Читать книгу This Perfect Stranger - Barbara Ankrum - Страница 9

The sleeting rain started after lunch, but by one-fifteen it had turned into hail—a sharp, biting deluge that rattled against the tin roof of Maggie’s barn. It had scattered the horses in the paddock in a blind panic. Marble-sized balls of ice pummeled the mares, reducing them to quivering masses huddling against the barn.

One by one, she managed to catch them and lead them into the barn, out of the weather. But Geronimo, a green-broke three-year old gelding, was too frightened to be caught. She’d already missed him three times with her rope as he skidded around the paddock, eyes white with terror.

The gelding was the most unpredictable of her new horses. With the temperament of a scared bulldog, he’d resisted her every attempt at training. But Maggie knew he’d been mishandled as a young horse and she believed he had real potential as a cutter.

The heels of her boots slipped in the mud as Maggie threw the lariat. She missed, going down painfully on one knee. Geronimo crashed into the split-rail fencing and shrieked. Struggling to her feet, Maggie hauled back the spooled out rope, cursing the weather and imagining the bruises she’d have on her before she was done.

Thunder rumbled, shaking the ground and blurring the roar of the hail against the barn. Frigid rain dripped off the brim of her hat and slid down her neck. The stinging hail beat against her slicker-covered back. Instinct warned that she should leave the damned horse where he was. But she knew she didn’t have the heart to do that either. Geronimo had been through enough in his short life to fill a book. She wasn’t about to compound his misery by abandoning him when things got tough. In his state, he could break his neck trying to break out of the paddock.

“Shh—Geronimo—” she called, approaching him again as he pranced madly back and forth on the north end of the enclosure. She knew he hated the rope, but she couldn’t get close enough to him to grab his halter. “Whoa, boy. Settle down, now. Here we go. That’s it. Let’s just get you outta this weather.”

Geronimo rolled his eyes in terror as she tossed the loop one more time, this time, miraculously, dropping it over the gelding’s head. Maggie hauled back on the rope feeling the resistance before she’d even gotten it tight.

The big gelding shuddered for a moment, legs splayed, before he exploded with a high-pitched squeal. Nine-hundred pounds of fury, bone and muscle bore down on her like a shrieking banshee.

There was no time to react. Nowhere to go. She heard a scream and knew it had come from her.

Too late, she lunged sideways, diving toward the fence rails, but Geronimo slammed into her with the force of an oncoming locomotive. The impact sent her careening against the railing and slammed the breath from her lungs. Lights exploded in her skull, and the rain and the sky and even the mud beneath her cheek winked in and out like a flickering lightbulb.

She felt, more than heard, the thunderous pounding of Geronimo’s hooves against the ground nearby. She gasped and coughed. Her lungs burned. The world, as she opened her eyes, was spinning. The only thing that was holding still was the post she was curled around.

Get up!

The voice was hers. Wasn’t it? She willed herself to try. Her fingernails sank into the mud in her pathetic effort to drag herself toward the nearby rail, but found no purchase around the cold chunks of ice that littered the ground. She could hear the frantic barking of her dog, Jigger, coming from inside the house and she suddenly wished she hadn’t left him there, safe from the storm.

Dimly, it occurred to her that this was a sloppy way to die. Slogged in mud, trampled in her own paddock by a dumb animal who depended on her for its very survival.

Embarrassing, really—

Before she could finish the thought, someone was tugging on her wrists. Pulling her effortlessly away from the sound of oncoming hooves. She felt the heavy, pounding closeness of them as they barely missed her legs. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled with a fierce howl.

And then she was sprawled outside the paddock with someone leaning urgently over her, shielding her from the hail. Touching her face.

“Can you hear me?”

It was a man’s voice. That realization only dimly registered. The sky above her was still doing a slow rotation. “I—” she croaked, licking the rain off her lips. “Ben—?”

The shadow above her shook his head. “Don’t move. You might’ve broken something.”

Not Ben, she thought. Of course, not Ben. Someone else. She tried to sit up. “Who—?”

“Lie still,” he commanded, pressing her back down. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

He didn’t have to. Everything ached. Maggie squinted up at him past the rain as he ran his hands down the sides of her ribs. Big was the first word that came to mind.

And just like that, her head cleared.

Oh, no.

Pushing his hands off her, she tried to sit up again. “Don’t—”

He swore under his breath, but let her sit.

She couldn’t think. Not coherently anyway. And not while he was touching her. “I’m all right,” she told him. “I just…just had the wind knocked out of me, that’s all.”

Her shaking hands were muddy, but she fingered her aching cheek, taking in the beat up old motorcyle parked twenty feet away.

“You—you were…at Moody’s.”

“That’s right.”

“What—” she shook her head “—what’re…you doing here?”

“Saving your pretty little behind apparently.” The hail was still pelting them, but he scanned her empty yard with a look close to anger. “Where the hell is everybody?”

Everybody? Maggie tried to get to her feet and failed, bracing a hand against the post. A soft curse spilled from her lips.

In one effortless movement, he scooped her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing at all and headed toward the house.

She gasped. “No, wait! I’m perfectly capable of—”

“The hell you are.” Unmoved, he trudged through the mud toward her front door. His arms were strong and thick and she felt unreasonably small in them.

She swung a look back at the paddock and the gelding still racing around in a froth of panic. “But Geronimo—”

A humorless laugh escaped him. “You mean that loco horse that just tried to trample you to death?”

Her head ached. “He’s afraid of ropes. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

“And if you had the sense God gave a flea, you’ll call the knacker’s truck for him tomorrow.”

The knacker! She would’ve argued if she had the where-withal, but she couldn’t seem to muster it.

They reached the door then, and he yanked open the screen and gave the handle a twist, shoving it open the rest of the way with his foot. A low growl froze him in his tracks. It was Jigger, who’d planted himself just inside the doorway, poised to do battle with this stranger. But at the sight of Maggie in the man’s arms, the dog whined happily and jumped up to lick her hand.

“It’s okay, Jigger,” Maggie told him. “He’s a friend.” She looked up at Cain, whose expression was considerably more guarded. “Don’t worry. He only bites when I tell him to.”

“That’s reassuring,” he said, carrying her into the warm room and setting her down gently on the corner of the pine-planked kitchen table.

Maggie braced a hand behind her, surprisingly unsteady. She had every intention of getting immediately to her feet, but her knees had the tensile strength of water.

Wordlessly, he tugged off his gloves, reached for her mud-covered right boot and began pulling it off.

“I can do that,” she argued, even though she wasn’t precisely sure that was true. Her head felt like a fractured egg and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Moody was right about you,” he said, as the boot released her foot with a watery pop.

She frowned. “Moody?”

“She said you were stubborn as mud.”

“She actually said that?”

“Which I see now is true.”

She stared down at the top of his head as he worked on her other boot, at his dark hair, slicked with rain and hanging in dripping hanks against his forehead. His shoulders were thick and wide with a man’s strength. “What else did she say?”

He cupped his palm against her calf and tugged at the heel of her boot. “That you need help.” That boot came off with a pop and his hands followed her muddy sock up her calf and pulled it down.

Help. Yes, she needed help right now, she thought, inhaling sharply at the touch of his hands on her skin. Lord, what was she doing letting this stranger undress her?

As if he’d heard her thought, his gaze lifted to hers, his cool palm still cradling her leg. The penetrating blue heat of his eyes seared her and she tried to remember ever feeling more off balance than she did right now.

“I…don’t even know your name,” she said, reclaiming her leg and scooting backward on the table.

“Cain,” he said. “Cain MacCallister.”

Biblical references of the dark kind flitted through her mind. Cain. As in the second original sin. She watched him pull a hand towel off a towel rack and run it under the kitchen faucet until the water got hot. Jigger was watching him, too, with a proprietary sweep of his tail across the floor.

“Listen, Mr. MacCallister—” she began.

“It’s just Cain.”

“Okay. Cain. Thank you for helping me. I mean, I owe you, but if you don’t mind, I can certainly—”

He was back at her side then, lifting the hot, damp towel to her cheek. “Hold still.”

She blocked him with her hand. “Please—”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I am?” She raised a hand to her cheek and brought it back stained with red. Oh, God…

The heat stung and she winced, but he was gentle. Very gentle as he soothed the towel across her cheek, cleaning away the mess she’d made of it.

“How bad is it?” she asked. He was close enough that she could feel the heat of his nearness.

“It’s not too deep. I don’t think you need stitches. But you’re gonna have a nice shiner.”

She sank lower as he moved back to the sink to rinse the towel.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “It could’ve been worse. A lot worse.”

He was right, of course. She’d come close many times. But never as close as she’d come today. “So…do you mind telling me what you were you doing riding all the way out here on a motorcycle in the middle of a hailstorm?”

“It wasn’t hailing when I started out. But we can talk about that later.”

She grabbed his wrist as he lifted the towel to her face again. “I think we should talk about it now. I mean, it’s not every day I let a strange man carry me into my own house and—” she stared at the towel “—pull my boots off.”

A small grin softened the hard line of his mouth. Maggie felt her resolve slipping as he lifted the towel again and smoothed it across her jawline.

“I suppose it’s not every day you nearly get yourself trampled either,” he said. “Or are you in the habit of putting yourself in harm’s way?”

“Not in the habit, no. What about you?”

“Oh, it’s definitely one I’m trying to break.”

The low baritone of his voice vibrated through her. Outside, the hail still battered the window. “So…Moody sent you out here, you said?”

“That’s right. I’m looking for work.”

An unreasonable disappointment sluiced through her. “I wish I could’ve saved you the trouble. I’m not hiring.”

He lowered the towel. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re out here all by yourself.”

Uncomfortable with his closeness, she slid off the table and stood, taking a moment to get her balance. “Mr. MacCallister—”

“Cain.”

“Cain. I don’t know what Moody told you, but—”

“That your husband left you alone with this place awhile back and that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. She said you need help. It just so happens that I know a little something about horses and I’m in the market for a job.”

Maggie pressed her hands together. “You don’t understand. I can’t hire you. I can’t afford to hire anyone.”

Folding up the towel, he walked back to the sink and stared out the window. “I don’t need much. Three squares and a roof.”

She blinked at him. “Room and board?”

Slowly, he turned back to her, but she didn’t miss the way he’d balled his fist against his stomach as if trying to grind away an ache there.

“I noticed your fences in the south pasture need fixing.” He glanced up at her ceiling where water droplets swelled and dripped in a steady staccato into a dented metal bucket on her kitchen floor. “One more good storm like this one and you can probably kiss your roof goodbye. Not to mention your stock. You need help. I need a place to be for a while. It sounds like a fair trade.”

The tattoo of hail stopped abruptly on the window and silence invaded the room. Was it her imagination, or had he gone suddenly pale? She dismissed the thought as a trick of lighting. Besides, nobody who looked like he did worked for room and board. His grasp of the English language told her he was educated too, which put him miles beyond most of the itinerant hands that drifted through here. And then another thought occurred to her. “Are you in some kind of…trouble, Mr. MacCallister?”

Sweat beaded on his upper lip and he braced a hand on the counter behind him. A low curse escaped him.

“Mr. MacCallister?”

Without answering, he bolted out the kitchen door. Maggie stared after him for a heartbeat before following him. Jigger shadowed close on her heels.

She found him leaning over the boxwood bushes around the corner of her house, retching. Maggie watched helplessly, uncertain whether to stay or leave him alone. In the end she found she couldn’t simply walk away from him.

When he’d finished, he straightened slowly, his color not far off from the winter-pale green leaves beside him.

He wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. “Sorry about that.”

“You’re ill?”

He shook his head. “Moody’s coffee on an empty stomach. Not a good idea.”

She remembered the way he’d looked at those plates of food at the café. The way he’d hugged that cup of coffee as if it were gold. “How long since you’ve eaten? I mean something solid.”

His posture stiffened and he blinked as if he were considering lying. “I’m looking for a job,” he said, “not a handout.”

“That’s not exactly an answer, is it? How long?”

“A couple of days ago, I guess.”

“A couple of—?” Maggie blinked at him incredulously.

He stared first at his feet then off toward his bike. “I’m sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Cortland. I’ll be on my way.”

“Troubled me? You saved my life, Mr. MacCallister. I…I owe you something for that.”

“You don’t owe me a thing.”

“I can’t offer you a job, but the least I can do is feed you a decent meal. In fact, I insist.”

His gaze traveled slowly down the length of her, then moved to his own mud-coated boots.

“Please,” she repeated softly. “Come inside.”

Reluctantly, he followed her back in the kitchen. Maggie pulled a glass down from the cupboard, filled it with milk and held it out to him.

“Mrs. Cortland, I—” he began.

“Drink this. It’ll settle your stomach.” She looked down at her mud-covered clothes. “Look, I’m…a mess. I need a shower and a change of clothes. And then I’ll come back down and fix you some lunch.” She pulled a chair out from the table for him. “Will you let me do that for you?”

Some of the steel went out of his spine as he took the glass she offered. He was proud. She could see that. But he was hungry, too. Too hungry, she decided, to refuse her.

“I’ll be outside.” Sliding his gloves back on, he left her standing with Jigger pressed protectively against her, and the screen door screeching shut in his wake.

It took her a ten minutes under a steaming shower to get the mud out of her hair and another ten to gingerly pull on her clothes, past the ache in her shoulder and left hip. And her cheek… Well, her cheek was another matter altogether.

She supposed the bruises she saw when she looked in the mirror were minor compared to the battering her confidence had taken today. She’d always believed she could do anything she put her mind to. Today, however, she’d failed. Failed not only to save her ranch from the fate to which her husband had consigned it, but failed at the simplest of tasks required in running it.

She leaned over the vanity, inspecting her battered cheek with a frown. She’d been lucky today. If it hadn’t been for that stranger downstairs, she might well be lying dead in the paddock right now instead of contemplating how a scar would add character to her face.

She closed her eyes against the dull ache throbbing at the back of her skull. Lord, what had she been thinking chasing Geronimo that way? She should have read him better. Anticipated what he’d been about to do. Sure, she was overtired, overworked, but who wasn’t? running a day-today operation like this one. Maybe Ernie and the bank and all of those men were who were waiting for her to fold were right. Maybe she couldn’t do it. Maybe Big Sky Country did belong to the men of the world.

Maybe a husband was a requirement up here in this wild country. And in the best of worlds, she’d have one. But Ben had taken that option right out of her hands six months ago. So what choice did she have? Husbands didn’t grow on trees. And except for the one man she’d never, ever consider, no one had offered. And even a ranch hand wouldn’t help her now, she realized, thinking of Cain’s offer. It was too late for that. She needed the loan. And they’d turned her down.

She’d failed. Utterly. It was only a matter of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. And after that, Laird Donnelly would finally get what he’d always wanted. At least, she amended, half of what he wanted.

Maggie moved to her bedroom window and looked down at the yard. She couldn’t explain the relief she felt when she saw Cain’s bike still parked there. Nor could she comprehend the almost palpable rush she got at the prospect of seeing him again.

Who was he and what strange twist of fate had brought him onto her ranch exactly when she’d needed him? More troubling, perhaps, was why that very coincidence didn’t alarm her? After all, she reasoned as she made her way downstairs, she didn’t know anything about him. What if he worked for Laird? What if Laird had sent him here to make trouble for her from the inside?

Unlikely, she decided, pulling a jacket from the clothes tree by the front door. He’d come into the diner off the highway. And there hadn’t been even an exchange of glances with Laird or his men that she could recall. No, he’d said Moody sent him and Moody would never knowingly send a dangerous man to her ranch.

But then, she reasoned, real monsters rarely have fangs.

Shrugging into her jacket, she headed outside to find him. She’d promised him food and she would feed him. And that, she told herself, would be the end of that.

“Whoa, son,” Cain soothed, rubbing a dry blanket over Geronimo’s soaked haunches as the gelding blew out a nervous breath and backed against the rear wall of the stall. Cain tightened his grip around Geronimo’s lead rope and brought the animal’s head down closer to him. “Nowhere to go now, is there? It’s just you an’ me here, pal. Nothin’ to be afraid of.”

Geronimo nuzzled Cain’s clothing for a scent and exhaled sharply.

Cain’s mouth twitched with a smile. “Yeah, I know. Life’s a bitch, isn’t it? But you could do a lot worse than to end up in Maggie Cortland’s barn. A helluva lot worse. You keep that in mind the next time she steps into a paddock with you, you hear?”

A sound from the doorway had Cain whirling around with an instinct honed over the last few years. It was an old habit and hard to break, and his shoulders relaxed fractionally when he saw it was only Maggie walking toward him with a curious expression on her face. Her hair was still damp from her shower and as she walked, she pulled her fingers through it unselfconsciously.

The sight of her did things to him. Made him remember how long it had been since he’d been with a woman. Any woman. Locking down the thought, he turned his attention to the wool blanket in his hand.

“I can’t tell you,” she said breezily, “what a relief it is to know I’m not the only one who talks to horses.”

“See?” he said, tossing the blanket over the stall half door. “I told you I could be useful.”

As Jigger prowled the hallway of the barn near her, Maggie nodded at the gelding. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Settle him down like that? He’s never let anyone but me touch him.”

Cain ran his palm down over Geronimo’s velvety nose and the horse quivered with pleasure. “We came to an understanding.”

“Ah,” she said, “you mean, he understands he’s not to trample you if you understand his heartfelt desire not to be sold to the nearest glue factory.”

“Something like that.” He grinned at her as he ran his hands down the animal’s flank and across the thick, well defined muscles of his chest. “He’s got decent lines. More than decent, actually. But he’s got a shaky history.”

She braced her elbows over the half door and studied the horse. “You’re right. I’ve had him for less than a month. God knows what happened to him before I found him in that auction. But I’m not giving up on him just yet.”

“Horses like this are unpredictable at best, dangerous at worst, like today. He could kill you in a heartbeat if he took it into his thick head.”

Maggie reached up to scratch Geronimo under his chin. “He’s scared, not mean. I know the difference.”

“Dead’s dead. Nobody will care later what his intentions were.” Cain turned his back on her and finished rubbing the horse’s flanks with the blanket.

“You’re right, “she said evenly. “I’ll be more careful.”

He nodded without reply.

“So…you seem to know your way around horses.”

“Yup.”

Maggie braced her arms across the half door of the stall, resting her chin there. “Huh. A monosylabic résumé. That’s a unique approach.”

He relinquished a small smile. “I thought you weren’t looking for a résumé.”

“I’m not…exactly. Just curious, I guess. You don’t look like the sort of man who’d be drifting, that’s all.”

He gave Geronimo a final pat, then gave her damp hair and battered cheek a fresh perusal. “And sad-eyed beauties dressed in city clothes who sit alone in cafés don’t usually run ranches. So there you go.”

Color crawled up her neck as Cain drew near enough to smell the scent of soap on her. And for the briefest of moments, he had the crazy impulse to bury his face in her hair and simply breathe in the scent of her.

“You’re not the first person who thinks I don’t belong here.”

Cain narrowed his eyes. “I never said that.”

“Well, that puts you miles ahead of the competition.”

“Competition?”

“Never mind.”

She turned and he knew he’d said something wrong. Dammit.

“No, wait. Mrs. Cortland. I may be a little outta practice, but I think I just stepped on your toes. I’m…sorry.”

Maggie turned around, her expression thawing as she hugged herself with her arms. She exhaled slowly. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— It’s been a bad day. You have nothing to do with that.”

“Look—” He stared down at a callus on his hand. “Maybe I should just go.”

“No, don’t. I mean…” She pressed her hands together and he had the oddest feeling that what he’d heard in her voice was desperation. “What I mean is, I still have to feed you. You did say you’d stay for lunch? Right?”

Her eyes had gone dark. Not desperation. Fear. Not of him, but of something. Like a child scared of being alone in the dark, afraid the boogyman would come out of her closet.

He shouldn’t care, he told himself.

No, make that, he didn’t care.

He couldn’t afford to get involved with this woman’s troubles. He had enough of his own. But something about her—maybe it was her stubborn pride—made him want to tell her that everything would be all right. Hold her against him until the worry melted from her eyes.

Hell.

As if he could. As if he had it in him to try. She was a means to an end. That’s all. She’d offered him food and he’d take it and go. Simple. Clean.

No fuss, no muss. That was his motto. And he’d damned well better stick with it if he was ever going to—

“Why don’t you come in and wash up,” she said, before he could finish his thought. Turning abruptly, she headed toward the house. “I hope you don’t mind chicken. I thought I’d fry it.”

Chicken? His mouth watered instantly at the very sound of the word and his empty belly growled.

No fuss, no muss, he thought, falling in behind her with all the self-restraint of a back-door dog.

Yeah, right.