He saw that Travis had gotten to his feet and was now busying himself hanging his wet clothing on a tree branch, his back to the rest of them. After T.D. had punched him, why hadn’t Travis left? Wyatt told himself he would have gone with him, but he knew that was a lie. T.D. would expect him to stay. Even if he wouldn’t, Wyatt wasn’t finished up here, was he?
After what he’d seen, he’d been telling himself that Jinx deserved what she was going to get. She was cheating on T.D. Not that it was his place to do anything about that, Wyatt told himself. But if he told T.D., he knew the cowboy would go ballistic, riding up to the camp, guns blazing.
He thought of Patty and the promise she’d made him—and the one he’d kind of made her. T.D. was pacing, worked up because his fire had fizzled out and his attempt to hurt Jinx had failed. So far, nothing that anyone had done had stopped the woman. Suddenly, T.D. stopped pacing and looked at him. “We’re going to have to stampede the herd.”
Travis turned to glance back at him, but then quickly turned away again. Royce threw a handful of dry dead pine needles onto the fire. “Count me in,” he said. Cash just looked uncomfortable but nodded.
Wyatt realized that everyone was waiting on him, including T.D. He told himself that now was the time to put an end to this if he was going to. If he rode back to town now, he suspected the others would follow. He knew Travis was just looking for an excuse to bail but wouldn’t unless someone else did first.
He could stop this before it was too late.
Before anyone got killed.
Chapter Eleven
“Hey! Watch out!”
Patty felt the plates of food she’d been carrying tilt dangerously as she collided with one of the café customers. “Sorry.”
The man was busily looking at his sleeve and then his pants to make sure that none of the café’s evening special had spilled on him. Patty heard his wife say from the booth, “It was your fault. You got up right in front of her.”
“Are you kidding?” the man demanded. “She wasn’t watching where she was going. If you’d been paying attention, you would know that she’s been in a daze this whole time. She screwed up the orders at that other table.”
“Seems one of us has been watching the waitress with a little too much interest,” the wife snapped.
Patty felt the heat of embarrassment on the back of her neck as she delivered the orders to a far table. The man was right. Her mind hadn’t been on work for some time now. She put on her plastic smile, tried to say all the right things, but she was only going through the motions and at least one person had noticed.
“Everything all right?” her boss asked when she returned to the kitchen.
She had no idea. “Fine.” Her mind was in the mountains with T.D. Had he caught up to his wife? For all she knew, the two of them could have made up. She kept seeing a campfire and the two of them rolling around on a bedroll next to it. The image burned through her stomach like acid.
Not that she believed it. Jinx wouldn’t take him back. There was no way the two of them were reconnecting, not with all those others up there on the mountain with them. Not only did Jinx have wranglers working for her apparently, but she also had several hundred head of cattle to tend to. She wasn’t rolling around with T.D. on any bedroll.
But not knowing what was happening was driving her crazy. Wouldn’t she have heard if T.D. and the others had returned to town? Of course she would have. Which meant they hadn’t.
So T.D. was still up there in the mountains. Which meant Wyatt was still up there, as well. For a while, she’d forgotten about that.
She thought of the promise she’d made him—and what she’d asked him to do. She’d seen the way he reacted to her. He would do anything for her—just as he’d said. Just as she’d known he would.
A thought made her heart begin to pound.
By now Jinx could be dead.
Unless Wyatt chickened out.
She went to pick up an order for a table that had just come up and tried to still her nervous anticipation. Wyatt wouldn’t let her down.
“DON’T YOU THINK we should call the sheriff on T.D.?” Ella asked as she joined her cousins around the campfire later that evening. Max was busy in the chuckwagon and Jinx was seeing to her horse.
They’d spent the day moving cattle, getting as far as they could. Tomorrow was their last day. They should reach summer range before noon, Jinx had said. “And tell him what? I’m sure he knows T.D. followed us up here, but there was little he could do. It’s a free country and a huge mountain range,” Brick said.
“Brick’s right. Nor can we prove he started the fire,” Angus said. “I’m not even sure the sheriff could arrest him on the restraining order. T.D. hasn’t gotten close enough to break it yet. Also, Jinx said we wouldn’t be able to get cell phone service until we reached the high country above the tree line and even then, she said it would be sketchy.”
She knew they were right and yet she couldn’t shake the bad feeling she had. “You know he’s not finished.”
“He’ll hit us tonight. He has to,” Brick said. “This time tomorrow we’ll be in Jackson Hole. I don’t know about the two of you, but I plan to kick up my heels. But first I’m going to treat myself
