by Diana Palmer
John stripped off the cotton shirt he was wearing over his black undershirt. He eased her hands away from her tattered blouse and guided her arms into the shirt, still warm from his body. He buttoned it up to the very top. Then he framed her wet face in his big hands and lifted it to his eyes. He winced. Her pretty little mouth was bruised. Her hair was mussed. Her eyes were red and swollen.
“Me and my damned barn,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”
“For…what?” she sobbed. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is. I should have expected something like this.”
The bell on the door jangled and heavy footsteps echoed on wood. There was conversation, punctuated by Tarleton’s protests.
A tall, lean man in a police uniform and a cowboy hat knocked at the tack door and walked in. John turned, letting him see Sassy’s condition.
The newcomer’s thin mouth set in hard lines and his black eyes flashed fire. “You all right, Sassy?” he asked in a deep, bass voice.
“Yes, sir, Chief Graves,” she said brokenly. “He assaulted me!” she accused, glaring at Tarleton. “He came up behind me while I was putting up stock and grabbed me. He kissed me and tore my blouse…” Her voice broke. “He tried to…to…!” She couldn’t choke the word out.
Graves looked as formidable as John. “He won’t ever touch you again. I promise. I need you to come down to my office when you feel a little better and give me a statement. Will you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
He glanced at John. “You hit him?” he asked, jerking his head toward the man still sitting on the floor outside the room.
“Damned straight I did,” John returned belligerently. His blue eyes were still flashing with bad temper.
Chief Graves glanced at Sassy and winced.
The police chief turned and went back out into the other room. He caught Tarleton by his arm, jerked him to his feet, and handcuffed him while he read him his rights.
“You let me go!” Tarleton shouted. “I’m going back to Billings in two days. She lied! I never touched her that way! I just kissed her! She teased me! She set me up! She lured me into the back! And I want that damned cowboy arrested for assault! He hit me!”
Nobody was paying him the least bit of attention. In fact, the police chief looked as if he’d like to hit Tarleton himself. The would-be Romeo shut up.
“I’m never hiring anybody else as long as I live,” McGuire told the police chief. “Not after this.”
“Sometimes snakes don’t look like snakes,” Graves told him. “We all make mistakes. Come along, Mr. Tarleton. We’ve got a nice new jail cell for you to live in while we get ready to put you on trial.”
“She’s lying!” Tarleton raged, red-faced.
Sassy came out with John just behind her. The ordeal she’d endured was so evident that the men in the room grimaced at just the sight of her. Tarleton stopped shouting. He looked sick.
“Do you mind if I say something to him, Chief Graves?” Sassy asked in a hoarse tone.
“Not at all,” the lawman replied.
She walked right up to Tarleton, with her green eyes glittering with fury, drew back her hand, and slapped him across the mouth as hard as she could. Then she turned on her heel and walked right back to the counter, picked up a sack of seed corn that she’d left there when the assault began, and went back to work.
The three men glanced from her to Tarleton. Their faces wore identical expressions.
“I’ll get a good lawyer!” Tarleton said belligerently.
“You’ll need one,” John promised him, in a tone so full of menace that the man backed up a step.
“I’ll sue you for assault!” he said from a safe distance.
“The corporation’s attorneys will enjoy the exercise,” John told him coolly. “One of them graduated from Harvard and spent ten years as a prosecutor specializing in sexual assault cases.”
Tarleton looked sick.
Graves took him outside. John turned to McGuire.
The man in the suit rammed his hands into his pockets and grimaced. “I’ll never be able to make that up to her,” he said heavily.
“You might tell her that you recommended raising her salary,” John replied.
“It’s the least I can do,” he agreed. “That new employee of yours—Buck Mannheim. He’s sharp. I learned things I didn’t know just from spending a half hour talking to him. He’ll be an asset.”
John nodded. “He retired too soon. Sixty-five is no great age these days.” He glanced toward the back, where Sassy was moving things around. “She needs to see a doctor.”
“Did Tarleton…?” McGuire asked with real concern.
John shook his head. “But he would have. If I’d walked in just ten minutes later…” His face paled as he considered what would have happened. “Damn that man! And damn me! I should have realized he’d do something stupid to get even with her!”
“I should have realized, too,” McGuire added. “Don’t beat yourself to death. There’s enough guilt to share. Dr. Bates is next to the post office. He has a clinic. He’ll see her. He’s been her family physician since she was a child.”
“I’ll take her right over there.”
Sassy looked up when John approached her. She looked terrible, but she wasn’t crying anymore. “Is he going to fire me?” she asked John.
“What in hell for? Almost getting raped?” he exclaimed. “Of course not. In fact, he’s mentioned getting you a raise. But right now, he wants you to go to the doctor and get checked out.”
“I’m okay,” she protested. “And I have a lot of work to do.”
“It can wait.”
“I don’t want to see Dr. Bates,” she said.
He shrugged. “We’re both pretty determined about this. I don’t really think you’d like the way I deal with mutiny.”
She stuck her hands on her slender hips. “Oh, yeah? Let’s see how you deal with it.”
He smiled gently. Before she could say another word, he picked her up very carefully in his arms and walked out the front door with her.
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU can’t do this!” Sassy raged as he walked across the street with her, to the amusement of an early morning shopper in front of the small grocery store there.
“You won’t go voluntarily,” he said philosophically. He looked down at her and smiled gently. “You’re very pretty.”
She stopped arguing. “W…what?”
“Pretty,” he repeated. “You’ve got grit, too.” He chuckled. “I wish you’d half-closed that hand you hit Tarleton with, though.” The smile faded. “That piece of work should be thrown into the county detention center wearing a sign telling what he tried to do. They’d pick him up in a shoebox.”
Her small hands clung to his neck. “I didn’t see it coming,” she said, still in shock. “He pushed me into the tack room and locked the door. Before I could save myself, he pushed me back into the feed sacks and started kissing me and trying to get inside my blouse. I never thought I’d get away. I was fighting for all I was worth…” She swallowed hard. “Men are so strong. Even pudgy men like him.”
“I should have seen it coming,” he said, staring ahead with a set face. “A man like that doesn’t go quietly. This could have been a worse tragedy than it already is.”
“You saved me.”
He looked down into her wide, green eyes. “Yes. I saved you.”
She managed a wan smile. “Funny. I was just talking to Selene—my mother’s little ward—about how Prince Charming would come and rescue me one day.” She studied his handsome face. “You do look a little like a prince.”
His eyebrow jerked. “I’m too tall. Princes are short and stubby, mostly.”
“Not in movies.”
“Ah, but that’s not real life.”
“I’ll bet you don’t know a single prince.”
She’d have been amazed. He and his brother had rubbed elbows with crowned heads of Europe any number of time
s. But he couldn’t admit that, of course.
“You could be right,” he agreed easily.
He paused to open the door with one hand with Sassy propped on his knee. He walked into the doctor’s waiting room with Sassy still in his arms and went up to the receptionist behind her glass panel. “We have something of an emergency,” he said in a low tone. “She’s been the victim of an assault.”
“Sassy?” the receptionist, a girl Sassy had gone to school with, exclaimed. She took one look at the other girl’s face and went running to open the door for John. “Bring her right in here. I’ll get Dr. Bates!”
The doctor was a crusty old fellow, but he had a kind heart and it showed. He asked John to wait outside while he examined his patient. John stood in the hall, staring at anatomy charts that lined the painted concrete block wall. In no time the sliding door opened and he motioned John back into the cubicle.
“Except for some understandable emotional upset, and a few light bruises, she’s not too hurt.” The doctor glowered. “I would like to see her assailant spend a few months or, better yet, a few years, in jail, however.”
“So would I,” John told him, looking glittery and full of outrage. “In fact, I’m going to work on that.”
The doctor nodded. “Good man.” He turned to Sassy, who was quiet and pale now that her ordeal was over and reaction was starting to set in. “I’m going to inject you with a tranquilizer. I want you to go home and lie down for the rest of the day.” He held up a hand when she protested. “Selene’s in school and your mother will cope. It’s not a choice, Sassy,” he added as he leaned out of the cubicle and motioned to a nurse.
While he was giving the nurse orders, John stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and looked down at Sassy. She had grit and style, for a woman raised in the back of beyond. He admired her. She was pretty, too, although she didn’t seem to realize it. The only real obstacle was her age. His face closed up as he faced the fact that she was years too young for him, even without their social separation. It was a pity. He’d been looking all his adult life for a woman he could like as well as desire. This sweet little firecracker was unique in his female acquaintances. He admired her.
His pale eyes narrowed on Sassy’s petite form. She had a very sexy body. He loved those small, pert breasts under the cotton shirt. He thought how bruised they probably were from Tarleton’s fingers and he wanted to hurt the man all over again. He knew she was untouched. Tarleton had stolen her first intimacy from her, soiled it, demeaned it. He wished he’d wiped the floor with the man before the police chief came.
Sassy saw his expression and felt uneasy. Did he think she was responsible for the attack? She winced. He didn’t know her at all. Maybe he thought she had lead Tarleton on. Maybe he thought she’d deserved what happened to her.
She lowered her eyes in shame. The doctor came back in with a syringe, rolled up her sleeve, swiped her upper arm with alcohol on a cotton ball, and injected her. Sassy didn’t even flinch. She rolled down her sleeve.
“Go home before that takes effect, or you’ll be lying down in the road,” the doctor chuckled. He glanced at John. “Can you…?”
“Of course,” John said. He smiled at Sassy, allaying her fears about his attitude. “Come on, sprout. I’ll drive you.”
“There’s new stock that has to be put up in the store,” she began to protest.
“It will still be waiting for you in the morning. If Buck needs help, I’ll send some of my men into town to help him.”
“But it’s not your responsibility…”
“My boss has leased the feed store,” he reminded her. “That makes it my responsibility.”
“All right, then.” She turned her head and smiled at the doctor. “Thanks.”
He smiled back. “Don’t you let this take over your life,” he lectured her. “If you have any problems, you come back. I know a psychologist who works for the school system. She also takes private patients. I’ll send you to her.”
“I’ll be okay.”
John nodded at the doctor and followed Sassy out the door.
On the way home, Sassy sat beside him in the cab of the big pickup truck, fascinated by all the high-tech gadgets. “This is really nice,” she remarked, smoothing over the leather dash. “I’ve never seen so many buttons and switches in a truck before.”
He smiled lazily, steering with his left hand while he toyed with a loaded key ring in one of the big cup holders. “We use computers for roundup and GPS to move cattle and men around.”
“Do you have a phone in here?” she asked, looking for one.
He indicated the second cup holder, where his cell phone was sitting. “I’ve got Bluetooth wiring in here,” he explained. “The phone works through the speaker system. It’s hands free. I can shorthand the call by saying the first or last name of the person I want to call. The phone does the rest. I get the Internet on it, and my e-mail as well.”
“Wow,” she said softly. “It’s like the Starship Enterprise, isn’t it?”
He could have told her that his brand-new Jaguar XF was more in that line, with controls that rose out of the console when the push-button ignition was activated, backup cameras, heated seats and steering wheel, and a supercharged V8 engine. But he wasn’t supposed to be able to afford that sort of luxury, so he kept his mouth shut.
“This must be a very expensive truck,” she murmured.
He grinned. “Just mid-range. Our bosses don’t skimp on tools,” he told her. “That includes working equipment for assistant feed store managers as well.”
She looked at him through green eyes that were becoming drowsy. “Are we getting a new assistant manager to go with Mr. Mannheim?” she asked.
“Sure. You,” he added, glancing at her warmly. “That goes with a rise in salary, by the way.”
Her breath caught. “Do you mean it?”
“Of course.”
“Wow,” she said softly, foreseeing better used appliances for the little house and some new clothes for Selene. “I can’t believe it!”
“You will.” He frowned. “Don’t fall over in your seat.”
She laughed breathily. “I think the shot’s taking effect.” She moved and grimaced, absently touching her small breasts. “A few bruises are coming out, too. He really was rough.”
His face hardened. “I hate knowing he manhandled you,” he said through his teeth. “I wish I’d come to the store sooner.”
“You saved me, just the same,” she replied. She smiled. “My hero.”
He chuckled. “Not me, lady,” he mused. “I’m just a working cowboy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with honest labor and hard work,” she told him. “I could never wrap my mind around some rich, fancy man with a string of women following him around. I like cowboys just fine.”
The words stung. He was living a lie, and he shouldn’t have started out with her on the wrong foot. She was an honest person. She’d never trust him again if she realized how he was fooling her. He should tell her who he really was. He glanced in her direction. She was asleep. Her head was resting against the glass, her chest softly pulsing as she breathed.
Well, there would be another time, he assured himself. She’d had enough shocks for one day.
He pulled up in her driveway, went around and lifted her out of the truck in his arms. He paused at the foot of the steps to look down at her sleeping face. He curled her close against his chest, loving her soft weight, loving the sweet face pressed against his shirt pocket. He carried her up the steps easily, knocked perfunctorily at the door, and opened it.
Her mother, Mrs. Peale, was sitting in a chair in her bathrobe, watching the news. She cried out when she saw her daughter.
“What happened to her?” she exclaimed, starting to rise.
“She’s all right,” he said at once. “The doctor sedated her. Can I put her down somewhere, and I’ll explain.”
“Yes. Her bedroom…is this way.” She got to her feet, panting with the ef
fort.
“Mrs. Peale, you just point the way and sit back down,” he said gently. “You don’t need to strain yourself.”
Her kind face beamed in a smile. “You’re a nice young man. It’s the first door on the left. Her bedroom.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He carried Sassy into the bare little room and pulled back the worn blue chenille coverlet that was on the twin bed where she slept. Everything was spotless, if old. He lifted Sassy’s head onto the pillow, tugged off her boots, and drew the coverlet over her, patting it down at her waist.
She breathed regularly. His eyes went from her disheveled, wavy dark hair to the slight rise of her firm breasts under the shirt he’d loaned her, down her narrow waist and slender hips and long legs. She was attractive. But it was more than a physical attractiveness. She was like a warm fireplace on a cold day. He smiled at his own imagery, took one last look at her pretty, sleeping face, went out, and pulled the door gently closed behind him.
Mrs. Peale was watching for him, worried. “What happened to her,” she asked at once.
He sat down on the sofa next to her chair. “Yes. She’s had a rough day…”
“That Tarleton man!” Mrs. Peale exclaimed furiously. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
His eyebrows arched at her unexpected perception. “Yes,” he agreed slowly. “But how would you know…?”
“He’s been creeping around her ever since McGuire hired him,” she said in her soft, raspy voice. She paused to get her breath. Her green eyes, so much like Sassy’s, were sparking with temper. “She came home crying one day because he touched her in a way he shouldn’t have, and she couldn’t stop him. He thought it was funny.”
John’s usually placid face was drawn with anger as he listened.
Mrs. Peale noticed that, and the caring way he’d brought her daughter home. “Forgive me for being blunt, but, who are you?” she asked gently.
He smiled. “Sorry. I’m John…Taggert,” he added, almost caught off guard enough to tell the truth. “My boss bought the old Bradbury place, and I’m his foreman.”
“That place.” She seemed surprised. “You know, it’s haunted.”
