Cowboy Under Cover Read online

  What kind of man was he?

  A normal healthy man, with all a normal healthy male’s wants and needs. But Jeannie wasn’t the kind of woman a man took for a night’s pleasure and rode away from with a smile on his lips. She was the kind a man took home to introduce to his crazy family. She was the kind of woman a man built sun porches for, took day jobs for, settled down for.

  And he wasn’t that kind of a man. He was a federal marshal, a rogue, an independent rider who went his own way at the end of a job and left the pretty ranch owner in the fading sunlight.

  And that was the biggest bunch of baloney he’d ever spouted to himself in his whole vagabond life.

  Cowboy Under Cover

  MARILYN TRACY

  Books by Marilyn Tracy

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Magic in the Air #311

  Blue Ice #362

  Echoes of the Garden #387

  Too Good To Forget #399

  No Place To Run #427

  The Fundamental Things Apply #479

  Extreme Justice #532

  Code Name: Daddy #736

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  Almost Perfect #766

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  Almost a Family #815

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  Almost Remembered #867

  Cowboy Under Cover #1162

  Silhouette Shadows

  Sharing the Darkness #34

  Memory’s Lamp #41

  Something Beautiful #51

  MARILYN TRACY

  lives in Portales, New Mexico, in a ramshackle turn-of-the-century house with her son, two dogs, three cats and a poltergeist. Between remodeling the house to its original Victorian-cum-Deco state, writing full-time and finishing a forty-foot cement dragon in the backyard, Marilyn composes full soundtracks to go with each of her novels.

  After having lived in both Tel Aviv and Moscow in conjunction with the U.S. State Department, Marilyn enjoys writing about the cultures she’s explored and the people she’s grown to love. She likes to hear from people who enjoy her books and always has a pot of coffee on or a glass of wine ready for anyone dropping by, especially if they don’t mind chaos and know how to wield a paintbrush.

  For my loving family, by birth and by choice, who sticks with me through experimental food nights, emotional upheavals and my addiction to happy endings.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 1

  C hance Salazar was chewing the fat with Doreen Gallegos across the scarred wooden countertop of the Carlsbad post office when a stranger walked in.

  Doreen flicked a glance at the newcomer and leaned close enough to Chance that he could have drowned in her musky perfume, but she didn’t lower her voice. “Mama will be at church bingo tonight, and you could come over. The kids’ll be with Geo. We can talk.”

  Chance muttered something noncommittal, his eyes on the woman standing at the Wait Here sign. She was taller than most women, almost six feet, and her lush curves were only partially concealed by her obviously new blue jeans and chambray shirt. She’d pulled her curly, longish auburn hair into a rough ponytail, revealing her elegant neck and a host of Irish freckles. She reminded him of a roan Appaloosa filly he’d once coveted. And everything about her—from her new duds to her designer sunglasses—let him know she wasn’t from anywhere near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Was she a tourist to see the caverns?

  She held a manila envelope in one hand and a slender notepad in the other. She flipped the notebook open.

  “What about it, Chance?” Doreen asked. “I made some sangria yesterday. Good burgundy, four lemons, two oranges, three limes and plenty of time to steep. And I want to talk to you about…you know.”

  The woman tucked the envelope beneath her arm and wrote something in the notepad. A small smile played around her full lips.

  “I made a whole gallon. And I got ice this morning. And Mama made tamales last night, so you wouldn’t have to worry about finding something for dinner.”

  “Customer, Doreen,” Chance said, stepping back from the counter and smiling at the woman. She didn’t smile back. Unfriendly? Or was she not looking at him? Impossible to tell with her eyes covered.

  “You wait right there, Chance,” Doreen commanded, pointing at the wall. She didn’t take her eyes off him until he leaned back and crossed his arms. Only then did she look at the woman and add with a note of impatience, “Can I help you?”

  The woman started, as if surprised awake, then moved to the counter. She set the notebook to the side. “I need some information,” she said. Her voice held no trace of a southwest twang. When Doreen didn’t say anything, the woman smiled and handed across the thick envelope, “And stamps for this, please.”

  Doreen held up the envelope. “How you want it?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How do you want it to go?” Doreen asked, filling in the words as if speaking to a second grader. “First class? Express? Overnight?” Doreen looked at the address. “Washington, D.C., that’d be twelve dollars for an overnight express, but no guarantees because it’s already past ten. Overnights have to be in by nine if you want to be sure it gets there the next day, and even then, I can’t make you no promises, because who knows what some idiot is going to do down the line somewhere, right? Two-day air is the safest bet and not so expensive. Still, if you want to go on the cheap, you can send it bulk. So, how you want it?”

  “Two-day air will be fine,” the woman said. In contrast to Doreen’s staccato soprano, the newcomer sounded as if she were speaking in contralto slow motion. “And thanks.”

  “No problemo. What else?”

  Chance leaned forward and tilted his head a little to read what the stranger had been writing in her notepad. Fires. Spontaneous combustion? Lightning? What kind of animal destroys fences? Find out difference between ranch hand and cowboy? Where are the cattle? Chance—cowboy name? Hispanic name? Pass, Carlsbad style—Mama’s playing church bingo. Recipe for sangria—four lemons, two oranges, three limes to one gallon burgundy. Let steep.

  As if aware he was reading her notes, or perhaps simply preparing to leave, the woman pulled the notepad to her chest. “And, I need to know where to find a police station.”

  “Something wrong?” Doreen asked.

  The woman’s shoulders stiffened slightly. Chance suspected she was unused to being questioned by strangers. If she planned on staying in New Mexico long, she’d have to get over that. People in these parts discussed others’ business more often than they did their own. She pulled her sunglasses from her eyes. Even from his spot against the wall, viewing her profile only, Chance could see how blue her eyes were. Summer-sky blue. And wary.

  Contrary to her generally hard facade, Doreen was, as Chance knew, a sensitive woman, and he wasn’t surprised when she stepped back a pace, as if trouble were contagious. “The police station’s across the street about three blocks up.” She pointed west. The woman followed her finger and narrowed her eyes against the bright, if dusty, window. “And then, for big stuff, like drug runners and such, you want the federal marshal’s office, and that’s around the corner and east about three blocks and upstairs and you can tell Ted Peters that Doreen sent you. But, if you’re having a problem out at Milagro, you’re gonna want the sheriff.”

  When the woman didn’t explain why she needed a peace officer, Doreen continued, “Police for city, sheriff for county, same
as most everywhere, I guess. ’Cept the sheriff’s elected. And he’s across the plaza at the courthouse. Nando Gallegos. He’s a cousin.”

  “How did you know—”

  “That you’re from Rancho Milagro?” Doreen grinned with the old gamine mischief that had gotten her in trouble so many times when Chance knew her in high school—and maybe a version of the same smile that landed her with three kids and two divorces before she was twenty-two, and a host of debts, worries and at least a handful of bad relationships since. She held up the woman’s envelope and waggled it. “It’s on the return.”

  The tension in the woman’s shoulder’s eased. “Of course,” she said, and with her lack of west Texas drawl and her clear consonants, she sounded as if she’d stepped straight from a presidential tea. “Thank you for your help. And the sheriff’s your cousin, you say?”

  “Fernando. But everybody calls him Nando. Tell him I sent you over there. Doreen Gallegos. He’ll help you out with whatever your problem is, okay?”

  Chance withheld a derisive snort. Nando Gallegos was the biggest jerk this side of the Mississippi River.

  The woman smiled, murmured a thank-you for the third time since she’d entered the post office, paid for her two-day overnight mail and left the small lobby, all without looking at the wall where Chance rested his shoulder. All without looking at him, in other words, he thought wryly. Chance saw her stop outside the threshold, slip her sunglasses on and jot something down. He smiled. It was oddly pleasant to think his name was already in her little notepad.

  “So?” Doreen asked. “What do you want, Chance?”

  “Did she seem like she’s in trouble, Doreen?” he asked, pushing off the wall and joining her at the counter.

  Doreen sighed. “Men. They’re all alike. A pretty new face, and the old one’s forgotten just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  Chance smiled at her. “Really, Doreen?”

  She tried maintaining the miffed look, but giggled instead and slapped at his arm. “You’re the worst of them all, Chance Salazar. You only think of two things—fast horses and faster women.”

  “But not necessarily in that order,” he said, flicking her cheek with a finger. He grinned at her easily, knowing she wasn’t at all vulnerable to his flirting, but recognizing that their long-past history and Doreen’s many heartaches, and knowing that dalliance kept her fear of loneliness at bay, Chance played the game with her.

  They had been friends for far too long not to be totally honest with one another—at least about relationships. Besides, Doreen was desperately, almost painfully in love with one of the boys at the federal marshal’s office and had confided this to Chance when he’d come back to Carlsbad a few months earlier.

  Her hard little features softened into a genuine look of affection, one Chance suspected she reserved only for her family and him. “What you need, Chance, is to fall in love.” She held up her hand to forestall his wisecrack. “I mean really in love. Maybe then you’d know what the rest of us feel like every day.”

  “Miserable and full of self-doubt?” he quipped.

  She gave him a long look and nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe happy. You know a whole bunch about laughing, but I don’t think you know so much about feeling happy inside.”

  “Doreen, I’m going to start having to pay you for the couch advice.”

  She sniffed. “You could do worse. I’m not the one who rides bucking horses for a living and then goes and breaks my collarbone. Now get out of here and let me go to work. And if you happen to stop by the marshal’s office…”

  “And just happen to run into Ted Peters…”

  “You can tell any one of them that their box rent is due,” she said primly.

  “I’ll do that, Doreen,” he said. “And thanks for the invite for sangria and tamales.”

  “Don’t tell me, I know. You’ve got another bone to break.”

  He grinned at her and tipped his hat. He was reaching for the door handle when she called after him, “Her name is Jeannie McMunn. She’s one of the new owners at Rancho Milagro.”

  “Get all that from the return address?” he asked.

  “Give me some credit, Chance Salazar. I knew who she was a month ago. She’s got two other partners who are still back east, she’s done a lot of repairs out at Milagro—she’s spent a fortune, which nobody knows where it came from—and she’s turning the place into some kind of orphan’s ranch. She hired a couple to be her house-and groundskeepers, Juanita and Tomás Montoya, you know them?”

  Chance shook his head.

  Doreen shrugged. “They came up from Mexico after you left, I guess. Somebody told me they used to work up in Roswell at Job Corps.”

  Chance gave a low whistle. “Ted Peters better watch out. You know as much as the Feds do.”

  “That’s not all I know,” Doreen said, leaning across the counter. This time she did lower her voice. “I know what her trouble is.”

  Chance stepped into the cool post office lobby. “What is it?”

  “Nobody told her Rancho Milagro is haunted. Really, Chance. Nando was telling me about it the other night at Juana’s first communion party. The party where you were so busy making up to my cousin Lucinda.”

  “I guess we’re pretty lucky to have a sheriff who believes in ghosts. Maybe that’ll help him find Lucinda’s husband. He can hold a séance and some voice will tell him where Jorge disappeared to.”

  “Scoff all you want, Chance, but I’m telling you that’s what’s troubling this Jeannie McMunn. Nando told me all about it. Strange lights in the sky, spooky sounds. Maybe that’s why they call the place Rancho Milagro.”

  “Milagro means miracle, not ghost, remember? Ghost Ranch is up north, Georgia O’Keeffe’s ranch.”

  “Spirits, miracles…whatever. I can tell you this, I don’t want to see either one, God forgive me,” she said, swiftly making the sign of the cross. “Me? I believe the old stories.” She sighed. “Pobrecita. Out there all alone. No husband. No friends.”

  “Give her some time, Doreen. She’s only been here a little while.”

  “What do you suppose she meant by writing that business about spontaneous combustion in her notebook?”

  Chance pushed his hat back and raised his eyebrows at her. “You read upside down in addition to your other talents, Doreen?” he asked.

  “Anyone who works at the post office does. It’s part of our job. Besides, I saw you reading it, too, and I never heard tell of any bronc rider who needed to read other people’s stuff.”

  Jeannie McMunn turned the air-conditioning in the new Jeep Cherokee to maximum and leaned forward to draw in the blast of cold air. She felt wilted by the heat—“a hundred and five hot degrees in the shade of Grandma’s apple tree,” the radio weatherman had called it. She didn’t doubt it whatsoever. She’d sit here and absorb all the cold she could before driving the few short blocks to the courthouse to talk with the sheriff—Nando Gallegos, cousin of Doreen, the postal clerk.

  She thought about the letter she’d mailed, on a two-day overnight status, no less. In just two days, Leeza and Corrie, her best friends in the world, her family of choice and her mainstays in a life gone crazy, would be opening the biggest pack of lies she’d ever told—except for the lies she’d told the day her husband, David, and baby Angela were killed. She’d told them everything was fine that day, too, that she would survive. That she’d be okay in time.

  In the letter she’d given Doreen to mail for her, she’d once again said all was well. She’d told them the ranch renovations were completed—and hadn’t mentioned she’d run afoul of inspectors who had blood vendettas with contractors and who wouldn’t sign off on that contractor’s work and that only a few judicious bribes, much pleading and in two instances hiring of other contractors had resulted in Rancho Milagro’s okay for final inspection.

  She’d told them it finally rained, but didn’t add that when the downpour came, lightning struck the prairie and started grass fires and that a wall of
muddy water flash flooded the new dirt road that cost a fortune to grade in the first place.

  And she’d written that the state had finally approved their status as a foster-care ranch, not bothering to mention that their plan of becoming a full-care facility for orphans wouldn’t become a reality until such time as hell apparently froze over or another inspector’s feud with some other warring family might end, whichever came first.

  And she’d said their first two foster children were charming. This was perhaps the biggest lie of all. One had arrived at the ranch some thirty miles north of Carlsbad all alone and without a scrap of paperwork and refused to—or couldn’t—speak. A host of doctors, speaking both English and Spanish, had examined the boy and found no physical reason for the silence, and no governmental agency could lay claim to him. He was a mystery in every sense of the word.

  And the other child, a girl of fifteen going on forty, with an attitude bigger than the Washington Monument, had been passed from one foster-care situation to another and, as far as Jeannie could see, hated the entire world and every single member of its population, with her newest guardian, Jeannie McMunn, heading the long list.

  Leeza and Corrie would see right through her cheery web of lies. They always did. She moaned, leaning her head against the steering wheel. They knew her too well. They would read between every line, see every falsehood and then would call her on the cell phone and send endless amounts of e-mail—which she didn’t have to worry about, as the phones at the ranch weren’t connected yet. At least she didn’t have to explain away the lack of telephone lines. This lack was logical. No wires had been attached to the canted telephone poles running beside the road leading to the ranch.

  But within two days of receiving the letter, one of them would hop on a plane and come see what had happened to her dear, demented friend.

  She’d turned the letter over to Doreen only moments ago. She could get it back. She could stop the lies, stop the questions and most of all stop her friends from coming to check on her. Jeannie drew in a final deep breath of cold air, turned off the Jeep and leaped from the vehicle onto the heat-slammed Carlsbad street. Whatever temperature it might be in the weatherman’s grandmother’s apple-tree shade, the asphalt in down-town Carlsbad added at least another five degrees to the August heat. It was hot enough to kill.