Whatever. The caller had definitely been weird. Just thinking about the way he'd said, "Your place is reserved," gave her a chill.
When he contacted her again to "finalize the details," she'd hang up on him, she decided. But something about his voice, the way he'd said the words, niggled at her until she fell back to sleep.
* * *
He slammed down the telephone. He should have stopped with the call to Jonna Sanders. He'd felt such control, such power as he talked, he'd wanted to call her and gloat. After his success with Jonna Sanders, he'd thought he was masterful enough to handle her. Now she had ruined everything.
The stupid bitch. She had lost him his last job, bothering him all the time, haranguing him to take her here, take her there. She had given him the ultimatum that had landed him here.
It was her fault he was so far away. How dare she refuse to accept a collect call from him, especially since his cell didn’t work out here? Was it because she hadn’t paid the bill as she was supposed to? Or was it just horrible reception.
He stalked out of the antiquated phone booth, trying to yank the door off its rusty hinges as he left.
A fat, sloppy slug got out of one of the few cars in the supermarket parking lot and eyed him suspiciously. He realized he was still glowering and threw her an appropriately friendly grin, adding a little leer of admiration for good measure.
He laughed to himself as she lifted her head, tucked in her stomach and smiled back. Women were such fools. And so predictable. She looked fresh out of bed, hadn't even used a comb on her hair yet the woman almost broke her neck as she entered the store, trying to see if he was still watching her. He lifted a hand in a final salute.
His car brought him up short. "Damned, cheap, old woman." All that money and he was driving a car no self- respecting man would drive. She'd probably bought her current drinking partner, that old man she'd let move in, a Mercedes by now. The last beau had "earned" a Corvette.
"What are you whining about?" she'd say. "A sturdy, reliable car to get you to work, and you can go anywhere else you want in style. Anyone else would die to be in your shoes."
Yeah. His father had. And he had the unlimited flying privileges his dad had earned in the bizarre accident at the airport that had killed him. He couldn't enjoy all those "privileges" when he was tied down to a job. Selfish old lady was rolling in settlement dough while the man's poor son had to have a worthless two-bit job.
What else had she bought her new paramour, he wondered, his thoughts suddenly stone sober. She'd always been good at finding men with what she called “exotic tastes." He'd been quite a draw because—unless they were your own—attractive young boys didn't come cheap. And she'd used him quite shamelessly to seduce the weirdo freaks.
The car rocked as he got in and slammed the door.
But he had Jonna Sanders, he reminded himself. Looking forward to adding her to The Record made it easy to stand anything for a little while. Even his lousy job and his two-bit whore of an old lady.
Yeah. Wouldn't be long now. Jonna would go to Los Angeles to get her award soon.
And he would be waiting when she returned.
* * *
Jonna had barely closed her eyes again, it seemed, when the doorbell rang.
"Jiminy Christmas!" She glanced at the clock. At a little after seven, it was at least starting to be late enough to classify it as morning. She swung her feet out of the bed as the doorbell repeated its chime.
"Just a minute," she muttered, lifting her robe off the hook on the back of the bathroom door and sliding her feet into fuzzy slippers. The bathroom mirror said she needed a brush and she grabbed it and gave her hair a quick smoothing stroke. She still looked like a zombie, but anyone who came to call at this hour surely couldn't expect much.
"Just a minute," she said again as the bell pealed another time.
Magic, always ready for a romp first thing in the morning, hopped one step in front of her the whole way down the stairs, making descending a game. Halfway to the bottom Jonna bent and swept the kitten up in her arms. Between Magic jumping from side to side in front of her and the long flannel robe, she was going to wind up a tangled heap.
At first she didn't know the man at the door. She was about to say something inane, like "Can I help you?" then memory reasserted itself. "Mr. Barton." She nearly gasped with recognition. Of course. The new hired hand.
His face held a charming grin. The dark circles under his eyes had faded to a dull smudge. How in the world could this startlingly handsome man be the same one who'd looked so sullen last night?
"I'm hoping you can spare a cup of coffee," he said.
She hesitated, then yawned and opened the door wider. She studied him, bemused, as he walked in. His dark hair, in need of a trim and curling slightly over the back of his turtleneck collar, was carefully parted and groomed. She had the urge to reach out and muss it. Somehow, the uncontrolled look had been more—
"Frankly, caffeine of any kind will do," he said. His voice was even more controlled today, more even. "I'm not much good first thing in the morning without it."
"Me either," she agreed. "I don't do mornings. But at least you're dressed." And nicely, she added to herself.
Maybe the old "Clothes make the man" saying wasn't so far off. Yesterday, dressed in dreary black, everything about him had seemed ominous. Today, in jeans and a plain, long-sleeved knit shirt, he looked... carefully prepared, but wonderful. The bright blue of the shirt was reflected in his almost blue-black hair and darkened the deep coffee color of his eyes. The crinkled little scowl that she had supposed was permanently in place over his nose had almost disappeared.
"Did I wake you?" he asked.
"It must be my day for ringing phones and dinging bells. Don't worry about it."
"I thought you would want me to get an early start on the morning chores.''
Jonna gestured for him to follow her into the kitchen. "It's been more than a year since I've hired a new hand. I tend to forget that whoever I hire doesn't automatically know what needs to be done. I'll make a deal with you," she said, reaching the counter and turning to gaze up at him. "You make coffee while I take a quick shower. Then maybe I'll be able to carry on an intelligent conversation." She indicated a drip coffeemaker sitting by the sink.
Hanging cabinets divided the kitchen from the rest of the room. She pulled a canister from one of them. "Here's the coffee." She shoved it into his hands and started to go back upstairs.
"Want me to make breakfast, too?" he offered.
She rubbed at one eye and suppressed another yawn. "Sure, if you want."
"Anything in particular?" he called to her retreating back.
"Whatever you can find."
"Great. I'm starving."
Of course you are, she started to say, and suddenly remembered why she hadn't invited him to eat supper with her the evening before. He'd all but asked her to get lost.
And right on the heels of that came the memory that he'd been in her house. She was suddenly wide awake. She felt his eyes on her and froze halfway up the stairs.
A wave of apprehension pricked her neck, spreading through her shoulders as she heard his soft footsteps start toward her.
"Something the matter?" Sam asked.
"Magic." She glanced over her shoulder and gave Sam a wary smile. "I just wondered where my cat has gotten to," she said brightly. "Here, kitty."
Magic leapt from behind the sofa, pouncing toward her playfully.
Sam reached down and scooped up the kitten by the scruff of its neck. "Here you go."
Jonna involuntarily shrank away from the limp and lifeless-looking cat he held over the banister.
Sam's eyebrows raised. "That's the way a mother cat would carry her," he said. Their fingers brushed in the handoff.
"No." The frisson of energy that had passed between them almost crackled around her. Horrified, she curled the kitten to her breast. "Nature doesn't always do things right," she said, avoidi
ng his look.
"Maybe not," he agreed with a shrug. "If a male cat gets a chance, he kills than." His voice sounded hard, well acquainted with nature's realities. He abruptly turned back to the kitchen. "I'll fix us some breakfast."
"Wait, Sam." She hurried back down the few steps. "We need to talk."
She resisted looking at him. She didn't need to, anyway; she could feel exactly where he was from anywhere in the room. He stood motionless beside the kitchen counter.
Jonna fixed her attention on Magic, stroking the soft fur in an apology for gripping her too tightly. "You were in my house yesterday." Her voice shook.
"What makes you think so?"
She felt his deadly stillness. "Magic was out. She was inside when I left after lunch."
"Magic?" His face and voice were lifeless.
"The cat."
"Yeah, I know. I just don't understand what it has to do with me." His voice was so low, she heard it vibrate in his chest.
"Unless I'm out riding or some distance from either the house or the barn, I always know when someone comes." It worried her. "I have difficulty believing two people could get past me in one day. I would have noticed," she added.
"I got past you. If you'd been on the porch painting, I would have seen you when I passed that house on my way up here, even if you didn't see me. Where were you when I came?"
She hesitated. Suddenly she wasn't as sure as she'd been. Daylight seemed to cloud the issue, to make her suspicions seem like wild imaginings.
"I arrived probably around six-thirty, seven," he offered quietly.
"I was in the barn, finishing the evening chores and taking care of the horses," she admitted.
"Were you there long?"
"About forty-five minutes," she said.
"Could someone else have come during that time?"
"All I know is that Magic could not have opened the door herself." Was Magic the only reason she had thought he'd been in her house? She couldn't remember.
But she did remember the hair standing on the back of bar neck as she had toured the rooms, looking for any hint of something out of place. And she had felt his presence in the room.
"You're sure someone was in the house?" he asked.
Had her imagination convinced her of something that wasn't true? She suddenly didn't know and realized she had conjured something up from the one thing that had failed her time and time again—her nonexistent feminine intuition.
"I did try the door, opened it and called out for you when you didn't answer." He shrugged. "Then I wandered around outside, looking for you. I was getting ready to leave when I saw the porch light come on down there and decided to walk down and check it out." His only movement was the twitch of a muscle in his jaw. His dark eyes were unreadable.
"You didn't let Magic out?"
He frowned. "I may have when I opened the door. I didn't notice if I did."
"Then you weren't in my house?"
"No."
Jonna should have breathed easier, but some creepy- crawly sensation still nudged her. She ventured a glance up at him. His eyes were watchful but his expressive mouth was silent as he waited. She suddenly wanted... wanted...
She wanted to believe him, she realized. It was a little reminiscent of how she'd felt about Jeffrey early in their relationship. Only not this early. Not after two meetings. And she'd had a lot more reason to trust him than she had this guy. She'd be better off accepting that this just wasn't all that important. "Oh forget it. You're right. It was probably all my imagination."
"I didn't say tha-"
"Never mind. You fix coffee, breakfast, whatever." She swung away, back toward the stairs. "I'll go take a shower and join you in a little while."
Sam nodded and turned abruptly toward the kitchen.
She resisted the urge to look down at him as she reached the top of the stairs. No sense freaking herself out if she found him staring at her in that unsettling way.
She went into the bathroom, punched the lock on the door and held her arm under the shower while she adjusted the water temperature.
She wanted to call Moss. A glance at the watch she'd placed on the back of the sink told her she wouldn't catch him anyway. He was usually at the cafe having breakfast and exchanging gossip with the early-morning coffee crowd about now. Besides, she'd promised herself she wouldn't rely on him so heavily.
Jim Moss had been her father's life-long friend, and she loved him dearly, perhaps even more than she'd loved her father. She'd been tied to her father by blood and by birth; she was tied to Moss by choice. Who else would have sided with and defended her during the tumultuous years of father-daughter battles, and encouraged her to go after her dreams? Who else would have helped her understand her father's frustration that she wasn't the son he had always wanted?
When her father's will had been read, Moss had been named her guardian. And, though she was too old by then to legally need one, she and Moss fell in with the spirit of her father's wishes. Lord only knew, she was incompetent at this farming business and she trusted Moss more than she trusted anyone—let alone herself.
She'd been much more self-reliant lately, though, she congratulated herself. But Moss was instrumental in that, too. He continually told her she had good instincts and encouraged her to follow them.
She frowned. So where had her good instincts been last night when she was so certain Sam had been in her house?
Same place they were when you were sure Jeffrey was reliable, she thought with a sigh. No, despite what Moss thought, she couldn't trust her misguided intuition any more now than she'd ever been able to. And at some point in time, she would realize that and quit trying.
And much as she loved Moss, trusted him, from now on, when he encouraged her to believe her own instincts, she would replace the word with "common sense." That quality was one of her strengths as long as she didn't let feelings get in the way.
Common sense: Why would Sam have wanted to come into her house anyway? Robbery? Nothing was missing. To find her? No, what he'd said about his efforts in that direction made good sense—pretty much what she would have done. And Magic could have escaped without him noticing when he opened the door. Magic had a knack for appearing and disappearing unexpectedly. That was one reason the kitten had earned the name Magic.
And common sense told her she needed Sam to be ready to take care of things when she went to L.A. So why was she looking for problems?
She'd proven time and time again that her instincts were way off. This time, she wasn't going to let them lead her astray. Especially now, when the award was generating a lot of interest in her work. She'd use common sense and Sam to take advantage of the kind of career boost anyone would kill for--and put her female intuition back in the closet where it belonged.
CHAPTER THREE
Something smells good," Jonna said brightly, coming down the stairs a little later.
Sam sat at the table, cradling a cup of coffee and staring off into space. He stood politely to greet her. "I have a couple of omelets warming in the oven," he said. "But I couldn't find the toaster."
"Probably because I don't have one," she said. "Give me a minute and I'll put us each an English muffin under the broiler."
"This is an interesting house," he said as they sat down at the table a few minutes later. "One of your designs?"
She nodded and shook off another wave of apprehension. One of the things that had bothered her about him last night was his lack of interest in anything about her or the farm. Everyone else she'd ever hired had asked a million questions. Yet he seemed to know a lot. Common sense, she chided herself. Moss had told him. She wondered why she was so determined to find everything Sam did disturbing?
She supposed that was better than blind trust. But she wasn't being very fair to him, either. He was a grieving man who had turned it all inward. He blamed himself for his sister's death, she realized with a flash of insight. She wasn't sure where the flash of insight came fr
om, but knew somehow that it was true.
Oh, good. She was doing it again. She was about to push the theory aside until she realized it wasn't just a feeling, it made good sense. If he was blaming himself for his sister's death it would explain a lot about Sam.
"And is this the house you won your award for designing?"
She nodded again. "Sort of," she said. "I fine-tuned the original plans a bit, and the final version was built by a builder in Kansas City. He's the one who actually entered the design in the competition." She looked around her at the open concept, at the world at her feet twenty feet away outside the huge expanse of window.
"You don't sound very pleased."
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