by Dana Marton
* * *
GRACE TUCKED HER SHORT, dark bob behind her ears as she ran down the front stairs of the police station. She frowned at the man leaning against her pickup. His color was better than the day before. He was better dressed, too. This time, Ryder McKay wore a dark gray suit with a dark blue shirt and dress shoes instead of the combat boots.
His hair had a little wave to it so it managed to look tussled even short-cut. He wasn’t the best looking man on his team, although he was plenty hot, but he had the kind of energy, a presence that drew her as the others hadn’t. All the more annoying since she hated him for taking Esperanza away.
He was the last person she wanted to see today.
He limped toward her. Looked as if he’d been waiting for her and his presence here wasn’t just an unhappy accident. Great.
“You should be resting that leg.”
“Let’s sit in your truck for a second.”
As he looked her over, she suddenly wished that she’d bothered to slap on some makeup that morning, or that the jeans she wore didn’t have a hole above her left knee. “What happened to Esperanza?”
“She’s on her way back home. Why don’t we see if we can come to some agreement about how to help her?” His desert-honey gaze held hers.
Awareness zinged up her spine. She went around him and yanked the driver’s-side door open.
“You should keep that locked.”
“You should mind your own business.” She wasn’t used to having to lock anything around here.
He got in next to her, taking up way too much space. “These are different times.”
So maybe they were. Smugglers. People getting shot. People disappearing. Things like that didn’t normally happen in Hullett. Even if she no longer lived around here, she hated the idea of the place changing for the worse. Dylan’s sister, Molly, was usually the one who hated change and wanted everything to stay the same, but for once, Grace agreed with that sentiment wholeheartedly.
She tried to take shallower breaths as Ryder’s faint masculine scent, soap and aftershave filled the cab and tickled something behind her breastbone. He smelled as good as he looked. His eyes never left her face.
She reached for the cooler behind her seat and grabbed two bottles of strawberry iced tea. Homemade, her mother’s recipe. Rose Cordero had been gone close to fifteen years now, taken by breast cancer. Grace’s father had been trampled to death by a bull at the rodeo the same year.
She closed her eyes for a second to shut away those memories, then said, “How about a cold drink?”
He smiled at her, and she just barely held back a groan. Was that a dimple in his cheek? The way those amazingly sexy masculine lips stretched over all those white teeth…
Holy Jehoshaphat. And he hadn’t even meant to dazzle her. If he ever tried to seduce a woman in earnest… She put that thought out of her head. She didn’t need to think about Ryder McKay and seduction. She had things to accomplish.
“Thanks,” he said, accepting the bottle. “How well do you know the local sheriff?”
“Went to high school with him and his wife. All three of us were in the same class.”
He frowned, as if that annoyed him. Go figure.
“You wouldn’t be investigating Esperanza’s family on your own after I told you that you can’t be involved in this, would you?” He raised an eyebrow as he lifted the bottle to those distracting lips.
“I promised her I’d help.”
“Why is this so important to you? You have kids back in the city?”
She nearly laughed at that. “I’m hardly mother material.” Some days she was fine, but at other times the past hit her so hard she could barely see straight.
“Don’t you have anyone special to go back to? A husband?”
“I don’t believe in marriage.”
The appalled look that flashed across his face was pretty comical. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around, men running from commitment and women starry-eyed looking for it? Not her. Her parents’ marriage had been hell. Her father had loved the rodeo ten times as much as he’d ever loved her mother. Tommy’s wife had divorced him when he’d gotten sick and she’d realized that the good times were over.
“What I’ve seen of marriages around me so far, I’d just as soon avoid.” Grace drew a long swallow of cold tea. Even if she could ever trust another person enough to give her heart, she would never want to saddle someone she cared about with the mess she was these days.
“You should go home, anyway. You must have a job to get back to,” Ryder was saying.
She didn’t like the way he managed to attract and irritate her at the same time. She wasn’t sure which she resented more. “How about I worry about my own schedule?”
“You don’t want to get mixed up with the criminal element.”
The muscles in her jaw tightened. “Wanting to find her family doesn’t make Esperanza a criminal.”
“I was talking about the people who might have made her family disappear. So what did you find out in there?” He jerked his head toward the station.
“Not a thing.” Frustration coursed through her. Nothing had popped in the computer files.
“Would help if we had a picture.” He took a long drink, but kept his gaze on her.
She considered that for a moment, then pulled the photo from her pocket and set it on the dashboard in front of him.
He didn’t seem overly surprised that she had the picture. Maybe he’d seen Esperanza pass it over. He took the small slip of paper and looked at it, then put the photo into his pocket. “What would it take to convince you to leave town?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She had her textbooks and she had weeks before her exams. She had some time to look into all this.
He flashed her a fierce glare. “Go home.”
It took work, but she gave him her sweetest smile. “I think you’re confusing me with someone who’s easily intimidated.”
He shook his head, and from the way his forehead drew together in a frown, she got the idea that he didn’t like what he was thinking. “I don’t suppose you went to school with the sheriff over at Pebble Creek, too.”
“I was just talking to Kenny last week. He went to school with my brother.”
“Of course he did.” He scratched his elbow. “Maybe I could use you as a temporary consultant. You do know your land, and the local people,” he said with a good dose of reluctance after a few seconds.
Relief flooded her. She’d been prepared to go it alone, but the search would be easier with some help. “So we’re going to see Kenny?”
His phone rang.
He flicked it open and listened. “Okay.” He hung up, a tight look on his face. “I have some things to look into right now, but I’ll be at your place to pick you up first thing in the morning. In the meanwhile, stick to the house. My team will be looking around near the border to see if we can find where Esperanza had been brought over.”
“Did that call have anything to do with her?”
He flashed her an unfathomable look, opened the door and unfolded his long legs to the ground, but then turned around to hand her a card with his name and number. “If you hear shots, you call me. If anyone knocks on your door in the middle of the night, you call me. If you hear any suspicious noises around the house…”
“I call you,” she finished for him. And then tried hard not to stare at the way his pants stretched across his fine behind as he strode away, favoring his bad leg.
No doubt about it, Ryder McKay was seven kinds of trouble. She thought of her small, safe, lonely apartment in Bryan—the perfect place for her at this stage of her life. Which was why she was going to do whatever she could here to help Esperanza but, after that, she definitely wasn’t going to stay.
“Stick to the house,” he called from his car before getting in.
“I’m thinking of a place where you could stick your orders, but since I’ve been raised a Texas belle, I’m not going to say it,”
she called back.
Chapter Four
She drove to the shopping center and picked up a few days’ worth of groceries, but didn’t fill up the whole pantry. She wouldn’t be around that long. Esperanza’s husband and children, Miguel and Rosita, would be found.
That Ryder had the gall to tell her to stay off her own land… Not likely. She needed to see what was going on, where people were coming over, how big a problem she had.
She needed a good horse. Time to go for a nice long ride and rediscover her land a little.
As if conjured by wishes, a beat-up horse trailer waited in her driveway when she got home, hitched to a pickup that looked as if it was held together by nothing but prayer. Old Man Murray leaned against the trailer on the shady side.
He took off his stained working hat as she got out of her truck.
“I heard you were home, Gracie. I’m awful sorry about Tommy. You let me know if there’s anythin’ I can do.”
In his mid-nineties, the man held down a ranch that had been in his family for two centuries, abandoned by his kids who’d moved to the North-East. But he would never walk by you without asking what he could do to help.
“I’m good for now. Thanks for offering. Everything okay with you?” She nodded toward the trailer.
A troubled shadow crossed his weather-lined face. “It’s Cookie. Colic, I think. I was hopin’ you could check her out.” He looked at his worn boots, hat in hand, as if embarrassed to be asking.
“I’m not a vet yet.”
“I don’t have money for the vet just now, Gracie,” he admitted with a sideway glance. “I’ve been walkin’ her and doin’ the wait-and-see thing. I gotta go into the hospital tomorrow. Be there for at least a week.”
Concern leaped. “Are you all right?”
“Doc Hanley says my ticker’s wearin’ out. Told him I don’t care, but you know how damn pushy the man is. Henry will be takin’ care of the animals, but the boy will have his hands full without this. His bad hip is actin’ up, anyway… .”
The “boy” had been Murray’s foreman at one time, stayed on after the money ran out and the rest of the ranch hands left for greener pastures. He was past seventy. And although they’d started out as employer and employee, the two men had been best friends for decades, looking out for each other.
“All right,” Grace capitulated. “Let’s see about this.”
She opened the trailer and backed the horse out. The mare did look bloated. She pressed her ear against the horse’s side. “Sounds like she swallowed a Harley.”
Murray nodded. “Plenty of rumbling.”
“Any pawing or lying down?”
“No. I’ve been watching her.”
“Runny stool?”
“Loose but not runny.”
She walked the horse around a little, watching carefully. The mare didn’t seem to be in pain. She needed some regular hand walking in the next couple of days to work the gas out, and some medicine to calm her intestinal tract. Chamomile and belladonna would accomplish that. Colocynth and nux vom would help with the gas. She preferred homeopathic cures and focused on those in her studies. She knew a place in Hullett where she could pick up everything she needed.
She glanced toward the barn her grandfather had built not long before his death, after the old one was lost to brush fire that spared the house, thank God. A single stall could be easily cleaned.
“I have no hay, or feed,” she said more to herself than to Murray.
“Brought some along, just in case.”
As she looked behind the trailer, she could see that the back of the pickup was loaded.
“Okay.”
“I can pay you in a couple of weeks,” the old man said in a tone of pure relief.
“How about a trade? I’ve been missing riding. Maybe I could borrow one of your other horses for a week. That way this one wouldn’t be so lonely here.”
His leathery face brightened. “I’ll bring you Maureen and some more feed.”
“How about I’ll make Cookie comfortable here, then I’ll go with you.” She wouldn’t mind a quick look at his other animals, and a chance to tell Henry that she was here if he needed anything.
Not that she was settling in at the ranch, or regrowing roots or any of that. But while she was here, she could certainly help out some old friends. Temporarily.
“Don’t suppose you need a barn cat?” she asked, leading the mare to the old corral that was still in pretty good shape.
“Got six kittens I don’t know what to do with. Haven’t seen the mother in days. Can’t catch them up in the hayloft. Can barely climb the ladder to leave them food.”
The idea of Murray climbing the ladder to the hayloft was enough to give her a heart attack. “A coyote probably caught the mother.” She bit her lip. Oh, what the hell. “I can catch those kittens and bring them back here, if you want,” she offered before common sense could take hold of her.
She had no idea what she was going to do with those kittens when she went back home to Bryan, an issue she should have been thinking about during the short ride to Murray’s place. Instead, she thought of Ryder McKay.
* * *
“NOTICED YOU DIDN’T HAVE one of these,” Ryder said as Grace opened the door the next morning. He held up clear plastic packaging that had a dead bolt inside. “A small thank-you gift for saving me the other night.”
She was still waiting for the coffee to kick in. Her muscles ached in places that hadn’t ached in a long time. She’d ridden out on Maureen after dinner, enjoyed it so much that she’d overdone it. Damn fine horse. Made her miss her old riding days. She hadn’t had a horse in…forever.
Ryder was checking her windows. “If you need a security upgrade, I’m an expert in that area. I could look this place over, make a few improvements.”
“It’s my place. I can do whatever needs to be done to it.”
“Just a friendly offer.”
“We’re not friends. We’re going to find Paco, Miguel and Rosita, then never see each other again. We’re not going to get close to each other in any way, shape or form.”
“Keep our distance.”
“Exactly.”
“Big words from a woman who cut off my pants the first time we met,” he reminded her, humor glinting in his eyes.
She turned on her heels and marched to the kitchen. She definitely needed more coffee.
She should have slept like a log after all the exercise, but she had a rough night. The ancient air-conditioning unit in the bedroom no longer worked, so she’d slept with the window open. Could hear the horses stomp around in the barn, getting used to their new surroundings. They kept waking her up, and each time it took her forever to settle back to sleep.
Ryder followed her and leaned against the counter. He wore another fancy suit. Maybe he only wore his black cargo pants and combat boots for in-the-field investigating.
He set the padlock on the counter.
“Thank you,” she said, even as part of her bristled. Didn’t he think that she was capable of picking up a lock for herself? The fact that he’d been thinking about her, about her safety, and cared enough to go out of his way to pick the lock up, made her feel strange. And she was feeling out of sorts already, not having gotten nearly enough sleep.
She’d spent half the night awake because of the horses, the other half tossing and turning in between nightmares that had taken her back to the battlefield.
“Did everything work out yesterday? You had to run off because of that phone call.” She tried to fish for some information. She’d gotten used to teamwork in the army. It annoyed her that Ryder was obviously keeping secrets. Whatever was happening on her land, she was smack-dab in the middle of it, and had a right to know, dammit.
He watched her for a second, then seemed to come to some sort of decision. “My team found some suspicious car tracks.”
“On Cordero land?”
He nodded, and her heart sank. She hadn’t seen anything when she’d
ridden out on Maureen. Of course, the ranch was way too big to ride every corner of it in one evening. “There’s some kind of a corporate team building thing going on. Could be them.” She should have probably told him that before, but he had a way of distracting her from thinking straight.
“I’ll look into that. You have a number to call?”
She gave him Dylan’s, and he saved it in his phone.
“Any other people come here on a regular basis?”
She shook her head. “It’s not a working ranch. Hasn’t been in years. The soil was never the best. My grandfather experimented with corn, milo and okra leaf cotton, and some other things. He made a good go of it most of the time. The years it failed, he had a couple hundred head of cattle to fall back on, and his horses.”
“Sounds like he knew something about diversifying.”
“He knew something about everything.”
One of the kittens meowed and drew his attention to the box next to the sofa. He stepped over to check out the kittens and raised an eyebrow.
“Came in last night. They lost their mother.”
“Do you need to stay home to take care of them?”
“Fed them after I fed the horses this morning.” She’d already walked Cookie, too. Wanted to do that a couple of times today, in between whatever else she would be doing. She already had the horse’s medicine.
“Horses?”
“Long story.”
Twinky strolled in, just in case he’d forgotten about her.
“That’s a lot of animals you collected in three days.”
She pulled her spine straight and looked him straight in the eye. “I’m just good-hearted that way.” Okay, so maybe her tone was a touch too defensive.
She hated that she was so bristly these days. Couldn’t take criticism. Growled at the slightest offer of help. Suddenly those things seemed to imply weakness. And she was way too self-conscious of all her new weaknesses already. She was no longer the tough soldier she’d once been. She had a hard time dealing with that. Hated every reminder. Jumped on every perceived offense.
