by Jeannie Watt
“Oh,” Susan said in confusion. “Didn’t Ty give you the message? Deirdre Landau will sell you half a cord.”
Madeline smiled tightly. “It must have slipped his mind. I’ll ask him about it.”
“Better hurry. It’s supposed to snow again tomorrow.”
Madeline crossed the street to the café in search of a satellite signal for her laptop, grumbling under her breath. Oh, yeah. She’d definitely be asking him about the wood. Meddling with her warmth trumped personal embarrassment.
THERE WAS NO PUBLIC WI-FI in Barlow Ridge, so unless she wanted to steal someone’s private connection, she wasn’t going to be researching real-estate agents online. Madeline drowned her disappointment in a cup of coffee at the café and a piece of excellent pie, then went to the counter and asked the waitress if she could borrow a phone book.
Back at the table, she flipped through the real-estate-agent listings. There were only a couple for the closest town, Wesley, and of those, one specialized in ranch sales. Madeline jotted down the number, wondering how this was all going to play out. She had to find someone she could trust. Someone who wasn’t an old friend or acquaintance of Ty. Someone who’d look after her interests first and foremost. What were the odds in a rural community?The waitress, wearing jeans and a winter sweater, came by and topped off her coffee after the other two patrons had left. “Find what you’re looking for?” she asked as she sloshed coffee into the cup, somehow pouring it to the brim with a flip of her wrist without getting any on the tablecloth.
“I hope,” Madeline said with a noncommittal smile. The waitress hesitated for a second, as if waiting for more of an answer. When Madeline lifted her fork and took a bite of pie, the girl gave up and carried the coffeepot back to the burner without any new tidbits of gossip.
As soon as she stepped behind the counter, Madeline reached for her phone. First, the ranch real-estate agent. Myron Crenshaw answered the call himself and was quite happy to make an appointment. Almost too happy. Well, the market was slow, so she understood. Next she called home.
Her grandmother’s phone rang through to the retirement-complex operator after ten rings—a safety precaution that Madeline appreciated. If her grandmother was unable to come to the phone, be it from illness or a fall, she wouldn’t have to wait for the evening residence check before help arrived.
“Eileen is out for lunch and Christmas shopping,” the manager told Madeline a few minutes later. “Connor and your cousin Jeffrey picked her up about an hour ago. She should be home around three this afternoon if you want to call back.”
“Thanks.” Madeline probably wouldn’t drive back down the mountain today to do that; as it was, she was hoping she could get back to the ranch. Her grandmother had a cell phone, but wouldn’t turn it on in public. Rude behavior, she’d said more than once. There was no need for an individual to be constantly in contact with every other person in the world. Her grandmother would love the ranch. Madeline hadn’t been this out of contact in years.
No message from Connor or her lawyer, so she did something she probably wouldn’t have done a few days ago. She dropped her phone into her pocket without calling for reassurance that nothing unexpected had happened. Her grandmother wouldn’t want Connor taking calls if he was with her, and Everett didn’t want her bugging him about the case. He had other clients, as he had gently pointed out before her flight to Nevada, and if he had updates, he’d be in touch.
She picked up the coffee cup and sipped, her gaze focused on the cheery country wallpaper on the wall opposite. Right now she had other issues to tend to, Ty’s failure to tell her about the wood at the top of the list. In a way, she was glad he hadn’t told her. Now she had a mission and she felt more like herself—in control and ready for action.
TY WAS JUST DISAPPEARING into the barn when Madeline drove up to the gate. She went through the entire opening and closing procedure, getting snow in the top of her boots in the process, then ignored her groceries and marched straight to the barn after parking the car.
As she expected, Ty was with the cow, and even though it was late in the day, he didn’t look as if he’d slept very well. There were shadows under his eyes, and rough stubble on his jaw, giving him a worn yet sensual look that stirred something within her—something she firmly squelched. She could have showered in a warm bathroom this morning had it not been for him.“Why didn’t you tell me about the wood?” she demanded, stopping a few feet away.
An odd expression crossed his face as he slowly lowered the water bucket he’d been about to empty into the cow’s water trough, an expression that looked a lot like guilt. “To tell you the truth, it slipped my mind.”
Madeline was outraged, but she kept her tone even when she said, “It slipped your mind while I froze my butt off.”
“It isn’t like I twisted your arm to come here in the first place, Madeline.” He lifted the bucket and poured the water, splashing some on the front of his jacket. “How long will you be staying, anyway, now that you’ve made the decision to sell? I mean, will you even need wood?”
“My return flight is three days before Christmas, so, yes, I need wood.”
He frowned, unaffected by her gritty tone of voice, as he grabbed the pitchfork. “You can’t get an earlier flight out?”
Madeline shoved her hands into her pockets. “No.”
“Why are you here for so long, anyway? Don’t you have classes to teach or something? I mean…” his eyes narrowed “…I went to college and I don’t remember school ending at Thanksgiving.”
To her horror, Madeline felt her color start to rise. “I’m on sabbatical.” The words came out too fast.
Ty lifted his eyebrows. “Really.” His sarcastic tone let Madeline know just what a bad liar she was. But she wouldn’t talk about her…situation…with this guy. She’d already discussed recoiling yesterday, much to her regret, and that was as personal as she was going to get.
Madeline held his eyes, daring him to call her untruthful. “Really,” she echoed flatly before firmly changing the subject. “I’m going to see the real-estate agent day after tomorrow. One of them, anyway.”
“How many do you have lined up?” He started loading soiled straw into the wheelbarrow.
“One for now. I’ll need some information from you before I meet with him.”
“Not if you’re using Myron Crenshaw. He sold the place to me.”
She didn’t ask how he knew it was Myron. The guy appeared to be the only game in town.
“Well, if I need information later, I assume I will not have to squeeze it out of you.”
“Nope. I’ll be the picture of cooperation,” he assured her coldly. “And I’ll call about the wood today.” He dumped the last fork of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow. “I don’t want you to freeze your ass off while you’re here.”
He held her gaze for what couldn’t have been more than a second, although it felt like an eternity, then looked down again to pop the hay strings with three swift swipes of his knife.
Madeline took the hint and left.
TY PULLED THE PITCHFORK back out of the straw and finished spreading the bedding for the cow, his movements automatic. Things were not going well with his business partner and he hated the sharp emotions that were breaking through the numbness he worked so hard to achieve. His shield against guilt.
He leaned on the fork and stared blankly at the far wall of the barn. Madeline had every right to be here. Hell, she had a right to fling her accusations. But before she came and started stirring things up, he’d had a system to help him get through each day, one step at a time. The days may not have been rich and full, but there were good moments, and more than that, his system worked. If he didn’t think, didn’t feel too much, then he could make it.Madeline was upsetting the status quo and he didn’t know what to do about it other than to keep his distance. After the way she’d huffed out of the barn, stopping only to turn on the generator, he probably wouldn’t have much trouble doing that.
&nbs
p; Once the bedding was done, he shoved the pitchfork back into the nearest bale and headed toward the door, thinking he may have another nightmare in his future.
MADELINE SPENT THE afternoon stewing and working on the memoir, without much success. With the memoir part, anyway. She leaned back in her chair, taking a break and staring out the window at the snowy landscape before diving in again with renewed determination.
In six weeks everything would be sorted out, not up in the air, a state she abhorred. The ranch would be listed; her job would be safe. Ty, who had appeared from the equipment shed and started walking to his house, would be a distant memory.With his hands deep in his pockets, his chin down and the black cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, he gave the impression of a man who was walling himself off from the world. The collie, his perpetual shadow, tagged a few feet behind, shooting a quick look through the window at Madeline, as though sensing her gaze. Ty continued on, his loose-limbed walk rather mesmerizing.
She had to admit, from a detached point of view, he was something. If she didn’t have to deal with him, if all she had to do was stare at him, Madeline had to admit that she could find a certain amount of pleasure in that. Unfortunately, she did have to deal with him, and it wasn’t as easy as she had first supposed it would be.
He made her feel edgy and uncomfortable. She didn’t quite know how to handle that…. She’d never felt that way before.
AFTER AN HOUR SPENT working on the grant he probably wouldn’t need because he wouldn’t own a ranch, Ty poured a couple fingers of Jameson and sat down at the computer. Madeline had lied to him about her sabbatical. Either that or she turned pink during normal conversation, and he had yet to see that reaction in any of their other discussions.
Once the internet was up, thanks to an expensive but remarkably quick satellite connection, he typed Madeline’s name into a search engine.There were a lot of Madeline Blaines.
He added Dr. before her name and anthropology after it.
Bingo.
Ty sipped the whiskey as he skimmed the first three articles that popped up. He’d had a feeling something was up with his business partner, and sure enough, according to the news sources, Dr. Madeline Blaine, Skip’s perfect sister, was under academic investigation for suspicion of falsifying data and using blood samples without permission in an anthropological study. She wasn’t the main suspect, but had worked closely with the professor accused of using blood samples intended for medical research for a different kind of study—one the donors had not agreed to.
Ty leaned back in his chair, contemplating the screen, almost forgetting that his knee was killing him after wrestling with the hay that morning. This was a most interesting turn of events. Not that it affected him one way or another in the long run. She would undoubtedly put the ranch on the market, and he wasn’t going to try to talk her out of it. He’d lost that right when he’d insisted on driving when he was too damned tired to stay awake. He did, however, rather appreciate the knowledge that he was dealing with a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The only difference was that he wasn’t guilty of the crimes she’d accused him of.
Was she guilty?
Ty turned off the computer and sat in silence, holding the half-empty whiskey glass. The sister Skip had described wouldn’t have broken academic standards, but maybe there was more to Madeline than people knew.
Damn, after seeing her drunk, he kind of wondered if there was more to her than she knew. If she’d been anyone else, he might have been curious enough to test the waters and find out.
A small part of him was disappointed that she wasn’t. Someone else, that is. The sooner she left for the East Coast, the sooner he could get his life, such as it was, back in strict order again. Then maybe he could start to feel a measure of peace once again.
MADELINE BRUSHED her teeth by flashlight that night, thinking she should have done that before turning off the power. There was a learning curve to this lifestyle. A few minutes later she made her way through the dark house, then snuggled deep into the sleeping bag on the sofa, after setting the flashlight on the floor. And there she lay for a good hour, sorting thoughts, trying vainly to fall asleep.
The image of Ty walking across the ranch yard, hands in his pockets, hat brim tilted down, kept crowding into her brain. A man who needed to be alone.If he and Skip had been friends and partners, he couldn’t have always been that solitary. He had to have had a strong bond with her brother, although Skip did sometimes tend to befriend the friendless. Did he also befriend the dishonest?
Madeline’s instinct was telling her that Ty wasn’t dishonest, that there were other reasons the ranch hadn’t been making money. Reasons she didn’t have the inclination to sift through. She wouldn’t be able to fix them anyway—she didn’t have the expertise, or the funds to hire a manager—so what was the point?
She was doing the right thing selling the ranch. Tomorrow she’d go to town and find a place with Wi-Fi to research real estate—
A rustling on the end table near her head cut the thought short. Madeline froze. When she heard the sound again, she identified the source. The cereal box.
Cereal boxes didn’t make noises…but mice inside them did.
The scream tore from her throat as she tried to fight her way out of the sleeping bag. Something shot across her, tiny little feet pattering over her arm.
She screamed again as she fell to the floor with a heavy hip-bruising thud. Somehow she struggled free of the nylon and snatched the flashlight off the floor next to the sofa, snapping it on and waving the light in a sweeping motion. Trying to find the nasty little vermin that had helped itself to her dinner. Before it could attack again.
THE SCREAM, distorted by distance, brought Ty bolt upright in his bed.
Alvin poked Ty with his nose.“Yeah, I heard it,” he muttered to the dog as he got out of bed and felt around for his jeans. He shoved his feet in his barn boots, jogged through the house, feeling his sore knee give a pulse of pain as he rounded the corner to the kitchen. He grabbed his jacket off the hook next to the back door and slipped into it as he let himself out of the house and into the cold. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt.
His heart beat faster as he jogged the distance between their houses, haphazardly buttoning his jacket with one hand as he ran. The full moon reflected off the snow, making the flashlight he carried unnecessary, but her trailer would be dark inside.
Things had been so much simpler when the only noises in the night were coyotes and the occasional owl. A light beam swept wildly through the house, reflecting off the windows and then disappearing, only to reappear again seconds later.
What the hell?
He tromped up the steps and had his hand poised to knock on the door when Madeline yanked it open and stumbled out. She did not fall into his arms, damsel-in-distress style, but instead jumped behind him, putting his body between her and…whatever.
“It’s a mouse,” she muttered from behind him. The light in her hand was shaking.
“A mouse.”
“It ran over my arm.” She was close enough that he felt the involuntary shudder that followed her words.
Okay. He was man enough to admit that would creep him out, too. Especially in the dark. When there could be a dozen of them. He took a step away from her. Either the moonlight or sheer terror gave her face an unnaturally pale cast.
“How the hell did it get in?” he said, more to himself than to Madeline. He’d caulked every crack and seam and had stuffed steel wool around all the pipe openings. It had worked for two years. Why…?
He glanced over his shoulder at Madeline, who had her arms wrapped tightly around her, probably as much from terror as from cold. All she was wearing was a long men’s pajama top and thick wool socks. “Did you leave the door open?” Crazy idea, because why would anyone leave a door open in the middle of winter?
She automatically opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again.
“You left the door open.”
�
�When I carried the stuff in from my car.”
“How long did you leave it open?”
She shrugged, her arms still around her middle, which had an interesting effect on her breasts under the flannel of the pajama top. Ty forced himself to focus on her face and ignore the fact that a few too many of her buttons were undone. It was surprisingly difficult not to take that second look. “Five minutes maybe.”
“In the winter?”
Her eyes snapped up to his. “What would it matter?” She ground the words out. “It’s as cold inside the trailer as out. I’m amazed the pipes don’t freeze.”
“They’re well insulated,” Ty automatically replied.
She pressed her lips together. “What are you going to do about the mouse?”
“I didn’t let the mouse in.”
“I cannot sleep in there.”
And he didn’t want her in his place. He was having enough trouble sleeping as it was. “If I catch the mouse, then will you sleep in there?”
“I don’t know,” she said huskily.
Ty motioned to the open trailer door. “Get the mouse, Alvin.”
The collie shot into the trailer and Ty closed the door.
“It’s too dark for him to see,” Madeline muttered.
“He can hear and he can smell.”
Madeline shivered. Had she been anyone else, he might have put an arm around her to warm her, but he wasn’t going there. Not with Madeline. Not when he was noticing her breasts.
Inside the trailer Alvin was scrambling around, his nails scrabbling on the linoleum as he zeroed in on his target. Alvin was the best mouser Ty had ever owned, including the giant Norwegian forest cat that even the coyotes hadn’t bothered. There was a mighty clatter, followed by the snapping of jaws and then everything went quiet.
Ty waited a few seconds, then opened the door. Alvin came out, delicately carrying the limp mouse by its tail. He trotted down the stairs and dropped the rodent in the snow, staring at it.
