The Widow's Protector

by Rachel Lee

  He even paused to smile at her and look deeply into her eyes, adding an intimate awareness she’d never experienced before. He knew who he was kissing, unlike Jeff who had seemed not to care who he was with as long as he got what he wanted.

  She returned Ryder’s smile then sighed as he began to kiss her again. He cradled her cheek, rubbing his thumb slowly over it, then left her mouth to begin sprinkling butterfly kisses on her cheeks and throat.

  He made her feel worshipped.

  When at long last his hand trailed lower and began to lightly caress her breast, she discovered a new sensitivity that she had never experienced before. It must have grown with her pregnancy because never before had the lightest touch of a man’s hand catapulted her so far so fast.

  Now she needed and wanted with an unfamiliar strength, but he still caressed her lightly. No hard squeezing, no pinching, no demanding massage of tender flesh. Just a light, almost teasing touch.

  Then he did something that made her breath catch in her throat. He returned to kissing her, plunging his tongue deeply, but he dropped his hand from her breast to her belly, rubbing it gently over the entire mound of her pregnancy, cherishing her in a way she could scarcely believe. Cherishing Linda Marie, as well.

  By the time he stopped and lifted his head to gaze again into her eyes, she was certain that Ryder was a man she could trust with her body. Wherever he chose to take her. That he didn’t find her pregnancy an obstruction, but instead counted it an important part of her.

  From hazy eyes she looked up at him and saw him smile.

  “I liked that,” he murmured.

  “Me, too,” she managed to whisper.

  He swept her short, curly hair back from her face, rained a few more kisses on her, gave her one last caress, then returned to his seat.

  She wished he hadn’t stopped, but she understood. In the deepest reaches of her being she understood. This man didn’t want to move too fast or risk taking advantage of her.

  In that moment, even though she knew she would lose it, she gave a tiny piece of her heart to Ryder Kelstrom.

  Chapter 6

  Ben Hansen became an even angrier man when he tried to make travel arrangements to get to Ryder in Conard City, Wyoming. He didn’t like to be stymied when he wanted something, but he grew purely furious when he found out how difficult it was going to be to get there.

  Count on Ryder to disappear to a place at the ends of the earth and decide to hang out. Oh, the place had an airport, but given the way airlines had established major hubs and then contracted with puddle-jumper airlines, he would have to go around his butt to get to his elbow.

  This was the twenty-first century, he thought, trying not to bash a hand on his computer as he looked at the number of flights and the schedules. It shouldn’t be this hard to get anywhere.

  But it was. No matter where he looked, he found that he’d have to take a minimum of three flights, with hours of layovers.

  Who the hell would have thought that you had to fly to Minneapolis or Chicago to get to a place in between there and here?

  Oh, there were other options, but they just got uglier. If he wanted to skip the flying halfway across the country so he didn’t have to fly back half the distance, his other option, although more direct, meant he’d be stopping and often changing planes in every rube airport in the west.

  He ground his teeth and tried to make up his mind. At this point it might make more sense to drive, but he didn’t want to leave that kind of record behind him. Ryder had to die for what he’d done to Brandy, but damn, Ben wasn’t going to leave a DayGlo trail behind.

  His head snapped up suddenly as he realized something. Flying or driving his own car was out. Either way he could be traced.

  So, he’d rent a car, tell the rental people he was driving to Vegas, and he wouldn’t mention that he was going to take as circuitous a route as any airline.

  He began to feel better. Rent the car, get plenty of cash so he wouldn’t leave a trail of credit card slips behind him, detour to this damn Conard City, take care of business and show up maybe a day or so late in Vegas. Who would know? Especially if he dropped off the car there and said he didn’t need it until he was ready to go back to Fresno.

  The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Where that car went, as long as he got one without GPS and he didn’t carry his cell phone, wouldn’t be traceable. Not at all.

  And all the world would know was that while Ryder was killed, Ben had been in Vegas.

  He’d have to make a hotel reservation. Okay, he’d have to go to Vegas first, check into a hotel for cover, then take a trip to Wyoming. That would work.

  The more he thought about it, the more his anger eased. Ryder was going to get his comeuppance at last.

  So maybe it was a damn good thing Ryder had stopped to help the widow lady. Yes, the more he thought about it, the better he liked it. It was just the opportunity he needed.

  No ties, no links, no reason for anyone to suspect Ben.

  It was an excellent plan.

  * * *

  The next morning, Ryder was just getting ready to haul roofing materials up the ladder when a pickup he hadn’t seen before pulled up in front of Marti’s house. The guy who climbed out appeared to be about sixty, with gold hair and a neat beard gone almost gray, but fit. From the other side of the truck, a boy in his late teens emerged.

  Ryder slid down the ladder and walked over.

  “Howdy,” the man said. “I’m Ransom Laird, and this is my son Marcus. Micah Parish said you might need some help this morning.”

  Ryder immediately shook their hands. “Ryder Kelstrom. You get through the storm okay?”

  “Yeah. I have a ranch about fifteen miles northwest of here and we took only a little wind damage. Let me pay my respects to Mrs. Chastain and then we’ll get on with helping you.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate it.”

  So, he thought as he followed the two men to the front door, the neighborliness around here existed. The local tom-tom had sent out the message the widow lady needed help. It tickled him, especially when Marti had been frank about knowing no one.

  For all she had chosen to be isolated before, Marti welcomed her neighbors warmly, invited them in and offered to make coffee.

  “Coffee after we get the heavy stuff on the roof,” Ransom said. “The way the weather’s been, we might not have all the time in the world.”

  Extra hands made the job easier by far. It proved relatively easy to pull away the tarps, cast them to the ground, and replace them with plywood sheathing. An extra nail gun would have helped, but Marcus, who looked like a young clone of his father, proved to be handy with a hammer.

  Ryder couldn’t have asked for much better than a morning under a warm sun working on a roof with a couple of nice guys. The heavy labor worked its usual magic, driving all the nightmares of his past into the background. Maybe, he thought, once he’d taken care of Ben he’d get back into construction but not as a general contractor. No, he liked the actual hands-on, hard work too much. He also enjoyed the camaraderie, and cabinet making wouldn’t give him that.

  About the time they had finished laying the tar paper over the plywood, it was lunchtime and the sky to the west was darkening again.

  Ransom plopped down on an undamaged portion of the roof and stared at the sky. “We’re not going to have time to get the shingles up today. Maybe we should tarp it over.”

  Ryder, standing beside him on the sloping roof, eyed the storm, too. “Is it going to do this every day?”

  Ransom shrugged. “Danged if I know. This isn’t normal weather. We’re mostly in the rain shadow of the mountains. But then, weather hasn’t really been normal for a few years. It used to be pretty arid around here. It makes a lot of good grazing for my sheep, but it doesn’t make
it easy to do anything else.”

  Ransom cocked his head, looking up at Ryder. “We can try to get as much done as possible. I’m not opposed. It’s just that these storms have been moving in fast.”

  “I’d rather not have to nail up tarps over new shingles,” Ryder said. “Seems crazy to put holes in a new roof. And we still haven’t put up all the flashing.”

  At that moment, Marti’s voice reached them from below. “Lunch is ready!”

  That seemed to settle the issue. Marcus climbed down to recover the tarps, and they spent about fifteen minutes nailing them back in place before they climbed down.

  “We can come back in the morning and help you finish up,” Ransom assured him. “Marcus won’t have any school for a week or two, and keeping a kid his age busy is always wise.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes. “Dad!”

  “Not enough syllables in that protest,” Ransom said with a wink. “You’re supposed to drag it out.”

  “Why no school?” Ryder asked as they headed inside.

  “Roof and window damage. Lots of folks are pitching in, but they’ve got their own problems to deal with.”

  “Maybe I can help when I get this done.”

  “We’d appreciate it,” Ransom said. “Well, I will. I’m not so sure about Marcus.”

  That earned him another eye roll and the two older men were laughing as they went inside.

  Ryder stepped into the kitchen and wondered if Marti had spent all morning cooking. Far from the sandwiches he would have expected, she’d turned out a full chicken dinner and a pie was cooling on the counter. Plenty of food and plenty of coffee and soon plenty of conversation.

  Of course, most of the subjects were alien to him, and probably to Marti as well, but she seemed to enjoy hearing about the ups and downs of raising sheep, a subject on which even Marcus grew voluble.

  Then there was the family stuff: Ransom’s wife, Mandy, who was a published novelist, and three kids. By the time they got to the pie, Ryder had even mentioned Brandy and that he was a widower, more than he’d expected to say from the outset but sufficient to explain a few things.

  By the time they helped Marti clear up, Ransom had promised that Mandy would drop by soon and it seemed a friendship had begun to form.

  Good. The more people she knew, the better he’d feel about moving on. But he was also getting a sense of how easy it would be to sink into the rhythms of this place: hard work, friendship, a kind of easiness among people he wasn’t really used to.

  It was, he thought with surprise, almost as seductive as Marti herself. And that was saying something.

  * * *

  After lunch, the looming storm moved in and it was far worse than the one the day before. This one literally shook the walls, and although there were no weather warnings other than of wind and flash floods near some creeks, it didn’t make either of them relax.

  “God,” Marti said finally, “I don’t know if I can stand this!”

  “We can go to the shelter,” Ryder offered.

  But she shook her head at him. While terror clawed at her, a stubborn streak she’d always had reared up. “I’ve got to learn to stand it,” she said, her fists clenched. “There will always be thunderstorms. I can’t have a nervous breakdown over every one. Even if I could stand it, it wouldn’t be good for Linda Marie.”

  She watched Ryder pull back to that place inside himself, a place he went every now and then that left her feeling alone even when he was right there. She could only wonder what he was thinking about; she didn’t ask. Something about those occasional withdrawals suggested he needed to be left alone with his thoughts.

  Probably thinking about Brandy, she thought. A woman with a serious emotional disease. God, maybe she was reminding him of his wife with this irrational behavior. She didn’t want to do that, but she didn’t know how she could stop. It was hard enough to sit in this damn chair with her swollen ankles elevated and not curl up into a tight ball.

  One storm. Now a phobia. Sheesh, she needed to get past this.

  The walls and windows rattled again, and she wondered if the whole place was going to collapse on them. It was old and she had absolutely no idea how well it had been maintained. It certainly hadn’t been maintained since Jeff had inherited it.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly. It was just a storm. Just an ordinary thunderstorm. Not a killer, unless she did something stupid. Wind and rain and lightning. It happened dozens of times a year.

  Her eyes snapped open as she felt her ballet slippers being tugged off her feet. She watched in astonishment as Ryder began to massage her toes gently.

  “Ryder?”

  “You talk to the doctor about this swelling?”

  “I’m okay. It’s normal.”

  “Guess that’s what you get for spending all morning cooking a gourmet meal for the help.” He flashed a smile that took any possible sting out of the words.

  The storm was still howling, but it seemed to recede as he worked gently on her feet, from her toes to just above her ankles, as if to encourage the swelling to move out.

  Before long, she wanted to purr. It was such a change in mood that it amazed her. But then she’d never had a foot massage before, nor dreamed that one could feel so good.

  Over and over his hands continued their gentle work, and the longer he went at it, the more relaxed she felt.

  “You have pretty feet,” he remarked.

  “They look like overstuffed sausages,” she retorted.

  He laughed. “Overstuffed or not, they’re pretty, like everything else about you.” He grasped her heel and flexed her toes upward at the same time, and she felt a deep tension let go. “Why does this happen?”

  “My doc says it’s the change in body chemistry, along with increasing pressure from the baby. Nothing to worry about unless I start seeing it in my face, or my hands swell too much.”

  “I’m glad it’s nothing to worry about but it doesn’t look comfortable.”

  “I usually don’t feel it at all.”

  “I suppose that’s good.” His hands began kneading a little harder but not enough to hurt. Odd how it seemed to be taking the tension out of her entire body.

  She let her head fall back and closed her eyes as his magical hands sent waves of relaxation throughout her entire body.

  The storm seemed to be receding, though whether it really was or she was just ignoring it better she didn’t know. All she knew was that the tension was seeping away and she was glad to let it go.

  “You can do that anytime you want,” she told him.

  He chuckled quietly. “I may take you up on it. I’m enjoying it.”

  “Every time it storms.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Of course, he wouldn’t be here every time it stormed. She tried to remember that, but another sensation began to replace the gooey relaxation that had cascaded through her. Now that she wasn’t worrying about the storm, wasn’t filled with irrational fear, she noticed something else.

  How good his touch felt. How warm his hands were. A sweeter tension began to fill her, rising from the hands that worked gently on her feet and ankles, following a whole new course to her very center. A whole new world, she thought again, he was showing her a whole new world.

  She tried not to stir as he continued the massage, but the sensations spreading up her legs to her center made that very difficult. She had forgotten how good that particular deep throbbing could feel. Had forgotten it was possible to be so needy and hungry for a man’s touch.

  The doors Ryder had started opening were swinging wide now, flooding her with sensations, making her realize how paltry and limited her previous experience had been.

  It was like a bad joke, she thought hazily. The man s
he had married had made her wonder what the big deal about sex was. The man who was going to leave her in a few short days was teaching her just how great it was with the gentlest, most unobjectionable touches.

  “Ryder?” she asked, knowing she might be getting into deep trouble.

  “Hmm?”

  “Have you ever had great sex?”

  His hands froze for a second, then resumed massaging. “Yeah. A very long time ago. At least I remember it as being great.”

  “I never have. I thought it was one big disappointment and couldn’t understand why it was such a huge deal.”

  Again his hands froze. Then he whispered, “Oh, lady, you just handed me a grenade.”

  She opened her eyes to half mast. “Grenade? What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been wanting you since I laid eyes on you. Now you’ve all but asked me. Tell me you don’t mean it.”

  “Why?”

  “You know all the reasons. You’re pregnant. I’ll be leaving eventually to go see Ben, I’m an emotional train wreck… Why in God’s name would you want to get mixed up with me even temporarily?”

  She barely hesitated. “Because I want to know.”

  He released her ankles. “Better to learn that from a guy better than me.”

  At least he didn’t go away. But he’d certainly killed the desire and replaced it with anger. “Just what is wrong with you?” she demanded. “You’re a really nice guy, you know. And what happened with Brandy wasn’t your fault. She was sick.”

  “If I’m not sure I didn’t screw it up somehow, how can you be? You hardly know me.”

  “I know what I’ve seen since you got here. My own husband didn’t take half as good care of me. In fact, he didn’t much give a damn. You—well there’s hardly been an instant when you haven’t been trying to take care of me. That’s tells me a lot. You even worry about my swollen ankles. So excuse me if I seriously doubt that you failed Brandy in any way. She was just too sick to know what a good man she had!”

  Oh, that had done it. He was up like a shot, and vanished out into the storm, slamming the door behind him.