Page 1 of Rawhide and Ransom

Chapter 1: No Cause to Celebrate

“Come on, Hawk!” Caro irritably tapped the toe of one of her ridiculous high-heeled red sandals. “Tell us who your mysterious visitor is.” She dramatically fluttered her hands toward the hallway, showing off her glossy, red-painted fingernails in a way that felt deliberate.

She was beautiful. Hawk Chesney would give her that. And purposely distracting. After years of working undercover with the FBI, she was very skilled at being an attention hog. At the moment, though, his co-worker’s classy new wife in her classy, city-girl jumpsuit was annoying the snot out of him.

He glared at her husband. Clint Rhodes was one of the cowboys he worked evenings and weekends with at a local dairy farm. “How about you guys answer my question first? Which one of you came up with the idea of crashing my birthday?”The one night I specifically requested to be left alone.

Nobody answered, but all eyes turned toward Ashley Cuba.

Hawk almost groaned aloud. “That figures,” he muttered. Nobody in their right mind would take offense to what Ashley had surely intended as a kind gesture. Her auburn hair was twisted in a messy bun, and the fact that she’d recently given birth to her and Johnny’s first child was hidden beneath an oversized sweatshirt.

“We were on the road, heading back from Dallas,” she explained softly, “when I realized what day it was.”

Dallas? Hawk’s heart sank. “Is everything okay with your dad?” he asked quickly.

“According to him? Yes.” The sigh in her voice told him she wasn’t entirely convinced of that fact.

Her father was a widower who’d recently gotten tangled up in a fake marriage with a felon who was now behind bars. Unfortunately, there were no recovery support groups for something like that. None that Hawk knew about, anyway. He hoped the guy had a good therapist.

“On the bright side,” she continued on a more cheerful note, “he agreed to move to Heart Lake to be closer to us. That’s something, huh?”

Johnny, who owned the dairy farm everyone in the room except Caro worked at, gave Hawk a sober nod. “He drove back with us this evening, which is how we found a babysitter on such short notice.”

Good grief!Hawk was starting to feel bad about being such a grump. Though uninvited, his friends had clearly gone to a lot of effort to show up at his cabin. “Lemme guess.” He waved irritably at his collection of mismatched leather furniture in the living room, inviting them to take a seat. “Ashley’s bleeding heart led her to call Caro, who all too willingly baked the mountain of cookies you brought over as your collective ticket through my front door?”

Clint guffawed, spreading his hands. “Why ask, since it’s obvious you already know the answer?” He snatched up two handfuls of his wife’s homemade chocolate chip cookies — Hawk’s favorite dessert on the planet — then took a running leap into the living room. He vaulted over the back of the sofa and landed on the center cushion with a thud as his boots slammed back down on the floor.

His movements jostled the top-heavy lamp on the end table to his left, making it tip. Silence fell over their gathering as everyone sucked in a breath of alarm. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the spray of water blasting from the shower head in the bathroom down the hall.

At the last possible second, Clint’s left hand shot out. It closed around the base of the lamp, righting it. Instead of apologizing or looking remotely contrite, he glanced toward the sound of the water that was running. “The sooner you answer Caro’s question, the sooner we’ll leave.”

Hawk stomped across the room to take the lamp from him and set it on the floor. “You could’ve led with that statement and saved me a major headache.” He’d been meaning to replace the base of the lamp with a heavier one. However, working three jobs didn’t leave time for non-essential home projects. He angled his head at the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen. “If anyone’s hungry, help yourself to some of the cookies Clint is dribbling all over my couch. I’ve got some chilled bottles of water and soft drinks in the fridge to wash ‘em down.”

A party host he was not. If they were disappointed in the lack of festivities, they should’ve left him alone for his birthday.

Like I wanted.

He’d genuinely been looking forward to having a rare evening off. He’d planned to watch a game of football in his workshop out back while catching up on one of his many rawhide projects. Then again, the runaway he’d discovered hiding beneath his work table had already put an end to those plans. There really wasn’t much point in taking it out on his friends.

He glanced toward the bathroom, wondering if his lovely little trespasser was going to stay in the shower until she ran his hot water tank dry. Since she was a teenager, he was betting the answer to that question was yes.

“What I’m about to tell you stays in this room,” he warned, turning around to meet the gazes of his friends one by one, “or no deal.”

Johnny lifted his Stetson to run his hand through his black hair. “I think you know us better than that, bro.”

He did, but Hawk had said what he’d said to include everyone else in the room. More specifically, everyone who wasn’t working a second job at Lonestar Security like he and Johnny were. Hawk’s third job involved pulling an occasional security detail for the chief of the Comanche reservation where he lived.

“Her name is Miley Dakota,” he stated without inflection. Or so the driver’s license she’d flashed at him stated. It could be a fake ID. There’d been no chance to verify the authenticity of it yet, though it was high on his to-do list. “She’s a runaway I found hiding in my shop.” During his rare bouts of spare time, he turned rawhide into saddles, stirrups, chaps, rugs, gloves, and more. Lately, he’d been getting so many orders for his projects, mostly saddles, that he could probably consider it a fourth job.

Clint hitched a leg over the arm of Hawk’s sofa, lounging back with an air of false contentedness that didn’t fool Hawk one bit. His eyes were snapping with curiosity. “Any idea how old she is?”

Hawk knew it was his way of asking if they needed to get Family Services involved, which they didn’t. “Eighteen.” He paused a beat before adding, “Today.” They might need to get the police involved at some point, but he needed more time to verify that, too.

“Whoa! You mean we’re celebrating two birthdays instead of one?” Caro moved across the room to perch on a bar stool beside Ashley, exchanging a wide-eyed look with her. “It’s a good thing you had me bake extra cookies, hon.”

Johnny’s gaze narrowed on Hawk as he pounced on the most concerning detail of his story. “Any idea what Miley is running from?” He was lounged beside the stool his wife was seated on, with one elbow resting on the butcher block countertop.

“Not what. Who,” a young female voice piped up from the bathroom doorway.

---