Ruthless

by Lisa Jackson

  “Brandon’s renting the house,” Max said, his gaze thinning as if he was thinking hard, putting two and two together and coming up with five.

  “No way.” A flush stole up her neck. Her fingers curled into fists of frustration.

  “There’s a problem?” Max looked from one to the other.

  “Don’t think so,” Brand drawled, enjoying watching her squirm, though why he didn’t understand. There was and always had been something about Dani Donahue—make that Dani Stewart—that brought out the devil in him. “My credit should be good.”

  Max cleared his throat and handed her the paperwork. “Credit’s not a problem.”

  Dani was frantic, her heart beating as wildly as the wings of a bird suddenly trapped in a small dark cage. Brandon? Here? Wanting to rent her house? Of all the bum luck! Brandon Scarlotti was the last person she wanted to lease the place to. Anyone, anyone else would be better. She caught her brother-in-law’s scrutinizing gaze and couldn’t stop her tongue. “I thought I told you I wanted a family—” She stopped short. She didn’t know anything about this man anymore. Maybe Brandon wasn’t single. For all she knew he could have a wife and a dozen kids tucked away somewhere.

  She turned her gaze on his ringless left hand and suddenly felt like a fool. What did it matter? He was here wanting the place and had the cash to make the deal work. A check for several thousand dollars was clipped to the lease, flapping in the honeysuckle-laced breeze, mocking her. First and last month’s rent, security deposit, cleaning deposit, the works. She was running out of time and options. He provided the resources for her to hold on to her dream. That was all and it certainly wasn’t a crime. In fact, if she wasn’t such an emotional wreck today, she might realize that he was a blessing in disguise.

  A blessing? Oh, sure! She made a deprecating noise in the back of her mouth and both men stared at her. Brandon Scarlotti may have been a lot of things, but a blessing? Was she suddenly out of her mind? She licked her lips, conscious of the time ticking by and the tension running in deep, noiseless undercurrents through the air. All she had to do was collect his rent each month and be civil to him. Nothing more. No strings attached. Squaring her shoulders, she shook her hair out of her face and cleared her throat. “Fine,” she muttered, forcing a smile she didn’t feel. Somehow she managed not to sound breathless. “I, um, I just thought—”

  “You didn’t expect to ever set eyes on me again.” Brand’s voice touched a hidden place in her heart, a place she’d nearly forgotten, a place she’d rather not acknowledge.

  She slid her hands into the back pockets of her cutoffs and nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.” Her fingertips brushed the edge of the letter she’d written so long ago and her throat clogged. Brandon had never known about the baby. Few had. She’d spent a few months away from Rimrock, out of sight, so that no one—aside from her mother, Jonah McKee, in whom her mother, Irene, confided, and the hospital staff in a small, private hospital—could say for certain that she’d been pregnant.

  His hair was still the color of ebony—not a trace of gray showed in the thick strands. His eyes were clear and blue and only a few lines from spending hours in the sun had altered his face, stealing away the traces of the boy she’d once known. He looked harder edged, honed to a more ruthless man than she remembered. A shame. “Yep,” he drawled evenly, his gaze warm as it touched hers, “I’m back.”

  “So it seems.” She could hardly believe this was happening—on the very day she’d discovered the letter she’d written eleven years before. Was it kismet? Fate? Destiny? Or just plain bad luck? “For how long?” she heard herself ask, hoping she didn’t sound as anxious as she felt. “Permanently?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Eight to ten months at least. That’s about as permanent as I get.”

  This was her out and she grabbed for it. “But I wanted a tenant for a minimum of a year.”

  Max thumped a finger on one paragraph of the agreement. The check flapped in the breeze. “Brandon’s signed for a year.”

  Dani’s heart sank. How could she possibly live this close to Brandon for the next three hundred and sixty-five days? The distance between her apartment over the garage and the main house was less than twenty yards.

  Because you have to. You have no choice. Be thankful it’s not a leap year!

  If she didn’t rent to Brandon, she’d have to find another tenant, or give up the ranch and all the money she’d put into it, or borrow cash from her sister. Not that Skye hadn’t offered. But Dani had spent too many years growing up poor and dependent upon the charity of others—first with her mother and their choking reliance on Jonah McKee with whom Irene had been half in love, then with Jeff who had always been pushing her to borrow from Skye and “tap into the McKee money.” She still remembered his skewed reasoning. “Hell, they can’t spend it all in a million years! We have a right to it, Dani. Why should we suffer?” Jeff’s words still stung. Fortunately, she’d never listened to him. She’d always had too much pride to accept any offer of a loan, even from her older sister.

  But Dani was running out of time. It was now or never and she couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, even one that came with extra emotional baggage. Like it or not, she had to accept Brand as her tenant. “Then I guess there’s nothing more for me to do but sign on the dotted line,” she said, forcing that practiced smile that felt so fake—the one she donned whenever someone asked her how she was getting along now that she was single. Propping the document against the side of the house, she inked her signature on the appropriate line, pushing hard as the forms were in triplicate. “You can move in tomorrow,” she said to Brandon as she clicked the pen closed.

  “Good.” Brandon’s gaze held hers for a second too long. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Her stomach seemed to drop to the dusty ground.

  “I’ve only got a few things,” he said. “Believe in traveling light. I’ll bring them by in a couple of days.”

  “I didn’t think you were ever coming back,” she blurted out, unable to stop herself.

  “Me, neither.” His voice lost some of its warmth.

  For years she had envisioned him wandering the globe, a man running from his past, uncertain about his future. Now, she realized, she’d been wrong—so very wrong. Brandon Scarlotti wasn’t the hard-luck boy from the wrong side of the tracks any longer. No, in his expensive slacks and crisp white shirt, he looked confident and assured and she doubted that he was afraid of anything. Even his tie, loosened and casual, reeked of good taste.

  Oh, Brandon, what happened to you?

  His gaze found hers briefly and his blue eyes landed long enough to suck some of the breath from her lungs before he looked quickly away.

  “So what brings you back to Rimrock?” She surprised herself with her calm voice that belied the perspiration collecting on her palms and the urge to scream the truth at him. The letter in her pocket seemed to scald through her jeans and panties to her skin.

  His lips tightened almost imperceptibly. “A project.”

  “Project?”

  “Brandon’s in charge of building the new resort on Elkhorn Lake,” Max interjected, his blue eyes twinkling with an unlikely amusement.

  “You?” she said, disbelieving.

  “My company,” he clarified. “S & J Limited.”

  “You must be the S,” she reasoned, surprised that she’d never heard his name in connection with the resort that the townspeople had been gossiping about for months. After years of red tape, the project had finally been given the go-ahead by all the state and local agencies involved.

  “Yep. A friend of mine, Mitch Jones, was the J, but I bought him out last year. Didn’t seem reasonable to change the company name. We’d just ordered more letterhead,” he said, teasing, of course, though she didn’t smile at his attempt to lighten the mood. Too many unchecked emotions were raging through her system, too many fears. Dear God, how could she live this close to him without telling him the truth?

&
nbsp; “But that project—it will take longer than six months. . . .”

  “Two, maybe three years.”

  “You said—”

  His face was suddenly grim. “I said I’ll be here for a minimum of six months. After that I might have to move closer to the lake.”

  Relief drizzled through her blood, but she still found it impossible to believe that he was back. Dear Lord, now what?

  He checked his watch and scowled. “I’ve got to get back—I’m expecting a phone call.” When he lifted his head, he stared straight at Dani. “Maybe you could give me a tour of the place tomorrow. Max showed me the house, at least through the windows, since that’s all I’m really leasing, but I’d like a look around the place. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  “’Course not,” she responded with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. He may as well have asked her to visit the graveyard at midnight, for all the joy she found in his request. She couldn’t imagine spending even a second alone with him, but she nodded. After all, they were going to be neighbors. Close neighbors.

  “Late afternoon?”

  “Fine.” She lifted both shoulders as if it didn’t matter in the least, as if they’d never shared a look, a touch, a kiss before. As if she hadn’t lain naked in his arms, her body bathed in sweat, his ragged breathing warm against her ear. Everything had happened so long ago. What could it matter? “What about your family? Will they be coming—?”

  The muscles in his face turned to stone. “Just me. Don’t you remember, Dani?” His hair caught in a breeze that had suddenly kicked up and his nostrils flared just a little. “Things haven’t changed all that much. I’m still not a family man. No wife. No kids. No strings attached.”

  Max watched the exchange and said nothing, but Dani read the interest in his eyes he tried so vainly to veil. If she and Brandon weren’t careful, Max would guess the truth. And she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

  “You can take possession tomorrow,” she said stiffly as she studied Brandon’s face—a face she was sure, at seventeen, she’d loved with all of her naive heart. Silly girl.

  His smile was older than she remembered; his eyes had seen far more than they had when he’d left Rimrock so many years ago. “I’m looking forward to it,” he said and her heart did a silly little flip. There was a moment when their gazes touched that she remembered just why she’d found him so irresistible.

  With a wave he climbed into Max’s truck, and as the pickup left behind a thin cloud of dust, Dani leaned against the post that supported the roof of the porch.

  What was it about Brand that had touched her? Why was he different from a dozen other boys who had been interested in her so long ago? Why had she let him near her?

  Because of his wild irreverence? Because she’d seen a spark of nobility hidden deep in his blue, blue eyes? Or because she’d been a foolish young rebel herself, hell-bent to live her life her own way despite her mother’s worries and her older sister’s concerns?

  Her throat grew thick and memories swirled through her mind like a whirlpool, moving rapidly, blurring, carrying her on a spinning tide, but getting nowhere.

  * * *

  The first time she’d seen Brandon Scarlotti she’d been barely seventeen, full of life and wanting to break free of the shackles of her tedious existence. She was tired of doing what was right, tired of being poor, tired of her mother’s incessant warnings and tired of living in her older sister’s shadow.

  She’d been driving home from work in her mother’s rattletrap of a car when the engine had sputtered twice and died. “Oh, God, no,” she’d whispered, silently cursing and looking out at the highway. “Not now. You can’t quit on me now!” It was nearly midnight, she was alone, and another car might not come along for a while. Even if one did come by, who was to say it would stop or that it would be driven by a Good Samaritan? At this time of night, chances were whoever was behind the wheel might be drunk or looking for trouble. “Great!” she muttered, slapping the steering wheel and trying once again to start the old brown sedan.

  “Come on, come on,” she encouraged as the engine fired only to die again. All her mother’s warnings came back to haunt her. Not knowing what else to do, she waited, then tried to start the car several times but to no avail. Eventually the damned engine wouldn’t even turn over.

  “Oh, save me!” she muttered, flinging herself back against the seat. She was dead tired after a full day of school followed by an eight-hour shift waiting tables at the diner of the Dawson City Truck Stop, five miles out of town. She reached in her purse, dug around and unearthed a pack of cigarettes, not yet opened, the pack she’d picked up from the vending machine on her way through the lobby of the diner. She opened the pack, found some matches and lit up, inhaling deeply, hoping the smoke would calm her nerves.

  “Think, Dani, think,” she muttered as she released a white cloud. In five minutes, no car had appeared, so she brushed aside maps and napkins and a pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment until she felt the ribbed handle of a flashlight. Climbing out of the car, she squashed her cigarette, looked up and down the winding, desolate stretch of road and felt an utter sense of defeat. She was in the mountains between Rimrock and Dawson City, but the main highway was far enough away that it could be a long time before someone came along. She switched on the dim beam of the flashlight, located the latch and managed to prop the hood open.

  Knowing it was a waste of time, she swept the beam of the flashlight over the grimy metal contraption that was the engine, but she didn’t know enough about cars to have the first idea what was wrong with her mother’s old lemon. There seemed to be an excess of oil, steam rose from the radiator, and corrosion had settled over the battery posts.

  To be honest, it looked like the car was ready for the junkyard. “Not yet,” she said, adjusting some wires, burning her fingers in the process and getting nowhere. “Perfect,” she said on a sigh. “Just perfect.”

  The car breaking down was a fitting end to the worst day of her life. She’d already been referred to the principal’s office when she’d been caught smoking during lunch, then she’d been fired from her job at the truck stop. One of the other waitresses, Brandy Barlow, had accused her of stealing tips and another girl had said she’d seen Dani skim some of the bills off one of Brandy’s tables. Though the story was pure fabrication—concocted by two girls who didn’t know how to smile and wink and ease a little extra cash out of the truckers’ wallets—Dani was let go. Her boss regretted the decision, but he was tired of the bickering between his crew and it seemed strange to him that Dani’s tips were always twice what the other girls were making.

  Guilty until proven innocent. Dani had learned a long time ago that life wasn’t fair. Truth to tell, she hated her job at the diner. It wasn’t so much the work as being cooped up inside. She didn’t mind flirting a little and listening to a few wolf whistles or compliments, but some of the patrons thought that for an extra couple of dollars they could make lewd remarks or paw at her and that’s where she drew the line. She’d rather work with animals anyway and was only saving the money she earned at the all-night diner so she could buy a horse that she’d been eyeing for the past few years. The mare, a fleet brown five-year-old, was owned by Glenn Stewart and he was finally willing to sell her. For the right price. Dani nearly had enough money to buy the horse and board her at the stables just outside of town.

  But she was still a couple of hundred dollars short. “Thanks a lot, Brandy,” she muttered, leaning her hips against the fender of her mother’s car and tapping her fingernails nervously on the dull finish. Walk or wait? Even though she was dead tired, she was far too restless to sit idly, hoping some kind stranger would show up. She’d just decided to hike to the nearest farmhouse, pound on the door, wake up the poor farmer and call her mother. Irene, in turn, could call a friend and have the car towed. Dani cringed at the thought of how much hauling the dead auto would cost. Her mother was already on overload, worried about her wayward daugh
ter.

  Blowing her bangs from her eyes, Dani heard the distant whine of a motorcycle racing through the mountains. She listened hard, holding her breath, trying to determine which direction the rider was moving—closer or farther away? She crossed her fingers and hoped that the biker was riding in this direction and was a decent man who would give her a lift home.

  Inwardly Dani winced when she imagined explaining all this to her mother who, along with raising two daughters single-handedly, held down a job at McKee Enterprises as Jonah McKee’s secretary. Oftentimes, Irene Donahue worked overtime, her hours stretching long into the night. Dani wished, as she had all her years growing up, that she’d had a father. At times like this, she needed a man who would know what to do.

  But Tom Donahue was dead, killed in a logging accident while working for Jonah McKee. Dani didn’t even remember her dad. She’d seen snapshots, of course, photographs of a strapping blond man with a muscular build, shaggy mustache and daredevil smile.

  “Yeah, well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” she told herself, spouting the words her mother often quoted. So she didn’t have a father—big deal. She was getting along. She kicked at a tire of the car and stopped to listen. The motorcycle was getting closer. Maybe she could flag down the midnight rider.

  And what if he’s a pervert? A rapist? A murderer? Drunk or loaded on drugs? Her fingers curled more tightly around the flashlight. Small weapon. Even smaller consolation.

  Ignoring the drumming of her heart, she waited while the motorcycle roared through the mountains, gears whining as the rider put the bike through its paces. “I hope you’re a good guy,” she said as the beam of a single headlight became visible, just a speck at first and then brighter and brighter, a luminescent disk boring down on her. “Please be a good guy.”