This Perfect Stranger. Barbara Ankrum
at the trio of men seated a few tables away, Cain tightened his fist. He’d known plenty of men like them. In lockup, a man got familiar with the lowest common denominator quickly. In the real world, men like Laird got off on using intimidation. Especially on women.
Cain smiled grimly. He’d give that bastard five minutes behind bars before men much better versed in arm-twisting put him in a place he’d wish he’d never seen. But men like Laird—men with money—rarely found themselves in the black hole. Even if they’d earned a spot there.
Cain reached into his pocket for the last of his change and tossed it on the table. The waitress who’d filled his cup smiled as she cruised by him again. “Finished? Sure I can’t get you something else?”
The smell of cinnamon buns had been making him almost sick with hunger for the past ten minutes and if he didn’t get out of here soon, he might just have to ask her for a job as a dishwasher to earn one.
“Thanks,” he said, managing a smile of his own as he shrugged into his denim jacket. “This is it. Unless you can tell me who might be hiring around here.”
“You’re looking for work?” she asked with a surprised lift of her brows.
He nodded curtly. “I’ve got some experience with ranch work. Horses, mostly.”
Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, looking him up and down for a moment. “Funny, I didn’t take you for a ranch hand.”
He slid his gloves back on.
“Horses, huh?” She glanced at Laird. “The Bar ZX is always hiring at this time of year.”
Laughter erupted from the men’s table as they shared a joke. Cain glanced out the window. “Anywhere else?”
The woman smiled slowly, then gestured to Cain with a tip of her chin to follow her. “As a matter of fact,” she said softly, walking him to the door, “I just might know of something.”
Chapter 2
The sleeting rain started after lunch, but by one-fifteen it had turned into hail—a sharp, biting deluge that rattled against the tin roof of Maggie’s barn. It had scattered the horses in the paddock in a blind panic. Marble-sized balls of ice pummeled the mares, reducing them to quivering masses huddling against the barn.
One by one, she managed to catch them and lead them into the barn, out of the weather. But Geronimo, a green-broke three-year old gelding, was too frightened to be caught. She’d already missed him three times with her rope as he skidded around the paddock, eyes white with terror.
The gelding was the most unpredictable of her new horses. With the temperament of a scared bulldog, he’d resisted her every attempt at training. But Maggie knew he’d been mishandled as a young horse and she believed he had real potential as a cutter.
The heels of her boots slipped in the mud as Maggie threw the lariat. She missed, going down painfully on one knee. Geronimo crashed into the split-rail fencing and shrieked. Struggling to her feet, Maggie hauled back the spooled out rope, cursing the weather and imagining the bruises she’d have on her before she was done.
Thunder rumbled, shaking the ground and blurring the roar of the hail against the barn. Frigid rain dripped off the brim of her hat and slid down her neck. The stinging hail beat against her slicker-covered back. Instinct warned that she should leave the damned horse where he was. But she knew she didn’t have the heart to do that either. Geronimo had been through enough in his short life to fill a book. She wasn’t about to compound his misery by abandoning him when things got tough. In his state, he could break his neck trying to break out of the paddock.
“Shh—Geronimo—” she called, approaching him again as he pranced madly back and forth on the north end of the enclosure. She knew he hated the rope, but she couldn’t get close enough to him to grab his halter. “Whoa, boy. Settle down, now. Here we go. That’s it. Let’s just get you outta this weather.”
Geronimo rolled his eyes in terror as she tossed the loop one more time, this time, miraculously, dropping it over the gelding’s head. Maggie hauled back on the rope feeling the resistance before she’d even gotten it tight.
The big gelding shuddered for a moment, legs splayed, before he exploded with a high-pitched squeal. Nine-hundred pounds of fury, bone and muscle bore down on her like a shrieking banshee.
There was no time to react. Nowhere to go. She heard a scream and knew it had come from her.
Too late, she lunged sideways, diving toward the fence rails, but Geronimo slammed into her with the force of an oncoming locomotive. The impact sent her careening against the railing and slammed the breath from her lungs. Lights exploded in her skull, and the rain and the sky and even the mud beneath her cheek winked in and out like a flickering lightbulb.
She felt, more than heard, the thunderous pounding of Geronimo’s hooves against the ground nearby. She gasped and coughed. Her lungs burned. The world, as she opened her eyes, was spinning. The only thing that was holding still was the post she was curled around.
Get up!
The voice was hers. Wasn’t it? She willed herself to try. Her fingernails sank into the mud in her pathetic effort to drag herself toward the nearby rail, but found no purchase around the cold chunks of ice that littered the ground. She could hear the frantic barking of her dog, Jigger, coming from inside the house and she suddenly wished she hadn’t left him there, safe from the storm.
Dimly, it occurred to her that this was a sloppy way to die. Slogged in mud, trampled in her own paddock by a dumb animal who depended on her for its very survival.
Embarrassing, really—
Before she could finish the thought, someone was tugging on her wrists. Pulling her effortlessly away from the sound of oncoming hooves. She felt the heavy, pounding closeness of them as they barely missed her legs. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled with a fierce howl.
And then she was sprawled outside the paddock with someone leaning urgently over her, shielding her from the hail. Touching her face.
“Can you hear me?”
It was a man’s voice. That realization only dimly registered. The sky above her was still doing a slow rotation. “I—” she croaked, licking the rain off her lips. “Ben—?”
The shadow above her shook his head. “Don’t move. You might’ve broken something.”
Not Ben, she thought. Of course, not Ben. Someone else. She tried to sit up. “Who—?”
“Lie still,” he commanded, pressing her back down. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
He didn’t have to. Everything ached. Maggie squinted up at him past the rain as he ran his hands down the sides of her ribs. Big was the first word that came to mind.
And just like that, her head cleared.
Oh, no.
Pushing his hands off her, she tried to sit up again. “Don’t—”
He swore under his breath, but let her sit.
She couldn’t think. Not coherently anyway. And not while he was touching her. “I’m all right,” she told him. “I just…just had the wind knocked out of me, that’s all.”
Her shaking hands were muddy, but she fingered her aching cheek, taking in the beat up old motorcyle parked twenty feet away.
“You—you were…at Moody’s.”
“That’s right.”
“What—” she shook her head “—what’re…you doing here?”
“Saving your pretty little behind apparently.” The hail was still pelting them, but he scanned her empty yard with a look close to anger. “Where the hell is everybody?”
Everybody? Maggie tried to get to her feet and failed, bracing a hand