Getting out of the car, he scanned the area as thoroughly as he had at the ranch house. He noted the stone camp house with what looked like a makeshift tack shed to one side…pipe corral backing it up…pasture beyond with horses peacefully grazing. Nothing amiss. “C’mon, Clay.”
Siobhan was already heading for the building. He pulled the overnight bag he’d packed from the truck and caught up to her at the front stoop, where a pile of cut wood was stacked to one side of the door.
“Wait. Let me go first.”
“Be my guest. Light switch is to your left.”
The camp house proved to be a large cabin with a single room that provided an all-purpose living area. A couple of scarred leather chairs like the ones at the big house faced a fireplace carved into the stone wall. Opposite, a counter with a sink, both a microwave and small coffee pot on top, and a half refrigerator below served as the kitchen and eating area, and a full-size bed along the far wall made up the bedroom. The place was empty of intruders. A single door on the opposite wall stood open. He crossed to what was a combination closet and bathroom with stone walls and floor. Also empty.
When he turned back to the room to signal Siobhan to enter, he saw she already had.
“You didn’t wait for my all-clear.”
“This is my place, Clay. I don’t have to wait for anyone’s permission. No one manages me. I can do what I want, when I want.”
The same Siobhan, he thought. No one had ever been able to tell her what to do. Stubborn as she was, Siobhan would be opposite just so a person didn’t get the idea that maybe she would follow orders.
Refusing to let her have the upper hand, he said, “I was thinking of you is all.” He moved closer. “Your safety. This place is probably not the best choice for me.”
“Why not? I thought you would like it better than the bunkhouse.”
“It’s just fine, but it puts some distance between you and me.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” she said, sounding a tad apprehensive now. “I don’t want you close enough to get any ideas.”
“Ideas?” Unable to resist the challenge, he narrowed his gaze on her and stepped closer. “Like what?”
Siobhan gaped at him for a moment. And for a moment, he felt it…the internal probing. She was trying to link with his thoughts as she had earlier.
Again he wouldn’t let her.
He’d learned enough from his grandfather as to how to hide his thoughts, which would keep her from making the connection. That connection that had always been between them was the reason she’d pushed him away once before.
“I don’t want you to get any ideas about the past.” She ripped herself away from him with what seemed like a great deal of effort. “We can’t go back.”
“No,” he agreed. “We can’t.”
What he wanted, he suddenly realized, was to go forward. He didn’t want to revisit a time that had torn him in two. He wanted to make a new playing field, give Siobhan new challenges, ones he would never even have thought of back then. Not now, though. Later. There were other things that needed fixing first. Besides, he’d learned a lot about patience in the past year.
And stealth.
“If that’s everything, I’ll be going.”
“Shouldn’t we trade numbers?” He pulled his cell phone out of his T-shirt pocket and flipped it open. “What’s yours?”
“I don’t have one.” She said it almost defiantly.
“You have something against new technology?”
“I had a cell. And cable. And the internet. Never had enough time for any of those things, but I had to pay the bills anyway. So I got rid of them.”
Which told Clay how tight her money was, having to get rid of things people already thought of as necessities.
She said, “I can give you the number for the house phone.”
“Go,” Clay said, then tapped in the number as she gave it to him. Slipping the cell back into his T-shirt pocket, he said, “I’ll see you at daybreak.”
She started. “Six-thirty? Make it eight.”
“We need to be moving cows by eight,” he argued. “And I need to eat. I doubt the refrigerator here is stocked.”
“Seven-thirty, then.”
“Seven,” he countered, waiting for her reaction. When all he got was a look from her, he grinned. “It’s a date, then.”
“Yeah, breakfast—you, me and the men.” With that, she spun on her boot and left.
Clay sauntered to the window and watched her climb into her SUV and pull away. He waited only until she was out of view before leaving the cabin and opening the shed door. She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t be managed. She might put him out here, where she thought she was safe.
That didn’t mean he had to stay put, not after someone already attacked her once tonight.
Especially not after he’d seen the gasoline can and rags stuffed outside the barn near the corral. He hadn’t wanted to scare Siobhan, so he hadn’t said anything about it. But he didn’t believe in coincidences. The only question was…
Had her attacker intended to burn the barn with or without her in it?
For a moment, Clay felt as helpless to prevent a tragedy-in-progress as he had been when he was eighteen…
GUT CHURNING, FINDING it hard to just breathe, Clay slammed out of the crumbling adobe structure he shared with his mother a short ride out of town. Climbing on his motorcycle, he cranked the engine and shot off down County Road. Mama had passed out again as she did more and more often as she drank to make their lives seem better somehow.
Not that it ever did. Poor was poor no matter how hard they worked. His mother cleaned houses all day and he cleaned barns after school and on Saturdays.
Who knew what his father did?
Who knew who his father was?
Clay assumed his mother knew the man, but she’d always refused to talk about it.
Somehow they always squeaked by financially, but Mama wanted more for him—college, for one—and the fact that she couldn’t provide that step up for her only son was killing her. He’d assured her that it was all right. That he would be fine with a high school degree. That he would be happy being a hand on a local ranch.
He lied, of course, to make Mama happy…only nothing ever did. Clay couldn’t stop her from drinking, so he ran from her to put his fear that she was killing herself out of his mind.
Speeding along the highway, he felt his spirits lift as he reached the area where he was to meet Siobhan. This was their special place, the place they turned to when they wanted to be alone. Slowing, he slipped the motorcycle onto the mesa and kept moving across the rolling area until he got back to where oak brush attracted deer and elk.
Standing in a small stone shelter that had an incredible view of the canyons before them, Siobhan was already waiting. With her fiery hair whipping around her shoulders and a smile that could light a room, she looked so damn beautiful that he felt his chest squeeze tight.
Clay’s heart thundered as he slid to a stop and launched himself off the bike and into her arms.
Siobhan laughed softly. “Such enthusiasm…and still you’re late.”
“It’s Mama again.” He shook his head.
She reached up and touched his face gently and inside his head he heard her say, It’s going to be all right, Clay.
I know it is. When I’m with you, everything is all right.
No actual words passed aloud between them. They didn’t have to speak. They could read each other, know what the other was thinking. He held her close, pressed to his aching heart, and once more savored the connection that he’d never experienced with anyone but her.
I love you, Clay. I always will…
Slowly, melting into her, he calmed inside. Siobhan was the only person who stood between him and the outside world. Him and trouble. Before her, he’d always been wild and reckless. But since that first day when she’d offered him her hand, something had drawn them together…something bigger than both of them.
Rather than question it, he’d simply gone along for the ride. He’d never been sorry.
Loving Siobhan was scary sometimes, but mostly she was the salve to his often-bleeding soul.
She was his sanctuary…and his salvation…she was his forever.
He couldn’t ever lose her or he would be well and truly lost…
HIS GUT CLENCHED AS CLAY forced himself back to the reality of the situation. He had lost her and he’d survived thanks to Grandfather.
Clay grabbed a bridle and stepped down toward the corral, which was empty. Heading to the back pasture, he whistled softly, hypnotically. By the time he reached the fence, an inquisitive Appaloosa awaited him, and several other horses were picking their way across the pasture.
“Hey, son,” Clay murmured to the gelding as he stepped through the fence rails. “You ready to ride?”
Locking gazes with the liquid dark eyes inspecting him, Clay projected calm. He stroked the Appaloosa’s nose then ran his hand along his thick neck and back smoothly to make sure the horse accepted him. Flesh quivered at his touch, but the horse didn’t move away.
“Good boy.” He would do.
Clay stroked the horse’s nose then raised the bridle, gently slipped the bit into his mouth and pulled the crown of the bridle into place up over his ears. Reins and mane bunched in one hand, he swung himself easily onto the horse’s bare back and took off all in one motion.
Riding at night gave Clay a feel of the place that he wouldn’t get by day. The dark spaces—the ones that could hide danger like a rock outcropping or a sudden dip away from the road—reached out to him. Thanks to Grandfather, he’d learned to fine-tune his senses, to hear what the average ear missed. The ability was different than what he and Siobhan had once shared, but it was equally powerful.
Tonight was quiet but for the horse beneath him as he rode hard to catch up to Siobhan.
Not that she would ever know it.
As they made a rise overlooking the main house, Clay slowed. This was a good lookout point. Far enough that she would never know he was there, but close enough that he would be within shouting distance.
Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
Guiding the horse into a bank of trees that would further protect them from observers, he hopped off and tossed the reins over a low branch.
Then he hunkered down, back against the trunk, where he would allow himself only a light sleep so that he could guard Siobhan until daybreak.
Chapter Five
Breakfast went smoothly with Esai and Ben keeping Clay involved as they ate large quantities of eggs and sausage and pancakes they got from the buffet she’d set out on a counter.
The kitchen might look rustic with pine cabinets and counters and plank floors, but she had every modern kitchen appliance a woman could want. Sitting around the kitchen table, her men detailed some of the incidents that had happened on the ranch in the past months. As she ate in near silence, Siobhan felt protected in their company.
“The worst thing,” old Esai was saying, his thin, sun-leathered face drawn into a frown that increased the wrinkles, “was when we lost a cow and her calf nearly went crazy.”
“You lost a cow how?” Clay asked.
The men exchanged significant looks, then young Ben said, “She got away from the herd.” He swallowed hard and his soft brown eyes got all watery. “She was torn up, still alive but partly eaten when we found her. Had to put her down. Never saw nothin’ like that before. Seems coyotes got her.”
“Seems?” Clay echoed.
“We ain’t convinced is all,” Esai grumbled.
Siobhan hadn’t been convinced, either, but she’d had neither the time nor the money to prove otherwise. Someone could have set dogs on the cow and watched her being tortured for fun. She didn’t want to think about what despicable human being would do that.
Despite the recounting of the ranch’s woes, Esai and Ben made a good buffer between her and Clay. Maybe having him around wasn’t going to be so difficult, after all.
Then Jacy showed up, waltzing through the back door dressed in tight jeans and a low-cut, short-sleeved T-shirt that showed off the muscular arms she was so proud of. Her blond hair was swept up in a ponytail, her face free of the makeup she’d worn the night before. Normally she ate breakfast in her own cottage, but apparently she was making an exception.
“Morning, Jacy,” Siobhan said.
“I saw the truck sitting outside.” Going for a plate at the buffet, Jacy gave Clay a hard look. “Don’t I know you?”
“Could be.”
“This is Clay Salazar,” Siobhan said, thinking her sister-in-law must have graduated high school several years before Clay even moved to town with his mother. Undoubtedly Jacy had seen him around, though.
“Clay Salazar?” Jacy looked to Siobhan, her expression accusing. “The Clay Salazar?”
Siobhan flinched inside. Jeff must have told his sister about the man she’d once loved.
“Clay agreed to take over as cowboss for a time. With Tonio gone—”
“So you went looking for your old lover?” Jacy troweled eggs to her plate, seeming not to notice that a quantity missed. “Or did you know where he was all along?”
“Actually, I heard the ranch was in trouble,” Clay said. “And that someone was helping it along. I was concerned, so I came to warn Siobhan. I offered to help her with the spread short-term.”
“How convenient.” Jacy tossed her plate onto the table then sat down and glared at Clay.
“Convenient that I had some time off,” he agreed.
He certainly sounded calm, Siobhan thought.
“I wonder what my dead brother would say if he knew you were here, poaching his territory.”
Clay was a whole lot calmer than Siobhan was suddenly feeling. “Jacy! You’re out of line!”
“Am I?”
“You are,” Clay agreed.
Though he didn’t lose his cool, Siobhan noted how his gaze hardened on Jacy.
“So are you trying to pretend you didn’t come back for Siobhan?”
Now all eyes were on her, Siobhan realized. She stood and took her plate. “Jacy, that’s enough. Be grateful Clay is willing to help us in our time of need.”
“Help you. The ranch belongs to you.”
Unable to argue with that, Siobhan took her dishes and flatware to the kitchen sink. Esai and Ben quickly followed. They were clearly uncomfortable, as well. They scraped their plates and set them on the counter.
“We’ll be getting to the horses,” Esai said.
“How many should we tack up?” Ben asked in a low voice.
Siobhan glanced over to her sister-in-law. Jacy might be in a mood over Clay’s appearance, but she never shirked her work on the ranch, and chances were she wouldn’t now.
“Five. Saddle Chief for Clay. He’s in the corral with Warrior.”
“Will do,” Ben mumbled, picking up his hat from the peg by the door and following the old man out the back way.
Siobhan stacked the dishwasher then started clearing the leftovers from the counter.
Jacy sat dead silent now, shoveling food in her mouth and glaring at Clay.
Clay in turn sat back in his chair and nursed his mug of coffee. Siobhan couldn’t see his eyes, but she expected they were still hard on her sister-in-law.
They shouldn’t be—he should give Jacy a break. She and Jeff had been as close as Siobhan had been with her twin brother, Daire. Jeff’s death had nearly killed Jacy—just as Daire’s would kill her if something happened to him. But Jeff’s death had changed Jacy, made her more reclusive and moody. And obviously more accusatory.
More reason for Siobhan to feel guilty. Though she hadn’t been in love with Jeff, she had cared for him, was filled with sorrow for his death, but her grief didn’t compare to Jacy’s. With her mother retired in Arizona, Jacy had lost her immediate connection to family. Siobhan had thought she might want to visit with her mother in Tucson after the funeral, but saying the
ranch was the only thing she knew, Jacy had been determined to stay—she’d said work on the ranch was the only thing she had.
Truthfully, Siobhan had been relieved. Jacy did know the ranch—and far better than she. Jeff should have left the spread to his sister, not to her, but Jeff had his problems with his sister—problems he wouldn’t talk about. Though he’d wanted her gone from the ranch, he’d never asked her to leave. Siobhan knew he’d hoped that someday Jacy would meet a man who would take her away to an easier life.
Maybe a man like Raul Galvan?
Thinking to ease the tension, she called out, “So how was your date last night, Jacy? Did it live up to that red dress you bought?”
“Raul is an interesting man. He’ll do.”
What an odd thing to say. He’ll do? Do for what? Realizing her sister-in-law probably meant for sex, Siobhan flushed.
And looked to Clay.
Her pulse shot up and her heart began to slowly thump. Just the thought of sex brought her thoughts to him, made her wonder what it would be like. She’d never slept with Clay—that would have brought the curse down on his head for sure—but not because she hadn’t wanted to.
“Ready to get started?” Clay asked, hauling the last of the dishes—his and Jacy’s—to the sink.
“Any time you are.”
Siobhan flushed again and quickly went to the door where she fetched her brimmed hat from its peg then rushed out and over to the barn. Esai and Ben were nearly finished saddling the horses.
Ten minutes later, they were on their way to move cows. Esai took the lead and Siobhan followed closely. As she rode, she kept her gaze roaming, searching for anything out of place. A glance back assured her that Clay was doing the same, keeping an eye out, watching for danger even as he learned the land.
Beneath her, Warrior was agitated. He, too, kept looking back at Clay. Not surprising since Clay had such a strong connection with the horse, a connection that kept making itself known to Siobhan.
She’d been aware that Clay had gentled the horse when she’d bought him. She’d gone to the Department of Corrections auction knowing Clay was a staff trainer—courtesy of town gossip. With her connection to horses, when she’d checked out Warrior, Siobhan had sensed the link to Clay. And when she’d bought Warrior and brought him home, Jeff had sensed it, too.
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