Her Sanctuary

by Toni Anderson

  He tipped his hat and eyed her thoughtfully, watched her hand slide down the smooth denim of her jeans and into her pocket. She brought out a shiny silver dollar coin, held it out toward him.

  “Your dollar, Mr. Sullivan.”

  Was that her lucky coin?

  Freckles stood out like constellations against pale skin, her green eyes flecked with tiny pieces of glittering gold. It intrigued him that someone from the city could shoot the balls off a rat at two hundred paces. ‘Course, there were plenty of rats in the city.

  Reaching out, he curled her fingers back around the coin. He wouldn’t take anyone’s luck, even though he could use some.

  Ryan would have swapped the coin for a kiss...

  “Keep it, and call me Nat.” Her hand was cool within his grasp and he tried not to think about kissing her.

  At six foot three, it made a nice change not to have to stoop down to talk to a woman. Nina had been tall too, and cocky, and beautiful. Unconsciously his grip tightened.

  Jerking her hand away, she stuffed the coin back in her pocket. “Eliza, call me Eliza. I hate being called Mizz or ma’am.” She looked startled by her declaration, a flush rising along her cheekbones and her green eyes going wide.

  “Eliza.” Nat thumbed the safety on the rifle, slung it over his shoulder and watched as her eyes widened before she avoided his gaze—again. She was as jittery as hell. He grinned, never having encountered a woman like her before, deadly and jittery—a perfect combination if you wanted to get your head blown off.

  She raised her gaze from a spot in the snow and their eyes clashed and held. He stared and watched the shutters come down. A mystery, an unknown. A beautiful woman, full of secrets and contradictions—just passing through. His brother’s prayers answered.

  Nat stared at her lips and wanted to kiss her. He’d wanted to kiss her from the moment he’d first seen her standing in the pale starlight. Hell, had this been his fantasy, they’d already be lying back making a four-legged snow angel. But this wasn’t his fantasy and the frozen look of fear in Eliza’s eyes held him still. Fear didn’t belong in a woman’s gaze.

  It shook him.

  A snowflake drifted past her cheek, then another. Big fat flakes that floated down lightly, catching eddies and twirling around like ballerinas. One landed on her cheek. He brushed it away with his thumb without thinking. She flinched, breaking the spell. Looking up at the sky, she backed away from his touch. He glanced up at the burgeoning heavens and swore softly. This winter was never going to end.

  “Better get back,” he said, as if nothing unusual had passed between them.

  ****

  A snowflake landed on her bottom lip, a sharp pinprick of cold that jolted her senses.

  A bit like touching the cowboy.

  She went and grabbed her gear, shriveled up pieces of balloons and the empty casings. She’d been terrified that Nat Sullivan was going to kiss her—terrified of how she’d react.

  When she glanced over her shoulder, he’d disappeared. She ran a shaky hand through her hair, trying to keep it out of her eyes as the wind picked up. She stuffed everything into her rucksack, placed the rifle back into its case and pulled it across her back, grabbed her snowshoes. Turning, she found Nat waiting for her on the back of the gray stallion.

  Looking like a Nordic God.

  Hesitant, she swallowed, uncertain, as he proffered a hand to her.

  Any normal person would jump at the chance of a ride down the mountain, but this man unsettled her more than anyone she’d ever met and she couldn’t afford to get close to him.

  Another snowflake hit her nose, melting with a burst of cold, and a moment later she let him pull her up behind him. The snow began to fall in earnest, so thick that she tucked her forehead against Nat’s back as they headed down the mountainside through a dense forest of lodgepole pines. He felt solid and strong and safe. She clutched at his jacket with cold fingers, belatedly realizing she’d forgotten to put on her gloves.

  Nat reached down, took her naked hand and placed it between the buttons of his coat, safely inside his jacket—cocooned in warmth. Beneath her fingertips his shirt felt smooth, the muscles hard and flat under the press of her palm. Staying absolutely still, as if the spell would be broken if she so much as breathed, she absorbed his heat.

  A raccoon stood between the trees watching them as they rode past, one foot raised as if he’d been interrupted mid-step.

  The steep slopes and slippery footing meant she had to hang on tight and she gripped Nat harder. She could smell leather and horse, and the faint scent of sandalwood beneath. The gray slipped over the uneven ground, haunches bunched, muscles straining, and then found better purchase in the gently sloped meadow. The energy of Nat’s body seeped into hers with each step the gray took.

  It unnerved her.

  It warmed her.

  Truth be told, it scared the hell out of her.

  Desperate to remove herself from Nat’s touch—not because she didn’t like it, but because she did—she scooted off the back of the horse as soon as they passed her cottage.

  She sensed his eyes on her as she ran with her head-down through the blizzard, up the three wooden steps and across the porch into the cottage. She threw him a quick smile and a ‘thanks’ before closing the door firmly behind her. She was running again, only this time it wasn’t from the mob.

  Chapter Six

  The smell of lemon polish and saddle-soap overwhelmed even the odor of horse in the small tack-room at the far end of the horse-barn. Bent over an ornately carved western saddle, Elizabeth rubbed the soap into the leather with a soft cloth.

  Shaking her head, she blew her bangs out of her eyes. She’d spent the morning being shown the horses by Sarah Sullivan, who wasn’t on duty at the hospital until the afternoon. Sarah impressed the hell out of her. Though small and slight, she was a ball of energy coping with her demanding job, her family, the ranch chores, and on top of that, acting as hostess for their ranch holidays.

  Elizabeth sat back and admired the sheen in the dark leather.

  The horses were beautiful. The ones she’d ridden had been well schooled and gentle, but she’d been knocked-out by the magnificent Arabian stallion dancing and twirling around a wide corral, showing off to the fillies in the next field. She was entranced and so were the fillies.

  There was something incredibly potent about the way the black stallion moved, the fluid grace with which he ran. Muscles flowed like living steel, pouring into each great stride. His neck arched and his long mane danced, the color of midnight against the snowy backdrop. His finely chiseled head and delicately pricked ears shook from side to side as he whirled and chased from one end of the corral to the other.

  He was, quite simply, perfect.

  Rubbing hard, she buffed the saddle, wrinkling her nose at the smell of polish and enjoying the ache in her muscles from the physical labor.

  A creak had her jerking around, knocking a hoof-pick onto the floor with a clatter. Cal Landon stood outlined in the open doorway carrying a saddle, with a bridle draped over one shoulder. Even though it was only mid-afternoon, Elizabeth realized it was getting dark outside. The barn behind Cal looked gloomy and forbidding.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” He tipped his battered black cowboy hat and backed up a step, “Didn’t know you were in here.”

  Cal didn’t have the startling good looks of the Sullivan men, in fact, if anything, he might be best described as plain or rugged. About five-nine, the same height as Elizabeth, he was whipcord thin from a lifetime of ranch work, or so she assumed. He looked maybe thirty-five, but it was hard to tell, the sun had carved his face heavily, forming those insidious creases that added character to men, and age to women. He had sharp features with bright hazel eyes and short cropped hair that was patchy in color, parts being dark brown like sable and others glinting like dull gold in the sun. He looked like a mongrel—a mongrel in snakeskin boots.

  She smiled as she kept a wary eye on him.

/>   They’d come to an unspoken agreement. He didn’t treat her like an idiot and she didn’t expect to be entertained. He didn’t bother to charm or beguile her, the way Ryan did, and he didn’t seem to give a damn about who she was or where she came from. Maybe that was the reason she’d managed to relax around him. Or maybe it was something else she’d noticed in his ultra-calm eyes.

  She raised her eyebrow in inquiry. The cowboy was quiet to the point of being mute and this was the first time she’d been alone with him.

  “More snow coming,” Cal said, scratching the side of his head.

  Elizabeth nodded silently, encouraging him. He still hesitated.

  Keeping her eyes locked on him, she reached down and stroked one of the ranch dogs.

  Cal moved forward into the small room, leaning close to heft the saddle onto its bracket on the wall. His obvious discomfort with her in close quarters made her own nerves quiet. He had to stand right behind her and almost throw the saddle into place. The saddles were bulky and heavy and she ducked down and tried to make herself as small as possible to give him more room.

  Despite the cold, Cal was in his shirtsleeves. The saddle started to slip and Cal lunged forward to catch it before it fell and hit her. He caught it, but not before Elizabeth got a full view of the tattoos that covered Cal’s upper arms.

  She froze.

  Standard prison issue.

  Cal was still stretched across the workbench hoisting the saddle into place when he followed her gaze and muttered an oath. Shoving the saddle into position, he moved back from the bench, rubbed his hands over his face and blew out a big frustrated sigh. “Damn.”

  “So, do the Sullivans know?” she asked. Being a dumbass, she’d left her weapon in the cabin. Stupid.

  Cal blew out a hard laugh and nodded. Ex-cons never admitted their crimes, but she wanted to hear what he’d say.

  “What did you do, fiddle your tax returns?”

  Concentrating on hanging up his bridle on the rack opposite, he said nothing for a long moment. Then he turned and looked her dead in the eye.

  “Killed my step-daddy.” Cal shifted from foot to foot, watching her warily. He must have noticed her sudden tension because he reached out and touched her shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze. Flinching, she shrank from his touch and Cal withdrew. The guy looked down at his boots as if wondering where the shine had gone.

  “I was fourteen years old...” He faded off like it was a story he didn’t want to tell, his voice flat, achingly, annoyingly flat. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I did my time.”

  He turned and walked back into the main part of the horse-barn, Elizabeth sat absolutely still, absorbing what he’d said. During training, and before she’d gone undercover, she’d met her fair share of cons. She’d also seen her fill of tragedy and circumstance. She knew bad people when she met them, had smelled the taint of DeLattio long before she’d seen the man.

  Fingers clenching so hard they hurt, she had a death-grip on the saddle she’d been cleaning. She let the saddle go, leaned back in the wooden swivel chair for support and wondered what had turned a 14-year-old boy into a killer. Some people were born bad, others...

  Empathy sliced her like a knife. Christ, she was no saint. Maybe she was a sucker, but the Sullivans trusted Cal Landon and they seemed to be pretty sane people. She got to her feet and followed Cal out into the barn. Horses stood in small groups in the wide pens that lined either side of the aisle. A palomino mare tried to nose her arm for a treat, but Elizabeth didn’t stop. She wanted to find the cowboy. Cal was rubbing down two horses in one of the empty pens near the front of the barn.

  Warily he turned to face her. Probably figured she was going to make trouble.

  Elizabeth looked outside, through the small opening in the slide-door of the barn and realized the snow was falling faster than ever.

  All it ever seemed to do up here was snow.

  She hesitated one second before she asked, “You need any help getting the stock in from the fields?”

  Cal’s flat-eyed stare turned surprised and then flickered to grateful.

  “If you’re up to it.” He nodded.

  “I’m up to it,” she said, putting her hands in her jeans pockets. Befriending a convicted murderer didn’t seem like such a dumb idea. In her mind’s eye, she’d put a gun to DeLattio’s head a thousand times. Pulling the trigger was as easy as swatting flies and that scared her a lot more than Cal Landon ever could. They weren’t so different after all.

  ****

  They worked as quickly as the horses would allow. Despite the rattles of feed buckets and the ever-increasing chill of the wind, some of the fillies seemed reluctant to move from the freedom of the meadows into the warm confines of the horse-barn. Hair blowing in her eyes and ears feeling so cold she feared they might snap off, Elizabeth threw a rope halter on the last recalcitrant female. She led the squirrelly horse down to the barn, chiding it all the time for being mischievous. Cal followed with the Arab stallion, which danced on the tips of his shiny black hooves. Cal turned the stallion out into a large loose-box at the end of the aisle where the horse could hang his head over the split Dutch-doors and watch his harem.

  Ryan Sullivan rode up out of nowhere and straight through the open door of the horse-barn. He was handsome like his brother, but he didn’t have the same effect on her that Nat Sullivan did. He jumped off his mount and immediately went to work saddling another while Cal took care of the first animal.

  As Ryan worked, snow began to drip off his dark Stetson onto the muddy stone floor at his feet. Elizabeth studied him. He had the same killer blue eyes, but where Nat was blond, Ryan’s hair was black as coal.

  “How’re you doing, Miss Reed?” Ryan asked, without looking up from tightening the cinch on the saddle. He finished the first horse and began saddling a second pony just as efficiently.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Elizabeth said. God, she sounded like a schoolgirl. She watched him throw a saddle-pad followed by a plain western saddle onto the back of a roan. The cowpony stood placidly waiting to go to work, like a commuter on the subway.

  She leaned back against the wooden rail and wished she could sink right back into it. She liked Ryan, despite his flirting ways, much the same way she liked Cal, but she still didn’t want to get too close. They were both polite and easygoing, respectful of her privacy, not overstepping the boundaries she set up, but she suspected Ryan had a dark side, whereas Nat seemed blindingly pure and bright.

  “So what’d ya think of the Triple H so far, Miss Reed?” Ryan asked. He’d finished saddling the second horse and turned towards her, brushed some of the melting snow off his jacket.

  “Call me Eliza.” One of the horses nudged her from behind and she laughed, turning slightly to stroke a soft brown nose. “It’s beautiful. Cold, but gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, well cold we can do, though it usually isn’t this bad.” Ryan’s voice flowed like raw honey, an obvious sales-pitch, but one laced with pride. “But it’s pretty and if you’re around long enough to see the summer, well now, that’s one of the most beautiful experiences a human-being can have.”

  She pinned him with a direct look, but kept her mouth shut. It wouldn’t take much to encourage Ryan Sullivan and he looked like a man who knew all about beautiful experiences.

  The wind howled outside the sanctuary of the barn. Listening to the blizzard rage, Elizabeth realized she’d like to see a summer here. She’d like to watch the flowers burst forth, to enjoy the hot lazy days, to see the horses run wild and the cows bellow in the high meadows.

  She might not live that long. She shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows?”

  Ryan’s smile was full of satisfaction. He’d make a great salesman.

  “I’d better get back to work before Nat comes in here and hauls my ass out into the snow. Wanna come?” He looked her over speculatively, like maybe she wasn’t up to it.

  The wind howled like a banshee and it was as cold as the pits of Arctic hell. Her spine s
tiffened. Cal started to mutter something, but she ignored him.

  “Sure,” she said, straightening up.

  Ryan glanced at her critically. He looked around the side of the barn door and found a pair of sturdy leather work-gloves to protect her hands. Then he took a wide-brimmed hat that had been hanging on a peg just inside the door, gave it a quick whack to clean off the dust and stuck it on her head. Next he found a pair of suede chaps and showed her how to put them on.

  “Keep the barn in sight and call it a day when you get cold.”

  She was already cold.

  Gritting her teeth, she squared her shoulders and headed off through the stable doors like they were the gates to purgatory.

  Horizontal snow hit her in the face like baseballs; the soft flakes of before replaced by fierce little creatures that stung. Elizabeth followed Ryan who led the two horses to just outside the barn.

  “This is Tiger,” he said, shouting against the howling wind. He patted the docile roan affectionately. “Stay on her back and you won’t get lost. Or hang on to me if you like.” His face was close to hers.

  She snorted, making her choice obvious.

  “Then what?” she said loudly enough to make her voice heard over the screaming wind. She gritted her teeth against the rush of cold air into her lungs, kept her head low behind the horse’s back to gain a momentary respite.

  “We’re herding loose cattle into the shed here.” He pointed to a big red Dutch barn the other side of the yard from the horse-barn. “Just make sure they don’t sneak past you, up onto the road.”

  It sounded easy enough. She declined his offer of a leg-up and watched him jump onto the other horse. Sticking her foot into the stirrup, she hauled herself onto the back of the mare and followed Ryan.

  The cowboy disappeared into the swirling snow almost immediately, but she kept the huge red barn close-by. The light was fading, turning the world into a whirling mass of monotonous white on gray.

  It was an easy job for the most part, except for the cold that numbed her fingers and froze her nose. When a spooked cow did something stupid like dive past her, Tiger acted more or less of her own will to curb the beast and change its direction. When that failed, Blue, one of the ranch dogs, nipped at their heels and sent them lumbering back towards the security of the well-lit barn. All Elizabeth had to do was stay on.