To Love & Protect Her

“All right.”

He glanced over at her. “All right? As easily as that? What if Ryan doesn’t learn anything? You don’t have forever before you have to start teaching your classes again. What if we don’t know what’s going on, and you have to go back to the university?”

“I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “Right now, the university and my job there seem very far away. I haven’t thought about it once since we left College Station.” She turned to him again, and gave him a blinding smile that made his legs weak. “I’m not going to worry about that until I have to.”

“I thought you were a regimented, plan-everything kind of woman,” he managed to say. “You teach at a university, for God’s sake. How much more by-the-book can you get than that? I figured an open-ended stay here in El Paso would be a problem for you.”

“I guess you were wrong, then,” she said lightly. “Maybe underneath this mousy exterior, I’m really a wild woman.”

“Mousy?” He gave her an incredulous look. “You’re about as far from mousy as you could get.”

His response was instantaneous, and he saw her blush. “Thank you, Griff,” she murmured. “But my physical attributes aren’t the issue. My job is. And I have a month before I have to worry about it. So let’s just forget about it for now.”

“That’s fine with me,” he muttered. How was he supposed to forget her physical attributes? he thought to himself. Especially when she’d spent the night sleeping on his lap.

He hardened again just thinking about it. He’d seen that her head was bent as she slept on his shoulder, and knew she’d awaken with a stiff neck. So he’d eased her down until she rested on his lap. That had been a mistake. It had been a night of pure torture for him, but he wouldn’t have traded it for anything. The fragrant cloud of her hair had drifted over his thigh, and whenever he’d shifted, her scent had swirled around him. As she slept, she’d unselfconsciously slid her hand under his leg, and the imprint of her fingers still burned on his skin. Even the heavy denim fabric of his jeans hadn’t been a barrier to the sensations. He’d been in a state of arousal for the whole trip, and it still hadn’t receded completely.

Which was probably why he was acting like an idiot.

“Here’s the road that leads to the cabin,” he said, as they turned onto a rutted dirt track. He was relieved and grateful for the distraction. “It doesn’t look like anyone has been this way in a while.”

“Great,” she said fervently. “I can’t wait to get out of this truck.”

Neither could he. The atmosphere was too confined, too intimate. Especially after last night.

But he was afraid that living in the same house with Willa was going to be even more so.

Betsy Keene sat on the shabby couch in the small living area of her trailer near Leather Bucket and shrank back against the cushions. She stared at the man who had been her lover ever since he showed up on her doorstep six months ago, wounded and needing help. Clint Lockhart raged through the room, throwing papers onto the floor and overturning her tiny kitchen table and chairs. His blue eyes were black with rage, and his arrogant mouth, the mouth she’d come to love, was twisted into a frightening grimace.

“We should have had her!” he shouted, slamming his fist onto the counter. The jars and boxes on top of the counter jumped, and so did Betsy. “One more minute, and we would have had her.”

“We can try again, Clint,” Betsy said, her voice placating.

“When?” He turned on her, his eyes blazing. “When will we get another chance? That meddling son of a bitch Ryan Fortune is going to make sure we can’t get close to Willa again. He’ll swoop her up and bring her to the Double Crown Ranch, and that will be it. We can’t take her from that ranch. Everyone there knows me. And since you started working at the ranch house they know you, too.”

“Maybe there’s something we can do,” she said nervously, pleating the fabric of her dress with shaking fingers. Clint was frightening her. He’d lost his temper before, but this time there was a glaze of madness in his eyes. She prayed he wouldn’t turn his rage against her.

“What can we do?” Clint’s voice dripped with scorn. “Should I call her on the phone and ask her to meet us somewhere by herself? That snooty, stuck-up college professor is too smart for that.” He kicked over a table and sent a lamp crashing into a wall. “She won’t be so stuck-up once I get my hands on her.”

Fear filled Betsy’s mouth with a sour taste as she edged away from Clint. My God, what was wrong with him? Willa Simms had never harmed him, or her, either. In fact, Willa had always been pleasant to her, and very kind.

“Why are you so angry with Willa?” she asked, her voice tentative.

“Because she has what I should have,” he shouted at her, his eyes full of rage. “She has free run of the Double Crown. Ryan Fortune gives her anything she wants. That should be my ranch. And it would be, too, if Ryan’s father hadn’t swindled my dad into selling our neighboring ranch to him. I should’ve inherited the ranch from my father. I should be the one in charge. Everyone should kowtow to me. I should be the one with all the money. And I will be. I’ll get the ranch in the end. We’ll see who’s smarter, me or Ryan Fortune. He thought he was so smart trying to frame me for Sophia’s murder, but I’ll show him.”

“I know you’ll win,” Betsy said. She had to soothe him somehow. “You’re smarter than Ryan Fortune. Anyone can see that.”

“That’s right,” he said, seeming to calm down at her words. “At least you believe in me, Betsy.”

“You know I do, Clint.” She licked her lips and watched him carefully. The madness seemed to be fading from his eyes. “You wouldn’t really hurt Willa, would you?”

A crafty look came into his eyes. “Now, why would I want to do that? That would be like killing the goose that laid the golden egg, wouldn’t it?”

“I knew you were a smart one, Clint. I knew it right away.”

Betsy told herself she should be relieved, but fear ate away at her gut. Clint was getting more impatient, more angry every day. And he’d raged at her during the entire trip back from College Station.

“That’s right, Betsy. I’m smart enough to figure this out.” His mouth twisted again, and once more madness shone out of his eyes. “And who was that man at her apartment who chased us, anyway? Do you know?”

“N-no, Clint, I don’t.” He’d looked familiar, but she’d been trying to get away and hadn’t taken a good look. “He must have been intending to visit someone in the apartment.”

Clint’s eyes darkened. “I’ll teach him to meddle.”

“He’s probably long gone,” Betsy said, watching Clint, the fear roiling inside her. Had Clint gone completely mad? “We won’t have to worry about him the next time.”

But her words only seemed to infuriate him. “Next time?” he screamed. “Next time? How can there be a next time? We should have had her tonight.”

“Maybe she’s at the ranch already.” Betsy clutched the fabric of her dress more tightly. She was terribly afraid of what Clint would do to Willa. But she was more afraid of what he would do to her. So she took a breath and said, “If she’s at the ranch, I’ll get her to come with me. She’d have no reason to be afraid of me. I’ll bring her to you.”

“What if she’s not at the ranch?” Clint asked. Now his eyes looked calculating.

“I’ll stick close to Ryan’s office,” she said, desperate to find some way of appeasing Clint. “She’s bound to get in touch with him. I’ll listen whenever he gets a phone call. I’ll get the information for you. Haven’t I always done what you wanted me to do?”

He smiled at her, but there was no warmth in his face, and Betsy shivered. “Yeah, you’ve always done what I wanted you to do, Betsy. And I won’t forget it.”

He grabbed his coat from the door and stepped outside. “I need to think for a while. You figure out how you’re going to get that information for me.”

Clint slammed the door, and the trailer shook for a moment. Betsy slumped against the couch, staring at the door, as tears slowly trickled down her face. How did everything go so wrong? she cried to herself. She’d had such glorious dreams of a wonderful life with Clint. Now they were as old and dusty as the dirt of the Double Crown Ranch. And as unattainable.

She had to put Griff out of her mind, Willa told herself as they bumped along the rutted dirt trail that was supposed to lead to the cabin. The disturbing feelings he roused in her were nothing more than her hormones reacting to an attractive man. Griff wouldn’t be interested in a woman like her, a woman who wasn’t exciting or glamorous or sophisticated.

She stared out the window, trying to find something else to think about. “The trees along this road to the house are beautiful,” she said in a low voice, desperate for an innocuous topic to discuss.

“They’re a problem.” Griff sounded worried.

She couldn’t stop herself from looking over at him. “What do you mean, ‘they’re a problem’?”

“Too much cover.” His face was hard. “Anyone could sneak up on the cabin along this road, and we wouldn’t be able to see them until they were at the door.”

“Who’s going to come to the cabin, Griff?” she asked. “No one but Ryan knows we’re here.”

He glanced over at her, and she thought his eyes softened a little. “Remember what you said about thinking three steps ahead? That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“But it’s so quiet up here. Surely we would hear anyone driving up the road.”

“I hope so.” He glanced out the window again. “Damn trees. I don’t know why you Americans are so nuts about trees.”

“Don’t you have trees in Australia?” she asked, trying to keep the laughter from her voice.