Safe with a Stranger

Josh heaved a heavy sigh. He could scarcely believe there would never be another opportunity to visit with his grandfather, Will Ryan. It didn’t seem possible that his father’s father could really be gone for good. It made Josh think of his own mortality, and that did nothing to help his melancholy.

One more arrow of guilt punctured Josh’s heart. He’d never made it back to tell the only grandfather he could remember how much he meant to him. Or how much Josh appreciated it when his grandfather and grandmother stepped up and took in Maggie when their mother died.

After their mother had been killed in that freak plane accident, Josh had thought their father should’ve been the one to step in and become both father and mother for his own teenage children—especially fifteen-year-old Maggie. But the mighty Brody Ryan would never bend enough to become a real parent. It was one of those memories from his past that Josh had never settled in his mind. One of the many things he’d wanted time alone to consider.

“Okay, we’re ready to eat now if you are.” Clare picked up her son and turned to face him. “I could sure use a hot shower and Jimmy needs a bath in the worst way. But I guess we’re presentable enough to go for fast-food.”

Josh supposed his alone time would just have to wait. “Why don’t you go on over and get in line while I move the truck away from the pumps.”

A half hour later, they were fed and Jimmy had been allowed a few free moments to toddle around in the restaurant’s indoor playground under his mother’s hawkish gaze. Back outside beside the truck, Josh stood against the open door next to Clare while she tried to ease Jimmy into the car seat. No luck.

“Anything I can do?” he asked as she pulled her boy back out of the pickup and began speaking to him in a soft but stern tone.

She shot Josh a quick “don’t interfere” glance and then turned her attention back to Jimmy. “Please do what I say, honey. Your mama needs you to be a good boy and help her out. We have to work together here.”

Jimmy wasn’t having any of it. “No!”

Clare’s patience at first seemed endless as she tried cajoling and then bribing her child. She was everything he ever remembered about a mother. Josh had to hold back his smile before it threatened to undo what she was trying to accomplish with her son. The woman was something else. She reminded him of his own mama. Strong-willed, firm but loving and unendingly patient with her child.

Maggie was going to love her.

After standing around in the hot Texas sun for a full ten minutes, biding time while Clare fought to get Jimmy settled down, Josh couldn’t wait any longer. He eased around Clare’s body and pulled Jimmy from her arms before either the mama or the boy knew what had happened.

“Heyuuup, boy,” he snapped in his best drill sergeant’s cadence as he swung the kid around and dropped him into the seat. “A—tennn—shun!”

Jimmy gaped up at him with his mouth wide-open and easily slid down into his seat with no fuss. Guess even a baby recognized authority when he heard it.

“You pay attention when your mama speaks,” Josh said firmly as he locked the kid into the restraints. “There you go.”

When Josh turned back around, Clare was glaring at him. Uh-oh. Had he overstepped some boundary without thinking and made her angry? He knew her well enough by now to see that she wanted to feel in charge of the parenting duties with her own son, and he admired her for it. But, hell, there came a time when enough was enough.

“I’m sorry if I did anything…” He stopped talking and stared down into that beautiful face, captivated by the tiny glint he caught in her eyes.

The first real sign she wasn’t mad came as the corners of both her eyes and mouth crinkled up. Pretty soon she was smiling at him with what turned into a full grin.

Josh couldn’t remember the last time he’d really smiled all out. His sense of humor had been AWOL for months—years, maybe. But when he looked at her mouth turned up in that wide smile, he found himself grinning back. He was fascinated by her mouth.

“Thank you,” she said with a flirtatious giggle in her voice.

Without thinking, only needing to feel her warmth, he leaned in closer. “I…uh…don’t know what to say,” he murmured. He was hovering within an inch of those tantalizing lips, caught between a wish and a prayer.

“Say, ‘You’re welcome.’”

The soft whisper of air from her words fanned over his face as he closed his eyes and breathed her in. What would she do if he narrowed the gap between their lips and bent for a taste of those luscious lips?

He reached out and ended up grabbing a handful of air.

The slam of Lucille’s front passenger door behind him told him everything he needed to know about what she would or would not do. Hot damn. He should’ve known better.

Chapter 4

Not ready to discuss their almost-kiss, Clare spent the next two hours finding ways to divert Jimmy’s attention from the long, boring ride. She handed the baby one of his favorite soft blocks, then a handful of fish crackers and finally told him a story he loved hearing over and over.

She’d been willing to do anything to keep Jimmy’s mind off getting out of his car seat to play—and her mind off Josh. Lucille’s cab had suddenly become too small by a factor of one very broad-shouldered man. But Josh didn’t seem to be facing the same problems she and Jimmy were. After nearly driving her mad with those intense looks and lust-filled expressions, he now drove the narrowing roads stoically and paid no attention to either one of them.

He’d been good with Jimmy at the gas stop. So good it had almost made her cry. The baby also noticed his firm but gentle care, and occasionally looked up at the back of his head with obvious admiration and yearning. Jimmy had never reacted with such instant bonding to any man, not even his own father. But then Ramzi was always too busy to pay much attention. In Ramzi’s world, babies were consigned to the women’s domain until old enough to be educated.

Josh had somehow known just what to do to settle and soothe her boy. She had been sorely tempted to find out how good Josh could be with her, too. As he’d stood beside her by the truck, she’d been suddenly wild with need. Narrowing the tiny gap that he’d infuriatingly left between them in a desperate attempt for just one taste had become an instant and insistent obsession. One she had fought hard to conquer, and congratulated herself for having mastered when she’d finally stepped away.

What was with her? She’d known the man less than a day. Furthermore, she had promised herself there would not be any romantic involvement with someone so obviously uninterested in making a commitment to a family.

Was Josh really not interested in kids? What about those longing looks he had given Jimmy? She knew what she’d been seeing. Those were the same kind of wistful looks she knew had been in her own eyes for babies before Jimmy was born. The damn man was confusing as hell with his gentleness and—and his declarations of not caring.

It was enough to make her wish for more time to figure him out. But her main concern, the entire focus of her existence for the immediate future, had to be finding a way to keep Ramzi from taking Jimmy back to Abu Fujarah.

Sighing in frustration, she sat back in her seat just as they drove past the sign that said Welcome To Zavala Springs. Except for a sleek new office complex built outside the old part of the town proper, the place didn’t look too different from any small town. Beyond the new-looking complex, they passed two brand-new multistory hotels and a couple of national chain restaurants. The newness of everything made the area look prosperous.

“Do those new buildings we passed just inside the town limits belong to the Delgado Ranch?” she asked Josh.

He shrugged a shoulder. “Beats me. I haven’t been back in a lot of years. But I’d have to guess they do. I can’t imagine any other businesses would make that kind of investment in Zavala Springs…or that the Delgado would allow anyone else to buy that much land from the company.”

“Does all the land in town belong to the Delgado, too?” She hadn’t thought of that, but it seemed logical when she considered how big and powerful the ranch and its owners were.

“Most of the land for a fifty-mile radius is part of the company’s holdings. Zavala Springs started out as a company town. I’d guess you could say it was sort of an expanded bunkhouse for the families of the ranch hands and those who worked at the wells. When the ranch last changed hands a couple of decades ago, many of the employees’ families inherited the land where they had been working or residing.”

“You mean the last actual owner named Delgado left parts of the town to the citizens in his will? As sort of a reward?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s just the way it was.”

Wanting to ask him how he was related to the Ryans and the Delgados but afraid she would sound either nosy or pushy, Clare left their conversation at that and stared out the window. The town was neat and clean, even though the mostly one-story stucco and shingled buildings on the main street didn’t look exactly new. She imagined that the whole place was probably no more than a hundred years old at most, but it still seemed to belong to another time. Small live oaks grew in planting beds next to the sidewalks, and there were colorful flowers in pots at every corner.

Certainly Ramzi’s men could never follow them here. Clare took her first real easy breath of air since she’d left Abu Fujarah.

On the other side of the small town’s business district, Josh turned the pickup down a side street. Here the trees were taller, and though there were no sidewalks, houses set on grass lawns and painted in soft pastel colors lined the street on both sides.

“Where are we headed?”

“My grandfather Will lives…lived…in a big house in town for as long as I can remember. And my younger sister has been living there with him since our mother died back when we were teens. My guess is she’s going to stay on now that he’s gone, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about her plans.”

His mother was dead. It hadn’t occurred to Clare to ask about his immediate family. His parents. His siblings. Wouldn’t that be one way to find out if he was related to the Ryans of the Delgado Ranch?

“What’s your sister’s name? And does she have any kids?”

Josh’s lips quirked up in something that resembled a smile. “Her name is Maggie. She’s never been married and has never had babies. But she loves them. Her best friend is the next-door neighbor who has a youngster of her own and runs a day care out of her home. Maggie is over there a lot.” Josh threw a glance back at Jimmy. “Maggie is really going to enjoy having your son in the house.”

“She doesn’t know we’re coming, does she? Are you sure it’s going to be okay to have us come barging in on her when her grandfather just died?”

“It’ll be fine. Wait and see.”