“You know, now that I think about it…” Wayne scratched the back of his neck again. “I think she does remind me of someone. Do you think…?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I have no idea. I’m not even going to explore that right now.”
“Still wary of upsetting the McAllisters?” Wayne asked, a knowing look in his eye that Wyatt didn’t much like.
“No,” Wyatt replied. “They just have a lot on their plate right now, and I don’t want to dig into it until I’m sure. Val doesn’t need any drama.”
“Okay,” Wayne said, shrugging his shoulders. “Whatever you say, boss.” Wayne could be difficult, stubborn, and ornery as anything.
But there was no one Wyatt trusted more. He’d been like a surrogate father or a grumpy uncle.
Val was in the best of hands.
“I’m going to just let her settle in for a few days, okay?” Wyatt said. “Give her space. You let me know if either of you need anything.”
Wayne nodded, folding his burly arms. “We’ll be fine.”
“Val?” Wyatt called, and she removed her hand from the horse, looking like she would reluctantly come over. “No, don’t worry about coming over,” he said. “I’m going to leave you in Wayne’s hands.” He winced at the wording. “I mean, he’ll be taking care of you. You can just let me know if you need anything. You know where to find me. I’m always in the office.”
He expected a fight, but she just nodded calmly, all of her attention on the horse in front of her.
“Anything she needs, you let me know,” Wyatt told Wayne.
Wayne gave him a long, piercing look that made Wyatt shuffle on his feet. “You got it, boss,” he drawled.
But he said it in a way that implied Wayne knew Wyatt was already treating his new employee in a way that was entirely inappropriate for a working relationship.
Not that he looked like he wholly disapproved.
But Wyatt shook his head as he turned around and walked back to the mansion.
Wayne was wrong, there was nothing to worry about. He wasn’t going to do anything to interfere with Val or her recovery. She wasn’t his type, despite the attraction, and she seemed to hate all men in general.
He’d be a good friend to her, though. That was all.
Even if a little voice in his head laughed at him as he said it.
4
A couple of days later, Wyatt was eating dinner alone in his office when a knock sounded on the doorframe.
He looked up with a smile and saw Val waiting there. She was dirty from the day’s work in the stables, with little bits of hay strewn about her shoulders and hair.
To his surprise, she’d been by every day to check in after work, thanking him for the job, telling him it was going well.
He’d made sure to have meals delivered to her room.
All in all, things seemed to be going well.
He gestured to a chair in front of his desk. “Want to join me? Clint served me way too much as usual.”
She hesitated as she did every time he invited her, but this time, she removed her hat, dusted off her clothing, and walked forward to join him.
He pushed the plates toward her and studied her face as she served herself some meat and potatoes.
She was looking much better. Healing even better than he would have guessed. A little niggling instinct was eating at him, but he pushed it away.
It wasn’t important right now. He was still just trying to gain her trust.
“I can’t thank you enough for hiring me,” she said, chewing earnestly as she relaxed back in her chair and looked out the wide window at the front of his office that allowed Wyatt to look out at his ranch. “I haven’t been this happy since… maybe ever.”
Her words warmed him from the inside, and he was just glad he could make a difference.
“You said you wanted to know what happened to me. I needed to know I could trust you first,” she said, looking at him warily. She took a few more bites and then slid the plate away, chewing thoughtfully.
Then she sighed and leaned back in the chair, once again looking out the window.
She was unlike any woman he’d ever known. No artifice, no flirtation. Just honest, straightforward. She had things to hide, but she didn’t put anything out that wasn’t there.
“I grew up in the mountains. Way up,” she said. “Above the two ranches down here. With wild people.”
“Wild people?” he asked.
She nodded. “Like you.”
Wyatt’s heart thudded. “What do you mean?” Had she figured out what he was somehow? He did like to go for midnight runs as his animal, when everyone else was asleep and it wouldn’t startle the horses because they were all safely locked away.
But she hadn’t ever been outside then, had she?
He kept his hands in his lap under the desk, but his fingernails dug into his palms.
If she’d found out his secret, and she was a human…
“Stop looking so nervous,” she said. “I’m one too. Sort of.”
His eyes flew open and he looked her up and down. “Then why can’t I scent you?”
“Well, I’m not like you. My dad was a cat and he assaulted a human. She dumped me with him and ran off, not wanting any part of it. I was raised with cats. Well, some cats. A mix. None as pureblooded as you.” She shrugged. “I’ve been told I could breed cats, but since I’ve never shifted, I’m not really one.”
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. He’d never heard of anything like this, and he didn’t like it.
From what she was saying, the situation up there in the mountains might be something that would necessitate calling in the very top of the shifter enforcer food chain.
Dragons.
But they’d have to approach that later. Carefully. After he knew for sure what they were and weren’t doing up there.
“We raised horses up there. Mustangs. I was happy with that part of it,” she said, twisting her hands. “But then my dad found out there’s a certain… audience looking for female cats to breed. And he thought I should probably do that.”
Wyatt felt his stomach tighten into a knot. All the while he’d been living this privileged life with his ranch and his money, she’d been terrorized by the people that should have been keeping her safe.
“I fought it at first,” she said. “All my life, I’d only known my dad as a cruel person, and the other men in our camp weren’t much better. But I learned to fight back. Protect myself. Not that it was always enough, as they were shifters and I was mostly human.”
“I see,” Wyatt said, curling his hands into tight fists and forcing himself to keep a calm tone. “So then what?”
“Then they brought someone by. My dad said he’d bought me. He wanted to breed.” She let out a little sigh. “At first I didn’t think he was so bad. He was handsome. Dressed nice. Like you.”
“Okay,” Wyatt said uncertainly.
“But he wasn’t like you. He was cruel, mean. After the first few visits, he started getting insistent. I tried to tell them I wanted nothing to do with it, but he said he wasn’t going to wait anymore for something he paid for.”
Wyatt felt his teeth grind together. “I see. How far did he go?”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry about that. I fought him, and he beat the tar out of me. That’s how I got away. He beat me so bad they thought I needed time to heal before breeding. So it bought me time. My father said it served me right for fighting, and they left me in the barn, thinking I was unconscious.”
“But you weren’t,” Wyatt said, a weird mix of sheer rage at her captors mixing with admiration for her tenacity brewing inside him uncomfortably.
Men who could hit women. Men who could hurt them. Men who would attack them.
No wonder she hated men. No wonder she hated being touched. No wonder she looked at men like they all deserved to be eliminated from the planet.
“These men,” he said. “Are they going to try to find you?”
She s
hook her head. “I don’t think so. I was an easy catch. When I first escaped, I wasn’t too far from them, and I didn’t see anyone leaving to chase after me. My guess is Lyle will go buy someone easier to deal with, and my dad will be glad to be rid of me, since I couldn’t even shift, which always disappointed him. He could have gotten more for that.”
“I’ll need both of their names,” Wyatt said.
“Why?” she asked, her eyes widening as she shrank back in her chair.
Wyatt sighed. “There are shifters who take care of things like this. Stop them. They need to be reported.”
“I don’t… What if they…?” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can deal with that right now. If they know I told, they might—”
He came around the desk and knelt in front of her, reaching up to push back her hair so he could look straight into her eyes.
“Val, I promise I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Or anything happen to you. But we have to bring them to justice before they hurt someone else.”
“There were no other women in camp,” she said. “I was the only one they tried to mess with.”
He sighed in relief. “All right. I’ll try and wait until you’re ready, then.” He bit his lip, reluctant to take his hand from her hair.
Her eyes were wary, and he pulled back and got to his feet. “You don’t have to worry about that, Val. I’m not going to make a move on you,” he said.
She blinked at him, pretty blue eyes confused and intent. “Why not?”
“Because you don’t want me to,” he said. “And because you aren’t really my type.” Well, that was kind of a lie. He’d been attracted to her since he’d met her, but now that he knew her history, the best he could do was help her feel like she was finally in a safe, non-threatening environment.
She’d had enough unwelcome advances to last a lifetime, it sounded like.
“I… appreciate that,” she said, sounding hesitant. “I just… I’m not into men that way.” But even as she said it, her eyes swept over him appreciatively.
Wyatt told himself to ignore it, hoping his body would listen.
He was a cat, and the cat in her called out to him. But he was also a good man, and he would be this woman’s protector because she needed one.
And he couldn’t very well do that if he was one of the men causing her problems and attempting things that were unwanted.
“I’m really sorry that happened to you,” he said. “I want you to tell me if you’re ever feeling afraid or worried. If anyone makes you uncomfortable…” He looked out in the direction of her cabin. “If you’re ever concerned out there, you’re welcome to move closer. You can come see me anytime.” He wrote down the number for his upstairs suite on a Post-it note and handed it over to her.
“Thanks,” she said, looking at it blankly like she didn’t know what to make of it.
An awkward moment followed.
“Thank you for trusting me,” he said. “For letting me know what’s going on.”
She nodded. “You’ve done a lot for me. It’s not like you didn’t deserve to know.” She stood and gave him one last look before heading to the door.
If Wyatt didn’t know better, he’d think she liked what she was looking at.
But she hated men, so that wasn’t possible, right?
5
Valerie watched the man beside her as they walked to the cabin.
He was so handsome in the moonlight, his broad shoulders outlined in a crisp jacket, his long legs taking easy strides over the lawn.
It had felt good to finally tell someone what happened to her, and in the few days she’d been at the Fifty Star, she’d come to trust him as a good friend.
It didn’t hurt that Wayne, her mentor and friend that she worked with, had known Wyatt since he was a child and liked to go on and on about him.
All he’d said was nice things about him, how generous he was as an employer. How fair he was. How he always stood up for someone in trouble.
She’d definitely seen that in the way he’d been with her.
If she hadn’t been so angry and defensive at the time, she’d have seen his inherent goodness in following her to the bar, rescuing her, and convincing her to come back here.
Thanks to him, she had a safe place for the first time in her life. Maybe that was why she was starting to feel odd around him whenever he was close.
When they reached her cabin, she felt awkward and she didn’t know why.
She was glad she’d told him what had happened. It had felt good to let someone in.
And she trusted him, mostly. So why was she still nervous, caught off guard?
He seemed to sense her mood and he looked over. He put out a hand, as if to set it on her shoulder to comfort her, but then reconsidered and dropped it.
His short blond hair rustled in the wind and his beautiful gold eyes glimmered in the reflected light over her small porch.
“I meant what I said,” he stated, leaning on the wall of the cabin and shoving his hands into his pockets. “You have nothing to fear from me.” He looked out at the wide, sprawling land around them. “Or from anyone else.”
She simply stared at him. The words and the sentiments he was uttering were so foreign to her. Protection? Not for her. Not in this life.
“No, I promise,” he said. “I see that doubt in your eyes, and I want to make this perfectly clear.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and rested one against the wall of the cabin, and she could see it was balled in a fist. “No one will ever hurt you again. Not as long as I’m breathing.”
Warmth shot through her, uncomfortable and strange. Somehow, the things he was saying unnerved her. Not because there was something wrong with them, but because there was something wrong with her hearing them for the first time.
Someone was actually caring for her. And that was odd. It did weird things to her insides. Things she didn’t want to think about.
“Why would you do that?” she asked, feeling confused. “Why would you care?” She felt like a cornered rabbit, even though all he was offering was freedom.
He reached for her cheek, and for some reason, she didn’t lean away. Like she could sense he wanted to touch her to comfort her, not to hurt her. When his fingers brushed against her face, it felt unlike anything else. So soothing she leaned into it as warmth moved through her to the tips of her toes.
So this was being touched without malice. A part of her wanted more of it. Wanted it to wash away every other touch.
She looked up into his gold eyes, scared of the emotions roiling inside her. The want.
And he pulled back, dropping his hand.
She was flooded with both relief and disappointment. Relief because she wasn’t ready to trust a man again, no matter how good he seemed, and disappointment because his hand had felt so good.
She rushed up the front stairs and fumbled with the lock. Then she heard him speak from behind her.
“I promise, Val. I’m not going to hurt you.” He put up his hands. “I’ll keep my promise and not make a move. I know you aren’t into that. I’m kind of a touchy-feely person. Cats tend to be,” he said, giving her a wink. “But you just let me know if I step out of line.” He put his hands in his pockets and took a few steps back. “I’m here to help you. The last thing I want is for you to be afraid of me.”
She nodded, fumbling with the door and finally getting it open. Why did her body feel so weird, so warm?
She waved good night and then hurried inside and shut the door behind her, locking it. Then she ran to the other side of the cabin and looked out of it.
She could see him striding back over the lawn to the lodge, his strong back wide and tall.
He hadn’t meant anything by the touch. Simple comfort, that was all.
And he wasn’t ever going to make a move on her. Not like he would on a normal woman.
One who didn’t hate men.
She knew that was a good thing. He was respectful. Strong. Kind. Would gi
ve her distance.
So why did she feel vaguely disappointed by the prospect of them always being no more than friends?
She shut the curtains and sat in the dark, letting the calm and quiet surround her, cooling the ardor inside her.
He didn’t want her to be afraid of him. He’d seen the fear in her eyes when they touched.
But he didn’t know she wasn’t afraid of him making a move on her.
She was afraid she might like it.
* * *
A few days later, Valerie had settled into the rhythm of things. She’d heard nothing from her dad or Lyle, and she assumed she was right and they thought she was more trouble than she was worth.
She was moving hay when she looked up and saw Wyatt watching her, and her skin prickled in awareness.
He’d been gentle and standoffish, as he’d promised, so she didn’t know why her wayward heart was trying to develop feelings for him.
Maybe it was just because he was the first person to ever be kind to her.
Maybe it was because she got to ride his horses and sleep under his roof.
Maybe because he gave her space.
Maybe because everyone working at the ranch seemed to adore him. Even lazy John, the other trainer she worked with, seemed to worship the ground he walked on.
Or maybe it was just that he was gorgeous. She had to keep back a sigh as she turned back to the hay, looking away from his muscled, golden beauty.
He’d made it clear he was going to keep his distance. She probably wasn’t his type anyway. He was gorgeous, could pick anyone. He wouldn’t be interested in some chubby country hick.
“Having a good day?” he asked.
“Yup, just finishing up,” she replied.
“You want to go for a ride?” he asked. “I’ve been feeling like getting out in the fresh air.”
She pressed her lips together. A ride, alone with Wyatt? Just the two of them?
She shook her head. Wyatt might see her only as some kind of little sister character, but that wasn’t how she saw him.
Mountain Lion (Bear Haven Book 4) Page 3
