No One But You

Whatever color there was in her face drained away. “I didn’t shoot—”

“I think you did.” But he really didn’t know. Her reaction could be taken in two completely exclusive ways. Either she’d shot Everly in the back and was now caught red-handed with the murder weapon, or she had only just now figured out that someone had neatly framed her.

It struck him that if Kyle Everly had an arsenal of weapons stashed somewhere on the Bar Naught, which was what Hanifen’s deputy had seemed to imply, weapons Fiona Halsey knew about, she would have been smarter than to used her own Remington.

She swallowed hard. He watched the pitching of her throat beneath the delicate, luminous skin of her neck in the low lighting of the stables. Rustling sounds, scrapes and hooves and clanking of the other Bar Naught horses, filled the silence.

“Who are you?” she demanded, her chin thrust forward.

Her question was more complicated than she knew. Matt answered more honestly than he’d had any intention of doing. “Whoever I need to be.”

He watched the shadows alter on her face, knew that her jaw tightened. “What were you doing hiding out in here?”

“Basically, I thought I’d be better off staying out of Hanifen’s way.”

“Just shy, I suppose.”

He cracked the smile, but the image of Everly dropping dead of a bullet in the back was not far from his mind.

She lowered the rifle a bit. If she truly wasn’t the one who had shot Everly in the back, then she had at least to suspect that she had the murderer in her sights. But she had a problem, he knew. She wasn’t willing or inclined to kill him, or she’d already have pulled the trigger. But if she turned her back on him to call Hanifen, he would either kill her or get away.

Why was she willing to stand here jawing with him?

Then the thought occurred to him that she had known all along that there was someone hiding out in the stables. She’d kept an eagle eye on the horses during the last few hours. He’d heard her come and go a couple of times before Hanifen and his men cleared out, making the rounds of stalls, calming the valuable animals by her presence and her soft, sultry reassurances.

She hadn’t come near Soldier’s stall. He’d sensed her nearby, smelled hesitation on her, but in his oxygen-deprived head, he’d chalked it up to Soldier’s inhospitable attitude. Now he had to wonder. He took the stab in the dark. “You knew before Hanifen and his boys left that someone was holed up in here with Soldier, didn’t you?”

Her chin pitched up. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Why didn’t you turn me in when you had the chance, Fiona?”

Her trigger finger flinched almost imperceptibly. Her shadowy eyes narrowed. “Maybe…No, you’re wrong. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

“Maybe?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I think you were.”

“You think?” she mocked him.

He turned his head slowly, minutely, back and forth. “You knew.” He knew, now, without a doubt. His stab in the dark had struck a nerve. He still didn’t get it. What possible reason could she have for not exposing an intruder’s whereabouts to Hanifen? For that matter, why wasn’t she persisting till he gave her straight answers as to who he was and what he was doing at the scene of a murder?

“All right, then,” she tossed back, at last releasing the firing pin, lowering the rifle butt-first to the ground. “Why do you think I kept my mouth shut?”

“It’s a mystery to me.” More so with every moment. Why put the rifle down now? “Maybe you aren’t at all sorry that he’s dead.”

“Hmm.” He heard heavy derision in that noise. “Maybe I wanted to find out who hated Everly more than I do.” She tossed her head, sent her long hair flying. For the first time he saw uncertainty edging in. She gritted her teeth “Maybe I wanted to help whoever did it get away. Maybe I wanted to kiss you—”

She cut herself off awkwardly. Her mouth clapped shut. “I mean—”

He knew what she meant. She knew what she meant. Maybe, she’d have kissed anyone who got rid of Kyle Everly for her. A sort of bounty. But in Matt’s perceptions—and hers, he thought—the meaning expanded, time slowed, and the air between them all but blistered.

His heart boomed. His blood pooled deep down. He’d spent his life keeping not only his passions but visceral reactions like this under impenetrable wraps, but he knew his gaze sharpened in spite of him, intensified, locked on her lips.

She couldn’t let her mistaken meaning go uncorrected. Her tongue swiped at her lips and she tried to take it back.

“Kiss whoever—” She swallowed. “I meant…not you.”

“I know what you meant.” He tried to put a stop to the slippery slope of sexual awareness sucking the air out of them both. “Did you hate him that much, Fiona? Enough to kill him?”

“Yes. But I didn’t.”

Stricken and still pale, shaking now, she fixed her gaze on Soldier Boy, avoiding the threat of a kiss between them. Then she turned and gave him a withering look. “When is the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

“Beats me. How long do those things last?”

She rolled her eyes. “Come with me. Or forget it. Take your chances. It really doesn’t matter to me.”

But he had the distinct impression that it would suit her very well if he if walked away and took his chances with a fatal case of lockjaw.

He followed her instead.

FIONA TURNED ON HER HEEL and led the way from the barn into a room outfitted with an examining table and stocked with veterinary supplies. Aware that he was following her, she switched on the glaring overhead lights. Her hands were shaking. She set the safety and put aside the rifle, then opened a gleaming white cabinet door and pulled out a vial containing a dose of tetanus booster.

Dear Lord, what was she doing?

She began to go through a drawer in search of a small syringe when he boosted himself up onto the small-animal exam table.

“That’s meant for animals under a hundred pounds.”

“Must not get a lot of use.” He pulled one arm out of his coat and began rolling up a sleeve.

“That’s not the point.” He didn’t belong there. Didn’t belong on the Bar Naught at all. In fact he didn’t have any business looking at her the way he was looking at her.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.” He meant that the table would hold up. She meant much, much more. Nothing was fine. Nothing had been fine for her or the Bar Naught in a very long time.

“Fiona—”

She looked straight into his dark brown eyes, noting the fringe of thick black lashes. “Don’t bother sweet-talking me, Guiliani.”

His pupils flared, otherwise she would not have known she’d caught him off guard. He was that good.

He blinked slowly. “If you know who I am, Fiona, then what was that all about in Soldier’s stall?”

“I didn’t know at first. Not for a while. Now that you’re under the lights—” Now that you made a fool of me, broke my heart cozying up to Soldier Boy— She cut off the thought and shrugged. “I know. That’s all.”