Rustler Mountain

Excerpt

Millie Talbot had never been called brave.

Mousy, timid, plain, homely, missish. Yes. Jilted, perhaps. Brave, no.

But as Millie stood there staring at the ranch house that sat smack dab in the middle of the Wilder homestead, she thought she might be a little brave for coming there.

Austin Wilder was an outlaw, after all. Maybe not so much in the present moment, and maybe never in the way his five times great great-grandfather had been, but he had certainly raised a significant amount of hell in his youth.

An apple that had fallen very close to the tree.

Rustler Mountain traded on its history, and as a result the lore and legends of the Wild West often felt closer to the present day than they might otherwise.

The town still felt divided the way it had been back then. Into the lawful and the lawless.

As a result, the Talbots didn’t mix with the Wilders.

Ironic that now she needed him.

She’d been rehearsing the speech that would get him on her side since yesterday, when she’d finally come to the conclusion that he and his family were her only options if she hoped to solve two of her current pressing problems.

She’d written the speech.

She’d discarded it.

Help me, Austin Wilder, you’re my only hope.

All the girls in middle and high school had whispered about him. A bad-boy fantasy or something like that. He’d ridden his horse down Main Street, right into the high school once. Defiant and cocky as always.

She’d heard about it. She’d been in eighth grade, so she hadn’t actually seen it.

It had been more common for him to ride his motorcycle into town with his brothers, Carson and Flynn, flanking him, their friend Dalton Wade bringing up the rear, the bikes so loud you couldn’t hear anyone talking over the roar of the engines.

They’d had legendary brawls with the Hancocks, who were also descended from outlaws—but did not mix with the Wilders, for historic reasons—and had near showdowns in the streets with the good citizens of town.

Austin had been arrested for any number of petty crimes in his youth. Moonshining, vandalism, and grand theft auto. Though he’d never been convicted, due to a lack of evidence.

They were the Undesirable Element about town.

They had their own saloon, their own haunts and hangouts, just as the other faction in town did.

Of course that had made him and his brothers ripe for speculation with any teenage girl in town who was inclined toward men.

Almost.

Millie had never had bad-boy fantasies.

She was the ultimate good girl.

And if she didn’t have the library in common with him, she never would have come here.

But that was the thing.

For all his crass-talking, hard-drinking, brawling ways, he had always been a patron of the Rustler Mountain Library.

In Rustler Mountain, there was the good and the bad, and never the twain shall meet.

Except at the library.

She clung to that now. Their common ground. The reason he might help her. The reason he would even know who she was.

She reminded herself of all that now as she tried to force herself to walk up the porch steps so she could knock on the door.

This meeting had seemed easier when it was theoretical.

Well, that was life.

Everything had seemed easy just two months ago. Now it was all different and terrible, and she was about to fling herself on the mercy of Austin Wilder.

Mercy she wasn’t sure he possessed.

But he was a reader. That made her feel they had something in common. It made her feel she had a hope of reaching him.

When she was a girl, and her mother was the head librarian, she used to watch him from behind the reference desk. He always came in alone. He was about five years older than she, so he had always seemed tall and remote.

He still did, honestly.

He wore outlaw the way her father had worn his sheriff’s badge.

Not surprising, because the town’s history was emblazoned everywhere. Their best-selling souvenirs were bricks from the original redbrick streets in town, which had been etched with the words: Rustler Mountain, Last Stop for the Wilder Brothers.

However, for all that the townspeople loved their history, the actual historical society was underfunded. The museum had closed a decade ago. It had once occupied the original courthouse, which was now being used as a town hall, with all the wonderful artifacts in boxes in the basement.

Gold Rush Days, once a staple of town tourism, running all through the month of June, used to bring in schoolchildren and visitors from out of town to see living history, gold panning, and a reenactment of the last stand of Austin Wilder. The historical figure, not the man she was here to see.

She wanted them back. Those events had been the pride and joy of her father, and he’d wanted to see them restored.

Something Millie was working on.

But Millie needed votes. Votes she would have had if her now ex-fiancé hadn’t cheated on her with Danielle LeFevre, the daughter of the former mayor, now town mayor herself.

Danielle was also Austin’s half-brother Flynn’s half-sister. Which was the kind of small town complication that was all too common. Millie had never had the feeling that Flynn was close with that part of his family, not that she knew the LeFevres or the Wilders well enough to be sure.

It was a gamble, and she was – historically – not one for games of change.

But she was desperate.

The way voting on town matters worked in Rustler Mountain was . . . quirky was maybe a nice way of saying it.

Town council members had votes, but so did members of Rustler Mountain’s founding families.

When she and Michael were engaged, she’d had enough votes. Michael was a Hall. The five times great-grandson of Rustler Mountain’s first banker. Michael was friends with the Langleys and the Hugheses, and they would generally vote with him. She could no longer count on those votes.

But the vote it hurt worst to lose was her father’s.

He’d died two and a half months earlier. The loss was fresh enough that there were still days she found herself standing there washing dishes or pruning the roses in her front yard, or putting a book back on the shelf at the library, and she’d be jolted by the sudden realization that John Talbot was dead.

She’d lost her mother ten years earlier, so she was no stranger to loss.

But with her dad gone . . .

She was the last remaining Talbot in town.

And it seemed that without him, she didn’t matter at all.

It certainly didn’t help that right after his death, she’d found out Michael was cheating with Danielle, and her wedding had been called off and . . .

Well, here she was.

Danielle was also a member of a founding family and had run on a platform of building Rustler Mountain up, but her idea of the way to go about it was very, very different from what Millie thought needed to happen. She proposed that the part of the budget Millie wanted for the historical society should be “earmarked for town council travel.”

Millie had four members of the town council on her side, as well as the Millses, the Bowlings, and the Lins.

She and her opposition were dead even.

And that was where Austin came in.

She needed the Wilder vote.

She could only hope that she was right in thinking she might be able to get it.

She doubted that anyone in town would believe her if she told them that he was a regular at the library.

But he had been since he was a boy, and he remained one now.

They didn’t speak when he came in. But he did come, once every two weeks, and he spent an hour or so perusing the shelves, coming back to the desk with a stack of books of just about every imaginable variety.

Around town, Austin had a reputation for being remote, cold, and hard. For being, essentially, the reincarnation of his ancestor.

He’d changed, though, after his father’s death, after his half sister had come to live with him and his brothers. The brawls had stopped.

But the town’s memory was more than a century long, so his reputation remained.

Austin had already lived longer than his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. Who had basically all lived just long enough to procreate, and then gotten themselves killed doing something dangerous or illegal.

She had to hope there was more to Austin than that. She wanted his vote.

She also wanted some artifacts from his family for the museum. If she could go into that meeting with his vote and with offerings of new attractions and insights for the grand reopening of the museum, she would feel . . .

Well, she would feel like maybe she was a Talbot in more than just name.

Austin’s family had a legacy of living fast and dying young. Hers was a legacy of staying strong and steady. Millie often didn’t feel strong or steady.

She needed to be now.

“Have courage,” she whispered to herself as she walked up the steps. She could have used his phone number. She had it in the library system.

But she felt that would be a violation of her sacred librarianship vows.

Not that she had actually taken vows, but she did take her job very seriously. The truth was, she knew which books everyone in town checked out. With knowledge came power and great responsibility. She had to be vigilant. She couldn’t just go telling everybody that Ronald Miller had checked out a book on herbal remedies for erectile dysfunction.

She simply had to check the book out, keep her expression neutral, and perhaps murmur a couple of things about the weather.

She did not ever say anything about the weather to Austin Wilder, however.

She took a breath, and gathered herself up, stomping up the porch steps, trying to use the vigorous nature of her steps to boost herself up.

Then she knocked. Firmly.

She was coming here to talk about the town. The past and the future.

She cared about both with all that she was.

A little ember began to burn in her chest.

She might be mousy a lot of the time, it was true. She couldn’t deny it. But when she got started talking about subjects she felt passionate about, she found her fire.

She was passionate about this.

And maybe passionate about beating Michael.

Maybe.

She waited for a moment, listening for the sounds of footsteps after she knocked.

She heard nothing.

She knocked again.

“Can I help you?”

She whirled around, putting her hand on her chest as if it might catch her heart as it tried to slam its way past her breastbone. “Oh,” she said.

There he was, standing in the dust behind her, cowboy hat planted firmly on his head, cowboy boots planted firmly on the ground.

He was wearing battered blue jeans, and a belt with an ornate buckle. His expression was unreadable, his square jaw set firm, his mouth a grim line. His dark brows were locked together, eyes glittering with emotion she couldn’t name.

He was backlit by the sun filtering through the towering pines behind him, and he looked as dangerous as he was rumored to be, as the many generations of his family were always purported to be.

“Austin?”

He looked her up and down, his gaze bracing.

“You’re the librarian,” he said.

At least he recognized her. She sometimes had the sense that she was nothing more than floral wallpaper to the men of this town. Even to her own fiancé.

Who hadn’t even noticed her when she’d walked in on him with . . .

She didn’t need to reflect on that right now.

“Yes. I am. I . . .” She cleared her throat and tilted her chin upward. “That’s not what I’m here about.”

He was so tall. So broad. And somehow it felt very different to be staring him down here, without the reference desk between them.

That, she realized, was her territory, and he, the outlaw, was a trespasser in it.

Here?

She was the one who didn’t belong.

She swallowed hard.

“I was going to say, I know I don’t have anything overdue.”

“We don’t make door-to-door attempts at repossessing books, Mr. Wilder.”

He snorted. “No one in my family has ever rated the respect of being called Mister. Just call me Austin.”

It wasn’t an overture of friendliness, but a flat statement of fact. She didn’t know quite what to make of it. “Okay.”

“What brings you up to Wilder Mountain if you aren’t here to repossess a copy of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up?”

“You . . . you turned that in two weeks ago.” She clasped her hands up at the center of her chest. Someone in high school had once said she made “mouse hands” when she was nervous, and every time she caught herself doing it, it infuriated her.

She lowered them quickly.

“So I did.” He stood there, staring, making her feel tiny even though he was standing down on the ground gazing up at her on the porch.

“You have The Elements of Style and a Jack Reacher book right now,” she said.

“I actually do know which books I have out right now.”

“Right. Well. I came up here because I wanted to talk to you. About . . . I’d like to ask you about a couple of things. The first is that I’d like to talk to you about any artifacts—journals, letters, or family heirlooms—you might be willing to donate to a new endeavor I’m working on.”

He crossed his arms across his broad chest, and she couldn’t help but notice how muscular his forearms were. And his chest under the tight white T-shirt he wore. Which was a silly observation, really. He was a cowboy. A working man. Of course he had muscles.

The heaviest thing she lifted was a weighty reference book.

He frowned. “Why?”

“I want . . . I want to reopen the museum. I have so many documents in the library. Historical journals and newspapers. All the artifacts that used to be on display at the courthouse are just gathering dust and . . . maybe I could put them on display at the library or in a different building in town—I’m still working on that part—but I want to have this information available again.”

“Then what do you need me for?”

“I’m a Talbot. The stories I have about my family, whether lore, legend, or fact . . . they are innumerable. But when it comes to the Wilders, there’s nothing but speculation.”

“And you want what?” He huffed. “Our side of the story?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“Make no mistake, Miss Talbot, what you really want is a boogeyman. You like your heroes and your villains, and you don’t like it complicated.”

“That isn’t true,” she said. “I want to portray the real history of the town.”

“And so you’re done with reenactments of my ancestors being shot in the streets?”

Her mouth dropped open, and then she shut it again. “I have no control over a private company’s Wild West shows.”

“I’m not asking about the Hancock’s Wild West Show. Their historically inaccurate nonsense is their own concern. Their family never had scruples and I don’t expect them to have any now. What I’m talking about is the historical society–sanctioned reenactment of the showdown that occurs under the guise of education.”

“I . . .” She stumbled over her words. “That’s part of the other piece of the conversation.”

“We’ve never spoken more than four words to each other, and you have two favors you want to ask? Damn, darlin’, that is bold.”

She knew that wasn’t supposed to be a compliment, but she took it as one all the same. “I need to be a little bold with this one, so I thought I’d take a shot.”

“Oh, careful. I find that triggering. Considering a Talbot did in fact shoot my ancestor.”

“Sorry,” she said quickly.

For the first time she wondered what it was like to have your family history centered on being the one who was shot dead.

She was related to the one who’d done the shooting.

“I’m kidding,” he said. Then he sighed heavily. “Come on inside.”

He walked up the porch steps, and then past her. She could smell hay, sweat, and something indefinable on the wind as he moved by her. It didn’t smell bad.

On the contrary, he smelled like the land. Like hard work and sunshine. Like dirt and trees.

It made her heart trip over itself, but she quickly gathered her wits. Austin Wilder was the kind of man who turned female heads wherever he went. It was impossible to ignore him. But one thing Millie had going for her—she was focused.

And she would remain focused now.

He held the door open and led her inside the house. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but she found herself fascinated by this place. It was clean. A large open space, a living room, kitchen, and dining area all combined into one. There was a large bookshelf next to an overstuffed chair. Everything was old, well-worn, but scrupulously kept.

She didn’t think there was a speck of dust to be found in the whole place, and it was just . . . not at all what she had expected from a rancher who was descended from one of the Wild West’s most notorious outlaws.

For a man with a tarnished reputation, he kept a very clean house.

“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to a spot at the square oak dining table.

There was no decor in the place, nothing that spoke of whimsy. A wooden floor, the walls covered in wood paneling, the ceiling also wood, with large log beams.

There were blinds, not curtains, over the window. And there wasn’t so much as a throw pillow on the couch. No vases with flowers, or anything like that.

It was nearly military, all that cleanliness combined with the simplicity.

“So what makes you think this is something the town wants? Something you can be successful with.”

“I think you misunderstand me. This isn’t a moneymaking venture. We have a building. The Talbot family. And I want to use it for this. The library is already in possession of a great many documents that I can use. But what I really want is to make the exhibit as interactive as possible. And I want people to get a deeper look at the reality of this place.”

“All right. And to do that you want . . . to go through all my family’s old shit?”

“Yes. And you know, if you . . . have any heirlooms you might possibly be interested in donating.”

“We have a collection of things in the attic.”

“They’re labeled and sorted, aren’t they?” she asked.

Because she could see it. He took good care of what he had.

He was an enigma, Austin Wilder. A man who read books, had a meticulously clean home, everything in its place, and yet possessed an outlaw reputation.

“They are,” he confirmed. “How did you guess?”

“You seem like the type.”

He chuckled. “Most people would say that I don’t.”

“Most people haven’t watched you check books out for the last twenty years.”

He laughed dryly. “Fair enough. So when you put forward your plan for the new museum, you’re confident that the town council is going to approve it? We both know they have a chokehold on what happens on Main Street.”

“Yes,” she said, “they do and . . . that’s where I need . . . my second favor.”

“Your second favor relates to the town council,” he said, the words deadpan.

“Yes.”

“Just how do you think I can help you with a whole panel of people who think I’m as bad as every other Wilder who came before me?”

She cleared her throat. “It doesn’t matter what they think. You have the vote. The founding family vote.”

He rubbed his chin, and the sound of his whiskers scraping against his palm sent an electric response all down her spine. “I see. So you don’t just want to take my family heirlooms and journals to make a museum. You want me to physically come and exercise a vote I’ve chosen never to exercise even once.”

Well, when he put it like that.

“I was hoping you might,” she said.

“All for what? For your family’s continued glory?”

“I told you,” she said, sputtering now. “I . . . I don’t want that. I want to present history in a real way and—”

“And continue with your sensationalized versions of history.”

“They aren’t mine,” she said.

“You’re a Talbot.”

As if that was the end of the discussion.

“And you’re a Wilder but—”

“I think you can see yourself out,” he said.

She was so shocked that she almost couldn’t comprehend what he’d just said. “What?”

“You heard me. You can see yourself out.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“Is no not enough? Then how about hell no.”

And with that, he stood up and gestured toward the door. And Millie Talbot found herself right back out on the front porch with no artifacts, no ally, and no hope.

 

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