"Why?"
"Something"s wrong. The light"s on in the bedroom. You didn"t turn it on before we left, did you?"
"No."
He climbed out and closed the truck door. Mallory watched as he cut across the yard to the front, but it was so dark she lost all sense of where he was. As one minute ticked by and then two, she got worried, couldn"t stay in the truck, and went after him cautiously. But by the time she reached the front door, he"d turned on the living room light and its rays spilled outside.
"Reed?" she called as she opened the screen door.
"Don"t touch anything," he directed.
Opening the screen, she went inside and gasped, "Oh, my."
The place was topsy-turvy. The kitchen window was broken and gla.s.s littered the floor. The cupboards stood open, sofa cushions had been tossed here and there. Even the candle and vases on the mantel had been moved. Reed stood by the phone, holding the receiver with a dish towel. "I"m calling Ryan," he said. "He needs to know about this."
Nodding, Mallory went to the bedroom. The drawers had been opened and both her clothing and Reed"s were strewn across the floor along with the bed pillows and the tan spread. There didn"t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the chaos.
Reed came into the bedroom. "Did you have any money tucked away in here?"
"No. My checkbook and cash were in the purse I had with me. How about you?"
"Ryan has a safe up at the house. I keep mine up there except for what I carry on me."
"Did they take anything?"
"I"m not sure this was meant to be a robbery."
"What do you mean?"
"There are three possibilities, Mallory. My first guess is Winston Bentley. He"s trying to scare you, make you feel unsafe here, so you"ll go running home."
"That"s ridiculous."
"Is it?" Reed picked up a pair of her pink lace underwear lying on the floor. "How does it feel to come in here and know that someone has touched your things?"
Chills ran up and down her spine. Reed was right. She felt violated that someone she didn"t know had gone through their things. "You said there were three possibilities."
"The second suspect would be Clint Lockhart."
The chills got worse. "You think he"s here on the Double Crown?"
"There"s no way of knowing. Ryan"s calling the sheriff. He"ll have the place dusted for prints."
"And the third possibility?" she asked, almost afraid of the answer.
"That this is a random burglar who didn"t take anything because we didn"t have anything he wanted. Although we have a real mess here, I can"t see that anything"s missing. Can you?"
Looking around, she had to agree.
By the time they"d made another cursory examination of the cabin, Ryan arrived. When he came inside, he took off his Stetson and whacked it against his thigh. "I can"t believe someone managed to slip in and out of here without my security staff seeing them."
"There"s something you should know," Reed said. When he cast a quick glance at her, Mallory wondered if he was going to tell Ryan that their marriage was a fake. Holding her breath, she waited.
He continued, "Mallory left an ex-fiance back in San Francisco. A rich one who isn"t too happy she married me. This could be his work."
Ryan looked from one of them to the other. "Is he that ornery?"
"Not only ornery, but dangerous. He tried to force Mallory to go back to San Francisco with him when we were in Reno. We should have told you."
Ryan was quiet for a few moments. "No use crying over spilled milk. Is anything missing?"
Both of them shook their heads.
"No real damage is done here. Whoever did this is giving us a warning. We"d better take it. I never thought I"d have to have a security system hooked up in this cabin, but that"s what I"d better do. You two could come up to the house and stay-"
"I have another idea," Reed said. "Can I talk to you outside for a few minutes?"
"Sure. Excuse us, will you, Mallory?"
"Yes," she answered quickly, hoping Reed had thought of something good. The last thing they needed was to share a bedroom up at the big house.
After the men stepped outside, she paced, remembering not to touch anything. It was only a few minutes until Ryan and Reed came back in.
"I think it would be a good idea if I got you away from here for a couple of days," Reed explained, his gaze holding hers.
"Where?"
"There"s a line shack about half a day"s ride from the Double Crown. We could camp out a couple of nights. I could check on the herd while we"re up there."
"Camp out?"
His steady blue eyes challenged her. "If you haven"t slept on a bedroll under the stars at least once in your lifetime, you haven"t lived."
The words he"d flung at her after they returned from the barbecue came back to haunt her. You"re a spoiled little rich girl. Maybe she had been, and this was a gauntlet he was throwing down in front of her. She couldn"t let Reed Fortune or her circ.u.mstances get the best of her. If he wanted to camp out, she"d show him that she was more than willing and very able.
"When do you want to leave?" she asked.
"Did you get everything?" Clint asked as Betsy came through the trailer door.
"Yep. The cash and the fake ID. I did just like you said. I parked way off the ranch, then followed the fence. It was scary out there in the dark with that little flashlight."
Clint knew he had to build Betsy up. He had to make her believe she could do anything-as long as she was doing it for him. "I knew you could do this for me...for us. You kept the gloves on the whole time?"
"Yep. The whole time. It was easy tonight. n.o.body was in the cabin. The people staying there drove away."
"Did the key work?"
"Nah. Like you said, they must"ve changed the locks. So I had to break the window. After I took the stash from under the floorboard in the bedroom, I messed everything up real good. It looked like some burglar went through it."
The sweater Betsy wore was tattered and looked as if it had been through a war. Reaching into one of its big pockets, she took out a wad of cash and the laminated ID. "Here you go." She put all of it into his lap.
"I guess you didn"t find any other cash laying around?"
"Uh-uh. There wasn"t much of nothin". They"re gonna think a burglar couldn"t find anything worth taking. There wasn"t even a TV!"
Clint wondered who was staying in the cabin now. "So there was more than one person staying in the cabin?"
"A man and a woman."
Usually when the Fortunes invited guests, they stayed up at the big house. Maybe they"d hired on new help. As soon as he was back on his feet, he"d find out exactly what was going on at that ranch. And he"d figure out exactly what he could do to make more trouble for Ryan Fortune than he"d ever seen.
Revenge was supposed to be sweet. Soon he"d find out just how sweet it was.
But in the meantime... He patted the couch next to his hip. "Come here, Betsy."
She perched on the sofa by his leg.
Handing her a twenty-dollar bill, he said, "You tuck that away till tomorrow, then you go buy that cat food and those candy bars."
She looked as if he"d given her the moon. After she stared down at the twenty, she glanced back up at him. "I was thinking," she said. "This couch has got to be gettin" awful lumpy. It can"t be too comfortable. Maybe..." She stopped, then went on. "Maybe, you"d like to sleep in my bed tonight."
He"d suspected this invitation was coming. "I"d like that, sugar. I"d like that a lot." He reached down and flipped his hand under her hair and brought her to him for a kiss.
A man had to take what he could get. Tonight he"d take Betsy Keene and soon...he"d take down Ryan Fortune.
As Reed readied the horses the next morning, Mallory realized she might have agreed to this outing a little too quickly. Being alone with Reed, miles from civilization...
Not that it seemed as if she had anything to worry about. He"d been keeping his distance. Lots of it. They"d been up late last night until Sheriff Wyatt Grayhawk, an in-law of Ryan"s, had taken a report, asked some questions and dusted the cabin for prints. Then they"d straightened up and gone to bed. Reed had convinced Ryan that they"d be fine for the few hours they were going to sleep...that he was a light sleeper and would hear any sound an intruder might make. But Ryan had insisted he put a guard on the cabin for the rest of the night to make sure they weren"t disturbed. They hadn"t been and soon after they"d dressed this morning Sam Waterman had arrived to do a preliminary examination for the security system Ryan wanted installed.
Reed had told Mallory there were provisions in the line shack and all they needed were bedrolls and a change of clothes. She could take her swimsuit if she wanted to go wading in the creek. Not sure exactly what they"d be doing, she packed an extra pair of jeans, socks, sneakers, shorts and a top, her swimsuit and managed to stick a towel into the bedroll. He"d eyed all of it curiously but hadn"t commented as he packed saddlebags and attached their bedrolls to the back of each saddle.
Ryan himself saw them off and told them to have a good time...to try to forget about everything that had happened. But as they rode across the range, Mallory couldn"t forget any of it. Not from the moment she"d awakened next to Reed, not their kisses, nor the tightrope of tension that pulled between them now. With the leather tie from her new hat swinging under her chin, she clicked to her horse and kept pace with Reed"s stallion.
"Thank you for handling the subject of Winston so tactfully last night," she said, breaking the silence.
"I wasn"t being tactful. I was just trying to alert Ryan to the possibility of more than one person causing trouble."
All of their conversations had been almost terse ever since those few moments in the kitchen yesterday. "But you didn"t tell him that our marriage is a...sham."
After a sobering moment he muttered, "There will be time enough for that."
Again silence fell between them, and it was obvious to Mallory that Reed didn"t want to talk to her. She felt like a burden, a responsibility he"d taken on and didn"t really want. She didn"t want to be his responsibility.
The countryside changed as they rode, becoming hillier. The gra.s.s grew thicker, and she could see why they brought cattle up here for summer pastures. "Have you been here before?" she asked when they stopped for a few moments to drink some water.
"My first week on the Double Crown, I drove a few head of cattle up here with another cowhand."
Again Reed made no attempt to carry on the conversation. So Mallory gave up trying. If he wanted silence, she"d give it to him.
They reached their destination in the early afternoon. The weathered shack and small corral looked like a set from an old Western. Mallory could see a stream about twenty yards behind it. Cottonwoods and cedars lined its banks. The Texas landscape in shades of brown and green stretched out behind the shack over the crest of a hill. It was a landscape that begged to be painted, and she was glad she"d tucked a small sketch pad and charcoal pencil into her saddlebag.
They rode into the corral and, as she prepared to dismount, Reed warned her, "Take care when you hit the ground. You"ve been on horseback a long time."
Sometimes she couldn"t figure out if he was telling her what to do or looking out for her benefit. But knowing the ride had been a long one, she dismounted carefully. Her legs did feel like wet noodles, and she held on to the saddle for a few minutes, letting the horse prop her up.
"The circulation will come back. Shake them out."
Feeling ridiculous, she tapped one foot on the ground then the other. Reed was still watching her, and she didn"t want to give him a reason to come to her rescue yet again. "I"m fine," she told him as she unhitched her saddlebag.
He dismounted easily, his boots solid on the ground. Obviously he was used to being on a horse for hours at a time. "I"ll get the bedrolls if you want to go inside out of the sun."
"Reed, will you please stop telling me how to take care of myself?"
His jaw tensed and the nerve on the side of it worked. From the look in his eyes, she knew he was holding his temper and biting back a lot of things he"d like to say. Before she found out what they were, she followed his suggestion and opened the creaky door of the line shack.
The inside was Spartan-two metal cots with thin mattresses and a stand of shelves that held canned goods. A scarred rectangular table flanked by two plank-bottom chairs sat in the corner, and a cupboard stood against the far wall. Mallory laid her saddlebag on one of the cots then went to open the cupboard. She found plastic plates, silverware, mugs, pots and an a.s.sortment of biodegradable soaps-bars for bathing, liquid for dishes. On the bottom shelf she saw a stack of dishcloths, a couple of towels and packs of toilet paper.
When Reed came in, he caught her checking the supplies. "Think you can handle this for a couple of days?"
"What"s to handle?" she murmured, going over to the window and hiking it up. "We"ve got everything we could need." She wouldn"t tell him that she was afraid of wild animals and being out in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors within shouting distance, let alone driving distance. She was also stressed out because these quarters were even smaller than the adobe"s. But she told herself she"d be perfectly fine.
He motioned to the water containers next to the shelves. "Make sure you keep drinking when you"re out in the sun."
Her gaze met his, and they both realized he"d just given her another order, but neither of them mentioned it, knowing it was the spark that might make the tinder ignite.
Rosita had packed them a lunch and they ate it swiftly, more to get the meal over with than to enjoy the food. Reed took a few swallows of water from his mug and set it down. "I"m going to ride out and check on the cattle this afternoon. Do you want to come along or do you want to stay here?"
She"d only slept a couple of hours last night. She was tired, and her body was already beginning to protest from the long ride. "I"ll stay here." Before he could give her a warning, she added, "I won"t go wandering off anywhere. I"ll wait until you come back to explore."
She almost thought he was going to smile, but if the inclination crossed his mind, it never made it to his lips.
Lifting his Stetson off a peg on the wall, he set it on his head. "I"ll be back in plenty of time to get supper started."
"I can certainly open a can of beans," she muttered, seeing that there were plenty of those on the shelf.
"Maybe so, but can you start the campfire to warm them on?"
"Once you show me how, I"ll be able to do it the next time," she returned with a little too much sweetness, not ready to capitulate that she needed him to take care of her.
This time the corner of his lip did twitch. "Make yourself at home," he said with a wink. Then he closed the door and was gone.
That darn s.e.xy Australian drawl made her want to throw something at the closed door, but she simply didn"t have the energy, and a few moments later she heard the clomp of hooves as Reed rode away.
Weaving in and out of the cattle, Reed checked them over superficially, his mind on Mallory. He couldn"t shake her out of his head anymore. He"d lost his cool with her after the barbecue. With the cabin torn up last night, the idea that somebody might want to do her harm unnerved him so much that all he wanted to do was to hold her in his arms and keep her safe.
Well...not all he wanted to do.
Shadows were lengthening as he rode back to the camp, wondering what Mallory had found to occupy herself. She wasn"t the type of woman who liked to sit idle. After he walked his horse the last quarter mile or so, he led Spirit into the corral and unsaddled him. The door to the shack was open, and Mallory sat at the table by the light of the window, sketching. Crossing to the table, he studied two finished scenes that she"d drawn. One was a long shot of the terrain and brush and gently sloping hills with the line shack nestled in the middle of all of it. The second was a sketch of her horse, Dusty Dawn, as he stood in the corral. She"d managed to capture his st.u.r.diness, the alertness in his eyes, the proud set of his head.