Wyoming Homecoming--A Novel

  Praise for the novels of New York Times

  and USA TODAY bestselling author

  Diana Palmer

  “Diana Palmer is an amazing storyteller, and her long-time fans will enjoy Wyoming Winter with satisfaction!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “The popular Palmer has penned another winning novel, a perfect blend of romance and suspense.”

  —Booklist on Lawman

  “Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Sensual and suspenseful.”

  —Booklist on Lawless

  “Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “This is a fascinating story.... It’s nice to have a hero wise enough to know when he can’t do things alone and willing to accept help when he needs it. There is pleasure to be found in the nice sense of family this tale imparts.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Wyoming Bold

  “Readers will be moved by this tale of revenge and justice, grief and healing.”

  —Booklist on Dangerous

  “Lots of passion, thrills, and plenty of suspense... Protector is a top-notch read!”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  Also by Diana Palmer

  Long, Tall Texans

  Fearless

  Heartless

  Dangerous

  Merciless

  Courageous

  Protector

  Invincible

  Untamed

  Defender

  Undaunted

  Unbridled

  Unleashed

  Notorious

  Wyoming Men

  Wyoming Tough

  Wyoming Fierce

  Wyoming Bold

  Wyoming Strong

  Wyoming Rugged

  Wyoming Brave

  Wyoming Winter

  Wyoming Legend

  Wyoming Heart

  Wyoming True

  The Morcai Battalion

  The Morcai Battalion

  The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

  The Morcai Battalion: Invictus

  The Morcai Battalion: The Rescue

  For a complete list of books by Diana Palmer, visit www.dianapalmer.com.

  Diana Palmer

  Wyoming Homecoming

  To Dr. Mark McCracken, who saw me safely through COVID pneumonia at the North Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, GA, last year. Thank you so much!

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE FUNERAL HOME was crowded. Charlie Butler was well-known in Catelow, Wyoming, and he owned a considerable amount of property outside the city limits, in greater Carne County. In fact, his land adjoined a small ranch that Cody Banks had purchased the year before. He’d been reluctant to leave his rented home in the city limits, but he was tired of people. Cody wanted room to breathe. Most of all, he wanted a refuge from his job.

  He loved being sheriff of the county. This was his second term, and no serious opponents had jumped up to run against him in the last election. Apparently he was doing a good enough job to satisfy his critics as well as the handful of people he called friends.

  He was alone, standing apart from the crowd in his uniform. He’d come to pay his respects. His late wife, Deborah, had been distantly related to Butler by marriage. So he was sort of family. He’d been fond of the old man. He’d stopped by to see him often and made sure he had heat and groceries and whatever he needed while he fought the long battle with cancer that finally claimed him. Cody had a deputy in a squad car standing by to lead the funeral procession to the cemetery, after the service.

  He glanced toward the closed casket where a woman was standing with a little girl. He knew them. He winced. It had been a long time. Almost six years ago. He’d stood in the parking lot at the Denver hospital where his beloved wife, a doctor, had just died, and accused the woman and the child of killing her. The child had been sick with a virus that was deadly to a handful of people, his wife included. It hadn’t been until days later that he’d learned the woman and child had been at a funeral home to arrange services for her brother and sister-in-law, who’d been killed in an accident. His wife, Deborah, a distant cousin to the deceased woman, had gone to the funeral home to see them and express her sorrow. It was there that she’d contracted the fatal virus, and not from the woman or child, but from a funeral attendant who later also died of exposure to it.

  Cody had been out of his mind with grief. They’d only been married for two years, much of it spent apart while his wife pursued her career as a neurologist in Denver, at a famous hospital. She’d commuted and only managed to get home one or two days a month, sometimes not even that much. It had been largely a long-distance relationship, but Cody had loved her so much. Too much. He thought his life was over when she died. But he picked himself up, thanks to his cousin, Bart Riddle, a local rancher, and he’d gone on. It had been hard. He hadn’t been thinking clearly, then. He’d lashed out at the most innocent people. The woman and child, standing by the casket.

  When he’d walked in the door, both of them had looked hunted. The woman had taken the little girl by the hand and walked her back to the restroom. By the time they returned, Cody was at the other end of the room talking to one of the city council members. They watched him, almost fearfully. It disturbed him to see how badly he’d wounded them, so badly that they wouldn’t come near him all these years later. He wanted to apologize, to explain. He couldn’t even get close enough to do that.

  She was elegant, he thought. Not beautiful. Not really pretty, but she had a pretty figure and a creamy complexion. Her long, silvery-blond hair fell to her waist in back, neatly styled. Her eyes were a pale, almost silver gray. She was dressed in a suit, very conservative. Well, she worked for attorneys in Denver, he recalled, probably she had to dress to maintain the dignity of her office. She was a paralegal. He’d often wondered why she didn’t go on to law school. But his cousin, Bart Riddle, had said that there was no money for the training. And besides that, she was reluctant to leave her little niece Lucinda in someone else’s care at night. She loved the child dearly, because of the fact that the little girl was the last family she had on earth and the last link she had with her late brother.

  It had touched him, what Bart said. He had cousins, at least, although his parents were long dead. Abigail Brennan had nobody; just little Lucinda, who was nine now. Technically, he supposed, he and Abigail were related by marriage. Debby’s sister-in-law’s second marriage, after her husband’s death, was to Abigail’s brother Lawrence, and both Lawrence and Mary had been killed in a wreck just days before his wife Deborah died. Mary had been Debby’s former sister-in-law, which was why Debby had gone to the funeral home in the first place.

  “Why is the casket closed?” Cody asked his cousin Bart, who’d just joined him near the potted plant at the other end of the big viewing room.

  “He died of cancer,” Bart reminded him. “He said he didn’t want a bunch of yahoos staring down at him in his casket, so he put in his will that he wanted it closed.” He frowned. “Why are you standing over here all by yourself?”

  Cody sighed. “Because when I walked over to Abigail to apologize for what I said to her six years ago, she took the little girl by the hand and almost ran to the restroom.”

  Bart, who knew the background of these people very well, just nodded. “Shame,” he said quietly. “I mean, she and the child have nobody now. Her brother raised her, you know. Their parents died together in a car crash when she was still in school. Ironic, that her brother and his wife died together in a similar manner. Charlie, there,” he indicated the casket with a nod of his head, “was the last living relative she had, besides Lucy.” He laughed softly. “And he wasn’t much of that, either. She sent him cards on his birthday and at Christmas. Would have come to see him, but he didn’t want the kid around.” He indicated Lucinda, who was pretty, with the same silvery-blond hair as her aunt. “He never liked children. It’s a shame. She’s a nice child, from all accounts. Polite and sweet and doesn’t talk back.”

  “I know a lot of nice, sweet people who get on the internet and become Frankenstein’s monster with a keyboard at their fingertips,” Cody mused.

  “And isn’t that the truth?”

  “What’s Abigail going to do with Charlie’s place?” he asked.

  “No idea. She works in Denver. That’s an impossibly long commute.”

  “It’s a good ranch. Clean water, lots of pasture, and I think he still had a pretty decent herd of Black Angus cattle, despite the downturn in the economy.”

  Bart was staring at him. “What if she came to work here? J.C. Calhoun’s wife, Colie, is pregnant with their seco
nd child and she really wants to stay home with her kids. God knows Calhoun makes enough, working on Ren Colter’s ranch as his head of security. That means her job will be up for grabs, and there aren’t that many paralegals in a town the size of Catelow.”

  Cody winced. “I don’t think she wants to be any closer to me than Denver,” he said quietly. “I wish I could take back all the things I said to her that day. I scared her. I scared the little girl, too,” he added sadly. “I love kids. It hurts me, remembering how they both backed away from me and ran for her car.” His eyes closed. “Dear God, the things we do that come back to haunt us.”

  Bart laid a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t change the past,” he said. “We can only deal with what we have right now.”

  Cody’s eyes opened, dark and somber. “I reckon.” His face was hard. “Six years,” he said. “And I still mourn her. I blamed everybody except myself. If I’d insisted, she might have come back here to live and got a job at our community hospital.”

  Bart didn’t remind his friend that Deborah had been aggressively ambitious. She wanted to be the best in her field, and that was only possible working at a big hospital, where such opportunities were available. He knew, as Cody never seemed to, that Deborah was never the sort of woman who’d want to cook and clean and have babies. She’d even told Cody, when they first married, that children were out of the question for the immediate future. Cody hadn’t seemed to mind. He was obsessed with Deborah, so much in love that if she’d said she wanted to go to the moon, Cody would have been looking at ways to build a spaceship. Obsessive love like that seemed to Bart to be destructive. There was an old saying about relationships, he mused, that one kissed while the other turned the cheek. Cody was in love. Deborah was affectionate, but her true love was her work, not her husband. In the two years they’d been married, they’d spent far more time apart than together. Cody saw what he wanted to see.

  “I’m going to say hello to Abby,” Bart said, hesitating.

  “Go ahead,” Cody replied. “I’ll be standing here, holding up the wall.”

  Bart’s eyebrows lifted in a silent question.

  “If I start over there, she’ll find a way to get out of the room,” Cody replied quietly. “It’s all right. I won’t be here much longer. I was fond of Charlie and I wanted to pay my respects. I didn’t come to terrorize the women and children.”

  The last remark sounded bitter, Bart thought as he walked toward Abigail. Cody didn’t realize that he was just as intimidating to men as he was to Abby and Lucinda. He did a hard job and it had made him hard. He wasn’t the easygoing, friendly man who’d attracted Deborah during a visit eight years ago. The Cody of today would have sent Deborah in search of a man who was more easily controlled. He laughed to himself. He wondered if Cody realized how much he’d changed since he’d been sheriff. He truly doubted it.

  * * *

  ABIGAIL WAS SAYING goodbye to an elderly woman who’d gone to school with Charlie.

  The old woman smiled at her and held on to her hand. “You should come back home,” she said, smiling down at Lucinda as well. “Small towns are the best place to raise a child. And besides, Colie’s pregnant and she’s going to resign from her job at the attorney’s office. They’ll need a paralegal.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Charlie has a nice ranch, with a house he’d just renovated, and there’s kittens in the barn.”

  “Oh, boy, Aunt Abby. Kittens!” Lucinda exclaimed, and her whole little face lit up.

  Across the room, Cody saw that delight on the child’s face and felt a weight on his shoulders like a concrete slab. He’d wanted children so badly. But Deborah had said they had years to think about kids. She didn’t really like them. Cody did. But he loved Deborah enough to sacrifice his own hungers. Now, looking at Lucinda’s joy, bright and shining, he felt the hunger again, deeper and stronger.

  “You look well,” Bart told Abby, smiling as he hugged her gently. “How do you like Denver?”

  She made a face. “I hate it. Lucinda’s in a school she doesn’t like, and we live in a poky little apartment on the top floor with a drunk next door and a drummer on the next floor.” She leaned toward him. “He likes to practice at two in the morning!” She laughed.

  Cody saw that laughter in her face and felt as if he was smothering to death in a misery of his own making. He turned and went out the door. It hurt, to see the woman and child so happy, when they looked at him as if he’d committed all seven deadly sins and was bent on retribution.

  Abby watched him go and she relaxed. “Why was he here?” she asked bluntly.

  “He and Charlie were friends as well as third cousins,” Bart told her. “They played chess together. Cody got tired of town living, so he bought Dan Harlow’s place, the ranch that adjoins Charlie’s property.”

  She looked hunted all over again.

  “Don’t,” Bart said gently. “He’s sorry for what he said to you and Lucy,” he added. “He said he’d give anything to take it back.”

  She averted her eyes. She didn’t have to tell Bart about her past, he knew. Everybody in Catelow knew everybody’s business. It was a big, sprawling family, and there were no secrets in it. Abby’s father had been a hopeless drunk. He’d gambled away everything her mother had, and there had been a good deal of money when they’d married. He’d turned to strong drink when his luck at the gaming tables turned, and he’d been brutal. Abby and her mother wore concealing garments so that the bruises wouldn’t show. It was almost a relief when the old man died, but he took Abby’s mother with him. Her older brother, Lawrence, had come to get her and take her to live with him and Mary. They both loved her dearly, and she’d been grateful for a home, even if it was in Denver.

  Abby got a job with Lawrence’s firm as an administrative assistant just out of high school and immediately enrolled in night classes to get her paralegal training. Abby hated having Lawrence responsible for that training. As intelligent as Abby was, she couldn’t qualify for any scholarships that would have paid her way. Private schools were expensive. She hadn’t even had her parents’ home after their deaths. It was mortgaged to the hilt. Lawrence, her brother, had sold it when he took Abby to live with him and his wife Mary.

  She loved her brother and Mary, but she felt she was a burden on them, with Mary pregnant and a bedroom needed to convert to a nursery. They protested; they loved her and she was welcome, they emphasized. But she was determined to go, to make room for the baby they’d anticipated for so long. So, she moved into a small apartment. Lucinda was born soon afterward. Abby had loved her from the start, finding excuses to visit, so that she could hold the little girl. She was as fascinated with her as her doting parents.

  Then had come the car crash and the agony of the funeral. Deborah had come to pay her respects to her first cousin, Mary, and contracted the fatal virus from one of the attendants, who also died of it. Deborah had been admitted to the hospital with a high fever and Abby had gone from the funeral home where Lawrence and Mary were together in a viewing room to the hospital to see about Deborah.

  Cody had come across them in the parking lot, after being told by an aide that Deborah had gone to the funeral home and caught the virus from somebody there. He’d assumed it was the little girl, because she was feverish and sick. Abby had stopped by the emergency room to let a resident look at Lucy and give her something for the complications that had presented themselves. She’d given up the idea of visiting Deborah, with Lucy so sick, and had actually been on her way to the car to take Lucy to Lawrence’s apartment where a friend would take care of the little girl while Abby came back to see Deborah.

  That was when Cody had encountered them in the parking lot and raged at them out of his grief.

  Abby shivered, just at the memory of his unbridled rage. She was afraid of men anyway. That experience had put a nail in the coffin of her desire to ever get married. First her father, then Cody. Men frightened her in a rage, and she’d rarely seen her father any other way. She’d stay single and raise Lucy and never get involved with a man, she decided.

  “Hey, it’s okay, he’s gone outside,” Bart said softly, noting Abby’s expression.