Mike, I’ll have you off this spread so fast your head will swim.”
“He deeply apologizes, sir. Don’t you, Mike?”
A tall, good-looking cowboy intervened just before Jake was about to open his mouth and try to smooth it over.
“Yes, sir. Deeply.”
Fowler gave both of them one more glaring look and strode off on his pricey hand-tooled boots.
“Better get Jo back to the barn now, Mike.”
They had a quick conversation about being more careful, even though it was Fowler who wasn’t looking where he was going.
The older guy faced Jake and said, “Hey, there. Saw you at breakfast but didn’t get a chance to say howdy. Dylan Harlow and that’s Mike Jensen. He’s one of Alanna’s troubled teens. Good kid.”
“Jake McCord.”
Dylan took off his hat and ran his hand through his dark hair, then jammed his hat back on. “Whew, still a mite warm for September.”
“Figure it is.”
“You the guy they hired to handle Zorro?”
“I am that man.”
“Boy howdy, you got your work cut out for you and I don’t just mean Zorro. Good luck,” he said as he sauntered off.
Jake nodded, looking in the direction Fowler had taken. Jake was sure the CEO of Colton Incorporated wasn’t done breathing down his neck.
At the end of the day, feeling the effects of the heat, the dirt and the slow start with Zorro, Jake headed for his apartment and the meal he was sure Miss Ellen would be cooking. After the initial meeting with Zorro, Jake found the rest of the afternoon to be frustrating as he tried to get closer to the animal. But it was as if he was off for some reason. He wondered if it could be Alanna. She did knock him for a loop.
As he approached, the aroma of beef and other delectable scents hit him as he entered the apartments. Ellen was at the stove and she waved to him as he climbed the stairs, his stomach grumbling.
In his newly appointed apartment, he stripped, opened the linen closet and discovered there were no towels. There was a knock at the door and he hastily pulled on his jeans, zipping them but in his hurry forgot to button them.
When he pulled open the door, Alanna Colton burst into the apartment toting a stack of fluffy brown towels with her tail on fire.
She came to a stop and bemused, he followed her. She was a combination of edgy sweet and bossy princess. She turned and that direct gaze slammed into him. Hoo-boy, she was riled. “I understand you had a run-in with my brother. What happened?”
“He wanted me to hurry up and fix the horse. I left my fairy wand in my other jeans.”
Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. “You didn’t actually say that.”
“I did.”
A soft laugh escaped and she shook her head, a gleam of admiration there. “And, you’re still here?”
“Left my fairy dust at home, too.”
That made her laugh out loud as if she was picturing him as Tinker Bell. “You had a full day pissing off the Coltons, huh?”
“Setting my boundaries is all.”
“I’d say they’re set. Not many men can or are willing to cross swords with my brother. That sets you apart, Jake.” His body leaped in response to her softly spoken compliment, urging him to do something—anything—about it. Hard to keep telling himself this was supposed to be a fake wooing when the sexual tension between them was clouding up his mind in a thick fog.
He nodded, taking a breath, shifting to accommodate the sudden lack of room in his jeans, deciding they needed a benign topic. “The towels are welcome,” he said in the sudden silence. Alanna had just realized he was bare-chested. The way her startled green eyes drifted over him set his teeth on edge, the very air vibrating with tension. On undercover operations where he had to get close to a suspect, he hadn’t worked this hard to stay detached. But she intrigued him.
He stepped over and slid his hand on top of and under the stack, and their fingers accidentally brushed across one another. She pulled her hand away, and stepped back. Her sudden uncertainty was so at odds with her bold nature. They were still standing close and something tightened in his chest. She was so innocent-looking, angelic even with her honey skin and tawny hair now loose and free, cut into tapered layers. But it was her face that did him in, every time. As a man he was acutely aware of her body, but he was a fool for that face, the innocence and the beauty of it never failing to turn him inside out.
“I saw the maid with them and I wanted to talk to you about Fowler. Let you know he’s...particular. He’s also out of his element and that makes him—”
“Confrontational?”
“He’s that on a good day. I was going to say nasty. But he’s handling the situation the best he can.”
“With your father’s disappearance,” he asked, not having to feign the slight roughness to his voice. Did she have any idea the effect she was having on him? Probably not. He didn’t fully understand it. But tell that to the rest of him, which was having no problem at all responding to her. Why he felt protective of her was anybody’s guess.
Think about why you’re here, boy, and rein in that hunger.
She blanched a bit and looked down, then nodded. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was true pain and worry in her eyes before he lost her gaze. If he was to go by what he’d just seen and felt, he would swear on a stack of Bibles that Alanna Colton had nothing to do with her father’s alleged kidnapping. But he wasn’t here to make snap judgments. He was here for facts.
Her bowed head and the glimpse of this angel’s pain worked against his cynicism. He leaned in, reacting on instinct, breathing her scent. Which was dangerous, given his current state of mind—and his tight jeans—but an impulse he seemed helpless to curb. She had been training horses all day and by rights she should smell like a barn. Only she didn’t. And standing this close, he noticed how smooth and soft-looking her skin was. For someone working such a physical job, exposed to the sun and wind, he’d expect her to look a bit more...worn.
Then it was that slight overbite. It was cute, and she wasn’t the cute type. She was no-nonsense and wore her confidence as easily as she did her shotgun chaps. What she was, drilling it into his head, was off-limits at least for where his male brain automatically took him. Give her what he suspected she was lacking...a shoulder to lean on. There wasn’t anyone in her family she could turn to for comfort and that made for a lonely existence. He knew that too well. It was something he was here to exploit.
He’d started this and now Alanna Colton was going to make this much too real.
But he would do his job, regardless of how the Colton princess was getting under his skin.
Alanna had always used physical work as a means
