Betting On The Maverick. Cindy Kirk

The growl grew louder and Vivian crouched into a fighting stance, the fur on the back of her neck standing straight up.

      Following the dog’s gaze to the stairway leading to the second floor, Margot gasped.

      A bare-chested man wearing only jeans stood on the steps, a baseball bat in his hands. Tall with a thatch of brown hair and a dark stubble of beard on his cheeks, his hair was mussed as if he’d just run his hands through it. The eyes riveted on her were sharp and assessing.

      “What are you doing here?” he demanded, but his expression was more puzzled than menacing.

      “I’ll ask the questions.” Margot rested a trembling hand on Vivian’s head. “Where’s my father?”

      Without answering, the man lowered the bat and started down the stairs toward her.

      “Not one more step,” she ordered. “Or I’ll give my dog the command to attack.”

      He paused, cocked his head, grinned.

      That’s when she recognized him. Brad Crawford, of the illustrious Crawford family. What the heck was a Crawford doing skulking around her father’s house half-dressed in the middle of the night?

      “Little Margot Sullivan.” He shook his head and flashed a smile that had been winning him hearts since he’d been old enough to walk.

      Despite herself, Margot relaxed slightly. Given the choice, she’d take Brad with a bat over a stranger in the same pose. Though she still had no clue what he was doing in her house.

      “Didn’t expect to see you here,” he added.

      “This is my house.”

      “Well, now.” He rubbed his chin. “That’s debatable.”

      “Where’s my father?” Margot’s heart froze as she imagined all the things that could have happened to a man pushing eighty. Without waiting for an answer, she called out. “Dad! It’s Margot. Where are you?”

      “Save your breath.” Barely giving a second glance to Vivian who’d continued to growl low in her throat, Brad meandered into the living room and plopped down into an overstuffed chair. “Boyd isn’t here.”

      Vivian’s eyes remained trained on Brad.

      “Friend,” Margot said reluctantly, then repeated. “Friend.”

      Friend might be carrying it a bit far but the Crawfords were well-known in Rust Creek Falls, Montana. Although Brad was a good ten years older than her—and had quite the reputation as a ladies’ man—there was no denying his family was respected in the community.

      While he wasn’t exactly her friend, Brad wasn’t a dangerous enemy, either.

      With Vivian glued to her side, Margot moved to the sofa and took a seat. Questions over her father’s whereabouts fought with an unexpected spike of lust at the sight of Brad’s muscular chest. She’d already noticed he hadn’t quite secured the button on his jeans. Just like she noticed he smelled terrific: a scent of soap and shampoo and that male scent that was incredibly sexy.

      Trying to forget the fact she’d driven ten hours today with the windows down and that her red hair was a messy tumble of curls, Margot leaned forward, concern for her father front and center. She rested her arms on her thighs and fixed her gaze on Brad. “Tell me where my father is.”

      “I don’t know.”

      A cold chill enveloped her in a too-tight hug. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

      “He left town right after the Fourth of July,” Brad said in a conversational tone. “Hasn’t come back.”

      It was now October. Three months. Her elderly father had left the family ranch not long after that last argument between them. A horrible conversation that had ended with him hanging up on her after telling her to not come back or call again.

      “Everyone knows he has a daughter, yet no one in this town thought to let me know he’d up and taken off for parts unknown?” Fear sluiced through Margot’s veins and panic had her voice rising with each word.

      “The sheriff confirmed he left by train with a ticket to New York City.”

      “Wow. That makes me feel so much better.” Sarcasm ran through her voice like thick molasses. Then the anger punched. “Did anyone even try to get a hold of me?”

      “Initially everyone thought Boyd had gone to see his sister, who—”

      “Who lived in New Jersey, not New York City. My aunt Verna has been gone almost two years. She died six months before my mother passed away.”

      “That fact wasn’t known until later.” Brad waved a dismissive hand. “You know your dad. He wasn’t the kind of guy to share personal stuff.”

      Margot clasped her hands together. “That still doesn’t explain why no one called me.”

      “After the sheriff discovered his sister was no longer living, he attempted to contact you. He discovered you’d been injured and were no longer competing. No one knew where to find you.”

      After sustaining a serious skull fracture shortly after that last conversation with her father, Margot had left the rodeo circuit to stay with a friend in Cheyenne. But when a week or two of recuperation stretched into several months, Margot decided to return to the only home she’d ever known. “My father has my cell number.”

      “One problem,” Brad said. “He wasn’t around to give it to us. And it’s not like you’ve kept in touch with anyone else in town.”

      Where would her father have gone? None of this made any sense. Margot wasn’t certain if it truly didn’t compute or if her head just wasn’t processing the information correctly. Boyd Sullivan was a smart man who, despite his age, knew how to handle himself. When he was sober, that is.

      “Was he still drinking before he left?”

      “He was,” Brad said quietly.

      Margot sat back abruptly. The head she’d injured ten weeks earlier began to ache. The strain of travel from Wyoming to Montana had taken its toll, but it was the tension of the past few minutes that now had her head clamped in a vise.

      She rubbed the back of her neck with one hand, trying to ease the pressure. With every syllable Brad uttered, the story worsened.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked bluntly.

      “I live here.”

      “You’re watching the place while my father is away?” she asked cautiously, her admiration for him inching up a notch.

      Unlike in many large cities where people could live side-by-side for years and not really know each other, in Rust Creek Falls neighbors took care of neighbors.

      Not to say there weren’t feuds. The bad blood between the Crawfords and the Traubs over the years was a prime example.

      But on the whole, you couldn’t have asked for a better place to grow up, or in her father’s case, to grow old.

      Brad shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “That’s not exactly the case.”

      Margot frowned. “If you’re not watching it for him, what are you doing here?”

      “Well, you see, your father put up the deed to the ranch in a poker game.” A sheepish grin crossed his handsome face. “He lost. I won. The Leap of Faith is now mine.”

      * * *

      Brad left the pretty redhead fuming in the downstairs parlor as he headed upstairs for his shirt and shoes. He was concerned about her father, too—if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have used some of his own money to hire a PI to search for the old man. But right now he had Boyd’s daughter on the brain.

      Sitting across from Margot Sullivan with that white shirt gaping open and those green eyes