When she opened her eyes, it was morning.
* * *
It was Saturday. Cain had left Jerome early enough to reach the ranch before sunrise. Working with Billy and Quinn, two of the full-time hands, Cain checked on Sultan, a big sorrel gelding with an injured tendon, then headed back to the house for one of Maria’s hearty breakfasts.
Billy, Quinn, Sanchez, and Denver sat down with Cain at a long wooden table in a corner of the big open kitchen and dug into platters of bacon, eggs, and toast.
“Pass the bacon,” Quinn said. He was late fifties, had worked on the ranch since he was a kid. He had darkly tanned, weathered skin and brown hair turning gray. Quinn knew more about ranching than Cain could learn in the next ten years.
Billy, who’d just turned twenty-two, had worked on the ranch summers and weekends until he’d graduated from high school, then gone to work full-time to help support his mom and little brother. Blond and lanky, Billy was a hard worker and never complained. Sanchez, nearing sixty, was one of the hardest-working men Cain had ever known. Denver Garrison was the latest addition, forty years old, a lean, fit, good-looking man, an expert rider who had trained a number of cutting-horse champions.
The ranch could probably make do with fewer people, but, except for Denver, whom Cain had personally hired, the men were part of the Cross Bar family. Along with Maria, they made a good team.
Cain thought of Jenny and wished he could show her the ranch. But Jenny was skittish. He had a feeling he would need to take things slowly.
He still wasn’t sure what there was about her that had snagged his interest so strongly, but since the first time he had seen her in the Copper Star, he’d been intrigued. He hadn’t remembered her at first—it had been nearly fifteen years since he’d seen her.
That first day in the saloon, she’d been patching up a kid who’d taken a bad fall out front on his bicycle. The kid was afraid to go home, afraid of what his dad would do when he found out about the ruined bike.
Jenny cleaned the scrapes on the boy’s knees and the cut on his hand; then she and one of the guys in the bar had managed to put the bike back together.
Maybe some things never changed—Jenny was still more like the fresh-faced girl she had been in high school than any of the women he usually dated, females who spent most of their time in beauty salons, expensive spas, or shopping for designer clothes. For a while, he’d enjoyed having a beautiful, high-maintenance female on his arm. But at some point over the last few years, the whole scene had begun to bore him.
He’d decided it was time to make some changes. First, he’d bought the ranch, a place where he could escape the pressures of his business; then he’d bought the hotel, a place to give his grandmother her dream. It wasn’t long after that he’d begun to feel better, more the person he wanted to be.
Still, something was missing. Cain was determined to find out what it was.
* * *
It was Saturday night. Last night’s storm had returned midday and worsened into the evening. Still, the hotels were full, the bars and saloons as busy as they’d been the night before.
The Copper Star would be open late, so Jenny would be spending the night in town again, going home to Cottonwood Sunday morning for a day of badly needed rest.
It was early, not quite nine p.m., the bar crowded with customers. Sometime during the last two hours, she had developed a headache. It didn’t happen often, but if she didn’t lie down, it was going to get a whole lot worse.
Jenny said good night to Troy, who would be closing up, as he often did, spoke to the servers, Cassie and Molly, and headed upstairs.
Tonight, she’d be staying in a room in the newly remodeled wing of the hotel.
She couldn’t put it off any longer. She needed to know if something suspicious was actually happening there.
The hallway was empty, room 8 a little chilly when she opened the door and walked inside. Jenny glanced around as she turned up the heat, proud of the décor in the hotel rooms, especially in the new section. An old-fashioned, queen-size four-poster formed the centerpiece of the room, while a blue-flowered porcelain washbasin and pitcher sat on an oak dresser with ornate brass handles.
With the exception of the four-poster beds, all the rooms were unique, this one done in cream and pale blue—the curtains, the quilt, and the upholstery on the oak rocker next to the round, piecrust table by the window.
Stripping off her plaid western shirt, stretch jeans, and sneakers, typical of the clothes she wore in the bar, she opened her overnight bag and pulled on a pink cotton sleep-tee with I LOVEJEROMEand a heart on the front.
Just being away from the loud music, raucous laughter and conversation downstairs helped her headache, which was still pounding in her temples, but wasn’t nearly as brutal as it could sometimes get.
There were no TVs in the hotel. People came to Jerome to get away from the pressures of their everyday lives. The tiny town provided the quiet visitors wanted.
Jenny turned back the covers on the bed and slid beneath the cool cotton sheets. She’d been up late last night and, after her encounter with the imaginary ghosts in the hall, hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Tonight, she was sleeping in the new section. Jenny prayed none of the ghostly incidents people reported were real.
CHAPTER SIX
WITH A FULL MOON TO HELP HIM NAVIGATE, CAIN TOOK THEcurves up Highway 89A a little faster than he should have. He was driving his newly purchased, forest-green Jaguar F-type, a sleek two-door that really hugged the road.
