The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Just fine. Maybe we’ll watch the rest of the show, just to check out Colt’s competition. Is that okay with you?”

  “Can we, Mom?” Nicky asked eagerly.

  Maggie smoothed a hand across his hair. “I guess so. Don’t give Cheyenne a hard time about bedtime, though, understand? When she says it’s time to go, you listen to her.”

  Her son gave a distracted nod, engrossed in the next competitor. She gave an exasperated sigh. He was already as addicted to rodeo as his grandfather had been. When they finally settled down, she would have a tough time weaning him away from it.

  “Thanks,” she said to Cheyenne. “I should be back around the usual time—”

  Her voice ground to a scratchy halt as her attention caught and held on a man across the arena. She picked up only random impressions—a neatly clipped mustache, a balding head, a stocky build—but somehow they coalesced into a clear image of one of the men she’d seen that terrible night at Michael’s office building.

  She quickly, frantically, sorted through her memories of that night after the murder: facing Michael’s body; the heartstopping, excruciatingly slow elevator ride; and finally, that sickening moment when the doors opened and she caught sight of the two men racing into the building.

  The first man had been older, handsome and distinguished, like some diplomat out for an evening stroll. But the second had been stocky, balding, mustachioed, exactly like the man across the arena. He had worn a dark, tailored suit that night while this man wore Western clothing like everyone else here, but it had to be the same man.

  “Aunt Maggie? Are you all right?”

  She blinked, swayed. “I—”

  Cheyenne grabbed her arm. “Sit. Right now. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  Not daring to take her gaze from the man, she let the teen drag her back down to the bleachers. How could they have found her? Dear God, what was she going to do? She had to protect her son, but where could she run? If they could find her here, at a two-bit rodeo in Montana, they could find her anywhere.

  Through the panic swelling inside her, she was vaguely aware of Cheyenne clasping her arm and patting her hand. “Stay with me, Mag. Do you need a drink or something? What happened? Are you sick?”

  Her gaze shifted for only an instant at the barrage of questions, but when she turned back, the man had vanished. She blinked rapidly and scanned the entire side of the arena, but could see no sign of the mystery man. The seat in the bleachers was filled now by an adolescent girl with teased blond hair and a black George Strait concert T-shirt.

  She rubbed clammy hands on her slacks. The panic gradually subsided, leaving in its place a deep unease. Was she going crazy, conjuring up things that weren’t there? Her imagination must just be running on overtime, like an immune system gone amok at the slightest threat to its health. Would she ever stop jumping at shadows, seeing danger where none existed.

  “Aunt Maggie? Should I call for a paramedic?”

  She gathered her frayed composure around her and turned to face Cheyenne. “I’m fine. I just stood up too quickly,” she lied, and tried to give a reassuring smile to the worried girl.

  Her attempt must have been convincing. After several beats Cheyenne returned it with a teasing grin of her own. “I think you’re just going weak in the knees over Colt McKendrick.”

  Or weak in the head, anyway. A much more likely explanation. “You’re right.” She summoned another smile for her niece. “That’s exactly what happened. Now I had better get my weak knees—and the rest of me—back to work.”

  She couldn’t do this anymore, she thought as she walked back through the crowd on her way to the medical trailer. She refused to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. That was no way to live, it was just surviving, barely existing.

  She was stronger than this. She had to be, for Nicky’s sake. This constant fear accomplished nothing productive, just left her jittery and unsettled.

  She wasn’t going to give in to it again.

  She straightened her shoulders at the internal declaration, suddenly feeling as if a weight the size of one of Peg’s prize Angus bulls had been lifted from them. No more. She hid in the bathroom while these men killed Michael, but she would not cower again.

  She was done with running scared. If they somehow managed to find her and Nicky, she would fight them with every weapon she had at her disposal.

  Or die trying.

  Hours later, still thinking about her new vow to stop being so weak and afraid, she sat on the top of the picnic table at their campsite feeling insignificant as she gazed up at a million stars peppering the vast Montana night sky.

  Why did the heavens seem so close in the West, she wondered, as if she could simply reach up and tug a few of those pinpricks of light down onto her lap?

  The cool night breeze carried the lowing of cattle down at the pens and the smell of woodsmoke from a campfire somewhere nearby. On the breeze also floated a hundred memories of other times she had sat just like this with her father, counting stars and listening to the night.

  Billy Joe had known many of the constellations from his stint in the Navy. Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia.

  Cassiopeia had been their special symbol, their way of connecting despite the distance between them most of the time. During the school year when she was with her mother, she would go out into the garden whenever Billy Joe called and look for the distinctive W of the constellation.

  San Francisco wasn’t the best place for stargazing, unfortunately, with the fog and the drizzles and the city lights, but she tried her darnedest. It comforted her on even the bleakest of days to know her father was looking at the same night sky, just from a different perspective.

  She smiled softly. She could still pick out Cassiopeia and the Big and Little Dippers but the rest of the sky was a mystery. Shame on her for not retaining more from those summer lessons. She ought to at least buy a stargazing book at one of the tourist traps along the way and try to relearn them so she could pass on the tradition to Nicky. Maybe when all this was over and they were settled somewhere, she could buy a little telescope and they could explore the heavens together.

  That seemed to have become her mantra. When all this is over. But she was beginning to wonder if it would ever be over, if she would ever feel completely safe again.

  As if to test her shaky, newfound courage, the sound of boots striking gravel carried through the night, and she looked away from the stars to find a dark shape walking slowly along the road toward her. Her heart stuttered in panic for just an instant before she quickly regained control. She was done jumping like a damn scared rabbit. Only by being strong and smart could she protect her son.

  The midnight rambler was Colt, she realized a few seconds later, with more relief than she cared to admit. She recognized him by that loose-hipped walk and the breadth of his shoulders. He walked toward her trailer, then paused outside it, his hands in the pockets of a denim jacket that had definitely seen better days.

  “Evening,” she called out softly.

  This time, she noted with a considerable amount of satisfaction, he was the one startled. His stance became ready, alert, like a mountain lion scenting trouble.

  He peered into the darkness to where she perched on the picnic table. “Doc? Is that you?”

  She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yes,” she answered.

  “What are you doing up so late?”

  “Watching the stars. Remembering.”

  He walked closer. “Something pleasant, I hope.”

  Now why had she said that? The last thing she wanted to do was start a conversation with him. All day she had been telling herself she needed to stay away from the man, and here she was, practically begging him to sit down for a chat.

  “My father,” she finally said. “On summer nights like this when I was on the road with him, we used to try to see how many constellations we could recognize. I was just sitting here feeling guilty that I can�
��t remember more of them.”

  “On the road with him? What was he, some kind of rock star?”

  She laughed softly at the idea of her gruff father performing in a rock and roll band. “Not even close. In his younger days, he was a bareback rider on the circuit. After he married Peg when I was ten, the two of them started a stock company.”

  “Rawlings Stock? As in Billy Joe Rawlings?” He gave a long, low whistle. “I should have put the pieces together before.”

  He looked up at the sky again. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with the stars. I can find the Milky Way but that’s about it.”

  “I can go you one better. That’s Cassiopeia over there. See the W?”

  His gaze followed her finger as it traced the constellation in the sky. “I can see it. Pretty little thing, isn’t it?”

  “And there you have the extent of my astronomical knowledge.”

  He chuckled and, without waiting for an invitation, joined her on the picnic table.

  Immediately the air smelled of sagebrush and leather and Colt. It’s a chemical reaction, she tried to tell herself, when her body instantly went on alert. Pheromones, that’s all.

  “I watched you ride today,” she said.

  “You did?” He sent her a quick, pleased look.

  “You’re good. Very good.”

  He snorted softly. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. I’m competent but that’s about it.”

  “You’re second in the standings. I’d say that’s a few steps above competent.”

  “I still have two more rounds to make it through. We’ll see where I am in the standings this time Saturday night.”

  “You ought to be sleeping so you can be rested for tomorrow’s competition. What brings you outside so late?”

  He paused as if considering his words carefully, then she felt a ripple of movement from him as he shrugged. “I was just checking on things.”

  “On what?”

  “Just wanted to make sure you all were okay over here. I wouldn’t want you to have to come out in the middle of the night with your frying pan again to chase down any drunk cowboys.”

  He didn’t add that he had been worried about her and about Nicholas, that he’d already been restless and edgy after their kiss this afternoon, and Dunbar’s visit had finished the job, making sleep impossible.

  “What makes you think we need protecting?”

  That frosty, back-off layer returned to her voice, and for a moment he wanted to pound his head against the picnic table a few hundred times in frustration.

  He couldn’t remember ever struggling so much with an assignment. Hell, organized-crime bosses were more trusting than Maggie Rawlings.

  He was a damn good undercover man. So why couldn’t he figure out the best approach to take with her? Everything he said just seemed to rile her.

  He sighed with resignation and finally just dived in. “No matter how many times you deny it, something’s got you jumpy, Doc. I figure if it’s bad enough to put that kind of scare into you, maybe I ought to keep an eye on things, just to be on the safe side. It would sure help if I knew who or what to be watching out for, though.”

  Come on, Maggie. He willed silently. Tell me about the bastards who killed your husband. I can’t help you unless you bring me into it. Then we can work together to find whatever Damian wants and be done with this.

  She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. For a moment he thought she would tell him, but she just rested her chin on her knee and looked out into the night. “It’s kind of you to be so concerned about us, but there’s nothing wrong. You’re imagining things.”

  Damn, damn, damn. She wasn’t going to confide in him. “Doc—”

  “Besides, you hardly know us.”

  At least she sounded more puzzled than suspicious, he thought with some relief.

  “Why would you continue to put yourself through so much trouble for us,” she went on, “when we’re virtually strangers?”

  “For one thing, I owe you.”

  At her confused frown, he lifted his shoulder. “The patch job you did on me last week.”

  “If there was a debt there—which there certainly isn’t, since I was just doing my job—it would certainly have been settled and then some the night you fixed my flat tire.”

  He scowled at the memory of his deception, of piercing her tire. Before this job, lies and subterfuge had been as natural to him as sleeping and eating, but suddenly he hated them with passionate intensity.

  “What’s the other reason?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said, ‘for one thing.’ That would seem to imply there’s another reason you’re suddenly acting like a worried older brother.”

  He gave a raw laugh. “My feelings for you are not in the least brotherly, Maggie. I would have thought that kiss in your trailer earlier proved that.”

  At the reminder of that soft, erotic kiss they’d shared, the air seemed to vibrate suddenly with charged tension. She cleared her throat. “I, ah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

  Now, this ought to be good. “What about it?”

  “Well, obviously, it was a—a mistake.”

  “Was it?” Never mind that he’d been thinking the same thing all afternoon. For some reason it irritated the hell out of him to hear her agree with him.

  “Of course,” she answered. “It was purely a—a chemical reaction.”

  “A chemical reaction.”

  “Right.” She seemed to warm to her boneheaded theory. “A chemical reaction, stimulated by the fact that we were in such close proximity, alone there in the trailer.”

  “Um, Doc, I hate to point this out, but we’re in even closer proximity right now. And we’re alone. Feeling any chemical reactions?”

  If he hadn’t been so frustrated, he would have laughed at the way she inched away almost imperceptibly. “No,” she said as primly as a schoolmarm. “It must have been a onetime occurrence and now it’s completely out of our systems.”

  This time he did laugh, a low amused laugh that had her sidling away another centimeter. “A chemical reaction. Right. You keep telling yourself that, Doc,” he said. “Maybe sooner or later you’ll even believe it.”

  “It was,” she insisted. “We just have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Like not sit together on a picnic table alone in the dark, under a night sky overflowing with stars?” he asked quietly.

  If she moved away any farther, she was going to fall off the edge of the table into the dirt. She cleared her throat again. “That would certainly be a good place to start.”

  He finally took pity on her nervousness and straightened from the table. “I wouldn’t want to blow your theory, so I’ll say good night, then.”

  “I need to turn in, too.”

  “My rig’s just at the end of this row. If you need me for anything in the night, you know where to find me, right?”

  Even in the moonlight, he could clearly see the quelling look she aimed at him. “I thought we just established that’s not likely to happen.”

  He laughed. “That’s not what I meant, although I sure wouldn’t turn you away.” His teasing smile faded, and he studied her seriously. “I know you said you don’t need protection, Doc, and I can respect that. But if anything spooks you in the night just holler. I can be here before you can say ‘Cassiopeia’.”

  Even in the darkness he could see her eyes soften, her mouth curl up. “I’ll remember that, Colt. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He waited until she was safely in her trailer before walking to his camper and grabbing his bedroll. He sighed, carefully making his way back under the carpet of stars toward the patch of grass under the protective arms of a willow tree near her trailer.

  Between his worry over what Damian might do when he found them and the “chemical reactions” still zinging through his blood, he was in for
one hell of a long night.

  Chapter 7

  He hated this.

  Colt shoved the pick into the flimsy lock on Maggie’s trailer and worked the tension. After only a few twists he heard the last tumbler click and the handle twisted easily in his fingers.

  With one more careful look over his shoulder, Colt pushed open the thin door and slipped inside. Yes, folks, he thought with no small amount of self-mockery. There you have it, your tax dollars at work.

  Lock picking was one of the more disreputable skills he’d learned during his training at the academy. It wasn’t an official class, but was something he had picked up from other trainees. Throughout the last ten years, his unsavory proficiency had come in handy many times, but he could never remember having this sick feeling in his stomach at using it.

  Once safely inside Maggie’s trailer, he closed the door behind him and surveyed her temporary home, strangely reluctant to begin

  Intellectually he knew he needed to search the place. If he could find Damian’s money and the records Michael Prescott had kept so carefully—and so stupidly—he knew she would be persuaded to cooperate with the investigation and he could drop this charade that was becoming more uncomfortable by the minute.

  Yeah, he knew he needed to do this. But the reality of breaking into her living quarters—of combing through her meager belongings like some kind of thief in the night—seemed like a harsh betrayal. He could just imagine her reaction if she caught him at it, that shocked hurt he knew would bruise her eyes. It left a hollow ache in his gut.

  Get on with it, he ordered himself. She wouldn’t discover him searching her trailer, she was too busy working. He had left her just moments ago sewing up a cut on one cowboy’s forehead while two others waited in line to have joints wrapped.

  He frowned. He was almost positive the two rowdy kids with the bad joints had been faking their injuries for a chance to make time with the beautiful lady doc.

  He supposed he couldn’t get too upset about it. Hell, he would have tried the same thing when he’d competed on the circuit for real when he was their age, so how could he blame them?