Mr. Taken

by Danica Winters

  “I don’t care if she was busy or not. We have flown halfway around the country to be here. The least she could do is be present when we arrive,” the woman said, continuing her rampage.

  Whitney bit her tongue instead of telling the woman that Dunrovin Ranch was a beautiful and majestic place, but it was a long way from the Four Seasons. If the woman had wanted to be catered to hand and foot, she should have picked a resort that would have done that—and not come to a guest ranch.

  “If you like,” Whitney said, forcing herself to behave, “and are interested in relaxing, there is a spa about ten miles back down the road. I can set up an appointment for you.”

  “Ten miles? Where are we, on the back side of Hell?” The woman glared at her husband, who must have been the one to book their trip.

  The man smiled at Whitney, clearly embarrassed by his wife’s atrocious behavior. “Is there any way we could have the masseuse come here?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Whitney said, though she was fully aware the local masseuse, Jess Lewis, would throw a holy hissy fit at the request. Yet if they gave her a few extra bucks she would quiet down in no time.

  She took down the couple’s names and got them the keys to their room—the nicest private cabin at the ranch, a two-story, nearly three-thousand-square-foot log home with marble and leather everywhere. “Let me know if there’s anything further I can assist you with,” Whitney said, the forced niceties like sand on her tongue.

  “Actually,” the woman said, handing over the rat creature, “I don’t want Francesca to be a bother to me this weekend. I need you to handle her.”

  Whitney balked at the woman as she stuffed the dog into her hands.

  Handle her? The last thing on her long list of duties was dog handler or kennel master. Whitney had work to do. She slowly lowered the dog to the floor behind the desk. “I... Uh...” she stammered.

  “That’s great. Perfect,” the woman continued, clearly not used to her requests being denied no matter how asinine they might have been.

  The man opened the door and waited as his wife pranced out, her stilettos clicking on the floor like the shrill impatient cadence of fingers. Whitney just stared at the computer screen for a moment as she reminded herself these kinds of people played a big part in why she had left her home state, and she took some level of comfort in the fact that they were outsiders and going to leave just as quickly as they came.

  A cold wind kicked up and spilled through the door, whipping dry fragile snowflakes onto the guest book that sat at the side of the desk. She walked over and touched the door. As she looked outside, running toward the entrance of the roundabout driveway was the little rat creature. Its dark fur sat stark against the snow as it sprinted toward freedom. She stood still for a moment, letting it get away. With an owner like hers, the dog deserved to have one go at escaping.

  On the other hand, Whitney would have to answer to said owners, and she could only imagine their response if the dog was actually lost. No matter how softhearted Eloise was, Whitney would probably lose her job, and therefore her room at the ranch. She would have to start all over.

  This dog’s freedom wasn’t worth it.

  What was the dog’s name again? “Fifi!” she called, but the dog didn’t slow down. “Fredrico!” Again, the dog simply kept running. She ran out the door, her cowboy boots thumping on the wooden porch as she made her way to the driveway. “Lassie, come home!” she cried again.

  There was the boom of laughter from behind her. She turned to see Colter watching her. “Did Timmy fall in the well again?”

  “Really?” she scoffed. “If you’re not going to go after the dog, at least you can be quiet.”

  His laughter lightened, but he didn’t stop chuckling. “All right, all right. I’ll come to little Lassie’s rescue. Where did she go?”

  She turned back and looked out at the driveway. A ’90s blue Dodge truck was rumbling down the road toward them.

  “No. Stop!” she screamed at the truck, almost as though the driver could hear her through the closed windows and the crunch of gravel under the tires. The man driving didn’t even seem to see her.

  He barreled down the road. Just as he was about to cross over the steel cattle guard, the little rat creature ran out. It wove in front of the truck, stopping as it stared up at the blue beast careening toward it.

  “No!” Whitney yelled.

  The dog took off running toward the truck. Just as they were about to collide, the dog slipped between the bars of the cattle guard that stretched across the end of the driveway, and disappeared. It wasn’t Timmy or the well, but it looked like they would have to pull off their own version of a rescue.

  Chapter Two

  He’d been at the save-a-life game for a long time now, but this was the first time Colter Fitzgerald had to save a dog from the jaws of a cattle guard. He waved at the guy driving the truck, motioning for him to go ahead. The guy had dark, oily hair that sparkled in the winter sun. Sitting on the man’s dashboard was a wooden bat, and the sight made chills ripple down Colter’s spine.

  In a split second, everything could have really gone downhill. The driver’s grim face and demeanor were far from friendly. So much so, Colter was thankful he had not climbed down to confront them about the dog that had appeared from nowhere in front of his vehicle. He watched in relief as the trucker drove past them with a curt wave and the taillights vanished in the distance. The last thing he needed, especially in his quest to impress Whitney, was a run-in with a hard-edged stranger.

  Whitney Barstow hadn’t been his mother’s employee for very long. From his recollection, it had been exactly three months since she set foot on his mother’s porch and asked for any job that didn’t involve the care and maintenance of horses. At the time, he had thought it was odd anyone would want to come to a ranch and not work with the animals, but he had let it go—everyone had their quirks. Besides, every time he caught a glimpse of her gray eyes, they made him nearly forget his name, not to mention any of her faults. To him, she was perfect, even the way she seemed to be constantly annoyed by him.

  He glanced over at her as she stared into the grates of the cattle guard. “It’s okay, sweet puppy. We’re going to get you out. Don’t worry,” she cooed, her voice taking on the same soft edge she must have used with small children.

  Colter smiled as she looked up at him and the sunlight caught in her hair and made it shine like each strand was spun out of gold. “What are we going to do?” she asked, motioning toward the grate.

  The steel bars had been bent, apparently just enough for a small pooch to fall between. Yet instead of staying where they could simply pull it, the dog had wedged itself deep into the corner of the trough beneath. The pup shook as it stood on the collection of cracked ice and looked up at them, its eyes rimmed with white. It had to have been cold down there, and the poor creature was ill-prepared, with its short hair and low body fat, to withstand frigid temperatures for long. They’d have to act fast.

  He stood up and rushed toward the barn. “I’ll grab the tractor,” he called over his shoulder.

  She nodded but turned back to the dog. “Come here, baby.”

  He didn’t know a great deal about the little animal that looked like a Chihuahua, but he did know that no amount of calling was going to get that dog to come to her. A dog like that was notorious for being a one-person animal. According to one guest he’d talked to, who had owned a similar dog, that was the allure—to have an animal that fawned over only its owner. It was like owning the cat of the dog world.

  The barn doors gave a loud grind of metal on metal as he slid them open. He took in a deep breath. He loved the smell of animals almost as much as he loved the animals themselves. Most people might have found the scent of feed, sweat and grime too much, but for a firefighter like him, it was the perfume of life—and it remi
nded him how lucky he was to have the opportunity to live it. It wasn’t like the smell of ash. He’d read poem after poem that likened the scent of ash to renewal, but it never drew images of a phoenix to his mind; rather, it only reminded him of the feeling of what it was to lose and be destroyed from the inside out.

  He grabbed a steel chain and the keys that hung on the wall just inside the door, and made his way back outside to the tractor parked just under the overhang.

  The tractor started with a chug and a sputter. The old beast fought hard to start, thanks to the cold, but it had been through a lot. He pressed it forward and moved it out of its parking spot by the barn. The vehicle made groans and grumbles that sounded like promises of many more years of service. His parents had done a good job with the place, always setting everything up to last not just their lifetime, but for generations to come. It was hard to imagine that his parents used to have a life before—lives that didn’t revolve around the comings and goings of the ranch, its guests and the foster kids who had passed in and out of their doors.

  They had spent their lives giving everything they had to this place. He could have said the same things about his intention as a firefighter; he undoubtedly would give everything he had to his job, and the lives he would affect, but it wasn’t the same. His job and lifestyle were finite. As soon as his body gave out and he was no longer physically able to do the job, someone new, younger would come in and take his place. In fact, as soon as he walked out of the station’s doors, it would be like he had never really been there at all—likely only the people whose lives he’d touched would have any lasting thoughts of him.

  He blew a warm breath of air onto his chilling fingers as he drove the tractor around the corner and onto the driveway. Maybe he was wrong in thinking that he had nothing in common with the phoenix. Maybe he had simply already risen from the ashes of a firefighter who had served before him, and when he aged out, another would take his place to renew their battalion.

  The thought didn’t upset him—it was an unspoken reality of their lifestyle—but when compared to his parents’ lifestyle he couldn’t help wondering if he had made the wrong choice. In all reality, he had only ever pulled one person out of a burning building, and it had been the town drunk after he had passed out with a cigarette listing from his lips. Most of his calls were accidents on the highway, grass fires and medical emergencies. If he had stayed on the ranch, he could have helped build the place up and worked on creating a legacy for his family for generations to come. As it was, none of his brothers had ever spoken of what would come.

  What would come. Even with the roar of the tractor’s engine, the words echoed within him. If things continued going as they had been doing over the last few months, there wouldn’t be anything left to worry about. Reservations for the upcoming month had been tapering off rapidly. If they didn’t turn things around, by next summer they would be unable to support the overhead it took to keep the ranch up and running.

  He hated being the pessimistic type, so he tried to push aside his concerns. Things were never as bad as they appeared. For him, it always seemed like things had a way of working out. Hopefully the same could be said for the ranch. At least this month they had Yule Night.

  Maybe if Yule Night went especially well, it could lighten some of his parents’ burden. The last thing they needed after the murders was money troubles. It wasn’t his job, but he would do everything in his power to make sure that the ranch would stay afloat—especially if that meant he could save puppies and look every part of a hero to the one woman he wanted to like him.

  Whitney stood up and waved him to bring the tractor closer. She really was incredibly beautiful. She stretched, moving her shoulders back as she pressed her hands against her hips. As he looked at where her hands touched her round curves, he wished those hands could be his. It would be incredible to feel the touch of her skin, to run his fingers down the round arch of her hips and over the strong muscles that adorned her thighs.

  She was so strong. Not just physically, but emotionally, as well. In fact, she had always made a point of being so strong that he barely knew anything about her past. She kept things so close to her chest that he longed to know more, to get her to trust him enough that she would open up. As it was, all he knew about her was that she had originally been from Kentucky—but that was only thanks to the fact that he had managed to catch a quick glimpse of her application on his mother’s desk before she was hired.

  Why was she so closed off? For a moment he wondered if she was hiding from something or someone, or if it was more that she was hiding something from them. No one came to nowhere, Montana, and hid on a ranch unless there was something in their lives, or in their past, that they were running away from.

  Maybe one day, if he was lucky, she would open up to him. Though, just because everything seemed to work out in the end for him, he’d never call himself lucky—and that would be exactly what it would take to make Whitney think of him as anything more than just another source of annoyance.

  “What took you so long?” she asked as he climbed down from the tractor and laid the chains over his shoulder.

  He didn’t know what was worse: the heaviness of the chains that dug into his skin or the disgust that tore through him from her gaze. He hadn’t been gone more than a couple of minutes, yet he understood more than anyone that when there was an emergency, time seemed to slow down. Minutes turned into millennia, and those were the kinds of minutes which had a way of driving a person to madness.

  He smiled, hoping some of the contempt she must have been feeling for him would dissipate. “I guess I could have put the tractor in third gear, but the way I see it, that dog ain’t going nowhere.”

  She shook her head and turned away from him. Yeah, she hated him. She looked back and reached out. “Hand me the chain. We need to get the dog out of here before it gets hypothermic.”

  “Here,” he said, handing her one end of the chain. “Hook this to the tractor’s bucket. I’ll get the guard.”

  She took the chain and did as he instructed while he made his way over to the cattle guard and peered in at the little dog. It looked up at him and whimpered. The sound made his gut ache and he wrapped the chain around the steel so that when he raised the bucket on the machine, it would lift the gate straight up and away from the dog. He’d have to be careful to avoid hurting the animal. Something like this could get a little hairy. One little slip, one weak link in the chain, and everything could go to hell in a handbasket in just a few seconds.

  He secured the chain and made his way back to the tractor. In one smooth, slow motion he raised the tractor’s bucket. The chain clinked and pulled taut, and he motioned to Whitney. “Ready?”

  She gave him a thumbs-up.

  He lifted the bucket higher, and the tractor shifted slightly as it fought to bring up the heavy grate that was frozen to the ground. With a pop of ice and the metallic twang, the grate pried loose from the concrete and the tractor hoisted it into the air. He rolled the machine back a few feet, just to be safe in case the chain broke. No one would get hurt, not on his watch.

  He ran over to the dog and lifted it up from its den of ice. The pup was shivering and panting with fear. He ran his fingers down the animal, trying to reassure the terrified creature.

  Whitney stood beside him and looked at him for a moment and smiled. There was an unexpected warmth in her eyes as she looked at him and then down at the dog. As he sent her a soft smile, she looked away—almost too quickly, as though she was avoiding his gaze. She reached down and opened up the buttons of her Western-style red shirt. “Here, let me have her,” she said, motioning for the animal.

  “You’re a good dog,” he said, handing her over to Whitney.

  Ever so carefully, as though she were handling a fragile Fabergé egg, she moved the dog against her skin; but not before he caught a glimpse of her red bra, a red that perfect
ly matched the color of her plaid shirt. His mind instinctively moved to thoughts of what rested beneath her jeans. She was probably the kind of woman who always wore matching underwear. He closed his eyes as the image of her standing in front of him in only her lingerie flashed through his mind. His body coursed to life.

  It was just lust. That was all this was. Or maybe it was just that she seemed so far out of his league that he couldn’t help wanting her.

  “Hey,” she said, pulling him from his thoughts.

  “Hmm?” he asked, trying to look at anything but the little spot of exposed flesh of her stomach just above the dog where, if she moved just right, he was sure he could have seen more of her forbidden bra.

  “Want a beer?” She pointed to something resting in the snow not far from the other side of the cattle guard.

  He jumped over the gaping trench and leaned down to take a closer look. There, sitting in the fresh snow, was a green glass Heineken bottle. Jammed into the opening was a cloth, and inside was liquid. Picking it up, he pulled the cloth out and took a quick sniff. The pungent, chemical-laced aroma of gas cut through his senses like a knife.

  He stuffed the rag back into the bottle and stared at the thing in his hand for a moment as Whitney came over to stand by his side.

  He shouldn’t have touched it. He never should have picked the dang thing up. Now his fingerprints were all over it.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He glanced over at her and contemplated telling her the truth, but he didn’t want to get her upset over something that may turn out to be nothing. Yet he couldn’t keep the truth from her forever. It couldn’t be helped.

  “Unfortunately, it ain’t beer,” he said, lifting it a bit higher. “What it is is what we call a Molotov cocktail.”

  Her jaw dropped and she moved to grab it, but he pulled it away. If he was right, her fingerprints didn’t need to be anywhere near this thing.