Kitabı oku: «Hitched!», sayfa 3

Chapter Four

Jack listened to the soft lap of water, fighting the image of his “wife” neck deep in that big old tub just beyond the bathroom door.

This definitely could have been a mistake. He felt a surge of warring emotions. A very male part of him wanted to protect her and had from the moment he’d stopped to pick her up on the highway.

But an equally male part of him was stirred by a growing desire for her. Josey was sexy as hell. To make matters worse, there was a vulnerability in her beautiful green eyes that suckered him in.

His taking a “wife” had been both brilliant and dangerous. The truth was he didn’t have any idea who this woman in the next room was. All he knew was that she was running from something. Why else agree to pretend to be his wife for a week? The thought worried him a little as he glanced toward the bathroom door.

The sweet scent of lilac drifted out from behind the closed and locked door. But nothing could shut out the thought of her. After having her in his arms, it wasn’t that hard to picture her lush, lanky body in the steamy bathroom: the full breasts, the slim waist and hips, the long, sensual legs.

The provocative image was almost his undoing. He groaned and headed for the door. He couldn’t let her distract him from his real reason for coming back to Montana and the Winchester Ranch—and that was impossible with her just feet away covered in bubbles.

Opening their bedroom door, he headed down the hallway toward the opposite wing—the wing where he and his mother had lived twenty-seven years ago.

Jack had expected to find his mother’s room changed. As he opened the door, he saw that it looked exactly as he remembered. The only new addition was the dust. His boots left prints as he crossed the floor and opened the window, needing to let some air into the room.

The fresh air helped. He stood breathing it in, thinking of his mother. She’d been a small, blond woman who’d mistakenly fallen in love with a Winchester. She’d been happy here—and miserable. He hadn’t understood why until later, when he’d found out that Angus Winchester was his father.

His jaw tightened as he considered the part his grandmother had played in destroying Angus Winchester, and that reminded him of the reception she’d given him earlier when he and Josey had arrived.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. When he was a boy, Pepper hadn’t paid him any mind, as if he were invisible. They’d all lived in some part of the huge old lodge, but seldom crossed paths except at meals.

It wasn’t that she’d disliked him. She just hadn’t cared one way or the other, and finding out he was Angus’s child hadn’t changed that.

He stood for a moment in the room, promising his mother’s memory that he’d see that Pepper Winchester paid for all of it, every miserable day she’d spent in this house or on Earth. Then he closed the window and left the room, anxious to get back to Josey.

Who knew what a woman on the run with a trail of secrets shadowing her might do.

FROM THE TUB, Josey glanced over at her backpack resting on the floor of the bathroom. Just the sight of it turned her stomach, but she was pretty sure she’d heard Jack leave and she had no idea how long he might be gone.

She quickly climbed from the tub and didn’t bother to towel off. Instead, she grabbed the robe he’d bought her and avoided looking in the mirror at her battered body. She also avoided thinking about how she’d gotten herself into such a mess. She was sick to death of all the “if only” thoughts.

As the saying went, the die was cast.

All she knew was that she couldn’t keep carrying her backpack around like a second skin. She’d seen the way Jack had eyed it. He was more than a little curious about what was so important in it that she wouldn’t let it out of her sight, and he’d eventually have a look.

Which meant she had to find a safe place for its contents.

She listened. No sound outside the bathroom door. Hefting the backpack, she cautiously opened the door a crack. The room appeared to be empty.

She shoved the door open a little wider, not trusting that he hadn’t returned.

No Jack. She wondered where he’d gone. She wondered a lot of things about him, but mostly why he’d wanted her to masquerade as his wife. He’d have to have seen she was in bad shape when he’d picked her up on the highway.

So what was in it for him? After meeting his grandmother, Josey was pretty sure it couldn’t be money. She just hadn’t figured out what Jack was really after.

Josey reminded herself it had nothing to do with her. All she had to do was play her part, hide out here on this isolated ranch until the heat died down. No one could find her here, right?

She quickly surveyed the room. She couldn’t chance a hiding place outside this room for fear someone would find it.

Across the room, she spotted the old armoire. The wardrobe was deep, and when she opened it she saw that it was filled with old clothing.

Strange. Just like this huge master suite. Who had it belonged to? she wondered, as she dug out a space at the back, then opened her backpack.

The gun lay on top. She grimaced at the sight of it. Picking it up, she stuck the weapon in the robe pocket. What lay beneath it was even more distressing. The money was in crisp new bills, bundled in stacks of hundreds. Over a million dollars splattered with blood.

Hurriedly she dumped the bundles of cash into the back of the wardrobe, hating that she had to touch it. Blood money, she thought. But the only way to save her mother. And ultimately, maybe herself.

She quickly covered it with some old clothing. Then, grabbing some of the clothing still on hangers, she stuffed the clothes into the backpack until it looked as it had.

Straightening, she closed the wardrobe and looked around to make sure Jack wouldn’t notice anything amiss when he returned.

Footsteps in the hallway. She started. Jack? Or someone else?

As she rushed back into the bathroom, closed and locked the door, she stood for a moment trying to catch her breath and not cry. Seeing the gun and the bloody money had brought it all back.

She heard the bedroom door open and close.

“You all right in there?” Jack asked. Her heart pounded at how close a call that had been.

Discarding the robe, she quickly stepped back into the tub. “Fine,” she called back, hating that she sounded breathless.

“We’re going to be late for supper if you don’t move it.”

The water was now lukewarm, the bubbles gone. She slid down into it anyway and picked up the soap. Her hands felt dirty after touching the money. Her whole body did. She scrubbed her hands, thinking of Lady Macbeth. Out, damned spots.

Suddenly she remembered the gun she’d stuffed into the robe pocket. She rinsed, stepped from the tub and pulled the plug. The water began to drain noisily as she looked around for a good place to hide the weapon.

There were few options. Opening a cabinet next to the sink, she shoved the gun behind a stack of towels on the bottom shelf. It would have to do for now until she could find a better place to hide it.

She intended to keep the weapon where she could get to it—just in case she needed it. That, unfortunately, was a real possibility.

WHEN JOSEY CAME OUT of the bathroom, she wore another of the Western shirts he’d bought her in town and the new pair of jeans that fit her curves to perfection. Jack had also picked her out a pair of Western boots, knowing she would need them to horseback-ride during their week on the ranch.

Jack grinned, pleased with himself but wondering why she hadn’t worn the two sexy sundresses he’d picked out for her. He’d been looking forward to seeing her in one of them, and he said as much.

“Maybe I’m a jeans and boots kind of girl,” she said.

She looked more like a corporate kind of girl who wore business suits and high heels, he thought, and wondered where that had come from. “You look damned fine in whatever you wear.”

She appeared embarrassed, which surprised him. The woman was beautiful. She must have had her share of compliments from men before.

As he smiled at her, he couldn’t help wondering who she was—just as he had from the moment he’d spotted her on the highway with her thumb out. Josey carried herself in a way that said she wasn’t just smart and savvy, she was confident in who she was. This woman was the kind who would be missed.

Someone would be looking for her. If they weren’t already.

Jack warned himself not to get involved, then laughed to himself at how foolish that was. He could have just dropped her off beside the road. Or taken her as far as the town of Whitehorse, given her some money and washed his hands of her and her troubles. He should have.

But something about her …

Jack shook his head. He’d played hero and sold himself on the idea of a wife for this visit with his grandmother, and now he worried he’d bought himself more than he could handle as he looked at her.

Her face was flushed from her bath, the scent of lilac wafting through the large bedroom. The Western shirt she’d chosen was a pale green check that was perfect for her coloring and went well with the scarf that she’d tied around her neck. The two scarves had been her idea.

She looked sweet enough to eat and smelled heavenly. It was going to be hell being around her 24/7 without wanting more than a pretend marriage.

Worse, their charade required a modicum of intimacy with her. As he led her down to dinner, he put his hand against the flat of her back and felt the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of her shirt. The touch burned him like a brand.

She looked over at him. Her smile said she knew what he was up to. He smiled back. She had no idea.

“Finally,” said a woman impatiently from the parlor where they’d been shown in earlier.

Jack looked in to see his aunt Virginia, a glass of wine in her hand and a frown on her less than comely face. The years hadn’t been kind to her. The alcohol she’d apparently already consumed added to her overall disheveled look.

Her lipstick was smeared, her linen dress was wrinkled from where she’d been perched on the arm of one of the leather chairs and there was a run in her stockings.

“We eat at seven sharp,” she snapped, and pointed to the clock on the wall, which read several minutes after.

Josey started to apologize, since it was her fault for staying in the tub so long, but the other woman in the room cut her off.

“You remember Virginia,” Pepper Winchester said drily.

“Of course, Virginia,” Jack said, extending his hand.

His aunt gave him the weakest of handshakes. “Mother says you’re Angus’s son?” Like his grandmother, Virginia had also missed her brother’s funeral. Nothing like a close-knit family, Jack thought.

Virginia was studying him as if under a microscope. Her sour expression said she saw no Winchester resemblance. “The nanny’s child.” She crinkled her nose in distaste. “Dear Angus,” she said, as if that explained it.

Jack tried not to take offense, but it was hard given the reception he and his pretend wife were getting here. He reminded himself that this wasn’t a social visit. Once he got what he’d come for, he would never see any of them again.

“This is my wife, Josey,” he said, glad as hell he hadn’t come here alone. All his misgivings earlier about bringing her were forgotten as he slipped his arm around her slim waist and pulled her close.

JOSEY FELT JACK’S ARM tighten around her as Virginia gave her a barely perceptible handshake.

It was hard not to see the resemblance between mother and daughter, Josey thought. Both women were tall, dark-haired and wore their bitterness on their faces. Virginia was broader, more matronly and perhaps more embittered as she narrowed her gaze at Josey, measuring her for a moment before dismissing her entirely.

“Can we please eat now?” Virginia demanded. “I’m famished. Little more than crumbs were served for lunch. I hope dinner will prove more filling.” She turned on her heel and headed down the hall.

Josey turned to Pepper, who was reaching for her cane. “I do apologize. I’m afraid I enjoyed your wonderful tub longer than I’d meant to. That is such a beautiful bathroom. I especially like the black-and-white tiles.”

Pepper seemed startled. “Enid put you in the room at the end of the south wing?” She quickly waved the question away. “Of course she would. Never mind.”

Grabbing her cane, she followed her daughter down the hallway. Josey noted that Pepper Winchester was more feeble than she let on. Maybe she really was dying. Or maybe just upset.

“I knew it,” Josey whispered to Jack, as they followed Pepper at a distance toward the dining room. “That room must have been your grandmother’s and grandfather’s. Wouldn’t Enid know that putting us in there would upset your grandmother?”

“I would bet on it,” he said.

Josey followed his gaze to where Enid stood in the kitchen doorway, looking like the cat who ate the canary. “She must have shared that room with your grandfather. I wonder why she moved out of it?”

Jack chuckled and slowed, lowering his voice as they neared the dining room. “I doubt it was for sentimental reasons. My mother told me that according to Winchester lore, Pepper didn’t shed a tear when my grandfather rode off and was never seen again. She just went on running the ranch as if Call Winchester had never existed—until her youngest son Trace vanished.”

DINNER WAS A TORTUROUS AFFAIR. Jack had known it wouldn’t be easy returning to the ranch, but he hadn’t anticipated the wellspring of emotions it brought to the surface. As he sat at the dining room table, he half expected to see his mother through the open kitchen doorway.

It was at that scarred kitchen table that he and his mother had eaten with the Winchester grandchildren and the staff. In the old days, he’d been told, Pepper and Call had eaten alone in the dining room while their young children had eaten in the kitchen.

But Call had been gone when his mother came to work here, and Pepper had eaten with her then-grown children in the dining room. When Trace was home, his mother had heard Pepper laughing. After Trace eloped with that woman in town and moved in with her, the laughter stopped. Jack’s mother said she often didn’t hear a peep out of the dining room the entire meal with Pepper and her other children.

“The animosity was so thick in the air you could choke on it,” his mother had told him. “Mrs. Winchester took to having her meals in her room.”

“Well, Mother, when are you planning to tell us what is really going on?” Virginia demanded now, slicing through the tense silence that had fallen around the table. She sat on her mother’s right, Jack and Josey across from her. Her face was flushed; she’d clearly drunk too much wine. Most of dinner she’d complained under her breath about Enid’s cooking.

Jack had hardly tasted his meal. He’d pushed his food around his plate, lost in the past. Josey had seemed to have no such problem. She’d eaten as if she hadn’t had a meal for sometime. He wondered how long it had been.

Pepper had also seemed starved, cleaning her plate with a gusto that didn’t go unnoticed. For a dying woman, she had a healthy appetite. Almost everyone commented on it, including Enid when she’d cleared away the dishes before bringing in dessert.

“Well, Mother?” Virginia repeated her demand.

Enid had stopped in midmotion and looked at Pepper, as if as anxious as any of them to hear why the family had been invited back to the ranch.

“Isn’t it possible that I wanted my family around me after receiving such horrible news about your brother?” Pepper asked, motioning for Enid to put down the cake and leave the room.

Virginia scoffed at the idea. “After twenty-seven years you suddenly remembered that you had other family?”

“Does it matter what brought us together?” Jack spoke up. “We’re here now. I assume some of the others will be arriving, as well?” he asked his grandmother.

She gave him a small smile. “A few have responded to my invitation. I knew it would be too much to have everyone here at the same time, so the others will be coming later.”

“Well, I know for a fact that my brother Brand isn’t coming,” Virginia said unkindly. “He’s made it perfectly clear he couldn’t care less about you or your money.” She poured herself the last of the red wine, splashing some onto the white tablecloth. “In fact, he said he wouldn’t come back here even if someone held a gun to his head.”

“How nice of you to point that out,” Pepper said.

Enid had left, but returned with a serving knife, and saw the mess Virginia had made. She set the knife beside the cake and began to complain under her breath about how overworked she already was without having to remove wine stains from the linens.

“That will be enough,” Pepper said to the cook-housekeeper. “Please close the kitchen door on your way out.”

Enid gave her a dirty look, but left the room, slamming the door behind her. But Jack saw through the gap under the door that Enid had stopped just on the other side and was now hovering there, listening.

“I only mention Brand to point out that not everyone is so forgiving as I am,” Virginia said. She glanced at her mother, tears welling in her eyes. “You hurt us all, Mother. Some of us are trying our best to forgive and forget.”

“Let’s not get maudlin. You’re too old, Virginia, to keep blaming me for the way your life turned out.”

“Am I? Who do you blame, Mother?”

A gasp came from behind the kitchen door.

Pepper ignored both the gasp and her daughter’s question as she began to dish up the cake. “I’ve always been fond of lemon. What about you, Josey?” she asked, as she passed her a slice.

Josey seemed surprised at the sudden turn in conversation. “I like lemon.”

Pepper graced her with a rare smile that actually reached the older woman’s eyes. “I don’t believe you told me how you and my grandson met.”

“I was hitchhiking and he picked me up,” Josey said.

Jack laughed, as he saw Josey flush at her own honesty. “It was love at first sight.” He shot her a look that could have melted the icing on her cake.

Her flush deepened.

“She climbed into my car and, as they say, the rest is history,” Jack said.

Pepper was studying Josey with an intensity that worried him. The elderly woman seemed to see more than he had originally given her credit for. Did his grandmother suspect the marriage was a ruse?

“Well, how fortunate,” Pepper said, shifting her gaze to Jack. “You’re a lucky man.” Her smile for him had a little more bite in it. “You have definitely proven that you’re a Winchester.”

Jack chuckled, afraid that was no compliment. It didn’t matter. He could tell that his grandmother liked Josey and he would use that to his advantage. But it wouldn’t change the way he felt about his grandmother.

He’d spent most of dinner secretly studying his beautiful “wife.” Josey continued to surprise him. Her manners and the way she carried herself made him realize she must have come from money—probably attended a boarding school, then some Ivy League college. She seemed to fit in here in a way that made her seem more like a Winchester than he ever could. So how did she end up on the side of the road with nothing more than a backpack? And more importantly, why would a woman with her obvious pedigree be sitting here now, pretending to be his wife?

“You’ve hardly touched your food.”

Jack dragged his gaze away from Josey as he realized his grandmother was talking to him. “I guess I’m not really hungry.”

Pepper nodded. “You probably have other things on your mind.”

“Yes. I should apologize for making this trip into a honeymoon. It wasn’t my intention when I answered your letter.”

“No, I’m sure it wasn’t,” his grandmother said with a wry smile. “But what better place than the family ranch? I assume you remember growing up here. You loved to ride horses. Surely you’ll want to ride while you’re here and show Josey the ranch. You were old enough to remember your uncle Trace, weren’t you?”

Virginia didn’t bother to stifle a groan.

Her mother ignored her. “You must have been—”

“Six,” Jack said, and felt all eyes at the table on him. Beside him, he sensed that even Josey had tensed.

“Then you remember the birthday party I threw for him?”

Jack nodded slowly. It wasn’t likely he would forget that day. His mother told him years later that Pepper had been making plans for weeks. Everything had to be perfect.

“I think she really thought that if she threw him an amazing birthday party, Trace would come back to the ranch,” his mother had told him. “Of course the only way he was welcome back was without the woman he’d eloped with, the woman who was carrying his child. Or at least he thought was carrying his child. Pepper didn’t believe it for a moment. Or didn’t want to.”

“I had a cake flown in,” Pepper said, her eyes bright with memory. “I wanted it to be a birthday he would never forget.” Her voice trailed off, now thick with emotion.

Instead it had been a birthday that none of the rest of them had ever forgotten. His grandmother, hysterical with grief and disappointment when Trace hadn’t shown for the party, had thrown everyone off the ranch, except for Enid and Alfred Hoagland.

“I bought all the children little party hats,” she was saying. “Do you remember?”

From the moment he’d received the letter from his grandmother’s attorney, Jack had known she wanted something from him. He just hadn’t been sure what. But he had an inkling he was about to find out.

“I recall sending all of you upstairs so you wouldn’t be underfoot,” Pepper said. “I believe you were playing with my other grandchildren at the time.” Her gaze locked with his, and he felt an icy chill climb up his spine and settle around his neck. “Whose idea was it to go up to the room on the third floor? The one you were all forbidden to enter?”

THIS FAR NORTH it was still light out, but it would be getting dark soon. Deputy Sheriff McCall Winchester listened to the whine of the tow truck cable, her focus on the dark green water of the Missouri River.

Déjà vu. Just last month, she’d watched another vehicle being pulled from deep water. Like now she’d feared they’d find a body inside it.

A car bumper broke the surface. The moment the windshield came into view, McCall felt a wave of relief not to see a face behind the glass. Which didn’t mean there still wasn’t someone in the car, but she was hoping that bizarre as this case was so far, it wouldn’t get any worse.

The tow truck pulled the newer-model luxury car from the water to the riverbank, then shut off the cable motor and truck engine. Silence swept in. Fortunately they were far enough upriver on a stretch of private ranch land away from the highway, so they hadn’t attracted any attention.

McCall stepped over to the car as water continued to run out from the cracks around the doors. She peered in, again thankful to find the car empty of bodies. Snapping on latex gloves, she opened the driver side door and let the rest of the water rush out.

Along with river water, there were numerous fast food containers, pop cans, empty potato chip bags.

“Looks like they were living in the car,” a deputy said.

McCall noticed something lodged under the brake pedal.

“Get me an evidence bag,” she ordered, and reached in to pull out a brand-new, expensive-looking loafer size 10½.

“The driver got out but left behind his shoe?” a deputy said as he opened the passenger-side door. “But did he make it out of the water?”

“See if you can find any tracks downstream,” McCall said. “The current is strong enough here that he would have been washed downriver a ways.”

“Should be easy to track him since he is wearing only one shoe,” the deputy said.

“Let’s try to find out before it gets dark,” McCall said. Otherwise they would be dragging the river come morning for a third body.

On the other side of the car, a deputy pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened the passenger-side door to get into the glove box. McCall watched him carefully check the soaking wet registration.

“The car is registered to a Ray Allan Evans Jr., age thirty-five, of Palm City, California. Looks like he just purchased the car three days ago.”