That stopped him. For an instant his vanity stung, but the freedom of unaccustomed anonymity hit, and he allowed a private grin. “David Graham.” He used his official alias. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said. “Excuse my rudeness, but this hay has to get in that barn before the storm hits. I can’t help you with your son. I don’t know anybody named Graham.”
Abby Stadtler hopped to the ground. The plaid shirt swung open to reveal a bright blue tank top hugging a curvy hip. “My boy isn’t Graham,” he said, meeting her eyes, which were unlike anything he’d ever seen. Green-ish? Blue-ish? “He’s Dawson. Dawson Covey.”
“I know a Dawson. His last name is Cooper.”
He tamped down a flicker of irritation, as she grabbed twine, swung a bale, and took two steps to dump it in the barn. There was not a single sound of exertion—or any hint she was taking him seriously.
“Yes, that would be my devious son.” He held onto a pleasant tone. “Cooper is his grandmother’s name.”
“And why would he use a different name?”
As she turned the interrogation on him, a rope of tension twisting down his neck knotted between his shoulder blades and threatened to stiffen him top to toe. He willed his fingers to uncurl, one-by-one. “Because he’s sixteen years old, he’s pissed off at his mother and is hiding from me. He’s also sharp as a knife blade, so it’s taken us a while to find him. You’ve obviously never had teenagers.”
An immediate illusion of height accompanied the steeling of her spine, and the soft, nameless color of her eyes turned to stormy aquamarine. “You shouldn’t make assumptions.” She tossed another hay bale, and Gray took a step backward.
“I apologize. I only meant you don’t look old enough to have teenagers.” That was true.
“If that was an attempt at getting yourself off the hook, it was smooth but ineffective.” The sharpest prickles left her voice.
Finally, she stopped tossing and crossed her arms. The rolled-up sleeves on her overshirt exposed slender forearms with sexy lines of definition curved along the muscle.
Gray produced his best version of a devilish grin. “Dang. I usually have better luck with a silver tongue.”
“I’ll just bet. Look, Mr. Graham.” She hesitated. “Wait a minute. Did you say sixteen?”
“Yup. My Dawson is sixteen. How old is yours?”
She didn’t respond to the humor. “Eighteen. We definitely have some confusion here. I hired a young man six weeks ago to help around the farm. He’ll be leaving for home in another month. Colorado.”
Gray snorted. “He’ll be leaving for Colorado over my dead body.”
“Mr. Graham.” Her voice flashed with annoyance to match her eyes. “I think you have the wrong Dawson. People must have mixed up the information they gave you.”
“I do not have the wrong Dawson.” Slamming his palm on the wooden bed of the hay wagon hard enough to cause flakes of alfalfa, and Abby Stadtler, to jump, the humor Gray had been using so desperately as a shield disintegrated. His make-nice smiles hardened into anger lines he could feel. “Look, Madam Jabberingwickets, or whatever the hell this place is called. You’ve got my son.” He jabbed his fingers into a back pocket, yanked out his wallet, and flipped through the three pictures that were part of its meager contents. “Tell me this isn’t the little con artist you call Dawson Cooper.”
The photo was two years old, but it did the trick. Abby leaned over it with skepticism, and then her shoulders sagged. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“I, I’m sorry.”
He gave her points for the apology, although she looked for all the world as if she didn’t want to give it. “It’s all right.” He calmed his voice. “All I want is to find my son.”
“I’ve never heard Dawson mention a father. He’s talked about his mother in New York.”
In a stinging sort of way that made sense, Dawson wouldn’t want to mention his dad’s notoriety. He jammed the wallet back into his pocket. “She’s not in New York. They live in London, and he packed up and left his private school just after Easter last month. Didn’t you check him out before letting him move in?”
Anger flared in her face again. For some reason, Gray found the rising and falling storms in her seawater eyes knee-weakening. “You really need to stop making judgments. What you just said was condescending and insulting.”
She turned her back and grabbed another hay bale, tossing it willy-nilly into a pile along with the others already in the barn. This one went a fair distance with the steam of her anger behind it. He couldn’t help but grin in admiration. Abby Stadtler was soft and enticing as a chocolate éclair on the outside, with TNT instead of custard beneath the surface.
“Look, I don’t know you . . .”
“That’s right.” Her fuse obviously still sparked, she clambered onto the wagon again. “For your information, your son had a New York driver’s license, references from a past employer, and a personal reference. No, I didn’t do an FBI background check on him. Up until now, I’ve had no reason to suspect I needed to. I don’t know where you come from, but around here we try our hardest to believe the best of people.”
Gray scarcely heard beyond the fact Dawson had come up with faked reference documents. He didn’t know whether to be horrified or impressed as hell.
“I . . . That’s amazing.” He tried finding some amusement in her face, but she kept yanking hay bales from the pile, her back flexing, captivating him. He wondered where Mr. Stadtler was. “Abby . . . Mrs. Stadtler.” He struggled not to anger her again. “I told you my son is smart. I forgot how smart. He’s pulled off a professional-level scam here, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am he came to a safe place like this.”
She threw a glance over her shoulder, her eyes no longer sizzling. “He’s a good boy, Mr. Graham, even now that I know the truth. Not that he won’t get a proper lecture.”
The very first hint of humor tinged her voice, and Gray grinned back, relief sweet in his chest. “You’d be justified. So, where is he?” Realization struck him. “Why isn’t he helping?”
“He isn’t here.”
His attention snapped back to her. “Excuse me?”
“He and Kim are gone for the weekend.”
“Gone! Gone?” Gray balled his fists and wanted to hurl a hay bale across the barn himself. “Gone where? And who the—” He took a deep breath. “Who is Kim?”
“The teenager you thought it obvious I never had.” This time her eyes danced with a hint of laughter, and if her newfound cheerfulness hadn’t come at his expense he’d have found the crinkled corners of her eyes appealing.
“When will he be back from wherever he went? With your teenage daughter.” He forced his voice to stay modulated and pleasant.
“They’ve been on a retreat with the church youth group all week. They’ll be back tomorrow late morning.”
“Tomorrow?” Another day? Gray lost his hold on calm. “Damn it!”
He stalked from the hay wagon. The cloying air pressed heavier with every step, and the clouds encroached, purple and black. Thunder reverberated, close, angry. He had another show in Chicago tomorrow night. No way could he miss it, too. What would Chris do when he found out tonight’s gig hadn’t needed to be canceled at all?
Slipping his hand into the pocket of his leather blazer, he fumbled for a pack of cigarettes. He hated them. He was down to half a pack a day, but times like this he despaired of ever kicking the habit. With automatic skill he drew one out, flicked his lighter flame against the end of the cigarette, and took a drag.
The idea of Chris Boyle on a rant made Gray swear under his breath again. Everything came down to money for his manager. Sometimes Gray felt like no more than a wind-up monkey who waddled onstage, banged its cymbals together, made the crowd screech, and raked in the dough. He dug his fingers through his hair and started a vicious second drag—
Thwack!
The cigarette flew from his lips as if a bul
lwhip had snatched it, and he choked on air and smoke.
“Are you really this phenomenally stupid?” Abby, her face florid, her posture like a boxer ready to jab, ground her boot toe into the smoldering cigarette until shattered pulp remained.
“What the . . .?” He stared at the ruins then into her furious eyes.
“This is a barn. Fifty feet away is a wagon loaded with hay. Do you have any idea what a gust of wind could do with one of your stupid ashes?”
“Oh, damn, Abby, Mrs. . . . Abby. I’m sorry.” Contrition twisted his gut.
He hadn’t considered the danger before lighting up. Her gaze drilled into his, and regret gave way to a slow roll of deep, unexpected attraction. Earlier they’d been separated by hay and irritation, but now they were separated by nothing but five inches of steamy, sultry air. An asinine string of thoughts ran through his brain: how smooth her cheek was up close; how the middle of her pupil was soft and calm like the eye of a hurricane; how much he wished he had a breath mint.
“It won’t happen again.”
Along with his sudden, inappropriate desire came an image of Fate laughing as he got pummeled by Mr. Abby Stadtler—who probably always carried breath mints. Then, without warning, Abby’s face drained of color. Slowly, she covered her mouth with one slender hand.
ABBY PRESSED SO hard against her lips she could almost feel pulses in her fingertips—ten runaway jackhammers. Every clue, every suspicion, crashed over her as she stared at the earnest-eyed man before her. How in the world had she missed it? What was he doing in her farmyard?
When he said, “It won’t happen again,” his thick brows furrowed in honest apology, his rich baritone was suddenly, obviously, as familiar as her daughter’s voice. And his pale blue eyes were ones she’d seen as many times as she’d entered her child’s bedroom, only this time they mesmerized in person, not from a dozen posters on Kim’s walls.
He’d given it away himself. “Dawson Covey.”
Oh, Lord, she’d slapped a cigarette from Gray Covey’s mouth.
Strangled laughter caught at her throat. This was far from the meeting fantasized by ten thousand adoring women at any given time. What did you say to a rock legend after you’d called him a liar? She dropped her hands from her mouth. “You—”
His face changed. The instant before she’d recognized him, he’d shown honest contrition. Now his mouth slipped into a strange, plastic smile, automatic, a little self-satisfied. Her annoyance sparked. It reminded her why, despite his knee-weakening looks, he’d irritated her with his assumptions and attitude. All at once, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of fawning over his identity.
“Sorry.” She forced herself to spin away and pull off a fib. “I just got a mental picture of my barn going up in flames. I accept your apology. But know this. If it does happen again, I won’t be knocking the cigarette out of your mouth. I’ll be drowning it with you attached.”
Ignoring his celebrity left her uplifted, as if she was going against nature—something her practical streak rarely allowed. She half-expected him to protest with wounded pride but, in fact, he remained silent until she was back at the hay wagon.
“You’re funny even when you’re mad,” he said. “I guess I consider myself lucky.”
“My daughter wouldn’t say I’m funny.” She half-grinned, although her back was to him.
“Speaking of your daughter and, by association it seems, my son. I don’t suppose there’s any way of getting them home early? I was hoping to take him with me tonight.”
Irritation seized her again, and she glared over her shoulder. Her breath caught now that she recognized who he was, but she shook it off. “Dawson’s been living here for almost six weeks. Won’t it be kinder to give him time to adjust?”
“You do understand he’s a runaway, right?” His voice lifted a notch in irritation. “You have no claim to him. Not to mention, a lot of people have been put out by your . . . employee.”
“Put out? How about worried? Has anyone been worried in all the time it took to locate him?” Immediately Abby regretted the thoughtless words. Gray’s features stilled, and his eyes iced. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me . . .”
The first plop of rain hit her dead on the nose, followed by a second on her head. Her heart sank. She’d let herself get distracted, and now she risked losing the eighty bales of hay still on the rack if they got soaked.
“Crap, crap, crap.” For half a second she waffled between Gray and the hay wagon. She groaned and chose the hay. “I’m sorry. Can you finish this discussion from the barn?”
Two more fat drops left splotches on her shoulders, and she hoisted herself back up onto the wagon. Normally, she didn’t mind stacking hay. It taxed her body while anesthetizing her brain. But even if she threw as hard as she could she wouldn’t beat this storm.
“I worried about him.” Gray’s voice held as much promise of thunder as the storm.
“I didn’t mean that.” She pulled two stacks of bales into heaps with one movement, and they banged into her legs, nearly knocking her off balance. More rain splashed her cheeks. “At least, I didn’t mean it to sound so harsh.”
“Let’s just call us even for assumptions. The point is, I flew from Chicago and am missing work to be here. I’m sure this will sound even crasser to you, but I have appointments I can’t miss. My job involves more than just me and a boss.”
Two bales. Three. Four.
“So you thought you’d simply grab your son and, what, take him to work with you?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I thought. I’m his father. I have considered what’s best for him.”
Five. Six. Seven. Abby heaved the hay just far enough to get it into the barn door. She could stack it later. Her arms started to sting from their exaggerated motions, but she knew how to ignore the discomfort.
“I’m sure that’s true.” She grunted with exertion. “But wouldn’t you like to know why he ran away in the first place, before you haul him off again?”
“Lady.” His taut voice caused her to look into his angry face. “I don’t know if you think you’re some sort of pop psychiatrist, but I’m not the sixteen-year-old here. I know why my son ran and, frankly, I don’t blame him. But, it’s not your business, and I don’t have the freedom to hang around waiting for him to come back.”
The drops fell faster, and the breeze picked up. An eerie twilight settled over the farm.
“Seems to me you do what you have to do where your children are concerned. Sacrifice. Ask yourself what your priorities are.” She tossed harder. The tender alfalfa leaves in the fragrant bundles glistened with moisture. In ten minutes the bales would be soaked deep. The rain saturated her shirt, and the tendrils escaping her loose chignon clung to her cheeks.
“You’re something, you know that? You warn me about making assumptions then tell me my priorities are screwed up. Who the hell do you think you are?”
The knife-blade edge to his voice made her stop and blink. She’d concentrated so hard on fighting the rain that she’d forgotten her actual fight with the person next to her. Lecture mode always seemed to slip out when she multi-tasked, but Gray’s glare of unequivocal anger told her she’d stepped over the line. Although the water beating into her hay made her cringe, she looked him in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” she began, but something fluttered in her chest, and she caught her breath in surprise. He didn’t look exactly like any picture of him she’d ever seen—and Kim had scrapbooks full of clippings and magazine photos. Three dimensions served him incredibly well. “You’re right.” She reined in her emotions. “I’ve grown fond of your son, Mr. . . . Graham. But I don’t have the right to be protective of him.”
The anger drained from his eyes, but his body remained a study of sculpted seriousness. Cocoa-colored hair feathered back from his forehead and framed his high cheekbones with thick locks that kissed his collar. A chiseled Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, and Abby’s stomach flutte
red again. If the rock-and-roll lifestyle was supposed to ravage a body, Gray Covey’s hadn’t paid attention to the rule.
Unable to ignore her hay any longer, she pulled her gaze from Gray’s, jumped off the wagon, and began dragging bales. This time her back muscles whined with every surge.
“I don’t suppose you could wait to finish until this passes?” he asked. He held up his palm to show he knew the answer. The rain on the old barn roof drummed like the backbeat on one of his songs. A flash of lightning slashed the dark sky, and thunder followed mere seconds later. He shucked off his leather jacket. “Aw, hell.”
An Excerpt from
RESCUED BY A STRANGER
THE DOG IN the middle of the road was all legs and mottled black patches. It stood still beside the yellow centerline, a good fifty feet away but too close to ignore, and Jill Carpenter eased off the accelerator of her Chevy Suburban.
“Get out of the way, sweetie,” she murmured, switching her foot to the brake.
Because she’d worked at the only vet clinic in Kennison Falls since junior high school, she knew most of the dogs in the area. This one, however, was shabbily unfamiliar. And stubbornly unmoving. It stared at her with a mutt-in-the-headlights look that didn’t bode well.
Finally, twenty feet from the unblinking animal, Jill blared her horn and stomped her brakes until the anti-lock system grabbed, and loose pebbles pinged the chassis like buckshot. At the very last moment the dog leaped—directly in front of her.
Accidents supposedly happened in slow motion, but no leisurely parade of her life played before her eyes. The jerk of her steering wheel, her shriek, a blur of darting, raggedy fur, and the boulder of dread dropping into the pit of her stomach all happened in something under five nanoseconds.
Then her stomach dropped again as it followed the nose of her truck across the narrow county road and down a six-foot ditch. The Suburban gave a carnival-ride fishtail, its rear axle grinding in protest. Something warm spurted into her face, and she came to rest parallel to the road on the steep ditch bank, wedged in precarious place against a slender maple sapling.
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