Just a Cowboy

by Rachel Lee

  Not a whole lot of excitement when he considered the array of delights offered by a large city like Miami. And Kelly had obviously lived in the fast lane during her marriage.

  So how could he—or this place—begin to compete?

  But why should he even ponder such things? She hadn’t pledged her troth to him; she’d simply made love with him. That wasn’t a promise of any kind. She had probably succumbed not only to desire, but to a need to forget for a little while.

  He’d be stupid to look at it as anything else.

  Just as 2:00 a.m. approached, and a yawn was trying to crack his jaws, he thought he caught sight of movement behind Kelly’s house. The storm had blown away, but clouds still rendered the night darker than usual. He strained his eyes, wondering if he had imagined it. Tree limbs were still tossing a bit, and an errant light could have created a shadow. He didn’t want to show himself too soon in case the guy hadn’t moved in yet. Scaring him away would only prolong Kelly’s hell.

  Every muscle in his body tensed as he strained to see. Where was it?

  From time to time, Kelly had to stand up and stretch her stiffening muscles. When she did so, she tried to move as quietly as possible, for fear of not hearing the intruder, or of warning him that she was awake.

  She was almost afraid to pull up her sleeve and look at her watch, but reminded herself that her bedroom door hadn’t opened yet. Even if someone was in the house, he couldn’t possibly see the faint glow from the dial.

  A few minutes past two. She leaned back against the wall, shaking her legs to restore circulation, then did a deep-knee bend. If time could move any slower, she didn’t know how.

  Come on, she thought. Come on, let’s just get it over with.

  While she may have wished time away in the past, never had she wished it gone as much as she did now. Waiting had never suited her well, but tonight it didn’t suit her at all. As the minutes crept by, she worried that dread was keeping her at a high pitch too long, that at some point weariness would overtake her, slow her down, make her less alert. Surely she couldn’t stay this wound up forever.

  But almost as soon as she wondered about it, adrenaline taught her a lesson: It had an even higher gear.

  She thought she heard something. Not the wind chimes. But something. Was it a tree rustling outdoors, or brushing the house? She wasn’t sure, and she hadn’t spent enough time in this house to recognize its normal night noises.

  Something had caught her attention. All she could do was tighten her grip on the hammer and wait, straining her ears. A lifetime seemed to pass in the next couple of minutes.

  Then again, another sound. A crunch? She wished she could be sure. What would be crunching? She tried to remember the sounds the house made as she walked through. Maybe some of the crumbling glue from the floor?

  Tensing until her muscles started to ache, she waited. No amount of effort could get her to relax, and she feared cramping at the wrong time. She shook her arms, tried to stretch her legs.

  Then she heard the faint clink of the wind chimes.

  Or had she?

  Damn, it hadn’t sounded so faint earlier. Was she imagining it? She fingered the beeper hanging around her neck and wondered if she should use it.

  One thought and one thought alone held her back. If she was wrong, if she’d imagined that faint sound of wind chimes and the police descended on this place, she’d be back to her endless game of cat and mouse with a killer. She’d have no idea when she might be at risk, or when she might be safe.

  She’d have to pack up and leave again because he wouldn’t attack her here at the house once more, not after a rapid police response. So he’d be out there somewhere, basically making her a prisoner in this house until she went somewhere by herself.

  So she’d have to go on the run again or accept being a prisoner for the next two months. Both thoughts sickened her, but what sickened her most of all was the thought of leaving Hank behind.

  Oh, God! What had she done? Fallen in love in a matter of days? Was she an idiot? Hadn’t she learned anything about caution, and getting to know someone before throwing her cap over the moon?

  Apparently not. And yet, she had thought she knew Dean. She’d worked for him. They’d dated for months before she accepted his proposal. Yes, she had thought she’d known him, and in the end it had turned out that she didn’t know the most important things about him.

  Maybe she didn’t know Hank, but she knew the important things about him. At this very moment he was next door, waiting to run to her rescue. From the moment he’d met her, he’d put himself out in all sorts of ways to take care of her. Dean had never done that.

  Hell, Dean had snowed her. Flattered her. Swept her away. But, in retrospect, she tried to remember a single time, just one time, when he’d put himself out a tiny little bit just for her.

  And she couldn’t.

  The fear that held her hostage, that turned her muscles into tightly wound wires, suddenly gave way to a blinding rage. Adrenaline flooded her, and she made up her mind that this was it. Tonight. She hefted the hammer and waited. It would end here.

  Then she heard it. No mistaking it this time. The wind chimes. Drawing a deep breath, she pressed the beeper button.

  He didn’t even have to try to kill her, she reminded herself. Just the fact that he was in her house would be enough to get him put away. And maybe enough to get Dean.

  Maybe.

  Both hands grasped the hammer shaft now, and her eyes remained fixed on her bedroom door. But it didn’t open.

  What…?

  Hank heard the beeper in his pocket go off. In a flash, as if he weren’t a sack of screaming bones and muscles, he dashed for his back door and outside. In the distance he could hear the approach of multiple car engines: the deputies.

  He wasn’t about to wait for them. Kelly could be dead by the time they arrived.

  He got to the back of her house and found the window open. He wasted a split second on deciding whether to climb through or use his key on the back door, a mental measurement of what would be faster. And more practical, because damn, hanging half in and out that open window…

  He headed for the back door and was almost there when it burst open and a dark shadow hurtled out of it. At once he leapt, but his hip chose that moment to fail him, and he barely clasped a shoe before he hit the ground on his stomach and the shadow vanished into the night.

  Dammit!

  He tried to scramble to his feet, ignoring his disobedient body, just as other shadows rounded the house. Silently, he pointed them in the direction the man had fled. Two deputies split up. Guns in hand they took off at a speed he could only envy.

  Then another deputy came and dashed into the house.

  Reaching his feet at last, Hank stumbled after him, scared to death. He threw on lights as they went and at last they reached the door of Kelly’s room.

  “He’s gone,” Hank told Jared Locke. “Unless there’s more than one of them.”

  Locke nodded, standing to one side of the door, his weapon in both hands. “Call her.”

  “Kelly? Kelly are you okay?”

  The door burst open and he saw Kelly standing there, hammer in her hand, her eyes almost wild. “He ran,” she said, her voice shaking. “Why the hell did he run?”

  Hank tore his gaze from her and looked down the short hall. The wind chimes sang merrily.

  “Hell,” he said. “Oh, hell.”

  Chapter 12

  “There’s nothing,” Hank said angrily, “quite like outsmarting yourself.”

  They were gathered in his living room—Kelly, Gage, Jared Locke and the two deputies who had failed to find the intruder. “Dammit, it never occurred to me that he’d take those wind chimes as anything except an addition to the house.”

  “He’s smart,” Gage said. “Smarter than I hoped. He must have realized the sound could have warned Kelly, that maybe she’d put the chimes there to do just that.”

  “So what now?” Kelly
asked.

  Hank looked at her and ached. Her eyes were smudged, dark circles of fear and stress, making her look hollow.

  “What now?” she asked again.

  None of them answered, and Hank hated it. They’d used her as bait. It wasn’t going to work a second time. Now she’d be at risk anywhere, anytime and they couldn’t shadow her every second. None of them except him, that was.

  “You’re moving in here,” he said. “You’re not going to be alone again.”

  “I can’t ask that.”

  “You’re not asking anything,” he said forcefully. “I’m offering. In fact, I’m demanding. He’s going to try again and he’s going to have to deal with both of us. And after tonight he probably figures I’m no problem at all.”

  The bitterness with which he spoke the words shocked him. He closed his eyes, reaching for some self-control, some clear thinking beside the horrible helplessness he felt, the failure he felt because his hip had given out.

  “Oh, hell,” he said finally. “Who am I kidding? I couldn’t even get across the yard without collapsing. Maybe we need to get you a permanent private security escort.”

  “I can’t afford that and I don’t want it,” Kelly said. Her voice grew stronger. “Don’t beat yourself up, Hank.”

  “Why not? The wind chimes were my brilliant idea. Then I almost had the guy and my leg gave out. Some protector I am.”

  “Stop it,” Kelly said angrily. “Please stop it. Nobody thought the guy was going to run like that. Even the deputies couldn’t catch him.”

  “Yeah, but he had a head start on them.”

  Silence filled the room. Gage rubbed his chin finally and sighed. “Okay, what do we know? We know the guy is for real, he broke in twice, he was smart enough to get scared off by wind chimes. That means he’s going to look for another time and place. That means Kelly can’t be alone. I can arrange a loose watch, but there’s no way I can staple a deputy to her side. That leaves you, Hank.”

  “Yeah, no reason he should fear me,” Hank said harshly.

  “And that’s where he’s wrong,” Gage said firmly. “He’s absolutely wrong. And that’s going to be his mistake.”

  Hank stared at him from burning eyes. “He’s not wrong, Gage.”

  “Yes, he is. First off, what happened tonight could have happened to anyone and he was already running. What if he hadn’t been running? What if you’d cornered him in the house? I think you’d have given him a whole lot more trouble.”

  “Maybe.” He’d allow that much, not much more.

  “My feeling is that if Kelly stays with you, he’ll try again. He’ll come prepared to deal with a woman and a cripple.”

  “Don’t say that,” Kelly snapped. “Hank’s not a cripple.”

  “No, he’s not. But that’s something the perp isn’t going to know. Hell, anyone who sees Hank limping around and doesn’t know him is bound to underestimate him.”

  “Especially after I wound up on my face making a simple tackle.”

  “That’ll work for us,” Gage said firmly. He looked at Kelly. “What do you think?”

  “About what? Whether I’ll feel safe with Hank? Of course I will. Safer than I will anywhere else, that’s for sure.”

  That was almost an indictment, Hank thought miserably. Safer than anywhere else. He counted more than no one. That thought pierced him to the core.

  Kelly rose from the rocker where she had been sitting, and crossed the room to his side. “That came out wrong,” she said.

  “It’s okay. It’s true.”

  “It’s not true.” She laid her hand on his arm and he forced himself to look at her. What he saw in her blue eyes was concern and warmth.

  “It is true. You’re a born protector, Hank. It shows in everything you do. I trust you with my life.”

  That could be a mistake, he thought with uncharacteristic bitterness. He’d failed again tonight, the same way he’d failed his friends in a burning building.

  But he couldn’t argue. He knew Gage was right about not being able to staple a deputy to her side. He simply didn’t have the manpower, and even if he did, they’d never catch the guy. And Kelly wanted him caught. She wanted him to pay for trying to kill her, and if Dean was behind it, she wanted Dean to pay, too.

  He could understand that need, and while turning the other cheek was his usual rule of life, that didn’t feel quite right when it came to murder or attempted murder.

  There were times when you failed society by not pursuing justice.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “I’ll do my damnedest.”

  “Keep the beeper,” Gage said, standing. “But I’m going to have to loosen the cordon more now that he’s probably had a chance to see how fast we responded. I’ll make it look like we think the threat is over.”

  “Maybe it is,” Kelly said. But she didn’t look or sound as if she believed it.

  “I doubt it,” Gage said frankly. “But I want him to think what happened tonight was our usual response to an emergency call, and that we think it was a random break-in and we’re not convinced anything more will happen. That perception will be enhanced by your moving over here. You can appear frightened, but we need to look as if we think nothing’s going to happen. Make him feel secure enough to try again.”

  He paused. “It probably won’t happen tonight, although I suppose it could. It depends on whether he thinks you won’t be expecting another break-in so soon. He must figure you know someone’s after you, because you ran, and you accused your husband of trying to have you killed. But whether he suspects you know he’s here will have a huge impact on his decision making, and I have no idea whether he does or not. Just stay on your toes.”

  At last everyone left, just as the advent of dawn was lightening the night a bit.

  “I think we could both use some sleep,” Hank suggested.

  Kelly nodded, still looking hollow. “Where do you want me to sleep?”

  “With me, of course. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  Nor did he want to. If there was one thing he had learned in the past few hours, it was that having her out of sight right now created a deep anxiety in him. He wasn’t volunteering for any more of that.

  Later while Kelly slept deeply, he lay awake staring at a ceiling that brightened steadily, even though the curtains were drawn. He’d come up hard tonight against limitations he’d been refusing to accept for some time. Yeah, he could ignore the pain and do almost everything he needed to, and a lot of what he wanted to, but he couldn’t do anything at all when his hip just quit like that.

  What if he failed her the way he’d failed Fran and Allan?

  If he couldn’t protect her, what earthly use was he? Just another person taking up space and using up air, that’s all.

  But even as he had that self-pitying thought, he kicked himself mentally. Disabled did not mean unable. There might be things he could no longer do, but choosing a metric like this would doom him to be one of those people he’d always loathed—the kind of people who sat around complaining about relatively little because they had a problem of some kind.

  The odd thing was, the truly disabled people he’d met over the years had been the ones who usually complained least about everything. He’d decided after his accident to use them as an example and not let himself sink into the pits.

  Okay, he’d launched himself and discovered that his hip was no longer able to do that. So he’d have to come up with other ways of achieving the same end…if he ever needed to do it again. God willing he wouldn’t.

  As for the rest, he had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t doing that badly. He could still be a cowboy when he felt like taking the work, he could still remodel houses, still indulge his passion for carpentry when he chose. He was far from crippled.

  That word had stung, though he knew why Gage had used it. And Gage, who wasn’t a whole lot better off than he was, certainly hadn’t meant it the way it had struck him. He’d only meant that whoev
er was after Kelly would see it that way.

  And that was a good thing, right?

  He dozed finally, the way he had often dozed at the firehouse, filling in quiet moments with needed sleep, but a sleep light enough to wake at a single unfamiliar sound.

  Kelly woke in the late morning tangled all around Hank. His presence had made it possible for her to sink deeper into sleep than she had in a while, and she felt refreshed.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw his face inches away. He was sleeping, his breathing deep and steady. She didn’t want to disturb him, so she indulged herself in the opportunity to drink in every detail of his features. When it came to a man, that was something she hadn’t wanted to do in a very long time, and she felt a little silly for doing it. That was the kind of thing she’d done in high school. And briefly with Dean, but not since.

  Hank was relaxed now, more relaxed than she’d seen him before, and she admired the strong lines of his face, the mouth that had given her so much pleasure. She longed to reach out and touch him. Right now he probably didn’t hurt, and that alone would have made her let him sleep forever.

  Remembering how down he had been on himself earlier when he had failed to capture the man who was running from her house, she ached. She wished she could find a way to reassure him that it didn’t matter, not in any real sense. What mattered far more was the kind of man he was, all the countless things he did to make her feel better and safer. A lot of people could probably make a flying tackle, and a lot more probably couldn’t. But the world wasn’t exactly overflowing with people who would upend their lives for a stranger.

  And even fewer, she was sure, who were such considerate lovers. Such incredible lovers. She realized that she didn’t have a huge sample set, but Dean had been a selfish lover. Maybe not as bad as some—how would she know?—but she knew enough to realize that Hank was pretty special.