Lone Star Redemption. Colleen Thompson

      Chapter 3

      Zach was astonished at how swiftly his mother jumped up and trotted upstairs to the landing. Showing no sign of illness, she knelt before Eden and wrapped the tiny girl in her thin arms.

      “No, sweetheart. You remember,” she insisted. “Your mama’s job has her flying overseas now. That’s why she had to leave you with me.”

      Zach’s gut tightened as his suspicion deepened. Was she reminding Eden of a truth—or coaching the child to stick to some story she’d come up with?

      Looking frightened, the girl stared into his mother’s face. “I want to stay with you, Grandma, and Uncle Zach, too, and my pony. Please don’t make me go back there. I don’t want to leave.”

      “I promise, baby, you don’t have to. Your mama signed the papers so you can stay with us forever.”

      “And get my puppies, too, soon as they’re ready to leave their mommy?” Eden asked, brightening at the mention of her favorite subject.

      Zach’s mother shot him an aggrieved look, since he’d been the fool who’d taken her with him to see his friend Nate, a bachelor who was even more clueless than Zach was when it came to four-year-olds. Not only had he shown Eden the litter of fluffy Australian shepherd pups in the barn, he’d encouraged her to cuddle and play with them, then pick out the one that she liked best.

      When Eden, who was as crazy about animals as Ian had been at her age, had been unable to choose between a merle female and a male tricolor, Nate had joked, “Then why not take both, Eden? This week only, they’re free to pretty girls.”

      Zach was still mad at the big idiot, though the two had been fast friends since high school. It wasn’t so much that Zach minded the idea of getting a dog for the ranch—especially one from Nate’s Bonnie, one of the smartest, most intuitive animals he’d ever known—but puppies were a lot of work. Besides, his mother, who had always firmly believed that animals belonged outdoors, had been quick to remind him how Eden had cried herself to sleep for days when they wouldn’t let the pony come up to bed with her at night.

      When his mama didn’t answer right away, Eden said, “I already thought of the best names for them. The girl’s gonna be Sweetheart and the boy is Lionheart. Sweetheart’ll kiss me when I’m lonesome and Lionheart will chase away the scary dreams at night.”

      “Those are good names.” As Zach followed Eden and his mother upstairs, he was troubled by the girl’s mention of the night terrors that had her waking up screaming several times a week. During the daylight hours, she seemed happy enough to ride sweet old Mr. Butters under his watchful eye or to curl up on his mama’s lap and listen to the same children’s books she’d once read to him and Ian. And he’d never once heard the girl ask about the mother who’d abandoned her. And she never mentioned Ian, either, or showed any interest in looking at old photos of her father.

      Her alleged father, he reminded himself, realizing there was not a shred of proof other than a stranger’s word. How could he have been so gullible as to accept it at face value? Was he as addled by grief as the mother who had raised him? Or maybe it had been her improvement, the swift change from deep depression to life and purpose, that had convinced him. A man saw what he wanted to, when his heart got in the way.

      Looking deeply troubled, his mother said, “You can bring home the puppies, darling. As soon as they’re big enough...”

      Her voice faltered, and she suddenly dropped to her rear on the hallway’s carpeted floor.

      “Mama?” he asked, taking her sagging shoulders to keep her from falling onto her side. “Are you all right?”

      “Oh, my,” she managed, lifting a hand to her head. “It’s just my medication—I’m afraid it’s made me dizzy.”

      He helped her to bed then, but as Eden “tucked Grandma in,” he thought he glimpsed a measure of shrewdness in his mother’s eyes, a look that more than half convinced him she was deliberately exaggerating whatever symptoms she’d been feeling.

      And even more deliberately avoiding the hard questions that she knew he must ask.

      * * *

      Sheriff George Canter stepped down from his Trencher County SUV, wearing a khaki-colored uniform and a look of disapproval. A tall, chiseled man whose broad-brimmed hat shaded his eyes, he made a beeline for Jessie, who’d been waiting with Henry in the car outside the diner for almost an hour.

      “He looks madder than McFarland,” Henry said. “Maybe we should just forget this and move on.”

      Wondering how the cameraman had survived decades in their line of work without a backbone, Jessie silenced him with a look. Once she’d slipped her phone back into her pocket, she climbed out to meet what passed for law enforcement in this one-horse town.

      “Sheriff Canter. Good to see you.” She barely restrained herself from adding, finally.

      He studied her carefully before replying, “So you’re the little lady who felt the need to drag me halfway across the county because she got herself pushed.”

      Jessie struggled to hold her temper in check.

      “Where I come from,” she said tightly, “a shove is an assault.”

      He snorted. “Turns out we got the memo on that all the way up here in Rusted Spur, too, Miss Layton. But at best, it’s only a Class C Misdemeanor, hardly worth the effort to write the ticket, by the time all’s said and done.”

      “He knocked me to the ground, Sheriff. I thought he was going to stomp my head in with those studded boots he was wearing.” She shuddered, remembering how he’d stopped short at her scream.

      “But he didn’t really hurt you, did he?” The sheriff removed his hat to push back thick, dark hair with splashes of silver at the temples. A handsome man who looked to be in his early forties, he narrowed his dark eyes.

      “Not really, no, but he threatened to—”

      “And where the hell were you, sir, during all this?” Canter challenged Henry, who had gotten out of the car.

      Flushing fiercely, the smaller man admitted, “I was going for my phone. I’d left it in the car, you see, and— I did tell him to back off.”

      The sheriff made a scoffing sound and shook his head in disgust, clearly unimpressed with the cameraman’s conduct.

      “Listen, Sheriff,” Jessie said. “Danny McFarland threatened to kick my teeth down my throat next time, if I didn’t get in the car and go back to wherever it was I came from.”

      “To your TV station back in Dallas,” Canter supplied, the creases in his forehead underscoring his disdain.

      Fury fading, she blinked at him in surprise. Though she’d given the dispatcher her name, she hadn’t mentioned a word about where she lived or her profession. She’d been hoping to enlist his help in the search for her twin, but in her experience, small-town law enforcement often hated big-city reporters, too many of whom were quick to paint the local cops as ignorant yokels.

      “You’ve been talking to Zach Rayford,” she guessed. For all she knew, the rancher and his mother were his cousins, old friends or the elected sheriff’s main campaign contributors.

      Canter shook his head and smirked. “Might surprise you to know we’ve got the internet at my office. When it’s working, anyhow. Your name caught my attention, so I did a quick search. Didn’t take me twenty seconds to come across your picture on your station’s website.”

      “So I’m a reporter. That doesn’t give some tattooed thug the right to knock me down and threaten my life.”

      “Threaten that pretty smile, you mean,” he reminded her. “Let’s get your story straight.”

      She glared, unable to believe this. “Seriously, Sheriff,