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“I’ll do that.” She frowned. “I wonder what happened to it. It wasn’t flat earlier this evening.”
He busied himself gathering up the tools. “Maybe you picked up a nail or something. Had a slow leak for a couple days that finally finished the thing off. Or you could have—Damn!”
“What is it?” She aimed the flashlight at him and saw him cradling one hand with the other.
“Blasted jack cut my hand.”
“Let me see.”
He wiggled it as if he could shake off the pain and picked up the crowbar. “It’s okay. Nothing that hasn’t happened to me dozens of times on the ranch.”
She gazed at him, momentarily diverted. “You have a ranch?”
He looked away as if he were too embarrassed to meet her gaze. “Uh, I used to.”
Compassion swept through her. He must have fallen on hard times and lost his ranch, the same fate suffered by countless other ranchers during the recent run of lousy beef prices and high feed costs. Maybe that’s why he was on the circuit. For a good cowboy, a summer spent rodeoing could be a quick route to ready cash to help rebuild a ranch.
She swallowed her words of sympathy, somehow knowing they wouldn’t be welcome. “Still,” she said quietly, “I would feel better if you allowed me to take a look at that hand.”
Before he could argue, she dropped the frying pan into the dirt and grabbed his fingers. As her hand met his skin, hardened and rough from hard work, heat raced between them every bit as powerful as the lightning sizzling across the sky.
Unnerved, Maggie cleared her throat and dropped his hand. “That looks deep. You should put some disinfectant and an antibiotic on it.”
He shoved the injured hand into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll be all right.”
“I insist, especially since it was my tire you were fixing. Come on. I’ve got some iodine in the trailer.”
“I wouldn’t want you to wake up your kid. I’ve probably got something I can use at my place.”
She frowned at him. “You might as well accept my help. I’m not going to be able to sleep until I know you’ve put something on that.”
“Fine, Doc. Whatever you say. Since you’re so set on it, you can come and watch to make sure I stick the Band-Aid on right side up.”
As he led the way to his camper, the skies finally opened and began to spit huge drops that plowed into the dusty ground like bullets. They made it inside just as the storm began in earnest.
“Welcome to the McKendrick hacienda,” he said, flipping on a light above the little stove. Maggie instantly realized she had made a mistake by following him.
A huge mistake.
The camper was no more than eight feet wide and a dozen feet long, small and compact and intimate, especially with the storm playing a symphony on the thin aluminum skin of the roof.
Her nerves were in entirely too much turmoil for her to be comfortable in such close quarters with Colt McKendrick. She couldn’t breathe without brushing against him, but she inched as far away as she could manage. “Um, where’s your disinfectant?”
“It’s in here somewhere. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll see if I can rustle it up?”
He bent to rummage through a drawer, highlighting thin spots where his jeans had worn almost white from all the time he spent in the saddle. She caught herself staring and jerked her gaze away.
What on earth was the matter with her, gawking at the man like she was some kind of buckle bunny on the make for a good-looking cowboy? Embarrassed, she slid onto one of the vinyl bench seats around a little gray-speckled Formica table
To distract herself she studied the interior of the camper, looking for some clue into McKendrick’s personality. It appeared to be about the same general era as the trailer she had bought with the proceeds from selling her Volvo The decor was straight out of the 1970s, all orange, yellow and dark green tones. A well-used rope, coiled neatly, hung on the back of the door. A pair of worn boots, an older twin to the pair he was wearing, waited by the bed.
Earlier in the day she had noticed that the pickup and horse trailer both looked fairly new and in much better condition than the camper. Wasn’t that just like a cowboy? Worry about his horse and his truck but not about where he laid his own head at night.
The only somewhat jarring note that kept the inside of the camper from being completely stereotypical was a stack of books on the window ledge. She studied their authors. Larry McMurtry, Louis L’Amour, a couple of mysteries. Just what she might have expected. But she suddenly did a double take at the slim volume at the bottom of the stack. Descartes? A cowboy who reads philosophy?
Before she could ask him about it, he emerged from the cupboard with a battered first aid kit lifted victoriously in his hand. “Here we go. I knew this was in here somewhere.”
He slid into the seat across from her and thrust out his hand. “Okay, Dr. Rawlings. Do your worst.”
She eyed his hand with trepidation. After what had happened outside when she touched him—that odd, silvery shower of sparks—she was reluctant to make contact again.
This is ridiculous, she thought, and forced herself to take a deep breath. She was a professional. She could handle putting antiseptic on a man’s hand without getting all fluttery over it. Couldn’t she?
Her nerves firmly in check, she picked through the first aid kit until she found a small dark bottle of iodine, then reached for his hand. The sparks threatened to return, but she sternly suppressed them and examined the injury. His hand was a testament to years of hard work, with a varied collection of nicks and scars.
Instead of a new injury, as she had assumed, it looked as if the jack had ripped open an existing wound, a jagged, ugly cut that traced the curve of his lifeline. “What did you do here? Before tonight, I mean.”
He looked at it for a moment and she could swear he was being evasive again. “Uh, a cowboy’s curse. I was putting up fence line and snagged it on some barbwire.”
“Looks like it was painful.”
He grunted in response and she managed not to smile. “Oh, I forgot. You macho cowboys don’t feel pain like the rest of us. Now if you weren’t a cowboy, I’d tell you this is going to sting a little. But since you are, I won’t waste my breath.”
Cowboy or not, he stiffened as she poured the iodine on, and Maggie winced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have teased you.” She instinctively blew on his palm to cool the burning.
He grinned. “Now there’s a mother for you, thinking you can make it all better by blowing on it. My mother used to do the same thing when I was a kid.”
She couldn’t stop her smile, intrigued by the idea of him as anything other than the completely adult, completely masculine person in front of her. “Sorry. It’s a habit I picked up with Nicky. You’re lucky I didn’t kiss it to make it feel better.”
“Am I?” he murmured.
Was he flirting with her? She’d been out of the manwoman scene so long she simply couldn’t tell. She shot him a glance under her lashes, but his strong, chiseled features remained impassive.
Unsure how to respond, she cleared her throat and opted to change the subject, even though the one she picked didn’t make her any more comfortable. “Speaking of Nicky,” she began, “I wanted to apologize for this morning. About calling you a saddle bum and all. I overreacted. It’s just that I panicked when I woke up and he wasn’t there. I’m afraid you bore the brunt of that lingering fear.”
“No harm done.”
“No, I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. It’s just...I tend to be a little overprotective of Nicky.” She forced her gaze away from his to the bandage she was wrapping around his hand. “It’s too bad today was the last day of the rodeo and we’re moving on tomorrow. If we had more time, I would have let you take Nicky up on your horse. If you were serious about your offer, that is.”
“Would I lie to a big, bad outlaw like Nicky the Kid?”
She couldn’t help her laugh, one of the few genuine ones she’d enjoyed in quite a while, then instantly regretted it when he gave her an odd look that sent her pulse skittering.
“Where’s your next assignment?” he finally asked. “Maybe we’ll run into each other down the road.”
“Butte, Montana. The Butte Vigilante Rodeo.”
“Now there’s a coincidence. I just sent in my entry fee for the same show this morning. They have a nice calf-roping purse I’ve got my eye on, so I’ll be heading into Montana ’round about Wednesday. I’d be happy to take your little guy up on Scout one day next week.”
She shouldn’t have this little hitch in her stomach at the idea of seeing him again. Darn it, she knew perfectly well she shouldn’t. “I’m sure Nicky will look forward to it.”
“Maybe you and I could get together, too, before the show one night. I know a great steak place in town.”
He was definitely flirting with her. Oh mercy. What was she supposed to do now? “I don’t... That is, I haven’t...”
“Relax, Doc. You don’t have to decide tonight.” He twisted his bandaged hand and rubbed a rough thumb over her knuckle. She felt hypnotized by his grin, like a rabbit caught in the hard, killing glare of headlights. “Just think about it.”
She carefully gathered her composure around her and tugged her hand away. “We’ll see,” she managed to say, then slipped from the seat and headed for the door. “Thank you again for fixing my tire. It was a very nice thing to do.”
To her confusion, he scowled. “Niceness has nothing to do with it, Doc. Not one damn thing.”
She gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t seem inclined to explain. If the man wanted to keep his secrets, who was she to argue? Lord knows, she had enough of her own. “Well, good night, then. I suppose I’ll see you in Butte.”
He was still scowling when she walked out into the rain. He swore under his breath and lifted the moth eaten curtains to watch her hurry into her own trailer. A light switched on inside, but the trailer went dark again after only a few moments.
Colt let the curtain fall. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Any degree of objectivity he might have claimed going into this assignment had just died a quick and painful death when Maggie Rawlings laughed back there, sweet and unaffected.
Unless she was the world’s greatest actress, the woman was about as innocent as a newborn calf. No way could she be a party to the illegal activity of her husband. Nobody with that much vulnerability in her eyes could be involved in the ugliness of Michael Prescott’s world. He would be willing to bet the entire Broken Spur she didn’t know what her husband had been involved with, that she was just running scared from the men who had killed him.
He thought of the stunned amazement in her dark eyes when she had found him changing the flat tire on her truck—the tire he’d purposely punctured himself.
His plan was to quietly fix the tire and leave a note about it for her to discover in the morning, in another attempt to insinuate himself into her life. Instead, she’d awakened and come out armed with a cast-iron skillet and a flashlight, ready to take on a drunk cowboy.
His mouth twisted in a wry grin. The woman had grit, he’d give her that much. Another few seconds and she would have beaned him.
Instead, she had been pathetically grateful when she discovered he was repairing the flat tire. His scheme couldn’t have worked better. So why did he feel no satisfaction, just this guilt churning around in his gut for deceiving her?
Maybe because he was inexplicably drawn to the woman, in a way he hadn’t been to anyone since his wife walked out five years ago.
With another oath at the thought of his ex-wife, he dug through the briefcase carefully hidden in a cabinet under the bench where Maggie Rawlings had been sitting. He picked up his slim cellular phone and quickly punched one of the preprogrammed numbers.
Beckstead sounded tired when he answered—it was after midnight, California time—and wasted no time on pleasantries. “How is the assignment progressing? Are you any closer to Maggie Rawlings?”
“I want out.”
He could practically hear his boss’s frown over the phone. “What happened?”
Maggie Rawlings, and her big eyes, happened. He couldn’t very well voice the thought, though. “Nothing’s happened. I just don’t think I’m making any progress gaining the woman’s trust,” he lied.
“You’ve been on the job less than a week. Give it some time.”
“I don’t want to give it time. I just want out. I’m too damn old to rodeo.” That, at least, was the truth
His boss laughed. “You’re thirty-six, McKendrick. I think you have a few good rides left in you.”
“I’d rather be taking them on my ranch than in the arena against a bunch of twenty-year-olds ”
“Haven’t we had this conversation already? Look, the net is tightening on DeMarranville. I know you want to put him away every bit as much as I do, and all my instincts are telling me Dr. Rawlings is the one person who can help us do that.”
“Let me go at DeMarranville another way. Maybe I can work on a couple of his men who might be ready to cut a deal against him. Last I talked to Joey Perone, he sounded like he could be bought.”
“No dice. I need you there. Right where you are.” Beckstead paused. “You realize there’s more at stake here than just the disk, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“We both know it’s only a matter of time until DeMarranville tracks her down.”
“If he hasn’t already.”
“He hasn’t. Our sources inside his organization are quite clear on that. Not for lack of trying, though. His people are looking everywhere.”
“Damian is nothing if not efficient.”
“He doesn’t know she witnessed the hit on her husband—if he did, she never would have made it this far—but he wants the disk more than we do. He’s going to be very unhappy if she doesn’t give it up.”
“What if she doesn’t have it?”
“Do you think he’s going to play nice if he thinks she’s holding out on him? If she really doesn’t know what her husband was involved with, I’d hate to see her or the kid get caught in the crossfire.”
Son of a bitch. Colt stared out through the rain streaking down the window like tears. He hated to think of Maggie or her son in DeMarranville’s hands.
“I’d feel better knowing one of our agents was close to her, to offer some degree of protection,” Beckstead went on.
What would his boss say if he knew exactly how close Colt wanted to be to the accountant’s widow? “Okay,” he growled, pushing the thought away. “But the stakes just went up. I want three months away from the Bureau when I’m done here.”
“We bring down DeMarranville and you can have as much time as you want.”
But would it be enough to make him forget Maggie Rawlings, with her big eyes and her outlaw son?
Somehow he doubted it.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_5043a473-d27d-5f48-adcf-d5821851c868)
Her kingdom for a decent shower.
With apologies to William Shakespeare, Maggie fought shivers as she turned off the trickling little spray that was all the Butte, Montana, campground facilities offered and reached for the thin towel she had hung over the stall door just a few moments before.
A month ago, if someone had told her the idea of a pounding hot shower would come to symbolize the height of luxury to her, she would have laughed hysterically.
Funny how she had taken so many things for granted before her life degenerated into chaos a month ago. A decent shower topped her list—with all the hot water she could dream of and complete, heavenly privacy instead of these flimsy shower stall doors between her and the rest of the world, this thin barrier that left her feeling entirely too vulnerable.
She could barely remember what it had been like to shower as long as she wanted, without this constant, nagging worry at leaving Nicky sleeping in their locked trailer for even these few stolen moments. What would she do if she had time to do more than just scrape her hair back into a wet braid and apply only the bare minimum of makeup?
Might as well wish for the moon while you’re dreaming, she scolded herself and slipped quickly into the clean clothing she had brought over from the trailer. This wasn’t so bad, anyway. It could be much, much worse. She and Nicky had clean, warm clothing to wear, food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads—even if it was a thin aluminum roof with a tendency to leak when it rained.
Besides, in a big city, what were the chances of your neighbor stopping to fix a flat tire in the middle of the night so you wouldn’t have to deal with an unpleasant surprise in the morning?
A picture of Colt McKendrick in the watery darkness back in Wyoming the week before crystallized in her mind and she smiled softly as she tugged a comb through her wet, tangled hair.
