by Katie Lane
Val couldn’t help feeling a little proud. He had worked hard at trying to scare the boys. Although it hadn’t felt like work. He’d loved writing those scary stories and telling them to his friends. They had come to him so organically. Now words seemed to be more his enemies than his friends.
“And speaking of deranged ranch hands,” Holden interrupted Val’s thoughts. “Does anyone remember Sam Sweeney?”
Val’s muscles tightened. It had been a long time since he’d heard the name. He had hoped he would never hear it again. It brought back a memory he’d just as soon forget.
Logan tossed in another piece of wood. “You mean the asshole who worked for Chester and Lucas when we first got here?”
“That’s the one,” Holden said.
“I hated that guy.” Cru finished off his beer and tossed the duck for Boomer, who chased off into the dark after it. “He could’ve been the deranged ranch hand in Val’s story. When Chester and Lucas were around he acted like a good ol’ cowboy, but when they weren’t, he was a cruel asshole. I know he was the one behind all those pranks—loosening our saddle straps so we almost fell off our horses, putting vinegar in our canteens so we didn’t have any water while we were herding cattle, giving the biggest greenhorn the wildest horse.”
Val had been that greenhorn. When Sam had tossed him onto the back of a big black stallion, he’d been petrified. He’d quickly learned that animals could sense fear. Luckily, when the horse tossed him off, he’d landed on his butt in the soft sand of the paddock and hadn’t been injured. At least, not physically. With all the other boys standing around watching, his pride had been badly wounded. Holden was the one who came over to make sure he was okay while Logan had confronted Sam for being an asshole. Before they had gotten into it, Lucas had come charging out of the house and Chester out of the barn to see what was going on. Val had thought for sure that they’d side with their ranch hand, but they hadn’t. They had believed the boys. After Lucas cussed Sam up one side and down the other, Chester sent him packing and threatened to fill him full of holes if he ever came back.
Sam had come back.
Something Lucas, Chester, and the other boys knew nothing about.
“So what about him?” Val asked as he praised Boomer for bringing the duck to him with a good back scratch.
“His daughter showed up here yesterday.”
“What did she want?” Logan asked.
“She was looking for her dad.”
Cru seemed as surprised as all the other boys were. “Why would she come here? It’s been fifteen years since Sam worked on the Double Diamond.”
“I guess Sam left her and her mother when she was a kid and now that she’s an adult she wants to meet him. This is the last place she could verify him working, so she drove from Odessa to talk to Chester and Lucas.”
Val continued to scratch Boomer as the dog flopped down at his feet. “She would be better off leaving that stone unturned.”
“Yeah, but it’s hard to keep from being curious about your parents. Especially if they leave when you’re only a kid,” Cru said. He understood this better than most because his mother had left him in a bus station when he was little and he’d spent the rest of his childhood in an orphanage. Recently, he’d reconnected with his mother and they had started to form a tentative relationship.
Val didn’t know if he could ever forgive his mother or father if they had left him and he was thankful that he didn’t have to test that theory. Which reminded him. He needed to call his parents. His mother had called wanting to know if he would be home for Thanksgiving. Last year, his parents and his sister’s family had come to New York City and he had taken them to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and then to a nice restaurant for turkey dinner. This year, he’d planned to go to Florida and spend the holiday with his parents. But that was when he thought he’d be finished with the first draft of his book.
“What was Sam’s daughter like?” Logan asked Holden. “Did she seem as two-faced as her father?”
“Not that I could tell. She seemed like a sweet, sincere young woman. Chester and Lucas, on the other hand, were a little more leery. I think they’re still upset about Sam pulling the wool over their eyes. They were short with Maisy Sweeney and didn’t give her any information at all about her father. Of course, maybe they just didn’t want her to know what an asshole he was while he was here.”
Logan poked at the fire with a stick. “Maybe Sam has changed. People do. I was an asshole father and I changed.”
“You were a scared father,” Cru said. “There’s a difference. But I hope you’re right. I hope when she finds Sam she finds the father she’s looking for.”
Val hoped so too, but he doubted it. There had been an evil meanness in Sam’s eyes that spoke of a psychological disorder—something Val knew about, having spent many hours researching the criminal mind for his fictional villains. Val wouldn’t be surprised at all if Miss Sweeney found her father in prison.
Suddenly, something clicked in his mind. He had planned for the murderer in his new book to be a mild-mannered businessman who goes to the psychiatrist hero for his nightmares, but what if Val made the murderer a sweet girl-next-door type who goes to the hero for the same thing? Like the businessman, she’s having nightmares about killing people. The hero wants to help her figure out what’s behind the nightmares and ends up falling in love with her. Which would make the stakes even higher when he discovers that the people she kills in her nightmares are ending up dead. Her backstory could be that she was adopted and finds out she’s the daughter of a psychotic mass murderer who’s on death row.
The title could be Like Father Like Daughter.
The idea took hold in Val’s brain, consuming it like the flames eating through the logs. The conversation moved from Sam’s daughter to Holden’s new law practice in Simple, but Val was no longer listening. He was figuring how to rework his story around the new plot twist. His fingers started to twitch like they did when his mind was flooded with ideas he wanted to get on to his laptop.
When he couldn’t take it a second longer, he jumped to his feet, knocking over his bottle of beer and startling Boomer awake. He grabbed up the bottle before the dog could get more than a few laps of beer. “I think I’m going to call it a night.”
Holden glanced at his watch. “It’s only a little after nine o’clock, Val.”
“I know, but I’m still on East Coast time.”
Cru stared at him in disbelief. “After almost a month of being here?”
He forced a yawn. “You know I’ve always been an early to bed kind of geek.”
“Bullshit,” Holden said. “You used to stay up way later than me scribbling away in your notebook.” His eyes narrowed. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re not heading inside to go to bed. You’re heading inside to work on your book.”
Val shrugged. “What can I say? I still need to scribble down my stories before I go to sleep.”
Holden waved a hand. “Go. But you’d better dedicate this one to your friends who sacrificed their boys’ night for your genius.”
“Deal!” As he turned and headed for the house, he prayed this story would turn into genius and not another piece of crap.
Lucas and Chester were already asleep, so he left his boots by the door and tiptoed to the room. He hated that Lucas had to give up his room for him. He also hated that getting writing time here wouldn’t be nearly so easy as it had been at Dixon’s Boardinghouse. Here, he felt a responsibility to Chester and Lucas. He knew Lucas would be hurt if he didn’t come to breakfast first thing in the morning, and then after breakfast, he’d feel obligated to help Chester and Holden with the horses and finish painting the barn. Which meant if he wanted to write, he needed to do it now.
Once inside the room, he wasted no time putting his suitcase on the bed and opening it. But after only a few seconds of searching through the clothes he had hurriedly packed, he realized what he’d done. He’d left his laptop in the top drawer of the
nightstand at the boardinghouse. And he never left his laptop. It was his livelihood. But obviously, his subconscious had been listening when he’d decided to put his novel on the shelf for a few days and it had taken matters into its own hands.
He could’ve just gotten a pencil and pad and written down his thoughts like he had when he’d been fourteen. But his twitching fingers were used to pecking out his stories on a keyboard. And not just any keyboard, but his keyboard with the worn spot on the space bar and the faded N and M.
He had to get his laptop tonight. Not just because of his twitchy fingers, but also because he couldn’t stand the thought of Reba finding it and reading the pile of crap he’d written. Why that would bother him, he didn’t know. But the thought of her sitting in bed, smirking as she read his story, bothered the hell out of him.
He grabbed his car keys and hurried out of the room. He planned on sneaking away and texting Holden later about what happened. But when he got out to the porch, he discovered that the campfire party had already broken up and Holden was standing out front holding a sleeping Boomer and saying goodnight to Cru and Logan. His friends hadn’t teased him about going inside to write, but they teased him unmercifully about forgetting his laptop at the boardinghouse and needing to drive all the way into town to get it.
“It’s seems pretty suspicious that you would forget something so important,” Cru said. “It makes me wonder if you don’t want to go back in town for something else.”
“You do have a point, Cru,” Holden joined in. “I’ve never known Val to be forgetful. Maybe he’s found himself a sweet little Simple gal, after all.”
Even Logan, who was not a teasing kind of guy, got in on the fun. “I agree, Hold. He does have that desperate look about him. A desperate look we’ve all had. Which makes me think that it has nothing to do with needin’ some writin’ and everything to do with needin’ some luvin’.”
Val flipped them the bird as he got in his rental car. By the time he got to the boardinghouse, all the windows were dark and he wasn’t surprised the front door was locked tight. Since he’d turned in his keys, there was no way to get in unless he rang the doorbell and woke up the entire house.
Miss Gertie included.
He had to admit he was terrified of the grumpy old woman and her hairless cat. After their first meeting, where she’d called him a no-good Double Diamond boy and told him to stay away from the women of Simple, he’d tried to keep his distance from her. Which was hard since they shared a bathroom. More than once, he had come out of the bathroom to find her standing there holding on to her bright pink walker and giving him a steely-eyed look that was more sinister than his most bloodthirsty villains. Even getting his twitchy fingers on his laptop wasn’t enough motivation to wake up the sleeping old dragon.
But maybe he didn’t have to wake up Miss Gertie. Maybe he could slip in the French doors of the garden room and retrieve his laptop without anyone knowing. When he’d stayed in the room, he’d noticed one side of the French doors didn’t latch properly. With a little jiggling, he might be able to get into the room. He just hoped Reba hadn’t rented it out already. He doubted she had since the boardinghouse didn’t seem to be busy. There had only been a few guests while he’d been there and none in the last week.
But just in case, he tapped on the glass and waited a moment before he tried finagling the door open. It didn’t take long. Once he had it opened, he hurried to the nightstand. He breathed a sigh of relief when he opened it and saw his laptop. He had just reached in to get it when he heard a sound behind him. As an expert on the different weapons his characters used to kill their unsuspecting victims, he knew the metallic click of a gun being cocked.
What he had not experienced was the heart-stopping effect the sound had on the person the gun was pointed at. He froze and all the air seemed to leave his lungs . . . until a husky, feminine voice spoke.
“Put your hands up where I can see them and slowly turn around. Just so you know, I won first place in the Annie Oakley Shooting Contest at the county fair when I was only thirteen.”
Val’s shoulders relaxed. But only a little. He and the woman holding the gun weren’t exactly on the best of terms and he wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t shoot him when she found out who he was. He held up his hands and slowly turned.
Reba stood in the open door that led to the garden. Her face was in shadow, but the moonlight highlighted the wild mass of curls that fell around her shoulders and streamed through her flimsy white nightgown, outlining every voluptuous swell and curve. Desire replaced any residual fear. Which probably wasn’t the best thing when she seemed to be pointing an old Colt revolver straight at his heart.
“Good evening, Ms. Dixon,” he said.
The gun in her hand didn’t waver. “Why, Mr. Sterling, what a surprise.” She didn’t sound surprised at all. It made him wonder if she had known it was him all along.
“I forgot my laptop.”
“So you just thought you’d break in and get it?”
“The latch is broken. You probably should get that fixed.”
“I’ll certainly add that to my to-do list.”
He glanced at the gun. “Do you think you could lower that? Or are you going to shoot me for my past indiscretions?”
“You do deserve it after the hell you put me through this last month. And it’s not like I’d go to jail for shooting a thief who broke into my place of business. In Texas, we have pretty strict rules about entering someone’s house uninvited.”
“Ahh, the perfect murder. Just not the perfect revenge. Revenge should always include torture and pain.”
“I could shoot you in the leg . . . or somewhere else.” Her gaze lowered and he knew exactly where she looked. He could only hope it was too dark to see the evidence of his arousal. His body had a weird sexual reaction to Reba threatening him. One he tried to ignore.
“Now that would be a perfect revenge. So how did you know I was here?”
She lifted her gaze. “My aunt saw someone lurking around in the garden and called me at the caretaker’s cottage.”
“The caretaker’s cottage? Is that the little house on the edge of the garden? You live there? I thought you lived in the boardinghouse like your aunt.”
“I spend most of my time at the boardinghouse, but I sleep in the cottage. That frees up more rooms for paying customers.”
“Well, you have another free room now, Ms. Dixon. I’m sorry for interrupting your night. If you’ll lower that gun, I’ll be on my way.”
She didn’t lower the gun. Nor did she move. She just stood there looking like a wild haired, voluptuous, gun-toting goddess with the moonlight outlining her body and gilding her hair to a flaming gold.
He had never wanted a woman more.
Chapter Five
Reba had known it was Valentine as soon as she came upon him breaking into the garden room. He had a way of moving that was like no other man she had ever known. Slow and liquid. Like honey sliding off a spoon. She should’ve lowered the gun and made herself known immediately. Instead, she’d waited to see what he was up to.
Now that she knew, she shouldn’t still be standing there threatening him with the gun. Except for the fact that it was deliciously wonderful to finally have the upper hand. Although he didn’t exactly look threatened. In the moonlight, his eyes glittered with something dangerous that made her heart race faster and her hand sweat on the handle of the gun. Suddenly, she felt like she was the one being threatened.
“Are you going to let me leave, Ms. Dixon?” he asked in a low voice that held the slightest hint of a Texas accent. She had read that Texas accents had been voted the sexiest accent in the country. Being a Texan and having an accent of her own, she had thought the poll was pure foolishness. It didn’t seem so foolish now. In the silent darkness, his twang strummed something deep inside her. As did his words. “Or are you planning to exact revenge?”
Why an image of her forcing him to take off his clothes at gunpoint popped into
her head, she didn’t know. And she didn’t want to know. She wasn’t interested in sex with Valentine. She was interested in something else.
“I don’t want revenge, Mr. Sterling. I want to make a deal.”
The dark slashes of his eyebrows lifted. “Strangely, that’s exactly the phrase I use in my books when some sort of blackmail is involved.”
“Maybe deal is the wrong word. I have a proposition.”
His gaze lowered and she couldn’t help the tremble that ran through her body. “Now I am intrigued. I like propositions much better than deals.” His gaze lifted. “What exactly is your proposition?”
With those intense moonlit eyes pinning her, it took her a moment to find the words. “I’d like to offer you the garden room to finish your book in.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Excuse me for being a little confused, but didn’t you just get finished kicking me out? With a broom, no less?”
“That was before I was made aware of the benefits you could offer me.” His eyes widened and she realized what he thought. “No!” she said. “Not that. This has nothing to do with the kiss. It has to do with business. You’re a famous author and if you were to write your next bestseller at the boardinghouse it could be very good for business.”
“I’m not William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway, Ms. Dixon. I don’t think people will flock to stay in a room I wrote in—especially after my last book. And could you lower that gun? It’s making me extremely nervous.”
“Oh!” She set the gun on the table. “Sorry, I forgot I was holding it. It’s not even loaded.”
“You were going to hold off an intruder with an unloaded gun?”
She smiled. “It worked on you, didn’t it?”
He laughed, and she felt something tighten in her tummy. He even had a sexy laugh. She tried to refocus.
“Believe me, I know you aren’t Faulkner or Hemingway, Mr. Sterling.” His smile faded, which gave her a small amount of satisfaction. “But you do have a large following. If even a small portion of those people want to stay in the room you wrote one of your bestsellers in, it would help my business considerably. Perhaps other writers would want to come here and absorb some of your creativity.” She paused. “Unless you really do have writer’s block.”