“Now Lily-love, eat,” he said and broke the eye contact with Josie.
The lyrics of an old jazz song suddenly played in his mind. I got it bad, and that ain’t good. Oh, yes, he had it bad for Josie Colton and that definitely wasn’t good.
She was like forbidden fruit, taboo to a jaded older man like him who hadn’t even been smart enough to keep his wife happy. The worst thing he could do was entertain the thought of having any kind of romantic relationship with Josie.
All too quickly dinner was finished and it was time for them to return to the suite. He pushed the stroller and Josie walked beside him. Now for sure he could smell the fresh, sweet fruity scent of her that stirred him on all kinds of levels.
“That was the best pot roast I’ve ever tasted,” she said.
“I told you Bettina was a great cook. Do you cook?”
“I’m definitely not chef quality, but I get by okay.”
“Do you have a specialty?” He welcomed the banal conversation that kept his mind off more carnal thoughts.
“Chicken and dumplings,” she replied without hesitation. “Maybe if I’m here long enough I’ll make it for you and the girls one night. It would be nice to skip the gossip for a change and just focus on a good meal for the four of us.”
“The gossip is definitely getting to be a little much,” he agreed. “I won’t believe anything unless I hear it from Troy’s mouth or from one of his deputies.” They reached the suite door and he unlocked it and they went inside.
“The ad for the new nanny will start running in tomorrow’s paper,” he said as he lifted each of the girls out of the stroller and put them on the living-room floor.
Josie immediately sat cross-legged on the carpeting and the twins fought for a space in her lap. “Hopefully somebody wonderful will apply for the job. You know I only want the best for them.”
He nodded. Somebody wonderful was already on the job, Tanner thought, and his opinion didn’t change in the next couple of hours as they entertained the twins with silly games of make-believe and indulged in small talk.
She was so easy to talk to and he was surprised to discover they shared not only the same common values, but also many of the same political views. There were some things they didn’t agree on and a good-natured argument ensued.
“I’m telling you autumn is the very best time of the year,” she now said.
He shook his head. “Spring, spring is the best. The new grass comes in and everything smells fresh and green.”
“And in the autumn you smell wood smoke and apples and crisp air,” she countered. “You have hot cider and hayrides.”
He laughed. “Excuse me if I don’t get excited about hayrides. Working on a ranch, I have to lug around enough bales of hay to not want to see it in my leisure hours.”
“Hay,” Lily said and then shoved her baby doll into Tanner’s lap.
Leigh followed Lily’s lead and gave Josie her baby. “Hay,” she repeated and the two laughed as if they shared a special joke.
“Two of my siblings are twins,” she said. “My brother Christopher and my sister, Annabel, but they were raised in different foster homes.”
Tanner looked at his girls. “I can’t imagine the two of them being separated.”
“They certainly seem to share a secret language between them,” Josie replied. “I’ve heard that about twins.”
“I think they use their secret language to make fun of all the adults,” Tanner said wryly.
As if to prove his point, Lily looked at Leigh and chattered a lengthy string of what sounded like musical nonsense. Leigh looked at Tanner, then at Josie, and threw her head back and giggled.
“I think you’re right,” Josie said and then proceeded to tickle the girls until their sweet, infectious giggles were the only sound in the room.
Music. The laughter was music to Tanner’s ears. Not just the giggling of his daughters, but also the sound of Josie’s laughter filling the air.
It wasn’t until the twins were in bed and the two of them were in the living room once again that he asked her about her day. “We didn’t have much of a chance to talk before we went to dinner and I didn’t ask this evening, but I’m assuming everything went smoothly today.”
“The girls were terrific and everything was great.”
They were the right words, but a faint frown scurried across her forehead and her eyes darkened. “But?” he asked with a touch of concern.
She leaned forward, her body radiating a tension he felt from across the room. “He’s still out there, Tanner. The man in the woods is still out there. I saw him this afternoon hiding behind a tree. He’s watching me and waiting.”
CHAPTER 7
Tanner stood and turned toward the window. He pulled the shades closed and then returned to his chair and eyed her soberly. “Exactly when and where did you see him?”
Josie hated that the light and easy mood of the evening had transformed into something far darker. She hadn’t even been sure she was going to tell him until the words had spilled from her mouth.
“This afternoon I was sitting where you are now when the girls were taking their nap. I got up to get myself something cold to drink and when I came back to the chair I looked outside and that’s when I thought I saw somebody run and hide behind one of the tree trunks.”
Her body reacted the same way it had in that moment. All of her muscles tensed and her heart raced wildly as a chill of fear gripped her heart. She wrapped her arms around herself and pressed farther back in the sofa cushion.
“What happened next?” he asked with a frown.
“Nothing. I watched the tree for several minutes but I didn’t see him anymore and then the girls got up from their naps. I looked out the window several more times during the afternoon, but didn’t see anything else that caused me any worry.”
“And you’re sure it was the same man from the woods?”
She stared at him for a long moment before replying. Had it been the same man? It had just been a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision. Had there even been a man there? Or had her mind played tricks on her?
She unwrapped her arms from around her shoulders and dropped her hands into her lap. She was suddenly sorry she’d even mentioned it. “I guess I’m not sure what I really saw,” she finally admitted.
She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “I spent seven years looking over my shoulder, certain somebody was going to jump out of the woodwork and try to kill me. I guess it’s possible I just had some sort of a flashback this afternoon and didn’t see anyone outside trying to hide behind a tree.”
She looked down at her hands, unable to hold his gaze as she confessed it might just have been a figment of her imagination. He probably thought she was crazy.
“Seven years of being afraid somebody was going to try to kill you? I don’t understand...” His voice trailed off and she felt the weight of his intense gaze on her.
In her haste to explain her current mental state, she realized she’d inadvertently opened up a whole new can of worms. She drew in another deep breath and looked at him once again. “From the time I was seventeen until just a little over a month ago, I was in the witness protection plan.”
His eyes widened. “Why?”
Her fingers locked together tightly in her lap as her mind cast her back in time, back to a place where terror had ruled her world.
“I told you I was raised in foster care. My foster parents, Roy and Rhonda Carlton, weren’t bad people, but Roy’s brother, Desmond, was a major drug lord. Roy and Rhonda were clueless about what Desmond was and just how evil he was.”
Her fingers tightened around each other. “One night when I was twelve years old Roy and Rhonda decided to have a night out on the town and left Desmond to babysit all of us.”
Funny how something that had happened over a decade ago could still cause her chest to tighten and make her heart beat to a frightening pace. Her fingers twisted together so tightly they turned whi
te as the past rushed up to slam her in the face.
“We all went to bed as usual around eight thirty and it was around midnight when I woke up and wanted a drink of water.” Her throat was suddenly as dry as it had been that night, when she’d awakened to the sound of voices in the living room.
She’d slipped out of the bunk bed, pleased she hadn’t awakened any of the younger children who shared the room with her. She remembered she was clad in her favorite pink-flowered pajamas and exactly how the cool hardwood floor had felt beneath her bare feet.
“And so you got up to get a drink of water,” Tanner said softly, prodding her to continue.
She jerked back to the here and now and nodded. “I got out of bed and I heard voices and I thought Roy and Rhonda had come home, but when I started to go into the living room Desmond was there with a man I’d never seen, and before I knew what was happening, Desmond stabbed him in the chest.”
The horror of the brutality and the blood and the dead man falling backward to the floor suffused her. Once again she wrapped her arms around her shoulders in an attempt to stanch the cold wind that blew through her.
Run, a childish voice screamed in her head. Run and don’t let Desmond catch you. Don’t let him see you. But she hadn’t run. She’d been frozen in place by a sheer terror she’d never felt before.
“He murdered him, Tanner. He killed him in cold blood. I thought I could just quietly run back down the hallway and Desmond would never know what I saw, but I must have gasped or something. Desmond grabbed me by the shoulders.” Tanner faded away as she remembered Desmond’s dark eyes glaring at her and the painful pinch of his fingers into her soft flesh.
Desmond’s breath had been hot and sour in her face as he’d whispered harshly exactly what would happen to her if she ever told anyone about what she’d seen.
“Josie...stay with me.” Tanner’s deep voice pulled her out of the past and back into the present once again.
She flashed him a grateful smile that lasted only a moment and then fell away. “Desmond promised if I told anyone about what I saw he wouldn’t kill me, but he’d kill everyone I loved, including Roy and Rhonda and all the kids in the house. He said he’d hunt down each and every one of my biological siblings and see to it that they all died a slow and painful death.”
She released a shuddery sigh. “I believed him and so I didn’t tell anyone for five long years. I isolated myself from everyone. I even refused to see my biological family members when they finally found me because I was terrified Desmond and his henchmen would follow through on his promise to kill them.”
“What happened next?” Tanner held her gaze.
She shrugged. “I went back to bed. I heard more voices and I now realize they must have belonged to a couple of Desmond’s men. Apparently they took the body out of the house and then there was silence until Roy and Rhonda came home.”
She released another deep sigh. She’d been frozen in the bed with the sheets pulled over her head as if that might stop the threat from reaching her. But nothing had stopped the cold, hard knowledge that Desmond’s warning was very real.
“Over the next five years Desmond never let me forget his vow of death to everyone I loved if I told anyone about what he’d done. Anytime he was around, he reminded me with a dark gaze or with his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth like he was a dead person, when nobody else was looking.”
“But something must have changed. Eventually you did tell somebody,” Tanner said.
She nodded. “Things changed when I fell in love. I was a sophomore in high school and Michael was a junior. I was really happy for the first time in my life. We dated in secret and on my seventeenth birthday he proposed to me and we made plans to marry just as soon as I graduated from high school. I really believed everything was going to be wonderful.”
Michael had been a brilliant sun in the storm of her life. With the optimism of youth they’d loved each other and planned for a future together. God, they had been so young and so unbelievably naive.
She focused her gaze on Tanner once again. “And then I got home one night and Desmond was at the house and I realized I had no future with Michael or with anyone else as long as he had all the power. If Desmond knew I loved Michael, then Michael would be just one more target for Desmond’s wrath.”
To her surprise tears pressed hot behind her eyes and her throat closed up with a wealth of emotion she’d never allowed herself to experience before. She gazed at Tanner helplessly, unable to speak without fear of breaking down altogether.
Tanner got up from the chair and walked over to sink down on the sofa next to her. He took one of her hands in his and squeezed it gently.
She swallowed several times in an attempt to gain control and finally she continued. “The next day I broke up with Michael and then I left school and walked to the nearest police station. I told a detective everything and thank God he believed me. What I didn’t know was Desmond had been on their radar for years and I was the witness to a crime that could finally take him down.”
“And all you had to do was give up your life.” His eyes held a warmth that bathed her, that stole away the chill that had held her in its grip.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she said ruefully. “I knew I would never have a life if I didn’t tell somebody. The man he had killed, Blake ‘the Snake’ Biltmore, was a small-time dealer who had apparently crossed Desmond. His body had been found two weeks after the murder but the police hadn’t been able to solve the crime until I came forward.” Tanner didn’t release her hand and she was grateful for the warm contact.
“And so what happened? Was Desmond arrested?”
“No, the police tried to take him down in a sting operation and he was killed before he could ever be brought up on charges, but Desmond had plenty of henchmen who the police feared would come after me and so I was sent to live in a small town in Missouri.”
“What changed that allowed you to finally leave the program?”
“The marshals in charge of my case believed all of the men who had worked for or with Desmond were gone. Some of them were killed on the streets by rival gang members and others died in prison. I was told there was nobody left for me to fear. It took seven long years but finally everyone believed it was safe, and I could be free.”
“And do you believe you no longer have anything to fear from Desmond and his cohorts?” Tanner’s piercing blue eyes seemed to be looking into her very soul.
“I want to believe it,” she replied slowly. “I hope it’s the truth, but that doesn’t mean my brain might not have played a trick on me this afternoon when I thought I saw somebody hiding behind a tree. To be honest, when the man first jumped out at us in the woods, my initial thought was that one of Desmond’s men had finally found me. I was sure he wanted revenge for me taking down Desmond’s drug kingdom.”
“But we know that isn’t the case,” he replied smoothly.
She released a small bitter laugh. “Right—I finally have the opportunity to build a life and now there’s somebody else after me.”
“Josie, you’re safe here. We’re safe as long as we don’t venture too far away from the house. I spoke to Zane Colton this afternoon. Remember I mentioned he’s in charge of security here? He told me he’s hired on some new people to assure the safety of everyone here at the ranch. As long as we stay away from that tree for a little while longer, you’ll be just fine. And when the time comes to get the watch I’ll be right by your side. You have nothing to worry about.”
You’ll be fine. You have nothing to worry about. His words washed over her with a sweetness that once again pulled tears to her eyes. Never in her life had anyone ever told her that she had nothing to worry about. Never in her life had she truly believed it as she did when she gazed into his eyes.
She started to thank him, but the words came out on a choked sob and suddenly she was crying like she’d never cried before in her life.
“Hey, hey,” he exclaimed and immediat
ely pulled her into his embrace with her head just beneath his chin. She turned her face into the clean scent of his shirt and continued to helplessly cry.
He cradled her against him, one hand stroking up and down her back. He didn’t speak. He made no attempt to stop her tears. He simply held her while she cried for the lost years she’d experienced, years where there had been no real love, no caring, just the simple act of surviving and enduring.
For years she had kept her grief for her mother, for the death of her childhood and the loneliness of her life, in a tightly locked box. But now the box was open and all the emotions she’d ever stuffed inside spilled out in choking, messy tears.
Monsters came in all shapes and sizes. They came in the cotton scent of a father’s shirt and in the flat, soulless eyes of a foster father’s brother. Now there was a new monster, one with greasy hair and a killing greed shining from his eyes. She was so very tired of monsters.
Tanner’s arms held her tight and it was easy for her to imagine he was a brave golden-haired monster slayer who had a magic that would keep her safe from any more monsters she might encounter.
The fanciful thought slowed her tears until finally they stopped. Still, she didn’t move from his arms. For the first time in her life, at this single moment, she felt utterly safe and protected.
Slowly she became aware of the press of her breasts against the solid muscles of his chest. His scent, which was already so familiar, stole away the last of her grief and instead filled her with a new, far different emotion.
Slowly she raised her head and found her mouth mere inches from his. His eyes seemed to glaze and deepened to a midnight hue in color and she knew he was going to kiss her. And, oh, how she wanted him to.
His lips touched hers with a tentative, feather-like softness as if fearing their welcome. He had nothing to fear and to prove it to him she raised a hand to the back of his head and pressed her mouth firmly, openly, against his.
* * *
Her mouth was hot and demanding, and as their tongues battled in a fiery dance, Tanner had a fleeting thought that he’d officially lost his mind. However, as he tasted the heat and the utter sweetness of Josie’s lips, he didn’t want to find it.
Colton Cowboy Hideout (The Coltons of Texas, Book 7) Page 9