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Two things were clear immediately. The battered pickup parked in front of her house now hadn’t been there when Val left a couple of hours ago. And she didn’t recognize it as belonging to anyone she knew. Since she didn’t get many visitors, especially ones she didn’t know, both of those things made her wary. It was pretty hard to stray off any beaten path and end up out here. Her eyes studying the unfamiliar vehicle, she slowed her gelding to a walk, guiding Harvard slowly toward the ranch house.
The truck sported Colorado plates, along with half a dozen pings and dents. There was more dirt on its paint job than the normal surface dust a vehicle would acquire in making the trek out here. This one had been in need of a wash job for a while.
Her eyes traced over the porch, sweeping quickly over and then coming back to the shape that didn’t belong there. Almost hidden in the late-afternoon shadows, a man was sitting in one of her mother’s rockers, booted feet crossed at the ankles and propped on the wooden porch railing.
A black Stetson had been pulled down over his face as if he were asleep. Val would be willing to bet money that he wasn’t.
The boots were well-worn, she noted, her eyes moving upward to assess the length of his legs—long, muscular and clad in faded jeans. And a broad chest covered by a chamois-colored shirt, the sleeves turned back, revealing tanned forearms that were crossed over the man’s flat belly. Long-fingered hands lay totally relaxed on either side of his waist. As she watched, one rose, its thumb pushing the Stetson up off the man’s eyes.
They were gray. Ocean-gray. Storm-gray. Rain-cloud gray. Valerie had time to come up with a couple of other totally inane analogies before he straightened in the rocker, putting his feet down on the porch and pushing the hat all the way back.
His hair was coal-black and just a little longer than she normally liked for a man. Val couldn’t decide whether that was a stylistic decision on his part, or if he were just badly in need of a haircut. Her gaze came back to his face, but she found it hard to look at any feature other than those compelling eyes.
They were silver now, opaque in the shadowed light, and set in a frame of thick black lashes. Their color was the only softness in a face as harsh as the country that surrounded them. The features were lean and darkly weathered. It was obvious his nose had been broken at least once, maybe more, and it sat defiantly crooked above thin, hard lips.
“Ma’am,” he said, touching his hat in the traditional gesture of respect. A respect missing from the silver eyes. They examined her face as thoroughly as she had examined his.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice demanding, a little arrogant. That was a front, the tone developed long ago to hide her habitual nervousness at meeting strangers.
“My name’s Grey Sellers, ma’am. Beneficial Life sent me.”
There were a couple of slow heartbeats of silence.
“Sent you for what?” Val asked. She really couldn’t imagine. He certainly didn’t look like any insurance salesman she’d ever seen.
“To be your bodyguard,” he said.
For just a second there had been something behind those shuttered eyes. Amusement? Val wondered. The emotion had disappeared too quickly for her to be sure of its identification, replaced by the same bland politeness that was in his voice.
“My…bodyguard? Is this somebody’s idea of a joke?”
“Not as far as I can tell. Their check was good.”
This time his amusement was obvious. It underlay the deep voice and touched the edges of that hard mouth, tilting a corner.
“Let me get this straight,” Val said. “Somebody paid you to come out here and be my bodyguard?”
The word was so ridiculous she almost couldn’t bring herself to say it. It was one of those words that belonged only in the movies. Or on bad TV shows. The people she knew didn’t have bodyguards. Not even the rich ones.
“Beneficial Life,” he said.
“I don’t have a policy with Beneficial whatever,” she said. “Now, if you’ll just get off my porch, Mr…?”
“Sellers,” he supplied obediently, the upward quirk of his lips increasing minutely.
“Mr. Sellers,” she echoed. “If you will just get off my porch and off my property, I’d be very grateful.”
She had already begun to turn Harvard toward the barn when he spoke again. “They had a policy on your father, ma’am.”
That stopped her. The wound of her father’s death was too new for any information about him not to give her pause. When she turned back, Sellers was holding out a packet of papers.
Without reaching for them, she asked, her voice full of sarcasm, “And they sent you out here to pay it off?”
No one with half a grain of sense would trust this man with money, not as disreputable as he appeared, and they both knew it.
“No, ma’am,” he said, still rather obviously amused. “If you’re short of cash, I’m afraid it wasn’t that kind of policy.”
She took a breath, holding on to her temper. She realized that, surprisingly, she didn’t feel any sense of threat. Even her initial wariness at finding a stranger on her porch had begun to fade, turning to skepticism instead.
“Then what kind of policy was it, Mr. Sellers?” she asked with studied patience, as if she were talking to someone who wasn’t quite bright.
“You can look at the paperwork,” he said, laying the packet on the railing. “But as I understand it, the policy assured the other owners that nothing untoward was going to happen to the CEO of Av-Tech Aeronautics.”
“Nothing…untoward,” she repeated. The word was as unexpected on his lips as his lean body had been on her porch.
“As I understand it.”
“You’re here to see that nothing untoward happens to me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said solemnly, but again there was a flash of something in the depths of those gray eyes.
“I don’t think that there is a single untoward thing lurking around out here. Do you?” She raised her eyebrows and waited.
His gaze circled the neat yard and then rose to the mountains that loomed over the narrow valley where the ranch and the spring that fed it were located. It was that spring that made her small operation possible in all this barrenness.
“I deposited their check,” he said, his eyes seeming to consider the line of fencing that faded off toward the barn.
She waited a moment to see if there would be some further enlightenment as to why he had thought she might be interested in that revelation. “And?” she asked finally.
“And frankly, I’d play hell giving that money back,” he said, turning to face her again. The mobile corner of his mouth had inched upward a little farther, almost a smile. His eyes, however, were still carefully neutral. Still opaque.
“Well, I think that’s probably going to have to be between you and them, Mr. Sellers. It seems to fall in the category of not my problem. I want you off my place in…two minutes?” she asked, looking toward the battered truck.
“I could do that, ma’am, providing my truck will start, of course. And sometimes that’s doubtful. But I don’t think they’d be any too pleased if I did. Beneficial Life, I mean.”
“You know, I don’t really give a damn whether they are pleased or not,” Val said. “I want you out.” She didn’t raise her voice, but the last word was sharp. And final.
“I wish I could oblige you, Ms. Beaufort. I really do. But I have a professional obligation, ma’am. I’m sure you, being the C-E-O of a big company and all, can understand that.” He had said the initials slowly, emphasizing each, drawling them out mockingly. “I took their money, and now I’m obligated to do the job. Whether you or I like it very much,” he added.
“You’re planning on protecting me,” she said, her anger building, “whether I want you to or not. Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Mr. Sellers?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, ma’am,” he agreed solemnly.
“Don’t you imagine that’s going to be hard to do without my cooperation?” she asked, her voice falsely sweet.
“Well, it would certainly be easier with your cooperation, but I think I can probably manage the other,” he said.
She drew a deep breath, feeling Harvard stir beneath her. He was probably responding to her tension. She was furious, but she wasn’t sure at whom she was angrier. Beneficial Life? Av-Tech’s attorneys for not telling her about this policy, if it even existed? Or with this smug son of a bitch sitting on her porch? She edged Harvard closer to the railing and reached out to retrieve the tri-folded packet of documents he’d laid there. When she had it in her hand, she backed the gelding.
“Get out,” she said softly.
“They’ll just send somebody else,” Sellers said, his tone devoid now of the amusement that had lurked in it before. “They aren’t going to leave you alone out here without some kind of security system in place. And I assume you don’t have one.”
She’d be a fool to tell him she didn’t, of course, but she had never seen the need for security. When you lived at the back of beyond—in the devil’s armpit, as her dad used to say—you didn’t worry about the occasional burglary. Especially when there was nothing out here worth stealing in the first place.
“What would make you assume that?” she asked, controlling the gelding’s impatience with the ease of long practice.
Grey Sellers held her eyes a moment before he unfolded his length out of the rocker and walked over to her front door. He opened it, and then he waited. Nothing happened, of course. There were no alarms. No automatic notification of the sheriff’s office. Considering the roads that led to the ranch and the distance from the nearest town, by the time anyone from the Bradford County Sheriff’s Department could get out here, anything that was happening would be long over with anyway.
Then Sellers walked over and pushed up the window behind the rocker he’d been sitting in. It wasn’t locked. Val didn’t worry too much about locking windows either, of course.
He turned to look at her, his hat shadowing his face. “Your alarm system doesn’t seem to be working, Ms. Beaufort.”
“That’s because there isn’t one. As you are well aware.”
“So are they,” he said. “The insurance company, I mean. Something happens to you, they pay Av-Tech through the nose. And they don’t like paying. Can’t say I blame them.”
“What do you think is going to happen to me out here?”
“Nothing,” he said. And then he added, his tone again amused, “At least, not as long as I’m around.”
He came back to the railing, looking up at her from under the brim of that dusty black hat. Appropriate, she thought. This one certainly wasn’t a member of the white hat brigade. Those shadowed eyes had seen too much.
And how the hell do I think I can tell that by looking into his eyes? she wondered in disgust. She seemed to have developed an eye fetish in the past few minutes.
Harvard snorted, tossing his head and working at the bit. Sellers put his hand on the horse’s nose, running the heel down the length of it from between the gelding’s eyes to the nostrils. He leaned forward and blew on them, an old horseman’s trick.
“Easy, buster,” he said. “Mind your manners.” The words were low and caressing. The tone of someone who liked horses.
They’ll just send somebody else, he had said. They aren’t going to leave you alone out here without some kind of security system in place. And he was probably right.
She wasn’t Val Beaufort, penny-ante horse breeder and trainer, anymore. She was the CEO of Av-Tech Aeronautics, and like it or not, there were certain restrictions that went with the position. Restrictions she couldn’t do much about right now.
She would, she vowed. She wasn’t going to live her life chained to that damn company as her father had. Chained to the headaches that went with it. They’ll just send somebody else. They would. And she’d deal with that one when he arrived.
“Tell them I’ll get someone out here to set up a security system at the earliest possible opportunity,” she said.
“If you don’t, they will.”
“On my property? I think that’s called trespassing.”
“And I think the policy Av-Tech agreed to gives them the right to take adequate measures to safeguard their investment. Beneficial Life wouldn’t have written it unless it did.”
“I’ll straighten this out as soon as possible, Mr. Sellers,” she said, feeling that he was probably right and she was wrong. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling. “Thank you for making me aware of the policy. And now, if you would be so kind…”
She turned and looked pointedly at the truck again.
“They’ll just send someone else,” he warned the second time. “It’ll take a few days to get a system in place. They won’t leave you unprotected while that’s going on.”
“Then I guess I’ll have another visitor tomorrow. In the meantime, it’s a long way back to civilization. And it’s almost dark, just in case you haven’t noticed. The roads out here can be a little harrowing at night.”
His eyes held on hers a long moment. Finally he touched his hat again and walked across the porch and down the shallow steps, boot heels loud on the wooden planks. He climbed into the pickup and closed the door. Val didn’t move, almost anticipating what would happen next.
She wasn’t disappointed. The motor ground a few times, but it never turned over. He had telegraphed that move with his comment about the unreliability of his truck. While he was waiting for her to get home, he had probably removed the wires from the spark plugs or something so the truck wouldn’t start.
She could dismount and try it herself. Or she could ask him to pop the hood and let her look at the engine. If he had done much fancy tinkering with the motor, however, she’d just end up looking like a fool, which was something she worked hard at not doing. She knew far more about horses than she did about internal combustion engines.
For some reason, his interaction with Harvard flashed into her head. But just because he liked horses didn’t mean he was harmless, of course. She took a breath, fighting frustration.
While he ground the motor a couple more times, she unfolded the papers she’d picked up off the railing. The heading at the top was Beneficial Life, and they looked official enough.
They’ll just send somebody else. At least this one knew the back end from the front end of a horse, which was something in his favor. To her, anyway. And for some reason, Val wasn’t afraid of him, despite what she thought she’d seen in his eyes.
The slamming of the truck’s door brought her attention from the papers she held to the man who had presented them. He walked around the back of the pickup and stood looking up at her.
“I know what you’re probably thinking,” he said disarmingly. “I can give you Joe Wallace’s number. You can call him and verify that he sent me out here, if that will make you feel any better. I’m not sure he’ll be in the office this late, but—”
“There’s a bunkhouse,” Val said shortly. “You can sleep out there tonight. I’ll talk to Beneficial Life in the morning.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“And Mr. Sellers?”
“Ma’am?”
“I may not have a security system, but I do have a Smith & Wesson. And I know how to use it.”
“That’s a real comfort to me, ma’am,” he said.
The amusement was back in his voice, although his expression hadn’t changed. There was no twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not a hint of laughter in the silver eyes. Just a rich layer of amusement in his voice before he turned and picked up a nylon gym bag from the bed of the truck.
Her eyes followed him until he had disappeared behind the barn. Then, realizing what she had been doing, she touched her heels to Harvard and headed him in almost the same direction.
GREY SELLERS WAS STILL fighting the urge to grin as he approached the bunkhouse she’d directed him to. It looked as well kept as everything else on the place. He wondered how much help she had. So far, he had seen no signs of human life other than Valerie Beaufort herself.
After he’d arrived this afternoon and discovered she wasn’t home, he had wandered around a little. With an eye to security, he had told himself, justifying the snooping.
Although it had been a long time since he’d lived on a working ranch, he had immediately felt at home. It seemed to be the same kind of small-potatoes outfit he’d grown up on, minus the cows. Until a few minutes ago, however, it had looked as if he wasn’t going to get a chance to savor this kind of life again.
Sitting on top of that big old roan, Valerie Beaufort might look fragile enough that a good wind would blow her away, but she had a mouth on her. And a very clear sense of what she wanted. Or what she didn’t want, he supposed, in his case.
Grey wasn’t sure what had changed her mind about letting him stay. Maybe just his winning ways, he thought, again fighting the urge to smile. His sparkling wit. Since he’d taken time to shave before he’d driven out here and had, in the process, gotten a really good look at himself in the mirror, he couldn’t imagine it was his physical appearance. He looked rough. Like he’d been rode hard and put up wet. Which was pretty much how he felt.
The aspirin he’d taken before he’d left the office was wearing off. Driving out here over those narrow roads and looking into the afternoon sun the whole way hadn’t helped the headache his hangover this morning had begun.
And he could use a drink, he acknowledged. He had deliberately left the bottle of bourbon in his desk drawer. He didn’t drink while he worked. He never had. Griff wouldn’t have put up with it, of course. Not from anybody on the team. Too many lives depended on them being able to do their jobs and do them well. Not that the booze had been a problem back then. That had all come about since—
He heard the squeak of the double doors at the front of the barn. They had made the same sound when he had opened them earlier this afternoon and taken a look inside. He glanced up and found that since the Dutch door at the back was standing wide open, he could see straight through the barn.
