Standoff at Mustang Ridge (7 page)

Travis definitely didn’t care for her hesitation. He huffed. “Sophie, here’s the bottom line. If you don’t leave with me now, the marriage is off, and your father loses everything. Maybe even his life.” He looked at his watch. “You’ve got two minutes to decide.”

Chapter Six

Royce didn’t realize he was holding his breath until his lungs began to ache. Hell. He wanted to toss both Travis and his ultimatum out the door, but there was a lot at stake here.

For Sophie.

And for her family.

Travis might indeed save her father from going under financially, but Royce didn’t trust the man. He wanted to believe it had nothing to do with Sophie herself. And especially nothing to do with their scalding-hot kissing session the month before. But he figured that his breath-holding wasn’t a good sign.

“I’ll check up on this loan shark,” Royce told her as Travis kept his attention nailed to his watch. “If he sent those kidnappers after you, maybe I can prove it.”

That would get the loan shark off the street, but it wouldn’t pay off her father’s debts. It also might not end the threats to Sophie and anyone else in her family.

“No,” Sophie said. “Travis, I’m not going with you.”

That was the answer Royce had hoped for, but he sure hadn’t expected it. Maybe Sophie had realized just how dangerous Travis could be. Next time, the man might do more than just slap her.

“You know what’s at stake,” Travis warned her.

She nodded.

Travis waited several moments, maybe to see if she’d change her mind. When Sophie didn’t budge, Travis cursed and headed for the door. “You’re an idiot to trust that cowboy over me, and you’ll be sorry.”

Royce nearly gave a smart-mouthed reply, but the truth was, he wanted Travis out of there. He didn’t have to wait long for that. Travis slammed the door and headed to his car across the street. Royce kept his eyes on him until the man had driven away.

Sophie was doing the same, and the moment he was out of sight, her breath swooshed out. “I’ve had more than enough excitement for one day,” she mumbled. “I need to go home.”

“You can’t,” Royce reminded her. “Those gunmen are still at large, and they could have your house under surveillance.”

The color drained from her face. “I have to get out of here and go somewhere else then,” she insisted.

Yeah. Royce knew how she felt. The adrenaline crash was no doubt hitting her pretty hard right now. Him, too. And now that the dust was settling, she was starting to realize just how close they’d come to dying today. Agent Lott was supposed to arrive soon, but they could reschedule their meeting with him. Sophie wasn’t in any shape to face the questions he’d no doubt ask.

Her tears didn’t return, thank God, but since she looked ready to keel over, he held her up. Sophie took the gesture one step further and leaned into him. Royce upped things too by looping his arm around her waist.

Then she sort of melted against him.

This holding was wrong, and Royce knew it. Sophie was business now. She was the target of hired guns, and that made her someone in his protective custody. Hugging her wasn’t exactly crossing the line, but whenever he was close to her like this, his thoughts didn’t stay just on hugging. Royce didn’t remember everything that happened in the motel, but he sure as hell remembered kissing her.

And touching her.

There was even a blink of an image of him unhooking her black lace bra and having her breasts spill out into his hands.

This wasn’t a good time to relive that specific image. Not with her this close and not with Royce dealing with his own adrenaline crash.

“I need to get out of here,” she repeated. She stayed melted against his body, and that didn’t help clear Royce’s head.

“We can go to my place,” he heard himself offer.

She looked relieved, as if she wanted to jump at the idea. Royce wasn’t jumping, that’s for sure. It was a dangerous mix—them, alone at his place. But with this heat simmering between them, maybe there was no place safe. At least he had a security system at his house and the ranch hands could help him keep an eye out for the gunmen. So he rationalized that Sophie would be safer there.

Well, safer from gunmen anyway.

But maybe not from him.

“But what about the office?” she asked. “No one else is here.”

“Give me a second.” Royce called Billy and asked him to come in.

The deputy said he’d be there in ten minutes, but Royce didn’t want to wait. He made a second call to one of the ranch hands, Tommy Rester, and asked him to secure the ranch.

Royce locked up Travis’s gun in his desk and stuffed the paper with the loan shark’s name and number in his shirt pocket. He hung the Be Back Soon sign in the window that had the emergency contact number. That was the advantage of living in a small town—people didn’t expect the sheriff’s office to be manned 24/7 as long as someone was on call and responded to 9-1-1.

He locked up and got Sophie moving toward his truck. The snow was light but still coming down, and the icy wind whipped at them. Royce got Sophie inside as quickly as he could, and on the drive to the ranch, he called Sergeant Frank Coulter, a cop in the Amarillo P.D.

Royce didn’t put the call on Speaker, even though Sophie no doubt wanted to hear what the sergeant had to say. Still, she might need a toned down version though he had no idea how to tone down the fact that her father might have nearly gotten her killed.

“What do you know about a loan shark named Teddy Bonner?” Royce asked Frank.

“Plenty. Please don’t tell me he’s in Mustang Ridge.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he just hired two goons to come after a local woman. When I intervened, they tried to gun down both of us.”

The sergeant made a slight sound of surprise. “You’re sure it was Bonner behind that?”

“No, but the woman’s father owes Bonner plenty of money.” Royce glanced at Sophie, and she was leaning closer, trying to listen.

“The hired guns don’t sound like Bonner,” Frank continued. “Neither does the part about going for the guy’s daughter. He’s real old-school, Royce. Breaking kneecaps is more his style, and he hires muscle to do that. And I’ve never heard of him using family to get back at someone who owes him money.”

Hell. If Bonner wasn’t responsible for this, then they were right back to Travis.

“I can bring Bonner in and ask him a few questions,” Frank offered. “Who’s the fool stupid enough to borrow money from a worm like him?”

“Eldon Conway,” Royce answered. “When I get the report done on the shooting, I’ll send you a copy. There might be some details of the attack that we might be able to tie back to Bonner.”

Royce thanked the sergeant, hung up.

“I heard,” Sophie said.

Unlike him, she was no doubt relieved that her father’s loan shark might not be the reason she’d nearly died. If it had been Bonner, it would have made this investigation a whole lot easier because he would have had an instant suspect and perhaps even a quick arrest.

Royce turned onto the ranch road, the tires of his truck crunching over the snow and ice. Maybe the weather would slow down the gunmen enough for the Rangers to find them. Maybe. But Royce was guessing the pair already had an escape route planned before they even fired the first shot.

He spotted one of the ranch hands in the doorway of the barn nearest the front of the property. The hand was armed with a rifle. So was the one sitting in a truck by the cattle gate that stretched across the entire road. The moment that Royce drove through, the hand shut the gate.

“You have Angus cows,” Sophie mumbled. “I wasn’t sure what kind of livestock you raised.”

Royce followed her gaze to the cows in the fenced pasture. They were indeed Angus, and since her father didn’t raise cattle, only quarter horses, he was surprised she even recognized the breed.

“We have some Charolais, too,” Royce explained.

Her attention went from the cows, to the outbuildings and then to the two-story ranch house where his father and sister, Nell, lived. Jake, Maggie and his niece, Sunny, were there, too, for now, but in another month or so they’d be moving to their own house that Jake was having built near the creek.

“It’s a big place,” she commented.

“Not as big as your father’s. And we won’t be staying here anyway. We’ll be at my house, and it’s a lot smaller than this place or yours,” he clarified. “It’s about a quarter of a mile from here.”

“My father has land and the house, not me,” she said a moment later. “But he had to sell the livestock because of his money problems.”

Yeah. Royce had heard that. And that brought him to something he should probably let lie, but Eldon’s money problems were perhaps connected to Sophie’s safety. “Why doesn’t he sell the ranch and pay off that loan shark?” Instead of trying to marry off Sophie to Travis.

She shook her head. “Even if he got top dollar for the place, it wouldn’t be enough, and the ranch isn’t worth what it was a few years ago.”

Royce had to replay that in his head to make sure he’d heard her correctly. Maybe the value had gone down, but Eldon still had a lot of land. “How much does your father owe?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure, but from what I can tell he owes about a dozen people close to a million dollars. I don’t know exactly how much of that has to be paid to Bonner.”

Hell.
“That was a lot of cash for Travis to cough up to marry you.”

She made a sound of agreement. “But there’s a twist,” Sophie said as Royce came to a stop in front of his small, wood frame house. “My mother left me nearly ten million, and while there are a dozen or more conditions of her will that prevent me from giving money to my father and brother, there’s nothing that prevents my spouse from dipping into it.”

“Isn’t that what prenups are for?” he immediately asked.

“Travis refused to sign one.”

He thought about that. And cursed. “Then Travis could be pressing for this marriage so he can get his hands on your money?”

“Maybe. He said he wouldn’t sign a prenup because he has triple the money that I do and doesn’t need my inheritance, but I found some things in the papers I sent to Agent Lott that contradicts that. I believe Travis has the million to pay off my father’s debts, but I think it would also wipe out his liquid assets.”

“Yet you agreed to marry him? Hell’s bells, Sophie, Travis could have been planning to kill you—” And his argument came to a halt. “But after the wedding. That’s the only way he could have gotten his hands on your money.”

She nodded.

“Travis could have sent the kidnappers, though,” Royce added.

Another nod. “Maybe he was going to force me into the marriage. Or he’s sick enough to stage my rescue so that I’d go running into his arms.” She paused, shuddered. “But those men fired shots at us.”

“Maybe not on Travis’s orders,” Royce had to admit. “They could have panicked or even thought they could scare us into surrendering.”

Movement in the side mirror caught his eye, and Royce automatically went for his gun. He stopped, though, when he saw his father’s truck coming up the road. Royce cursed. He didn’t need this today.

“Trouble?” Sophie asked.

“Always,” Royce mumbled.

He got out, Sophie did the same, and they went onto his porch, which was scabbed with ice. Sophie’s left foot slipped, sliding her right back into Royce’s arms, and that’s when Chet stepped from his truck.

“Jake told me about the shooting,” Chet greeted in his usual snarling tone. “Is that why you brought
her
here?”

Royce opened the door to his house and helped Sophie inside. It was not only warmer there, but it would get them out of the slipping embrace that his father had no doubt noticed.

“Sophie’s in danger,” Royce informed his father. “And yeah, that’s why I brought her here.”

Royce braced himself for a scathing reminder of that danger following her to the ranch. Chet had had a few run-ins with Eldon, so Royce figured his father would want her anywhere but there.

Of course, Chet felt that way about most people.

“I’ve heard talk,” Chet said, his attention landing not on Royce but Sophie, “that my son might have gotten you pregnant.”

Sophie made a sound of pure surprise, and if Chet’s revelation hadn’t stunned Royce for several seconds, he might have made that sound, too.

“Where did you hear that?” Royce demanded.

“Around. Is it true?”

“No,” Sophie insisted before Royce could tell Chet to mind his own business.

“Good.” But there was no relief in Chet’s weathered eyes when he looked at Royce. “I didn’t think you were that stupid. Best to keep your jeans zipped around her sort.”

Royce glanced at Sophie and saw the color rise in her cheeks. What Royce was feeling wasn’t embarrassment. It was pure anger.

“Her sort?”
Royce repeated. He eased Sophie back so he could step inside and meet his father’s gaze. “What? You afraid I’ll follow in your footsteps?”

Royce didn’t give Chet a chance to answer. He’d made his point, and that point was for his father to back way off, especially when it came to Sophie.

He shut the door. And locked it. While he was at it, Royce set the security system. From the window, he saw his father mumble something and then get back in his truck and drive away.
Good
. He could only take Chet in small doses, and that had been a big enough dose to last him for weeks.

“Your father and you don’t get along,” Sophie commented. She took off her coat and put it on the peg next to the door.

“No one gets along with Chet.” Royce shrugged. “Well, except my three-year-old niece, Sunny. He doesn’t bark and growl at her.”

“Then there must be some good underneath that gruff exterior.”

Royce took off his coat as well and put it over Sophie’s. “If there is, I haven’t found it yet. He definitely wouldn’t offer me a hug like your old man did you back at the sheriff’s office.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “He loves me. I just wish he were more responsible.” She paused. “How do you think your father found out about the pregnancy lie?”

He huffed, tried to rub away his headache. “I don’t know, and we won’t get the answer from Chet until he’s good and ready to spill it. But my guess is that Travis asked around to find out if we were seeing each other. Those kinds of questions wouldn’t stay secret long in a small town.”