Tucker grunted. “Figures. I’ll get Zane to do a check on your locks. Have you considered going to stay with someone until we catch this guy?”
Jane picked up her purse and got to her feet. She hadn’t expected Tucker to jump through any hoops for her, but all the same, it didn’t make her happy that he was treating the matter so casually. “I’ve got Jess and the hens to feed, and the sheep to keep an eye on. Leaving’s a great idea, but it’s not practical.”
“What about getting someone to come and stay with you?”
“I’ll see.”
The problem was she didn’t really have anyone who was close enough for her to ask that kind of favour. One of the results of Patrick’s illness was that she’d concentrated so much on him that she’d neglected the girlfriend thing. They’d both lost touch with the friends they’d had when they’d lived in Auckland, and since moving to Tayler’s Creek, she somehow hadn’t ever moved past the acquaintanceship stage into friendship with anyone. She had plenty of people she could pass the time of day with in the street, but no actual friends.
Zane followed her back to her house, and walked with her out to the river. She pointed out the spot where the ferns were flattened. He found a place along the river that had stepping stones, then walked upstream to examine the trampled area, taking notes. When they returned to her house, he walked through her house and checked her doors and windows. “Your doors are good, but you need bolts for the windows. And make sure you get that alarm installed.”
He scribbled the name of a couple of reputable security firms on her telephone pad, both of which she had already tried to buy alarms from when she was in Winslow. As he set the pen down, his pager beeped.
He checked the message, and blushed. “My girlfriend,” he mumbled, as he clipped the pager back on his belt and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
Jess thumped her tail on the verandah decking as Jane watched Zane drive away, still talking to his girlfriend. Jane absently stroked her head. “Well, that was the cavalry. So much for security.”
As the dust cloud from Zane’s vehicle dissipated, she decided that she couldn’t wait the week it would take for a security system to be installed.
She didn’t feel safe. In fact, she felt distinctly unsafe. There wasn’t a lot she could do to increase her security, but she had to try. Jess was her main alarm, but it was always possible that Jess could be harmed by an intruder—maybe even poisoned or shot.
She had a gun. It wasn’t much of a gun, and it was possibly more of a hazard than a help because it could be taken away from her in a confrontation—but she wasn’t intending on using the weapon for anything other than warning off possible intruders.
Collecting the key to the reinforced cupboard that Patrick had built in the mudroom, she unlocked first the padlock bolt that secured the door, then the steel bar that locked the gun against the back of the cupboard wall. The gun felt heavy and unwieldy as she set it down on the floor, then collected the bolt, a box of ammunition, and the two magazines that went with the rifle. On impulse, she grabbed a bottle of gun oil and a cloth—she supposed since the gun hadn’t been used for so long it would need a clean. She hadn’t touched the thing in years, not since Patrick had given her lessons on how to load and shoot it, and made her practice until she could hit a target with reasonable accuracy.
She carried all the pieces out to the kitchen table and laid them down. The gun looked dark and lethal in her bright, sunny kitchen, and the smell of gun oil was pungent and faintly acrid, already overlaying the gentler scents of the garden floating in the open door. Lifting the weapon, she examined it, then began systematically dismantling and cleaning the ancient twenty-two, using the ritual to refamiliarize herself. When she was finished, she reassembled the weapon and fed shells into the two five-shot magazines.
Minutes later, she walked out into the empty paddock nearest the bush line, with Jess at her heels, and placed a row of empty cans on fence posts. When she was satisfied she had enough targets, she fetched the gun, positioned herself twenty paces back from the tins, and took aim. She decided she didn’t have to be too far away from the target, because if anyone attacked her, it was going to be a close-quarters thing; she wouldn’t have time to do anything but bring the gun up and shoot, anyway. Apart from that eventuality, she wouldn’t be doing anything but firing into the air as a warning.
The gun bucked gently against her shoulder, and the shot went wide. She altered her stance a little, to allow more flexibility when the recoil hit, and this time she managed to wing the tin. The third shot, she blew it off the post. Methodically, she hit two more tins, then changed the magazine. As she lined up the next target, she had a disorienting flash of the way she’d been ten years ago, before she’d hit Tayler’s Creek—with a wardrobe of pretty clothes, long nails, high heels, and enough makeup to fill a suitcase. Now she was barefoot, her shorts and halter-neck top stuck to her skin with sweat, her hair tangling around her face where it had blown loose from her plait, and her skin tanned and bare of makeup.
She wasn’t the city girl she’d been before, and she wasn’t the quiet, empty person she’d been just days ago. She had changed, but she liked the changes in herself.
She didn’t know if she could actually walk in high heels anymore, or where on earth in Tayler’s Creek she could even wear high heels, but she decided then and there that she was going to try. Wearing high heels would mean more clothes, because unless she put on weight, she wouldn’t fit any of the old ones, and that meant shopping.
Blankly, she considered what it would be like to once again take part in the utterly female ritual of shopping—to stroll through malls and browse through boutiques, choosing clothes and shoes not because they were practical, but simply because they made her look and feel good.
She felt dazed at the prospect, and somehow lighter, as if a weight had just slipped from her shoulders. But then the past few days had been filled with change, ever since Michael Rider had intruded back into her world and forced her out of the rut she’d sunk into. The process had been painful, and she’d resisted like crazy, but for the first time in years, she felt free, and despite her tiredness and the grimness of what she was doing, she felt…strong.
A wry smile curved her mouth. It was scary to think that the moment of empowerment had happened while she was holding one of the most potent symbols of male power—a gun—in her hands.
A MISTY HAZE, the peculiar characteristic of cyclones in New Zealand, built up as the day passed. The cloud cover remained heavy, and the breeze began to gust.
Jane moved from trimming branches near windows, to working on the home alarm system she’d devised. She hauled water up the stepladder and filled the bucket that she’d set on the roof just above the entrance to the kitchen. When it was half full, she climbed back down the ladder, and pulled on the rope attached to the bucket to test it. Water cascaded down, partway soaking her despite the fact that she took care to step back.
She replaced the bucket, balancing it carefully on the edge of the guttering, and refilled it with water. It was a kid’s trick, but it was effective.
She repeated the same booby trap over the front door, and to finish off, she gathered up empty paint tins from the barn and empty cans that were stored in a rubbish bin liner ready to be taken to the recycling station. She punched holes in each can, using a hammer and a nail, then strung them together in two bunches with baling twine, and tied a cluster to each bucket of water. Now when either of the buckets came down, they would not only soak the attacker and, hopefully, hit him on the head or the chest, but the attached cans would tumble down around him, making plenty of noise.
There wasn’t a lot else she could do. If an intruder decided to smash glass and come in one of her windows, then she was sunk. She had Jess for protection, and if she had to, she would use the gun.
Chapter 6
AT FIVE MINUTES past midnight, the power failed.
Jane sat up in bed and set down the book she’d been
trying to read. The wind was howling, and thin drizzle spattered her windows. Jess’s tail thumped on the floor. Jane patted her head as she reached for the phone on her bedside table and discovered that that was dead, too. Either the storm had knocked the lines out, or someone had wrapped their car around a power pole, bringing the lines down.
Jackknifing out of bed, she dragged on her shorts, pulled a shirt over the soft cotton singlet she’d worn to bed, and padded downstairs, holding the torch she’d left beside the bed. Jess had followed her, and now she flopped down on the kitchen floor, set her head down, and let out a gusty sigh. Reassured by Jess’s relaxed mood, Jane rummaged in the hall cupboard and extracted the battery lantern that was stored there, carried it through to the kitchen, and adjusted the knob until the room was filled with a soft glow.
She tried the phone again. The line was still dead. She paced the kitchen, stared out at the wild night, and was abruptly gripped by a sense of isolation.
Although she’d spent a lot of time on her own over the past few years, she hadn’t often been alone. Barring the time he’d spent in hospital, she’d always had Patrick for company. Now the house seemed to echo with emptiness, the sense of being cut off from everyone and everything intensified by the loss of the phone.
A sweep of headlights briefly illuminated the kitchen, throwing the potted plants that lined the window into stark relief and giving a ghostly cast to the room. Above the whine of the wind, she thought she heard tyres crunching on gravel.
Grabbing the torch, she flicked off the beam, took a hold of Jess’s collar, and slipped out the door, bracing herself against the full brunt of the wind where it slammed into the east side of the house, and shivering as she was instantly soaked by the thin drizzle that was being driven in horizontal gusts. Outside, the sound of the wind was eerily amplified, rising to a high-pitched animalistic howl that tightened the skin all along the length of her spine. She wasn’t normally this nervy, but then she wasn’t in the habit of receiving midnight visitors either.
As she edged around the corner of the house to see who it was, Jess lunged free of her hold and shot straight down the steps and out to the drive, which meant that whoever the intruder was, he would probably be licked to death before he could get to the house. At the same time, it occurred to Jane that a murderer wouldn’t be likely to have his lights on, but with the power and the phone out, she wasn’t taking any chances.
And as isolated as she was, a convoy of murderers could turn up and it wouldn’t matter how many lights were blazing; she couldn’t expect any help from anyone but Rider who, from all accounts, was too busy with his new girlfriend to notice what was happening to his neighbour.
Wiping moisture and wet strands of hair from her face, she peered in the direction of the drive. Movement registered out of the corner of her eye, as if someone was walking toward the kitchen rather than the front door. The flicker of movement was followed by a gravelly curse, then the rattle and clang of tins as the bucket came down. She heard something that sounded suspiciously like a groan, but the sound was muffled and indistinct.
Gripping the torch, she peered around the corner of the house. The faint wash of the light from the kitchen windows flowed over a familiar male form.
Switching the torch on, she hurried forward, knelt on the wet grass, and began dragging the tangle of cans and rope off Rider, her hands feverish. The bucket must have caught him on the head, knocking him out.
In the dim light his eyes flickered, and his gaze locked on hers, narrowed and glittering. “Since coming back I’ve been arrested, cuffed, and fingerprinted, tortured by spending four hours solid with Tucker and Zane Parker.” He lifted a hand to his head and winced. “Now, I’ve been attacked by a bucket. Whoever said Tayler’s Creek is Sleepy Hollow lied. It’s a war zone.”
The bite to his words barely registered beyond the fact that his irritation told her that he was obviously okay. She swatted his hand aside. “Let me see.”
The lump was situated in the centre of his forehead. Unexpected amusement quivered through her. When she was a kid the bucket trap had never netted much success. Obviously her targets had all been too short. Rider, at around six-feet-two, was the perfect height. The bucket had caught him clean—right between the eyes.
He pushed himself into a sitting position and fingered the lump. “Oh yeah, you got me good. I saw stars.” His gaze swept her, still glittering, and not a little irritable. “You’re getting wet.”
Understatement of the universe. Already her shirt was clinging to her skin, and her hair was sopping. Retrieving the torch, she got to her feet. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Rider, there’s a storm; everything’s wet.”
His teeth flashed white in the dim light as he eased to his feet, stumbling slightly as he straightened, as if he was having trouble orienting himself. “Some things look better wet than others.”
Her amusement was replaced by a spurt of anger, and she was glad she’d resisted the urge to grab his arm and steady him. Rider had obviously come to check on her because the power and telephone were out, which was nice. Very neighbourly. She was sorry he’d gotten hurt, but obviously the bucket hadn’t hit hard enough to anaesthetize his libido. “I saw Marg Tayler in town yesterday,” she said pointedly. “She said you were involved with someone.”
“Did she, now?”
Fury flickered at the expressionless mask of his face, the stony male reserve that was one of Rider’s defining qualities—and did she detect a hint of male smugness in that low, gravelly voice?
Her jaw clamped, and in that moment everything changed. For years she’d been on the defensive—running—and she hated that. One thing she had never been was a coward.
She shouldn’t feel one iota of emotion for Rider, but unfortunately she felt considerably more than that. Against her better judgment, against her will she’d been tied to Rider for the past seven years as if she’d been married to him instead of Patrick. To say she was ticked was putting it mildly.
Rider’s head came up, as if he’d somehow latched on to her thoughts. Light glistened off the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the strong shape of his jaw. “What did you expect?” he said coldly. “That I’d live years on about two minutes of lip contact?”
Her chest contracted on a sharp pang that she refused to label as hurt. “It wasn’t just lips.”
And it may have been two minutes, but it had felt like an hour of teeth and tongue, hot, steamy breath, and full, pulse-pounding body contact. To say he’d kissed her didn’t cover it. His intentions and arousal had been explicit, and so had hers. Fully clothed as they’d both been, within the two minutes they’d been “lip-locked,” they’d practically had sex on her front porch. The only thing that had prevented actual penetration had been the sound of the answer phone engaging and a crippling surge of guilt.
She had climaxed.
Heat washed through her at the memory of just how far they’d gone, fully clothed, and despite the fury that burned like a hot coal in her chest, her breasts rose, tight and aroused against the wet drag of her shirt.
Rider’s gaze slitted. “So, who have the local gossips put me in bed with this time? Macie Hume? Or are they having another stab at firing up a scandal with the Irwin twins?”
The Irwin twins? Jane stared at Rider in disbelief, ignoring the moisture trickling down her face and running in small rivulets down her spine and between her breasts. Rider in bed with twins?
Her jaw clamped. She was getting crazier by the minute. She had no idea there were so many single women in Tayler’s Creek—let alone twins—and no idea what she was doing outside in the dead of night, in the middle of a cyclone, having this conversation with Rider. “If you don’t mind,” she said stiffly, “I’m going inside. Thanks for coming over, but as you can see, I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”
His hand curled around her arm, jerking her to a halt. “I thought you understood how I felt.”
His voice was rough, his palm hot, burning through the wet
cotton of her shirt.
She resisted the urge to pull free. Damned if she’d fight with him. “What do you mean?”
His gaze burned into hers. “I don’t cheat.”
Her cheeks warmed at the memory of her own guilt. He had kissed her, but she had been the one who had climaxed—and she’d wanted to do a lot more. She didn’t know what their little interlude could be classified as; but whether it was labeled an affair or not, it had felt like one. “You could have fooled me.”
“You’re angry.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in his voice. “Well, hallelujah for that. It beats the hell out of indifference.”
He released her. “I don’t cheat, and I’m here. Figure it out.”
She blinked, feeling abruptly unsteady, as if the ground beneath her feet had just shifted. She’d felt like this once before, and she didn’t trust the feeling. The last time, Rider had kissed her and almost wrecked her life.
“You’re finally getting it,” he muttered, turning away, “but don’t expect me to go down on my knees begging—”
“Wait!” She touched his back, then snatched her fingers back as he spun, his gaze as cold as obsidian. “Look, I’m sorry—” She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Um—don’t go.”
His expression was wary. “What do you mean, ‘Don’t go’?”
Her stomach clenched at the risk she had to take. She would rather walk over hot coals than admit to Rider that she’d been obsessed with him for years. “If you don’t cheat, and you’re here,” she said carefully, “that must mean…”
“Christ,” he snapped, “I can’t stand it. Just come here.”
Jane’s heart slammed in her chest. The invitation, couched as an order—as if she was one of the soldiers under his command—the way his gaze zeroed in on her mouth, was about as subtle as a hammer blow. “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a problem with anger?”
He stepped toward Jane, crowding her space. “I’ve been pissed for seven years. Most people know I’ve got a problem with anger. Some of them were even interested enough to find out why.”
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