Cowboy Who Came For Christmas (Harlequin Romance) (5 page)

Adan nodded and helped her down the steps. They slogged through almost a foot of snow before they reached the other window.

And saw that the screen was not on the window. It was lying ripped and torn on the snow-covered grass.

Sophia turned and tried to run. “I have to get inside.”

Adan hurried and caught her by the arm. “Hold up. Do you want to scare her?”

Angry that he was wasting time, she shouted, “You saw that screen!”

Adan nodded. “Yes, and I saw the window. The glass is intact. No one went through that window.”

“He could have closed it.”

“He would have broken out a pane to get inside. The glass is intact.”

When they heard a dog barking from inside the house, Sophia yanked away from Adan. “I’m going inside.”

“How?”

She lifted the key ring from her coat pocket. “I have a key.”

She didn’t wait for him to ask her about anything else. Sophia’s heart was churning and shifting in the same blustery confusion as the wind’s unforgiving gusts. Her safe, quiet life was now in an uproar and her fears for her friend had multiplied twofold after seeing that busted window screen.

She was fighting two very determined men. One evil...and one good. She just wished she knew which one would win.

CHAPTER FIVE

B
Y
THE
TIME
they’d made it back around the house, the rear porch light flickered on and Bettye cracked open the door enough to push a rifle barrel through it. “Who’s out there?”

Letting out a held breath, Sophia ran up the slippery steps. “It’s me, Bettye. I was worried about you.”

The door peeled back like a creaky old trunk lid. “I’m fine, honey. You sure scared Bandit, though.” She motioned them inside with the gun down and her left hand in the air.

Sophia smelled the faint scents of vanilla and lavender. A burning candle? Then she heard a man’s cough.

Adan shot her a confused glance before they entered the back door of the cluttered, cloying cabin. “What’s going on?”

Bettye gave them a sheepish grin. “Jacob saw y’all with me earlier and...came over to see what all the commotion was about.” She motioned to Adan. “Jacob, this is the Ranger-Man I was telling you about.”

Jacob? Sophia’s relief was followed by a bemused confusion. She’d always known Jacob Miller had a huge crush on Bettye, but Bettye had never indicated that she felt the same about the grizzled, cantankerous older man. He had to be at least eighty. He could barely walk!

Adan introduced himself and walked over to shake Jacob’s hand. “Hello, sir.”

Jacob pushed up off the chair and shook Adan’s hand. “Hear you’re tracking a nasty criminal.”

“Yes, sir.” Adan explained what he was doing here. “Have y’all seen or heard anything?”

“Not a peep until you two showed up,” Jacob said on a grin.

“Hey there,” Jacob said to Sophia after grasping Adan’s hand, his ever-present pipe hanging like a leafless tree branch out of his whiskered mouth. What little bit of hair he had stood out around his head in white tufts that reminded Sophia of snow caught against limbs. “We’re just sitting here enjoying the fire.”

“Without any lights on, apparently,” Adan replied on a dry note. He turned to Bettye. “Sophia was concerned and when we went around to the side, we found one of your window screens lying in the bushes.”

Bettye brushed at her braid. “Been meaning to replace that.”

“Remind me when spring comes and I’ll take care of it,” Jacob said, his gray beard dancing. “A mite too cold out there tonight.”

Bettye eyed Adan and Sophia. “It’s late, but you’re both welcome to come in and sit awhile.”

She didn’t offer up anywhere to sit, however.

“Uh, no, we won’t stay,” Sophia replied, unable to hide her smile. “As long as you’re okay, Bettye.”

“She’s just fine,” Jacob said with another big grin and a strong bobble of a nod. “We were reminiscing about when we were young and in love.”

“With other people,” Bettye replied in a rush of words. “We both were married long ago, before the mountain claimed us.” She glanced down at her house booties, a sly smile hanging off her cheery face. “Now we enjoy sitting by the fire.”

“Uh-huh,” Adan replied, his lips twitching. He glanced at his watch. “It
is
late. Sophia, I think we should leave these two young’uns alone.”

Bandit meandered out of the bedroom, his ears flopping and his nose in the air. After sniffing at Adan and then stopping in front of Sophia for a fur rub, he sauntered over to the hooked rug in front of the fireplace and plopped down.

“Some watchdog you are,” Sophia said, walking over to bend and pet him again. After giving Bandit a thorough belly rub, she stood and said, “Okay, now that I’ve embarrassed everyone, I’m going back to my own cabin.”

Bettye came over to give her a hug. “Jacob and I’ll sit a bit longer, then I’ll send him on his way.” She leaned in. “I did hear a noise earlier, honey. I used the old-fashioned message system. I flicked the porch light three times. Jacob saw it and came over straight away.”

“You should come home with me,” Sophia said, her gaze scurrying toward where Adan was making small talk with Jacob. She’d wondered if Jacob had been climbing in and out of that window, but that image just didn’t jive with his arthritic arms and legs. Maybe he was a back-door man.

Bettye shook her head then lifted a hand toward Jacob. “Are you kidding me? I been waiting for this man to catch me—this man sitting in the rocking chair, that is—for about three years now. Fate has a way of working in our favor sometimes.” She shot a covert glance at Adan. “Bad guy on the loose, nice-looking Ranger in the house, Jacob in my rocking chair. Fate.”

“I don’t need this kind of fate,” Sophia retorted, her gaze hitting on Adan. Then she looked Bettye in the eye. “Maybe we can talk in private tomorrow.”

“Sure thing,” Bettye said, stepping back. “Sorry about scaring you,” she said a bit louder for Adan’s benefit.

After a few more questions from Jacob about Adan’s being a Ranger, Sophia and Adan left to face the brutal cold once again. Adan had given them a description of Joe Pritchard before urging them to be alert. He did one more thorough check on the bushes around Sophia’s cabin, but turned up nothing.

Maybe the prowler was gone, or worse, frozen in the snow. Sophia could hope that, right?

When they were safely inside her cabin, she turned to give Adan a solemn stare. And found him standing there with a wide grin on his face.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, completely captivated by his beautiful smile. Too captivated. The man dazzled her with gleaming toughness, but she needed to remember this was not a social call. He was here to do lawman business and she had to keep that in mind at all times.

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Did we just walk in on a...senior hookup?”

Sophia gasped then clamped a hand over her mouth. “No. I mean, no. I don’t know. I... I don’t think so. Not yet, at least. Bettye isn’t that kind of girl.”

“You’re blushing,” he said, his smile dying on his lips while his eyes heated to liquid gold. “And you’re smiling.”

Trying to deflect the sizzle of his eyes moving over her, Sophia shook her head. “So are you. I didn’t think Rangers knew how to smile.”

His eyebrows lifted while he stared her down. “And what exactly do you know about Rangers?”

“Not nearly enough,” she said on a sassy huff. “Or in your case, way more than I ever wanted to know.”

Such as, he would arrest her if he knew the truth. Or maybe that his smile could definitely change her attitude from standoffish to
come closer
.

No, never mind that!

“But I still don’t know a lot about you,” he said, his gaze melting her chill away. And scaring it right back in a shivering slide down her backbone.

“You know enough.”

He grinned and headed to drop another log on the fire. “What a night.”

“Full of lots of revelations,” Sophia said, reminding herself to be careful. He was being charming now that they were alone. Did he plan on tormenting her with his commanding presence until she gave in and spilled her guts?

Even that thought made her blush.

“And full of lots of secrets,” he retorted, his grin tapering off to a solid, unyielding poker face.

The man was truly like a dog with a bone.

“So we have a snowstorm, a criminal on the loose and two old people making eyes at each other.”

Not to mention her being here with Adan in a cabin in a snowstorm, alone. Trapped.

He stepped so close she could smell the snowdrift all around him. “And...one very pretty woman who isn’t telling the truth.”

* * *

S
OPHIA
STARTED
MAKING
the sofa into his sleeping quarters, probably to avoid the accusation in his words. After fluffing blankets and tucking sheets, she said, “So you’re back on that?”

Adan watched her face for lies but in the flickering golden light from the fire all he saw was a secretive confusion. Was she hiding something? Was she hiding someone? Would the snow ever melt?

The snow she had around her heart, that was. This woman obviously had something to hide and she seemed to have a major distrust of law enforcement.

Not so much a hard heart, but maybe a bruised one.

“I’m good at my job,” he replied, once again taking in the bright colors and quirky artwork that filled every surface of her little home. “I’ll get the truth out of everyone around here, sooner or later.”

“I figure you’ll have to go back to Texas—sooner than later, I hope.”

Adan decided to mess with her a little bit. “Until that storm clears, I got nothing but time, darlin’. And you got nobody else to talk to tonight.”

She whirled to give him a feminine frown. “And what makes you think I’m lying? Haven’t I tried to cooperate with you and answer all of your questions?”

He had to grin again at that. “You held a gun on me and tied me up but yes, you’ve been very cooperative. But as I said before, I couldn’t help but notice you got scared, extremely scared, when you found that wanted poster on your back door.”

She lowered her head then crossed her arms over her stomach. “That was silly and I shouldn’t have reacted that way. Probably one of our neighbors went down the mountain and ran into someone passing those out. Any one of my friends could have left that on my door just to warn me.”

“A passable explanation, but not on a night like this.”

She peeked out the kitchen window. “Criminals don’t care about the weather.”

“True. But why would a neighbor wait until so late in the day to leave posters on doors? And why didn’t Bettye mention having one on her door?”

Sophia whirled around and took her time putting fresh pillowcases on the two pillows she’d pulled out of the hallway closet. “I don’t know. I just reacted to seeing
that
right after you showed up here. Too much excitement and you with all your talk of some dangerous man on the run.”

Adan stared over at her with purposeful intent. “A dangerous man who obviously came to Crescent Mountain for a reason.”

She got that fearful look again but quickly cleared it and gave him a defiant chin lift. “Maybe he knows someone around here.”

A roundabout confession? “Maybe so.”

The room grew uncomfortably quiet.

Deciding to back off for now, Adan stifled a yawn. “Sorry. I guess I’m more beat than I realized.”

“Me, too,” she said on an eager sigh. “I hope this will be okay.”

He nodded toward the blanket and fluffy pillows. “Looks like heaven.” He took off his hat and laid it on the coffee table then shrugged. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

She gave him an appraising glance. “I guess you have at that.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He wanted to say more, but it had been a while since he’d been in a forced confinement with a woman. Adan’s rule was to keep moving fast so no woman would ever try to tie him down the way his ex-wife had. And yet this one had already tied him up. He’d have to bear that in mind until the snow stopped falling. No telling what she’d try if he actually fell asleep.

“Okay, then, I’m, uh, going to bed.” She motioned toward the bathroom. “I’ll just be a minute then you can take a shower if you’d like. Towels underneath the sink. And I think I have several unopened toothbrushes from our many trips into town. Jacob always brings everyone a new toothbrush. He’s a retired dentist.”

Adan nodded and grinned. “He did have white teeth.”

She put a hand to her mouth and reminded him of his daughter, girly and giggly. But this particular girl was all grown-up and way too enticing.

“I guess I have missed a few clues around here,” she admitted. “Did not see that one coming.”

“I think they make a cute couple,” he replied. “But I’ll have to question them again. And everyone else on this mountain, too. I need you to understand that, Sophia.”

“I guess I don’t have much of a choice,” she replied, her playful expression changing as an aggravated frown arrowed its way up her forehead. “You do what you need to do. And we’ll do the same.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I have no reason to threaten you.”

“Then be honest with me so I don’t have to threaten you.”

“I’m tired,” she replied. “And I’m going to bed.”

And the moment was gone.

In a whirl worthy of an award-winning actress, she turned and strutted into the bathroom and slammed the door.

But the warning had been very clear.

Sophia and her merry band of followers would not make his job easy. He’d have to do some investigating when this weather cleared. If this weather cleared.

Something wasn’t right about Sophia’s reaction to that poster. Either she knew the man in the picture or she’d seen him recently. Why would she withhold information on a dangerous man?

Maybe because she might be the reason that man had come to this mountain?

Adan grunted and sank down on the sofa and removed his boots. Sometimes, his job really got the best of him.

But at no time on a case had a woman ever gotten the best of him.

Not yet, at least.