was about to do, but he shushed her.
“I need a ride,” he said into the phone.
She heard laughter on the other end.
“I need you to bring me my pickup. That’s right, it’s parked right where we left it before the rodeo. No, I can’t come get it myself, Marshall, or I wouldn’t have called you. The keys are in it. I’m in the last fairground building. There will be two of us. Make it quick, okay?” He snapped off the phone and gave her a reassuring smile.
Billie Rae wondered if she’d just jumped from the skillet into the fire. But there was something about this man that made her feel safe. It wasn’t just the kindness she saw in his brown eyes.
There was a softness to his voice and his movements that belied his size and the strength she could see in his broad shoulders, muscled arms and callused hands.
This was a man who did manual labor—not one who either sat behind a desk or rode around all day in a car.
“I’m Tanner Chisholm,” he said and held out his hand.
“Billie Rae Johnson.” She realized she’d given him her maiden name instead of her married one.
“My brother Marshall is coming to pick us up in my truck, then we’ll go out to the ranch where my stepmother, Emma, will make you feel at home. She’ll insist you have something to eat. She does that to everyone. Humor her; it is much easier in the long run.” He smiled. “You’ll like Emma. Everyone does.”
“I couldn’t possibly impose—”
“Trust me, it is impossible to impose at the Chisholm ranch. If anything, Emma and my father, Hoyt, will want to adopt you.”
She felt tears well and quickly brushed them away. “Why are you being so nice to me? You don’t know me.”
“I know you’re in trouble and I’m a sucker for a woman who needs my help,” he joked. “Seriously, whatever is going on, you need someplace to stay tonight at least and to give your husband a chance to calm down.”
As if Duane was going to calm down, she thought with a grimace. All of this would have him foaming at the mouth with fury.
“I assume you drove to the rodeo?”
“A pickup. It’s out of gas. But—”
“My brother and I will see to it tomorrow. It will be safe here tonight.”
Maybe the truck would be safe but the brothers wouldn’t be if they came to fetch it tomorrow. Duane would be watching it and waiting.
She had to stop this now. She knew Duane, knew what he would do to this cowboy. “You have to let me go,” she said as she reached for the doorknob again. “You don’t know my husband. He’ll come after you—”
“I think I do know your husband,” Tanner said and gently touched her cheek under her left eye with his fingertips. She flinched, not because her bruised cheek still hurt, but because she’d forgotten about her healing black eye and now this kind cowboy knew her hidden shame.
At the sound of a truck pulling up outside the building, Tanner said, “That will be Marshall.” He opened the door a crack and looked out as if checking to make sure the coast was clear. “I come from a large ranch family that sticks together. I have five brothers. Your husband isn’t going to take on the six of us, trust me.”
Before she could argue, he quickly ushered her out to a large ranch truck. She noticed the sign printed on the side: Chisholm Cattle Company. Tanner opened the truck door, then taking her waist in both of his large hands, lifted her in before sliding into the bench seat next to her.
“Marshall, meet Billie Rae. Billie Rae, my big brother Marshall.”
The cowboy behind the wheel grinned. Like his brother, Marshall had dark hair and brown eyes reflecting his Native American ancestry. Both men were very handsome but there was also something kind and comforting in their faces.
“I’d appreciate it if you got this truck moving,” Tanner said, glancing in his side mirror. He turned back to Billie Rae, plucked a cowboy hat from the gun rack behind her and dropped it onto her long, dark, curly hair.
Marshall laughed. “So you got yourself into some kind of trouble and apparently involved this pretty little lady in the midst of it, huh?” He shook his head, but he got the truck moving.
As they drove out the back way of the fairgrounds, Billie Rae stared through the windshield from under the brim of the hat, afraid she’d see Duane in the dispersing crowd. Or worse, Duane would see her—and the name of the ranch painted on the side of the truck.
Chapter Two
Duane Rasmussen leaned against his father’s pickup, arms crossed over his chest, his heart pounding with both anger and anticipation.
The fairgrounds were still clearing out. His head hurt from searching the crowd and waiting to see Billie Rae’s contrite face.
She would come crawling back, apologizing and saying how sorry she was. She’d be a lot sorrier when he got through with her. The thought kicked up his pulse to a nice familiar throb he could feel in his thick neck.
As his daddy used to say, “A man who can’t control his woman is no man at all.”
He used to think his old man was a mean SOB. But Duane hadn’t understood what his father had to contend with when it came to living with a woman. Sometimes just opening the door and seeing Billie Rae with that look on her face …
Duane couldn’t describe it any other way than as a deer-in-the-headlights look. It made him want to wipe it off her face. He hated it when she acted as if she had to fear him.
He had told her repeatedly that he loved her and that the only reason he had to get tough with her sometimes was because she made him mad. Or when she acted like she was walking around on eggshells, treating him as if she thought he might go off at any moment and slap her.
Didn’t he realize how that would make him even angrier with her?
Duane shook his head now. He’d never be able to understand his wife.
Like this little trick she’d just pulled, taking off on him. What the hell was she thinking? She’d been so sweet and compliant when they were dating. She’d liked it when he took care of her, told her what was best for her, didn’t bother her with making any of the decisions.
He couldn’t understand what had changed her. It was a mystery to him especially since he’d given the woman everything—she didn’t even have to work outside the home.
He’d squashed all talk of her looking for a job after they’d moved. No wife of his was working. Every man knew that working outside the home ruined a woman. They got all kinds of strange ideas into their heads. Let a woman be too independent and you were just asking for trouble.
With a curse, he saw that the parking area was almost empty. Only a few stragglers wandered out from the direction of the rodeo grandstands. The rodeo cowboys had loaded up their stock and taken off. The parking lot in the field next to the fairgrounds
