by Kat Martin
* * *
It was hard to believe four months had passed since Tory had left Phoenix. After the attack, she had moved to Houston, taken a high-paying job as an executive secretary, assistant to the president of Huntley Drilling, a small oil company. She’d liked the work, which paid well and was less stressful than her former job as an advertising executive with the Elwin Davis Group, the top marketing agency in Phoenix.
But she had gone to a headhunter to find the job so it hadn’t taken Damon long to track her down. The harassment had started right away, with him showing up at her apartment, at work, making threats, scaring Ivy. Demanding Tory return with him to Phoenix.
She’d called the police and they had done their best to help, but in Texas, the restraining order she’d gotten in Phoenix had to be updated to be valid. That meant her abuser had to be notified and given a chance to argue his side of the case in court.
She didn’t have the money for more attorney fees, and the restraining order she’d gotten after the attack hadn’t really done any good. In Houston, when the neighbor’s kitten had turned up with a wire around its neck, strangled and bloody, dead in front of her apartment door, it had been time to move on.
New Mexico sounded good. She’d taken an interim job at a dry-cleaning store in Albuquerque just to earn some money. But the first day of work, the owner had cornered her in the garment racks and suggested her job could be a lot easier if she provided a few fringe benefits. She had quit the same day.
She’d been lucky. By the end of the week, she’d found a job over the Internet, office manager of Dominion Potash, a potassium mining company in Carlsbad. She’d liked the challenge of organizing the office and keeping the company running; she’d liked the small, high desert community famous for its world-famous caverns.
After two months with no sign of Damon, she had finally begun to settle in. She’d even allowed herself to make a few friends, relax enough to leave Ivy with a sitter once in a while and go out to a show or dinner in the evenings.
But every day she worried.
Every night, she lay awake, straining to hear the sound of an intruder. Tonight, as she lay in the darkness and listened to the heavy footfalls outside her bedroom door, she knew Damon had found her again.
Cold fear slid through her. It was as if her worst nightmare had come to life and she had to live it all over again.
Only this time, she was prepared.
Her heart slammed like a hammer against the wall of her chest as he shoved open the bedroom door. She had no idea how he had gotten inside, but she knew him well enough to know if he wanted in, nothing was going to stop him.
There was no time to pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1. Help wouldn’t arrive in time if she did. Instead she summoned her courage and forced down her fear.
“What are you doing here, Damon?” Glad for the white cotton nightgown she’d started wearing after the beating, she sat up in bed, her eyes on the man who had just stepped into her bedroom.
She knew exactly what to do. In her mind, she had rehearsed this scenario a hundred times. The knowledge calmed her a little. “Get out before I call the police.”
He just laughed. “You think I’m leaving? It’s taken me months to find you. When I leave, sweetheart, you’re going with me.”
Like hell I am. “What happened to you, Damon? You never used to be like this.”
“You don’t think so?” He propped a thick shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “I finally accepted who I am—that’s what happened. Sooner or later, you will, too.”
She was shaking inside. She didn’t dare let him see how terrified she really was. “I’m not going with you, Damon. Not now or anytime in the future.” She was ready for this, she reminded herself. She just needed him to come a little closer. “I’m warning you. I’m calling the police. This is your last chance.”
“You little bitch. You think you scare me? You’ve belonged to me since the day you put my ring on your finger. That isn’t going to change. It’s time you accepted it and I plan to see that you do.” A hard smile curved his lips. “First, I’m going to punish you, give you the beating you deserve; then we’re leaving. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do.”
Wait, Tory warned herself. She swallowed a fresh rush of fear as Damon shoved away from the wall and started toward her. You’ll only get one chance. The eyes she saw in her nightmares were dark with a combination of barely suppressed rage and anticipation. His hands fisted as he stalked across the room, around to the side of the bed.
The stun gun was in her hand before he reached her. She swung her arm toward him so fast he didn’t see it coming, the stun gun making contact—right in the middle of Damon’s chest.
A gurgling sound came from his throat. His eyes shot wide open and his teeth clenched into a frozen snarl. His muscles contracted. His head jerked back and forth before she hit him again and he crashed to the floor beside the bed.
Tory shot off the mattress. With shaking hands, she pulled open the top drawer in the nightstand and grabbed a couple of nylon zip ties from the bag she had bought at Home Depot to prepare for exactly this. Dragging Damon’s limp arms behind his back, she looped a tie around his wrists and cinched it tight. She did the same with his feet, pulling the tie tightly together around his ankles.
She hit him again with the stun gun to be sure he wouldn’t struggle while she stuffed a washcloth into his mouth and tied a scarf around his head to hold it in place.
Dressing quickly in jeans and a short-sleeved sweatshirt, she opened the closet door and grabbed the go-bags she kept packed for her and Ivy, snatched her purse, stunned him again just because he deserved it, and ran down the hall.
She shook the little blond girl’s shoulder. “Get up, sweetheart, we have to leave.”
Ivy was wide-awake in an instant. “Is it him? Is he here?” Her daughter was terrified of Damon, and she had every right to be.
“He’s tied up in the bedroom. We need to leave. We have to hurry.”
Dressed in her unicorn pajamas, Ivy grabbed Pansy, her brown velvet stuffed pony, and raced down the hall to the living room.
She slid to a stop in front of the door. “Where are we going?” She looked frantically back over her small shoulder, her face pale with fear.
“Someplace safe. Someplace Damon won’t find us.”
Ivy’s blue eyes filled with tears. “There’s no such place, Mama.” She started crying. “There’s no place safe from Damon.”
Tory jerked the door open and urged Ivy out into the night. “There is a place, honey. This time we won’t stop until we find it.”
Tory and Ivy raced for the car.
Chapter Three
Three weeks passed. Three weeks since Ramirez had quit and left the ranch, and Josh still hadn’t found a reliable stable hand. He’d hired a kid just out of high school but the boy had quit after shoveling manure only a couple of days.
Like a lot of kids today, Chris expected to start as foreman instead of working his way up from the lowest job on the ranch, or at least that’s the way it looked to Josh.
He’d had to fire the second guy for stealing.
“You’re finished, Randy,” he’d said. “Get your stuff and get out of here.”
The lanky black-haired teen clamped his hands on his skinny hips. “Man, you gotta be kidding! You’re gonna fire me for taking a five-gallon can of gas? I had to drive out here, didn’t I? That ought to be worth something.”
“You wanted the gas, you should have asked. Take a hike and don’t come back.”
“Screw you, dude.”
The kid grumbled all the way to his car, then shot Josh the bird as he roared off down the dirt road to the highway.
So Josh was back to shoveling the stalls himself. With so many people looking for work, it should have been easy to hire someone, and he could afford to pay for the help.
In high school, he’d been dirt poor, working two jobs to help his single mother feed a
nd clothe them. His life had changed course when his mother had told him about his half brother, a son his no-good father had sired by a previous wife before Josh was born.
Lincoln Cain, a man who’d spent two years in prison for attempted robbery, had become a mega-successful entrepreneur. Linc had turned his life around and was now co-owner of Texas American Enterprises, a billion-dollar corporation.
His brother’s success had motivated Josh to rethink his own potential. It made him believe he could make a better life for himself.
Over that summer, he’d set some goals, met them, set new goals and achieved those, too. The summer after graduation, his mom, a smoker, had died of lung cancer, which had sent him into a tailspin for a while, but at least she was finally free of the drunken wife-beater who had been Josh and Linc’s dad.
Josh had put himself through community college, then enlisted in the marines. He’d gone on to become a special operations sniper, but the smartest thing he’d done was invest in his brother’s company.
Every extra dime he earned, every penny he could get his hands on, went into Tex/Am stock. Being in Afghanistan made saving easy. The stock he bought went up, split, went up, split, and went up again.
Josh wasn’t the multimillionaire his brother was, but he wasn’t poor, either. Buying the ranch had set him back a little, but the mortgage was the only money he owed. He still had plenty in the bank, enough to live the way he wanted and make the ranch a success.
The trick was finding decent help. He had a couple of good wranglers, but there were other jobs he needed them to do. He’d keep looking. He had a couple of ideas that might pan out. The hands lived in town. He had moved the double-wide he’d been living in onto the Iron River Ranch, but it was empty now that he’d moved into the remodeled house.
He’d decided to put an ad in the newspaper offering the use of the trailer along with the job. Might get someone more reliable.
In the meantime, he had plenty of work to do.
Josh grabbed a shovel and a wheelbarrow and headed for the horse barn.
* * *
Tory drove the old blue Chevy Malibu along the two-lane road. Up ahead, a sign hung above a narrow dirt track running off to the west, IRON RIVER RANCH.
“Are we there yet, Mama?” Ivy had asked at least a dozen times since they’d left the Walmart parking lot in Iron Springs. The ten-mile drive didn’t take long, but to a four-year-old who’d been in the car for days, they couldn’t reach their destination soon enough.
“We’re very close, sweetheart. This is the turn, right here.” Tory checked the gas gauge as the wheels left the pavement and started rumbling over the bumpy dirt road. Less than an eighth of a tank. She hoped the ranch wasn’t much farther.
More than that, she prayed the job hadn’t already been filled.
She sighed as the aging Malibu rolled along. She was basically in bumfrick Egypt, ten miles north of Nowhere Springs, almost out of gas, with twenty-three dollars and thirty-three cents in her wallet.
Last night, without enough money for a hotel room and afraid to use her credit cards for fear Damon would somehow track her, they’d slept in the car in the Walmart parking lot. As soon as the McDonald’s was open, she had pulled through the drive-thru and bought a cheap breakfast, then started driving out to the ranch to somehow convince the owner to hire a woman with a daughter and no actual ranching experience.
She thought of the ad in the paper she had spotted last night on the counter in the Iron Springs Café. If she somehow managed to get the job, it would be perfect. Besides a steady paycheck and the ranch being way off the grid, the position included the use of a double-wide trailer.
After being on the road for the past three weeks, living out of hotel rooms and suitcases, the trailer sounded like a palace.
Ivy pointed toward the cluster of buildings up ahead: a couple of barns, several fenced training arenas, and a two-story home with dormer windows and a covered porch running the length out in front. A double-wide sat fifty yards away.
Vast stretches of open green pastureland surrounded the complex, where horses and cattle grazed, and there were ponds and woodlands in the distance, a few dense clusters of trees.
The Chevy bumped over the last patch of road, pulled up in front of the house, and Tory quickly turned off the engine. No use wasting what little gas she had left.
“Mama, there’s a man over there by the barn.”
Her gaze swung in that direction. There was, indeed, a man. The noisy buzz of a saw covered the sound of their arrival, giving her time to assess him.
Shirtless, he was working with his back to them, broad, tanned, and muscled above a narrow waist that disappeared into a pair of faded jeans. The jeans hugged a round behind and long, powerful legs.
He was tall, she saw when he straightened away from his work and walked into the barn, with medium brown hair cut short. She got her first look at his face when he walked back out: handsome, with masculine features, at least three days’ growth of whiskers along a solid jaw. The front of him was just as impressive as the back, a broad chest with solid pecs, muscular biceps, and six-pack abs.
Unease filtered through her. This was a strong, powerful male. She knew firsthand what a man like that could do to a woman.
Tory shoved the notion away. Not all men were like Damon. Before she’d met him, she had been married to a good and decent man, the father of her child. Jamie Bradford, her high school sweetheart, was one of the gentlest people she’d ever known. Her father had been a good man, before he’d fallen in love with his secretary and divorced her mother, leaving the two of them alone.
Tory took a courage-building breath. “Stay here, sweetheart.” Cracking open the car door, she slid out from behind the wheel. “Don’t worry, sweetie. Everything’s going to be okay.”
She hoped.
Ivy sank down in her booster seat, trying to make herself invisible. Tory had survived the fights, arguments, and finally the brutal beating Damon had given her that had put her in the hospital. Though he had never hurt Ivy, the little girl had seen the results of his mistreatment, leaving her with an unnatural fear of men.
Tory glanced at the big, thick-chested male striding toward her, shrugging into a blue denim shirt. Ivy would be terrified of him. If there was any other way, she would climb back in the car and just drive off.
There wasn’t. Tory started walking, meeting the man halfway. She glanced around but didn’t see a soul besides the big man in front of her. Her uneasiness returned.
“May I help you?” he asked, and she thought that at least he was polite.
“My name is Tory Ford. I’m looking for Joshua Cain. Is that you?” He had blue eyes and a cleft in his chin. From a purely physical standpoint, the man was flat-out hot.
“I’m Josh Cain. What can I do for you?”
“I saw your ad in the Iron Springs Gazette. You’re looking for a stable hand. I’m here to apply for the job.”
He just shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s a man’s job, Ms. Ford. Mucking out stalls and cleaning tack, feeding the livestock. It isn’t something you’d want to do.”
“Work isn’t supposed to be fun, Mr. Cain. That’s why they call it work. I can muck out stalls, clean tack, and feed stock as well as anyone else.”
“Sorry. I’m looking for a man. I appreciate you’re coming out, but—”
“There are laws, Mr. Cain. Equal rights for women. Have you never heard of that? Lawsuits against discrimination?”
His jaw hardened. His eyebrows came down in a frown. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to sue me because I won’t hire you to shovel horseshit out of the barn?”
She could feel the heat creeping into her cheeks. With her fair skin, there was no way to hide her embarrassment.
She looked him straight in the face. “I need this job, Mr. Cain. I need the house that comes with it.” She forced herself to smile. “Why don’t we compromise? You give me three days to prove I’m up to the job. If I’m not, I won�
��t give you any more trouble. Three days. If you don’t think I can handle the work, I’ll leave. I won’t argue, I’ll just go.”
A muscle jerked in his cheek. He didn’t like being pressured. He looked at her hard, and then those condemning blue eyes traveled over her shoulder to something behind her.
“Who is that?”
She didn’t have to turn to know Ivy had climbed out of the car. Like Tory, she was small for her age, but her hair was blond instead of red, and her eyes were blue instead of green.
“That’s my daughter. She’s only four.” Desperate now, she could feel her heart throbbing softly inside her ribs. “We need a place, Mr. Cain. I’ll work hard. I’ll do whatever you need done. Just give me a chance.”
He swore the F-word under his breath, not loud enough for Ivy to hear. Damon wouldn’t have cared. She clung to the hope that fostered.
“What do you plan to do with your daughter while you’re working? You can’t leave her in the house alone.”
Tory glanced around wildly. She had known this would be a problem. Before, she’d had money enough to hire a sitter or there was day care for employees’ kids.
She looked at the fenced yard off to the side in front of the trailer. The grass was sparse and in need of a trim. Maybe he’d had a dog or something, but it was clean and empty now. The weather was still good and there was a little gazebo with a table and benches in the middle. She’d be able to keep an eye on Ivy while she was working.
“She could play in the yard. She likes to color and she already reads kids’ books. She wouldn’t be any trouble. If this works out, I’ll have money to pay for a sitter.”
Cain looked at Ivy, paced away then back. “Dammit.”
“It’s just three days. If I do a good job, you won’t have to search for someone else.”
He ran a hand over his short brown hair. “Did you sleep in your car last night?”
She refused to answer. She didn’t want charity from Cain or anyone else.
“Fine,” he said. “You’ve got three days. But I’m not cutting you any slack. You do a man’s job for a man’s pay. If you can’t hack it, you’re out of here.”
