Rachel Lee - Just a Cowboy

“I can.” Hank laughed, relaxing again. Her consternation struck him as cute. “It’s okay, really. I just got all worked up about safety issues, but you’re a grown-up. You can avoid the stuff I was worried about. And things like the stove can be fixed quickly. Nothing’s changed, except the order in which I was going to do repairs.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” He waved at the floors. “I was going to get to these next, but since you’re here, I’ll just rearrange my schedule. No big deal. First the stove, then the electrician.”

“Why were you going to do the floors first?”

“Because they annoy the hell out of me.” He was still smiling. And because they sometimes tripped him, when his leg was acting up and he didn’t lift his foot high enough. But he didn’t want to bring his disability up. Bad enough living with it, without having buckets of sympathy ladled his way.

“Well, can I help with them? I need something to do besides sit around all day worrying about what might never happen.”

And that, he thought, was a healthy attitude. He felt his last reservations about her start slipping away. “Sure. I’d like that. Help is always welcome.”

From the way she beamed, he realized how much she wanted to feel useful again.

But even as he watched her, he saw her smile start to slip, and a look of horror began to replace it.

“Kelly? Kelly, what’s wrong?”

“I just realized something. I can’t believe I was too stupid to think of it before.”

“What’s that?”

“The place where the guy tried to drown me? It was in one of the canals around Miami.”

“So the gators would get you?”

“Maybe.” But then she shook her head. “No, it just suddenly struck me it was a canal where I went jogging a lot of mornings. Not too far from Dean’s house.”

He wasn’t sure where she was leading. “That would seem stupid. It could link it to Dean.”

She shook her head. “Don’t you see? He would have made it look like I might have fallen while I was out running. And there are gators in those canals. Lots of them. Bull sharks, too, in some places. There wouldn’t be much evidence for long. But the important thing is, how likely is it that someone who didn’t know me would know where I liked to jog?”

She had him there. Hard. All of a sudden, no matter how wacky it might have sounded at first, he believed her husband wanted her dead.

“Okay,” he said quietly, feeling his jaw tighten. “I’m buying it. All of it.”

She lifted her gaze, questioning without words.

“I wasn’t sure at first. It seems so far-fetched that the guy would want to kill you. I mean, I know it happens, but it doesn’t happen that often, does it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me, either. But to me it seems a helluva lot more likely that you were mugged by some stranger, odd as it seems, than that he’d carry you out some place just to drown you. But if he took you to a canal where you liked to jog…”

“He could just have been watching me,” she said tautly.

“Sure. Then why not go for you while you were out for a run? Why stalk you to your parking garage, then take you back there to kill you? Did he try to rape you or anything?”

She shook her head. “He just hit me over the head.”

“And you said he didn’t rob you, either. That fits with trying to make it look like an accident.”

Much to his dismay, he watched one lone tear roll down her cheek.

“Why are you crying?” he asked. “Isn’t this what you already thought was going on?”

She drew a shaky breath. “I guess,” she said sadly, “that some part of me wanted to believe I was wrong. Somewhere deep inside, I wanted to believe I was wrong about Dean. I wanted to believe I was making a mountain out of a molehill. I wanted to believe it was just random. Dammit, Hank, I didn’t want to believe, really believe, that the man I married is capable of murder.”

“You believed it enough to run.”

“And I spent the last six weeks telling myself I was crazy, even though I kept running.”

“And now you don’t feel crazy anymore.”

She shook her head. “Not now.”

“The canal changed your mind?”

“Yes, it did. Because Dean knew I ran out there all the time. Everyone knew it. And when they got around to finding whatever pieces of me were left after the gators or sharks were done, it would have been a sad, sad accident. Except that someone tried to drown me in that canal.”

“The police should have listened to that part.” He felt his ire stirring.

“How could they when I didn’t tell them? I was half-hysterical over being attacked, I was accusing Dean, they were telling me it was just random … God, I can’t believe I didn’t put it together before!”

He could. He knew what shock and denial could do to a mind. He’d experienced enough of his own. Impulsively, he reached out and took her hand, giving it a quick squeeze before he let go.

Of all the damn times to be inappropriately aware of the satin of a woman’s skin, this was it. He shoved the awareness down into a pit for later consideration. There were more important issues to deal with.

“You didn’t want to believe it any more than the cops and your lawyer did,” he said after a moment. “That’s normal enough. I doubt I’d have felt any differently.”

“No.” She shivered and rubbed her arms again. The night was cooling down, but not that much. At least not for him, but he didn’t come from Miami. “Jeez, now I do feel crazy. I went on the run because it occurred to me that Dean had paid someone to kill me, but I didn’t think of the one thing that proved it until just now? I need a shrink.”

“No,” he said firmly, “you’re normal. I don’t think the normal human mind is designed to readily accept the idea that someone wants to kill us. Certainly not someone we think we know and used to love.”

“Maybe. Maybe.” But she sounded awfully doubtful.

“Anyway,” he said bracingly, “you’re safe here. That’s what matters.”

“Yes. It is.” Several minutes ticked by then she managed a wan smile. “That was the whole point in coming here. But now I’ve got a lot of other stuff to think about.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why I’ve been such an idiot, believing and not believing, and running if I didn’t fully believe it, and…”

“Whoa,” he said gently, smiling for her. “Don’t start beating yourself up. The mind works in its own ways, and sometimes we don’t realize things until we’re ready for them.”

She seemed willing to accept that. When he went home a half hour later, the conversation had even turned back to the home repair project she wanted to involve herself in.

She seemed happier. And he was determined to find out what the hell had happened in Miami.

Thank God for friends in the police department.

Because, if he emerged from his own denial to look at this clearly, it seemed entirely possible that if a man with money really wanted to find her, there was little to stop him.

He needed details. Every one he could get. Only then could he figure out what he could do, what he might need to do.

He headed straight for his computer to send an email.

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