting soil, dropped the handles of her wheelbarrow and shut her eyes.

She’d said a prayer. And when she’d glanced up, a tangerine cloud shaped like a ballerina had been executing a grand jeté across the sky. She liked to believe it was a message from her mother, letting Bonnie know she’d found freedom and peace at last.

After that, her wait had been easier. She loved the nursery job, and the days flew. All thirty-one of them.

A month and a day. That was how long had passed, between the night her mother had died and this clear April afternoon when Bonnie had finally come home.

If she could even call Sacramento home anymore. She’d lost so much over the past two years. But somehow she had survived. That was all that really mattered now.

She had outwitted Jacob. She couldn’t really absorb that fact, even now that she saw him, up there, so sanctimonious and self-important in the first row. It was the first time she’d laid eyes on him since she had left, nearly two years ago.

It was the first time she’d seen any of these people since then. The auction house was filled with friends of her grandmother, collectors, critics, other artists and other Sacramento bigwigs—people she’d known all her life.

They didn’t recognize her yet, of course. They weren’t expecting her. Most of them probably thought she was dead and assumed her body would never be located, or that if she ever were discovered, she’d be pathetic and half-mad in some art colony somewhere, as her mother so often had been found.

The stylish black hat she’d bought yesterday covered her hair, which she’d had stripped back to its natural color, but pinned tightly to her head, so that it wouldn’t give her away too soon.

She took a seat quietly at the back of the auction room, attracting little attention from anyone except her attorney, who had technically known she’d be coming but had still looked relieved when she’d appeared.

Everyone else was focused on the oil painting that had just been brought out. A low rumble of appreciation moved through the audience as they caught their first glimpse of the portrait, the girl with the legendary cascade of red-gold hair.

It was, indisputably, one of the most beautiful of the Annabelle Oils, a series of paintings done by the California portraitist Ava Andersen Irving. Sixteen complete oils, all with only one subject—Ava’s Titian-haired, blue-eyed, fairylike granddaughter, Annabelle Irving.

The series had begun when Annabelle had been just a year old and had continued until Ava died, when Annabelle was fifteen. The paintings and adjunct sketches had made Ava rich...well, richer, given that she’d already married into money.

And they had made little Annabelle famous. It had made a million people think they knew her, made them romanticize and misunderstand her, as if she were Ophelia or Alice in Wonderland. Somewhere along the way, Annabelle Irving had stopped being a normal child and had started being a myth. Strange, ethereal, otherworldly, elfin, odd...just a few of the adjectives art critics loved to apply to her.

The portraits were officially known by numbers only. This was Fourteen, which didn’t correspond with the subject’s age, because Annabelle had been only twelve the year this one was painted. Twelve, and so tired of sitting still. Her grandmother had positioned Annabelle next to a window, where the light hit her hair just right. Out of the corner of her eye, Annabelle caught a tantalizing hint of buttercups dancing in the wind, but she wasn’t allowed to look. She was barely allowed to breathe.

That particular year, Annabelle had rebelled, briefly, the way preteens sometimes did. The slight puffiness beneath the famous blue eyes was proof of the storm of tears, the refusal to cooperate, the desperation to be set free.

Ava had been furious, at first, but eventually she had announced that the hint of sadness added pathos to the painting, which was ultimately priceless.

With a start, Bonnie came back to the present, realizing the bidding had begun. She didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t want this painting. She hated it. But she was glad to see the price rise higher and higher. Her mother had owned Fourteen outright, and she had left instructions in her will that it, along with a small pencil sketch of Annabelle, the only two pieces from the series that legally belonged to her, should be auctioned after her death. The proceeds were to be donated to the women’s shelter that had taken in Heather Irving so many times during her troubled life.

Jacob was bidding, too. Bonnie smiled grimly behind her black-dotted Swiss veil, watching him lift one elegant finger, then let it drop, then lift it again. Was he using his own money, she wondered, or hers?

He didn’t win. When the figure sailed too high, he shook his head discreetly at the auctioneer, then turned around to see who had beaten him. Recognizing an elderly California art collector whose goodwill he obviously needed to keep, he threw a smile of graceful surrender.

As his smarmy gaze raked the crowd, Bonnie froze, wondering if he’d see her. It no longer mattered, not as it once had. She wasn’t in danger anymore. He didn’t have anything to gain by hurting her now.

But she wanted to do this her way.

The drawing was up next. Only nine-by-twelve, and unframed, it looked like the unloved stepsister of the larger oil. But Bonnie adored this picture, a practice sketch for Nine. In it, a seven-year-old Annabelle was in profile, one arm thrown over the back of a straight wooden chair, and she gazed longingly out the window. It was an odd little thing, drawn mostly to help Ava get the flowers right. Annabelle herself was rendered in simple charcoal, while the blooming gardens outside the window were bursting with vibrant color.

Bonnie remembered that summer so well. It had been one of the few times she’d been posed looking through the window. Being able to watch the bees buzzing around the roses and the butterflies dipping into the penta plant... It had made the hours so much easier to bear.

It had been almost as good as being free.

She raised her hand. The auctioneer glanced at her, too professional to show surprise at a new bidder this late in the game. Her attorney remained utterly still and impassive, giving nothing away prematurely.

She had many competitors. She wasn’t the only one who could see the special joy in this sketch—one of the few pictures in which the infamous Annabelle looked like a normal child.

But she didn’t care if everyone in the room bid against her. She would have this sketch, whatever the price. She was a rich woman now, and if she ended up donating every dollar of her inheritance to the women’s shelter, that was fine with her.

She raised her hand again and again. Quickly, people began to stare at her. Jacob himself had turned half a dozen times.

He was merely curious at first. Then she saw him squinting, confused. And then a slowly dawning alarm.

His posture tightened, all the easy insouciance evaporating. Eventually, when the bidding had come down to Bonnie and one other, Jacob didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t staring. He sat permanently swiveled toward her, his neck uncomfortably twisted. He gripped the seat of his chair with both hands, as if he had to hold himself down.

Finally, her last competitor dropped out. The price was absurd, even for an Annabelle sketch. As the bid assistant bent over her, Jacob obviously couldn’t endure the suspense another minute. He stood and started moving toward her, dark and malevolent, like the California mudslides that coursed down hillsides blindly, burying everything in their paths.

The bid assistant hesitated, confused and slightly startled by the frigid waves of fury suddenly pulsing through the air around them.

Jacob’s face said it all. He knew. He had to know. He had to understand, at that terrible moment, that he’d lost. That all his attempts to outwit her, to ruin her... No, no euphemisms. Just state it baldly, like the hideous truth it was.

All his attempts to kill her had failed.

As Jacob approached, Bonnie stood, too. She lifted the veil from her face and smiled. Only five feet away, he froze, as if she were a gorgon, a Medusa—as if one look from her blue eyes had turned him to stone.

A murmur spread through the room. Good. She wanted everyone, from the millionaires to the janitors, from the journalists to the guards, to know her. She removed her hat with one motion, then pulled the clip that had held her hair in its tight twist. A cascade of red-gold hair fell around her shoulders, and the murmur rose to an excited buzz.

“Annabelle!” Jacob lunged forward.

Abruptly, her lawyer jerked to a standing position, as if to block whatever the crazed man might have in mind. But Jacob pushed past him, rearranging his face as he came toward her. By the time he touched her, he was affection incarnate, the epitome of cousinly love.

He reached out and enveloped Bonnie...Annabelle...in his arms.

“Belle, Belle!” He was so smooth, so good, that if she didn’t know better, she’d believe he was overjoyed. “Oh, Belle, thank God you’re alive!”