by Tina Leonard
“Big tough guy,” Ranger said on a grunt. “What’s he to you?”
“He’s always been my protector,” Hannah said, nudging her body up against Ranger’s. “He was there for me when I couldn’t count on my own family.”
“He’s not here now.”
“No, but you are, and you aren’t getting the job done,” she said deliberately. “Still don’t trust me?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.” And then he kissed her lips, soft and sweet, and then more hungrily, demanding that she give him reason to trust her.
She didn’t trust herself right now, not with him on top of her, with the bad intent in his eyes, and a major piece of something hot and hard jutting against her lower half. Oh, she remembered that part of him very well. In spite of all her good intentions to stay focused on the mission, she felt herself starting to heat.
She pulled away from his lips before she lost all her self-control and what little pride she had left. “You know, it would be just peachy if you’d get off of me, you big lug.”
“Peachy?” Ranger repeated with a grin.
“That’s the word,” she said defiantly, trying to get her mind off what she suspected his mind was mulling by picking a squabble. “Do you have a problem with it?”
“Nope,” he said, pulling the blanket out of her fingers and holding it tight so she couldn’t jerk it back up. He winked at her. “Makes me think of your breasts.” And he took hold of one of her spaghetti straps with his teeth and pulled that down, too, exposing her to his suddenly hot gaze. “Now these are peaches.”
Hannah felt herself go weak. “Ranger,” she said, feeling her resistance caving. “Could we focus on the task at hand? If we put our heads together, we can probably think of a way to outwit Marvella.”
“You know, you’re right,” he said, tucking the stolen spaghetti strap under his finger with the blanket. “But then again, I believe we’d think even better if our bodies were together.” And he took her nipple into his mouth, sucking it, biting it and tasting it.
“Oh, my goodness,” Hannah said on a moan. “Yes, maybe you’re right. I’m certain we think better together. Hurry, Ranger.” She helped him strip off his clothes and giggled when he tossed her nightgown to the floor. And then he was on her, and in her, and his mouth was everywhere, and a scream built inside her that didn’t seem to stop until she’d forgotten all about being rescued.
And when she awakened the next morning, her bed was empty and the door was locked. Her nightgown was still on the floor. She flew to the window and looked out.
Ranger’s truck was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Someone tapped on her bedroom door, so Hannah threw on her gown and robe and went to unlock it. Cissy walked in. “How’s the latest escape planning?” Cissy asked.
“I’m going to kill that cowboy,” Hannah said on a moan. “I thought everything was fine. But then he got away and now I think he was serious about not rescuing us.” She took a deep breath. “Now we have to beam up Plan B.”
“Wait. When was Ranger here?”
“All night, the cheater. He’d cheat a blind man at cards, I do believe.”
“You’re really miffed with him, aren’t you?” Cissy observed wryly. “He gets your feathers out of place real good.”
“It’s just that I mean to say no,” Hannah said, “but then I say yes, and then whatever plan I had goes the wrong way. I hate to say it, but that man really goofs me up.” She sighed and checked the street again. No truck. “We’ve gone around in circles, you know. We left because we wanted a new life, but now we’re back, and we still want a new life.”
Cissy nodded. “I got a snake in my bed last night.”
“What?” Hannah gaped at her friend.
“Well, it was just a garden snake. And the prank was so silly and so like Marvella’s girls that it shouldn’t have rattled me. But it did.” Tears started to fall down Cissy’s cheeks, and she wiped them away impatiently. “They’re not happy I’m back. Valentine told me that while I was gone, Marvella gave them more goodies. Lord knows I’m not happy to be back.” She took a deep breath. “I wish I hadn’t signed that stupid employment contract.”
“How did someone get into your room?”
“I think the snake was probably put there when I went down the hall to brush my teeth. I left my bedroom door open.” She shuddered. “I really don’t prefer snakes.”
“Where is it now?”
“I left it in the bed. The snake seemed real cozy, and I wasn’t about to give any pranksters the satisfaction of a scream. I slept on the chaise lounge.”
“I’ll get it. Show me.” Hannah followed Cissy to her room, but the snake was gone.
“It’s in here somewhere.” Cissy’s eyes were big. “It’s taken up residence in a drape or drawer or something!”
Hannah searched the room. “If Ranger comes back, I’m going to tell him to hurry up with the plans. Not that I think he’s going to. I’m going to have to think up a way out of this myself.”
“You don’t have to stay here for six months,” Cissy said sadly.
“Yes, I do. Hang on. Here’s the little devil.” She removed the snake from the sheet it was content to curl up in. “Hmm.” She held it up and looked at it. “Well, you’d be happiest in the garden, but if you don’t mind, I think I’ll have you do me a favor,” she told the snake.
“Where are you going?” Cissy called as she left the room.
“To even the score.” With the snake in her robe pocket, Hannah went down the hall. She heard voices outside one of the bedroom doors and stopped to listen.
“We’ve got to get her out of here.”
“She won’t go! And the snake didn’t work. She didn’t even scream, and she couldn’t have missed it. I put it right in the center of the bed.”
“We could pay someone to kidnap her.”
“And then what?” someone asked snidely. “She’d just return once Marvella chased her down.”
“Well, maybe we can find a way to make her less beautiful. How gorgeous do you think she’d be with short hair? Like, a half-inch long?”
Everyone giggled. Hannah rolled her eyes and opened the door. Three stylists jumped guiltily.
“Hello,” Hannah said. “Oops, this isn’t the powder room.”
“Down the hall,” one of the girls said. “How long are you staying?”
Hannah’s brows arched. “Why, Miss Marvella offered to make me a partner in the salon,” she said. “And she told Cissy she was manager material.”
The gasps were silent and painful. They stared at her with dismay. Hannah moved closer. “Oh, look at this pretty wedding ring quilt,” she said. “Did you make this, Valentine?” All three women turned to stare at the quilt, and Hannah slipped the little snake down Valentine’s silky robe.
The scream was instant and bloodcurdling. “Get it out, get it out!” Valentine shrieked, hopping around, shaking her robe. “Oh, my gosh!” And she exploded with another scream when the snake landed on her toes. “Snake! Snake!” She ran crying from the room, and one of the other stylists joined her, squealing with horror.
That left one woman staring at Hannah before her gaze dropped guiltily to the snake on the ground. “It’s just a small one,” she said.
“Maybe,” Hannah said, bending to scoop up the little fellow, “but if it’s something more unkind next time, I’ll be angry.”
“Oh?” The woman put her hands on her hips. “And just what will you do about it?”
“Tell Marvella you’re trying to scare off her best advertising. In fact, I think I will anyway—”
“Wait.” The remaining stylist held up her hand. “That won’t be necessary.”
Hannah gave her a meaningful stare. “I’m glad we understand each other. And now, I want some information.”
“I don’t give out information.”
Hannah held the snake up. “Snakey and I think you do, unless you want us to rat you out.”
“I’ll just say I didn’t do it.”
“And I’ll say I heard you planning to cut off Cissy’s hair, and I think Marvella will believe me because I’m what you’d call a hostile employee.”
“A spy,” the girl spat.
“Hey, I like that!” Hannah said cheerfully. “Hannah, the hair salon spy! Now listen,” she commanded, “here’s the part where you need all your focus. What does Marvella fear most?”
“I can’t tell.”
“But you know.”
“We all know. Even you know, if you’d think about it hard enough.”
“Delilah.”
The woman nodded. “She hates her with a passion.”
Hannah thought about that. “Delilah’s not bothering her. Why doesn’t Marvella just go away?”
“And leave all the money and handsome men to her sister? No, it’s too much fun for Marvella to torture Delilah. She really enjoys it. And that’s all I’m saying,” the stylist said as she exited.
Hannah left, too, going to the back door to put the snake in the bushes outside. “Goodbye, small friend. I’m sorry I used you as a scare tactic, but you did your part.” The snake went off gladly, and Hannah went back inside the salon to her bedroom.
Ranger was sitting on her bed, his boots kicked off, eating doughnuts and watching TV. “Where have you been?” he demanded with his mouth full.
Her lips parted. “You rat. I thought you deserted me.”
“I went to bring you breakfast in bed. Get back in and let me feed you.”
Hannah shook her head, still too unsettled by his disappearance to want to give in so easily. “You can’t hang around here, Ranger.”
He glanced around her room. “I don’t like you being here. It’s seedy.”
“And snakey, too.”
“Well, there’ll be none of that, I can tell you,” he said definitely. “The only snake you’re having is—”
“Ranger, please.” Hannah didn’t want to think about sex. She didn’t have time to get sidetracked. “Can you help me think?”
He waved for her to lock the door and join him on the bed, which she did, adopting his pose and taking the doughnut he handed her. They both stared at the TV, which was running endless commercials.
“I don’t know if I can help you think, but my stomach’s fuller, so we can give it a shot,” Ranger said.
“I need Marvella’s weak spot. Something I can bribe her with so that she’ll let Cissy go.”
Ranger frowned. “Bribery’s kind of seedy.”
Hannah blinked. “Ranger, it is seedy. When in Rome, you live like the Romans do.”
“I heard that. But I never believed it. I always live like a Jefferson cowboy. And I don’t do blackmail.”
She looked at him. “Okay. So how do I extricate Cissy and myself from this mess?”
“Well, first thing, you hire a lawyer. Of course, that’s just my suggestion. You don’t have to act on it—”
“A lawyer?” Hannah echoed. “I don’t know a lawyer.”
“I do. I already called him. Mimi’s husband, Brian.”
Her jaw dropped. “You already called him?”
“Mmm. He said to bring him the contract so he could review it. Brian says he’s not yet seen a contract so airtight he couldn’t find a loophole. Or a payoff, but we won’t discuss that. To get you out of here, I’ll be willing to chip in. Something. A buck or two.”
Hannah threw her arms around his neck. “I knew you couldn’t be as heartless as you were acting! All that baloney about not rescuing me! Ranger, you’re such a sweetie!”
He allowed her to kiss his cheek and his ear and his cheek again, and then he pulled away to lean back against the headboard. “There’s two problems we have to work through. One, we need a copy of the contract, which I don’t think Marvella is going to give us. Unless Cissy kept a copy, and a nagging suspicion tells me she didn’t.”
“So we’ll borrow it,” Hannah said. “I don’t mind borrowing for a good cause. This is definitely a good cause.”
“Yes, but stealing’s seedy,” Ranger said.
“Excuse me,” Hannah said, putting out a hand to stop him from inserting another doughnut hole into his mouth. “When did you become so righteous and…and…righteous? Are you not the man who deserted his family to join the military? Or at least go on a time-out with the illusion of going into the military?”
Ranger grunted. “The second problem I see is larger. It involves the charity rodeos and all that goes with them. It involves Delilah, even. Now, if we think this through,” he pontificated, “we can see that Marvella is no purist when it comes to getting her way. Absolutely nothing comes between her and a dollar sign. And if we have a legal beagle look at her contract and deem it bogus, then she’s going to be annoyed. Annoyance is not good for Marvella, because she’s going to visit that on someone. In this case, I’m figuring that the unhappy target is Delilah.”
“I’m following you, but at a remote distance,” Hannah said, confused. “Marvella’s always taking everything out on Delilah.”
“Yeah, but springing Cissy with the help of a lawyer would really make Marvella mad. And we’ve got a good thing going between the two salons with the charity competitions, which may be benefiting Delilah more than Marvella right now, because Delilah’s picking up new customers. Nobody from out of town knows the two salons hate each other, so Lonely Hearts Station gains economically. But say we piss off Marvella and she decides not to have anything to do with the rodeo, just to spite Delilah. Then we’ve hurt everybody on our side of the street.”
“I think I see.” Hannah admired Ranger’s ability to think through a sticky situation. “So what are you suggesting?”
“Well, Marvella’s looking for money, right? That’s the purpose of her hunting Cissy down.”
“No, that was just plain meanness.”
Ranger nodded. “Granted. But what if we throw her a huge bone, and slip Cissy out from underneath her paw while she doesn’t realize what we’re doing?”
Hannah sighed and got up, stretching.
“Could you do that again?” Ranger asked. “Stand in front of the window where the light shines through, please.”
She gave him a dry look. “Just go on with your nefarious thoughts. Not seedy, not dishonest. Just intricate and nefarious.”
“I say we offer her a deal. Something big. Something that involves money and cowboys, because that’s two things I see she has ultimate respect for. Something that she can’t say no to. A deal-maker and deal-breaker at the same time. Think, Hannah, think. It’s gotta be novel. It’s gotta be enough to smoke her out and make her say yes.”
“Um, um, um—” Hannah said, squinching her eyes shut to concentrate. “Money and cowboys. What woman doesn’t love money and cowboys?”
Ranger tapped her wrist. Her eyes flew open to see him in her face, staring at her intently. “Are you thinking hard? Or are you stuck on money and cowboys? I might be a bit jealous if you can’t get past the cowboys part.”
“A bachelor auction!” Hannah exclaimed. “At the next rodeo, we’ll hold a bachelor auction for all your brothers and let Marvella have the proceeds in exchange for terminating Cissy’s contract!”
“Uh-uh,” Ranger said. “Absolutely not. My brothers would kill me! And besides, if it’s just money Marvella’s after, we can take up a collection and buy her out.”
“But cowboys,” Hannah reminded him. “You said we needed cowboys. And my idea has lots of cowboys.”
“Yeah, but…” He was going to say that his brothers wouldn’t work in such a scheme—they were no beefcakes. But then he realized what a stupid thought that was—they were beefcakes. They loved being drooled over and fought over and fighting themselves. It was just the type of harebrained—Ranger silently pardoned his play on words—shindig that they’d sink their teeth into. Tex in particular might have an itch to get involved in any rescue operation where Cissy was the prize.
“Well, maybe,” he muttered. “It
’s a pretty stupid idea, Hannah. In fact, it’s so…seedy that it just might work.”
“Wait till I tell Cissy! Thank you, Ranger. It’s a brilliant idea you thought up! Everybody wins!” She kissed his cheek and went running out the door.
Ranger leaned his head back against the headboard with a thump. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not a bachelor auction. Why didn’t I see that one coming?”
BUT WHEN Marvella got wind of their proposition, she turned it down flat.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I’m enjoying having Cissy here, and Hannah as my guest. And no amount of money can pay for enjoyment of that kind.”
Marvella grinned at Ranger, who was sitting on Hannah’s bed as he had been doing off and on for the past two days. Her eyes lit with greedy amusement. “And Mr. Jefferson, as far as I can see, you have not been granted exclusive visiting privileges for this young lady.”
Hannah gazed at Marvella in dismay. She couldn’t commit to keeping her hair one color. Exclusive privileges?
“You can’t keep coming here, Mr. Jefferson. I’m certain you’ll understand that this establishment has standards. Why should I allow one customer not to pay?”
Ranger narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like what I think you’re saying.”
“Well, let me put it to you this way. If other customers see that you have what we call run-of-the-house, they’re going to assume that they can, too. After all, they are paying clients. You are not. And, as you can see, gentlemen do not freely roam our halls. It’s not good for the girls’ reputations or their safety.”
“Well, Ms. Marvella,” Ranger said, his patience shot and gone, “I hate to break this to you. I really was holding back on this because it’s important to Hannah to be loyal to Cissy. But this woman,” he said, putting his arm around Hannah, “is my wife. And I’ll see her when I damn well please.”
“Well, in that case,” Marvella said, her nostrils flaring with anger, “we have a problem.”
Hannah shrank away from the fury in Marvella’s eyes. She’d seen many emotions on Marvella’s face, but this was the most frightening one.