by Robin Perini
“Except you had our baby.”
“And he’s proof that the entire night wasn’t all in my imagination.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked carefully. “Emotions ruled that night. I have a feeling they are again.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I’ve been waiting a year and a half to feel alive again. Don’t make me wait any longer.”
With a force that surprised even her, she tugged at his lips and he opened his mouth, tasting the salt of her skin. Courtney closed her eyes against the overwhelming emotions. For the first time since she’d awoken in the lonely bed in the hotel room she didn’t feel utterly alone.
He swallowed deeply. “If I kiss you, Courtney, I won’t stop.”
“I don’t want you to.”
He lowered his mouth and his lips touched hers. She wrapped her arms around his back and pulled him closer, wanting to feel his body on top of hers.
“Jared!”
Roscoe’s shout tore them apart. Jared wrenched his lips away from hers and catapulted off the bed.
The foreman rushed into the room, his gait off-kilter from his earlier encounter with Angel Maker. “A brush fire popped up from the north near the oil rigs. It’s been dry the last few months and we’ve got a twenty-mile-an-hour wind. It’s heading for the quarter horse facility.”
* * *
JARED GRABBED HIS boots and sat on the edge of the bed. He refused to look at Courtney. He could imagine the invitation on her swollen lips and passion-filled eyes.
Dylan whimpered and stood up in his crib. Courtney crossed to him and whispered to him, calming the baby.
“Lightning?” Jared asked, facing Roscoe. He didn’t appreciate the arch of a brow on his foreman’s face.
He shoved his feet into his boots. Roscoe didn’t say a word, only tossed his shoulder holster at him.
So much for being discrete. Roscoe knew exactly what they’d been about to do.
“No storms, no clouds. It came out of nowhere.”
“Man-made, then. Could be an accident. Could be one of the Criswells.” Jared strode across the hall and grabbed his rifle. “Velma!”
At his call, the housekeeper rushed into the bedroom. He handed her the weapon and gave Courtney the keys to his truck. “Stay locked in this room with Dylan. If the fire gets out of control, I’ll call and you two head for CTC. Velma knows where it is. Got it?”
The housekeeper pointed the barrel toward the ground and nodded. Courtney gripped the keys tight.
Jared tried to give her a confident smile. “It’s part of living in the middle of nowhere. You gotta do for yourself. By the time the volunteer fire truck arrives, we’ll have this thing out. Right, Roscoe?”
“Sure, Jared.” The foreman studied Velma, his features looked pale and nauseous. “You don’t take any chances, woman. You hear me?”
“Oh, quit your sweet talkin’. Besides, maybe one of the hands flipped a cigarette,” Velma said, the perpetual Pollyanna. “Some of ‘em got no more sense than a bullfrog.”
Roscoe stared at her like she was crazy.
“It could be,” she protested.
“Get your head out of the dirt, woman. You know what’s happened. Criswell is upping his threat. He’s trying to force Jared to give in.”
“There is another option,” Courtney said. “What if it’s him? What if he’s here, on this ranch.”
Jared thrust his hand through his hair. “We’ll review the video footage after we take care of the fire. In the meantime, do what you have to do to protect yourself,” he ordered. “I’ll leave as many men to guard you as I can. The CTC operatives are out there and I’ll make certain more are on the way. You’re not alone.” He sent Velma a stern look. “Just don’t shoot me on the way back in.”
“Get out of here, boyo,” Velma said. “We women can take care of ourselves. Been doing it all my life.”
She gripped the rifle with the very determined look on her face he recognized so well. She would do whatever it took to protect her family. So would Courtney.
Jared paused, then pulled her close and gave her a hard kiss on the lips. “You take care of our son. I’ll be back soon.”
He took one last look at his unhappy son before racing out of the room. Roscoe headed for the truck and Jared locked the door behind them. He took in a quick sweep of the guards.
“No one gets in that house except me or Roscoe,” he ordered.
They nodded. Angel Maker snorted in his pen as if in agreement. Crazy bull.
“Let’s go,” Jared shouted and jumped into his truck. Several hands leaped into the back. Jared pushed the truck as fast as he could, heading north. He could see the smoke rising. There was a lot of it.
Once or twice, though, he caught himself glancing in the rearview mirror. “I don’t like leaving them,” he said to Roscoe.
“Get your head in the game, Jared. If the fire gets past those buildings, the wind’ll bring it to the house way fast. The whole place will go up in flames, and we might not be able to get back in time,” Roscoe said. “We gotta stop it up here.”
The truth of his foreman’s words chilled Jared. As they got closer thick smoke settled on the air making it tough to breathe.
“Break out the masks the minute I stop,” he said.
“The men know what to do,” Roscoe said. “I trained ’em. And you. So let them do their job.”
Jared skidded to a stop a few hundred feet from the barns. He looked on in horror. The crackling fire had licked its way up the backside of the large structure.
Roscoe exited the truck and started shouting orders. The men piled out of the vehicle and grabbed a pile of white smoke masks. They weren’t anything like what firefighters wore, but they’d keep their lungs clear in the short term.
An explosion made the ground shudder. Thick smoke billowed from the top of the barn. Okay, that wasn’t normal.
Jared tapped his phone to speed dial CTC.
“What’s going on out there, Jared?” Ransom asked. “I got an emergency page from my men.
With a curse, Jared’s grip tightened on the phone. “Is everything at the ranch okay?”
“So far, we’re status green.”
“Keep it that way. I left Courtney and Dylan at my house, but I’ve got a bigger mess here than I thought. Either the Criswells have gone nuts or someone with a much bigger agenda is trying to burn everything on my land.”
“Or, it could be a diversion, Ransom countered. “Do you get the feeling it’s as if the guy has a view into exactly what we’re doing and thinking?”
Jared spat out a curse. “Exactly. I’m going home.”
“We’ll keep them safe and I’ll contact you if the situation changes,” Ransom said. “But that fire needs to be contained before it spreads.”
Ransom was right. Jared ended the call and shoved his phone into his pocket. When he slammed open the door a wave of heat hit him. He could hear the horses whinnying from inside the structure.
“Sanderson, take the back. You two—” he pointed to a couple of hands “—work the hoses. The rest of you, get the animals to safety. I want this fire under control before the Carder Fire Department arrives.”
The men scurried off. At least he’d had the money to purchase the mobile firefighting unit. Its two hoses would give them a fighting chance of getting this thing under control.
Jared rushed into the building. Brownish-tinged smoke billowed around him, the air thick with soot. He squinted. Roscoe fought one of the quarter horses and pulled him out. “They’re spooked bad,” he coughed.
Jared grabbed a rag from a bucket and opened the stall to his prized mare. She snorted and reared up. “Easy girl,” Jared choked out. Grabbing her bridle, he covered her eyes with the rag and tied it over her ears.
The blindfold calmed her and he led her out, ha
nding her off to one of the hands. “Get them to the east pasture,” he shouted.
Jared rushed to the fence when he caught sight of the fire leaping from the roof of the barn to the barracks. Off in the distance the siren of Carder’s single fire engine headed their way. It might not be enough.
A shout rang out from inside the vacant winter barracks.
“Stop!” a hoarse voice called out.
“What the hell?” No one was supposed to be staying here. Jared ran to the building and threw open the door. The fire had dropped down from the roof and had created a wall of conflagration. He scanned the ceiling. The timbers would give way soon.
Eyes burning, lungs scorched, he could barely make out the long hallway, but a familiar blue shirt on the ground caught his eye.
“Roscoe!”
Taking a deep breath, he leaped through the fire and hurried to his foreman. A wooden beam lay beside him, and blood trickled from the wound on his forehead. The fire behind them roared. Flames consumed a curtain at one of the windows.
Jared grabbed Roscoe beneath his arms and dragged him to the other end of the building. In just the few seconds since he’d entered the structure, the fire had doubled in size, sweeping across the wood floors as if it were in a conflagration race. The flames licked up the walls, closing in on them.
Above, the wood creaked. Desperate, Jared searched for a means to escape. He tugged Roscoe toward one of the windows, but the fire outran him and suddenly the last opening was barricaded by flame.
“Roscoe? Can you hear me?”
The man’s eyes fluttered.
He was still alive.
One wall remained fire-free. For the moment. Slowly sparks soared toward the wood. It would ignite at any moment. Without a sledgehammer or something large and heavy he’d never break through. Spinning around, searching for a way to survive, Jared’s gaze penetrated the smoke. He grabbed a chair and ran toward the fire-engulfed window, slammed the wood through, and then raced to pull a blanket from a lower bunk.
He wrapped Roscoe in the blanket, making sure it covered his arms, and shoved his foreman through the opening and dropped him to the ground. Flames licked against the back of the shirt. Heat moved in closer. Jared dove through the opening, twisting in the air to avoid landing on Roscoe, and rolled in the grass. Pricks of heat peppered Jared’s back. He yanked the smoking shirt from his body and ground it into the dirt.
They weren’t safe yet. Roscoe was too close to the building. He grabbed the man’s hands and dragged him away before collapsing backward onto the ground.
Smoke exploded from the opening as oxygen fed the fire. The smoke rose in a plume, darkening the sky. Jared lay there for a moment sucking in air. His eyes burned.
He was alive.
With a groan he sat up and bent over Roscoe. The man’s eyes were closed, his jaw slack.
Hand shaking, Jared placed his fingertips on Roscoe’s carotid. A faint beat pulsed against him. He tore off the smoke mask and rested his cheek close to the man’s mouth. No breath.
“You’re not doing this to me, Roscoe. Not today.”
He unmasked himself, closed his foreman’s nose and puffed a couple of breaths. Then waited.
“Breathe, damn it.”
Two more puffs.
Roscoe heaved, Roscoe rolled over, and coughs shuddered through his body. He swiped his mouth. “That’s enough. I’m awake, I’m awake,” he choked out. “No reason to keep kissin’ on me.”
Jared sagged, a slight chuckle escaping him. “Don’t scare me like that. Breathing isn’t optional.”
Roscoe wiped his mouth and propped himself up. His eyes widened. “We gotta run.”
Jared followed his gaze and let out a loud curse. He grabbed Roscoe by the arm and practically carried him.
The building behind them groaned and shuddered, wood cracking under the heat. The fire roared with intensity sounding like a tornado.
After twenty feet, Jared and Roscoe collapsed on the ground.
Not a moment too soon.
Glass windows exploded; the roof imploded.
Both men turned over and covered their heads.
Debris shot over them, a fire rain bombarding them. When it subsided, Jared stood up and looked around.
Several men were dousing the shrapnel. He bent over. “That was close.”
Roscoe looked up at Jared.
“I saw someone. He had a gas can. This was sabotage.”
Chapter Eight
The ranch house felt like a prison. Courtney paced back and forth and peered out the small window of the bedroom. She should be doing something. Gathering food, water, bandages. Instead, because of the threats, she was stuck here, like the citified woman Roscoe believed her to be.
Plumes of dark brown smoke drifted from the north over the ranch, its acrid scent poisoning the fresh air. An hour ago the sirens of a fire truck and ambulance had screamed across Jared’s land.
Still, they waited.
Unaware of the dangers outside, Dylan had discovered energy to spare. He crawled around the room, exploring everything. She’d shut the bathroom door to keep him from getting into trouble. Right now, he’d discovered the closet and a small cubby underneath a short table sitting inside. It was just his size. He threw his stuffed bull out of the closet and crawled to retrieve it before repeating the process a second, third and fourth time.
Courtney would normally have been on the floor enjoying her son, but instead, she recorded every fact she could remember from the time Marilyn had called to warn her. With one eye on him and on Velma, she filled page after page.
The housekeeper sat on the bed holding the gun and staring at the door.
“How much longer do you think?” Courtney asked, her legs bouncing with nerves.
“No telling. Fires are tricky, especially as dry as it’s been lately. No news is good news as far as I’m concerned. Nobody tried to get in this room, and Jared hasn’t called to evacuate. To me, that’s a win.”
Dylan crawled between her legs and grabbed on to her pants. He pulled himself up and grinned at her, oh-so-proud of himself for standing alone.
“Look at you, Jelly Bean,” she said with a smile. She chucked him under the chin. He hugged her and then scooted beneath the crib, lying on the floor and staring up at its base.
Courtney planted herself cross-legged on the bed. “Jared told me about Alyssa and their daughter.”
Velma’s eyebrow popped up. “I’m surprised. He doesn’t talk about them. Ever.”
“I can’t believe they never caught the man who killed her.”
Velma clicked her teeth together. “That was a bad business. I thought Jared might waste away to nothing. He blamed himself for so long, not being able to save Alyssa from drowning. For months he called out her name in his sleep, promising he’d save her this time.”
“She drowned?”
“The murderer pushed her out of the boat at Last Chance Lake and weighed her body down with a tire. Jared did everything humanly possible, but she was under the water too long. He’s never forgiven himself.”
“I didn’t understand how much he must have gone through,” Courtney whispered. “And he was never caught. He could still be out there.”
“That’s Jared’s fear. It’s why he’s built an impenetrable wall around his heart. The truth is, the murderer could easily be dead. He hasn’t shown his face since. The ranch has done well. And we haven’t had any trouble until the last few months when the Criswells started causing trouble because they want to bleed more money out of Jared.”
The sabotage on the ranch couldn’t be about Dylan and her. A month ago, she hadn’t known Jared’s name.
“Jared won’t move on, will he?” Courtney twisted her hands in the fabric of her pants.
“He won’t take the risk. He can’t. Not with anyone. A
nd especially not with his son.”
A phone rang and Velma pulled it out of her pocket. “Jared? Is that you?”
She nodded her head and looked over at Courtney giving her a thumbs-up. “We’re fine. Barricaded and safe.”
She let out a sigh.
“Is he going to be okay?” The worry lines on Velma’s brow deepened.
Courtney leaned in and Velma moved the phone so they could both hear.
“Roscoe’s sitting in the ambulance now,” Jared said. “They’re giving him oxygen, but he refuses to go to the hospital.”
“Stubborn old coot. Bring him home and I’ll make up a room for Derek, too.”
Velma ended the call.
“What happened?” Courtney asked.
“Roscoe done and got himself almost killed, but they put out the fire. Jared’s bringing him home. And I’m calling his son.” Velma’s face held a certain amount of glee. “Derek will give his father hell for not taking care of himself. We may finally convince that boy to come home.”
“Finally, we can leave this room.”
“Not so fast, honey. Until Jared walks through that door, you and I are staying put.”
With a scowl, she returned to her notes, but another half hour didn’t provide any insights. A familiar rhythmic knock sounded softly on the door.
Velma grinned and Courtney yanked it open.
“Glad you didn’t shoot me through the door, ladies,” Jared said.
He looked like he’d been through a war. Soot smeared on his face, his clothes reeked of smoke. Shirt torn and coated with dried blood.
She ran her hands up and down his body, checking for injuries. “Are you hurt?”
Jared quirked a half smile. “You should see the other guy.” The smile didn’t reach his eyes, though. He shoved his hand through his hair. “I need a shower. I put Roscoe in the old guest room. One of the hands is helping him.”
“I’ll check on him and make you a dinner that’ll stick to your ribs. Both of you,” Velma paused and clutched the rifle. “I’m keeping this with me.”
“Good idea.”
Jared crossed the room and peered underneath the crib, watching Dylan quietly for a few moments. “Slept through it all, did he?”
