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He listened while Sarah placed her order and then gave the waitress his, surprised to find that he was actually hungry. Rosa had accused him more than once of eating anything that didn’t eat him first, but since he’d left the Smoking Barrel, he’d lost his taste for food. At least working again gave him an appetite even if he didn’t take to the job. It had one pregnant woman too many for his liking.
As soon as the waitress walked away, Sarah dived into the chips, dipping one into the salsa before slipping it between her lips. “I absolutely love Mexican food. Don’t you?”
“I like it well enough.”
Sarah nibbled on another chip. “Actually I love anything hot and spicy. The first three months I was pregnant I got sick every time I ate a bite of food with a little zip to it. It drove me nuts. But now I can eat anything without getting sick. Well, most of the time anyway.”
A few minutes, and a couple of thousand words later, the waitress returned with their food and drinks. He ate and half listened to Sarah’s chatter. If she kept this up all the way to Mexico, he’d have to seriously consider gagging her or at least stuffing cotton in his ears. If they actually went to Mexico. He needed more reason to believe this whole operation was on the up-and-up before he sealed this deal.
“Have you ever been afraid, Cody?”
He looked up and met her gaze, wondering where the question had come from and when her tone had changed from light to deadly serious. “Not lately.”
“But you have been at some time in your life?” Old memories surfaced. He pushed them aside, back into the dead file where he’d buried them long ago. “I imagine everybody’s been scared of something at one time or another.”
“I’m scared now. Excited, but still scared, especially when I stop to think about what would happen if something went wrong.”
Her voice caught, and a protectiveness he didn’t want to acknowledge rattled inside him. “No one’s making you go through with this, Sarah.”
“You have a short memory, Cody. You said you wouldn’t let me out of your sight until you’d delivered me and the disk to Daniel Austin.”
He swallowed hard. He’d made a lot of mistakes in his life, but that’s all they’d been. Mistakes in judgment. He’d never jumped sides, never played on the team that wore the black hats. Yet here he was, aching to give comfort and solace to the enemy.
And all because the bad guy was a woman. A scared, young pregnant woman. “I’m just doing my job, Sarah.”
“I know. I guess we’re all just doing what we have to do. I don’t want to change anything. But, all the same, I’m a little scared.”
Silence grew thick and suffocating between them. He pushed his plate away, his appetite lost to an unexplained regret that had crept into his gut.
A few minutes later, he paid the bill and they left the restaurant, the silence still holding between them. And strange as it seemed, he missed her chatter.
SARAH WINCED, trying to bite back the groan that hung in her throat. She’d bragged about being able to eat anything, but Carmelita’s enchilada platter had proven her wrong. Her chest burned as if she’d swallowed fire, and her stomach was turning itself inside out.
She closed her eyes as a new wave of nausea washed over her. Cody turned his gaze from the road to her. “Is something wrong?”
“Just a little upset stomach. I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” Cody reached up and flicked on the inside light, knocking the edge off the grayness of dusk. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
“It’s nothing. I just get pale when I feel queasy.”
“You’re not about to do anything drastic are you? We’re a long way from a hospital.”
“Drastic?”
“You know, like have a baby.”
“No, cowboy. But maybe you better pull over for a minute. I might do something drastic like lose my dinner.”
He pulled over, only now he looked a little pale himself. Obviously he wasn’t used to tending a sick woman. He stopped the truck and jumped out, rushing around the truck to open her door.
“Try to breathe a little fresh air. Maybe that will help.”
She cradled her head in her hands. “Do we have much farther to go?”
“Half the night.”
She groaned.
Cody hunched down beside her. “Look, we don’t have to rush. Daniel’s the one who had us waste time driving in the opposite direction. He can just bide his time until you feel like traveling.”
“Thanks.” His concern surprised her. Todd had hated it when she first started waking up with morning sickness, always finding a reason why he couldn’t stay around, until the morning he’d just walked off for good.
“We can sit here as long as you need to. There’s no rush.”
“It’s all right, Cody. I can make it,” she assured him. “I just needed to stop for a minute. I feel better now.”
“Like hell you do.” He took her hand. “I don’t know much about having a baby, but I know when a woman’s hurting. You need to see a doctor, and I plan to find you one.”
“No. I have something to take.” She unzipped her purse and located the small bottle of antacid tablets. “A couple of these and I’ll be good as new.”
“You had a blow to the head earlier today. Now you’re nauseous. We’re seeing a doctor.”
“Dan won’t like that.”
“That’s just too bad.”
“I have a better idea.”
“We’re not calling your mother in Africa.”
“That wasn’t my idea. I was going to suggest calling my gynecologist in Washington. Dr. Marino knows my history and he knows how my stomach reacts to spicy food. If he thinks I should see a doctor, I’ll follow his advice.”
“Okay, but even if he says you don’t need to see a doctor, I’m finding a place for us to stay tonight. Tomorrow we’ll get up early and drive into Mexico. That makes more sense anyway.”
“Then you’ll have to get two rooms.”
“Why?”
“I can’t sleep with you.”
He dropped her hand. “Nice try, Miss Rand, but you and I are going to be real close tonight. I don’t buy your innocent gambit.”
She shuddered. “What does that mean?”
“That I have no intention of giving you the chance to run out on me like you did at the airport. I’ll be right beside you all night long, but you don’t need to worry about your virtue with me. I’m choosy about who I take to bed.”
She swung her legs back into the truck and folded her hands over her bulging stomach, suddenly aware of how her misshapen body must look to him. She’d have laughed out loud if she didn’t feel so bad.
Still, it would be her first time to spend a night with a cowboy. Maybe there was some kind of charm attached to carrying that tote bag.
Chapter Three
A half hour later Cody turned off the nearly deserted asphalt road and pulled onto a completely deserted dirt one. It was too dark to see anything except sporadic clusters of brush that bordered the road and an occasional stubby tree.
The antacid tablets had eased the stomach discomfort and her head no longer ached from the blow she’d received earlier that day. She was tough, always had been. It was only her petite size that fooled people, but she couldn’t deny that a bed would feel really good about now. They hit a hole, and she grabbed hold of the armrest to keep from falling over onto Cody. “Is this the most desolate place you can find?”
“On short notice.” Apprehension set her stomach rolling again. “You said we were going to look for a place to spend the night. You surely don’t expect to find a motel down this lousy excuse for a road.”
“Not a motel, but the sign back there said there’s a fishing camp down here with rustic cabins.”
“I don’t doubt the rustic part.”
“It won’t be the Holiday Inn, but we shouldn’t have to worry about anyone finding us down here.”
“That sounds as if you think someone is still looking.”
“I haven’t spotted anyone who looked even vaguely suspicious since we left the restaurant, but I don’t take chances unless I have to.”
She put her hand to her mouth, almost catching the end of her fingernail between her teeth before she jerked it away. It was no time to show weakness. “Mr. Austin failed to mention that delivery of the files would be this dangerous.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
She considered the question. “It might have. I wouldn’t have worried about myself so much, but I have my unborn child to consider.”
“Now’s a fine time to think about that.”
His attitude annoyed her. “Don’t you ever take risks, Cody Gannon?”
“All the time.” He nudged his Stetson back a notch, and a sprinkling of dark, wavy hair peeked out from under the edge of the hat. “I just don’t want tonight to be one of them.”
“That makes two of us.”
SARAH LEANED against the doorframe of the small office while Cody registered them as Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter. He paid the bill for one night’s lodging in advance—in cash.
She lost track of the conversation, as the middle-aged woman who’d introduced herself as the owner drawled on, more nosy than she had a right to be. Instead Sarah shuffled through memories, searching for something pleasant to latch on to.
A morning five months ago when she’d stood in Dr. Marino’s office and he’d told her that the test she’d taken at home had been accurate. She was carrying a new life inside her. The events that followed played in her mind, turning sour when she got to the point where she delivered the news to Todd.
“You don’t look so good.”
She jumped at the voice. The woman had walked over to stand beside her. “I ate some spicy food,” Sarah answered, looking away from the woman’s appraising stare. “I took a couple of antacid tablets. I’ll be fine. I just need a bed.”
“Hmmmph. I’d say you need a sight more than that.” The woman’s gaze traveled from Sarah’s swollen nose to the dried bloodstain on the front of her clothes. Then she looked back at Cody, disgust twisting her mouth and narrowing her eyes.
It took Sarah a few seconds to decipher her meaning. The woman believed that Cody had hit her. “This isn’t what it seems,” Sarah assured her and then wondered why she bothered. It was clear from the woman’s patronizing smile that she didn’t believe her.
The woman laid a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “I’ll be working until nine. If you need anything, just call me.” Her gaze shifted to Cody and then back again. “And you don’t have to put up with anything as long as you’re staying in one of my cabins. I have a night watchman on duty. He’s tough as a wild coyote. Nobody scares him.”
Sarah looked up to find Cody doing his own impression of a big, tough Texan behind the woman’s back. Any other time, she’d have had to laugh. Even now, she managed a smile. “If I need you, or the night watchman, I’ll definitely call.”
The woman stood in the door and watched them as they left the office and walked back to the truck. The cabin she’d assigned them was at the end of the road, set off by itself.
“That’s the first time I’ve been accused of being a wife beater,” Cody said, as he took her elbow and guided her around a rut in the path.
“She didn’t accuse you.”
“Oh, no? If looks could kill, I’d be waiting on morgue pick-up right now.”
“As it is, you better walk a thin, straight line or I’ll have her sic the night watchman on you.”
“She’s probably calling him right now, to put him on alert so he can start flexing his big, tough muscles. Of course, once he finds out its a looker he’s to protect, he might flex a new muscle. Then you’d be wishing you had me back.”
“Or maybe not. I haven’t seen the big, tough watchman yet.” But his comment stayed with her. Cody saw her as attractive. Interesting, especially since most of the time he treated her as if she had something contagious.
The night watchman stepped into the clearing surrounding the office just as they reached the truck. The woman hadn’t lied. The man was big, at least a head taller than Cody with muscles a body builder would have envied. A gun rested in a holster at his waist but it was the chainsaw he held in his hand that sent shivers up Sarah’s spine.
“It’s almost dark. Why would he be chopping down trees this time of night?” she asked.
Cody opened the truck door for her. “He’s probably cutting some logs into firewood.”
“Hmm. Does chainsaw massacre have any meaning for you?”
“It didn’t. It does now.” He touched a hand to her arm. “But don’t worry. You have a cowboy to protect you. You know, so many cowboys, so little time.”
“You against the machismo guard dog. Now I feel so much better.”
SARAH STEPPED inside the cabin. It was one room, with a sink, range, table and four chairs on one end and a bed, chest and upholstered chair on the other. An open door led to a closet-sized bathroom. The mattress was lumpy, narrow, topped with a faded spread and two pillows that had lost their fluff years ago. Still, it had been an extremely long and eventful day, and she couldn’t remember when a bed had looked so inviting.
Cody reached to take her coat from around her shoulders. She held on to it for a second, then relinquished it. If she made too much of a fuss, he’d figure out why she never let it out of her sight.
Cody hung up the coat and then walked over to stand beside her. “Now that we’ve settled for the night, you should give your doctor a call.”
“If it will make you happy. But I’m fine.” She called the after-hours number and left a message for her gynecologist to call her back. Then she slipped out of her shoes and stretched out on the bed. “My mother always said that the best thing for a queasy stomach is to lie very still and think pleasant thoughts.”
“Yeah, well my mother always gave me a cold, wet cloth for my head. We weren’t big on pleasant thoughts around my house.”
He walked away and came back a few moments later with a damp cloth. The bed shifted as he sat down on the edge of it and pressed the thin washcloth against her forehead. She stared up at him, studying his expression. The worry was evident. She wondered if it was really for her.
“Why don’t you crawl under the covers and get comfortable,” he said. “If you need anything, I’ll be right here.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said since you met me at the airport.” She closed her eyes. Actually, promising to be there for her might be the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her, she decided, as she took his suggestion and snuggled between the sheets.
Too bad the emotion stemmed from the fact that he was being paid to deliver her and the disk. Both of them had to be kept safe and sound until they were turned over to Daniel Austin. Then his duties would be fulfilled, and he’d no longer be there if she needed anything.
Neither would anyone else.
CODY PACED the motel room. The air conditioner hadn’t stopped running since they’d come in, nearly an hour ago, but still the air was sultry and suffocating. He hated being cooped up in this one-room cabin, hated more that this operation had gone wrong. Beginning with the moment Sarah Rand had stepped off that airplane—pregnant.
