“Suffice it to say, that in under two minutes, Darryl was screaming for mercy. He promised never to touch another girl or woman against her will. Hal and Erwin eventually came and took him back to the cabin he was staying in. I was pounding on his door the next morning at dawn.”
“You had back-up, right?”
She loved how concerned he was, for some reason his worry felt like caring and didn’t chafe like when other men said something like that.
God, she really was one of those psycho broads.
She knocked her head against Dalton’s chest.
“Ouch,” she yelped.
“Ah, Sunshine, don’t hurt yourself.”
“Yes, I had back-up,” she looked up into his eyes. “Erwin and Hal were both with me. I stood over him with my shotgun while he packed up his cabin and we followed behind him until he was off the property. But it still didn’t stop him from hurting some other girl.”
“That wasn’t on you.”
She gritted her teeth so hard she thought they might shatter.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dalton reiterated. “You did everything you could. Hell, even the police’s hands were tied. You couldn’t very well follow him around every day, now could you?”
“I about died the day Brody told me. Apparently, the assistant DA in California who was handling the case called Brody to find out if there were ever any problems that didn’t get reported. To find out if there was some kind of pattern. The attorney wanted to get an idea of what kind of sentencing to go for.”
Dalton nodded for her to continue.
“When Brody found out Darryl was successfully put behind bars, he told me. He wanted to make sure it was a done deal, before he told me.”
She curled her left hand, the one he wasn’t holding, into a fist and hit him half-heartedly on the chest. “Logically I know it wasn’t my fault, but Dalton, it just kills. You know?”
He looked into her brown eyes that shimmered with tears that she was holding back. Fuck yeah, he understood. He cuddled her next to his heart and looked off into space. It took him far too long to pull himself together, but eventually he did.
“Tell me about the other guy.”
“Ned Little. He only worked for us for two weeks. Again, I checked his references, but it turned out that he had us call a cell phone number that didn’t belong to the ranch where he’d had worked. If I had talked to them, I would have found out he had been tossed out on his ear. Instead I was totally duped.”
He heard the weariness in her voice.
“So, I hired him. His first assignment was to work with one of our new horses. We were slammed, that’s why I hired him. After a week I could tell he didn’t like taking orders from me because I was a woman. I didn’t have time for his bullshit, so I just put Hal in charge of him. He was working with to break a young and eager filly. Yeah, she was a little rambunctious, but it should have been easy.”
“I take it, it wasn’t.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why I was doing a walk through the barn one night, but I did. I couldn’t find Lily in her stall. I checked the corral, but she wasn’t there. I finally checked the horse trailers, and that’s where I found her. The bastard was actually hang-tying her, so she’d be more malleable when he went to train her.”
“What’s hang-tying?”
“It’s when the halter is connected to a chain hooked into the ceiling and the horse’s neck is forced upwards. It’s like they are on their tiptoes. It’s barbaric.”
Her rage was palpable.
“Let me guess, she’d be so tired and sore, she wouldn’t put up a fight the next day.”
“You got it one,” Aurora agreed. She pushed out of his arms. “After I took care of Lily, I got my shotgun and rousted him out of bed and kicked him off our land.”
He grinned. Seemed that Aurora liked her shotgun. Then he frowned. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you get Hal or Erwin to back you up?”
“I was too pissed to think of it. The little shit refused to open the door. He was a little scaredy cat. I used the key to let myself in.”
Dalton’s blood ran cold at the thought. “Jesus Aurora, he could have had a gun trained on you.”
“The little fuck picked on young horses, he would be too scared to pull shit on me. I knocked him upside the head with the butt of my gun. He ended up crawling around half the time to grab his shit. I actually kicked him in his ass out the door,” she said with a laugh.
Dalton didn’t care if she found it funny, it made him sick to his stomach. God knows what could have happened while she was alone in that cabin with that man.
“The next day I put the word out to everyone I could think of about the little shit. I faxed and e-mailed his ID around to make sure nobody would hire him. His name is mud in the horse community.”
“Do you know where Ned Little is today?”
“Not a clue.” She yawned, it pushed her breasts into prominence. He needed to keep his mind on task, and not focused on her body. But what a body.
“I need to get to bed.” She peered at the clock on the stove. “Only three more hours of shut-eye,” she sighed woefully. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
It took everything he had not to offer to tuck her in.
What the hell was he thinking? He only hooked up with women who didn’t want relationships, and Aurora screamed white picket fence. He needed to stop thinking about her.
He shifted his stance. Maybe staying here hadn’t been such a good idea, but he just hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of Aurora being unprotected.
He strode back to his bedroom and snagged his cell phone. Kenna was going to hate him, but that didn’t stop him from texting Dex. If the man wanted to mother the Western Hemisphere, then he was just going to have to start mothering Aurora too.
Dalton threw the phone down next to him on the bed and peeled out of his shirt and jeans. He waited for Dex’s call. He started to get pissed when twenty-five minutes passed by.
“Is everything okay? Is everyone safe?” Dalton asked when Dex finally called him back.
“Yeah, everyone’s good,” Dex answered.
“Then what the fuck? What took you so long to answer? I said it was important.”
Was he being an irrational, impatient prick? Definitely. Was it because he was a horny asshole? Most likely. But he was worried about Aurora too.
“I was in the middle of a delicate operation,” Dex said with a smile in his voice.
The way he said it just pissed Dalton off more. The man had been getting lucky.
Dammit!
“Whatchya need? I figure since it’s three in the morning it’s important.” The man was laughing at him.
“It is,” Dalton bit out.
“Does this have something to do with a beautiful blonde? I heard she knows her way around disgruntled animals,” Dex teased. “By the sounds of things, that’s probably for the best.”
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Nothing was fucking sacred with Dexter Evans. And he knew that Zed hadn’t spilled the beans.
“Somebody’s out to hurt her.”
“What are you talking about? I need details.” Dalton calmed down a little when he heard the concern in his friend’s clipped voice.
“Somebody took shots at her. It wasn’t that professional, otherwise she’d be dead, but still, they targeted her. The locals are insisting it was some poacher who mistook her for big game. My happy ass it was. They’re idea of policework is handing out speeding tickets, seeing if granny is tilting a slot machine to make it pay out or worrying about someone peeing in their pristine lake.”
Dex let out a big laugh. “What has your tail in a twist? Usually this level of pissed-offed-ness is left for the spooks in Langley who give us the wrong intel for an op.”
“They’ve let Aurora down twice now. If I wasn’t on a time schedule to come back home, and I didn’t have to track down the bastard who has her in his sights, I’d have you get me info, so I could dismantle the sh
eriff.”
Dalton was surprised to find himself pacing around the small bedroom. When had he gotten out of bed?
“Calm your shit down. Tell me what you need and it’s yours,” Dex said soothingly.
“Cut it out Evans, you’re never going to be a horse whisperer.” A picture of Aurora burst into his mind. She’d looked so tiny compared to the mammoth stallion. Even now his mouth felt like it was filled with cotton when he remembered her going into that stall with Aladdin.
“Tell me how to help your lady,” Dex said. Again, he was calm and steady. It helped. Maybe he was a Navy SEAL whisperer.
“I need you to get me all the info you can on a guy named Ned Little. He used to work at this ranch, it’s called Valhalla. He only worked here at the ranch for a couple of weeks. He worked as a horse trainer. Look, I’ve met her and her grandfather, plus the two hands who’ve been here forever, she just doesn’t have any real enemies. This has got to be the guy. I need you to track him down.”
“Do you have anything else? Can you get his employment file?”
“I’ll get it tomorrow.”
There was a long silence. “Ned Little, huh? His real name is probably Edward. I’m on it. I’ll get you something by noon.”
6
Aurora watched him riding Siren in pearlescent afternoon light and her heart jumped into her throat. The blue Henley shirt molded to his chest, shoulders and arms. The sun glinted in his blue-black hair. Dalton was the embodiment of every warrior in history. But what made her want to cry, was what he was doing.
A crisis had happened today, and Hal and Erwin had their hands full going to Reno to pick-up another abused horse that had been fraudulently purchased. Gunnar left about the same time, and she had screwed up by not calling and telling Crystal that she wouldn’t be able to take Taylor and Mark for their lesson.
When they showed up at three o’clock she was devastated at the thought of turning them away. Crystal was the boy’s foster mother, and Aurora’s oldest friend. Both boys scored high on the autism spectrum scale and they had been coming to Valhalla for over a year to do Equine Therapy. It was because of Crystal that she’d gone to Torrey Pines for ten days a year and half ago for training. After identifying two horses that would be perfect for the boys she’d worked with Erwin and the horses for three months before inviting Crystal, Taylor and Mark over for a test run.
“What’s going on Sunshine?” Dalton had asked when Crystal’s SUV came up the drive.
She’d explained and watched his thoughtful expression. “My friend Dare Stanton has a son named Georgie, he’s eight years old. Georgie’s great, when you can get through to him. It takes a lot of patience, he’s severely autistic.”
Aurora wished she had time to be subtler in her questioning, but Crystal and the boys were getting out of their vehicle. “How much time did you spend with Georgie? Was it just a one-time thing, or do you have a relationship with him?”
Luckily Dalton didn’t take it bad. “Georgie and I seemed to hit it off at a couple of team barbeques,” he said quietly. “I went and visited him at his house a couple of times. He soothed me. Rylie, Dare’s wife, said I calmed him.”
“Okay, you’re hired to help me. I’ve seen you with the horses, I’ll have you work with Mark, he normally works with Erwin.”
Now here she was, leaning on the corral fence, watching Dalton like a besotted fool as he rode behind Mark.
“Dalton’s nice,” Taylor said.
Aurora looked over at the thirteen-year-old boy who was almost as tall as she was and smiled. “I think he is too.”
“Is he a cowboy?”
“He’s a soldier.”
A grin split the boy’s face. “Does he have a gun?”
What was it about testosterone and guns? “I don’t know. Did you enjoy riding Pepper?”
Taylor looked off into the distance, then he bent down to climb through the fence rail. She put her hand on his back. “Taylor, I need your help to groom Pepper. Crystal’s going to be back here soon.”
He shrugged her off and was inside the corral before she could stop him. She’d lost him, he was off in his own world.
Shit, he didn’t have his helmet on. Aurora grabbed him, and he started to howl and fight. Soon he was on the ground.
“Shhh, Honey.” She knelt down and cupped his cheeks, out of the corner of her eyes she could see that Dalton was steering Mark and his horse to the gate.
“Calm down Honey. You’ll get to play with your brother and Dalton in just a minute. But you need to remember not to go into the corral when there is a horse in there, them’s the rules. Remember?”
She looked at his tear-streaked face. He finally nodded. Then he grinned. He yelled over her shoulder.
“Do you have a gun?” Taylor yelled to Dalton.
Dalton was helping Mark off his horse as Taylor ran toward them. Dalton kept the horses under control even with Taylor running awkwardly hell-bent for leather and yelling. She was impressed. She moved quickly to join them, so she could help the man. As soon as she had the horses, he had his arms around each boys’ shoulders and was patiently answering their questions.
Aurora was grinning as she took Pepper and Lightening to the barn. He was fantastic with the kids, they’d be talking about him for months. By the time she got the two horses into their stalls, Crystal was there, and Taylor and Mark were getting into the blue SUV, still hollering questions at Dalton.
“Aurora can I talk to you for a second?” Crystal asked.
Her friend practically dragged her up onto the porch.
“What’s wrong?” Aurora asked. “Did you find more info about Siren and Aladdin, because I think Erwin and Hal are bringing in another abused horse today, so that makes three.”
“We can talk some other time,” Crystal waved her off. “This is more important. Who’s the hunk?”
“I don’t think Danny’s going to appreciate it if you bring a man home. He doesn’t strike me as someone who’s into a ménage.” Aurora teased. She knew the types of romance books her friend read.
“I’m not thinking for me, I’m thinking for you, you idiot. Oh my God, the way he fills out that shirt. The way he fills out those jeans. You’ve been celibate for five years. You do realize that your hymen has probably grown back, don’t you? I hear that happens.”
Aurora started to cough, then choke. Crystal whacked her on the back.
“He’s looking this way. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Do you have any kind of toy? Have you been taking care of business? If you haven’t, you might have forgotten how to orgasm. If that happens, you might have to fake it the first few times until you get back into the groove. Just saying.”
Aurora glared at her former best friend. “How ‘bout you just send Danny over, so I can have a couple of practice runs?”
Crystal’s eyes twinkled. “You’re not ready for the advanced class.” Then her gaze shot over Aurora’s shoulder. “Of course, if I’m not mistaken, that man could help you earn your PhD.”
Heat suffused Aurora’s entire body, it was almost like she could feel him.
“Crystal, you’ve done a great job with those boys.” Dalton’s voice rumbled like distant thunder at midnight, it made her shiver. Crystal gave Aurora a knowing grin, she didn’t miss a trick.
“Thanks Dalton. Danny and I were blessed when they came into our lives.”
“How long have they been living with you?” he asked.
“Taylor came to us when he was five. Mark has only been with us for four years. Aurora’s therapy has done wonders for them.”
Dalton’s big hand slid up under Aurora’s hair and rested on the nape of her neck, giving her a subtle squeeze. “She’s a special lady.”
“Gunnar left today, didn’t he?” Crystal asked. She had the subtlety of a freight train.
“Nona! You promised us McDonald’s,” Mark yelled from the SUV.
“Duty calls,” she shrugged. She jogged down the porch steps, then looked back at th
e two of them. “Don’t do anything Danny and I wouldn’t do. Dalton ask Aurora what that list entails, it’s pretty extensive.” She lifted her hand and waved. She was laughing all the way to her vehicle.
“I like your friend,” Dalton said as he shifted so he could look down at Aurora. She swallowed nervously. “I take it Danny is her husband?”
“Yep.”
“So how extensive is their list?”
The man had a killer smile. Crystal was right, she should have invested in toys years ago.
Pulling the porkchops out of the oven, Dalton listened for Aurora’s footsteps. He tried to throw off his nervousness, but it was impossible. He’d realized midway through glazing the meat that the last time he’d cooked dinner for a woman had been for Lacey. Did his past have to color every aspect of the present?
“What smells so good?” she asked as she opened the refrigerator and pulled out the pitcher of lemonade.
“I bought wine, if you’re interested,” Dalton said as he cut into one of the porkchops to see if it was cooked through. “It’s there on the table.”
When she didn’t answer, he turned to get a good look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t realize that this was going to be a dinner, dinner.”
“What do you mean?”
She held out her arms and looked down at her jeans, then up at him. “Fancy.”
“Sunshine, I’m wearing jeans.”
“You bought wine,” she said as she tilted the bottle. “It’s really good wine too.”
Dalton left the stove and put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m glad you like it.” She’d washed her hair, it smelled like strawberries and vanilla. “Why don’t you tell me where the wine glasses are.”
“I’ll have to rinse them.”
“I’ll take care of it, just point me to the right cupboard.”
She pointed, then he held out her chair, and she sat down. He watched with amusement as she practically vibrated in her seat. The woman had trouble sitting still.
Her Guarded Hero Page 8