Page 7 of Reckoning with the Cowboy
“It’s bad enough that he’s in town, but if you get him out of jail…”
“It’s my job. Strictly business.”
Her sister laughed. “You can actually say that with a straight face? No wonder you’re such a good lawyer.” Amy Sue had never understood why Josie had come back to Dry Gulch to open her practice.
“You have all kinds of job offers,” her sister had cried. “You could get hired anywhere, start your own practice anywhere, why would you come back here? I thought you were trying to get out of Dry Gulch.”
“It’s you who wants out, Amy Sue,” Josie had said in exasperation. “You’re just too scared to drive out past the city limits. Don’t blame me for my choices when you have never let yourself make one.”
Amy Sue had never understood that Dry Gulch, their grandmother’s farm, this part of Montana was Josie’s home. It’s probably why their grandmother had left the place to her in a trust so it would be handed down to Josie’s children. Their grandmother had never thought Amy Sue would stay around and she didn’t want the property ever sold. She trusted Josie to make sure it wasn’t.
Even though Josie had left for college and gotten her law degree, she’d always planned to return home. The area needed a lawyer.
“You’ll go broke,” her sister had contended. “Or get bored to death.”
“Good thing I don’t need much money, and I’m not easily bored,” Josie had told her. “Sis, I know what I’m doing.”
But Amy Sue had dug in her heels, determined it was Cordell Lander’s fault Josie hadn’t left for greener pastures. “You want to be here when he comes back. You really think he’s coming back to farm this property?” They had the land leased, which brought in more than enough for them to live on even without Josie’s law office income.
She wondered now if Amy Sue remembered those words. Josie would have denied she was here because of Cordell to her dying day. But now she had to wonder if at least there had been some truth to it. Was she that foolish that she’d been waiting around all this time for Cordell to return? No, she thought. As to whether or not she was still in love with the bad boy, that was her own burden to carry since it appeared that he hadn’t changed one iota. Maybe worse, it seemed that whatever had brought him back, he was involving his brother in it.
“I’m sure that once I get him out of jail, he’ll be gone,” she told her sister now. “Can you finish up the canning? I have a client I have to see and take that damned phone off the hook.” Cordell was back and everyone thought they needed to warn her. The town’s people were determined to protect her heart from getting broken again. As if a heart once broken could be that easily repaired for another bout of heartbreak.
Given how the town’s people felt about her, she hoped Cordell wouldn’t give the residents of Dry Gulch any more reason to want to run him back out of town.
* * *
AmySue watchedher sister leave. Oh, she would finish the canning, but she wasn’t happy about Cordell Lander being back. Of course he was already in jail. Why couldn’t Josie see that the two of them had no future?
She looked around the farmhouse kitchen. Her grandmother had been wrong. She loved this place. She didn’t want to leave. She was the obvious one to keep the farm going—not her sister. Josie thought she was the only one with plans. Little did she know.
Smiling, Amy Sue reminded herself that one day she would run this farm with her husband, a man who wanted to work the land as much as she did. She would show her sister. Josie thought she knew her so well. She had no idea. Wouldn’t she be surprised to learn that Amy Sue had a man in her life?
She looked forward to the day when Josie got to meet him. She couldn’t wait to see the expression on her sister’s face. All the residents of Dry Gulch who thought Amy Sue Brand would be an old spinster out here on the farm alone raising cats would realize how wrong they’d been.
But the main person she wanted to show was her grandmother, who’d left the farm to the wrong granddaughter.
CHAPTER FOUR
Josie put on her game face as she pushed open the door to the sheriff’s office. She was only there as an attorney, she told herself. If Cordell thought it was more, he was wrong, and she would set him straight right away.
The fact that he’d even had the gall to call her to begin with made her shake her head in wonder. If he gave her any trouble, he could try to find someone else to represent him—if he could get anyone to come to Dry Gulch on his behalf.
But even as she thought it, she had to admit that she was anxious to see him again, curious if he’d changed any, afraid he wouldn’t be the same—and just as afraid he would be.
Max looked up as she entered. She could tell by his expression that he questioned her judgment. Nothing new there. Everyone in this town had when she’d hooked up with Cordell years ago. Good girl gone bad. There had been a collective sigh of relief when Cordell had left before he’d done something ruinous like talk her into marrying him. Or worse, impregnated her with his bad seed.
Not that he’d ever asked her to marry him, she reminded herself. So she’d never know what her answer would have been. The thought made her stifle a laugh. Whom was she kidding? She would have married him, had his children and followed him to the ends of the earth if he had asked.
Max nodded to her, rose from his chair and handed her the key to his brother’s cell door without another word on her decision. His expression relayed everything he had to say on that matter. “You know your way. Holler if you need me.”
She nodded back and braced herself for seeing Cordell after all this time. She wasn’t sure what shape she wanted him to be in. A lot could have happened to him over the years he’d been gone—probably mostly bad. But one look into those faded-denim blue eyes and she knew it wouldn’t matter if he’d gone to pot, as her grandmother would have said.
The moment she opened the door to the cellblock, he looked in her direction. Clearly, he’d been waiting for her. She tried not to meet his eyes, but it was impossible as she let the door close behind her and walked toward his cell.
It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him behind bars. She’d always doubted it would be the last. He’d never been arrested for more than a few misdemeanors. He wasn’t criminal material. Instead, he grinned at trouble and dared it to take him on. Often it did, winning, not that he seemed to care.
“I’ve checked the warrants against you,” she said as she approached his cell with his paperwork. “I spoke to the judge. He’s willing to make the deal I told you about. You pay a fine and go free—as long as you leave the county.”
