by Linda Howard
THEY WERE IN the middle of the lunch rush—Carlin behind the counter and Kat making the rounds with a pitcher of tea in one hand and a carafe of coffee in the other, because she could handle pouring on the go better than Carlin could—when the cowboy walked in. Carlin couldn’t help but notice him. What warm-blooded woman wouldn’t? He was tall and muscular, and he moved with an iron confidence that said he knew his strength and hadn’t met much that could stop him. She had to call him handsome, though he wasn’t, not really. His face wasn’t perfect and sculpted, it was on the rough and hard side, but she was going on her reaction to him rather than what her eyes saw. She went warm and breathless, and looked away because staring at him was abruptly too much, too dangerous in a way she sensed but couldn’t quite grasp, at least not consciously. He was every inch the heartbreaker cowboy Kat had warned her away from—and damn if he didn’t charge the air when he walked into the place.
Running Wild is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books eBook Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Linda Howington and Linda Winstead Jones Excerpt from Shadow Woman by Linda Howard copyright © 2012 by Linda Howington
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Shadow Woman by Linda Howard. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52079-1
Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi
Cover photographs: © George Kerrigan
www.ballantinebooks.com
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Recipes
Dedication
Other Books by This Author
Excerpt from Shadow Woman
Prologue
LIBBY THOMPSON CROSSED her plump arms and tried to look stern, which wasn’t easy considering the undeniable sadness she felt. “Don’t give me that look, A.Z. Decker. Those puppy-dog eyes haven’t worked on me since you were nine years old.” Not that he’d had puppy-dog eyes even back then, and he certainly didn’t now, but she’d learned a long time ago that the trick to handling him was to never let it show how blasted intimidating he was when he looked pissed and flinty-eyed, the way he did now.
Zeke glanced down and to the side, where Libby’s bags sat. They were a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs, three different makers, three different colors: red, brown, and black. The bags were all stuffed so full they bulged and threatened to split their zippers wide open. Everything she owned was in those bags.
“I gave you two weeks’ notice,” she said in her best no-nonsense tone, because if she gave an inch, in no time flat he’d have her talked into staying. She couldn’t let her guard down, not even for a minute. The trick was to remember that he looked at problems as things he could solve if he just didn’t give up, which was great if he was working on your behalf, and not so great if you were on the other side of all that bullheaded determination.
“I tried to find a replacement,” Zeke growled, glaring at her accusingly, as if his failure was her fault.
“Really?” She snorted. “You put an ad in the Battle Ridge Weekly.” That was when she’d realized he hadn’t taken her seriously when she’d told him she was leaving, otherwise he’d have placed multiple ads in the newspapers in larger towns. As much as she loved him, that had really ticked her off. If he thought he could bulldoze her the way he did everyone else, then he was about to get his perception of the world rearranged.
“Two more weeks,” he bargained.
She blew out a breath of frustration. In her fifty-seven years, she’d faced down a lot, and never let life get her down even when she was widowed at a young age and left with a baby she needed to support. But from the time she’d first come to work here at the Decker ranch, she’d needed every bit of ability she possessed to stay ahead of Zeke. As a toddler he’d been a chubby, charming hellion; as a gap-toothed little boy he’d been a skinny, charming hellion; and since his teenage years he’d been a heartbreaker, with a whole lot of hard-ass thrown into the mix. He always got his way, but this time she simply couldn’t let that happen.
She’d been working at this ranch house for thirty-odd years, at first part-time and later, after Zeke’s mother remarried and moved to Arizona, full-time. She and Jenny had had their own rooms here, just off the kitchen. She knew this house as if it were her own, knew Zeke as if she’d given birth to him. His sisters had become a big part of her life, too, but they were both older, and Libby hadn’t played as large a part in their lives as she had in Zeke’s. For more than thirty years she’d cooked, she’d cleaned, and she’d blessed him out when he needed it. She’d mothered him, mothered the ranch hands, and spoiled him rotten. And she was on her way out the door.
She sighed, and her gaze softened a little. “Zeke, I hate to leave you in the lurch, you know I do, but I promised Jenny I’d be there this coming weekend. She’s at her wit’s end, with Tim out of town on business more often than not and those three kids running her ragged, and another one on the way. She’s my daughter, and she needs me.”
“I need you,” he growled, then his jaw hardened as he finally faced the reality, once and for all, that she was leaving. “Okay. Damn it—okay. I’ll get by.”
“I know you will.” Libby stepped toward him, patted him on one cheek while she went up on her toes and kissed him on the other. She backed away, and was all business once again. “I think Spencer knows his way around the kitchen; he’ll do until you find a replacement. I left a couple of cookbooks on the kitchen table. The recipe for my beef stew is in the one with the green cover.” He loved her beef stew, always had. She felt more than a little sad that she might never make it for him again, but at least the recipe was there so someone could.
“Thanks.”
He didn’t sound very grateful; he still sounded pissed as hell. Well, he could just stay pissed, because she’d made up her mind. Ignoring his sour mood, she continued, “I filled the freezer with stew, a pan of lasagna, and corn bread. There’s a big pot of chicken and dumplings in the refrigerator for tonight. Once that’s all gone, you can either find another housekeeper or you can get your ass busy finding another wife. That’s what you really need.”
That was a safe gambit, because if there was one subject Zeke av
oided, it was marriage. He’d tried it once, it hadn’t worked. By his way of thinking, he’d have to be nuts to put himself through the torture of trying again. He wasn’t a monk, by any means, and if he put himself out to find another wife he’d find himself standing in front of a preacher in no time; he definitely wasn’t hard on the eyes, with those broad shoulders, green eyes, and that thick, light brown hair. The right woman would rise to the challenge of meeting him halfway—if he were looking for a wife, which he wasn’t. Why would he, when he’d been able to find sex whenever he wanted and Libby was here on the home front taking care of all things domestic? All he wanted now was a cook and a housekeeper, and that was a horse of a different color.
Not many women would be happy on a ranch in the Middle Of Nowhere, Wyoming. The nearest town, Battle Ridge, was an hour’s drive away and was damn near a ghost town these days, anyway. Well, not really; there were still stores, but ten years ago over two thousand people had lived there, and now there was only about half that many.
And the bus only came through twice a week. Libby was about to get on it.
“Well come on, damn it,” he said, reaching for the bulging red bag. “It’s time to get you to town. You’re right, we’ll find a way to get by until I hire someone to replace you. No one’s going to starve, and I can damn well do my own laundry.” He snatched up the brown bag, too, leaving the black one, the smallest, for Libby.
She couldn’t help it. Her voice softened some when she said, “You know, you could call your mother …”
“No,” Zeke said sharply. Well, she’d known that was a nonstarter. He’d love a visit from his mother, but if she came her husband—Larry—would tag along. Zeke didn’t begrudge his mother happiness, but he and Larry had never seen eye to eye. A few days were about all he could stomach; no way would he ask them to move in for a stay that could turn into weeks.
“One of your sisters, then.”
“No.” This particular no wasn’t as harsh as the first one had been. “They’ve both got families, kids, jobs. Neither of them could take that much time away to stay here.”
“Kat might—”
Zeke snorted. “She’s got a business of her own to run. Why would she leave it to work here?”
“She could still cook some stuff for you to freeze, for emergencies. All you have to do is unbend enough to ask her.” Kat was a damn good cook, which was why she did so well with her little restaurant in Battle Ridge; she and Zeke were first cousins, so she’d help if she could, though her schedule was so crowded there was no way he could rely on her help to keep the hands fed full-time.
Libby opened the front door for Zeke, since his hands were full, and he stepped onto the porch. Half a dozen hands were waiting by the truck, waiting to say goodbye to the woman who had become a second mother to many of them. For a couple, she was the first real caring mother they’d ever known. There wasn’t a smile to be seen on any of those weather-beaten faces.
“Like I said, we’ll get by.” He shot a narrow-eyed look at Spencer, who shifted his feet and looked both guilty and confused, because he didn’t know what he’d done to earn the boss’s scowl. “Though we’ll be lucky if Spencer doesn’t give us all food poisoning.”
“Things will work out. They always do,” Libby said optimistically. She patted her hair, making sure all was in place, then rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek again. “I’ll be back for a visit every now and then,” she said, going down the steps to say goodbye to the ranch hands.
ZEKE WASN’T AS optimistic as Libby. As he drove her into town he tried not to growl his answers to her conversational chatter, tried to be happy for her, but—hell!
He’d miss her. He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been here. She was a spark plug of a woman, short and wide, with the kind of spirit that drew other people to her. When other women were settling into their senior years, Libby was dyeing her hair a different color every other week—it was flaming red right now—and bossing everyone around, making plans to take her grandchildren on a hot-air balloon ride, and generally steamrolling through life. At the same time, she had the kindest heart he’d ever seen.
Damn it. He couldn’t replace Libby. Someone else might do her job, but no one could replace her.
You’d think with the economy as tough as it was, hiring someone would be easy, but folks were leaving instead of digging in their heels and fighting to keep their lives intact. Battle Ridge was full of empty houses, most of them with “For Rent” or “For Sale” signs on them, and not a sign of any renters, much less actual buyers. Businesses were closing, families were pulling up stakes and heading south, where the brutal winters didn’t hammer at you, where you might still be unemployed, but at least you wouldn’t be freezing.
He’d try. So far he hadn’t really put his mind to it, because up until the last minute he’d thought Libby would back out of her plans and stay. It galled him to think he might not succeed, but he was enough of a realist to know that right now, the deck was stacked against him.
Getting a woman to come out to the middle of nowhere for a lot of hard work and nominal pay—he wasn’t a miser, but no one was going to get rich working at the Decker ranch—wasn’t as easy as she seemed to think it would be. Things didn’t always work out. When God closed a door He didn’t necessarily open a convenient window. No, Zeke figured he was pretty much fucked.
CARLIN WALKED QUICKLY to her desk, a frown on her face, her heart beating too hard. Be rational. She told herself that over and over, trying to reassure herself. She was just being paranoid; her imagination working overtime. There were thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Toyotas that particular shade of blue in the state of Texas. Just because one had appeared to follow her from her apartment to work, and just because the driver—who she’d barely been able to see when she’d checked her rearview mirror—had dark hair, that didn’t mean Brad had tracked her down. No way.
The frighteningly familiar vehicle had kept going when she’d turned into the building’s parking garage. No one had followed her. She was perfectly safe here. Damn it, she had to stop letting that psycho get into her head! Hadn’t he already done enough?
She’d completely uprooted her life because of him. She’d quit her job, moved to Dallas—which was more than a four-hour drive from the Houston suburb where she’d lived for almost a year—and left her worries behind … she hoped. She’d been working here for three months, and Brad hadn’t so much as called. He sure as hell hadn’t shown up at her apartment time and again without warning, the way he had before she’d moved.
No way did he know where she lived or where she worked. She kept telling herself that. No way.
She’d taken precautions when she’d moved, paying all her outstanding bills before leaving town and not telling anyone where she was going, not even her coworkers at the kitchen supply company where she’d been in charge of billing. Her mail was being forwarded to a post office box on the other side of Dallas, rather than to her new apartment. She’d left in the middle of the night—literally—taking only what she could fit in her car. She wouldn’t say that Brad couldn’t possibly find her, but she’d been very careful and she’d hoped—and prayed—that once she was gone he’d turn his attention elsewhere. She felt a little guilty about that, because what woman deserved Brad? She wouldn’t wish him on her worst enemy … well, maybe she would, if she had a worst enemy, but right off the bat she couldn’t think of anyone she disliked that much.
If anyone had listened to her, if even one cop had been on her side, she might still be working in Houston. She had been so naive! She’d been sure that once she filed a complaint, the authorities would take care of Brad. But when a cop decides to stalk a woman and he knows how to cover his tracks, when everyone is so quick to take his word over hers, there’s not much to be done except start over, which was what she’d done.
From the window she saw a line of clouds on the horizon; it hadn’t started raining yet, but according to the weatherman rain was coming. Ca
rlin slipped off her red raincoat and hung it on a hook at the edge of her cubicle. She loved that raincoat so much she almost looked forward to the occasional fall shower just so she could wear it. Now her nerves were so unsettled she didn’t want to deal with rain, or traffic, or even a phone call. If her phone rang now … what if it was Brad? What if he’d not only found— No, she needed to stop thinking about him. She’d seen someone who reminded her of him, but that was all. Nothing had happened.
Jina Matthews, who worked at the cubicle directly beside Carlin’s, wasn’t having a good day, either. She was on her phone, her expression tense. She and her boyfriend had been fighting a lot lately, and it looked as if Jina was at the end of her rope. She said a few choice words, then thumbed a button on her phone. Looking across the aisle at Carlin, she made a wry face.
“It was so much more satisfying when you could slam a phone down. Pushing a button just doesn’t have the same gratification factor.” Her phone, set to vibrate, buzzed around on the desk as another call came in. Jina picked it up, looked at the caller ID, and jabbed the button again. “Unless it’s the off button.” She leaned forward and spoke to the silent phone. “Call all you want, jackass. I can’t hear you,” she said in a singsong falsetto.
In spite of herself, Carlin laughed. Jina smiled, though the anger and sadness and frustration remained clear on her face.
Jina was gorgeous. She was blond, like Carlin, and about the same height, but that was where the similarity ended. Carlin knew she was acceptable, even above average, but she’d never be a knockout. Jina was. Men literally turned around in the street to stare at her. Unfortunately she had terrible taste in men, a strange and self-destructive attraction to the bad boy. She’d probably have a new boyfriend by the end of the week, and maybe this time she’d choose more wisely. God knows she had her pick of men, so why she went for the jerk instead of the straight-up guy was anyone’s guess.