by Jeannie Watt
The tops didn’t cling to her upper body, the jeans didn’t hug her legs. Everything was loose and comfortable—and made her feel invisible—or as invisible as a person could be with a ruined face.
When Tess came back into the kitchen, the oversize stovetop espresso maker began to gurgle and the dogs instantly ran to the back door to wait while Tess poured coffee into a tall travel mug and added a healthy dollop of cream. She’d fallen into a routine over the past week. Coffee—regardless of what time of day she woke up—a quick breakfast of cereal and milk followed by a protein shake, then several hours in the barn sanding the old oak furniture she’d found there. Not that she knew anything about refinishing furniture, but she had instructions she’d printed off the internet and time on her hands.
Too much time. But dwelling on it made her feel even more like the prisoner she essentially was, which in turn made her determined to fill the hours so she wouldn’t feel like a prisoner. Eddie had destroyed her looks and her livelihood, all because she wouldn’t give him something she didn’t have, something that probably no longer even existed. She wasn’t going to let him destroy what was left of her life. She would hang on to what she had and make what she could of it. Then maybe, once the bastard was caught, she could slip back into the mainstream. Rejoin the land of the living.
But first he had to be caught.
* * *
ZACH RETURNED TO the house about half an hour after the girls got home from school. He’d pulled the pump and managed to fix it with the extra parts he had in his shop and then hauled the clumsy cylinder back to the well and lowered it down the hole. It had obligingly sucked up water and spit it back out through the wheel lines in the field.
Sweet victory.
When he walked into the house, the television was on and the heat was off. The three girls were in the living room wrapped in the afghans Karen had made for each of them during her illness. Emma and Lizzie were watching TV, Darcy was doing her homework at the big oak desk he’d inherited from his grandpa, the dark blue crocheted blanket draped over her shoulders. It’d been an unseasonably cold spring day and the house felt like a tomb.
“Darcy, you need to remember to turn on the heat.” Zach pulled off his gloves and dropped them in the square willow basket next to the door that Lizzie called the mitten box. “I can almost see my breath.”
Darcy looked at him from over the top of her glasses. “The furnace is dead and you won’t let me build a fire.”
Damn. He crossed the room to check the thermostat. Dead as a doornail. “You can build all the fires you want while I’m here,” Zach said as he headed for the basement door.
“That doesn’t do us much good when you’re not here,” Darcy said.
“I guess that’s what afghans are for.” Zach snapped on the hanging light before going down the wooden steps to battle the furnace. One of his wife’s cardinal rules had been no fires, no sharp things without an adult in the house. Darcy had been nine when Karen died—old enough to use sharp things, but she hadn’t. As far as he knew she still abided by the rule three years later.
He spent as much time working on the furnace as he did on the tractors and fully expected another major fight, but for once it turned out to be an easy fix. He replaced the fuse then hit the reset button and the beast roared to life. That was two relatively easy fixes in one day. But they didn’t balance out losing his grazing.
“Way to go, Daddy,” Lizzie said as he came up the stairs. She was still wearing Darcy’s coat, which went past her knees. Zach smiled at his youngest daughter, the one with Karen’s fair coloring and strawberry-blond hair. “Thanks, kiddo.” He knelt in front of her, placed a big hand on each of her small shoulders and gave her an exaggerated once-over. “Where’s your coat, Lizzie?”
The six-year-old shifted her mouth sideways. Not a good sign.
“I put it somewhere. I guess.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Any idea where?”
She shook her head. Zach glanced at Darcy, who watched the action from his desk. She instantly went back to her homework. Zach sensed conspiracy.
“I want you to find it.”
“What if I can’t?” Lizzie asked as she twisted a button on Darcy’s coat.
Excellent question. “We’ll worry about that later. Right now I want you to find your coat.”
Lizzie exhaled in a long-suffering way and walked out of the room, feet dragging.
“Where’s Lizzie’s coat?” he asked Darcy.
She met his eyes in her direct way. “Honestly, Dad, I have no idea where it is.”
“She hid it,” Emma said from behind him. “I don’t know where.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t like it. She wanted a pink coat. Tia—” aka Beth Ann “—got her the red one because it was a better price.” Emma gave a philosophical shrug and then dismissively flipped one of her light brown braids over her shoulder. “You know how she hates red.”
Actually he didn’t, which kind of bothered him. It was common knowledge that Lizzie hated red?
Zach rubbed the back of his neck. “Thanks.”
“What’re you going to do?” Emma asked.
Consult with Beth Ann, no doubt. A new coat simply wasn’t in the cards until he shipped another lot of cattle and he was trying to hold off on that until the prices jumped. He was damned tired of giving away his beef for break-even prices. Last time he sold prematurely, he’d lost money, but he’d needed the cash and had taken the financial beating.
And he’d probably have to do it again before he had all the doctors and labs and hospitals—both local and the one in Reno—paid off.
Lizzie was going to wear her coat once they found it.
As Zach walked down the hall to the kitchen where dinner simmered in a slow cooker he wondered if a red coat could be dyed a less hated color. Purple maybe?
He’d just taken the top off the Crock-Pot when the kitchen door opened and his sister-in-law came in carrying a laptop case. “Hey, Beth Ann.”
“Zach.” She set the computer on the counter then pushed the dark hair back from the side of her face. She looked a lot like her sister, except Karen had been fair while Beth Ann was a deep brunette.
“What’s that for?”
“Darcy wants to borrow it.”
“You don’t need it for studying?” Beth Ann was taking online courses, trying to complete an education degree—or most of it anyway. By the time she got to the point when she would have to take regular classes, Darcy would be traveling to the high school in town, forty miles away, where the community college was located. The two of them could drive together, which would solve another problem—buying a car for Darcy.
“I can use the computer at school tonight and Darcy can take this up to her room and work in peace.” Beth Ann came to stand beside him as he added salt to the stew. “Any luck with the pastures?”
“Struck out.” He put the salt down and pulled the pepper out of the spice drawer, hoping Emma didn’t walk in. She ate more pepper than she realized.
“Really?” Beth Ann asked. “What’s she going to use them for?”
“We never got that far in the conversation.”
Beth Ann cocked her head and Zach added, “The new neighbor wasn’t all that friendly. Hung up on me.”
“Really?” She looked shocked.
“Yep.” The conversation had been over for all intents and purposes, but around here, people said goodbye before they hun
g up the phone.
Beth Ann took the pepper shaker from Zach when he was finished and dropped it back in the drawer while he stirred the stew. “Susan said one side of her face was bandaged when she came in to rent the post office box.”
“I heard.” Pretty much everyone had heard. Susan wasn’t exactly shy about sharing what she knew.
Beth Ann shrugged. “Maybe she needs some time to settle in. Get used to us here.”
“Maybe.” Zach wasn’t holding his breath. He opened the cupboard and pulled out five bowls.
“Nothing for me,” Beth Ann said. “I just came to drop off the laptop and see if you needed anything from town tomorrow.”
No, because he’d have to pay for it and he was saving his money for important stuff like hospital bills and equipment repairs. “I can’t think of anything.” He put the extra bowl back in the cupboard. “Did you know that Lizzie hates red?”
Beth Ann snorted. “I got that feeling when she pouted all the way home after I bought her a red coat.”
“She, uh, lost the red coat.”
“I think Miss Lizzie and I will have a talk,” Beth Ann said flatly.
“I already had one.”
“I’ll add my voice to yours.”
He shook his head. “I want to give Lizzie a shot at doing the right thing on her own.”
“Fine.” Beth Ann headed down the hall to the living room. “I’ll see how the homework is going before I head on back to school.”
Zach counted spoons out of the utensil drawer. His sister-in-law had been a godsend during Karen’s illness and for the three years since she’d died. And despite the fact that Beth Ann was practically the antithesis of her sister in temperament, she was devoted to raising her nieces the way Karen would have wanted them raised—to the point that there were times when Zach wondered if he was taking advantage, keeping her from having a life of her own. Whenever he broached the subject, though, Beth Ann brushed him off and Zach let the matter drop.
It was a comfortable arrangement—for him anyway—and it worked.
Beth Ann came back into the kitchen with Emma behind her explaining why she had yet to start her social studies report. The beauty of Beth Ann working at the school was that she knew everything that went on in her nieces’ academic lives—much to their annoyance.
“Are you sure you don’t want some stew?” Zach asked as he set the bowls on the table. On the nights they used the slow cooker, it was every man for himself and then the girls cleaned up while he went into his office and ruined his night calculating finances.
Again Beth Ann shook her head.
“You need to eat, Tia,” Emma said, echoing the words Beth Ann so often said when vegetables played a starring role in dinner.
“I’ll eat. I do have food at my place. By the way, you’ll need to find your own way home from school tomorrow.” Beth Ann looked at Zach. “I have language proficiency training in town for the next three afternoons. I leave as soon as school lets out.”
“We can walk home,” Emma said.
“Yes, but can Lizzie?” Beth Ann asked dryly. Lizzie hated walking anywhere.
“We can take our bikes,” Emma said brightly.
“Where?” Darcy asked as she came into the room.
“Tia can’t bring us home tomorrow because she has a meeting in town,” Emma said.
“I can take you to school and then you can walk home or your dad can pick you up,” Beth Ann said.
“We’ll ride our bikes,” Darcy said with an air of finality. She took her position as the oldest seriously and expected to have the last word on all matters. She was a bit like Beth Ann in that regard.
“Lizzie can’t ride a bike in your old coat,” Zach pointed out. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the outcome of a Lizzie/giant coat/bicycle spoke/gravel combination.
Emma and Darcy exchanged looks. “She’ll find her coat,” Darcy said. Emma nodded.
The two girls left the kitchen and Beth Ann smiled slightly. “Problem solved.”
“I just hope no one cries.”
“Amen to that.” Beth Ann smiled a little then headed for the door. Her hand was on the doorknob when she stopped and said, “You okay?”
Zach shrugged, hating that she could read him—but then she’d seen him in his most desperate and unguarded moments. “I’m concerned about losing the pastures.” Understatement of the year.
“What are you going to do about it?”
Zach opened the fridge and pulled out half a gallon of milk, then met Beth Ann’s eyes over the door. “I guess that I’m going to give it another shot.”
Only this time he was going in person.
CHAPTER TWO
TESS BALANCED THE coffee travel mug on top of the box of sandpaper and paint stripper that had arrived via UPS the day before, holding the top of the cup with her chin as she maneuvered the back door open on her way to the barn.
She’d yet to actually see the UPS man, who’d come to the ranch four times since she’d moved in. The first time he’d come, she’d been in the shower and had suffered a near heart attack when Blossom and Mac sounded the alarm from the living room. By the time she’d gotten out of the shower and jammed her soaking wet body into her robe and retrieved her small gun, the dogs had stilled. When she’d gotten into the living room, she saw the distinctive brown van pulling out of the driveway and a box of kitchen supplies sitting on her front porch, no signature required.
After that, Tess simply ignored the man’s knock once she ascertained it was really him. The fewer people who saw her, the better...which was why the last thing she wanted to see as she rounded the corner of the house was a plume of dust coming from a pickup truck heading down her driveway.
What now?
She wasn’t waiting around to find out—not out in the open. The pickup probably belonged to one of her neighbors and it no doubt looked crazy, but she turned and headed straight back around the house, the dogs on her heels. Once she was safely inside, she locked the back door and leaned against it. The front door was already locked.
She let out a shaky breath and debated. If whoever it was knocked, she could ignore it—even though she knew he’d seen her. There was no law saying she had to answer her door, but in a community like this, where the postmistress hugged the patrons, all that would do was cause talk among the neighbors.
If the guy driving the truck was a neighbor.
There’s no way Eddie’s found you.
The phrase was a mantra she used to soothe herself during the long hours of the night, but at the moment she was fairly certain it was true. She’d just had yet another clipped conversation with the Los Angeles detective, Tom Hiller, who was handling her assault case. She called him, once a week, for any possible updates on the case. She had a strong feeling she was bugging the hell out of him, but this was her life she was concerned about and it wouldn’t kill him to take a few minutes out of his week to talk to her.
So far nothing had changed. Eddie was an exemplary parolee with a job at a car wash. He was keeping his nose clean, doing what he was supposed to do.
Tess was more concerned about him doing what he wasn’t supposed to do.
The engine died and a minute later Tess heard footsteps on the front porch, which made her stomach clench until she thought she might throw up.
Deal with this.
Once upon a time she’d been fearless. Less than two months ago she would have described herself as savvy and streetw
ise. She’d had to be to survive her rugged teen years with her alleged family and their drugged-out friends. The modeling world also had its own kind of cutthroat culture. Yeah, she definitely would have called herself tough.
Looking back, though, she could see she’d been confident to the point of bravado. Confident enough to tell Eddie to take a flying leap when he’d first approached her. Confident in her abilities to stay safe right up until the guy had appeared out of nowhere as she approached her apartment building, knocked her down and slashed her face with what the doctors said was probably a piece of metal shrapnel, telling her in a low growl that Eddie was going to keep taking pieces off her until he got the money he knew she had. The money he’d left with her drugged-out mother before going to prison. Money she knew nothing about.
Safety had been an illusion—even to someone who thought of herself as streetwise—and she realized too late that Eddie would never believe she didn’t have his dirty money stashed away somewhere. He’d keep looking until he found her.
The old-fashioned doorbell rang and Tess moistened her dry lips as both dogs growled, reminding herself that she was still tough. A survivor. Plus she had two big dogs and a gun.
She sucked in a shaky breath, then pushed off from the back door and headed for the living room. She could see her visitor—from the chest up, anyway—through the slit in the curtains that covered the window in the door. He was a guy of average height and weight—as her attacker had been. She couldn’t tell what color his hair was under the beat-up cowboy hat, but guessed it was dark. He shifted his weight as he waited for her to open the door.
Tess unlocked the dead bolt and pulled the door open a crack, feeling somewhat reassured by the dogs crowding up behind her, trying to assess whether or not this guy was a threat. She kept her face tilted so he could only see the right side, the good side, but the corner of her glasses banged against the door and she had to move back slightly.