Wrangling The Cowboy's Heart. Carolyne Aarsen

girlfriend of one Finn Hicks. If you could call one summer of romance being a girlfriend.

      Jodie had no doubt returned to Saddlebank, Montana, for her father’s funeral. The same funeral he hoped to attend once his shift was done.

      All he had heard lately of Jodie’s life had come from his friend Keith. Finn knew Jodie worked as a waitress during the day and played piano in bars at night.

      Such a waste of her talent, he had often thought. Jodie had been set to audition for a prestigious music school in Maryland the summer they had dated, ten years ago.

      She was also supposed to have gone on another date with him. A date he thought would move things from casual to serious.

      She had ditched both appointments and never told him why. The rest of the summer she’d avoided him and hung out with a bad crowd. After that he’d never seen her again.

      Until now.

      The window rolled down as he came near. Jodie looked up at him through large, dark sunglasses, her mouth pert as always. Thick brown hair flowed over her shoulders, and in her bright red dress and gauzy purple scarf, she looked more as though she was on her way to a party than a funeral.

      “Driver’s license, insurance and registration, please,” he stated, sounding more brusque than he liked.

      A reaction to her effect on him.

      “Sure thing,” she said, handing the papers to him. “Can I ask why you stopped me?”

      Her voice was formal, her mouth unsmiling. She didn’t seem to recognize him, but then he was wearing sunglasses himself.

      “You were speeding, ma’am.”

      “I understood that the speed limit didn’t change for another mile,” Jodie said.

      “The boundary changed a couple of years ago.”

      “Has Mayor Milton been digging into the town of Saddlebank’s tax coffers again that they need to be replenished with speeding tickets?” she joked, her left elbow resting on the open window, her attitude bordering on cocky.

      Still the same boundary-pushing girl he remembered.

      “I need your driver’s license, Jodie. I mean, ma’am.”

      Her name slipped out. Most unprofessional of him.

      She frowned, then took off her sunglasses.

      Eyes blue as a mountain lake and fringed with sooty eyelashes stared up at him, enhanced by dark eyebrows. Her fine features were like porcelain, and combined with her thick, brown hair, it was enough to take his breath away.

      Then Jodie glanced down at his chest and he saw the moment she recognized him. Her cocky smile faded away and for a moment, her lashes lowered over her eyes. Her shoulders lifted slowly, as if she was drawing in a calming breath.

      “Hey, Finn. Or should I say Sheriff Hicks?” Her voice held a faintly taunting note, which bothered him more than he cared to admit.

      “It’s deputy. Sheriff Donnelly is still around,” he said, unable to stop the confused flow of memories as he thought of her father sitting by himself at the dining room table of the ranch he owned, lamenting the fact that his three daughters never came to visit anymore. Keith McCauley had been a good friend and mentor to Finn, helping him through a rough time in his life after his father died when Finn was fifteen. Finn’s mother had retreated into herself after that, and then Finn had come home from school one bitterly cold March day to find out her gone. She had left a note on the table telling him she needed to focus on her musical career. That she would be back. She just wasn’t sure when.

      Worried about his mother, Finn had called Keith, who’d been a deputy at the time. Keith had come and driven him to his house. The next day he’d brought him over to the Moore family, who had taken him in. Finn’s mother had come home four months later, and he’d moved back in with her. But a week later she’d left again.

      Though she’d popped in and out of his life after that, he’d stayed with the Moores until he could move out on his own.

      Keith had encouraged him and helped him through that difficult time. It had been Keith who’d introduced him to his fiancée, Denise. Keith who had encouraged him to date her after Keith had met her at the hospital in Bozeman.

      “Hate to rush the long arm of the law,” Jodie said, her voice holding a surprisingly tight note, “but am I getting a ticket or...?”

      Finn mentally shook off the sad memories. “In honor of your father, a man I admired, I’ll let you off today,” he said, meeting her gaze. “He was a good man.”

      She looked up at him, her blue eyes flat now. Expressionless. “I’m sure he was good to you.”

      Her cryptic comment confused him, but he guessed her emotions were volatile on a day like today, so he let it go. He had heard from Keith that his three daughters had planned to visit him after his cancer diagnosis. But before that happened Keith had been killed when his truck rolled upside down.

      Finn stood aside as Jodie rolled up the window, started the car.

      He half expected her to peel off, tires spinning, but she slowly pulled away, keeping to the speed limit this time.

      Her car topped the rise, the heat shimmering up from the pavement, distorting it, and then it dropped into the valley, disappearing from view.

      Now he had to finish his shift, clean up and try to get to the funeral on time. But as he drove to his last call of the day, all his thoughts were of those blue, blue eyes.

      * * *

      Jodie clutched the single rose she held, staring at the casket bearing the remains of her father as the pastor read from the Bible. With her other arm she clung to her sister Lauren as a flock of ravens whistled overhead. The birds were a funereal black against the blue Montana sky that stretched from one mountain range to the other, cradling the basin the town of Saddlebank nestled in.

      She took in a deep breath, slowing her still-racing heart, memories as raucous as the birds above them swirling through her mind. The service in the church had been mercifully brief and surprisingly difficult. Jodie’s own emotions were so mixed as she listened to the pastor talking about her father’s life. She wondered if they knew the same person.

      Do not speak ill of the dead.

      Her grandmother’s words resounded in Jodie’s mind. Her dear grandmother, who had also passed on, like Jodie’s mother had. So many losses, she thought.

      Only half her attention was on the casket and the pastor. The other half was on the man who stood toward the back of the sparse crowd assembled around the grave.

      He was taller than the last time she’d seen him. Which wasn’t a memory she enjoyed pulling out.

      That summer had been both wonderful and awful. She’d dated Finn, and lost her chance at her audition for the music conservatory.

      After her parents’ divorce and their subsequent move to Knoxville with their mom, she and her sisters had spent their summers in Saddlebank with their father. He’d never approved of her seeing Finn. Keith McCauley thought Finn Hicks was too good for her.

      But at the beginning of that summer Jodie had felt her life was coming to a good place. She was falling in love with a wonderful guy. Which had scared her, and led her to do something very stupid.

      She was still dealing with the repercussions of that decision and her father’s reaction to this day. After that summer, she’d never seen Finn again.

      Until a couple hours ago.

      Seeing Finn in the same uniform her father always wore, a uniform that evoked too many bad memories, was a shock, and yet not a surprise. Finn had always been a solid, salt-of-the-earth guy. Which was what had attracted her to him initially.

      She wondered what he would think of her now, working as a waitress during the day, playing piano in