Reunion at Cardwell Ranch (15 page)

“Enjoying the dance?” he whispered near her ear. He felt her shiver.

“I am,” she replied in a whisper that had intrigued him the first time they’d met.

He breathed in the citrus scent of her, reveling in the feel of her in his arms. How badly he wanted to kiss her again, knowing that if he did, there would be no more hiding behind the mask. He would have to demand what she was doing here because all his instincts warned him that she was up to trouble.

But as they danced, he was so happy to have her in his arms that he didn’t want it to end. Unfortunately, the song did end, though, and she stepped back. He reached for her, but she slipped from his grasp.

And with a slight shake of her head, she gave him another quick curtsy and disappeared into the crowd.

He thought about going after her, cornering her, unmasking her, but good sense kept him from it. He’d promised to stay out of her business. But what was she up to? He hated to think, as he glanced toward the art room. The door was closed, the older security guard standing in front of it.

When someone touched his shoulder, Laramie jumped.

“Is anything wrong?” his cousin Dana asked him.

Laramie shook his head, but he feared a lot of things were wrong.

“You’re the only cousin I haven’t danced with tonight,” she said.

Laramie was happy to dance with Dana. He understood how she had become the matriarch of the family even at her young age. She’d brought them all together as a family because of her loving nature. Everyone loved Dana.

“Are you having fun?” she asked as they danced.

Fun didn’t really describe it, but he nodded and smiled. “I’m glad I’m here,” he said truthfully, which made her smile.

“I saw you dancing with a woman dressed all in black,” Dana said.

“Did you recognize her?” he asked quickly.

“No.” She frowned, looking surprised. “You didn’t know who she was, either?” That seemed to amuse her. “That explains why you keep looking for her.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. He hadn’t even realized he’d been doing that.

Dana laughed. “I’m just glad to see you enjoying yourself.”

When the dance ended, she said, “There are some people I want you to meet.” She led him back to the lobby.

For the next half hour, he tried to remember the names of the ranchers, business owners and neighbors Dana introduced him to. More champagne was forced on him as he nodded and smiled and thought about the woman he’d danced with.

It wasn’t until someone announced it was almost time for the partygoers to reveal their identities that he escaped back into the ballroom. He had to find the woman.

He worked his way through the crowd, looking for her.

She’d left, he decided. And yet he’d been in the lobby. He hadn’t been so distracted that he wouldn’t have noticed if she’d passed him. Was there another way out of here? There would be emergency exits, but those would set off alarms.

Just when he thought he’d only imagined her—or she’d evaporated into thin air—he spotted her. She was coming out of the ladies’ room. He hadn’t thought that was where she might be. He hesitated, realizing also that she probably hadn’t attended the ball alone.

He waited for her to make a beeline for some handsome man. The countdown began. Ten. Nine. Eight. The huge room went quiet as everyone anticipated the unmasking. Except his woman in black. Seven. Six. Five. She seemed to be making a beeline not for some handsome escort, but for the door.

Laramie stepped in front of her. Four. Three. Her gaze flew up to his. He saw the alarm as she tried to step around him. Two. One!

Masks started coming off all around the huge ballroom.

“Please,” she said as she tried to get past him.

“It’s time to unmask,” he said and peeled off his own.

She met his eyes with a steely look. Her eyes had gone from cool blue to silver steel. With an arrogant lift of her head, she reached for her mask.

A blood-curdling scream filled the ballroom, followed by the sound of several people running. Laramie turned to see that the door to the art room was open. Even from where he was standing, he could see that the H. F. Powell painting was gone.

As he turned back, he saw that the painting wasn’t the only thing missing. His woman in black was also gone.

Chapter Seventeen

Laramie saw the marshal and his brothers Austin and Hayes heading for the art room and quickly followed. Hud barked out orders to the pavilion guards to have all the doors blocked. No one was to leave. Then he motioned them and the guard in and closed the door.

“This door was locked?” Hud asked the guard the moment they were all in the room.

“I locked it myself.”

“And there was no one in the room?”

“No.” The guard glanced around the space. “Where would they have hidden?”

It was a good question. The room had been bare except for the paintings. Not a stick of furniture was in the room. Laramie looked toward the windows as Hud walked over to them.

“The windows don’t open. Nor are there any footprints in the snow outside them,” the marshal said as he turned back to the room. “No other doors in or out.”

It must have dawned on them all at the same time, because they all looked up. Hud swore. A piece of the dropped ceiling had been left ajar.

“Seal the room,” he said as he reached for his cell phone and barked, “Make sure no one leaves.”

“Are you going to detain and question everyone outside this room?” Austin asked. They would be here all night and then some if that was the case.

Hud shook his head irritably. “But I need some men at the door to make sure no one walks out of here with that painting in case the burglar left that ceiling tile like that to misdirect us.” He looked from Austin to Hayes and then Laramie. “Mind helping until I can get deputies and a crime-scene team over here?”

Laramie joined his brothers at the pavilion’s main entrance. The Powell painting was large enough that it wouldn’t fit under most costumes, so screening people as they left went fairly fast.

The whole time, he found himself looking for the woman in black. She didn’t come through the lines. Which meant she’d left right after the missing painting was discovered? But Hud had asked that all the doors be covered. Maybe she slipped out before the guards could get to the doors. He thought of her hooped skirt and swore. The Powell painting could have fit under it.

Then he saw her. She had taken off her mask, but still wore the wide-brimmed hat that hid most of her face. Only when she glanced up did he catch the glint of her silvery-blue eyes. Eyes like a wolf, he thought.

She had started toward his line, then looked up and seen him. Hesitating, he saw her look to the other lines.

Something shone in those eyes for a moment. Defiance? Challenge? It must have been, because she stepped into his line. As he checked one after another ball goer through, she moved closer and closer. It wouldn’t be long before she was standing directly in front of him.

Laramie could hear people complaining. Some were threatening to call their lawyers.

He let two more people out and turned to find himself face-to-face with the woman of his nightly dreams and his growing obsession. Her head was down, the hat shadowing her face.

He hoped to hell she didn’t think he would let her get out of here with the painting. “I’m going to have one of the women check under your hoop skirt,” he said.

“That isn’t necessary,” she said and lifted the framework of the skirt. She wore black yoga pants beneath the skirt. No painting. When he glanced up at her, he saw the smile and the amusement in her eyes before he jerked back in surprise.

This woman looked like Obsidian “Sid” Forester. They would have been twins...

“Let’s keep the lines moving,” Hud ordered as the grumbling increased among the waiting guests.

“If that’s all...” the woman said. She even sounded like Sid, he thought as he watched the woman who’d coldcocked him last night walk away.

* * *

T
AYLOR
W
EST
NEEDED
a drink like he’d never needed one before. He’d awakened with a killer headache and the worst taste in his mouth. When he’d sat up, it took him a few moments to realize where he was. In jail. For murder.

Stumbling to his feet, he lurched toward the bars. “Hey!” he yelled and listened for someone to come. No one did. “Hey!”

When a deputy finally did show his face, Taylor said, “I’ll pay you to get me a drink.”

The deputy shook his head and started to close the door.

“Wait! Do you know who I am? I’m Taylor West. I’ll give you any painting you want. Just between you and me.”

“You need to quiet down. Try to get some rest.” He closed the door and even when Taylor yelled obscenities at his departing form, the deputy didn’t return.

He banged on the bars of his cell and yelled, “I didn’t murder anyone!”

“Didn’t your lawyer tell you not to talk about your case?” asked a voice. Taylor couldn’t see the man because they were in separate cells divided by a wall instead of bars.

“What’s it to you?” he demanded.

“You should listen to your lawyer.”

Taylor scoffed at that. “You know what they say about lawyers? Once you need one, you’re already screwed.” He wandered over to his bunk and sat down, his head in his hands. He would kill for a drink.

“Who didn’t you murder?” the man asked.

“The two-bit artist Rock Jackson.”

“I know who Rock is,” the voice said. “Why
didn’t
you kill him?”

Taylor wasn’t about to get into it with a stranger. “He was running around with my wife.”

“That can get a man killed, all right.”

“I planned to kill him. I was waiting outside his house.”

“So what happened?”

Taylor thought of the crime shows he’d seen on television. The incarcerated killer always had a big mouth and talked too much to a jailhouse snitch. “What’s it to you?”

“I can’t sleep, either.”

“What are you in for?”

“Writing hot checks.”

“
Hot
checks?”

“Checks you can’t make good on because you don’t have any money.”

“At least I don’t have that problem,” Taylor said, and they both laughed. “When the cops found me I was passed out in my truck with an empty quart bourbon bottle in one hand and my gun in the other. The last thing I remember before that was closing my eyes to wait for my cheating wife and Rock to return.”

“Sounds to me like you were framed.”

Framed? He lay back on the bunk, staring up at the stained ceiling. “Who would want to frame me?”

“Good question,” the man said. “Have you made anyone mad lately?”

“Who
haven’t
I made mad?” Taylor said to himself and closed his eyes. But the list of the people who might want to frame him for murder was short and he’d confided in them about the forged painting.

* * *

S
ID
WASN
’
T
SURPRISED
when she heard the knock at her door. She glanced at the clock. Almost two in the morning. She’d known she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she hadn’t even tried. Instead, she’d been painting. It was what she did when she was upset.

“Your light was on,” Laramie said by way of explanation when she opened the door. He glanced past her to the costume from the ball that had been tossed onto a chair. Sid now wore jeans and a T-shirt.

Opening the door wider, she motioned him in with a wave of her hand. After seeing him at the ball, she’d suspected it was only a matter of time before he showed up. What surprised her was that the marshal and a couple of deputies weren’t with him.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t be caught dead at the ball,” he said as she closed the door and turned to look at him. He had stopped in the middle of her living room.

She could tell he was angry. But she suspected he was also scared. “Fortunately I wasn’t.”

He stepped toward her. “Where is the Powell painting?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Don’t I?” He took another step. “You’ve been playing some kind of game with me since the first night we met. You’re lucky I’m here instead of with the marshal.”

“Why isn’t the marshal here?”

Another step toward her. The room seemed to be closing in, getting smaller and smaller. She could smell the cold night air on him and remembered the way he’d pulled her close earlier when they’d danced. He was almost that close again.

“Because I wanted to give you the opportunity to level with me. For starters, I know you’re in more trouble than you’re telling me.”

She smiled, holding her ground. “You think you know me?”

He was just inches away now. “I know how you feel in my arms. I know how you taste.”

She felt something give in her chest as he reached out and cupped her cheek. She’d tried to forget how his mouth had felt and tasted on hers, how safe she’d felt in his arms, how her heart raced when he was this close.

“You weren’t alone at my house last night,” Laramie said, his voice little more than a whisper. He was so close she could smell his warm scent. “It was your twin.”

“My twin? I don’t have—”

“You don’t have a sister or cousin or some relative who looks enough like you that you used her tonight to pull off the heist? You want to keep pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about?”

She started to step away, needing to put space between them, afraid of what she would do if she didn’t.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her into him. His voice was rough, his hands strong. “Tell me what’s going on. All that stuff you told me last night? Was it just a crock of crap to keep me out of your hair tonight? Come on, Sid. You’re too good at what you do,” he said as his gaze swept over the painting on her easel.

She’d known he would figure it out. She’d let him get too close. Her mistake.

Laramie looked from the painting to her. His eyes widened as if the truth had just struck him. “You’re not just a master thief.
You’re
an art forger.”

* * *

S
ID
WRENCHED
FREE
of his grasp and stepped past him and, for a moment, Laramie thought she might be going for a weapon. His head still ached from last night. If he could help it, he wasn’t going to let that happen again. He turned to watch her step into the kitchen and open the refrigerator.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said as she grabbed two bottles of beer. She held one out to him. When he didn’t reach for it, she said, “You came here for the truth, right? Now you’re not sure you want to hear it.”

“Try me. Or we can just call the marshal.”

“Which makes me wonder why you haven’t called him.” She squinted, studying him openly. “Maybe because you have no proof. You cried wolf once, the first night we met. You don’t want to do it again with the marshal. Am I right?”

She was. It didn’t surprise him that she knew he’d gone to the marshal the first night when he’d caught her coming out of his future house with the painting.

The truth. That was why he’d come here tonight. At least in part. He took one of the beers that she offered. Twisting off the top with both anger and frustration, he took a drink, watching her over the bottle. “What you told me last night—”

“Was all true.”

“But you didn’t tell me everything.”

Sid met his gaze. “I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”

“Trust
me
?” He laughed as he watched her twist off the bottle cap and toss it into the trash before taking a long drink.

She motioned toward a place for him to sit, but he was too restless. She was right. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the truth. He’d fallen for this woman—a thief, an apparent forger, a cat burglar.

He stepped into her studio off the living room. The room was small with large windows. Because of the lack of wall space, paintings were stacked against the walls. “You painted all of these?” he asked turning to find her standing in the doorway, holding her beer. She nodded.

“I thought you didn’t like cowboy art?”

She said nothing as she took another swig of her beer.

In one corner of the room was a stack of old logging crosscut handsaws. The rusted metal between the handles had Montana scenes painted on them. He noticed at once that they weren’t half as good as the paintings. That wasn’t all he noticed. Her cowboy art wasn’t just good, it was masterful and yet she wasn’t in the Old West Artists Coalition—just like her father. Nor had he seen her work in any of the galleries he’d visited.

He stared at one of the paintings for a long moment, something stirring inside him. He could feel her watching him. It came to him like another knock to his head.

Turning quickly, he stared at her. “Tell me I’m wrong about you.”

“I wish I could.”

“I don’t get you.”

“I think you do.”

He smiled at that and shook his head. “I
want
to. You’re obviously talented.
Very
talented. So I ask myself what is she doing painting old saw blades? What is it she’s hiding other than her obvious talent?”

She lifted her chin. He’d seen that defiant look on her before. “Now you think you have me all figured out.”

“Nope, I suspect it could take a lifetime to do that.” He put down his beer and closed the distance between them in two long strides. He took her bottle from her and set it aside as he drew her to him. “The H. F. Powell painting that was stolen tonight? I wanted it more than I have wanted anything. Except,” he drawled, “
you.
It was because, on some level, I knew. You painted it. But what about the auction?”

“I couldn’t let it be auctioned off as one of my father’s paintings. It was stolen from his art studio the night he was killed. One of the members of the OWAC donated it anonymously. The killer knows I’m coming for him. Don’t worry. I’ll make it right with the charity.”

“If you’re still alive. Sid, we have to go to the marshal.”

“Are you sure we have to go right now?” She looked up at him, her blue eyes bright as diamonds, her lips parting. He dropped his mouth to hers.

Then he swung her up into his arms and carried her to the bedroom just off the studio.

* * *

S
ID
LOOKED
INTO
his eyes as he gently laid her on the bed. His expression made her weak inside. His touch was so tender as he crawled onto the bed next to her and drew her close again. He dropped his mouth to hers, exploring her intimately as if there was still so much he wanted to know about her.