Only Hers (8 page)

Matt’s long fingers gripped the corner of the refrigerator tighter, but otherwise he didn’t move. Shannon might have suckered his uncle and Octavia, but she wasn’t adding his name to her list.

“Besides,” the housekeeper continued, “since she has a claim on the meadow, it seems to me it would be in your best interest to keep an eye on her rather than letting her do God knows what with the property.”

Finally, she had said something that got Matt’s
attention. He gave up all pretense of searching for something to eat and faced the housekeeper. Lines furrowed her forehead and crinkled the corners of her eyes. Obviously she was worried, and now he was, too. Not about Shannon, but about her future plans for the land.

That afternoon when he had seen Shannon near the cabin, he had been too angry to approach her. The thought that she had legal claim to the meadow and that he might have to pay her to get it back burned his insides like acid. After all these years, this woman was going to make him break a promise he’d made to himself because of another woman’s deceit.

“She isn’t going anyplace until she signs over all rights to the meadow to me.” Slamming the refrigerator door closed, he headed for the front door.

“Now you’re talking,” Octavia encouraged, a pleased smile on her ebony face.

A mile from the motel Matt saw Shannon’s car on the shoulder of the road. Since the car appeared undamaged, he reasoned it must be a mechanical problem. Recalling the last time he had seen her, how her miniskirt displayed her long, elegant legs, how her thick hair swirled wildly around her beautiful face, a face that sadness only made more compelling, he didn’t imagine it was long before some man had stopped.

And now she was registered at the Paradise.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened. Her name might be the only one registered, but that didn’t mean she was alone. The rage that splintered through him caught him off guard.

Loyalty and fidelity were two things he didn’t expect from beautiful women like Shannon. His wife’s had lasted only as long as he finished in the top money roping calves in the rodeo. But the more they argued over her spending habits and her refusal to travel with him on the circuit, the worse his concentration became, the more he lost.

By the time their nine-month marriage was over, he
had gone from being ranked tenth in the country with a good chance at winning the National Calf Roping title to being unranked. At twenty-four he was a has-been and he owed it all to his stupidity and a greedy, unscrupulous woman. He had confused lust with love and paid the price.

So why did the confirmation that Shannon was exactly the same way anger him? He didn’t look for an answer, he simply pressed his booted foot on the accelerator. The speedometer needle rocked to the right.

The purple-and-green neon-lit palm tree over the name Paradise winked on and off in subtle invitation and underlying promise of discretion and pleasure. The overgrown shrubbery, dingy windows, and cars of assorted ages and models told their own story of those whose carnal desires outweighed any other consideration. At least, on this night.

Matt passed the front office without slowing. His headlights on bright, he turned in a wide, searching arc in the one-story motel court. Number twelve was at the farthest end. An old dented Buick was parked at an angle in front, as if the occupants had been anxious to get inside.

Coming to a gravel-spitting stop, Matt jumped out of the vehicle. A heavy fist pounded on the door. “Open up!” A choked cry came from behind the peeling pink wood.

“Shannon! Shannon!”

Frantically, he twisted the knob. He stepped back with every intention of breaking the door down when he heard what sounded like his name and furniture being moved. Seconds later the door swung open. He only had a moment to glimpse Shannon’s tear-stained face before she launched herself against him, her arms going around his neck.

“I—I thought you were that man who was bothering me earlier. Oh, Matt. I was so scared,” she cried, her cheek pressed against his chest.

Something in his gut clenched again. His arms clutched around her shivering body drawing her closer. What if it
hadn’t been him? Fury at the unknown man—and himself—whipped through him.

For the first time in his memory, he didn’t think right or wrong, he didn’t weigh the cost. He simply held her. “It’s all right, Shannon. I’m here.”

Her grip tightened as she tried to burrow closer. Her voice quivered. “I . . . I was so scared.”

“It’s over. I’m here now.” One hand slid down the smooth curve of her back, the other one tunneled through her hair. He soothed her with his voice, the steady rhythm of his hand.

The angry voices of a man and woman erupted in the courtyard. “I need to close the door, Shannon.”

She tensed. “D-don’t leave me.”

“I’m not.” Curving one arm around her small waist, he anchored her against his chest, moved just enough to reach the door, then slammed it shut. The instant the door closed, she released a tension-filled sigh. Her warm breath raked delicately over the side of his neck, the bare skin beneath his partially opened shirt.

Reluctantly, he set her on her feet, but kept her within the confines of his arms. “You feel better?”

She nodded, still not releasing her hold or moving away from him. With the full length of her body flush against his, he felt the lush imprint of each soft curve, the generous fullness of her breasts, inhaled the alluring fragrance of her perfume. Desire tore through him, but he ruthlessly controlled it.

Wrong time, wrong place, wrong woman.

The problem was she felt so right in his arms.

“No one is going to hurt you,” he assured her.

“I—I knew that once I saw you.”

Her words shouldn’t have caused the strange feeling in his chest, but they did, and at the moment, there was nothing he could do about it except remember vulnerable women said things they often didn’t mean. “When you feel better we’re leaving.”

A shiver ripped through her. “This was the only place
I could afford after I couldn’t find the rest of my money or my credit card,” Shannon explained.

Every nerve in Matt’s body went on alert. His hand in the small of her back paused. “You lost your money?”

“At first I thought I did. But after going over it again and again, I think I must have left the rest of my money and the one credit card I always carry on trips at home on my dresser.” Sadness darkened her amber-brown eyes as she looked up at him. “I was in such a hurry to leave.”

“To see the meadow,” he said, ice sliding into his voice.

She nodded and lowered her head to his chest. “Everyone I called back home tonight was out. I just sat by the pay phone at the store and kept calling my family and friends in St. Louis with my calling card even though I had left a message on all their answering machines. Then it got dark and the store closed. There wasn’t another place in town open for anyone to wire money to.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath before continuing. “I thought about staying in the car, but after it got dark some men in a beat-up old truck kept cruising by. I had already asked the lady working in the store about the cheapest place in town to stay and she told me the Paradise. I should have suspected something from the surly way she answered my question.”

“Why didn’t you call Arthur Ferguson?”

“I tried. His office was closed and I got another answering machine at his house. So I decided to come here. Knowing how my family and friends would worry, I called everyone back before I left the store and told them I had run into an old friend.”

“That was very considerate of you,” said Matt coldly, his eyes narrow slits.

The terseness in Matt’s voice finally penetrated Shannon’s fear. Leaning back, she looked up into his starkly handsome face. His body against hers was as devoid of comfort as the emotionless black eyes that stared accusingly back at her.

“W-what’s wrong?”

Matt studied the beautiful tear-stained face. If he didn’t know better, he might think the puzzlement she showed was genuine. She had almost fooled him. Greedy like his ex-wife and a lot of other women he had known.

If she thought he was going to put her up at one of the hotels on the interstate, she had picked the wrong man to con. It was a good thing it suited his plans for him to be able to watch her or he’d leave her here with the roaches.

“Get your things,” he ordered.

The stiffness of Matt’s voice caused Shannon to hesitate for a moment before she rushed to get her overnight case and her purse from atop a rickety table. She didn’t know what had gotten into him, but if he was taking her out of the Paradise that was all that mattered. The place made her skin crawl. “I’m ready.”

“I see you didn’t bother to unpack.”

“I don’t think a rat would stay in this place,” Shannon said with feeling.

Matt glanced around the dingy room, the cobwebs on the one light fixture in the ceiling, the faded and chipped Mediterranean decor, then at the sizable diamonds in her ears. “Not what you’re used to, huh?”

“No woman should have to get used to this.”

“You’d be surprised at the number of women who like sleeping in low places.” Taking her case, he grasped her by the arm and led her outside to his truck.

Unworried about decorum, Shannon pulled up her short skirt and climbed ungracefully inside as soon as he opened her door. Seated, she glanced at Matt’s stiff profile as he slid in behind the wheel and wished the caring man who held her earlier would return.

She had told him the truth when she’d said she knew she was safe as soon as she saw him. He might make her angrier than she ever thought possible, but she couldn’t deny he was the one person she had prayed would come and find her. And when he had held her in the shelter of his strong arms and soothed her with his deep voice, she had felt as if nothing could harm her.

At least she now knew Wade was right, that somewhere beneath Matt’s cold exterior he had a heart. She hadn’t missed his remark about a woman sleeping in low places. Had the woman Wade mentioned in his letter cheated on Matt? Was that why he distrusted women?

Absently, she wondered what kind of woman had taken away his ability to trust and what kind of woman it would take to restore his faith in a woman and make him smile. The sudden urge to be that woman jerked her back to reality almost as strongly as seeing them pass the motel’s office without slowing.

“Stop!”

Tires screeched on gravel. “You forget something?”

“To check out.” She held up the key. “I have to turn this in.”

“If you think you’ll get a refund, forget it.”

“I don’t, but I don’t want anything to remind me of the last two hours.” She opened the door, looked at the naked light bulb at the front door of the office, then back at Matt. Her voice hesitant, she asked, “You’ll wait here, won’t you?”

“I’ll wait.”

Offering a smile of gratitude, Shannon got out of the truck and went into the dingy office. The sight of the thin, unshaven man behind the counter caused her to shudder. She had been mentally groped by men before, but never had she wanted to rush home and take a scalding bath.

“I’m checking out.”

Hands under his armpits, his back propped against the doorframe of a connecting room of the office, he slowly turned toward her. As when she had registered, his gaze dropped to her breasts and stayed there. His tongue ran across his narrow lower lip.

Shannon barely kept her disgust from showing. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. The key landed with a soft thunk on the counter. “I’d like a receipt.”

His gaze lifted. “Didn’t take you long to get a better offer.”

“The receipt.”

Dragging his hands from beneath his arms, he went behind the counter and moved a sheet of paper. “Can’t seem to find the receipt book. Wanna come behind the counter and help me look?”

“Not if my life depended on it.”

“I’ll just see about that,” he snarled and started around the counter.

Shannon spun for the door. She heard a curse, then the distinctive clang of a phone hitting the floor. She looked over her shoulder. Not seeing anyone, she cautiously peeped over the four-foot wooden countertop. The clerk was sprawled on the cluttered floor, the phone cord tangled around his bony legs.

“Saved by Ma Bell,” she said, and began to laugh.

The door behind her opened and she turned. Matt filled the doorway, his face harsh and relentless. “Having fun?”

“Hardly. The clerk appears to be having some difficulty finding a receipt book,” she told him.

There was another clank behind the counter, then a string of curse words. “When I catch that bi—” A head shot over the counter and looked straight into Matt’s dark, forbidding face. The man stumbled backward, tripped over the phone for the second time and went down.

Shannon laughed again. Catching her sides, she glanced up at Matt. Laughter abruptly ceased. She well understood the clerk’s fright. Matt looked as if he could strangle her. She couldn’t imagine what she had done this time to annoy him.

“Do you need help in writing that receipt?” Matt asked, his voice tight and clipped.

“No . . . no, sir” came the hasty reply.

Her eyes widened. Her gaze went to Matt. The pimply-faced, surly young man probably hadn’t said “sir” in his life. At least it was nice to know she wasn’t the only person intimidated by Matt.

True to the clerk’s words, his head came back up this
time with a body and a receipt shaking in his grubby hand. “Nice having you, Ms. Johnson.”

Matt snatched the receipt with one hand and Shannon with the other. He didn’t stop until he practically tossed her into the passenger seat of his truck. This time when he took off she had no intention of saying anything. Just breathing appeared to upset her reluctant rescuer. With no money she was at his mercy. She shivered. Not a comforting thought.

Less than five minutes later Shannon realized she wasn’t going to be able to keep her promise of not speaking to Matt. A small groan slipped past her lips as he slowed his truck and pulled off the highway behind her Allante. She had hoped he had forgotten about her car. The way her life was going she should have known that wouldn’t happen.