Black Heat (3 page)

Roan peeked through her curtain of hair at the man who was keeping her prisoner in the old pantry. He was looking at her as though he knew everything about her without being told. "Then I guess we're back where we started," he said. "Breaking and entering."

"What do you care?" she snapped, lifting her head and looking at him defiantly. "You work on the rigs, right? Came up from Mississippi or Georgia or somewhere like that, to get rich? What business is it of yours what goes on in this town, since you'll leave as soon as the work dries up?"

"You're local."

"Yeah, genius, I already told you that."

His expression didn't change. He looked...thoughtful. Calculating. Roan couldn't figure out his angle, and it made her nervous. If he wanted to harm her, he would have done so already. If he was going to turn her in, all it would take was a quick call, but he hadn't reached for his phone. He couldn't possibly know about the treasure, so she didn't figure he wanted a cut of it.

Hell, he probably wouldn't believe it if she told him about it, anyway. He'd probably doubt that an old man would bury something valuable beneath the floor of the family home before he died. But Grandpop had been an eccentric old war veteran with a distrust of banks, and besides, Roan had no choice but to believe the treasure was real. It was Angel's only hope.

"My name is Cal," the man said finally. "Calvin Dixon. I'm not an oilman, but a lot of my friends are. And I'm from Arkansas. We all are." He hooked his thumb behind him, toward the bunkhouse. "We rent from your stepmother. I'm not going to tell her I found you out here, long as we can come to some kind of agreement, so you can stop worrying about that."

Roan snorted, unwilling to let him see the relief that flooded her. She couldn't really afford to antagonize Mimi, not unless she wanted to get sucked into another big drama over her plans for the farm. Last time Mimi sold off acreage, Roan had been furious, but the angry phone calls between them had done nothing but make her feel worse. She couldn't control what Mimi did, so the best she could do was to ignore her as well as the ranch, which she'd been doing until very recently. Until she got desperate.

"Whatever," she muttered.

"You're not going to break in any more. I can't exactly sit over here waiting for you to show up in the middle of the night, and I don't want to have to explain to my roommates that it isn't raccoons over here leaving tracks."

"Okay, I won't come back," she snapped at him. Let him believe it, if it helped him sleep at night; she'd just have to be more careful.

"And I'm taking you to lunch."

"
No
." She bit off the word almost before he finished speaking. It wasn't just fear that caused her visceral response—after all, he couldn't do anything to her in a public place, especially if he promised not to tell anyone that he'd caught her breaking in—but the stirring of emotions Roan didn't have a name for.

Calvin Dixon, whoever he was, was dangerous. Not because he was strong, and stealthy, and unclear about his motives. But because Roan felt herself responding to him: to his dark, ragged good looks; to his measured words and smoldering eye contact. Because he was a man who made her feel very much like a grown woman.

At twenty-four, Roan had had several relationships with men, one that lasted almost six months. But she'd also had time to build a wall against intimacy that had seemed solid enough to keep out any serious bids for her heart. And she needed that wall to stay firmly in place.

"It's the deal," Cal said, his voice hard. "Take it or leave it."

Their eyes met and held. The only sound was the creaking of beams somewhere in the upper floor of the ruined house. In Roan's old bedroom, perhaps, which had looked out over a flowering dogwood and a view of the town far in the distance. Roan curled her fingers into fists and took a breath. It was just lunch—she could survive an hour in a public place with anyone, even this man who'd interrupted her search for treasure, who'd never understand what was at stake.

"Not unless I have your word I can finish looking for what's mine."

"Can't let you do that." He shook his head, his jaw set. "You'll have to work that out with Mimi."

More stony silence. "Fine," she finally lied. She'd just have to find a way.

"And I'm driving you home."

"I have my bike."

"It's almost three in the morning. And it's about to rain. I'm not asking. What's your name, anyway?"

"Roan," she said, and she saw him try it soundlessly, moving his lips to the shape of her name as he helped her up, folding her hand into his like it was made to fit there.

CHAPTER THREE

The bike was surprising.

It didn't look like much on the outside, but as Cal rolled it toward his truck, it glided as though it had just rolled off the assembly line. Someone had done some custom work on the gears, and the wheels rolled straight and true.

Roan looked like she wanted to bolt. But as he lifted the bike into the truck bed, she got into the cab and put on her seat belt.

"I'm on Myrtle Street," she said, staring straight ahead. "Two blocks past the tire store on Second."

Cal nodded and started the truck, backing carefully into a turn before heading down the lane toward the main road. He glanced at the bunkhouse; the only light on was in his own bedroom. His roommates were all asleep. It would be close to four o'clock when he got back, too late to try to get any more sleep. At five-thirty, Matthew would be up making coffee and starting breakfast. And Cal had plenty of experience waiting out the hours before dawn.

They didn't speak. Cal glanced at her as he drove, keeping an eye on the road ahead of him. Even in the middle of the night the trucks made the route through town out to the rigs, loaded down with equipment and oil and gravel and sand. The rigs never slept: the night shift would end at seven, a fresh crew coming in to take over until their own twelve hours were finished. Then they would return, exhausted, to the man camps and apartments and motels they called home during their hitches, which lasted weeks at a time. Cal was one of the lucky ones, with a real home, and friends to make it bearable.

"I didn't need a ride," she finally said. She sounded angry, but somehow Cal knew it wasn't all directed at him. "I could have biked."

"All right."

He wasn't going to give her an argument, even if that's what she was looking for. She was older than he'd first thought. Yesterday afternoon, he'd glimpsed only her slim, wiry figure and all that hair and thought she was a teenager, maybe a runaway. But the woman sitting next to him in his truck was all grown up, not much younger than his own twenty-eight years. Underneath the battered leather jacket and the old sweatshirt, her body bore a woman's curves, her hips and ass fitting the old jeans perfectly. Her face was all angles and planes, full lips and cheekbones and narrow navy-blue eyes that tilted up slightly at the corners, making her look like she had a thousand secrets. She'd be gorgeous if she pulled her hair back enough for anyone to get a look at her face, but he had the feeling she didn't have the faintest idea.

He found Myrtle Street and turned right. A handful of bungalows lined one side; the other was taken up by a lumberyard, the tall fencing that surrounded it topped by razor wire and lit by spots.

"I can get out here," Roan said, her hand already on the door handle.

"Which one's yours?" Cal gambled that she wouldn't jump out while the truck was still moving, but he slowed just in case. He didn't need to be peeling her off the road tonight, not with dawn just hours away.

She bit her lip, barely looking at him. "Why do you need to know?"

"Look," Cal said, letting out an exasperated sigh. "I can find out easy enough. You already know my name, you know where I live, and I guess by now we can agree I'm not exactly a danger to you. In fact, I might be the kind of friend you could stand to have."

Why had he said that? He'd asked Roan to lunch tomorrow just so he could get a little closure on the events in the burned house: if he established his relationship to Mimi, to his friends, to the ranch, maybe he could help Roan get whatever it was she was looking for without complicating their renting situation. Which was tenuous, to say the least; Mimi wasn't exactly the easiest landlady in the world, according to Matthew. The rest of them hadn't met her yet, since Matthew took care of all the details.

He wanted to help
. The notion echoed back in his mind, mocking him. The same voice he fought every day since he'd been an out-of-control teenager, the voice that tried to seduce him into quitting, giving up, agreeing with the rest of the world that he was no good and never would be.

"Let me help, damn it," he repeated. Way louder than necessary. Roan gave him a startled glance and he knew he'd gone too far. He gripped the steering wheel so hard he thought he might pull it off the steering column.

"I have plenty of friends," Roan mumbled. But Cal knew a lie when he heard one. Her hand was still on the door handle; she was looking down at the floor of the truck.

"It's that one," he said, pointing at a little white house with brick trim and a pair of crabapple trees flanking the walk. A row of shrubs was neatly wrapped in burlap; window boxes had been filled with cut greens. The house itself had seen better days; paint peeled and the porch listed and one of the shutters was hanging by a nail.

"How did you know?" She finally looked him in the eye.

Cal shrugged. As deductive detective work went, it was hardly a challenge. He pointed to the garage at the end of the pebbled driveway; leaning against its side were half a dozen bicycle tires and several bikes in various states of disrepair and dismantling. "They're yours, right?"

She looked from the bicycle parts back to him and nodded.

"You fix bikes."

"I work at Walt's bike shop."

Cal couldn't think of anything else to say. He was uncomfortably aware of trying to stretch the conversation out. "So I'll see you tomorrow. Bluebird okay? Noon?"

"I guess." This time she opened the door and jumped out without looking at him. Cal considered getting out and lifting her bike from the truck bed, but he figured she'd only glare at him. She had it out, her hand under the frame like it weighed nothing, in seconds.

Cal watched Roan wheel the thing down the drive and around the back of the house. She never looked back.

CHAPTER FOUR

"
Angel," Roan said softly, sliding her backpack onto the battered table next to the door. "My big girl."

In response she heard the thump of a feathered tail against the wall of the kitchen. As Roan snapped on a light, bathing one of her two small rooms in golden light, she winced, knowing that Angel was getting slowly to her feet, her hips trembling with pain and effort as she braced herself against the wall.

"Animals are incredibly adaptable," Dr. Raj had told Roan kindly last time she'd taken Angel in. She knew Dr. Raj had been trying to make her feel better. His gentle, caring ways went well beyond the animals in his veterinary practice; he was just as solicitous with the humans who came through his doors.

Dr. Raj had tried a variety of nonsurgical techniques to help Angel's dysplasia, but they had run out of options. Options that Roan could afford, anyway. Dr. Raj had already offered to do both hips for the price of a single surgery, and Roan had a feeling he was tempted to do the entire procedure for free, but she could never allow that.

Roan had been on her own from the age of eighteen and one day, and she was determined to hang onto her independence, which was something you couldn't do by taking handouts.

Roan went into the kitchen and knelt down next to Angel, who made a sound deep in her throat that Roan thought of as her purring sound. She yawned extravagantly and burrowed her head onto Roan's knees. Roan scratched her behind the ears and along her spine, taking care not to exert any pressure on the dog's hindquarters.

"You up for a walk, girl?" she asked, fetching the leash from the hook on the wall. She'd walked Angel after her dinner and the dog didn't need to go out until morning, but the encounter with Calvin Dixon had left Roan unsettled. A walk in the cold night air would do her good.

Roan closed the door behind her with care. Her landlady lived in the front of the house and her bedroom was on the same side as Roan's door. Mrs. Castleberry was quite elderly and probably would sleep through Armageddon, but many of their neighbors worked long shifts and cherished their sleep.

They set out together, walking slowly—limping, in Angel's case. Angel was a bulldog/chocolate lab mix, as far as anyone could tell, and she wasn't yet six years old. Her severe dysplasia was sheer bad luck, Dr. Raj said, combined with the bulldog breed's tendency toward hip issues. With surgery, she could live pain free. Without it...

Roan blinked away the moisture in her eyes. She wasn't a crier. Never had been and wasn't about to start now. Without surgery, having exhausted every other option, Angel would experience agony every time she took a step. Roan had given herself until the day after Thanksgiving, a week away, to find the money for the surgery. Dr. Raj, his kind old face looking unusually lined and tired, had nodded when they discussed what needed to be done. Roan knew that he would be waiting for her in his office if she needed him, even while his wife and daughters went shopping or enjoyed their holiday, and that he would do whatever could be done to make Angel's passing a peaceful one.