A Knight In Cowboy Boots (15 page)

“Nothin’.”

“It ain’t nothin’. There’s something eating at—” And a piece of the puzzle dropped into place. “Was Vince in love?”

Instead of answering, Sol stretched his right leg out from the couch, so he could dig into the front pocket of his jeans. Zach had to get up to see what he held up between his fingers.

“Is that a diamond?”

Sol turned the ring in his fingers and, even in the poorly lit room, it glinted. “He was gonna ask her that day—the day he died.”

“Christ.” The word was little more than air passing between Zach’s teeth as he sat back down hard.

“His mamma asked me to go up there after the funeral and bring his stuff home.” Sol’s words lacked emotion, as though his burst of fury had left him hollowed out.

“Jake didn’t tell me you done went up there.”

With that, Zach understood his brother’s bitterness. Vince had died because of a girl who had a crazy ex-boyfriend. Sol was mad about it, but Zach was suddenly glad Vince had at least found someone to love before he died.

“Did you meet her?”

Sol nodded wearily. “He told her all about me.”

What had Vince told Sol about her? Zach wondered. He could too easily imagine Vince not saying anything until he was sure he was serious. They’d been as close as brothers, but no one talked to Sol about their love life. Sol’s marriage had been a train wreck that left him cynical and bitter about relationships. Prophecies of doom wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear when they were busy falling in love.

“Before I could introduce myself, she knew who I was.” Sol’s voice roughened, as though he pushed the words through a throat tight with emotion. “She called me McKay.”

Zach closed his eyes. Vince and Sol’s friendship had started in first grade where the teacher had seated their class alphabetically. For years, they’d called each other McKay and McEm—Sol McKnight and Vince McMahon. Though they’d eventually dropped the nicknames, Vince had started using McKay again when he’d gone off to college. An attempt, Zach thought, to stave off homesickness.

“I didn’t give his folks the ring coz then I’d have to explain about … and I just … I ain’t figured out how to do that yet.”

Zach nodded his understanding.

“She’s a nice girl,” Sol said softly, as though he was talking to himself. “She cried over him with me.”

And if I died tomorrow, Zach thought, no girl would cry for me.

He remembered the way Maddie had cried in his arms. Any woman who could cry like that felt things deeply. He wanted a woman to care like that, who would cry over him, if he were gone. Even as he recognized that his timing stank, that it was totally inappropriate while in the middle of a conversation about Vince, he throbbed with the desire to drag Maddie off to bed, like a caveman claiming his woman. That it was a five hour drive back to Galveston wasn’t something his body seemed to think mattered.

He was going to have to work long hours over the breeding books to get back to Galveston by Friday, but waiting any longer just wasn’t something he thought he could do.

Chapter Eleven

“Hey, sweet Maddie.”

Maddie’s hands froze over the cash register keys. She hadn’t realized Zach’s voice would send a thrill down her spine. Recovering quickly, she stabbed at the keys, tallying up the customer’s tab, all the while refusing to lift her eyes to his image in the back bar mirror.

The register began spitting out the credit card slip. Maddie’s hand hovered until it was done. With the slip in hand, she turned. “Hello, Zach.” Without a second glance, she left for the customer waiting at the far end of the bar.

She wished it were later. The bar would get busy soon as folks came in to hear the small country band that played on Friday and Saturday nights. Unfortunately, Friday afternoons were the slowest time of the week with the businessmen checking out and the weekend clientele just checking in.

“Tall Lone Star?” she asked when she returned, keeping her voice professionally distant.

When he didn’t answer, she was forced to look at him. His face was expressionless, but the hurt in his dark eyes stabbed at her.
What did he expect?
she thought, trying to argue herself out of feeling responsible. He was the one who had left town without so much as a ‘see you around.’

“You’re mad at me,” Zach said softly.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Maddie repeated. “You can’t guess?” She could see it on his face as he mentally sorted through possibilities.

“Because I didn’t call?” His voice revealed how unsure he was of his answer.

“Why should I be mad about that?” Maddie said, aware that her tone rebutted her words, but unable to keep the anger from her voice. “I don’t own you.”

It didn’t escape her notice that her emotions contradicted her decision not to see him again.

“But I told you I’d be going up to the ranch.”

“No, you—” Maddie pressed her lips tight as she realized Zach thought she’d understood when he’d told her about the ranch. “You didn’t say when you were going. Or when you’d be back. Do you think I have nothing better to do than sit around, wondering if you’re going to show up?”

“No, I—I thought you’d be busy with Jesse and with the bar.”

Maddie tightened her lips again, this time, fighting a smile. Confusion mixed with the desire to placate her showed plainly on his face. She had him totally flummoxed.

Inexplicably, she found it endearing.

No!
Maddie scolded herself. She forced the corners of her lips into a frown. She couldn’t see him anymore. For just a moment though, she couldn’t remember why.

“Maddie?”

She focused on Zach, steeling herself to be ruthless not only with him, but with herself. “Look, Zach. I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but I just don’t have a place in my life right now for the games you men play.”

“I wasn’t—”

“No.”

“No? No what?”

“Just no. I can’t deal with this now. I don’t have the emotional reserves.” She hadn’t intended to reveal that much truth.

Zach sat for several moments, just looking at her, his large hands splayed on top of the bar. His eyes were shuttered, closing whatever he might be feeling inside. “All right. If that’s how you want it. Let me know if you change your mind.” He got off the barstool and walked out, his back ramrod stiff.

Maddie’s emotions flatlined. She’d expected it to be more difficult. She couldn’t possibly be disappointed that he hadn’t fought harder. She only felt like crying, she assured herself, because she hadn’t been able to close the Pandora’s box of emotion inside herself that he’d opened.

*

Zach didn’t recognize the woman at checkin. He’d been presumptive, thinking he wouldn’t need a room. Too embarrassed to call his sister and ask her to comp him one at the last minute, he paid for it himself.

Only when the quiet of the room got on his nerves did he remember he’d left his iPod station at Maddie’s. Zach laughed harshly at himself. He’d known the woman a week and already he’d managed to leave his stuff at her place. He pried his boots off and stretched out on the bed. Propping his back against the headboard, he switched on the TV with the remote and started flipping through channels.

When nothing snagged his attention, he snapped it off. Between shifts on the oil rigs, Zach was a voracious reader. He reached into his bag for the novel by Harlen Coben he hadn’t finished, but his mind wouldn’t shut up long enough for him to disappear into the pages. After a dozen false starts, he tossed the book against the wall and sat there, brooding.

He’d run into unreasonable women before, but they didn’t just cut a guy loose over the first misunderstanding. They usually spent time trying to reform him into what they thought they wanted. How could Maddie have snapped so quickly? Why was she so different from other women?

Zach felt like giving himself the V-slap. How could he even ask why she was different?

Spending the last four days lost in daydreams about her and how he’d sweep her off her feet, he’d completely lost sight of the fact that she was a frightened woman on the run. He should count himself lucky she hadn’t shot him again.

Maddie needed more than sweeping off her feet; she needed to be protected and made to feel secure. In order to do that, he needed to figure out what was going on. Zach dug his wallet out of his hip pocket and fished the slip of paper with the Wyoming phone number on it from among the bills.

He stared at it, the question of who to ask for running in circles in his mind: Prudence or Maddie. Maddie or Prudence.

If he screwed up, he’d blow the only shot he had at this. The only thing he knew for sure was the car was tied to this number and to Prudence Wells. He had to attack through that knowledge. Zach reached for his cell phone, only to realize he’d left it in the pickup he’d driven back to Galveston. Too impatient to get it now that he’d figured out an approach, he picked up the room phone, punched up an outside line, and dialed Prudence Wells’s number.

“Hello?” A woman answered tentatively.

“Hello, ma’am. Is this Prudence Wells?”

“Yes, it is,” she answered cautiously.

“I understand you have a ‘ Lincoln Continental Mark IV for sale.”

The pause seemed endless, but eventually the woman said, “I’m afraid it’s already been sold.”

“I’m right sorry to hear that, Miz Wells, coz from what I hear tell, your car’s exactly what I been looking for. My daddy had one years ago, and he sure loved that car. I done come into some money, and I’d dearly love to find him one. Is there any chance whoever bought it might be interested in selling it? I’d pay a premium price.”

“I really couldn’t say,” Prudence said coolly.

“Is there some way I could reach the buyer to ask her?” Zach grimaced. A stranger wouldn’t assume a woman had bought the car.

Prudence Wells’s voice went from chilly to freezer burned. “I really don’t know how to contact the buyer. He was taking the car out of state. To Kansas, I believe.”

“That’s a real shame. I’m sorry to have taken up your time.”

He hung up, not at all upset about not getting more from Prudence Wells. She’d given him more than he’d expected. The woman had no reason to go so cold over his slip unless she was protecting Maddie.

Zach found that reassuring. He liked Miz Wells’s voice. He couldn’t imagine the woman who owned it protecting someone who would kidnap a child.

Gut reaction wasn’t proof, Zach told himself, but the exhilaration that sprouted from his instinctive reaction refused to be dispelled. A new resolve grew out of the euphoria.

If Maddie thought she was going to run him off so easily, she’d lost more than her mind. He pulled the phone book out of the nightstand and flipped through the pages until he found a good florist.

*

Maddie walked hand-in-hand with Vince through a sun-drenched field of wildflowers. He folded her in his arms and kissed her.

“Sweet Maddie,” Vince whispered. She opened her eyes to find herself naked on a bed of white rose petals. Zach had replaced Vince. With a touch as light as butterfly wings, he explored her body. The climax that cascaded through her just as he was nudging his way inside woke her. Maddie lay breathless in the aftermath.

Damn him
, but the curse carried no heat. A glance at the clock told her it was early, only a quarter to five. Not having fallen into bed until :, she should still be tired, but the dream, with its unexpected benefits, left her wide awake. It also placed Zach center stage in her mind.

In the short time she’d known him, he’d never been anything but confident. His bewildered reaction to her rejection had been a new side of him—a strangely appealing side. He made her want to reconsider her decision, but even contemplating it left her emotionally exhausted. Maddie had spent the days waiting for his return thinking about little else. He’d even distracted her from selling the Lincoln as she’d intended to do this week.

Eventually, she gave up the idea of falling back to sleep and got up. Jesse would be awake soon, and she’d have to face the day short of sleep—one more excuse to damn Zach.

Later, when she was almost ready to go to work, she found out just how difficult it was going to be to continue damning him. Expecting Peggy, when the doorbell rang, she buzzed the downstairs door open without even inquiring who it was.

Maddie’s heart leaped into her throat when the knock sounded at the door. Peggy would have just bounced in.

“Who’s there?” she asked as her fingers fumbled the deadbolt closed.

“Flower delivery.”

Maddie’s fingers froze on the lock. “Flowers?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Maddie put the chain on the door, unlocked the deadbolt, and peered out. It really was flowers, and no matter how paranoid she might be, she couldn’t imagine the poor, pimpled teenage boy holding them could be anyone sinister. Maddie unhooked the chain she’d just put on and opened the door.

“Maddie Grey?”

“Yes.”

“These are for you.”

The delivery boy held out a massive cluster of roses in a large vase.

Instinctively, Maddie took them.

He was gone, passing Peggy at the top of the stairs as she was coming up, before Maddie could even ask if she should tip him.

“Roses!” Peggy exclaimed. “What did you do for those?”

Maddie blushed. “Nothing. Come on in.”

Peggy bulldogged her steps as she set the roses on the table. Maddie couldn’t help burying her nose in a blossom and breathing in the lovely scent. She turned her back on Peggy to read the card.

Forgive me.
Below that:
You can shoot me if it helps.

Maddie couldn’t help smiling, even as her heart twisted. Why couldn’t she have met him when her life wasn’t such a mess?

“Who’re they from?”

“No one special,” Maddie put on a casual face. “Just a guy from the hotel, trying to impress me.”

“Well, if you’re not impressed, I am,” Peggy gushed. “Imagine two dozen red roses just—”

“
Two
dozen?” Maddie looked at the flowers again.

“
Two
dozen,” Peggy repeated. “I oughta know. I’m a college girl. That means I can count.”