Larkspur Road
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF JILL GREGORY
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—Publishers Weekly
“A transfixing blend of fiery romance and spine-tingling suspense.”
—Booklist
“For tales of romance and adventure that keep you reading into the night, look no further than Jill Gregory.”
—Nora Roberts
“A first-rate romance. Gregory…writes the stuff that romance readers yearn for. If you haven’t yet read her, you’re missing out on a great treat.”
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“Riveting…The ultimate seductive read…Unforgettable.”
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“A page-turner extraordinaire.”
—Douglas Preston
“Stirring and imaginative. A tense, intelligent, and surprising thrill. Drum tight in execution, fueled by imagination, the plot is as sharp as a broken shard of glass.”
—Steve Berry
“With her usual style and gift for characterization, the always great Gregory gives readers a tale of intense emotion spiced with the thrill of danger.”
—RT Book Reviews
“The excitement is palpable. The story is priceless.”
—M. J. Rose
“Convincing characters and a rapidly moving plot… Enjoyable.”
—Library Journal
Berkley Sensation Titles by Jill Gregory
SAGE CREEK
LARKSPUR ROAD
Larkspur Road
JILL GREGORY
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
LARKSPUR ROAD
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / May 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Jill Gregory.
Excerpt from Sage Creek by Jill Gregory copyright © 2011 by Jill Gregory.
Cover design by Rita Frangie.
Cover art by Hugh Syme.
Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of
copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-56897-2
BERKLEY SENSATION®
Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
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The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is
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ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
To my family, with love
Acknowledgments
A huge thank-you to Leslie LaFoy, friend and quilter extraordinaire, for so generously sharing her time and expertise. Leslie, you’re not only a marvelous quilter, you’re a lovely friend and a patient teacher. Thanks for your invaluable help! And to Marianne Willman, my dear and wonderful friend, thank you for your wisdom and insights, and most of all, for your treasured friendship all of these years.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Sage Greek
Chapter One
“When will we get there? To Sage Ranch?”
The sleepy, but still wary voice of the boy in the passenger seat broke the silence of the moonless Montana night.
Travis Tanner glanced at his scrawny ten-year-old adopted stepson. Then back at the long, empty road leading them to Lonesome Way and his family’s ranch. The vast darkness of the June night nearly obliterated the peaks of the Crazy Mountains in the distance—but not quite. A few stars gleamed, despite the clouds, illuminating the faint outline of hefty granite peaks spiraling up, dwarfing the road, the trees, and certainly the black Explorer and its two passengers driving down that lonely road.
“Soon,” Travis said quietly. “We’ll be there soon. Another twenty minutes, half hour, tops.”
It was almost midnight and Grady had been sleeping since ten o’clock. But now the brown-haired boy with his mother’s green eyes looked like he was going to be awake for the duration. Awake and uneasy.
“You need a pit stop?” Travis asked as the Explorer sped past a coyote stealing furtively thro
ugh some brush at the side of the road. “There’s a gas station coming up just outside of Lonesome Way.”
“I’m okay,” Grady mumbled. His voice sounded low, defensive. And just a tad sulky. Which matched the expression on his face ever since Travis had picked him up at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix the previous afternoon, after Val plopped him on a plane in L.A.
The poor kid didn’t know what to expect, Travis reflected, his jaw tightening. One minute he’d been in L.A., in his big fancy new house with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, cabana, guest house, game room, and thirty-seat home theater, and the next he’d been shipped off for the summer with his adoptive father, who was no longer even married to his mother—and was on his way to a remote ranch the kid had been to only once in his life and probably didn’t even remember.
Travis had been stunned when his ex-wife called him, her voice high-pitched and shaking with tension as she yelled that she and her new husband were at the end of their rope and couldn’t handle Grady anymore, that they needed a break. She’d said Grady had failed a class at school and would probably need to repeat fifth grade. He hadn’t bothered doing homework, he’d skipped classes, he’d mouthed off to teachers. Worse, he’d been getting into fights and had even been suspended for the last two weeks of school before summer vacation started.
“Drew’s really angry—and I just can’t take it anymore. The two of them…they just don’t…Travis, you’re his father legally, and I need you to take him for the summer! I really can’t deal with any of this right now. Drew and I—we’re having a big party here in a few weeks—one hundred guests—and I’m at my wit’s end. There’s so much to do, and Grady, he’s so difficult—I just can’t handle—”
“I’ll come get him,” Travis had said instantly. Not for Val’s sake, that was for damned sure, but for Grady’s. He’d first met Val’s son, then four years old, when he picked her up for their second date. Val’s first husband, Kevin, had died of cancer two years before, when Grady was only a toddler.
The Grady he’d met that night had been a tiny fast-motion machine, a tousle-haired, pug-nosed imp, precocious, funny as hell, and possessing a sweet smile that had burrowed its way into Travis’s heart. A year after he and Val tied the knot, Travis had legally adopted his stepson and had loved being a father to him, even after things went south between him and Val.
But lately he hadn’t been able to spend as much time with his son. His latest investigation with the FBI, the death of his former partner, and Val marrying some corporate bigwig and moving with Grady to L.A. last year had made visits a lot more difficult to come by.
“I was just leaving for the ranch, Val, but I’ll come to L.A. first and pick Grady up,” Travis had told her.
“The ranch? You’re going to the ranch?”
He hadn’t bothered explaining that he’d taken an extended leave of absence from the FBI two weeks before, had found someone to rent his house outside of Phoenix, and was headed home to Lonesome Way to take some time, figure things out, and make a new start.
“Yep,” was all Travis had told his ex-wife. “I’ll see to it Grady gets back on track over the summer. In Montana.”
After that, Val hadn’t asked any questions. She’d been too relieved that Travis was taking the boy off her hands for the entire summer. Before he could say another word, she told him that he didn’t need to drive all the way out to L. A.—she would put Grady on a plane, get an airline escort for him. It was as clear as daylight to Travis that all she really wanted was to ship the kid the hell out as fast as she could.
Travis’s heart had plummeted when he’d picked Grady up at the airport and had seen how much his son had changed in just the past three months. For one thing, he’d shot up a couple of inches—the very beginnings of a growth spurt. But there was also scant trace of the happy kid who’d read all of the Harry Potter books twice and seen all of the movies, and who had joyously biked with Travis up and down Venice Beach last summer.
The boy who stepped off that plane and was now slouched in the passenger seat of the Explorer was withdrawn, wary, on the verge of being surly.
And Travis knew he should have been there for him—FBI or no FBI.
“Things will start looking up tomorrow,” he said conversationally as they swung down the main street of his hometown of Lonesome Way. The sidewalks were deserted at this time of night, though he noted with not the slightest bit of surprise that there were lights blazing and cars crammed in the parking lot of the Double Cross Bar and Grill, the town’s most popular watering hole.
When Grady didn’t answer, Travis continued easily as he took the turn that would lead to Squirrel Road. “You’ll have a good bed tonight, not like that lumpy one at the motel last night. You had a great time at the ranch when you were there before, remember? And Uncle Rafe’s new wife, Sophie—she owns that little bakery we just passed in town. A Bun in the Oven. She makes cinnamon buns that you won’t believe. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Bet she’ll have some on hand tomorrow for breakfast.”
“Yeah?”
For the first time Travis heard a note of interest in the boy’s tone.
Food. Food is the way to a growing boy’s heart. He’d have to remember that. Grady had wolfed down two burgers and a greasy bag of fries at the drive-through in Crystal Springs that afternoon.
“Sophie—she’s your aunt now—usually has a chocolate cake or an apple pie around the house, too. At least that’s what my niece, Ivy, tells me. You won’t go hungry at Sage Ranch, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t really remember it.” Grady stared out into the darkness, a frown puckering his mouth. “I remember horses, that’s about it. You put me up on a horse called Gum…Gumball or something, and I almost slipped off. But you caught me.”
“Gumption,” Travis corrected with a grin. “You were only seven. You got the hang of it before too long. You actually did great for a tenderfoot. And this summer, you’ll get to do some real riding. And some real work.”
Grady looked interested, and just a tad scared.
“What kind of work?” he bit out.
“Taking care of the horses, mucking out stalls, pitching hay. I haven’t checked out my cabin in a while and might need some help making it habitable again. Stuff like that.”
“And what if I don’t want to muck out stalls and clean up crap?”
Travis shot him a measuring glance and Grady glanced away, his hands clenched in his lap.
“It’s going to be a good summer, Grady,” Travis told his son quietly.
“Yeah, right. Aren’t you going to yell at me—for getting a D in English, and flunking earth science and getting suspended? Everyone else does. That’s all they do.”
“We’ll talk about all of that. But not tonight.” Travis kept his tone steady. “You’re beat and so am I. It can wait. Unless there’s something you want to say.”
Grady shook his head.
“You sure? I’m listening.”
“How much longer ’til we’re there? I just want outta this car.” Grady’s tone was defiant again now. But Travis heard the misery and uncertainty beneath the words as the boy hunched his shoulders and turned away, staring out the window into the black moonless night.
Travis said nothing, merely drove another mile and then turned into the long wide drive leading to the ranch. When Grady made out the ranch house just ahead, he stiffened and peered through the darkness at the huge rambling structure looming up in the darkness.
The porch light was on. And light gleamed in the kitchen window. For a moment Travis could almost imagine it was a dozen years earlier, that his parents were still alive, sipping coffee in the kitchen, waiting up for him and his brothers, Rafe and Jake, to get home from a date or a dance or a movie.
He shook himself back to the present and wondered how much of the ranch his son remembered. Being back in Lonesome Way was stirring his own memories big-time.
All those squabbles and tussles and laughs with Rafe and Jake. Hours spent swimming in the c
reek with his sister, Lissie, or racing on horseback across the pasture. Midnight poker games with his high school friends in Mick Peterson’s barn. The exhilaration that had rushed through him every time he threw a winning touchdown pass or charged down the field at a football game.
And Mia. Mia Quinn.
Mia had been best friends with his younger sister, Lissie, since as far back as he could recall. She and Lissie—along with Sophie McPhee, who’d married his brother Rafe last year—had been inseparable growing up, and he’d regularly encountered Mia darting around every corner of his house when he was a kid. She’d been a scrappy little tomboy in those days, two years younger than Travis—just his sister’s tiny, fast-talking friend. And Travis had never looked at her twice.
Until she hit high school. Then he’d looked, all right. Because sometime over the summer between eighth grade and her freshman year, the messy-haired tomboy had transformed into a petite blond bombshell, with pin-straight hair that flowed to her slim little waist, a gorgeous face with a mouth so lush he could almost taste its pillowy sweetness before his lips ever actually touched hers, and a body as curvy and distracting as any Victoria’s Secret model.
Travis had fallen for her. Fallen hard.
They’d started dating in November of her freshman year and he’d known he loved her by Christmas. They’d been a couple all through the rest of Travis’s time in high school. And not just any couple. Travis and Mia had been “the” couple—the one everyone was sure would get married and have a ton of kids.
Pulling up in the dark at the house with his son beside him, Travis flashed back for a dizzying moment on all the dates and dances and picnics he and Mia had shared—afternoons sipping Cokes and eating chocolate cream pie at Roy’s Diner, weekends kissing and laughing on her front porch swing on Larkspur Road. Or all those evenings in the hay-scented barn at Sage Ranch, making out in the hayloft when no one was around. Stroking her hair, touching her beautiful, trusting face, breathing in the summer-flower scent of her, whispering how much he loved her on those hikes up to Larkspur Point.