Bridal Falls Ranch Ransom (10 page)

“Have you considered the possibility that Edith could somehow be involved, or at the very least, feeding her nephew information?”

“Yes. But why would she betray me? She knows I care about her. I trust her. She’s the only person on the ranch I told about Thomas’s kidnapping, and what happened to me. She’s the only one I’ve been able to confide in about it.”

“You’re a hundred percent sure about how you feel?”

“I am, and that’s why I plan to withhold judgment until we know for certain. Give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she’s simply a gossip and inadvertently gives Roger the details of what goes on around the ranch.”

“That’s the best approach.” He didn’t doubt it. Let the evidence tell the story minus conjecture. But the lifeblood of his security business was speculation, and he’d done plenty of it since their encounter with Roger Grimes this morning.

“I called the pilot from the hospital after our visit with Devon,” Eve said. “He’s warming up the chopper to take us back to the ranch. We’ll have Tyler drop us at the hangar.”

“As the crow flies works for me.” He maneuvered the truck into the hospital parking lot, where he spotted Tyler Spangler waiting outside the main entrance. He was glad they’d be taking the chopper back to the ranch instead of driving. He planned to get the lay of the land around the ranch from the air and have Eve point out the Clayton Ranch and its proximity to the Bridal Falls.

Until there was provable evidence Roger Grimes was somehow involved, he couldn’t rush to judgment, relax his guard or overlook a potential suspect, no matter how unlikely they appeared.

* * *

T
he sound of the helicopter’s
blades calmed Eve’s frayed nerves. She pulled the scarf tighter against her face, adjusted her headset and relaxed into the seat next to J.P., anxious to get home. Home? The Bridal Falls Ranch had become her home. That fact had somehow married with the feeling it was her only home, and she didn’t want to consider being anywhere else, including L.A.

“Good to have you aboard, Miss Brooks.” The pilot’s voice echoed in her ear.

“It’s good to be aboard, Henry.” Henry Brashear had been her father’s chopper pilot since her early teens, and she instantly enjoyed the air of familiarity.

“Once we get to the ranch, I’d like to give J.P. an aerial tour, if you don’t mind.”

Henry tapped the fuel gauge. “Topped off the tank as soon as you called, Miss Brooks.”

Content, she touched J.P.’s leg to get his attention and pointed out the window. “That’s Penny Springs. We used to camp there overnight and play in the hot pools.”

Gazing to the north, she picked out another landmark she recognized. “That’s Thunderbolt Mountain Lookout. My dad and I hiked up there one summer and spent a week on fire watch. We saw some amazing thunderstorms and lightning shows.”

“What’s the elevation?”

“Eighty-six hundred feet plus.”

J.P. leaned past her to view the points of interest out of the helicopter’s small side window, but his gaze locked on her face and glanced off the smile on her full lips.

She’d removed her sunglasses and folded them in her delicate hands. Wisps of her silky blond hair flared from under the scarf and brushed her shoulders. Enthralled by the lilt of reminiscences in her voice, he knew he could listen to her speak from now till eternity and not get tired.

Intrigued by his out-of-place internal rhetoric, he wondered if this was what had brought Thomas Avery into her life? Even scarred, Eve Brooks was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. No doubt Avery had come to the same conclusion without ever taking a true look inside her heart.

“Have you ever given Thomas Avery this sightseeing tour?”

Caught off guard, she turned to stare at him, her glacial blue eyes narrowing in contemplation. “I tried, but he wasn’t interested. He’s been to the ranch many times, but not since my accident. He always tiptoed around like he was afraid he might step in something while wearing his Salvatore Ferragamo shoes.”

“A real metrosexual L.A. male?”

“Yeah. That’s his breed. Designer rags, fast cars and not a hair out of place, even with the top down.”

“Did his time in the storm drain after the kidnapping reshape his attitude at all?”

“No. He’s worse.” She broke eye contact and turned to stare out the window. “His date with near death only made him want more.”

J.P. considered Thomas Avery from Eve’s perspective. They both ran in some pretty glamorous circles, so how had Thomas found his way into hers?

“How long has he worked for you?”

“Since just before my half sister Shelly was taken.”

“Three years?”

“Yeah. He came to the table with an MBA from Harvard Business School. I snapped him up.”

“When did things turn romantic between the two of you?” An uncomfortable knot turned in his stomach. He felt like some sort of psychological voyeur, prying into her love life, but he needed to question her about Thomas Avery. In fact, he found it odd that Avery had been the target of the kidnapping instead of her.

“A year and a half ago. We’d been dating casually and decided to make it exclusive. He proposed a couple of months before he was kidnapped.”

J.P. considered the information, boiling it down to a grand total of nothing. It sounded like Thomas Avery had been an easy target with a rich girlfriend. Nothing special.

“Bridal Falls Ranch straight ahead.”

“Oh, shoot, Henry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to drag all my baggage out.” Embarrassment clutched in her chest and flared on her cheeks in hot pools she couldn’t brush away. She’d lost hold of her tongue and answered J.P.’s questions as if they were the only ones in the aircraft.

“Not a problem, Miss Brooks. I turned down the volume on my headset right after Mr. Ryker used the word
metrosexual.
I figure it’s better if I don’t know anything about that.”

Eve glanced at J.P., seeing a smug grin turn his mouth up in measured amusement. There was nothing metrosexual about J.P. Ryker, and she couldn’t be happier. Long, lean thighs wrapped up in tight jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his muscled forearms beat the hell out of Armani any day of the week. And his lips? Thomas had never kissed her the way J.P. did.

“Show me the Clayton Ranch,” he said, jockeying closer to her so he could look at the ground below.

“Do you see that cabin perched on the ridge?” Pointing, she made sure his gaze tracked to the exact spot. “That’s the main house where Grimes lives. The other outbuildings and barn are on that lower flat.”

“I see it. How big is his spread?”

“I’m not sure, but my daddy bought three-quarters of it. I’d guess it’s about five hundred acres now.”

He sat back in his seat, making her immediately miss the pressure of having him close.

“Henry, can you take us out over Bridal Falls?” she asked.

“You’ve got it.” He banked the chopper slightly northeast and hummed over the lodge.

Picking out the beginning of the trailhead, she pointed to the ground. “That’s the path we took when we left the ranch.”

J.P. eyed the layout. “Grimes could easily have skirted the ranch from his place and gotten the drop on us from the slope above. On foot, in a straight line, he could have beaten us there with half an hour warning.”

“Yeah. That’s about the time between when I told Edith I intended to go and the time we rode out.”

A chill skated through her. Reaching over, she looped her arm around J.P.’s and let his nearness infuse her body with the sense of security she craved. At what point had she become such a poor judge of character? She’d told Edith the details of their trip to the falls. Had she relayed that information to Grimes? “Take us home, Henry. It’s getting late.”

“You’ve got it, Miss Brooks.”

Chapter Ten

J.P. slugged his pillow a couple of times then shoved it back under his head, trying to get comfortable again. He hadn’t been able to go back to sleep since hearing the telephone ring in Eve’s room fifteen minutes ago.

Was she talking to Thomas Avery? That was his guess.

Not more than five minutes after Henry had landed the helicopter to drop them off, Edith Weber had come out of the lodge to announce Thomas had called several times for Eve and it sounded urgent.

He closed his eyes, listening to the rise and fall of her voice in the room across the hall where the conversation reached a crescendo, then faded to silence.

Swinging his feet over the edge of the bed, he sat up to listen.

Nothing.

Nothing but crickets and the disquieting bawl of calves in the field outside drifted in on the breeze coming through the crack he’d opened in the bedroom window.

Was she okay? What did Thomas Avery have to say that was so urgent it couldn’t wait until morning?

Frustrated, he flopped back onto the bed. He could protect her physically, but not emotionally.

The crush of gravel in the driveway outside brought him up again, but this time he flicked open the window blind and stared outside, seeing the brake lights of the ranch’s flatbed truck. He glanced at the clock on the bedside table.

It was almost midnight and Tyler Spangler was just now pulling into the drive? He’d been headed out of town at the same time they’d lifted off in the chopper around four o’clock. Something must have happened to delay him.

J.P. stood up, grabbed his jeans and slipped them on. He pulled on his shirt, grabbed his socks and boots, then tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs, where he let himself out into the main lodge and out onto the porch. Taking a spot on the steps, he pulled on his socks and boots, then headed for the pickup.

“Spangler. What’s going on? Where have you been?”

“Damn, J.P., you scared the hell out of me.” Spangler flicked the flashlight in his hand onto J.P.’s face.

“Sorry.” Lowering the beam, he refocused on the truck. “Someone tried to kill me tonight, and they dang near succeeded.”

Caution bubbled inside J.P. He stepped closer. “Let me guess, rifle fire?”

“Yeah, half a dozen rounds. Took out the headlights and one of the rear dually tires. There wasn’t a chance I was stopping to change it.”

“How’d you make it home without headlights?”

He followed Tyler around the pickup, where he spotted three bullet holes in the passenger side door panel.

“I used this flashlight. Aimed it at the road in front of me. Damn glad I put new batteries in it this morning.”

“Where’d this happen?”

“Top of the summit in the narrow pass a couple of miles from where you burned in the SUV this morning.”

Uneasiness flooded his system, floating one troubling thought in his head. “Whoever fired at you thought Eve and I were in the truck. They were after us.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Tyler’s brows pulled together.

He shook his head, unwilling to let the cowpoke in on the truth of why he was really here. “We need to contact Sheriff Adams in the morning and file a report.”

“Sure thing.”

“I’ll pull that dually tire in the morning.”

“No problem.”

“Night, Spangler. Glad you made it home in one piece.” He nodded and headed for the lodge with his nerves on fire. He could almost bet whoever had failed to send them over the side of the mountain had tried to get another shot at them, unaware they’d found another way home ten thousand feet above the fray. He could only hope the gunman’s bullet was still lodged in the tire.

He pulled open the screen door and went inside, then locked it behind him. Three feet from the door leading upstairs, he heard the distinctive plink of glass shattering.

“Eve!”

Jamming the skeleton key into the lock, he turned it.

Crash! The hollow ping of more glass breaking echoed into the stairwell.

Taking the treads two at a time, he flipped on the light in the hall as he ran past the switch plate.

“Eve!”

He hit the door leading into her studio and turned the knob. Locked.

“Eve!”

Silence.

Digging in his pocket, he pulled out the skeleton key and fit it into the keyhole. It turned. He pushed the door open.

Light shone from a single lamp in the sitting area on his right.

Smash!

Turning at the sound, he bolted for the door standing ajar at the back of a wide corridor. Eve’s bedroom?

Ready for battle, he pulled up short and pushed open the door.

“Don’t do it, Eve,” he coaxed, watching her lift a large framed photograph of herself standing next to a pretty boy he guessed was Thomas Avery off the wall and drop it on the floor.

The picture joined the rest in a heap of shattered glass and twisted frames.

She turned to stare at him for a moment without seeing him. Tear lines tracked down both her cheeks, still wet in the soft light coming from the lamp on her bedside table.

Turning back to the wall, she reached out and grasped the last framed photo of herself.

He didn’t try to stop her. She needed to purge. Gritting his teeth, he watched her lift it off its hanger, raise it and drop it on the floor.

“What happened?” He walked through the doorway into the mayhem. Glass crunched under his boot soles as he moved toward her. Looking down, he saw her bare feet poking out from under the hem of her filmy blue nightgown. Tiny pinpricks of blood glistened on her skin where shards of glass had cut into her.

“Don’t move, sweetheart,” he whispered, focused on her body as she stood trembling like a blade of grass in the wind. His mouth went dry, his stare fixed on her naked silhouette outlined beneath the flow of her gown.

Glancing down at her flawless image staring up at him from the floor, he worked to get his inflamed senses under control.

“I can’t look at her anymore,” she whispered. “I don’t know who she is.”

“I do.” He took another step toward her.

“Thomas says my brand is finished.
Elle
magazine is going to publish a feature about my mysterious exit from L.A. and my accident. He says it will bring down the company. He wants to interview other designers.”

“I’m sorry, Eve.” One more step and he reached her, then picked her up in his arms, high above the sharp angles of glass. He wouldn’t have her hurt anymore.

She clung to him. A guttural sob shook her willowy frame and rocked his heart.

He pulled her closer. She was shattered like the mass of her images broken on the floor at his feet. He silently cursed Thomas Avery as he turned and carried her from the bedroom and out into the sitting area.

Easing down onto the sofa with her in his arms, he cradled her until the storm passed. He lost track of time as he stroked her hair and cupped her head against his chest.

Caught up in the feel of his strong body molded around hers, Eve relaxed for the first time in what felt like months. There were no emotions left inside her. Thomas had hollowed them out and she suddenly doubted he’d ever really loved her. He’d been in love with the persona of who she was before the pipe bomb. He was nothing like J.P. Solid and good, formed by reason and honesty.

With her ear pressed to his chest, she listened to the steady beat of his heart for a moment before she pushed away from him and leaned back so she could see his face.

“He wants a meeting in L.A. next week. Lawyers on both sides, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

Concern masked his features and turned his eyes bright with speculation. “What do
you
want, Eve?”

She knew what she wanted, and it had nothing to do with a meeting in L.A. “I agreed to sit down at the table with him and his suits.”

J.P.’s gaze went neutral, but a telltale tic played along his jaw, making her want to reach up and smooth it away. To reassure him she was no newbie when it came to matters of business. But of the heart? She was just getting started.

“Are you going to let him bully you into hiring someone else into a business you built from the ground up?”

“I didn’t say that.” It was a mistake, but she let her gaze slide to his lips for an instant before pulling it back to meet his hot-blue stare.

Unchained for the first time from her former self, she leaned into him and pressed her lips to his. A shudder pitched through her body. She raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck.

Melting into him, she triggered a low moan deep in his throat, and the hollow place in her soul began to fill.

* * *

J
.
P
. dabbed at the cuts
on Eve’s feet with a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide.

She flinched each time he brushed one of the dozen tiny pricks, but she didn’t pull away.

“Sting?”

“A little.”

Short of a mental pry bar and the willpower of an Olympian, they’d barely made it out of that kiss with their lips still attached. Guilt had plowed deep into his gray matter and forced him to pull back. He didn’t want sex with Eve for sex, even though their mutual response, if acted upon, could easily have landed them in her bed.

“We need to get the glass cleaned up before you go back in there.” He motioned to her room.

“About that.” She nibbled on her lower lip. “You never should have burst in on my pity party. I’m pretty sure I locked the door.”

“What’s a good cathartic purge between a woman and her protector? I’m here to keep you safe, even from yourself.” He watched a sweet smile play across her lips and had to look away. He was ten excruciating minutes away from the coldest damn shower on the planet. He couldn’t lose it now.

“I’m going to sleep here on the couch. I’ll clean it up in the morning. I’ll wear my cowgirl boots.” Her brows arched in amusement. “I promise.” She studied him from under her lashes, before her eyes opened wide.

“Hey, how’d you get your boots and jeans on so quick?”

“Talent.” Damn, he’d almost forgotten the ordeal Spangler had gone through tonight. “I was already dressed when I heard the glass breaking.”

“You were downstairs?”

“Yeah. Tyler rolled in around midnight and I went out to see where he’d been.”

Her expression changed from silly-overtired-happy to alert employer. “He was right behind us when we took off from the airport this afternoon.”

“Someone ambushed him in the narrows at the top of the grade and blew out the headlights on the truck, shot out a rear dually and left three bullet holes in the passenger side door.”

She sucked in an audible breath and stared at him. “You think they were trying to hit us, don’t you?”

“Looks that way. Someone assumed we’d be in the truck tonight on our return trip.”

“Tyler could have been hit, or worse, killed.”

“There’s a chance the slug might still be in the dually tire. If I can recover it, we’ll have rifling evidence to match the bullet to a specific gun. I’ve got a hunch it’ll be a .308.”

Eve reached out and pulled the blanket off the back of the sofa, then tucked it up around her shoulders. “Maybe I should just give the kidnapper the ransom money he demanded and be done with it.”

“Maybe. But what do you do when he comes back for more?”

“I don’t know.”

Eyeing J.P. where he sat on the edge of the ottoman with her feet in his lap, she smiled at him, noting the gentle way he’d doctored her injuries. “You better turn in. The first day of branding is always a doozy.”

“Yeah.” He clasped her ankles in his strong hands and positioned them on the cushion next to him, then pushed to his feet. “Are you sure you don’t want my help clearing the glass so you can sleep in your own bed tonight?”

“I’ll be fine right here.” She watched him pick up the bottle of peroxide and a handful of cotton balls and put them on the table next to the lamp. “Don’t bother to lock my door. I’m done hiding.”

He paused to look at her for a moment, a mix of curiosity and worry playing across his handsome face, but then he smiled. “Good night, Eve.”

“Good night.” She closed her eyes and listened to his retreating footfalls on the hardwood floor, until the door closed behind him.

Opening them again, she stared at the ceiling, remembering the feel of his body tangled up with hers. The tender way he’d stroked her hair had unintentionally fanned a flame of need in her body. Hot embers that still smoldered, one kiss away from ignition and total burn.

Somehow she couldn’t imagine not having him at her side in L.A. when she fed Thomas his Gucci tie. She would ask J.P. to come with her in the morning.

A thread of apprehension wove its way along her spine. She rolled over onto her side. It eased somewhat, but an annoying stitch of it remained. Going back to Los Angeles scared the hell out of her. It was the kidnapper’s stomping ground, but apparently, so was the Bridal Falls Ranch. She wasn’t safe anywhere, except in this room with J.P. down the hall. Besides, how was she going to put herself out there again in the land of beautiful faces? It was a place where she no longer fit in.

She listened to the whoosh of rushing water come on in J.P.’s private bath. Settling her head on the pillow, she closed her eyes and homed in on it. It was a normal sound, an everyday sound, a comforting sound.

* * *

J.P.
reached up and shut
off the cold water valve on the shower, noting a hint of blue deep in his fingernail beds. At least some parts of him had taken a hint from the icy water; too bad it wasn’t the single part he needed to cooperate.

If he were at home in L.A., he’d try lacing up his shoes and heading for the beach to run himself senseless. It was pretty hard to focus on much when he was fighting for one more mile. That was the only M.O. that had seemed to erase his pain since the Shelly McGinnis case. But he wasn’t in L.A. He was here. Fifty steps and an unlocked door from Shelly’s half sister and a confession he wished he could run from.

Irritated with himself for churning it up, he pulled the shower curtain back and reached for the towel hanging on the rack next to the tub.