Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

by Anna J. Stewart

  “Dogs get into stuff like that if it’s left where they can reach it.”

  “We didn’t have anything like that in the house. And he was never let out of the house. Someone came into my father’s house and deliberately fed it to him.”

  “So because someone poisoned your dog, you decided you had to destroy my life?”

  “Of course not. Because someone poisoned my dog and threatened to harm you, I took the threats against you seriously. That’s why I—” she choked on the word but forced it out anyway “—lied.”

  Wes demanded, “Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”

  “Yes. I do. But you have to believe me. They promised me—promised me—they’d kill you if I didn’t get you thrown out of the military.”

  “That’s a pretty specific threat. What did your father think about it?”

  She winced. “I couldn’t tell him. They threatened to kill him, too.”

  “You seriously expect me to believe this ridiculous story?”

  She opened her mouth to ask him why she would lie about something like that and then realized in the nick of time how stupid that would sound to him. “Someone has been following me.”

  “So you’ve seen whoever’s threatening you? Who is it?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone’s face. Cars tail me, and I see strangers lurking behind me in doorways and down the street.”

  “That sounds more like paranoia than a problem.”

  “I got more emails after the hearing. They continued to threaten you and my father.”

  “You definitely should have called the police.”

  “Wes, I was afraid! I still am!”

  “Why? You already ruined my life. Who cares if someone knocks me off?”

  “I care! And you should, too.”

  “Drama queen, much?” he muttered.

  “I drove all the way out here to warn you that someone is threatening to kill you. Look, I was pretty sure you wouldn’t accept my apology if I tried to say I was sorry for tanking your career. I get it. But you have to believe me when I tell you someone is threatening you and my father. I lied to save the only two men in the world I lo—” she broke off and corrected herself “—that I care about.”

  The look on his face made it clear she had wasted both her time and her breath by coming out here to see him. Her heart ached far more than it should have at the way he was shutting her out. They’d been broken off for a while when the whole catastrophe happened. She wasn’t still harboring love for him, was she?

  Why else would the anger and disgust in his eyes be so hard to look at?

  She stood up, her spine rigid. She wasn’t going to get out of this exchange with her honor intact. But she could at least leave with her dignity intact. She said quietly, “I thought I at least owed you the courtesy of letting you know you may be in danger.”

  He snorted. “This is Montana. Strangers stick out like a sore thumb around here, and everyone owns a rifle. Not much crime happens in these parts that the locals don’t take care of immediately. Hell, the sheriff is my cousin.”

  “Great. Then I’ll just take my warning and leave you to your vigilante justice. Good luck with that.”

  The least he could do was show a tiny bit of gratitude for the dire warning she’d delivered to him. Even if he did decide to completely blow it off, she’d gone to a lot of trouble to get here to share it with him. Not that she expected him to care. She should have expected him not to believe her.

  She grabbed her coat, opened the front door and stopped cold. A wall of snow that came nearly to her waist confronted her. She turned around to ask for another way out and spied Wes leaning against the edge of the kitchen island, arms crossed, studying her like she was some kind of unwelcome bug.

  She asked reluctantly, “Is there another way out to my car, or am I going to have to bust through that?”

  “The barn your car is parked in has a bigger drift than that in front of it. You’re not going anywhere today.”

  She swore colorfully. She really didn’t want to spend the entire day with Wes glowering at her like she was sharing some contagious disease with him.

  He shrugged. “If you’re gonna be stuck here, you might as well make yourself useful.”

  Her gaze narrowed. That sounded ominous. She wouldn’t put it past him to exact some sort of petty revenge on her now that he had her at his mercy. “What did you have in mind?”

  “This is a ranch. There’s always work to be done.”

  Yup. Petty revenge. Well, two could play that game. She smiled brightly. “Great! I’ve been cooped up in a car for three days. Getting out and doing something physical sounds wonderful.”

  She glanced down at her leggings and silk blouse. “But I’m not exactly dressed for it.”

  “Change into something else.”

  “I grabbed my purse, left my father’s house and started driving. I didn’t pack a suitcase to signal to anyone that I was leaving town. I have the clothes on my back until I can get back to an actual town with stores and do a little shopping.”

  Wes rolled his eyes. “City slicker. I don’t suppose you have a heavier coat than that skimpy jacket you wore last night, either, do you?”

  “March is springtime in Washington!”

  “Newsflash—it’s still winter here.”

  She made a face. “I figured that out as I drove up here in a blizzard last night.”

  He grinned sardonically. “That was not a blizzard. That was a minor late-season snowstorm.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I suppose I can lend you some work clothes.”

  He strode down the hall to his room and emerged in a minute with a pair of jeans, a belt, a black T-shirt and a hoodie sweatshirt. “Leave your leggings on under the jeans. You’ll need the layers. While you put this stuff on, I’ll go see if I can find a pair of my old work boots that might fit you.”

  Work boots? Good grief. He really was planning to torture her!

  She emerged from the guest bedroom feeling like a snowman. Wes was in the living room with a pair of what looked a lot like combat boots but clunkier, if that was actually possible.

  “If you wear a couple pairs of socks, these should work.”

  He held out the boots and she grimaced at their weight. “Are there lead blocks in these?”

  “Steel toes. You need them when working around large animals and heavy equipment.”

  Animals? Equipment?

  Deeply skeptical of whatever he had planned for her, she donned the three pairs of socks that he lent her and the boots. Silently he handed her a pair of wool-lined leather work gloves. She followed him out the side door between the kitchen and dining room. A mudroom extended the full width of the end of the house. Cold bit through her clothes instantly, and she shivered as Wes passed her a thick parka and an ugly knit cap. Fashion be damned. It was freezing out here. She yanked on the cap and pulled the parka’s hood up over it for good measure.

  Wes donned a big sheepskin coat and led her outside. Bright sunshine glittered off the snow, blinding her. She squinted against the glare and followed the dark blob of Wes down the porch steps. He broke a path through the drifts and she followed close on his heels. An icy wind picked up the powdery snow, coating her clothing and stinging her skin everywhere it was exposed to the air.

  He slid open a big barn door on a squeaky track, and she slipped inside the decrepit barn behind him. It was warmer in here. Quiet. It smelled of sweetgrass on a summer day. And it was crammed with fuzzy red cows with curly white faces.

  She cringed beside Wes as one of them turned to sniff her with its wet pink nose.

  He spoke soothingly, no doubt so he wouldn’t upset the animals—because God knew he didn’t give a damn about her feelings. “They won’t hurt you. They’re Herefords. One of the gentlest breeds of cattle
. Think of them as giant, docile puppies, and you’ll have their temperament about right.”

  “Really? They seem so...big.”

  He laughed. “Bulls—they’re big. And muscular. These are all cows. They’ll start calving in the next month or so. See their big bellies? And how their sides stick out?”

  “They’re pregnant ladies? That’s so cool. Can I pet them?”

  “You don’t pet a cow. But you can scratch them. They like to have their shoulders scratched right here or, if they like you, around their ears or under their chin. Like this.” The cow he demonstrated on all but lay down on his hand, so happy she was to be scratched.

  “That’s adorable!” Jessica exclaimed under her breath.

  Wes gave her a withering look. “Cows are not adorable. They’re good-looking or well built or have nice conformation.”

  “Well, yours are adorable. Look at those curly faces! I’m dying.”

  Wes rolled his eyes. “Good thing you won’t be here to see the calves. They have knobby knees and whiter, curlier faces than their mamas. Now they are adorable.”

  “Isn’t it too cold for calves to be born?” she asked in concern.

  “Spring will be here in another month. There will be green grass in the pastures and it’ll be warm in the daytime. I’ll bring the cows inside at night for a few extra weeks so the calves aren’t killed by predators.”

  “Killed?” she exclaimed. The nearest cows threw their heads up in alarm, and she muttered, “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to say you’re sorry to cows. Since when did you become such an apologizer, anyway?”

  She looked over at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “You never used to be sorry for anything. You were fearless and took life head-on. No regrets. No looking back. What happened?”

  She shrugged. “The nightclub happened.”

  “How’d you get drugged?” He sounded reluctant, like he hated to ask but had been dying to ask the question for a long time.

  “The guy you pulled off me tried to pick me up and I turned him down. He came back a few minutes later carrying a drink and apologized really nicely. It didn’t even occur to me that he would try to get even by dropping a roofie on me. God, it was so easy for him to incapacitate me.”

  “Scary,” he muttered.

  “You think it’s scary! It terrifies me how close I came to being raped. I never did get a chance to thank you for charging in to the rescue like you did. You saved my life.”

  “If you’re trying to tell me it was worth destroying my life for, don’t. There were other ways to save yourself that didn’t involve me. You could have called the police directly.”

  She rubbed the shoulders of the nearest cow absently and was surprised when the animal leaned into her hand a little. She confessed, “I was afraid the police wouldn’t believe me. Or that they would think it was my fault for ingesting the roofie in the first place. I knew you would believe me and come right away.”

  He scowled. “Gee. Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m so glad my reliability and gullibility made me behave as forecast.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that—”

  “Don’t.” To punctuate his order, he moved away from her, winding into the closely packed herd of cattle.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To feed,” he answered unhelpfully.

  She debated staying here by the door, on her own with the unknown feeding behaviors of cows, or following him. She opted for Wes. He might hate her guts, but he was a known quantity.

  She stepped in something squishy, and a pungent odor immediately rose up. Oh. My. God. Horrified, she didn’t look down and kept on going, praying Wes wouldn’t be furious that she’d stepped in a fresh cow pie in his boots.

  He stood behind a long feeding trough on the other side of a gate made of steel pipe. She quickly unlatched the gate, slipped through and relatched it behind her. Wes handed her a big metal scoop. “Start throwing corn in the trough. Don’t stop until I tell you to.”

  She dug with gusto into a huge burlap bag of dried cracked corn and dumped a scoop of corn into the long, V-shaped feeder. The cows moved into a line, side by side, every one poking its nose into the trough eagerly.

  She moved a little bit down the line to scoop and dump again. And again.

  By the twentieth time she’d scooped and dumped, she’d added pain to the rhythm. Scoop. Pain. Dump. Pain. Scoop. Pain. Dump. Pain. Her shoulders and back ached, her arms burned and even her hands ached from the weight of the corn.

  “More?” she called. She’d lost sight of Wes and had no idea where he’d gone off to.

  “Keep scooping.” His voice was muffled and came from above her. She realized a partial second floor jutted out to right about where she stood. A hayloft, maybe?

  She looked up at the loft just in time to catch a face full of fine green hay leaves. They got in her eyes and mouth and tasted sweet and green, but the hay dust made her sneeze violently. She stepped back under the overhang hastily and realized with dismay that her hair was full of hay. He had done that on purpose!

  Scowling, she combed her fingers through her hair in a futile effort to get the bits of clinging hay out. No luck. She was covered in the stuff.

  “Are you scooping?” he called down. “Those poor, pregnant cows are hungry.”

  Jerk. She resumed scooping, keeping a wary eye on where big flakes of hay were flying down into the feeder from above. Any time he neared her, she prudently stepped back out of the way. Eventually, when she’d laid down a line of corn along the entire fifty-foot-or-so length of the trough, and had gone back to the beginning and replenished it again, Wes called down, “That’s enough corn.”

  She sagged, exhausted. She must have scooped three hundred pounds’ worth of the kernels. Wes came down from the loft and joined her. She asked him, “Do you scoop all that corn every day?”

  He shrugged. “I just pick up the bags and walk down the feeder with them. Takes me about thirty seconds.”

  “And you made me do it one scoop at a time?” she exclaimed.

  “I didn’t think you could pick up a hundred-pound sack of corn.”

  Oh. Well, there was that. She looked up at him sidelong, and for a fleeting moment his dark, dark blue eyes glinted with humor. It was just a glimpse of the old Wes, the man she’d fallen for, but he was still in there. Hiding, maybe, inside the angry, bitter man he’d become.

  She looked down the line of contentedly munching cows. “Will you keep them inside until the snow melts?”

  “Good Lord, no. They’ll go outside as soon as they’re done eating. Because they’re in the late stages of pregnancy, I’m supplementing their forage to make sure they’re getting plenty of high-quality nutrition. They’ll go outside and graze on the exposed grass and will dig through the snow to expose more roughage for themselves.”

  “Won’t they get cold?”

  “Have you taken a look at their coats? Their fur’s nearly three inches long. If anything, I have to guard against them getting too warm inside this barn and shedding out their winter hair too soon.”

  “I had no idea you knew so much about cows.”

  He rolled his eyes. “What part of ‘I grew up on a ranch in Montana’ didn’t you get?”

  “It’s one thing to hear it. It’s another to see exactly what that means.”

  “Well, now you’ve seen it. You can go back to DC and resume your regularly scheduled jet-set life.”

  But that was the thing. She couldn’t go back. Her previous life had been irrevocably taken from her when she’d realized how terribly vulnerable her party-girl lifestyle had made her to predators like the man who’d drugged her.

  Aloud, she mused, “I’m not sure what my regularly scheduled life should look like anymore.”

  Wes snorted. “That makes tw
o of us.”

  She frowned. “It looks to me like you’ve settled right back into your old life. You own a ranch. Some cows. A house.”

  He turned on her abruptly, and the fury in his stare made her step back from him. He ground out, “I never wanted this life for myself. I joined the Marine Corps to escape this. But you took my escape away from me and forced me right back here to the one place I swore I would never end up.”

  He might as well have punched her in the stomach. Only now was the true enormity of what she’d done to him starting to sink in. She hadn’t really given any thought to what he would do after he left the military. Her father was always talking about how he couldn’t wait to be a civilian again. It had never dawned on her that all soldiers might not feel the same way.

  “Wes, I’m really sorr—”

  “Save it. I already told you, I don’t want your apology.”

  “Is there some way I can make it up to you?”

  “Yeah. Get me my commission back.”

  If only. Her father had supposedly pulled all kinds of strings to keep him out of jail. No way could anyone, not even her father, get Wes his rank and position back. Not after he’d half killed a man with his bare hands.

  The temporary truce between them while feeding the cattle was apparently over.

  “Go inside the house,” he bit out.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Plow my damned driveway so you can get the hell out of here.”

  Stung, she retreated along the path they’d created before. She stopped in the mudroom to doff her boots and outer layers of clothing. Dispirited, she cleaned up the breakfast dishes and tidied the kitchen. Except for the quiche in the fridge and the new furniture arrangement, no one would know she’d ever been here. Wes could get on with his life, and she...

  She didn’t know what she was going to do.

  CHAPTER 5

  Where did one go when one’s life was in danger? Was a run-down ranch in Montana far enough out of the way that she would be safe here or not? Or would she lead the killer straight to Wes if she stayed here?