The Montana Sheriff Read online

  “I do want it. Thank you for the recommendation. It means a lot.”

  She grabbed dinner with the rest of the team before settling into her bunk with the most entertaining of the three books she had on the go. A few pages in, just when the story was getting good, her phone, set to silent, vibrated. The screen lit up.

  She checked the number and sighed as she answered. “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

  “Hi, Jasmine.” Only her mother ever called her by her full name. Her voice, soft and anxious, filled Jazz with dread. “Have you heard from Todd lately?”

  Jazz closed her eyes. She was eight years older than her brother. When he was a little boy, she’d been more of a mother to him than a sister. She was tired of bailing him out of trouble. She was equally tired of their mother expecting her to. Old habits, however, died hard.

  “What’s he done this time?”

  “I didn’t ask,” her mother admitted. “He called from the police station and asked me to come post his bail. What do I do?”

  You call your daughter and ask her for the money. Same as always.

  Jazz longed to say it, but didn’t. Her mother was an aging former showgirl who couldn’t name her children’s fathers. That they were three different men, Jazz didn’t doubt. Her mother had been irresponsible for as long as she could remember.

  “Do you know how much the bail is?” she asked.

  There was a brief silence on the other end of the connection. She could almost see her mother doing the calculations in her head. “Two thousand.”

  Which meant bail was really only a thousand, because her mother couldn’t resist skimming some off the top for herself. Still, the amount was large enough to suggest Todd had violated the restraining order his ex-girlfriend had taken out against him. He needed to grow up and move on.

  She was tempted to tell her mother to approach a bail bonds company for the cash, but if Todd skipped out on his court date, which was a distinct possibility, Jazz would have to repay it. Either way, this phone call was going to cost her money she’d never see again. “I’ll send you an e-transfer.”

  Her mother made a pretense of being grateful, but the call lasted only a few minutes after that. She never asked Jazz how she was doing, or even where she was.

  Jazz tossed the now-silent phone aside. She’d once watched a few reruns of the TV series Shameless, but quit because it reminded her too much of her childhood. The biggest differences were that she’d had two brothers to care for and she’d grown up in Las Vegas. She left home when she was eighteen and never looked back, so her sense of family wasn’t strong, either. She did, however, send grocery money.

  And, occasionally, bail money for Todd. Thankfully her youngest brother, Leo, had managed to stay out of trouble so far. She called both of her brothers for birthdays and Christmas, trying to lessen the guilt she felt over abandoning them, but figured she’d inherited her mother and unknown father’s stellar parenting DNA, because the biggest emotion she’d felt when she left them behind was relief.

  She tried to go back to her book, but thanks to the call from her mother, the story had lost much of its charm. Sleep was out, too. She could switch to a less riveting book on world economies, but if it did put her out, she’d have to reread it on principle. She’d barely finished high school, and she hated sounding ignorant when the team got together, so she read a lot to compensate.

  She slid from her bunk, and with her boots in her hand, tiptoed from the room. A few lights were still on but most of the others were sleeping. She wore sweats to bed when staying on base, but she stopped at her locker for her jacket, leather pants, and helmet. Then, she made her way to the parking lot. It was quiet outside. Except for the occasional plane, traffic was light around the airport at night.

  Her bike was an aging Harley-Davidson Sportster 883L. She’d bought it used a few years ago after a months-long search and she loved it beyond belief. The racing green fuel tank and low mileage were what finalized the deal.

  She tucked her fringe of blond bangs under the lip of her helmet so her hair wouldn’t get in her eyes, then dropped the visor over her face. Within minutes she was on the I-90 with the wind tugging at the sleeves of her jacket.

  A long bike ride was second only to those few brief heartbeats of freefall for putting her world back to rights.

  Chapter Two

  Jazz navigated her Harley off the back road and onto the wide drive, passing under an arched sign that read Endeavour Ranch, proof the gas station attendant in Grand hadn’t steered her wrong despite what she’d half begun to suspect. The five miles she’d ridden outside of town had revealed nothing but plowed fields ready for planting and heavy equipment churning up dirt.

  It was a little past ten in the morning. She’d left civilization behind an hour or so ago. She drove another mile up the long, snaking drive before spotting any signs of human habitation. She cut her engine in front of a massive L-shaped, single-story mansion with three identical wings—two facing the drive and one angled to the right so it overlooked the shining waters of the Tongue River. No landscaping had yet been accomplished, although a sectioned-off piece of dry ground surrounding the walkway, and a hose with a sprinkler, indicated it might have been seeded.

  The house appeared to be mostly framed in, unfinished, and uninhabited. Two half-ton trucks wearing construction company logos plastered to the doors lent credibility to her theory it was a work in progress. So did the sounds of hammering and the buzzing of saws. The Custer County sheriff’s SUV next to the trucks, however, left her wondering if this was also the scene of some crime.

  Behind the main house, three barns trailed the length of what remained of the drive, which reached its conclusion in front of an enormous, fenced-in pasture containing horses and an adjoining corral. The warm spring air reeked of horses, manure, raw wood, and fresh sawdust. To Jazz, who’d grown up in a large city filled with nightlife and tourists, the combination was oddly exotic, and more pleasant than not.

  She scanned the wide, rolling fields that stretched to either horizon, interrupted by a lone butte far to the right. Where had they hidden the airfield?

  A sudden urge to turn around and head back to Helena hit hard. She was a city girl. She knew firefighting, not ranching, and while no one hoped they’d see fires, if she didn’t, what would she do with herself for a whole summer here?

  She’d whip the Endeavour smokejumper operation into shape—that was what. She’d come too far to have second thoughts.

  She flipped down the bike’s kickstand with her right boot, then unfastened the chin strap on her helmet and swung her leg over the seat so she could stand. She hung the helmet from the handlebar and finger-combed her short hair, even though only optimism suggested it would do any good.

  She’d been told to ask for Dan McKillop, one of the Endeavour’s three owners. Since she didn’t see anyone standing around outside to ask, she followed the sounds of construction. The day was warm so she left her leather jacket behind with her helmet. As she crossed the yard, the sun bit through her thin cotton blouse and heated the leather encasing her thighs. The protective leather biking pants were jeans-style, so they weren’t super-tight, but leather didn’t breathe.

  She knocked on the doorframe, which seemed silly considering no door had yet been installed, but politeness overruled. She stepped past the threshold and out of the sun and waited for her eyesight to adjust.

  “Anyone home?” she called out.

  The hum of the saws carried on, but the hammering stopped. A head and one drywall-dusted shoulder popped sideways through an interior doorframe, as if their owner were leaning back from some task rather than allowing himself to be completely disengaged. Whatever he wrestled with appeared to be winning. Any second now, Jazz expected him to topple onto his back.

  “How can I help you?” the floating head asked.

  “I’m looking for Dan McKillop.”

  “That would be me. Give me two seconds. I’ll be right with you.” The head and should
er disappeared. The hammering picked up again, with greater determination than before. Then came a grunt of what might be satisfaction, the rattle of metal on concrete, and the entire person appeared from behind the far side of the wall, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  Jazz had grown up around the casinos in Vegas, so she was familiar with men who had money—or more specifically, and of far more value, the subtler nuances between those who pretended to have it and those who pretended they didn’t—but, while she hadn’t known what to expect a billionaire rancher on his home turf to look like, this wasn’t it.

  In his early to mid-thirties, Dan McKillop was a good half a head taller than her, making him at least six feet two inches, although broad shoulders gave him the appearance of far greater size. Sun-streaked blond hair, cropped short over the ears, had been licked off his forehead on top. His drywall-speckled jeans sagged off his hips beneath the tail of a T-shirt that might once have been white. Not any longer. It had a tear in one sleeve and a collar that sagged from too many washings. His steel-toed boots, covered in a fine, gray-powdered dust, showed a level of wear and tear beyond what one might expect from one of the Endeavour Ranch’s wealthy new owners.

  He wore an easy confidence that belonged on a much older man. It said he had no need to pretend a thing. He didn’t miss anything, either. Sky-blue eyes scrutinized her in a way that said he’d memorized every detail about her, from the leather pants right down to the pale pink hue of a bra that her cotton blouse didn’t quite hide, within seconds. His eyes held a question, plus a glitter of interest Jazz had seen too many times before.

  Dan McKillop liked women. And he was confident women liked him.

  She realized she was staring. Of course she was. His confidence regarding women wasn’t misplaced.

  “I’m Jazz O’Reilly,” she said, stepping forward to shake his hand. He had a nice grip, firm, but not overlong. “I thought you’d be older,” she blurted out, afraid he might think her stare meant she was hitting on him.

  Why wouldn’t he think that? He looked like a short-haired Keith Urban and had money. Women probably threw themselves at him every day.

  Well, Jazz wouldn’t be one of them. Men with money were nothing but trouble for women without it. She could thank the casinos and her mother for that particular life lesson.

  He let go of her hand. The smile threatening the corners of his mouth stiffened before it had a chance to fully engage. The interest in his eyes flickered out of existence. “I assumed from your name that you’d be a man, so it turns out we’ve both been surprised. I’m going to have to rethink the sleeping arrangements at the base.”

  She hadn’t considered he might not know she was a woman. Firefighting communities were tight-knit and she was one of a very small number of women in an already small pool of smokejumpers. Everyone knew everyone else, or at the very least, knew of them.

  She swallowed a fresh wave of homesickness. She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to rely on the people she worked with—both in Helena and Missoula—or how sheltered from real life she’d become, which was beyond ridiculous. She was a grown woman who leaped from airplanes without a second thought. She fought forest fires. And she ran into burning buildings—not from them.

  “Whatever arrangements you have in place will be fine. I’m used to bunking with men,” she said, and yes, she knew how that sounded. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to deliver that line. She braced for the inevitable joke, but it never came.

  “We’ll find a way to make do for now. Everything is a little chaotic around here,” Dan confessed, his expression rueful. His gaze flitted around the unfinished room with its sawhorses, stacks of lumber, and exposed sheetrock. “Luckily, the airfield was already in place before we took ownership of the ranch, and we’ve started to upgrade the three hangars, although the sleeping quarters are still a bit tight. The beds are wedged together and there’s no real kitchen installed yet. There’s a portable outhouse for a toilet and we’ve rigged up an outdoor shower with a hose. You’ll have to use the laundry services in Grand until we get the plumbing sorted out.” An eyebrow shot up. The smile returned. “Want to change your mind?”

  He threw it down like a challenge.

  She wedged her hands into her back pockets. If he was trying to get rid of her, he had another thing coming. Where she came from, what he’d just described would have sounded like heaven—not that she planned to let on. Her past was her business and she kept it to herself.

  “Helping get the operation up and running was part of the job I accepted,” she said. “And since I don’t usually have access to indoor plumbing when I’m fighting fires, I can make do.”

  “Suit yourself.” His eyes lit with good-natured humor. “Let’s go take a look, shall we?”

  *

  The pretty, blue-eyed girl with the short, spiky blond hair and long, jagged bangs looked about as much like a firefighter as Dan did a beautician.

  Not only a firefighter, but a smokejumper—one of their elite. And not only a smokejumper, but a highly recommended base manager, meaning she’d been at it a long time. He wanted to ask, “Did they hire you when you were ten?” Because she didn’t look old enough to get into Lou’s Pub, let alone smokejumper training.

  But saying so might sound sexist.

  She did, however, look like a Jazz. The leather pants covered mile-long, muscled legs and the short-sleeved T-shirt revealed tanned, well-toned arms. She was lean, physically fit, yet at the same time, there was a delicate freshness to her face that was decidedly female and very appealing.

  And that smooth, husky voice… He could picture her with a mike on a stage in a dark, smoke-filled lounge, crooning to an appreciative crowd of drunken businessmen kicking back at the tail end of a conference.

  He could imagine her equally well as a high school basketball star. She had the wholesome look down pat, too. The juxtaposition was intriguing.

  What he couldn’t imagine was her managing a crew of smokejumpers. Those guys ate testosterone for breakfast.

  But again, saying so might sound sexist.

  He dug in his jeans pocket for the keys to his SUV as he followed her into the sunshine. The only unfamiliar vehicle in the yard was a sweet little Harley-Davidson lowrider, all polished chrome and gleaming, racing-green metal. A bulky pack and full saddlebags were strapped to it. A helmet and leather jacket hung from the handlebars.

  The skin on his back and upper arms shrank, as if he’d brushed up against something cold. Disquiet rippled his spine. He knew the signs of an adrenaline junkie better than most and Jazz O’Reilly was ticking the boxes. The bike might be sweet, but a lot could happen in the seven hours it took to drive from Missoula to Grand. He’d been called to three motorcycle accidents in his relatively short career as a sheriff and none had been pretty. Statistically speaking, in fatal accidents involving motorcycles and cars, cars came out the clear winners.

  He had no doubt she was a competent rider. The problem was that there were a lot of other drivers on the road, and competent wasn’t the word he’d use to describe all of them. Besides, it was hard to argue who was the better driver when you were hung up in the undercarriage of an eighteen-wheeler long haul.

  It was all he could do not to deliver a lecture, as if she were some schoolkid, or one of his nieces or nephews, and not a free-thinking, legally licensed adult.

  He assumed she was licensed.

  “Is the bike yours?” he asked, which had to be the dumbest question he’d asked so far this week. Who else could it belong to?

  “It is.” Her smooth, pretty cheeks dimpled. Innocent blue eyes, unaware of his internal struggle, laughed up at him. “Is that SUV yours?”

  She was quick. He’d give her that.

  “Yes. Well,” he amended, “technically, it belongs to the county. I’m the sheriff.”

  “Really?” Long, dark blond lashes fluttered. “Between construction work and ranching, when do you find the time?”

  Now she was just plai
n making fun of him.

  He grinned. “I never said I was good at it.” He tossed the keys in his hand. “Do you want to leave the bike here and ride out with me? We can load your packs in my SUV.”

  The breeze ruffled that cute blond fringe of hair doing its best to hide her eyes. And failing. “How far is it to the airfield?”

  “Ten miles. The road that cuts through the Endeavour from this side is dirt and not all that great.”

  The fun in her eyes changed to surprise. “How big is this ranch, anyway?”

  It still embarrassed him to say. They’d all been so busy trying to get paperwork in order, and projects up and running, that it was hard to think of themselves as the Endeavour’s owners. Most days, Dan felt more like its indentured servant.

  “About 180 square miles.”

  Her long lashes flickered again as she processed the information. “Then I’d better take my bike to the airfield. It saves me making a second trip.”

  She was right, of course. It made no sense for her to leave her bike here.

  “Don’t you have to run every day, anyway?” he asked, straight-faced. Smokejumpers—firefighters in general—were required to stay physically fit.

  She picked up her helmet and settled it on her head, fastening the strap under her chin. Her response was equally serious, although her expressive eyes danced as she spoke. “I don’t normally run in leather. It chafes, especially on a hot day.”

  He’d always had a weakness for women, but it had been a long time since he’d met one as interesting as this. She was cute and had a good sense of humor. She reminded him of…

  Damn it.

  He had a type—he knew it—and Jazz O’Reilly was ticking those boxes, too. With any luck, she’d have a boyfriend. A husband. A significant other. Maybe all three. Thank God, the Endeavour, Custer County, and the state of Montana that he didn’t have the free time to find out, because for the sake of his sanity, the next woman he pursued was going to be the homebody type.