Winsor, Linda (3 page)

A
sob worked its way out of her dry throat. As she opened her eyes, the image of
the shoes faded and transformed into a pair of dusty boots. She started,
brandishing her pepper spray, but before she could activate it Shep snatched it
away.

"Take
it easy, Slick." He stepped back, hands raised as though to prove he meant
no harm. "This way, no one will get hurt over a misunderstanding. I've had
a taste of this stuff before, and once was more than enough, believe me."

Deanna
eyed him with suspicion. "What was the occasion?"

Instead
of answering, Shep chuckled. "You're jumpier than a frog on a hot
rock." He extended a hand to help her to her feet. "How about some
grub?"

Food.
The idea was heavenly enough to assuage her ruffled humor. Shepard Jones could
laugh all he wanted, so long as he fed her. Maybe then her head would be
clearer and she could make up her mind just what to do about her precarious
situation. Taking his hand, she struggled to her feet only to be startled by
pain shooting up from her right ankle. Her right knee gave out, throwing her
off balance against Shep.

"My
ankle," she gasped, trying to explain her sprawling assault.

"Must
have landed on it wrong when you dismounted." He steadied her with one arm
about her waist. After what seemed a moment of indecision, he handed her back
the spray canister. "Here, hold this and keep the cap
on."
Without
further ado, he swept her good leg out from under her and lifted her in his
arms.

"You
sure you trust me?"

"I
guess we have to start somewhere." He shrugged. "Besides, where are
you going to run off to?"

Deanna
kept her fallback plan of following the electric lines to civilization to
herself, tucking the spray back in her purse. But after the battering she'd
given her rescuer with it, her purse didn't want to close right, adding insult
to injury. This was a hundred-and-fifty-dollar designer clutch ruined, even if
she had found it for twenty-five in a Fifth Avenue bargain basement.

"A
good soak in some salts and you'll feel like a new person."

"I
didn't say I was staying... after I eat, that is. You said there was a
Jeep—"

The
press of Shep's lips expressed his waning patience. He had every right to be
annoyed with her. He was trying to be hospitable in an inhospitable place. That
alone should win him an A for effort.

"I'm
sorry I should be thanking you, not asking you to do more for me."

"It
was my horse that got you into this fix and you were pretty shaken up," he
answered, with a guarded grace as he climbed the step to the porch of the main
house.

"I
didn't have to hit you." She touched the corner of his lip on impulse and
he tensed in response.

Their
gazes locked for the time it took the screen door he'd swung open with his boot
tip to bounce back. It wasn't long by any means, but then, electricity traveled
light speeds faster than second thoughts. Every one of Deanna's senses
heightened along its charged path, the same awareness that seized him seizing
her as well.

Beyond
the dust of the trail and unshaven stubble were eyes that defied the label of
brown. She watched, fascinated as a renegade
come hither
kindled in
their gold-flecked umber only to be willfully doused by the mask of indifference
claiming his face.

Once
inside, he all but dropped her. "Make yourself at home. I'll get a tub for
that ankle."

Deanna
bobbed her head, still dumb from the shock, as he retreated through a narrow
hallway into another room. He seemed to favor one leg. She hadn't noticed it
before. Or was it just her imagination?

Hobbling
over to a pine-framed sofa with plump plaid cushions of fifties vintage, she
dropped down to take off her shoes and trouser socks.

"I
figure I can start the grill and take a quick shower while you're
soaking," he hollered above the sound of running water. "Then you can
wash off some of the dust while I fix supper."

Deanna
scowled in the direction of his voice. Clearly Shep was a man accustomed to
taking charge, but at the moment, the only fault she could find with his
reasoning was that it wasn't her idea.

She
was used to being in control—at least until C. R. had come into her life. No
way would she allow another man to control her life. Yet, she needed food or
she wouldn't have the strength to control her next blink. She'd just play along
until they reached a fork in the road of their intentions before showing him no
one rode herd over her.

Ride
herd? Fork in the road of their intentions?
With a groan, Deanna buried her
face in her hands.
Lord, puh-leeze help me find a way back East before I
start chewing tobacco and taking pride in my aim back at the Hopeless Ranch in
Buffalo Butte, the backside of the world! If I have to be herded by Shepard
Jones, let me be herded home.

Once
Deanna was situated with a foot tub, a cartoon character jelly glass of orange
juice, and bag of pretzels to stave off starvation, her grubby but obliging
host abandoned her. Like him, the house was laid back, fifties retro with
knotty pine paneling and cabinets in the country kitchen-family room. Rustic
wooden furniture with plump, masculine plaid cushions provided cozy seating
near the fireplace. A large moose head hung over the stone hearth, flanked by
other furry hunting trophies and a mounted fish frozen in mid jump. With no
clue regarding the nature of their demise, blank expressions seemingly fixed on
Deanna while death-silenced voices called out in warning to her.

That
imagination of yours is goin' to be the death of you.
Deanna could
almost hear the exasperation in the observation her grandmother used to make of
her. The way her heart was fluttering, maybe Grandma was right.

Looking
away with an involuntary shudder, she took comfort that the only human
representations among them were in faded pictures on the mantel representing a
happier time gone by. Was the snaggle-toothed kid in the oversized cowboy hat
her host per chance?

Along
a sidewall, a stack of boxes—many still sealed with tape and labeled—suggested
a recent move on someone's part. They reminded her of the ones in the spare
bedroom of her apartment in Great Falls—before someone had torn them apart and emptied
their contents from one end of the room to the other.

Oh,
Deanna, what have you gotten yourself into?
She swallowed the remaining bite
of a pretzel stick and chased it with juice before resting her head against the
back of the sofa. Nearby a voice crackled sharply amid a storm of static,
startling her from her self-pity.

On
a built-in desk sat a radio or scanner of some sort that fit the rest of these
rustic trappings. As the transmission cleared, Deanna listened to a
conversation of a father on his way home from town—wherever that was—reminding
his son to get his homework done so he could go to a church youth meeting. She
imagined a long ride home on some of the isolated roads she'd been lost on the
last day or so and how comforting it would have been to have someone who cared
to talk to.

Or
at least someone who would talk back, she thought, remembering her furtive
prayers. Maybe God just wasn't listening anymore, not that He'd ever actually
spoken
to her when she had been a little more regular in communication with Him.

A
sound from the hallway where Shep had disappeared drew her attention to where a
different man from the one who'd rescued her emerged from the back of the
house. Now this was a guy befitting those incredible brown eyes that had held
her hostage earlier. Clean-shaven, square-jawed, broad shouldered—Shep could
have stepped off the pages of a rugged wear catalog but for the shirt he'd
thrown on without bothering with the buttons.

It
occurred to Deanna that he might be showing off his infomercial-perfect abs,
but he'd tugged on his jeans without a belt as well and padded around in his
bare feet. Buffed by hard work and long days in the sun, he didn't seem aware
of his effect on the opposite sex. Deanna had seen enough men to know when one
was putting on a show or just being himself.. . until C. R. The roller coaster
of her frayed emotions took another dip.

"You
got some spare clothes in your car?" her host asked, a vexed expression
claiming his angular features. "If not I might find something you can
change into, but they won't fit."

Deanna
shook her head. "I hadn't planned on being gone overnight."

She
hadn't planned anything. When she came home from the police station, already
frazzled by hours of fruitless interrogation, she found her apartment turned
upside down and inside out. Whoever ransacked the place had left a cryptic note
saying they weren't through with her yet. Deanna shivered, arms crossed over
her chest to disguise her discomfiture.

"Where's
home then?" He helped himself to bottled fruit juice from the ancient
round-topped fridge. Her grandmother had had a similar model. There was
something oddly comforting about that and the general old-timey feel of the
place.

"Originally
New York," Deanna told him, distracted as she flashed back to the
nightmarish scene at her apartment in Great Falls. When she called the police
to report the break in, they'd treated her like the criminal, insinuating that
she'd engineered the crime scene to draw attention away from their belief that
she was in cahoots with the late C. R. Majors. And so she'd bolted without so
much as a toothbrush, much less a plan.

"So
what brings you to Montana?" Shep's query drew her back to the present. As
he raised the drink to his lips, the late afternoon sunlight caught on a flash
of gold lying against his chest. It was a plain cross, strung on a masculine
weight chain.

"Checking
out a job offer in Great Falls." Although a city in its own right, Great
Falls had felt like a strange place with no longtime friends or even business
associates. It wasn't her fault New York's heart beat in her chest.

He
chuckled. "Well, you certainly took a wrong turn."

"So
Pocahontas I'm not. With that zoo of animal heads staring at me, I'm lucky if I
can remember where I am now."

Instead
of taking offense at her stab at humor, he laughed. "You're just a bit
frahoodled."

Frahoodled.
That was a new one, but it fit just right. Deanna chuckled with him grateful
for his good nature. "I guess so."

"So
what brings you into these parts? You're a far cry from Great Falls. Just
touring?"

"I
was checking for a place to relocate, but I seem to have gotten off
course." She'd sublet a furnished apartment in the city itself for a month
to give her time to search for the right place.

Right
place. It might as well be on the moon now.

"Boy,
when you take a wrong turn, you make it a doozy." Shep snatched open the
freezer door. "That's four hours away."

"I
was just meandering to see what I could see and lost track of time." And
she'd seen a gorgeous red stallion break in front of her car from nowhere in
the middle of nowhere.

There
was no point in telling Shepard Jones any more than he had to know. All she
needed was another kink in this snarl of a mess.

The
man took out two frozen steaks and slapped them on a plate. No more modern than
the house itself, the plate was yellowed and cracked with age. Its pattern
reminded Deanna of older, more carefree days when she'd set the table with a
like design at her maternal grandmother's. Gram, who'd baby-sat Deanna while
her parents worked, said the old dinnerware had come as a bonus prize in
laundry powder boxes purchased long before Deanna was even born.

"Well,
like I said earlier, I don't have anything to fit you, but I put out clean
towels. There's a bathrobe on the back of the bathroom door. I can toss your
things in the washer and dry them while you're cleaning up, if you want."

She
sighed, grateful that Great Falls had left the discussion. Besides, to one
who'd spent the last three days washing up at rest stops, the idea of a shower
sounded heavenly. Dare she trust in that cross on his chest, that it
represented the man? Or was she grasping at straws?

"Are
you going to take me into town after supper?" She thought she saw the Jeep
when he carried her into the house, but he'd had the bulk of her attention.

He
stopped rummaging through a built-in bin of the knotty pine cabinets and let
out a measured breath. "If you insist, Miss Manetti." Taking out two
large potatoes, he straightened. "Miss Esther Lawson has a few guest
cottages on the edge of town. If she's not booked up, you could rent one of
them for the night. I can rouse her up on the radio to see, if that's what you
want."

Except
that Deanna had no money. As for her credit cards, even if the woman honored
them, was it worth the risk that her pursuers could trace her whereabouts? It
was that way in the movies.

She
glanced at the radio and searched the jumble of wires and papers on the desk
for sign of more modern communication. "What, you don't have a
phone?" Everyone had a telephone.

"Not
if I can help it."

"Not
even a cell phone?"

Shep
shrugged. "Sorry Ma Bell gets on my nerves."

Heaven
spare her. "What do you do in an emergency?"

"I
have a radio. It's more reliable, 'specially in bad weather... and the
telemarketers haven't figured out a way to utilize the air waves yet." He
held up the potatoes. "Baked in the microwave okay with you?"

He
had a microwave but not a radio. Deanna nodded. She was at the hind end of the
world and stuck with a total stranger who decorated with dead animal heads.
"What about your friend, er.. . Ticker?"

"Tick
lives on the other side of town in an old travel trailer." Grinning, Shep
added, "He's not much on social life unless it centers around a
campfire."

Or
skinning and cutting into bits some poor, defenseless animal. "I
see." Deanna started to draw her feet out of the now-cool water in the
foot tub when she realized she had no towel.

Seeing
her predicament, Shep yanked off a few handfuls of paper towels and tossed them
at her. "Sorry about that."

At
least it wasn't an animal hide. She dabbed her feet dry, sinking with
exhaustion and despair. What on earth was she going to do?

"Why
don't you just wait till after you rinse off the trail dust and fill your belly
before you decide?"

Deanna
jerked her head toward her host. Was she so obvious?

"And
if you're worried about sleeping arrangements, my aunt Sue's ghost would haunt
me if I didn't give a lady my room for the night and bunk on the sofa."

Bless
Aunt Sue's ghost for answering that question. Not that Deanna believed in such
things. The late woman's nephew, on the other hand, was quite real. Although,
to date, he had been the epitome of a gentleman and a good host. But was he a
wolf in good host's clothing?

"People
may fail you, Deanna darlin', but the good Lord never will."
Shocked by the
unexpected memory of her grandmother's words, Deanna glanced from the old
refrigerator to the plate where two slabs of frozen beef thawed. That did it.

Her
mind made up, she balled and tossed the damp paper towels in a thirty-gallon
garbage can by the stove. She wouldn't trust the man, but how could she go
wrong trusting in the Holy Spirit behind that cross, especially when it was
backed by the faith of her devout grandmother and his righteous Aunt Sue?

"Nice
shot."

Deanna
managed a fatigued grin. "I've had lots of practice." Her office
cohorts had given her a wastebasket with a basketball hoop to catch all the
ideas that never made it past the drafting table.

"How's
the foot?"

She
tested it with her full weight and winced. "Sore, but it's better than
before when I couldn't bear my weight at all. Thanks." She met his gaze
from across the room.

Deanna
saw no lightning bolt pass between them, but she felt its charge and retreated
in all haste toward the back of the house.

Ahead
was the open door of a bedroom—
the
bedroom, judging from what she'd seen
of the outside of the small house.

"Hang
a right. Left takes you into a closet," Shep called after her, once again
anticipating her thoughts. "Wrong right," he teased, when she turned
the wrong way on impulse.

"Why
didn't you say it was the
other
one," she shot back.

Once
inside the small bathroom, Deanna stared at the woman in the mirror, watching a
crimson tide claim her face. "Young lady" she complained to her twin
as she kicked the door closed behind her. "I hope you haven't jumped from
one fire smack into another."

The
way her cheeks felt to the touch of her cool fingers, she knew she had.