Crimes of Passion

by Toni Anderson

  The water ran cold. Shivers turned into great wracking tremors that brought Elizabeth slowly back into herself. Hell was supposed to be burning hot, but Elizabeth knew better. It was bitterly cold.

  She got up, leaned heavily on one foot, then slipped and bashed her knee. Swearing, she turned off the faucets and reached for a towel, her movements shaky and deliberately slow. She rubbed her icy skin until it glowed and wrapped her hair in a thick towel. The cold water had actually done her body some good.

  Muscles began to heat and warmth spread painfully down to her toes as she moved. She climbed out of the tub, supporting herself on her arms until she got her good foot down. She just managed to reach the toweling robe that hung from the back of the door, before pins and needles attacked her feet in a rush of unwelcome sensation.

  She didn’t want to feel anything. But even though she concentrated hard on the numbness inside her head, it didn’t last. She was so sick of it all.

  Wrapping her robe tight around her with quick sharp jerks, even her anger irritated her. She felt as worn out as an old rag. Growing up an orphan had been bad enough, no matter how rich she’d been. Then rape, coming out of nowhere—all her training, all her skills neutralized by a couple of drops of Rohypnol in a glass of champagne.

  Her heart hammered and her fists clenched. She hopped over to the bed and pulled the Glock from beneath the pillow, felt a hundred years old as she sat down on the edge of the mattress.

  Worse than the rape, worse even than lying on a gurney under the bright lights of the ER as she was photographed from every conceivable angle, was the betrayal of trust from her colleagues at the FBI. There had been a hidden microphone in her purse the night DeLattio had raped her, and the OCU agents had hung her out to dry. They’d caught the big fish all right. And then they’d protected the bastard.

  Tears gathered for another onslaught and she screwed up her eyes in an effort to stop them. When she opened them again she was staring down at the weapon in her hand. She loved her Glock. She retracted the slide to check there was a round in the chamber. Automatically, she popped the magazine into the palm of her hand and peered into the witness hole to see the bullet. Satisfied, she slapped the magazine back in place and ran her index finger along the short black muzzle.

  Maybe I should just end it. Stop the chase. Admit defeat.

  Every muscle in her body held motionless.

  She was on the run from the mob and a brutal rapist out for revenge. The price on her head was seven-figures and rising. There was no one to trust. And her presence alone was endangering the life of everyone at the ranch. Including the stubborn cowboy who’d begun to make her realize just how pathetic and empty her life had become.

  She loved her Glock.

  Loved it.

  Her weapon was reliable, lightweight and virtually indestructible. More like a friend than an inanimate object, somebody to depend on in a tight spot. And only when she wore her gun did she feel she had some measure of control over the madness her life had become. Only then did she feel safe.

  Her hands trembled as she looked down the barrel to see the tip of the bullet gleaming in the dull light. Her firearms instructors at Quantico called this the ‘pre-suicide technique’ for checking that a gun was loaded. She smiled at the irony. They’d been merciless bastards, especially during shotgun training, but she’d liked them. Wanted to be one of them, to fit in somewhere.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against the muzzle, then slid the gun into her mouth. Her heart banged so hard against her ribs, she thought it might burst.

  It would be so easy to pull the trigger.

  Most women shot themselves in the chest, but that was too risky. Her finger pressed lightly against the trigger and she grimaced at the pleasure her death would give DeLattio. That sonofabitch could rot in hell as far as she was concerned. Her revenge was well planned whether she lived or died.

  She hesitated. Did she really want to commit suicide? Even the word was distasteful. But it was an option, right? The ultimate way to regain control of her life.

  Nat Sullivan’s face flashed before her, not angry like he’d been when he’d left the cottage today, but smiling down at her from the back of a white horse, looking like heaven. Damn, but there was something about that man...

  She took her finger off the trigger.

  There would be an unholy mess left behind. Gunshot wounds to the head were never pretty. Taking the gun out of her mouth, she pointed it at the floor. Exhaled a tight breath.

  An image of her parents and baby brother flashed through her mind and she wondered what her life would have been like had they not died when she’d been a little girl. She was the last one left of her family, probably the only person in the world who remembered her little brother’s single-toothed smile.

  Death might be an easy option, but it was still a cowardly escape from a hellish situation. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it to the Sullivans, she couldn’t do it to her long-dead parents, and she couldn’t do it to herself.

  Besides, why let Andrew DeLattio have that final victory?

  Sensation returned to her body and she stretched out her sore limbs. The weight of misery lifted from her shoulders and dispelled like mist. Her grief was spent, her body aching but whole. Being raped and beaten had damn near killed her, but it wasn’t the end of the world. There were far too many things left that she needed to do and she’d never taken the easy way out before.

  Kissing the barrel of the pistol, she slipped it back under the pillow.

  DeLattio would not win. She wasn’t going to die a victim. If she had anything to do with it, she wasn’t going to die at all.

  ***

  Snow had stopped falling, leaving a world filled with sparkling sunshine and reflected light so bright it dazzled. Nat cleared the snow off the roads with the snowplow hitched to the front of his truck. Normally he’d have given the job to Cal or Ezra, but right now he wanted his own company and some mindless, honest toil. He turned his music up loud, too loud to think.

  The valley looked beautiful, like a winter wonderland. Fence-posts made valiant attempts to break free of the shallow drifts, cast spindly shadows like cobwebs over the iced fields. He should really go get his camera and take a few shots. But he was avoiding Eliza Reed and that pissed him off. This was his home and she made him feel uncomfortable in it.

  The barn and stables were shrouded with white cloaks that melted as a warm Chinook swept down off the mountain slopes. The thaw began in earnest when the sun reached its zenith.

  Finishing up, Nat pulled the truck in front of the ranch house and cut the engine. Quietly, he sat in the quiet sunshine watching the crystal clear water drip rhythmically off the buildings. So what if he’d misread the situation yesterday? So what if he’d thought sticking your tongue in someone’s mouth was a come-on signal? So what if he’d been ready to take her in a fury of passion after she’d just wept an ocean of tears in his lap?

  His hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles whitening with strain.

  Hell.

  That was what he couldn’t get past. Yes, she’d kissed him, but she’d been upset, crying. He should have had the strength, and goddamn it, the good sense, to pull away.

  He rubbed his fingers over his eyes. Cursed again. The fact that he’d been blown away by a simple kiss just meant it had been way too long since he’d had sex. It did not mean that Eliza Reed was special. Just because she was beautiful, with her stubborn ways and fierce nature, did not mean she was special.

  But special or not, he owed her an apology.

  He climbed out into the gray slush that carpeted the yard and went in search of Eliza. A pile of snow slid off the sloping roof of the ranch house with a solid ‘whoosh’.

  There was smoke coming from her chimney, but it was near midday and she’d spent most daylight hours helping out with the horses. He strode toward the paddock, climbed over the wooden rails and headed into the back of the stables, past the piles of hay,
hoses and buckets.

  Shadow and her foals were in their stall, little Red hiding behind his surrogate dam. The mare nickered as Nat went past, nudged him playfully for a treat. Nat obliged and filled up the feed bucket before he left. He checked all the stalls, but there was no sign of anybody, anywhere.

  He heard the soft murmur of voices coming from outside and turned in that direction. Bright sunlight blinded him for a full five-seconds before he could see. Then bile hit his throat and he wished he hadn’t bothered to search for Mizz Eliza Reed because at that moment she was stretched out full-length on top of Cal in the middle of the sodden training ring.

  His hands fisted tightly as his stomach clenched. Reality blurred. Another dark-haired woman, stretched out over her lover beneath the thin veil of a mosquito net. That time he’d turned on his heel and never looked back, the two-carat engagement ring clutched tightly in the palm of his hand.

  He forced out a breath. This time he was damned if he’d run.

  ***

  Elizabeth tried to roll off Cal without crushing any vital organs but knew she’d failed when he cried out in pain as her knee struck a glancing blow off his crotch.

  “Oh, God.” She tried to sit up and help him, but he was curled up into a ball of pain, his face as white as pure Irish linen.

  “I’m so sorry.” She tried to pry him into a sitting position, but the man had a grip of iron on his abused anatomy and it was like trying to move a statue.

  Christ, first she’d nearly flattened the poor bastard and then she’d kneed him in the balls. She sat back in the mud and knew it was going to take a few minutes before Cal would be able to get up. Though it galled her, she also knew she couldn’t stand without his help.

  Movement caught her eye and she swallowed her pride as Nat Sullivan approached. She’d been dreading seeing him all morning and he had to choose now to show up.

  Well crap, at least he would be able to help Cal up out of the dirt.

  She watched him walking towards her, long strides covering the muddy earth with ease. She was mortified that she’d thrown herself at him yesterday, and she owed him an apology.

  He looked pristine, not a speck of dirt on his well-worn hide, whereas she looked like she’d been painted gray from the head down, and felt like one big muscle cramp.

  She met his gaze, his blue eyes dark and intimidating. He looked pissed.

  “Nat...” she began.

  “How’s the ankle, Eliza?” he interrupted. The inflection he placed on her name wasn’t pretty, and there was nothing but cold derision in his gaze.

  “Fine, thank you.” She’d behaved badly yesterday, but she had her reasons. Sticking her chin out, she swallowed and looked him in the eye, trying to ignore the flush that rose up and heated her cheeks.

  She tried again, “Nat...”

  “Good.” He stepped closer and pierced her like a bug on a pin with his steely blue gaze. Leaning down he laid a work-callused finger on the top button of her jacket, resting it just below her throat. Her pulse fluttered and froze, nervous of him for the first time.

  “Don’t mess with the men on this ranch, Eliza.” His eyes drilled into her. “We don’t need some goddamned prick-tease stirring up trouble around here.”

  Elizabeth started to splutter, but Nat walked away, leaving Cal heaving on the ground next to her, and her stranded with a bad ankle and a soaking wet butt.

  “Well,” she shouted after Nat as he climbed the fence, “I guess that makes you the prick then, huh?”

  Cal sputtered a laugh, speculation rife in his eyes as he watched his boss stomp away.

  “What?” She glared at him.

  “Nothing,” Cal croaked.

  Elizabeth scrambled to her feet but only succeeded in slipping and thudding into Cal’s hipbone.

  “Awww,” he cried out.

  “Sorry.” Elizabeth wanted to cry. Again. When she’d woken up, her ankle was swollen to the size of a melon and she couldn’t even get her own boots on. Luckily, ‘her being so big and all’, Cal had said that he had a pair of boots that would fit her.

  He’d hoisted her onto the back of Tiger before heading out to check on the cattle. He might have been whipcord thin without a spare ounce of flesh on his body, but he sure as hell was strong.

  She’d spent the next two hours trying to rope a damned fence post while the ranch hands had disappeared off to the far-flung corners of the farm to check the stock. Nat had been nowhere in sight.

  And she hadn’t been able to get off the damned horse.

  Some professional she was. For the first hour and a half she hadn’t even noticed her predicament. She’d practiced in the small corral that had been cleared of snow. Wheeling backwards and forwards, she’d controlled Tiger with her knees and the lightest touch of the reins against the horse’s neck. She worked tirelessly, deep in concentration, round and round the small corral until she was dizzy with it. She’d ignored her sore ankle and applied herself to learning the art of riding western-style and to roping.

  ‘Rope is like a living thing,’ Cal had told her before he’d gone off and left her for two-goddamned-hours. ‘You have to think about it in its entirety, not just the bit in your hand. It’s like a flow of energy and you have to become one with the rope, let it become an extension of your arm.’

  The Zen art of roping.

  Well, she’d sucked at roping.

  By chewing the Tylenol she’d packed in her jacket pocket, she’d managed to endure her throbbing ankle and numb butt, and knew she’d hurt like a bitch tomorrow.

  Two hours after Cal had left her with ‘roping wisdom for beginners’, he’d returned full of anxiety, having finally remembered that there was no one else back at the ranch to help her. Sure she could have thrown herself off the horse’s back, but she was damned if she was going to wreck the other ankle too. At this rate she’d be leaving the ranch in a wheelchair, or a body bag.

  But she didn’t want to think about that.

  Cal had done his best not to laugh at her woebegone state. And, convicted killer or not, she found herself returning his grin, despite the fact that every muscle in her body felt like it had been beaten.

  Hell, I should know.

  She’d dismounted with all the grace of a shot pheasant, plummeting to earth on legs that had turned into limp noodles. Cal had tried to catch her, but she’d flattened him with momentum.

  Then Nat had showed up.

  She glanced at the cowboy who was now trying to stand, gingerly clutching his crotch.

  “I am not a prick-tease,” Elizabeth said.

  Cal didn’t disagree and went back to being mute as he offered her a spare hand up. Pulling her to her feet he surprised her with another grin.

  “He’s jealous,” he said, “me being such a fine catch an’ all.”

  Elizabeth considered that for a moment and discarded the notion. “Jealous, my ass. He’s a numbskull, bone-headed jackass.”

  So much for the apology she’d prepared. Nat could stuff it where the sun didn’t shine, all the way up to his tonsils.

  Pain streaked up her ankle as she tried to put more weight on it. Cal pulled her arm across his shoulder and placed the other around her waist. Cautiously they moved forward through the slush, like a pair of wounded warriors, covered from head to toe in mud.

  She’d made a big step forward today. Being forced to touch Cal, to get on and off the horse, had proved she could still function in a normal situation with a man who didn’t threaten her. She didn’t always freeze up and freak out.

  It felt good being mad. It sure beat the crap out of being miserable.

  She blew out a heavy sigh of frustration that Cal interpreted as pain and he tried to take more of her weight to help her back to her cabin. But pain wasn’t the problem for Elizabeth. Pain she could deal with.

  Lust was the problem.

  Lust was supposed to be a simple emotion for the unattached, but she both ached for and feared Nathan Sullivan’s touch in equal measures.r />
  Clutching Cal’s shoulder hard enough to bruise, she hobbled back to the cottage closely followed by Blue, who wagged his tail as they hopped up the three steps.

  “Okay, fella,” she said as Cal let the dog in first. The best plan of action was a hot bath and a long cold beer.

  Nat Sullivan could rot in hell.

  ***

  She spent the next few days helping out Ryan and Cal on the ranch. Today she’d been assigned to work the cattle chute. The weather had warmed up considerably and most of the snow had melted off the lower slopes, leaving the creeks full to bursting.

  The vacation had been exactly what they’d advertised: backbreaking hard work, no-frills and basic. It wasn’t a dude ranch, there was no hot-tub to soak in when you got saddle-sore, no trips to local tourist attractions, no refried beans for dinner. It was a plain and simple ‘working holiday’, with the emphasis on ‘work’. The contrast between ranch life and her urban existence in New York was marked by a gulf so wide they could have been on different planets. Her Fendi furs and Sergio Rossi high heels had been exchanged for Levi’s and work boots. Rather than sipping lattés, organizing exhibitions and tracking down fraudsters, she’d spent every minute of daylight looking after the stock or fixing up the ranch. Most evenings she fell asleep on the couch, too tired to move.

  She’d settled in. Relaxed.

  Nat avoided her altogether and headed up to the mountains to check out the snow in the summer pastures. But just because he wasn’t there didn’t mean she didn’t think about him. She’d mellowed during the week and didn’t know whether to be annoyed with him or herself. She’d kissed him and then freaked out, and then he’d jumped to his own conclusions about her cracked personality when he’d seen her lying on top of Cal. The fact that they were the wrong conclusions wasn’t really his fault; she was a mess and he was a million times better off without her. Maybe it was better this way, she decided, because nobody would get hurt.