while my sister-in-law finishes cooking her baby.”
She smiled. That was better. He liked that smile. It tipped the end of her nose up and made the corners of her eyes wrinkle. Pretty eyes. Blue as the desert sky on a winter morning.
“What will you be doing for them?” she asked.
“Typical contract work.” He glanced at her as he passed between the white fencing his sister-in-law insisted was de rigueur for the ranch. He had to admit, the place looked spectacular. When he’d first driven up, he’d been blown away by the changes made since his brother’s wedding. Huge barn. Covered arena. Irrigated pasture. Turned out, they’d been sitting on a gold mine and never known it—a natural aquifer supplied water to the ranch, as well as a few neighbors, for a price.
“I’ve always wondered what a military contractor does.” She smiled again. “I assume you’re not building houses.”
He shook his head. “We’re a security service. Mostly corporate executives, although we do escort the occasional civvy. Our job is to keep someone safe while they do business in war-torn towns.”
A blond brow arched. “Business? When there’s a war going on?”
“Yup. Sometimes it’s military business, sometimes it’s civilian business. The need for oil never stops, and billion-dollar corporations need protection for the people who work to bring the product to market. Plus there’s road reconstruction companies and real estate investors—”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. War or no, life goes on.”
She lapsed into silence, and he let her contemplate his words. A lot of people had no idea what it was really like in the Middle East. All they saw were the bits on TV. Five minutes of chaos followed by days, sometimes weeks, of normalcy. Well, as normal as life in a war-torn country could be. In those moments, people tried to get on with their lives, businesses tried to regroup and recoup. It wasn’t as if life stopped. The corporate machine kept moving.
“This is it,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. “Turn here.”
He followed her directions, turning down a street with two-story apartment complexes on both sides.
“Thank you,” she said as he pulled up in front of her building.
“Not so fast.” He shut off the engine. “I’m walking you to your door.”
She shook her head, the twin braids sliding behind her shoulders. “There’s no need. He’s not there. If he was, we’d see his truck parked down the road.”
“Has he done that before?”
He saw her eyes flicker. “Not lately.”
He had a feeling that “not lately” meant not within the last few days. She might be putting on a brave face, but her eyes conveyed the pictures in her mind.
“I’m still walking you to your door,” he said, slipping out of the truck. “And I’ll be by tomorrow to pick you up around ten.”
Her forehead wrinkled as though she wanted to argue, but she nodded just the same and then slid out of the vehicle. She walked ahead of him as she crossed the tiny grass hill separating the road from the apartment complex.
“I’m the second one on the left,” she explained. “Bottom floor.”
Which was why they didn’t see it at first.
BITCH.
She stopped in her tracks. He did, too. Her front door had been shielded from their view by her neighbor’s tiny porch, the word that’d been spray painted in red only visible from a certain angle.
“Son of a—” She didn’t finish what she wanted to say, but there was no need. She froze, eyes wide, hands clenching and unclenching in...what emotion did he see on her face? Dismay? Disgust? Rage? Maybe a combination of it all.
“You’re staying with me,” he said firmly.
“Yes.” She turned to face him, and to his surprise, tears glinted in her eyes. The sight kicked him in the gut. “And I’ll stay at the ranch, too, if you don’t mind.”
There was something completely mortifying about having to accept the help of a near stranger. Worse, she’d had to call her boss and tell him what had happened. Colt Reynolds had been completely kind, but then again, he always was. She’d never met someone with such a huge capacity to help people in need. In hindsight, it should be no surprise that his little brother was the same way.
Well, there was nothing little about him.
“You really don’t have to move in with your brother, though,” Carolina said, glancing behind them to make sure no silver 4x4 followed. So far, so good. No sign of James. “I can stay in my horse trailer. I do it all the time.”
“Does it have living quarters?”
“Well, no.” Not technically. She’d never been able to afford one of those big fancy trailers. Her own humble stock trailer was all she had in the world. That and her truck. “I converted the tack room into a space where I could sleep. It has a bed over the hitch and electricity for a portable stove. It works fine.”
“Does it have a bathroom?”
“Well, no—”
“A heater or air-conditioning?”
“No, but maybe I could live in the Galloping Girlz trailer? It has living quarters.” She paused. “Or maybe I can stay in Colt’s trailer?” Her boss had her dream trailer. Shower. Kitchen. Living area.
One day.
“Maybe, but we’ll need to use it on the weekends for rodeos.” He stared at her. “What are you doing to do? Move in and out every weekend? And before you suggest it, the trick-riding rig is out, too. There’s a perfectly good apartment at the ranch. You’re going to stay there and I’ll move in with my sister or brother. Capisce?”
She didn’t want to, but she nodded just the same. Carolina glanced at the neighborhoods they passed, her mind settling on one word: rodeo. James would follow her to one of them. She would stake her life on it, and there would be no way to avoid the man—not in a public place. Her stomach curdled thinking about it.
They passed the burger joint outside town, and she caught sight of a young couple facing each other in the gravel parking lot. The girl sat on the tailgate, a look of love on her face as she gazed into the eyes of the captain of the high school football team.
Okay, she had no way of knowing if that were true. Carolina looked away from the scene because it made her think of her own childhood. Had she ever really had one? There’d never been time to date anybody, much less a football player. She’d been too busy working two jobs and trying to graduate. She’d refused to flunk out like her mother. Carolina had been determined to do things differently, but look what it’d gotten her. The first man she ever dated had ended
