Bodyguard Father

She nodded in a dazed kind of fashion.

“Can you move?”

She nodded again and sat perfectly still, blinking.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

More nodding. He brushed some of the glass away then reached inside and pulled on her jacket sleeve and her jeans. She slid closer to the edge of the seat until she slipped into his arms as though she belonged there. She looped her arms over his head and around his neck and for a second, he wondered if she knew how to choke a man with a rope. But instead of trying to strangle him, she looked into his eyes. The cold, miserable day receded, the pain ebbed, the clock stopped ticking.

“Thanks,” she said, lowering her gaze.

“If you’d stayed tied up this wouldn’t have happened,” he grumbled as he carried her away from the hissing, steaming mass of mangled metal. He set her on her feet, anxious to see just how injured she was. She swayed a little but caught herself.

“Can you walk?” he barked.

“Of course,” she said, shaking glass off her clothes, out of her hair. “I’m just a little…rattled,” she added, and proved it by trembling from the feet up.

“Stand here for a second,” he said as he handed her her handbag. “Don’t run away.”

He limped back to the truck and grabbed the rifle before pulling his duffel bag from behind the seat. He didn’t know how he was going to get out of here now that both vehicles were wrecked, but he knew he had to. Soon.

She still stood where he’d left her. What was he going to do with her? He couldn’t leave her here alone, could he? He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. The minutes kept ticking by.

As he approached, he saw the return of fear in her eyes. Why she should be afraid of him when it was she who had started this mess?

She believes you blew up Elaine Greason.

He moved a few steps toward the house and looked back at her. “Let’s go inside while I come up with plan B.”

She looked anxiously over his shoulder toward the cabin and back again, her gaze straying past the wreck. It appeared she longed to run down the hill screaming at the top of her lungs.

“The snow is beginning to stick,” he said.

“But—”

“Listen. I know you’re Anastasia Ryder, I know you have a husband named Jack, I know you came to find me and that you called someone named Shelby Parker once you followed me back to Ben’s place. I know all this. I know you’ve been stalking me and I know why. So let’s can the scared female act. Thanks to your little escape attempt, I have to figure out how I’m going to get out of here before the cops come. Or worse.”

As she walked toward him, she shrugged off her coat and shook off more glass. “Call me Annie,” she said.

THE FIRST THING Garrett Skye did was tape a square of thick cardboard over the broken pane in the door and sweep up the glass. He did this work efficiently and without fanfare as Annie stood by, still shaken up and disorientated. The stream of cold the hole had allowed to enter the cabin immediately stopped and along with it, some of Annie’s shivers.

Next, he produced a lethal-looking pocketknife and as Annie shrank away from the blade, cut the rope from around her wrists. As she rubbed the reddened skin, he disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing a few moments later with a small clean towel and a bowl of steaming water. He pointed at a chair and she sat down.

“I don’t have a lot of time but I can’t leave you here like this. I’m going to wipe the blood off your face. While I do that, you’re going to talk. Your last call, made minutes before you hiked up my driveway, was to Shelby Parker. Who exactly is she?”

“You looked at my cell phone.”

“Yes.”

What was the use of lying? She said, “Shelby Parker is Elaine Greason’s daughter.”

“Elaine’s daughter? The one who lives in Arizona?”

“That’s the one. She got tired of waiting for the police to find you.”

“So she hired you?”

Annie tried to look like a force to be reckoned with. “I’m sure she’s called the police by now. They’ll be here any minute.”

“You hope,” he said, dousing the cloth with water and moving it across her forehead. “Sure seems to be taking them a long time, though, doesn’t it?” he added as he wrung out the cloth. The water in the bowl turned pink. Annie’s stomach turned over. She wasn’t good with blood, especially her own.

She cried out as he dabbed at her chin. “There’s a piece of glass in there. Stay put.”

He found tweezers in a cabinet and brought them back to the table, where he deftly removed the glass. “I wonder why the sheriff hasn’t shown up?” he mused again as he tossed the glass chip into the waste basket.

She glanced out the big window in front. Snow. Nothing but snow. No cops running to the rescue.

He leaned back and looked at her. “I’ll tell you why. The sheriff’s office doesn’t know my true identity because you didn’t tell them. The whole town of Poplar Gulch thinks my name is Pete Jordan. They believe I’m a professor friend of Ben Miller’s, using his place to recover from knee surgery. I don’t talk a lot, but I’m friendly, ride Ben’s horse on occasion, and pay my bills with cash.”

“But—”

“Your cuts are minor.” He took the bowl and cloth back to the kitchen and returned with a box of bandages and a tube of ointment which he applied with a cotton-tipped stick. The bandages went on next. One near her temple and another on her left cheek. Two over the gash on her chin.

She looked at his face as he worked. He needed a shave. The dark stubble made him look raw, sexy, male. On second thought, perhaps he didn’t need a shave.

She took a steadying breath but all that accomplished was filling her nostrils with his woodsy scent. She was way too aware of him as a man, considering the fact he was a murderer. She’d read about those women who get all emotionally attached to vicious fiends and spend their life trotting back and forth to prison cells for conjugal visits. No, thanks.

“Why didn’t Parker tell you to contact the police when you found me?” he said. “Why contact her?”

Because that’s the way my dad organized it. She wasn’t going to tell him that. Let this guy think she had connections and experience. And a husband if he wanted. The bigger, the better.

He sat on his heels and directed a flashlight into her eyes. Wasn’t it obvious by now her eyes were fine?

“Don’t blink,” he said. “Anything hurt?”

“No.” She stared into his bottomless brown orbs, intrigued by the swirls of burnt sienna until she blinked rapidly and pushed his hand away. Had she really just sat there meekly and let him attend to her wounds, gazing into his eyes like a goof? Maybe she’d been in shock. If so, she was better now and she wanted a little elbow room. She said, “I’m good. Thanks.”

He switched off the flashlight and stood. Perching on the edge of the table, he said, “If Parker wants her mother’s alleged killer brought to justice, why direct her private eye to call her instead of the cops?”

“Alleged?” she said, sitting forward. “Didn’t you kill Elaine Greason?”

He stared at her. “Does it matter? You don’t care if I’m guilty or innocent, right? Just as long as you collect your money. You can’t be a bounty hunter because I was never bonded. Why don’t you have some kind of license or permit? You were carrying concealed. Is that lawful between Nevada and California?”

She ignored his questions because she didn’t really know what he was talking about. Was there a law against a concerned citizen tracking down a wanted killer? Her intention had never been to confront him.

He frowned at her, narrowing those rich, dark eyes in the process.

He said, “You took that picture of me in the truck when I went to see my daughter.”