Lonestar Sanctuary (19 page)

"Old story," he said shortly. He jerked aT-shirt on over his bare chest
and yanked on his jeans over his shorts. She followed him to the door and
clicked it shut behind him. Dragging the ladder-back chair from the corner, she propped it under the doorknob and crawled into bed with Betsy.

The pillow smelled of Rick. She told herself not to be a fool, but
she buried her face in the pillow anyway and pulled the covers around
her neck as if she were enveloped in Rick's arms.

Stupid, stupid. She wasn't so naive that she didn't recognize how
she was beginning to fall for her new husband. She kicked off the
sheets. Betsy shuffled and rolled away from her. Maybe someday he'd
tell her who had made those scars. And why.

THE HOUSE BLAZED WITH LIGHT. RICK HAD LOOKED IN EVERY CLOSET,
behind every curtain in the empty bedrooms and in the downstairs.
He hadn't wanted to awaken the teenage girls, but when he didn't find
an intruder, he rapped on their door and had them come out while he
searched their room.

Their hair a mess and dragging their sheets, they'd congregated in
the hall while he poked around their room. It stank of cheap perfume
and nail polish.

"If you want to hook up, just say so," Latoya said, batting her
lashes. "You don't have to make no excuses to visit my bedroom."

Rick was in no mood for her antics. "You've got sleep in the corners of your eyes," he told her.

Her coy smile faded, and she cleaned the gunk out of her eyes.
"Thanks," she said sullenly.

"Is there an intruder?" Fern asked, her voice barely audible but
shaking.

"Yep. But he seems to be gone. Did either of you hear anything?"

Latoya tossed her rumpled head. "You mean other than you hollering at us to drag our booties out of bed? Not a thing"

"How about you?" he asked Fern.

She hesitated. "I thought I heard someone in the hall a while ago.
But I was half-asleep."

It could have been him or Allie. "What did it sound like?"

"It sounded like someone opened the door, then closed it again.
But like I said, I was half-asleep and didn't look up."

"Wishful thinking," Latoya scoffed. "She's got a crush on Charlie."

Fern flushed and looked down at her bare feet.

Rick stepped back into the hallway. "Go back to bed. There's no
one in the house, and I locked the doors."

The girls shuffled back into their bedroom and shut the door. He
could hear Latoya haranguing Fern about her ridiculous crush on
Charlie. Poor kid. After running back downstairs to double-check the
doors, he went back up the stairs and started toward his room. As he
passed Allie's room, he decided to take one more look at the hall outside her door. The guy had slipped the paper under the door. If his aim
was to hurt Allie, he could have just as easily gone into the bedroom.

Why hadn't he?

Rick didn't know what the guy's game was, but the thought that
he'd waltzed in here and back out without detection really steamed
him. He'd have to ask Brendan for help. Running his hand over Allie's
doorjamb, he felt every nick and scratch. The guy wouldn't have had
to pick a lock because there were none in this old house other than
the outside door locks and the office.

He knelt on the rug and lifted the edge of it. Nothing there. Rising,
he stepped into the room and glanced around again. Everything was
neat and in its place. A few cosmetics lined the dresser. Before he realized it, he'd picked up the gaudy nail polish and turned it in his hand.
She was such a contradiction all cowgirl and competent then very
feminine with bright nail polish and sleek hair.

He put the bottle back, then picked up her cologne and brought
it to his nose. It smelled sweet and dainty, just like Allie. He put the
bottle back hastily.

Don't go there. She'd chew his heart up for breakfast and spit it
out. Backing away as if a rattlesnake lay coiled on the dresser, he
turned to the closet. He'd checked it once, but he wasn't ready to give
up finding whoever was behind this. Opening the door, he swept his
hand through the hanging clothes, and the sweet scent drifted out
again. Her shoes, two pair, were lined up evenly in the bottom of the
closet. Betsy's shoes were just as precisely placed.

She didn't seem the type to want everything so ordered. Maybe it
was a way of controlling the things she could control when there was
so much she couldn't. What was that eye problem she'd mentioned?
Something about Irlen. He'd have to look it up. Maybe there was
something he could do to help her.

Shutting the closet door, he went down the hall to his bedroom.
He tapped on the door. "Allie? It's me."

He heard the bed springs squeak, then a few moments later, the
scrape of the chair being removed from the doorknob. The door
opened, and she looked up at him, her blue eyes wide with trust.
Something shattered in the region of his heart when he saw how completely she believed in him.

Had anyone ever looked at him like that before like he could
conquer the world? Maybe Jon. At the reminder of his friend, he
pulled his mental shield back into place. Allie and Betsy were Jon's,
not his. He couldn't ever let himself forget he was just a stand-in.

"Everything's okay," he told her. "I'll carry Betsy back to bed for
you.

She sighed at his perfunctory tone. "Thanks." She stepped aside to
allow him space to enter.

He went to the bed and lifted the little girl. Betsy didn't stir as he
carried her back to her bed. "You'll be okay?"

She nodded. "Fine. Thanks for checking" She hesitated. "Maybe we
should leave, pack up and run."

"He found you here," Rick pointed out. "Running is never the
answer. This guy is tenacious. At least here we can see someone coming from miles away."

"Just like tonight?" Her smile did little to take the sting from her
words.

"We know he's found you now. I'll get some friends on it tomorrow.
We'll find him."

Her eyes looked sad, but she nodded. "Thank you, Rick. I don't
know what we'd have done without your help."

Her words sounded stilted and formal, and he wished she'd look
at him with that trust again. He gave a curt nod and backed out of the
room. "Put a chair under your door," he said.

She shut the door, and he waited until he heard a chair scrape
across the floor and lodge under the knob. Retreating to his bedroom,
he listened to the wind howl through the eaves. He used to howl like
that when his back was laid bare.

He shut the door, shucked his jeans and shirt, and crawled between
the sheets. The sweet scent of her in his sheets filled him with an emotion he couldn't bring himself to name.

EYERYTHING SEEMED DIFFERENT BY THE LIGHT OF DAY. BETSY CLUNG TO
Allie's side all morning. Even though she'd slept through the whole
upheaval in the night, she seemed to understand that something had
changed.

Her little girl sat by the refrigerator with her doll clutched in her
hand and watched Allie slice roast beef and homemade bread for
lunch. Allie hadn't seen her daughter have the doll out since they'd
come.

"How about if we go out looking for bluebirds after lunch?" she
asked Betsy. "We'll see if Rick will go with us."

She needed a distraction as badly as Betsy did. The realization that
Yo was gone kept ambushing her.

Betsy looked up and nodded, her smile breaking out of the gloom.
Allie's eyes burned as she watched her daughter bend her head until
her dark curls touched the golden head of her doll. She wanted so
much for her daughter, but it seemed Betsy was living the life of the
cinder maid.

The haven they'd found here hadn't lasted nearly long enough.
How could Rick protect them from a phantom who slipped in and out
of sight like the fog?

The screen door banged, and Latoya strolled into the kitchen, followed by Fern. The two girls were so different. Latoya came in like she
owned the world, while Fern slunk in with her head down and her
shoulders slumped. Allie wanted to take Fern by the shoulders and tell
her to stand up straight, look the world in the eye, and chart her course.

But had Allie done any better with her own life? She'd had big
handicaps to overcome, and once upon a time, she thought she had
done a pretty good job of scaling the mountains that had once seemed
so daunting. But life had a way of dethroning you when you least
expected it.

Allie wanted to be more like Latoya, certain of herself and her
power over other people. But maybe the teenager was just better at
hiding her fears. Maybe people were all the same inside.

"Girl, my stomach is growling like that lion I heard last night,"
Latoya complained.

"Lunch will be ready in a few minutes," Allie said, snapping out
of her reverie and turning back to her task. "Did you get all your
chores done?"

"That mare of Betsy's about chewed the bag up and spit it back
out. She's one hungry mama. Did you go see her this morning, Bets?"
Latoya squatted beside Betsy, who just nodded without looking at her. Latoya stood and went to the cabinet, where she began to pull down
plates and glasses.

Allie wanted to smile but hid it by turning away to get the mayo
out of the refrigerator. A week ago, the teen would have sullenly
agreed to set the table only after being asked numerous times.

The pottery clattered on the wood table as Latoya carelessly
tossed the dishes into place. "That little colt loves me like his mama,"
she said in a conversational tone. "He followed me all over that corral."
She giggled like a five-year-old. "He kept nibbling on my shirt." She
sank onto the chair and crossed her legs at the ankles. "I like it here."

"Me too," Fern said, laying out the tableware. "I wish I never had
to leave."

Allie felt a pang at the wistful tones of both girls. She might have
thought her life was hard, but these girls had even more strikes against
them. At least she'd had loving parents. She could see the attraction in
helping kids like these.

"We're going to go look for bluebirds after lunch. You girls want
to come?" she asked them.

"Bluebirds? What's up with that?" Latoya demanded.

"Betsy loves them. Haven't you ever heard of the bluebird of happiness? Betsy loves the old Shirley Temple movie called The Blue Bird.
We could watch it tonight after supper if you've never seen it."

"I used to watch Shirley Temple at my grandma's," Fern said in a
soft voice. "My brother had a crush on her. He never knew she was old
enough now to be his grandma."

"Shirley Temple? She that curly-headed Betty in the old black-andwhite movies?" Latoya demanded. "That's kid stuff"

"Aw, come on, Latoya," Fern said with more animation than Allie
had ever seen. "It's a really good movie."

Latoya sniffed. "I'll watch it for a while, but if it gets too hokey,
I'm outta there."

Allie wanted to gather the girl up in her arms and tell her it wasn't
too late to regain her childhood, but she knew the words would seem
empty. And maybe they were. Once innocence was lost, she wasn't
sure it could ever be regained.

THE SKY HAD CLEARED OF THE SAND THAT YELLOWED THE AIR AND PILED
around the foundations of the buildings. Rick and Charlie spent the
morning tramping the ranch, looking for any sign of the man who had
broken into the house last night.

Rick called the sheriff, and he came out too, but there was nothing to see, no one to interrogate. The two older hands had been here
over twenty years, and Rick couldn't see Buzz or Guinn trying to
frighten Allie. Charlie was just a kid. None of the help had any reason
to terrorize her.

He ruled out Emilio and the kids too. Her stalker must be lurking
nearby after tracking her here.

"You want me to stand guard tonight?" Charlie asked, a worried
frown settling on his forehead when the men failed to turn up any
clues. "Me and the hands could take turns."

"Maybe. I asked the sheriff if he'd give her some police protection."

Charlie snorted. "Good luck with that. I don't think he's got an
officer smart enough to find his butt with both hands."

Charlie had a point. The sheriff's good of boys weren't capable of
anything beyond arresting drunk and disorderly residents. There wasn't
much crime here beyond the occasional theft from a tourist's car and
the fights that broke out in Long Branch Saloon.

Maybe he should talk to Brendan, but he didn't see what his
friend could do about the situation. He likely had his plate full saving the world. Still, maybe Brendan could at least put some feelers
out and give him some indication of how the guy might have found
Allic.

His wife. The thought still made his stomach plunge. The realization that he was married kept playing hide-and-seek in his mind. Rick
couldn't quite grasp the reality of it, even yet.

Charlie was staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

"Allic told me."

"Told you what?"

"That you married her.You could have called dibs on her when she
got here, but you kept mum." His glance was full of curiosity.

"She's too old for you anyway."

"I'm only ten years younger," Charlie said, his voice indignant.
"Why didn't you say anything about knowing her?"

Rick shrugged. "I didn't know her, Charlie. She was my best
friend's wife, and she came to me for help. I told her husband I'd take
care of her."

Charlie pulled an aspirin bottle from his jeans and shook out
three pills.

"Migraine again?"

"Yeah, my counselor says it's stress." Charlie pulled his canteen
from his belt and uncapped it. Throwing back his head, he swallowed
the pills and wiped his lips before resealing it and putting it away.
"That's a rare brand of loyalty."

"Jon's parents are trying to get custody of Betsy. It seemed the best
thing to do to keep Betsy with Allie."

Charlie grinned then. "Anything to get a woman like that in your
bed, huh?"