by Cindy Dees
She gave the long couch an experimental tug. It was heavy. But it did move. That did it. She pushed the sofa to where it properly belonged and dragged the chair to its left. Better. The coffee table’s edge was scarred like one too many pair of boots had been propped on it. The thing really needed a rug under it to anchor it, but the great room was entirely rugless. Drat.
She flopped down on the couch and watched the fire burn. The dance of white-yellow flames hypnotized her, lulling her into a relaxation she hadn’t felt since that fateful night at the underground club in Washington.
As best she could tell, the guy Wes had dragged off her had spiked the drink he’d bought her. Thank God she’d only sipped at it and hadn’t consumed the whole thing. She’d stayed conscious for Wes on the phone much longer than she’d expected to. As far as she could tell, she’d only been fully unconscious for a little while. And then Wes had arrived and saved her. It had been a close call with disaster. Far, far too close.
Now when she looked at men—all men—she saw a threat. Intellectually, she knew that most men were respectful and kind to women. But her gut didn’t want to play along with trusting any of them.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the emails had started coming, threatening the life of the one man she did trust. She couldn’t lose Wes. Even if he hated her for the rest of their lives, she needed to know that one good man existed out there somewhere.
Every time she waivered and considered contacting Wes to explain herself, another email arrived. It was uncanny how the sender seemed to sense when she was on the verge of cracking and telling Wes everything. She began to suspect that whoever was writing the emails either knew her or was watching her. Which turned out to be a surefire recipe for soul-sucking paranoia, terrible sleep and a destroyed appetite. Sometimes, she seriously thought she was losing her mind.
Unable to take the stress any longer, she’d finally snuck out of Washington without telling even her father where she was going or that she was leaving town. She’d just thrown a few clothes and toiletries in a bag and started driving. And here she was.
She had to find a way to get Wes to listen to her. She had to warn him. In the morning. Before he kicked her to the curb—or to the cow pie, as it were—she would force him to hear her out.
There had to be some way she could make all of this up to him. If only she wasn’t tired all the way to the depths of her soul. If only she could think. Tomorrow. She would find it tomorrow.
Her head nodded forward on her chest, then jerked upright. She kicked off her sheepskin boots, tucking her feet under the ragged throw blanket across the back of the couch. She pulled the scratchy wool across her shoulders and drifted off, staring into the flames of her life.
* * *
Wes woke with a start. What was that noise? Someone was in his house. He went on full battle alert before he remembered that Jessica had shown up at his door unannounced and unwelcome. A bitter taste filled his mouth. Talk about nasty shocks. Opening his door to see her standing there, tall and elegant and more beautiful than ought to be legal, her eyes bright with worry and her cheeks rosy with cold—sheesh. His heart couldn’t take too many shocks like that.
He heard the sound again. A moan of fear and pain. Swearing, he threw back the covers and yanked on jeans. He grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it on as he headed into the hall. He poked his head in the guest room, but the bed was still made. Frowning, he headed for the living room.
Jessica was stretched out on the couch, tangled in the old saddle blanket he’d thrown over the back of the thing to hide the threadbare cushions. She twitched and then thrashed as some nightmare stalked her.
He tossed several pieces of split oak onto the almost dead fire and used the bellows to blow on the embers until they glowed brightly. The seasoned wood caught fast, and bright new flames licked at the logs.
He sat on the hearth and contemplated the woman on his sofa. The firelight kissed her skin, which was as silky and dewy soft as he remembered. If anything, the past few months had made her even more beautiful than he remembered. He had never tired of looking at her. It was just when she was awake that he had a huge problem with her. She was selfish, scheming and childishly vengeful if history was any indication.
Jessica quieted and he caught himself staring hungrily at her perfect features, remembering her slender body wrapped around his, all that fiery passion for life spilling over onto him. Nope. Not opening that can of worms again. He’d been burned too badly the first time.
He nursed his rage, cloaking himself in its protection from the niggle of hurt gnawing at his gut. He didn’t care why she’d done it. He knew why. She was a self-serving bitch who’d chosen to protect her own dubious reputation rather than telling the truth and exonerating him.
He stood up to go back to bed. But his movement must have woken her, for Jessica’s luminous, sky blue eyes opened, and she looked around wildly, lurching upright. He stared at her, shocked.
That was stone-cold terror on her face. Since when did she experience that kind of fear? She was ballsy and bold, charging headfirst into life with courage he’d seen matched in only a few of the most confident of warriors. But here she was in the deep silence of a Montana snowstorm acting like the boogeyman was about to snatch her up and eat her alive.
Frowning, he murmured, “You had a bad dream.”
She reached up...and dashed away wetness from her cheek. She was crying? There was a snowball fight happening in hell at this very second.
“Sorry I woke you up,” she mumbled.
Apologetic Jessica was another first. Since when did she regret anything she did? Maybe that scare with getting drugged had taught her a much-needed lesson in caution and humility.
Still, this was the woman who’d told bald-faced lies in a court of law and had forced him to pay the price. He muttered, “If you’re done thrashing around, I’ll go back to bed now.”
“No more thrashing. I promise.”
“Thrash all you’d like. It’s no skin off my nose. You might want to go back into the bedroom, though. That couch puts a mean kink in a person’s back.” He should know. He fell asleep out here in front of the fire more nights than not. He had demons of his own waiting for him in dreamland. And most of them were elegant blondes who tied him up in emotional knots he was helpless to resist.
Shaking his head, he padded back to his room to do some thrashing around of his own as sleep eluded him and rage and betrayal wrestled in his gut. One night. He just had to survive this night. And then he’d get rid of her forever.
Chapter 4
Jessica woke with a start for the second time and lurched upright. Shabby room. Giant fireplace with a dead fire. A deep, bone-chilling cold pervaded the room.
Montana. Wes. And a snowstorm.
He hated her guts as he rightfully should and was refusing to let her explain anything to him. She had to make him listen. Poking her feet into her boots, she laid some wood on the ashes and used the bellows to blow on them. Nothing. The fire had gone out completely. Depressed by the cold gray ashes, she spotted some kindling and a newspaper folded in the wood holder. She wadded up a few pieces of it, laid the kindling and went hunting for matches. She found some in a drawer in the kitchen and carried them back to the hearth.
It took a few minutes of babying it along, but eventually the wood lit and the fire became self-sustaining. That task taken care of, she headed for the kitchen to see how stocked it was with food. She found a half-dozen eggs and some bacon. And then she spotted a pint of cream and some cheese. Now she was talking! She hunted around in the cupboards and found a bag of flour and some old-fashioned lard. Now for a pie pan. She found only an old cake pan stuffed in the back of a cupboard. That would work. She rolled up her sleeves and went to work, mixing a pastry crust, shredding cheese, frying bacon and putting together a quiche lorraine. Carefully, she placed it the oven and went looking for something to g
o with it. A bag of potatoes in the pantry and an onion became a fried hash while the quiche cooked. As the meal came together, she frowned at the ancient drip coffeepot on the kitchen counter. If she could work a French press, surely she could figure this out.
The cantankerous machine was finally dripping coffee through a paper filter when Wes said from behind her, “What’s all this?”
“A peace offering. That, and I was hungry.”
“It would take a hell of a lot more than a nice breakfast to make peace with me, darlin’.”
At least he thought it was a nice breakfast. She didn’t, however, take him calling her darling as anything other than the sarcasm it was meant to be. She poured him a cup of coffee and used the bit of cream she’d saved to gunk it up the way he liked it. “Try this. I wasn’t sure how to work your coffee maker. How is it?” she asked anxiously.
He sipped it and grimaced. “Strong.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll remake it.”
“Stop fussing, Jess. I can add a little more milk and some sugar, and it’ll be fine.”
Anxiously she served him a slice of the quiche and some hash.
“Will you stop hovering long enough to get yourself a plate of food and sit down?” he finally grumbled.
Too tense to eat now that the moment was upon her to talk with Wes, she settled for pouring herself a cup of coffee. She took a sip and grimaced. No amount of cream or sugar was going to save that. It tasted terrible. Well. Wasn’t this conversation off to a spectacular start?
She dived in, blurting, “Aren’t you going to ask me why I lied?”
He froze in the act of taking a bite of the quiche. Laid his fork down slowly without taking the bite. Wiped his mouth and folded his napkin with exacting precision. Leaned back in his chair. And finally looked up at her. He pinned her with a stare that would freeze a polar bear. He hadn’t been a Marine officer for nothing.
It took every ounce of self-discipline she had not to fidget under that accusing glare.
He spoke from between clenched teeth. “I know why you lied.”
She stared. “You do?”
He shrugged, but the movement was so tense she wasn’t sure what that jerk of his shoulders was at first. “You threw me under the bus to save your reputation and your father’s. I hope you both find them to be cold comfort when you end up alone.”
He stood up abruptly, startling her, and carried his plate over to the sink.
“That’s not why!” she exclaimed.
Another exaggeratedly slow movement, this time to turn around and stare at her from over by the sink. She noticed with dismay that his hands were balled into fists at his sides.
“Fine. Why?” he bit out. His voice didn’t quite shake with rage but wasn’t far from it. With that beard and wild look in his eyes, he looked lke some sort of crazed mountain man. Where was the spit-and-polish Marine she’d fallen so hard for before? She searched for any sign of him, and the only remnant she spied was the rigid set of his shoulders and ramrod-straight spine.
She explained urgently, “I was threatened. I got a bunch of anonymous emails saying that if I didn’t destroy you professionally, they would kill you.”
“They who?”
She stared down at her fingers, twined together, tugging at each other until they turned red. “I don’t know. But they knew things about me. Like what I was wearing and where I was. They were following me.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because I believed them,” she answered desperately.
He huffed. “You know better than to give in to anonymous threats. You should have called their bluff.”
“I did. They killed my dog.”
“Paco? How do you know someone killed that little rat? Wasn’t he about a hundred years old?”
Paco had been more than a little neurotic and he’d had lots of quirks. But he surely hadn’t deserved to be murdered. “The veterinarian did a tox screen, and he died from ingesting large quantities of rat poison.”
“Dogs get into stuff like that if it’s left where they can reach it.”
“We didn’t have anything like that in the house. And he was never let out of the house. Someone came into my father’s house and deliberately fed it to him.”
“So because someone poisoned your dog, you decided you had to destroy my life?”
“Of course not. Because someone poisoned my dog and threatened to harm you, I took the threats against you seriously. That’s why I—” she choked on the word but forced it out anyway “—lied.”
Wes demanded, “Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”
“Yes. I do. But you have to believe me. They promised me—promised me—they’d kill you if I didn’t get you thrown out of the military.”
“That’s a pretty specific threat. What did your father think about it?”
She winced. “I couldn’t tell him. They threatened to kill him, too.”
“You seriously expect me to believe this ridiculous story?”
She opened her mouth to ask him why she would lie about something like that and then realized in the nick of time how stupid that would sound to him. “Someone has been following me.”
“So you’ve seen whoever’s threatening you? Who is it?”
“I haven’t seen anyone’s face. Cars tail me, and I see strangers lurking behind me in doorways and down the street.”
“That sounds more like paranoia than a problem.”
“I got more emails after the hearing. They continued to threaten you and my father.”
“You definitely should have called the police.”
“Wes, I was afraid! I still am!”
“Why? You already ruined my life. Who cares if someone knocks me off?”
“I care! And you should, too.”
“Drama queen, much?” he muttered.
“I drove all the way out here to warn you that someone is threatening to kill you. Look, I was pretty sure you wouldn’t accept my apology if I tried to say I was sorry for tanking your career. I get it. But you have to believe me when I tell you someone is threatening you and my father. I lied to save the only two men in the world I lo—” she broke off and corrected herself “—that I care about.”
The look on his face made it clear she had wasted both her time and her breath by coming out here to see him. Her heart ached far more than it should have at the way he was shutting her out. They’d been broken off for a while when the whole catastrophe happened. She wasn’t still harboring love for him, was she?
Why else would the anger and disgust in his eyes be so hard to look at?
She stood up, her spine rigid. She wasn’t going to get out of this exchange with her honor intact. But she could at least leave with her dignity intact. She said quietly, “I thought I at least owed you the courtesy of letting you know you may be in danger.”
He snorted. “This is Montana. Strangers stick out like a sore thumb around here, and everyone owns a rifle. Not much crime happens in these parts that the locals don’t take care of immediately. Hell, the sheriff is my cousin.”
“Great. Then I’ll just take my warning and leave you to your vigilante justice. Good luck with that.”
The least he could do was show a tiny bit of gratitude for the dire warning she’d delivered to him. Even if he did decide to completely blow it off, she’d gone to a lot of trouble to get here to share it with him. Not that she expected him to care. She should have expected him not to believe her.
She grabbed her coat, opened the front door and stopped cold. A wall of snow that came nearly to her waist confronted her. She turned around to ask for another way out and spied Wes leaning against the edge of the kitchen island, arms crossed, studying her like she was some kind of unwelcome bug.
She asked reluctantly, “Is there another way out to my car, or
am I going to have to bust through that?”
“The barn your car is parked in has a bigger drift than that in front of it. You’re not going anywhere today.”
She swore colorfully. She really didn’t want to spend the entire day with Wes glowering at her like she was sharing some contagious disease with him.
He shrugged. “If you’re gonna be stuck here, you might as well make yourself useful.”
Her gaze narrowed. That sounded ominous. She wouldn’t put it past him to exact some sort of petty revenge on her now that he had her at his mercy. “What did you have in mind?”
“This is a ranch. There’s always work to be done.”
Yup. Petty revenge. Well, two could play that game. She smiled brightly. “Great! I’ve been cooped up in a car for three days. Getting out and doing something physical sounds wonderful.”
She glanced down at her leggings and silk blouse. “But I’m not exactly dressed for it.”
“Change into something else.”
“I grabbed my purse, left my father’s house and started driving. I didn’t pack a suitcase to signal to anyone that I was leaving town. I have the clothes on my back until I can get back to an actual town with stores and do a little shopping.”
Wes rolled his eyes. “City slicker. I don’t suppose you have a heavier coat than that skimpy jacket you wore last night, either, do you?”
“March is springtime in Washington!”
“Newsflash—it’s still winter here.”
She made a face. “I figured that out as I drove up here in a blizzard last night.”
He grinned sardonically. “That was not a blizzard. That was a minor late-season snowstorm.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I suppose I can lend you some work clothes.”
He strode down the hall to his room and emerged in a minute with a pair of jeans, a belt, a black T-shirt and a hoodie sweatshirt. “Leave your leggings on under the jeans. You’ll need the layers. While you put this stuff on, I’ll go see if I can find a pair of my old work boots that might fit you.”