The Quiet Seduction Page 7

  She’d turned to him then, picked up the plane again, and he could have sworn she’d been about to say something important. Instead, she’d shaken her head, murmured something about locating a spool of wire and gone back outside.

  Five

  What, Storm wondered idly, had Ellen been about to tell him? That it was time he left? That she didn’t like the way he made the beds? That he’d used too much detergent in the laundry? He’d figured that much out by himself when the suds had threatened to overflow. Figured it out and dealt with it. He still had a few gray cells on active duty.

  Feeling restless—his usual state these days—Storm opened the front door and studied the terrain. Nothing unusual about it. Nothing in the least outstanding, yet he liked it.

  As compared to what? a mocking voice asked.

  Okay, so the partial fence around the house needed painting. For that matter, the house itself needed painting. Maybe while he was here he could—

  And maybe not.

  The remnants of a sadly neglected lawn cried out for help. Someone—Ellen, probably—had planted some ornamental shrubs that were also in need of attention. Maybe if he picked up a pair of pruning shears, something would come back to him.

  The horse barn was in surprisingly good shape compared to the other outbuildings. Among other things, she needed a carpenter. He had a feeling that memory or not, he was not now, nor had he ever been, a carpenter.

  However, he might as well try his hand at a few simple repairs. It didn’t take a college degree to tighten a few hinges so that gates wouldn’t sag and shutters wouldn’t bang against the wall. Given the right tools, common sense should kick in and tell him how to make a few basic repairs.

  His gaze shifted to the lane, which was badly in need of resurfacing. He had a vague memory of being bumped over a few potholes, tilting dangerously and grabbing hold of the metal sides of the wheelbarrow when Ellen and Pete had steered him around others.

  At the other end of that driveway there was a state highway. A hedgerow blocked the view, but he could hear the sound of traffic quite clearly from where he stood. Somewhere out there he had a vehicle, or what was left of one. He had to have been driving. His memory was hazy, but he didn’t recall seeing a car nearby when he’d been dragged out of that ditch.

  Ellen had mentioned seeing a delivery van a few hundred yards down the highway. Later she’d seen a wrecked pickup and the hood of a red sports car.

  Could any of them have been his?

  Possibly. Whatever he’d been driving, there was bound to be some form of ID in it. License plates could be traced. Had anyone done that? And if not, damn it, why not?

  Had he been alone when the twister struck?

  Unable to find answers, his restless mind returned to his immediate surroundings. From where he stood he could see one corner of the paddock where two mares swished away the flies. Nice-looking stock. Nothing outstanding, but good, serviceable mounts. It occurred to him that he’d never seen Ellen or Pete up on one. Still, they had to be saddle broken. Maybe he could buy one of the geldings and ride out of here.

  Oh, yeah? Using what for money? For all he knew, he couldn’t even ride. It was really beginning to gall the hell out of him, being out of the loop.

  Stealing a horse to escape was probably not an option. Whatever else he was—or wasn’t—he was pretty sure he was no horse thief.

  Wearing shoes that had dried stiff, the soles curling up slightly at the toes, he made his way carefully down the front steps and crossed the clearing between house and barn. From inside he could hear Ellen raising hell with one of the hands. If it was the one he’d already met, the jerk probably deserved it.

  “I don’t care who did it, it wasn’t done properly, so you’ll just have to do it over.”

  “It was done good enough. If it didn’t hold, it’s ’cause yer posts is too rotted to hold a fencing nail. That ain’t my fault. You didn’t say nothin’ ’bout replacin’ no posts.”

  Storm felt his hands curling into fists. Should he step in and back her up? He was almost up to fighting trim. He outweighed the bastard by a good fifty pounds. On the other hand, Ellen could probably take him if he didn’t interfere. Any woman who could manage to haul a full-grown man up out of that ditch and get him to her house with only the aid of a wheelbarrow and a skinny kid could easily handle a whining runt like—

  “Where’s Clyde?” she demanded.

  Okay, so this must be the other one. Buster? Booker. And she was steaming, all right. Without raising her voice, she managed to get her point across.

  “Gone to the feed store. Reck’n he’ll stop by the diner after that.”

  “The bar, you mean. He can drink on his own time. I want that fence back up by dark today. If it’s not—“

  Storm figured if there was ever a time to interfere, this was it. He might not know his own name, but even he could recognize the hollowness behind her threat. She could fire the pair of them and then do all the work herself. That insolent jackass knew it, too. He was sprawled across a bale of hay, smirking openly.

  About to stride through the barn door—at least he could stride now without hobbling—he was ready to jerk a knot in Booker’s scrawny neck when he heard the sound of a car turning into the lane.

  He could also hear Ellen, still loaded for bear, moving to the door to see who was headed up the driveway. Catching sight of Storm in the doorway, she shook her head in a signal he had no trouble reading. Butt out. I can handle this.

  Ellen Wagner might be a lot of things, he thought, somewhat amused, mostly concerned. Superwoman, she wasn’t. The insolent bastard with the greasy pony-tail hadn’t made the first move to round up any fencing tools. Just as she turned to go meet whoever was headed up her lane, he’d spat a stream of tobacco juice that landed not six inches from where she’d been standing.

  The slimeball grinned openly. When Ellen marched past Storm, he heard her mutter something like, “Damn it, what now?”

  Striding into the barn, he reached down, grabbed a fistful of dirty shirt and lifted the jerk up onto his toes.

  Booker’s grin wavered and disappeared. “Hey, put me down! You can’t do that!”

  “Listen closely, you creep, I’ll say this once. The next time you feel the urge to spit, you swallow instead, you got that?” Storm leaned in close, then backed off as the stench of bad teeth and an unwashed body struck him. Still holding on to a fistful of filthy, faded flannel, he said, “Did that register? Good. Now pay careful attention. You will mend that fence. Those staples will hold, do I make myself clear?”

  “Man, it ain’t my fault her posts is rotten,” Booker whined.

  Storm released him suddenly and dusted off his hands. Looking aggrieved, the hired man staggered, sputtering his outrage. Storm shut him up with a single look, a talent he hadn’t known he possessed.

  Had Ellen known her fence needed replacing and not just repairing? If so, she should have had supplies on hand. The fact that she hadn’t was one more indication that the lady was hanging on by a shoestring.

  The trouble was, there wasn’t much he could do to help her, short of recovering his memory, learning that he could afford it and ordering a truckload of fencing material and sufficient labor to utilize it. Two dozen roses and a bottle of good wine might make a nice hostess gift, but in this case, a truckload of fence posts would probably be more appreciated.

  Booker started to sit again, thought better of it and slouched against the wall, working on a ragged thumb-nail.

  “Do we have an understanding?” Storm pressed.

  “Yeah, yeah. Soon’s Clyde gets back, me’n him’ll go fix the sonovabitchin’ fence, but I can tell you right now, mister, it ain’t gonna hold.”

  “It’ll hold.” As long as he was bluffing, he might as well do a thorough job of it. “I’ll be riding out first thing in the morning to check on it. The job had better be done by then. Use baling wire instead of staples if you have to, but make it hold.”

  Not until h
e was halfway across the yard to where Ellen was standing did it occur to him that he knew how to jury-rig an old fence line. Hooray. One piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. Now all he had to do was find roughly a million more and fit them together.

  As if in need of support, Ellen waited beside Pete’s basketball standard for the visitor to negotiate her rutted drive. Her arms were crossed in a familiar posture. If he read her right—and he was getting pretty good at it—she was definitely playing defense.

  Shoving his anger to a back burner, he moved up beside her in case this turned out to be another creep who got his jollies from jerking women around. His heart was pumping adrenaline by the gallon.

  She moved a step closer, her arms still crossed defensively over her breasts, but otherwise ignored him.

  “You expecting company?” he asked quietly.

  “Not this kind of company.” While he was still pondering that, she added, “Are you?”

  “Well now, I could’ve sworn the party invitations said half past four. Looks like I’ll have to hire a new social secretary.”

  After a brief, astonished look, she laughed, which had been the whole point of the lame joke. She’d been looking as if one more straw would have broken the camel’s back, and while he might not be able to slay all her dragons, the least he could do was provide a touch of comic relief.

  Turning his attention to the visitor, it occurred to him that this could be someone looking for him. The leap of anticipation was only slightly tainted by…disappointment? Hell, that didn’t even make sense.

  Instead of stopping beside the shed where the trucks were parked, the car pulled up in front of the picket fence, its gleaming presence distinctly out of place against the backdrop of shaggy shrubs and peeling white paint. Together they waited for the doors to open. “You think maybe this is another member of the silk-underwear-and-monogrammed-handkerchief set?” he inquired softly, still playing for laughs.

  Tongue in cheek, she looked him over, from the tips of his ruined cordovans to the top of his shaggy head, taking in the faded jeans he wore low on his hips to make up for the lack of length and her husband’s flannel shirt that didn’t quite accommodate his shoulders. “If it is, I’m not sure he’ll recognize you. Have any of your friends ever seen you before with a yellow and lavender forehead?”

  Standing close enough to feel the heat of her body, close enough to catch a whiff of alfalfa hay and the baby powder he knew she dusted down with after her shower, Storm waited for the visitor to emerge. It was probably just someone pulling in off the highway to check his map or to ask directions. It didn’t take a genius to recognize the make and model as one usually indicative of a seven-figure income. Whether that had any meaning or not, he couldn’t have said. The information just popped into his head.

  And then the door began to open and Ellen muttered, “Oh, hell.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  Her fingers dug into his arm and he covered her hand with his own as a good-looking, fortyish blond guy wearing madras slacks, a linen blazer and a pair of aviator-style sunglasses emerged, one long leg at a time.

  Ellen pulled her arm free and moved toward the car. “Greg,” she said calmly, just as if she hadn’t been spitting nails only moments before.

  “Ellen, it’s been a while.”

  Smooth, Storm thought, sizing him up and filing away the details as if he’d done it a thousand times. With nothing more than instinct to base an opinion on, he didn’t trust the man. If Ellen expected him to walk off and leave her alone with her guest, she’d have to speak up.

  Her guest, not someone looking for him. Storm didn’t know whether he was relieved or disappointed. Some of both, probably. He was definitely curious. She introduced the guy as Greg Sanders, a business associate of her father’s.

  “Greg, this is Storm—Hale,” she said.

  He nearly lost it. Storm Hail? It occurred to him then that they hadn’t bothered to give him a last name. She’d been forced to improvise or to tell the truth. Evidently she’d picked up on his reluctance to explain the situation, but that didn’t mean she had to go along with it. It was her call to make.

  She didn’t make it. At least, not yet.

  A business associate of her father’s, hmm? What kind of business was her father in, anyway? Not ranching—not unless he was a lot more successful than his daughter. And if she had a father in the business—in any business—what the devil was he doing allowing his daughter to struggle along with only the help of a couple of slugs like Clyde and Booker?

  When an awkward pause occurred during which Storm knew damned well Sanders expected him to take a hike, he offered to go make coffee. Not lunch, although it was past time and neither of them had eaten. There was a limit to his generosity.

  To Ellen’s generosity, he amended when she murmured that that would be lovely.

  Lovely? Were we playing lady now?

  He hesitated, trying to read the scene and to get a handle on the players. Sanders’s smile would have done credit to a barracuda. “I just happened to be in neighborhood and thought I’d come by and see how you were getting on. Your father asked me to drop off a few things.” He gestured to the trunk of his car.

  Ellen shook her head. “You can tell my father thanks, but no thanks.”

  “He’ll be disappointed.”

  “Will he?”

  Storm waited for a response. The brief exchange seemed to imply far more than the words actually said.

  They strolled toward the house, with Storm acting as rear guard. Ellen led her guest into the living room, making no effort to collect Pete’s scattered toys, a coffee cup and the morning papers, which were folded over the arm of a chair. Storm lingered in the hall, not a part of the company, yet unwilling to leave her alone until he knew she could handle things.

  Sanders moved to the fireplace and turned to face the room, deliberately assuming the power position. Some men were easy to read, even without a frame of reference. The photograph of Jake Wagner with the stallion, Zeus, was just to the left of the brass and mahogany clock, a few inches from Sanders’s linen-clad elbow. Storm had studied the photo enough to form an opinion that Ellen’s late husband had been a pretty decent guy. He’d probably have liked him if they’d ever met.

  Sanders didn’t give it so much as a glance. “How’s the boy? He’s what—about nine now?”

  “He’s fine.” Pete was eight. She didn’t bother to correct him.

  Sanders nodded, then sauntered across the room to claim the chair Storm usually sat in. Jake’s chair.

  “Glad to hear it. Your father sent him a football and some video games.”

  “Pete likes baseball. He doesn’t have time for video games.”

  “Doesn’t have time?” One of Sanders’s blond, well-groomed eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “Surely he’s not in school that long. Don’t you have Christmas holidays coming up soon?”

  Storm stood in the hall and looked from one to the other, watching the duel to see who drew first blood. His money was on Ellen.

  “He has chores. And homework, even during the holidays. And anyway, he’d rather be outdoors riding or shooting baskets than holed up in the house with a…a gadget.”

  “Oh, Ellen, sweetheart, you’ve been out here in the boonies too long. Some of these little gadgets, as you call them, cost more than—”

  “I don’t care how much they cost, Greg. You can go back and report to my father that we’re fine, just fine. We don’t need his money, we don’t need his gifts, we don’t need anything.”

  Way to go, lady, Storm applauded silently.

  “Did you know your father had remarried recently?”

  “I don’t keep up with his social life.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

  As Storm watched the sportily dressed man, noting his swift surveillance of the comfortable if slightly shabby room, another piece of the puzzle came into focus. There was no mistaking the disdain he saw on features that might have
been called patrician in another era. Personally, he preferred to call them arrogant, even somewhat effeminate.

  So he was good at reading expressions. It was a skill that might serve him well if he happened to be a dealer in a gambling casino or a professional fortune-teller.

  Which, for all he knew, he might be.

  Turning away, he left to go make coffee before he said something he might regret. Or rather, that Ellen might regret. He was on shaky enough ground here without making things worse.

  He lingered in the kitchen until the coffeemaker signaled its readiness, then carried the tray into the living room. Conversation ceased abruptly when he entered. He probably should have found some excuse to leave again, but for some reason he felt like staying close. Hey, don’t mind me, folks, I’m harmless.

  He didn’t feel harmless. No way.

  Sanders asked about her stock, and she told him about the horses. “I know it’s not an ideal mix—we wanted four mares and a stallion, but while we were looking this lot went on sale at a price that was too good to pass up. Jake said we’d need the geldings for riding anyway. So we’re starting with just two mares for now. We’ll pick up more stock as soon as I can—”

  Afford it, Storm filled in mentally.

  “—add onto the horse barn,” Ellen finished.

  Sure we will. No problem.

  Storm knew most of the story by now and could guess at the rest. Just about the time Wagner had bought the first of his stock and got them settled in, repaired the barn, built new stalls, patched up the fences and improved the pastures, the bottom had fallen out of their world. After that, every penny had been designated for Wagner’s medical treatment. Veterans’ benefits would stretch only so far.

  Sanders plucked the creases in his madras slacks and crossed his long legs. He wore loafers. “Do you remember the year we all went to the derby?” he drawled. “You were what, about sixteen then?”