Courting the Enemy (8 page)

When she realized that he was no longer staring at her but at the puzzle, that he’d used these few minutes to complete another big chunk, she recognized that
letting her guard down, even for a second, was a mistake. It was a lesson she needed to keep in mind.

Glancing at the clock, she saw that there were fifteen minutes left in their competition. Grady had a serious lead. She couldn’t let him win. Not at this. Not at any of his games. The stakes were too high and, for one terrifying minute, she had lost sight of that.

It wouldn’t happen again, Karen vowed, as she went back to work on the puzzle with total concentration. This might be just a silly contest, but Grady was clearly playing as he did everything, with a winner-take-all attitude. It would be wise to remember that, because the next time she might lose more than a game.

Grady had never expected to get turned on by doing a jigsaw puzzle. Oh, he’d always found competition to be invigorating, but arousing? Never. Which meant this had to do with his opponent.

He glanced at Karen, amused by her flushed cheeks, by the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, as she focused totally on the puzzle. She was a feisty, sneaky competitor, far more devious than he’d ever envisioned. She had taken him totally by surprise when she’d flirted outrageously in a very successful attempt to distract him.

Not only was he distracted from the game, he was totally absorbed by the female puzzle sitting opposite him. He realized that he was no closer to his goal of understanding Karen than he had been on the day he’d decided to start spending time with her. There were too many layers, too many contradictions.

Her blind loyalty to her husband’s memory bumped
up against her sense of fair play. Her wistful dreams clashed with the harsh reality of her life. She was stubborn and hardheaded, yet vulnerable. Her eyes could flash with defiance and anger one minute, with heat and desire the next. And heat and desire were what she aroused in him, on a more continual basis.

Something was happening between the two of them, but Grady was at a loss to understand it or to predict where it might lead. Nor did he dare jump to any conclusions, because one misstep could ruin everything.

The ringing of a phone jarred the peaceful ambiance. Karen looked up, startled, and maybe even a little bit afraid. Or was it guilt that caused the color in her cheeks to heighten again? Guilt that she was sharing the day with him?

It took her a minute to react, but then she bolted for the kitchen. He heard her answer the phone with a terse greeting, then her voice dropped and he could hear nothing at all.

Knowing it would infuriate her, he used the time to add another dozen pieces to his section of the puzzle. He studied her work and his own and concluded that he had the game easily won.

When she came back into the room, she looked shaken.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

She nodded, but her expression remained troubled and she stood several feet from the table, as if she didn’t dare sit down and join him.

“I don’t believe you,” he said bluntly. “Who was on the phone?”

“Just Gina, making sure that everything was okay out here.”

So far, he didn’t see the problem. “And?”

Worried blue eyes finally met his. “She’d heard you were here.”

“How would she hear a thing like that?” he asked.

“One of the neighbors apparently saw you turning in here earlier in the day yesterday. Somebody asked Hank about it, and he told ’em to mind their own business. Dooley apparently wasn’t so circumspect.”

Grady was indignant. “Seems like a lot of commotion over you having a visitor.”

“Not just any visitor,” she reminded him.
“You.”

“So what?”

“Grady, don’t play dumb. You know how the Hansons will feel when they hear about this. It’s bad enough that people are probably calling every ten seconds to report that you’ve been stopping by to help out. When they hear you were here overnight, they’re going to go ballistic.”

He reached for her hand, but she snatched it away. “Karen, nothing happened last night.”

She scowled at him. “Don’t you think
I
know that? But it’s appearances that matter.”

“Really?”

“With Caleb’s parents, it is.”

“And their opinion matters to you?”

“Of course it does. He was their son. This was their home. I have a duty…”

He found himself battling exasperation. “The only duty you have is to yourself.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong. People don’t live just for themselves. You have to consider the impact your actions could have on everyone you care about.” Her gaze challenged him. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

He regarded her with confusion. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you? You told me you want to buy this ranch because of your grandfather,” she reminded him. “It’s never been about you, has it? It’s been about your sense of duty toward a man you admire and love and to those who came before him, people you never knew at all.”

The accuracy of her assessment made him pause. “Okay, you’re right.”

“So you have your obligations and I have mine. I don’t want to hurt the Hansons, Grady. I really don’t.”

“And my being here will hurt them.”

She nodded.

Because he hated seeing her so unhappy, he stood up. “I’m sure the highway has been plowed by now. My truck will make it down your driveway. I’ll go.” His gaze locked with hers. “If that’s what you want.”

“I do,” she said, but there was little conviction in her voice. Clearly she was struggling with herself.

Again Grady took pity on her. He would go, but not before he stepped closer, trailed a finger along her cheek. Unable to resist, he rubbed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip, needing to know if it was a soft as it looked. It was, and it quivered beneath his touch.

“It’s okay, Karen,” he told her quietly.

“It’s not,” she said. “I shouldn’t be insisting that you go. If something happens—”

“Nothing is going to happen. I’ll call you when I get to my place, if it’ll make you feel any better.” He forced a grin. “Though I’d think you might actually feel better if I slid into a ditch.”

She stared at him, clearly aghast at the suggestion. “How can you say a thing like that?”

“I am a thorn in your side, aren’t I?”

“True,” she admitted with her unfailing candor. Then she sighed. “But I’m starting to get used to it.”

Another tiny triumph, Grady concluded. He would savor that on the long, cold, risky ride home.

G
rady stayed away for two weeks. Even though it was something she’d once hoped for, Karen found herself watching the driveway day after day, regretting the attack of conscience that had had her sending him off after the snowstorm.

She knew he’d gotten home safely, not because
he’d
called, but because his housekeeper had. It was as if he’d taken her cue and decided to go one step further, cutting off all contact. The disappointment she had felt the second he had left had only grown in the days since that afternoon.

“You certainly look miserable,” Gina declared when Karen drove into Winding River to have a spaghetti dinner at the restaurant where her friend was filling in as cook. Tony had used Gina’s willingness to step in for him as the perfect excuse to take his wife on a long-promised trip to Italy.

“Just what every woman wants to hear,” Karen said. “Maybe I should have stayed home. I can probably boil pasta as well as you can.”

“Ouch,” Gina protested.

“Well, I can.”

“But your pasta isn’t homemade. Mine is.”

“You’ve got me there, though I doubt I’d notice the difference.”

“Which brings us back to miserable,” Gina said, sitting down opposite her. “I’ve got some time to talk. We’re not that busy. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Karen said honestly. There was nothing good or bad going on in her life. Every day it was just more of the same exhausting work and loneliness. She’d had a brief respite, thanks to Grady…which made it seem even more depressing now.

“Hey, this is
me
you’re talking to, not those nosy in-laws of yours,” Gina said. “Tell the truth. Is this about Grady Blackhawk?”

Karen’s gaze shot up. “Why would you think that?”

“Just hazarding a guess. You two were spending a lot of time together until I told you I’d heard rumors floating around town about him being at the ranch the night of the snowstorm. Is he still coming by?”

“No.”

“Did you two have a fight?”

“Not exactly.”

Gina regarded her with exasperation. “This is like trying to get information out of the CIA.”

Karen grinned despite herself. “Sorry. I’m not being deliberately tight-lipped. I just don’t know what to say. After you called, I explained what you had
said, and I told him it would be best if he left. He seemed to understand.”

“But he hasn’t been back,” Gina concluded. “Hasn’t called, either?”

“Nope.”

Her gaze narrowed. “And that really bothers you, doesn’t it? Were you starting to trust him, Karen? Maybe even like him? Was this turning into something for you?”

Karen felt compelled to deny it, even though the truth was that Gina had hit on the problem. “It was a pain in the neck at the outset,” she said. “It’s a pain in the neck now. Nothing’s changed.”

“Except that you’ve realized that the pain is actually a gorgeous, sexy man,” Gina guessed, clearly not buying her disclaimer.

Karen sighed. “Yes, well, there is that.”

“And that maybe you wouldn’t mind getting to know him a lot better,” Gina continued. “At least if there weren’t all these obstacles in the way.”

“But the obstacles are real,” Karen said despondently. “Caleb, his parents, the ranch—how can I overlook any of that just because I’ve been feeling a little lonely and Grady has filled a void in my life?”

Gina stood up. “I’m getting you a glass of wine. No, a whole bottle of wine.”

Karen regarded her with alarm. “I can’t drink and drive all the way back to the ranch.”

“You’re not going to. You’re going to drink and walk to my place and spend the night.” Gina walked off toward the bar before Karen could protest.

While Gina was gone, the rest of her words sank in. When she returned, Karen studied her intently,
then asked, “Since when do you have a place in Winding River?”

Gina winced. “You caught that, did you? Since I agreed to stick around and help Tony out. I couldn’t keep crashing at my parents’ place, so I rented an apartment here in town.”

“For how long?”

Gina shrugged. “Yet to be determined,” she said, casting a look across the dining room to a table by the window. The man who’d been hanging around off and on since the reunion was sitting there with an empty wineglass and a stack of paperwork. He looked as if he’d set up a permanent office right there. At the moment he was the only other customer.

“Do you want to tell me who he is and what’s going on?” Karen asked, studying her friend’s face with concern.

“Nope,” Gina said.

Alarm rose as another thought occurred to her. “He’s not stalking you, is he?”

“Not the way you mean,” Gina said wryly. “Drink your wine. I’m going to fix your dinner. Forget spaghetti. This will make your mouth water. It will transport you straight to a trattoria in Rome.”

Karen noticed that, on her way across the room, Gina paused to splash a little wine into the man’s glass, though she carefully avoided his gaze, ignored whatever he said and kept right on going toward the kitchen, where the waitress was no doubt filing her nails.

Interesting, Karen thought. And troubling. Gina had never been known for her reticence. In fact, her bubbling enthusiasm and firsthand knowledge of Italian cuisine, combined with her innovative technique
in the kitchen, had made her the perfect candidate for running a successful New York restaurant. She wasn’t bubbling now, though. At least not with the mysterious stranger.

And in all these months there had been no mention of that New York bistro or who was running it in her absence. Direct questions had been ignored or evaded, which was very unlike the candid Gina of old.

Another mystery, Karen concluded with a sigh. Her life seemed filled with them lately. And Grady was the biggest one of all. Had he been insulted, even hurt, by her cavalier dismissal that day? Had he simply given up the fight? As incredible as that might be, it was a possibility.

Maybe he was simply away on a sudden trip. She knew he had a ranch, but he also had other business interests. Perhaps he’d had to go to Cheyenne or Denver or who knew where else he might have his finger in some corporate pie. Maybe this disappearing act had nothing to do with her at all.

She sighed at the thought. More troubling than his disappearance was her reaction to it. She missed him, dammit. As Gina had guessed, Karen had gotten used to Grady’s company, exasperating as it was at times.

“It was just a habit,” she muttered. Like anything else that was bad for her, it could be broken.

“Deep thoughts?” a familiar male voice inquired behind her.

Her head snapped around, her gaze clashed with Grady’s, the wine she held with suddenly trembling fingers splashed on the table.

“Where have you been?” she asked before she could bite back the words. Even she recognized they
were a stark contrast to her previous greetings demanding to know why he
was
there.

“Miss me?” he asked, a devilish twinkle in his eyes.

“No more than I would a swarm of bees,” she retorted.

He slid into the seat opposite her, taking note of the second glass of wine. “Where’s your date?”

“I’m here alone.”

“Good. Then I’ll join you,” he said, taking a sip from the untouched extra glass Gina had left for herself.

Karen frowned, annoyed by his presumption and by her own eagerness to have him stay. “Grady, you can’t just waltz in here and invite yourself to have dinner with me.”

“Why not?”

“Just because.”

“Because it’s going to stir up more talk?” he asked, regarding her with a pointed look.

“That, too,” she agreed.

“And what else?”

“Maybe I don’t want to have dinner with you.”

“Maybe?” he teased. “Let me know when you decide, then we’ll discuss it. Until then, I’ll just sit here and enjoy the wine and the vision of a beautiful woman sitting across the table from me.”

“I don’t want you here,” she said with more conviction. “And you know perfectly well why it’s a bad idea.”

He studied her thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Yes, you do want me here. You just feel compelled to deny it. You’re tough enough to stand up to a little idle gossip.”

“If you believe that, then why did you leave the house when I asked you to?”

“Because my being there had clearly upset you and because I was way too tempted to kiss you senseless to make you forget that inconvenient conscience of yours.”

“And now?”

“You’re here. I happened by. I consider that fate.” He smiled, then turned his attention to the menu. “What are you having?”

Because she knew from experience there was little point in arguing, she gave up. Besides, the truth was, she was so happy to see him, so happy to know that he wasn’t furious with her, that her heart felt lighter than it had in days.

“I have no idea what I’m going to eat.”

“You haven’t ordered?”

“Gina wouldn’t let me. She’s fixing what suits her.”

Grady nodded. “Maybe I’d better stick my head in the kitchen and make sure she fixes enough for two.”

As he crossed the restaurant, Karen watched him intently. Her pulse had kicked into high gear the second she heard his voice and hadn’t let up since. This wasn’t good, she thought. Not good at all.

Gina came stalking out of the kitchen on Grady’s heels and followed him straight to the table. Her indignant gaze came to rest on Karen. “Are you okay with this?”

“He’s not going away,” Karen said with an air of resignation. “I guess I’ll have to make the best of it.”

“I can kick him out,” Gina offered.

“You and who else?” Grady demanded, regarding Gina with amusement.

Gina’s gaze strayed to her mysterious man. “I can muster up some help if I need it,” she declared.

“No need,” Karen said. “Grady will be on his good behavior.” She looked at him. “Won’t you?”

He winked. “The best. And I’m a really big tipper.”

Gina grinned then, apparently satisfied that there would be no fireworks. “I’m counting on it.”

After she’d gone, Grady looked at Karen. “She’s very protective of you.”

“As you’ve figured out by now, I’m sure, there are five of us who grew up together. We’ve been best friends ever since. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do if one of us needed something.”

“And these are the friends who are willing to bankroll your vacation?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“It must be nice to have a circle of friends you can count on.”

Her gaze narrowed at that. “Don’t you?”

“I have acquaintances,” he said with no trace of self-pity. “And I have my grandfather. That’s always been enough.”

She thought she detected a rare note of wistfulness in his voice. “It has been? Not now?”

His gaze met hers. “No,” he said quietly. “Not now.”

Deep inside, she felt something give way. It was the last of her defenses crumbling…and for the life of her, she couldn’t seem to regret it.

Even though she’d been anticipating—no, dreading—the call, hearing Anna Hanson’s voice on the phone first thing the next morning would have been
disconcerting enough for Karen under any conditions. But Grady had arrived not five minutes earlier. He was standing right next to her. That was enough to fill her with guilt. Added to the discovery she’d made the night before about just how vulnerable she was to this man and the guilt tripled.

“Anna,” she said with forced enthusiasm. “How good to hear your voice.”

“Is it?” Anna said in that dire tone that meant she had plenty to say to Karen, none of it good.

Anna Hanson hadn’t entirely approved of her son’s choice of a wife for reasons that had never been clear. Maybe she would have resented any woman chosen by her only son.

And when Caleb had died, Anna had all but said she believed Karen was responsible in some way. Had she known that Karen, in fact, blamed herself, she would have thrown it in her face at every opportunity. Even as it was, the tension between them had been thick ever since the funeral. Anna called only when she felt duty-bound to check in on the condition of the ranch, and seemed to have no concern about how Karen was managing with her grief.

“Of course it’s good to hear from you,” Karen said, scowling at Grady, who rolled his eyes, clearly aware of the reason for this call. “How’s everything in Arizona? Is Carl doing okay?”

“He’d be much better if we hadn’t been hearing certain things,” Anna said, her tone grim.

Karen barely contained a sigh. At least the woman hadn’t wasted any time getting to the point. “What things?”

“That you and that terrible Grady Blackhawk have been carrying on.”

“Excuse me?” Karen said, though she was less stunned by the accusation than she would have been if Gina hadn’t warned her that rumors were circulating about the night of the storm. She was only surprised that they’d taken so long to reach her in-laws.

“The first time I heard it, I dismissed it,” Anna claimed, sounding self-righteous. “But we’ve had three calls this morning alone. Apparently everyone in the entire region knows that he’s spending every single day at the ranch with you. That was bad enough, but then he was there overnight. Was he sleeping with you in my son’s bed?”

Karen had always tried to ignore her mother-in-law’s attitude for Caleb’s sake. She had wanted a smooth co-existence, if a friendship was impossible. But Caleb was no longer a consideration. She no longer had to bite her tongue. Years of pent-up anger roared through her.

“How dare you,” she said sharply, aware that Grady had moved closer and laid a supportive hand on her shoulder. She shuddered at the contact, especially given the context of the conversation, but she didn’t move away.

“I loved your son,” she told Anna emphatically. “I never gave him or you any reason to doubt that. I certainly wouldn’t do anything disrespectful of his memory under his roof.”

“Then why is that man there every single day? Why did he spend the night? And how could you be seen in public with him last night, flaunting your affair in front of our friends?”

Karen wasn’t exactly certain how to answer that. “He stayed the night because he was stranded by the
storm. And whether you want to believe me or not, there is no affair.”