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Jessica had been so deep in thought, she’d heard nothing the Santa had said until now. She froze in the cowboy’s embrace—except for a quick flick of her eyes that took in the rest of the now-silent lobby. The customers stood ashen-faced, hands raised, with the panicked expressions of wild nocturnal animals caught in a sudden beam of light.
The snarling Santa hadn’t been waiting in line for a legitimate transaction. His fluffy white beard and bushy eyebrows were a disguise. Beady yellow-brown eyes, like those of a cobra prepared to strike, glared at her. Jessica shivered as his cold stare bored into her. He’d shot out the window without hesitation and looked ready—even eager—to shoot again. The man was either totally reckless or out of his mind.
Or both.
Jessica swallowed hard against the terror rising in her throat and prayed silently that no one would try to be a hero. The crazed Saint Nicholas looked capable of blowing them all away without a qualm.
Behind the counter, a terrified young female teller was stuffing packets of bills into a bag as fast as her shaking hands would allow. Even under duress, Jessica’s efficient and encyclopedic brain fed her information, reminding her that bank tellers were trained to hand over their money without resistance—and to insert a stack of bills with a dye pack that would explode once the robbers left the bank. She recalled that small-town banks were considered soft targets for thieves, with buildings that were less secure and escape routes that were more accessible and less likely to be heavily patrolled by law enforcement.
For an instant, Jessica, locked in the iron grasp of the cowboy’s arms, wondered if the man who held her was the robber’s accomplice and had grabbed her as a hostage. Then she noted the path the shotgun pellets had taken to the outside window and realized with a shock that the cowboy had probably saved her life. Lost in her mental review of her upcoming interview, she hadn’t heard the robber’s first warning to remain still, and he’d opened fire on her. Only the swift intervention of her rescuer, who had jerked her out of the buckshot’s path, had saved her from being blasted to kingdom come, just like the bank’s front window.
Her knees buckled at the could-have-been, and if the cowboy hadn’t held her, she would have collapsed onto the desert-toned carpet.
“Steady.” His low voice, rich and smooth as cubano espresso, filled her left ear. “Stay calm.”
“Shut up,” the pseudo-Santa yelled, “or I’ll shoot you both.”
Jessica dragged in a deep breath of the chilly air pouring through the shattered window, and with it, the tantalizing fragrance of leather, saddle soap, open spaces and the unmistakable provocative male scent emanating from her rescuer. He had molded his body against her back and buttocks with an intimacy usually reserved for lovers, and his heat seeped through the triple layers of her coat, suit and lingerie. His contact reassured and, at the same time, flustered her, but she didn’t have long to dwell on the contradiction.
“Hurry up!” the robber screamed at the young teller. At the strain in his voice and the knowledge that he’d already shot to kill once, Jessica shuddered. Everyone in the room faced imminent danger.
The distraught teller shoved the last of the bills into the bag and flung it atop the counter.
The biting north wind carried the wail of an approaching siren through the demolished window. Someone must have triggered the silent alarm, Jessica thought. Hearing the siren, Santa grabbed the money-filled sack and swung it over his shoulder.
And laying his finger aside of his nose… Jessica choked back a hysterical giggle as the line from the traditional Christmas poem popped into her head.
With no chimney for his escape, Santa backed toward the front of the lobby. Swinging his shotgun in an arc that covered every person in the room, he warned, “You follow me, you’re dead meat.”
He lifted a dirty black boot over the low sill, stepped out onto the shards of glass that covered the sidewalk and disappeared at a trot down the practically deserted main street of Swenson.
Jessica sagged in relief against the stranger who held her, and chaos erupted in the lobby with everyone talking at once. A sheriff’s car, blue emergency lights flashing, sped past the window in the direction the robber had taken.
The cowboy who’d rescued her grabbed her shoulders and swiveled her to face him. He was so tall, she found herself confronting the broad expanse of his chest.
“What’s the matter with you?” Anger tainted the rich smoothness of his voice. “Are you deaf? Or just suicidal?”
Before she could reply, he turned from her and shouted across the lobby, “Nobody move or touch anything until I give the okay.”
Still stinging from his rebuke, Jessica felt a flush of embarrassment mixed with irritation rising to her cheeks. Prepared to explain her behavior, she lifted her gaze from the open collar of his denim shirt to the man’s face. Her excuse died on her lips, and her knees threatened to go weak again.
The cowboy mystique was alive and well in Swenson, Montana.
Gazing down from a lofty height of well over six foot four with a body as big and sturdy as a Humvee and eyes as deep brown as the mineral-stained waters of the Everglades, the intriguing man took her breath away. His face was too rugged to call handsome with its square jaw and high cheekbones, but attractive enough to make her pulse stutter. At the corners of his eyes and mouth, fine laugh lines crinkled skin as warm and golden as South Beach sands, and his wide, appealing mouth and strong chin had a determined set.
What was the matter with her?
She was gawking at her rescuer like a moonstruck teenager, expecting to hear the opening strains from The Magnificent Seven any second. Her close brush with death had addled her brain.
Hands that felt strong enough to snap her in two shook her gently, and his eyes filled with alarm. “Hell’s bells, lady, don’t faint on me.”
His plea broke the spell, and she shook off his grasp. “I’ve never fainted in my life,” she insisted with righteous indignation.
“There’s always a first time.”
Before she could protest further, he scooped her into his arms.
“Put me down. I’m perfectly capable of walking.”
“No, you’re not. And you’re in no position to be giving orders.”
Surprise took her breath away, stifling any more protests. He carried her across the lobby into Hayes’s empty office and deposited her on a sofa.
“I’m okay—” She struggled to rise, but he pushed her back onto the sofa with a firm hand.
“Stay put.” His tone left no room for argument. He pivoted on his heel and headed toward the lobby.
“Wait!”
He turned at her call, and she was struck again by the man’s magnetic charm. Accustomed to addressing conference rooms filled with international captains of industry, Jessica found herself suddenly tongue-tied in front of one incredibly attractive cowboy.
His wide mouth lifted in a slow, bone-melting grin, and amusement lit his eyes at her extended silence. “Well?”
“I… Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Just doing my job.” With a look that made her stomach flip-flop, he touched his fingers to the brim of his hat and stepped out the door.
Jessica propped herself on her elbows and watched him stride into the lobby, where the other customers and tellers had gathered. As her heartbeat returned to normal after revving at the stranger’s sexy smile, her previous irritation at her current assignment rose to new heights. She hadn’t been in Montana more than a few hours, and already she’d been shot at and man-handled. Max would have to cough up more than three weeks in St. Thomas to compensate for this.
She struggled upright, swung her feet to the floor and started to stand, but her knees wouldn’t cooperate. More shaken by her close brush with death than she cared to admit, she collapsed onto the sofa with a soft grunt.
She was where she’d intended to be, in John Hayes’s office. She might as well wait.
ROSS MCGARRETT left the woman in John Hayes’s office and returned to the lobby. He was a man slow to anger, but at this moment he felt like Mount St. Helens ready to blow. The robber had not only come within a hairbreadth of killing a young woman, he had stolen hardworking people’s money and scared a sweet old lady half to death.
Holding his temper in check, Ross waded into the midst of the frightened group in the bank’s lobby and strode straight to the information desk where Miss Minnie Perkins was trembling like a leaf in a gale-force wind.
With the bank filled with people, he’d decided against using the gun in the holster at the small of his back to confront the fake Santa. Better to let the robber get away than to have someone killed. His decision, he realized, had been the right one when the man proved so trigger-happy. Ross’s next instinct had been to follow the robber into the street. Then Josh Greenlea, the deputy on duty, had roared by in hot pursuit in his cruiser. With Josh on the felon’s tail, Ross had decided to remain with the rattled customers and secure the crime scene until the technicians arrived.
Kneeling on one knee by the information desk, Ross grasped the old woman’s cold hands. “You okay, Miss Minnie?”
All the color had drained from her weathered face. “I need my pills.”
Ross opened her oversize handbag and dug out the bottle of nitroglycerin from among the jumble of wadded Kleenex and grocery coupons. He popped the cap and dumped one pill into her shaking hand, then thought better of that and gripped it between his fingers. “Open wide and lift your tongue.”
Like a baby bird, Minnie did as he asked, and he tucked the pill beneath her tongue. “Want someone to drive you to the hospital?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine now.”
Renewed anger at the robber surged through Ross. If he lived to be a thousand, he’d never understand people who felt that laws didn’t apply to them. As a young boy, Ross had been taught by his grandfather that law was the glue that held society together, and Ross’s reverence for the law had eventually led to his election as sheriff of Swenson County. He took his sworn duty seriously.
And he took the breaking of the law within the county’s borders personally.
Especially personal had been the murder of his wife, Kathy, last year….
With an effort, he shoved aside that pain and the unsolved mystery. One crime at a time, he reminded himself and moved swiftly through the lobby, speaking to each witness, consoling the distraught customers and easing them away from any possible forensic evidence.
The entire time, however, he found himself glancing into John Hayes’s office, unable to keep his eyes off the beautiful stranger who’d come so close to perishing from the shotgun’s blast. The floral fragrance of her shampoo, something tropical and exotic, still clung where his chin had brushed her sleek auburn hair when he’d yanked her from harm’s way. Her provocative scent stirred feelings he didn’t have time to deal with now.
Concentrating on the business at hand, he realized the attractive woman in Hayes’s office had been one of two strangers in the bank that morning. The robber had been the other. His shot at her could have been a ploy intended to terrorize the others into submission. The probability that this petite and elegant woman was Santa’s accomplice was a stretch, but Ross had to check out every angle.
“Everybody stay put till the Crime Scene Unit arrives,” he warned the others after a call to dispatch, who assured him the CSU was en route.
Then he returned to Hayes’s office.
At his approach, the woman leaped to her feet, all five foot three of her. She had seemed such a tiny submissive thing in his arms, but now she appeared ready to take on a wild grizzly five times her size. Her stylishly short coat and skirt revealed long, slender legs, and as he’d held her, he had registered the pleasant fact that she was deliciously rounded in all the right places. Her spunk as well as her appearance impressed him. No, spunk suggested too much heat. In spite of having come within inches of losing her life, the woman appeared cool and composed. Glacial was a better term.
“I’m Sheriff—”
“Where’s John Hayes?” she asked abruptly.
Ross shrugged. “Probably taking a late lunch, but he’ll be back soon if he’s heard the news. Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”
She cocked her head and observed him with defiant blue eyes, dark and deep as a mountain lake. “You said ‘sheriff.’ Am I under arrest?”
“Should you be?”
“I may be crazy for coming here and for not hearing the robber’s warning,” she said in a rueful tone, “but I haven’t done anything illegal.”
“I’ll need your name and address.”
She slid the tiny strap of a fine leather handbag off her shoulder, snapped open the gold clasp and removed a business card. “Everything you need to know is right there.”
With interest, he scanned the card, printed on heavy, expensive stock. She was Jessica Landon with Rinehart and Associates, Financial Consultants, out of Miami. The card appeared authentic, but anyone with a computer and the right paper could print one. “You’re a long way from home.”
Comprehension appeared to dawn suddenly in her eyes. “You don’t think I had anything to do with—”
“Sheriff.” John Hayes, the bank’s manager, stepped into the office.
“You expecting this lady?” Ross asked. “Ms. Landon from Miami?”
John nodded. “We have an appointment.” He turned to Jessica. “Sorry, but I’ll have to postpone our meeting. Have you had lunch?”
The woman looked ready to protest the delay, then seemed to think better of it. “Is there a restaurant nearby?”
Ross nodded toward the opposite side of the street. “The café has great coffee. Good pies, too.”
“I’m free to go?”
Ross nodded again, irrationally wishing for an excuse to keep her around until his sense of duty kicked in.
“Come back in an hour,” John suggested with a glance at Ross. “I imagine the sheriff will be through by then.”
“That should do it,” Ross agreed, hoping the CSU would arrive promptly.
Jessica Landon straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and strode out of the office and the bank as coolly as if someone almost killed her every day.
TWO HOURS LATER, Jessica sat in the booth at the front of the café watching the controlled pandemonium at the bank across the street. Except for three rugged cowboy types, their weathered faces making their ages impossible to guess, one at the booth beside hers, the others at the counter, the restaurant was empty.
During her vigil, she’d watched the arrival of the Crime Scene Unit van, the departure of the customers, the removal of the glass from the front walk and the covering of the window with plywood. Throughout all the activity, the tall, handsome sheriff had been a constant presence, supervising, observing, instructing, and obviously completely in charge.
What struck Jessica most about the man, besides his distinctive good looks, was his apparent calm throughout the chaos. Nothing seemed to rattle him as he moved smoothly from task to task, person to person. He took the term laid-back to a whole new level. She could understand why the people of Swenson had elected him. He was without a doubt a good man to have around in a crisis. She just hoped he handled things quickly so she could meet with Hayes and get out of Dodge—or Swenson, as the case may be.
“Change your mind, hon?” The waitress with a name tag identifying her as Madge reappeared at her elbow, shoved the mint she’d been sucking into the pouch of her cheek and refilled Jessica’s cup. “Want to order now?”
Jessica had been nursing several mugs of decaf while she waited for Hayes to become available, obviously longer than he’d anticipated. At first, her close call had robbed her of her appetite, but she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and at three in the afternoon, hunger made her empty stomach ache.
“I’ll try some pie. The sheriff recommended it.”
The middle-aged waitress grinned and winked, exposing a lid caked with blue eye shadow. “You a friend of the sheriff?”
“We met at the bank.” How else could Jessica describe her intimate encounter with the man who had saved her life and set her senses tingling?
Madge made a clucking sound with her tongue. “What a hunk. He can park his boots under my bunk any day.”
The bedroom image made Jessica flush with heat in the already stuffy room, but she wasn’t about to discuss one stranger’s attributes with another. “What kind of pie do you have?”
Madge rattled off an impressive list, and Jessica selected chocolate cream. In moments, the waitress placed a huge wedge of pie topped with several inches of meringue in front of her and nodded toward the window. “Looks like they caught the crook.”
Another cruiser had pulled up with a man in the back seat, apparently handcuffed, judging from his posture. The Santa suit was gone, but even from across the street, Jessica could recognize those cold, deadly eyes. The sheriff climbed into the passenger seat of the car, the deputy drove away and the Crime Scene Unit van followed.
Within minutes, an Open sign appeared on the bank’s front door. Deserting her hardly touched pie, Jessica grabbed her coat, paid her bill and headed across the street.
ANOTHER HOUR LATER, Jessica left the bank in an even fouler mood than when she’d first arrived. In spite of what Max had hinted, she’d hoped this assignment would be quick, a day or two at most auditing accounts, perusing records and then writing up her assessment of the ranch’s viability in the dubious comfort of her spartan hotel room.
Max and Hayes had made other plans.
All the paperwork she needed to complete her assignment was in the office of the Shooting Star Ranch, thirty-five miles outside of town. And Hayes had insisted that the trustees wanted a thorough inspection of the ranch, acreage, stock and buildings.
“The family’s invited you to be their guest while you work,” Hayes had said. “That way you won’t have that long commute back and forth to the hotel and restaurants every day. The less you’re on the road this time of year, the better. Driving can be treacherous.”
“Then I should see you in a few days,” Jessica said.
Hayes looked surprised. “Oh, I doubt that. You should take your time, observe for yourself the assets of the ranch and how it works. Plus you have over a decade’s worth of accounts to evaluate. The trust insists on a complete evaluation of the property’s productivity. Only when the trustees are satisfied that all is as it should be will ownership be transferred.”
“Rinehart and Associates are never anything but thorough,” Jessica said, wishing in this instance it wasn’t so. She’d never been so homesick for Miami.
“Of course,” Hayes said soothingly. “That’s why the trustees selected you.”
