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His lips crushed down on hers with bruising force, and she tasted blood.
She forced herself to relax for a moment, until she felt him loosen his grip and shift his legs. Then she jerked her knee up into his groin. He gave a loud groan and fell off her.
She scrambled to her feet and wiped the blood from her lip. “Collect your pay and be off the ranch by noon. You’re fired.”
Cody groaned again.
She quickly saddled Dia and led him out of the barn. By the time her weight settled into the saddle, Dia was moving forward. She reined him in, attempting to hold him to a walk. “Easy, boy. Let’s warm up first.”
She flipped her hair free of her jacket collar, and as they passed the next barn, she saw Tio, one of the ranch’s longtime cowboys, and lifted her hand to him.
“Kit?” he called out. “What’s wrong? You’re lookin’ like thunder this mornin’.”
“Just a guy who can’t take no for an answer.”
“Well, now, that ain’t right, no sir. You want me to handle him for you?”
“Don’t bother. I took care of him.”
Free of the outbuildings, she eased Dia into a lope, then gradually into an easy gallop. When she thought he had warmed up enough, she let him run flat out.
The whole unpleasant scene with Cody could be traced back to her reaction to the news that Des wanted to see her. How incredibly stupid of her.
Des.
Where was he?
What was he doing?
Why did he want to see her?
One
Careful of her split lip, Kit took a sip of the hot coffee, leaned back in her rocking chair, propped her booted feet atop the porch railing and scanned the lake. The breeze rippled across its surface as the sun lit the water silver.
She hadn’t meant to ride as far as the lake this morning. Normally she let Dia run for only a quarter of a mile, then slowed him to a lope for perhaps another quarter of a mile, after which they would head back to the barn.
But this morning neither one of them had seemed to want to return home just yet. So she had given in to the need to lengthen her time away from the waiting ranch business and turned Dia in the direction of her small cabin, which sat atop a bluff, overlooking the Double B’s largest lake. She was glad she had.
Truthfully, Dia never wanted their morning ride to end. As for her, she was still upset about Cody. She cast her mind back on the few times she had been with him. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of a thing she had done to lead him on.
But… Cody was a relatively new hire and didn’t know her well. And they had been alone….
She sighed. In retrospect, it had been a mistake to invite him to go with her, but it was over now. Hindsight was a wonderful thing and, in this case, totally useless.
She took another sip and refocused on her surroundings. The lake cabin was one of her favorite places. As soon as her father had died, she’d had it built, along with a corral and a small barn. It had been one of her dreams. Here there were no phones. Here no one ever bothered her. Often she and Dia would ride out on a summer evening. She would swim and spend the night, then, the next morning, after another swim, she would head back to the house.
She scanned the lake. Unfortunately, it would be much too cold to swim this morning, and it was time she returned to her work.
A faint roar disturbed her musings. Curious, she got up and walked to the corner of the long porch so that she could peer around the side of the cabin. The roar was coming from the south, which meant it was coming from the direction of the homestead.
She shielded her eyes and picked out a vehicle, speeding toward her at what she estimated to be well over fifty miles an hour, raising a cloud of dust behind it.
She stiffened. Surely it wasn’t Cody. Surely their encounter in the barn had been enough to discourage him. But no…
It was a truck, she realized, as it drew closer. And it looked like the one her Uncle William had given his stepson, Desmond Baron, when he had graduated from law school.
Her pulse quickened, and her brow crinkled.
If it was Des, why would he seek her out here? His message had said he had wanted to talk to her. Was it so important he had felt the need to come after her?
It had to be him. No man on the Double B would dare abuse a ranch vehicle by driving it that fast over what was little more than a track. But with her Uncle William’s death four months ago, Desmond Baron now owned fifty percent of the entire Baron empire. He could do anything he wanted to.
With a sigh, she sat her coffee cup on the railing and went down the steps to meet him.
If Des had been raised in a city instead of on a working ranch, his appearance might have stopped at classically good-looking. But he had been raised on a vast ranch and had conquered most of its jobs by the time he was fourteen. With time, the rough, outdoor life had branded him with a ruggedness and sexuality that seared as hot as the West Texas sun. His thick, dark brown hair was styled away from his brow and in short sideburns in front of his ears. His brown eyes were as sharp and all-seeing as a hawk’s.
With the force of his intelligence and personality, he had the ability to dominate any situation, whether it was in the courtroom, where he had earned a reputation as one of the toughest, smartest defense lawyers in the country, or on the ranch, where every hand viewed him with respect. He was as hard as the plains on which they had both been reared, so what did he want with her?
As he climbed out of his car, her heart somersaulted. She hadn’t seen Des since the reading of the will, which had occurred right after Uncle William’s funeral. Now his jeans wrapped his lean hips and long legs like a Christmas present. His boots were well worn, and beneath a sheepskin vest was a beautiful pine-green sweater. It looked hand-knitted, and she couldn’t help but wonder if a woman had made it for him. The home where he’d been raised sat less than a mile from hers, and she’d had countless opportunities to watch him from afar, starting when she first became aware of him as a little girl. There had always been women in his life. Gorgeous women who seemed willing to do anything for him. She’d never liked any of them, not that it mattered.
His scent of leather and spice came to her on the breeze as he stopped in front of her. Funny. From the first time she had been this close to him, though she had tried her best, she had never forgotten the way he smelled. Or anything else about him, for that matter. “Good morning, Kit.”
“Good morning.” His sharp brown eyes seemed to cut to her very heart, and his deep voice resonated inside her. No wonder he won the majority of his cases. Just last week she had read that his latest trial had ended with a victory for his client. Most of the trials he conducted ended the same way. Opposing lawyers rarely had a prayer against him. “What are you doing out here?”
He paused, his gaze touching on her red hair.
“You really should have a phone installed out here.”
It didn’t escape her that he hadn’t answered her question. “Usually I’m not here that long.”
“Still, in case of an emergency, you should carry a cell phone.”
His tone was mild, not dictatorial or judgmental. Nevertheless, she instinctively defended herself. “It’s not like I’m out here all the time.” She swung an arm to indicate her surroundings, causing her jacket to shift partially open and reveal her sweater. His gaze dropped to her breasts, and she silently cursed as she felt her nipples harden. “Besides, the ranch isn’t going to fall apart if I’m gone for a few hours now and then.”
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of the ranch. I was thinking about you. What would happen if you had an accident and needed help?”
She slipped her hands into the fleece-lined pockets of her jacket. “My managers know where the cabin is, along with my routine. If I was missing for more than a few hours, they’d come straight here.”
“What happened to your lip?” he asked, causing her to take a quick mental left turn.
Her hand flew to her mouth and the split lip that remained slightly swollen. “I must have bitten it.”
“Must have?” His gaze roamed her face, searching. “Don’t you know for sure?”
“I bit it.” She didn’t want to tell him the truth. Despite her reassurances to herself, she still couldn’t help feeling that she could have handled Cody better.
“It must have been a hard bite.” He reached out and gently touched the spot. “And it looks like a fresh wound.”
Heat flashed through her. She recognized the feeling from that long ago summer night when he had taken her in his arms. Why couldn’t she forget? She moved her head slightly, dislodging his touch. “It’s fine.”
In a casual move, he shifted the lapel of her jacket aside, baring the portion of her sweater he had seen when she had gestured. “Is this your blood?”
She glanced down at her sweater. She hadn’t realized her lip had bled so badly. That damn Cody. “What’s brought you all the way out here? If you had just waited, I would have been back soon.”
With a quickness that nearly took her breath away, he stepped forward and slid one hand along the side of her jaw, tilting her face up. “Kit, would you tell me if you were in trouble?”
His move and question took her by surprise. His touch warmed her skin. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Are you in trouble? Because if you are, I’ll help.”
With his hand on her, she could barely think. Could he have heard about her argument with Cody? But no, that didn’t make sense. For better or worse, she had taken care of the matter. “Why are you here, Des?”
He let his hand drop away. “You’re needed back at the homestead.”
“Why? I don’t have any appointments scheduled until this afternoon.” She didn’t have a clue what he was thinking, and instinct honed over time kept her from trying to find out. With Des, it was better if she kept her distance. “Oh, never mind. I was about to head back anyway. I’ll just close up.”
“Wait.”
His grim tone halted her as she was about to turn. She eyed him cautiously. Because of her father’s cruelty in keeping her and her sisters under his thumb, and later, because of her wariness of Des, she’d never been close to him. But even she knew he wasn’t acting normally. “What is it?”
“Someone’s been killed, Kit.”
“Oh no! Who?”
Death on the ranch wasn’t a complete shock. Working with large animals, as well as heavy machinery and equipment, offered too many chances for accidents. But she always hated to hear about it.
“Cody Inman.”
She stiffened. How could that be? After she had left, he hadn’t even been supposed to go to work, only draw his check from the paymaster and leave. “Cody Inman?” she repeated to make sure she’d heard correctly. “But I saw him right before I rode out this morning.”
“That’s what Tio said. A little while after you left, Tio went into the barn to start his work and found the body in one of the empty stalls. Since you weren’t around, he came to me. I called the sheriff, then drove out here to get you.”
She nodded. “Of course.” How had Cody managed to get into an accident on what should have been his last few hours on the Double B?
“How awful.” However Cody had acted toward her, she felt a deep pang of sadness for him. Just last night he had been so alive, dancing and laughing with her. But then he’d begun to drink and come on to her, and then this morning…
Questions raced through her mind as she tried to grapple with the fact that a man she had argued with mere hours before was now dead.
“How did he die?”
“You don’t know?”
Confused, she stared up at him. “How would I know?” He didn’t answer. “Des? How did he die?”
“It looks like a blow to the head with a blunt object. Perhaps a shovel.”
The air went out of her. “Are you saying Cody was murdered?”
“That’s right.”
“But I don’t understand. How could such a thing have happened?”
“That’s what the sheriff wants to question you about.”
“Okay, I’ll close up here and be there as soon as possible.”
“No. Just leave Dia here and come with me. We’ll have someone bring a horse trailer out for him.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“The sheriff will be waiting to talk to you.” He paused. “So, now do you want to tell me how you got that split lip?”
She hadn’t told him. And for the most part, Des didn’t say much on the drive back to the homestead, which was fine with her. She’d given him the general outline of what had happened, but no details. Her morning encounter with Cody was still not something of which she was proud. It had been a situation she had let get out of her control.
Thoughts of Cody and the way he had died kept her busy. She kept trying to come up with scenarios for what could possibly have happened, but for the life of her, she couldn’t come up with one that made sense.
But then, Des also occupied a large part of her mind. She attempted to ignore him by fixing her gaze on the passing landscape, but time and again his nearness drew her thoughts and senses back to him. Despite her attempts to ignore him, it had always been like that. With resignation, she wondered if it always would.
When he finally pulled up to the saddle barn, she breathed a soft sigh of relief.
She didn’t recognize several of the cars and trucks parked there, but she did recognize the sheriff from a picture she had seen in the paper, put there when he had first come to their area nine months earlier. A tall, lanky man in his late thirties, he stood beside one of the trucks, speaking on a cell phone, but as soon as he saw them, he hung up and waited expectantly.
“Have you had any dealings with this sheriff?” Des asked quietly as he cut off the engine.
“No. Any problems we have with the men we try to handle ourselves.” Her hand went to the door handle.
“Wait a minute.” Des leaned over and clasped her wrist, and his arm pressed against the softness of her breasts.
Heat filled her lungs and, uncontrolled, her nipples hardened. No matter what, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from responding to him.
“Listen to me, Kit. The sheriff’s name is Moreno, and his reputation is that he’s ambitious. So I want you to say as little as possible, and when in doubt, let me answer for you.”
“What are you talking about?” She pushed against his arm.
He straightened away, but the severity of his tone didn’t lessen. “Don’t volunteer anything he doesn’t ask. And if I tell you not to answer a certain question, don’t.”
She glanced through the windshield at the sheriff, whose gaze was now trained on her. “He just wants me to tell him what happened.”
“Actually, he wants you to make his job easy by confessing. Right now, you’re the only suspect for Cody Inman’s murder.”
Her mouth dropped. “Suspect? Confess? But that’s ridiculous.”
“It’s also the truth. So just be careful what you say.”
“This is absurd.” Suddenly she felt as if she were suffocating. Cody was dead, and Des was focusing his entire attention on her. It was too much. Her legs were shaking as she climbed out of the truck.
“Ms. Baron.” The sheriff touched the brim of his hat in greeting.
