Home on the Ranch: Oklahoma: Defending the Rancher's Daughter / The Rancher Bodyguard. Carla Cassidy
stepped backward, breaking their physical contact as he pulled away from her. “Last time I stood that close to you, you scratched half the flesh off my cheek,” he said.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “If you expect me to apologize, you’ll be waiting a long time. You were where you didn’t belong and it really wasn’t any of your business.”
“You were where you didn’t belong, as well,” he reminded her.
Her cheeks deepened in color. “That was a long time ago. What’s important isn’t the past, what’s important is the here and now.”
“Easy for you to say. I bear the scars of the temper tantrum you threw in the past.” He reached up and touched his cheek where the small scar had ensured that he’d never completely forget Katie Sampson.
“You’re joking, right? I didn’t really leave a scar, did I?” She stepped closer to him and once again he tensed as the scent of her surrounded him. Before he knew her intent, she reached up and traced a soft, warm finger across his cheek.
She gasped and jerked her hand away. “Oh, Zack. Tell me the truth? Did I do that or did you get it some other way and you’re just trying to make me feel bad?”
What in the hell was he doing? As he looked at her face, her features taut with concern and maybe just a touch of remorse, he wondered why he’d even brought up that night so long ago.
“I’m just giving you a hard time,” he finally said. “I got this scar in a bar fight several years ago, and you’re right, what’s important is the here and now.” He stepped down from the porch. “I’d better get back to the bunkhouse before the other men come back from town.”
“Of course. I’d like to go with you when you take the file to Dalton.”
“That will be first thing in the morning. Dalton won’t be in the office in town tomorrow, but he has everything he needs at the ranch to start working the background checks. Don’t you need to be here for the cattle tagging?”
He didn’t want her with him. He’d been less than twenty-four hours in her employment and she was already bothering him in a way that confused and irritated him.
“No. Doc Edwards and the men know how to handle it.” She leaned against one of the porch railings once again, her features obscured by the night shadows. “Zack, I have no intention of you running this investigation without me. I want to be beside you every step of the way. Partners, so to speak.”
“I don’t work with partners,” he said.
“Well, you’ve just changed your work habits,” she replied. “I’ll be ready first thing in the morning to go with you to speak to Dalton.”
Before he could protest again, she turned and disappeared into the house. Zack stared at the closed door, his cheek still burning from her touch.
He placed the manila folder in his truck parked at the side of Katie’s house, then headed back to the bunkhouse with the moonlight overhead guiding his way.
When he’d decided to give Katie a couple of days, he figured the worst he’d have to put up with from her was her explosive temper tantrums and impertinence.
He never would have guessed that the scent of her would twist his guts into knots, that her simple touch to his face would generate enough electricity to start a storm. He never would have guessed that her mouth would tempt him to forget the fact that he had no intention of ever getting deeply involved with a woman again.
It had been one hell of a day. First, the realization that Gray’s accident hadn’t been an accident after all and now the knowledge that Katie Sampson had the power to stir him on a level where he hadn’t been stirred in a very long time.
George’s snores greeted him as he entered the bunkhouse. The middle-aged man had moved from in front of the television to his bed.
With the aid of a night-light that gleamed from the kitchen area, Zack made his way to his own bunk. He shucked off his jeans, pulled his T-shirt over his head, then crawled beneath the crisp white sheets on the bed, but sleep remained elusive.
He would have liked an opportunity to read through the file before going to bed to see if any names leaped out at him. Although Zack was aware of the American romance with cowboys, he also knew that in reality many of the workers who drifted from ranch to ranch were misfits, ex-cons and bad apples. Every rancher probably had a horror story about one of his ranch hands, but not every rancher was killed by one of his own.
Katie had to be right about one thing. If Gray had suffered no defensive wounds, then somebody had ambushed him on the trail. Gray had been a big man, no slouch when it came to physical strength and agility. Zack had to guess that the first blow had come from behind, that Gray had been blindsided.
That meant he probably hadn’t been on his horse when he’d been attacked. He’d dismounted to meet somebody? To speak with somebody he’d met on the trail? It had to have been somebody he knew. A man usually didn’t dismount a horse for a stranger.
She’d been so warm in his arms. The stray thought sliced through his head as he remembered holding Katie as she’d wept. He thought of that moment on the porch when she’d leaned toward him and he’d had the crazy impulse to kiss her.
Partners, indeed. The last thing he needed in his life was a woman. He’d emotionally invested as a teenager and early twenty-year-old in the wrong woman and most recently been involved with a client who had ended up dead.
As far as he was concerned, emotional investment in anything or anyone was vastly overrated. The Katie he had always known was nothing more than a big vacuum of emotion and he wasn’t about to get sucked into her by unexpected physical desire or the fact that they both mourned the same man.
He was still awake around midnight when the men came in from town. He feigned sleep and listened to them stumbling around, talking in half-drunk whispers as they fell into bed. Within minutes the room was once again silent.
Was one of these men a murderer? Had one of them met Gray on the trail that early sunny morning and killed him? At the moment Zack had no clue, not even the faintest inclination as to who might be responsible.
* * *
He awoke suddenly, his heart pounding, and for a moment disoriented as to where he was. He sat up and full consciousness gripped him.
He had no idea if he’d been asleep for five minutes or fifty. The nightmare. That’s what had awakened him. The nightmare about Melissa’s death.
Certainly it wasn’t an unusual occurrence. In the past month, nightmares about his client’s death had haunted him regularly.
Knowing from experience that sleep wouldn’t come easily again, he slid out of bed and pulled on his jeans and boots. He moved quietly, not wanting to awaken any of the other men, and slipped out of the bunkhouse door and into the darkness of the night.
He leaned against the bunkhouse and for a moment wished he had a cigarette. Even though he’d quit smoking more than a year before there were still times, especially lately, that he thought about a calming lungful of smoke. Fortunately, the impulse never lasted long.
Melissa. He hadn’t been in love with her, but he’d loved her. He’d been hired to keep her safe from an abusive, soon-to-be ex-husband and in the couple of months he’d spent with her he’d come to respect and admire her strength and indomitable spirit.
When she’d told him she didn’t need his services anymore, when she’d released him from her employment, his instincts had told him the danger still existed. But he’d ignored his instincts and now she was dead.
The nightmare that haunted him was always the same. Even though when Melissa had been killed by her ex-husband Zack had been a hundred miles away, he dreamed of that moment of her death.
In his dream, she stepped out of her car and waved to him, her face radiating the warm smile of a close friend. Clad in a white sundress, she