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The ranch had a feudal character. Sort of like a bygone era. It gave her the creeps. Nothing should be this laid-back and boring. Where was all the action?
The minute she’d thought the word laid-back, the one thing she didn’t find particularly boring around here came clearly into her mind. Cinco.
Despite not having enough time to figure him out, Meredith thought he must really be a kind person to take her in this way. That first day, after he’d shown her the family’s personal library and told her to help herself, he’d surprised her by also leading her to a makeshift weight room located in the far reaches of the ranch house. He’d explained that in the dead of winter even cowboys need some exercise.
She’d found herself starting to like him—a little. He was easy and funny, even if he was committed to controlling her actions and her life for the near future.
All things considered, for a jailer, he wasn’t half-bad.
She started to run again in earnest. Cinco had made himself scarce for the past two days. He’d left her breakfast and dinner on the kitchen counter with notes saying he’d be tied up for a while and for her to make herself at home. The ranch could never feel like a home, but it was nice of him to offer. Perhaps he’d be in the kitchen when she returned this time. They could talk.
As she rounded the last bend in the road, leading into the yard surrounding the house, she saw a man standing on the wide porch. Meredith couldn’t make out his features yet, but she knew it was Cinco by the way he filled out the denim shirt and jeans he was wearing.
The closer she came, the slower she ran. His black felt cowboy hat cast a threatening shadow across his eyes, as he sipped a cup of coffee. Silhouetted above her at the porch railing, he seemed big, tough and unfriendly.
Her forward progress slowed to a crawl. He looked mad. Whatever had possessed her to want to talk to him? And what right did he have to be angry?
She was the one who had every right to be mad at her situation. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t asked for this mess. She hadn’t wanted to be brought out to some distant and uncivilized backcountry. She hadn’t needed his damn protection in the first place.
By the time she’d stopped moving, she was fairly shimmering with livid energy. While she tried to catch her breath, his gaze skimmed up her bare legs, over her thighs and heaving chest, and upward on a long, lazy journey to her eyes.
“’Bout time you finally decided to get back here,” he growled. “Where’ve you been, Meredith?”
“Running,” she answered automatically. She’d almost complained about feeling like a caged animal, but thought better about it. Did she owe him any explanations?
He wasn’t her superior officer. He wasn’t her father. He hadn’t even bothered to check on her welfare at all in two days. She didn’t owe him any answers.
“What’s gotten into you this morning, Gentry?” she shot back at him. “You said it’d be all right for me to exercise. That’s what I’ve been doing.”
Cinco tamped down on his rising panic. Ever since he’d realized Meredith wasn’t in the house when he’d gotten home from his morning rounds, the insidious worry grew like wild mesquite on the range.
He’d had very little sleep in the past couple of days, trying to finish up the latest security program he’d promised another Cyber-Investigations client. Going at it straight through so he could spend more time keeping Meredith entertained, he was tired and not just a little edgy.
“I didn’t say you could go out of the house without leaving me word. I was about to organize a search party when I saw you coming down the road.” He looked at his hand—the one holding the coffee mug—and realized it was shaking. “Don’t do that again.”
Meredith bristled, bounding past him up the stairs and into the kitchen. “I can’t stay cooped up in this house for days, no matter how big and nice it is. Just what do you expect me to do?”
Cinco closed the door and took a deep breath. She was okay.
“Well, we could always try wrestling,” he drawled slowly…for effect. “Kyle tells me you’re really quite good.”
That did the trick. She stopped dead in her tracks, her skin turning the spectacular sunrise-pink color he’d noted the other day. He was starting to love that particular shade. No longer angry, she looked downright embarrassed. Served her right for scaring the good sense right out of him.
“I’m sorry to be so out of sorts.” Meredith managed a mumbled apology, then looked up at him with those huge blue eyes. “But us wrestling…might not be such a bad idea. Do you think?”
He could scarcely believe it, but her eyes were twinkling with both chagrin and mischief. The more he got to know this uptight pilot, the more he found to like about her.
An assignment to protect a witness for the U.S. Marshal’s Office should remain impersonal. Despite his attempts, however, he was finding it harder and harder to keep their relationship on that level.
He urged himself to keep on trying.
“Look. I’ve made time today to show you around the spread and try to find a few things you might enjoy doing while you’re here. Why don’t you change into something…” He glanced at her long legs topped by the shortest of running shorts and tried to remember to breathe.
He forced his gaze up to latch on to hers. “Go put on some jeans and get into leather-soled shoes with a heel,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
Another few seconds of looking at those legs—the ones going on forever, the ones designed to make a man forget his own name—and it would be the end of him. He headed toward the staircase, putting distance between his libido and the sight of all that skin.
Meredith felt the flush of her anger begin to replace the crawl of embarrassment from a few minutes ago. “If that’s an order, Mr. Gentry, I respectfully…request that you shove it. You’re not my commander.” She headed for the coffeepot. “I don’t own a pair of blue jeans, anyway.”
Cinco halted midstride and spun around. She braced herself to hear a barrage of reasons why she should heed his demands in order to ensure her own safety.
He quickly moved toward her and placed his huge hands on her shoulders, gripping them firmly but tenderly. “I didn’t mean for it to sound like an order. I’m only trying to make you feel more comfortable around the ranch.” Instead of sounding stern, his voice turned soft…almost pleading. “And to make you aware of how dangerous a ranch can be. This is no place to run around half-dressed. You could get hurt…or worse.”
Looking up into his chocolate-colored eyes, she felt her knees turn to heated butter. Impossible. She was strong, tough. Cold as ice. After all, hadn’t people told her so often enough?
She resented her own thudding pulse. This was no time for a breakdown of some sort. No time to become all vulnerable and mushy.
Meredith pulled herself free from his grip. “I usually run in shorts. Most civilized people don’t consider that half-dressed. But if it makes you happy, I’ll change to sweats.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. “Did you mean it when you said you didn’t own any jeans?”
“Yes. I’ve never had any use for a pair. Never thought they looked regulation…or terribly comfortable.”
Cinco’s expression was stunned for a second, but he recovered quickly. “Well now, darlin’. Why don’t you…please…go put on warmer clothes. I think we’ve just found ourselves a little chore to do today.” He headed toward the stairs once more. “You’re going to get a real kick out of this.”
About an hour later Meredith wanted to kick something, all right.
They’d been bouncing along the bumpy, gravel roads in one of the ranch’s fleet of pickups for what seemed like forever. Didn’t the man believe in shock absorbers?
She stared out the window, hoping to see something that looked more like civilization than the endless vistas of scrub and stubby trees. Trying not to think about the huge man sitting next to her, taking up most of the bench front seat, she struggled to regulate her breathing.
Within the confinement of the truck cab, it was hard not to dwell on the bolt-action Weatherby rifle hanging on pegs in the window behind her head. She supposed she could fire one as well as the next guy, but it seemed rather barbaric to carry a firearm of any sort inside the passenger compartment.
If going to Gentry Wells to buy a pair of jeans was Cinco’s idea of fun, she’d have to set him straight on a few things. Just then, the truck ran over some kind of metal grate placed flat in the road, and she wondered if she’d need her teeth straightened first.
“What did we just run over? It sounded like it did some damage to the pickup.” She noticed he hadn’t even flinched at the clanking noise or jarring bumps.
“What?” He looked over at her as if she’d just asked whether the moon was green. “Oh, that.” He smiled—a little grin, and his face was transformed. “That’s a cattle guard. Don’t want any steers out roaming the main roads, now do we?”
He slowed the truck, coming to a stop at a blacktop road with printed road signs, a white stripe painted down the middle and…everything civilized.
“You mean a little grate thing will keep them in?”
Cinco nodded. “Yep. That and about a thousand miles of wire fencing.”
Think of that. She shivered slightly. Those huge beasts would be afraid of a little metal. So, they really weren’t very bright, just as her father had always told her. They’d surely be impossible to reason with, like all animals…and probably like the man sitting next to her as well.
After looking both ways down long, empty stretches of road, Cinco pulled out onto the blessedly smooth blacktop. They hadn’t traveled more than a mile when they passed a road sign announcing the speed limit at fifty-five and then another sign announcing that Gentry Wells would be ten miles farther along.
“What are the holes in those signs designed to do?” she asked, as they whizzed by.
With a grin as wide as a four-lane highway, Cinco turned to her. “Those aren’t designer holes. They’re bullet holes. Rifle-shot for the most part.”
“What on earth for?”
“Not for anything. That’s just where the teenagers around here practice their aim after they’ve had a few beers. I doubt there’s a sign in the entire county that doesn’t have them.”
She stayed quiet a second, picturing rowdy teens—with guns. “Did you do that when you were a teenager?”
He kept his eyes focused on the road ahead. “Well now, darlin’. I suppose I might’ve. There’s nothing wrong with letting off a little steam, as long as it’s directed toward inanimate objects. Especially out here where no one will be injured.”
This guy was sure a puzzle. He spoke with a twang and had some funny ideas about things, but he also used language the way a man of letters might. Odd and a little dangerous, but definitely compelling, Meredith mused.
“We need to talk about making up a cover story for you,” he told her. “Gentry Wells is the kind of place where everyone knows everybody else who lives here. I’m sure when you and Kyle stopped in town last week, you started tongues wagging.”
“Oh?” It was hard to believe any town could be quite so…provincial.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” he continued. “You know a little about computers, don’t you?”
She nodded, but kept herself from bragging that there wasn’t a machine in the world she didn’t know something about.
Cinco apparently saw the nod. “Well, everyone in the county knows all my spare time is spent with computers. They don’t exactly understand about the security business, but they do know I have a lot of equipment.”
At the word equipment, a picture of what else that might refer to zinged through her brain. Oh, he definitely had the right equipment as far as she was concerned. She felt the blush coming on, so she turned to look out the window.
He concentrated on the road ahead and didn’t seem to notice. “I thought we could tell everyone that you’re a computer consultant who’s come here to install some new machinery…satellite connections and whatnot.”
“Yes, all right. If you think that will work, I can probably pull it off.”
He grinned. “Great. We’ll tell that story to everyone, including the hired hands.” He seemed to mull that over for another second. “Hmm. My sister will be home from college in a few days. I think we might have to tell her the truth.”
“Fine. Whatever.” It didn’t make any difference.
Just then the engine noises changed a decibel or two. She looked over at Cinco, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Did you see that the engine warning light just came on?” She pointed down at the amber light on the dash in front of him.
“That happens sometimes. Don’t worry. The light’ll go off soon enough.”
“Don’t you think that means something’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Naw. Probably just the light’s broken. We have two mechanics, both working full-time to keep our rolling stock running smooth.”
A few hundred feet down the road she noted something had changed. “The light’s still on and now the temperature gauge is on the high side. Isn’t that a problem?”
Once again he shook his head. “Stop worrying so much. You’ve got real threats to aggravate yourself about. The mechanical workings of our pickups shouldn’t be your concern.”
Typical male, she thought. But she let it be, even though she felt another flush of unease over his controlling nature. He was certainly right, though. His trucks were not her responsibility.
Still, she couldn’t help but ask. “So, you don’t want to stop and check it out then?”
“Just relax. You don’t know the first thing about life out here. Let me handle it.
She straightened in her seat and glanced out the passenger window to keep from saying something she might regret. His words flashed her back to a time long ago when her father, Rear Admiral Stanton Powell, had said much the same thing, over and over again.
She gritted her teeth and tried to forget how she’d learned what he’d really meant by that. How he taught her to be a good little soldier—or else. How he’d never let her properly grieve over her mother’s death, or any of the many other nightmarish memories she’d done her best to put behind her now that he was dead.
Shaking her head softly to clear it, she wondered why in the world those old nightmares had come back to her at this moment. She sneaked a glance at the handsome cowboy in the driver’s seat. He was not her father.
She still wasn’t exactly sure who Cinco was inside, but she was positive that he was only interested in her safety—not really trying to control her life. She had to find a way to deal with her temporary situation and not take out frustrations or deep-seated fears on the man who didn’t seem any happier about her being here than she was.
Turning to face forward, she saw steam begin to blow out from under the hood. Well, that didn’t take as long as she’d thought it would. Within a few seconds the billowing clouds of steam covered the windshield and forced Cinco to bring the truck to a stop at the side of the road.
He didn’t look at her, but opened his door and stepped to the ground. “Sit tight. I’ll see what’s wrong.”
No chance of that. She counted to ten then climbed out, walking to the lifted hood and the puzzled-looking man who stood gazing at the engine, scratching the back of his neck.
Cinco narrowed his eyes at her. “I see you mind real well, Captain Frosty. You must realize it’s past time for you to start doing what I say.”
He flung his arm in a huge arch. “We’re not protected out here. There could be a sniper just waiting for you to be out in the open.”
She rolled her eyes and tsked at him. Tsked at him, for God’s sake!
“All right,” he conceded. “Maybe that’s a little farfetched, but I’m the security specialist, not you. It’s my job to keep you safe while you’re under my protection.” He gave up on the steaming engine and reached for his mobile phone. “I’ll just call the ranch. Someone should be able to come for us shortly. Meanwhile you can wait in the pickup.”
Meredith moved around him and peered down at the errant machinery under the hood. “Mind if I take a look first?”
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