Lucky Devil

by Patricia Rosemoor

  What had Lucky been trying to prove anyway? Had the kiss been another attempt to scare her off, away from the ranch? Had he appeared so grim because she’d responded rather than running as he’d hoped?

  She had to be crazy to want to stay, JoJo told herself, but the kiss that had been meaningless to him had reinforced her stubborn streak. The uncomfortable situation was becoming a test of wills, not exactly conducive to her mental health. Or to her physical well-being, either, she thought, remembering Lucky’s speculation about the Bushwhacker incident.

  Not that she’d actually been hurt, she reminded herself.

  Not that she even knew anyone was trying to pull something on her, either.

  But what if…?

  By the time she parked in front of the ranch house, JoJo was wondering if she shouldn’t leave in the morning, despite her mulish nature. Maybe this once she should forget her damn pride and worry about her skin. And when she found Caroline relaxing in front of the fire, she figured retreating wasn’t such a bad thing if it meant she didn’t have to deal with the Donatelli sister.

  Cold green eyes assessed her. “JoJo. You finally found your way back here.”

  “Disappointed?”

  Caroline took a sip from a glass of wine. “Actually, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Don’t bother,” JoJo said wearily, about to announce the good news that she was leaving.

  “But I feel it’s my civic duty to warn you.”

  “About what?”

  “Lester Perkins, of course.”

  JoJo started. “Something happened to Lester?” Despite herself, she moved closer to the other woman.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Caroline was drawing out her announcement, was enjoying making her sweat, JoJo realized. “I’m too tired to play out this little—”

  “Lester Perkins is on the loose.”

  JoJo’s heart threatened to stop…then went wild. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Afraid not.” Caroline appeared perfectly serious, even a bit worried, when she explained. “He escaped before dawn the morning of the wedding.”

  Legs shaking, JoJo sat. She’d seen him. Dear Lord, she’d seen him in the crowd and she’d thought her imagination was playing tricks on her. She hadn’t been imagining anything. Lester Perkins was on the loose.

  “How did you find out?”

  “When they hadn’t tracked Lester down by the next day, someone in the sheriff’s office called the Caribbean to warn Nick. Vito took the call.”

  “They think Lester’s dangerous?”

  Caroline gave her a look. “You, of all people, should know just how dangerous.”

  “But Lester never tried to hurt me.”

  “Excuse me? He kidnapped you.”

  “He was protecting me from Marco.”

  “In his own twisted mind, maybe. And what did he get for his trouble? A tour in the psych ward.” Caroline’s gaze was frank rather than malicious when she added, “I doubt that Lester views you with the same slavelike devotion that he used to.”

  Because Lester Perkins had worked for her father before her brother, Caroline knew him better than JoJo did.

  “You think he’s out for revenge?” JoJo swallowed hard. “Against me?”

  “He’s not a very stable man. His helping you got him in trouble big time, and took him away from his predictable but secure life. What do you think?”

  JoJo didn’t know what to think other than to put her plans to head back to Las Vegas on hold for the moment. If Lester were running loose around town, she’d rather not be anywhere in his radius. Though she believed Caroline, she’d call the sheriff’s department first thing in the morning to find out whether or not Lester was still at large.

  Until then…

  “I think I’d better get some sleep,” JoJo finally said, rising.

  Caroline raised her wineglass. “Happy dreams.”

  For once, JoJo thought the other woman was sincere, maybe even felt sorry for her.

  If only she didn’t have reason to.

  VISIONS OF THE MOUSY maintenance man dancing in her head, JoJo barely slept at all, and when she rose, the first thing she did after getting dressed was to place the phone call that plunged her back into the nightmare she’d hoped was over.

  “Sorry, Miss Weston, but Lester Perkins is still at large,” Deputy Sheriff Ben Carter told her.

  JoJo gripped the cordless phone. “How did he get away in the first place?”

  “That matter is still under investigation. I’m not at liberty to speculate.”

  “I see.” She stared into the now-cold fireplace, thinking her life was suddenly in ashes, too. “Why didn’t you inform me when this happened?”

  “Someone was instructed to call all the people involved in the Perkins case, Miss Weston. I guess you weren’t home. You don’t have an answering machine?”

  “My answering machine. Of course. I’m afraid I haven’t thought to call my home number to get my messages the last couple of days.”

  “Then you’re out of town?”

  “In Arizona. The Macbride Ranch near Sedona.”

  “Good. That takes you out of the picture as a target.”

  A target.

  Boy, was she ever beginning to feel like one. JoJo wasn’t certain which would be worse—staying here and trying to avoid any more accidents or going home and trying to avoid Lester, who might even now be looking for her. Great choice. At home she would be alone, no one to turn to if she did get into trouble. Here she would have more company than she needed.

  In the end, she had no choice at all, JoJo realized. And if Lucky didn’t like her continuing presence, he would just have to lump it.

  “I’ll be here for at least a few more days,” she told the deputy. “Would you please call me the moment you know anything more?”

  “Yes, ma’am, we’ll do that,” he assured her.

  She gave Deputy Carter the ranch’s number and switched off the phone for a moment as memories swamped her.

  Being tricked into what would be her dungeon for a week…Lester’s assuring her that he was going to keep her away from her prospective groom for her own good…being alone in the near-dark, hour upon hour, each day wondering whether Lester would come back or leave her to rot in that dank room in the theater’s subbasement.

  Giving herself a shake—nothing like that could happen to her here—JoJo decided to call home and pick up her messages. There were three. The first was indeed from the sheriff’s department. The second was from Sasha checking to make certain JoJo had left town as promised. The third was from a woman with a familiar-sounding East Coast accent.

  “Miss Weston, this is Marva Levine from the law firm of Abrams and Horowitz in New York. Since we haven’t heard from you, I fear you didn’t receive our letter. Could you please return my call at your convenience? The number is 212-555-3647. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.”

  Clicking off, JoJo frowned. She’d received the letter informing her of Oliver’s death, all right, but she didn’t remember a request to call the law firm. Then again, she’d been so upset, she hadn’t actually read the missive all the way through.

  Thinking she ought to do so, she rose just as Paula Gibson breezed into the living room.

  “Morning, JoJo!” she called cheerily. “Want to join us for a trail ride this morning after breakfast?”

  “Who’s us?”

  “Rocky and me. Someone told Rocky a movie company was just shooting at this ghost town less than an hour’s ride from here, and we thought it would be a hoot to check it out.”

  This must be the movie Adair Keating had been working on. The ride would get her away from the ranch for a while, and with a couple of companions, JoJo realized. And she had to admit there would be safety in numbers.

  “Sure. It’ll be fun.”

  Fresh air and open spaces were just the things she needed to rid herself of the claustrophobic atmosphere created by her memories.

&nb
sp; “Great!” Paula enthused. “I hope Lucky had that talk with Vincent Zamora, though.”

  “About what?”

  “About disappearing like he did yesterday.” Paula hooked her hair behind her ear. “We couldn’t find him to get us horses, so we were stuck around here all morning. We finally gave up and drove into town.”

  Remembering she’d originally thought Vincent had been playing the rumba music while he was working around the place, JoJo wondered where the ranch hand had gone off to. It was odd that he would have done a disappearing act at the very time she’d gotten herself into trouble.

  Now she was fabricating. There was no reason to think the wrangler had anything against her.

  First Lucky, then Caroline, now Vincent…

  Still, when Flora arrived and began breakfast, and Paula left to find Vincent and ask him to saddle up some horses, JoJo found herself alone with the housekeeper for a while. So she decided to see what she could find out about the man.

  “Has Vincent Zamora worked for the ranch long?” JoJo asked, carrying a stack of plates to the table.

  “A few months only.”

  “Then you don’t know him very well.” She went back for the cups and saucers. “I mean what kind of a person he is.”

  An odd expression crossed Flora’s features. “He’s a wild card, that one.”

  “Why do you say that? I ask because he makes me uncomfortable.” When she feared the housekeeper wouldn’t be forthcoming, JoJo added, “I’m not a paying guest. I’m a friend of Nick’s, remember.”

  Flora shook her head. “He’s the wrong man to work with guests. I don’t know what Henry was thinking. He should’ve taken Vincent on the range to round up strays and left someone else behind.” She took a big breath and in a low voice added, “Vincent’s been in jail a couple of times, and he’s got a reputation for hiring himself out for trouble.”

  Paula and Rocky appeared before JoJo could delve further into the reasons. At least she knew enough to be wary around the wrangler if not enough to know why.

  JOJO WESTON WAS PROVING to be more trouble than initially anticipated.

  Using the bull to do a job on her had been a stroke of genius. The circumstances had been perfect. She’d been alone with no one to save her. If all had gone as planned, she would be dead now….

  But the show girl had outsmarted the crafty old bull. She’d bushwhacked Bushwhacker!

  Somehow, she’d managed to save herself.

  The challenge she presented might almost be amusing if so much weren’t at stake. It was no time to play games. She had to be dispatched as quickly as possible, although having so many people around made the task more difficult. Still, she had to be punished in a very final way.

  Then she couldn’t go on fooling men, making them think they were special.

  Where men were concerned, JoJo Weston was a liar.

  A manipulator.

  A cheat.

  And the little schemer wasn’t going to get the chance to work her wiles on another unsuspecting victim.

  Chapter Six

  Vincent Zamora wasn’t the only man JoJo had to be wary of that morning. Having shown up alone halfway through breakfast and in the midst of the conversation about the trail ride, Lucky had insisted on coming along. That brought the group’s number to five, since Adair Keating had already opted to join the other guests.

  At least Caroline chose to absent herself from the group—a bit of a consolation, JoJo thought as she changed into her barely broken-in hand-tooled boots, stuffed her wallet into her rear jeans pocket and grabbed her cowboy hat.

  When she ventured out of her bedroom, everyone was gathering near the door, eager to get started.

  “Hey, finally a chance to step back into the Old West, where a man was a man,” Rocky said, then pantomimed a quick draw with an imaginary gun. “Bam!”

  He shot Adair, who obligingly caught himself around the middle and swayed as if he were ready to hit the dust.

  “No firearms in the house,” Lucky said dryly as he led the way out the front door. “Cowboys used to leave their holsters on pegs outside the front door.”

  “That’s as bad as keeping an unloaded gun in your nightstand,” Rocky complained. “What’s the point of having it at all if you can’t use it when you need it?”

  Not wanting to get into a discussion about guns, which she personally hated, JoJo let the men go ahead and hung to the back of the pack with Paula. Still, she noticed Lucky’s limp was hardly noticeable this morning.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” the other woman whispered as they headed for the pasture where Vincent would already have begun to tack up the horses. “Two of us and three of them?”

  Divorced a few weeks, and Paula was already looking for a man. JoJo shrugged. Each to her own. At least Paula wasn’t sitting at home feeling sorry for herself.

  “Thrilling,” JoJo replied, staring daggers at Lucky’s back.

  As if he could feel their sharpness, Lucky glanced over his shoulder at her. Even though she was unable to see his eyes because of the cowboy hat pulled low on his forehead, JoJo sensed them on her and immediately grew warm. She was glad when his attention was drawn back to the conversation with Rocky and Adair.

  Since Vincent had only known about three riders, the group had to wait a few minutes while he tacked up a fourth horse, while Lucky got his own. The moment the Appaloosa spotted him, he trotted straight to Lucky.

  “Hey, Silverado, how you doin’, boy?” he asked, rubbing the horse’s nose.

  JoJo couldn’t help but admire his ease with the animal and the apparent affection between man and beast that had to have come with time. She wondered if Lucky had brought his personal mount with him around the rodeo circuit, or if he’d bought Silverado somewhere along the way as Eli had Bushwhacker. Truthful with herself, she couldn’t help admiring Lucky’s strength as he tacked up the horse, the way his jeans and cotton shirt stretched over pure muscle. That part of him was definitely attractive.

  Too bad he couldn’t get a personality transplant…

  “So what are you going to do while you’re here?” Paula interrupted her private reflections. “I mean for the next couple of days.”

  “Chill out, mostly.”

  “Then have you thought about taking one of the vortex tours? You know—a guide takes you around to different sites in the red rocks. You’re supposed to meditate, develop your spiritual side.” Without waiting for JoJo’s answer, Paula continued her chattering. “Or if you don’t want to take an official tour, you and I could explore by ourselves. I have a book that explains everything. I believe in being prepared.”

  Surprised that the other woman seemed so interested in the metaphysical, not to mention in doing something with another woman rather than one of the men, JoJo said, “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Or we could gallery hop together if you prefer,” Paula enthused. “I’m always on the lookout for silver pieces designed by Sadie Buckthorn.”

  Paula held out her right hand, today her long nails were painted canyon red. Her ring really was quite an interesting design, a combination of handworked silver and purple stone, that must have cost a small fortune.

  “Beautiful,” JoJo said. “But I think I’ve had all the galleries I can take for a while.” Noting Paula’s crestfallen expression, she added, “But we’ll do something together, I promise.”

  The other woman’s lips curved in satisfaction. “Great! Oh, I think we’re ready.”

  JoJo looked around to find Vincent leading all four horses toward them…and staring straight at her.

  “Ready to mount up?” he asked.

  “I’ll stick with Spitfire.”

  “Figured.” Vincent handed over the reins to the chestnut mare. “You and her must have hit it off, huh?”

  “She has some spirit. We understand each other.”

  He leered at her, if a bit more discreetly than he had the other day. “I just bet you do.”

  And even as she reali
zed she was the center of Lucky’s attention, as well, he snapped, “Get the other guests their horses, Zamora.” He gave a hard tug on his saddle’s cinch as if for emphasis. “We want to get out on the trail now. Rain’s coming early this afternoon.”

  JoJo wondered if his clipped tone were meant for the wrangler…or for her.

  So far, though he’d done a few inspection tours of her that morning, Lucky had avoided speaking directly to JoJo, irritating her as much as if he’d made one of his hostile remarks. She checked the sky, a brilliant blue against the deep greens of growth and reds of sandstone in the distance. Not a cloud marred its perfection. No sign of rain as far as she could tell. She wondered if his weather prediction had been the truth, or if Lucky had used the excuse to cover his impatience.

  “You must be psychic,” JoJo murmured as Spitfire danced toward Lucky and his mount. “About the rain coming.”

  “Not psychic. Just clever enough to get a weather report before going out into the desert.” He swung up into his saddle, the smooth movement mesmerizing JoJo for a moment. “Maybe you haven’t lived in the Southwest long enough to know how fickle—and dangerous—weather can be out here.”

  Under the impression that it didn’t rain all that much in Arizona, which was known for its sunny days, JoJo said, “You wouldn’t be trying to scare me, now, would you?” Another ploy to make her leave?

  “This area is loaded with canyons and arroyos. When rain hits, it hits hard. Haven’t you seen the flash-flood warnings wherever the land dips?”

  JoJo shifted in her saddle, making Spitfire prance under her. “I guess I hadn’t noticed.”

  A bit chagrined, she turned her attention to Vincent, who was introducing the guests to their horses. Flash, a bronze palomino with silvery mane and tail, for Paula. A black-and-white pinto named Apache for Rocky. And for Adair—Chocolate, a big dark bay.

  When they were all mounted, Paula asked, “Could someone shorten these stirrups for me?”

  Blue eyes wide, she was appealing directly to Lucky, who didn’t seem to notice that she was flirting with him when he said, “Zamora, the lady needs an adjustment.”