“I'd sooner call on one of those coyotes to guard my calves,” Leah stated. “Are you going to leave on your own or do I have to call the sheriff?”
“The sheriff is well aware of the truth of the situation between us and you know it,” the man replied, making John wonder what he meant. The truth about what? Buchanan's railroading her father and buying part of her land when she was desperate for money?
“I'll let you be for now,” Buchanan continued. “Sooner or later you'll have to listen to reason. When you're ready, you know where I am.”
His words sounded like a threat to John, who would have liked nothing better than to run him off personally. Instinct told him Leah was too intent on sticking up for herself to welcome a champion at this point, though. Grimly, he stayed where he was.
She remained stubbornly silent, her eyes narrowed with dislike. Twin patches of color highlighted her cheeks. The rifle was clutched in her hands so tight that her knuckles showed white.
Caught up in the image of glorious womanhood she presented, John nearly forgot to duck out of sight as the other man shrugged, swung around and walked back to his truck. As he did, John caught a glimpse of his face below the brim of his hat.
For a moment, the impression that he'd seen Buchanan somewhere before perplexed him. He stared hard but, as usual, he couldn't remember. Stopping only to touch his fingers politely to his hat brim, a gesture Leah refused to acknowledge, Buchanan climbed back in his truck, started the engine and drove in a slow half circle out of the yard. As he did so, John noticed a logo on the driver's door.
Buchanan Brothers Enterprises was written in gold script framed by a painted lasso.
Pretty fancy, John thought with a sneer.
“What are you doing here, spying on me?” Leah demanded. While he'd been watching Buchanan's retreat, she'd marched over and was looking up at him with the light of battle still glowing hotly in her clear blue eyes.
John glanced down at the rifle and then back into her face. If she hadn't been armed, he might have been tempted to taste her sweet mouth again, but he wasn't a fool. She'd probably turn on him like a bad tempered badger.
“Gonna shoot me?” he asked instead.
Obviously surprised, she glanced down at the gun as if she'd forgotten she was even carrying it.
“Oh heck, it's not even loaded,” she taunted. “Don't be scared.”
It was the second time his bravery had been called into question, and it was enough to shatter his resolve. This time when he reached for her, though, she met him halfway.
Tossing aside her good sense along with the gun, Leah launched herself at John like a groupie at a rock star. Her breasts flattened against his chest and her mouth pressed into his, her adrenaline running like molten lava as she opened to him, tasting, stroking, greedy for more of the passion that flowed from him in waves. He groaned deep in his throat as she wriggled closer yet. His hands clamped on her waist and he backed her against the wall. His thigh nudged its way between her legs, nestling into her heat.
With a little moan of surrender, she stretched up to bury her hands in the hair at his nape and managed to knock his hat askew. Her breasts throbbed and her nipples tingled as the feelings tumbled over one another inside herâdesire, frustration, hunger, excitement and a nameless craving she couldn't begin to identify.
John lifted his mouth fractionally and she moaned. Her fingers tightened on his scalp, seeking to anchor him close as she brought his mouth back to hers. She kept her eyes squeezed shut and he responded by kissing her more deeply than before. Leah's senses spun dizzily.
His hold on her shifted and the world tilted at a crazy angle as he scooped her into his arms. Reluctantly, she peeked at her surroundings. He was carrying her into the dim recesses of the barn. Only when he shouldered his way into the tack room and lowered her to the cot he'd been using did she begin to come to her senses.
“Whatâwhat are you doing?” she stammered.
His eyes smoldered with desire and she wondered for an instant if it was already too late. Had she pushed him too far or would he stop if she asked him to?
“What do you want me to do?” he demanded hoarsely. His face was flushed with passion, his features drawn tight with it as his gaze cut to her mouth. Before he could lower his head again and draw her back into the mindless whirlpool of passion that threatened to engulf them, she shook her head and pressed her hand to his chest.
“We can't,” she gasped, every nerve in her body crying out for her to sink back with him into the maelstrom. “We don't know if you're married or not.”
His face darkened and she wasn't sure if it was anger or frustrated desire that stained his skin.
“I
know,” he replied. He dropped his arms and straightened, leaving her huddled on the blankets. “Either you believe me or not. Which is it to be?”
For a timeless moment, Leah stared up at him, struggling to accept what he said and knowing, deep inside, that
he
believed it. Finally she bowed her head. The risk was too great. Taking him into her body and her heart, as well, then finding out his instincts had been wrong and he
did
belong to another woman would exact a bigger price than she could afford to pay. It could very well break her heart.
“I'm sorry,” she said, scrambling to her feet in the quiet stall. “It's not that I don't think you're telling the truthâ”
Before she could finish, he held up a detaining hand. “No, don't apologize,” he said roughly. “It's me who should be sorry. Dragging you in here the way I did and insisting that you believe me.” He turned away from her, head hanging. “Hell, you don't know me that well. I don't even know myself.”
It was Leah's turn to silence him. She put a hand on his arm and felt his muscles shiver beneath her touch. “Don't beat yourself up over this,” she told him, striving for lightness. “I haven't fired you yet, have I?”
His gaze, when he looked at her, was hooded. “Perhaps you should.”
His warning tone sent a trickle of nervousness through her. “Why?” she asked. “Have you remembered something else? Are you a man on the run, after all?”
“Damned if I know any more,” he replied grimly.
“Maybe supper will restore you,” she suggested. “I've got stew in the Crock-Pot and sourdough bread in the freezer. Are you hungry?”
He looked at her and then his gaze shifted to the pile of blankets in the corner. “Hungry doesn't even begin to describe it,” he said dryly.
Ignoring her own leaping response to his comment, Leah ducked around him and stepped into the wide aisleway. “Let's eat now and then finish the chores afterward,” she suggested. She needed to get out of here. Without looking to see whether John was following her or not, she headed for the house. Before she could take more than two steps, his voice stopped her in her tracks.
“If you and Taylor Buchanan are such enemies, why did he come by today?” he demanded, closing the gap between them. “Does he have the hots for you, too?”
Leah's reaction to the jealousy in John's tone was mixed. As she faced him, her chin jerked upward defiantly.
“I already told you that I have no use for the man,” she said. “When I was a kid I'd baby-sit for him and his wife The one good thing I will say about him is that as far as I know, he's never looked at another woman since they came here. He adores Ashley. When I was at their house, he never treated me in any manner that made me uncomfortable.” She remembered the arrogant way he'd stood there and asked how she was doing, as if the gun she were holding didn't exist. “He's probably just keeping an eye on the rest of the land he hopes to acquire someday. He must be getting impatient. I'm sure that's why he asked how the roundup went.”
She and John started walking together toward the house. “He looked familiar,” John said. “Not that I could remember if I'd met him, of course.”
Leah glanced up at him. She hadn't thought about it, but the two men resembled each other in a general way, especially dressed as similarly as they were. “Look in the mirror,” she said flippantly. “With your cheekbones, the cleft in your chin and your matching Stetsons, you and Buchanan could probably be brothers.”
John hesitated, frowning, and then he stared off into space as if he were no longer with her. His thick brows were bunched in concentration and there was a tightness at the corners of his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Leah asked nervously after he had remained silent for a good half minute.
He blinked and then his gaze refocused on her. “Huh?”
“I asked if you were all right?” she repeated, relief trickling back slowly. “For a moment, you kind of went somewhere else.”
To her surprise, he grabbed her upper arms and a wide grin splashed across his face. “I think it's coming back!” he exclaimed. “My memory. By bits and pieces, it's starting to return.”
Happiness for him washed over her, followed almost immediately by a sense of foreboding. Would the return of his memory take him away from the ranch, from her? She liked having him around and not just because he helped with the chores.
“What is it you've remembered?” she asked, holding her breath. Was it something more about his not being married? Something specific?
“After you said that Buchanan and I could be brothers, I remembered very clearly that I was an only child. It wasn't one of those crazy flashes I've been getting. I saw myself with my mother. She raised me alone, I'm sure of it.”
He sounded so elated that she was loath to push him. He hadn't mentioned a father, and there was so much further he had to go. Hoping for John's sake that he was right about the veil of amnesia lifting, she slapped a smile on her face and gave him a quick, impersonal hug. “That's wonderful,” she said, stepping back before he could react. Perhaps soon they'd both have some answers.
Chapter Seven
“I
have tomorrow off and I need to run to town for supplies,” Leah told John over supper a couple of days later. “Do you want to go with me?” There was always a chance someone he knew would recognize him, but that wasn't going to happen if he stayed at the ranch. He hadn't mentioned any more returning memories and she hadn't asked. “We could grab a bite at the café if you want, maybe catch a movie,” she added.
John's brows rose and his hazel eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned. “Are you asking me out? Because if you are, I accept.”
His smile scrambled Leah's senses. Looking at his mouth reminded her of the kisses they'd shared. Unsure just how to deal with his teasing tone, she took a bite of her chicken leg. As she chewed, she tried to think of some flip, clever comment and failed utterly. When he smiled at her the way he was doing now, it was hard enough to breathe normally, let alone be witty.
“In fact,” John continued as he forked up more green beans, “I'll take you to dinner. Is there a decent restaurant in Caulder Springs? Besides the pizza parlor?”
“Well, there's the Blue Dog, but you don't have to make a big deal out of this.” He must have been able to tell how much he'd flustered her, and now he was gloating. Irritation crept into her voice. “I'm tired of my own cooking, that's all. I haven't visited Mama since before you showed up, so I need to stop by and see her, too.” Leah pushed the mashed potatoes around on her plate. “Since you apparently don't have any means of transportation other than your thumb, I just thought you'd like a ride to town.”
As soon as the last nasty comment was out of her mouth, she longed to call it back. John had done nothing to deserve it except make her feel attractive, even desirable for a moment.
He stared at her while she struggled not to fidget, appalled by her own rudeness. She couldn't speak. Then he helped himself to a biscuit, spreading honey as carefully as if it were gold leaf. A pink flush swept over his face from his jaw to his chiseled cheekbones.
“Sorry, boss, I didn't mean to overstep my bounds,” he said in a tone devoid of expression. “I'd appreciate the lift, if you don't mind. I need to pick up some underwear and another pair of jeans, if there's a place that sells clothes. What time did you want to leave?”
Dang it. Now she'd gone and hurt his feelings. The last thing Leah wanted to deal with was how long it had been since she'd found herself in a social situation with a man. Not since Gil left her, she realized now.
Obviously her manners were more than a tad rusty. Exasperated, she blew out a breath and rocked her chair onto its back legs. How to make amends without adding to the sudden strain between them?
“Compton's probably sells everything you need, unless you want designer jeans or those silk boxer shorts the yuppies wear. I figured on leaving by two, after chores.”
“I wear briefs, and plain white will do fine. I'll be ready when you are.” His tone was flat, but strain snapped between them like river ice breaking up.
“What about a compromise?” she suggested cautiously. “You buy dinner and I'll pay for the show.”
He tipped his head to the side assessingly. “If we were dating, that would be called dutch treat.”
Leah breathed a sigh of relief as the tension eased a notch. “We're not dating.”
“Then I get to pick the movie,” he replied straight-faced.
“Deal.” She took a drink of milk and then she grinned. “In case you
forgot,”
she teased, “there's only one movie house in Caulder Springs and it's not a multiplex. More like third run.”
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What's playing? Not some girlie thing, I hope, all drippy and romantic.”
“I have no idea. What kind of movies do you like?” she asked curiously. “Big guns, lots of explosions and car chases, fake blood?”
He thought for a moment and then he shrugged. “Danged if I can remember,” he drawled.
For some reason, his reply struck Leah as hilarious. She tried to stop the laughter, pressing a hand to her mouth, but it just sputtered out between her fingers. Helpless with it, she turned sideways in her chair and doubled over as her eyes filled with tears.
After a moment, John chimed in, his hearty chuckles a counterpoint to her burst of laughter. Duke, lying down across the unlit fireplace hearth, pricked up his ears and looked at the two of them as though they'd lost their minds. One of the cats that had sneaked in unnoticed jumped down off the couch and padded over to meow at the door. Still giggling, Leah dabbed at her streaming eyes and got up to let it out.
“What kind of movies do
you
like?” John asked when she sat back down, gasping for breath and grinning like a fool. The laughter had loosened something inside her, reminded her that life wasn't always a dark ride.
She thought for a moment. “I don't like to be scared,” she said. “I hate gore and flailing body parts, but I want a good story.”
He just looked at her. “Flailing body parts?”
“I like Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise.” She sighed. “George Clooney, Nicholas Cage.”
John rolled his eyes.
“Do you remember any of them?”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It's just the personal stuff that eludes me.”
For a few moments they resumed eating in silence. “Why does your mom live in town?” he asked after he'd cleaned his plate, wiping up the gravy with the last bite of biscuit. “Doesn't she like the ranch? You never really said.”
Leah poked at her beans with her fork. She ate vegetables because they were good for her, but she didn't care for them. Talking about her mother usually made her feel uncomfortable, inadequate. Raised questions for which she had no answers, like what she could have done differently to pull Mama back from the brink.
“It started after Daddy died,” she said without looking up. Meticulously, she dissected a bean into three pieces with her fork. “She just started to fade, as if she were withdrawing from life. I thought it was the grief and I left her to work it out for herself. Then one day I asked her to run an errand for me to the vet's office in town. I didn't have the time and Gil, my husband, wasn't around. She started to cry, big silent tears.” That day still haunted Leah, and she could picture the panic on her mother's face. “That was when I finally realized she didn't go outside the house anymore. She hadn't set foot off the ranch in weeks, maybe since the funeral, and I hadn't noticed,” she added bitterly. “I was too busy.”
“Well, who was running things around here?” John demanded. “Did you have a foreman, a manager?”
She gave him a look of disbelief. “Are you kidding? Does this look like the King Ranch? Daddy ran it with two wranglers. After he died, one of them refused to take orders from a woman and quit.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “The woman being you?”
“That's right.” She'd been dealing with the stock, the books and the billsâa lot of billsâas well as her own crumbling marriage. “One day I came in from the range and saw that the house was dirty, the dishes weren't done and we'd run out of groceries. Mama had stopped getting dressed, but I thought it was temporary. Then she stopped getting out of bed.”
“It sounds as though you had a lot on your plate,” John remarked. “Your husband, did he help?”
Leah remembered how Gil had complained that she didn't have enough time for him. He'd been one more problem when what she desperately needed was solutions. “No,” she said starkly. “Except for tearing apart the machinery, Gil didn't much like ranch work.”
John made a sound of disgust and shook his head. “Maybe you're being too hard on yourself.”
“He was good with cars,” Leah explained, rising to Gil's defense just as she always had with her folks, even in her own mind. Maybe it was her choice of husband she was really defending. “He could take an engine apart and put it back together with his eyes shut. After Daddy died, Gil wanted me to talk Mama into selling the ranch so he could open a garage in town. We argued about it.” She made a helpless gesture. “This was Mama's home, the only one she'd ever had. How could I do that?” Even though her mother had stopped caring about the ranch, Leah had hoped at the time that her feelings might change.
Gil had been impatient. Before Leah ever saw the problem coming, he and his boss's wife at the gas station where he worked part-time ran off together. Hank Abbott had been livid. He'd hired a private detective. Leah had done her best to ignore the whispers, the questions, but she hadn't contested the divorce Gil wanted. Her pride was in tatters by then, along with any feeling she'd had toward him.
“What happened?” John asked gently. He'd propped his elbows on the table, resting his chin in one hand and giving her his undivided attention. His hazel eyes were like warm honey.
“He left town and we got divorced,” she said shortly, unwilling to admit the death of her marriage had been one more thing she just hadn't noticed. “End of story.”
John's eyes narrowed, but he didn't probe any further. “And your mother?” he prompted instead.
“When she refused to get out of bed, I realized we needed help. I couldn't manage the ranch, the house and her meals, too. Doc Hershaw said there was nothing wrong with her physically. He prescribed some pills. She didn't take them. He recommended counseling. She refused.”
John sat back in his chair. “Was there no one else to help you?”
“No one I felt comfortable asking. Mama was an only child, like me, and Daddy's family was scattered.” Not one of them had come to his funeral. She remembered her panic and the crushing sense of failure when she'd realized her mother was slipping away from her no less surely than her father had.
“The winter was a bitter one and we lost some cattle.” She swallowed hard as visions of that bleak time filled her mind, the unrelenting cold and the snow, day after day. Struggling to keep the truck on the slippery roads as she and Eli hauled feed to the cattle and broke through the crust of ice in the water troughs. Numbness in her fingers and needles when they thawed, eyes that reddened, watered and stung, wind that cut through the layers of clothing like a jagged knife. Just thinking about it, she shivered and hugged herself.
“When spring came, there were losses. I had no choice but to sell off some land to Buchanan.” If she'd done that before Gil left, would he have stuck around? Would she have cared? They were questions without answers. “I'd hired a neighbor's wife part-time. She tended Mama while her kids were in school, but after a while that wasn't enough. Doc Hershaw found the two women who agreed to take her in. They're widows and they appear to enjoy fussing after her. She seems content and they don't charge too much.”
“Does your mother go out?” John asked. “Does she ever come here?”
Leah frowned. “Oh, no. She hardly ever leaves the house, except maybe to sit in the garden. Irene and Rosemary love their flowers. I try to stop by every week or so, but I don't think time means much to Mama anymore.” Leah pushed back her chair, wrung out from all the emotion she'd dredged up. “She doesn't miss me or this place, at least.”
John watched her carry the dirty dishes to the sink, her forlorn voice still echoing in his ears. She'd been through enough to beat down anyone, let alone a slip of a thing like her, and yet it seemed only to have made her stronger.
“So why do you stay here?” he asked. “You could sell the ranch, start over somewhere with a tidy nest egg. Surely this Buchanan would buy you out.” It seemed like a reasonable question.
She looked appalled. “It's my
home
. Daddy would hate my selling, especially to Taylor Buchanan.” She nearly spat out his name. Apparently she considered that answer enough. She didn't elaborate.
“Did Buchanan give you a fair price for the land he bought?” John asked. Perhaps the other man had taken advantage of her plight, set up her father with an agenda of his own in mind. Some things were awfully hard to prove, but there were moral laws as well as civil ones. This Buchanan had sounded reasonable enough when he was here, but that didn't mean he wasn't used to getting what he wanted.
Her expression turned cold as she glanced over her shoulder. “You don't understand. Buchanan waited, like a vulture, until I was forced to sell. No price was fair.”
“What exactly happened when your father lost his job?” John asked, getting to his feet and helping to clear the table as Leah ran water in the sink. Over the past few days, they'd developed a routine of kitchen cleanup, moving easily around each other in the confined area.
“Don't you dare blame my father for any of it!” she cried, stopping so quick that John nearly plowed into her. “It was Buchanan who passed judgment on him, and Buchanan who benefited from it.” She turned her back, but not before John saw her wipe at her eyes. He put his hands on her shoulders in a clumsy attempt at comfort, but she pulled away from his grasp.