style="font-size:15px;"> “One that’ll put a hole in you,” she said. “Happy?”
“Not particularly.” The quaver in her voice told him she was probably lying about the gun, which he’d suspected from the beginning. He could understand why she’d feel a bit intimidated with a six-foot-two, two-hundred-and-ten-pound stranger barging in on her. What bothered him was the light—that and the question of why she was there. “Who are you?”
“I could ask the same of you,” she said warily.
“Mike Hill. I own the ranch next door.”
Mike had grown up in these parts. Most everyone knew his family. But if she recognized his name, she didn’t say so.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Hill?”
“Do you mind?” He scowled at the light as she stepped closer.
“You’re the one who walked in uninvited.”
She had to be alone, or he would’ve heard someone else by now. “I came to tell you that you’d better put out those candles and hightail it out of here before I call the police. You’re trespassing on private property.”
“Is it your property?” she asked.
“It should be.”
“But it’s not, is it?”
He didn’t like her tone. The fact that he’d lost the house, of which he had so many fond childhood memories, to a gold digger and her children still bothered him. The fact that he’d been robbed of the time he could’ve spent with his grandfather in the last ten years of Morris Caldwell’s life rankled even more.
“What happens here is none of your business,” she went on briskly. “Please go.”
Mike had no intention of leaving. No one was going to chase him out of his grandfather’s house—especially with nothing more threatening than a flashlight. “Get that damn light out of my eyes.”
“Or?” she said, coming back at him with his own line.
Mike welcomed the challenge. “Or I’ll take it away from you.”
“Then I’ll—”
“Shoot? You don’t even have a gun. If you did, you wouldn’t need to blind me.”
She hesitated, but Mike didn’t give her a chance to decide, just in case he was wrong about the gun. With two quick steps, he caught her around the waist and pressed her up against the closest wall.
The flashlight fell and rolled away as he pinned her hands to the side. But he’d moved her close enough to the light in the kitchen that he could just make out a straining chest covered by an overlarge sweatshirt, a pale oval face and a thick halo of long curly hair that appeared to be blond. She was young, all right, but older than he’d thought. Certainly not a teenager. She looked small, perfect, porcelain—like an angel. But the glint in her luminous eyes had nothing to do with innocence and everything to do with red-hot fury.
She began to raise her knee, but he managed to maintain his hold on her and protect his groin at the same time. “Let go of me you, son of—!”
“Whoa, calm down, little lady!” He used his body weight to press her more firmly against the wall so she wouldn’t try to knee him again.
“Little lady?” She was breathing so hard he could feel every intake of breath. “I suppose you think that kind of condescending bullshit passes for manners out here, huh, cowboy?”
Mike cocked an eyebrow at her. “My manners are a hell of a lot better than anything I’ve seen from you,” he snapped.
“I’m not the one who came barging into your house!”
That took him aback. “What?”
“You heard me. Whether you think this place should belong to you or not, I own it, so let me go.”
Mike didn’t budge. The last time he’d seen Lucky Caldwell she’d been a pudgy eighteen-year-old with more than her share of acne. She’d worn her reddish hair in a tight ponytail and waited for the school bus out front every morning, hugging her books to her chest and glaring daggers at him whenever he drove by. “I don’t believe you,” he said.
“Rumor had it that my mother tried to poison him. Actually, she gave him too much insulin, which she claimed was an accident, but he divorced her and cut her out of his will. Would I know that if I was just some squatter?”
“Pretty much everybody knows that,” he pointed out, trying to see her more clearly. “At least around here.”
“Okay, you bought the land next door from Morris when I was ten and you were about twenty-five. Josh was a couple of years younger. You and he started a stud service with a black stallion that had a white star on his forehead and white socks.”
At his surprised silence she added grudgingly, “That horse was beautiful. I used to bring him sugar cubes and apples.”
Slowly, Mike let go of her and eased away, wondering why his stallion hadn’t keeled over if she’d been feeding it from her evil mother’s pantry. Now that he could see her a little better, he couldn’t help noticing that she wasn’t wearing anything, other than maybe a pair of panties, beneath that baggy sweatshirt. The hem hit her almost at midthigh; bare, shapely legs extended from there.
“It’s cold. Where’re your pants?” he asked.
“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s late. I happened to be in my sleeping bag when you so kindly broke into my house and ruined my night. Forgive me for not dressing more modestly.”
With that biting edge to her voice, he could tell she still had plenty of spunk. But she’d certainly changed in other ways. Mostly, she’d grown up. Although she had large breasts, especially for such a small woman, the fat had melted away, and her hair was long and curly and tumbled almost to her waist. With the light from the kitchen acting like a halo behind her, he could now see that it was more red than blond.
Mike restrained a whistle and couldn’t help wondering whether she would’ve looked that good six years ago if she hadn’t pulled her hair back every day. If so, she might have commanded a little more positive attention from the boys in town. As it was, she hadn’t been especially attractive. Nor, with her unpleasant personality, did she have anything else to recommend her.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was you?” he asked.
Her hands curled into fists. “Maybe I appreciate my privacy.”
More likely she enjoyed being caustic. He remembered Lucky clinging to Morris’s arm the day Morris had invited Mike over to meet his new wife and children. Because of his grandparents’ divorce and the quick second wedding, it had been a difficult year for Mike’s whole family, but particularly for Mike, since he’d always been closest to his grandpa. Everyone else had refused to acknowledge Morris’s invitation to come to the house, but Mike had shown up, hoping that everything he’d been hearing was a lie, or at least not as bad as it seemed. He’d thought he knew his grandpa. He’d thought his grandpa would never change. But Morris had been swept away by the excitement
