Secrets and Desire: Best-Kept Lies / Miss Pruitt's Private Life / Secrets, Lies...and Passion

“Why not?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“Oh, right, keep the little woman in the dark. That’s always a great idea,” she said sarcastically. “This isn’t the Dark Ages, Striker.”

If possible, his lips compressed even further. His mouth was the thinnest of lines, his jaw set, his expression hard as nails. And then she got it. Why he was being so tight-lipped. “Wait a minute. What do you think? That this place is bugged?”

When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. Disbelieving. “No way.”

He threw her a look that cut her to the bone. “Let’s get a move on.”

She didn’t argue, just dug through the drawers of her dresser and threw some essentials into her bag, then grabbed her purse.

Within minutes they were inside Kurt’s truck and roaring out of the parking lot. Yesterday’s rain had stopped, but the sky was still overcast, gray clouds moving slowly inland from the Pacific. Randi stared out the window, but her mind was racing. Could Sam have found out about Joshua? It was possible, of course, that he’d somehow learned she’d had a baby, but she doubted he would do the math to figure out if he was the kid’s father. The truth of the matter was that he just didn’t give a damn. Never had. She drummed her fingers against window.

“I don’t know why you think just because Donahue’s in town that Joshua’s not safe. If he drove by, it was probably just a fluke, a coincidence. Believe me, Sam Donahue wouldn’t give two cents that he fathered another kid.” She leaned against the passenger door as Kurt inched the pickup through the tangle of thick traffic.

“A truck belonging to Donahue has cruised by Sharon Okano’s apartment complex twice this afternoon. Not just once. I wouldn’t call that a coincidence. Would you?”

“No.” Her throat went dry, her fingers curled into balls of tension.

“Already checked the plates with the DMV. That’s what tipped Brown off, the license plates were from out of state. Montana.”

Randi’s entire world cracked. She fingered the chain at her throat. “But he’s rarely there, in Montana,” she heard herself saying as if from a long distance away. “And I didn’t tell him about Joshua.”

“Doesn’t matter what you told him. He could have found out easy enough. He has ties to Grand Hope. Parents, an ex-wife or two. Gossip travels fast. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to count back nine months from the date your baby was born.” Striker managed to nose the truck onto the freeway where he accelerated for less than a mile, then slammed on the brakes as traffic stopped and far in the distance lights from a police car flashed bright.

“Great,” Striker muttered, forcing the truck toward the next exit. He pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket and poked in a number. A few seconds later, he said, “Look, we’re caught in traffic. An accident northbound. It’s gonna be a while. Stay where you are and call me if the rig goes by or if there’s any sign of Donahue.”

Randi listened and tried not to panic. So Sam Donahue was in the area. It wasn’t as if he never came to Seattle. Hadn’t she hooked up with him here, in a bar on the waterfront? She’d been doing research on her book and had realized through the wonders of the Internet that he’d been in a rodeo competition in Oregon and was traveling north on his way to Alberta, Canada. She’d e-mailed him, met him for a drink and the rest was history.

“Good. Just keep an eye out. We’ll be there ASAP.” Striker snapped the phone shut and slid a glance in her direction. “Donahue hasn’t been back.”

“Maybe I should call him.”

A muscle in Kurt’s jaw leaped as he glared through the windshield. “And why the hell would you want to do that?”

“To find out what he’s doing in town.”

Striker’s eyes narrowed. “You’d call up the guy who’s trying to kill you.”

“We don’t know that he’s trying to kill me.” She shook her head and leaned the back of her crown against the seat rest. “It doesn’t make sense. Even if he knew about Joshua, Sam wouldn’t want anything to do with him.”

“So why did you two break up—wait a minute, let’s start with how you got together.”

“I’d always wanted to write a book and my brothers had not only glamorized the whole rodeo circuit but they had also told me about the seedy side. There were illegal wagers, lots of betting. Some contestants would throw a competition, others drugged their horses, or their competitors’ mounts. The animals—bulls, calves, horses—were sometimes mistreated. It’s a violent sport, one that attracts macho men and competitive women moving from one town to the next. There are groupies and bar fights and prescription and recreational drug abuse. A lot of these cowboys live in pain and there’s the constant danger of being thrown and trampled or gored or crushed. High passion. I thought it would make for interesting reading, so, while interviewing people, I came across Sam Donahue.” Her tongue nearly tripped on his name. “He grew up in Grand Hope, knew my brothers, was even on the circuit with Matt. I started interviewing him, one thing led to another and…well, the rest, as they say, is history.”

“How’d you find him?”

“I read about a local rodeo, down towards Centralia. He was entered, so I got his number, gave him a call and agreed to meet him for a drink. My brothers didn’t much like him but I found him interesting and charming. We had a connection in that we both grew up in Montana, and I was coming off a bad relationship, so we hit it off. In retrospect, I’d probably say it was a mistake, except for the fact that I ended up with Joshua. My son is worth every second of heartache I suffered.”

“What kind of heartache?” Striker asked, his jaw rock hard.

She glanced through the window, avoiding his eyes. “Oh, you know. The kind where you find out that the last ex-wife wasn’t quite an ex. Sam had never quite gotten around to signing the divorce papers.” She felt a fool for having believed the lying son of a bitch. She’d known better. She was a journalist, for crying out loud. She should have checked him out, seen the warning signs, because she’d always made a point of dating men who were completely single—not engaged, not separated, not seriously connected with any woman. But she’d failed with Sam Donahue, believing him when he’d lied and said he’d been separated two years, divorced for six months.

Striker was easing the truck past the accident where the driver of a tow truck was winching a mangled Honda onto its bed and a couple of police officers were talking with two men near the twisted front end of a minivan of some kind. A paramedic truck was parked at an angle and two officers were talking with several boys in baseball hats who appeared unhurt but shaken. As soon as the truck was past the accident, traffic cleared and Striker pushed the speed limit again.

“So you didn’t know he was married.”

“Right,” she replied, but couldn’t stop the heat from washing up the back of her neck. She’d been a fool. “I knew that he was divorced from his first wife, Corrine. Patsy was his second wife. Might still be for all I know. Once I found out he was still married I was outta there.” With one finger she drew on the condensation on the passenger-door window.

“You loved him.” There it was. The statement she’d withdrawn from; the one she couldn’t face.

Striker’s fingers were coiled in a death grip around the steering wheel, as if somehow her answer mattered to him.

“I thought I loved him, but…even while we were seeing each other, I knew it wasn’t right. There was something off.” It was hard to explain that tumble of emotions. “The trouble was, by the time I’d figured it out, I was pregnant.”

“So you decided to keep the baby and the secret.”

“Yes,” she admitted, strangely relieved to unburden herself as Striker took an off-ramp and cut through the neighborhood where Sharon Okano’s apartment was located. She hesitated about telling him the rest of the story, but decided to trust him with the truth. “Along with the fact that Sam didn’t tell me he was married, he also failed to mention that he and some of his friends had actually drugged a competitor’s animals just before the competition. One bull reacted violently, injuring himself and his rider. The Brahman had to be put down, but not before throwing the rider and trampling him. The cowboy survived, but barely. Ended up with broken ribs, a shattered wrist, crushed pelvis and punctured spleen.”

“So why wasn’t Donahue arrested?”

“Not enough proof. No one saw him do it. He and his friends came up with an alibi.” She glanced at Striker as he pulled into a parking space at Sharon’s apartment building. “He never admitted drugging the bull, and I’m really not sure that it wasn’t one of his buddies who actually did the injecting, but I’m sure that he was behind it. Just a gut feeling and the way he talked about the incident.” She mentally chastised herself for being such a fool, and stared out the passenger window. “I’d already decided not to see him anymore and then, on top of all that, I discovered he was still married. Nice, huh?”

Striker cut the engine. “Not very.”

“I know.” The old pain cut deep, but she wasn’t about to break down. Not in front of this man; not in front of anyone. Her jaw slid to one side. “Man, can I pick ’em.”

Kurt touched her shoulder. “Just for the record, Randi. You deserve better than Donahue.” She glanced his way and found him staring at her. His gaze scraped hers and beneath the hard facade, hidden in his eyes, a sliver of understanding, a tiny bit of empathy. “Come on. Let’s go get your kid.” He offered her the hint of a smile, then his grin faded quickly and the moment, that instant of connection, passed.

Her silly heart wrenched, and tears, so close to the surface, threatened.

She was out of the truck in a flash, taking the stairs to the upper-story unit two at a time. Suddenly frantic to see her baby, she pounded on the door. Sharon, a petite woman, answered. In her arms was Joshua. Blinking as if he’d just woken up from a nap, his fuzz of red-blond hair sticking straight up, he wiggled at the sight of her. Randi’s heart split into a million pieces at the sight of her son. The tears she’d been fighting filled her eyes.

“Hey, big guy,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

“He missed you,” Sharon said as she transferred the baby into Randi’s hungry arms.

“Not half as bad as I missed him.” Randi was snuggling her son, wrapped up in the wonder of holding him, smelling the baby shampoo in his hair and listening to the little coo that escaped those tiny lips, when she heard a quiet cough behind her. “Oh…this is Kurt Striker. Sharon Okano. Kurt is a friend of my brother Slade’s.” With an arch of her eyebrow, she added, “All of my brothers decided to hire him as, if you’ll believe this, my personal bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?” Sharon’s eyebrows lifted a bit. “How serious is this trouble you’re in?”

“Serious enough, I guess. Kurt thinks it would be best if we kept the baby with us.”

“Whatever you want.” Sharon gently touched Joshua’s cheek. “He’s adorable, you know. I’m not sure that if you left him here much longer I could ever give him up.”

“You need one of your own.”