Harlequin Desire February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: The King Next DoorMarriage With BenefitsA Real Cowboy (Kings of California)

by Maureen Child

  “Okay.” She tried to swallow, but her fear was becoming a thing so real she had half a mind to remind it to hang on to the rope, too.

  J.R. turned the knob to lock it from the inside, and Thalia set the key on the hall table. If they didn’t have to fumble around the mailbox and lock, they’d make it to the truck faster. “Ready?”

  She nodded, and he opened the door. The wind jumped at the chance to rush in again, but—maybe for the first time—Thalia was ready for it. Head down, shoulders set, her bag in one hand and the rope in the other, she pushed through it, keeping her eyes locked on J.R.’s back. The only time she looked away was to make sure the door shut behind her. Lloyd had been such a nice host—she’d hate to leave his house full of snow.

  By the time she got turned back around, she couldn’t see J.R. anymore. A spike of panic stabbed at her throat, making it hard to breathe. She couldn’t see anything; she couldn’t feel anything but the cold that burrowed under her skin. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t sure she even remembered what this was.

  Then the rope jerked in her hand, pulling her forward so hard she almost stumbled. He was pulling her into safety, she realized, when the rope jerked again. Two more tugs, and the outline of the Jeep came into view. “Still there?” he roared over the wind as he physically hauled her into the vehicle. She realized he must have untied the rope, because, leaning across her body, he threw it outside before pulling the door shut.

  The panic was still tight around her throat, smothering her with the realization that if she’d tried to do this by herself, she’d have died. J.R. had saved her from herself. She threw her arms around his neck, any words of thanks she had stuck in the back of her throat with sobs of terror she couldn’t voice.

  J.R. froze for a second, then his arms wrapped around her, pulling her into his chest. “You’re still here,” he murmured into her hair before he pressed his lips against her forehead. The touch pushed her panic back and down into her stomach, and she was able to breathe again. “I won’t let anything hurt you. But we’ve got to go.”

  “Okay,” she said as she released him. Not so much because she was all better now, but because they had to keep moving.

  Now was probably the time to start praying.

  The going was slower this time. Every so often, the winds would relent enough that the stripes on the road would pop up in surprising relief. The snow was something else, but the wind was blowing the road somewhat clear. Every time that happened, J.R. would put the pedal to the metal. Which meant his top speed was probably close to forty miles per hour, then would drop back down into the twenties. It was like bunny hopping in slow motion.

  At one point, the wind died back in time to see a post sticking out of the snowbank. J.R. cut the wheel hard to the right. Clawing for the door handle, Thalia let out a little scream as the truck skidded.

  “Easy,” J.R. said—the first thing he’d said since they’d left Lloyd’s.

  Thalia wanted to yell at the man—what about this was easy? And how did driving like a maniac make it any easier? She bit her tongue. He hadn’t killed them yet, after all, and she didn’t want to distract him and risk hastening their demise.

  She was pretty sure they were on the gravel road that led to the ranch, but damned if she could see anything but the snow. However, J.R. seemed to know where he was going. She had no choice but to trust him.

  The world had disappeared completely. It felt like the world inside this Jeep was the only thing in existence. Maybe hell wasn’t hot, she thought as she tried to see something—anything. Maybe it was unending, white cold.

  Suddenly, off to their left, a sputtering burst of firework red broke through the snow. “What the...?”

  “Flares,” J.R. said, turning the Jeep at a saner rate of speed. He didn’t sound shocked about this. “Hang on.”

  The vehicle jumped and shuddered, as if they were now driving over curbs. Another flare of color cut the white. This time, it was closer, and straight ahead of them. J.R. laid on the horn.

  Two more flares cut through the snow, but instead of shooting up into the sky like a Roman candle, they were waving in front of the truck.

  “Made it.” J.R. may have acted all calm, cool and collected over there, but Thalia heard the sheer relief in his voice.

  When the flares got close to the hood, J.R. swung wide and turned the Jeep. The ranch house loomed out from behind the curtain of white like a ghost, hulking and dark. “Damn. Already lost power,” J.R. muttered.

  That seemed bad, but Thalia remembered him telling Hoss to get the generators. Maybe the power outage was a temporary thing.

  A bundle of fur that looked more like a bear than a man came toward them. “Get your bags,” J.R. said, jerking his chin toward the backseat.

  Thalia handed her things through the window to Hoss, who disappeared back into the house and then reappeared. “Ready?” J.R. asked seconds before the passenger door was opened.

  Without a word, Hoss scooped her up, then turned around. He paused, which didn’t make any sense to Thalia—why weren’t they running for the house? Then she heard J.R. shout, “Okay!” behind Hoss at the same time she realized Hoss had a rope tied around his waist.

  Oh. Duh, Hoss was waiting for J.R. to grab hold. Then their little people train moved into the house. It couldn’t have taken more than three minutes, but to Thalia, it felt like hours of being carried through the wilderness. Hoss appeared to be wearing the buffalo robe again, and the snowflakes stuck to the fur. He looked like a yeti.

  Soon enough, though, they were being pulled inside the house. Minnie was braced against the door, yanking on the rope hand-over-hand. Hoss managed to set Thalia down on her feet, but J.R. stumbled in and went down on one knee before Minnie could get the door shut behind him.

  “Hot damn, now that’s a blizzard,” Hoss announced as he threw off his robe and helped J.R. to his feet. “We were starting to get a little worried about you all.”

  “You and me both,” J.R. muttered as he pulled off his coat. He didn’t look exactly steady on his feet. Thalia went to his side and looped her arm around his waist. When he leaned against her, she felt inexplicably good. This wasn’t on the same level as him saving her life, but at least she was helping him a little. “Power?”

  “Yeah, about that.” Hoss looked down at his feet as he kicked off his snow-covered boots. “The generator won’t turn over. If it was lighter, I’d be able to figure out what the deal was, but...” He sounded uncharacteristically defeated.

  J.R. sagged against her a little more. “We’ve got wood, right?”

  “Tons.”

  J.R. squeezed her a little tighter and said, “We’ll be fine, then.”

  Minnie swooped into action, gathering up the coats and shooing everyone back to the kitchen. Thalia wanted to look a little more at the house she was going to be staying in for the foreseeable future—surely there was more to it than a cozy kitchen—but it was all she could do to keep walking. She and J.R. moved slowly, still leaning on each other despite having removed their coats and boots. Maybe it was the cold, or maybe it was the near-death experience that had Thalia still shaking. Whatever it was, she felt warmer and safer tucked under J.R.’s arm than she had in a long time, blizzards notwithstanding.

  Minnie plunked them down on a big couch in front of the fire—a couch Thalia was sure hadn’t been there a few hours ago. Not that it mattered. The couch was only a few feet from the fire, and the other chairs had been pulled in close to bookend it. It made the otherwise large space feel small and cozy.

  She and J.R. slid down onto the leather. Part of her brain realized she was, for lack of a better word, being cuddled by him, and that part tried hard to get swoony.

  Another part of her was filled with such an upwelling of gratitude—both to J.R. and to Hoss and Minnie—that she felt a little teary. For as long
as she’d been in Hollywood, she’d been on her own, no one to lean on, no one willing to help her handle the constant bumps along the way. The last time anyone had helped her—out of the goodness of their heart and not because they wanted her to be beholden to them—had been... Well, Mom had offered to pay her way home after Thalia had been blacklisted. The thing she’d had to learn the hard way was no one else would be there for her. She was all she had.

  Out here, in the proverbial middle of nowhere? J.R. hadn’t let her drive off to her doom. Instead, he’d risked his life to make sure she had her things. Minnie was fussing over them with tea and hot soup. And Hoss had taken up residence in one of the chairs and apparently was recounting each and every blizzard they’d weathered out here in great detail. These people had gone out of their way to make sure she was welcome, safe and cared for. At least, they had eventually, in J.R.’s case. And they didn’t do it because they wanted a favor for later or because it’d look good on the internet. They did it because that’s the way they lived—helping out a neighbor, taking care of a friend.

  She’d never known anyone like J.R. And, as she nestled into his arm, she knew she’d never meet another. “Thank you,” she whispered so as not to interrupt Hoss’s stories.

  He didn’t respond.

  Eight

  “Thalia, honey, you must be exhausted.” Minnie maneuvered through the furniture to stand in front of her. “Let me show you to your room. Hoss got the fire going while you were gone, so it’s fairly warm.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Yes. Seeing other parts of the house was probably preferable to being both snuggled and ignored by J.R. But when she went to stand, J.R.’s arm weighed heavy over her shoulder.

  She turned to look at him and saw his head was tucked down on to his chest and his eyes were closed. Ah. That buoyed her spirits—he wasn’t ignoring her. He was asleep. Moving slowly, she lifted his arm away and then set his hand in his lap. He didn’t even stir.

  That was probably her fault, too. She’d turned off her light and gone to bed fairly early—maybe ten o’clock? How long had he sat outside in that truck? Add that to the stress of driving through a blizzard. No wonder the man was exhausted. She was pretty whipped by the whole day, herself.

  Minnie had gathered up Thalia’s things. Hoss joined them, carrying a huge kettle of water. Thalia took the two shopping bags and they headed up the back stairs. Minnie led the way with a flashlight.

  “Is it going to be a problem without power?” Because, honestly, she’d been as close to freezing to death in the last week as she ever wanted to be.

  “As long as the fires are burning, you’ll be fine,” Minnie said at the top of the stairs. Then she turned left down a long hall. “You’ve got your own bathroom. Can’t promise the water will be warm, but at least it’ll work. We heat the water for washing on the stove.”

  So showers were out. “Sounds good.” She wasn’t about to look the gift of running water in the mouth right now. Instead, she was going to be thankful for being able to wash her face and flush a toilet. It was the little things in life.

  Minnie opened the door, and Thalia stepped into exactly the kind of room she’d expected to find. A stone hearth with a blazing fire and a mantle that looked carved from an entire tree took up one wall; wood paneling covered all the others, like downstairs. The big difference was that a huge four-poster bed complete with bed curtains stood in the middle of the room. The bed, while large, looked soft and inviting, the rug appeared to be Navajo, and instead of the animal heads she might have expected, framed art of mountains and trees decorated the place. It beat the heck out of Lloyd’s sixties flashback.

  “Bathroom’s this way,” Hoss said, going through a door on the opposite side. “I’ll fill the sink for you. It’ll be warm for a little bit.”

  Minnie set the bag down on a cedar chest at the end of the bed. “Let me get those curtains for you. They’ll help hold in the heat,” she added as she pulled three of the four curtains, but left the side facing the fire open.

  Three hours ago, Thalia had been headed home. If she’d started for Billings instead of coming to say goodbye, she’d probably be in a ditch somewhere, wondering if anyone would find her before she ran out of gas. Now, she was being settled into a guest room half the size of her whole apartment by nice people who were going to feed her and keep her warm. Thalia must have looked a little shell-shocked. God knew she felt it. Minnie came up to her and patted her on the arm in an inherently motherly way. “There’s no need to worry, sweetie. We’ve weathered worse out here. I’m sure the boys will be able to get the generators going tomorrow, and we’ve got a whole garage of wood out back. We can stay out here for a month, easy.”

  Thalia’s throat closed up on her, pulling down the corners of her mouth and making any sort of polite response all but impossible. A month? Did that mean she would have to spend Valentine’s Day with J.R.? And was that a bad thing or a good thing? How was she supposed to get back to Hollywood?

  Beyond that, who would miss her? Levinson might, but only because she wasn’t at his beck and call. He wouldn’t be worried about her, just the work she wasn’t able to do. Mom knew she’d come to Montana, but unless this was the kind of blizzard that made the evening news, Mom would assume no news was good news. That was for the best, Thalia decided. She didn’t want Mom to be frantic and unable to get a hold of her.

  No one else would notice she was gone. She had a few work friends she ate lunch with, that sort of thing, but no roommates, no boyfriends. No close friends. No one who cared about her. She’d been facing another lifeless Valentine’s Day with nothing but a solitary card from Mom to mark the occasion.

  Everything was different here. She barely knew these people, but J.R. had risked his life to keep her safe, and Minnie and Hoss had welcomed her with open arms. She mattered to them. And more and more, they mattered to her, too. That realization choked her up.

  Her lack of words was drowned out by the howling of the wind that seemed to be trying to pull the house apart, piece by piece.

  “I’ve got to check on the pork chops,” Minnie said. “Dinner will be in a few.”

  Thalia managed to nod. Dinner. And after that? She had a nice room—right across the hall from J.R. She was here for the duration. She might as well make the most of it.

  * * *

  J.R. sat as still as he could, straining to hear footsteps over the wind. When he was sure everyone was upstairs, he got up and went to the bathroom. The water from the tap was one step above ice cubes, but he splashed it on his face anyway, hoping it would shock some sense back into his system.

  He couldn’t believe he’d faked being asleep. It was an act of cowardice, and he knew it. But, like she’d been doing since she’d first set foot on his property, Thalia had caught him off guard and he hadn’t known how to react.

  Yeah, he was exhausted. Driving into the yawning mouth of snow hell on four hours of sleep had taken everything he had and a whole bunch more. That was the problem. If he’d had a little in reserve, he wouldn’t have been so weak with relief to see those flares that he’d had to let Hoss carry Thalia inside. He wouldn’t have stumbled walking into his own house, his weakness on full display.

  He sure as hell wouldn’t have needed her to support him. He wouldn’t have had to lean on her, or have gotten so light-headed that he’d been completely unable to pull away from her. Even if he’d wanted to, he hadn’t been able to let go of her. If anything, he’d held her even tighter. He still didn’t know how he’d managed to get on the couch in front of the fire. Unless she’d out-and-out carried him. At this point, he wasn’t sure.

  J.R. couldn’t see much of his reflection in the dark interior of the bathroom, but he stared nonetheless. What the hell was wrong with him?

  Thalia by his side had felt warm. Real.

  Safe.

  He’d felt safe with her arm
around his waist, with his arm around her shoulders. So much so, he hadn’t wanted that moment to end.

  “Don’t be an ass,” he said to his faint reflection. All these unwanted feelings were the result of the late night and the dangerous afternoon. Thalia had never been someone he could trust. She could ruin his life and destroy everything he’d built. Hell, if the fight at the bar was any example, she’d already gotten a head start.

  But.

  Because there was a huge but, and it went back before the snow started falling. Back when she’d been in his kitchen, again. Back when she’d come to say goodbye. Back when she’d promised not to tell anyone where he was.

  She was from Hollywood. She was a former actress. She worked for Levinson. There was no way he could trust her, not in this life and not in the next.

  So when she’d been curled up at his side, one arm around his waist, her head resting on his shoulder, and whispered, “Thank you,” in a voice he knew—felt deep in his soul—wasn’t an act or a negotiating tactic...well, he’d frozen up. His brain had tried to tell him it was another trap, but the rest of him? The rest of him didn’t know what it wanted.

  Well, that wasn’t true, either. Large parts of him wanted to hold her closer, to duck his head down and plant a gentle kiss on her lips. Then maybe another, not so gentle one.

  Those kissing parts and his brain parts had canceled each other out, leaving him without a clear course of action. So he’d faked it.

  He heard footsteps overhead. The bathroom was tucked under the stairs, so that meant someone was coming back down. He finished his business and headed out. He was going to bed good and early, but he wasn’t about to miss dinner. Not if Thalia was there.

  Hoss was throwing a few more logs on the fire; Minnie was peeking into the oven. Weather like this was one of the reasons they had a gas stove—if they got truly desperate, they’d turn on the oven to heat the room. In many ways, this was a normal night. Except for the blizzard and the woman who was still upstairs.