Riley's Retribution

So he’d be easy to spot, Riley mused.

They finished the tour back at the barn. Riley could go to the house and start perusing the books. But he didn’t want to barge in on Ms. Rogers. Their first meeting had been pretty crazy. Maybe he should give her some space. And himself, too. Taking the coward’s route, he decided to have a look around some of the ranch acreage. He found himself wondering if he’d find any signs of the guy named Greg Nichols. What if he were hiding out on the ranch? Was he watching Courtney’s activities?

With a silent curse he reminded himself he wasn’t supposed to be looking for Nichols. He was supposed to locate Boone Fowler’s militia group so he could report back to Big Sky.

Of course, Nichols could be with Fowler. So maybe if he found the militia group, he’d kill two birds with one stone.

AFTER SADDLING UP a stallion named Monty, he rode east across a shallow river into rugged country with rolling hills covered by dry grass. Rugged snowcapped mountains rose in the background like sentinels.

But he could easily skirt the patches of snow that still lay in the valley shadows.

Of course, the ranch encompassed almost ten thousand acres, so there was a lot of territory to cover. But Big Sky had done aerial surveillance and pinpointed some areas to investigate.

He brought Monty to a halt and turned in the saddle, taking in the wide-open spaces that stretched around him. Out here, he and the horse might have been the only two living creatures in the world.

After two hours on the range, he found nothing out of the ordinary. So he headed back, then spent the rest of the day asking more questions, unobtrusively watching the men do their jobs and giving the horses a more thorough inspection. And all the time he was aware of Ms. Rogers’s absence.

That evening he joined the rest of the hands at dinner, working hard to convey the impression that he was a regular guy who just wanted to fit in to the established patterns of the Golden Saddle Ranch.

But when he went to sleep, he had no control over his unconscious mind. He dreamed about Courtney. Dreamed about holding her in his arms in a bed the way he had in that motel room. Only, in his sleep, the encounter hadn’t been quite so innocent. He’d started taking her clothes off, like a man uncovering buried treasure. And her hands had moved just as eagerly over him.

He woke up angry with himself. In practical terms he was thinking that probably he should have gone out and gotten laid before he took this job. Then he wouldn’t be so focused on Courtney Rogers. She fascinated him. Exasperated him. Attracted him. She’d been ready to defend herself when she thought he was the guy who’d taken a shot at her. But she was hiding out from her own ranch manager.

COURTNEY STEPPED BACK from the window. She’d been watching for Riley Watson, and he’d just stridden across the ranch yard and into the barn.

He had an unsettling effect on her, like no one she’d ever met. He was so damn self-contained, yet below the surface she could sense his mind working.

Too bad he was the sexiest man she’d met in a long time. That was another major problem. He had made her feel hot and needy, just from the way he looked at her.

And she knew that he found her attractive. That was part of the lure of the man for her—the exhilaration of knowing that he was responding to her, even in her condition.

Her lips firmed. She should be focused on the baby, not some cowboy who had just stepped into her life. Or was she so eager for attention, that she glommed on to the first guy who came along?

She stalked down the hall, then stopped short at the room that she was fixing up as a nursery. For Emily. Or maybe Hannah. She wasn’t sure of the name yet, and she hated not being able to discuss her choices with anyone.

She stroked her hand over her abdomen. “What do you think, Emily? Do you like that name? Or is Hannah better?”

She’d let her imagination blossom as she’d decorated the room. The walls were a light green, with a colorful garden of flowers and a picket fence running around the bottom three feet of the walls. And in a fit of whimsy, she’d painted the ceiling blue and added fluffy white clouds.

She fingered a pink and white blanket she’d bought on sale from an online company. Too bad nobody in Spur City had thought to give her a baby shower. With money so tight, she could have used the gifts. And she would have loved someone making a fuss over her.

That last thought made her grimace. It sounded as if she was feeling sorry for herself. And that wasn’t true. She was going to make the best life she could for herself and her daughter.

And she wasn’t going to let Riley Watson think she was a coward. Because she wasn’t. She simply hadn’t been prepared to meet anyone like him—not now.

Marching out of the baby’s room, she hurried to the front hall and pulled on her coat. It was about time she stopped hiding in her own house. But just as she stepped out the door, she saw the man ride past who had been in her thoughts—and he didn’t look as if he was just taking Monty around the ranch yard.

RILEY RODE NORTH into an area where the landscape was flatter. A couple of miles from the ranch yard, he caught sight of something interesting through the trees and ordered Monty to a halt. Just visible through a screen of branches, he could see an old cabin.

He’d better check the place out.

The militia could be using it—or that Gary Nichols guy could be squatting here.

He dismounted and tied the horse to a low pine branch. Then crept slowly forward, moving from tree to tree in case somebody took a notion to shoot at him.

The cabin sat in a large clearing. He observed it from cover for several minutes, then stepped into the open. Now that he was exposed to view, he moved more rapidly.

Maybe he should have been paying better attention to where he put his feet.

The ground was scattered with brush. When he crossed a patch with a heavy accumulation of branches and leaves, the surface gave way under his feet with a ripping sound. Before he could catch himself, he was tumbling into blackness…and cursing his own stupidity.

Chapter Five

Riley dropped through space, struggling to stay on his feet. Knees bent, he landed with a thud. As far as he could tell, he was at the bottom of a pit someone had deliberately dug.

Daylight poured in from the hole where he’d broken through. And as he tried to move his feet, he found they were stuck between some wickedly pointed stakes poking out of the ground.

They were lethal enough to pierce flesh, and he was damn lucky that he hadn’t landed on his ass.

He took a quick physical inventory, moving his arms and legs, then twisting his torso. It appeared that he hadn’t seriously injured himself in the fall, which was also damn lucky.

He looked up, inspecting the ragged hole in the brush through which he’d fallen. So—was this an animal trap… Or was this a man trap?

He brought his attention back to the broken roof above him. It looked like slender sticks had been placed across the pit. They provided just enough support to hold the brush in place. And he’d stepped through the surface—like a damn fool out for a stroll in the park.

Well, that mistake was in the past. Now he’d better figure out how to get out before whoever had set the trap came back to see if he’d caught anything.

The walls of the hole were too far apart for him to brace his back and feet and climb up that way. He decided to try to pull out the stakes, work them into the side and make a ladder. He had almost freed one, when a noise from above made him tense.

Footsteps.

Someone was up there, crunching across the open space. Coming to scoop him up.

Well, he wasn’t going to stand here waiting for the trapper to get the drop on him. Pulling his gun from the holster at his waist, he held it pointed upward in a two-handed grip, ready to shoot anybody who attacked him.

When a shadow fell across the opening, his finger tensed on the trigger.

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