Blackwolf's Redemption (9 page)

“I’m just going to get those sneakers,” she said quickly, brushing past him.

She didn’t get very far. His hand curled around her arm. “I was out of line.”

“We already talked about this, remember? I’m as responsible for what happened as you are.”

“Still, I owe you an apology.”

“Fine. Apology accepted—assuming you’ve accepted mine.”

Jesse held out his hand. She looked at it for a long moment before she took it.

“Deal,” he said.

She nodded. “Deal.”

He smiled. So did she. But when she looked up at him, she saw an intensity in his dark eyes that left her breathless, and saw, too, a question she could answer simply by taking a step toward him.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Because if he took her in his arms again, she would be more lost than she already was.

The handshake ended.

“I’ll bring the truck around front,” he said, as if the moment had not happened, and she said, “Fine,” and moved past him, and knew that the sooner she got out of this place, the better.

Because of detritus from yesterday’s storm, the drive took almost two hours.

Downed trees, a swollen creek, a fallen power line all required Jesse’s concentration. Just as well. It gave him a reason to keep quiet after a few desultory remarks.

He had no idea what to say to the woman seated beside him.

She hadn’t been big on conversation, either. In fact, she’d only made one remark since getting into his Chevy Silverado. She’d looked at his eight-track tape player and given a choked laugh.

“Something funny?”

“No. No, not at all. It’s just…that’s an eight-track, right?”

His brows lifted. “What else would it be?”

An iPod, she thought giddily, and fought back a sense of rising hysteria.

“Want to hear something?”

She nodded.

“Pick whatever you like,” he said, jerking his head toward the box of tapes on the floor near her feet.

“The Eagles,” she said, with that little laugh again, as if she’d stumbled across something completely unexpected. “Oh, I love their music! You, too?”

“Yeah,” he’d said. “They’re okay.”

The truth was, they were his favorite band, but admitting that seemed to be admitting too much.

Now, as they approached the center of town, “One of These Nights” playing softly in the background, Jesse cleared his throat.

“There’s a hotel on Main Street that’s not too bad.”

Sienna swung toward him. She knew he’d said something, but her brain seemed to have stopped working.

“What?”

He reached out, silenced the tape player.

“I said, there’s a hotel on Main that’s passable.”

She nodded. It wasn’t the music that had kept her from hearing him, it was the realization that this place, this town, was not the one she’d flown into a couple of days ago. Some of the buildings were the same, but if this was Main Street, where were those staples of American life that had been here then?

Arby’s. Taco Bell. Burger King. They were gone. Or they’d never been. Either way, she was lost, lost, lost—

“Unless you and the boyfriend already have a room.”

“For the last time, there is no boyfriend. We don’t have a room.
I
don’t have a room. We were camping in the canyon—”

“My canyon.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again. Looked straight ahead, not at him.

“Just let me out anywhere you want.”

“You pick it. The airport? Someplace that’ll rent you a car? The Greyhound terminal?”

“Greyhound? Oh. The bus station. Yes, that’s fine.”

Jesse nodded, The terminal was dead ahead. He pulled to the curb and stopped. He hadn’t meant to bark at her about the damned canyon or to toss yet another accusation about Jack. Who cared if she’d been in his canyon? And she’d already said Jack was her professor, and he believed her.

It was just that he was in one miserable mood. No reason for it. Actually, he should have been feeling great, getting rid of an unwanted encumbrance.

“You want me to wait while you go in and check the schedule?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, thank you. I—I’ll be fine.”

“Do you need money?”

“No,” she said again.

Still, he reached in his pocket, took out some bills and held them toward her. “Go ahead. Just in case.”

She looked at him and knew she’d sooner starve than take anything more from him.

“I don’t need it.”

Jesse shrugged, opened his door, stepped down from the truck and went around to her side. She had already opened her door and stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Well,” he said.

Sienna flashed a bright smile. “Thanks for everything,” she said, even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t.

The muscle in his jaw locked and unlocked. “Damn it, Sienna,” he said roughly, but before he could say more, she turned and ran into the bus station. The door shut after her.

Jesse stood, unmoving.

She was gone.

It was a relief. It was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To get her out of his life?

Maybe he should have asked her where she’d go. Or how she’d get there. She’d said she didn’t need money, but she didn’t have a purse. Her clothes were still on the floor in his house. If she’d had a wallet, he sure as hell hadn’t seen it.

All he’d seen was sadness in her eyes, and fear—and then, this morning, there’d been more, something that had made him ache to take her in his arms and tell her not to leave, never to leave, which was exactly what he’d come within a heartbeat of saying….

A bus pulled out into the road. Was she on it? She couldn’t be. She’d only just gone through those doors….

“Sienna?”

He started toward the terminal, slowly at first, then faster and faster so that by the time he reached it, he was running. He flung the door open, stood still, looked around him.

The waiting room was empty.

“Sienna!” A worn-out-looking guy dozing on a bench jerked awake. “Sienna,” Jesse shouted…and, suddenly, he saw her, standing at the far end of the gloomy room, looking fragile and lost.

“Jesse?”

Her face lit. It made his heart turn over. He had never thought a woman would look at him that way again, as if he were all
she’d ever wanted or needed, and he’d damned well never imagined he’d want a woman to look at him like that, either.

Now he knew he’d never wanted it, or wanted one particular woman, half this much.

He wanted to open his arms and gather her in, tell her what he felt…but a man only made a fool of himself over a woman one time and he had met his quota.

So he strode toward her instead, stopped inches away and put his hands on his hips.

“Where are you going?”

The glow in her eyes dimmed so fast he thought maybe he’d imagined it.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, where are you going? Why didn’t you take that money? Aren’t you even going to try to find this guy, Jack? He brought you here, didn’t he? Shouldn’t he be looking for you?”

“That’s five questions,” she said, lifting her chin. “And not one of them is any of your business.”

That muscle that knotted in his jaw whenever he was ticked off was going full speed. What had made him come after her? Not concern or caring, that was certain, though it was what she’d foolishly thought when she first saw him.

She knew why he’d come after her. The same thing that had made him risk his neck getting her off that ledge, that had made him give her shelter, food, even these ridiculous sweats.

He was a man of honor. He felt responsible for her, but then, he’d probably feel that same responsibility for anybody. It had nothing to do with her.

Somehow, stupid as it seemed, that was infuriating.

“I am not your responsibility,” she said coldly. “You got that, Mr. Blackwolf?”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed. He glared at her, glared some more.
Then he said something in what she figured might have been Sioux or Comanche, took her none-too-gently by the arm and, despite her yelps of protest, marched her out of the terminal and back to the Silverado.

S
HE
fought all the way, digging in her heels, calling him names he hadn’t thought women knew, but then, this was a woman like none he’d ever met. Tough. Strong. Fragile. Vulnerable. She was a mass of contradictions and, damn it, so was he, or else why would he have yanked her out of that gloomy bus station and hustled her back into the cab of his truck?

“Do not try to get away,” he said grimly, once he got her there, “because I’ll just go after you again and bring you back. You got that?”

The look she gave him said she got it, and more. Despite everything, he came close to laughing. What mattered was that he didn’t, he just went around the truck, got into the driver’s seat, turned the key, jammed his foot to the floor and the Silverado skidded onto the road, the roar of its engine and the squeal of its tires a good approximation of the anger boiling inside him.

Yes, but who was he angry at? Her? Or him?

He drove fast, up Main Street, out of town, turned off on a muddy excuse for a road he remembered from his high school days, a place where you could cut classes and find half
a dozen other bored jerks doing the same thing. Once there, he shut off the engine and looked at her.

“Question one. Where did you figure on going?”

Nothing. She went on staring straight ahead, arms folded, profile looking as if it had been done by a chisel.

“Okay, question two. How were you going to get there? Far as I can tell, you don’t have a dime to your name.”

Still nothing. Jesse glowered.

“Question three. Why didn’t you want to go looking for Jack the Quitter?”

Was that a faint twitch of her mouth? Maybe they were making progress.

“If I were in your shoes, all alone, no money, nothing but my clothes on my back—”

“Your clothes,” she said caustically. “My back, your clothes. Don’t you want to point that out, too?”

“If I were in your shoes,” he said, as if she hadn’t interrupted him, “I’d sure as hell want to locate Jack the Jerk.”

Another twitch. “Very amusing.”

“Very valid, you mean. Why aren’t you interested in finding him? The man brought you here. He left you in the canyon. He’s responsible for you.”

She swung toward him. “Look, take my word on this. Jack isn’t—he isn’t here.” She turned away, fixed her eyes on the windshield again. “Now, will you take me back to the bus station?”

“You haven’t answered my other questions. Where are you going to go?”

“Wherever the first bus out will take me.”

“And how will you pay for a ticket?” More stony silence. Jesse grabbed her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Damn it, woman, stop pretending I’m a stranger. I saw you
dressed.” His eyes narrowed. “I saw you undressed. Damned near every inch of you, and—”

“Such a gentleman,” she said, her defiance matched by the rise of color in her face.

“I’m not a gentleman. I never pretended I was.”

“I don’t think you could. Pretend to be a gentleman, I mean. A man like you just—just takes what he wants and to hell with—”

She gasped as he pulled her against him and kissed her, his mouth hard and bruising against hers.

“Stop while you’re still ahead,” he growled when he lifted his head. “If I’d taken what I wanted last night, things would be a lot different this morning.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” she said, her voice trembling.

He didn’t know what it was supposed to mean, either. If they’d made love, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. Morning still would have come and he’d still have sent her on her way….

Except, he
hadn’t
sent her on her way, even though they hadn’t made love.

Just as he’d figured, she was complicating his life and he seemed powerless to stop it.

He let go of her, sat back, clasped the steering wheel and stared out the windshield.

“Okay. You’re broke. You have nowhere to go. Nobody you can turn to for help.” He looked at her, his voice cold. “Have I left anything out?”

Sienna lifted her shoulders, then dropped them in what he assumed was meant as a what-else-is-new gesture. It made him want to tug her into his arms again and kiss her not as he just had, with anger at himself, at her, at fate, but with tenderness.

He wouldn’t, of course.

Why should he feel tender toward a woman who’d dropped into his life without invitation?

Still, no way could he simply abandon her. Pretending otherwise had been foolish. His mother had always teased him about bringing home strays. Dogs, cats, one time an orphaned raccoon, another a baby possum. Linda hadn’t teased him about it so much as she’d chastised him for it. She had enough to do, dealing with him, she’d say; the last thing she needed was a stray underfoot.

But Linda had nothing to do with this. This was about Sienna. She was a problem, and until he figured out what to do about it, he’d handle it.

He took the bills he’d tried to give her earlier from his shirt pocket, sat forward, took his wallet from his jeans, thumbed out all the bills and held all the money toward her. She looked at his hand, then at him. The expression on her face would have frozen an entire ocean.

“I already told you. No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, no. En-Oh. No. I don’t want anything from you except a lift back to the bus station.”

He stared at her for a long minute. Then he shook his head, stuffed the bills and the wallet into his pocket.

“You,” he said grimly, “are impossible.”

Sienna thought that he might be right. But she didn’t want his money, didn’t want him thinking he could buy her off, didn’t want anything except what he had not offered, and, God, she wasn’t just impossible, she was crazy.

She was furious with him, and he hadn’t done anything but show her another act of kindness even if he’d done it with all the charm of a grizzly.

Even if it wasn’t the one thing she really wanted.

When he’d come through the door at the bus station, calling her name; when he’d located her and come toward her…Her heart, her foolish, foolish heart, had bounced straight into her throat.

He’d come for her, she’d thought. This time, he really had come for her. He didn’t want to let her leave him. He was going to tell her that, to say it didn’t matter how or when or where they’d stumbled across each other, all that counted was that they had.

But he hadn’t done or said anything remotely like that. Instead, he’d grabbed her as if she were a—a sack of laundry, hauled her to his truck, driven her out here in grim silence and then asked her questions she couldn’t answer.

The worst of it was, she couldn’t blame him.

They were nothing to each other. She’d romanticized everything. The storm, the kisses, the sexual heat they’d generated, and now she was taking out her anger on him.

“Okay,” he said, and slapped his palms against the steering wheel. “Okay. You won’t accept a handout. How about a job, instead?”

A job. Yes. That sounded reasonable. She could accumulate a little money, take the time to determine what to do next.

She turned toward him.

“Do you know someone with a job to fill?”

He shrugged those broad shoulders. “Maybe.”

Maybe. The man was a wellspring of information.

“Doing what?”

He glanced at her. “Does it matter?”

No, it didn’t. She’d take whatever she could get.

“Yes,” she said, lying through her teeth. “A person likes to know what she’s applying for before she applies.”

Brilliant. He raised his eyebrows. She fought against raising hers.

“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “what can you do? There must be something besides anthropology.”

He made the profession sound like a disease. Sienna sat a little straighter.

“I studied business for two years before switching majors.”

He nodded, obviously not impressed. “So, you can type?”

That did it. She swung toward him again, this time breathing fire.

“If you mean, can I do word processing…”

“I mean, can you type? Whatever ‘word processing’ is, it doesn’t interest me.”

No. It wouldn’t. She was thirty-five-plus years ahead of him in technology and light-years ahead in gender equality, but the old saying was accurate. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and if ever there’d been a beggar, it was she.

“Yes,” she said. “I can type.”

He nodded again. “There’s a job opening for a typist. Well, a secretary.”

“A personal assistant,” she said sweetly, because she couldn’t help herself.

He snorted. “This is not a job that involves arranging flowers or planning parties. It’s for a woman who can do some typing. Some shorthand. Brew coffee, run errands, you know the routine.”

She certainly did. When she’d studied business, older women in the department had talked about the days when men automatically assumed those functions were strictly sex-related. But she could survive stereotyping for a few weeks, because, surely, it wouldn’t take longer than that to get her head around what had happened, save a little money and plan a way out.

“Can you do those things?”

“I don’t take shorthand.” Did anyone, in her world? “But I can handle the rest of it.”

“Fine.”

He turned the key. The Silverado gave a sexy growl and he shifted into Reverse, laid his arm over the seat back, peered behind them and began backing toward the main road. His hand brushed her shoulder; an electric tingle sizzled through her. She caught her breath. The sooner she got this job, got a room in town, got away from Jesse Blackwolf, the better.

Say something, she told herself, say something about the job, about the world, just say something that takes your mind off him.

“Where’s this job located?”

“Outside town.”

Outside town. How would she get back and forth to work? She wasn’t going to ask.

“What’s it pay?”

He glanced at her, then at the road. “Enough.”

“Enough? Enough?” Sienna glared at him. “What’s that mean? I’ll have to find a room, buy food, buy clothes….”

“One-twenty a week.”

The amount was surely a joke—or was that what a secretary was expected to live on in the seventies?

Sienna lifted her chin. “No way.”

“One-thirty. Plus room and board.”

“You mean, I’m going to live where I work?”

“Yeah.” His tone turned sarcastic. “Unless you’d prefer to drive there in the car you don’t own.”

“Very amusing.” She folded her arms. “What kind of business is it?”

Jesse shrugged. “A little of this, a little of that. Ranching, mostly, with some other stuff tossed in.”

Was she paranoid along with everything else, or was he being evasive? “What other stuff?”

“Jeez.” He huffed out a breath as he tapped his horn and cut around a truck towing a horse trailer. “Stuff. Finance.”

“Excel, you mean?”

That won her another glance. “I don’t know if you’d call this guy one who excels at finance, but he’s done okay.”

“No. I didn’t mean does he excel at it, I meant does he use Ex…” She sighed. “Never mind.”

“So, you can handle the numbers part? Keep a ledger?”

Not without a computer and software, but why tell him that?

“I’m good at on-the-job learning,” she said airily. “What’s my boss’s name?”

“His name is Jesse Blackwolf,” Jesse said, and made a sharp right through the gate that led onto Blackwolf Ranch.

“What?” Sienna sat up straight. “Forget it! I am not living here, sleeping here, working here—working for you.”

“You got any better ideas, I’m ready to hear them.”

“I want a job in town.”

“Sure.” He gave a lazy, infuriating laugh. “Only one little problem, baby. There are no jobs in town.”

“Don’t call me ‘baby.’ And there must be jobs. Small towns always need waitstaff.”

“Waitstaff,” he said, and chuckled. “You mean waiters and waitresses? Well, yes. But Bozeman gets more than its share of skiers, hikers, whatever. They take those jobs faster than you can say ‘Thank you, Jesse, for finding me a job.’ If you were ever going to say ‘thanks,’ that is.”

“I… You…” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. He was right. She was lucky he was willing to hire her. All she’d have to do was make sure he knew it was a business arrangement.

She told him that, in precisely those words, as he pulled up in front of the house.

“This is strictly business,” she said coldly, “and don’t you forget it.”

She was out of the truck before he could say anything. He thought about going after her as she flounced toward the porch, of taking her in his arms and showing her that what was between them was business, all right. Unfinished business.

But she was right.

He’d keep his distance. She’d keep hers. It was a big ranch. And he actually did need a secretary, assuming she was competent, someone who could type his letters, sort his mail, keep the ranch’s books so his accountants wouldn’t scratch their heads and give him lectures at the end of every quarter when they came by….

Hell.

He wasn’t going to be here another quarter. He was selling this place; why had he forgotten that? She’d be out of a job in another couple of days….

“Jesse?”

He swung around as he stepped from the cab. His foreman was trotting toward him. He’d given Chuck and the rest of his men the weekend off. He’d wanted to be alone so he could figure out how to tell them he was selling the ranch, that there’d be no more work for them, and, instead, he’d spent his time first chasing after spiritual hocus-pocus and then after a woman.

A woman.

He was a fool, he thought grimly. Worse than a fool. He’d wasted precious time instead of dealing with reality.

“Chuck. I’m glad to see you. We need to talk.”

“Yeah. I saw the damage in the southeast pasture. I’ve
got a couple of men out there already, fixing those fence posts, but—”

“No. Not about that. I meant…” Jesse looked toward the front door just as Sienna opened it. He frowned and ran his hand through his hair. “Give me a half hour, then come to the office, okay?”

His foreman looked at Sienna’s receding back, then at him. “Sure,” he said, and headed for the barn.

Jesse stepped inside the quiet house. “Sienna?”