Chance issued a clicking sound Jeannie had heard him make with Diablo, and Jezebel started walking forward. Jeannie gasped and held on. It wasn’t nearly as rough a ride as she’d anticipated, and after a couple of passes around the corral, she almost felt secure enough on the horse’s back to pry her death grip from the saddle horn. She risked a glance at her small audience. Dulce was smiling, revealing slightly crooked but beautifully white teeth. José was grinning openly. Pablo and Tomás stood in the shade cast by the barn, eyes hidden by cowboy hats. She didn’t want to think what the gentle expression on Chance’s rugged face might mean.
“Now why don’t you give her another squeeze and urge her into a trot,” Chance called. “And let go of the saddle.”
“Why don’t you go soak your head?” Jeannie muttered. She thought her voice sufficiently sotto that no one would hear, but Dulce let loose a crack of laughter—and Chance chuckled. Stealing herself for the worst, she squeezed her legs, imitated Chance’s clicking, and Jezebel jumped forward, nearly unseating her.
Somehow, she hung on, despite being bounced around in the saddle like a tetherball gone haywire. After a couple of bone-jarring turns around the corral, she pulled in the reins and drew Jezebel to a stop. “I want off now,” she said. “I have to give my insides some time to realign.”
Chance and Dulce were at Jezebel’s side in seconds. Chance took the reins, handed them to Dulce and stretched callused palms up for Jeannie. She felt a jolt of sharp reaction. Determined to do it on her own, to stay away from touching him, she swung her leg behind her as he’d demonstrated earlier and, because of her trembling, slid right into his waiting arms.
Her legs were shaking from fear and the unusual exercise, and the rest of her body from the proximity to the cowboy holding her tightly to his chest.
“You did just fine,” he said.
“And you ride these things when they’re bucking?” she asked, her voice jittery. She was far too conscious of his lips mere inches from hers. And wholly aware of how his hand felt against her sun-warmed back.
“I do,” he said. “But I’ve had a little more practice than you have. I think we’ll hold off on the bronc riding until you’ve had a few more lessons.”
She chuckled against him and felt him draw in a sharp breath. And his hand pressed a bit tighter in the small of her back.
“It’s José’s turn,” Dulce said, the sullen note in her voice.
“Right,” Jeannie said, stepping from Chance’s embrace. “Let someone else get tortured.” She risked a smile for Dulce a few minutes later and was glad to see whatever new cloud had descended had passed. Had the girl been upset to see her new guardian in Chance’s arms? Did it represent something that would make her feel more insecure than she already was? Would it make Dulce feel any better to know it absolutely terrified her guardian, as well?
Chance tossed little José up and onto the saddle, and it was immediately apparent to one and all that José had ridden many times in his life. He was as comfortable on the back of Jezebel as Jeannie had been terrified. Jezebel recognized the difference, as well, arching her neck like a debutante preening for the best dancer at a ball, prancing on light feet around the corral and walking backward for him when he gave some mysterious signal.
Jeannie declined another turn and left Chance to work with Dulce and José. Standing in the shade of the barn’s overhang, she leaned against the broad planks and watched as Chance led the children through a few paces. She smiled when José helped Dulce understand how to get her horse to leap from a stop to a canter, all through gloriously unintelligible pantomime. And she smiled even deeper when Dulce said something that made both José and Chance laugh.
Maybe things were going to be all right, after all.
Chance looked at her then, and the smile on his face held for moment, then slipped. It was as if everything about him stilled. And it seemed that all the air disappeared from the space between them.
Her heart thundered in her chest. Maybe things felt a little too right. Jeannie knew all too well how dangerous that feeling could be. No one could know better than she how the bottom could be yanked out from under a perfect world. One minute all was well, sweet and ideal, and the next, police were knocking at the door, hats in their hands and sad tidings resting heavily on their young faces.
Deliberately, she turned her back on Chance and walked to the hacienda. Every step she took was pure torture, as if she were fighting against a gale-force storm. She could feel his eyes on her, a magic cord that made walking away from him almost impossible.
Inside the cool hacienda, she leaned against the door, as if shutting off his power over her.
When the phone rang, she answered it with relief, as though a spell had been broken. She listened for a few moments, then, without consciously saying anything beyond a murmured thanks, hung up the phone. She stared at her hands on the receiver, surprised to discover she wasn’t shaking.
“Señora?” Juanita asked from the dining room.
“Yes, Juanita?”
“Something is wrong?”
Jeannie set down the receiver and shoved her hands into her jeans’ pockets. “Maybe,” she said. “Would you do me a favor, please?”
“Si, Señora. Of course.”
“Good. Would you please tell Señor Salazar that I need to talk to him in the office right away?”
Juanita hustled from the room and went out by way of the kitchen. A few minutes later, Chance stood in the doorway of her office off the backside of the living room, smelling of late afternoon sunshine and horses, his hair matted from the hat he held in his hands, a frown creasing his tanned brow. The office had always seemed spacious before. Now it seemed made small by his stature.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
In the few minutes since the phone call, she’d had enough time to compose herself, to prepare her words carefully if not tactfully. “The sheriff just called. They found drugs in your pickup.”
To her amazement, Chance grinned and leaned against the doorjamb. “That’s a new one. Did Nando tell you what kind of drugs he found?”
“What? No, he didn’t tell me what kind. Does it matter?”
His eyes lit with a genuine amusement that made her feel all the more foolish for having called him into her office. He’d never been in there before, and yet she felt the stranger in it. Should she have listened to the sheriff’s words at all? Given her position, she’d had to.
“Of course it matters,” he said easily. “Are we talking about a six-month-old prescription or a kilo of heroin?”
“I don’t know what we’re talking about,” she snapped. “I’m not the one with drugs in my pickup.”
“Neither am I, as far as I know,” he said, and shrugged. “They cramp my style.”
“For heaven’s sake. We’re not talking about your style here. We’re talking about drugs the sheriff found in your pickup. Why would he call and tell me this if it wasn’t true?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That may be the question of the day. Did he say he was going to arrest me?”
“No-o. No, he didn’t say that.”
“What did he say?”
“That he thought I’d like to know that his men had found illegal drugs in your pickup.”
“Ah-h. It was a for-your-information-only friendly little call.”
Jeannie had sent Juanita after him as soon as she’d hung up from the call, still stinging with confusion over her reaction to him, stunned by the call from the sheriff. She hadn’t thought how strange the call from the sheriff might really be. But drugs? On a ranch with foster children? If there were any truth in it at all, she could lose her hard-won foster-care license. And if it were true, he’d have to leave. And wouldn’t that be a shame…but make everything so much easier at the same time?
Not appreciating his nonchalance, she said, “You said you knew him. It might have been a warning.”
“Yes. But who exactly is he trying to warn?”
Chance’s eyes never wavered from hers. “Caught that, did you?” He shrugged.
“There has to be some other reason,” she snapped.
“Maybe he doesn’t like me.”
“And why would that be?”
“Because I haven’t made it any secret that I think he’s doing a lousy job in this county.”
“And why is that?”
“Why I haven’t made it a secret or why Nando is a lying, thieving dog who would rather eat maggots than help a constituent in trouble?”
Jeannie gave an involuntary chuckle at the remarkable description of Nando Gallegos’s character. “That rather answers both possible questions,” she said, trying not to smile.
Chance didn’t say anything.
“So where does this leave us?” Jeannie asked.
“That’s up to you,” he said.
“Explain how that is, please.”
“If he were going to arrest me, he’d already be here. I’ll eat my granddad’s old rodeo hat if he had anything remotely resembling a warrant when they searched my pickup—which I doubt they even did, by the way. And, if he surprises me and shows up out here, warrant in hand, made-up evidence in the crypt, you can bet he’ll be here for one reason, and one reason only—”
Chance stopped abruptly and looked away for the first time.
“And what’s that?” Jeannie asked, wishing he’d tell her what it was he suddenly bit off.
A strange expression, one that seemed a combination of duplicity and guilt, crossed his face before Chance’s eyes cut to hers. No smile lingered in those hazel-green depths. He all but snarled his words. “I’ll stay here all morning and explain anything about Nando Gallegos that you might want to know. But I’m sure as hell not going to explain why with a woman as drop-dead gorgeous as you are out in the middle of damned nowhere, a man like him would want a man like me out of the way.” With that, he pushed off the door frame and left.
His footsteps matched the beating of her heart, hard and furious.
Chapter 6
P ablo had been snoring for at least two hours, but sleep eluded Chance. He told himself it wasn’t because of Nanda Gallegos’s crude attempt to get him off the ranch—though that bothered him tremendously—or the doubt in Jeannie’s eyes when she’d told him about the call that afternoon.
No one knew better than he did how hard she must have worked to create this haven for unwanted kids, and how any hint of drug use on the place would shut her down faster than a coyote could snatch a jackrabbit. That she hadn’t fired him on the spot, taking the sheriff’s word for finding drugs in that old beater pickup, spoke volumes about her innate sense of fairness—and more, it let him see her intelligence, for she’d questioned him like a pro and even more swiftly taken in the logic of his questions back to her.
And, if he felt that some part of her hadn’t wanted to believe the call from Nando because she couldn’t believe Chance capable of drug use, then surely that only further addressed her fairness. He’d all but moved mountains for her the last few days, hadn’t he? And for what? Some aching muscles, sleep deprivation and that pervasive sense of having wandered into quicksand.
He wished he could believe his current bout of sleeplessness had something to do with yet another of Juanita’s exquisite dinners. And tried convincing himself it had nothing to do with the way Jeannie McMunn had leaned into him that afternoon in the corral and parted her lips as if to invite him even closer. It definitely wasn’t that. And it wasn’t because he’d known she would taste of lemon-flavored iced tea and one of the cookies she’d made that afternoon while he was in town dropping off the pickup that supposedly harbored all sorts of evil drugs.
And he sure wasn’t standing here wide-awake around midnight after a long, hard day because he’d felt her throbbing pulse beneath his fingertips or too clearly remembered the way her body had molded to his when she’d slid off her horse into his arms.
Hell, it was all her fault. Every sleepless second of it.
From his experience the last several nights, he knew the only thing to tame the restlessness in him was to take a cold shower or a long walk. Since he’d never stripped down, it was a simple enough matter to pull on his boots and grab his hat before stepping into the slivered-moon night.
At the main hacienda, a light burned in one of the bedroom windows, and Chance stopped to stare at it. He knew it was hers. He couldn’t have said how or why. He just knew. He wondered if she was as awake as he, tossing and turning in her bed. He pictured her nightgown rucked up to her thighs and her hair tousled across the pillow. He could almost taste the warm, sleepy tang of her.
He turned from the window with an oath and, for some reason he couldn’t have begun to explain, tucked in his shirt. He drew a deep breath and laughed at himself. For all he knew, the lit window could belong to José or even to prickly but rather marshmallow-like Dulce.
But when he turned and looked again, he felt that stab of surety that it was Jeannie’s. It was as if he could feel her just beyond the adobe wall. He knew it the same way he knew the sun would rise in the morning and that he was a federal marshal with the wrong sort of protection in mind.
He deliberately turned his back on the lighted window and strode to the nearest place to hide in the darkness, the barn. From there, he could watch without being seen. He yanked his hat from his head and raked his hand through his hair before jamming the hat on again. What kind of crazy cowboy was he, anyway? he wondered. He told himself he was simply doing his job, watching out for her. The fact the job was wholly self-made, that the watching included fantasies of her in her bed thinking of him, couldn’t be allowed to cloud the issue.
The point was, she’d been having too many unexplained difficulties on her ranch. He was still sure the source lay at El Patron’s door, and it was up to him to protect her and to catch El Patron. Nando’s bumbling call that afternoon had underscored the need for him to stay alert. To watch. To protect. And if he fantasized, no one had to know about it but him.
He slipped beneath the broad overhang of the barn’s roof, half angry at himself for falling into fits about the redheaded Jeannie McMunn and irrationally mad at her for not being right in front of him. She should have been there, not some half-baked dream.
Chance jerked open the heavy side door of the barn with more force than necessary and was reaching for a light switch when he heard a man’s muffled oath in Spanish. He immediately dropped to a defensive crouch, one arm stretched before him, one behind—reaching for a gun that wasn’t there—as he strafed the darkness in front of him with piercing eyes.
“Who’s there?” he growled. He could smell the acrid tang of something burning. He quashed the rage even as his marshal’s mind outlined possible options. The barn was on fire. He’d surprised one of El Patron’s henchmen. He’d stumbled into many of them.
“¿Quien es?” someone asked him.
“Chance Salazar,” he answered roughly and repeated the man’s question in Spanish. “¿Quien es ese?”
“Tomás, Señor. Soy Tomás.” The groundskeeper.
Chance slowly stood erect, but didn’t relax. He’d learned that the house-and-groundskeepers, Juanita and Tomás Montoya, lived in an apartment at the rear of the main hacienda. Not their light, then. He told himself the man could be in the barn for the same reason as he, mere sleeplessness.
But that didn’t explain why the man was in the barn in pitch-black darkness. Nor why it smelled like something was burning. Thinking of the small fires he’d doused the last few days and the larger one that first afternoon, furious he hadn’t brought his gun with him, Chance felt along the doorjamb, found the light switch and flicked it on.
Overhead, fluorescent tubes flickered and hummed before flooding the large barn with harsh light. One of the horses stomped a foot and whinnied softly.
The groundskeeper, eyes wide a
nd on Chance, knelt alone in the center of the barn between the two rows of tidy and empty box stalls. On the floor before him was a small, shallow metal bowl with the charred remains of something Tomás had obviously been burning.
Chance took in the scene as a whole. He saw a barn he was growing accustomed to—a barn like none he’d ever seen before arriving at this ranch. As usual, even with horses in it, no hay littered the broad passage stretching between two rows of stalls. It had concrete floors complete with drains spaced every four feet and was wholly without the usual pockets of debris. And, except for the smallish man bent over a bowl of still-smoldering something, he couldn’t detect anyone either by sight or sound, though he could hear the horses restlessly moving in their stalls.
Thinking about that first fire in the field leading to Rancho Milagro and the murder in Jeannie’s blue eyes when she’d thought he was party to it, and later the fear and relief in little José’s eyes when they returned covered in filth, he understood Jeannie’s rage. He had to swallow an urge to leap across the barn and yank Tomás to his feet so he could beat the living daylights out of him for so much as lighting a match in a barn. Any barn.
Instead, Chance looked from the bowl and the black curls of carbon in it to Tomás’s white face. Again, he fought the instinct to bust the man in more ways than a simple arrest. No matter how much he might want to give in to the need, he couldn’t. Aside from mundane considerations like outweighing the man by at least forty pounds, he would blow his cover right then and there.
“What’s this?” he growled.
“Nothing,” Tomás said in Spanish, scraping the bowl with the side of his hand and crushing the carbon curls into dust. Then he sneered in English, “It’s nada for you to think about.”
“Oh, I think you’re wrong there, hombre. Señora McMunn asked me to keep an eye on everything around this ranch,” Chance said coldly. She hadn’t said any such thing, but he assumed Tomás didn’t know that. “I figure that includes a two-bit junkie burning dope in the barn in the middle of the night. You damned fool! Are you trying to burn the place down? There are horses in here, for God’s sake!”
Cowboy Under Cover Page 9
