her eyes left him with no option. He tugged the hem of his T-shirt upward, wincing as it snagged on the surgical tape holding his bandage in place.
Jane laid her supplies on the bed beside him and helped him slide the shirt over his head. He felt her hands trembling but her expression was all business. She sat by him on the bed, keeping a careful distance. He didn’t know whether to laugh or feel insulted.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured as she removed his bandage, taking pains to be gentle. “About what happened before.”
He wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for the kiss or for cutting it short. He went with the former. “It’s my fault. You were trying to make sense of what your father had told you and I…changed the subject.”
She smiled wryly and tossed the soiled bandage into the plastic bag. “You weren’t exactly alone in that.”
“Maybe we should talk about that, too.”
“I know we had a relationship before, but I don’t remember it,” she said quietly as she dabbed at his healing wound with some antiseptic wash.
He winced. “I know.”
She looked at him. “You don’t trust me anymore.”
“I don’t trust anybody,” he admitted, regretting the words as soon as they spilled from his lips.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“Forget it.”
She pressed her lips together, clearly not happy about letting such a cryptic remark go unexplained, though she remained quiet as she finished cleaning the wound. But as she squeezed some antibiotic cream onto a soft sterile pad, she broke the silence. “Did someone hurt you?”
A bubble of bleak laughter rose in his throat. “You never could just let things go.”
She met his gaze. “You told me before?”
“Yeah,” he said, old, bitter pain settling deep in his chest. As reluctant as she’d been to share the mysteries of her hidden past, she’d been a bulldog when it came to wheedling his secrets out of him. She’d made him want to share his pain, to let her help him bury it in the past.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes, trying to resist the pull of her. It was stronger than ever, despite all the lies he’d uncovered since her disappearance.
“Was it a woman?”
“Please, Jane-let it go.”
“I must have seemed just like them. Running off, leaving you with more questions than answers.”
“You
She fell silent. He opened his eyes and saw that she was sitting hunched beside him, her cheeks damp with tears.
Something inside him cracked and spilled. “You and I are more alike than you know,” he said.
She slanted a look at him, knuckling away her tears.
“I lost my mother when I was a baby, too,” he said when she remained silent. “She died in a car accident, leaving my father to raise me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I guess I had it pretty good compared to what your father did to you.”
“Was your father a cowboy like you?” she asked with a slight smile.
“He owned a ranch.”
“Did he raise you by himself?”
“Mostly. When I was two, he remarried. For a while.”
She reached for the gauze pad on the bed next to her and resumed bandaging his side, a sideways glance inviting him to continue talking.
“Her name was Melissa. She was beautiful and sweet. She’s the only mother I really remember, you know? My own mother was just pictures in an album. Melissa was real.”
Jane smiled. “Someone to tend your scrapes when you fell down and hug you when you cried?”
He nodded. “I loved her.”
“What happened?”
“My father was a difficult man to love. And life on a ranch is hard. There’s a lot of isolation. Melissa was a woman who needed to be around other people. She wasn’t cut out for life on the ranch, and my father would have died before moving into town. So she left. And she took my little brother with her.”
“Tommy?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “He was four when she left. I was seven. She changed their names back to her maiden name and moved a couple of towns over. That’s why his last name was Blake.”
“I wondered.” Jane laid her hand on his arm. “That must have been so confusing for you.”
He sighed. “I got over it. I found Tommy later, when we were both grown. They’d moved back to Canyon Creek while I was away at college. We had some time together before-”
When he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, Jane’s fingers tightened on his arm. “I wish I could remember what happened that night. I honestly do.”
For the first time in a long time, he believed her.
“Did your father ever try to find your brother?”
“No.” He’d never forgiven the old man for that, especially when he’d discovered how easy it was to find Tommy when he was old enough to do it himself. “He died while I was in college. I found Tommy on my own. He was right there in Canyon County, working on a ranch in Addison. He was a born rancher.”
“And you weren’t?”
“I knew I wanted to be a policeman the first time I rode in a cruiser, lights flashing and siren blaring.”
Her smile carved dimples into her freckled cheeks. “Were you in the front seat or the back?”
He laughed. “It was a ride-along for career day at my elementary school. When I came home babbling about wanting to be a policeman, my father threatened to have my teacher and the Canyon Creek Chief of Police fired.”
“What happened to the ranch after your father died?”
“I deeded it over to Tommy. It always should have been his. Now it belongs to Melissa, as far as I know.”
“As far as you know?”
“Melissa and I don’t talk. We haven’t been on good terms since she walked out when I was seven.” He sat upright suddenly, a thought popping into his head. “Everybody in Canyon Creek knows that. Which is why nobody’s monitoring her phone, waiting for me to call.”
Jane met his excited gaze. He saw her quick mind putting two and two together.
“I think I know how to get us safely home,” he said.
Chapter Twelve
“Joe?” Melissa Blake’s soft voice registered surprise and just a hint of wariness. “Are you all right?”
Joe hadn’t prepared himself for the rush of emotion that washed over him at the sound of his stepmother’s voice. They hadn’t talked since Tommy’s funeral-the first time in over twenty-five years-and even then, it had been a quick, awkward exchange, both of them too wrapped up in grief and anger to meet each other halfway.
“Joe?”
He swallowed the painful lump in his throat. “I’m fine, Melissa.”
A long pause on her end made him wonder if she’d hung up on him. But she spoke finally, her voice thick with emotion. “I’ve been so worried about you. You know what the news is saying about you-”
“It’s a lie.”
“I know it’s a lie,” she said firmly. “The news is also saying you were shot.”
“Just a graze. Listen, I don’t have much time.” He looked across at Jane, who sat on the opposite bed, her anxious gaze fixed on his face. “I need to get back to Wyoming, but I don’t want to risk taking public
