Dodge the Bullet (19 page)

“Really? Yeah, I think I heard about that,
now that you mention it.” Stan reached for the damp rag hanging
from a holder near the sink and wiped the once glossy surface.
“Winslow thought he’d been real upstanding cornering your cattle
‘til you got around to getting them. Thought it was mighty white of
him considering he’s not too thrilled to have you working so
close.”

Dodge shrugged and thought nothing of the
fact that Stan told him Winslow didn’t like him. No news there.
“You hear anything else, Stan? Anyone bragging about getting back
at me maybe?” Dodge reached in the peanut bowl and plopped a
handful in his mouth, tried to sound as casual as he could.

Stan straightened, then bent down to whisper
to Dodge. “No, can’t say that I have. I thought that fence broke,
thought it was an accident?”

Dodge raised his brows, ran his fingers
through his hair. “I don’t know about you Stan, but I’ve never
heard of week old fence breaking lose from a post. Maybe decades
old…maybe, but week old?” He shrugged. “Just gets a man to
thinking.”

Whatever Stan was about to say got
interrupted by a howling shriek near the back of the bar where
ancient pool tables sat and dart boards hung. A group of men, both
young and old, had been playing pool. Even with his limited
understanding of Spanish, Dodge could make out the beginnings of an
argument over one of the tables. Hell, anyone could the way the men
were squaring into two groups and puffing out their chests.

“Damn it,” Stan muttered. “That’s the third
time this week.” He grabbed a baseball bat and moved out from
behind the counter toward the back, ready to ward off impending
violence by heading the group outside.

Dodge glanced over his shoulder and sighed.
If Stan knew anything about the fence at Sarah’s, he’d be too busy
to tell Dodge about it tonight. He finished the last of the beer,
threw a five on the counter and had headed for the door when he
caught sight of Miguel, tucked away in a corner, dead drunk and
leaning against a pool cue like a bike uses a kick stand.

“Miguel.” Dodge shouted over the fight about
to take place within feet of where they stood. When he didn’t
respond, Dodge knocked away the stick and had to shove Miguel back
with the heel of his hand to keep him upright. “What the hell are
you doing here?”

Miguel turned his face to Dodge, his pupils
huge black balls swimming in the equally dark sea of his face. “Mi
amigo,” Miguel slurred.

“You’re supposed to be back at the
Woodward’s keeping an eye on the place.” Dodge spoke in English,
then tried to translate to Spanish. Miguel was so drunk Dodge knew
he wouldn’t be able to understand anything but his first language.
“Por qué no está usted en el Woodwards?”

Miguel smiled and tried to glance around,
his eyes unable to focus on anything. “La Senora Woodward está
aquí?

“No, Mrs. Woodward isn’t here.” Dodge
reached for a chair to set Miguel down. “Damn it.” He wiped his
hands off, ducked to miss a cue stick flying through the air and
made his way to his truck.

The drive from the bar to Sarah’s place
would take about 10 minutes. With the looks of Miguel, he’d have to
say the place had been without protection for at least a few hours.
Damn it. This was exactly the kind of thing he was trying to avoid.
He knew Sarah would be furious if she knew he was trying to protect
her, keeping Miguel on alert for anything or anyone suspicious.
Hell, he should have just done it himself, but he’d been trying to
stay away from Sarah ever since he’d kissed her in the truck.

He knew it was childish, avoiding her, and
probably hurtful for her too. But he couldn’t help it; running had
always been his first instinct with women. The last woman he’d let
into his heart had proved that running was the safest course of
action.

What had started between them was a mistake
and unfortunately, he feared, inevitable. Keeping his distance had
caused the image of her and Wendy Hawkins to merge in his head. He
was sleep deprived, jittery and grumpy as hell.

He pulled onto the gravel drive and stopped
at Miguel’s house just outside the corral. He’d asked Miguel to
patrol the pastures a couple times each night and to swing around
the cabin. Miguel did his patrols in his truck, which was smaller
and quieter than Dodge’s big diesel, the sound of which might wake
someone in the cabin. Miguel’s truck was nowhere to be found and
Dodge’s only other option was the four by four. He pulled on his
jacket, grabbed a flashlight and keys to the barn and headed out to
do some sleuth work.

###

Sarah walked past Kevin’s room, heard the
muted sound of his iPod and his off-key singing and smiled. When
they’d first come to Colorado he’d been too depressed and angry to
sing. Things were looking up.

She’d left Lyle on the couch, covered in a
blanket. He’d fallen asleep watching baseball and from experience,
she knew it was better for everyone if she left him to wake on his
own and stumble to his bed.

She cracked the door to her bedroom, tossed
off her slippers and stared at her queen bed. The mattress was
comfortable, the heavy duvet enough to ward off the cold nights
when the windows were raised. Her pillows looked fluffy and
inviting. But crawling in to bed at night had become her least
favorite part of the day. She hated sleeping alone. She’d hated
sleeping alone when Todd had been away from home on business, hated
sleeping alone in the months after his death, and since a certain
cowboy had reawakened her hibernating libido, her detest for bed
had returned with a vengeance. With a heavy sigh she crawled into
bed and after she’d stacked the pillows behind her back, reached
for the book she’d been trying to read for the last few nights.

It had been three days since she’d kissed
Dodge and Jenny had convinced her to go for it. And where was the
man she planned to seduce? Nowhere to be found. Oh, he was around.
She’d seen his truck in the mornings parked near the barns, back
again sporadically throughout the day and sometimes around the
dinner hour as well. The man was at her ranch practically all day
long and she never saw him.

In the week or so it had taken him to get
his cows transferred to her place, he’d made a habit of coming by
for coffee some mornings, slipping in for a drink if the heat got
too bad and staying for dinner on a whim. She missed him. The one
time she’d actually worked up the nerve to go talk to him, he’d
taken off like a shot when she’d gotten within two hundred
yards.

There she sat, restlessly awaiting another
night that stretched ahead of her, sleep and peace just out of
reach. She tossed the book aside, threw back the covers and crossed
the foot of the bed to the window. When she yanked the cord to the
blinds and heaved the window open, she noticed what looked like
small headlights and the beam from a flashlight off in the
distance. She leaned down and pressed her nose against the screen
to get a better look. The headlights appeared too small for
Miguel’s truck. Sarah had noticed he’d been checking things out at
night, probably on Dodge’s orders. But that definitely wasn’t his
truck. Even the sound the vehicle made was different and she’d
never seen him use a flashlight. She straightened so suddenly that
she scraped her nose on the raised window and yelped.

She turned away from the window, searched
her room for something to use as a weapon, and decided to grab a
baseball bat from the garage on her way to investigate. Her heart
thundered in her chest as she checked the window again, saw the
lights head back toward the barn and headed outside to
investigate.

Sarah paused by Kevin’s door and for a
fleeting moment she considered getting him to come with her. He was
as tall as a man, but he was still her little boy and she needed to
protect him, not send him out to face an intruder. In the garage
she grabbed the biggest bat she could find, one of Kevin’s aluminum
Louisville Sluggers, and went out the side door.

The night was very quiet, very dark and if
she could’ve felt anything beyond the blood surging through the
rapid fire beat of her heart she’d have frozen in the cold. She
crossed the fenced yard and followed close to the road. She could
hear her footsteps in the gravel even in her rubber-soled slippers
and had to concentrate on not tripping in the irrigation grooves.
The bite of the air against her exposed arms and ankles stung, and
underneath the thin tank top and pajama pants her skin didn’t fare
much better. As she gripped the handle of the bat tightly, she
wished she’d listened to Dodge and gotten a gun so she could fire a
warning shot from a distance. She’d probably end up scaring the
shit out of everyone and incite a gun battle, which she’d
inevitably lose. Dumb idea.

Sarah stopped at the gate that separated the
main pasture from the barns to catch her breath and to try and
figure out what was going on. She could see the back end of a
truck, too large to be Miguel’s, but it was too dark to tell if it
belonged to Dodge. And the headlights she saw were too small to
have come from such a large truck. She squeezed between the razor
sharp wires and jerked when she heard a noise from the barn. The
razor sliced through the back of her tank top and, she felt sure,
into her skin. She bit her tongue to stop from screaming and,
crouched over like a thief in the night, ran toward the side of the
barn.

Sarah pushed her back against the
cinderblock structure and inched her way toward the corner of the
barn nearest the door to try and get a look inside. The door was
open in her direction and there was no way for her to see without
exposing herself. Sarah was debating what to do when a tall shadow
approached the opening and reached for the door that was only
inches from her face. She didn’t have time to think, barely had
time to take a breath before she cocked the bat back and swung with
all her mite.

For someone who had just swung a bat, Sarah
couldn’t quite figure out how her head had slammed against the barn
wall with a strong arm pushed against her larynx. The bright beam
of a flashlight shined accusingly in her face.

“Goddamn it, woman!” Dodge clicked off the
light and dropped his arm, but didn’t back up. “What the hell are
you doing, trying to get yourself killed?”

Sarah tried to rub the back of her head, but
couldn’t lift her arms higher than her chest because he still had
her pinned. “Get the hell off of me.” She pushed him away with the
heels of her palms.

Dodge stepped back, and in the dim light
from the barn she could tell by the way the veins in his neck
bulged he was spitting mad. He’d scared her to death and damn near
given her a concussion and he had the nerve to be angry with her?
She gave his chest a slap for good measure. “What am I doing? What
the hell are you doing?” She rubbed her head in earnest. “I thought
you were an intruder.”

“So you came after me alone? With a bat? I
thought I told you to call me if you saw anything suspicious. I
made it clear you weren’t to handle this on your own.”

“You’re not my keeper.”

“Well somebody needs to be because you sure
as hell could do with one.”

“Urrrrr,” Sarah growled and turned to stomp
away.

Dodge grabbed her arm. “Whoa, wait a
minute.” He pulled her back.

“Let go of me.” She tried to pull her arm
away.

“Sarah, you’re bleeding, honey, what
happened?” He clicked on the flashlight to examine her wound.

“I am?” He’d startled her, the tenderness in
his voice had blanked her mind. “Oh, I…ouch!”

“Hold still and let me get a look at this.”
She could feel him pulling her shirt away from the dried blood.

“That hurts. How bad is it?”

Dodge ran his finger along her back. “Not
too deep. I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but it needs to be
cleaned. You had a tetanus shot lately?”

“No.”

Dodge took off his jacket and wrapped it
around her gently before leading her to the barn. “Go have a seat.
I’ve got a first aid kit in the truck.”

When he returned to the barn, she turned and
tried to smile through the shivers. “I couldn’t find a place to
sit.”

“I probably need you to stand against the
wall over here by the light.” She carefully removed his jacket and
turned her face to the wall, leaving her back for him to doctor. He
set the first aid kit on a makeshift workbench he’d set up in the
barn and lifted the back of her shirt. “Sarah, you’re either going
to have to take this shirt off or I’ll need to cut it off. I can’t
hold it up and get this cleaned out at the same time.”

“Oh.” She tried to get the shirt off, but
winced when the scrape pulled as she moved.

Dodge grabbed her midsection to stop her.
“Just lift your arms up and I’ll take it off nice and easy. That’s
it,” he encouraged as he eased the tank from her head and tossed it
on the table.

Sarah felt her skin heat even as the cold
air hit her bare chest. She nearly jumped at the feel of his
calloused hands on her back. As he cleaned the wound, he murmured
soft words like “this may sting a little” and “that’s better,”
“just a few more dabs, sweetheart.” Sarah wanted to weep at his
compassion. She couldn’t feel the cut through the waves of desire
brought on by the feel of his fingers on his back. Her breath came
faster, her head hung as though too heavy to lift, and she wished
with an unbearable need that he’d reach around her back and caress
her breasts that ached for his touch.

###

Dodge’s hands shook. He could see the swell
of Sarah’s breasts crushed under her arms, feel the warmth of her
skin beneath his touch, hear her breath catch as he doctored her
wound. When he put the last bandage in place over the ointment he’d
smoothed over her skin, his hands began a journey of their own. He
ran a finger up and down along her spine, back and forth over each
bump and valley. He knew he needed to stop, knew where his
exploration would lead, and kept right on going, up and down her
back. Every stroke of his hand loosened his grip on sanity.