Mr. Taken Read online

  She gave a sardonic chuckle. “Just because we’ve been passing each other on the ranch since I got here, that doesn’t mean you know me. You have merely seen me. There are things in my past that a man like you would never accept. We have fundamental differences. Number one—that you have more dates than a fruitcake. I don’t want a man whose attention I have to struggle to keep.”

  “Unless we go out, how do you know if we have fundamental differences?” He leaned against the chair closest to him. “And wait... Does fruitcake even have dates in it?”

  She groaned as she tried not to smile. He might have been right, she didn’t know if there were dates in fruitcake, but she was never going to admit it. He never ceased to irritate her. He couldn’t take anything seriously—but then again, it was one of the things she couldn’t help being attracted to.

  “Just sit down,” she said, pointing to the chair he leaned on. “I will fix your leg. As long as you promise not to ask me out again.”

  “Today or ever?” he said, giving her a cheeky grin.

  She sighed, not wanting to give him the answer she should have. She equally loved and hated the feelings he created within her. It was so much easier to not give in to her attraction, to keep out of the reach of any man’s attentions. As soon as men entered her life, only bad things seemed to follow in their wake—drama, intrigue and danger.

  Love was just too risky—especially with a man like Colter, the most eligible bachelor in the county.

  He plopped down into the chair and she went to get the first-aid kit. He pulled up his shredded pants leg, unveiling his bloodied and badly cut leg. Slivers of wood were embedded in his skin.

  “Maybe you should go into the emergency room?” she asked, sitting down on the floor at his feet.

  He waved her off. “It’s fine as long as we get it cleaned out.”

  It struck her how strong he was. He had to be hurting, yet he still fought through it to make jokes with her. She didn’t want to admit it, but he really was an incredible man. Not that she was in the market for a man—no matter how incredible.

  “You didn’t give me an answer about asking you out again,” he said as she set about cleaning the wound on his leg.

  She patted at the cut with the gauze soaked in hydrogen peroxide as she tried to come up with the right answer. “It’s not you... You’re great. It’s just that right now...” She glanced toward the office.

  His face dropped and she watched as the hope faded from his eyes. It was almost as if part of his soul had seeped from him, and she hated herself for making something like that happen. Yet she couldn’t change her mind. She had to stick to her guns.

  “Besides,” she continued, “you need to focus on where you’re walking. If you think about me all the time—I mean, look at what happened this time.” She motioned to his leg. “You fell through a floor. I’m a risk to your health.” As the words escaped her, she couldn’t help thinking about how many times that had been true for the people she had gotten close to, throughout her life.

  No matter where she went, or what she did, she only brought danger, sadness and loss to the ones she loved. To protect him, and the people of the ranch, she could never love again.

  Chapter Six

  Overnight the sky had opened and fresh glittering snowflakes adorned Colter’s front yard. The weatherman was calling for another six inches of snow today and possibly another six tomorrow. Yet in rural Montana, six inches could turn out to be two inches, or it could be two feet—it all depended on the way the wind decided to blow and the fickle whims of the winter storm.

  He loved this time of year. Some hated the cold and the constant grayness that came with living in the valley, but he’d always thought of the world around him like a blanket. The mountains were his borders and the clouds were his cover, as though he were protected from the brutal world thanks to the bosom of the world itself.

  He pulled on a red sweater his mother had given him last Christmas. He needed to get back to the ranch. His parents would need his help plowing and getting ready. There were only two more days until the party. He’d need to fix the floor of the barn. Not to mention being on hand to greet the visitors who would be starting to arrive for the ranch’s holiday festivities.

  If truth be told, though his parents would appreciate his help, he knew they could do it on their own—what and who he really wanted to help was Whitney and the poor little dog they had saved. Or, if she asked, that would be a convenient excuse for finding his way to the ranch’s main office.

  The snow crunched under his boots as he walked out to his pickup. He started it, letting the engine warm up and stave off the bitter cold. His breath was a white cloud even in the cab of the truck. According to the dashboard temperature gauge, it was ten below. This kind of weather only lent itself to three things—breakdowns, house fires and frostbite.

  He wouldn’t be surprised if he got called into work. It would be an overtime shift, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was find himself there. His hand and leg were sore from yesterday’s fall. He’d be all right, but it would be an annoyance that he would have to ignore in order to do his job—and anytime something like this happened, he always had a sinking fear that it could hinder his attempt to save someone’s life. He hated the thought of letting someone else down thanks to his own weakness.

  As he drove toward the ranch, his mind wandered to his other weakness—Whitney. He couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. She didn’t want to be with him; she had made that clear. Yet, when he was around her, there was just some...a spark. Something seemed to buzz between them, and from the look in her eyes, she couldn’t ignore the feeling, either.

  He just had to be around her, even if it wasn’t as anything more than a friend. He was simply drawn to her. Maybe it would turn into something more than it was, and maybe it wouldn’t, but at the very least he could have her in his life.

  Whitney really was one of the most confusing women he’d ever met. One minute she seemed open to the world and a future, and the next it was like a curtain fell over her and she slipped back into the shadows of her thoughts and closed him out. Colter understood it. He had seen the look a thousand times with his brother Waylon. It was the look that came with loss and pain.

  She had never really talked about her life, but she didn’t need to tell him in order for him to understand that she had some baggage. Everyone had a past. Though he tried hard to hide from his, enveloping it with humor and lightheartedness, it didn’t hurt any less when he pressed too hard against it. If she would only talk to him, maybe they could work through it together.

  He hoped.

  Or maybe her secrets were darker than he could ever imagine. Maybe she’d killed a man. Left someone on the side of a road. He laughed at his ridiculous thought. She wasn’t the kind. She was a tad rough around the edges, but was soft in all the ways that were important. Yet, as much as he was attracted to her, he couldn’t help feeling like he was in the dark. She was hiding something from him, something she feared sharing with anyone, something that he desperately wanted to know.

  Maybe that was what he was most attracted to her for—her mysteriousness. She challenged him in a way no other woman had. She was like a quest, and it made him want her that much more.

  As he neared the ranch, there was a line of cars in the middle of the road. One of the drivers was standing beside his car, holding up his cell phone as though he was searching for a signal.

  Colter stopped next to the man and rolled down his window. “What’s going on?”

  “The road’s blocked. And of course there isn’t a cell phone signal to be had,” the man said, his voice flecked with a Northeastern accent, as he pushed his phone deep into his pocket. “And I don’t even know if we’re in the right place.” He motioned to his car.

  It was a white rental, the kind that most picked up whe
n they arrived at their little airport. It had regular tires that made a day like this, one in which everything was slick and treacherous, that much more dangerous.

  “You heading to Dunrovin?” Colter asked.

  The man nodded. “We heard that it was magical, but so far all we’re finding is crappy roads and poor technology. Even your airport was like walking into a living room from the seventies.”

  Colter couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. If he had to explain to someone what the place looked like, he wouldn’t have come up with something as perfect as the man’s description. The airport was all orange and brown, and its walls were accented with the dark cherrywood that harked back to the day it had been built.

  “No offense,” the man added, his breath clouding the air.

  “None taken. Admittedly there are times when even I have to agree we are a little bit behind the rest of the country.”

  “But that’s all part of its charm,” the man said. “Except when you need to make a call.” He laughed.

  “Don’t worry about it. I got a phone that works. Why don’t you just go and get warmed up? I’ll make sure you get to the ranch.”

  The man gave him an appreciative nod and, tucking his face into the collar of his jacket, jogged back to his car.

  Colter got out of his truck and made his way to the front of the line. There, in the world of white, was a fallen pine. Its dark green boughs and its buckskin trunk were partly masked in newly fallen snow. Yet, as he neared the tree that lay across the road, he could see the fresh cut marks of a chain saw at the tree’s base.

  Tacked to the center of the tree, between some branches, was a red envelope. It was flecked with snow and he blew it off, his breath warming some of the flakes enough to make fat wet blobs on the paper that looked almost like tears.

  He grabbed it and opened the seal. The cold winter chill bit at his fingers as he pulled the card from the envelope. The card had a picture of his family and the staff in front of the ranch’s sign. He recognized it as the family’s yearly newsletter. They sent it out to everyone in the community and former guests. Thousands had to have gone out. Yet this one was different. Each of the people’s faces had been x-ed out with a black marker. He flipped over the card. On the back it read:

  Mess with my family. I’ll mess with yours.

  This is WAR.

  Chills rippled down his spine as he looked at the jagged handwriting.

  The bomb, the floor...it all made sense. Someone had been trying to send them a message. Someone was coming after them.

  He stared at the letter. Whose family had they been messing with?

  His thoughts moved to William Poe and his wife’s death. William had threatened them, as he had sworn that their family was to blame for his wife’s demise, but he wouldn’t do something so treacherous. He was the kind who would pull political strings, not obstruct roads to deter guests from making it to the ranch, or send makeshift Molotov cocktails as a warning.

  His wife’s killer’s only relatives had been Christina and her young daughter, Winnie, who were both in Fort Bragg with Waylon until they came back in a few weeks to celebrate Christmas. Truth be told, Colter had a feeling that part of the reason Christina had been so willing to go with Waylon was that it was so hard to face the community after everything that had happened with her sister.

  If only his answers were so easy. Right now all he had was a threatening note, the remnants of a bomb and a series of scrapes and bruises.

  He glanced back at the note, trying his best to see something about it that would help him get an idea, yet he found himself concentrating on the dark ink of the letters.

  Maybe there was something going on, something deeper in the past that he didn’t know about. His parents didn’t share everything.

  He walked back to the guy in the car and tapped on his window as he stuffed the envelope into his pocket.

  “Is there anything you can do?” the guy asked.

  Colter barely heard the man as he ran his fingers over the edge of the envelope in his pocket. “Huh?”

  “The tree,” the guy said, frowning. “Is there something you can do?”

  “Oh, yeah. No worries. I have a chain saw in the back of my truck.”

  “You carry a saw around with you?” the guy asked, giving him a look of disbelief.

  In Montana, there was a culture of live and let live, and with that came a certain amount of self-reliance. If you needed something fixed, or to get yourself out of a jam, it was up to you and your ingenuity. In his world, he had to be like a Boy Scout and always be prepared.

  “This is hardly my first tree across a road. It ain’t nothing,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’ll get it out of the way in a sec.”

  It took a few minutes thanks to the pain in his calf, but before long he’d cut the tree into manageable pieces and loaded it all into the back of his truck for next year’s firewood. He waved the cars on, but all he could think about as he worked was the fact that someone had done all this to send them a message.

  If he hadn’t come along, the guests would have been stuck out there for hours until someone found out about the tree. It would have been an even worse start to what, for many of their guests, was meant to be a restful vacation away from these kinds of headaches.

  The ranch was bustling as he arrived. The man he’d talked to had a key in his hand and was making his way to his room as Colter parked. Luckily, the guy had a smile on his face. He must have been talking to Whitney. She always had a way of making people happy. It was why she was so good at her job, and no doubt why his mother had hired her—even though it had to be hard on the ranch’s finances.

  Another couple walked out of the office. They were carrying hot chocolates, complete with big white marshmallows and cups that looked like snowmen.

  He waited a moment for the guests to make it to the ranch’s assortment of houses and to their appointed rooms. It felt good as he watched the movement of the comings and goings of the place. It reminded him of the many good years that they’d had, years when there were so many guests that they would be booked six months to a year in advance.

  They would get there again. He knew it.

  He reached into his back pocket, took the envelope out and glanced at the card. Someone wanted this all to end just as much as he wanted it all to continue. The perpetrator was right—the place was at war. He’d have to give this place everything he could to bring it back to life—and a bright future—even if that meant giving up his own dreams.

  He put the envelope on his dashboard and sat back for a moment. What were his dreams?

  It had been a while since he’d really given any thought to his own life and where he wanted to go. As it was, his job was the kind that had a certain cap. He’d never get rich doing what he was doing. He’d probably never become the fire marshal or the captain, no matter how many years he put into the place—the odds were stacked against him for that kind of job. However, none of that really mattered to him.

  If he had to put words to his true feelings and desires, what he wanted most was a family of his own. He thought about Waylon and his daughter, Winnie. He loved that girl, and it made his heart heavy to think of her all the way across the country. She had brought such joy and lightheartedness to the ranch.

  He was ready to have a life that revolved around the smile and cheers of a kid like her. In fact, it would be great to have children about the same ages as his brothers’. It would bring them all back together again, all back to this wondrous place and to share his world with.

  More than that, he wanted a woman in his life, a wife whom he could share it all with—the joy of having a family, spending nights around a warm fire and taking the horses out for a ride on the weekends. He wanted a wife who would light up when she saw him come home. He wanted a wife to help him make a home, a wife
who could be his partner in everything life brought.

  Until now, he hadn’t realized how lonely he was. Sure, he had his parents and brothers, but it wasn’t the same as being in a loving and committed relationship—a connection that was true and deep. He longed for the kind of bond in which they could finish each other’s sentences, become their better selves.

  He wanted to be completed.

  Whitney walked out of the office and, not seeing him, made her way toward the end of the house. She picked up from the ground an orange plastic box that held his father’s chain saw and made her way to the woodshed. He reached down and was about to open the truck’s door, but stopped. Why would she have had his father’s chain saw? It didn’t make sense.

  He sat back and watched her as she disappeared into the woodshed. A few minutes later she came out and tucked her hair behind her ear and locked the door.

  She reached down and picked a bit of sawdust from her jacket and flicked it into the snow and glanced around like she was checking to make sure no one had seen her. Was it possible that she had been putting the saw away after she had used it to fell the tree in the road?

  He shook the thought from his head. Just because he didn’t know who had sent the threatening note didn’t mean everyone around him was guilty. And the last person he could see being responsible for the fallen tree was her. She had no reason to disrupt the flow of guests. Her future was just as dependent on the success or failure of the ranch as the rest of them. It would have been counterintuitive.

  Yet whoever was behind the sabotage that was occurring had to know a bit about the comings and goings of the ranch.

  He moved slightly and Whitney caught sight of him and waved. He smiled and returned her wave before getting out of his truck.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked, approaching him and stopping by the front steps of the porch leading to the office.

  He couldn’t ignore the way she quickly glanced back over her shoulder toward the shed.

  Her eyes were bright and her face was red from the cold, but she stood there and waited until he walked to her side. “I thought I’d come out and give you all a hand after the storm. Thought you’d need a little plowing to be done or something.”