Kelton's Rules

SHE’D SWORN she’d stand on her own two feet from now on, yet here she was again, letting a man take charge.

Not that it was easy to stand alone when apparently she’d wrecked an ankle, somewhere in that pell-mell, adrenaline-powered chase, Abby reminded herself. Sitting in the topless Jeep, where their rescuer had planted her when he realized—at the same moment she did—that she could barely hobble, Abby clasped still-shaking hands between wobbly knees. She watched with growing uneasiness as he stalked around the bus, hands on lean hips, shaking his shaggy head to himself as he summed up the state of her disaster and decided what should be done about it.

She had a terrible suspicion his conclusions would be the right ones—logical, sensible and therefore impossible to refute, much as she’d rather refute them. She’d already had one sample of his plain-spoken intelligence, with that guess about her marital status.

I don’t need this!

Didn’t need a disastrous setback, just as she was starting to pick up the pieces of her life and think about rebuilding.

Didn’t need someone—another too confident, too brash, too good-looking-for-his-own-good male—telling her what to do and how to do it.

Except that she did. She was utterly exhausted and confused. Overwhelmed. She supposed this was what they called shock. Looking at her son as he smiled wanly up at the man who’d rolled out from under the bus to stand and pat his shoulder, her eyes filled slowly with tears. Oh, Sky, I could have lost you!

Losing the life she’d known since she was nineteen was nothing compared to that.

And being bossed around by another know-it-all man—who’d known enough to save her son—was a small price to pay. A price she’d pay gladly again and again. The bargain of a lifetime.

“I haven’t even thanked you yet,” she said huskily a few minutes later when he came to sit beside her in the Jeep. “That cliff beyond the trees…if Sky’d gone over that…”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I couldn’t have done it without him. He’s a smart kid. Stayed cool when it counted.”

“Yes…” Cool under pressure. Steve and his pilot buddies had valued that quality above all else.

Sometimes she wondered if it signified ice at the center. A basic heartlessness. Easy to be cool if you didn’t really care. When she’d told him she wanted a divorce, Steve had shrugged, given her a rueful grin and merely said, “Can’t say I blame you, babe.”

She shook off the memory with a jerk of her head. Who cared if this man was just one more of that type? It wasn’t as though she was buying him and taking him home. “I don’t understand how this could’ve happened,” she said now, eyes returning to the bus. “I know I left the brake on. And I thought I left it in gear.”

He glanced down at his boots, then quickly up again—and smiled. “Brakes have been known to fail. My name’s Kelton, by the way. Jack Kelton.” He held out a big hand and reluctantly she surrendered her own to its shockingly warm clasp, aware of the roughness of his palm. A carpenter, perhaps? Or out here in cow country, with those boots he was wearing, maybe a cattleman?

“Abby Lake,” she murmured. “And that’s Skyler.” She nodded at her son, who’d climbed into the back of the bus and was apparently searching for DC among the tumbled boxes. In the gathering twilight, she could barely see him moving beyond the windows.

“Good enough. So first question, Abby. Do you have any sort of towing service we can call?”

“I’m afraid I—” She’d had roadside assistance, of course, on her car. But in her scramble to close on the house, then move, since the new buyers had insisted on immediate occupancy… What with all the other details of dismantling one’s life and carting it across country: changing bank accounts, health insurance, credit cards, mailing address… “I forgot to get it. I just bought the bus last week.”

“Ah,” Kelton said neutrally, although she could hear his disapproval. No doubt he would have remembered. “So question two. I take it money’s an issue here?”

A sensible deduction—prodding old bruises and a still-simmering indignation. Three months ago, money wouldn’t have been an issue. Now it was survival itself. “It’s tight.” Budgeted to the penny and now, looking at the bus, she realized her budget was blown. What am I going to do?

“Okay, so hiring a tow truck to come out from Durango, then haul a bus forty miles back, isn’t practical. And once you get it to a garage, it may need a new transmission, definitely a new exhaust system. I’m not sure about the axles, though they might be intact… Repairs are going to be costly, if you can even scrounge the parts for this old girl. And meantime, while somebody’s fixing it for a week or more, I suppose you’ll have to stay in a motel. Unless you have friends in Durango?”

“No…” Abby threaded a hand through her disheveled hair. Tried to find a smile. “We’re from New Jersey. At least lately…” It was one of the things she’d hated most about being a military wife all those years. The repeated uprootings. The constant farewells. A shy woman like her needed to nest in one place, where she could build and nourish long-term friendships. The kind of support system that sustained you through disasters such as this.

“Anyway, that all adds up to a lot of money,” Jack concluded, casually reaching across to brush a knuckle across her cheek, where a tear had escaped. He glanced skyward with a comical frown. “And on top of all that, damned if it doesn’t look like rain.”

Reflexively, Abby followed his gaze. Over their heads stretched a vault of cloudless silvery blue, cupping the last of the light, one star already twinkling in the east. She laughed shakily, wiping one hand across her wet lashes. “Cats and dogs by the bucketful.”

“Well, then…” Jack folded his arms and leaned back, stretching his long legs, boots braced against the pedals. “If Durango’s not an option, what about this instead? We’re three miles from Trueheart. There’s an old cowhand north of town, Whitey Whitelaw, who’s the best shade-tree mechanic I’ve ever seen. Cobbling together clapped-out feed trucks and tractors is his specialty, and his prices are pretty reasonable. I imagine he’d cut you a deal.”

“He doesn’t know me from Adam. I don’t know why he’d—”

“Why don’t you ask him and see? I can call Whitey when we get back to town, ask if he’d come out here in the morning, take a look at her…”

Abby nodded doubtfully. She could think of nothing better to try. “I…suppose so. And for tonight, we’ve got a mattress in back and a camp stove.” She could boil enough creek water to—

But Jack was shaking his head. “Don’t even think it. You need a real bed and a hot meal—you both do—and that ankle needs some ice to bring it down. You’re coming with me. I’ve got just the place for you.”

“You mean, to your…house?” If he was married it would be awful, descending on his surprised, solicitous wife, and if he wasn’t, even worse. “Oh, no! We couldn’t impose.” She’d rather camp for a year in a cow pasture than be forced into that kind of dependency on a stranger, no matter how kindly intended.

“Abby, I never let anybody impose on me. And Kat and I don’t have room for guests at the moment.”

So he was married. She should have guessed, attractive as he was. He didn’t wear a ring, but then that came as no surprise. Steve had shed his within a year of their marriage, insisting it was dangerous, what with all the machinery and electronics a pilot had to deal with.

“But there’s an empty rental cottage next door to us set up for mountain bikers and for skiers in winter. It’s furnished down to the pots and pans and bedsheets—and I’m sure I can arrange for you to stay there. My landlady owns it.”

Abby smiled in spite of herself. He had it all figured out. And she’d bet Jack could sell coconuts to Tahitians, if he took the notion. She should be thankful he was willing to help.

“So what are we gonna do?” Skyler demanded, appearing out of the dark at her elbow, his arms wrapped around a glowering DC-3.

Abby let out a long breath. She supposed she’d never really had a choice in the matter. “I guess we’re going with Mr. Kelton.”

CHAPTER THREE

“AND HE-ERE WE ARE,” Jack announced grandly as he swung the Jeep into an unpaved driveway. Set fifty feet back in a narrow lot, a tiny, two-story cottage crouched under the trees. “Be it ever so humble, you’ll find it homey enough. It’s basically identical in layout to mine. They were built at the same time for twin daughters, back in the 1880s.”

He’d warned her it would be rustic, Abby reminded herself, searching for something to say as she studied the sagging front porch, the weathered clapboard siding that suggested this twin hadn’t sprung for a paint job since the 1890s.

Still, whatever its appearance, the price had indeed been right for a week’s lodging. On the far side of Trueheart, Jack had left them in the Jeep while he’d negotiated with his landlady, Maudie Harris. He’d loped out of her house minutes later, wearing a triumphant grin while he twirled a key ring around his finger.

“That’s my place over—” Jack paused in the act of nodding to their right, across a picket fence hedged by an overgrown border of bushes and waist-high weeds. He scowled. “Over there.”

Through leafy branches, Abby could make out the glint of a pickup truck, parked in the shadows beyond an identical sagging porch that ran the width of Jack’s cottage. With lights glowing from the front-room windows, his house looked more inviting than hers.

“Very nice,” she said, although a twist of uneasiness coiled through her stomach. Bad enough to be so obliged to the man already. But to have him as her next-door neighbor—ready, willing and able to give his opinion on her every move from here on out… I don’t need this. “Well…” She swiveled in her seat.

“Hang on.” Jack bounded out of the Jeep and around to her side. “You shouldn’t put your weight on that ankle. Not till we’ve had a look at it.”

“I can manage.”

“I’m sure you can.” But his hand blocked her passage, leaving her the choice of shoving it aside—or accepting it.

Used to having his own way, for all his charm and goodwill, Abby decided, gritting her teeth behind a close-mouthed smile. She’d learned not to trust charm. She’d found that it was often a substitute for less polished but kinder, more genuine emotions.

“Thank you.” Her nerves skittered as those oven-warm fingers closed over hers. Then he took her other arm, supporting her weight as she slithered down from the high seat. They stood for an instant toe-to-toe, Abby looking up—quite a way up—and Jack holding on to her just a heartbeat too long, his fingers seeming to squeeze her a hairsbreadth too tightly.

Or maybe her alarm sprang from her rattled nerves, sensing danger where it didn’t exist. There was also the simple fact that she hadn’t stood this close to a man—a virile, ruggedly attractive man—in months. “Thanks,” she said again.

But he didn’t take that as dismissal. Instead Jack transferred her hand to his forearm, a support as hard and muscular as the rest of him obviously was. “We’ll get you settled and then…” His shaggy head swung back toward his own yard as they moved carefully across the grass. Abby could see one decisive eyebrow drawn down in a scowl. “Then I’ll just…”