The Wrangler And The Runaway Mom

She shouldn’t have this little hitch in her stomach at the idea of seeing him again. Darn it, she knew perfectly well she shouldn’t. “I’m sure Nicky will look forward to it.”

“Maybe you and I could get together, too, before the show one night. I know a great steak place in town.”

He was definitely flirting with her. Oh mercy. What was she supposed to do now? “I don’t... That is, I haven’t...”

“Relax, Doc. You don’t have to decide tonight.” He twisted his bandaged hand and rubbed a rough thumb over her knuckle. She felt hypnotized by his grin, like a rabbit caught in the hard, killing glare of headlights. “Just think about it.”

She carefully gathered her composure around her and tugged her hand away. “We’ll see,” she managed to say, then slipped from the seat and headed for the door. “Thank you again for fixing my tire. It was a very nice thing to do.”

To her confusion, he scowled. “Niceness has nothing to do with it, Doc. Not one damn thing.”

She gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t seem inclined to explain. If the man wanted to keep his secrets, who was she to argue? Lord knows, she had enough of her own. “Well, good night, then. I suppose I’ll see you in Butte.”

He was still scowling when she walked out into the rain. He swore under his breath and lifted the moth eaten curtains to watch her hurry into her own trailer. A light switched on inside, but the trailer went dark again after only a few moments.

Colt let the curtain fall. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Any degree of objectivity he might have claimed going into this assignment had just died a quick and painful death when Maggie Rawlings laughed back there, sweet and unaffected.

Unless she was the world’s greatest actress, the woman was about as innocent as a newborn calf. No way could she be a party to the illegal activity of her husband. Nobody with that much vulnerability in her eyes could be involved in the ugliness of Michael Prescott’s world. He would be willing to bet the entire Broken Spur she didn’t know what her husband had been involved with, that she was just running scared from the men who had killed him.

He thought of the stunned amazement in her dark eyes when she had found him changing the flat tire on her truck—the tire he’d purposely punctured himself.

His plan was to quietly fix the tire and leave a note about it for her to discover in the morning, in another attempt to insinuate himself into her life. Instead, she’d awakened and come out armed with a cast-iron skillet and a flashlight, ready to take on a drunk cowboy.

His mouth twisted in a wry grin. The woman had grit, he’d give her that much. Another few seconds and she would have beaned him.

Instead, she had been pathetically grateful when she discovered he was repairing the flat tire. His scheme couldn’t have worked better. So why did he feel no satisfaction, just this guilt churning around in his gut for deceiving her?

Maybe because he was inexplicably drawn to the woman, in a way he hadn’t been to anyone since his wife walked out five years ago.

With another oath at the thought of his ex-wife, he dug through the briefcase carefully hidden in a cabinet under the bench where Maggie Rawlings had been sitting. He picked up his slim cellular phone and quickly punched one of the preprogrammed numbers.

Beckstead sounded tired when he answered—it was after midnight, California time—and wasted no time on pleasantries. “How is the assignment progressing? Are you any closer to Maggie Rawlings?”

“I want out.”

He could practically hear his boss’s frown over the phone. “What happened?”

Maggie Rawlings, and her big eyes, happened. He couldn’t very well voice the thought, though. “Nothing’s happened. I just don’t think I’m making any progress gaining the woman’s trust,” he lied.

“You’ve been on the job less than a week. Give it some time.”

“I don’t want to give it time. I just want out. I’m too damn old to rodeo.” That, at least, was the truth

His boss laughed. “You’re thirty-six, McKendrick. I think you have a few good rides left in you.”

“I’d rather be taking them on my ranch than in the arena against a bunch of twenty-year-olds ”

“Haven’t we had this conversation already? Look, the net is tightening on DeMarranville. I know you want to put him away every bit as much as I do, and all my instincts are telling me Dr. Rawlings is the one person who can help us do that.”

“Let me go at DeMarranville another way. Maybe I can work on a couple of his men who might be ready to cut a deal against him. Last I talked to Joey Perone, he sounded like he could be bought.”

“No dice. I need you there. Right where you are.” Beckstead paused. “You realize there’s more at stake here than just the disk, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We both know it’s only a matter of time until DeMarranville tracks her down.”

“If he hasn’t already.”

“He hasn’t. Our sources inside his organization are quite clear on that. Not for lack of trying, though. His people are looking everywhere.”

“Damian is nothing if not efficient.”

“He doesn’t know she witnessed the hit on her husband—if he did, she never would have made it this far—but he wants the disk more than we do. He’s going to be very unhappy if she doesn’t give it up.”

“What if she doesn’t have it?”

“Do you think he’s going to play nice if he thinks she’s holding out on him? If she really doesn’t know what her husband was involved with, I’d hate to see her or the kid get caught in the crossfire.”

Son of a bitch. Colt stared out through the rain streaking down the window like tears. He hated to think of Maggie or her son in DeMarranville’s hands.

“I’d feel better knowing one of our agents was close to her, to offer some degree of protection,” Beckstead went on.

What would his boss say if he knew exactly how close Colt wanted to be to the accountant’s widow? “Okay,” he growled, pushing the thought away. “But the stakes just went up. I want three months away from the Bureau when I’m done here.”

“We bring down DeMarranville and you can have as much time as you want.”

But would it be enough to make him forget Maggie Rawlings, with her big eyes and her outlaw son?

Somehow he doubted it.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_5043a473-d27d-5f48-adcf-d5821851c868)

Her kingdom for a decent shower.

With apologies to William Shakespeare, Maggie fought shivers as she turned off the trickling little spray that was all the Butte, Montana, campground facilities offered and reached for the thin towel she had hung over the stall door just a few moments before.

A month ago, if someone had told her the idea of a pounding hot shower would come to symbolize the height of luxury to her, she would have laughed hysterically.

Funny how she had taken so many things for granted before her life degenerated into chaos a month ago. A decent shower topped her list—with all the hot water she could dream of and complete, heavenly privacy instead of these flimsy shower stall doors between her and the rest of the world, this thin barrier that left her feeling entirely too vulnerable.

She could barely remember what it had been like to shower as long as she wanted, without this constant, nagging worry at leaving Nicky sleeping in their locked trailer for even these few stolen moments. What would she do if she had time to do more than just scrape her hair back into a wet braid and apply only the bare minimum of makeup?

Might as well wish for the moon while you’re dreaming, she scolded herself and slipped quickly into the clean clothing she had brought over from the trailer. This wasn’t so bad, anyway. It could be much, much worse. She and Nicky had clean, warm clothing to wear, food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads—even if it was a thin aluminum roof with a tendency to leak when it rained.

Besides, in a big city, what were the chances of your neighbor stopping to fix a flat tire in the middle of the night so you wouldn’t have to deal with an unpleasant surprise in the morning?

A picture of Colt McKendrick in the watery darkness back in Wyoming the week before crystallized in her mind and she smiled softly as she tugged a comb through her wet, tangled hair.