there?”
There was no answer. And Samantha suddenly missed the reassuring beam of the flashlight. She also decided that the night seemed much too quiet, so quiet that she could hear nothing but the sound of her own breathing. She didn’t like it. Didn’t like how heavy the shadows were in that grove of trees off to her right, shadows that could conceal a menace lurking in their depths.
She was being silly again. But she couldn’t shake her sense of uneasiness, the eerie feeling that she was being watched, that she was no longer alone out here. The feeling became a certainty when one of those dark shadows moved, detaching itself from the others.
Samantha didn’t pause to learn the identity of that furtive shadow or why Ramona hadn’t waited for her. Swinging around, she fled up the path as if every nightmare from her childhood were at her heels. She was so fearful of the thing behind her that she didn’t concern herself with what might be in front of her. Until she flew around the corner of the house and smacked into a wall that hadn’t been there before. A towering wall of living, breathing flesh.
She knew it was flesh, because when she raised her hands to defend herself against her attacker, they encountered a chest. A hard, totally bare male chest. She was dragged up against its heat when a pair of strong hands gripped her upper arms to steady her. Gasping, she struggled against his hold.
“Easy,” he said.
Samantha went still. She recognized his voice.
“What were you running from?”
“Something back there under the trees.”
“What?” Roark demanded sharply.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was human, maybe not.”
Her relief that Roark was here had been both enormous and sweet, but, aware now that she was still pressed against his naked chest, Samantha experienced another kind of danger. One from which she needed to disengage herself. “I’m all right now,” she insisted. “It was probably just an animal. You can let me go.”
He released her. “What in hell are you doing out here, anyway?”
“I needed to visit the privy.”
“Then you should have had me go with you. That’s what I’m here for, remember?”
“I didn’t go out alone. Ramona was with me.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She seems to have dis—”
“Here I am,” Ramona said, trotting around the corner of the house.
“Where on earth have you been? Didn’t you hear me call you?”
“I’m sorry. There was a nightjar singing in one of the trees, and I stepped around the other side of the house to see if I could catch a glimpse of—” She broke off, as if she realized that Samantha was upset and that Roark had arrived on the scene and was looking far too rigid standing there. “Is something wrong?”
“Samantha spotted something she didn’t like under the trees. Did you see anyone back there? Or maybe an animal?”
“No, nothing.”
Roark nodded, and then before Samantha could prevent it, he grabbed her hand and hauled her in the direction of the open French door. “What are you—”
“I’m taking you back inside. Putting you behind a locked door where you belong.”
He must have the eyes of an owl, she thought. He needed no flashlight to aid him as he swiftly conducted her through the door and across the living room into the corridor, pausing only long enough to make certain that Ramona was close behind them. Samantha waited until the bemused cook was safely back inside her room before she confronted her rescuer.
“Why are you so angry with me? I told you I’m all right now.”
“You’re not all right. You’re shaking all over. And Ramona or no Ramona, you had no business being out there without me. Or are you forgetting what happened back in Texas? That threat could have followed you here to Colorado.”
“How did you know Ramona and I were—”
“I caught a glimpse of your flashlight passing under my window so I left my room to investigate and saw the French door open.”
The light must have awakened him, which demonstrated an alertness on her behalf she had no choice but to be grateful for. She expressed her appreciation with a meek thank-you.
By then he had steered her back into her bedroom. Or what she assumed was her bedroom until he lighted the oil lamp, and she learned that it was his room.
She also discovered, turning to him, that he was a riveting sight in nothing but a pair of snug jeans. In his haste he hadn’t bothered to don anything else, unless she counted the gun tucked into his waistband. Samantha wasn’t sure whether her slight wooziness was the result of the terror she had just experienced or the slabs of hard muscle above the waistband of his jeans.
“Uh, I assume you have a reason for bringing me here instead of next door. A good one.”
“I want you on that bed.”
“I said I was grateful for your rescue, but I’m not that grateful.”
“Sitting there, Samantha, not lying there. If someone happens to be prowling around looking for you, maybe even knows which room is yours, then you’re safer waiting here while I check outside. I want to find out what you saw in that grove of trees. Try to relax, huh? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
He was gone then, taking the key with him. She heard him locking the door from the hallway outside. Eyeing the bed, Samantha decided that his command was probably a sensible one. She was feeling just weak enough to need a support, and there was no chair in the small room.
That was better, she thought when she’d lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress. What didn’t feel so comfortable was the memory of Roark Hawke’s high-handed treatment of her. All right, so she had made a mistake, but he didn’t have to be so brusque about it. It was bad enough having a bodyguard without his expecting her to ask permission every time she went to the bathroom.
She didn’t like any of it, but she had her resentment under control when he returned a short while later. “Nothing,” he reported. “Whatever was out there is gone. It was probably nothing more sinister than an animal.”
“A big one, by the size of that shadow.”
“Well, it is bear country.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring? Though, come to think of it, I guess a bear would be more friendly than a two-legged stalker. It doesn’t make sense, you know.”
“What doesn’t?”
“That someone should want me out of the way. I talked to the lawyer again before we left Texas. He told me that my grandfather’s investments were still sound but nowhere near what they’d been worth a few years ago when the market was high. The value of the ranch itself is solid, but
