Distrust

by Lisa Jackson

  One glance at the dog’s bowl near the back door indicated to Dani that Runt had been fed recently. As she straightened the kitchen, cleaning the counters that Cody had missed, Dani called over her shoulder, “I think it’s about time you went to bed, don’t you?”

  “It’s still light out!”

  Dani glanced out the window over the sink. The only illumination over the land was from the silvery half moon. “It’s not light and it’s nearly ten,” she pointed out as she finished wiping the counters.

  “Just a little longer,” the boy begged.

  “All right. When the show’s over, then you can read in bed for a while, but I think you’d better hit the hay soon; my friend. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Guess.”

  Cody groaned. “Hauling hay again.”

  “You got it.”

  “So why are you all dressed up? Is someone coming over?” the boy asked with a frown as he stared at his mother.

  “Hardly. It’s too late for company.” Dani laughed and shook her head. The damp strands of her long hair brushed the back of her blouse. “And, for your information, I’m not dressed up. You’re just used to seeing me in my work clothes.”

  Cody eyed her clean jeans and crisp cotton blouse. “So why didn’t you put on your pajamas?”

  “Too hot and I thought I’d drink some lemonade on the back porch.” She turned to face her son, an affectionate grin spreading across her tanned face when she recognized the concern in his eyes. “Hey, just because I changed from dirty work clothes doesn’t mean you have to give me the third degree. But thanks for the compliment.”

  A few minutes later, Runt pricked up his black ears and growled just as the sound of an approaching engine caught Dani’s attention.

  “Hey, Mom. I think somebody’s here,” Cody said, looking over his shoulder and silently accusing her of lying. “You said you weren’t expecting anyone!”

  “I wasn’t . . . I mean, I’m not.” Dani was drying her hands on a dishtowel just as there was a knock on the door. She glanced through the window and recognized Chase McEnroe, who was standing on the porch. Now what, she wondered, inwardly bracing herself for another confrontation with Caleb Johnson’s most recent acquisition.

  Opening the door, she pursed her lips and stared into his eyes. “Obviously you don’t know how to take a hint, Mr. McEnroe.”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” he commented dryly.

  “Hey, Mom. Who is it?” Cody asked, dragging himself off the couch and sauntering to the door.

  “This is Mr. McEnroe—”

  “Chase,” he corrected, smiling at the boy and offering his hand.

  “And this is my son, Cody,” Dani said, introducing the boy as Cody took Chase’s hand and looked at the man suspiciously.

  “Chase works for Caleb Johnson,” Dani continued, and Cody immediately withdrew his hand. “I think maybe you should go upstairs to bed,” Dani said. “Obviously Mr. McEnroe has business to discuss with me.”

  “You sure?” Cody asked.

  “Positive.” Dani’s eyes left her son’s to stare into Chase’s enigmatic blue gaze.

  “Okay.” Cody went to the bottom of the stairs, looked over his shoulder, whistled to Runt, and then ran up the stairs, the black dog following eagerly. A few seconds later Dani heard the door to Cody’s room close.

  Crossing her arms under her breasts, she leaned a hip against an antique sideboard near the door. “What do you want?”

  “To talk with you.”

  “So talk.”

  “This may take a while.”

  Sighing, Dani gestured toward the living room. “Okay. Come in.”

  Chase sauntered into the room, eyeing the contents of the cabin. Rustic pieces of furniture, well worn but comfortable, were placed between family antiques and heirlooms. A hand-knit afghan was draped over the back of the couch and pieces of embroidery and appliqué adorned the wooden walls. It was small, but homey and comfortable. The house fits her, Chase thought as he took a seat on the hearth of the stone fireplace and leaned forward, hands over his knees, just as Caleb’s meticulous but cold farmhouse fits him.

  Deciding that beating around the bush wouldn’t accomplish anything, Dani walked into the living room, snapped off the TV, sat on the arm of the couch and faced him. “So, what do you want? Why are you here?”

  Chase smiled. A brilliant, white-toothed grin slashed his tanned face and made his blue eyes sparkle. “You can drop the tough lady act with me.”

  “It’s not an act.”

  “That’s not what Caleb says.”

  Dani’s lips tightened and a challenge flashed in her eyes. “Caleb doesn’t know me very well. Otherwise he wouldn’t keep trying to force me into selling my place to him.”

  “By offering you a reasonable price for it?”

  Dani wasn’t about to confide in one of Johnson’s men; whether he was interesting or not. “Reasonable?” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “Look, Mr. McEnroe, obviously you came here for a reason, so why don’t you get to the point and tell me what it is?”

  “All business, right?”

  “Right. Shoot,” she encouraged and Chase laughed out loud. It was a deep rumbling sound that bounced off the rafters and dared to touch a secret part of Dani’s heart.

  “Bad choice of words,” he said.

  “Okay.” She smiled in spite of herself. “So why are you here?”

  “I want answers.”

  “From me?”

  “To start with.” He stood up and stretched before reaching upward to the rifle mounted over the mantel.

  Dani bristled. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, leaping up and stepping forward.

  He ignored her outcry and opened the chamber of the weapon. It was empty. “Just checking,” he said, almost to himself.

  “On what?”

  “To see which one of you is lying. You or Caleb Johnson.” He replaced the Winchester and looked over his shoulder at her. “So far the score is zero/zero for the truth.”

  “I think you’d better leave,” she said, angry with herself for allowing him to enter her house in the first place.

  “Not yet.”

  “If you don’t—”

  “Yeah. I know, I know.” He walked around the room, staring at the woven baskets, brass pots, worn furniture and scratched wooden floor. “If I don’t leave, you’ll call the sheriff or that fictitious attorney of yours.”

  Shaking with anger, Dani stifled an urge to scream at him, and planted her hands firmly on her hips. “Just what is it you want, Mr. McEnroe?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Chase?”

  “And how many times do I have to tell you to get off my property?”

  “I’ll go, I’ll go,” he agreed amiably, though his jaw was hard. “I just want some answers.”

  Her temper snapped. “Well, so do I! Just who are you and why are you here?”

  “I told you who I was, the other day, when you so graciously pointed the barrel of your rifle at me. As to what I do, I own a small business, the headquarters of which are located in Boise,” he said, focusing his sky-blue eyes on her. “I rehabilitate streams, like Grizzly Creek, to make them viable for trout.”

  “Come again?”

  He smiled slightly. “A lot of streams and rivers have become too dirty for the fish to spawn.”

  Dani shook her head and held up her palm to quiet him. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I make it up?”

  “Heaven only knows. Probably because Caleb Johnson asked you to.”

  Pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans he leaned against the fireplace, his broad shoulders resting on the mantel. “Contrary to your opinion, I don’t do everything Johnson asks me to.”

  “Then you’ll be fired soon,” she said flatly.

  “I don’t think so. Caleb Johnson and I are partners.”

  “Partners!” Dani repeated, the wor
d strangling her throat. Good Lord, that was worse! “In what?”

  “A few years ago, I needed capital. For my business.” He looked at the pictures on the mantel and fingered one of Dani and Cody sitting astride the buckskin. In the snapshot Dani was laughing, her arms securely around a grinning four-year-old Cody. Chase stared at the picture a long time, taking it from its resting place on the mantel.

  “You were saying,” she prodded, feeling his presence filling the small cabin. Just the fact that he was in her home made her uneasy; more aware of him as a man, and less threatened. She had to remind herself that he was the enemy.

  He returned the photograph to its spot. “I was telling you that just when my business needed funds for advertising and expansion, Caleb Johnson walked into my life.”

  “Convenient,” she said dryly.

  He frowned at the distasteful memory, remembering the unlikely events and odd set of circumstances that led Caleb Johnson to his door. “Maybe too convenient,” he agreed, bothered again by Caleb’s association with his mother. Stepping away from the fireplace, Chase looked out the back window, toward Grizzly Creek. “Anyway, Caleb offered me two-hundred-thousand dollars to become partners with me, and I took his money because I thought Relive needed a shot in the arm.”

  “Relive?”

  “My company.”

  “Oh. And so Johnson provided it.”

  “Right.”

  “Money.” Dani sank onto the couch. “Of course. That’s all a man like Johnson can understand.” She looked at Chase thoughtfully.

  Chase was mesmerized by her stare. Her gray-green eyes seemed to look past the surface and search for the inner man. “Let me guess,” Dani said. “There’s a catch to this ‘partnership.’”

  His dark brows rose appreciatively. “A small one. Johnson has agreed to sell a quarter of the company back to me if I can rehabilitate Grizzly Creek. But I can’t do that without your cooperation.”

  Here it comes, she thought. “What kind of cooperation?”

  “If you won’t sell or lease your land to Caleb—”

  “I won’t. You know that.”

  “Why not?”

  Because Caleb wants it all and this farm is all I have; this land and my son. “Johnson’s a snake. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.”

  “What’s the difference? His money is green.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Money isn’t the issue.”

  “What is?”

  “My right to live here, on this land, without having to sell. It’s not that I’m really against the resort; I’m just against the resort on my land.”

  “Isn’t that a little proprietary?”

  “Damn right. The way I look at it, I am the proprietor. And maybe I would have changed my mind if Johnson would have played by the rules.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dani’s muscles ached with tension. “Believe me, he’s tried everything he could to get rid of me and it sticks in my throat.”

  “So you try to thwart him.”

  “I see it as exercising my rights,” she pointed out, her voice rising.

  Chase thought for a moment. He really didn’t blame Dani. Didn’t he have some of the same reservations about Caleb himself? Some of the things Caleb had told him just didn’t quite seem to hold water. He tried a new tack. “Then I want your permission to work in the water on your land.”

  “Forget it.” She shook her head and the glow from the dim lights in the room caught in her hair. “I told you: I don’t trust that man and I don’t trust you.”

  “So what has Caleb Johnson done to make you so suspicious?”

  Dani laughed bitterly and looked at her hands. “Everything short of planting explosives in my house,” she said, and then realizing that Chase might have come for the express purpose of prying information from her to take to his “partner,” she became quiet.

  She heard him approach, but didn’t expect the touch of his fingers to warm her shoulder. Surprised, she raised her head, her startled gaze meeting his.

  “You can trust me,” he said, his voice deep and slightly husky. “I’ll be straight with you.”

  Dani stared at the sincerity of his features, the honest lines of his rugged face, the depths of his deep blue eyes. If there were any one she could trust, she felt that Chase McEnroe might just be the man.

  He started to bend over her, and for a moment Dani had the absurd impression that he might kiss her, but he drew away and she shook her head at her own stupidity. If men like Blake and Caleb Johnson had taught her anything, it was never to trust a man who had an ulterior motive.

  “I think you’d better go,” she whispered, shifting so that his fingers no longer touched her. “And don’t come back.”

  “You think I’m your enemy.”

  “You are.”

  “Me and the rest of the world?” he asked. “Or just men in general?”

  Stung and seething, Dani stood and faced him. “You, Caleb Johnson and anyone else, man or woman, who tries to steal my land from me.”

  “Steal?” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Caleb Johnson tried to rob you of this land?” He seemed genuinely surprised and more than a little dubious.

  Dani’s lips twisted at the irony of it all “Go ask Johnson about it,” she said. As if you don’t know already. For all Dani knew about him, Chase could be a consummate actor playing a well-rehearsed role or a simple con man lying through his beautiful Colgate-white teeth.

  “I will,” he promised, heading for the door.

  “Good!”

  When he got to the door, he hesitated and his broad shoulders slumped as he turned around. “Dani?”

  She didn’t answer, but inclined her head.

  “For what it’s worth. Whatever this . . . problem is between you and Johnson, I’m not part of it. I told Johnson as much.”

  “But you are his partner.”

  Chase ground his back teeth together. “That’s right,” he admitted.

  “And you did come here to get me to either sell, lease, rent or let you use my land.”

  He looked at her silently and the tension in the air seemed to crackle with the fire in her eyes.

  “Then you have to understand, Mr. McEnroe, you can stand in front of that door until hell freezes over and I won’t believe a word you say.”

  A muscle worked in the corner of his jaw and his blue eyes blazed angrily. “Okay, lady, have it your way. I just thought I could help you. Sorry if I wasted your time!”

  Chase strode angrily out of the room, letting the door slam shut behind him. The hot night air did little to cool his seething temper as he strode to his Jeep, climbed inside and roared down the long lane leading back to the country road and eventually to Caleb Johnson’s property.

  Just a couple of months, he thought with an inward groan, and then I’ll be out of it. I’ll be able to leave Dani Summers, her suspicious kid, and Caleb Johnson. Then they can all go for each other’s throats for all I care!

  He slowed as the Jeep reached the main road. When the vehicle had come to a complete stop, Chase cranked the wheel of the Jeep hard to the right. Right now he couldn’t face Caleb Johnson’s smug face or the smell of the old man’s money. Seeing the way Dani Summers lived soured Chase’s stomach. In the distance, the lights of Martinville brightened the night sky. The town wasn’t much more than a grocery store, post office, gas station and a couple of churches, but it did have a bar. Chase decided that the smoky atmosphere of Yukon Jack’s had to be more comforting than the cold intenor of Caleb Johnson’s house. Anything did.

  Unreasonably he thought about Dani again and he experienced a tightening in his gut. She was beautiful, no doubt about it. With wavy sun-streaked hair that fell almost to her waist, high, flushed cheekbones and wide sensual lips, she was the most attractive woman he’d met in a long while.

  The fact that her eyes could look right through him only added to h
er appeal and innate sexuality. She was trim and lean, probably strong and obviously intelligent; attributes Chase didn’t normally look for in a woman. However, he sensed that Dani was different than the women he’d seen over the past few years and it worried him. It worried him a lot.

  “Don’t forget the chip she’s got on her shoulder,” he warned himself, trying to discourage his fantasies of the spitfire of a woman. “And the rifle-loaded or unloaded. A dangerous lady any way you cut it.”

  So why then did he think about the photograph on the mantel? A snapshot of a laughing woman and happy child astride a rangy horse in the bright Montana sun. The image lingered in his mind even as he parked the truck, stepped across the concrete sidewalk and strode into the noisy smoke-filled interior of Yukon Jack’s.

  Chapter Three

  “That’s the last of it,” Dani said, wiping the sweat from her eyes.

  “Thank God,” Jake responded with a groan. The lanky boy was one of the two brothers Dani had hired to help her haul the baled hay into her barn.

  It was late in the season for cutting hay, but with the unexpected breakdown of her equipment earlier in the summer, she’d been forced to rent a baler from a neighboring rancher after he’d finished with his own fields. Though she couldn’t prove it, she suspected that her machinery had been tampered with—by someone from Caleb Johnson’s place—just as she suspected other problems at the farm had been instigated by Johnson or one of his hands. The stolen gasoline, sick cattle and broken hay baler were just a few of the worries she’d faced in the past year. Maybe they were coincidence. But the fact that the problems had increased since she’d refused to sell all of her farm to Johnson made her uneasy. Very uneasy.

  She slid an angry glance toward the neighboring acres and frowned. “You’re imagining things,” she muttered as she put the tractor into gear. “Just because you couldn’t get a part to fix the old baler.” With a roar the tractor started moving again.

  Cody, Jake and Jonathon climbed onto the top of the bales stacked carefully on the trailer as Dani drove slowly toward the barn through the straw stubble in the field.

  It was nearly twilight, but she had opted to work late rather than face another day painstakingly driving the tractor through the fields and lifting hundred-pound bales of dry hay onto the flatbed trailer. Dani hadn’t wanted to gamble that her cut hay might get ruined in the rain. She looked at the purple sky and noticed the clouds silently gathering overhead. If the weather forecast were to be believed, there was a good chance of thundershowers later.