Baby at his Door

“Why?” Payne asked.

“She had a wreck last night avoiding one of our cows.” Evan closed the tack-room door and started up toward the house. His father fell into step beside him. Evan watched the old man from the corner of his eye. He wondered if Payne ever got lonely living out here with just Evan and ranch hands for company.

“We’ve got insurance,” Payne said, interrupting his thoughts.

Evan nodded. “She has a head injury.”

“Concussion?” Payne asked as they entered the kitchen. Both men stopped to kick off their boots. One of Evan’s mother’s lingering edicts. No dirty boots in the house. She’d been dead for over twenty years, but they still wouldn’t track muck into her kitchen.

“I don’t think so. But we couldn’t be sure.”

“That’s good. When’s she leaving?”

“She’s broke. I’m going to put her to work at the sheriff’s office until she has enough money to pay off her car.”

“Do you know what you’re doing, son?”

Evan nodded.

“She looks a little like Shanna.”

“I know.”

“See that you remember that.”

Evan started breakfast trying to forget what his father’s words meant.

Shanna had been spoiled, and though she’d loved him at school, his hometown had been too much for her. She’d begged him to move back to D.C. with her. To go back to working with the FBI when it became apparent that ranch life wasn’t what she’d envisioned. But he hadn’t loved her enough to leave his family and his home. Nor had she.

He’d been a mess when Shanna had left him for the bright lights of D.C. But Evan had learned that lesson. He didn’t need a reminder. Fooling around with Lydia was all he had in mind. And that was more dreaming than anything else. If she stayed here, there were Payne and a dozen ranch hands to act as chaperones.

The two Powell men sat down to a cold cereal breakfast without speaking. The silence was comfortable to them and they both enjoyed it for their own reasons.

The phone interrupted breakfast, and Payne, closest to the wall unit, reached out his long arm to answer it. He nodded to Evan. Evan took the call in the other room.

“What’s up, Hobbs?”

“I ran the description of the car and the lady last night and nothing came up.”

“Okay, we’ll look into it when I come down this afternoon.”

Lydia passed by the doorway as Evan hung up the phone. “Lydia?”

“Yes?” she said.

He saw that the lights last night hadn’t fooled him, she was even more beautiful in the pure light of day. Her icy blond hair was pulled into a chignon. He knew it wasn’t a bun because his mother had explained women’s hairstyles to him when he was a boy.

“We couldn’t find your name in the computer last night to match to the car. I’m going to need you to write down the spelling.”

She hesitated a second before she looked away. “Okay.”

“Is this going to be a problem?”

Her face was transparent and her eyes, which were a deep sapphire this morning, wouldn’t meet his. She wore a stylish sundress with thin straps and a short skirt. She had knockout legs. He longed to feel them wrapped around his hips.

Dammit, get your mind back to business. The wound on her forehead had disappeared. She had a good hand with makeup, he thought.

“No. It’s just that well…the car isn’t registered in my name.” She was lying to him. And she wasn’t very good at it.

“You know we can find out who you are from the vehicle identification number, right?”

“Really?”

He nodded.

She moved closer to him. Her expensive perfume surrounded him, and he could think of nothing but searching her body to find out where she’d dabbed it. “Will you take my word for it that I haven’t done anything illegal and the car really is mine?”

She had innocent eyes; he didn’t think she’d done anything illegal. There was something about the eyes of a criminal that you never forgot. “Maybe.”

“Maybe? What would it take to make that a yes?” she asked, moving a breath closer and running her finger along his jaw.

“More than a lick,” he said stepping away. Damn, he liked flirting with a sassy woman. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it until this very moment. If he stayed in the room with her alone for a few more seconds he was going to forget his good sense and kiss her. Take those perfectly painted lips beneath his own and not come up for air until she forgot about the stories she was trying to tell him.

“Well that’s all I’ve got to offer right now,” she said.

“Let’s go have some breakfast and you can meet my dad. You can tell me the details of why you’re using an assumed name on the way into town.”

He followed her down the hall to the silence of the kitchen, watching her hips sway with each step and feeling arousal tingle along his spine and groin. He wanted her, and she had to know. He’d always been transparent when he was in lust.

He was once again in the crossfire that had cut him down before. A lying woman he wanted more than his next breath or his job. He’d chosen poorly the first time. He wouldn’t again.

Three

Staying in the small town of Placid Springs, Florida, was going to be an experience. To call it a town was being generous. The one main street possessed a flashing caution signal, and there wasn’t a department store to be found.

She’d come into the office with Evan because she couldn’t stand being alone with her thoughts. The sheriff’s office was besieged by well-wishers and curiosity seekers for a good part of the afternoon while she was there. Every person in the small town knew each other. Apparently she was the first person to hit a light pole while avoiding a cow.

“Most people just stop, ma’am. The cows rarely ram ya’,” one old-timer told her.

She was between a rock and a hard place. Evan embodied all of the qualities she’d found lacking in the men she’d dated. And after meeting the kind older gentleman that was Evan’s father, she doubted Evan would understand how demanding a father could be.

The mechanic had called; it was going to take two weeks for the parts needed to repair her car to come in. She wished Aunt Gracie was home so she could wire her some money. No, she didn’t, she wanted to do this on her own.

Say it again, she thought, maybe you’ll begin to believe it.

“We still can’t find your name in our computers.”

Lydia flinched and stared up into the sheriff’s frozen gray eyes. She’d tried to think of how to get around having her father find out where she was while still assuaging the local law-enforcement needs. “I…”