by Lori Foster
At the sound of Joe’s thundering approach, the man jerked upright. Shock held him immobile for only a moment of time, then with a panicked screech he high stepped it around Joe’s truck toward the wooded area adjacent to the property. The trees and shrubs there shielded the access to the main road.
Knowing he likely had transportation hidden there, Joe pressed himself, determined to catch him. With silent, acute concentration, his long legs ate up the ground, drawing him nearer, nearer. He could feel the blood rushing through his veins, the throbbing of his own heartbeat. His bare feet registered every small rock and piece of debris on the ground. The sonorous breaths of the man he chased mimicked their crashing footfalls.
They reached the blackened woods filled with concealing shadows and foliage. The ground was a trap of twisted roots and fallen branches, sharp brambles and prickling weeds. Joe cursed to himself and stretched out one arm, his fingertips almost there. He lunged—and snagged the back of a black shirt.
Issuing a ridiculously high-pitched scream, the body twisted, striking out, kicking. A clumsy fist landed on Joe’s jaw, barely dazing him, and a foot caught him in his sore ribs.
He hung on.
In a wild tangle, they both went down into a bed of sharp-pointed twigs. Joe landed mostly atop the intruder. The man held his arms over the face while kicking and thrashing. In a red haze of rage, Joe drew back his fist, intent on smashing the man’s nose. At the last second the man turned his face and the punch landed on his temple. He grunted, his arms fell to his sides and he went limp with a rumbling groan. Joe took quick advantage, drawing back to deliver a knock-out, immobilizing blow.
Willow shouted behind him.
There was no mistaking the fear in her voice. Had Joe miscalculated? Were there two men? He was on his feet in an instant, holding his captive with a hand twisted in his shirtfront. Fear washed through him as he turned toward the house—and he saw a small fire burst to life next to his truck.
It was only a moment of distraction, but the body he held bucked and lunged free. Cursing, Joe reached for him again and stepped on a fallen tree limb. His bad knee crumpled, causing Joe to grit his teeth in pain as he went down. “Goddammit.”
Frustration bit into him, adding to his fury. He was back on his feet in a heartbeat, but already the intruder had disappeared from sight, swallowed up by the black night. Deep into the woods, Joe could hear the lumbering, quickly receding footsteps, but he couldn’t see a thing. He stood undecided for only a moment, knowing he’d never catch the bastard now, not barefoot, not without light. He was sick at the idea of letting him get away. Again.
Then Luna was there, her flowing white nightshirt billowing in the evening breeze.
“Joe?” She frantically stroked her hands over him, his face, his chest. He heard the trembling in her tone and felt it in her touch. “Are you all right? Damn it, Joe, answer me.”
“I’m fine.” Still tight with anger but determined to reassure her, Joe threw an arm around her, dragging her to his side so he could see beyond her to the fire. “Shit.”
In a hobbling gait, he started forward. Luna braced her shoulder under his arm, offering her slight support. “You are not all right! You damn fool,” she raged. “How dare you do that? How dare you run off into the dark without a weapon—”
Disgusted, Joe said, “I needed shoes, not a weapon. Besides, I had my knife. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to stick anyone tonight, especially without knowing who it was.”
She glared at him. “Look, Joe, I know I came here to take care of the kids, and I know they come first. That’s a given.”
Thank God. At least if she was worried about the kids, she wouldn’t be dogging his heels.
“But I’m not very good at hanging back while you go off to probable danger. In fact, I don’t like it at all. I waited this time until I saw the guy run off, but in the future—”
“In the future, you’ll do the same.” Through an open window on the porch, Joe could see the pale, alert faces of Willow and Austin where they huddled together. Someone had frightened them. No way in hell would Joe tolerate that.
“I called Deputy Royal,” Luna told him in a short voice filled with censure. “Which is what you should have done before charging off like a vigilante without an ounce of sense—”
“Wives can be such a bother.” Joe kept his gaze on the fire. It was small, but too damn close to his truck. His steps became more hurried. He saw a gas can tipped to the side and quickly moved it farther away. If he hadn’t interrupted things when he had, would his truck have been torched?
At his side, Luna huffed. “I’ll go get an old blanket before it spreads.” She hurried away.
Willow unlocked the front door to let Luna in, then stepped outside. She had her arms wrapped around herself, her long hair drifting in the damp evening breeze. “There’s a hose at the side of the house, Joe. Want me to get it?”
He shook his head. “It’s a gasoline fire, hon. That might make it spread.”
Joe’s bare feet felt shredded from his chase across a field grown wild with thorny weeds. His knee throbbed. Bloody scratches marred his bare chest and arms from where he’d fallen, and rage burned like acid in his stomach. But he wasn’t about to react to any of that yet, not when the kids were watching him so closely.
Luna reappeared with two tattered blankets, and Joe went about smothering the flames. When only smoke remained, he put his truck in neutral and pushed it several yards away, closer to the house and the light of the porch. It was as he left the truck that he saw the deeply etched message on the side.
Take the tramp and leave, before someone gets hurt.
Joe’s eyes narrowed and his teeth locked.
He felt a small hand on his bare biceps and twisted to see Willow’s wide brown eyes staring at the message. “They mean me.”
“You don’t know that,” Luna said beside her. “They could mean me.”
“You?”
She shrugged, but her gaze never wavered from the truck. “I imagine Dinah has told everyone how I fired her.” She had Austin’s hand in hers, and all three of them seemed spellbound by the obscene message.
Joe stepped in front of them, blocking it from their view. “All of you listen to me.” Three pairs of eyes locked on his face: hopeful, expectant, still dark with anger and fear. Protectiveness erupted, so strong Joe wanted to shout with it. He drew one breath, then another, but Jesus it didn’t help.
“You’re mine now,” he told them, and he knew his voice was hoarse, trembling with furious conviction. He hadn’t meant to rush Luna, to spill his guts so soon. He’d meant to give himself time, to give her and the kids time. But he couldn’t hold it in. “All of you. I protect what’s mine. No one is going to hurt you, and no one is going to run us off. I’ll find the son of a bitch, I swear it. And when I do, he’ll pay.”
Luna’s eyes, narrowed with rage only a moment ago, now softened with an expression far too close to concern. She gave a reluctant nod and spoke very softly. “All right, Joe.”
He had the awful suspicion she agreed more to soothe him than because she believed what he said.
Willow swallowed, nodded, then gave him a trembling smile. “All right,” she said, agreeing with Luna, and she, too, seemed to want to comfort him.
Women.
Austin launched himself forward, hugging himself around Joe’s knees and hanging on tight. Joe almost fell over. He felt as though he’d been stomped on already, his muscles, his mind, his deepest emotions. Hell, he hadn’t known he had deep emotions until the kids and Luna had dredged them from a dark, empty place.
He wasn’t all that steady on his feet, and Austin hit him with the impact of a small tank. But it was more the punch to his heart than the impetus against his legs that threw him off balance.
Joe touched the tangled mop of blond hair. “Austin?”
Austin squeezed him, then said against Joe’s knees, “Okay.” He finally tipped up his face to give Joe a crooked, admiring gr
in. “I sure like it when you’re disrespectful.”
That ridiculous comment lightened Joe’s mood, and he laughed. “Rodent.”
Beneath the moonlight, with the scent of smoke thick in the cool evening air, they stood there. A retired bounty hunter, a psychic’s assistant, and two needy kids—a mismatched family, but a family nonetheless. Though it seemed to have happened at Mach speed, Joe accepted it. He needed them, as much if not more than they needed him. No one would hurt them. He wouldn’t allow it.
Joe reached for Luna and Willow and gathered them close, relishing the warmth and love and odd sense of security that he hadn’t realized had been missing from his life. He felt Luna’s warm breath against his bare shoulder, felt Willow’s tear-damp cheek on his chest. And Austin, clinging like a scrawny monkey to his legs. Deep inside him, something expanded—and this time there was no doubt, no hesitation. It felt right, filling him up with satisfaction.
He was a marrying kind of man after all, it seemed. Now the hard part would be convincing Luna.
Seconds later, flashing lights and shrill sirens split the night. Joe looked up as Scott Royal pulled into the yard with a lot of fanfare. When he saw them all congregated outside in their sleep clothes, he turned off the noise and climbed out of his car.
He did not look happy.
Both admiring and amused, he lowered the night-vision goggles that had allowed him to watch the unfolding drama as clearly as if it had been pure daylight.
It had been a real pleasure, watching Winston do his thing. He had that deadly combination of speed, agility and stealth. There was no way not to admire him.
He lifted the goggles again and tracked the retreating figure as it wisely left the woods and headed toward a car on the side of the road. The guy ran like a turkey. A terrified turkey. ’Course, Winston was a big bruiser, and if the guy hadn’t gotten free, Winston would have pulverized him. Too bad that hadn’t happened. He was so bored right now, he’d take any form of entertainment he could get.
Not that he disliked Visitation. The small town had started to grow on him. At night, the damn sky was so clear, so laden with stars, it fair took his breath away—and here he’d always considered himself a cynical bastard unmoved by things like starry skies. He snorted. Maybe once this was finished, he’d buy himself a spot of land and put up a little house. Visitation would be a right fine place to settle, or at least visit when the bullshit got to be too much.
He smiled, wondering if Winston would enjoy having him for a neighbor.
But first, he had a job to do. And he couldn’t very well do it if things stayed so complicated. So maybe he should help Winston sort it out a bit.
From this distance, he couldn’t make out the plates on the retreating car. The night-vision goggles weren’t good enough for that. But he saw it was an older hatchback. What would Winston do with that information if he had it? Maybe, when the time was right, he’d share it with him, just to see.
Yeah, he’d do that.
When the time was right.
Luna felt ridiculously nervous Monday morning. She’d be alone with Joe today, and that was enough to make her hands shake and her body flush in anticipation. Loving him as well as wanting him made for some pretty intense sensations.
But she was nervous, too, because Joe was different now. Some of the changes she’d noted were subtle, like the way he looked at her, how he touched her. Every kiss and caress still reeked of possessiveness, but there was a new tenderness, too, in the way his gaze lingered on her, the way his hands held her. It thrilled her, but also left her confused.
Other changes were less subtle.
Since the deliberate fire and the damage to his truck, Joe looked more like a badass than ever. He appeared bigger, more imposing, too. And he positively heaved with menace.
The tape from the surveillance camera had shown nothing more than the top of the man’s head and his dark clothing. The feed was good, but they didn’t have one single shot of his face. He’d stuck close to the shadows, making height and weight difficult to estimate.
Deputy Royal was still checking the gas can for prints, but the can was old and rusty, so they weren’t very hopeful. Other than knowing that the man had blond hair and, as Joe put it, screamed like a girl, they didn’t have a thing to go on.
Luna thought Joe might want to cancel their shopping trip that next day. But Joe had refused to rob the kids of their outing. Instead, he’d stuck close to them and kept a watchful eye on everyone. Luna had driven into town with the kids in her car, and Joe had trailed behind them in his truck. It’d be a week before the body shop could remove the scratches from the side panel, so Joe had covered it with strips of opaque plastic to spare Willow and Austin from seeing it again.
Joe’s vigilance had never been more apparent than while they shopped. People had given him wary looks and walked a wide berth around him. Not that Luna blamed them. Even while in the relative safety of the mall, Joe had surveyed everyone and everything with burning blue eyes and sharp suspicion. His expression was so forbidding that only Willow and Austin had seemed immune.
To Luna’s mind, the shopping spree had turned into an odyssey of excitement for Willow, but mind-numbing torture for Joe and Austin. Within half an hour, Joe had chosen a bed to be delivered the next day. It was bigger and better able to accommodate his large frame.
They’d then spent several more hours deciding on a multitude of clothes and shoes and underwear for the kids. With every shirt, pair of shorts or jeans purchased, Willow glowed. Even new socks had her sighing in pleasure—and Luna loved it. She could have shopped the rest of the day.
Austin, however, had carped and complained and dragged along with a bogus limp that hadn’t garnered him one speck of sympathy from Willow, but had obviously amused Joe. Getting him to try on clothes proved nearly impossible, so Luna finally purchased what she thought would fit him and spared him more torture. Austin’s complaints got on everyone’s nerves and for a while there, she had expected Joe to pull up lame, too. But with Willow’s excitement so plain, Joe had sucked up his objections, juggled the packages she piled in his arms, and encouraged Willow to continue shopping.
What a great guy.
Now, thanks to Joe’s patience, the kids were decked out in all new clothes and shoes for their first day at summer school. Luna looked over at Joe as he drove, but he kept his eyes on the road, sparing her little attention.
She didn’t like being ignored. She’d deliberately worn a new dress, a stretchy tan sheath that clung to her body. The dress itself was simple, but she’d adorned it with long loopy earrings, several silver and gold bracelets, and a woven belt that hung low on her hips. She thought she looked rather nice in the outfit, but Joe had only given her one quick, cursory glance.
The kids were in the backseat of her Contour, subdued in their anticipation of school. Joe, however, seemed very disgruntled as he constantly scanned the area with a threatening scowl.
Luna leaned to look into the backseat and was struck anew at how much the kids had come to mean to her in such a short time. Austin’s hair, freshly brushed just that morning, had already sprung back into an impossible tangle, thanks to his open window. Willow nervously fiddled with a new bracelet, quietly introspective in that special way of hers. Though Willow looked very delicate and Austin appeared as rugged as any nine-year-old boy, the similarities in features couldn’t be denied.
“You have Joe’s cell phone number, right?”
Since she’d asked that several times already, both kids made faces and said, almost in unison, “Yes.”
“I’m being a pain, aren’t I? I always swore I wouldn’t be a pain.”
“You are not a pain,” Joe rumbled without looking at her.
Austin just rolled his eyes, much aggrieved, but Willow smiled. “Mom was worse. She fretted over everything.”
Luna asked, “So you’re used to it?”
“Yeah. But we’ll be fine. Ms. Rose won’t let anything happen.”
Austin thrust up his small chin. “If anyone tries anything, I’ll—”
Joe cut the threat short. “You’ll call me. Understand?”
His tone left no room for arguments, and Austin subsided with a mulish grumble that was neither agreement nor denial.
“I mean it, Austin.”
He glared at the back of Joe’s head, then nodded. “All right. I’ll call ya.”
When they pulled up in front of the small school, Julie Rose was there, waiting at the door with a smile. She wore a prim summer suit of pale green with sensible brown pumps. Joe paid her no mind, but Luna smiled and waved. She adored the woman for caring about the kids.
After they parked, they got out to walk the kids to the door. Luna was about to greet Julie when Austin pointed across the street. “There’s Clay.”
Willow’s reaction was immediate. She blushed with pleasure, then almost as quickly frowned in forced dislike. “Don’t look at him, Austin.” She grabbed her brother’s upper arm and prodded him along. When they reached the school door, she said in passing, “Ms. Rose,” and hustled on inside.
Julie shook her head. “Relax, Mr. Winston. I’ll watch the kids closely, I promise.”
Joe nodded toward Clay. “Will he be at summer school, too?”
“No. He and his friends always hang out in town during the day. If you ask me, they should have summer jobs. I’m told they used to spend all day at the lake, until Patricia closed it.”
“We’re thinking of reopening it,” Luna told her. “Joe’s been checking into it. Sometime this week we’ll talk to the county commissioner to see what permits we’ll need.”
Julie raised a brow. “You’ll need to talk to Quincy Owen, too. He’s on the board of trustees, and from what Patricia told me, he pushed to have the lake closed.”
Joe’s head jerked up. “Why?”
“I have no idea what his reasons might have been, but according to Patricia, it was too much work. Of course, she only told me this in passing. Most of my discussions with her centered more on the children’s schooling.”
