Sticking to Her Guns Read online

  “Afraid so,” Tommy said. “She and I ran into each other in Denver a couple of weeks ago.”

  James opened the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out what was left of the bottle of blackberry brandy and two paper cups. “If this conversation about Bella is going the way I suspect it is, then we better finish this bottle.” He poured. Tommy took his full paper cup, stared at it a moment before he downed it.

  His brother laughed. “So maybe you do realize that what you’re thinking is beyond crazy. Do I have to remind you who her father is? Not a fan of yours or the rest of us, for that matter. I’m sure he has aspirations of her marrying some biz-whiz with big bucks.”

  “It’s not up to him,” Tommy said as he smiled and traced the scar on his right temple. The scar was from when they were kids and he’d made the mistake of suggesting that Bella, being a girl, shouldn’t try to cross the creek on a slippery log. She’d picked up a rock and nailed him, then she’d crossed the creek on the log. He smiled remembering that he’d been the one to slip off the dang log. Bella had come into the water to save him, though. It was what best friends did, she’d told him.

  “The woman can be a firecracker,” Tommy agreed. “Maybe that’s why I’ve never gotten over her.”

  James shook his head. “What are you going to do? I suspect you won’t get within a mile of the Worthington ranch before the shotgun comes out if her father is around.” He shook his head and downed his brandy.

  As he refilled the cups, his brother asked, “How’d this happen? You wake up one day and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t been kicked in the head by a bucking horse enough lately. I think I’ll go home and see if Bella wants to marry me’?”

  Tommy shrugged. “Something like that. I can’t explain it. I guess I did wake up one day with this feeling.” He met his brother’s gaze. “I think it’s meant to be. Running into her again in Denver, I suddenly knew what I wanted—what I’ve always wanted.”

  James studied him for a moment. “I just have one question. When she sends you hightailing it, are you planning to tuck your tail between your legs and leave Lonesome and Colt Investigations?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I’m serious about going into the business with you.” He glanced around. “The way I see it, you need me maybe even worse than she does.”

  His brother laughed. “You’re serious about the job—and Bella?”

  “Dead serious,” he said.

  James shook his head. “Dangerous business going after Lady Worthington. That is one strong, determined woman.”

  Tommy grinned. “That’s what I love about her. I can’t seem to quit thinking about her. I think it’s a sign.”

  “It’s a sign all right,” James mumbled under this breath, but he smiled and raised his cup. “Fine. You start work in the morning.”

  Tommy looked down at the paper cup full of blackberry brandy in his hand. But this time he took his time drinking it. Tomorrow, he would learn as much as James could teach him, start an online class and apply for his private investigator’s license. He hadn’t seen Bella yet, but he wanted to accomplish something before he did.

  When he went out to the Worthington ranch to see her, come hell or high water, he planned to ask her to marry him. He had the ring in his pocket. As terrified as he was, he was doing this.

  * * *

  BELLA COULDN’T HELP being worried as she drove out to the ranch. She’d heard something in her father’s tone when he’d called her in Denver and asked her to come see him at the ranch. There’d been an urgency that surprised—and concerned—her.

  Maybe this wasn’t about trying to get her to go into business with him. He often made her feel guilty for striking out on her own, but he knew why she’d declined. She didn’t like his other partners, Edwin Fitzgerald Mattson and his son, Fitz. As generous as her father’s offer had been, she’d also wanted to start her own business.

  Her father had started his from the ground up. She thought he should understand why she wanted to succeed on her own. But the more she thought about it, she wondered if this visit would be about something different entirely.

  “I need you to come home,” her father had said.

  She hadn’t been back to Lonesome River Ranch in months because of her business. When he’d called, she’d given legitimate excuses as to why she couldn’t come home right now.

  “Bella.” His voice had broken. “I have to see you. If you’d prefer that I come to you—”

  “Are you sick?” she’d asked, suddenly frightened. Was it possible he was worse than sick? It seemed inconceivable. Her larger-than-life father never even got a cold.

  “No. It’s not that. I have to see you. I wouldn’t ask, but...” His voice had broken. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll come right away,” she said and then hesitated before asking, “Are you there alone?”

  “Except for the staff,” he said, sounding both annoyed and resigned. He knew that if Edwin and Fitz were there she would refuse. The last Christmas she’d spent at the ranch had been so miserable because of the two Mattsons, she’d told her father that there would be no encore.

  Parking, she got out of her vehicle in front of the ranch house and took a deep breath. The Montana summer air was ripe with the smell of pines and river. She’d missed this, another reason she was ready to make some changes.

  As she started up the steps to the wide front porch that overlooked the river, her father stepped out and she felt a jolt of shock. He’d aged. While still a large, imposing man, Nolan Worthington appeared beat down, something she’d never seen before. She was instantly taken aback. He had to be sick. Her heart fell.

  He quickly ushered her into the house, going straight to his den. This had always been his favorite room in the ranch house with its leather furniture, huge oak desk and small rock fireplace.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her pulse thundering with fear.

  Tears filled his eyes. “I’ve been a fool,” he said and broke down. “I’m in terrible trouble and the worst part is...” He looked up at her. “I’m afraid that I’ve dragged you into it.”

  Chapter Three

  Present Day

  Tommy Colt woke to sunshine—and as usual, a good strong jolt of reality. For days now, he’d been learning the investigations business from the ground up. And each morning, he’d awakened with a shock.

  He’d come back to Lonesome, Montana, for a woman. A woman who had no idea how he felt and might not feel the same way. Not only had he blindly returned home for love, but he’d also quit the first and, for a long time, only love of his life. The rodeo.

  Because of that, he’d thrown himself into a new job with his brother as a private detective for Colt Investigations. The two of them were following in their father’s footsteps, both knowing the job had gotten Del killed.

  In the light of day each morning, the whole thing seemed pretty risky on his part. But his brother James, as Jimmy D was going by now, had already solved his first case, gotten his PI license and was making money at it. Tommy had jumped in feetfirst with no training.

  But then James had learned on the job when he’d decided to take over their late father’s agency, he reminded himself. Clients were now pouring in.

  Maybe more like trickling in, but enough so that his brother could use the help. Tommy told himself that he wanted to prove he could do this before he went out to the Lonesome River Ranch and told Bella how he felt about her. He was planning to go out to her family ranch as soon as he got settled in. He wanted to make sure he had a job and a place to live first before he asked her out on a real date, told her how he felt about her and asked her to marry him.

  He had to have some experience under his belt before he told her what he’d done, quitting the job he’d had and taking on one he currently didn’t know for beans. All he knew was that she’d returned to Lonesome to her family ranch—after that amazing lo
ng weekend in Denver with him. It had been platonic. That was another crazy part of this.

  Tommy was planning to ask a woman he’d never even dated to marry him. What was the worst that could happen? She could say no.

  James had agreed that him learning more of the business before going to see Bella was a good plan.

  “I’d like to get some work out of you before you go out there and her old man shoots you,” James had said. “I doubt his feelings about you have changed.”

  Tommy doubted it, too. Nolan Worthington had his own aspirations for his daughter. None of those aspirations included one of the wild Colt brothers.

  Since moving home, he’d found a place to live in a cabin down by the river that he could rent cheap for a while. He’d saved most of the money he’d made rodeoing. But to say his life was up in the air right now was putting it mildly.

  Forcing himself out of bed, he showered and changed for work. It was an alien feeling. Could he really do a nine-to-five job?

  “More manuals?” Tommy asked as he came through the door of the office later that morning. This was the most studying he’d done since college when he’d also been on the rodeo team. He figured James would start him out doing something like filing once he finished with his studies.

  “I have a skip for you,” James said now, shoving a sheet of paper across the desk at him without looking up.

  Tommy couldn’t help being surprised. “A real job?”

  “What were you expecting, a soft, cushy desk job?” James laughed. “It’s an easy one, Ezekiel Murray.”

  “Wait, Zeke?”

  “I would imagine you’ll find him downtown at the Lariat.”

  The Lariat bar was one of three bars in Lonesome. Like a lot of Montana towns there were more bars than churches, more pickups than cars, more Stetsons than baseball caps.

  Tom checked the time as he picked up the paper, folded it and stuffed it into pocket. 8:45 a.m. If Zeke were already at the bar, it would mean one of two things—he’d been there all night, or he was starting earlier than usual. Either was trouble.

  “Is this like my initiation? Bringing in Zeke?” Tom asked half-jokingly.

  “I hear that he’s mellowed,” his brother said, still without looking up from his desk.

  Tom laughed doubtfully. Even Zeke mellowed would be wilder than probably any bronc he’d tried to ride.

  James looked up. “If you can’t handle it...”

  In the Colt family, those words were tossed out as a challenge at best. At worse, foreplay for a fistfight.

  “I’m on it,” Tom said as he headed for the door. This was definitely a test—just not one he’d expected. But there was no turning it down.

  Colt Investigations was housed in an old two-story building along the main drag. Their father, Del, had bought the building, rented out the ground floor and used the upstairs apartment as an office.

  But James was currently working on moving the office to the ground floor now that Tom was joining the business. The upstairs would remain an apartment where James was living while his house was being built on the old Colt Ranch outside of town. He and Lori, who owned the sandwich shop next door to Colt Investigations, would be getting married on the Fourth of July weekend.

  “What did Zeke do this time?” Tommy asked, stopping just inside the office door before leaving.

  “Drunk and disorderly, destruction of property, resisting arrest. The usual. His mother put up the bail. He missed his court hearing yesterday.”

  “Great,” Tom said. “So all I have to do is walk him over to the jail.”

  James chuckled as he looked up from what he’d been working on. “Easy peasy for a guy like you.”

  Tommy grinned, nodding. “I knew you were jealous of how much bigger, stronger and tougher I am than you. Better looking, too.”

  “Yep, that’s it,” his brother joked. “The longer you stand here giving me a hard time, the drunker Zeke will be. Just a thought.”

  “Uh-huh.” He put on his Stetson and strode on out the door.

  It was only a little over a block to the Lariat. The town was still quiet this time of the morning. Not that there was much going on even later. Lonesome was like so many other Montana towns. Its population had dropped over time, but was now growing again as more people left the big cities for a simpler lifestyle. That was Lonesome. Simple.

  He pushed open the door and was hit with the familiar smell of stale beer and floor cleaner. In the dim light, Tommy thought that this could have been any bar, anywhere in Montana. There were mounts of deer, elk, antelope and rainbow trout on the knotty-pine walls. The back bar was a warbled mirror with glowing bottles of hard liquor under canned lights.

  At the end of a long scarred wooden bar sat Ezekiel Murray. His massive body teetered on a stool, body slumped forward, his huge paws wrapped around a pint of draft beer that he had just dropped a shot glass of whiskey into—shot glass and all. The whiskey was just starting to turn the beer a warm brown. Tommy would bet it wasn’t his first boilermaker and would win.

  In Lonesome, Zeke was known as a gentle giant—until he got a few shots in him. Tommy tried to gauge how far gone Zeke was as he approached the man.

  Chapter Four

  Other than Zeke, the bar was empty except for the bartender, who was busy restocking. A newsman droned on the small television over the bar, with neither man paying any attention.

  “Hey Zeke,” Tommy said as he joined him.

  A pair of unfocused brown eyes took him in for a moment before the man frowned. “Which one are you?”

  The thing about the four Colt brothers...they all resembled each other to the point that often people didn’t bother with their first names. They all had the same thick head of dark hair that usually needed cutting and blue eyes that ranged from faded denim to sky blue depending on their moods.

  They were all pretty much built alike as well and all liked to think that they were the most handsome of the bunch. Close in age, they’d spent years confusing their teachers. They were simply known around the county as those wild Colt boys.

  Having been gone on the rodeo circuit now for so long, Tommy wasn’t surprised that Zeke might not remember him.

  “I’m Tommy Colt.”

  Zeke nodded, already bored by the conversation, and lifted his glass to his lips.

  “I need you to take a walk with me,” Tommy said standing next to Zeke’s stool.

  The big man looked over at him before the drink reached his lips.

  “Your mother... She posted your bail.”

  “I don’t want any trouble in here,” the bartender called from a safe distance.

  “Won’t be any trouble,” Tommy assured him. “Zeke doesn’t want his mother upset. Do you, Zeke.”

  He wagged his big head and started to put down his drink, but then thought better of it and downed the whole thing. The shot glass that had been floating in the beer clinked against the man’s teeth and rattled around the beer glass as he slurped up every drop of the booze before setting it down with a loud burp.

  Okay, this probably wasn’t going to go easy peasy at all, Tommy thought as Zeke got to his feet. Even at six foot four, Tommy had to look up at Zeke. And while in good shape from years of trying to ride the wildest bucking horses available, he knew he was no match for the big man.

  Zeke pulled a few bills from his pocket, slapped them down on the bar and turned to Tommy. “Ready when you are.”

  They left the bar as the sun crested the mountains to the east. It was a beautiful summer day filled with the scent of pine from the nearby forest and that rare smell of water, sunshine and warm earth that he loved. There was nothing like a Montana summer.

  Tommy couldn’t believe his luck. Was it really going to be this easy? The courthouse was kitty-corner from the bar. Tommy was tempted to jaywalk, but Zeke was insistent that they w
alk up to the light and cross legally.

  Lonesome had begun to wake up, a few cars driving past. Several honked, a couple of people waved. Tommy could just imagine what he and Zeke looked like, the gentle giant looming over the cowboy walking next to him.

  The light changed. They were about to cross the street when Zeke seemed to realize where they were headed. “I thought we were going to see my ma?”

  “But first we need to stop by the courthouse.” The jail was right next door. Once inside, Zeke would be the deputy’s problem.

  “This about what I did the other night?”

  “I suspect so,” Tommy told him. “But once you go before the judge—”

  Zeke turned so quickly Tom never saw the huge fist until it struck him in the face. He stumbled back, crashed into the front of the electronics store and sat down hard on the pavement. He could feel his right eye beginning to swell. Blinking, he looked up at Zeke.

  “You realize I’m going to come after you again if you don’t go peacefully with me now. Next time I’ll bring a stun gun. If that isn’t enough, the next time I’ll bring a .45. I’m working with my brother James at Colt Investigations now and my first job was to bring you in. So, sorry, Zeke, but I gotta do it.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t going,” Zeke said. “But I have to at least put up a fight. How would it look if I just let you take me in?” With that the man turned and walked on the crosswalk toward the courthouse.

  Tommy got to his feet, only then starting to feel the pain. This was worse than getting thrown off a bucking bronco. He hurried after the man.

  Once Zeke was in custody, Tommy headed back toward the office. He’d taken a ribbing from the deputies, but growing up with three brothers, he was used to abuse. He’d known this job wouldn’t be easy, but so far it wasn’t making him glad he quit the rodeo.

  Worse, he could well imagine what James was going to say when he saw him. Gentle giant my ass, Tommy was thinking as he looked up and saw her. Bella Worthington.