Page 44 of Cowboy Don't Go

“I never said she loved me.”

Now he was just pissing Cooper off. “Sarah Hardesty just now drove you to the hospital in town, sat with you the entire day, and held your hand while you got some of the hardest news anyone can hear. Damned if she wasn’t the one to inspire you to even try to save your own life after all my pleas fell on deaf ears. She literally gave you a reason to live, Dad. And you’re saying she never loved you?”

Ray sighed deeply. “It’s for her to say, not me.”

This was all head-turning information. “Well . . . what did she say about it once you were in prison?”

“I never saw her there.”

What? “She never came to see you?”

“She did. She came to see me in prison. I turned her away. What was the point? To ruin her life waiting for me?”

The same way he’d pushed Cooper away. “But apparently, she has waited for you.”

Ray set the lights down. “It all comes down to choices, son. What we can live with and what we can’t. But not everything is as simple as yes or no. Right or wrong. Not even love. She was kind to me, today. But maybe that’s all it was. So, like every day for the last eight years, all I can do is one day at a time. Anything more is just . . . hubris and wishful thinking.” He lifted the tangle of lights and tugged out a long strand. “Now let’s get these lights untangled before we miss that home-cooked meal Sarah invited us to.”

Chapter Eight

The slow-cooker lasagna was every bit as good as promised. The evening passed with that sort of big-family dinner feeling Cooper had always imagined but had never personally had. The Hardesty siblings spent half the time teasing each other and the other half laughing, with Will and Izzy right in the mix.

Cooper kept his eye on Shay across the table, without being too obvious about it, thinking about today on the mountain. How it had ended and what exactly that meant.

He could still feel the softness of her lips on his and the curl in his gut when she’d wrapped her arms around him. All of that couldn’t have been simple curiosity. Because the heat in that kiss had knocked him sideways. He couldn’t seem to let it go. Once or twice, Shay’s gaze flicked in his direction and caught him looking.

So, she knew he wanted her. He wished he could get her alone again, to talk about what was happening between them. But Shay Hardesty had a wall around her built of brick and mortar. Maybe she’d never allow herself to love again after Summer Boy had done his best to break her heart. She’d either convinced herself that A—she didn’t deserve happiness or a relationship that might bring her that or B—happiness would have to wait until her only child was grown and gone.

There was a C option as well, and it had to do with him being an acceptable possibility.

Acceptable, in terms of his history, he supposed. That he’d just have to deal with. That, he wanted to deal with. Because whatever she thought, he had no intention of bringing any trouble to the Hard Eight or to her. He’d been half in love with Shay Hardesty for most of his life. He had this one last chance with her.

As the group polished off the cherry dump cake Sarah had baked up for dessert, Cooper pondered exactly how he was going to break through that wall of Shay’s. Which was when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

One look at the caller ID and he excused himself from the table and walked outside.

“It’s good news,” Trey Reyes said on the other end of the line. “Your father’s partner, Evan Clulagher, it turns out, is a dead man walking.”

“Meaning?”

“You called it. These past eight years, he’s been living the high life in the Bahamas under an assumed identity. My hacker was able to track that money from your father’s business account to a bank in the Caymans, which exited that account some two days later to another LLC account in the Bahamas.”

Cooper’s head started swimming. For a moment he was speechless. “Wait. You found him?”

“Sort of. Not exactly. He was there, moving around a bit over the years, but staying in the Caribbean. Once my guy learned his assumed name, thanks to a contact he has down there who was able to access that account, I flew down there to track the guy down. Seems like he really enjoyed all that money he stole. He wasn’t very wise about spending it. Eight years later, he’s gone through almost all of it. He’s left behind a bunch of bad debts there. Two weeks ago, he flew back to the US under that assumed name. He landed in San Francisco, then promptly disappeared again.”

“Under that assumed name…” Cooper paced under the big tree in front of the house. From somewhere above him, an owl hooted at him, and a chill ran under his skin. “But why would he risk coming back to the US? He’s been declared dead here. Getting caught here alive would surely have consequences.”

“Consequences that could clear your father’s name,” Trey said.

The moment of buoyant hope quickly deflated. “If he was able to invent a new identity once, he’ll do it again. He could go anywhere. We’ll never find him.”

“Don’t lose hope. There’s one more thing.”

“What?”

“My friend uncovered some curious cash withdrawals from Clulagher’s account in the year before his disappearance. Those cash withdrawals interestingly did not correspond with deposits in the Caymans. In other words, that particular money came out but never went back in. It never flowed through any of your father’s accounts. It was separate.”

“I don’t follow.”

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