Heather Graham (2 page)

“Marry! You’re insane—”

“No,” he drawled quietly. “This seems just right to me. Maybe it’s the way I always wanted you. Martine Galway, naked in the dirt. Taken in the dirt by a man who knows just how to handle her. You’re going to discover that you just love it.”

He straightened to strip away his suede jacket, and she made another wild bid for freedom, unable to believe what was happening. For all her struggles, for all her bitter fight, she was about to be raped in the dirt by an egoist convinced it was what she wanted.

And she couldn’t stop it. She was sobbing and striking at him furiously, but he was stronger and just kept laughing. He tossed her back to the dirt so hard that she was stunned, and in the daze in which she now fought she saw him stand. He gripped his belt buckle, getting ready to come down to her again. She closed her eyes and started to scream.

But she was interrupted by a sound, something she barely heard against her own scream. It was a strange whisper, like a furious breeze that ripped through the air; it was followed by a thunk—and Lander’s startled gasp.

Martie opened her eyes with amazement. Ken Lander was lying on the ground a few feet away from her, arms and torso entangled in a perfect lasso. He was cursing away and fighting the rope, but it was only being jerked more tightly around him.

Martie looked up.

There was the horse—the horse she had seen on the ridge—and beyond the horse stood a man.

Dazed as she was, she could barely make out his features. He was tall and lean but apparently muscular beneath the faded blue of his work shirt and jeans. Blinking against the sun, she at last began to see his face beneath the shade of his low-brimmed hat. His eyes were gleaming and bright against the rugged bronzed contours of his hard-set features. His uncompromising jaw was twisted in anger that was reflected in the hazel gleam of his tawny gold eyes. He was not as handsome as Ken, but he was arresting. He glanced her way but said nothing. Nor did he help her to her feet. He pulled at the end of the rope he held, drawing Ken Lander to his feet.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Ken raged, struggling with the rope, despising the humiliation he felt as he rose. “This is a private affair—”

“It isn’t any affair at all, as far as I can see,” the stranger interrupted coolly. His voice was rich, a baritone in keeping with the rough landscape around them.

“Listen, drifter,” Ken growled, struggling with the rope, “you don’t know who I am in this town. You’re going to rue the day you were born when I finish with you—”

“You’ll rue the fact that you were born at all if you don’t remove your carcass from this property—quickly,” the unperturbed stranger drawled threateningly.

“Let go of that rope!” Lander shouted.

The stranger did so with a shrug. Ken freed himself, then charged the man. Martie barely saw what happened. The stranger stood still and raised a fist. There was a resounding crunch, and then Lander was on the ground.

“Get out of here,” the man said with disgust.

Warily wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth, Lander rose, his eyes on the man. “You ass, it’s my property now.”

“Not until midnight. And until then I’m telling you—get off this land!” His voice barely rose, but the warning was unmistakable.

Ken grabbed his hat from the dirt and dusted it off against his jeans. He gave Martine a look of pure venom. “You’ll get yours, baby, trust me. There’s nothing that can save you now.”

“Go!” the stranger commanded.

Ken Lander got into the Land-Rover. The engine revved like an enraged cat, and dirt flew and spewed from underneath the tires as he drove away.

Still stunned, Martie stared up at the horseman who had—as ridiculous as it might seem—ridden down from the ridge to save her in the nick of time.

A slight grin touched his features as he stared at her, twitching the corners of his mouth. He watched her while he began to rewind his rope. She wondered why he did not come to help her to her feet, then realized that her shirt was half open. She nervously clutched at the edges to bring it together. She should be thanking him, but she couldn’t find anything to say—at least not while his keen gaze was touching her with golden sparks.

“Thank you,” she said at last.

“You’re welcome.”

She tried to sit while holding her shirt at the same time.

“If you think I’m going to help you up, Ms. Galway, don’t. No assistance in the world is any good unless it’s given to someone with the courage to rise out of the dirt alone.”

Her cheeks flamed brightly, and forcing her muscles to move, she rose with what she thought was a fair amount of grace for the situation.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “No one, really. My name is Kane Montgomery. Since you seem to have some free time now, thanks to me, I’d like a cup of coffee. And maybe some bacon and eggs.”

“I—of course,” Martie murmured, grateful, of course, but also thoroughly disturbed by his presence.

Still clutching her shirt, she started for the house. She could barely hear his footsteps behind her, but she could feel him, radiating a heat more intense than the sun.

Who the hell, she wondered, was Kane Montgomery?

M
ARTIE PUSHED OPEN THE
screen door to the house. When she heard it swing shut, she turned around, blinking against the subdued interior light. For a moment all she could see was a silhouette again: the tall man, lean and wiry—and very disturbing with his quiet air.

“There’s coffee on in the kitchen,” she motioned to the left of the huge parlor. “If you’ll go ahead and help yourself, I’ll, uh.” She paused, glancing down at her ripped shirt in explanation. “I’ll be right with you.”

“Thank you.”

He stepped past her and Martine watched his shoulders, broad and taut beneath his cotton shirt, until he disappeared past the swinging door. Then she sighed and looked about the room.

It was beautiful. The ranch house was more than a hundred years old; it had originally been built by French trappers then was refurbished as a cathouse in the gold rush days. It had maintained a stately elegance anyway, and though every generation had added on and modernized in one way or another, it was still an old-fashioned and gracious place. In the back of the house, past the French doors that led to the office and bedrooms, was a game room as vast as the parlor. From the game room the view was a very modern one. Wall-to-ceiling glass looked out onto the pool and a barbecue and patio that could accommodate several hundred guests.

If she could ever afford a hundred guests, Martine thought bitterly. Parts of the ranch might not have changed much in a century, but times certainly had for her. She sighed. Then she forced herself to forget about the house for a minute and turn down the right hallway to enter her bedroom.

In the bathroom she repeatedly splashed her face with cool water, then pressed a cold cloth to her cheeks. What had it all been for? she wondered wearily. She was grateful to Kane Montgomery—whoever he was—but what good had any of it been? She might have gained a few more hours with his help, but she had lost. Even if the ranch didn’t belong to Ken Lander now, it would by tomorrow morning.

She sighed, quickly grabbed a T-shirt from her drawer and, with an oath of fury, tore her ruined shirt to shreds. She then flung it into the wastebasket.

Oh, but this whole damned thing was incredible! If only she’d been born a male. She might have lost the ranch, but she’d have never found herself in the predicament she’d been rescued from.
The Perils of Pauline
indeed!

Kane Montgomery, she reminded herself, was sitting in her kitchen. She quickly grabbed a brush to run through her tangled hair, then left her bedroom behind, surprised that she felt a little breathless, that her heart seemed to be pounding too fast.

He was there. She saw him as soon as she passed through the swinging doors. He was leaning against the counter, staring out the window to the eastern fields. She knew he heard her, but he took several seconds to leave his vigil and turn to face her. To her surprise, she found herself the object of his thorough scrutiny. His strange tawny gold eyes moved over her from head to toe, very slowly. Annoyed that a blush was rising to her cheeks, Martine hurried into the room, passing him on her way to the refrigerator. He didn’t touch her, but his scent lingered, a scent of leather and horses, fresh soap and … something else. He wasn’t wearing after-shave, but there was still something pleasant and appealing.

“Ah, you said bacon and eggs, right?” Martine inquired, reaching into the refrigerator to find the desired foodstuffs. It was just him, she realized, trembling a little. His scent …It was just him, very clean and very male.

“Right.”

Not “Right, thank you,” or “Right, if you don’t mind,” just “Right.” Martie reached for the bread, too, and brought the things to the counter. He watched her, then left his position at the counter to sit on a chair at the kitchen table. She felt a little odd with her back to him and wondered at the wisdom of asking the man into her house. Beyond a shadow of doubt Ken Lander would have raped her. But had she been saved from a rapist only to find herself in more trouble? No, surely not! But—Kane Montgomery was dangerous. That fact, too, left no room for doubt.

“How would you like your eggs?” she asked as she turned to face him, not so much because she cared as because she wanted to see what he was doing. He was sitting, leaning back in the chair, idly smoking a cigarette while he watched her. He had taken off his hat and tossed it onto an empty chair, and she could see that his hair was Indian black, without a streak of gray. She couldn’t tell if his age was closer to thirty or forty, only that it wouldn’t matter to him. He seemed to consider himself a law unto himself. He probably had for quite some time. He wasn’t handsome in a conventional way, but his features were fine and strong, with a fascinating appeal. To soften the hard line of his bronzed jaw, there was a small cleft in the center of his chin. He had dimples, too, when he chose to smile. His hair parted at the side but fell slightly over his forehead; she was willing to bet it annoyed him when he was busy. That sleek darkness contrasted sharply with the tawny gold brilliance of his keen eyes, making them appear like those of a cougar, always wary and dangerous.

“Scrambled will be fine,” he told her. She gave him a little smile and turned back to her work, reaching over the counter for a bowl in which to scramble the eggs. The bacon she decided to stick in the microwave. She didn’t ask him if he minded; she just did it, certain that he would want his bacon fried.

She jumped when he spoke again.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“What?” she asked, spinning around.

He grinned, and when he did, she saw that he had white, even teeth. And his features didn’t look quite so hard or craggy; they were really very nice, just set with his own brand of determination. “I said, do you want to tell me about it? To the most undiscerning eye, Ms. Galway, this is not your usual situation. What’s going on here?”

She turned back to the counter. “You mean Ken Lander?”

“If he’s the pretty boy that I suggested leave your property, then, yes, I mean Ken Lander.”

She looked at him again just as he was leaning across the table to crush out his cigarette in the ashtray. He had expected her to turn; his tawny eyes were sharp as he gazed at her.

She shrugged. “It’s rather obvious. I was in financial trouble. The banks didn’t want to touch me. He offered me a loan that I believed I could pay. …I couldn’t.”

“So he wanted his ounce of flesh?”

She was annoyed to see that one black-as-ink brow was raised at her a little skeptically. “That’s the story,” she answered sharply, spinning around to attack the eggs with a fork.

“In a nutshell anyway.”

Martine turned on the gas, set the skillet on the stove, and almost sent the eggs flying out of it by tossing them in with vehemence. She didn’t care. She pirouetted cleanly again and strode to the table with her hands on her hips.

“Who are you—and what is all this to you?”

He laughed, and she decided that he was closer to thirty than forty—just very, very sure of himself.

“I told you—”

“Yes, yes, that your name is Kane Montgomery. But you’re asking a lot of questions for a man who seems to have tripped into being a hero, is anxious for breakfast—and nothing else.”

He stood, then touched her shoulders to step past her and rescue the burning eggs. “I’m looking for a job,” he told her. “I hear your foreman’s laid up with a broken leg. You could use me. And since I did happen to trip into being a hero, I think that out of common courtesy you might want to offer a few explanations.”

Martine dropped into the chair he had vacated, suddenly so weary and frustrated that she picked up his coffee cup and sipped it without thinking about her action. “You’ve really got the only explanation. I’ve known Ken Lander a long time. I’ve never trusted him; he’s always resented the Galways. But I thought I could pay the loan. And I could have if my cattle hadn’t gotten sick,” she muttered fiercely, closing her eyes with the painful memory. It had been a strange and isolated outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. Isolated, of course, because between her and the government, they hadn’t allowed it to spread. But it was strange because it was a viral disease that had suddenly—out of the clear blue—attacked only
her
cattle. It had been a nightmare for her, watching the cattle sicken, finding herself quarantined, discovering that a good portion of the herd had to be put to death, and then working around the clock to disinfect the entire ranch.

That, at least, was in the past. Martine opened her eyes and shrugged. “I can’t give you a job,” she told him. Surely that had to be as obvious as everything else. “You might have bought me a few hours, but I don’t own this place anymore.”

The eggs were done. Without asking, he searched quickly through the cabinets and brought out two plates. Martine frowned as she followed his movement. He pulled the bacon out of the microwave next and divided the food neatly.