jerked to a stop at the sight of a set of prime hind quarters bent over the open hood of the station wagon. Leanna might wear baggy clothes, but nothing could conceal those curves. Not to a man with eyes in his head, anyway. He tamped down his reaction and reminded himself that he had no time for detours.
“Problem?”
She spun around and a shy smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “The engine smelled a little hot when I arrived, but everything looks and sounds okay now.”
He bit down on the urge to flex his muscles and smile back. Something in the way the Double C’s newest employee looked at him made him feel ten feet tall. She was definitely too darn young for him.
So why did one shy glance from her hit him like a sucker punch in the gut?
He stifled the urge to help. This wasn’t his problem, even though damsels in distress were his number-one weakness. Heck, women period were his weakness, but starting today, he was on a woman-free diet.
A quick check of her car’s reservoir told him it held plenty of antifreeze. The engine wasn’t in danger of overheating and it sounded normal. “Pete’s Garage is on the way to the Pink Palace. If you’re worried, get him to take a look.”
“The Pink Palace?”
In the bright sunlight he noticed the dapple of faded freckles on her nose and cheeks and the golden streaks in her light-brown hair. She was cute, in an all-American girl-next-door kind of way. He preferred women with a little more flash and a lot more experience, but heaven help the men on the spread—and him—if she ever slapped on a layer of war paint or squeezed herself into tight blue jeans.
“Penny’s place. It used to be a whor—brothel.”
A blush crawled up her neck and spread to her hairline. That blush was a sure sign she was out of his league. Only virgins blushed like that, and he adhered to a strict no-virgins policy. Virgin hearts broke too easily. Virgins expected a guy to be loyal, but he was his mother’s son. Loyalty wasn’t encoded on his DNA.
Leanna was off-limits. Taboo.
If he repeated the words often enough he might remember ’em.
“I’ll be staying in a whore house?”
Aw, heck, she wasn’t going to get prudish on him, was she? “Used to be one, but the sheriff closed down that side of the business years ago. It’s been a rooming house all my life.”
She slammed the hood and grimaced at her dirty hands.
Patrick pulled his bandanna out of his pocket and offered it to her before he could stop himself. Even good habits were hard to break. “Don’t let Penny put you in room ten.”
Her chin jerked up and suspicion dimmed the gold flecks in her eyes. “Why?”
“It’s haunted.”
Instead of looking at him like he was a couple of bales short of a trailer load, he noted a spark of interest. “You’re teasing me.”
“No, ma’am. Story is that one of the madam’s customers wanted to take her away from her business. He proposed. She refused. He offed her because she loved her, ah…work more than him and he didn’t want to share.”
Her eyes widened, and then she beamed like he’d just handed her a winning lottery ticket. He staggered back a step. That smile of hers nearly blinded him. Leanna Jensen wasn’t just cute, she was damned dazzling. Put a cork in it, Lander. He tried to shake off the unwanted attraction.
She practically danced with excitement. “Get out of here. A ghost? Really?”
He hesitated to tell her the local legend, fearing she’d misread any effort at conversation as sign of interest, but he couldn’t resist the questions in her eyes. “Folks say that if you make love in room ten your partner won’t be the only one with you.”
Ghost stories creeped him out. He’d never had the desire to investigate the madam’s story or any of the others his mother had told him on those long nights when she’d dragged him out of bed, strapped him into the car and circled the Palace time and time again. Whatever it was she thought she’d see, she’d always gone home disappointed, and he’d always crawled into bed and cowered under the covers, waiting for the nightmares her tales conjured up.
“A haunted whore house.” Leanna’s delighted chuckle drew him back from his bitter childhood memories. The sound, combined with the anticipation lighting her up like a neon sign, made him wonder if she might not be a straitlaced stick-in-the-mud after all. His body responded in a way it shouldn’t, considering he had no intention of following where it urged him to go.
“I love ghost stories.” Her smile widened and mischief made the gold flecks in her eyes sparkle. Pink tinted her cheeks as she peeked at him from beneath her gold-tipped lashes. She lowered her voice. “Have you ever tested the tale? You know, to see if there’s an amorous ghost?”
Too cute. Too young. Into ghosts. And testing his temporary vow of celibacy. Just his luck.
“No.” He took a long stride backward, opened his truck door and put it between them.
In the past year, wily women had shanghaied two of his brothers into marriage, and while Leanna didn’t seem to be the wily type, he wasn’t taking any chances. Brand and Caleb were happy enough, but marriage wasn’t for him. His mother hadn’t had a faithful bone in her body, and as far as he could tell, he was just like her. More’n one woman had tried to put a ring around his finger—a noose around his neck, to his way of thinking—but he wasn’t promising forever to anybody. He’d disappointed enough people in his life.
“Penny can probably tell you more about it. Don’t forget to stop by Pete’s. See you tomorrow.” He climbed into the cab and backed out of the space before he did something stupid like ask her to dinner.
Two
Leanna’s Buick roared like an expensive sports car. It wasn’t a good sign since the station wagon wasn’t moving—unless you counted the slight backward roll.
She pursed her lips and pressed the gas pedal once again. Nothing. The gauges gave no indication of distress, but something was definitely wrong with her car. Taking her foot off the brake, she coasted backward off the road and onto the grassy verge and then turned off the engine. Heat immediately filled the interior, forcing her to roll down the windows while she debated her options.
Arch’s chauffeur had walked her though filling the assorted fluid tanks before she’d left Carlsbad, but that was the extent of her knowledge about the inner workings of a car. She pulled the latch and climbed out to take another look beneath the hood, but to her inexperienced eye everything appeared as it should.
Sweat plastered her clothes to her body within minutes. She nibbled a nail. Her car had to be repaired. One of the most important lessons she’d learned growing up was that you had to have a plan B—a way to escape if a situation became ugly. It was the reason she’d saved a portion of her salary—the portion her mother’s treatment didn’t consume—and bought her own car a few months ago.
She stared into the distance at the heat haze wavering on the asphalt. Barbed-wire fencing stretched along either side of the road, marking dry, empty pastures. She hadn’t passed another
