Rebecca Winters - Home To Copper Mountain

She hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but it must have come out sounding that way, because he grimaced.

“Then you’re damn lucky.”

“According to your father, so are you,” she drawled.

The room was charged with tension, which broke as he moved toward the hallway. Audra made a half turn with her crutches.

Over her shoulder she said, “If you’re determined to be a Boy Scout instead of an intruder, you might as well put the screen back on while you’re at it.”

After that reminder she opened the front door and started down the porch steps. There were only two of them. She managed without difficulty.

It didn’t surprise her to find a new, gleaming black BMW parked in front of the bungalow. The kind of car she was seeing more and more of these days on the back roads…

Rich trespassers were raping the land with their easy money and didn’t know a gelding from a stallion. Did the racetrack lover know the difference? It would be interesting to find out.

RICK STARTED UP the car without saying anything to her. He backed out of the driveway, past the mailbox, to the road leading to the main ranch house. When he’d offered to pick up Pam’s cousin as a way to help, all he’d known about her was that she was recovering from an automobile accident in which the driver had been killed. Apparently, the man had worked at the same radio station she did.

Though he was armed with that much knowledge, he couldn’t have imagined what awaited him at the bungalow. The screams he’d heard coming from inside were so bloodcurdling, he still hadn’t recovered.

Ms. Audra Jarrett had come as a big surprise to him in more ways than one.

She was in her early to mid-twenties. For some reason he’d had the erroneous impression she was much closer to Pam’s forty. He’d never been partial to red hair, but then he’d never seen a shining mass of dark-mahogany curls before. They danced above a pair of blue-gray eyes so close in color to his mother’s, he was taken by surprise.

While he’d tried to wake the writhing woman on top of the bed, his gaze had been drawn to the curves of her slender body, making it impossible for him to look anywhere else.

Right now she didn’t appear to be in the mood to talk. Who could blame her for her silence?

No doubt she’d been plagued by horrific dreams since the crash. They had to be disorienting and probably stayed with her even after she awakened from them.

He’d known several racers who’d had to be cut from a wreckage. While he’d watched and listened to Audra fight her way out of her nightmare, it was evident she’d been trapped in the car accident that had broken her leg.

Neither his father nor Pam had shared those details with him. His breaking into her bedroom couldn’t have helped the situation any.

“I’m sorry a total stranger had to be the cause of more distress,” he apologized again. “You were in such a highly agitated state, my only thought was to get to you and wake you up so you wouldn’t have to suffer any longer.”

“I realize I sounded like a soldier back from Vietnam, so you’re forgiven,” she said without looking at him. “Last night Pam told me your father had gone out looking for you, so I can’t say you came as a complete surprise. Otherwise I’d have cracked your head open with the end of my crutch.”

“Ouch,” he teased.

“Obviously he found you,” she replied without a hint of warmth. “How far off the beaten track were you?”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Audra Jarrett didn’t like him.

Rick wasn’t such a vain man he had to conquer every woman in sight. Still, her hostility had gotten beneath his skin.

Intrigued, he intended to learn the reason for her demeanor. He suspected today’s events had little to do with the fact that she wished herself anywhere but in his car.

“We discovered each other on the ranch road about two miles from the house.”

Her only response was to turn her head and stare out the passenger window. The gesture caused him to wonder if she resented his father for taking Pam away from her and couldn’t help disliking Rick for being his son.

Rick’s thoughts harkened back to a conversation with his brother. Nate had found out that the men in Pam’s family were laying bets on how long the marriage to their father would last. That was why she hadn’t invited any of them to the wedding.

It was possible that no one in Pam’s family, male or female, was happy about her recent marriage.

Then again, maybe Audra’s antipathy toward Rick had nothing to do with his father. Perhaps after such a terrible nightmare, she was just lashing out. The accident had killed a man she loved, and Rick happened to be a handy target.

“I heard you calling for Pete over and over again,” he said quietly. “He was your fiancé?”

That brought her head around. She studied him as if he were a species she’d never come across before.

“Your father may have married my cousin, but that doesn’t make us related or entitle you to information that’s none of your business.”

He saw her hands curl into fists. His attempt at sensitivity wasn’t going over well.

“Why don’t we start again, Ms. Jarrett?” he suggested. “Since my father and Pam’s happiness is of the utmost importance to both of us, shall we try to be friends while I’m here?”

His father intended to use the money from the sale of the ski business to help Pam establish a bed-and-breakfast on the ranch. Apparently, the idea had been a dream of hers for years and would bring in much needed income. Rick didn’t want to see anything go wrong with their plans when they both seemed so excited about it.

He pulled to a stop in front of the ranch house where there were a half-dozen cars and trucks assembled.

“I have a better idea,” she replied.

His lips twitched while he waited to hear the rest of her remarks with an eagerness that surprised him.

“Let’s agree to stay out of each other’s way. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Inside of twelve hours, boredom will consume you. By nightfall we’ll be breathing the dust from your tires when you peal out of here for heaven knows what race with death you have scheduled next.”

Her withering comment brought to mind a conversation he’d had with his brother a few weeks earlier.

When I saw Laurel’s joy as she held her daughter in her arms, I knew what Mom and Dad felt when we were born. Since that moment, I’ve asked myself how our parents were able to accept our chosen careers without suffering a nervous breakdown in the process.

Come on, Nate. Don’t forget, they placed themselves in mortal danger every time they ran a ski race.

True. But in comparison, you have to admit strapping ourselves into a race car or into the cockpit of a jet increases the danger by quantum leaps.

No longer smiling, Rick got out of the car to help Audra, but Pam had reached her first.

“Honey—you took so long I got worried about you.” She opened the back door to retrieve the crutches for her cousin.

“Forgive me. I’m afraid I overslept.”

The impassioned woman of a moment ago shot Rick a warning glance that forbid him to add one word of explanation.

Message received, he muttered to himself.

By this time Audra had swung her legs out, displaying amazing agility for someone wearing a full-length leg cast. With Pam’s assistance she stood up and started walking toward the house on her crutches.

Pam put a detaining hand on Rick’s arm. Her demeanor didn’t resemble that of the radiant wife who’d introduced Rick and his father to her male cousins less than an hour ago. Some contentious family issue must have flared up during the time Rick had been gone.