“That’s not fair,” she said angrily, hating his attempt to use the children to manipulate her into agreeing to his crazy plan. More, she was angry that he could so easily dismiss what they had once shared, insist he wanted nothing to do with her physically or emotionally. “I’ve got to get back home before it gets dark.” She untied Candy from the railing and mounted the horse.
“Belinda, we could both gain from the marriage. I’m not making you a one-sided offer. I can relieve the financial pressures you and your sisters have been under.”
“Colette and Abby and my brothers-in-law are taking off for California first thing in the morning to speak with prospective investors. I’m sure our financial worries will be over within the next week or two.” She picked up the reins to urge Candy away, but hesitated as Derek spoke her name again.
“Please.”
The word fell from his lips as if pulled by great force, and Belinda knew how difficult it was for him to say. Derek was a proud and stubborn man, and she used to tease him because of his reluctance to say that particular word. “Saying please feels too much like begging,” he used to protest. “And there’s nothing so important that it would make me beg.”
Now he’d said it and Belinda’s heart constricted as she saw the fervent emotion shimmering in his eyes, letting her know just how important those children were to him.
She admired him caring for them…and hated him for it at the same time. That he would go to such extremes for his niece and nephew, yet had virtually turned his back on his own child, made her heart ache with a renewed force. “I’ve got to get home.” Flicking the reins, she nodded goodbye, then turned Candy around to begin the ride back to her ranch.
Candy had taken only a step or two when a loud report split the surrounding silence. Candy’s ears folded back and her eyes rolled as she skittered sideways in nervous high-steps. As Belinda fought to keep control of the horse, Derek looked out into the distance, obviously trying to discern where the shot might have come from.
“You see anyone?” Belinda asked, finally managing to calm Candy.
He shook his head. “I’m not even sure what direction it came from. Probably a hunter who doesn’t realize this is private property.”
Before Belinda had a chance to reply, another blast resounded and she heard the whistle of a bullet whiz by her head. Candy reared up on hind legs. A terrified whinny tore from the horse’s throat as she bucked Belinda off her back.
Belinda fell to the ground with a thud, all breath leaving her body.
“Belinda!” Derek shouted from the porch.
Vaguely aware of the sound of Candy’s hooves as the horse raced off, Belinda drew in a gasping breath and tried to stand. “I’m okay,” she said as she finally got to her feet.
Again the sharp crack of gunfire rent the air and Derek dove into her, tackling her back to the ground. For the first time confusion gave way to fear as she felt Derek’s heart racing against her own. “What’s happening?” she asked, body tense as she waited for whatever might happen next.
Derek remained on top of her—the only thing moving were his eyes as they scanned the thickly wooded area in the distance.
He glanced down at her, his eyes dark and disturbed. “It appears whoever is hunting…is hunting us.”
Chapter Five
“Can you see anything?” Belinda asked softly.
“No.” Derek continued to scan the area, his muscles tensed as he tried to see somebody—anybody—in the nearby woods.
There was no doubt in his mind that whoever had fired the gun had fired it at them. The first shot could have been written off as an accident, an overzealous hunter who hadn’t realized they were in the line of fire. The subsequent shots couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a deliberate attack. Dammit, he should have been prepared for something like this. He should have been more cautious.
Belinda squirmed beneath him. “Stay still,” he said sharply.
“There’s a rock in my back,” she whispered, her breath a warm sweetness against the hollow of his throat.
He reached beneath her, trying to ignore the thrust of her body against his as she arched to allow him access to the rock. He grabbed the offending object and removed it from beneath her. She sank against the ground.
Derek threw the rock into the tall grass to the right of them, tensing for the expected gunshot blast the noise might draw. Nothing. No shot. Nothing at all.
Seconds turned into minutes as Derek remained tensed, watchful. Each moment brought a deepening of the night, cloaking them in the safety of darkness. As the minutes stretched, he became conscious of the sweet scent of wildflowers nearby and the beat of Belinda’s heart against his own.
Desire came as unexpectedly as the shots had and struck him hard in the pit of his stomach. It surprised him. He’d thought all capability for desire had burned up in the flames that had left him half crippled.
Bitterness clogged the back of his throat. He could desire, but he’d never again be desirable. Anger usurped desire, an anger directed at Belinda, who unwittingly could still stir his blood with lust.
He rose hesitantly, instinctively knowing the shooter had gone. A bird cried from a nearby tree and the clicking and buzzing of night insects filled the air. “I think it’s okay now.”
“Are you sure?” She remained on her back, the moonlight illuminating her features and painting her hair with incandescent strands. With the dark grass beneath her, and her blue eyes shimmering almost silver, she looked much the way she had years ago when Derek had made love to her beneath a full summer moon.
Again anger surfaced as memories whispered in his head, taunting him with what might have been, what would now never be. “I’m positive.” He stood and eyed the dark woods from where the shots had come. “Whoever was there, isn’t there any longer.”
Belinda rose and brushed off the seat of her slacks, her gaze following his. “Who on earth would do such a thing?”
“Who knows? We need to call Junior and report this. Come on back in the house. I’ve got a phone inside.” Belinda remained downstairs in the foyer while he went up to the bedroom where he’d been staying. It took only moments for him to call the sheriff, then he and Belinda sat on the front porch to await Junior’s arrival.
“You want me to see if I can find your horse?” he asked, hiding time so he could think, assess the mounting danger surrounding Belinda.
She shook her head. “I’m sure she went back to the stable. She has good instincts for home.” She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, as if chilled. Derek suspected it was fear rather than the coolness of the night air that chilled her. “Why on earth would somebody want to shoot at you?” she asked as she leaned back against the porch railing.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Surely you don’t believe those bullets were meant for me?”
Derek frowned, replaying the initial moments of the first shot in his mind. “I’m not sure what to believe. All I know is when the first shot came, you were some distance from where I stood, and that bullet nearly hit you. As did the second one. If the shooter was after me, then we’re dealing with a hunter with a very bad aim.”
“But why would anyone want to harm me?” Belinda shook her head thoughtfully. “It doesn’t make any sense that somebody is after me.” She shook herhead more vehemently. “No. Somehow this has to be tied to you.”
Derek knew better. If she gave it enough thought, she’d realize it seemed farfetched to believe that a fire three years ago and a shooting now might be related. Although he wanted to find the person who’d hated him enough to try to kill him before, it was far more important he figure out who wanted to harm Belinda.
Looking at her, he noted again how the moonlight loved her features, caressing her in a silvery light that only intensified her natural beauty.
Had he been smart, he’d never have come back here where thoughts of her could torment him. He’d have gone
to another city, another state, and tried his damnedest to put her out of his mind forever.
But he’d been drawn back here by memories, trapped in the lies he’d blurted to a judge, caught in a web of threats sent to him by an unknown antagonist.
The fact that somebody had tried to kill him three years ago concerned him. The fact that somebody wanted to hurt Belinda infuriated him.
“Did Junior ever find out who forced you off the road the night of the Harvest Moon Dance?” he asked.
Again her eyes flickered with surprise. “No. Why? Do you think that has something to do with tonight?”
He shrugged and released a deep sigh. “I’m just trying to make some sort of sense out of the senseless.”
“I don’t think that my getting forced off the road has anything to do with this. Junior believes whoever was responsible for that was probably just drunk and careless. I think he’s right.” She leaned her head forward and closed her eyes. As Derek watched, she rubbed her forehead, as if trying to ease an ache deep inside her head.
“Headache?” he asked.
“I feel like my brain is about to explode from overload.” She looked at Derek, her eyes darkened by confusion. “First there’s the worry about hanging on to the ranch.”
“Which you can fix by saying two little words to me,” he reminded her. “I do. That’s all it will take.”
She frowned her displeasure at his interruption. “As if that’s not enough,” she continued, “one of our ranch hands informed us this morning that he’s certain one of us is his long-lost sister.”
Derek stared at her in shock. “What?”
As Belinda explained about the adoption papers found long ago, and Roger Eaton’s claim of family, Derek realized again that the relationship he’d thought he and Belinda had shared three years before had been little more than a surface one.
He’d believed she’d shared everything with him, told him all the secrets contained in her soul, but he now recognized that she’d held private areas of her heart that she’d never allowed him to enter. No wonder she hadn’t tried too hard to maintain their love. She’d never really given him her heart. “You never told me you might be adopted,” he said.
Before she could answer, Junior’s car pulled into view. Derek stood, shoving thoughts of the past away. He needed Belinda, but he’d never make the mistake of loving her again. And if she hadn’t been able to love him years ago when he’d been a whole man, she certainly wouldn’t fall in love with him now, scarred and bitter.
As Junior got out of his car, Belinda stood and together she and Derek went out to meet the sheriff. “Evening,” the lawman said as they approached. “What’s going on?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Belinda said. As she explained to Junior what had happened, Derek once again perused the dark wooded area from where he thought the shots had come.
“You don’t think it was some kind of an accident?” Junior asked.
Derek shook his head. “I might have been able to dismiss it all as an accident if there’d only been one shot. But there were several and there’s no way in hell it wasn’t deliberate.”
Junior leaned into his car and grabbed a flashlight from the front seat. “Guess I’ll have a look around.”
“I’ll go with you,” Derek said.
“I’ll just wait up on the porch,” Belinda added, sounding weary and still a little shaken by the entire incident.
“I don’t think those shots were intended for me,” Derek said to Junior as the two men began walking toward the woods.
Junior eyed him sharply. “You think somebody was trying to harm Belinda?”
Derek shrugged. “The first two shots seemed directed entirely toward her.”
“I hope you’re wrong about that,” Junior replied with a heavy sigh. “Those Connor girls have seen more than their share of trouble over the last couple of months. I’d like to think the bad times are all behind them now.”
Junior shone the flashlight toward the grove of trees just ahead of them. “You think the shots came from someplace around there?”
“With the echo effect, it’s difficult to say exactly where they came from,” Derek explained, “but this is the only viable place for somebody to hide, so they had to come from here.”
Together the two men followed the illumination of the flashlight, attempting to locate where a gunman might have stood or any other clues to help answer who and why.
Fallen leaves littered the ground, crunching noisily beneath their feet as they searched the area. As the sheriff’s light swept back and forth, Derek caught a glimpse of something gleaming amid the leaves.
“Hold it,” he said. “Back here.” He indicated for Junior to shine the light in the area he’d just passed. Derek bent and picked up a gleaming gold shotgun shell. “Bingo,” he said softly, and held the shell out to Junior.
“A twelve gauge,” Junior observed. “Somebody meant business.”
Derek continued to pick through the leaves and came up with two more shells. He straightened and looked toward the house. With the light of the moon spilling down, he could easily see the front porch and the place where Belinda had mounted her horse. “Whoever it was, they stood here and fired.” The shells felt heavy in his hand. “There’s no way it was an accident. There’s nothing impeding the view from here.”
A chill danced up Derek’s spine as he thought of somebody crouched here in the cover of the woods, watching him and Belinda, then carefully taking aim and squeezing the trigger.
“You sure they were aiming at Belinda and not you?” Junior asked.
Derek hesitated before answering. It was time to tell somebody what had brought him back here, time to trust somebody. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” he finally replied. “About a month ago I started getting notes telling me Belinda was in danger.” Junior stared at him in surprise. “That’s part of what brought me back here. I want her protected.”
Junior frowned, looking old and tired in the pale moonlight. “What, exactly, did these notes say?”
Derek leaned against a tree trunk and rubbed his thigh thoughtfully. “That she was going to die, that she had to die.”
Junior sucked in a long breath, then released it slowly. “And you don’t know who might have sent those notes?”
Derek shook his head. “Not a clue. They were block-lettered on plain paper and postmarked from here.”
“Why would this person write to you?”
“I don’t know,” Derek replied, although he assumed it had been a ploy to get him back to town. Somebody knew how deeply he’d once felt about Belinda and was now using those emotions to bring him back here. But why?
“You have those notes?” Junior asked.
“Inside the house.”
“I’d like to see them.”
Derek nodded and pushed off from the tree. “I’ll bring them by your office first thing in the morning. At the moment I’d prefer Belinda not know about them. Can you provide some kind of protection for her?”
Junior’s frown deepened, causing the lines and wrinkles in his tanned skin to intensify. “Derek,
there’s no way I can do that. I’m working without a deputy right now and even hiring a dozen more men, we’d all be overworked.”
“Couldn’t the Cheyenne police department loan you a couple of men?”
“For what? Right now all I’ve got is some anonymous notes and what might be construed as a random shooting.” Junior sighed. “There’s no point in us fumbling around out here in the dark,” he said. “I’ll come back out early in the morning and take a look around, see if there’s anything else to find.”
Derek nodded. Just as he suspected, he was the only protection Belinda would get. If she was going to stay safe, it would be up to him. He and Junior started back toward the house.
“You think it wise to keep those notes from her?”
“Hell, I don’t know what’s wise and what isn’t. Initially I didn’t want to frighten her. I didn�
�t know if the notes were somebody’s idea of a sick joke or what.” He stopped walking and turned to Junior. “The other reason why I haven’t said anything to her is that there’s a possibility she isn’t the target at all. Somebody wanted me back here, and it’s possible Belinda is merely the bait.”
“You think this has something to do with the fire at your place?”
“I don’t know.” Derek looked toward the porch, where Belinda’s silhouette was visible against the light wood of the house. “The fire was a long time ago. Hard for me to believe this is all tied together. All I know is that I intend to make sure nobody gets to me, and I’m sure as hell not going to let anyone get to Belinda.”
As they reached the porch, Belinda stood. “Did you find anything?”
“Shells,” Derek answered.
“Unfortunately they won’t do us any good unless we have a gun to check them against. And half the ranchers in the state have twelve-gauge shotguns,” Junior replied.
Derek nodded absently, his gaze lingering on Belinda. Who could possibly want to harm her? Why would anyone want to? Was the car that forced her off the road a week earlier really a drunk? Or was this all a sick game to get to him?
“No point in me hanging around any longer,” Junior said, breaking into Derek’s thoughts. “I’ll be out here at first light to check the area a little more thoroughly.”
“Junior, would you mind dropping me home?” Belinda asked the lawman.
“I’ll take you home,” Derek replied.
Her eyes flashed with some emotion Derek couldn’t decipher. Something deeper than fear and yet he couldn’t imagine why she’d be afraid of him. It was there only a moment then gone. “Thanks, but I’ll just catch a ride with Junior,” she replied.
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