The Quiet Seduction Page 5

  She didn’t have to explain. There hadn’t been enough time then, and there wasn’t enough money now. He was getting pretty good at sizing up situations from insufficient evidence, or maybe he’d always been good at it. There was no way of knowing…yet.

  “Booker and Clyde have only been working here a few weeks. Mr. Caster left toward the end of September, as soon as his social security kicked in. His arthritis was getting pretty bad, not that he’d admit it. I started advertising for a replacement as soon as he gave notice, but it didn’t take long to discover that anyone even marginally competent was already working. By the time that pair of…of—”

  “Bums,” Storm supplied.

  “To put it delicately.” She spared him a fleeting smile. “Anyway, by the time they showed up, I was at my wit’s end. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t even bother to check their references.”

  She was an easy mark, he concluded. She’d proved that much by dragging home a man she had never before laid eyes on. A vulnerable woman, living alone with her son, yet she had brought him into her home, taken care of him—even lent him her late husband’s clothes and shaving gear. He could’ve been a proverbial ax murderer for all she knew. There were no rules that said ax murderers couldn’t get caught in a tornado.

  “You should have called nine-one-one and let someone else drag me out of that ditch.”

  She shrugged. He decided on the spot that the least he could do in return was to see that those two scoundrels who were supposed to be working for her didn’t take advantage of her. The kid was willing, but at eight years old, he simply wasn’t up to the task. “Ellen, a woman needs to be careful about the kinds of people she brings home with her, especially when there’s a kid involved.”

  She looked at him, started to speak, and then bit her lip. It occurred to him that green eyes could look both clear as glass and opaque as moss, depending on the light. Or perhaps on the lady’s mood.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go turn Zeus into the large pasture. The grass there isn’t nearly as good, but he gets restless in the small pen.”

  When the going gets uncomfortable, the uncomfortable get going. The words came to him, a paraphrase of something or other. Apt, though, he mused. “Sure, go ahead. You need some help?”

  “No thanks. If you’re smart, you’ll get off that leg.”

  Whether he was smart remained to be seen. He was tempted to follow her just to prove he wasn’t totally useless. He could open and shut gates, if nothing else. However, knowing that the best way to help was to stay out of the way, he spent several minutes scraping together the scant evidence he had and trying to weave it into something more solid.

  Judging from the look of his hands—not to mention his clothes—he was probably a white-collar worker of some sort. Banker, broker… “Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief,” he finished out loud. The situation might even have been amusing if only it weren’t so damned frustrating. Just because his nails had been relatively clean when he’d been found and dragged here to the Wagner ranch, that didn’t mean he was a respectable businessman. He could just as easily be a professional gambler, an embezzler, a pimp—the possibilities were endless.

  And endlessly chilling.

  “Think, man—concentrate! Speech patterns. Words, images—they don’t come out of a vacuum.”

  Judging from certain speech patterns and word images that seemed to come naturally to him, while he might not be a crook, he was no stranger to the criminal life. Best case scenario, he was a cop.

  A cop who wore hand-tailored suits, silk underwear and a high-dollar wristwatch? If he was a cop, then odds were better than even he was a cop on the take. The implications of that were dizzying, if not downright sickening.

  Day four. That was how he counted time now. With both his past and his future a blank wall, all he could do was live in the moment and wait for an opening. One thing he’d discovered right off—patience was not his long suit. Any man, under the circumstances, would be impatient, he told himself, but rationalizing didn’t help. Ellen had called him the quintessential Alpha male. He wasn’t sure what she’d meant, or how she could tell, but if it meant he didn’t like sitting around doing nothing more productive than sweeping, dusting and making beds—chores she’d only grudgingly allowed him to take over yesterday—then she was dead on target.

  She had offered several times to go into town to ask around, to see if anyone was missing a stray male of the human species. Even offered to place an ad in the paper advertising his whereabouts. They had actually laughed over the possible wording of such an ad.

  “Where would you list me, with the lost pets?” he’d asked.

  “Why not? Good-tempered, house broken—we’d have to guess as to whether or not you’re up to date on your shots.”

  He had found himself enjoying the repartee, drawn deeper by the hint of laughter that tugged at the corners of her mouth. In the kitchen doorway they’d stood toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye, caught in an extemporaneous sparring match, each daring the other to give in. It was a crazy confrontation about nothing at all, fueled by the unexpected, not to mention inappropriate way he was beginning to react to her presence. Even over such a trivial matter as a classified ad, he’d felt the adrenaline race through his body, tightening nerves, heightening senses. His own brown eyes had bored into her changeable green ones as if searching for a hint of weakness.

  When it came to strengths and weaknesses, there was no contest. He’d managed to pass it off as teasing, as a joke. But for a minute there, it had felt like something entirely different.

  Logical or not, he’d declined her offer to advertise his whereabouts. Later, whenever she’d suggested he ride with her to town and back to see if anything looked familiar, he’d found some excuse not to go. His head was bothering him—or his knee or his ankle, both of which were almost back to normal except for the occasional twinge when he turned too quickly.

  The truth was—

  Hell, he didn’t know what the truth was; he only knew he felt safe here. Until he knew what was out there waiting for him—until he was fully fit, both physically and mentally—he preferred to play it safe.

  “Look, why don’t I go by to see what the library has on amnesia?” Ellen offered.

  “Thanks, but that’s not necessary. Now that my headache’s almost gone, my memory’s showing definite signs of returning.”

  Neither of which was consistently true, but close enough. His headache was down to a dull, background pressure, and for the past couple of days he’d been…sensing things. Usually it was something on the news or in the daily paper that triggered a reaction.

  Now all he had to do was figure out what the reaction meant—waiting, not pushing too hard. No point in confusing himself with a lot of psychobabble.

  Then, too, he didn’t want Ellen going out of her way to do him any more favors. He already owed her too much. Once his brain came back on line and he was able to pick up his life again, he would be on his way. The first thing he intended to do was to find some way to repay her. Maybe he could find her a couple of good men and pay them under the table. Or maybe he could set up some kind of a fund for Pete. Whatever he did would have to be done tactfully, possibly even secretly. For a lady who was living from day to day, she had more than her share of pride.

  Maybe he could arrange to buy a couple of her horses, although where he would keep them, not to mention what use he had for them, remained to be seen.

  As did far too much else.

  Storm was going over an old newspaper he’d found in the kindling basket a day or so later when Ellen came inside from her morning chores, cheeks glowing and her hair slipping free of the scarf she’d used to tie it back. She was either upset or angry. He recognized that militant march.

  “Where’s Pete?” he asked, rising from the only man-size chair in the room.

  “School. This is Monday, in case you’ve lost track.”

  “I thought that was a bus I heard early this morning.”

&nb
sp; “He hates having to ride it. He’s been begging me all year to let him ride his bike to school, but now…”

  Right. Now the argument was settled. Probably for the best, as the highway was no place for an eight-year-old on a bike. “Any chance of getting him another one?” He knew the answer before she spoke. She’d admitted to being unable to pay higher wages to attract good help. She was good at disguising it, but the signs of near poverty were everywhere. Beans, macaroni and bologna sandwiches weren’t exactly his idea of gourmet fare.

  “Maybe for Christmas. I worried about letting him ride it even as far as Joey’s, but then, it’s not like we’re on a major highway.”

  “Not all the dangers are out on the interstate.”

  “Oh, I know, you think I’m being overprotective, but—” She gestured helplessly, visible anger seeping away as she crossed the room to hang up her heavy wool shirt. “I hate to deny him anything he really wants when he’s already lost so much. And yes, you don’t have to say it—I know he has to grow up. It’s just that he’s all I have. You know how it is.” Shrugging, she gestured, palms out, with her calloused hands.

  When he didn’t reply, she looked at him and bit her lip. “Sorry. I guess you don’t.”

  “No problem.” And then, “Yeah, big problem. Look, I can’t even offer to pay room and board, much less—”

  “Hush! I owe you more than I can ever repay. Pete would’ve— He told me how he froze, watching that awful thing roaring down at him, with no place to hide even if he’d had time. If anything had happened to him, I don’t know what I’d have done.”

  She turned away, arms hugging her chest as she stared out through the window at the red barn that was in far better shape than the house. He waited, not saying anything because he didn’t know what to say. Hell, maybe he had saved the kid’s neck, but it hadn’t involved any heroics. There hadn’t been time for heroics. Truth was, he’d come close to drowning them both in that flooded drainage ditch before Pete had managed to wiggle out from under him.

  “How long has it been?” he asked, curious now about more than his own identity.

  “How long?” She turned away from the window, arms still wrapped around the bosom she disguised whenever she went out to the barn by wearing a man’s shirt. He’d noticed that about her—guessed the reason for it. “If you mean how long have you been here, I’ve lost track. Let’s see, the storm hit last…was it Tuesday or Wednesday?”

  “No, I meant how long since your husband…”

  “Died? You can say it. I’m not fragile.”

  She was far more fragile than she cared to admit, but he didn’t think she’d like knowing he’d picked up on her vulnerability. A man would have to be blind not to. Blank he might be; blind he was not. “How long have you and Pete lived here alone?”

  “Jake died just over two years ago. He was sick for a while before that, and we stayed here as long as we could. The visiting nurse taught me—” Breaking off, she took a deep breath and turned to stare out the window at the high clouds building up out over the Gulf of Mexico.

  She’d nursed him at home. It had to have been hellish for her, knowing that the end was inevitable. Somehow, though, he wasn’t surprised. “Pete was in the first grade when Jake died,” she said, picking up the threads of her story as if determined to lay out all the facts and then move on. “We’d moved here from Laredo. Before that we lived in Dallas. And before that, we were in the army. At least, Jake was. See, we’d been looking for just the right place because Jake’s ambition was to breed quarter horses, and we both wanted a place away from town, but close to a good school.”

  He waited for her to go on, had a feeling she needed to talk. As far as he knew, no one had even come by to see how she’d fared in the tornado, which meant either she hadn’t had time to make friends or she’d managed to tick off all her neighbors. She didn’t strike him as antisocial, so too busy for much of a social life was his best guess.

  Her next words corroborated it. “At first I didn’t much like it, with no close neighbors. I mean, I’ve always had people around. I grew up with lots of friends, and then, in the army, of course, there were the other wives.” She bit her lip and he found himself staring at the way her teeth dented the soft, pink flesh. “But once we settled in there wasn’t time to think about anything but getting the barn in shape—that was our first priority, then we were going to tackle the house.”

  He watched her as she talked, seeing the way she used her hands to make a point. She was graceful. Feminine. Even when she was wearing baggy jeans and one of her late husband’s shirts.

  “Jake always hated the city, but that’s where the jobs were. He grew up in a rough section of Dallas and joined the army as soon as he was old enough. He was thinking about making it his career, but then we met and fell in love, and—” Here she paused, twisted the plain gold band on her ring finger, and then shook her head, as if in answer to an unasked question. “I got pregnant and Jake was afraid he’d be sent overseas, so he got out and we went back to Dallas, and Jake went into construction work. He was always good with his hands—he had this way of thinking through a project before he ever started it—sort of a logical mind. Truly, it’s a gift. I hope Pete inherited it, but I’m afraid he might have inherited more of my impulsiveness.”

  “Leap first and look later?” He’d never have pegged her for the impulsive type, not with that square little jaw. On the other hand, she’d hired that pair of scum-bags without first checking them out. But that, he suspected, had been more a case of desperation than impulsiveness.

  For the first time since he’d erupted into her life—or she into his—he watched her visibly relax. It was like seeing a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis and flex its newfound wings.

  And if that was a clue that he was some kind of poet, then he must be pretty damned good at it to afford the kind of clothes he’d been wearing.

  Clearing his throat, Storm wrenched his mind back into line and asked, “How far are we from the state prison?”

  Ellen blinked those remarkable green eyes. “The prison? Several miles, I think. I’ve never had occasion to go there. Why?”

  He shrugged. “No real reason. Just a feeling I had. Probably something I heard on the news, I don’t know.” He smiled at her then, the kind of smile that invited a like response. For several long moments he basked in the spell of her rare answering smile before turning away, oddly affected without knowing why. “Just grasping at straws, I guess.”

  Four

  Long after he left the room, his step only slightly uneven as he favored his left leg, Ellen stared after him, thinking. Wondering. Struggling with feelings that veered from gratitude to suspicion to guilt—to something she would prefer not to examine too closely. The kind of tingling awareness she hadn’t felt in years. Whoever and whatever he was, anything of that nature was out of the question. She owed him more than she could ever repay, but she really didn’t know him.

  He’d mentioned the prison. There had been prison gangs out cleaning up after the devastation, she’d heard that on the news—but that was after the tornado, not before. Besides, he would hardly have been a member of a road gang, dressed the way he’d been dressed. Still, he’d had no identification on him, and there hadn’t been time to get rid of it. What kind of man traveled without identification?

  What kind of woman living alone with her child, with no close neighbors, would bring home a stranger with no identification, one who claimed to have lost his memory? And then, based on instinct alone, turned away two men who might have identified him?

  The answer, of course, was a gullible fool. One who had been severely overprotected to the point that she’d grown up feeling like a bird in a gilded cage.

  After the only son of a friend had been kidnapped for ransom, Leonard Summerlin had insisted that Howard, his chauffeur who doubled as a bodyguard, drive Ellen back and forth to school. All her friends had had to be vetted before she could even play with them. Having to bring her boyfrie
nds home to be interrogated by her father had been so embarrassing it was a wonder she’d had had any social life at all.

  How she had hated all that. It might even be the reason she had escaped the way she had—by eloping with a man she’d met at the mall when he’d been trying to pick out a birthday gift for a friend’s three-year-old daughter. She had slipped her leash to go shopping that April afternoon and literally run headlong into a handsome young soldier who was standing outside a toy store window, trying to decide between a Barbie doll and a toy makeup kit. When he’d seen her staring at him—in a tight-fitting uniform with those shiny brown boots, he’d been well worth a second look—he had asked her what she thought a three-year-old girl would like better, the doll or the makeup kit. That had led to a discussion of baby dolls versus grown-up dolls and she had eventually helped him select a gift more suitable for the child.

  After that, she’d done a lot of shopping. Howard would wait at the food court while she sallied forth in the mall. Jake, back in the States on leave, would meet her at the bookstore, which lent itself to leisurely browsing. Once inside, they would study the covers of all the paperbacks and Jake would make up outrageous stories to fit each one. She’d fallen in love with his mind even before she had with his body.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. She’d fallen in lust about half an hour before she’d fallen in love. Jake had been handsome, shy and protective, not to mention totally unlike any man she had ever met before. What woman could resist such a combination? Certainly not a naive, overprotected college sophomore who had never been exposed at close range to a man who defined the word macho. The uniform had only added to the mystique.