* * *
Jesse tried to stretch. His arms would not straighten. He needed to take a deep breath but his chest was banded by something that kept his lungs from expanding.
Confusion set heavy upon him. The only thing he knew with certainty was that he was lying on the floor and it was cold.
Easing onto his elbows, he felt something soft yet inflexible cage the roll of his shoulders.
The fabric smelled pretty, though, like citrus and lilac. He’d noticed that fragrance recently, but when? His head pounded. His eyeballs ached. With great force of will, he opened his eyes.
A rose-patterned ruffle fluttered across his chest to the tempo of his breathing.
Sitting up suddenly, he cursed the pain shooting from the back of his brain to the front. He heard a seam rip. Looking down, he saw his legs sticking out of the bottom of a woman’s flannel nightgown. A wide band of lace tickled the hair on his legs inches below his knees.
What the blazes! He’d been in and out of a dream state was all he could recall.
But this was his room, as solid and real as he’d last seen it.
He sat on the floor beside the bed, his naked butt numb with cold. Glancing down, he saw a pillow. Someone must have put it under his head.
A woman—but no, not simply a woman—the woman. She must be the one who dressed him in this...this flannel nightmare.
Also the one who, no doubt, hit him in the head with the skillet that lay on the mattress. It was the only thing that made sense.
She’d hit him because—
Of his horses!
Her beau was the cowboy who was involved with those hell-raising Underwoods. They would have known he’d gone to purchase his herd.
“Damn!” he shouted, then regretted it because it hurt like blazes and because in a shadowed corner of the room, something growled.
Slowly, Jesse came to his feet. So did the animal. In the dim, predawn light, he saw it bare its great, long teeth.
“Good dog.” Or wolf or bear. “Good, good fellow.”
There was no time to deal with the beast. At this very moment, the Underwoods and their fetching accomplice could be riding away with his stock.
As he thought about it, it made sense. Just because Bingham believed the gang of brothers went to Black Creek on a regular basis did not mean that this time they weren’t following Jesse. It had been no secret in Forget-Me-Not that he would be away purchasing his horses. If the brothers were set on thievery, they knew where to find a victim.
The woman had proved to be a skilled conspirator, luring him over the bed and then knocking him senseless. Could be the reason she looked familiar was from seeing that pretty face on a wanted poster. Although, he didn’t think that was something he would forget.
How long had he been unconscious? Plenty long enough for them to ride off with nineteen prime breeding animals.
The dog’s tail thumped the wall. It emerged from the corner.
“Hey...Dog! Is that you?” he muttered in relief. “What the glory blazes are you doing in my house?”
When Jesse ran out the door, he heard the dog padding behind him.
It was a good thing his closest neighbor was a fair distance away. He’d look like a fool, running barefoot in the freezing rain wearing a woman’s nightie. And a double fool for having no weapon at hand.
In the future, no matter how blamed tired he was, he was not leaving his rifle on his saddle under the lean-to.
But if sheer anger could count as a weapon, he was well armed.
For all that his toes felt frozen, numb in the sucking mud, it didn’t cool his anger at himself and the folly of being duped by a pretty slip of a woman. He was ashamed to admit that he’d succumbed to such beguiling bait...even dreamed of her while wide awake.
Slipping and sliding, he rounded the corner of the barn where the paddock was located.
As he’d feared, it was empty.
No mind, he was a tracker by former profession.
Looked like Hey...Dog was a tracker, too, although not so skilled as a dog ought to be. He trotted to the large barn doors, scratched and whined.
A seam of light glowed dimly through the door crack.
Either someone remained in the barn or the thieves had committed the sin of leaving a lamp burning when they hightailed it.
“Hush up, pup,” he whispered, not wanting his presence known before he snatched his rifle from the saddle where it lay across a sawhorse ten feet away. “You ready to catch us a thief?” he asked, retrieving the weapon. The dog thumped his muddy tail on the nightgown.
Slowly, so as to make the least noise possible, he drew open one of the doors and eased inside, his rifle at the ready.
He spotted his horses first thing.
Then he saw the woman. She stood on a wagon bed, her skirt rucked up about her waist and her shapely bare legs caked with mud. Gripping a pitchfork, she shoveled hay onto the barn floor. Because she had her back turned, he had a moment to watch her golden hair shimmy with the sway of her hips. She hummed an off-key tune while she worked.
The relief he felt finding that she was not a thief seemed excessive. He’d only met her the one time, for pity’s sake. It couldn’t rightly be said that she was even an acquaintance. There was just something about her...a sensation of knowing...
Wasn’t that as logical as a frog flapping butterfly wings?
But here she was, making herself at home in his house and in his barn.
“Howdy, ma’am,” he said because his sense of knowing did not include the knowledge of her name.
“Oh!” Startled by the voice, Laura Lee’s fingers clamped hard around the handle of the pitchfork. Turning quickly, she sucked in a breath and held it. Not because she believed the man intended to shoot her; the weapon was nose to the dirt and his finger nowhere near the trigger. She couldn’t breathe because of the effort it took not to laugh out loud.
Her guest—she supposed that was what she must consider him to be—looked absurd. Seeing him standing in the doorway of the barn, his legs spread in a no-nonsense stance, holding his weapon while rain dripped off his eyebrows...oh, my.
Still, it wasn’t that which nearly brought her to her knees in hilarity. It was the sight of this large man, so bold looking in every way, dressed in pink flannel with delicate flowers and leaves stretched across his chest, with wiry brown hair poking from the stretched-out neckline, that made her need to cover her mouth with one hand.
She
