best in the county. Our two properties share a creek, but more importantly, the darned place sits on an aquifer and there are three deep wells to keep ponds full regardless of the weather trends. Fred wasn’t as particular about the house, but what it lacks in style, it makes up for in sturdiness. As for the barn, it’s big enough to protect the machinery from the elements and to store feed. Behind it are the horse stables. There are only two horses these days—Fred’s mount, Rooster, who’s pretty old and is kept as a pet, and Eberardo’s horse, Blanco. The rest of the pens are used to tend to injured or orphaned stock.”
“Do you sell real estate during the day?”
Understanding what he was insinuating, Alana shrugged. “Yeah, I’m kind of attached to the place, as I am to my own home.” Remembering something, Alana glanced at her watch, which read nearly two in the morning—winced—and reached for her phone. “Eberardo Chavez is the hand who still lives on the property. You’ll see his trailer on the side of the barn and sheds. I’m going to call him to let him know not to worry if he sees me pull in and the house light up. More likely, Two Dog would announce our arrival as soon as the front gate opens.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“Eberardo’s dog. His second dog since working at Last Call. He’s a good man and hard worker, but he’s no cowboy poet.”
Moments later, she heard Eberardo’s groggy voice.
“Sí, Señorita Ally. ¿Es todo lo correcto?”
Aware that he had caller ID, Alana replied, “Lo siento. Sorry to disturb you, Eberardo. Everything is fine. I just wanted you to know that Two Dog may start barking shortly, and you might see lights at the house. I’m letting Mr. Fred’s son, Mack, in.”
“Ah, he has come. Mr. Fred would be much happy.”
“Pienso tan, también,” Ally replied, telling him that she thought so, too. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”
“To happy dreams. We wait for this day, eh? Gracias, Señorita Ally.”
As Alana disconnected, hoping he was right, she saw Mack pick up the pen and scrawl his signature across the bottom of the paper. When finished, he pushed it and the pen back toward her. Finally, he took a tentative sip of coffee, followed by a more appreciative gulp.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“You can admit it’s good coffee,” she said, amusement and challenge in her gaze.
“Why waste my breath telling you what you already know?”
He was Fred’s son all right, Alana thought. Mule-headed, confident and all man with those penetrating eyes letting a woman know that no matter what, sex was always in the mindset. She shoved the paper into the top drawer of her desk and handed over the banded bundle. “You can take the coffee and protein bar with you. Consider the mug a housewarming gift.”
* * *
Minutes later, back at the patrol car, Mack gingerly took his seat. As he fastened his seat belt, he tried to ignore Alana’s open stare.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re moving like someone ten or fifteen years older than you are.”
“Hitching and hiking can do that to you.”
Alana seemed to accept that and exited the parking lot. She turned onto Main Street for the turn north that would take them to the farm-to-market road and Last Call Ranch. In all honesty, that’s all Mack remembered of the directions to the place. But his back hurt so much from carrying the duffel bag—even though he changed shoulders frequently—that he mentally kissed her for insisting on driving him. At least none of his wounds had busted open. He’d fingered the spots when she’d gone to get him coffee.
The town was literally ghostlike with not another vehicle in sight, until he caught a glimpse of lights and spotted a patrol car in his side-view mirror as it left the convenience store and turned toward the station. No doubt the other night-shift cop, Ed, coming to catch up on the excitement with dispatcher Bunny.
Buns, he thought with a silent snort, remembering Alana’s personal nickname for her. The woman had certainly earned that one, too, although she seemed pretty harmless and sweet—and again, all wrong for a police station. And how the devil did females sit for hours in clothes that tight without losing consciousness? But at least she wasn’t in a uniform.
Mack had never cared for the idea of women in uniform, although he’d had his butt saved twice by female chopper pilots and had since adjusted his opinion to a degree. However, he wasn’t changing his mind about Alana Anders. Maybe she seemed to know what she was doing, but she was too feminine, too much woman for what she did for a living. That annoyed him as much as it did to realize that his gaze was drawn to her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.
Face it, you don’t care if she’s noticing or not.
Fine, he amended, if things were different, he would be coming after her, staking his claim like the red-blooded male he was. He may have been shot twice, but as far as he could tell, all of his equipment still worked, and he was going to prove that as soon as he regained a little more strength. In the meantime, he was going to dream about Officer Anders’s long legs out of those uniform blues. He would bet a month’s pay that she had the legs of a swimsuit model and that her breasts weren’t filled with silicone. That face could be on a magazine cover, too, but the fools would want to airbrush away the small scar above her left eyebrow, and put too much greasy stuff on those succulent lips. He would like to taste them wet from a bite of strawberry or a lush peach, as he lost himself in those deceptively soft brown eyes.
Nuts, he thought.
Deceptive was the key word. There was a lot going on inside her and he wasn’t sure of a fraction of it. One minute she was all business, the next she was giving him a look so honest and bold, he felt as though he’d taken an electric shock to his groin, and the next he could swear her heart was fracturing. What the hell was going on with her?
At least it seemed that she’d been decent to the old man. Mack thought his father had been a lucky stiff if he’d checked out while gazing at Alana’s high-cheekboned face, especially if that luscious hair wasn’t tied back as it was now.
“How long have you been at this?” They were at least a mile outside town, and security lights were growing fewer and farther between, and Mack figured her mind was cranking away questions, too. He’d rather have her answering than asking them.
“You mean law enforcement? I went into the academy straight from college.”
“So you’re a rookie?” He suspected she was slightly older than that, but not by much.
“Hilarious. This is my seventh year. I just turned thirty.”
Mentally, he gave her another point for being honest. At thirty, some women started counting backward. “So this is really what you always wanted to do?”
“You didn’t hear me say that. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I caught the flying bug from my older brother. He would be your age now.”
“Would be?”
“He
