She almost made herself believe it.
“So did you buy this place from Paulus?” He cocked his head, looked past her into the living room. In a belated move, she shifted position, trying to block his view, mentally damning herself for not pulling the door shut after her.
“Just rented it. Bonnie’s hips are bothering her and they bought a place in town. Ed’s completely retired. He leases his land to John Barnes.”
Cort gave an absent nod then sidestepped to get a better view of the living room over the top of her head. “You opening up a technology store?”
For a moment Emma felt hunted. Of course he’d see the cameras and monitors still in their boxes on the floor. “I’m . . . it’s a security system. A woman out here alone with small kids . . . ”
He seemed to accept her explanation at face value. “Sounds smart. The fence looks new, too, which makes me feel even worse about telling you that one of our cows got loose and damaged it.”
She knew her dismay showed in her expression. But the fence had taken her weeks to complete and she had far more to do before this place was ready.
“Nothing major,” he hastened to assure her. “I just need to replace a couple boards and reset two of the posts.”
Forcing a smile, Emma said, “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t returned the extra supplies. They’re still in the barn.”
His look sharpened and she was reminded then that secrets hadn’t lasted long when Cort had been around. His fun-loving exterior had masked a sharp mind. People who didn’t know him better had often underestimated him.
“You haven’t returned . . . you didn’t build it yourself.”
The certainty in the words had her spine stiffening. “Didn’t I?”
In answer he reached out and took one of her hands in his, turned it palm up. It was ridiculous to feel embarrassed about the calluses that had replaced the blisters that appeared that first week, in spite of the work gloves she’d worn.
“If I’d known you were that handy I’d have hauled you out of bed the last three days to ride fence with me.”
Because he hadn’t let go of her hand she gave a slight tug until he freed it. Then curled her fingers into her palm, trapping the heat that lingered there. “I’m afraid I’d slow you down with two kids in tow. Although Matthew would consider it quite the adventure, Molly isn’t much into roughing it. They’re five and three.”
“All the more reason to let me do the repair. I’ll be back tomorrow to fix that section.” He gave a barely perceptible nod to the mess in the living room. “Looks like you’ve got enough to do, and it was Gabe’s cow that did the damage.”
She hesitated. It was on the tip of her tongue to argue with him. She didn’t want anyone around the place; it made her nervous. But this wasn’t just anyone, it was Cort. She’d once fancied herself in love with his brother. They’d gone to the same schools, haunted the same hangouts. He was as safe as any man could be.
“Suit yourself.”
The slow smile that crossed his face sent tiny alarms shrilling through her. Because safe was no longer a word that fit Cort Ramsey, if it ever had.
“I usually do.”
Chapter Four
Before returning to his horse Cort rounded the other side of the porch and checked the fence there. As he suspected, there was no gate accessing the back yard. He didn’t have to examine the rest of the sections to know that he’d find none around its entire perimeter.
Pensively, he took his time walking back to where he’d left the horse, his mind only half on the nagging phantom pain in his injured leg. Emma looked good; she always had. Her long dark hair was cut in a way that framed her face. But her big dark eyes were clouded with worry that hadn’t been there a decade earlier.
The fence was one thing. The elaborate security system, complete with outside cameras and inner monitors, if he didn’t miss his guess, was an expensive one and likely the only one of its kind within fifty miles.
He’d seen the handgun on the table next to the door. Observed the canned goods and bottled water stacked neatly on the counter. Emma Watkins Cunningham wasn’t just settling in to her new home.
She was preparing for a siege.
The five a.m. alarm released only two beeps before Emma rolled to the side of the bed and silenced it. She continued the momentum out of the bed and padded toward the shower.
Though she’d hated getting up before dawn when she’d been a teenager, she didn’t mind it so much now. The kids would sleep for another two hours and it was the only time until after they went to bed that she had to herself. It would be a peaceful start to her day if it weren’t packed with urgency.
How much time did she have?
She dragged the sleep tee over her head and adjusted the spray before stepping into the shower. When she was busy the constant nagging question was relegated to the back of her mind. But at times like these, without immediate distractions and duties, it moved front and center, instilling her with dread.
She’d figured a month. Hoped for more. As Emma shampooed her hair she flipped through her mental calendar and her stomach hollowed out. It’d been twenty-seven days since she’d packed up the kids and casually let it be known that she was heading down to the Palm Beach home. But once there, instead of giving the taxi driver the address to the beach house, she’d directed him to a car lot where she’d paid cash for a used Suburban.
The drive to Montana had taken three days. But every hour since she’d gotten here had been a blur of activity fueled by purpose.
The courts couldn’t protect her children. Neither could law enforcement. It was up to her.
Powered by renewed sense of urgency, Emma toweled off and dragged a comb through her hair. Time was running out. And things weren’t ready.
Striding back to her room, she dressed rapidly in jeans and another tee. She took a moment to tiptoe down the hallway to check on Matt and Molly before changing direction for the family room. Building a fence alone had been a snap compared to trying to decipher the complications of the security system specs. She was hoping that sleep would make her mind sharper.
Emma veered toward the kitchen for her morning jolt of caffeine and carried a mug of coffee back into the living room with her. Determinedly, she picked up the instruction manual and sank on the rented couch. Every stick of furniture in the place had been rented from the same company, which specialized in furnishing entire businesses and homes. She’d had it delivered from Butte, paying extra for the mileage required. One advantage to living out in the middle of nowhere was that deliveries didn’t bring any comments from neighbors. The nearest ranch was Ramsey’s, and that was five miles away.
That distance hadn’t kept Cort from landing on her doorstep yesterday, however. Recalling the moments she’d spent in his arms, nerves fluttered in her stomach. She soothed them with another swallow of coffee.
Emma was deep into reading about photoelectric cells, sensors and closed circuit systems when a foreign sound reached her ears. Lunging from her seat, she ran to the hallway closet and reached for the top shelf where she’d stored the handgun, rifle and ammunition. Quickly loading the rifle, she moved swiftly to the side window and peered out between the slats of the blind.
She didn’t recognize the pickup parked twenty yards beyond the fence. But the lumber piled into the back was familiar enough. She had more just like it in her barn.
Her locked barn.
Chapter Five
Cort had a renewed appreciation for what Emma had accomplished. Just resetting the posts and replacing a few boards had taken him a couple hours. Of course, these days everything took a little longer. Sometimes he still forgot he was wearing an artificial leg and expected it to respond like the limb of old.
More often than not when he made that mistake, he landed on his ass.
He piled his tools and the lumber scraps in the back of the truck and drove to the barn to unload them. Then, without conscious decision, he headed toward the house.
> He couldn’t deny the burn of anticipation he felt at the prospect of seeing Emma again. It was hard to imagine what had brought her back to these parts. Her dad had died when she’d been a kid and her mother hadn’t lived around here for years.
The back of his neck prickled as he walked up the porch steps. Cort knew he was being watched out of the judas hole again even before the door swung open and she stood facing him, hands on her slim hips.
He tucked his fingertips into his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Pretty thirsty after all that labor. I work cheap, though. A cup of coffee should do it.”
Though her lips looked like they wanted to smile, she kept them in a firm line. “Payment? I seem to recall that your cow did the damage.”
“Gabe’s cow, actually. And since there’s absolutely no way you’d get him over here to repair the fence, I did you a favor.”
“If breaking into my barn can be construed as a favor. It was locked.”
His mouth quirked. “Ah . . . I circumvented.”
“You circumvented.” She narrowed her brown eyes at him. “I imagine you have some experience in that area.”
The familiar pang occurred at the reference to his past, but it was milder this time. “Among other things.”
An ear-piercing shriek interrupted whatever Emma had been about to say. She stepped inside the doorway and turned her gaze toward the kitchen. “Molly.” Her voice was stern. “Use your inside voice.”
Cort took advantage of her distraction and slipped inside the house, picking his way carefully through the cartons still in the living room. The kids he’d talked to yesterday were seated at the kitchen table, in their pajamas.
“Mom, you let the seal in,” hissed the boy.
She tossed Cort a half-amused, half-irritated look. “He sort of let himself in. He seems to have a habit of that.”
Cort walked past her to the kitchen, bee-lining for the automatic coffeemaker on the counter. He opened cupboards until he found a mug and poured himself a steaming cup. He caught Emma’s eye then and nodded toward the littered living room. “You over your head in there?”
He knew in the next instant that it had been the wrong thing to say. The amusement vanished from her expression, to be replaced with a look of determination that was also familiar. “I can handle it.”
Maybe she could. He brought the mug to his lips and drank reflectively. But for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why she’d try. “Place you bought it from probably does installation.”
“The waiting list was too long.”
Her response was clipped, but it gave him something to contemplate while she herded the kids back to their bedrooms to get dressed.
He could imagine that her rich husband’s death had left her pretty well heeled. So she could certainly afford state of the art security systems. She could also afford more than the used Suburban he’d seen in the barn. Hell, she could do better than renting the Paulus ranch house, which was homey enough but had to be a far cry from what she’d grown used to.
He settled comfortably onto the couch and picked up the instructions to the security specs. Sipped from the mug again as he perused them. But his mind wasn’t on the directions.
He’d been to town a few times in the last three weeks since he’d been back, and he hadn’t heard a word about her return from the usual mainstays of the local grapevine.
There had to be a reason for that.
A slight buzz sounded and habit had him reaching for his cell phone. In the next instant he realized the sound was coming from another direction. Saw Emma’s phone sitting next to a lamp on the end table. Cort had half-risen from the couch when common sense had him retaking his seat.
He wasn’t in the intel business anymore. Didn’t take every advantage that presented to supply himself with facts. It was still hard to remember sometimes that he’d returned to the outside world, back to the manners and mores that hadn’t applied to the life and death situations he was accustomed to.
Whatever Emma’s secrets were, they weren’t life and death. The most dangerous thing about the woman was the effect she had on him.
Staring down at the specs spread across his lap, the thought was immediately discounted. He’d just been too long without a woman. Hadn’t been interested, to tell the truth.
But there’d been ‘interest’—and a lot more—stirring the moment he’d seen Emma walk out on the porch yesterday.
The admission had him scowling, his mood darkening. So when Emma re-entered the room, preceded by two noisy kids, his tone was abrupt. “Your phone went off while you were gone.”
Her reaction had his instincts heightening. Her face paled and he’d have had to be blind to miss the expression that flickered across her face before she deliberately blanked it.
Dread.
Chapter Six
She sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the clutter when Cort returned, visibly shaken, staring fixedly at the specs.
Something twisted in Cort’s stomach at the sight of her. She was pale, deathly so. He immediately revised his earlier conclusion. Whatever had caused Emma to pack up her kids and return to Montana may not be life or death, but it sure as hell was serious.
And it was past time that he learned what it was.
“Bad news?”
“What?” She looked up distractedly, appeared confused for a minute. “Where are Matt and Molly?”
“I’ve got them hunting for the elusive but incredibly lucky four-leaf clover.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the back yard. “A search that could take hours, if done properly.”
She didn’t smile, just nodded distractedly. “They’ll be safe in the yard.”
He stared at her, but found no answers in her expression. “Safe from what, Emma?”
She rose with an ease that he would have envied if every thought, every instinct wasn’t attuned to what she wasn’t saying. “I appreciate the help with the fence. I’m sure you have more important things to do, so . . . ”
The invitation to leave was issued and ignored. “What’s this all for?” He waved a hand around the room. “A security system, a fence, a studier front door . . . exactly why have you holed up here? What are you running from?”
The coolness that settled in her eyes was new and it was a change he didn’t like. “I’m not running from anything.”
“No.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall and surveyed her. “You’re hunkering down to make a stand. I recognize the preparations. I just don’t know from what or why.”
When she made no answer he pushed away from the wall and headed to where her phone still lay. Realizing his intent, she lunged for it. The fact that he got to it first had far more to do with his longer reach than superior agility.
Turning his back to her when she made another grab he quickly discovered the recent text and read it a second before the phone was snatched from his grasp.
“Dammit, Cort, we may be old friends but we aren’t kids any . . . ”
He reached out to catch her wrist. “‘They know where you are?’” He repeated the message. “Who knows where you are, Emma?”‘
If anything, her face went whiter at the question, but the tension riding in her shoulders sounded in her voice. “None of your business. You need to leave. Now.”
In answer, he turned to riffle through the newly purchased contents in the room until he found a receipt stapled to the side of one of the boxes. Let out a low whistle. “That wasn’t a cheap trip. Paid cash for all this?” When she didn’t answer he straightened. Looked her in the eye. “Bet you paid cash for the used Suburban, too. And the fencing supplies. And the rent paid to Paulus. Because you didn’t want to leave a trail, did you, Emma? But someone tracked you down despite your efforts.”
“Cort.” His name was rifle sharp and might have stopped him when they were kids. It had no effect now.
“Now you can lie or refuse to tell me what kind of trouble you’re in. Then I’m going to have to re
trace your path, look into what was going on in Manhattan before you left there. I’m good at that sort of thing, but if you make me go that route rather than telling me up front, it’s going to piss me off and waste time.” And he wanted, more than he was comfortable with, to have her share the information freely because she trusted him.
Her eyelids slid closed for a moment and she looked for the moment to be on the verge of exhaustion. “Just let it go. Please.”
But when she looked at him again he just gave one slow shake of his head. “I won’t do that. But if you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, maybe the sender of the text would be more willing to talk about it.”
When she swayed a little, remorse stabbed through him. But it wasn’t strong enough to deter him. If she was in trouble, she didn’t have to face it alone. He might not be a SEAL anymore, but he knew enough about trouble, and how to avert it, to be useful here.
And God knew he needed to feel useful to someone.
Chapter Seven
“She’d lose her job. Probably be deported.” Emma sank on the couch, the cell still tightly clenched in her hand. “Elena Sanchez is my former mother-in-law’s housekeeper. She’s been keeping me informed of Michelle Cunningham’s intentions.”
“Which are?”
She glared at him. Who was he to stride back into her life and start demanding explanations? She hadn’t answered to anyone since Parker died, and didn’t much care for the experience.
But as quickly as her ire rose, it dissipated. This was Cort. Like it or not there was a bond between them, forged by long-time friendship, shared experiences and shared loss.
And knowing him as she did, she didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d start digging around on his own if she didn’t tell him everything.
“Michelle Cunningham has hired someone to take the children away from me for good.” Her voice was amazingly calm given the knots twisting inside her at the thought. “I assume she means to kidnap them, get them out of the country smuggled aboard her yacht. She has any number of homes in the world, and the resources to start a new life wherever she pleases.”
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