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  “I guess I can handle him all right. Especially if I get coffee right away.” She sent Bessie a hopeful smile.

  “Coming right up,” Bessie promised, and bustled toward the kitchen as Josy scooted ahead of the line, slipping into a seat across from Chance who beamed with triumph, while the cowboys in line behind her playfully booed.

  “I see you have a reputation in this town.”

  He held up both hands in a gesture of professed innocence. “Can I help it if women like me?”

  “Help it? You gobble it up. You heard Bessie, you’re the biggest flirt in town.”

  “I’ll give up every single other woman if you’ll have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with me today,” he countered instantly.

  Josy laughed. “Don’t you have to work?”

  “It’s my day off. Once every two weeks I get a whole twenty-four hours to myself. Want to go hiking with me? Or for a drive? We could be in Casper in a couple of hours, take in a movie, and have a real nice dinner at the—”

  He was interrupted by Bessie arriving with coffee. She handed Josy a menu before sweeping away again.

  “Let’s get through breakfast first,” Josy suggested. “Any recommendations?”

  “Yeah—everything. But the pancakes are about the best I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Pancakes,” she murmured. She had a weakness for them, especially pecan pancakes. And there they were on the menu. “You’ve talked me into it.”

  Her gaze slid toward the cash register. A small-boned bird of a woman in her seventies was making change amd chatting with a middle-aged couple. She was no more than five feet tall, her face thin and soft-looking, beneath short tufts of white hair.

  “Is that Ada Scott?” she asked Chance softly, without glancing away from the woman.

  “Yep. She and Bessie just got back early today from Vegas. Ada won seventy-five dollars playing roulette. She’s really tickled. Bessie’s bummed because she lost thirty bucks at blackjack.”

  Roberta flew by the table, headed for the kitchen, a few men in cowboy hats moved toward the door, and Bessie brought a place setting and napkins. But Josy couldn’t tear her gaze from the tiny, sweet-faced woman at the cash register.

  She felt her throat tighten and reached for her coffee to wash down a rush of emotions unexpectedly making it difficult to swallow.

  “Hey, are you all right? Why’re you staring at Ada?”

  She dragged her gaze back to Chance’s face. “No reason. She . . . reminds me of someone. I’m sorry.” Josy forced herself to focus on Chance and tried to smile.

  But all she wanted to do was gaze at Ada Scott and try to imagine how and why she’d given her baby daughter away. She wanted to think about what would happen if she went over and spoke to the woman. But she couldn’t think about any of that. Not now. Not yet.

  She made small talk with Chance, batted away his compliments and lines, and in the end, turned down his invitation to spend the day with him. But when he invited her to go to a movie Saturday night in the nearby town of Winston Falls, she finally accepted. Why not? It was only one date, a movie date.

  And she was pretty sure she’d made it clear that friendship was all she had in mind—and all she would allow.

  He left the diner first, as she claimed she wanted another cup of coffee. Alone, she lingered over a fresh cup, casually studying Ada Scott at the cash register without being too obvious.

  The crowd dwindled and soon only a few diners remained, among them Ty Barclay and Roy Hewett.

  They were finishing up, though, Josy noted, watching as Ty moved to the cash register and spoke for several moments with Ada.

  They seemed to be on familiar terms.

  He left the diner with only the briefest nod to her, while Roy waved, came over, and made a point of telling her how glad he and Corinne were that she’d come to Corinne’s farewell party.

  Then she was virtually alone in the diner with Bessie, who had disappeared into the kitchen, Roberta, clearing empty tables, and Ada, counting money at the cash register.

  Suddenly, Ada closed the drawer, locked it, and glanced her way. The next thing she knew the white-haired woman had picked up a coffeepot and was coming toward her.

  “More coffee?”

  Josy shook her head.

  Ada was starting to move away before Josy found her voice.

  “I hear you won some nice money at the roulette table,” she blurted out, and Ada Scott paused and turned back to her with a surprised smile. “Who told you that?”

  “Chance Roper. We had breakfast together.”

  “If that doesn’t beat all.” Ada returned to the table and cocked her head to one side.

  “I’d think that man of all others would have more to talk to a pretty young thing like you about than my trip to Las Vegas,” she mused.

  “Oh, he only mentioned it because I . . . I thought you looked familiar.”

  “You don’t say?” Ada peered at her with interest. Her brown eyes were faded, yet she managed to study Josy with a disconcerting keenness. “I can’t say I recognize you.”

  “Have you . . . ever been to . . .” She was about to say “New York” but switched it at the last minute to “Chicago.”

  “Chicago? No, never.” Ada shook her head as if the notion were absurd. “I’ve been to Cheyenne, to Casper, of course, to Las Vegas a dozen times . . . and lately to visit my grandson at the university in Laramie,” she added, and Josy heard the note of fondness and pride in her voice. “Aside from that I’ve only been to . . .”

  There was a momentary hesitation before she continued.

  “I went to Denver once to visit a cousin,” she said quietly. “Though that was a long time ago. But I haven’t been too many other places. So I don’t think we’ve met.”

  Suddenly she smiled. “I’d surely remember a young lady as pretty as you.”

  There was a crash in the kitchen just then and Ada started. “Uh-oh. What in the world did Bessie drop now? I hope it wasn’t the steak-and-potato casserole that’s the dinner special for tonight.”

  She scurried toward the kitchen. Josy sat perfectly still, gazing with unseeing eyes at the empty coffee cup before her.

  Shouldn’t I feel something? she thought. If this woman is my grandmother, shouldn’t I feel something? Some pull, some connection? Shouldn’t there have been some flash of something in her when we met, as well?

  Ada Scott seemed nice enough. A sweet, simple woman who’d traveled little from her own backyard, who worked among friends, who wore pink cotton pantsuits and sneakers. A woman who had treated her with the politeness you show strangers, and who had spoken of her grandson with obvious pride.

  She’s happy. She’s at peace. She doesn’t need or want a stranger in her life, Josy suddenly realized. There’s no need to go any further with this.

  Ignoring the icy disappointment pulsing through her, she slid out of the booth and asked Roberta for her bill.

  “Coming right up, but I want to show you something.” Roberta breezed toward the kitchen as Ada emerged. When Josy reached her at the cash register, Ada was shaking her head.

  “Bessie dropped a pie. A strawberry-rhubarb pie. It’s all over the floor. But will she let me help her clean it up?” Ada shook her head, her eyes sparkling. “The Templetons are all stubborn to a point, and she’s one of them. Said she dropped it, she’ll clean it, that’s that.” Ada chuckled. “I’m her best friend, have been for years, but do you think she’d let me help her? No, sirree.”

  Josy smiled. “You know her pretty well, don’t you?”

  “I surely do. You know how it is. You spend enough time with someone, they get to be like family. Me and Bessie, after all these years, we’re like family.”

  “You mentioned your grandson.” Josy didn’t know why she was following up the conversation when she’d already decided to let it go. The words just seemed to stream from her mouth. “Do you have any other family besides him—and Bessie?”

  “Well, all of the Tem
pletons are like family to me. We go way back. Dorsey, Big John, and their daughter, Katy, of course. She’s Katy Brent now. But I’ve been a widow for the past fifteen years, and my son died some eleven years ago, along with his wife.”

  Her eyes clouded. “There was a pileup on the highway during a snowstorm. Both my son and daughter-in-law were taken from me . . . and from Billy, my grandson. He was still a child then. I raised him after that, you know. He’s all I have left. And he’s a fine young man, if I do say so myself. He studies science at the university.”

  She shook her head. “Listen to me rattling on. You must have better things to do than stand around here— Roberta! Where’s this young lady’s bill?” she called toward the kitchen.

  “Hold your horses. I’ve got it.” But as Roberta came out and handed Josy her check, she also had a sheet of lined yellow paper in her hand. “Take a look at this, Josy.”

  It was the invitation list for Corinne’s shower. Her name was there, at the very bottom of the list.

  “Corinne wants you to come to the shower and so do I. So next time you come in here, I should have your invitation ready. But in the meantime, consider yourself invited.”

  Josy didn’t know what to say. She’d only known Corinne and Roberta for a day—and a night—and they were including her, treating her as a friend, making her feel more than welcome in the town.

  “This is so kind of you. I’ve heard of country hospitality, but you don’t have to do this,” she protested automatically, but Roberta folded her arms.

  “No arguing, girl. My Luther used to say that arguing with me was a shameless waste of breath—and damned if he wasn’t right. The shower is a week from Saturday, twelve o’clock. At Ada’s place on Angel Road. You’ll get to meet a bunch of ladies from the town, maybe you’ll even get some decorating jobs out of it. I told Tammie Morgan yesterday that we had a decorator here from Chicago. She was curious as hell to meet you. Seems the Crystal Horseshoe wants to renovate a couple of their guest cabins—make ’em even ritzier.”

  She rolled her eyes. “She wants to talk to you. Bet she thinks you’ll give her a deal—that decorator they got from Los Angeles cost them the sun and the moon.”

  Decorating jobs? Josy thought in dismay. What have I gotten myself into?

  “Oh, my, Tammie Morgan.” Ada snorted. She looked Josy straight in the eye. “Whatever you do, young lady, don’t let that woman take advantage of you. She’ll try to suck your brain and find some way to get you to work for her for free.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I won’t let that happen.” Mostly because I know nothing about decorating dude ranch guest cabins, Josy thought ruefully.

  Her little deception was taking on a life of its own and she felt a twinge of guilt. At the same time, there was a small rush of warmth because Ada had warned her about Tammie Morgan. Even if it wasn’t personal—Ada was just warning Corinne and Roberta’s friend—it still made her smile at Ada with a surge of gratitude.

  “Actually, I’m curious to meet her now.” She laughed. “And I’d love to come to the shower. Thank you, Roberta, for including me.”

  “It’s a good thing Corinne finally got me this list today or it would be too late to even have a shower,” Roberta flung over her shoulder as she headed back to the kitchen.

  Another customer had lined up behind Josy now, so she murmured a good-bye to Ada and left the diner.

  But as she drove back to the apartment, she reflected that the shower would afford her a perfect opportunity to see Ada’s home, to see if she recognized it as the same house she and her parents had driven to that long-ago day. Of course, Ada could have moved since then, but maybe she could find out about that too and casually ask where she’d lived before. It was an opportunity—an opportunity to learn more about her grandmother, to reconcile that memory of her parents and herself and the woman on that porch.

  Even if she never told Ada a word about their relationship, even if they never had a real conversation alone together about anything except Thunder Creek chitchat, seeing her home and watching her interact with her friends and neighbors would provide a better sense of the woman to whom she was related by blood.

  And that will be enough, she told herself.

  But as she pulled up in front of her building she could still see Ada Scott’s sweet, gently lined face in her mind. And she wasn’t entirely certain she’d be able to leave Thunder Creek without finding out one thing: why the plainspoken woman who worked the cash register at Bessie’s Diner and had raised her grandson from the time he was a boy had made the decision more than fifty years ago to give away her newborn daughter.

  Chapter 8

  “ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT YOU HAVE NO IDEA where Ricky Sabatini is at this moment?”

  Oliver Tate’s voice was calm as he turned from the window where his children splashed three stories below in the shimmering free-form pool, and where his wife lounged on a pink chaise amid copper pots brimming with roses.

  But for all the evenness of Tate’s tone, Dolph Lindstron wasn’t fooled. Not for a second.

  Dolph was a big man—six foot six, 230 pounds of rock-solid muscle, and a brute strength forged in the slums of Copenhagen. But he wasn’t stupid. Fear slithered through him like a snake when he saw the ice-chip green of his employer’s eyes, the catlike way Oliver Tate pivoted from the window overlooking his estate.

  For Oliver Tate, losing Ricky Sabatini was equivalent to a cardinal sin. And he was the sinner.

  “No, Mr. Tate.” Dolph stood at rigid attention. “Not yet, I don’t. But I’ll lock down Sabatini’s whereabouts soon. And I will find him,” he vowed, then tensed as he caught the flash of anger in Tate’s icy eyes.

  “And the woman—the woman with my property?” Tate asked silkily.

  “Josephine Warner. We’re still searching for her. She’s nobody, not a professional, we should have her any day. And your property too, of course,” Dolph added as his employer’s eyebrows shot up, a sign he recognized. Tate was infuriated.

  And Dolph knew it wasn’t healthy to infuriate Oliver Tate.

  “The Warner woman flew out of LaGuardia to Salt Lake City. She stayed two nights at the Best Western motel near the airport, paid cash for her room, made no phone calls. But the clerk remembered her—after I refreshed his memory, that is.” Dolph smiled, his teeth gleaming whitely beneath his shaved head. But there was no responsive smile from Tate. Only two clipped words.

  “Go on.”

  “She bought a blue ’95 Blazer with Utah plates—paid cash again—and no one’s seen her since. But we have people in Salt Lake City asking more questions, and I’m going back to interview the car salesman again personally—”

  “I’m not interested in your tedious explanations, Dolph.” The words flicked like a slow, slick whip. “I want results.”

  “Yes, Mr. Tate. Sure. I’ll—”

  The door to the office burst open suddenly and immediately Oliver Tate held up a hand for silence. Seven-year-old Eric Tate darted into the room in swimming trunks and sandals.

  “Daddy, I swam. I swam across the pool. Stephanie can’t swim, she’d drown if Mommy or Catrina didn’t hold her up, but I can swim!” the boy announced, his hair still wet from the pool, though his feet were dry and clad in sandals, as required by Oliver Tate whenever anyone left the pool to enter the house.

  “Good boy, Eric. You see? I told you swimming was easy.” Oliver grinned down at the boy and tousled his damp hair. “You’re strong, aren’t you? A good, fast, strong swimmer.”

  “The strongest.” Eric glanced over at Dolph, smiling. “One day I’ll be as strong as Dolph,” he boasted.

  “Yes, you will. In the meantime, keep practicing your swimming so you’ll be the best swimmer in the world. Or at the least in your high school when you’re old enough to try out for the swim team. Daddy likes the best.”

  “Mommy is the best, right? The most beautiful?”

  “Indeed she is. Out of all the women in the world.”


  “Stephanie isn’t the best at anything.”

  “Not yet, she’s only a baby. When she is older, she will be the best of daughters. Now see what I have for you.”

  Dolph kept silent as Oliver Tate reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a coin. He handed it to his son.

  “Those who are best always get rewarded. This coin is worth a great deal of money, Eric. I want you to have it— put it away where no one will take it from you, and keep it. When you win your first swimming meet, I will give you a box of coins just like this one. All of them rare and valuable. But if you lose—I will come to you and take this coin away.”

  The smile faded from the boy’s face. “You’ll take it away?”

  “Only if you lose. If you win . . . there will be more. Much more. And I know that you are strong enough to win.”

  Tate bent and kissed his son’s cheek. “Go now. Put this in a safe place and then swim some more. Work at it. If you want to be the best, you must work very hard. Remember. Only the best is good enough.”

  The best, Dolph thought, and a tiny bead of sweat glistened on his shaved head. Oliver Tate was obsessed with the best. He insisted on it. Once upon a time, Dolph knew, his employer had been Olvan Tatrinsky, a starving kid from the slums of Helsinki, who lurked in alleys wearing rags and eating from garbage cans, until he started earning money by running errands for gangsters.

  But as soon as he had enough money and the means to travel to America, Olvan left his native land, magically reappearing several years later as young, ambitious banking whiz Oliver Tate. His original backers were unknown, and probably dead, but now the boy who had lived in alleys infested with rats and garbage had far surpassed all those who had tutored him in the ways of crime.

  Now his name, his fancy new name, was found in the registers of the best hotels, the business columns of the Wall Street Journal, and the invitation lists of all the best New York and London parties.