Red-Hot Ranchman Read online

  Suddenly, she saw the light again when it washed across the window in the upper half of the back door.

  “Robbie, come here!” she whispered urgently to her son as he headed for the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Shh. Somebody’s outside.”

  Paige saw the light yet again as she watched for it, wishing she could convince herself it was just fireflies. But she knew better. Even if it was the end of August, fireflies just weren’t that big. Or that efficient.

  She reached out and clasped Robbie’s small shoulders in both her hands, pulling him against her while she froze in her tracks in the middle of the entryway and tried to figure out what to do.

  The front door was closed and locked behind them but Paige considered making a run for the truck anyway.

  Only how could she be sure that whoever was carrying that flashlight was alone? That there weren’t more intruders out there who had heard the truck drive up and gone around to see what it was? If that was the case and she took Robbie out of the house, they’d be easy to grab and they’d lose what little advantage they had.

  “Where’s the baseball bat?” she whispered to her son.

  “In the umbrella can,” he whispered back, sounding scared as they both stared at that flicker of light on the back porch appearing and disappearing across the windows.

  Taking Robbie with her, Paige went to the coat tree and umbrella stand just to the left of the front door. She felt among the umbrellas and antique canes in the old milk can until she found the bat and pulled it out.

  She was reluctant to let Robbie out of her sight, but with his safety in mind she said, “Go upstairs to the phone in my room and call Burt’s pager number the way I taught you. Then hide in the secret cubbyhole in my closet and don’t come out until I call for you.”

  Robbie didn’t need to be told more than that. He ran like crazy for the stairs to do as she said.

  Still not sure what she was going to do, Paige walked carefully down the hall to the kitchen, keeping to the shadows until she reached the back door. She pressed herself against the wall beside it so she could peek out covertly.

  She could see the beam of the flashlight and the silhouette of a man. A big man. He was bending low to the ground, following the light as he ran it along the side of the house barely above the porch floor.

  Maybe he was looking for basement windows. That was how the burglar had gotten into the Clarks’ house—through the basement.

  Paige’s house had a cellar. A cellar that could be reached from inside the house down a flight of stairs behind a door in the mudroom, or from outside the house down some stairs that were hidden behind a hinged panel in the boxed-in porch. A hinged panel that was easy to spot and only padlocked shut.

  It wouldn’t take any time at all to find the panel if he stepped off the porch, or to break that padlock and get to those stairs.

  Her mouth went dry at the thought and she slid along the wall to the mudroom, picking up a ladder-back chair from the pedestal kitchen table and carrying it silently with her to jam under the knob of the cellar door.

  Then she retraced her steps to see where the prowler had gone, wondering where Burt was, too.

  Would Robbie punch in the right numbers? He didn’t have a lot of experience using the telephone.

  Would Burt see their phone number on the pager’s display, recognize it and come straight here in answer or would he have to call to find out who the number belonged to and what the trouble was?

  Was Burt still out on the back road or was he farther away than that by now and headed home?

  Headed home was likely. Which meant that even if he recognized their number on the pager display and came without calling first, it still might take him a while to get there.

  Through the window in the back door, she spotted the man, once again bending over.

  Was he going to pick the lock and come in that way? Or maybe just break it?

  Seconds. She could have only mere seconds before he burst in.

  Then she’d hit him with the baseball bat, she told herself.

  But what if he spotted her first? She might not get the opportunity to hit him.

  If she flung the door open, she’d have the element of surprise on her side. Better on her side than his.

  “Come on, Burt, get here,” she whispered.

  Slowly, so as not to make a sound and alert the prowler on her back porch, she unlocked the door and closed her left hand around the knob while she wielded the bat in her right.

  Paige took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the bat and swallowed hard against the fear that made her want to be hiding with Robbie. Then all at once she yanked the door open and swung.

  But her aim was poor and she barely hit the intruder with the end, knocking him off-balance. He staggered back, groaning in pain and surprise.

  Just then, the kitchen light came on, and from behind her, Robbie yelled, “You got ‘im!”

  As she was about to strike another, more effective blow, the man’s deep, booming voice ordered, “Hold on! This is not what you think! Whatever the hell you do think.”

  “That’s John!” Robbie shouted in sudden recognition as the flashlight rolled into the kitchen and a little red puppy leaped over Paige’s feet to make a dash for her son.

  “Oh, my God,” Paige muttered.

  Robbie slipped around her and ran to the man, grabbing him around a bole-like thigh and staring up at him with fear-filled blue eyes in a worried, chipmunkcheeked face. “Are you okay? Are you okay?” he asked over and over again.

  Paige watched as the man reached one hand down to the top of Robbie’s honey-hued head to reassure him while his other hand was pressed just above his own temple, where blood seeped from between his fingers.

  “John Jarvis?” she said as if she’d rather he was a burglar.

  “From next door,” he confirmed. “That one puppy is adventurous and keeps climbing out of his box and coming over here looking for Robbie. I was just trying to find her.”

  “I’m so sorry!” Paige said. “I thought you were a prowler.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Please come in, sit down, let me see how badly I hurt you.”

  “Not until you put the bat away.”

  Paige hadn’t realized she was still holding it poised as if to hit a home run—with his head.

  Again she apologized and stashed the bat behind the door.

  Robbie led their neighbor into the kitchen, then pulled a chair out for him at the table and watched him like a hawk as the big man sat down.

  “Let me wet a cloth and we’ll get you cleaned up so I can take a look at the damages,” Paige said, hurrying to the kitchen sink.

  She took a fresh dish towel from a drawer and turned on the water. As she waited for it to get cold, she caught sight of her reflection in the darkened window and wished not only that she hadn’t just clobbered John Jarvis with a baseball bat, but also that she looked better for her first meeting with the man who was the object of her son’s hero worship.

  Her auburn hair was hanging loosely around her shoulders, uncombed since she’d left Topeka early that morning. She hadn’t bothered with blush the way she usually did to bring out her cheekbones, or with lipstick to highlight lips that were slightly full—the bottom one more than the top. She did have on a little mascara because her eyes were just too pale a blue to ever go without it, but now she wished she would have taken the few extra seconds to add some eyeliner because she thought she still looked washed out. And certainly her oldest, most comfortable, baggiest jeans and the I-Love-You-Mom T-shirt with the message faded from so many washings would hardly win her a beauty contest.

  But there was nothing to be done about any of it at that moment, so she dampened the cloth and went back to the table where Robbie was fretting over John Jarvis.

  “Why don’t you say hello to that puppy while I see to this?” she suggested to her son so she could get at their neighbor’s wound.
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  Robbie looked John Jarvis in the eye, as if searching for the okay to hand him over to her. The man nodded and only then did the little boy give way.

  “I’m just so sorry,” Paige repeated when her son had left the man’s side.

  “It’s all right.”

  She thought he meant it was all right that she’d mistaken him for a burglar and hit him. Except that when he lowered his hand and she began to clean the blood away, she found that his head was nearly all right, too. He wasn’t bleeding anymore. In fact, he only had a small lump and a minor cut about half an inch above his hairline.

  “Wow. You’re a fast healer.”

  He chuckled slightly, and she found herself liking the sound an inordinate amount. “Good thing, since I have a neighbor who hits first and asks questions later.”

  “You know about the burglaries that have been happening around here lately, don’t you?”

  “I’ve heard, yeah. I suppose that is cause for being skittish,” he said wryly but without rancor. In fact, there seemed to be just a hint of amusement to his tone that let Paige begin to relax.

  “I guess we’re all a little on edge.”

  With his wound closed and nothing much to bandage once she’d cleaned the blood from his face, Paige stepped back and finally took a close look at the neighbor she’d only seen from a distance. With his black Stetson pulled low and shading his face so much, she wouldn’t have known him if they’d passed each other on the street.

  Women around town talked about how good-looking he was, but until that moment, Paige hadn’t realized the extent of it. Good-looking barely scratched the surface of John Jarvis’s appearance. The man was more handsome than anyone she’d ever laid eyes on. So heart-stoppingly handsome that he could have posed for one of those cigarette ads.

  He had dark hair the color of strong black coffee cut short on the sides and just long enough on top to fall forward and brush his square forehead now that it was mussed. Thick, unruly brows partnered penetrating green eyes the shade of sea foam. His nose was long and thin, and his nostrils flared ever so slightly above a full, thick mustache that made him look a touch dangerous.

  Beneath the mustache he had straight, strong lips and a hint of an indentation in his sharp chin. But not only his chin was sharp. His whole face was made of angular planes, with cheekbones that were high and pronounced, cheeks that dipped inward in a lean, no-nonsense slide to a jawline that could slice bread.

  Tan, lean, hard and handsome. He was a potent package.

  Not that his being drop-dead gorgeous mattered to her, Paige reminded herself. She’d sworn off romance. And a man who seemed to be secretive and reclusive was hardly someone she’d forsake her resolution for. In fact, men like that were the reason she’d made it to begin with.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said then, bringing her out of her reverie.

  “Real sorry,” she said with a nod toward his head wound.

  “Robbie didn’t tell me the robberies had you so worried.”

  What did Robbie tell him? Paige suddenly wondered. “It’s not as if I’m quivering in the corner because of them. I’m just trying to be cautious.”

  “I don’t think a baseball bat will do much to protect you in the long run.”

  “The burglar only strikes when no one’s home and we weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, so I just thought it was our turn to be burgled.”

  He nodded, but his eyes never left her. In fact, he was studying her—assessing her, maybe—the way she had just been looking at him. It was unnerving. Especially since she could feel herself actually heating up under the scrutiny of his mesmerizing sea green stare.

  She bit back the urge to say something silly about looking a mess, but couldn’t stop from running her hand through her hair to push it from her face.

  There shouldn’t have been any kind of man-woman thing going on between them. And yet she had a strong sense that there was. Certainly the way he was looking at her made her all too aware that she was a woman—something she seemed to forget about these days.

  And there was no disputing the fact that he was a man.

  Then into the silence that had somehow fallen came the sound of tires on the gravel drive out front.

  “Sheriff’s here,” Robbie announced after popping up from playing with the puppy to run to the front door, look out and run back.

  That broke the spell—if spell was the right word for the feeling that had wrapped around Paige in the heat of her neighbor’s gaze.

  John Jarvis stood, towering a full ten inches over Paige’s five-foot-three-inch height, with shoulders so broad they blocked out the lamp that hung from the ceiling on a chain over the kitchen table. “I better get that pup home to her momma,” he said, bending to scoop the little red Labrador off the floor in one powerful-looking hand that was big enough to cradle the animal.

  “Maybe you ought to stay and talk to Burt, too,” Paige said, not because she could think of anything her neighbor might want to say to the sheriff but—for some reason she couldn’t figure out—she didn’t want him to go.

  “You can do the talking,” he answered. “I don’t have anything to say to him.” The big man glanced at Robbie and raised his chin in the kind of silent communication exchanged by two people who know and understand each other. “You take care that the doors are all locked and look after your mom here.”

  Robbie puffed up as if he’d been knighted. “I will. See ya tomorrow.”

  Their neighbor nodded. “Night.”

  He repeated his good-night to Paige, but before she could do more than answer it, Burt pounded on the front door and John Jarvis slipped out the back.

  Almost as if he were in a hurry.

  Chapter Two

  John Jarvis was standing on his back porch the next morning, holding a steaming mug of fresh coffee and watching the eastern Colorado sky as the sun came up in a spectacular burst of brilliant persimmon color. None of the animals on the farm that matched his neighbor’s were rustling yet. Even Hannah and her puppies were still asleep. All was tranquil, quiet, peaceful.

  After the recent tumult in his life, that peacefulness was something he cherished. In fact, it was the only reason he’d bought this place in Pine Ridge. And it hadn’t disappointed him. It had been his haven. His refuge. His salvation.

  At least, it had been until the night before.

  Getting hit on the head with a baseball bat hardly qualified as any of those things.

  Yet the thought of it only made him smile now.

  It had almost been worth getting bashed in the head to meet the feisty Paige Kenton. Even if he had been avoiding her ever since moving in here.

  Sure, he’d seen her in the distance. Stared at her sometimes from inside a house that was identical to hers except for the black trim and shutters his sported. He’d known long before the past evening that she was compact, graceful, adept at the chores she did around her place and good at dealing with all the animals she tended.

  He’d also known she filled out a pair of blue jeans to perfection.

  He’d seen her long, thick auburn hair flying free in the wind as she walked to her barn, or glinting with fiery highlights when it was tied back to stay out of her face while she worked. And he’d admired it all, even if she’d been too far away for him to make out any more details of her appearance.

  But appreciating her from afar suited the course he’d had to set for himself and so he’d kept his distance. He was determined to lead a solitary life. For now anyway. At least until things could be sorted through. Until he could figure out what the hell had happened to him.

  If he ever figured that out.

  But even as he reminded himself of the need to maintain that distance, he still couldn’t get the image of Paige Kenton out of his mind. Paige Kenton close up. Because close up she was so much more than he’d realized from across their neighboring barnyards.

  Her hair was even more lush than it had looked from far away. Silky, shiny,
and it smelled good enough to make him want to bury his face in it.

  The body he’d admired was even better close up, too. Small and lithe, proportioned just right, with breasts not too big, not too small—something he couldn’t help but notice when they were inches away as she’d washed the blood from his head.

  And her face…What a face…

  She had the most beautiful eyes. Pale, pale blue. They seemed to glow like beacons of light shining through barely colored glass, shaded by long, thick lashes.

  Her skin was smooth and poreless, kissed by the sun to a golden hue. Her nose was flawless, a size and shape no surgeon’s hand could have improved upon.

  She had high, delicate cheekbones that bore a healthy pink glow and gave evidence of the vibrance he’d already seen in the way she worked around her place and played with Robbie.

  And her lips…great lips. The lower one was full and lush, the upper a thinner, perfectly peaked, sassy mate that curled slightly at the corners even when she wasn’t smiling.

  But worst of all, he’d liked the woman herself.

  He’d liked the gumption that had enabled her to confront the person who she’d believed was a prowler in order to protect her son and home—even if it had resulted in a bump on his head.

  Even after she’d found out who he was, she’d faced up to what she’d done, apologized for the act but not for the assumption that had led up to it and hadn’t simpered over any of it. He’d liked that.

  He’d also liked the sound of her voice. Just slightly husky. Sexy. He’d liked the perfume she wore—light, clean, airy. And he’d definitely liked the feel of her hands on him, even if they had only been tending his wound…

  He closed his eyes against the brilliance of the rising sun appearing over the horizon as if that would block out the memory of Paige Kenton, too, and once more reminded himself that he couldn’t give in to the stirrings he was feeling. He’d already established a relationship with her son that he probably shouldn’t have. He couldn’t start something that might bring Paige near, too.

  Not that he hadn’t tried to keep Robbie at bay just the way he was planning to keep Paige. He hadn’t intended to let the little boy get as close as he had; had tried to discourage him from coming over. From getting friendly with him.