Bounty Hunter Read online

  It was a moot point since she wouldn’t have the luxury of finding out. His steady voice jerked her from her thoughts.

  “I checked the barn as thoroughly as I could. I think with some simple repairs, the front half can be salvaged fairly easily. But the rest is a loss without major work.”

  She appreciated his bluntness almost as much as the change of topic. “I won’t need much room. Fix what you can and I’m sure it’ll be fine.” For some reason she decided not to tell him that she wasn’t planning on staying long enough to make a complete overhaul of the barn worthwhile.

  She started as his chair scraped across the uneven flooring. Kane stood and carried his plates to the counter. She watched as he primed the small pump by the sink, momentarily too caught up in the play of muscles in his arm and shoulder to tell him to stop.

  He turned back to her before she could look away. “If you’re done, I’ll be glad to wash these.”

  She sensed it would be important to a man like Kane to pull his own weight, but the kitchen felt suddenly stifling, more intimate than cramped, and she couldn’t see herself standing close to him, drying dishes as he washed. She quickly stood. “Thanks, but really, it’s not necessary. I would’ve been washing these anyway. A few more won’t take much longer.”

  He seemed about to say something, then apparently thought better of it, because he handed her the dishtowel. “Thank you for the meal. Will you be picking berries again tomorrow?”

  “Only in the morning. I plan to cook all afternoon.”

  “Won’t it get hot in here?”

  “I’d rather be in here cooking than outside in the heat of the day.”

  “You were out there today.”

  “I know, but I needed to get enough berries to get a head start tomorrow.”

  “And I made you dump half of them.”

  She waved away his concern. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty more where those came from.” He started to say something else, but she cut him off. “Really. With what I get in the morning, I’ll have more than enough to start. I really can’t handle more until I have more room.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I make some headway.”

  “Fine.”

  He paused, and for a long moment, Elizabeth didn’t know what to do or say.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a look in here when you’re out in the fields tomorrow, see what I can repair.”

  Kane. Alone in her house? “I’d really rather have you work on the—”

  “I’ll get the barn done. But this house looks as if it hasn’t been lived in for decades—”

  “It’s been twenty-five years.”

  “Well, if this room is anything to go by, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind having a few things repaired. Consider it thanks for feeding me.”

  “But you’re already earning—”

  “My room by fixing your barn,” he finished. “I’ll earn the rest in here.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t stop the shiver from racing lightly over her skin as images she had no right visualizing persisted in crowding into her brain. The sensation ceased, but the mental pictures left her skin damp. She wanted to pluck at her shirt, but didn’t dare draw his attention to her sudden discomfort.

  “Fine,” was all she could manage.

  He tilted his head in a brief nod. The next moment, she was standing alone.

  Perversely, now that she’d gotten what she wanted, she wished she’d kept him talking longer. She turned to the dishes with a sigh.

  And later that night, when she slid into her grandmother’s lumpy feather bed, she worked hard to shut out images of Kane wandering through her house.

  If dreams were any indication, she was less than successful.

  The muscles in Kane’s shoulders burned as he bent his weight against the stubborn plank. With a loud grunt and a mighty yank, Kane snapped the board off. The resounding crack echoed throughout the barn.

  “Figures the only boards I have to pull are the ones the termites left behind,” he grumbled as he tossed the scrap in the growing heap behind him.

  He’d found a pile of rusty tools in the small shed beside the barn. They were very outdated, but functional. And thanks to Cloud Dancer and her insistence that, as a child, Kane learn to function with tools made of his own hand, these would be more than adequate.

  “If she could only see me now,” he muttered. Thinking of the recalcitrant adolescent he’d been after his mother died, he allowed himself a small sad smile as he yanked the next board from its moorings.

  His thoughts strayed to his “employer,” Ann Fielding. He grunted more than necessary, and another plank went flying. He should be getting used to it. He’d hardly thought of anything else since he’d left her in that poor excuse for a kitchen the night before. And he’d be less than honest if he said his thoughts had been of a strictly professional nature.

  She’d revealed more to him by simply existing out here on this rugged scrap of wilderness she called a ranch, than by coming right out with the information about her family and current financial circumstances. Somewhere between the salad and the stew, he’d forgotten he was subtly interrogating her and had actually been listening because he was truly interested.

  He almost growled as he ripped the next board from the posts in front of him. Because of that gross error in judgment, he’d spent the night wrestling with his sleeping bag and his conscience. But now it was a new day, and his head was as clear as the sky. He was here to do a job. Simple.

  His gaze strayed to the door that led to her kitchen and the bucket he’d left sitting on her stoop. He glanced at the horizon. It was well after seven and there was no sign of her yet.

  What in the hell was she doing out in the middle of nowhere? His instincts as well as his eyes told him that Sam Perkins knew next to nothing about his wife if he thought she would crumple without a gold card.

  But then again, maybe Sam Perkins knew more about his wife than he’d let on. It wouldn’t surprise Kane. Especially in light of the fact that Sam hadn’t bothered to mention he was having him tailed. Kane had managed to lose the hired goon just north of Coeur d’Alene. At that point, he hadn’t known exactly where the Lazy F was located, but until he’d figured out Sam’s angle, he sure as hell wasn’t going to lead the guy straight to it. So he’d traded his pickup for a horse. A horse didn’t have tags and a registration that could be traced.

  Hinges squeaked across the yard behind him. Kane stilled, willing himself not to look. He knew she was discovering his offering and suddenly wished he were somewhere else.

  “Kane?”

  Her soft voice floating on the clear morning air rode his senses like sweet music. “Damn,” he swore under his breath as his body responded to the sound of her crossing the stretch of land separating them. This was insane. He should just haul her back and dump her on Perkins, grab his money, and head out in search of another client who required his special skills.

  “Kane?” she called again from a few feet away.

  He didn’t feel too damn special right now. Steeling himself, he looked up at her. And he knew then that he wasn’t taking her anywhere. Not yet.

  On the heels of that decision came the knowledge that the only place he did want to take her was to bed.

  His gaze skimmed over her plain white T-shirt, stopping briefly at the conspicuous designer label on her wrinkled pleated shorts. A testimony to her recent change in circumstances. On someone else, the ensemble would have looked rumpled and mismatched. On her it was sexy. As if she’d just rolled out of bed and pulled on clothes tossed carelessly away in the heat of passion.

  Passion. Heat. Damn if she didn’t stir both in him.

  The final irony was that she was the first to do so in a very long time. Maybe ever. And she was legally bound to another man.

  He pulled his gaze away from her, hating the effort involved. “Yes?” he answered finally.

  “You didn’t need to do this.”

  Knowing she meant the b
ucket of raspberries he’d gotten up at dawn to pick, he kept his eyes trained on sorting the pieces of wood into usable lumber and scrap. “Yes. I did.”

  She didn’t respond right away. “Well, then, thank you.”

  “No problem.” He was done sorting and knew he couldn’t go on with his work without looking at her. He mentally cursed himself for his cowardice. Cloud Dancer would have been vastly amused to see her stoic grandson behaving like an untried brave, hiding his face for fear some soft emotion shone in his eyes. That thought alone brought his head up and his gaze to hers.

  Business. This was just business as usual.

  “Do you still need to go in the fields?” he asked, his voice more terse than he’d intended.

  “For an hour or so.” She smiled and lifted the bucket a bit. “This will cut at least an hour of work off my day though.”

  He nodded and said, “If it’s okay with you then, I’ll go inside and check out the rooms.”

  If he hadn’t been studying her so closely, he would have missed the slight blush that briefly colored her cheeks. Was she so used to her wealthy lifestyle that she was embarrassed for him to see her humble surroundings? She hadn’t made any excuses the previous night at dinner.

  “Is there any part of the house that needs to be worked on first?” She fidgeted with the bucket handle, and another thought occurred to him. “Or a part you’d rather me not go into?”

  She blushed again. And damn if he didn’t respond. So, she was uncomfortable with the idea of him invading her privacy. He wondered what in the hell she’d do if he told her just how privately he’d thought about invading her space. His thoughts must have flashed in his eyes, because she stepped back.

  “Ah, no, you can go anywhere you want.” She laughed a bit dryly. “And as to what needs to be fixed, take your pick.”

  “This place looks as if it’s survived for quite a while.”

  She smiled softly. “I guess it has. Grandpa Fielding died just after he and Grandma had homesteaded this property. That was over fifty years ago. Grandma tried for years, even after my mom married and moved away, to make it into a working proposition, but it never panned out. I’d been here only once before. I was about seven. My folks dragged me and my brother up here to try to convince Grandma to come and live with us. It took us a few weeks, but she gave in. No one’s been back up here since.”

  “Why didn’t they sell it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe my folks never got around to it, or maybe no one wanted it. After they died, neither Matt nor I really gave it any thought.”

  Until she needed a place to run to. Kane thought about the picture in his saddlebag. He knew what she’d looked like around age seven. He knew because he’d searched her brother’s apartment and found an old black-and-white photo of them standing together under the Lazy F sign that still hung over the entrance to the long, winding driveway. Elizabeth Ann Lawson, the child, had been all blond pigtails, freckles, and scuffed knees. He hadn’t known she’d never been back since, but it had been his only lead.

  And Elizabeth Ann Lawson-Perkins, the grown woman, had just handed him a golden opportunity to get a confession as to why she’d run in the first place. Run from a man who was paying him to bring her back.

  “What made you come back here after all that time?” He watched the lovely pink hue on her cheeks fade to white. He swallowed the urge to apologize for upsetting her.

  Instead he silently watched her struggle for control.

  She tilted her chin and pasted a spectacular and patently false smile across her face. “I guess I got tired of the rat race and decided to get back to nature for a while. You know, get in touch with my feelings and all that.” She glanced around her. “Of course, I didn’t want to touch nature quite so closely, but this was the only place I knew to go.”

  She’d been all bravado until that last part of her admission, which had come out on more of a waver.

  Kane felt a tug in the middle of his chest which he steadfastly ignored. Just as he ignored the sudden urge to pull her into his arms and tell her it would be all right, that he’d protect her.

  What in the hell had gotten into him? He clenched his fists at his sides to keep from reaching for her, his blunt nails digging into his palms. “Did someone hurt you? Is that why you came here?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet and soft. But when she turned her soft brown eyes to his, he reached up to touch her chin without even realizing he was doing so.

  Her pupils dilated at his touch. Kane swallowed hard. “Tell me, Annie. Who hurt you?”

  THREE

  He watched her pulse vibrate the tender skin below her ear, then he dragged his gaze to hers, willing her to answer him with his eyes.

  “No one. I came here to get away.”

  “From what? Who?”

  She looked into his eyes for what seemed an eternity. Her lashes drifted shut for several seconds, and Kane knew then that he had lost. She wasn’t going to tell him what had happened. Not yet.

  She opened her eyes and said, “No one. I just wanted to be alone for a while.”

  Kane let his fingers drift up along her jaw and tuck a wayward wild red curl behind her ear. “Okay,” he said finally. “But can I ask you to do one thing for me?”

  He let his hand drop when she leaned away from his touch.

  “That depends.”

  “When you decide you can trust me, will you tell me what really happened?”

  “But noth—”

  Kane stopped her denial by placing one finger across her lips. “Just don’t lie to me.”

  She stepped back so they were no longer touching, staring at him as if uncertain whether to break down and confess—or run hard in the opposite direction.

  She did neither, nor did she answer him. She simply walked away. She’d gone about ten feet when she turned back to him. “What makes you think someone hurt me?”

  Kane realized he was in trouble. He couldn’t tell her who he was. Who had sent him. Shouldn’t want to. But for the first time in his life, he found himself questioning his motives. What bothered him even more was the fact that no matter how much he hated the unsettling emotions she raised in him, he knew he couldn’t come right out and lie to her. Not at this moment. So he told her what he could.

  “My Shoshone name is ‘Eyes of the Hawk.’ It was given to me at age twelve by a tribal elder. One of the children had wandered off and become lost. Everyone looked for her for hours. I happened to spot her tracks.”

  “How did you know they were hers?”

  “I knew that Lucy always dragged her stuffed dog around with her. I noticed small tracks leaving the playground with a drag mark in the dirt between the footprints. I followed it and eventually found her hiding beneath a porch. She’d hidden because she’d torn her dress and thought she’d get in trouble.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I was given the name because I notice things others don’t. Small things most people take for granted or are too busy to see.”

  He could tell she hesitated over her next question, and he willed her to ask it.

  “What do you see when you look at me?”

  He walked to stand directly in front of her, but didn’t touch her. He waited until she lifted her gaze to his. “I see a woman who needs to be with others. A woman who may need to be alone, but doesn’t want to be alone.”

  A long moment elapsed before she answered him. “You may be right, Eyes of the Hawk,” she said in a whisper. “But I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”

  Kane’s muscles tightened with need. The need to kiss her, to taste her pain and her strength, to forge a bond with her that was as physical as it was mental. When she’d spoken his Shoshone name, it had moved something deep within him.

  It shook him so badly, he didn’t dare to so much as touch her. Breathing in her scent was almost more than he could stand.

  “Just know,” he said, his usually even voice rough with need, “that I am here when yo
u do.”

  She dipped her chin in the barest of nods.

  Kane watched her as she turned and walked away. Her dyed red hair with its sexy unnatural curl, her squared slender shoulders that carried an unknown burden, a waist made for big hands like his to grip, hips that would cushion the need that strained hard against the zipper of his jeans, strong legs that would hold him tightly in place.

  And more than anything in the world, at that moment, he wished Sam Perkins dead.

  Not only because he was convinced the man had wronged his wife in some way, but because only then would she be free to come to him.

  He tilted his head to look heavenward. “I am a fool.” He dropped his chin. “I’m also no saint,” he muttered, wondering if the Fates were finally punishing him for his many faults, as Cloud Dancer had said countless times they would. Only he’d never imagined his penance would come in the form of a woman he could need more than want, but never have.

  Elizabeth wiped her forehead with a corner of the old sheet she’d torn and wrapped around her waist as an apron. The steam rising from the pot in front of her wasn’t the only reason for her heated condition. She’d spent over an hour in the fields that morning, then worked in the kitchen all afternoon. And not a minute had passed that she’d been able to think of anything except Kane Hawthorne and what had happened between them.

  There was no denying the effect his dark sensuality and quiet, purposeful demeanor had on her equilibrium. But even more disturbing was the idea of just how special a man he might be. He struck her as honest and caring.

  But then, hadn’t she once thought the same things of Sam Perkins?

  The hair on her neck stood up even though damp with perspiration. Yeah. She was one hell of a judge of character all right. Theirs hadn’t been the passion of a lifetime—Sam was a bit too conservative for that sort of behavior—but for a secretary working to make ends meet, having a whirlwind courtship with a bank president she’d met at a church social was pretty heady stuff. And when he’d asked her to marry him mere months later, she hadn’t hesitated to say yes. After all, what more could she have wanted? She knew many women would have killed to have been in her position.