by Cathie Linz
Dylan decided he’d do better doing this alone. He worked best that way. Traveled faster, too.
But he didn’t want to be alone anymore. He wanted to be with Abbie.
“That was your brother calling both times?” Raj repeated.
“Yeah, I hung up on him so fast the first time he forgot to tell me something important.”
“Oh. I was hoping it might be news of Abbie.”
“Yeah, me too.”
As Dylan approached the homesteader’s cabin at dawn the next morning, he marveled at what a difference a day made. Yesterday at about this time, he and Abigail had been in that cabin, snuggling together in bed. Now he didn’t even know if she was dead or alive.
He’d told himself all night that it was in her kidnapper’s best interest to keep her alive. And he’d dreamed up and discarded at least half a dozen bold rescue attempts. But none of them could guarantee her safety. He could only hope that him showing up here would do that.
He’d barely dismounted from his horse when Randy showed up out of nowhere with a hunting rifle. “Hands on your head,” he ordered.
Dylan obeyed. He didn’t have much choice. “Where’s Abbie? She better not be hurt, or the buzzards are gonna pick your bones, Randy.”
“I would never hurt Abbie. You’re the one who did that,” Randy retorted.
Dylan winced, because he knew that Randy was right. He had hurt Abbie. But that was a mistake he’d never make again.
“Is your boss here?” Dylan demanded.
Randy nodded. “Inside.”
“And Abbie?”
“She’s in there, too. Go on, get a move on.” Randy shoved Dylan up the step to the front door.
The cabin was dimly lit with the weak morning sunlight just starting to filter through the windows. Dylan’s first concern was Abbie. He found her sitting on the bed.
“Abbie, are you okay?” He immediately moved toward her, but was stopped by the end of a rifle. This one was held by none other than Hoss Jr.
“I’m fine,” Abigail hastily assured Dylan.
“Hi there, Junior. Your daddy send you to do his dirty work?” Dylan drawled.
“This has nothing to do with my daddy,” Hoss Jr. stated. “He doesn’t know anything about this because he thinks small. My plans are more global in nature.”
“And what plans might that be?”
“Importing a big cash crop over the Canadian border, ” Hoss Jr. replied. “The border runs along the northeastern property line of this ranch, you know. Old Pete never paid any attention to what was going on up here, he was too old to get around much anyway. But I knew that wouldn’t last once the new owner took over. That’s why I pushed for my dad to buy this place.”
“You’re the one who wanted Redkins to buy this ranch?”
Hoss Jr. nodded. “You see, I couldn’t let anything jeopardize the nice little operation I’ve set up here.”
“What kind of cash crop are you talking about?” Abigail demanded. “Are you rustling cattle or something?”
Hoss Jr. just laughed. “This is something much more lucrative.”
“Drugs,” Dylan said.
“Nothing really bad,” Randy inserted. “Just marijuana.”
“And how did you get wrapped up in this mess?”
“I needed the money,” Randy said.
“Why drag Abbie and me into this?”
“That’s all your fault,” Randy accused. “If you’d just have minded your own business and kept on riding, none of this would have happened. I was supposed to be the one to rescue Abbie that first day in the meadow, not you. I had it all planned out.”
“So you’re the one who put the burrs under that saddle blanket?” Dylan asked.
Randy nodded. “Wild Thing may not like strangers much, but I’d been taking care of her for a month so she trusted me.”
Dylan growled, “Why, you son of a…”
In the blink of an eye, Dylan had Randy by the shirt collar and was shaking him the way a terrier shakes a rat, when Hoss Jr. suddenly kicked Dylan’s bad leg out from under him.
Dylan managed to save himself from falling flat on his face, but he had to let go of Randy to do so.
“Gee, Junior, it looks like your toe wasn’t broken that night of the dance after all,” Dylan drawled, gritting his teeth against the pain shooting down his right leg.
“No thanks to you,” Hoss Jr. retorted. “My father isn’t the brightest man in the state. It wasn’t very courteous of you to play on his lack of intelligence with all those ridiculous threats about some Gypsy curse.”
“I take that to mean that giving you the evil eye won’t work?” Dylan inquired.
“Bingo.”
“Then I’ll just have to come up with something else, won’t I?”
“I’ll give you this, Janos. You don’t give up easily. I admire your spirit. Under other circumstances, we might have worked together.”
“Not in this lifetime.”
“Well, maybe in your next lifetime, then. Because your time is running out on this one.”
“Abbie was supposed to lean on me,” Randy declared. “I would have been her rescuer, not you. And when I slashed her tires, she was supposed to come to me. She was supposed to fall in love with me. Not you.”
“Look,” Dylan said placatingly, “why don’t you let Abbie go…?”
“How chivalrous of you,” Hoss Jr. inserted. “But that won’t work. Abbie has to be gotten rid of. That way, the ranch will revert to her father, who has already said he thinks the ranch should be sold to my father. Once that happens, dear old Dad will never think to check the northeastern corner of this holding. Why should he? He’s got his only son looking after things for him.”
“His only son, the drug runner.”
“Marijuana is just another crop as far as I’m concerned. ”
“How noble of you.”
“We tried things Randy’s way. I gave him the chance to scare her into selling. But she got stubborn.”
“Yeah, that’s a trait she’s got,” Dylan had to admit, all the while trying to come up with a way out of this mess.
“But you said you weren’t going to hurt Abbie,” Randy belatedly protested, only now registering what Hoss Jr. had said. “I’m not going to stand here and let you hurt Abbie.”
“Then you’ll have to sir…over there!” Hoss Jr. pointed his gun at Randy and then at the bed. “Tie him up, Janos.”
“Why should I?” Dylan knew that Hoss Jr. had no intention of letting them go. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that they knew too much. The way Dylan saw it, having Randy as a distraction was in their best interest. Now, if he could just get Randy to help out…
“Because I’ll shoot Abbie if you don’t. Oh, never mind,” Hoss Jr. muttered in disgust. “If you want anything done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Without further ado, he clubbed Randy with the rifle, knocking him unconscious. “There, one less idiot to worry about.”
“Are you this good to all your employees?” Dylan mockingly inquired.
“You think you’re so smart? Working for a dumb romance writer?” Hoss laughed cruelly.
“I am not dumb,” Abigail declared with dignity before realizing dignity was lost on a rattlesnake like Hoss Jr. So she let her anger take hold, shouting, “I am not dumb!”
“Yeah, right,” Hoss Jr. mocked. “Like yelling at a man holding a gun on you and your bucking cowboy lover isn’t dumb? Right.” His laughter increased.
“I don’t like being laughed at,” Abigail growled, putting her hands on the table and leaning forward to make her point.
The table, never steady under the best of circumstances, turned over with a loud crash.
It was just the opening Dylan needed. He made his move…
Ten
Dylan managed to knock the rifle from Hoss Jr.’s hands. The gun landed on the cabin floor, but before Dylan could reach for it, Hoss Jr. had landed a punch right in Dylan’s abdomen.
> Abigail winced on his behalf even as she struggled against the ropes holding her captive. But no matter how she squirmed, the rifle remained just out of her reach.
Even as she attempted to get her hands on the gun, she was very much aware of the fight going on around her. Dylan was faster than Hoss Jr., but Hoss Jr. weighed about three times as much. His fists were the size of hams, and he was pounding them on Dylan, who was managing to hold his own despite the odds. When Dylan landed a swift left hook smack on Hoss Jr.’s jaw, Abigail jumped up and down and screamed, “Get him! Get him!”
Unfortunately her words distracted Dylan, allowing Hoss Jr. to punch him…hard.
Frantic, Abigail strained against the ropes and tried even harder to reach the rifle. Just a little more…just another inch…
She had her fingertips on the barrel of the rifle when the fighting men stumbled backward, nearly smashing her fingers and sending the rifle skidding against the far wall. There was no way she could reach it now! Her right ankle and wrist were still tied to the upright support beam in the center of the cabin, hobbling her and giving her very limited mobility.
“Oh, fudge,” she wailed.
Hoss Jr. paused to snicker at her choice of curses before turning his back on her and hitting Dylan again.
Infuriated, Abigail used her free left hand to grab the heavy mason jar, which had somehow miraculously avoided breaking when the table had tipped over. Holding the jar high over her head, she waited for the right moment as the two men struggled. Dylan, Hoss Jr., Dylan, Hoss Jr.—their heads whirled by like a kid’s top.
Duck and dodge…okay, here he came…
Smash!
She’d brought the heavy glass jar down with all her might, crashing it on Hoss Jr.’s head. As the big man slid to the cabin floor, Abigail dusted her hand on her thigh and reminded the prone figure, “I told you I didn’t like being laughed at.”
“My hero!” Dylan murmured with a lift of one devilish eyebrow.
“Oh, Dylan!” She threw her one free arm around him, tugging him closer so that both arms reached around him.
Dylan returned her embrace. “Let me untie you first,” he said, brushing her lips with a kiss that was filled with promise and something else…
The moment she was free, Dylan lifted her right arm to kiss the inside of her wrist, where the skin was raw and red from her struggles to get free. “You poor baby,” he crooned against her skin.
Hoss Jr. groaned at their feet, reminding them of his presence. With amazing speed and efficiency, Dylan used the rope that had been used on Abigail to tie up Hoss Jr.—tying him the way he’d tie a calf at a calf-roping event—arms and legs tied together in one neat package.
“Give that cowboy a 99,” Abigail cheered, as if judging the event.
Dylan looked up and flashed her that special grin of his. His black Stetson had been knocked off early in the fight. Standing up, he held his arms out to her, and she rushed into them.
“I was so afraid he’d hurt you. Oh, your poor lip.” Her tender touch was as light as thistledown as she brushed her fingertip across the perfection of his mouth, now marred slightly by a split lip.
“It’s nothing,” he dismissed before growling, “I was afraid you were hurt.” His desperado voice was gruff and dusty. “Are you sure you’re okay? They didn’t hurt you? I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”
“Oh, Dylan…” She pressed a string of loving kisses along the uninjured corner of his mouth.
Being the creative type, Dylan kept the pressure of his mouth resting on hers light and instead intensified the kiss with the use of his tongue, which, after all, hadn’t been injured in the fight.
The thrust and parry, the sweeping dalliance, made Abigail go weak at the knees. It also made her want more.
She was pressed against him as tightly as paper stuck to a window in a gale-force wind. It didn’t seem to be close enough for Dylan, who stroked her from her nape to the small of her back, fitting her against him and rubbing against her with hungry need.
Feeling him wince as she ran her fingertips across his jaw, she broke off the kiss. “You were so brave, coming up here by yourself to save me…”
Dylan just shrugged. “You know what they say—when all else fails, be brave. We have a phrase for it in rodeo. You might have heard it. Cowboy up.”
“It certainly is,” she noted with a grin, moving against his obvious arousal.
He gave her a supposedly reprimanding frown even as he held her tighter. “I’m trying to be serious here.”
“That will be the day.”
“Today is the day. The day that I ask you to marry me.”
Putting her hands on his chest, she shoved him away and gave him a reproachful glare. “That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny. This is just as tough on me as it is on you…”
“Gosh, what a romantic proposal,” she noted wryly with a shake of her head. “Telling me that marrying me would be tough…”
“I meant the asking.”
“I haven’t heard any asking yet.”
“Will you marry me?”
“Why should I?” she countered.
“Because I love you, you infuriating woman. My wandering days are over.” Smoothing her wavy hair from her forehead, he quietly said, “I’ve found my freedom in you. Now, are you going to marry me or not?”
Given what they’d just been through, the fact that Dylan was younger than she was didn’t seem very relevant anymore. The fact that he was alive and loved her was the important thing. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
With a loud “Ya-hooo!” Dylan swooped down to capture her mouth with his, momentarily forgetting his split lip as he gathered her against him.
In the safe haven of his arms, Abigail knew with bone-deep certainty that this was where she was meant to be. Just as the mountains had provided her with an inherent sense of peace, so too did Dylan’s embrace give her a strong sense of joy.
At first, the strange whap-whap-whap sound seemed to be the blood thrumming through her head. Then it finally occurred to her that the noise was coming from above her head—and above Dylan’s, too, for that matter.
Reluctantly lifting his parted lips from hers, Dylan muttered, “Damn, I almost forgot…”
“Forgot what? What is that noise?”
“A helicopter.” Opening the front door, Dylan went outside, but instead of trying to wave to get the helicopter’s attention, he reached into his saddlebags and tugged out her cellular phone.
“I knew Sheriff Tiber wouldn’t do anything, so I called in reinforcements from outside his jurisdiction.” Into the phone, he said, “Dylan here. We’re ready for you now.” After he’d flipped shut the phone, he saw the look Abigail was giving him. “What?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the man who made this awful face—” she did a passable impression “—when I talked about using a cellular phone?”
“When?”
“That first day when you rescued me. I told you I’d gotten a call from my editor on my cellular phone, and you made this face—” she screwed up her face like a kid facing a plateful of spinach “—as if I were some kind of Hollywood type or something.”
“I remember thinking you must be very high maintenance.”
“And what do you think now?”
“That I can’t live without you,” he said simply.
He would have taken her in his arms, but since the chopper swooped out of the sky, he had to make do with putting an arm around her shoulder as he calmed Traveler and Wild Thing.
The helicopter landed in a nearby clearing, close enough to make fast work of picking up Hoss Jr. and Randy but far enough away not to freak out the horses.
The arrival of the police made everything seem so much more tangible. She shivered and burrowed closer to Dylan.
“We’ll drive in to Missoula later and give a statement, ” Dylan told the officials.
&n
bsp; Abigail didn’t relax until the helicopter had disappeared over the mountaintops.
“You know what I’d like to do now?”
“Does it have anything to do with strawberries and whipped cream?” he asked with a wicked lift of one devil-dark eyebrow.
She smiled. “It might. I really want to go home, take a long, hot shower and…”
“And?”
“And make love with you.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he declared.
She tugged her paint-stained work shirt from her body as she said, “It’s just that I’ve been in the same clothes since yesterday. I almost made my escape last night, you know. I’d come up with this brilliant plan, asking Randy to build a fire, knowing that the chimney was plugged. I figured that he’d have to untie me to get me outside of the cabin and then I’d run for it…but he’d cleared the bird’s nest out.”
“I wonder if it was a robin’s nest,” Dylan murmured. “My dad always said it’s bad luck to mess with a robin’s nest. Guess Randy just proved him right.”
Because Dylan didn’t want to let Abbie go for even one second, he had her ride with him on Traveler while Wild Thing trailed behind.
“This brings back memories,” she murmured, leaning back against his chest. “What is this now, the third time I’ve been in your saddle?”
“My saddle is ready for you now,” he growled, his voice silky and sexy as he spoke into her ear. He slid his left hand to the inside of her thigh and crept up the double seam of her jeans until he erotically cupped her in the palm of his hand.
“You keep that up, and we’re going to be riding more than just a horse, cowboy,” she gasped.
She was actually considering the possibility of turning around to face him, wrapping her legs around his waist and making love on the back of his horse, when she realized they were almost home.
“I hope you plan on joining me for a hot shower,” she told Dylan with a sultry smile over her shoulder. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a group of people standing outside the ranch house. They were still too far away for her make out who they were.
