Gravel crunched beneath her pumps as Casey left. the steps behind and nervously picked her way over ridges of hard mud and stone.
In the thin illumination of the moon, a fine, frosty glow outlined the cowboy’s broad shoulders and tapering back, while the stark, webby silhouettes of trees against the night sky framed him in blacks and grays. He’d given up on the lock now, and he stood with both hands braced against the top of the truck’s cab. Despite the way he’d handled himself inside, he looked vulnerable.
Suddenly “Jess” whirled from the truck, keys jangling. “Goddammit, Farrell, if you’ve got something to say, say it!”
Casey scrambled backward, smacking into a truck parked several feet from Jess’s. So much for vulnerable. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, her face catching fire. “I didn’t mean to intrude, but I saw the fight and thought you might need help.”
It was hard to read his expression in the darkness, but it seemed that as his anger quickly disappeared, it was replaced by wary recognition.
“Oh...damn,” he said softly. Then: “You have nothing to be sorry for. I heard your footsteps on the gravel and thought you were...someone I passed on my way out.”
Casey’s frantic heartbeat began to slow, but no words seemed to be forthcoming. He took a few steps toward her, tucking his keys into his jeans pocket.
“You came out here to see if I needed help?”
Casey nodded nervously. When he wasn’t yelling, he had a very nice voice—deep and soft, with a low timbre that blended perfectly with the wild landscape surrounding them. “Yes, I...I couldn’t help noticing you were a little slow getting up in there. You could have a concussion. Are you experiencing any nausea? Headache? Dizziness?”
“A headache. A little dizziness. But I’d guess that’s normal, after trying to shear off one of Dusty’s support posts. Are you a doctor?”
She was feeling more in control now, and she cleared her throat. “No, a nurse. But you should see a doctor, just to be on the safe side. Is there someone who could drive you to the hospital?”
“I’ll be okay.”
He had good cheekbones, a good mouth. “Alcohol and a concussion can be a very dangerous combination. I assume you were drinking a little tonight.”
His dark gaze rested on hers, something changing in his eyes. He sent her a faintly amused look. “You assume I was drinking? Don’t you mean, you know I was?”
Heat flooded her cheeks again, and Casey hoped he was referring only to their emotionally charged meeting in Dusty’s mirror. If he knew she’d been watching him all night... “Dusty’s is a bar,” she managed to say. “People drink in bars.”
His rugged face went still for a moment. Then he winced guiltily. “Look, I’ve had a little too much to drink, not nearly enough sleep, and I...I thought I saw—sensed—something that wasn’t there.” Touching his hat, he turned back to his truck. “Good night, miss. Thanks for your concern.”
And she still was concerned. Especially after his admission of too much booze and too little sleep. “Wait.” She touched his arm and saw him glance back in surprise. “Maybe you should find someone to drive you home. And if you won’t go to the hospital, at the very least you need to have someone wake you periodically during the night. Forgive me...but sometimes concussion patients don’t wake up.”
Something weighty moved through the tall man’s gaze as it shifted slowly to the hand resting on his forearm, then returned to her face. Beneath the brim of his Stetson, his dark gaze was seriously intent, transmitting a message of awareness that stilled Casey’s breathing and drove the moisture from her throat. She couldn’t move her hand away.
He was a man who worked outdoors, and as he slowly brought his free hand up to cover hers, Casey felt the warm, callused contact all the way up her arm.
“Maybe you should be the one to wake me,” he suggested softly. “If I do have a problem, it might be helpful to have a nurse nearby.” His voice went lower still, and the bottom dropped out of Casey’s stomach. “I didn’t imagine anything, did I? Come home with me.”
A door banged open behind them, and Casey yanked her hand away, her face flaming again as she realized that she’d been caught up in something totally—
She gave herself a mental shake. She didn’t know what to call it. But it was illogical, unacceptable and, unless she missed her guess, dangerous.
Heavy footsteps thudded on wood as someone descended the stairs, then moved over the gravel toward them. “I see you’re still standing, Dalton.”
Dalton?
Casey’s gaze ricocheted between Jess’s instantly cold expression and the husky officer ambling toward them. He was short and stocky, with thinning hair, and he wore a uniform beneath his open jacket. In the light from the lamp pole, a sheriffs badge gleamed from his breast pocket.
“And I see it breaks your heart, Farrell.”
“Not at all,” he said cordially, but the eyes behind his steel-rimmed glasses didn’t look friendly. “I wouldn’t want you anything but healthy, Jess. It’ll make the hangin’ that much more fun.” Then, with a nod to Casey, the lawman got into a nearby Jeep, fired the engine, and was gone.
Casey shifted uneasily as she stood beside the man who held so many answers for her, wondering if she dared ask them. If he was Jess Dalton, then he was Ross Dalton’s brother—and the man who, according to attorney Rupert Chesney, actually ran the Broken straw Ranch. She glanced up at him warily. His eyes were flint-hard, and beneath the dark stubble shading his jaw, an unspoken anger lingered. More chills peppered her arms, and Casey rubbed them briskly, wishing she’d brought her jacket from the car. This was supposed to be the “responsible” brother?
“So...that was the sheriff.”
“Yeah.”
“Is he always like that?”
“Like what?”
“Hostile.” She swallowed nervously. “What did he mean, having you healthy would make the hanging more fun? Have you done something illegal?”
Jess stared straight ahead, watching the red glow of Farrell’s taillights disappear down the road. “No,” he said distractedly. “He just needs to think that I did.”
Casey digested that for a moment. Obviously, Sheriff Farrell wasn’t your run-of-the-mill lawman. “He was inside when the fight broke out. Why didn’t he do anything to stop it?”
The Jeep faded into the night, and Jess turned to give her his full attention again. “Probably because he enjoyed seeing me get my butt kicked. That, and the fact that Dusty generally handles his own problems. Actually, our personal differences aside, Cy Farrell’s a good man.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Thankfully, I won’t be here long enough to find out for myself.”
He dug his keys from his pocket and jammed one into the truck’s door lock, his earlier interest in her gone. “Then I hope the rest of your visit here is more enjoyable than tonight’s.” He opened the door. But as he prepared to climb inside, he seemed to realize that she hadn’t moved. “Is there something else?”
“Let me drive you home.”
Interest returned, and he measured her slowly. “You want to come home with me?”
“That’s not what I said. I watched you walk out a few minutes ago, and whether it’s a concussion, the alcohol, or lack of sleep, you’re in no shape to drive. If you roll over an embankment on your way home, or hurt someone else, I’ll feel responsible. And believe me, I don’t need any more stress or guilt in my life.”
The motel room she’d reserved was guaranteed with her credit card. She could get settled later. Besides—and she wasn’t proud of herself for considering this—if he felt better when they got back to the ranch, maybe they could talk about the loan agreement in her purse, and establish an equitable time frame for repayment. All she really wanted was the sixty thousand dollars due her. She had no interest in spending any more time here than she had to.
Casey reached into her purse for her keys, stunned by her courage tonight, when she’d never so much as que
stioned any of Dane’s decisions. Maybe what her father had always said was true: If you pretended to be strong long enough and hard enough, you eventually became strong. For now, she was still pretending, but it was getting easier. Maybe she’d had to lose everything to find the strength it would take to rebuild her life.
“We can take my rental car...unless you’d prefer that a friend took you home, or you’ve changed your mind about the hospital.”
She felt his intense gaze on her for a long moment before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was heavy with mistrust. “Who are you?”
She was ready for the question. She would tell him soon enough, but full disclosure was not a good idea at this point. Right now, she believed he needed her help; if he knew who she was, he might not accept it. “My name is Casey, I have Extra Strength Tylenol in my purse, and I’m getting colder by the minute. Now, please... make a choice. The hospital, a friend, or me.”
“You,” he said quietly, his dark eyes sliding over her in a way that nearly made her reconsider. “Definitely, you.”
Chapter 2
Casey shifted her gaze from the long, narrow farm road for an instant to glance at Jess. For the past half hour, he’d been slouching in the seat of the compact car she’d rented at the airport, his long legs bent at an awkward angle under the dashboard, his arms folded across his chest. His hat was tipped down over his eyes, and while he’d been largely silent during the trip—except for giving directions she really didn’t need—she knew he wasn’t asleep. In fact, she’d sensed him studying her a few times during the ride, and it had made her uneasy.
Did he have a concussion? He’d swallowed the acetaminophen she offered when they got into the car, but he wasn’t exhibiting the symptoms a serious concussion presented: confusion, nausea, memory loss. Of course, he could be hiding his symptoms, like one of those rough-and-tumble movie cowboys who never complained about anything and never showed emotion.
An involuntary warmth crept into Casey’s limbs as a memory surfaced to dispute that thought—a memory of base desire churning through dark, dark eyes. She drew a soft breath. All right, he was capable of showing emotion. Just not the kind that left a man looking weak.
Up ahead, the bumpy road bent sharply, and as Casey eased into the curve, Jess spoke, obviously having recognized their location. “The house’ll be coming up on your left. You can pull up pretty close to the porch.”
Casey squirmed uncomfortably. She knew where the house was situated; she’d been there only a few hours ago. And remembering his anger inside the bar—and again in the parking lot, when he’d mistaken her for Sheriff Farrell—she couldn’t help wondering how he’d react when he found out. And he would find out. Not that she considered herself all that memorable, but it was a cinch his grandmother—or whoever the tiny woman was who’d answered the door—hadn’t seen many visitors in Chanel blouses and Gucci pumps today. Not out here, where fields of grass and barbed-wire fencing stretched along for miles between neighboring spreads.
Finally, the bouncing play of her headlights illuminated the two-story Victorian home. Casey followed the rutted dirt drive up to the gravel pad to the right of the big white wraparound porch. When she was here earlier, a red pickup had been parked in this spot. Now it was gone. She put the little compact in Park.
Jess’s eyes opened a crack, and he squinted up at her for a long moment before he spoke, in a deep, thoughtful voice. “Why, Miss Casey?”
It seemed like a perfectly harmless—albeit cryptic—question, but somehow it made her jittery. “Why, what?”
“Why did you push so hard to drive me home tonight?” His mouth tipped wryly. “It can’t be my scintillating personality, or my heart-stopping good looks. I never got around to shaving today, and I don’t look like Robert Red-ford. So why are you here with me?”
Casey’s brow lined. Maybe he was having memory lapses. “I told you why. Between the alcohol and the blow to your head, you were in no shape to drive.”
“I remember what you said. It just feels like there’s something more going on.”
Nervously Casey moistened her lips and pinned her gaze on the porch light glowing beside the front door. Was that what he’d been doing during the drive here? Trying to figure her out? She’d had an honest reason for seeing that he got home safely. But she couldn’t deny that her reason had gained weight when Sheriff Farrell called Jess by his last name back at the roadhouse. “Are you saying people don’t do favors for each other out here?”
“No, I’m saying it’s rare for strangers to get involved.”
Casey shifted her gaze from the porch to Jess. He was sitting up now, and in the faint glow of the dashboard lights, his features were shadowed, unreadable. Still, she had heard the suspicion in his voice. “So you want to know what motivates a perfect stranger to do what I did,” she said quietly. “All right, I’ll tell you. Someone I cared for was killed by a drunk driver. When I said I didn’t want to see you rolling your truck over an embankment or hurting someone else, I meant it.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. But I would’ve been fine”
“You didn’t look fine when you were trying to unlock your truck.”
He shrugged. “I was a little dazed from smacking into that post—I admit it. But my head cleared.”
“Really? Then why did you let me drive you home?”
Jess considered her for a long moment, then frowned, unsnapped the seat belt across his lap and opened the door. “Never mind, I was wrong. But now that you’re here, why don’t you come in for a minute? It’s late, and it’s a long drive back to town. I’ll fix you a cup of coffee before you hit the road again.”
Casey hesitated. She still wasn’t sure he was as healthy as he claimed. The car’s dome light had come on when the door opened, and he looked pale beneath his beard stubble, his hair and brows and lashes in stark contrast with the rest of his coloring. The hollows beneath his cheekbones looked almost blue, and an angry scrape had begun to puff along his jaw. Was he all right or not? Concussed or not? Not knowing worried her.
Perhaps she should go inside for a moment. That way, if the elderly woman she’d spoken with this evening hadn’t retired yet, Casey could warn her that Jess’s sleep needed to be monitored tonight. The little Casey knew about him made her almost certain he wouldn’t request help on his own.
Smiling tightly, Casey extinguished the headlights, cut the engine and grabbed her purse. “Thanks. Coffee sounds good.”
She saw him wince as he extricated himself from the car. But once he was out in the cool air, his gait and balance seemed normal as he took the porch steps to the house. Jess opened the multipaned storm door, then turned the knob on the heavy interior door and pushed it open. He flicked a wall switch inside.
Surprised that he hadn’t used a key, Casey followed him into the spacious foyer, passing a clothes tree full of jackets, and stepping from dark hardwood onto a worn but serviceable Oriental rug. Wallpaper in a small, delicate pattern stretched to the high ceiling, where an overhead light fixture hung from brass chains. Although the woman she’d imagined to be his grandmother was nowhere in sight, the fragrant smells of cinnamon and baked apples Casey had noticed earlier still perfumed the air. To her left, heavy pocket doors closed in...a parlor? An office? A den?
“You lock your truck, but you don’t lock your home?” she asked, looking around curiously.
“There was a gun in my truck. As for the house, from the time it was built, there was never a good enough reason to lock it up.”
Casey shivered. She hated guns. “I would think the possibility of a robbery would be a good enough reason.”
Jess shed his Stet son, dropping it on a low hutch, then finger-combed his hair. “We’re too far from town to worry about hoodlums. They’d spend more on gasoline to get out here than they’d get looting the place.”
He kept walking; she kept following. The antique table and Tiffany lamp beside the oak staircase surprised her; the wide antlers over an old beveled
mirror didn’t. Jess entered the kitchen and hit another wall switch, illuminating an updated knotty-pine kitchen, complete with a butcher-block work island in the center of the floor. Then he flicked a button on a coffee maker that had apparently been readied for the breakfast hour, wet several paper towels, and carried them to the table.
Exhaling audibly, he fell into a chair and draped the paper towels over his eyes. He did have a headache. And it had obviously reached the point where he was tired of hiding it.
“All this talk about locking doors makes me think you don’t have much faith in your fellow man, Miss Casey. Where are you from?”
Casey laid her purse on the clear pine table and took a seat opposite him, wondering what on earth she was doing here. The lure of coffee? Hardly. And she had no intention of telling a man in that much discomfort to write her a check for sixty thousand dollars so that she could be on her way. That left one more reason—a reason she didn’t want to consider, because it was completely ridiculous to be thinking such things. Casey felt her face grow warm as she studied the broad, callused hand holding the paper towels against that intriguing face. “Chicago,” she said quietly. “I’m from Chicago.”
He grunted, and the sound said he understood her interest in locks. “So what do you do in Chicago?” Before she could remind him, he remembered on his own. “That’s right, you’re a nurse.”
“Actually, right now I’m unemployed. I used to be a nurse-clinician in the pediatrics department.”
“You like kids, then.”
“Love them.” She fingered the wide lace doily under the fruit bowl in the center of the table. “Unfortunately, Dane and I were never able to—” She stopped, suddenly embarrassed to be sharing such intimate information with a stranger. “Anyway, I keep hoping—”
Slowly, Jess straightened in his chair and slid the wet towels from his eyes. Staring coldly, he dropped them on the table.
The air in Casey’s lungs froze. The name. He’d recognized Dane’s name. Swallowing, praying she was wrong, she finished her sentence. “I keep hoping that another nursing position opens up by the time I get back. I was actually promised a job before I left, but it fell through. Everybody’s d-downsizing.”
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