Cowboy Alibi

Chapter Sixteen

Clint Holbrook unknotted his tie and settled back in his chair, looking around his shabby hotel room with disdain. If he never had to chase Sarah to another backwater hellhole again, it’d be too soon. What was her fascination with places like this? He’d shown her a life of ease, where she wore beautiful dresses and expensive jewelry and wanted for nothing.

Ungrateful bitch.

He might have been in love with her once, he supposed, the way a sculptor might obsess over his latest masterpiece. Until he saw that the flaws in the marble would never go away, no matter how he much he chipped and polished.

She was what she was. No changing that now. This time, he needed what she’d taken from him. And then he’d be done with her. For good.

His cell phone rang. It was Prescott from the Jackson Hole Resident Agency. “Got something for me?” Clint asked.

“I’ve e-mailed the passenger manifests you asked for.”

Clint thanked Prescott and pulled out his PDA. He scanned the list of passengers flying between Jackson Hole and Reno over the last few days. One of the names caught his eye. It might be a coincidence, he thought. Not an uncommon name. But she’d flown to Reno the night before, and returned the next day. What kind of trip was that?

He made a note to find out where Melissa Blake lived. He’d give her a visit bright and early the next morning.

“YOU REMEMBERED where the sheets were kept.” Joe’s gray eyes glowed with a mixture of hope and fear. “You went right to the armoire. Tell me you remembered.”

Tears spilling down her cheeks, she nodded. “I remember this place. I remember you.” She flattened her hand against the center of his chest. His heart hammered wildly against her palm, matching beat for beat the pulse thundering in her ears. “I remember…this.”

He threaded his fingers through her damp hair, lifting her face toward his. “Yes.”

She put her other hand on his chest and smoothed her palms over his damp skin in slow circles, his hair rough beneath her fingertips. A strange certainty descended over her, easing the tremors rattling her nerves.

This was right. They were right.

She looked up at him through her tears. “We made love the first time right here. On the Fourth of July, after the big parade but before the fireworks.”

He smiled, his thumbs moving over her cheeks, dashing away her tears. “We heard the booming from the cabin.”

Laughter bubbled up in her throat as she pictured the scene so clearly, as if a cloudy glass wall standing between her and her memories had shattered, letting her see beyond. Though some pieces remained blurry, they couldn’t hide the truth from her anymore.

Not about Joe. Not about who he’d been to her. Who she’d been to him.

She remembered lying with him, naked and spent, as the first fireworks blast had rattled the cabin walls. “You dared me to go naked to the bluff to watch the fireworks,” she said aloud, slapping his chest lightly. “Cowboy Joe, who knew you had a naughty streak?”

He nuzzled her neck, his laughter tinged with wonder and relief, like a condemned man given a miraculous reprieve. “You certainly knew by the end of summer.”

Fire scorched her nerve endings where he touched her. She arched her neck, giving him better access. “I’m still missing quite a few memories,” she murmured.

He pulled back, which wasn’t quite what she’d intended. “So you don’t remember everything?”

The serious tone of his voice made her stomach knot. “Not everything. Does that matter?”

His brow furrowed with uncertainty, and she kicked herself for saying anything at all when he’d been doing such magical things to her throat with his lips and tongue.

Whatever she couldn’t remember, whatever had happened to end the idyllic summer she was finally starting to remember, she didn’t want it to destroy what was happening here between them.

“I remember enough,” she murmured, sliding her hand up his chest. “I remember…I remember you feeding me chocolate in bed,” she said.

The furrow in his brow disappeared.

“I remember that you can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

His lips quirked. “I was told that serenading a woman was a very romantic thing to do.”

She stroked his jawline. “Only if you can actually sing. But I also remember that you’re a whiz with birdcalls. You taught me a few, right?” She tried one, the shrill call of the American dipper. It was about the only one she’d ever been good at, despite its difficulty.

Joe laughed. “I forgot how good you are at that.”

“I’m good at a lot of things.” She curled one hand around his neck and pulled him down to her, parting her lips for his kiss.

He resisted for a moment, his body tense, but when she brushed her tongue against his, he surrendered, his hands sliding down her spine to settle on her hips. He backed her toward the bed, she hit the mattress and tumbled backward onto the cool sheets, bringing him down with her. She deepened the kiss, demanding more.

He gave it to her in hot, maddening kisses that trailed down her throat and over her collarbone to settle over the lacy cotton of her bra. He suckled one nipple briefly through the fabric before pulling the fabric aside with a frustrated groan.

He laved her hardened nipple, sending fire streaking through her body from that single ignition point. She threw her head back against the sheets, sensations tangling with memories. His mouth on her belly, tracing a slow, heated path downward. His fingers moving between her legs, seeking, exploring, teasing until she cried out for him to end the sweet torment. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what was real and what was memory.

She felt his hand slide slowly over the curve of her hip. She caught it, pulling it between their bodies, urging his touch lower and lower. He drew back and gazed at her, a question in his eyes.

“Please,” she whispered.

A wicked smile curving his lips, he moved his hand beneath the soft cotton of her panties and slipped his finger inside her, his touch bold, sure and achingly familiar. He knew her, even more than she knew herself at the moment. The intimacy of his touch was proof of that.

He knew how much she liked being touched that way, she remembered, her head swimming with images and sensations from the past. He knew when to tease and when to demand, playing her like an instrument until her whole body sang. He’d always found new ways to bring her to the edge with just his fingers and his soft, hot murmurs of encouragement.

He hadn’t forgotten. She felt herself slowly coming apart beneath his touch.

“Is that good?” he whispered against her breast.

“Yes,” she moaned as he found a sensitive spot. It had been a long time, and her body responded strongly, hurtling toward completion with coltish eagerness. Her back arched when he pressed the knot of nerves beneath his thumb. “Joe, please-not yet-”

He rolled away from her and stripped off his jeans. She started to reach for him, but he held back a moment, his brow furrowed. “I didn’t really plan for this-but maybe we’re lucky-” He leaned over and opened the drawer of the nightstand.

She propped herself up on her elbows. “The condoms are in the other nightstand,” she murmured.

He looked at her over his shoulder, a slow grin spreading over his face. “The things you remember…”

She grinned as he stretched across the bed to the other nightstand and returned, triumphant, with a box. He shook it, and the foil packets inside rattled. “So far so good. Let’s check the expiration date?”

“Should I hold my breath?” she asked, sliding her hand up the inside of his thigh. “Cross my fingers?”

He sucked in a deep breath as her fingers reached their goal. “Lucky for us, these are good for another year.”

Darting her a look so full of naughty promise that her own breath caught, he pulled out a condom and ripped open the foil. With his other hand, he caught her roving fingers, stilling their movements. He turned her hand over and placed the condom in her palm. “Here. Since you’re so eager to make yourself…useful.”

Chuckling softly, she pushed herself up on her knees and straddled his lap, her tongue sliding over his as she sheathed him with the condom. “The things I remember,” she murmured against his lips.

Then she lowered herself onto him, taking him deep.

Her whole body seemed to contract into one quivering, fiery nerve ending. She drew her head back and gazed into his eyes, her heart pounding so hard she was certain he could hear it.

“I remember you,” she said, needing him to understand it was true. She didn’t remember every detail of what they’d shared, or much of what had brought her to him in the first place, but she remembered how he’d made her feel. Safe. Special. Beautiful.

He brushed his thumb against her lips. “I see that,” he said softly, pulling her down for another kiss.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she rocked her hips forward until he filled her completely. His soft intake of breath filled her with a sense of power. Cradling his face between her hands, she made him look up at her so she could see the shift of his expression when she slowly withdrew.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

Tears stung her eyes and she rocked forward again, lowering her mouth to his. She kissed him deeply, settling into a steady, escalating rhythm. Beneath her, his body grew taut with hunger. He was being patient, letting her set the pace, but she felt his muscles bunching as his need grew into something fierce and out of control.

Now, she thought, knowing what was about to happen more surely than she even knew her own name. She needed to feel him surge and take control, to remind her of his power as much as his patience had reminded her of his tenderness.

Memory intertwined with desire until she wasn’t sure what was recollection and what was anticipation. She wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.

Wrapping his arms tightly around her waist, he rolled her onto her back, pinning her beneath him. He threaded his fingers through hers, holding them above her head as he rose over her, gazing at her with hunger and a single-minded determination that thrilled her to her core. Dipping his mouth to hers to drink her kisses like a dying man, he drove into her, branding her with his desire.

As she clung to him, answering kiss for kiss, she began to unravel, swept into a maelstrom of pleasure that stole her breath and rocked her body. He plunged after her, his body shaking with release, urging her past sanity into a sweet madness as familiar as her own breath.

SHE WOKE suddenly, as if startled awake by a noise, but the room was dark and silent. Only the faint metallic ticking of the clock on the fireplace mantel disturbed the quiet. For a moment, she wanted nothing more than to dive back under the silk coverlet, as if it could protect her from the fear she lived with every second.

But she couldn’t go back into hiding. She’d wasted the first few weeks back in Clint’s control curled up like a scared child. That’s not who she was. Not anymore. It was time to prove it.

She slipped on her house shoes and wrapped herself in the Chinese silk robe Clint had given her the first day back. He’d presented it as a gift, but she knew it was just a fancy sort of prison garb. She’d give anything to be back in her favorite fluffy green terry-cloth robe. Joe had teased her about it-“Sexy!” was his favorite comment when he caught her wrapped up in the thing-but he’d never let it stop him from stripping her out of it…

The thought of Joe made her smile all too briefly, before sorrow and longing overtook her. But she shook it off, pushed aside the memory of death and separation. Grief was weakness. She could no longer afford to be weak. She pressed her hand low against her belly, remembering why she had to keep fighting.

She tested the bedroom door. It was unlocked, though she’d half expected otherwise, given how easily Clint seemed to read her thoughts since he’d brought her back with him. Still, she knew the outer doors would be guarded, and the gates beyond locked and unbreachable. It had taken her almost two months to figure out a way to escape the fortress Clint had built to keep her with him this time.

Now she just had to decide when to make her move.

It had to be soon. Clint was beginning to notice that she’d stopped cowering, even if he didn’t yet know what was driving her to fight this time around. But within a month or two, he’d know exactly what was fueling her need to get away. She had to get out of here before that happened.

Every night for the past few nights, she’d tested the limits of her prison. Tonight, Miguel had promised he’d leave the code for the back gate in the plant by the kitchen window. She’d retrieve it tonight, memorize the code and destroy the paper it was written on.

As soon as she found a chance, she’d escape the house and grounds. Then she’d get word to Joe somehow.

He’d come for her if she needed him.

In the corridor outside her bedroom, dim wall lights lit the path to the stairs. She padded quietly down the curving stairway to the first floor, where she heard the faint murmur of voices. She looked around for any of the house staff, but they’d apparently retired for the night. Taking a deep breath, she moved silently toward the room at the end of the hallway, where a door was barely cracked open.

She peered through the narrow opening and saw the back of Clint’s head. He sat in a large leather chair, looking at the screen of a notebook computer. On the screen, a video was playing-the source of the voices she’d heard.

The picture was grainy but she could discern enough of what she was seeing to recognize Tommy Blake’s horse barn. Her heart clenched at the sight of her friend walking into the picture, a feed bucket in one hand and a couple of blankets tossed over his shoulder. This must be from the surveillance system Joe had helped his brother set up in the horse barns to deter the rustlers who’d been creating havoc in the area that summer.

Behind Tommy, Clint stepped into view. Tommy must have heard something, for he turned to face the other man, his expression wary but not yet afraid.

“Can I help you?” Tommy said.

Without saying a word, Clint took out a gun and pulled the trigger. Tommy’s body jerked and he flew backward onto the hay-strewn floor of the barn.

She pressed her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Clint must not have heard her behind him, because he punched a button and the picture reset to that same moment when Tommy walked into the barn, oblivious to the fact that he would be dead in just a few more seconds.

With escalating horror, she watched Clint replay the murder again and again on the computer screen. Part of her wanted to run back to her bedroom and hide again, but another, stronger part of her realized that for the first time since Clint Holbrook walked into her life, she had proof that he was the bastard she knew him to be. She just had to find out where he kept the recording of the murder, get it to Joe and she’d finally be free.

Jane woke in a rush, panic icing her veins until she realized she wasn’t back in that bedroom prison but lying curled up in Joe’s strong arms. The dream she’d awakened from was already starting to drift into the ether, but she struggled to hang on to it, forced herself to separate the misty threads of dream from memory.

Was it real? Had she seen a video of Tommy’s murder?

She eased herself out of Joe’s arms, soothing him with a whisper when he stirred, and slipped from beneath the covers. Frigid air washed over her naked body, making her gasp. She grabbed a thick thermal blanket from the armoire to wrap around her and crossed the hard plank floor to the cabin’s front window.

Outside, the first faint gray of sunrise peeked over the top of the pines and aspens between the cabin and the bluff beyond. Beyond the bluff, where Tommy’s ranch sprawled across 250 acres of grazing land, sunrise came a little later in the morning, having to rise over the ridge to the east before spilling light over the valley.

She remembered. She remembered everything now, the last clouds breaking in her mind to reveal her hidden past. She remembered who Shannon Dugan was, the hardscrabble life she’d lived. The cons, the scrapes with the law. She remembered who Sarah Holbrook was, too. Not Clint’s wife-he’d never have sullied his family name by bringing her into it-but he’d treated her as his woman, taken her out of Reno and made her his lover, his pupil and, eventually, his partner in crime.

She’d been eighteen and foolishly in love. Too foolish to realize that the designer dresses, the etiquette lessons and the free access to his library weren’t a reward for being his woman, but a means to an end. She’d become his shill in the political power plays that had given him more power than even his father’s billions could do. He’d told her it was part of his job, that she was helping him do good deeds, but she’d grown up on the streets of Reno. She should have known better.

She just wanted to believe that kind of life was over.

She heard Joe stir behind her and turned, looking at him in the dying glow of the fire. He rolled to her side of the bed, throwing his arm over her pillow, and settled back to sleep, his face soft and boyish in slumber.

She had been so happy last night, lying in Joe’s arms, listening to the sound of his heartbeat under her ear. She had thought there was nothing that could separate them again. Not Clint, not the still-missing pieces of her past. But that was before she’d remembered the rest of it.

She crossed quietly to the bed and crouched beside him, tears burning her eyes. There was so much he didn’t know about her because she hadn’t wanted him to know what a fool she’d been.

It had cost them everything. And now that she knew the truth, she wasn’t sure if they’d ever be able to get back any of what they’d lost.

But if it was possible, she now knew where to start.

She found her clothes and dressed quickly, taking care not to wake Joe. Shrugging on her fleece-lined jacket, she started out the cabin door, pausing a moment in the open doorway to look back at Joe. He hadn’t stirred.

Dashing away her tears, she slipped out of the cabin and headed for the horse shed.

THE SUN was high when Joe finally woke. He wiped his gritty eyes and turned over, automatically reaching for Jane. But she wasn’t there.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, looking at his watch. It was after nine.

“Jane?” he called, looking toward the tiny bathroom off the main room. But there was no answer.

He found his jeans on the floor and pulled them on. “Jane?”

A quick look around the cabin assured him she wasn’t there. He finished dressing and went outside.

“Jane, are you out here?” Joe descended the cabin’s wooden steps and landed on the damp grass. From the horse shed around the side of the cabin, Jazz’s soft nicker answered him. Had Jane gone to see about the horses when he overslept?

He entered the horse shed and stopped, staring at the empty stall next to Jazz’s. Bella’s saddle and reins were also missing.

Oh, Jane, he thought, his heart dropping like lead. What’ve you done?

SHE WAS lost.

She’d thought the return of her memories would make it easy to find her way back to town, but last night’s rain had washed out some of the path, and she was now certain she had been traveling in circles since daylight.

Jane wiped her sweaty brow with the back of her hand and checked her watch. Almost ten o’clock. She’d been out here for over three hours and was no closer to finding the horse trail than she had been when she left the cabin.

Blinking back hot tears of frustration, she pulled her horse to a stop and dismounted, stretching her aching legs. What the hell was she doing? Why had she run away, yet again, from the one man she’d ever known who seemed to care about her for who she was, not for what she could do for him? Why couldn’t she just trust him as he’d asked her to do so many times?

Because he didn’t trust you the one time it really counted, a small voice whispered in her ear. When she’d gotten away from Clint the last time, when she’d fought her way back to Joe despite one disaster after another, she’d learned just how little faith he had in her.

The entire east wall of his living room was a giant bulletin board, packed from corner to corner with notes, newspaper clippings, enlarged photos of her time in Canyon Creek and faxes from dozens of Western law-enforcement agencies with reports of possible sightings.

He wasn’t trying to save her from Clint, she realized with dawning horror.

He was trying to arrest her for Tommy’s murder.

He’d been out of town when she’d arrived in Canyon Creek a couple of weeks after she’d escaped Clint the last time. Weak, brokenhearted and desperate for a friendly face, she’d let herself into his house, hoping to find some clue to where he’d gone.

What she’d found was his shrine to his brother’s murder and the woman he believed responsible.

What happened next was mostly a blur. She remembered a knock on the door. A quick glimpse out the window and the nightmare of seeing Clint Holbrook standing on Joe’s front porch. The frantic scramble to hide the one piece of evidence that would prove her innocence, though too late to salvage her fragile relationship with Joe. Then she’d fled out the back door, never looking back.

It was the last thing she remembered before Idaho.

She patted the side of her horse. The mare snuffled softly in response, nuzzling Jane’s jacket pocket, where she’d stashed a small bag of feed in case she needed it. She wished she’d brought a bottle of water as well, but she hadn’t wanted to go back to the cabin and risk waking Joe. Stupid mistake. She should have taken a chance on him. Trusted him enough to tell him what she remembered.

Maybe it would be easier finding her way back to the cabin than trying to find the trail off the mountain.

She heard the soft snort of a horse moving up the rise toward her, carrying through the cool morning air. Joe, she thought, her pulse quickening.

She grabbed Bella’s reins and tugged her forward, so relieved to hear the sound of another living being that it never occurred to her, until the rider and horse rounded the bend, that her rescuer might not be Joe Garrison.