Blackbird Lake Read online

  Jake had lent him cash several times to help him get by, had paid his hospital bills, had tried to talk sense into him. He’d recommended AA, tried to convince him to cut out the liquor, take a break from rodeo until he’d fully healed.

  But Cord insisted he knew what he was doing, that he could handle it and was going to win some big-time prize money soon.

  Instead, two months later he’d been thrown from a bull at seven seconds. He hit the dirt hard and got stomped on before either the clowns or anyone in the stands could do more than blink. Cord’s chest had been crushed. He’d died before he even reached the hospital.

  It was a horrific accident but not a completely surprising one.

  Jake knew just how dangerous the rodeo could be, and bull riding posed the most danger of all.

  Those eight seconds you needed to stay on that bull didn’t seem like a long time unless you were the one riding that two-thousand-pound beast. Then those eight seconds ticked by as slow as frozen syrup while those monsters heaved and bucked. Jake was used to it—he had the rhythm of the ride in his veins, pulsing through his blood.

  He’d had his close calls, plenty of them—all the times he’d needed to roll aside real fast, but the rodeo clowns had always dashed in front of him, arms waving, distracting the bull before it could reach him once he was bucked off.

  Cord hadn’t been as lucky that night. The clowns had raced in—but the enraged bull had cut toward Cord even faster. And Cord had been too stunned by the impact of the fall to roll or leap out of its path….

  Jake still found it hard to believe he was gone. Everyone who’d ever met Cord Farraday took to the guy. Total strangers bought him drinks within minutes of the most casual conversation.

  Even his ex-wife still loved him, though they’d been divorced for more than a year. Tiffy Farraday couldn’t take the stress of the rodeo life, of not having money to pay the bills, of not seeing Cord for weeks, sometimes even a month at a time. She’d given him an ultimatum and he’d chosen rodeo over her.

  Still, when he died, she handled all the funeral arrangements and buried him in a plot near her home in Mesa. She’d cried in Jake’s arms at the funeral and there was a world of regret, anger, and lost dreams in her red-rimmed eyes.

  Brady had been there, too, but the boy hadn’t seemed to really grasp what was going on. When Jake threw an arm around his shoulders and tried to offer his condolences, the kid had pulled away. He’d seemed still half in shock. Brady had remained mute during the entire service, his eyes almost glazed—then, the moment Cord was lowered into the ground, he’d roared off on his motorcycle without a word to anyone.

  Jake had been trying to get in touch with him and make sure he was all right ever since.

  “If there’s anything I can do to lend a hand, let me know,” Rafe told him quietly. “If Brady decides he wants to have a go at ranch work, I know the Double J is shorthanded. I can talk to Jerry Johnson, put in a good word for him.”

  “Thanks, bro, I’ll tell him.” Jake didn’t mention the idea that had been circling in his head for a while now. It had first come to him a year ago, just a vague notion. With his schedule, he hadn’t had time to really develop it. But every once in a while, it returned and began taking hold in his mind.

  Now, while he was here in town, with Brady needing a job and all, maybe it was time to set things in motion.

  “Any idea if Brady’s still living out at the house?”

  “Seems like the logical place, but I can’t say for sure. Not too many people have spotted him since he got out of jail.”

  “Well, I’ll be heading over there later to find out. Soon as I check out my cabin, see if it’s habitable for tonight.” Jake got to his feet, mindful of the lightly snoring mutt whose golden head still rested on his boot. He eased his foot away but even as he did, the thin dog clambered up, staring at him with deep, worried brown eyes.

  “Come back and have supper with us,” Rafe suggested as they headed to the kitchen door. “Sophie will bite my head off if you don’t. And you can always bunk here if your cabin needs work before you can spend the night. When are you heading over to Travis’s place?”

  “Right after I scope out the cabin, clean up a little. Been driving for ten hours and don’t want to hug little Miss Zoey wearing my travel dust.” Striding out the door, just as a horse whickered from the corral, Jake noted wryly that the dog was still right there on his heels.

  “Hey, buddy, you’re staying put,” he said firmly, as Starbucks and Tidbit trailed eagerly after their skinny new pal. “You’ve got yourself some friends now. Ivy and Aiden will want to get to know you, and if I know my brother, even young Aiden knows how to be gentle with animals. Trust me, you don’t want to hook up with me. I never stay in one place too long and it’s no life for a dog.”

  Rafe had stopped for a moment to speak to his foreman, but he caught up with Jake as his brother opened the door of his truck.

  “So how long are you sticking around Lonesome Way this time?” Rafe asked drily.

  “Not too long, bro. I’m taking off for the Bighorn Bull Rodeo in Wyoming two days after I sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Zoey.”

  Though it was tempting, he decided against telling Rafe yet about the plan he intended to set into motion. It had been rattling around in his brain for a while, but things had really begun clicking into place when he got involved in the antibullying crusade. Then he learned about Brady quitting his job and suddenly—now that he was back in Lonesome Way—there was a picture in his head of how this all might come together.

  It was the right time. And the right place. He’d get it started, and after he took off, he could get updates from the road. With the right builder in charge—and Jake knew just who that builder ought to be—all he’d have to do was give his okays via phone or email and foot the bill.

  “Wait until you see Zoey.” Rafe’s words interrupted his thoughts. “She’s a hoot. She might be the spitting image of Mia—only tiny—including all that blond hair, but trust me, she’s got a will of iron, just like Travis. That’s one fearless, plucky little girl, and you won’t believe how she idolizes Grady.”

  Grady was Travis’s adopted stepson from his first marriage. A brilliant kid, all of thirteen, and last year he’d won first prize in the countywide science fair.

  “I’ve seen her picture. Looks like an angel. But if she’s anything like Travis, heaven help him and Mia,” Jake said with a grin.

  The smile stayed on his lips as he thought about his niece. Mia had been emailing him photos since the day Zoey was born. He had them all saved on his phone, along with pics of Grady, and the ones Sophie had sent of Aiden and Ivy. Ivy. His teenaged niece was morphing way too fast into a knockout young woman. It scared the hell out of him. And his sister emailed him pictures practically twice a day of her beautiful four-year-old, Molly, who’d snagged his heart the moment he set eyes on her—which happened to be the day after Sophie and Rafe got married, when Lissie barely made it to the hospital in time for the delivery.

  He was crazy about all of his nieces and nephews. Which was probably why every time he talked to Lissie, she kept pestering him, telling him he’d make a great dad and since he was now thirty-four he needed to seriously think about settling down. First she wanted him to snag himself a wife, then get started on a passel of kids. Lissie insisted he didn’t know what he was missing.

  But Jake saw things differently. Marriage, kids, a normal life, that wasn’t for him. His life suited him; it was exactly the way it should be. He had freedom with all that riding and competing, every week a different crowd, a different town. And best of all, no one depended on him. He’d failed once at the most important commitment he’d ever made. He’d decided after Melanie died that he wasn’t going to make any more promises to anyone—especially a woman—that he might not be able to keep.

  So he planned to go right on winning championships until he was too old to saddle a horse. He relished being in a position to raise awareness and funds fo
r the charities and causes he supported.

  Rafe and Travis kept razzing him, telling him he’d feel differently if he met the right woman. They didn’t have a clue why he intended to ride right away even if he did meet her. They didn’t get it. He wasn’t cut out for long-term relationships or marriage or promises that needed to be kept. He’d known the truth about himself since he was twenty or so, when he was young and stupid and just starting out in professional rodeo. Melanie Sutton had danced into his life one night bright as a candle, incandescent.

  And he’d failed her.

  After that, Jake knew that family life and the kind of love Rafe had with Sophie, and Travis had with Mia, wasn’t in the cards for him. Not ever. Maybe if he’d stayed with Melanie that night, things could have been different….

  But he hadn’t stayed. And Melanie…

  Jake had met a lot of smart, cool, sexy women in subsequent years, and he’d liked them all—enjoyed them all. All shapes, all sizes, blond, redhead, brunette.

  But if he hadn’t been there for Melanie, how could he promise to be there for anyone else?

  “Let me know what time to show up for supper—” he began abruptly, deliberately cutting off the painful memories, but suddenly, with a burst of energy, the mutt tried to spring up onto the front seat of the truck, then almost didn’t make it and would have slid backward, except Jake grabbed him swiftly before he hit the ground. He lifted him up into the driver’s seat.

  “Who invited you, fella?” His tone was gruff. But somehow he didn’t have the heart to set the scrawny creature down on the driveway again.

  “I think you’ve got yourself a dog there, bro. Whether you want one or not.”

  “Naw. He just knows me better than he knows you. He’ll be happy to hang with you guys once he meets the kids. Tell Ivy and Aiden they should start brainstorming names for him.”

  But glancing over his shoulder, he caught an amused—and skeptical—grin spreading across his brother’s face.

  Jake shook his head and turned back to the mutt crouched behind the wheel of his truck. “You want to drive this thing, pardner, or you going to move over?”

  As if he understood, the dog lumbered over to the passenger seat and sat staring out the window as if he hadn’t a care in the world and was studying the sweeping view of the lavender mountains in the distance.

  Behind Jake, Rafe laughed.

  “You think this is funny?” But Jake was fighting a smile, too.

  “You’ve been adopted, bro. Hold on while I grab your new dog a few days’ worth of pet food.” His brother was already striding back toward the ranch house. “Just to tide him over until you bring him back.”

  Jake swore he could hear Rafe chuckling just before the screen door slammed.

  Twenty minutes later, Jake turned off of Squirrel Road and onto Wild Mule Pass. He drove another two miles through lonely, beautifully wild country until he reached the bumpy gravel path leading to his cabin.

  His grandfather had willed him nearly seven hundred acres of lush rolling grassland practically within spitting distance of mountains and lakes ripe with wildlife and fish. This gorgeous spot was only a ten-mile hike from Blackbird Lake and surrounded by jagged mountains, magnificent sky, and wildflower meadows that seemed to roll on forever into the hazy distance.

  In addition to his own renovated cabin, there were three older, smaller cabins scattered across the property. He sometimes rented them out to fishermen, hikers, or tourists. But he’d never rented out his grandparents’ original cabin on Blackbird Lake.

  Five years ago, Jake had hired the father and son construction team of Sam and Denny McDonald to transform his personal fifteen-hundred-square-foot cabin into a two-story, six-thousand-square-foot house. That was right after he nabbed his biggest championship purse ever and won a fat commercial endorsement contract for a premium beer. Now, after investing the bulk of that money, Jake had big plans for those other three cabins.

  “Don’t get lost, buddy,” he told the mutt softly as he unlocked the massive solid oak front door and the dog brushed past him into the hall, his feet pattering across wide dusty hardwood floors.

  The living room and dining room furniture had been draped in drop cloths while he was gone and the place had a big, lonesome feel to it, thanks to the lofty ceilings and wide open, flowing floor plan.

  Way too big for one cowboy. Even one with a dog.

  But he didn’t expect to be spending too much time here this week anyway. He had too much catching up to do with his family, not to mention tracking Brady down and hauling the kid back in line.

  So after showering in the upstairs master bath, changing into clean jeans and a blue and gray flannel shirt, he fed Bronco—only a temporary name for the dog, he told himself, just until his niece and nephew came up with something better—then made sure all the lights and plumbing worked everywhere before taking off again. He pointed his truck north toward rolling foothills and the Farraday place.

  Sure, Bronco was curled on the passenger seat of his truck like he’d been there all his life, but that didn’t mean Jake was planning to keep the mutt.

  It just didn’t seem right to leave him alone in that big house—not right away. From the looks of it, this dog hadn’t had anyone looking after him in quite a while, if ever, and he had to have some abandonment issues. Which was why Sage Ranch, with Sophie and Rafe and the kids around most of the time, was the place for him to light. Someone was always around; he’d have Tidbit and Starbucks to play with and never a lonely moment.

  Hell, speaking of lonely…

  Jake frowned as he turned onto the rambling drive leading to the Farraday home. It could have been a setting for a sad, spooky painting about desolation.

  The clearing where the small frame house squatted was quiet. Too damned quiet. There was no sign that Brady was anywhere around. No sign of his Harley or any other vehicle. No windows seemed open, there wasn’t a light on, and not a sound came from the remote clearing surrounded by a lone treehouse and a scattering of cottonwood trees and pines.

  Only silence. Except for the faintest rustling of leaves.

  The sun slid lower in the September sky and a lone hawk wheeled lazily as Jake stared at the Farraday place. The small frame house, shed, and garage seemed to stand watch over the clearing like three tired old gray soldiers.

  Jake remembered the flowers Cord’s mom used to meticulously plant all around the ranch house. Roses, he thought, and some kind of big yellow flowers, bright and happy looking. All spring and summer, Mrs. Farraday was out there working on her garden.

  He took the old porch steps two at a time, knocked on the door he remembered from his teenaged years. He rang the doorbell, but heard no sound from within. He wondered if the bell was broken. There was a missing floorboard on the porch. Not a good sign, considering Brady was a wizard with tools and carpentry and had built that tree-house for himself and his friends when he was only twelve years old.

  “Brady! Open up!” His fist hammered the door.

  More silence.

  Checking the shed and peering through the windows of the garage, he determined that both were deserted. He called Brady’s name one more time. And heard nothing.

  “Guess, I’ll have to catch you later. Don’t think for a minute this is over,” he muttered under his breath as he started up the engine and swung the truck around, back up the drive. A new option popped into his head.

  He knew just where he was headed after his visit with Travis and Mia and the kids, and his supper at Sage Ranch.

  He’d call ahead to Denny McDonald and get the ball rolling on his new project. Considering the scope of it and the good it would do, he was pretty sure he could persuade Denny to rehire Brady, give him another shot. Then he’d reel the kid in when he caught up to him.

  Jake had no intention of taking no for an answer. Whether he liked it or not, Cord’s brother was going to quit throwing his life away and do some good in Lonesome Way.

  Just as he swung out
of the drive and back onto the road, a beat-up old Silverado passed him from the other direction and turned in toward the Farraday place. Jake had only a quick glimpse, but he thought he recognized the little brunette beauty behind the wheel.

  Madison Hodge. She had to be about Brady’s age. She was Sheriff Teddy Hodge’s granddaughter—and Lonesome Way’s resident pageant queen.

  Everyone in town knew Madison. She’d collected a slew of titles before she quit the pageant circuit. The glimpse he’d caught of that girl in the truck was nowhere even close to resembling the glamorously made-up, rhinestone-adorned princess whose photos he’d seen in the local newspapers Lissie used to send him. Tonight the girl’s famous sweep of thick, straight, dark brown hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail and he hadn’t spotted even a lick of makeup on her face.

  Why was she headed to the Farraday place? Were she and Brady friends?

  Or maybe something more….

  He suddenly wished she would find Brady at home. A female could be an excellent influence on a man. On any man other than himself, that is.

  He loved women, loved the way they looked and smelled and felt and tasted, and he respected the way they thought and reasoned on almost every subject—except on that settling-down thing. Some women just didn’t get that it wasn’t for everyone, and Jake avoided women like that. He didn’t want anyone getting hurt. Ever since Melanie, he liked to keep his attachments simple, short term and no strings attached.

  But if Madison Hodge was interested in helping Brady get back on track, he was all for it. If she’s not up for it, though, Jake reflected as he listened to Garth on the radio and the gentle snores of Bronco on the seat beside him, I’ll just have to sit the kid down myself sooner rather than later—and I damn well will.