Two Spirit Ranch

Two Spirit Ranch

By

Jaime Stryker

PUBLISHED BY:

Chances at Romance a special imprint of

 Chances Press, LLC

Copyright © 2011 by Jaime Stryker

www.chancespress.com

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

* * * * *

Publication of the photograph of any person in this publication is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual orientation of such person.  Cover photo courtesy of iStockPhoto.

For more information on Jaime Stryker, please visit www.chancesatromance.com.

***

Prologue

For some odd reason, Terri had always noticed the little things when her life seemingly had begun to spiral out of control.  Tonight, for one, it was the vastness of the summer Montana night sky.  The stars twinkled in a way they never could in the artificial light drenched Manhattan skies.  Here, in “Big Sky Country,” the stars appeared to stretch out forever bathing the night in what should be an intoxicatingly romantic sight.  The grasshoppers chirped quietly in the background, and a slight crisp breeze blew through the air, ruffling her soft sun yellow skirt and the caramel colored curls that highlighted her face.

She remembered how her Uncle Bud had described his Montana ranch home as a slice of heaven you can't buy in any store—even in New York City.  Terri had thought him to be crazy for leaving the bustling, opportunity-filled life of the Big Apple for one smack in the middle of what amounted to little more than a village.

“Sometimes you just need to shake things up, do the unexpected, and challenge yourself,” Uncle Bud had said at their tearful goodbye before giving a teenage Terri a big hug and hopping into his over packed VW Beetle.

Now older and the proverbial wiser, she had a better idea of what he meant, but now she feared it might be too late for her just when she'd finally...

“Terri, aren't you going to say something?” she heard Jake say as he stood behind her.

Handsome, wonderful Jake.  She could smell his clean masculine scent wafting through the air, and without needing to turn around she could see his fit, muscular form in his sheriff’s office uniform.  Strong, sensitive Jake. She should have been honest with him right at the get-go.  But it had been the fear of this moment right here that had her act against her better judgment, her lawyer instincts of laying out the evidence right at the beginning.  No surprises later.  Let the jury know what's at hand from the start.  That's the way you win people over.

But she had never intended to
want
to win anybody over in this small town.  She only wanted to get away from her life in the Big Apple and to feel closer to her Uncle Bud after his passing.  She never imagined she would get wrapped up into life here...let alone into
someone
here.

Finally, she turned around to face Jake, eye to eye, just as she did the jurors in all of her cases.  She'd lay out the case for why she felt, whether it had been right or wrong, to keep silent about her past. She kept quiet, even though she could look into his deep chestnut brown eyes and see this relationship obviously went beyond the point of anything casual for Jake, which is what made this so hard, so messy and so emotional.

Even though she had gotten the chance to know him
, to see him
, over the past few days, the mere sight of him still took her breath away as no man ever did before.  Over six foot three inches tall and built of a solid wall of muscle, Jake had a commanding presence.  But one look in his eyes and she saw him as the protector he was.  He took the ethics and oath of his sheriff’s badge seriously.  His midnight dark wavy hair and eternal five o'clock shadow just added to an already smoldering specimen of masculinity. And this man stood before her waiting for a response from her.  

“Your cousin, Carl, spoke to you didn't he?” she said at last breaking the silence, averting her eyes, feeling vulnerable under his steely gaze.  “You know, don't you?”

“I do,” Jake said, holding his uniform hat by his side, forever the perfect gentleman even when he perhaps had a good reason not to be anymore.  “What I want to know is why
you
didn't tell me?  You had every chance.  Do you know how it felt to have Carl be the one to tell me?”

Jake paused, and he appeared to be struggling for the words to express himself. She knew he had never been in quite the same situation before, not out here in small town Montana.  She had learned to give people time to process things when needed which had been something she had never been good at in her younger years.  If people didn’t accept her, Terri simply moved on. But this was different. He was different, or so she thought. She didn’t want to run away from him. Her instinct was quite the opposite. She wanted him to hold her in his strong arms and protect her even more. But she wasn’t sure how he felt about the situation, about her.

“How did it make you feel?” she asked, the words barely escaping her throat.

“Betrayed,” he said finally, the words cutting into her heart like a sharp knife into butter.  “I don't pretend to understand everything...
yet.
  I may be a small town sheriff but didn’t you respect me enough to tell the truth?  But I would have rather heard it from you first hand.  Don't you think I deserved at least that, Terri?  Don't you? Didn’t I deserve some respect after all we’ve been through?”

“You do,” she admitted.  ““I don’t know how I could have handled anything here without you, Jake. I needed you.  I was afraid...”

“Of?”

“What do you mean
of
?” she said, suddenly sounding defensive.  “You must know how it scared me to tell you...especially after we...made love.  You must know how it scared me to tell you. But then I wanted to tell you the next morning…but you were gone. I felt so abandoned.”

Jake felt a twinge of guilt upon hearing the word
abandoned
. 

“I just never thought things would go this far, Jake,” she admitted.  “And last night happened. It was special to me. I don’t know how you feel but I’ll always remember it…”

“Well, the jury’s still out,” he said, searching for additional words to adequately express how he felt.  “I’m not sure where all this is going. But here we are.”

She took a deep breath and asked the one question she feared knowing the answer to the most, “Does knowing everything change the way you feel?”

He turned to face her, his dark eyes an enigma, and Terri searched his countenance for the answer that would change her life forever.

Chapter 1

“Terri, the client's waiting in to the conference room.  Are you ready?” Martin, a senior partner at her firm, said after poking his head into her office.

Startled, Terri, wearing a smart navy Prada pantsuit, swiveled her chair around from her window with its view of Central Park.  She had been staring outside of it for the past fifteen minutes which was very unlike her, but her mind had been sent reeling trying to process the call she had received just twenty minutes earlier.  She always seemed too busy and focused to enjoy the view.

“Yes, I'm ready.  I'm sorry, Martin.  My mind is just a little scattered today.”

She began to shuffle some papers around on her desk and looked for her notes on the McBriar case, a software company suing another one over copyright infringement.

“By the way,” Martin said, all smiles as he walked up to her desk and laid a newspaper across it.  “You trying to make us feel bad with all of your
pro bono
work on top of the regular eighty hour work week?  Geez, Terri!”

The newspaper article.
  She had forgotten all about it in the middle of the day's hectic schedule.  The reporter had told her it would be in today's edition, and she meant to grab a few copies at the newsstand next to her loft.  She had woken up late, something else that had been unlike her, and rushed off to work forgetting all about it.  Maybe she was overextending herself, but the work discussed in the article felt more important than anything else in her career up to that point especially compared with an impersonal lawsuit from a software giant.

“You saw the article!” Terri exclaimed, feeling a sense of pride and momentarily forgetting her sadness.

“The whole firm is talking about it,” Martin said, sitting in one of the overstuffed leather chairs facing her desk.  Martin was a jovial man in his late fifties, slightly chubby, ruddy cheeks, with a deep laugh that would make Santa Claus jealous.  He had also been one of Terri's biggest cheerleaders the past few years.

“The other senior partners,” Martin continued, “if pressed on the issue, are tickled pink about the publicity this has brought the firm in regards to being
diversity friendly.
  You did good, kid!”

“Thanks, Martin,” Terri said, starting to feel choked up emotions overwhelming her for once.

“Don't mention it,” Martin said, waving his hand dismissively.

“No, I mean it.  You've done so much always standing by me,” Terri said, and at that moment, she couldn't hold it in anymore.  The tears began to flow, and poor Martin, unused to seeing normally composed Terri act so emotional appeared shocked and unsure what to do next.  “I couldn't have asked for a better friend here at work.”

“Hey, hey!  You okay?  What's going on?”

“The client.  We need to get going,” Terri said, trying to internally command the tears to stop as she finished sorting her notes.

Martin looked behind him and through the open door to her office.  He got up, shut the door, and sat back down.  “Screw the client for once.  Tell me what's going on. We’re friends here.”

Terri took a deep breath to try and steady her nerves while looking into Martin’s trustworthy face before talking.

“I got a phone call from Montana not too long ago.  My Uncle Bud passed unexpectedly.  Heart attack.  Christ, they already had the funeral and no one in my family bothered to even call me to tell me.  Not that they call any other time, either.  But this...I don't understand.  They know how close Uncle Bud and I always were.  He was always so supportive of me. 
Like you.”

“
Ah, jeez, Terri.  I'm so sorry to hear about your loss.  I don't know what to say.  I can't believe your family wouldn't tell you.”

“You won't believe what he did before he passed though,” she said, shaking her head still not believing it herself.

“What?”

“He left me his ranch in Montana.  It was the only thing he owned out right.  Can you imagine me hanging out at a ranch in Montana?” she said, trying to force out a little chuckle to lighten the mood.  That's how she always had been.  She tried to make others comfortable more than herself.  She wished she could move past that, but it had become so ingrained in her from before.

“Why don't you take some time and go out there?” Martin suggested.

Terri shook her head and motioned to all the files on her desk. 

“I can't,” she said immediately dismissing the idea.  “There's too much work to be done.”

“Look.  You more than deserve it.  Trust me.  Take some personal time.  Don't try and work through it like I did.  That's how you end up in the hospital at forty-five with a heart attack. Besides, you might meet some nice cowboy up there and poor Tom will get the heave-ho….”

“Martin!” She sighed loudly yet smiled slightly. Martin was always the joker around the office even in the tensest moments.

“Seriously. Think about it,” Martin said.  He picked up the newspaper, read over the headline again, and said, “And this is something truly to be proud of.  This is the important stuff in life. Don't ever forget it.”

After a sweltering hot day at the office, the evening cooled down quite nicely. The taxi gods must have been smiling since she arrived 20 minutes early at the restaurant and was promptly seated.  Her boyfriend, Tom, had called her earlier in the day and wanted “to talk” and after the day she had had, she certainly needed to lean on him for some support.  She decided she wouldn't mention the news about her Uncle Bud until seeing him in person. 

She didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but she wondered if he might pop the question.  Things had been getting pretty serious lately after they met at a legal conference a year ago.  She and Tom had been almost inseparable ever since, and he had taken her to numerous functions at his law firm.  If that wasn’t a sign of being serious, what was?

She had taken extra care in dressing for dinner.  She wore her new black Escada dress, the pearl and diamond earrings Tom had given her for Christmas, and her new Jimmy Choo heels.  No matter how bad of a day she had, Tom had a calming effect and would always bring a smile to her face. She sure needed that now. 

At her apartment earlier, while digging in the back of a drawer for a bangle bracelet, she paused when she came across a picture of another man, the one she had tried to put behind her. 
Him. 
The man, surrounded by some friends from law school, smiled in the picture, but Terri could recognize the hurt in his eyes.  She didn't keep pictures of
him
around, as it was still a little too painful, to relive the memories.  However, she had hung on to this picture because it was taken not long before she had the greatest revelation of her life.

The waiter at the restaurant asked if she'd like to order a drink while she waited, and she ordered a glass of merlot.  She glanced at her watch and noticed that Tom was running late which was very unlike him.  She hoped his taxi hadn't gotten caught in the snarling Big Apple traffic. He would always leave a voicemail or sent a text if he was late—the consummate professional. She needed to kiss him and hold his hand for reassurance.