Out Rider

Don’t go there. But her heart automatically began to pound as Dev starkly recalled the evening at the ranger headquarters when she had been alone, getting ready to close up the visitor’s center. Gordon had waited, hidden, when she went into the back room to put the money in the safe. He’d jumped her, then knocked her down and started tearing at her shirt, popping the buttons off. Dev closed her eyes, willing away that terrifying experience, the fear skittering through her like a knife blade sliding through her tightening gut.

“You all right, Miss McGuire?”

Sloan’s low voice was near and it startled her. Ever since Gordon had jumped her, she’d been filled with anxiety, afraid of her own shadow. With a gasp, Dev’s eyes flew open and she leaped back. Staring up at him, she saw confusion and then regret come to Sloan’s expression.

“Sorry,” he said. “I startled you.” He turned and pointed toward the trailer. “Tire’s fixed and you’re ready to go.”

Gulping, Dev whispered, “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean... I...” She gave him an apologetic look. “I’m just jumpy.”

Nodding, Sloan said, “Understandable. You’re in a new state, new area with a new job. That’s enough to make a polecat wanna leap around.”

He pushed the brim of his hat up a little, studying her. Dev McGuire had gone pale on him except for two red spots on her cheeks from the near-freezing temperature. His low, soothing words seemed to calm her and her eyes no longer reflected menace. There was nothing threatening around him that he could discern, so Sloan wrote it off as that blown tire. It would spook anyone when they were carrying a beloved animal in a trailer. It took a damn good driver to safely bring a horse in a trailer to a standstill after a tire had blown. She had the skills.

“C-could you tell me how to get to Teton Park, Mr. Rankin?” Dev said, trying to collect her strewn thoughts. Every time she had a flashback on Gordon jumping her, she was shaking for the next few hours. She could feel her stomach curling and tightening, her breath a little ragged and shallow. “I need to put my mare, Goldy, in the barn area.”

“Call me Sloan. I’ll do you one better than that,” he reassured her. “Follow me. I’ll take you right to the barn. That way, you won’t get lost. Sound good to you?”

Did it ever! Dev gave him a grateful look. “Wonderful. Are you sure I’m not taking you out of your way?”

“Naw,” Sloan replied, pulling out a cell phone from his worn back pocket. “I was going to shoe Triple H Ranch horses today, but I’ll call ’em and let ’em know I’ll be a tad late. They won’t mind.”

Tension bled out of Dev and her stomach unknotted. It usually took hours for her to relax. Did it have to do with Sloan? He didn’t seem like someone who got rattled about anything. But then, her knowledge of horses and blacksmiths told her that the men and women who entered that trade were all like him: calm, quiet and possessing a low voice that just naturally put tense horses and mules at ease. Hell, he’d put her at ease! Smiling to herself, she said, “Great. Thanks. I’ll just follow you, then.” She walked quickly around the trailer and climbed into her truck.

* * *

SLOAN WAS MET by a whine from Mouse, his brindle-colored Belgian Malinois dog on his front seat. The dog’s cinnamon eyes danced with excitement, his pink tongue lolling out the side of his long, black muzzle. After patting Mouse, his dog moved over to the other side to allow Sloan into the cab. He was excitedly thumping his lean tail.

“She’s kinda pretty, isn’t she?” Sloan asked his companion.

Mouse whined, thumping his tail even harder and faster.

“You probably think I’m talking about that good-looking yellow Lab she owns hanging her head out her truck window. Don’t you?” Sloan grinned, roughing up his male dog’s dark brown fur. “Two nice-looking females,” he agreed as the dog sat obediently as he closed the door.

Sloan pulled his truck around Dev’s and signaled, easing into the nearest lane. Right now, there was no traffic coming their way. He watched through his side mirror and saw Dev McGuire was right behind him, but keeping a safe distance between the two vehicles. Smiling a little, Sloan rubbed his recently shaven jaw, thinking that she was one fine-looking filly of a woman. He liked her raven-black hair that shone with blue highlights even beneath a gray rainy sky. Her oval face had a strong chin and he could sense stubborn resolve in her after the tire had blown. Knowing she’d have successfully handled the changing of a tire, Sloan liked that Dev had allowed him to step in and aid her. She might be stubborn, but judging from the look in those deep forest green eyes of hers, she was intelligent and had the good common sense to accept help from others.

Dev was built slender, reminding him more of a willow, although he couldn’t tell much beneath that navy goose-down winter coat she wore. The woman definitely had a fine pair of long, long legs on her and that heightened Sloan’s interest in her. He’d always liked tall, willowy-looking women. But he darkly reminded himself that more than likely, she had a man in her life, even though she wore no wedding ring on her left hand. Most of the female rangers at the Teton station were either going with someone or married. Him and about ten other younger rangers were single. They were all looking for the right woman. He was not. His ex-wife, Cary Davis, had cured him of ever wanting marriage again.

As Sloan drove at a reasonable speed, he noted again that Dev was easily keeping up with him. Once they entered Jackson Hole, the four-lane highway bustling with locals and tourists, Sloan remained in the slower right-hand lane for Dev’s sake. Trailering a horse required 100 percent of the driver’s attention. Plus, they never drove near anyone else’s bumper because they had a lot of weight and a thousand-pound horse pushing them forward even after brakes were applied. Trucks and trailers didn’t stop that fast as a result.

Sloan kept trying to ignore the fact he caught the fragrance of her hair or skin, a subtle jasmine scent. It made him inhale deeply, as if he were inhaling a woman’s scent for the first time. Well, that was partly true. After divorcing Cary at twenty-seven, it had taken Sloan nearly three years to recover from the damage it had done to him. And just recently, he was beginning to feel the ache of wanting a partner, or at least a woman to be in a serious relationship with, in his life once again. But no marriage. Just a relationship. Sloan wasn’t the kind of man to have one-night stands. He never had been that type, and wasn’t about to start now. He’d always had long-term relationships and never went into them with the thought that they were going to be shallow or time limited.

There was a haunting softness to Dev McGuire that called powerfully to him. Maybe an innocence to her? She looked college aged, but Sloan was sure she was probably in her late twenties even though she didn’t look it. The maturity she had told him she was older. She wasn’t some giggly young twentysomething. No, Dev had dealt with him in an adult way, although Sloan swore he had seen her interest in him as a man. Maybe that was his imagination? Sloan knew he was no pretty boy or magazine cover model. He was country born, backwoods raised on Black Mountain, and lowlanders referred to his kind as hillbillies. There was pride in being raised in West Virginia, in the Allegheny Mountains among the Hill people whose blood ran through his veins. Black Mountain was a harbor for his kind. These were good people who lived off the land, worked hard, took care of themselves as well as their neighbors. And despite the stereotype where outsiders thought Hill people were dumb and illiterate, nothing could be further from the truth. Minds were changed, however, one person at a time.

So why the sense of innocence around Dev? Sloan pondered that question as he drove slowly through the town. Maybe she got married early, in her late teens. Again, he assumed she was in a relationship. Damn, she was pretty. He liked her beautifully shaped lips, their natural fullness. Her wing-shaped black brows emphasized those glorious, large green eyes of hers. They were alive with life, dancing and fully engaged with him when they spoke to one another. Sloan had tried to ignore as best he could the heat that had streaked straight down to his lower body when Dev had smiled at him.

Sloan thought back to his growing-up years in an old log cabin that sat on top of a tree-clad hill deep in the woods of Black Mountain. They had electricity and every night his mother, Wilma, would read to him as a young child. She loved myths and in particular he remembered Helen of Troy and how beautiful she was. Sloan thought that Dev could be a black-haired version of her. What bothered him, however, was her reaction when he accidentally scared the bejesus out of her. She’d reacted violently when he’d approached her. Looking back on it, he did walk quietly and Dev hadn’t heard him coming her way. Sloan felt bad about jolting her. The woman was under enough stress hauling a horse halfway across the United States, then having a flat tire, which could all have contributed to her reaction.

It was the look in her green eyes that had struck him deeply, the raw terror he’d seen in them. Her face had gone completely white except for her red cheeks caused by the cold weather and wind. He’d seen that look in Afghan villagers’ eyes too often, particularly the women and children who had been terrorized by Taliban who’d come through killing and torturing fathers and husbands. And raping the women. It was a look he’d never forget from his deployments. And it was reflected in Dev’s eyes. Why? Shaking his head, Sloan couldn’t put it together. At least, not yet. And probably never.

As they reached the outskirts of the town, there was a long, long hill they had to climb. On his right was the ten-foot-high elk fence. Below it was the valley where thousands of deer and elk were fed all winter long so they wouldn’t die of starvation. On his left rose a thousand-foot hill, rocks craggy and gleaming with wetness from small springs that wound unseen and then oozed out of the fissures and cracks on the surface.

Sloan could always tell a lot about a person by the animals they kept. That buckskin mare of hers wasn’t jumpy, nervous or tense. She was real relaxed in that trailer, alert but not jerking and jumping around like some horses did. That was a reflection of Dev’s real nature, for sure. Animals always mirrored their owners, plain and simple. So his initial sense of the woman was that she was grounded, quiet and mature. Just like her horse. That was a good combination in Sloan’s book. Giggly, flighty, nervous women made him tense. But then, Cary had been like that, hadn’t she? But that was because she’d been high on drugs and he hadn’t realized it until much too late.

Sloan had only caught a glimpse of the yellow Labrador in the front of Dev’s truck. By the fineness of the dog’s large, broad head, she looked to be a female. He’d find out soon enough, he though, and then he grinned over at Mouse, who was decidedly an alpha male. “I think you already know that good-lookin’ yellow Lab is a female.”

Mouse cocked his black head, his large, intelligent eyes dancing with excitement. He whined. His tail kept thumping against the seat.

Reaching out, Sloan petted his combat-assault dog that had, for two years, helped save his ass over in Afghanistan. When he got out of the Army, he was able to bring Mouse with him because the dog had developed stress from too many IEDs and explosions. He’d been a brave dog, often going after fleeing enemies in nights so dark Sloan couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Mouse would nail them, take them down and grip a leg with his teeth until the Army soldiers could arrive to take the screaming enemy prisoner.

Now his brindle dog was eight years old, well past his prime, but he was in better shape than 90 percent of the dogs in the United States. And Mouse had slowly, over time, let go of his combat-dog training as Sloan gently but firmly got his best four-legged friend to adjust to civilian life instead. As he moved his long fingers through the dog’s short, thick fur, Sloan smiled a little.

“Hey, this may be your lucky day, fella. That woman has a yellow Lab and who knows? You might get to befriend that dog of hers.” He chuckled. “And I might be able to befriend her owner.”

Mouse thumped his tail mightily, ears up, eyes on the back window where Dev’s truck and trailer were visible. He gave a long, excited whine.

Sloan knew Mouse could see the other dog through the windows, no question. The Belgian Malinois was one of the most intelligent dog breeds on the planet and nothing, but nothing, escaped Mouse’s attention.

It made Sloan grin. Giving Mouse a last pat, Sloan wrapped his hand around the steering wheel, urging the truck up the long, easy slope of the hill. As they crested it, the mighty Tetons sat on his left. They were clothed in deep white snow with blue granite flanks and skirts of evergreens around their bases. May was still a winter month up here, but Sloan knew come June 1, the tourists would descend like a plague of locusts on this park and Yellowstone, which sat fifty miles north of them.

Mouse whined. His thin, long tail was whipping against Sloan’s thigh.

“Patience, pardner,” he drawled to his dog. “We’re almost there. As soon as we can get this gal and her horse over to the barn, I might let you out and we’ll introduce you to her dog. But no promises. Okay? Gotta see what the lady wants to do with her horse first.”

The dog’s tail hit Sloan with great regularity across his hard thigh. They were bruising hits.

“Calm down,” he told Mouse. “Easy.” And Sloan slowly stroked the dog’s long, powerful back. He felt the dog’s muscles relax beneath his stroking fingers. Mouse stopped whining. If Mouse thought he could crash through that rear-window glass, run across the bed of his truck and leap up onto the hood of Dev’s truck, he’d do it. Such was his dog’s type-A nature. Belgian Malinois were basically sheep-herding dogs in Europe. And their nature was to bring everyone together in a nice, tight, safe group, with the dog prowling around the edges, watching for bears, wolves or apex predators from the sky.

Sloan couldn’t lie to himself. He was mirroring his dog. Only Mouse was a helluva lot more obvious about it than he was. No question, Dev turned him on. Caution told him not to put much stock in first impressions. He’d fallen so hard and fast for Cary, married her three months after meeting her in a bar, and look what had happened. Sloan frowned; he knew the price. And it was far too much for him to ever pay again.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_77cc62d5-ee53-5a50-a1d7-9cb89fa42fe6)

DEV FELT NOTHING but gratefulness for Sloan as he pulled into the large gravel circle in front of a dark green three-story barn. She’d seen the headquarters building, a two-story yellow-brick affair on the right, after they’d passed through the area that allowed visitors into the park. Her heart picked up in tempo and she felt anticipation and relief while she parked the truck and trailer in front of the open barn doors.

Bella, her yellow Lab, whined, her head stuck out the window, her long, slender yellow tail beating happily against the seat.

Patting her rump, Dev said, “Stay here, girl. First things first. We have to get Goldy out of that trailer and into an assigned box stall in that barn.”

As she opened the door to climb out, she watched Sloan ease his tall frame out of the truck in front of her. There was a casualness about him, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but Dev saw something else. He seemed to look around, not in an easygoing manner, but in a way that suggested he was thoroughly checking out the territory around him. Further, her own senses told her this man wasn’t who or what he seemed to be. That was unsettling to her because Bart Gordon hadn’t been, either. He was a stalker, a sexual predator beneath those good looks of his. Only she’d found out too late.

Dev compressed her lips and shut the truck door. She waited for Sloan to walk up to where she stood. A rocky hiking and horse trail existed beyond the barn area. The Douglas firs stood tall and straight everywhere she looked on that side of the path. Inhaling deeply, she drew the scent of pine into her lungs. The air was cold, the breeze brisk and there were patches of white snow everywhere, telling her spring had yet to make an entrance into this area of Wyoming.

“Welcome home,” Sloan said, gesturing to the barn. “Let me connect with Charlotte Hastings. She’s our supervisor. Chances are her assistant, Linda Chambers, will know which box stall has been reserved for your mare.” He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket.

Nodding, Dev looked around as he made the call for her. She could feel Sloan’s quiet power radiating around him. Bella had poked her head out the driver’s-side window, panting and watching Sloan. He seemed to draw women like bees found flowers. Somewhat skittish, Dev walked away from Sloan, wanting to get out of that warm, sunlit aura that surrounded him. It was too tempting and she was too raw from Gordon’s attack on her. There was no way she could afford to trust this ranger, even if he seemed helpful. He might have ulterior motives toward her, too.

Dev hated that she thought that way since Gordon’s attack. Now she was looking at every man who approached her as a potential predator. Dev knew not every man was out to get her like Gordon did, but she couldn’t stop the emotional internal reactions that automatically popped up whenever she was around a strange unknown male. And worse, the rangers she worked with at the other park, she began to question and distrust them, as well. Rubbing her furrowed brow, she walked around the back of the trailer.

Goldy nickered.