What She Did

“Mom, can you listen for my ringtones?” she shouted upstairs.

“Who was at the door?” her mother asked, appearing at the landing and scaring the hell out of Chelsea. Thankfully, her mother looked normal.

“Fireman,” she responded and, before her mother could freak out, added, “Everything’s fine.”

“I’ll keep an ear open,” Linda said, giving a thumbs-up sign.

Chelsea hoped her mother was making the gesture because she caught onto the plan and not because she thought Chelsea should flirt with their guest. When Mom winked, it was pretty obvious which side she was on.

Hot cowboy or no, Chelsea couldn’t be bothered with so much riding on her business getting off the ground. There was a lot of work to be done and she needed to focus on making sure the three of them didn’t starve.

Plus, her immediate need was to find her daughter. Nothing overrode that.

Nate Kent entered the hallway and Chelsea didn’t have to look to know he was there. She could feel his masculine presence. She turned and him gave the awkward hand signal her mother had just given her, with an even cheesier smile.

Chelsea took a breath and fisted her hand.

He seemed to get the idea because he tapped the call button.

A hush seemed to fall over the house and even the roaring winds outside calmed.

Chelsea listened, moving from room to room when no ringtones sounded. Her daughter was too young to change the settings on the phone. This couldn’t be right. Skylar was hiding somewhere. She’d called 9-1-1 and asked for help.

The cowboy followed her until they ended up back in the kitchen.

“It’s gone into voice mail.”

Chapter Two

The look of terror on the brown-eyed, blond-haired mother punched Nate in the gut. The five-and-a-half-foot tall beauty had full lips, creamy skin and a flawless figure with just the right amount of curves. And those were things Nate had no business noticing.

“If she was okay, she would answer.” Chelsea twisted her fingers together.

An older woman wearing a frock and apron came into the kitchen. “Any luck down here?”

“No.” Chelsea looked frantic as she exited the kitchen and moved from room to room calling for her daughter.

“I’m Linda,” the older woman said. She had permanent worry lines etched into her forehead and sad, light brown eyes. Maybe sad wasn’t the right word. Deep down, behind her smile, she looked empty. She was thick around the middle and it looked like it took some effort to walk. But there was also a kindness and warmth to her that her daughter had no doubt inherited.

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Name’s Nate Kent.” He offered a handshake that she took with a surprising amount of vigor for a woman of her stature.

His cell buzzed. He excused himself as he checked the screen and saw the call was from Dispatch.

“Are you still at the McGregor residence?” Patty Smart had turned seventy-eight on her last birthday and her mind was still sharp as a tack.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. I have a little girl on the line and she’s quite distraught. Seems she’s gotten herself in a fix.” Patty’s calm, sympathetic voice was a welcome relief. It meant the little girl was okay.

“Is she in the house?” He shot a knowing look toward Chelsea. Even wearing baggy jogging pants and a loose T-shirt, he could tell she had an amazing figure. Again, her shapely hips and full breasts were none of his business.

“Yes. She’s in a closet under the stairwell,” Patty supplied.

“We looked inside there.” Nate was already circling back with Chelsea on his heels.

“Can you hold on, please?” Patty asked.

“Of course.” Nate turned to Chelsea and whispered, “She called 9-1-1. I’m on the phone with one of the operators. Your daughter’s here in the house and she’s shaken up but all right.” Nate was grateful he could deliver good news. As a volunteer fireman for Broward County, he’d seen a little bit of everything and not every situation turned out the way he’d like.

“Thank you.” Chelsea’s eyes closed for a second and she looked to be collecting herself as relief washed over her features. “If she’s here, where is she?”

He nodded at the hall closet as Patty came back on the line.

Chelsea’s forehead creased with confusion.

There could be a crawl space in there. He’d seen plenty of oddities in these old houses. People created insulated spaces to hide money and, in some cases, bootleg whiskey.

“I’m putting the call on speaker,” Nate said to Patty.

“Skylar said she’s worried that her mommy is going to get upset with her for being bad. She didn’t want to start a new school.” Patty’s grandmotherly compassion came through.

“She’s safe. That’s all that matters to me,” Chelsea said.

“I’m sorry it took a minute to call. You must be worried sick. It took time to calm her down enough to understand what she was saying.”

Chelsea was already inside the four-by-six closet with its sloped ceiling.

Nate peeked inside.

“She’s not in here.” Chelsea dropped to all fours and felt around on the floor.

“None of these houses have basements.” Nate had no idea where the blond beauty had moved from. This was Old Lady Barstock’s place.

Chelsea felt around walls. “There’s nothing here.”

“Can you tell Skylar to shout to us or bang on the wall?” Nate dropped to all fours and knocked on the walls, looking for a dead space.

And then he felt it. A ridge where there should have been solid wall. “Hold on. I might have something.”

He ran his finger along the ridge. Chelsea moved beside him and her scent washed over him. She had that clean, warm and citrusy smell.

Refocusing, Nate pushed on the two-by-two box. The wall moved. Using both hands, he forced an opening. Almost instantly, sniffles sounded.

“Skylar, baby, are you in there?” Chelsea’s voice had a forced calm that belied the wild look in her eyes.

“Momma?” A sob echoed as a scuffling movement sounded. The little girl’s face appeared in the opening, round and angelic. Red, puffy eyes spilled tears when she saw her mother.

Nate backed away, ending the call with Patty after delivering the good news, giving mother and daughter space to reunite.

Linda paced in the hallway. “Was that her voice I heard?”

“She’s okay.”

The older woman clutched at her chest and it looked like her right knee gave out. Nate grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.

“Let’s get you into a comfortable chair.” He helped Linda into the kitchen and into a chair at the table.

Linda apologized several times.

“Don’t worry about it. Happens all the time.” It didn’t, but he wanted to make her feel better. The family had clearly been through enough for one morning.

Nate didn’t have children of his own but a few of his brothers did. He couldn’t imagine the terror of one going missing even for a few minutes.

His family had been through a lot and that had made them even closer.

Their parents had died a short time apart, leaving Nate, his four brothers and one sister to run the family ranch. The Kent Ranch, known to most simply as KR, was one of the most successful cattle ranches in Texas. The family owned land across the state and into Idaho and Wyoming.

Then there was the growing problem of someone butchering heifers on the family ranch. The gruesome killings had started out weeks ago with one heifer found near Rushing Creek with its left hoof hacked off before being left to die. There was no excuse for animal cruelty to any Kent, and Nate was no exception. His family had been working closely with local Sheriff Zach McWilliams, who was also a relative, to solve the cases. The cousins had been close from childhood, along with Zach’s sister, Amy.

Everyone was on the hunt. There had been no new information or leads on the case yet extra patrols couldn’t keep the killer at bay. His pattern of striking was unpredictable.

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Linda said, settling in the chair.

“You couldn’t be,” Nate reassured her. He had basic EMT training but that’s about as far as his skills went.

Linda’s color had washed out, her pupils dilated.

“Are you taking any medications?” he asked.

The older woman issued a breath. “I forgot. In all the excitement, I completely missed my morning pills.”

Chelsea came into the room, a little girl in her arms who looked like her Mini-Me but with black, kinky curls. Nate glanced up and his heart squeezed at the sight of mother and daughter. The little girl was still sniffling and softly crying, her face buried in her mother’s long hair.

Linda put up a hand at Chelsea’s obvious concern. “I forgot to take my medication this morning,” Linda said.

“Where is it? I’ll go get it.” Chelsea was busy with her little girl, so Nate volunteered to do it.

“I keep them in the cabinet next to the kitchen sink.” Linda pointed. “There’s a lock on it so you’ll have to finagle it open.”

“A couple of my brothers are married with kids. I’ve seen most of these.” He was able to open the cabinet easily. He grabbed three bottles with Linda’s name on them and brought them to Chelsea’s mother with a glass of water. He recognized one as a commonly prescribed blood pressure medication.

She thanked him and took the offering. She opened the bottles and popped three pills in her mouth. “I’ll be back to normal in no time.”

Nate noticed the concern on Chelsea’s forehead. She had her hands full.

And so did he.

“THANK YOU FOR COMING,” Chelsea said to Nate. Her to-do list was piling up and she hadn’t planned on Skylar being around for the day. Having her daughter home was going to throw a wrench in things. Part of her figured she should send her daughter to preschool, but the other part—the winning part—convinced her to keep Skylar home.

What Skylar had done was not okay. But the scare of being locked inside the crawl space had been bad enough for her daughter to still cling to Chelsea. There’d be no peeling those fingers from around Chelsea’s neck, and maybe she was a bad parent for it, but she needed to keep eyes on her little girl after that shock, to see that her daughter was fine.

Chelsea, shaken up by the morning’s events, was probably overreacting, but she also acknowledged that she’d uprooted Skylar from everything familiar.

Nate finished his cup of coffee and set it on the counter.

“There’s no reason to rush him out the door,” Linda said with a little wink that made Chelsea’s face flame with embarrassment.

Worse yet, he chuckled, and it was a rumble from deep in his chest.

“I’ll walk you out.” Chelsea didn’t care how amused he was. She was mortified.

“Hope you feel better soon,” he said to her mother.

“Maybe you could stop in later.”

“Mom.”

Chelsea, Skylar in her arms, led the way to the front door without looking back. She didn’t want to give away her body’s reaction to the handsome cowboy. Besides, it was most likely because of what had happened, but she had a creepy feeling that she couldn’t shake. When she really thought about it, she’d woken with it.

A premonition? She didn’t believe in psychic abilities.

She stopped at the door, hefting Skylar higher on her hip. “I think I’ve apologized like fifty times already, but I’m sorry about my mother just now.”

“She was having a little fun.” She was grateful for his good nature. He hesitated at the door. “I don’t want to intrude, but it might be safer if I check out that crawl space before I leave.”

Skylar lifted her head to look up. She’d always been a shy child, avoiding eye contact until it was absolutely necessary.

“It was scary,” Skylar said, brown eyes wide and watery. A tear escaped, rolling down her cheek. She brought the back of her hand up to wipe it away.

Chelsea almost didn’t know how to react. Her daughter rarely spoke to strangers, especially men she didn’t know.

Nate’s offer would take an item off Chelsea’s growing to-do list. Accepting help was foreign to her, especially from a stranger. She had always been self-reliant. To be honest, she preferred it to depending on anyone else.

But she could also admit that she was in over her head.

“That would be great.” She needed to get back to the kitchen to check on her mother, though she didn’t like the idea of the crawl space being open. “Any chance you can board it up while you’re here? I have a hammer and nails. I’m sure I can find a couple of boards.”

“I was going to offer the same thing. Thought I’d check it out first to make sure nothing else was in there.”

Chelsea must’ve tensed without realizing.

“In case there are any small critters in there that need to get out first,” he clarified.

She wasn’t sure she loved the sound of that, either, but it was a nice gesture. Being in the country would take some getting used to. “You must love animals.” Wasn’t his last name Kent?

He nodded and smiled. Those gray eyes of his shouldn’t make her feel like her knees might buckle when he looked at her.

He was just a man. Okay, that wasn’t entirely fair. He was more than a man. He was one seriously gorgeous cowboy with a familiar last name—why did she know it?

“You could say taking care of animals is in my blood.”

“Do you have any?” Skylar asked, perking up.

“I live on a ranch where there are cattle, horses and pretty much every other wild thing you can find in Texas.” Normally a man of his size and build would be intimidating to a small child. His gentle nature with Skylar made it easy to see why her daughter took to him.

Chelsea glanced at his ring finger and her heart gave a little flip when she didn’t see a gold band. Not that it mattered, she quickly reminded herself.

Skylar’s face lit up as the cowboy spoke. She leaned away from her mother and unclenched her hands from around her mother’s neck. She rocked her body, indicating that she wanted to get down. Chelsea complied.

Her daughter had never recovered from a traumatic event so fast. Chelsea’s head was spinning and she knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Do you have a pony?” Skylar asked.

“We have three. Peter, Polka and Dot,” he supplied much to Skylar’s amusement. “Peter bites, so you have to watch out for him if you ever stop by.”

“Can I come over now?” Skylar twisted her arms together and shifted from foot to foot.

“No, honey. Mr. Kent is working and you should be at your first day of school. Remember?” Chelsea couldn’t help herself but to throw in that last part. Now that her own heart rate had settled below panic she was rethinking her position on keeping Sky home. If there was a chance she could get her daughter to school, even late, she probably should do it. Having even a few hours to focus would go a long way toward getting her restaurant ready for its opening in six weeks. Six weeks? Thinking about it made her lungs squeeze.

“What school do you go to?” Nate asked, squatting until he was eye level with the child.

Skylar looked up at her mother and blinked.

“Clemens Preschool. Have you heard of it?” It was an early childhood development program and the best part was that tuition was next to nothing—precisely what Chelsea could afford while she got her business off the ground.

“I know a few of the teachers over there. Mrs. Eaton—”

Skylar jump-clapped, which was quite a sight, considering she’d never jumped and clapped at the same time before. “That’s my teacher’s name.” Skylar could barely contain her excitement.

Shock nearly knocked Chelsea back a step. Skylar’s reaction had caught Chelsea off guard but then she’d never seen Skylar react to a man this way. Her little girl had never met her own father and there’d been no grandfather around to fill in the gap.

Chelsea’s attempt to sign her daughter up for a coed soccer team had fallen flat when Skylar had refused to step on the pitch. In her daughter’s defense, the coach had had a supersonic voice that boomed. He was Dad to seven boisterous boys and coached middle school football. He was big, round and loud. Skylar had been terrified of him.

“Your teacher brings in a special visitor every year around this time,” Nate said. “A male frog by the name of Henry.”

“Really?” Skylar’s eyes were saucers. She was captivated. Her mother could admit to being enthralled by the handsome cowboy, too. The man most likely had a girlfriend or significant other. There was no way he was single and, even if he was, Chelsea had been there, done that, and the T-shirt had been stolen by her ex.

“That’s right,” he said. Chelsea already knew from checking his ring finger earlier there was no band, which didn’t necessarily mean there was no relationship.

Besides, once this cowboy was on his way, Chelsea planned to have a serious discussion with her daughter about the proper use of 9-1-1. Although, in fairness, the little girl had been trapped between the walls. Chelsea shivered thinking about how badly this could’ve gone if her daughter hadn’t taken the cell phone in with her.

A cold trickle, like when people said a cat walked over their grave, crept over her. She’d been on edge for days and it was probably because of the way she’d left things at her job in Houston.

Renaldo had made threats before telling her she’d regret walking out on him. He’d been outraged at the fact that she didn’t want to date him and her quitting had seemed to infuriate him more. She would’ve walked out after the first time he’d made a pass at her but she’d needed the job and would need a letter of recommendation if she quit. She’d been forced to keep the peace.

Looking back she could see how naïve she’d been in believing his interest would blow over. She figured he’d lose interest and find another person to date. It wasn’t like many of the other waitresses didn’t see him as attractive. To Chelsea, he seemed like a spoiled middle-aged man used to getting what he wanted from people. There was absolutely nothing attractive about that to her.

Renaldo had made no secret of being put off by her rebuttals.

The man had an ego the size of Texas.

But was it dangerous?

Chapter Three

Nate had picked up a sidekick while he worked. Skylar was a cute little thing with big, rust-colored eyes and a shy smile. He’d been around kids enough recently, thanks to his brothers and their wives, to be halfway decent as an uncle. A few of his brothers had found true happiness with wives and kids. Don’t misunderstand, Nate was all about the people he cared about being happy. And marriage was great for some people. He had no plans to rush into a commitment of that magnitude.

When he and his former girlfriend, Mia Chase, had hit the six-month mark of dating, her software job moved to Boulder. She’d told him how much she cared about him and that she didn’t want the relationship to end. And that’s when the ultimatum came to take their relationship to the next level or end it.

Nate had been honest. He hadn’t been ready right then, but that didn’t mean he would never be. He didn’t share the part about something holding him back. It didn’t matter. Mia had balked and it had become clear to him that she’d been expecting a different answer.

A couple of weeks after she’d left, he’d learned the move had been optional. She’d tried to back him against the wall to get him to the altar. Her plan had backfired. To this day, he couldn’t understand why she’d done it, but he knew for certain that he’d dodged a bullet. There wasn’t much Nate despised more than a liar.

Besides, six months was a long time to spend with the same person. He’d been bored for the last two, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to break up with her after she’d told him she was still dealing with the loss of her sister to lymphoma. That, he later found out, had also been a lie.

He hammered the last of the nails and backed out of the crawl space. “That should take care of it.”

Chelsea had ushered her daughter into the kitchen and now stood next to him. She’d changed into formfitting jeans, a blouse and ankle boots. Her hair was slicked back in a ponytail, her brown eyes intent on him. “How’d you do that with Skylar?”

The little nugget, he knew, was in the kitchen, eating with her grandmother and happily chatting about how much fun her day at school was going to be.

“It’s magic.” Nate’s work was done. It was time to take off. He put his hat back on and pulled down on the rim in front.

Chelsea was beautiful. And, under different circumstances, she was exactly the person he’d enjoy getting to know better. But family was sacred to him and he doubted a woman like Chelsea would be happy with what he could offer—a great time in the sack with mutual consent. Besides, the burn marks from his last relationship were fresh and he had no intention of jogging down that same snake-filled path any time soon.

“We’re obviously new in town. Last night was our first night in a new house and this morning is not off to a good start,” Chelsea said on what seemed like a frustrated sigh.

He already knew, thanks to Linda, she was single. He didn’t want to like that fact as much as he did.

“Jacobstown is a great place to bring up a family. Small-town atmosphere. Nice folks,” he told her. He also felt the need to warn her about the heifers. “Until a recent crime spree involving heifers, I don’t think we knew what crime was.”

Her eyes grew wide. “And now?”

“We’ve had a threat to our livestock. A few animals have been butchered by a man who has been cutting off the hooves of animals. In fact, he just picked up a name, Jacobstown Hacker. You might hear folks mention him.” Nate didn’t want to go into more details than that but people were on edge and she deserved to know the truth about what was going on.

Her face twisted in a mix of rebuke and sadness. “This sounds like one messed-up individual. Who on earth would get pleasure out of hurting innocent animals?”

“A twisted jerk.” Nate couldn’t agree more. “Do you have a pet?”

“I promised Skylar a puppy once we get settled,” she said on a sigh.

“Might want to think about keeping it inside. There are coyotes to deal with in the country. Not to mention the Texas heat.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Chelsea’s eyes sparked but she didn’t mention where she’d moved from.

“Folks from the city are known to drive out to these parts to drop off unwanted dogs. Not sure if you had your heart set on a specific breed, but you can save money if you’re willing to care for anything that turns up.” Nate thought it was a shame people did that to animals. A domesticated dog, especially a puppy, didn’t have the survival skills necessary to outsmart a bobcat or a hungry pack of wolves. Get much farther out and wild boar roamed.

“That’s awful.” Chelsea frowned and he had no business looking at her pink lips or the freckle on the left side of her mouth.

“If you end up with more than you can handle, give my ranch a call. We have heated and air-conditioned barns for the horses with plenty of room to take care of strays.” Nate gave her his personal cell number, just in case.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Part of Nate wanted to volunteer that she call if she needed anything. But he knew better. Go down that rabbit hole and what?

He had no idea. Chelsea seemed the opposite of Mia, but first impressions could be deceiving. He’d learned that the hard way, too.

Still fresh from his breakup and betrayal, Nate knew better than to jump back into the dating saddle—no matter how much his heart seemed to have other ideas when it came to the town’s newest resident. Casual and consensual sex was another story altogether. He’d had plenty of that in the past few months since the breakup.