The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Maggie could take care of herself if they tried anything. For all her nervousness about DeMarranville’s men, judging by the way she handled herself with the young bucks, she had obviously had plenty of practice dealing with amorous patients.

  No, she would probably never know he had searched her temporary home unless he told her himself. Still, eventually she would learn he worked for the FBI, that he had been sent to investigate her. Either he would have to come clean or she would figure it out on her own.

  When she did, he knew those eyes would never again look at him with that shy, hesitant interest. Instead, they would be guarded and distrustful, like a puppy that had been kicked once who was waiting for the other boot to strike.

  He muttered a low, frustrated curse. He wasn’t at all sure he liked having a conscience again. Things were so much simpler when he could go in and do a job cleanly, precisely, without having to worry about a pair of soft brown eyes that could make him ache.

  The job. He needed to focus on the job. Instead of thinking about the hurt it would cause Maggie to find out he had lied to her, he forced himself to conjure up an image of Damian behind bars, where he belonged. In prison orange instead of those designer suits he wore so smugly, eating greasy, tasteless prison food instead of the haute cuisine prepared by that French chef he employed with dirty money.

  Only a matter of time, he assured himself. The records kept by Maggie’s late, unlamented husband would see to that. A grim smile twisted his mouth. He hoped to hell Damian knew he was being hunted like a rabbit. It would give him nothing but satisfaction to know he was giving his former partner a few sleepless nights, that Damian was forced to be a little more watchful, a little more anxious.

  He deserved that and much, much more for the havoc the bastard had wreaked in countless lives.

  If nothing else, Damian deserved to pay for destroying his illusions about justice and decency, for taking an idealistic young military policeman who was out to prove something to the world and turning Colt into the man he had become. Hard, ruthless.

  Despicable.

  The reminder was all the impetus he needed. Sharply, brusquely, he buried his hesitation and shoved his fledgling guilt as far down as he could stuff it. No matter what he’d started out as, this was his reality now. This was who he was: a tough, cold-blooded investigator who could submerge his feelings completely for the sake of the job, who could do what had to be done without needless emotion.

  Fifteen minutes later, he hungered for a little of that cold-bloodedness while he fought the urge to punch a fist through the aluminum skin of her trailer.

  She had to have Damian’s merchandise! But where? Not in her trailer, he was sure of at least that much.

  After combing through every inch of the place—which didn’t take long, since there weren’t all that many inches to the little piece-of-junk dwelling—he had found nothing even remotely resembling embezzled money or the computer disk that contained all the evidence needed to bring down DeMarranville.

  He did have a clearer picture of Maggie Rawlings, but he wasn’t sure that was necessarily a good thing. He had discovered she liked books. There were stacks of them scattered around the trailer: medical journals, paperback mysteries, and piles of well-worn children’s books for Nick.

  She had obviously tried to make the trailer as homey as possible, with patchwork quilts on the loft bed and throw pillows on the bench seats. She’d even stuck a picture Nicky had obviously colored onto the little refrigerator—of a stick-figure cowboy on the back of a misshapen horse, with spindly legs and a huge head. Nicky’s scrawl underneath the picture made him smile: “Colt and Scout,” with a backward S.

  Further searching revealed her clothes were plain, practical. Classic button-down oxfords, slacks and skirts, with a few T-shirts and the tan pair of jeans she wore when he took Nicky riding. She even wore practical underwear—white cotton, no frills, no thrills—he’d learned, poking through a drawer like some kind of sick voyeur.

  Her clothes weren’t in the least what he would have expected from a woman who grew up in the pearls-anddiamonds world of San Francisco society or who had been married to a social-climbing accountant. He would have expected designer labels, expensive fabrics.

  She would have been stunning in silk. He did a little mental conjuring. Something short and black and elegant. With that honey-blond hair twisted up into something sleek and graceful and some kind of strappy shoes, she would be nothing short of breathtaking.

  He indulged in the possibilities for just a few seconds, then shoved the images away. That kind of thinking would only play hell with his concentration when he could least afford to be distracted. With effort he turned his mind back to the job and what he had discovered about Maggie Sinclair.

  He already knew she was into healthy food, and the little pantry cupboard backed that up—low-fat peanut butter, cans of tuna fish, rice, oatmeal. Just what he would have expected except for one renegade bag of Oreos he found in the back of the cupboard, way back where her son couldn’t reach. It was shy only a couple of cookies, as if she hoarded them carefully and doled them out to herself just a few at a time. It made him smile, just a little, to discover one of her weaknesses.

  Other than that, there were few surprises in the trailer. She had left San Francisco in a hurry but had apparently taken time to grab a few photo albums. They were the only mementos he could find of her life with Michael Prescott.

  He leafed through them quickly, finding pictures of Nicky through various stages of childhood. Lying on his stomach on a blanket, naked except for a big toothless grin. In a high chair behind a birthday cake, with frosting smeared all over his face. Riding a tricycle wearing a fierce look of concentration.

  He frowned. Maggie was in a few of the pictures, but where was her husband? Flipping pages toward the back of one, he finally found a photograph of Michael Prescott posing stiffly with Nicky on what looked like another birthday celebration. He looked handsome in a well-groomed sort of way but didn’t appear at all comfortable with his son.

  It made him think of his own father, of Sunday afternoons spent tussling on the living room carpet and midnight fishing trips to Butterfly Lake and learning how to shave by mornings spent watching wide-eyed as Jack McKendrick took an old-fashioned razor to his face.

  Guilt crashed into him, painfully familiar, and he slapped Maggie’s photo album shut at the same time he slammed the door on his own memories.

  Where did he go from here? Beckstead and Dunbar were convinced Maggie had Damian’s money and the computer disk. They said Prescott himself said she did the night he was murdered and that they had searched her belongings in San Francisco without success. But if they weren’t in the trailer, where else could he possibly look?

  He was going to have to tell her he was FBI, and soon. Time was running out. Yeah, it would hurt her, but so what? He was hard, he was ruthless, he was cold-blooded. Right?

  Too bad he had such a tough time remembering that when he was dealing with Maggie Rawlings.

  Maggie looked through the doorway of Peg’s big, plush trailer where Nicky slept on the soft couch inside. “Are you sure you don’t mind if he sleeps in here tonight?” she whispered to her stepmother.

  “Don’t be silly.” Peg’s voice was brisk. “No sense wakin’ him up just to put him to bed again over at your place. We got plenty of room.”

  Maggie frowned and stepped down from the doorway to talk to Peg outside so she wouldn’t wake up Nicky or Cheyenne. “This is the second night this week. At this rate he’ll spend more time sleeping in your trailer than in his own bed.”

  “He’s no trouble at all, darlin’. I love havin’ him here, you know that. Now why is it so hard for you to accept a little help?”

  Maggie jammed her hands into the pockets of her cardigan. She couldn’t explain it to Peg until she understood it herself. Maybe her stubbornness had something to do with the fact that she felt she was finally learning to stand on her own. Maybe subconsciously
she was afraid counting on anyone else, even in such a little thing as Nicky sleeping at Peg’s trailer overnight, might undermine her new independence.

  “Now if I was you,” her stepmother went on, “I’d take advantage of not havin’ to be a mother for a while and go hook up with that big hunk of cowboy of yours for a little Texas two-step.”

  Hot color flooded her cheeks at the knowing smile playing around Peg’s scarlet-painted lips, especially since the image was more tempting than she cared to admit.

  “I don’t have a ‘big hunk of cowboy,’ as you so charmingly put it,” she replied.

  “Oh, come on. I’ve been around the block a few times, Miss Maggie. Anybody with a pair of eyes can see the sparks flickerin’ between you and that Montana roper of yours.”

  “What is it with you and Cheyenne? Why is my love life—or lack thereof—so interesting to the two of you?”

  Peg’s sharp features suddenly, unexpectedly, softened and she reached out and pulled Maggie to her in a quick hug. “It’s no secret that no-good husband of yours made your life miserable. We just want to see you happy, darlin’.”

  She returned the hug with exasperated affection. “What makes you think a ‘big hunk of cowboy’ is going to be any better for me?”

  “I never did like that fella you married. Neither did your dad. Used to say he had shifty eyes. Now McKendrick, on the other hand... I like him. Besides bein’ sexy as all getout, he’s real good with that boy of yours. That has to count for something.”

  It counted for a great deal. She smiled softly, remembering the image of Nicky perched happily in front of Colt on that big buckskin gelding, of his patient answers to a little boy’s unending curiosity.

  She liked him, too. That was the problem. She could find entirely too many things that were likable about Colton McKendrick. With a sigh, she pulled away from Peg. “I appreciate your concern, really I do, but it’s just not a good time for me to be thinking about any kind of romantic involvement right now.”

  “Hell, what’s there to think about it? For once in your life, don’t think. Just feel.”

  “I wish it was that easy.”

  Peg squeezed her hands. “It is. Just keep in mind, a man like that one doesn’t come around every day.”

  Her stepmother’s words were still ringing in her ears a few minutes later when she walked to her own trailer and fumbled through her bag for her keys in the darkness. After finding them, she unlocked the door and swung it open, then froze, her fingers still on the cold metal of the doorknob.

  Someone had been here.

  She stared into the inky blackness, her pulse lurching and bucking. She couldn’t say exactly how she recognized the trailer had been invaded, she just knew. The moment she opened the door the realization had climbed over her.

  Her fingers trembling, she forced herself to go inside and switch on the light above the stove. Its yellow glow warmed her slightly but couldn’t completely take the chill from her blood.

  Someone had most definitely been here. It wasn’t so much a concrete knowledge of something wrong, more like a subtle awareness: a strange scent lingering in the air, a sensation that things were not exactly as she had left them—a book out of place, a drawer slightly ajar.

  Her heartbeat continued to stutter wildly. When had the break-in happened? During the rodeo or later? Had they found her, then? Were they out there somewhere, watching, waiting?

  With effort, she reined in her gyrating thoughts. It was probably just Cheyenne, she assured herself. She had probably come into the trailer looking for something for Nicky. His pajamas, a stuffed animal, a favorite bedtime storybook. She had a key, after all, and it didn’t appear that the door had been jimmied.

  She forced herself to breathe calmly and easily until her panic began to subside. So much for her vow the other night to stop living in fear. The slightest thing seems off-kilter and she completely goes off the deep end. She was only imagining things again.

  She had almost managed to soothe her nerves when a rustle sounded through the open window of the trailer, as if the long, draping branches of the weeping willow had been disturbed in the quiet, windless night, pushed aside to let someone through.

  Her head jerked up, all her frantic fears returning in force. But she had vowed to face her fears head-on, and face them she would, dammit. Pulse pounding furiously, she picked up the frying pan from its hook by the stove. With the solid weight of the trusty cast iron clenched in her hand, she twisted the knob and pushed open the door.

  It was an eerie repeat of the night a week ago—had it only been a week?—when she had found Colt fixing her flat tire. This time it wasn’t raining, though. High, wispy clouds floated across the sliver of moon and she heard the distant rumble of trucks on the Interstate.

  Most of the campground slept—it was past midnight, after all, and the cowboys put in long hours. She could see a few lights on in trailers here and there and hear the high whinny of a horse hobbled nearby, but other than that, she could have been alone in the night.

  She was imagining things again. She had to be. She peered into the shadows under the big willow. There. Did something move? A shadow slightly darker than the night around it? Her eyes strained to see, and she thought she saw the darker spot shift slightly, then move forward.

  She gripped the pan tighter, her heartbeat picking up a pace, and she wondered if she really had the fortitude to use it against another human being.

  “Doc? Somethin’ wrong?”

  She nearly collapsed onto the steps. Hot on the heels of her relief was aggravation. Damn that Colt McKendrick anyway, always lurking in the dark waiting to spook her.

  “You makin’ flapjacks in the middle of the night again?”

  Her arm sagged with the weight of the frying pan. “You scared me! What are you doing out here? Don’t tell me I have another flat tire.”

  “Not that I can see. I’d be happy to check it out for you, though.”

  Her knees shook in delayed reaction and she decided collapsing on the steps wouldn’t be such a bad idea. It sure beat toppling over at his feet. She lowered herself to the cold metal and only then saw the sleeping bag he carried over his shoulder.

  “Have a hot date, McKendrick?”

  “What?”

  “Your sleeping bag.”

  He glanced at the rolled-up bag and then back at her with an almost sheepish look in his face. “Um, something like that.”

  Jealousy, hot and sharp, pierced her. It came out of nowhere, shocking her with its intensity.

  She had no right to be jealous, she reminded herself. No right at all. It wasn’t any of her business if he found some ditzy buckle bunny to share a sleeping bag with. Colt was nothing to her but a friend.

  “Well don’t let me keep you.” She heard the tight, prissy tone in her voice and flushed again.

  He studied her for a moment, then jerked a thumb toward the willow tree. “I’ve got a hot date with a patch of grass over there.”

  “You were going to sleep out here? Why?”

  “Maybe I just like sleepin’ under the stars.”

  “How can you see them if you’re sleeping under a tree?”

  He laughed softly, a low, rough sound that somehow seemed to score along her nerve endings, raw already with the tumult of her emotions. “Good point.”

  He gazed up at the moon, then back at her with that sheepish expression on his face again. “Hell, I might as well tell you. You’ll figure it out sooner or later. The truth is, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on things over here.”

  She stared up at him. “You were sleeping on the ground to stand guard? Over me?” The idea floored her, completely stunned her.

  “It’s not so bad. I’ve slept out during roundups plenty of times and this isn’t much different. Warmer, actually. Last night was kind of nice, with a little breeze and the sound of the river in the distance.”

  His words barely registered through the haze of disbelief that surrounded her. />
  Once when she was a kid she’d been bucked off an energetic little mare her father had warned her against taking on. She still remembered the way her breath had been punched out of her, the way she had laid on her back and stared up at the sky while her vision dimmed around the edges.

  That was exactly the way she felt right now, shocked and breathless and achy.

  She had tried to be stoic throughout the last month, had tried hard not to give in to the constant, unrelenting fear. In the process, she had discovered reserves of strength she had no idea she possessed. But the idea of Colt spending a night on the hard ground—of him caring enough to watch over her and her son—somehow reached through her veneer of control and yanked at her heart.

  Tears welled up behind her eyelids, in her throat, and she could do nothing but stare at him, speechless.

  “Aw, come on Doc. Don’t look at me like that,” he mumbled.

  “I-I’m sorry.” She sniffled and blinked and tried to hold her tears back but they finally broke free, chasing each other down her cheeks. Once free, she couldn’t do anything to stop them.

  She thought she had been touched when he changed her flat tire in the night so she wouldn’t have to face it in the morning. That was nothing to this bittersweet warmth welling up inside her.

  With a muffled curse, he dropped the sleeping bag and crossed the space between them to where she sat on the trailer step. In one motion, he pulled her to her feet and into his arms. She sagged against his broad, hard chest that smelled like sage and leather, and wanted to stay there forever, just like this, and weep.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. When her mother died? Her father? She wasn’t the crying sort. Never had been, not even during the worst rigors of med school.

  When she was a kid, she had been too busy trying to be a rough-and-tumble tomboy during her summers with Billy Joe to give in to tears often. And Helen had viewed tears as a loss of control, something she simply wouldn’t tolerate in her daughter any more than she did in herself.