Her Kind of Hero (23 page)

“The last mercenary,” she whispered. “And you didn't get away, after all.”

“Not the last,” he murmured, glancing toward his old comrades and Peter, their newest member, all of whom were silently easing away toward the parking lot. He smiled down at her. “But the happiest,” he added, bending to kiss her. “Wave bye at both our papas and let's go. I can't wait to get you alone, Mrs. Steele!”

She chuckled and blushed prettily. “That makes two of us!”

She waved and climbed into the car with her acres of silk and lace and waited for Micah to pile in beside her. The door closed. The car drove away to the excited cries of good luck that followed it. Inside, two newlyweds were wrapped up close in each others' arms, oblivious to everything else. Micah cradled Callie in his arms and thanked God for second chances. He recalled Callie's soft words: After the pain, the pleasure. He closed his eyes and sighed. The pleasure had just begun.

T
he man on the hill sat on his horse with elegance and grace, and the young woman found herself staring at him. He was obviously overseeing the roundup, which the man at her side had brought her to view. This ranch was small by Texas standards, but around Jacobsville, it was big enough to put its owner in the top ten in size.

“Dusty, isn't it?” Ed Caldwell asked with a chuckle, oblivious to the distant mounted rider, who was behind him and out of his line of sight. “I'm glad I work for the corporation and not here. I like my air cool and unpolluted.”

Leslie Murry smiled. She wasn't pretty. She had a plain, rather ordinary sort of face with blond hair that had a natural wave, and gray eyes. Her one good feature besides her slender figure was a pretty bow mouth. She had a quiet, almost reclusive demeanor these days. But she hadn't always been like that. In her early teens, Leslie had been flamboyant and outgoing, a live wire of a girl whose friends had laughed at her exploits. Now, at twenty-three, she was as sedate as a matron. The change
in her was shocking to people who'd once known her. She knew Ed Caldwell from college in Houston. He'd graduated in her sophomore year, and she'd quit the following semester to go to work as a paralegal for his father's law firm in Houston. Things had gotten too complicated there, and Ed had come to the rescue once again. In fact, Ed was the reason she'd just been hired as an executive assistant by the mammoth Caldwell firm. His cousin owned it.

She'd never met Mather Gilbert Caldwell, or Matt as he was known locally. People said he was a nice, easygoing man who loved an underdog. In fact, Ed said it frequently himself. They were down here for roundup so that Ed could introduce Leslie to the head of the corporation. But so far, all they'd seen was dust and cattle and hardworking cowboys.

“Wait here,” Ed said. “I'm going to ride over and find Matt. Be right back.” He urged his horse into a trot and held on for dear life. Leslie had to bite her lip to conceal a smile at the way he rode. It was painfully obvious that he was much more at home behind the wheel of a car. But she wouldn't have been so rude as to have mentioned it, because Ed was the only friend she had these days. He was, in fact, the only person around who knew about her past.

While she was watching him, the man on horseback on the hill behind them was watching her. She sat on a horse with style, and she had a figure that would have attracted a connoisseur of women—which the man on horseback was. Impulsively he spurred his horse into a gallop and came down the rise behind her. She didn't hear him until he reined in and the harsh sound of the horse snorting had her whirling in the saddle.

The man was wearing working clothes, like the other
cowboys, but all comparisons ended there. He wasn't ragged or missing a tooth or unshaven. He was oddly intimidating, even in the way he sat the horse, with one hand on the reins and the other on his powerful denim-clad thigh.

Matt Caldwell met her gray eyes with his dark ones and noted that she wasn't the beauty he'd expected, despite her elegance of carriage and that perfect figure. “Ed brought you, I gather,” he said curtly.

She'd almost guessed from his appearance that his voice would be deep and gravelly, but not that it would cut like a knife. Her hands tightened on the reins. “I…yes, he…he brought me.”

The stammer was unexpected. Ed's usual sort of girl was brash and brassy, much more sophisticated than this shrinking violet here. He liked to show off Matt's ranch and impress the girls. Usually it didn't bother Matt, but he'd had a frustrating day and he was out of humor. He scowled. “Interested in cattle ranching, are you?” he drawled with ice dripping from every syllable. “We could always get you a rope and let you try your hand, if you'd like.”

She felt as if every muscle in her body had gone taut. “I…came to meet Ed's cousin,” she managed. “He's rich.” The man's dark eyes flashed and she flushed. She couldn't believe she'd made such a remark to a stranger. “I mean,” she corrected, “he owns the company where Ed works. Where I work,” she added. She could have bitten her tongue for her artless mangling of a straightforward subject, but the man rattled her.

Something kindled in the man's dark eyes under the jutting brow; something not very nice at all. He leaned forward and his eyes narrowed. “Why are you really out here with Ed?” he asked.

She swallowed. He had her hypnotized, like a cobra with a rabbit. Those eyes…those very dark, unyielding eyes…!

“It's not your business, is it?” she asked finally, furious at her lack of cohesive thought and this man's assumption that he had the right to interrogate her.

He didn't say a word. Instead, he just looked at her.

“Please,” she bit off, hunching her shoulders uncomfortably. “You're making me nervous!”

“You came to meet the boss, didn't you?” he asked in a velvety smooth tone. “Didn't anyone tell you that he's no marshmallow?”

She swallowed. “They say he's a very nice, pleasant man,” she returned a little belligerently. “Something I'll bet nobody in his right mind would dream of saying about you!” she added with her first burst of spirit in years.

His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know I'm not nice and pleasant?” he asked, chuckling suddenly.

“You're like a cobra,” she said uneasily.

He studied her for a few seconds before he nudged his horse in the side with a huge dusty boot and eased so close to her that she actually shivered. He hadn't been impressed with the young woman who stammered and stuttered with nerves, but a spirited woman was a totally new proposition. He liked a woman who wasn't intimidated by his bad mood.

His hand went across her hip to catch the back of her saddle and he looked into her eyes from an unnervingly close distance. “If I'm a cobra, then what does that make you, cupcake?” he drawled with deliberate sensuality, so close that she caught the faint smoky scent of his breath, the hint of spicy cologne that clung to his lean, tanned face. “A soft, furry little bunny?”

She was so shaken by the proximity of him that she tried desperately to get away, pulling so hard on the reins that her mount unexpectedly reared and she went down on the ground, hard, hitting her injured left hip and her shoulder as she fell into the thick grass.

A shocked sound came from the man, who vaulted out of the saddle and was beside her as she tried to sit up. He reached for her a little roughly, shaken by her panic. Women didn't usually try to back away from him; especially ordinary ones like this. She fell far short of his usual companions.

She fought his hands, her eyes huge and overly bright, panic in the very air around her. “No…!” she cried out helplessly.

He froze in place, withdrawing his lean hand from her arm, and stared at her with scowling curiosity.

“Leslie!” came a shout from a few yards away. Ed bounced up as quickly as he could manage it without being unseated. He fumbled his way off the horse and knelt beside her, holding out his arm so that she could catch it and pull herself up.

“I'm sorry,” she said, refusing to look at the man who was responsible for her tumble. “I jerked the reins. I didn't mean to.”

“Are you all right?” Ed asked, concerned.

She nodded. “Sure.” But she was shaking, and both men could see it.

Ed glanced over her head at the taller, darker, leaner man who stood with his horse's reins in his hand, staring at the girl.

“Uh, have you two introduced yourselves?” he asked awkwardly.

Matt was torn by conflicting emotions, the strongest of which was bridled fury at the woman's panicky attitude. She
acted as if he had plans to assault her, when he'd only been trying to help her up. He was angry and it cost him his temper. “The next time you bring a certifiable lunatic to my ranch, give me some advance warning,” the tall man sniped at Ed. He moved as curtly as he spoke, swinging abruptly into the saddle to glare down at them. “You'd better take her home,” he told Ed. “She's a damned walking liability around animals.”

“But she rides very well, usually,” Ed protested. “Okay, then,” he added when the other man glowered at him. He forced a smile. “I'll see you later.”

The tall man jerked his hat down over his eyes, wheeled the horse without another word and rode back up on the rise where he'd been sitting earlier.

“Whew!” Ed laughed, sweeping back his light brown hair uneasily. “I haven't seen him in a mood like that for years. I can't imagine what set him off. He's usually the soul of courtesy, especially when someone's hurt.”

Leslie brushed off her jeans and looked up at her friend morosely. “He rode right up to me,” she said unsteadily, “and leaned across me to talk with a hand on the saddle. I just…panicked. I'm sorry. I guess he's some sort of foreman here. I hope you don't get in trouble with your cousin because of it.”

“That
was
my cousin, Leslie,” he said heavily.

She stared at him vacantly. “That was Matt Caldwell?”

He nodded.

She let out a long breath. “Oh, boy. What a nice way to start a new job, by alienating the man at the head of the whole food chain.”

“He doesn't know about you,” he began.

Her eyes flashed. “And you're not to tell him,” she returned firmly. “I mean it! I will not have my past paraded out again. I came down here to get away from reporters and movie producers, and that's what I'm going to do. I've had my hair cut, bought new clothes, gotten contact lenses. I've done everything I can think of so I won't be recognized. I'm not going to have it all dragged up again. It's been six years,” she added miserably. “Why can't people just leave it alone?”

“The newsman was just following a lead,” he said gently. “One of the men who attacked you was arrested for drunk driving and someone connected the name to your mother's case. His father is some high city official in Houston. It was inevitable that the press would dig up his son's involvement in your mother's case in an election year.”

“Yes, I know, and that's what prompted the producer to think it would make a great TV movie of the week.” She ground her teeth together. “That's just what we all need. And I thought it was all over. How silly of me,” she said in a defeated tone. “I wish I were rich and famous,” she added. “Then may be I could buy my self some peace and privacy.” She glanced up where the tall man sat silently watching the herding below. “I made so me stupid remarks to your cousin, too, not knowing who he really was. I guess he'll be down in personnel first thing Monday to have me fired.”

“Over my dead body,” he said. “I may be only a lowly cousin, but I do own stock in the corporation. If he fires you, I'll fight for you.”

“Would you really, for me?” she asked solemnly.

He ruffled her short blond hair. “You're my pal,” he said. “I've had a pretty bad blow of my own. I don't want to get serious about anybody ever again. But I like having you around.”

She smiled sadly. “I'm glad you can act that way about me. I can't really bear to be…” She swallowed. “I don't like men close to me, in any physical way. The therapist said I might be able to change that someday, with the right man. I don't know. It's been so long…”

“Don't sit and worry,” he said. “Come on. I'll take you back to town and buy you a nice vanilla ice-cream cone. How's that?”

She smiled at him. “Thanks, Ed.”

He shrugged. “Just another example of my sterling character.” He glanced up toward the rise and away again. “He's just not himself today,” he said. “Let's go.”

Matt Caldwell watched his visitors bounce away on their respective horses with a resentment and fury he hadn't experienced in years. The little blond icicle had made him feel like a lecher. As if she could have appealed to him, a man who had movie stars chasing after him! He let out a rough sigh and pulled a much-used cigar from his pocket and stuck it in his teeth. He didn't light it. He was trying to give up the bad habit, but it was slow going. This cigar had been just recently the target of his secretary's newest weapon in her campaign to save him from nicotine. The end was still damp, in fact, despite the fact that he'd only arrived here from his office in town about an hour ago. He took it out of his mouth with a sigh, eyed it sadly and put it away. He'd threatened to fire her and she'd threatened to quit. She was a nice woman, married with two cute little kids. He couldn't let her leave him. Better the cigar than good help, he decided.

He let his eyes turn again toward the couple growing smaller in the distance. What an odd girlfriend Ed had latched onto this time. Of course, she'd let Ed touch her. She'd flinched away
from Matt as if he was contagious. The more he thought about it, the madder he got. He turned his horse toward the bawling cattle in the distance. Working might take the edge off his temper.

 

Ed took Leslie to her small apartment at a local boardinghouse and left her at the front door with an apology.

“You don't think he'll fire me?” she asked in a plaintive tone.