The Ranchers: Destiny Bay Romances Boxed Set vol. 1 (Destiny Bay Romances - The Ranchers)

by Helen Conrad

  “Listen, Mr. Carter. Kerry and I worked together at Matthews Aviation. Kerry wanted my help in clearing up some illegal activities there, and I wouldn’t back him at the time. I thought he was making mountains out of molehills. Now I know better. I’ve seen evidence that he was right all along. I’d like to help him, but I can’t do that unless I find him.”

  Silence. He held on tensely. “Mr. Carter,” he added at last. “If you could just give me some name to go on, someone Kerry might know in Las Vegas…”

  “Look, I told you I don’t know. I can’t help you. If you’d like to leave your number with me, I’ll tell Kerry you called when I hear from him. But I don’t expect to hear from him any time soon.”

  Michael sighed. “I don’t have a number. I’m on the run.”

  More silence.

  “Okay, here’s what I’ll do,” Chester Carter said, his voice low and conspiratorial. “I’ll give you the name of someone who knows a lot about what’s going on in Vegas. If he trusts you, he might help you find Kerry.”

  Michael’s sagging spirits lifted. This better be good. If not, he had absolutely nothing to go on. “Great. Who is he?”

  “His name is Nargeant. He runs the Samarkand Hotel and Casino, on the Strip. Look him up when you get to town.”

  “Do you have a number for him?”

  The man sighed, then laughed shortly. “Actually, I do. Kerry was trying to get hold of him before he left and it’s right here on the pad of paper by the phone.” He recited it and Michael wrote it down.

  “Thanks.”

  “Good luck.”

  Michael went ahead and tried the number, and to his surprise, he got a pick up.

  “Mr. Nargeant’s office,” the female voice said, and as it went on, Michael realized it was a recording. “Mr. Nargeant will be out of town all week. If you need to contact him, please don’t call until Thursday the 17th. No one will be available to deal with your request until that time. Thank you.”

  Michael walked back to the car, where he’d arranged to meet Jessie, and slid in behind the steering wheel. Jessie looked at him expectantly. “Well?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Was he the right guy?” she asked. “Did he tell you where to find this person you’re looking for?”

  Michael’s eyes were cool and hooded. “Yeah, he told me someone I can try.”

  She waited, but he didn’t go on. “Where? Where are we going?”

  He looked at her silently, his mouth a hard line.

  Suddenly her face changed. “Oh, of course.” Exasperation made her sarcastic. “I should know better than to ask. After all, they just might capture me and torture me until I spill my guts, and then I would scream it out and then they’d know, wouldn’t they? You’re absolutely right not to tell me. It’s for my own good.”

  He couldn’t hold back a sheepish grin. “Jessie...”

  “No!” She held a hand up for silence. “Say no more. I understand.”

  He glanced to where Jimmy was sitting on a curb, counting out his twenty-five-dollar prize for the tenth time. Turning back to Jessie, he looked at her with mock menace. “If you must know, we’re going to Las Vegas,” he told her. “But keep it under your hat.”

  At the same moment he said the words, he used one hand to flick her hat off of her head, while the other grabbed both her wrists and got her quickly under his power. His eyes gleamed with amusement. “You, lady, are getting on my nerves,” he told her as she writhed, half laughing, half protesting his dominance. “You’ve been getting out of hand. In fact, I think I’m going to have to tame you a little.”

  She went very still, her eyes huge. His face was so very close to hers. “I don’t think you’d like me tame,” she heard herself whisper.

  His eyes darkened. “I think you’re probably right.”

  He was going to kiss her and she didn’t care. Her heart was pounding and her body was very still, like the earth was at dawn, waiting for the sun to rise. His breath was hot and sweet against her lips. In a moment his mouth would touch hers, and then—

  “I guess I’ll go now.” Jimmy’s voice came crashing into the car. “See ya.”

  Michael straightened, pulling away from Jessie, but his gaze met hers for a second as he did so and she read the promise there. She shivered and pulled herself up in the seat of the car, finally focusing on what Jimmy had said.

  “No, wait a minute.” She turned urgently to Michael. “We’ve got to put him on a bus or something. We can’t let him hitch out on the highway.” Her face brightened. “Wait a minute. If we’re really going, uh, where you said, Bullhead City is right on our way.”

  For once, Michael agreed. “Get in, kid,” he said gruffly. “We’ll take you to your mother.”

  Jimmy didn’t argue. It was becoming apparent he liked being with them.

  Michael pulled out a map and studied it, making sure of routes and distances. “I don’t know if I want to get there tonight,” he said softly to Jessie, frowning. “I don’t want to check into a hotel there, and God knows I don’t want to sleep on the desert again.”

  “There’s not much else but desert out there,” she said, thinking. He’d want to stick to back roads, she figured, since surely the authorities knew what kind of car he was driving by now. He really should have picked something less glitzy. No one could miss this baby rolling by.

  Then an idea came to her. “Listen, I’ve got an uncle who runs a jojoba ranch ninety miles south of Las Vegas.”

  “Runs a what?”

  “A jojoba ranch. You know, those beans they get the oil from. It was a get-rich-quick scheme that didn’t pan out, but he makes a living and he’s there, out in the middle of nowhere. Why don’t we go?”

  Michael’s glance was skeptical. “Your father will have called him.”

  She chuckled. “No way. They haven’t spoken in years.” She shook her head. “No, they’re way out in the country. And unless he’s changed a lot, my uncle doesn’t believe in modern conveniences like television and telephones. He’s proud of living off the grid. The only way they might have heard about us is if someone drove over specially to tell them about it.”

  Michael was still skeptical. He didn’t want to spend the two nights he figured it was going to take hanging around in any one place. He felt a lot more comfortable being on the move, and the Nargeant character wouldn’t be in until Thursday.

  “Here’s another idea,” she said as she watched him hesitate. “My cousin Joe Carrington has some land up in the Rojo Mountains, just this side of the Valley. We used to go there for family reunions when I was a kid. There’s a small ranch house that’s mostly unused, and no neighbors for a hundred miles. We could hide out there.”

  Michael winced at the words “hide out” but then he shrugged. “Sounds perfect.” Too perfect, maybe. He glanced at her, wondering. Was she setting him up again? Then he was ashamed of the thought.

  She hadn’t done anything all day to make him think that. He was too paranoid.

  Still, he was wary. “We can spend tonight in the mountains, then tomorrow night at your uncle’s. Then Thursday we can cruise on into Las Vegas and find this man I need to find.”

  Moving. Always moving. That was the safest way.

  Jessie settled back against the seat as they headed for the main road. Now that their strategy was all mapped out, she was having second thoughts, not about Joe’s hidden ranch—there wasn’t likely to be anyone there--but about whether or not her uncle would be pleased to see her.

  The last time they’d been together was ten years earlier and there’d been a shouting match between Fred and her father that could have been heard three counties wide. The whole thing had been over a misplaced inheritance from an elderly aunt or something like that. Jessie couldn’t remember the details, or even who was supposed to have the money and who ended up with it, though she rather thought it must have been Fred. Harley was no money shark, and Fred was always on the lookout for money-making schemes. The last s
he’d heard, he’d lost everything but the ranch on some worthless mines in Colorado. But you never knew. Maybe he’d found another way to get rich by now. She would just have to wait and see.

  They were soon leaving Phoenix behind, then turning north toward the high country of Flagstaff.

  “It would be quicker to go straight out of Kingman,” she advised Michael.

  “Also more obvious.”

  “True.”

  Her eyes began to droop and soon she was asleep, not waking until they were near the red rock hills and starting the climb to Flagstaff. As she stirred, she heard Michael and Jimmy talking. They were discussing baseball scores and players.

  She sat very still for a while, her eyes closed, and took in the camaraderie that seemed to have sprung up between them. She liked the sound of Michael’s voice. It had a warm rumble to it, and yet it wasn’t really deep. His words came quickly, but clearly. As often as not there was a touch of humor to his tone. All in all it fit the man.

  As if she really knew what sort of man he was. She stirred uncomfortably at the thought. Some people believed he was an outlaw. Had she really seen anything that would prove them wrong?

  And then there was Jimmy. He’d touched her heart from the moment she’d seen him with the two bullies tormenting him. Opening her eyes, she glanced back at him just as he was in the middle of a story about hitting a ball over a cow pasture fence, and suddenly she knew why. There but for the grace of God and gender went little Jessie Carrington of years ago.

  She’d been lost and lonely after her mother had died. She’d felt the world on her shoulders, and she’d had to grow up fast and take care of Harley and the ranch and everything that went along with it. If she could see back into time and take a look at her own eyes at that age, they would have appeared like his—ready to accept responsibility and at the same time terrified of it.

  What was his home life like, she wondered. How much rested on his thin shoulders?

  By the time they rolled across the California state line, the three of them were getting on like a house on fire. It was long after lunchtime and they were all hungry, but they still had a few hours to go.

  “Turn north on the Seco highway,” she told him. “Then we’ll start climbing back up into the mountains.”

  It was late afternoon before they hit the little town she remembered as a stopping point from her childhood. Driving on through town, they followed a side road until they found a campground. Michael drove around looking for the most remote campsite, then pulled the car into the underbrush as far as he could. They all piled out.

  Jessie breathed deeply of the fresh, pine-scented air and reached into the car for her jacket. “It’s beautiful here,” she said, looking up at the snow-covered mountains.

  Michael nodded, but she could see by the look in his eyes that he had more on his mind than nature. She could forget for long periods of time that they were the hunted ones in a dangerous game, but he couldn’t afford to.

  “I’ll make up some sandwiches,” Jessie offered, carrying her brown paper bag to the picnic table.

  “Jimmy and I will go exploring,” Michael said. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

  She smiled as she watched the two of them go off together, then got busy with the food fixings. Two sandwiches for Michael, one each for herself and Jimmy. She put them on napkins and shaded her eyes, looking for them to come back. Minutes passed and she began to worry. Listening intently, she could hear the low muffled buzz of voices from other campsites, but nothing to mark the place Michael might be. A chill ran down her spine. What if something had happened?

  She began to walk in the direction they’d gone, hoping to meet them coming back. Ponderosa pines were everywhere, limiting her field of vision. Smoke drifted through the trees from campfires. In no time she was out of sight of the picnic table. Where were they?

  She avoided coming close enough to other campers to be seen, staying in the thick of the trees. The sound of a twig snapping stopped her.

  “Michael?” she called softly.

  There was no answer, but there was a crunch. Jessie held her breath, her heart pounding. The stillness seemed to echo ominously around her.

  “Michael?” she whispered.

  “Here,” he said from behind her, sending her a foot into the air with a shriek.

  “Hey.” Grinning, he took hold of her. “What are you so jumpy for?”

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I was going crazy!”

  The humor left his face, but he still held her close. “What’s the matter? Did you think I’d run away?”

  She wasn’t sure what she’d thought and she didn’t answer. Blinking up into his somber eyes, she tried to pull away, only to find his hold growing stronger.

  “Did you think you’d lost your prisoner?” he said softly.

  “You’re not my prisoner!”

  “Sure I am. I’m yours, and you’re mine.”

  She tried harder to pull away from him, but his arms tightened. He had her hips pushed hard against his and there was something just a bit wild in his eyes, as though he’d been breathing the clear, cold mountain air and it had set something free inside him.

  “How long’s it been since you’ve really been kissed, Jessie Carrington?”

  Something sharp and hot shot through her chest. “That’s none of your business!”

  He still held her with one arm, while the other freed itself so that he could brush several stray hairs away from her face.

  “Someone ought to kiss you, Jessie,” he said softly, his eyes flickering with something deep and untamed. “Someone ought to remind you about how things can be between a man and a woman.”

  Whipping her head away from his hand, she glared at him. This was exactly what she wanted and she knew it, but that only made her angrier. “I took a shotgun to the last man who tried that,” she warned. “So I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “A shotgun.”

  What a fool she’d been to think that would scare him off. Instead his eyes glittered with interest.

  “I bet he thought it was worth it,” he murmured, his face coming closer to hers.

  His hunger was raw and basic and evident in his eyes. She was weak, paralyzed, her breath stuck in her throat, her pulse pounding like a jungle drum, horror mixing with excitement in a blur that heightened her senses. She could smell his clean, masculine strength, feel the heat from his body against her wind-chilled skin. Before his mouth had touched hers she could feel it, and her lips parted in anticipation.

  His lips moved on hers, smooth and warm and caressing, and his tongue flickered against her lips, and then, when she sighed with guilty pleasure, plunged into her mouth. Now he was hot and demanding. The world spun and fell away. Jessie felt as though she were falling through space. A million emotions whirled through her, excitement, fear, need, wariness, and then an explosion of desire such as she’d never felt before.

  He kissed her again and again, short, stroking kisses that made her reach for him, hungry for more, hungry for something deeper, and then her arms were twining around his neck and she was pulling him closer, her body an arch that fit against him, yearning for him.

  “Hey, you guys.” Jimmy’s distant voice was like a whip cracking between them. “It’s cold.”

  She stared up into Michael’s eyes as he hesitated, so close, so far. The kiss had been so much more than she’d bargained for, and her shock was clear on her face. Smiling, he dropped a final kiss on the tip of her nose. “Who asked this kid along, anyway?” he grumbled.

  Reluctantly he released her just as Jimmy emerged from the trees. “It’s cold all right,” he called to the boy. “Let’s get back to the campsite.”

  She turned, feeling light-headed, and tried to smile at Jimmy. “I’ve got sandwiches,” she said, hoping no one else noticed how shaky her voice had become. “Come on.”

  She could tell Michael was looking at her, but she didn’t have the courage to meet his gaze. She couldn’t bel
ieve what had happened. She’d thought she’d been so strong, that she’d been so guarded, and then in one weak moment... She shuddered again, this time, she hoped, with dread.

  They walked back together until they found the clearing close to where they’d parked the car.

  Jimmy was a bit ahead of them. “Oh, no!” he cried, turning around and gesturing for them to hurry. “Look what happened!”

  They rushed forward to find squirrels covering the picnic table where the food had been.

  “You little devils!” Jessie yelled, running at them. Every last one of them took off for the trees, leaving not much more than crumbs behind them.

  “I don’t believe this,” Michael said. “You’re the nature girl. You’re supposed to know better than to leave food out where animals can get it.”

  Jessie sighed in frustration. “The cows and horses I deal with usually aren’t too interested in sandwiches,” she retorted. “Besides, you two are the ones who disappeared and... and...”

  They looked at the pitiful mess, then at each other, and the next thing Jessie knew, they were both laughing.

  “We’ll get hamburgers at a takeout in town,” Michael said.

  She looked at him. “You want to risk it again?”

  He nodded. “Just a quick hit. We can send Jimmy in to get the food.”

  Jessie glanced at the boy, wondering if he was curious about why they might be wary of populated areas. “We’ve been lucky so far,” she said softly to Michael.

  “Yes, we have. Sticking to back roads is paying off. We haven’t seen one cop all day.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed, and at the same moment heard the crunch of tires on the rough road behind them. They both turned to face the ranger’s car as it rolled to a stop in the clearing, blocking the road and any escape route they might have had in mind. The ranger got out slowly, pulling his hat straight and looking around the campsite with a stiff, unsmiling face. Jessie’s heart leaped into her throat and she swallowed hard. This surely looked like trouble.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Joe Carrington’s Mustangs