The Cowboy's Mistaken Identity
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Melissa Senate
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Chapter One
“You have some nerve showing your face in this town.”
Chase Dawson was about to head into Mae’s Diner when a man leaving the restaurant jabbed a finger at his chest.
The woman with the guy glared at Chase. “He’s not worth it,” she ground out. Then, as the couple pushed past him and headed down Main Street, she turned and added, “You’re a despicable excuse for a human being!”
Whoa. Chase was sure glad he wasn’t the man these two thought he was. Though at six foot three, with black hair, blue eyes and a cleft in his chin, he couldn’t remember ever being mistaken for someone else.
He pulled open the door to the diner, anticipating a juicy cheeseburger, fries in gravy and a tall glass of sweet iced tea. He’d been on the road for five hours and had finally arrived in Winston, Wyoming, from his home in the eastern part of the state. He’d been reluctant enough to come here and finally dig into his family history, and this was the crazy welcome he got? Doesn’t bode well, he thought.
“Well, well, look who’s back in town,” another female voice said, a combination of anger and sadness in her tone. “Of course, I’m not surprised that you didn’t contact me.”
He let go of the door and turned around. A petite blonde woman with two hands on a baby stroller stood about a foot away. She looked even madder than the couple had.
She shook her head. “Do you even care that you have a son?” she asked, her hazel-green eyes going to the stroller for a moment before shooting back to him. “A three-month-old beautiful baby boy? No, you don’t. You made that clear.”
Whoa again. What the heck? He’d never stepped foot in Winston, Wyoming, before two minutes ago. He’d never even been within three hours of the place. He most definitely did not have a three-month-old son.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you have me mistaken for someone else,” Chase said, taking off his hat so she could better see his face.
“Yeah, you’re real easy to mistake,” she said with an angry roll of her eyes. “Now you’re pretending to be someone else? Classic gaslighting. What a piece of work you are.” With that she wheeled the stroller past him down the sidewalk.
Okay, what was going on here? Could he look so much like someone else in this town that a woman thought he was the father of her baby?
He hurried after her, taking his wallet from his back pocket and getting out his driver’s license. “Here,” he said. “This will prove I’m not you who have me confused with.”
She stopped and turned around. “Oh, I’m the confused one? And I don’t need to see your fake license. I’m sure you have dozens of them with all kinds of aliases. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“Miss. Ma’am,” he said. “If you’ll just listen—”
“Miss? Ma’am?” A burst of angry laughter came out of her pink-red mouth. “You know, you probably have forgotten my name. Well, it’s Hannah Calhoun. I suppose you don’t remember whispering it in my ear when you sweet-talked me into bed that first night.”
“Trust me, ma’am. Hannah. I would not forget that.” Had that just stupidly come out of his mouth? He shook his head. “Please—I’m not whoever you think I am. My name is Chase Dawson,” he added, holding up his license, which she refused to even glance at. He put it back in his wallet. “I’m from Bear Ridge, Wyoming, five hours southeast. I’ve never been to Winston before but I’m here to follow up a lead on my father, who I never met and don’t know a thing about. It’s possible he could be from here. Could I look so much like him that I’m being mistaken for him? He’d be around twenty years older, though.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but just then, two elderly men in Stetsons and cowboy boots emerged from the diner, looked his way and shook their fists at him before getting into a pickup. “Dirtbag!” one of them shouted out the window at him.
Chase was stunned into silence for a moment, staring at the truck and wondering how his first five minutes in Winston had derailed like this. He looked back at Hannah Calhoun. “I’m telling you the truth.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Oh yeah? What’s your father’s name?”
“As I said, I don’t know a thing about him—including his name.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know who your father is?”
“No. That’s why I’m here. To solve a family mystery. I was raised by a single mother who wouldn’t tell me anything about my dad. She passed away a couple months ago, and I found a piece of scrap paper among her things with Winston, WY, written on it and underlined. I thought maybe there was a connection to her past so I’m here to follow it. And from the way I’ve been greeted, I’m clearly onto something.”
She tilted her head to the left and studied him, then to the right. “You swear on a stack of Bibles that you’re telling the truth?”
He held his hat to his chest and looked right into her eyes. “Yes.”
“Huh,” she said, her expression softening for a second. Then it turned stony again. “That was Kent McCord’s signature look—false sincerity. He had it mastered.”
“Kent McCord?” Chase repeated. “That’s the guy I look so much like?”
“So alike you could be identical twins,” she said, staring at him. Studying him. Suddenly her eyes got a little misty and she shook her head. “I’m actually standing here believing your lies again. What is wrong with me? Haven’t I learned you’re a lying, cheating bastard who’ll say anything, even the most outrageous nonsense and get people to believe it?” She glanced into the stroller, where he could see a sleeping infant with wispy dark hair peeking out from under his bear-ears fleece hat. “Just stay away from me, Kent.”
With that, she turned and walked away, pushing the stroller with slumped shoulders.
He ran after her. “I’m Chase Dawson. Not Kent McCord. I don’t even have a brother and certainly not an identical twin. Apparently, I have a look-alike, though.”
She stopped and turned around, reaching into the tote bag snapped onto the stroller handles and pulling out a cell phone. She scrolled through photos, letting out an impatient sigh. “Here,” she said, holding up the phone. “Here you are.”
Chase took the phone and stared at the photo of...himself. Down to the blue eyes, the nose, the strong jawline, the cleft in the chin, the thick black hair. This was his face. And from the way the man stood very tall against a shiny black pickup, he appeared to be over six feet, like Chase.
“He looks exactly like me,” Chase said. “I’ll grant you that. But he has a scar by the side of his left eye. I don’t.” He held out the phone to her.
She took it and stared. “Huh. You’re right,” she said, looking from the photo to the left side of Chase’s face. “But you could have had plastic surgery. I’m surprised you didn’t alter your appearance more, actually, with so many people out for your blood.”
Jeez. Just what had this man done to earn the wrath of so many? “I don’t know how else to prove to you that I’m not who you think I am.”
She leaned in a bit, studying him again—hard. “You know, now that I look more closely, really closely, there’s something slightly different about the shape and intensity of your eyes. Kent’s eyes were just a bit softer somehow. Helped him get his way.”
A small bit of relief hit him in the chest. Helped him get his way meant she was starting to believe he wasn’t this Kent McCord. A man Chase clearly didn’t want to be.
A car coming down Main Street slowed, and a teenager in the passenger seat threw something right at him. It landed on his thigh and bounced to the ground by his foot. Chase looked down. A wadded-up fast food wrapper from Quik Burger. “Jerk!” the kid called out as the car kept going.
Chase threw his arms up in the air. Even teenagers hated him. “I came here for answers about my past,” he said. “But it sure looks like no one is going to talk to me, anyway. Everyone thinks I’m this really bad dude.”
Her head tilted again, and then she let out a breath. She studied him harder, peering closely at his face. She let out another impatient sigh. “There’s a park up ahead with a coffee truck. I could use a cup and a rest on one of the benches. We can talk there while Danny sleeps.”
She started pushing the stroller and he followed, putting his hat back on and pulling it down way low.
Hannah Calhoun turned the stroller into the entrance to the park, glad “Chase Dawson” hadn’t said a word during the two block walk. She still didn’t know what to think. She’d been up close and very personal with Kent McCord for two months. The guy beside her, with the exact physique and voice and face, save the small scar near his left eye, was a dead ringer.
Jolting to the say the least.
Despite the bright sunshine, it was still chilly this mid-April late afternoon, so the park was thankfully close to empty. The last thing she needed was to be seen talking to Kent McCord—or his doppleganger. She’d already lost half her business, a few friends, including one she’d been very close to, and her good name in this town. She was sure those who’d seen them chatting away on Main Street would assume the worst.
And Hannah Calhoun still wasn’t used to anyone thinking the worst of her. A good girl pleaser all her life and then wham—canceled.
Danny was dressed for the weather in his fleece suit, so he’d be fine for the fifteen minutes she’d grant this man. She needed to catch her breath, get control of herself and decide if “Chase Dawson” was telling the truth. No one had been a better liar, Academy Award level, than Kent, so she couldn’t be sure, even with that slight difference of the shape of their eyes and the lack of that scar. Could two people who were not identical twins look so much alike?
If this was Kent and he was making a fool of her, God help him. Not that she could do much more than throw a dirty diaper at him. But still.
The coffee truck was right where it always was, a comfort in this sudden craziness.
She stopped at the side of the truck and turned to the man beside her. “If Pete, who owns the truck, sees you, not only won’t he serve you, but he may come after you with a shotgun for how you—Kent,” she said, emphasizing the name, “treated me and a whole lot of other people in this town. Why don’t you head over to that bench just down the path, and I’ll join you in minute with our orders.”
He sighed. “Coffee with cream and sugar. And thank you.”
Huh. Kent drank his coffee black and would never let added sugar enter his body. She watched the Kent look-alike head down the path until he disappeared around the curve, then she pushed the stroller to the truck and got their orders, his regular and her iced coffee with a mocha swirl. Pete came out with the drinks in a carboard holder, oohed and aahed over the sleeping Danny, and she balanced the tray on the hood of the stroller.
As she approached the bench where Chase/Kent was sitting, he stood to take the tray from the stroller, waited for her to sit, then sat beside her—at a distance she appreciated. He sipped his coffee, and she sneaked in another study of his face. She could more readily see the slight differences between him and Kent. There was just something more intense about Chase Dawson’s features.
“What exactly did Kent McCord do to make everyone hate his guts?” he asked.
She took a sip of her own drink and set it between them on the bench. “He was a classic con man and swindled a lot of people out of either money or their self-respect. But he was always smart about it. Made it seem like their fault instead of his. Most people he conned just handed over money, no clue he was lying to him.”
“And I have the misfortune of looking exactly like this guy.”
Well, in this town. But it was hardly misfortune to be that damned good-looking, tall and sexy. Hannah, who’d never slept with a man on the first date, let alone even the usual third, had been suckered into stepping out of her cautious ways for a change.
Don’t think about it, she told herself. How he hurt you. How easily fooled you were when you thought you were a smart cookie and a good judge of character. She’d dated him for two months without a clue. She shook her head at how impossible that seemed now. It was why so many people in town had a hard time believing she hadn’t known that he was a con man.
But she’d gotten conned too.
She took another sip of her iced coffee. “He had a secret gambling addiction that got him desperate, apparently. Kent had done so much damage by the end that the police finally started an investigation. He fled town almost a year ago—when I was three months pregnant. No one’s heard from him or seen him since. Until today.”
He paused with his coffee headed toward his mouth. He looked truly surprised, shocked even. “Do you believe I’m not him?”
She didn’t know what to believe anymore. But the more she looked at him, the more she could the variations in their features. Kent had some trademark moves, too. Like the way he’d toss his hair. How he always sat with his left leg crossed over his right knee. He’d been a tapper, too, drumming his fingers to some imaginary beat on his leg or a tabletop since he used to play the drums in a local band. Small things, but Chase Dawson, if that was really his name, hadn’t tossed his thick dark hair once. And he sat with his legs straight down—and not in cowboy man spread, either. Not a single finger tap on the bench or his thigh. “I can see you’re not him.”
He extended his free hand. “Chase Dawson.”
She extended hers, still uneasy. How did this guy look so much like her ex? Her baby’s father? “Hannah Calhoun. And this is Danny Calhoun.” She ran her gaze over her son, sleeping so peacefully, then took a sip of her coffee. “Anyway, maybe Kent is a half brother you didn’t know about? Maybe your mother had a relationship with Kent’s father? There has to be some kind of family connection. I mean, you look just like Danny too.”
Chase Dawson looked in the stroller, a sense of wonder coming over his face. She well remembered the look on Kent McCord’s face when she told him she was pregnant, and it was something akin to horror.
“That’s possible,” he said. Confusion flashed in his eyes. “Thing is, I look a lot like my mom. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Fair complexion. Why would Kent and I look so much like my mother? I guess both his parents have the same coloring.”
Now she was confused. “Actually, no. Not at all. His mother died years ago when he was very young, but I saw a family photo once, and she was blond and brown-eyed. And his father, Owen McCord, is tall like the both of you, yes. But he has light brown hair. And hazel eyes. He does have a cleft in his chin, though.”
“How could Kent and I look exactly alike and only favor my mother? My mom had had one child—me.”
Hannah had no idea. “Nothing about this makes sense. But there’s a reason a piece of paper with the words Winston, WY were among your mother’s things.”
“Do you know Owen McCord? I mean, is he involved in his grandson’s life?”
She nodded. “I wanted my baby to have some connection to his paternal side. I was about six months along when I got up the nerve—even though I’d met Owen a few times at the ranch and even had dinner with him and Kent once. I found Owen in the barn and told him that he was going to be a grandfather.”
“How’d he react?” Chase asked, sipping his coffee.
“He broke down crying and hugged me. Then he told me everything Kent had done. His own son had all but destroyed the once prosperous McCord Ranch before Owen had realized it. Secretly sold land, equipment, livestock, made shoddy deals and promises he had no intention of keeping.”
“He swindled his own father?” Chase asked with a slow shake of his head.
“Broke his heart.”
Chase stood up. “I have to talk to him. There’s a very obvious reason why Kent and I look so much alike, why my mother has always been so secretive about my father’s identity, why she’d written Winston, WY, on that piece of paper, and Owen McCord is the only one who knows what that is. Can you direct me to the ranch?”
Hannah stood too and nodded. She took a final sip of her coffee and tossed it in the trash can near the bench, Chase doing the same.
“I’ll do better than that,” she said. “I help out on the ranch in my spare time, not that I have much, cleaning out the pens and stalls, spreading hay in the barn, sweeping up. I’d planned to go over now anyway. You can follow me in your truck.”
He sucked in a breath. “I appreciate it.”
A thought occurred to her, and she whipped around to face Chase. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” he said. “Same as Kent?”
She bit her lip and nodded. “I’d ask you when your birthday is, but I don’t know Kent’s.”
“Did Owen ever mention having another child out there somewhere?” he asked.
“Nope. Kent was an only child just like you.”
Chase seemed to take that in. “And his mother died when he was young?”
She nodded. “I don’t know anything about her. Kent didn’t like to talk about his family much, but that one time he invited me over to the ranch for dinner with him and his father, I saw a family photo on the fireplace mantel of Owen, Kent and his mom, all smiling in front of a duck pond. Kent noticed me looking at it, and I’ll never forget the look on his face as he picked it up and stared at it. A wistfulness came over his expression and he’d said, ‘I barely remember her.’ My heart just went right out to him.” She frowned and bit her lip. Maybe that was an act too. Saying and doing anything to get what he wanted.”
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” Chase said.
“Yeah, me too. But I did get this absolute gift out of the whole mess.” She leaned down in front of the stroller and ran a gentle caress over Danny’s fleece-capped head.
Chase nodded, his gaze on the baby for a long moment before turning to her. “What’s Owen like?”
“A very good person, completely broken still but trying. Between Kent betting against parts of the ranch and fudging the books, Owen ended up in big trouble with the bank, his own employees and other ranchers, who used to be his good friends. The McCord Ranch probably won’t ever come back from all Kent pulled.”
As they started to walk toward the park exit, Chase pulled his hat down low again.
“You don’t know anything about your father?” she asked. “Nothing?”
“I just know my mother was seventeen when I was born. Her parents were not the kindest people, and they tossed her out when the pregnancy she tried to hide became obvious.”
Hannah put a hand on his arm. “Your poor mother. How awful.” Hannah’s parents were gold—the kindest, warmest people—even though they too had gotten their share of dirty looks and “you had to know” from some folks in town, despite having been swindled too. Her family had thick skin and had rallied around Hannah. They’d gotten her through the worst of Kent’s betrayal. It hadn’t been an easy bunch of months, but when she’d delivered in the hospital, her family and Owen McCord had been so overjoyed that all the strife had stung a bit less.
They headed out of the park, Chase pulling his Stetson even farther down over his face. “My mother told me she got by lying about her age and waitressing and then went, all alone, to a sliding-scale clinic when it was time to give birth,” he said. “When I was little, I’d ask her about my dad and she’d clam up and say I’d have to make do with just a mom who loved me more than anything else in the world. She’d get all teary and I’d feel bad and stop asking questions. She was a great mom. Struggled, but always put me first.”
“Oh, Chase. I hope you get answers from Owen.”
“Me too,” he said.
He kept his head down as they approached his truck.
“The ranch is about five miles out from here. My car’s over there,” she added, pointing at the old but trustworthy little Honda a few spots up.
“I’ll help you load the stroller,” he said, walking over with her.
She appreciated the thoughtfulness. “Thanks.” She unlatched the five-point harness and lifted Danny out, then settled him in his car seat in the back.
Chase folded up the stroller and put in the trunk. “I’ll be right behind you,” he said with a slight tip of his hat. Then he went back over to this truck.
As she buckled her seat belt, she wondered if she should call Owen and prepare him for the Kent look-alike about to barrel into his life. Was Owen McCord Chase Dawson’s father? If he was, it was entirely possible that he had no idea he had another son.
One who looked just like Kent? And the same age?
Nothing about this situation made any sense.
Just what would Chase Dawson find out at the ranch?
