Reclaiming the Cowboy. Kathleen O'Brien

few of the adjectives art critics loved to apply to her.

      The portraits were officially known by numbers only. This was Fourteen, which didn’t correspond with the subject’s age, because Annabelle had been only twelve the year this one was painted. Twelve, and so tired of sitting still. Her grandmother had positioned Annabelle next to a window, where the light hit her hair just right. Out of the corner of her eye, Annabelle caught a tantalizing hint of buttercups dancing in the wind, but she wasn’t allowed to look. She was barely allowed to breathe.

      That particular year, Annabelle had rebelled, briefly, the way preteens sometimes did. The slight puffiness beneath the famous blue eyes was proof of the storm of tears, the refusal to cooperate, the desperation to be set free.

      Ava had been furious, at first, but eventually she had announced that the hint of sadness added pathos to the painting, which was ultimately priceless.

      With a start, Bonnie came back to the present, realizing the bidding had begun. She didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t want this painting. She hated it. But she was glad to see the price rise higher and higher. Her mother had owned Fourteen outright, and she had left instructions in her will that it, along with a small pencil sketch of Annabelle, the only two pieces from the series that legally belonged to her, should be auctioned after her death. The proceeds were to be donated to the women’s shelter that had taken in Heather Irving so many times during her troubled life.

      Jacob was bidding, too. Bonnie smiled grimly behind her black-dotted Swiss veil, watching him lift one elegant finger, then let it drop, then lift it again. Was he using his own money, she wondered, or hers?

      He didn’t win. When the figure sailed too high, he shook his head discreetly at the auctioneer, then turned around to see who had beaten him. Recognizing an elderly California art collector whose goodwill he obviously needed to keep, he threw a smile of graceful surrender.

      As his smarmy gaze raked the crowd, Bonnie froze, wondering if he’d see her. It no longer mattered, not as it once had. She wasn’t in danger anymore. He didn’t have anything to gain by hurting her now.

      But she wanted to do this her way.

      The drawing was up next. Only nine-by-twelve, and unframed, it looked like the unloved stepsister of the larger oil. But Bonnie adored this picture, a practice sketch for Nine. In it, a seven-year-old Annabelle was in profile, one arm thrown over the back of a straight wooden chair, and she gazed longingly out the window. It was an odd little thing, drawn mostly to help Ava get the flowers right. Annabelle herself was rendered in simple charcoal, while the blooming gardens outside the window were bursting with vibrant color.

      Bonnie remembered that summer so well. It had been one of the few times she’d been posed looking through the window. Being able to watch the bees buzzing around the roses and the butterflies dipping into the penta plant... It had made the hours so much easier to bear.

      It had been almost as good as being free.

      She raised her hand. The auctioneer glanced at her, too professional to show surprise at a new bidder this late in the game. Her attorney remained utterly still and impassive, giving nothing away prematurely.

      She had many competitors. She wasn’t the only one who could see the special joy in this sketch—one of the few pictures in which the infamous Annabelle looked like a normal child.

      But she didn’t care if everyone in the room bid against her. She would have this sketch, whatever the price. She was a rich woman now, and if she ended up donating every dollar of her inheritance to the women’s shelter, that was fine with her.

      She raised her hand again and again. Quickly, people began to stare at her. Jacob himself had turned half a dozen times.

      He was merely curious at first. Then she saw him squinting, confused. And then a slowly dawning alarm.

      His posture tightened, all the easy insouciance evaporating. Eventually, when the bidding had come down to Bonnie and one other, Jacob didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t staring. He sat permanently swiveled toward her, his neck uncomfortably twisted. He gripped the seat of his chair with both hands, as if he had to hold himself down.

      Finally, her last competitor dropped out. The price was absurd, even for an Annabelle sketch. As the bid assistant bent over her, Jacob obviously couldn’t endure the suspense another minute. He stood and started moving toward her, dark and malevolent, like the California mudslides that coursed down hillsides blindly, burying everything in their paths.

      The bid assistant hesitated, confused and slightly startled by the frigid waves of fury suddenly pulsing through the air around them.

      Jacob’s face said it all. He knew. He had to know. He had to understand, at that terrible moment, that he’d lost. That all his attempts to outwit her, to ruin her... No, no euphemisms. Just state it baldly, like the hideous truth it was.

      All his attempts to kill her had failed.

      As Jacob approached, Bonnie stood, too. She lifted the veil from her face and smiled. Only five feet away, he froze, as if she were a gorgon, a Medusa—as if one look from her blue eyes had turned him to stone.

      A murmur spread through the room. Good. She wanted everyone, from the millionaires to the janitors, from the journalists to the guards, to know her. She removed her hat with one motion, then pulled the clip that had held her hair in its tight twist. A cascade of red-gold hair fell around her shoulders, and the murmur rose to an excited buzz.

      “Annabelle!” Jacob lunged forward.

      Abruptly, her lawyer jerked to a standing position, as if to block whatever the crazed man might have in mind. But Jacob pushed past him, rearranging his face as he came toward her. By the time he touched her, he was affection incarnate, the epitome of cousinly love.

      He reached out and enveloped Bonnie...Annabelle...in his arms.

      “Belle, Belle!” He was so smooth, so good, that if she didn’t know better, she’d believe he was overjoyed. “Oh, Belle, thank God you’re alive!”

CHAPTER THREE

      IT SHOULD HAVE been a peaceful Monday afternoon at the ranch. Instead, having counted every single second in the week since his meeting with Dallas, Mitch was going crazy.

      On TV it took about thirty seconds to get a fingerprint match. Even factoring in reality, and the need to do this through back channels, what could possibly be taking eight whole days?

      And then, just as Mitch was winding up the training session with Rusty, one of Bell River’s newest ponies destined to take the littlest guests on trail rides, he saw his brother coming toward him.

      Hell. Dallas had news. And it wasn’t good news.

      Mitch could sense that much from a hundred yards, just watching the way Dallas walked, framed in silhouette through the doorway of the indoor paddock. The first clue was the tight, squared-off position of his shoulders. And when Dallas cleared the door and the overhead lights hit him, Mitch could read the grim evidence on his face.

      “Scat, Alec,” Mitch said to his nephew, not roughly but flatly, without sugarcoating. “Go help Rowena with the baby. Your dad and I are going to need some privacy.”

      Alec made an irritated snicking sound between his teeth. He’d been having fun helping Mitch, and he didn’t want to quit. “Privacy for what?”

      Mitch rolled his eyes. Seriously?

      “We’re making plans to sell your scrawny body for spare parts. We can’t have you listening, so scram.”

      Alec started to protest again, but then he glanced over at his dad, and apparently the kid could read body language, too. When Dallas had a face like that, Alec wanted to be somewhere else.

      So did Mitch, who was suddenly as terrified as if he, too, were a kid. He tried to stop his heart from thumping so fast. He tried to stop his mind from imagining