by Jodi Thomas
Jax lifted the coffeepot. “Want a cup of coffee while I fry your breakfast?”
She nodded and reached for the button to raise the top of her bed.
When she took her first sip of his strong coffee, she swore she felt it run the length of her body. She was alive and safe, and most of all, healing.
She’d survive. Curtis hadn’t won. Not this time.
As the morning passed, her only entertainment was watching Jax. He talked a bit, telling her his routine, asking if she was all right. But he didn’t insist on walking her to the bathroom or hover over her with questions. He was sitting in his desk chair reading when she took her morning nap, and still reading when she woke up.
When she began unwrapping her hand, he turned from his computer and stood close to watch. The skin was wrinkled and bruised but scabbing over.
Handing Mallory the analgesic cream, he let her rub it into her skin. Then he studied her hand, carefully turning it in his gentle grip. “You want me to rewrap it?”
Shaking her head, Mallory was relieved he didn’t insist. One of the terrible things about being in a hospital was that you lost control over your own body. Others decided everything for you. Jax wasn’t doing that.
She slept for a while again, then woke to a sandwich lunch made from the eggs she hadn’t eaten for breakfast.
When she made no effort to eat them, he frowned. “You don’t like eggs all that much, do you?”
She shook her head.
Jax took the plate away and handed her a pen and paper. “What sounds good to you? You got to eat.”
She glanced at the kitchen that wasn’t big enough to stock much. Pizza was all she could think of, so she wrote it down. Salad. Ice cream. She wrote both down.
Jax frowned and moved to his computer. A minute later, he leaned back in his chair. “Ordered.”
It couldn’t have been an hour later that she saw the pickup she’d ridden in last night pull up to the cabin. Her new redheaded cousin jumped out.
He didn’t bother to knock. He just walked in carrying a big pizza box, a bag of lettuce and a tub of Neapolitan ice cream.
Tim O’Grady winked at her. “Good afternoon, beautiful. My brain-dead cousin didn’t tell me what kind of pizza so I got half meat lovers and half veggie. Did the same with ice cream—part vanilla, part chocolate, part strawberry—but I should warn you, I’m eating the chocolate third.”
“Close the door. I’m trying to keep the place the same temperature,” Jax ordered.
Tim shrugged. “She’s not a baby, Jax.” He dropped the food in the kitchen, walked directly toward her and sat on the end of her bed. “How you feeling today, M&M?”
“She doesn’t talk,” Jax answered from the kitchen.
“Can’t or doesn’t?” Tim asked. Both men waited for the answer.
She touched her bandaged throat. Slowly, as they watched, she unwrapped the gauze. She saw the shock in Tim’s face before he hid his reaction.
Mallory closed her eyes but held her head high. She would not hide away from what had happened. Not this time. Not ever again.
Jax moved closer and looked straight on at her throat. “You’ve got a few scratches. One long and deep enough to leave a scar, but it’s not bleeding.” He turned his head as he continued his examination. “And bruises. Deep bruises.”
Tim found his voice. “In the shape of a handprint. You were choked.”
She nodded.
Jax leaned over her. “You want me to bandage it back up?”
She shook her head. They’d already seen the damage. As she looked into the sorrow in Jax’s eyes, she heard Tim say, “Well, the good news is it’s got nowhere to go but better.”
She tried to smile, then almost laughed when Jax told his cousin to shut up.
While Jax chopped the lettuce, Tim went back to his truck and brought in three folding chairs and a folding table. He started talking while he was still on the porch.
“I know you’re a minimalist, Jax, but company has to have a place to sit. Every time I visit, we always sit on the porch. Now I’m inside, I see why. Squirrels have more furnishings in their nest than you do. It’s obvious you’ve been stealing books from every library in the state for years. You could have made a few of them into furniture. You’ve got a shed full of lumber and all you make is shelves. So much for Uncle Darrell’s hope you’d become a carpenter.”
Jax frowned. “I order the books from a university bookstore and have the bookstore mail them direct to my PO box. Every few weeks, I drive in and pick new ones up after dark.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything? I’ve been getting your mail at my house and delivering it every month. You could have just changed your address to the PO box and saved me a trip.”
Jax smiled. “I like seeing you now and then.”
Tim looked as if he didn’t know whether to be mad or flattered. He smiled at Mallory. “You do know that you are living with a crazy man. If he stays out here by himself much longer, he’ll be more myth than man. Some folks have already forgotten I have a cousin named Jaxson. Griffin Holloway, Jaxson’s nearest neighbor, says he sees a shadow walking the hills now and then.”
Tim paced the bookshelf-covered walls of the room, letting his hand glide over the spines of thick books. “All this time I thought you were just whittling on all the wood your uncle sent you and turns out you’ve been reading—no, studying. These books are tagged, dog-eared, written in, I’ll bet. Most of these look like textbooks.” He slowed, reading the titles aloud. “Forensics, Fire Science. Burn Patterns. Criminal Justice. Chemistry. Investigative Interviewing.”
“That’s enough, Tim.” Jax’s words came low. “I’ll bet Mallory would rather you serve the pizza than read book titles.”
“Right,” he said and he lifted the pizza box and opened it.
Mallory picked up the plate Jax had set on her blankets and reached for a slice. After three days of hospital food, the pizza, even cold, was perfect.
As she ate slowly, feeling tiny bites slip down her sore throat, Jax and Tim entertained her. Tim did most of the talking, but Jax added a dry kind of humor that never failed to make her smile.
In the sunlight, she watched the hard lines of Jaxson’s face soften. Something very deep about him drew her. There was far more to the man than he let people see. A sort of kindness she decided. He lived a very simple life, but he was aware of every detail of his surroundings.
When Tim finally stood to leave, he handed her the pen and paper. “Write down what you want and, if I can find it in Crossroads, I’ll bring it tomorrow for lunch.”
She wrote. Fruit. Vegetables. Cookies.
“I can handle that with all the fixin’s.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “So long, cousin. I’ll bring you puzzles tomorrow and maybe a few games. The Christmas puzzles are in at the gas station. You want one with puppies under the tree or horses running across snow?”
She shrugged and waved as Jax walked him out. A few minutes later when Jax walked back in, she was almost asleep, barely aware that he was tending to the fire and doing the dishes and folding away the chairs and table.
A complicated man who liked a simple kind of order.
“Thanks,” she whispered, but her voice was too weak for him to hear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Maverick Ranch
GRIFFIN WALKED THE rooms on the third floor of his home trying to figure out if what he’d committed to would slowly drive him insane. His future bride had dropped by every morning with updated plans for the wedding and revised charts for her rooms upstairs. After almost a week, the entire third floor of the headquarters looked like some modern art project called Chaos in shades of earth tones.
The second morning, she’d brought a contractor and two cleaning ladies.
On day three, she’d added a truckload of carpenters, two e
lectricians, a design consultant and an old hippie who looked like he hadn’t changed clothes or shaved since the sixties. He said he was the tile guy. She introduced them by their occupations as they stormed the stairs.
Finally, when no one showed up on the fifth day, Griffin relaxed, deciding she was finished fixing up what was now her suite of rooms, her space. Only when he climbed the stairs, the mess was still there. Yesterday they must have knocked out a whole wall, making her bedroom bigger. A set of windows had been removed to add a huge round hole on the east wall, big enough for a man to walk through. It had been covered with thick plastic that rattled and popped.
He walked slowly back downstairs. If the wedding didn’t happen, he’d never be able to pay for the un-makeover. Griffin poured cold cereal in a mixing bowl and grabbed a half-empty gallon of milk. Then he sat out on the porch to enjoy the first warm day in weeks.
Before he was half finished with breakfast, trucks started pulling up. People he’d never seen followed the stuck-up decorator into the house as if Griffin were invisible. Like ants, they circled back to the trucks for more stuff. Pillows, curtains, chairs, mirrors, furniture, couches, rugs. It all went up.
Their footsteps on the stairs sounded like buffalo on the move.
Elliot finally gave up working in the study and joined Griffin on the porch. “What is going on?” he asked. He sloshed his coffee when he leaned against the porch railing.
“Sunlan is redecorating.”
“Seems more like a hostile takeover. Maybe we should start locking the doors. Do you know even one of those strangers tromping up and down our stairs?”
“Nope. I said howdy to one guy, and he stopped long enough to stare at me and say he didn’t speak cowboy. But since they’re bringing things in, I don’t think they came to rob us.”
Elliot thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “We paying for any of the repairs or rebuilding going on? We’re beyond tight this month.”
“Nope.”
Elliot relaxed. “Then I think we should let your future wife make herself comfortable if it makes her happy.”
Griffin had no idea what would make Sunlan happy, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be wise to cross her. His future wife was a woman who knew her own mind and he had no doubt, if he let her, she’d drive him out of his.
A few hours later, she drove up with trays of food and the Franklin sisters. Both of the old ladies looked at him like he was the yard dog.
The shorter one of the sisters stopped long enough to greet Griffin. “We’re lending a hand to Sunlan. She’s so busy, you know. So Rose and I are being professional caterers today.” Daisy giggled. “We padded the number so there will be plenty for you boys. We’ve heard you still haven’t found a cook willing to drive out here.”
“Thank you for the delivery.” Griffin had been about to go for hamburgers, but these people didn’t look like the burgers-and-fries crowd. “Elliot and I are much obliged, but Cooper rarely makes it back in for lunch.”
“Then what does he do?” Daisy looked truly concerned.
“I think he just grazes with the cows.”
Daisy ticktocked her head. “We’re here to help, Griffin. Sunlan asked if we’d assist in the selection of a new cook for the place. I’ve got a few ideas. You’ll want someone who can cook the basics, right?”
“Right. Nothing fancy.”
“I’ll send out people for interviews on Friday. You’ll have to hire someone else to come once a week to do the cleaning.”
“You got a list of people who might be willing to do that? Really clean, I mean.” He had no idea what to tell a housekeeper. Mamie usually ran the vacuum a few times a month but never dusted anything. The only time the windows were cleaned was when it rained, and she’d wash towels and sheets only when one of the men delivered and picked them up from the laundry room.
“I know a few folks who could use the work.” Daisy grinned and hurried off behind her sister.
Griffin sat back down in the porch chair. He had no idea what was going on. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Elliot hated change, Cooper ignored it and Griffin had a feeling it was washing over him.
His new bride might not want any advice or help, but Griffin needed all anyone would give him. Maybe he should offer to drop by the bed-and-breakfast once a week for lessons again. One beautiful woman, who didn’t look like she even weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, was complicating his life.
Maybe it would all settle down after the wedding. She’d get on with her life. He’d run the ranch. They’d see each other now and then. No drama. No changes. No joint bank accounts. Sounded like a happy marriage.
Sunlan rushed out the front door and froze when she saw him. Griffin wasn’t sure she’d noticed him when she came in.
“Griff?”
“Sunshine,” he said, thinking a better name for the lady might be Stormy. “We going to introduce ourselves every time we see each other?”
“No, of course not.” She moved closer and awkwardly put her hand on his shoulder. “The sisters and Elliot are eating in the study if you want to join them. I’m afraid the people I sent out to work filled both the dining room, the kitchen table and the bar.”
Sunlan shifted. “I didn’t realize I’d sent out so many. I just wanted it done before I head back to Denver tomorrow. Now I’ve got people asking me questions from every direction. I feel like I’m on a quiz show and there’s never a commercial break.”
“When you planning on coming back here?” He almost said home. “All of this can wait, you know. The house and I aren’t going anywhere.”
She smiled. “You’re right. I’ll be back before the wedding. I’ve got new stock coming in and need to be at Misty Bend. Remember at the café, our first meeting, I said I’d always let you know where I was.”
“I remember. But tell me, are you leaving all these people here?”
“And if I am?”
“Then you’d better come back soon. I’m not sure we speak the same language. Some guy in tight pants rushed down a while ago and asked me if I’d seen a sangria pillow. When I looked blank, he added real slow, ‘Sangria-colored pillow.’ I thought that was a drink, not a color. I told him I saw it riding off on a whiskey horse with a brandy mane toward a tequila sunset.”
She relaxed a little, letting her hip brush his shoulder. “I’ll make it a short trip.” He heard laughter in her voice.
“It doesn’t matter. There’s no hurry. I can handle any problem that comes up about the wedding.” Griffin had seen horses that were jumpy like her: uncertain, afraid, ready to run. “No storm’s coming. It’s all going to work out.” She didn’t need to know his fears right now. She had a bucket load of her own.
Sunlan smiled slightly. “It will. The sisters were right. We’ll fit together as a couple.”
He took her hand as he rose out of the chair. “Any food left? We should eat with the sisters.”
She followed him back into the house. The moment they were within sight of the crowd in the dining room, she moved against his side, her arm across his back.
Griffin smiled. Waved at the crowd, then turned and kissed Sunny on the forehead. Part of him felt like a fool pretending, but it was what he’d agreed to do. He’d get his ranch and she’d get her freedom. A fair enough swap. From what he’d gathered from bits of conversation, Sunlan’s parents took turns trying to run her life. Whatever she did to please one only angered the other.
As they filled their plates, he asked, “Have you been to the white barn?”
“Not yet. I thought I’d go there after lunch.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
She hesitated.
“If I know what you want, maybe I could get started on some of the changes while you’re in Denver.”
“You’d do that?”
“Sure. This is winter, our slow season. If I
have any questions, I could call and check in with you.” If I had your cell number, he almost added.
An hour later when she’d told him all her plans to upgrade a barn that had already been built to impress, she reached for his cell and typed in her number. The contact name was simply Sunshine.
“I’ll hire the men who know how to update this barn and put them up at the B & B while they’re working,” she said. “They shouldn’t bother you much with questions.”
He took her hand as they walked out into a cool afternoon sun. People could see them now. “We’ve got a bunkhouse that could house them. It’s not used this time of year. That would save them an hour in travel every day.”
She agreed. “You sure you wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all. There’s a small kitchen out there. I’ll stock it with sandwich makings and the cabinet with soups. I’ll check up on them and if I find a cook, I’ll make sure they have a hot dinner every night.”
Her eyes glared at him. “What do you want in return, Griff?”
“Nothing. Just helping out.”
“No. We’re not just neighbors or friends. We made a bargain. You ask for something and we trade.”
Man, this woman was cold. About the time he thought it would be nice to cuddle up with her, she porcupined up. “You’re right. The bargain. Everything fair and square. When you come back, I’ll try to have that runway packed so you can land your plane on that long stretch about a half mile behind the barn. I’ll have an ATV parked out there so you can drive in. But, in exchange, you consider spending the nights in your rooms...here on the ranch but not with me. I want us to spend at least a little time together before the wedding.” He caught a bit of fear in her glance. “You have my word you’ll be safe here. None of us is going to try to run your life, Sunshine. Hell, we have enough trouble running our own.”
“But the sisters? They’ll expect me.”
“I think they’ll understand. Once all the workmen are gone, you may want to move into town with them for a few days to plan the last details of our wedding. We’ve got a hell of a lot to do in only a few weeks. It’ll work smoother, faster, if we’re close.”