Under Threat

him.”
Her husband shook his head. “Why didn’t we have all boys?”
“Our sons will fall in love one day and will probably have their heartbreaks as well.” She had the feeling that Hud hadn’t heard the latest. “She’s going out with Deputy Dillon Ramsey tonight.”
Hud swore and raked a hand through his graying hair. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that there was something about him that made me nervous.”
She laughed. “If you’re that worried about him, then why don’t you talk to her?”
Her husband shot her a look that said he knew their stubborn daughter only too well. “Tell her not to do something and damned if she isn’t even more bound and determined to do it.”
Like he had to tell her that. Mary was just like her mother and grandmother. “It’s just a date,” Dana said, hoping there wasn’t anything to worry about.
Hud grumbled under his breath as he reached for his Stetson. “I have to get back to work.” His look softened. “You think she’s all right?”
Dana wished she knew. “She will be, given time. I think she needs to get some closure from Chase. His not answering her letter could be what she needed to move on.”
“I hope not with Dillon Ramsey.”
“Seriously, what is it about him that worries you?” Dana asked.
He frowned. “I can’t put my finger on it. I hired him as a favor to his uncle down in Wyoming. Dillon’s cocky and opinionated.”
Dana laughed. “I used to know a deputy like that.”
Hud grinned. “Point taken. He’s also still green.”
“I don’t think that’s the part that caught Mary’s attention.”
Her husband groaned. “I’d like to see her with someone with both feet firmly planted on the ground.”
“You mean someone who isn’t in law enforcement. Chase Steele wasn’t.”
“I liked him well enough,” Hud said grudgingly. “But he hadn’t sowed his wild oats yet. They were both too young, and he needed to get out of here and get some maturity under his belt, so to speak.”
“She wanted him to stay and fight for her. Sound familiar?”
Hud’s smile was sad. “Sometimes a man has to go out into the world, grow up, figure some things out.” He reached for her hand. “That’s what I did when I left. It made me realize what I wanted. You.”
She stepped into his arms, leaning into his strength, thankful for the years they’d had together raising a family on this ranch. “Mary’s strong.”
“Like her mother.”
“She’ll be all right,” Dana said, hoping it was true.
Chase was determined to drive as far as he could the first day, needing to put miles behind him. He thought of Fiona and felt sick to his stomach. He kept going over it in his head, trying to understand if he’d done anything to lead her on beyond that one night. He was clear with her that he was not in the market for anything serious. His biggest mistake though was allowing himself a moment of weakness when he’d let himself be seduced.
But before that he’d explained to her that he was in love with someone else. She said she didn’t care. That she wasn’t looking for a relationship. She’d said that she needed him that night because she’d had a bad day.
Had he really fallen for that? He had. And when she became obsessed, he’d been shocked and felt sorry for her. Maybe he shouldn’t have.
He felt awful, and not even the miles he put behind him made him feel better. He wished he’d never left Montana, but at the time, leaving seemed the only thing to do. He’d worked his way south, taking carpenter jobs, having no idea where he was headed.
When he’d gotten the call from his mother to say she was dying and that she’d needed to see him, he’d quit his job, packed up and headed for Quartsite, Arizona, in hopes that his mother would finally give him the name.
Chase had never known who his father was. It was a secret his mother refused to reveal for reasons of her own. Once in Arizona, though, he’d realized that she planned to take that secret to her grave. On her death bed, she’d begged him to do one thing for her. Would he take her ashes back to Montana and scatter them in the Gallatin Canyon near Big Sky?
“That’s where I met your father,” she said, her voice weak. “He was the love of my life.”
She hadn’t given him a name, but at least he knew now that the man had lived in Big Sky at the time of Chase’s conception. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
He was in the middle of nowhere just outside of Searchlight, Nevada, when smoke began to boil out from under the pickup’s hood. He started to pull over when the engine made a loud sound and stopped dead. As he rolled to stop, his first thought was: could Fiona have done something to his pickup before he left?
Anger filled him to overflowing. But it was another emotion that scared him. He had a sudden awful feeling that something terrible was going to happen to Mary if he didn’t get to Montana. Soon. The feeling was so strong that he thought about leaving his pickup beside the road and thumbing a ride the rest of the way.
Chase tried to tamp down the feeling, telling himself that it was because of Fiona and what she’d done before he’d left when she’d tried to kill him, not to mention what she’d done to his pickup. The engine was shot. He’d have to get a new one and that was going to take a while.
That bad feeling though wouldn’t go away. After he called for a tow truck, he dialed the Jensen Ranch, the closest ranch to Mary’s. He figured if anyone would know how Mary was doing, it would be Beth Anne Jensen. She answered on the third ring. “It’s Chase.” He heard the immediate change in her voice and realized she was probably the wrong person to