by Robin Wells
Austin turned back toward the driver of the Jaguar, a feeling of distaste rising in his throat. Even if he hadn’t just seen the man nearly run down a helpless animal with what looked like cold-blooded deliberation, he was certain he would have disliked him on sight. His lips were set in what looked like perpetual disdain, and he had a foppish, overly groomed look that spoke of self-absorption. His perfectly combed hair was so heavily moussed and gelled that the wind lifted it as a single unit. He wore a Rolex watch on his left wrist and a pinky ring on each hand. A gold chain was visible at the open neck of his custom-made shirt.
Austin looked him dead in the eye. “Looked to me like you were aiming for that dog.”
“It had no business being on the street.” Lyle glared at Frannie. “And the same goes for you.”
Austin took a menacing step forward. “Well, now, I believe you have that all wrong. Frannie here has as much right as anyone to be anywhere she pleases. You’re the one who was out of line. You owe Frannie an apology, and I’d like to hear you make it.”
“I’ll do no such thing. I had the right of way. I was driving along, minding my own business, when she recklessly threw herself in front of my car.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘your own business’ when you’re behind the wheel of a car,” Austin said sharply.
The man stared at him coldly. “I know who you are. You’re that racing hotshot that just moved here, aren’t you?” He pulled himself up to his full height, but Austin still towered over him. The man puffed out his chest and scowled. “Maybe you don’t know who you’re dealing with here. I’m Lyle Brooks, the owner of one of the biggest construction companies in Montana, and I don’t need lessons in how to drive a car.”
Austin glared at the man. “Well, then, maybe you need lessons in how to read street signs, because you were clearly exceeding the speed limit. You were racing down Main Street as if it were the final lap at Winslow, and I’ll have no problem telling that to the police.”
“The police?” Lyle’s eyebrows shot up. His brow furrowed, and his eyes widened in apprehension. “Hey, now, there wasn’t an accident. There’s no reason to get the law involved.”
Austin took another step forward, enjoying the fact that it forced Lyle to back up. “Not if you apologize to Miss Hannon.”
The man’s eyes narrowed.
Austin rubbed his chin. “If you have a problem with that, well, then, I’m afraid I’ll have a problem letting this matter go without filing a report. And Miss Hannon, here, is likely to want to press charges for reckless endangerment.”
Frannie looked at him wide-eyed. Austin was pretty certain she’d never do any such thing, but he was thankful she kept silent.
“If we all stand here blocking traffic much longer, the police are likely to show up whether we want them to or not,” Austin added.
Lyle’s eyes were small, hate-filled slits. With an impatient sigh, he turned toward Frannie. “Sorry.”
He hardly sounded sincere, but Austin decided not to push it. He watched the man stalk back to his expensive car, climb in and peel rubber as he drove away.
“What a charmer,” Austin muttered. He looked at Frannie, and the absurdity of her green face made him smile. “We’d better get out of the street.”
He took her arm, started to the sidewalk, only to realize she was limping. “Are you hurt?”
She winced in pain. “I think I skinned my knee.”
“I’ve got a first-aid kit in my car. Let’s get you to that bench on the sidewalk, then I’ll go get it.”
They’d made it to the sidewalk and had nearly reached the bench when an elderly woman rushed up to Frannie, all out of breath. “Snook’ems!” Her wrinkled face beaming, she clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh, you found my Snooky-Wook’ems! Oh, how can I thank you?”
The fur ball in Frannie’s arms thumped its tail madly. Frannie passed the dog to the woman’s outstretched arms.
The woman joyfully kissed the animal on its wet black nose. “I’ve been looking everywhere for her.” The little dog nearly knocked off the woman’s glasses in its effusive expression of delight. “Where did you find my angel?”
“Wandering around in the middle of the street,” Frannie said.
“Oh, dear! I’m glad she wasn’t hit by a car. I don’t know what I’d do without my Snooky-Wook’ems!”
Austin fixed her with a stern look. “You’d better keep her on a leash, then. Frannie risked her life to save your dog.”
“Oh, my! Oh, I’m so sorry!” The woman’s gray eyes were round and earnest behind her thick trifocals. “I left Snooky in my car while I ran into the drugstore to get my heart medicine. I put the window down so she wouldn’t get hot, and well, she must have jumped right out.” The woman held the little dog up to her face and spoke in a high-pitched, babyish voice. “You were a naughty girl, weren’t you, Snook’ems? You gave Mommy quite a scare.”
“Scared me pretty good, too,” Frannie said dryly.
They weren’t the only ones, Austin thought. His heart had nearly jumped out of his chest when he’d seen a woman—Frannie—dive in front of that car.
“I don’t know how to thank you, dear.” The woman kissed the dog again, then turned to Frannie. She peered over the top of her thick lenses. “It just goes to show, you can’t judge a person by the way they look. I never knew you punk rockers cared about animals. “
“Punk rocker?” Frannie’s eyes were shocked. “ I’m not a punk rocker!”
Austin leaned toward the old woman conspiratorially. “She’s very sensitive about her skin condition. I keep telling her its nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone can pick up a fungal condition.”
The old woman’s eyes flew wide. “You mean, that’s fungus? Is it contagious?”
Austin nodded somberly. “I’m afraid so. The only antidote is to cover your entire body in peanut butter for twenty-four hours immediately after exposure.”
“Oh, dear!”
“I suggest that you and Snooky go right home and get started.”
Wearing a look of horror, the woman hurried down the sidewalk, clutching the little dog to her ample chest.
Frannie convulsed in a fit of laughter. It took her a minute to regain her ability to speak. “You’re as naughty as Snook’ems,” she finally gasped.
Austin grinned. “Served the old biddy right.”
She grinned at him, her smile so warm and bright he practically reached for his sun glasses. A jolt of attraction zapped through him despite her green face.
He cleared his throat, disconcerted. “Let’s take a look at your knee.” He gestured to a wooden bench under the green-and-white-striped drug store awning. Frannie sat down, lifted the cape and pulled up the long tan skirt of her gabardine suit to reveal long slender calves.
Her right knee was scraped and bleeding. Austin felt a rush of empathy. “You sit right there, and I’ll go get my first-aid kit.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He could feel Frannie’s eyes on him as he sprinted across the street. Opening the door of his black pickup, he pulled out a box from under the seat, then strode back across the street.
She looked so ridiculous, sitting on that wooden bench in that ridiculous cape, with that goofy green face and those enormous eyeglasses. Something inside of him went warm and oddly mushy.
“Are you okay?” He squatted in front of her and opened the box.
“Yes. But you might as well go ahead and say it.”
“Say what?”
“What you’re thinking. That it was stupid of me to run out in the street like that.”
Austin pulled out a cotton pad and squirted it with disinfectant. “Why do you think that’s what I’m thinking?”
“Because it was stupid. I acted before I thought. But that little dog looked so scared and helpless, and that car was coming so fast. I knew if I was going to try to help it, I had to act fast.”
“Well, I gotta say, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I did?”
Austin nodded. “I was just coming out of the automotive store when I saw you flying across the street. You looked like Batman, swooping into the street in that cape.”
He was glad to see that he’d made her grin.
“I didn’t see the dog at first, but I heard you yell, and I saw the Jag speeding toward you. When I saw you take a tumble right in front of it, well, my heart was in my throat.”
“It was?”
“Dang right. No one knows better than me the damage an automobile can inflict on the human body.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not usually so reckless.”
Something about the chagrin on her green face made him smile. “Hey, I said you scared me. I didn’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
Her hazel eyes fixed on him in a way that made him forget all about her green face.
“Come to think of it, I have done the same thing,” Austin found himself saying. “I nearly got trampled by a stallion once, trying to get a sick colt out of a herd back when I was breaking horses.”
“You used to break horses?”
He grinned. “Well, it’s debatable who got broken more, the horses or me.” He set the bottle of disinfectant on the sidewalk and lifted the soaked pad. “This is likely to sting, but I need to clean the wound.”
“Okay.”
He dabbed at her left knee. She bit her lip, but didn’t cry out. Once again he felt that odd, mushy feeling.
“Did you work with horses here in Montana?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Among other places. My father never stayed in one place for long.”
“Because of his job?”
Austin gave wry smile. “Not really. Because of his lifestyle.”
Frannie tilted her head quizzically, and looked at him, really looked at him, in a way he hadn’t been looked at in a long time. She wasn’t just looking at him; she seemed to be really seeing him.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Austin lifted his shoulders. “He didn’t want to put down any roots, didn’t want to get attached to anyone or anything.” Including me, Austin thought bitterly.
“We moved a lot.”
“What did he do?”
“He was a ranch hand. Had a real talent with cattle. Me, I always preferred horses.”
“Is that what you’re raising on your ranch?”
Austin nodded. Why was he telling her all this? It wasn’t like him to gab about his personal life with someone he’d just met. It must be that sincere way she looked at him, as if she were somehow connecting with him.
Austin picked up a Band-Aid strip and peeled the paper away. He gently set it on her knee, covering the wound, then found himself oddly reluctant to take his hand from her leg.
It was a very nice leg. Her skin was warm and smooth and lightly tanned. Her calves were well-shaped and slender. It was a shame that a woman with legs like that would hide them under such a long skirt.
“There.” He pressed down the edges of the Band-Aid strip, then pulled back his hands. He had the oddest urge to bend down and kiss her knee.
But that made no sense—no sense at all. He clicked the metal box of bandages closed and straightened.
She stood, as well. “Thanks. I really appreciate your help.”
“My pleasure.”
His gaze fell to her lips. They were moist and pink, and they stood out in sharp contrast to the green on the rest of her face. In fact, she seemed to be all eyes and lips. Beautiful hazel eyes. Plump, luscious-looking lips—lips that parted slightly as he stared at them. A rush of heat coursed through him. How he’d like to press his mouth to those lips, to draw that pouty bottom one into his mouth, to slide his tongue right between her lips….
The inappropriateness of his thoughts jarred him. He shifted the first-aid kit to his other hand. “Well, I’d better get back to the ranch. Tommy needs these parts for the car.”
“And I’d better get back inside and get this goop off my face.”
“Right.” Austin nodded curtly. “Well, see you later.”
“Okay.” Those tempting lips curved into a smile. “And thanks. For the first aid, and for stepping in with Lyle.” Her hair had come loose from the low ponytail she wore, and she brushed a stray strand behind her ear.
“My pleasure.” But it was pleasure of an entirely different kind that he was thinking about as he watched her turn and scurry back into the drugstore.
I must have taken one too many knocks to the head in race collisions, Austin thought as he strode to his car. Why else would a woman covered in a shapeless plastic cape who looked as if she’d fallen face-first into a bowl of puréed spinach turn him on more than any woman had in a long, long time?
Lyle Brooks gunned the engine of his expensive car as he tore down the dirt road leading to the resort construction site, still fuming over his near accident in town.
Who the hell did Austin Parker think he was, telling him what to do? He might be a hotshot on the NASCAR circuit, but that didn’t mean he was anyone here in Whitehorn.
Around here, Lyle thought heatedly, he was the hotshot. After all, he was the owner of the construction company building the resort and casino, the biggest thing to ever hit this one-horse town. The complex was going to put Whitehorn on the map. Even more importantly, it was going to make Lyle richer and more powerful than ever.
Lyle braked as he approached the construction trailer, pulling into the spot directly in front of the door. His foreman had suggested that they reserve the spot for the handicapped, but Lyle hadn’t cared for the idea. It was his construction company, by damn. If anyone was going to get the best parking spot, it was going to be him. He wanted the best out of life, whether it was parking spots or cars or cigars or women. He wanted it, he deserved it, and he intended to see that he got it.
Slamming the door of the Jag, he strode up the wooden steps into the luxury trailer to find his secretary, Pam, on the phone. “Oh, he just walked in, sir,” the attractive blonde said into the receiver. “Just a moment.” Pam punched a button and looked up. “It’s your grandfather.”
So the old goat finally decided to call me back, Lyle thought. He’d been trying to reach Garrett Kincaid all morning, but all he’d got was the old man’s answering machine. Lyle didn’t know why his grandfather didn’t just get a cell phone. Garrett said he didn’t need one, but Lyle was certain he was just being stubborn. It was awfully hard to get the old man to change his mind about anything once his mind was made up about it.
But Lyle was working on it. Oh, yes, he was working on it. “I’ll take the call in my office,” he said, stalking past the secretary and closing the door.
He lowered himself into the tall cordovan leather chair. It was a custom-made chair Lyle had ordered from a furniture company in North Carolina, stately and large, with an extra-high back. Even with the two-inch lifts in his shoes, Lyle was only five-foot-nine, and he liked to make an imposing impression.
He picked up the phone and punched the button, forcing a warmth he didn’t feel into his voice. “Hello, Granddad. Thanks for calling me back.”
“What can I do for you today, Lyle?”
“I was, er, wondering if you’ve given any more thought to what we were discussing yesterday. “
He heard his grandfather sigh. “Lyle, we’ve been all through that, and you know how I feel about the matter. That land is reserved for Gabriel, and I’m not going to swap it for yours. There’s no point in discussing it further.”
“I’m not asking for a straight trade. I’m willing to offer a considerable amount of money in addition to my land. For the sake of fairness, I don’t see why you can’t at least consider the possibility of selling it to me.”
“I’ve been more than fair with you, Lyle.” Garrett’s voice was as hard as steel. “It’s my land, and I’ll do what I damn well please with it.”
“But two years ago, you didn’t even know about Larry’s brood of bastards!”
“I won’t have you talkin
g about your cousins that way.” The steel in Garrett’s voice sounded razor-sharp.
“Cousins.” Lyle spit the word out, derision dripping from his voice. “I don’t understand how you can consider those illegitimate whelps as family.” As far as Lyle was concerned, they were nothing but unfortunate reminders of his uncle Larry’s philandering ways.
“Because that’s what they are, whether you like it or not.” Garrett’s voice cut sharply through the phone line. “They’re Larry’s sons. They’re as much my blood as you are, and I suggest you start accepting that fact.”
Lyle stared out the window at the Crazy Mountains, their tops rugged and craggy above the timberline. They looked just like his grandfather sounded, tough and indomitable and unmoving. No, his grandfather was tougher than the mountains, Lyle thought ruefully. If a mountain was in his way, he could always blast through it with dynamite. With his grandfather, he’d have to find a way around.
The old man was completely intractable when it came to this topic. Ever since he discovered two years ago that his late son, Larry, had fathered seven illegitimate children, Garrett had refused to listen to reason. The old man had not only welcomed the bastards into the bosom of the family, but given them all large chunks of the Kincaid ranch, as well. Land that should have been split three ways—between Lyle and his two legitimate cousins, Melanie and Collin—was now going to be split among the bastards.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The piece of land the old man had given Lyle was a worthless parcel abutting the Laughing Horse Reservation up north. The land the resort was being constructed upon, however, was being saved for Gabriel Reilly Baxter, Larry’s youngest illegitimate child who’d been adopted by Jordan Baxter. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the little bastard was probably still in diapers.
Lyle’s grandfather refused to see the injustice of it all. Lyle had tried to reason with the old man. He’d tried wheedling and logic. He’d even had his mother intercede on his behalf. She’d manage to convince Garrett to give Lyle an extra piece of the Whitehorn property, but it had been more of that useless tract next to the reservation. He’d even offered to buy the land the resort would be built on from the stubborn old mule. The only concession he’d gotten was that Garrett had agreed to let him represent the land in negotiations with the Indians, and he’d made sure that Lyle’s construction company got the contract to build the casino and resort.