Haystacks and Hoaxes (Cowboy Brand of Justice #3)

Epilogue

February

T he moment Monty Chester was released from the hospital, he started planning his next big holiday function. The posters he printed up and hung around town called it the Festival of Festivals. For the first time in the history of Chester Farm events, however, it didn’t state the theme or the designated charity. Both items had been omitted by Carla Kingston’s special request.

Or royal decree, as he laughingly called it behind her back. And in front of her back. And to everyone else who was in on the secret. What he didn’t know was that the Kingstons and Hefners had reserved his farm as their wedding venue as an excuse to help him rebuild what his nephew, sister, and brother-in-law had destroyed.

Or maybe he did know.

“Thank you again for letting us hijack your victorious return to the stage, sir.” Mila gave a happy twirl in the middle of his newly laid hardwood floor in the living room. Her movements made the white tulle ruffles of her dress fan out around her knees and ankles. She’d been right in her assessment of the dress her sister-in-law had custom designed for her. It made the perfect wedding dress. All it took was a custom designed veil and designer shoes from Modello’s to give it picture perfect finishing touches for her wedding day.

In a twist of pure gold, Chanel had designed a matching gown for Ella Lawton, who was all too happy to wear it. She was somewhere in the house, putting it on right now. Mila was supposed to be helping her, but her mother had chased her off, and Mila was only too happy to let her. Carla Kingston was in her element overseeing their double wedding.

“This isn’t a hijacking, kid. It’s a double wedding that the entire town is eager to celebrate.” Monty Chester ambled her way in his favorite Santa suit to enclose her in a hug. “No one more than me. There’s nothing like a blast of sunshine to chase away the darkness.”

She definitely knew a thing or two about shadows, though hers were fast fading. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his velvety shoulder, swallowing a pang of sadness over how badly the suit had hung on his gaunt frame — right up until her mother and Chanel had helped him stuff it with extra pillows.

“You jumped right into the deep end of the pool today,” she mumbled in a voice choked with emotion. “Instead of taking the proper time to rest.”

“Bah!” He brushed off her concerns. “Happiness is my rest, kid. And seeing you this happy is the drizzle on my cinnamon buns.”

They shared an emotion-charged chuckle over his reference to the dessert bar and feast awaiting their guests in the big barn outside .

Mila leaned back in his arms. “Promise me you’ll rest up after the wedding,” she begged. “Because if there’s any truth to the rumors flying around, you’re about to have an avalanche of requests to reserve your farm as a venue for, well, everything!”

“The avalanche has already begun.” He pretended to stagger backward beneath its weight. “It’s a good thing, too, since I’m not getting any younger.” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial tenor. “In case you haven’t heard, the town council voted to keep the autumn festival and Christmas lights displays going as official community functions. I’m not one hundred percent sure what that means, though your councilman brother insists it’s to take the lion’s share of the work off my shoulders. And that I will gladly get behind!”

So would Mila. She was so happy about all the good things happening that it was making her lightheaded. She waved Mr. Monty excitedly toward the window on the side of the room. “I should’ve brought a spare sketchpad with me,” she murmured, drinking in the scene on the other side of the glass.

Since it was February, the frost outside was real. However, he’d ramped up the atmosphere with a pair of snow machines. They were artfully hidden in the trees, raining white crystals down on the milling guests. It made them look like they were walking in a snow globe.

There were some rustling sounds as Mr. Monty rummaged through his desk against the wall. “Here.” The dear old farmer pressed a notepad and pen into her hand. “Have at it, kid.”

“You’re the best!” She opened the cover and flipped through his scrawl of notes to the first empty page. Then her borrowed pen moved over the page, and his freshly recovered hay huts appeared. Men, women, and children dressed in hats, coats, and mittens moved in and out of them with steaming beverages in hand. It was just like the old days, but better.

“At the mayor’s advice, I advertised for an event manager,” Mr. Monty drawled in her ear. “There she is.” He pointed out the window.

Mila followed his white-gloved finger, wondering why this was the first she was hearing about an event manager. Instead of the shrewd-looking businessman her mind conjured up, she found herself staring at a woman dressed as Mrs. Santa — a very young, very slender, very elegant version of her.

“Whoa there, cowboy!”

The musical voice stopped Johnny Cuba dead in his tracks, but only because the woman it belonged to had stepped directly in his path. The sprightly Mrs. Santa in her ridiculously long red dress was lucky he hadn’t plowed right through her.

“I’m used to people not seeing me,” she joked in such a sweetly regretful voice that he took another look at her.

The glare he’d been attempting to roast her with disappeared. She was younger than he’d been expecting, a lot younger, as in a good fifty years younger beneath her cherry-cheeked makeup. It was skillfully applied. He was betting she’d paid a professional to do it.

“The perils of being four feet eleven and a half inches and not a hair taller,” she continued in the same mournful voice. It was accompanied by a mischievous twinkle in her eyes that tugged at his heartstrings. He, too, tended to crack jokes to cover what he was really feeling. Over the past two years, he’d become an expert at it. It was far better to be the guy who kept the room laughing instead of the guy everyone pitied.

“Eh, you make up for it in other ways.” He winked at her to let her know he found her attractive. The platinum blonde curls wisping against her cheeks weren’t from a wig. They were real. Dyed, but real. He was guessing she was a natural brunette from the color of her roots.

She didn’t seem to have noticed his wink. She was too busy casting a longing look at one of the cups of hot chocolate he was clutching. It was a miracle he hadn’t dumped them all over her.

Though he’d grabbed the second cup for Hawk, he held it out to her. “Who are you, and why haven’t we met before?” Hawk, buddy, this is a clear case of beauty over duty. Surely, the tall, dark, and broody Native American bodyguard would understand. Just in case, Johnny made a mental note to watch his back…and his scalp for the next few days.

“Are all cowboys this bold?” Mrs. Santa gave a merry chuckle that reminded him of sleigh bells as she greedily accepted the cardboard cup. She wrapped both white-mittened hands around it, dipping her head over it to breathe in the delicious chocolate steam.

“Pretty much.” Johnny snorted. Much good it had done him the last two times a gorgeous woman had blown into town. The Hefner brothers had been all too quick to edge him out of any shot at dating either Ella Lawton or Mila Kingston. But today was their wedding day, so maybe it would improve his chances.

“In that case...” Mrs. Santa gave a ballerina twirl in her red velvet gown, drawing his attention back to her. “I’m Caro Madison, the new event planner for Chester Farm.” She gave another one of her tinkling laughs. “Technically, I was born Caroline Bennington Madison, but my mother is the only person who’s ever called me that.” She peeked at him from beneath her impressively long, dark eyelashes. Probably fake. “And only when I was in trouble.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her, since he could certainly relate. As the only child of a pair of rodeo champions, he’d wallowed in the attention that came with being a spoiled only child — right up to when tragedy had struck. Afterward, their well-meaning sympathy had become unbearable. He’d moved hundreds of miles away to escape it.

“And you are?” she prodded coyly when he fell silent.

He gave her a look of mock surprise. “Are all southern belles this forward?”

“Not at all!” She fluttered her lashes at him, looking mildly abashed. “I’m actually pretty rusty at it.” She glanced away from him, growing pensive. “I lost my husband some time ago. It’s been…difficult.” She drew a shuddery breath and lapsed into silence.

Private investigator Ashley Perkins watched Mrs. Santa from a distance. It had been easy to join the flood of townsfolk pouring into Chester Farm this morning. No one had even bothered checking her ID. The moment she’d pulled up to the gated old homestead in her borrowed pickup truck and Santa hat, she’d been waved on through.

Her mission was simple — to keep Mrs. Santa in her sights. It had taken over two months of intense detective work to locate the former housekeeper of the late Mr. Clark. However, his daughter and son-in-law were sparing no cost in finding the man’s killer. Assuming, of course, he’d been murdered at all. The coroner said it was suicide. According to Ashley’s digging, however, the same coroner had labeled three other deaths in the greater Dallas area as suicide during the past five years. All of them elderly men. All of them wealthy. All of them connected, at least in passing, to the grieving widow, Caroline Madison —the tireless queen of personal services. Her company, Sunrise Solutions, offered everything from dog walking to meal preparation to one-on-one personal trainer sessions. And now event planning, apparently.

It was possible the woman was every inch the professional jack-of-all-trades she claimed to be. She was certainly adept at changing her colors to match her environment. The Mrs. Santa costume was a nice touch. If the late Mr. Clark’s family was correct, however, Caroline Madison was using Sunrise Solutions as a cover for a much darker set of activities — one in which she used her personal services to ingratiate herself into the lives of wealthy older men, helped herself to their bank accounts, then murdered the key witness before moving on to her next target.

It was the same behavior exhibited by the Latrodectus , the scientific name for the black widow spider — a venomous arthropod known for cannibalizing its mates.

Ashley sipped the hot apple cider someone had thrust into her hands. It was good. Fresh. Possibly made from the apples that were grown in the orchard beyond the fence up ahead. The limbs of the apple trees were bare right now, stretching like the arms of skeletons toward the morning sun.

She wrinkled her nose as she forced the image from her mind. Her thoughts had been way too grisly since the shootout she’d been caught in on the job six months ago. One of the bullets had lodged itself in her shoulder, a mere millimeter outside the confines of her bulletproof vest. The ensuing blood loss, shattered bone, and infection had nearly taken her from this world.

Her fiancé had been all too quick to point out her sudden increase in paranoia and negativity. Talk about kicking a dog while she was down! She’d thanked him for his non-professional assessment of her condition by breaking up with him, something he was refusing to accept. Before she’d driven to Heart Lake two nights ago, he’d doubled down on his sentiments in a text message.

I’ll give you your space for now, but it’s not over between us.

Some women would’ve considered his ongoing pursuit of her to be romantic. However, she wasn’t in the mood to be relentlessly hounded by a man who’d never called her anything besides Perkins. Not sweetie. Not honey. Not babe. From her perspective, it had been over between them long before she made their breakup official. The sooner he accepted it, the sooner they could both move on with their lives. They’d been engaged for over three years. If they were going to get married, they would’ve done it by now.

The cowboy Caroline Madison was currently flirting with was more like the tall, dark, and dashing heroes that filled Ashley’s daydreams. In her defense, her daydreams lately had been largely laced with pain meds and too much caffeine. She’d always had a bit of a weakness for men in boots and Stetsons — the opposite of her by-the-books ex in his perfectly creased trousers and dress shirts.

The most remarkable thing about this particular cowboy, though, wasn’t his windblown black hair or rugged good looks. It was that he wasn’t the least bit Caro Madison’s usual type. For starters, he wasn’t old. He didn’t appear wealthy, either, though it was impossible to tell the size of a man’s bank account at a quick glance.

What are you up to, Caroline? It was possible the woman was merely offering to do his laundry or serve as his personal chef.

Ashley edged closer to them. Though she’d recently left the Dallas Police Department to open her own PI business, she had six years of field experience under her belt as a police detective. Moving through a crowd undetected was her specialty. Her faded jeans and the Santa hat perched crookedly over her cascade of auburn hair were the perfect blend.

A flurry of barking made her jolt. For a split second, she was back on the job. The police dogs had barked up a raucous warning, right before the bullets started flying.

She instinctively lurched away from the two little balls of fur hurtling her direction, preparing to hit the ground. Instead, she slammed against an unmovable wall of rock-solid male.

Her cardboard cup of apple cider slapped against the cowboy’s leather jacket, sending an arc of steaming liquid upward. It caught him right smack in the jaw.

His wince of pain told her the scalding liquid hadn’t cooled nearly enough during its short flight through the air.

“I’m so, so, so sorry!” She used her gloved fingers to brush at the dampness on his jacket, quickly turning her fuzzy white gloves a golden brown. Her gaze latched onto the festering red welt rising on his jaw. “I’ll call an ambulance,” she offered, not sure what else to do. The guy could easily be suffering from a second-degree burn .

He snorted in derision. “I’m fine, darling.”

Darling? She stared at him, stunned. It was the first time any man had ever called her that. And all it had taken was an act of supreme klutziness on her part.

“Is that apple cider? Ugh!” Caroline Madison gave a sugary laugh, designed to yank the hunky cowboy’s attention back to her. It worked.

Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dreamy gave her a worried once-over. “You okay?

The woman was fine. Ashley glowered at the massive shoulder he’d rudely stuck in her face in his hurry to continue slobbering over her target. The only upside was that Caroline Madison didn’t consider a klutzy bystander to be worthy of her notice. She completely ignored Ashley’s presence while she gave him the lengthy version of how allergic she was to apples. Fortunately, not a single drop of the cider had landed on her.

“Which doesn’t change the fact that I’m on the clock.” Her announcement was accompanied by an excessive batting of eyelashes as she pressed her cup of hot chocolate back into his hands. “Duty calls.” She fluttered her fingers at him and backed away with a lingering look that was intended to stress how reluctant she was to end their encounter.

It was so coy and so fake that Ashley wanted to gag. It blew her mind how many guys failed to see through stuff like that. “I’m okay, too.” The sarcastic comment flew out of her mouth. “Thanks for asking,” she added, since he hadn’t bothered to inquire about her well-being.

Mr. Tall, Dark, and Slightly Less Dreamy slowly pivoted back in her direction. “Ah. You’re still here.”

Her hackles rose. “My fiancé said something equally rude and unfeeling after I took a bullet in the line of duty.” Her chin rose in defiance. “And now he’s my ex.”

“Sounds like he had it coming.” Instead of taking offense like she intended him to, the cowboy gave her an up-down nod of approval. “You a police officer?”

“Was.” She bit back the bitter story that flew to her lips, one that involved so many psych evaluations after being shot that she’d turned in her resignation to get off the sidelines. “I answer to no one but myself these days.” She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered telling him that. “I’m taking a nice long vacay, until I figure out what comes next.” It was sort of true and sort of not.

A wicked twinkle entered his dark-brown eyes. “Trying your hand as a wedding crasher, eh?” He pulled off one of his leather gloves and tentatively palpated the festering mark on his jaw.

It looked like it was turning into a blister. “I’m so sorry,” she mourned, digging into the pocket of her puffer jacket for the tube of petroleum jelly she always carried with her. It doubled as her lip balm and the soother of everything else — from dry elbows to you name it. “Here.” She held it out to him.

His eyebrows rose beneath the brim of his Stetson. “What’s that?”

“For the burn on your face.” She pointed at the swollen red welt. “It might keep it from blistering.”

“As a former bull rider, I’ve had far worse injuries.” He waved away her tube of petroleum jelly with a look of disdain. “Think I’ll pass.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” She irritably motioned for him to bend his head closer. “I’ll do it.” She fully expected him to turn down her offer, which would alleviate any further guilt she felt about injuring him .

To her surprise, he removed his Stetson. “Yes, ma’am. But only because you’re armed and dangerous, and I’m in no condition to make a proper getaway.”

It was true that she was armed, even though he couldn’t possibly know that, and the blister rising on his jaw was proof that she was dangerously klutzy, but still. “Your condition. Really?” She rolled her eyes at him as she pulled off her soggy gloves and squeezed a generous dollop of the petroleum jelly on the tip of her finger.

“I’m injured,” he reminded with a playful wink that took the sting out of his next words. “Your fault, lady.”

“Ashley Perkins,” she corrected mechanically, as she ever so gently dabbed the goop on his festering skin.

He held surprisingly still. “Johnny Cuba, private investigator extraordinaire for Lonestar Security.” He sounded enormously proud of that fact.

“Wow!” The word eased out of her with a breathy fan-girl quality, but only because she was surprised to discover they were in the same line of work. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s not a typical career progression for a bull rider.”

“Nope. A typical career progression for a rodeo boy would be retiring to a dairy farm, which I’m also doing.” He gave her a crooked grin that she found more charming than she should have while working a case. “Minus the retirement part.”

She absentmindedly finished dabbing on the petroleum jelly while she processed the information Johnny Cuba had shared about himself. Either he’d inherited some money recently, or he’d done really well for himself on the rodeo circuit. Maybe that was why he’d landed in the crosshairs of the Black Widow.

She shivered at how easily it was for her to picture Caroline Madison devouring her victims like a deadly spider. The woman had practically devoured the big doofus with her eyes the entire time they’d been flirting with each other.

“Cold?”

“What?” Ashley stared blankly at Johnny Cuba, wondering why he was unzipping his jacket in these frigid February temps. She received her answer the moment he swung the enormous leather coat around her shoulders. It was so toasty from his body heat that she couldn’t immediately summon the willpower to hand it back. “You’re going to freeze!”

“At least my face is warm.” He winked at her again.

“That was low,” she accused.

“You kind of had it coming, Ash.” He tugged her toward a haystack that turned out to be a covering for a hut with a space heater. “Ash and the great wedding crash. Hey, that rhymes!”

“Very poorly,” she snickered to cover how melty her insides felt over being called both darling and Ash by a guy she’d just met — a very nice, very outspoken, very handsome goofball whom she couldn’t stand the thought of being next on the Black Widow’s hit list. After running into him — literally — Ashley was glad she was in town to keep an eye on him and the developing situation.

“Don’t care. Since you crashed a double wedding, you get to suffer through the vows and kisses right along with the rest of us lonely single folks. You so much as even think of running,” he warned, “and I’ll sick those same two Golden Doodle pups on you that got such a rise out of you the first time.”

“You’re a truly horrible person.” She actually wasn’t in a hurry to leave, and not just because she was working on a case. Johnny Cuba was downright entertaining. She hadn’t laughed this much in a very long time. “And there’s no way a detective with my illustrious record lost her religion over two measly puppies.”

He wagged a finger at her. “Sorry to break it to you, Ash?—”

“No, you aren’t!” She adored the way the shortened version of her name sounded in his country boy drawl. “You’re enjoying every second of it.”

He smirked at her. “Guess you weren’t kidding about that illustrious record of yours, Sherlock.”

“If anyone asks,” she airily adjusted her Santa hat that had slipped over one eye, “my version of the story will at least include a little blood on their fangs.”

“Nice!” He bumped shoulders companionably with her, making her slightly oversized Santa hat slip back over her eye.

The opening notes of the wedding march sounded over a hidden speaker system, keeping her from sharing the next retort that rose to her lips. Two lovely brides were escorted across the snowy stretch of yard where the crowd was gathered. They sashayed toward an enormous trellis of white roses where their grooms-to-be were waiting.

“They’re brothers,” Johnny informed her in undertones. “Raised in foster care. Made a boyhood pact to marry on the same day and actually pulled it off.”

She was utterly charmed by the story, so much so that she felt like turning around and slapping the person behind them who rudely shushed him.

While the two brothers exchanged their vows with their two brides, Ashley tried not to think about the diamond ring that was no longer resting on her left hand. It was hard, though. The truth was, she wanted to be in love and wanted to be married. Finding the right guy had proven to be the hard part, if such a man even existed. Her choice of careers certainly hadn’t made it easy for her to date.

When the two couples finished exchanging their vows, the minister spoke a closing prayer over them. The moment he said amen, Johnny’s hand closed around Ashley’s elbow.

“Come on.” His voice was firm. “I should’ve never goaded you into staying. That was cruel, and I’m not normally cruel.”

His words made her wonder what he may or may have not read in her expression during the ceremony. “I started it.” She forced a note of lightness into her voice before adding, “By removing the top layer of skin on your jaw.”

“No, really.” He looked genuinely contrite. “Let me walk you to your car. You can regale me with the tale of why you chose little ol’ Heart Lake for your vacation destination, while I come up with a nefarious plan for wrangling your phone number out of you.”

Ashley gave a sputter of helpless laughter. His brand of humor was irresistible.

“There you are!” Mrs. Santa reappeared and reached for Johnny’s arm. Though she drenched him with a syrupy smile, she managed to shoot a few eye daggers at Ashley in the process.

Guess I’m no longer invisible to her. Lucky me! Before Ashley could blink, Caroline Madison dragged Johnny off into the crowd. It quickly closed around them.

“What about your jacket, cowboy?” She glanced ruefully down at the lapels she was still clutching around her. After a short debate, she decided it would be easier to track Johnny down at Lonestar Security in the next day or two. It was certainly preferable to freezing her backside off beneath two snow blowing machines at a wedding she hadn’t been invited to in the first place.

Rock’s kiss-the-bride kiss warmed Mila all the way to her toes. It even melted the snowflakes off her eyelashes. “Thank you for marrying me, partner.” His voice was husky with adoration.

“I’m honored you asked me to.” She touched his cheek, reveling in the love she read in his gaze. It was hard to believe their relationship had started off with a simple job interview and blossomed into all of this!

“I’m honored you said yes.” He brushed his mouth against hers again, taking the rest of her breath away with the reverence in his touch.

Mila’s mother flew in their direction with a sob of happiness. “Oh, my sweet girl!” She threw her arms around them both. “You got the right one this time,” she babbled.

“I sure did!” Rock kissed her mother’s cheek.

“Welcome to the family,” she gushed.

“The pleasure is all mine, ma’am.”

Gage and Ella joined their huddle for another round of hugs, tears, and congratulations.

“We did it, bro!” Rock exchanged a laughing fist bump with his brother. “Not sure how, but we did it.”

Gage pointed upward, sending the credit for their happily-ever-after-times-two where it belonged.

“Thank You!” Mila tipped her face toward the sky, allowing the snowflakes to graze her cheeks and nose again with their icy kiss. Sometimes the simplest prayers were the best ones. Sometimes two words were all a person needed to get their point across .

“I love you,” Rock’s voice brought her back to the present.

Or three words.

Thank you for reading

Haystacks and Hoaxes.

Tall, rugged, laugh-out-loud Johnny Cuba has a secret he’s in no hurry to share, though he’d spill it in a heartbeat to the lovely Ashley Perkins in exchange for the real reason she’s visiting Heart Lake. Not for a second is he buying her cock-and-bull story about being on vacation. Nope. The truth is bigger. Maybe dangerous. It probably isn’t wise of him to be daydreaming about kissing it out of her in

Dairy and Deadly .