Just a Cowboy
Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Copyright

About the Author

RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

Her bestselling CONARD County series (see www.conardcounty.com) has won the hearts of readers worldwide, and it’s no wonder, given her own approach to life and love. As she says, “Life is the biggest romantic adventure of all—and if you’re open and aware, the most marvelous things are just waiting to be discovered.” Readers can e-mail Rachel at Rachellee@conardcounty.com.

TO KRISTIN T., a quiet hero

Prologue

Kelly Scanlon Devereaux drove home late and alone. It was fast approaching midnight, the downside of having lost her job along with her marriage. She’d had to take a temporary position waiting tables, and it was beginning to look as if she’d never work again as a medical billing clerk. At least not around here.

That was the cost of divorcing a prominent plastic surgeon: No other doctor wanted to hire her under the circumstances, and so far the hospitals had had no openings.

At least she had shed Dean Devereaux. Mostly. There was still the divorce to get through in a few months, but in the meantime she had her own place and didn’t have to live in constant terror that she would to make Dean mad.

Only now that she was free of that threat did she realize just how nervous and tense she had been for most of the last eight years. Now she often wondered why she had put up with it for so long.

She knew her way around Miami like the back of her hand and chose her route to avoid dangerous neighborhoods. It made her trip longer, but she didn’t care. A little extra time in the car was a small price to pay for freedom.

The truth was, however, that she wouldn’t feel truly free until the divorce was final. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as the anxiety hit her again, and she took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself.

Up until today, Dean had been ugly about the whole thing. He didn’t like losing, and watching him over the last few months since she’d filed for divorce had been an eye-opener. That man actually thought of her as a possession.

He’d fought the court’s decision to give her separate maintenance and had lost. Her attorney had had to hire forensic accountants to find his assets. And she had been mad enough about the way he had treated her, especially over the last year of their marriage when he had started to hit her, that she had wanted to gouge him.

Cripes, he’d even told her she wasn’t going to live long enough to see a settlement. Ugly, ugly.

But today, just today, her lawyer had called to tell her that Dean had agreed to the settlement, that he had signed the papers.

She was still reeling from that. Her attorney assured her that Dean had changed his mind in order to avoid the publicity of a messy trial, in which his own wife would accuse him of physical abuse, and maybe the lawyer was right. It could hardly help the practice of a man who spent his life making beautiful, wealthy women more beautiful to have it known that he was a wife beater.

So maybe the end was in sight. Her lawyer said Dean couldn’t change his mind now, that the papers his attorney had sent were almost as good as the court’s seal on the settlement.

But she realized, now that she had won, that she didn’t care much about the money. She cared most about the painful places the whole mess had left, and worse, the realization that she hadn’t been strong enough to stand up to the man all those years. That she had taken it and taken it, and blamed herself for not being good enough.

That she had been drawn in by charm, flattery and all the oiliness of a snake.

Ugh. She’d give all that money back if she could just erase the last eight years from her life.

She pulled into her parking garage at last and into her numbered slot. Like many high-rises in Miami, this one had been built so that the parking garage was beneath the apartments, at ground level, putting the living units well above the reach of a storm surge in hurricane season. She often thought that if they hadn’t had to put the building on stilts, there would have been no garage at all. This address wasn’t exactly A-list.

But it was good enough, she reminded herself. She sat for a few minutes in her car, enjoying the quiet after work, the sense that soon it would all be over and Dean would be firmly in her past. The sense that she was about to reach a point where she could finally shed the emotional bruises and stop living in fear.

God, it was going to be a relief. Increasingly, she dreamed of leaving Miami permanently. The more miles she could put between her and Dean, the better. She didn’t want to hear his name ever again, even by accident. Heck, she wouldn’t turn on her TV because she might run across one of the commercials for his practice.

Nor did she have any ties holding her here. All the friends she thought she had made during her marriage had turned their backs on her. Maybe she made them uncomfortable in some way, because she suspected many of their marriages were like hers. Women who had married wealthy men who had turned out to think of them as possessions.

“You pay for that money,” she whispered, facing up to her mistake yet again. Even when you honestly believed you loved the guy, you wound up paying for the luxury…sometimes with your body, sometimes with your soul. She’d paid with a little of both.

At last she sighed and climbed out of her car, thinking of crawling into bed and just forgetting everything for a few hours. All the stress, all the worry, even some of the self-loathing she still felt.

Oh, she’d been stupid and naive to begin with, but later, as the emotional abuse mounted, her excuses had grown thinner. She didn’t like herself for that.

She was walking toward the elevator when a voice called out, “Mrs. Devereaux?”

At once a shudder of distaste ran down her spine. Thinking it was one of the security guards, she turned. “I prefer Ms. Scanlon now.”

The man stood only a foot away, dressed Miami casual, smiling. “I thought I recognized you. My sister-in-law goes to see your husband. Anyway, you dropped something when you got out of the car.”

She looked at the hand he held out, trying to see what it was, caught a blur from the corner of her eye, then the world exploded in blackness and stars as her head seemed to split open.

I’m going to die.

And then she thought nothing at all.

Chapter 1

Coming home from roundup at a local ranch in Conard County, Hank Jackson expected to unload his gear, step into the cool quiet of his house, and maybe have a shot of bourbon to ease the pain he lived with constantly.

It seemed that no matter how well the docs put smashed bones back together, the bones always remembered the insult. Then they couldn’t make up their minds if they hated activity or inactivity more.

Regardless, more than a week on the range of riding, camping, roping and herding had left his body feeling a little older than its thirty-four years, and he was looking for a hot bath and a shot, not necessarily in that order.

Except as he was tugging his saddle out of the back of his pickup, he noticed the house next door. He owned that place, too, a decision made on the spur of the moment because he preferred being busy to having too much time on his hands to think, and that house would keep an entire crew of repairmen busy for quite a while.

But since he had left nine days ago, things had changed, signaled by curtains in the windows.

Crap. He froze, saddle still resting on the truck bed, and looked again. He should never have let Ben Patterson persuade him to list the place for rent a few weeks ago. There was still a ton of work that needed to be done, as he’d told Ben. Then he’d allowed himself to be talked into listing it because it would propel him to get the work done faster.

Hell.

He’d never expected that anyone would take it in that condition, not even at the ridiculously low rent.

Sighing, he shifted his weight onto the hip that hurt marginally less and tried to decide if he could ignore his new tenant until tomorrow. Or was he honor-bound to get the heck over there right now and tell him all about the things that weren’t working right and a few things that might not be safe?

Ben might not have remembered all the details. And what if there was a family in there?

Cussing under his breath, he left his saddle and headed next door, leaving his own grassy yard behind for the weedy patch of dirt that belonged to the other house. Yet another thing he’d been planning to take care of this week or next.

Climbing the two steps to the small, covered porch elicited another cuss word that only he could hear. The doorbell didn’t work, so he rapped sharply on the front door, a solid oak door in dire need of painting. Oh, hell, why kid himself? It needed a blow-torch first, and looking at it he was quite certain some of the underlying layers of paint were lead-based. He’d better not find any kids living here, because, if he did, Ben would get more than a few choice words.

His first knock went unanswered. He rapped again, more loudly, saw one of the new curtains twitch, and finally the front door opened a crack.

He found himself looking into one blue eye through that crack.

“Yes?” said a quiet, tense voice.

“Hank Jackson,” he said. “I’m your landlord.”

“Oh.” Then, “Oh! The agent mentioned you.”

And the door didn’t open even a hair wider. “Lady, I don’t know if Ben bothered to tell you, but there are some things about this house that aren’t safe.”

“I know that.”

“But do you know them all? Just tell me you don’t have any kids.”

“No. No kids.”

This wasn’t getting them very far. Part of him just wanted to turn around, walk away, find that hot bath and that shot of bourbon. But in good conscience he couldn’t do that without at least making an attempt.

“I need to show you the things that are wrong. I need to tell you the work I’m going to be doing in the next week or so. Ben did tell you I’d be working on the place?”

“It can wait. I’ll only be here a short while.”

“Some of it can’t wait.” Damn, she was bringing out his stubborn streak. “Look, I don’t bite, but I may have to break your rental agreement if we don’t come to some kind of terms about the things I need to do here.”

The door opened a little wider and he was astonished to see the kind of blond, blue-eyed beauty that should be in the movies. And she looked nervous. Why the heck should she look nervous? Nobody in Conard County looked nervous about someone knocking on the door.

He almost sighed. Instead, he fought for some courtesy. “It’s important,” he said. “I didn’t expect the place to get rented in its current condition, and I’m not sure Ben gave you all the warnings.”

At last she nodded, opened the door all the way, and let him step in. He smothered a wince as his hip reminded him that not all was well south of the border, especially after a week in the saddle.

“The place is good enough for me,” she said tentatively. “I’ll only be here a short time.”

“Yeah, but I’d like you to leave on your feet, not on a stretcher.”

At that he was relieved to see the faintest of smiles lift the corners of her perfect mouth. Beauty came in all varieties, but this woman had the kind that usually implied heaps of plastic surgery. Exactly the kind that didn’t appeal a whole lot to him. Usually.

“The place isn’t exactly a death trap,” he said, forcing himself to pay attention to business and not to another area south of the border that was choosing a bad time to sit up and take notice. “But there’s some rotten flooring I need to warn you about, and a couple of iffy electrical circuits. And the stove doesn’t work right, but I have a replacement coming soon.”

“Okay.”

He held out his hand. “Hank Jackson.”

“Kelly Scanlon.” Her handshake was firm. Okay, so she hadn’t come by that perfect figure by unnatural means. She must work out.

“Nice to meet you,” he managed to say as if he meant it, although he was thinking of at least a half-dozen ways he’d like to give Ben a hard time.

“If the house is so bad, why are you renting it?” she asked.

“It wasn’t my intention. Ben’s been after me to list it with him. I thought I made it clear he wasn’t to rent it until I’d finished the most important work.”

Her smile widened a shade. “I guess he doesn’t listen well?”

“Apparently not. Either that, or he’s even more desperate than I thought. Even with the semiconductor plant that moved in a couple of years ago, I think beggars around here make more than real estate agents. Did he even show you the fuse box?”

“No.”

“Hell.” He sighed, then limped past her through the small living room to the kitchen. Like many kitchens of its era, it had more room than convenience. Space enough for a big table, but few cabinets, an old freestanding sink, and just an itty-bitty patch of counter. The stove stood all by itself near one wall, the refrigerator a few feet away.

“Someday,” he remarked, “this is going to be a nice kitchen. But right now…” He shook his head. “Most of it looks like an afterthought.”

“I don’t need much.”

“Maybe not,” he allowed. “One person can get by.” He walked over to the mudroom door and stepped out into the unheated, glassed-in area. “Here’s the fuse box.”

He opened the metal casing. “There are three circuits here that I removed the fuses from. Resist any temptation to put a fuse in them until I get an electrician out here. If you get desperate to use these circuits, I have extension cords I can lend you so you can plug into safe sockets.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

He glanced over and found her standing right at his shoulder. And damn, she smelled good, too. Faintly like roses and honey. Or maybe after a week of smelling horses and cattle, anything else would smell like ambrosia.

He tore his gaze from her—for some reason his eyes kept wanting to stare—and pointed to the floor to the right side of the back door. “Over there the joists are rotting underneath. You can go out the door safely, but I’d advise against stepping over there. I can’t guarantee it will hold you.”

“Okay.” She sounded agreeable enough.

He looked at her again. “Did Ben tell you this?”

She bit her lip, then gave a tiny shake of her head.

He sighed. “Oh, I am going to have some words with him. All right, the windows out here are slated to be replaced. I have the new ones in my garage, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. You’ll notice the windows in the rest of the house are all new, but I still need to do some caulking and leveling, okay? So you’ll have me outside from time to time banging around.”

“Okay.”

That seemed to be her only word. He led the way back through the kitchen to the rear of the house, where there were two bedrooms. One was completely empty, the other held an old bedstead. He just hadn’t gotten around to removing it, or some of the other furniture the last owners had left behind. Not much, but a minimum for someone who had none.

But when he looked at the bedstead and mattress, he winced, and this time it wasn’t from physical pain. “Are you going to sleep on that?” he asked.

“It’s there.”

“Ah, crap, lady, that thing is…”

“A bed,” she said firmly. “I can get a mattress pad to cover the worst of it. At least it’s not the floor.”

This time when he looked at her he saw past the initial impression of too beautiful to something that showed more depth and determination. Eyes that appeared older than her appearance would indicate. There was a story there, he thought. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know it, either. She’d made it clear she was a transient, and he knew the kinds of stories that came with eyes like that.

“The stuff that’s here,” he said by way of explanation, “was left by the previous owners. I just haven’t gotten around to getting rid of it. If you want it out of here…”

She interrupted. “No, really. I can use the stuff that’s here. I don’t need or want to replace it.”

“Your choice,” he said after a moment. “Watch it in the empty bedroom, though. More rotten floors. I got rid of the termites, but I just haven’t had time yet to replace all the wood.”

“Not a problem.”

He scanned the rooms again, and never had the place looked shabbier. It was an old house to begin with, and the last owners hadn’t invested much, if anything, in keeping it up. They’d been getting on in years, and probably hadn’t even noticed most of the deterioration. The walls everywhere were hideous, covered in dying wallpaper, water spots and paint that had probably been sagging on the walls since the Second World War. The floors…well, where they weren’t bare, worn wood, they were covered by old, cheap linoleum that had been tacked down in places where it had ripped.

“I was so sure nobody would rent this place in this condition.”

She surprised him with a quiet laugh. “Amazing things happen.”

He looked at her again and felt himself smiling in response. “That they do.”

“Sorry I can’t offer you coffee or anything, but I just rented the place this morning and I haven’t been out to get supplies, or even any dishes or a coffeemaker. I figured I could do that tomorrow.”

“This morning? Just this morning?” That gave him pause. “You have a car, right?”

She shook her head.

“Well, hell,” he said. “That’s not gonna work. You can’t carry much on foot—the store’s on the other side of town. What do you need?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “That depends on how comfortable I want to be.”

“Short term, right?”

“Two months at most.”

He nodded. “Okay. I’ve got some stuff at my place you can use. Coffeemaker, pots and pans, some spare dishes and things. No reason you should buy that stuff for just a couple of months.”

Her mouth opened a little in surprise. “Are you sure you can spare it?”

“Hell, yeah. That house belonged to my parents. When I moved back here, I came with a lot of stuff from my place in Denver. I wanted my own things, and I just moved a lot of theirs to the side.” Feeling a little awkward, he admitted, “I just wasn’t ready to get rid of it, you know?”

She nodded. “But now? Are you comfortable with somebody else using it?”

“Sure. I’m not lending you the heirloom china, though.”

She laughed again, and this time it was an easier sound. That was good. If he was going to have to deal with a tenant as closely as he’d need to deal with this one, what with all the work this place needed quickly, it was far better to deal with one who wasn’t uptight about everything.

And the rest of it? Well that was just being neighborly.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll get you some minimum stuff to get through the night, and we can discuss what else you need in the morning.”

“But,” she said, “Ben said you were out working at one of the ranches. You must be tired.”

“I am. But if I stop moving, I’ll freeze up. So let’s just get you a coffeepot, some dishes. Like I said, just enough for tonight. We can deal with anything else in the morning.”

Then he turned and limped his way to the front door, aware of her light step following him.

Kelly followed him, noticing the limp, but even more noticing his lean, rangy build, a build that, encased in jeans and a plaid Western shirt, suggested a lot of hard muscle beneath. His face had a chiseled appearance, a few lines that seemed awfully deep for a guy who didn’t look like he was much older than she was, and the sun had bronzed him. His hair was dark and a little wavy, and just a bit too long.

He was the kind of guy a lot of women in her previous life would have noticed, partly because he had a great build, but partly because he was so different from what they were accustomed to. A rednecked cowboy, evidently, and a far cry from the guys she had known who got their muscles in gyms and their tans on the beach or in salons.

She had to admit that she liked it. Life with her soon-to-be-ex husband had revolved around his practice and the hours he spent with a personal trainer. Not to mention the careful artifice of sun-streaked hair from a bottle.

Once that had seemed normal to her, but now she loathed the plasticity of it. Which was really kind of a funny thought, since Dean had been a plastic surgeon. She swallowed a giggle, surprised that she even wanted to laugh.

“So,” said Hank Jackson, the limping cowboy who had just barged into her life, “how the heck did you get curtains up so fast?”

“It was the first thing I did this morning,” she answered truthfully. “I walked into town and bought them. The rods were still good.”

“Yeah, I hadn’t pulled them down, either.” He paused at the steps to his porch and looked at her. “I’ve always heard that the first thing women do in a new place is put up curtains. Never believed it before.”

“Well, you can believe it now.” Nor did she have any intention of telling him why those curtains were so important to her.

“I guess not all stereotypes are stereotypes,” he remarked. He tugged a key out of his pocket and unlocked the front door.

The house smelled a tiny bit stale, having been closed up for a while, but it wasn’t a bad stale. Just faint hints that meals had been cooked here, that someone had lived here and been away.

It had a similar layout to her place, although it was a bit bigger. And the signs of a woman’s presence still dominated. She guessed that he hadn’t been able to part with a lot, including dotted Swiss curtains with ruffles, cheerful rag rugs and picture frames holding bunches of dried flowers.

He led her down the hallway, much longer than the tiny one in her place, to a large kitchen. Unlike hers, this one had been modernized with new cabinets, a dishwasher, a stainless-steel stove and a matching refrigerator.

“Let me get some boxes,” he said, and disappeared through a door.

She waited, looking around, and felt her throat tighten unwillingly. This place practically shouted “home,” unlike the mansion she’d left behind. Sometimes she wondered how she could have been so stupid and blind.

Hank returned a couple of minutes later with a box under each arm. “I think a lot of what you need is already here.”

He set them on the table and she moved closer to look as he opened them.

“Ah, I do have a memory,” he said wryly as he revealed a drip coffeemaker, some dishes and flatware.

“This is terribly kind of you,” she said honestly. “I’d have managed.”

“I’m sure you would have, but when you have a neighbor, it’s not always necessary. And if you’re only going to stay a few weeks, it just makes sense to lend you my extras.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled, an expression that lit up his face. “Let’s get this stuff over there, and come back for some more. You cook a lot?”

“Not really.” Not anymore. Life with Dean had meant dining out nearly every night, and when dining at home there’d been guests and a cook. Funny how that all looked to her in retrospect. But she didn’t want to think about that now.

It felt odd, after weeks on the run, to be trusting someone again, even if the trust only went as far as to let her new landlord lend her some things. Her nerve endings had been crawling for so long that she wasn’t sure they were capable of stopping.

But she was sure she had found the most out-of-the-way place on the planet, short of Antarctica, and something about this little town nestled in the middle of nowhere had suggested that she might be able to safely pause and catch her breath. She could be wrong, and she promised herself that at the first suggestion of danger, she would bolt like a rabbit.

One thing for sure: She needed a little time free from being constantly on the move. Even if it was only a few days or a week.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she repeated as he unloaded the boxes onto her kitchen table and suggested that they go back for more.

“No need,” he insisted reassuringly. “I’m not using these things and you need them for a few weeks. It’s really not a big deal.”

It was to her, but Kelly didn’t say so. Up to now, the only help she had received from anyone had been a few drivers who had given her a lift when she decided she needed to get away from buses for a while.

By the time Hank finished taking care of her, she had sheets, towels, pots, pans and some kitchen utensils.

“If you need anything else,” he said as he unloaded the last ones, “just give me a shout. I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, and I have plenty in storage.”

“You’re very kind.”

He shook his head, looking almost wry. “That’s what neighbors do. Although I have to admit, it’s not helping me work on my future as a crusty curmudgeon.”

That surprised a laugh out of her, and she liked the way his gray eyes seemed to dance in response. “Really? You want to be a curmudgeon?”

“Of course. I still have a long way to go. Haven’t been able to bring myself to yell at the kids to stay out of my yard … although I may get there when I lay the sod out front next week.”

“Why are you sodding?”

He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms. “Because if I seed, it’ll rain and wash it all away…and I really don’t fancy the idea of trying to scoop up all the seed in a spoon and sprinkle it around again.” He paused while she laughed quietly again at the image. “Or, if it doesn’t rain, the neighborhood kids I still can’t bring myself to yell at will be all over it, killing the shoots before they have a chance.”

“And that would make you yell?”

He sighed and ran his fingers through shaggy, dark hair. “No, it probably wouldn’t. So I’ll just avoid all the problems and lay sod. It should stand up to just about anything except a baseball game. Now what about food? You must need to get some. Just let me get that saddle out of my truck and we’ll go.”

“I’ve already imposed enough,” she said firmly.

“I need to go to the store anyway. I’ve been out on the range for about nine days. I’m afraid to open my refrigerator. Grab whatever you need while I get my gear stowed, then we’ll go.”

She followed him to the door, and once again noticed the way he limped as he walked back to his place. She wondered what had happened to him.

Then she told herself it didn’t matter. Two months, max, and she’d be out of here. Sooner if necessary.

So it really didn’t matter at all.

Chapter 2

It felt odd to have someone to talk to again. Someone she needed to talk to or seem discourteous. For the last several months she’d been on the run, exchanging as few words as possible with strangers, lying about her name and even keeping her communications with her lawyer as brief as possible.

She’d been living off cash from her mother’s estate, using pay phones and basically doing what she had heard was called “living off the grid.” All because she was getting a divorce. All because Dean had gotten furious with her and told her she wouldn’t live to collect a settlement, and then a few weeks later some guy had attacked her and tried to drown her.

Even the cops didn’t believe that Dean had been behind that. Even the cops. But she knew Dean in a way the cops didn’t. She had seen his ruthless side, and when it came to money, few were as ruthless as Dean.

She sighed, and the man in the seat beside her in the old pickup looked her way. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“No. Just feeling tired I guess.” Being tired covered a multitude of sins and failings, at least with people you didn’t know.

“Yeah, I’m a little worn out, too,” Hank said. “But it won’t take long to get you some food. Enough for a day or two. We can always come back another time.”

She was still trying to absorb this helpfulness. She wasn’t used to it—not anymore. In the world she had just left, you paid for help or you didn’t get a whole lot of it. Heck, even her few girlfriends thought she was nuts to leave Dean. But they didn’t know.

And in retrospect, she wasn’t sure their lives were all that much better. Did a woman have to sell her soul to live in comfort, belong to a country club and move in the right circles? Maybe so.

The main thing she wondered about was how she could ever have thought those things were important.

She cleared her throat, trying to think of something casual to say. Had she even lost her capacity for pointless conversation? After so many years of it, she would have thought it was engraved in her brain.

Except the man sitting beside her didn’t seem like the type who would appreciate the inanities that had made up so much of her social life over the last eight years.

“Why,” she managed finally, “do you think Ben rented me the house if you didn’t want him to yet?”

“I plan to ask him. But, as I said, the real estate business isn’t exactly booming around here. We got that new semiconductor plant five years ago, and for a while it looked like we were going to become the kind of town people didn’t keep leaving.”

“But?”

“But they laid off about two hundred people last fall. Doesn’t seem like much until you see all the empty apartments and houses, and see the way local businesses are struggling again. Boom and bust. Story of this town from the beginning.”

That at least gave her an opening. “How’s that?”

“Well, first they found gold up there on Thunder Mountain.” He pointed to the looming mountain range. “That played out in about ten years. Then came a kind of heyday for ranching. Lots of cattle, lots of wide-open space, enough water, believe it or not. Those were the days of the big spreads, and folks in town were just here to supply ranchers’ needs basically.”

Kelly nodded. “And then?”

“Raising cattle got out-of-sight expensive, people wouldn’t pay the price, beef got shipped in from Argentina and things turned kind of black around here for a while.”

“And now?”

“The ranches are mostly smaller, some folks still make money off beef, some are raising sheep, others horses. Then we got the semiconductor plant, and for a while there were plenty of jobs for young folks, and people with special skills moved here and we kinda grew again.”

“But now it’s bad.”

“Now it’s rough. The way it is everywhere, it seems. We thought we might get a ski resort up in the mountains, but that folded up pretty fast. We aren’t close enough to a major population center to have a load of people drive out here, and while we’ve got an airport, it would need a major expansion to bring in enough skiers. I guess you could say we didn’t have the kind of money necessary to make ourselves attractive.”

She nodded, absorbing what he was saying. “So everyone here is hurting?”

“Not really. We’ve just gone back to our belt-tightening ways. We get by on what we have—it’s not like we’re going to dry up and blow away. I guess it’s just kind of an interest of mine, to think about how this town starts to grow and then shrinks back again. It’s almost like breathing.” He chuckled quietly.

“That’s a different way of looking at it. But I agree. This place doesn’t look like it’s going away. The first thing that struck me about it is that it seems to have always been here.”

“Not quite always, but well over a century now. Was that what made you decide to stay here? Because we sure don’t seem to have a lot to offer most people, at least ones who didn’t grow up here.”

She hesitated, trying to find a way to put into words what had made her pause here in her journey, without revealing too much. “I guess…well, the place just feels…” She hesitated again and then gave a nervous laugh. “It’s sounds stupid, but when I got here what I felt was reliability. You know, like you could always count on this town.”

He turned into the grocery store lot and parked before he spoke. “Maybe that’s a good word for it,” he said finally. “Reliability. There’s a lot of that around here.”

Then he paused. “Well, except for Ben Patterson. I told him that place isn’t safe yet.”

“Maybe he just figured it wouldn’t be a problem because I wanted it for such a short time.” She bit her lower lip. “Look, if you want me to move, I will. But it’s just so hard to find a place that doesn’t want to tie me into a long-term lease.”

His gray eyes focused on her with an intensity that made her nervous. As if he were seeing things she was sure she hadn’t revealed. Then came the question she had hoped to avoid but had known, deep in her heart, she wouldn’t be able to.

“Why do you want to keep moving?”

It was, however, a question for which she’d already thought up the answer, weeks ago, just in case. “I’m traveling around the country is all. I finally reached a point where I could do it, and so I just decided to do it.”

To her it almost seemed as if he frowned, though she couldn’t point to a single thing in his face that changed. After a moment he shrugged. “Some folks have wanderlust, I guess.”

“It’s not exactly wanderlust. It’s just that…well, I might never get the chance to do this again. It seemed like a good time.” She hoped she never had to do this again, but that was a different story, one she wasn’t prepared to discuss with a stranger. Nor was she about to tell anyone that the only hope she cherished was that she had covered her tracks well enough. Sometimes she feared she hadn’t.

He seemed satisfied, though, and climbed out of the truck. She came around from her side and watched him stretch a little, as if things ached.

“Being a cowboy is hard work?” she asked, deciding to let him explain it any way he wanted.

“It can be, but damn, it’s great. Wide-open spaces, sleeping under starry skies, cooking over campfires. I like it.”

“Do you do it all the time?”

He twisted his back a little then shook his arms. “When there’s work. When I can.”

The answers sounded short, so she let it go. She was hardly likely to press him to go places when there were plenty of them she didn’t want to go herself.

They shopped separately and met back at the truck. She had only bought enough for a couple of days, but he seemed to have bought considerably more. She helped him load bags into the back of the pickup, and then they headed back to the house.

“You need anything else,” he said after he helped her carry her stuff inside, “you let me know. And don’t go scratching at the walls. God knows what’s under that paper.”

At that she laughed again, suddenly feeling better than she had in a couple of months.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“The idea of what could be under that paper. You’ve been talking about this house like it’s a ticking time bomb.”

A smile lit his face. “Maybe it is. Admittedly, the last folks who lived there made it to their nineties, so for all I know it’s the Fountain of Youth.”

She had a nice laugh, he thought as he headed back to his place, focused on finally getting that hot bath and that shot of bourbon. Or maybe he’d go over to Mahoney’s tonight instead and shoot the breeze with some of the regulars.

Of course, the problem with that was, inevitably, someone would get drunk enough to ask him about his firefighting days. And no matter how often he made it clear that he was just a cowboy now, there was always some jerk who didn’t get the memo, at least once he was a little drunk.

Most folks hereabouts had gotten the memo and didn’t bring up the subject anymore. And that was just the way he wanted it.

He shook the thought away. One of the best things he could say about Conard County was that folks tended to drop things you wanted dropped. At least to your face. They might gossip like mad among themselves, but they wouldn’t keep bringing it up to you.

And he didn’t want to think about that right now. In fact, he’d have been happy not to think about it at all.

Settling into the tub full of hot water, he released a sigh and turned his thoughts in other directions. Like Ben Patterson, with whom he was going to have more than a couple of words soon. And his new tenant.

Kelly Scanlon. He liked the name but her very presence raised a lot of questions. He had honestly believed that Ben wouldn’t be able to rent that place at any price, warnings attached or not. It was barely livable, and just knowing there was someone over there now made him feel like a grade-A slumlord.

He’d agreed to list it because Ben had been full of talk about how people never moved overnight, that listing it would be good because the place was going to be ready in a couple of months.

That had made sense to Hank. Let people know the property would be available down the road. He’d agreed when Ben had said most people planned their moves in advance anyway.

So, yeah, it had made sense. Certainly, he’d never expected a total stranger to turn up out of the blue wanting the place right now, in its current condition, for only a couple of months. Weird.

And that weirdness made him think about Kelly Scanlon. Her nervousness when she’d opened the door. That haunted look in her eyes. That kind of woman seldom went begging for anything. Men would trip all over themselves to look after her.

Or maybe not.

He sighed, let his head fall back against the rolled-up towel he’d strategically placed on the edge of the tub, and closed his eyes.

Something was not right over there. The thought drifted through his mind, and since he hadn’t poured that shot of bourbon, he knew he couldn’t blame it on anything except instinct.

His instincts were sharp, honed by years of fighting fires. He never ignored them, unless someone else’s life was on the line.

And his instincts were trying to tell him that something was very wrong. Well, sheesh, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure that out, he supposed.

Woman comes out of nowhere—gorgeous woman, making it even odder—to rent a house just this side of condemned for a couple of months in a town in the middle of nowhere. Sure, that sounded perfectly normal.

He sighed again, sinking a little lower into the soothing water and raised his knees one at a time to loosen the kinks.

Okay, it was strange. It was also not his problem, beyond making sure she didn’t get hurt because of that house. Hell, was he ever going to roast Ben over some hot coals. How many times had he told the agent that the house was not completely safe?

It wasn’t likely to collapse on Kelly’s head, but things could happen. The termite damage, some of the dubious wiring, even a stove with a pilot light…

Dammit. He sat up suddenly, ignoring a spear of pain. He hadn’t gotten to that part. And he’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Ben had been real friendly and had turned the propane on for her. Not that it was all that bad. The thing had an automatic shutoff when the pilot went out, which was the only reason he hadn’t just ripped it out of the house already.

But still.

Oh, what the … He didn’t bother to complete the thought. The water was cooling down anyway, and he could take another bath if he needed to soak some more.

Rising, water sluicing off him in waves, he stepped out onto the mat and reached for a towel.

Five minutes later he was limping next door, water droplets still clinging to the ends of his hair.

Kelly didn’t want to answer the knock. It was getting dark outside, although the evenings were a lot longer here than she was used to. She didn’t even want to twitch a curtain back to look. She was well aware that all her attempts to evade a possible tracker might not have worked. Aware of all the times she’d had to present ID, then hit the road again the very next morning, following a crazy-quilt pattern around the country. What if her path hadn’t been random enough?

Even as she hovered in hesitation in the kitchen, she told herself that she was overreacting. No one knew where she was. She had tried to make darn sure of that. So the only person who could be at her door was her too-attractive landlord, the real estate agent who shouldn’t have rented to her or a kid selling something, and it was the wrong time of year for cookies.

The knock came again, more insistent this time, and finally she squared her shoulders and went to answer it.

Twilight bathed the world outside, the long endless twilight of the northern latitudes. The sun had gone down behind the mountains early, but that didn’t make the world completely darken. She had plenty of light by which to see Hank.

“I’m a fireman,” he said without preamble. “Well, I was.”

“Oh.” How was she supposed to respond to that?

“I’m just a cowboy these days,” he said rather insistently, “but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten everything.”

“Of course not.”

“I’ve got to tell you about the pilot light on the stove.”

Feeling confused, but strangely relieved to see him, she stepped back and waved him inside. For some reason she’d felt safer in cheap motel rooms than she felt in this house, something that surprised her. Maybe she’d found so much security in moving that she couldn’t feel it any longer when she held still. Or maybe there was a reason for the uneasiness that wouldn’t leave her alone. Maybe she needed to heed it until she could figure out where it was coming from.

“I just made some coffee,” she offered hesitantly.

“This won’t take but a minute.”

For some reason, as soon as they were in the kitchen, she pulled a couple of the mugs he’d leant her out of the cupboard anyway. “Black?” she asked.

“Yeah. Please.”

At least he hadn’t refused again. For the first time in ages she just didn’t want to be alone.

“Okay,” he said, lifting the stovetop to reveal the unadorned burners and gas lines. “The pilot won’t stay lit. I don’t know why, I don’t especially care because this thing is going. In fact, it’s going tomorrow and I’m putting in the new stove since someone’s living here.”

“I’m sure I can manage. You don’t have to do that on my account.”

His gray eyes pierced her. “Yes. I do. Gas is nothing to fool with.”

“No,” she agreed. He seemed to want her to come over, so she left the mugs on the table and went to stand beside him.

“This is an older model, obviously. It has separate pilot lights for the stovetop and the oven. I’m going to show you how to light them both. The stove also has an automatic shutoff if the pilot goes out when the burners are turned off. They built that safety feature in years ago.”

“Okay. Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

He shook his head. “Not exactly. I haven’t been in a rush to pull it out because no one was living here and I checked the automatic shutoffs. They seem to work properly. So no gas leaks when the stove is off, even if someone turned the propane back on. I’ll bet Ben turned it on for you.”

“I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t even think to ask about it.”

Stranger and stranger, he thought. She’d moved in here without even asking how to get gas for the stove?

Opening the drawer beside the stove, he pulled out a box of wooden matches and struck one. When he turned on a burner, it lit immediately. “Yeah, he turned it on for you.”

“Okay.”

He glanced at her and realized that she was looking puzzled, as if he was making a huge case out of nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. He turned off the burner, and after about a minute, the pilot light went out. “And there’s the problem.”

“I see that.”

“As I said, I checked and the safety shutoffs are working, so you don’t need to worry about the pilots going out. But I don’t know what might happen if you have a burner turned on and it goes out. I haven’t cooked on this dang thing—never intended to. So I guess, what I’m saying is, don’t leave it unattended while you cook until I get the new stove in here.”

“I can do that,” she said with certainty. “I wasn’t planning on cooking anything tonight anyway, and if I do in the morning, I’ll watch it.”

“Thank you.” He lowered the stove lid and opened the oven. “This is the pilot for the oven, but I’d really prefer you leave this one alone. This worries me because it pours out a lot of gas fast, and if the flame goes out, you won’t necessarily notice and…well, you don’t need me to draw you a map.”

“No, I get it. But you don’t have to rush to get a new stove on my account. I can manage.”

He shook his head. “Ben rented this place to you. I’m responsible for your safety. That’s the beginning and end of it.”

“Thank you. I’ll be careful.”

She went quickly to get the coffee, afraid he might just stride out, and poured two mugs. He didn’t hesitate, much to her relief, but took one of the chairs at the chipped dinette and reached for a mug.

She replaced the pot before joining him, and wondered at her sudden need for companionship. Maybe it was just the strangeness of being in a house again. She hadn’t really thought about that when she’d decided to rent the place for a while, but she was thinking about it now. Unlike the motel rooms she had inhabited, this place had more windows and more doors. She kept thinking about that now as darkness approached.

“So you’re a firefighter?” she asked tentatively, thinking that would be a safe place to go.

Apparently not. It was almost as if his face shuttered, growing suddenly hard. Then he visibly relaxed. “Not anymore. I’m just a cowboy.”

“That seems like a big career change.”

“Not really. I worked as a cowpoke from the time I was twelve until I went off to the academy. Summers and vacations.”

She pulled up her knee, rested her chin on it, and wrapped her arms around her leg. “I can’t imagine. I’ve had a very different sort of life. Being a cowboy sounds exotic to me.”

At that, some of the hardness slipped from his face and he smiled faintly. “It’s dirty, hard, smelly work for the most part. But I’ve always enjoyed it. I’d do it more often if there was more work available.”

“Is it like the movies?”

“In what way? We’re outdoors most of the time, we pretty much work sunup to sundown. If we’re working with the herds, we sleep with them. If we’re working the fences, sometimes we have the shelter of a line shack if we want it. If it’s romantic at all, it’s the part where we sleep under the stars and sit around the campfire at night telling godawful stories. But the coffee is terrible, the food is pretty rugged and the nights can sometimes seem miserably cold.”

“I’ve only been camping a couple of times. I liked it.” She tried a tentative smile, glad to see he’d relaxed from whatever had made him so tense.

“So what do you do?” he asked.

“I’m…I was in charge of billing for a large medical practice. I moved up to office manager, too, a couple of years ago.”

“That sounds complicated. Did you like it?”

“Mostly.” She closed her eyes a bit, thinking back, trying to leave Dean out of the equation. It wasn’t easy. Her marriage to him had colored everything.

“Better question,” he said. “Would you like to do it again?”

“Maybe.” She let out a sigh and shook her head a little as she reached for her coffee. “That depends, I guess.”

“With what you feel like when you’re done traveling?”

“Pretty much.” That seemed as safe a way to put it as any. “I have time.” Two months, anyway. If she could make it that long. Once again, she assured herself she had covered her tracks. And once again some little corner at the back of her mind wasn’t so sure about that. Dang it, why couldn’t she put her finger on what worried her? Other than the fact that she hadn’t felt safe since that man tried to drown her in a canal.

Then he dropped the boulder that left her rattled to her very core. “What are you running from?” he asked.

She went hot and cold by turns as shock ripped through her. How had he known? What had she said? Had her most closely guarded secret been so obvious? When she managed to find her voice, she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do,” he said quietly.

“You don’t know anything about me!”

“That’s true. And it’s none of my business, really.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“But the way you opened the door this afternoon, looking like a frightened gazelle, and renting this crappy place in a town in the middle of nowhere … Sorry. I don’t think you’re on a vacation.”

“It doesn’t matter what I am.”

“Maybe not.” He leaned back a bit in his chair, as if to give her more space. “I guess I’ve overstayed my welcome. I’ll be back as early as I can with the stove tomorrow, and after I get it in, I’ll probably work on the windows.”

He started to push back from the table, but she instantly felt bad. For the way she had just shut him out, for the rudeness she’d just displayed when he’d gone out of his way to be kind to her. But there was a bit of selfishness, too, because she didn’t want him to go. Didn’t want to rattle around alone in this house—not yet.

“Wait,” she said tautly.

He paused, the chair only an inch farther from the table than when he’d started to shove back.

“I’m sorry. I’m being rude.”

“Your business is your business.”

“I know but…you’ve been so kind, and you’re right—this is all crazy. And you’re probably wondering if I’m a criminal on the lam….”

He startled her by laughing. “By God,” he said, “that thought never entered my mind.” Still smiling, he cocked a brow at her. “Now that could be exciting.”

With all that had happened, with all she’d had to give up, she still had her sense of humor. A little giggle escaped her. “Are you that bored?”

“I don’t bore easily. But I have to admit, renting a house to a fleeing felon might be one of the most interesting things I’ve ever done. Not the kind of thing that happens every day.”

“No, it’s not,” she admitted, the smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Sorry, I’m not running from the law.”

“No surprise there.”

She hesitated, then bit her lip a moment. Finally, she said, “I’ll tell you, but please don’t tell anyone else.”

“Gossip is far from my favorite thing. And you don’t have to tell me. I was just getting ready to tell you that I’m right next door if you need anything. Since you’re not a felon, I won’t even get in trouble for providing it. That’s very dull, you know.”

She liked the sparkle of humor in his eyes, liked it much better than the closed-off look she’d seen there before. Better than the man who had folded up his emotional tent because he’d just been told to mind his own business.

“Well, the truth is duller,” she admitted. She could tell him part of her story, she decided. Just part. And for some idiotic reason, it seemed to want to burst out of her for the first time since she’d tried to tell the police and her lawyer. As if she’d been sitting on a powder keg of feelings for way too long and needed just one person to listen. Just one. Even her lawyer didn’t quite believe her. And Hank might not, either. But the words still wanted to spill, as if she needed to vent them, regardless of the response.

“I’m getting divorced,” she said.

Hank hesitated, then leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I don’t know how I endured the last eight years—honestly. Anyway, you’re right, I’m on the run.”

“He’s abusive?”

“He can be. But it’s not exactly him I’m hiding from.”

“Then what?”

“I think he paid someone to try to kill me.”

Chapter 3

Okay, Hank thought, this was like a movie. Only the woman sitting in front of him, much as she might look like a movie star, wasn’t sitting on a set reciting lines. She could be crazy, of course—always a possibility. But something about the way her eyes tightened as she spoke the words made him quite sure she believed what she was saying.

And there was no way on earth he could just walk away from that.

“What happened?” he asked her, knowing he was about to get involved one way or the other. He’d never been one to stand back if someone needed help. Unfortunately.

She shrugged. “It’s an old story. Dean mistreated me so I left. I got a lawyer. The lawyer figured I should get a lot of money and went hunting for all of Dean’s assets, at least the ones he hadn’t already sheltered. Then he notified Dean’s lawyer of the amount we were asking for as a settlement.”

She drew a long breath. “It was a lot of money. At least I thought it was. Apparently, Dean did, too, because one night he called me and told me I wouldn’t live to collect it.”

“You believed him.”

She shook her head. “No, honestly, I didn’t. I mean, that seemed extreme under any circumstances, even though he’d banged me around a bit. I didn’t figure him for a killer.” Her blue eyes lifted to his, looking so very sad. “It seems like a huge step from hitting someone when you get mad to actually killing her.”

“For most people it would be.”

She nodded. “So I didn’t even mention it to my lawyer. All I did was tell him I didn’t want so much money. But then Dean did this really odd thing.”

“What was that?”

“He agreed to the settlement. Without a fight.”

“Why do you think that’s odd?”

“You’d have to know Dean. He was all about money. But even my lawyer didn’t think it was odd. He said Dean had a lot to lose by the publicity from a messy divorce, and probably just wanted it over with.”

“That would have been my guess.”

Kelly nodded again. “Yeah. That’s how it seems. Except I kept remembering him saying I wouldn’t live long enough to collect it. But I couldn’t put the pieces together. Or maybe I didn’t want to put them together.”

She stood up suddenly and started pacing the kitchen, rubbing her arms as if she were cold. “I couldn’t believe he’d really hurt me, more than hitting and screaming as he’d done before, and while I couldn’t believe he’d part with all that money so easily, finally it seemed like my lawyer had to be right. Dean had more to lose by fighting, because it would come out that he’d hit me. And…I’d lived with the man for eight years. As hard as it was to believe he’d accept the settlement, it was harder to believe he would do anything that extreme. In all those years, he only gave me some bruises. That’s wrong, but it’s not murderous.”

She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. “Regardless…I guess part of me still wanted to believe he was the man I’d fallen in love with. That, after all those years, I really knew him, even his faults, and he couldn’t possibly be capable of murder. I believed that right up to the moment some guy grabbed me in the parking garage, stuffed me in his trunk and then tried to drown me.”

Hank swore. The kitchen was darkening at last, and now it felt darker with something more than the night. “How’d you get away? Did the cops get him?”

“I’m in good shape and I know some self-defense. I fought hard, and we splashed so much in the water I think he finally got afraid somebody would come. Or maybe that we’d attract an alligator. He gave up and ran.”

“My God.” He could too easily imagine her terror and desperation. Assuming it was true, of course. “And the police?”

“The cops decided it was a random crime. They didn’t think Dean had anything to do with it. Guys who are mad say things like that all the time, they said, especially ones who are being divorced. And I didn’t have any proof that Dean was behind it. Maybe he wasn’t. My lawyer didn’t even think so.”

“But you were scared enough to run.”

“Yes.” She looked at him from haunted eyes. “What kind of lunatic grabs a woman, drives her somewhere and tries to drown her? Without doing anything else? He didn’t even empty my wallet. I suppose people like that exist out there, but it just didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t risk the possibility Dean had put the guy up to it.”

He rubbed his chin, then said gently, “Have you considered that, by running, you might have made it easier for your ex?”

“What do you mean?”

“You already reported to the cops that you thought he was behind the attack. If someone tried to get you again, he’d be the first person they’d look at…unless you were halfway across the country.”

“Maybe, but they’d have to prove it. And it won’t matter to me if I’m dead, will it?”

He couldn’t argue that point.

She came back to the table and sat again. “I could be wrong. I know I could be. But the risk is too great. So I left town with the cash I inherited from my mother and I’ve been moving ever since. I don’t even know if I’ll go back for the hearing.”

“Do you have to?”

“One of us has to show up. My lawyer thinks Dean won’t. So if I don’t show up, everything is left hanging out there unfinished. The whole divorce action might even be dismissed, and right now I don’t think that’s so bad.”

“You want to go back to him?” The idea shocked Hank, just from what little she had said.

“No. Never.” She sighed again and hugged herself. “I hate even thinking about this. I guess I’ve been doing it for too long, arguing with myself. The thing is, I already owe my lawyer a ton of money. If I don’t get at least part of that settlement, I’m going to spend years trying to pay him off. On the other hand, right now my lawyer isn’t willing to lower our settlement demand when Dean has already agreed to it. Apparently, that leaves it all but decided. Nothing left but to make an appearance in court and get the official seal. So I can see his point.”

“I can see that, too.”

“But if neither of us shows up for the court date, the case will probably be dismissed and we have to start over, and maybe I can persuade my lawyer to basically just bill me for his expenses.”

“I see.” He did indeed. “Do you feel you’re not entitled to some kind of settlement?”

She looked down. “I was mad enough when I left him to want to ruin him. Now I’m just scared. I just want to be free of him and not have to be frightened all the time.”

There was nothing Hank could say to that. But he was deeply disturbed by her story. The idea of a man hiring a killer to rid himself of a wife over money wasn’t unheard of, but it didn’t fit anywhere in the world he lived in. Those were stories you heard, and only rarely, on the news. Hell, as far as he knew, it wasn’t even as common as serial killers, although money was surely one of the leading motives for crime.

But what did he know? And her description of what had happened to her did seem strange enough. To kidnap a woman to drown her? Didn’t there have to be some kind of motive—even a sick one? Although maybe drowning people would be motive enough for one or two freaks out there.

If he was sure of anything, it was that her story was so squirrely he could understand why the cops hadn’t believed her.

She could be lying, she could be deluded or she could be right. All three meant he needed to keep an eye on her. And tomorrow he was going to give Ben what-for. Like he needed this?

But then he looked at the woman who sat hunched in the chair across from him and he realized that she needed help. Whatever was going on, she needed someone in her life right now. Someone to keep an eye on her.

He doubted he’d ever seen anyone quite as alone as she was. Coming to a strange town where she knew no one because she needed to hide from something real or imagined. That was pretty bad.

He had to find some way to come at this, a way that would reassure her and give him more information about what he needed to do, even if it was just keep an eye on her from a distance.

But how could he do that?

“Anyway,” she said finally, giving herself a visible shake, “I should be safe here while I decide if I’m even going back to Miami for the court date. This is the first time I’ve slowed down in weeks. I’ve been paying my way with cash. He shouldn’t be able to find me.”

If someone wanted to kill her, Hank thought, he wouldn’t be all that sure she’d covered her tracks well enough. There were a million things a person could do to leave a trail. It all depended on how determined someone was to find her. And he doubted she was very experienced in the kind of thing she’d been trying to do.

He reached for his coffee mug, trying to sort out his thoughts about the best way to handle this. It was possible someone had tried to kill her, strange as it seemed, given the details. He could find out if that was true just by talking to some friends in the Denver Police Department, an inquiry that wouldn’t draw any attention here to Conard County.

Looking at the way she was hunched, he felt pretty certain, deep inside, that she had been mugged. Regardless of whether she was correct about why it had happened, he found he did believe she’d been attacked. The cops might be right that it had nothing to do with her husband, but that was the question, wasn’t it?

Even she didn’t seem one hundred percent certain, but he could understand her unwillingness to take any risks: A threat had been made, and then someone had tried to kill her.

He’d heard lots of such threats in his life, often made in moments of anger or stress, that were meaningless. It was usually just a strong expression on the part of people who said it.

On the other hand, if the man—Dean, it was—had felt strongly enough about it to call her and tell her that … Maybe it would be a mistake to dismiss it. Most people said things like that in a moment of passion, not in calmer moments. Not by making a phone call.

He frowned, looking down at his mug because it was easier than looking at her. Looking at her, much as she wasn’t his type, reminded him that he was a man with a man’s needs, something he had been trying not to think about for a while now.

But looking at the mug didn’t help a whole lot, either. It wasn’t as if it held any answers.

“What are you thinking?” she asked finally.

“I’m thinking that I’m not quite as prepared to dismiss what you’re saying as the police were.”

He saw her lift her head, and a flicker of hope appeared on her face before it disappeared.

“That’s nice of you,” she said finally. “I’ve been feeling kind of … Well, it’s hard to explain. When nobody believes you, you start to wonder if you’re losing your mind. It’s a very lonely feeling.”

He could well imagine it would be. God knew he’d had plenty of reason to second-guess some of his own decisions, and his own interpretations of things.

He still planned to check on whether her mugging story was true, but if it was, he couldn’t afford to dismiss the rest. Not when she was living right next door to him.

Not when she apparently didn’t have anyone else.

He could almost hear Fran laughing, as once she would have laughed, Count on you, Hank, to be the one to get the kitten down from the tree.

“Crap,” he said.

“Crap?” Kelly asked.

“Crap,” he repeated. Then he regretted it, because she began to shrink in on herself again. “Look, relax. I was just remembering my…a friend. She used to tease me about my inclination to get involved in things, so if you think I’m getting more involved than you want, just tell me to get lost.”

“I don’t want to do that,” she said swiftly. “But you don’t have to get involved. Really. I just told you my story. There’s no reason for you to give it another thought.”

Yeah, there was. Because it might be true. All of it. And that was worth a million reasons right there.

“What were you remembering?” she asked when he said nothing.

Ah, hell. “At the fire department we used to joke about rescuing cats. We did it sometimes—we weren’t heartless. But the joke was that you never saw the skeleton of a cat in a tree. Somehow they’d find their ways down, even if we never came to help. Fran, my friend, used to say that I’d always be the first one up into the tree.”

“Is that how you see me?”

He saw a spark of anger in her gaze, which was an improvement over her haunted look. “No, actually I don’t. It was a comment about me, not you. Not at all about you.”

A couple of seconds ticked by, then she relaxed. “Well, it doesn’t have to concern you at all. I just told you what happened and why I’m here. I don’t need a keeper. Or a rescuer.”

“I don’t remember saying that you did. You seem to have done all right so far.”

At that she seemed to shrink again, and all of a sudden he felt frustrated. “What now?” he asked. “What the hell did I say this time?”

She winced a bit, shaking her head. “It’s not you. I just got sick of hearing how I’d done all right for myself by marrying Dean.”

“Oh.” Kind of an echo. He could understand that. Still, it seemed to him that he and this lady weren’t going to get along very well. She seemed to be a walking land mine. Understandable, but not something he especially wanted to deal with. No, he could just keep a general eye out and keep his distance as much as possible. Other than some essential stuff he needed to do around here, there was no need for them to hang out together or anything.

She seemed to have grown fascinated by her coffee mug, both hands wrapped tightly around it as she stared into it. He felt again that sizzle of surprise and attraction he’d felt when first he’d laid eyes on her.

It wasn’t just that she was too damn pretty. He ordinarily was drawn to brunettes with warm dark eyes, yet here he was staring at a pale blonde with blue eyes. And yes, she looked like she’d stepped out of Central Casting, or whatever they called it. But there was something else about her, something very real and not plastic at all.

It called to him, to his feelings as a man. Kind of like a chest-beating response, he thought wryly. Well, he was long past those days, thanks to becoming pretty well crippled.

Leaning forward, he lifted his cup to sip coffee, trying to find a way to wrap up this conversation that wouldn’t leave her feeling abandoned once again. Because whether she was right or not about what had happened, she’d been abandoned by the cops and even by her lawyer. All she had left was herself.

And now him. He sighed, sipped and rose. “Cold,” he said by way of explanation. He went to the sink, ignoring the glassy splinters of pain in his hips, dumped the coffee and poured a fresh cup. Then he returned to the table, trying to feel his way.

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly as he sat again. “I didn’t mean to cause you so much trouble.”

He felt startled. “Trouble? What trouble?”

She hesitated. “Well, renting this place. You obviously weren’t ready for a tenant. Now on my account you’re rushing things. I’ve made work for you. And then I went and dragged you in with my story. I could just be crazy. Maybe I should move on.”

“I was going to do the work anyway. Speeding it up a bit is no problem. As for you moving on…well, I don’t have anything to say about that, but I doubt Ben’s going to part with his fee, which is the first month’s rent.”

“Oh no!” She clapped a hand to her cheek.

“Oh no? That’s standard.”

“No, no. It’s just that I can’t believe he rented this place to me knowing I’d only be here a couple of months when he was going to get the first month’s rent.”

“I can.” Hank laughed, relaxing again. Her consternation struck him as cute. “It’s okay, really. I just got all worked up about safety issues, but you’re a grown-up. You can avoid the stuff I was worried about. And things like the stove can be fixed quickly. Nothing’s changed, except the order in which I was going to do repairs.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” He waved at the floors. “I was going to get to these next, but since you’re here, I’ll just rearrange my schedule. No big deal. First the stove, then the electrician.”

“Why were you going to do the floors first?”

“Because they annoy the hell out of me.” He was still smiling. And because they sometimes tripped him, when his leg was acting up and he didn’t lift his foot high enough. But he didn’t want to bring his disability up. Bad enough living with it, without having buckets of sympathy ladled his way.

“Well, can I help with them? I need something to do besides sit around all day worrying about what might never happen.”

And that, he thought, was a healthy attitude. He felt his last reservations about her start slipping away. “Sure. I’d like that. Help is always welcome.”

From the way she beamed, he realized how much she wanted to feel useful again.

But even as he watched her, he saw her smile start to slip, and a look of horror began to replace it.

“Kelly? Kelly, what’s wrong?”

“I just realized something. I can’t believe I was too stupid to think of it before.”

“What’s that?”

“The place where the guy tried to drown me? It was in one of the canals around Miami.”

“So the gators would get you?”

“Maybe.” But then she shook her head. “No, it just suddenly struck me it was a canal where I went jogging a lot of mornings. Not too far from Dean’s house.”

He wasn’t sure where she was leading. “That would seem stupid. It could link it to Dean.”

She shook her head. “Don’t you see? He would have made it look like I might have fallen while I was out running. And there are gators in those canals. Lots of them. Bull sharks, too, in some places. There wouldn’t be much evidence for long. But the important thing is, how likely is it that someone who didn’t know me would know where I liked to jog?”

She had him there. Hard. All of a sudden, no matter how wacky it might have sounded at first, he believed her husband wanted her dead.

“Okay,” he said quietly, feeling his jaw tighten. “I’m buying it. All of it.”

She lifted her gaze, questioning without words.

“I wasn’t sure at first. It seems so far-fetched that the guy would want to kill you. I mean, I know it happens, but it doesn’t happen that often, does it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me, either. But to me it seems a helluva lot more likely that you were mugged by some stranger, odd as it seems, than that he’d carry you out some place just to drown you. But if he took you to a canal where you liked to jog…”

“He could just have been watching me,” she said tautly.

“Sure. Then why not go for you while you were out for a run? Why stalk you to your parking garage, then take you back there to kill you? Did he try to rape you or anything?”

She shook her head. “He just hit me over the head.”

“And you said he didn’t rob you, either. That fits with trying to make it look like an accident.”

Much to his dismay, he watched one lone tear roll down her cheek.

“Why are you crying?” he asked. “Isn’t this what you already thought was going on?”

She drew a shaky breath. “I guess,” she said sadly, “that some part of me wanted to believe I was wrong. Somewhere deep inside, I wanted to believe I was wrong about Dean. I wanted to believe I was making a mountain out of a molehill. I wanted to believe it was just random. Dammit, Hank, I didn’t want to believe, really believe, that the man I married is capable of murder.”

“You believed it enough to run.”

“And I spent the last six weeks telling myself I was crazy, even though I kept running.”

“And now you don’t feel crazy anymore.”

She shook her head. “Not now.”

“The canal changed your mind?”

“Yes, it did. Because Dean knew I ran out there all the time. Everyone knew it. And when they got around to finding whatever pieces of me were left after the gators or sharks were done, it would have been a sad, sad accident. Except that someone tried to drown me in that canal.”

“The police should have listened to that part.” He felt his ire stirring.

“How could they when I didn’t tell them? I was half-hysterical over being attacked, I was accusing Dean, they were telling me it was just random … God, I can’t believe I didn’t put it together before!”

He could. He knew what shock and denial could do to a mind. He’d experienced enough of his own. Impulsively, he reached out and took her hand, giving it a quick squeeze before he let go.

Of all the damn times to be inappropriately aware of the satin of a woman’s skin, this was it. He shoved the awareness down into a pit for later consideration. There were more important issues to deal with.

“You didn’t want to believe it any more than the cops and your lawyer did,” he said after a moment. “That’s normal enough. I doubt I’d have felt any differently.”

“No.” She shivered and rubbed her arms again. The night was cooling down, but not that much. At least not for him, but he didn’t come from Miami. “Jeez, now I do feel crazy. I went on the run because it occurred to me that Dean had paid someone to kill me, but I didn’t think of the one thing that proved it until just now? I need a shrink.”

“No,” he said firmly, “you’re normal. I don’t think the normal human mind is designed to readily accept the idea that someone wants to kill us. Certainly not someone we think we know and used to love.”

“Maybe. Maybe.” But she sounded awfully doubtful.

“Anyway,” he said bracingly, “you’re safe here. That’s what matters.”

“Yes. It is.” Several minutes ticked by then she managed a wan smile. “That was the whole point in coming here. But now I’ve got a lot of other stuff to think about.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why I’ve been such an idiot, believing and not believing, and running if I didn’t fully believe it, and…”

“Whoa,” he said gently, smiling for her. “Don’t start beating yourself up. The mind works in its own ways, and sometimes we don’t realize things until we’re ready for them.”

She seemed willing to accept that. When he went home a half hour later, the conversation had even turned back to the home repair project she wanted to involve herself in.

She seemed happier. And he was determined to find out what the hell had happened in Miami.

Thank God for friends in the police department.

Because, if he emerged from his own denial to look at this clearly, it seemed entirely possible that if a man with money really wanted to find her, there was little to stop him.

He needed details. Every one he could get. Only then could he figure out what he could do, what he might need to do.

He headed straight for his computer to send an email.

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