Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2016 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  Even in the faint light, he saw the charming blush that colored her cheeks. “I was just on the phone with Forest before you came in. He and Patience are planning a Christmas wedding and he asked me to be his best man.”

  “Dusty, that’s wonderful,” she said.

  “I feel very honored that he asked me, and of course I accepted. Forest was a huge part of my growing-up years. I’m so happy that he’s found happiness. And now, let me give you the rest of the tour before I carry you out of here and straight to my bunk.”

  She released the breathy laugh that he found so sexy. “There will be none of that tonight, Mr. Crawford. This is just going to be a short visit.”

  “That doesn’t mean that at some point before you go back inside the house I’m not going to kiss you,” he replied.

  “And that doesn’t mean that if you do I’ll stop you.” Her eyes sparkled with a teasing light. “Now, show me the rest of this place.”

  He took her into the feed room, with the bins of grain and bales of fresh hay, and then into the tack room, where he closed the door behind them and proceeded to point to the various saddles and explain some of the other equipment.

  “But you can’t be interested in all of this,” he said when he realized he’d been rambling on.

  “Dusty, I’m interested in knowing about everything that you do and all the things that are important to you,” she replied.

  “You’re important to me.” He leaned back against the workbench and pulled her into his embrace. “You and Cooper have filled my life in a way I never expected. I can’t believe how long I waited to ask you out, how much time I wasted in hesitation.”

  She smiled. “The important thing is that you did ask me out and I agreed to go out with you.”

  “And now here we are together.” He bent his head and captured her mouth with his. He would never tire of the taste of her, of the sweet heat her lips contained.

  She leaned into him, completely surrendering to him and the kiss they shared. Their surroundings melted away as the kiss continued.

  He no longer smelled horse and hay and leather. There was just the scent of her filling his head and firing a hot desire through his veins. All sense of time and place melted away.

  He cupped her buttocks and pulled her closer against him, his heartbeat accelerating with every breath he took. No woman had ever affected him on so many levels. Physically, she stirred him to heights he’d never known before, but his emotional connection with her was just as strong. This was the woman he wanted forever and a day. This was the woman he wanted to build a life with, to have his children.

  He didn’t know how long they’d been kissing when she broke the embrace, her eyes registering alarm. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  “What?” He hadn’t heard anything but the sound of his desire rushing in his head.

  “I heard a loud bang.”

  He reached for her once again. “It’s probably just Brody coming in from the pasture.” He frowned and dropped his arms to his sides as a new scent assailed his nose.

  Smoke.

  Fire, his brain screamed.

  CHAPTER 11

  “There’s a fire someplace close. We’ve got to get out of here.” Dusty grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the tack room door. He laid a palm against the door, apparently checking it for heat.

  The smell of smoke filled Trisha’s head and her heartbeat roared into overtime as fear gripped her and usurped the desire that Dusty had stirred in her only seconds before.

  He threw open the door and as they entered the main stable area Trisha was horrified by the faint layer of dark smoke that burned her eyes. The horses banged into the sides of their stalls, their high-pitched whinnies panicked.

  Was the whole building on fire? How had this happened? Trisha knew how dangerous a fire could be on a ranch. The wooden stable along with the dryness of the area would be like tinder.

  The main stable door appeared miles away as the smoke thickened and the horses grew even more agitated. Dusty’s tension was evident in the tight grip of his hand on hers as he hurriedly pulled her forward.

  Despite the smoke, which appeared to grow thicker, there was no heat that she could discern. But where there was this much smoke, there had to be flames.

  “Dusty...are you in here?” a deep male voice called from the main door.

  “Brody!” Dusty dropped her hand and instead threw an arm around her shoulder as he rushed her forward toward the door. “We’ve got fire. I think it’s on the west side of the building.”

  “I saw it when I rode up. Tony and a couple of others already have hoses on it,” Brody replied tersely.

  Trisha and Dusty stepped out of the stable. Men rushed toward the building from the bunkhouse and the back light on the main house blinked on.

  “I’m going to open things up and get the horses out,” Brody said and ran past them and into the building.

  “I’ll go back to the house,” Trisha said, not wanting to get in anyone’s way. Chaos was everywhere.

  “No, stay with me,” Dusty replied. His eyes narrowed and he dropped his hand to his gun.

  A new fear shot through her. Did he believe that somebody had intentionally set the fire to flush them out of the stable? Did he think somebody might be waiting for them...someone who hadn’t anticipated Brody’s unexpected, very timely arrival?

  Her stomach knotted as her gaze once again swept the night landscape and deep male voices filled the air. A flickering light came from around the side of the building along with the distinct crackle of a hungry fire.

  “Let’s go check it out,” Dusty said. Once again he threw an arm over her shoulder and pulled her tight against his side.

  Together they hurried around the corner of the building and there Tony and a couple of other men held large garden hoses spraying water on what appeared to be a wall of fire.

  The scene was grim as the flames seemed to grow stronger rather than weakening. Sawyer and Jerrod joined the men with the hoses and used fire extinguishers in an attempt to douse the flames.

  Tears burned at her eyes and she leaned weakly against Dusty as the men continued to battle. How had this happened? Was her presence here somehow responsible? Had Frank set the fire in order to get to her...or to Dusty?

  She whirled around at the sound of horse hooves pounding the hard ground. Silhouetted in the moonlight were horses running toward the pasture in the distance. She shot her gaze to the left, and then to the right, tensed for any danger that might appear out of the darkness.

  Time stood still as the men continued to fight the flames until finally Tony tossed the hose behind him and stepped back from the structure. The flames were now out, but thick black smoke still billowed in the air.

  Tony’s features were grim along with Mac’s and Adam’s as they joined Trisha and Dusty. “Definitely arson,” Adam said.

  “Thank God we got it out before the whole building went up,” Mac added. “As it is, it looks like two stalls are a total loss.”

  “When I first saw it, there was a pile of hay burning next to the building,” Tony said.

  “Hay? There shouldn’t be any hay out here,” Dusty said.

  “Yeah, well, somebody put it there,” Mac said.

  Trisha’s heartbeat hadn’t slowed as she listened to the men. Arson? The fire had been intentionally set? Why? The questions raced through her head once again. Dusty tightened his arm around her. “Has anyone called Dillon?” he asked.

  “I’ll call him now,” Tony said.

  “And I’m going to talk to Cassie and let her know what’s happened.” Adam looked at Trisha. “Why don’t I walk you back to the house?”

  Dusty dropped his arm from around her. “Go on, Trisha, I’ll feel better if you’re safe and sound in the house.�
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  “Why don’t you come with me?” She’d feel better if he were in the house safe and sound as well and not standing out in the open where something could happen to him. “It looks like the other men have everything under control.”

  His gaze held hers for a long moment, and in the faint spill of moonlight it was as if he could read her inner thoughts. “Don’t worry about me, Trisha. I’ll be fine.”

  With nerves that still pooled hot and electric in the pit of her stomach, she nodded and then together she and Adam headed for the house.

  Neither of them spoke until they reached Cassie at the back door. “How bad is it?” she asked as they went into the kitchen. Cassie gestured for them to sit at the table.

  “All things considered, not as bad as it could have been,” Adam replied. “A couple of stalls are burned, but at least the whole place didn’t go up in flames. We’ll be able to get a better idea of the damage in the morning. The horses are all out to pasture. Things would have been a hell of a lot worse if Brody hadn’t come in when he did.”

  “It was intentionally set,” Trisha said. A new horror swept through her as the full impact of what might have happened struck her.

  She and Dusty easily could have been overcome by smoke. The fire could have raged out of control and killed them. The horses might have burst out of their stalls and in their panicked run to escape the danger they could have trampled the two of them to death.

  “Thank God Cass had a healthy respect for the potential of fire and made sure that most of the outbuildings had a water source nearby. And now I need to get back out there,” Adam said and rose from the chair. “Tony was going to call Dillon. I’ll check in with you later after he arrives.”

  Cassie and Trisha remained at the table as he disappeared back out the door. “You’re white as a ghost,” Cassie finally said.

  “It was frightening, and what really scares me is the idea that I might have brought danger here to you and all the other men.” She placed her hands on the top of the table and twisted her fingers together as a deep anxiety fired up inside her. “You do realize that what just happened is probably about me.”

  “We don’t know that,” Cassie countered firmly. “We can’t know that right now. From what the men have told me, this wouldn’t be the first time that a nuisance fire has been set on the property.”

  “This was way more than a nuisance fire.” Trisha appreciated Cassie’s attempt to allay her fears, but it wasn’t working. She’d just been waiting for another shoe to drop. Despite the couple of weeks of peace, she hadn’t really believed that the threat to her—to Dusty—had just magically gone away.

  She’d known in her gut that somebody had just been biding their time, waiting for another opportunity to strike. Whoever had set that fire hadn’t known that Brody would appear when he had. They’d probably only known that she and Dusty were in the stable all alone.

  “Trisha, don’t do anything rash,” Cassie said softly. “Don’t even think anything rash. We don’t know for sure what happened out there tonight.”

  Trisha nodded. “I’m just going to go upstairs and check on Cooper. I’ll be back down in a few minutes.” She got up from her chair and slowly climbed the stairs.

  She stood at the bedroom door. In the spill of light from the hallway she could see that Cooper slept peacefully, unaware of the drama outside. Her heart swelled at the very sight of him.

  Thank goodness he always slept deep and almost never woke up in the middle of the night unless he was sick. She leaned her head against the doorjamb and released a shuddery sigh.

  No matter what Cassie said, there was no way Trisha would believe that the fire didn’t have something to do with her. Dusty had believed it, too. She’d seen it in the grim set of his jaw, in the way his hand had instantly fallen on the butt of his gun. If he’d really believed it was just a nuisance fire, he wouldn’t have reacted that way.

  Frightening questions whirled in her head, questions that had no answers. Who was behind all of this? Why couldn’t anyone figure this out?

  Time to go, a little voice whispered in her head. Time to run. Every muscle in her body tensed with fight-or-flight adrenaline. She closed her eyes at the burn of hot tears.

  God help her, but she didn’t want to go. She wasn’t as afraid for herself as she was for the man she loved. She thought of Courtney...of her mother...and the tears burned hotter.

  She loved Dusty, but was love enough for them to face whatever darkness came their way? Or would her love for Dusty ultimately be his death?

  * * *

  Dillon didn’t arrive on the property alone. Jim Browbeck, chief of the Bitterroot volunteer fire department, pulled his official car in behind Dillon’s in the driveway. Another patrol car added to the vehicles and several officers got out and joined the crowd.

  Dusty, along with Adam and Tony and several of the others, watched as they approached the stable. All of the yard lights in the area had been turned on to aid them in their investigation.

  “Don’t tell me you were involved in this,” Dillon said to Dusty.

  “He and Trisha were in the stable when the fire was set,” Tony said.

  Dillon gave a weary shake of his head and then clicked on his high-powered flashlight. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  The men followed Dillon and Jim to the blackened, wet scene. Jim turned on his flashlight and crouched down. “I don’t smell any accelerant,” he said.

  “As dry as everything has been, you wouldn’t need any,” Dusty replied.

  “When I first saw the fire, a big pile of hay was burning. By the time I got the hose, it had leaped to the building,” Tony explained.

  Dusty fought back the sickness that had been in his soul since the moment he’d first smelled the smoke. There was almost nothing more frightening on a ranch than fire.

  Dillon said something, but he was standing on Dusty’s left side and his words were garbled. He turned to look at the lawman. “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, did you see anyone lurking around when you first went into the stable?” Dillon asked.

  “No. If I had, I definitely would have checked them out.” Dusty sighed in frustration. He knew the odds of anyone figuring out who had set the fire were slim to none. “I didn’t see or hear anything unusual, not until we smelled the smoke.”

  Dillon looked at his three officers. “Spread out and check the area.”

  “I’ll get some of our men to look around, too,” Mac said.

  Jim pulled on a pair of fire gloves and began to poke around in the debris. “What have we here?” He pulled out a soggy butt of a cigarette and held it up in the air. “Do any of the men here smoke cigarettes?”

  “None of us,” Tony answered. “But I know some men who do smoke.” His gaze shot off in the distance toward the Humes ranch.

  “Zeke Osmond and Lloyd Green,” Dusty said flatly.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Dillon replied. “Plenty of men in this town smoke. Bag it, Jim, and we’ll see if the lab can pull something off it.”

  It was nearly an hour later when Dusty and Dillon headed for the house. “Do you think this has something to do with Trisha’s secret admirer?” Dillon asked.

  Dusty frowned. “Honest to God, Dillon, I don’t know what else to believe. My first thought when I smelled the smoke was that somebody had set a fire to cause us to rush out of the stable. I was half expecting a bullet in my chest.”

  Dillon stopped in his tracks and eyed Dusty curiously. “Then you believe the danger is to you and not to Trisha?”

  Dusty deepened his frown as he stared at the house, where the kitchen light burned bright now that all of the other lights in the yard had been turned off.

  “I don’t know. I do know that Trisha thinks I’m the one in danger because of the murders of her
best friend and her mother—and then there was the big timber rattler in my bunk room.”

  “What?”

  Dusty quickly explained about finding the snake in his bed. “I checked my room a couple of times, but I couldn’t figure out how the critter got in.”

  Dillon released a deep, weary sigh. “Be careful, Dusty. I can’t get a handle on anything that’s going on right now. None of my men have spotted any strangers in town and none of my interviews have led to any answers. I’ve never been so frustrated.”

  “That makes two of us,” Dusty replied.

  They walked the rest of the way to the house in silence. All Dusty wanted to do now was talk to Trisha. He needed to make sure she wasn’t ready to bolt.

  She and Cassie were seated at the table when he and Dillon walked in. Trisha was still pale and her eyes shimmered overbrightly.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Cassie said to Dillon as he and Dusty sat.

  “I wish I could,” Dillon replied soberly.

  “But the good news is that Jim found a cigarette butt,” Dusty said.

  “And I’m hoping the lab can pull some DNA results,” Dillon added.

  “How long will that take?” Trisha asked.

  “Hopefully no longer than a week or so. It depends on how busy the lab is,” Dillon replied. “I’ll have one of the men drive it into Oklahoma City first thing in the morning.”

  Adam came in through the back door. Dark soot clung to his forehead and cheeks. “The stable is still smoky, so we won’t try to round up the horses tonight. I’ll order the supplies to repair the two stalls first thing in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Adam,” Cassie replied.

  “Cassie, do you mind if I talk to Trisha in the front parlor?” Dusty asked.

  “I don’t mind at all,” she replied.

  Together they got up from the table and Dusty led her through the great room and into the smaller formal living room. He sat on the floral love seat and gestured for her to sit next to him.

  “All of us men always hated this room,” he said. “It was where Cass would bring us when she was angry with one of us.”