Carla Cassidy - Home on the Ranch - Oklahoma - Defending the Rancher's Daughter / The Rancher Bodyguard

She refused to rise to his bait. “So, could you tell what happened? How the fire started?”

He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “I’m taking you to my place for the night.”

She sat straighter in the seat. “I can’t leave,” she protested.

“You can’t stay, at least not for the rest of the night.” He placed the key in the ignition and started the engine. “I already told Sonny I’d make arrangements for you for tonight and he’s posting a guard so nobody will go into the house through the damaged area.”

“Zack, I can’t leave my home.”

“You can for tonight.” His voice held a firmness that brooked no argument. He put the truck in gear and pulled away.

Kate frowned, a flutter of worry coursing through her. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you this, I believe you about the stampede.”

Of all the things she’d expected him to say, this hadn’t been one of them. “How did we get from here to there?” she asked as they drove through the Bent Tree Ranch gates.

“I believe that it’s possible somebody intentionally spooked your herd in an effort to hurt you because of what I found when I broke down your front door to get you out of that burning bedroom.”

“What did you find?” Her heart began to hammer an unnatural rhythm.

“Somebody had tied a rope from your doorknob to the bathroom doorknob, making certain you wouldn’t be able to get out of that room.” He cast her a quick glance, his eyes glittering in the light from the dashboard. “Somebody tried to kill you tonight, Katie.”

Zack tightened his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought of the rope he’d found, the rope that had made it impossible for Katie to escape the inferno of her bedroom. It had been a devious mechanism for death.

He felt her gaze on him, stunned and with more than a touch of fear. He glanced at her, noting her widened electric-blue eyes, the paleness of her skin beneath the thick layer of soot.

“The way I see it, the plan was that you would probably be overcome by smoke, the fire would overwhelm the house and that rope would have eventually burned away, leaving no trace of its existence.”

“Who spotted the fire?” she asked. Her voice held the slightest tremble.

“I did. I couldn’t sleep so I stepped outside the bunkhouse and just happened to glance toward the main house. That’s when I saw the flames and sounded the alarm.”

“So, if you’d gotten a good night’s sleep you probably would have found me dead in the morning.”

His hands once again tightened on the steering wheel. “It would seem that was the intent.”

She leaned back against the seat and released a weary sigh. “Any suspicions on who might have set the fire?”

He turned down the narrow road that led to the West property, wishing he had a different answer for her than the one he had. “None. When I woke up I just assumed all the men in the bunkhouse were sleeping, but appearances can be deceiving.”

“So it might or might not have been one of the men in the bunkhouse.” Her voice was as weary as he’d ever heard it.

“Katie, we’re not going to figure this out tonight. I’ll call Ramsey, but it’s too dark for anything to be done tonight. Let’s just get to my place, shower off the soot and smoke and get a few hours of sleep.” He felt her gaze on him and turned to meet it. “What?”

“I don’t even know where your place is. Do you live with your father and Smokey?”

“No, I live in a two-bedroom house that was originally built for the ranch manager. It’s small, nothing fancy, but it’s my space and gives me my privacy.”

They didn’t speak again as he pulled through the gates of the West ranch and he drove past the large, sprawling ranch house. “What’s that?” she asked as his headlights fell on a smaller house that was in the building process.

“That’s Tanner’s place. It burned down several weeks ago. While he’s on his honeymoon, he’s got a crew of men working to rebuild it.”

“Yes I heard about that. Are fires a normal occurrence in the lives of the West men?” she asked dryly.

He offered her a tight grin. “I’d say it’s less about the West men and more about the women they choose to hang out with.”

He wondered how long she could maintain her calm, her seemingly nonchalant attitude in the face of her own attempted murder. He had a feeling she was suffering some sort of shock.

No lights shone from the small, two-bedroom cabin Zack called home. As he pulled up front he recognized that over the past couple of hours his mind had gone from unwilling investigator to determined bodyguard.

His head clicked and whirled with suppositions and possibilities as he parked and shut off the engine. “I want you to wait here while I check things out inside,” he said.

By moonlight he once again saw her eyes widen. “Surely you can’t believe somebody might be inside waiting for us.”

“If I’m to believe what you told me about the stampede and with what happened tonight at your place, I’d be a fool not to consider any and all possibilities. I’ll check things out, then we’ll get settled inside.”

Armed with a heavy-duty flashlight that he pulled from beneath his seat, he left her locked in the truck. As he approached his front door he cursed the fact that he didn’t have his gun by his side, but rather had left it in the storage trunk at the foot of his bed in Katie’s bunkhouse.

When he’d seen the flames of the fire, his gun had been the last thing on his mind. All he’d thought about was getting to the house and getting her out of danger.

He had another gun inside and vowed that from now on he would go nowhere without a weapon. Using the powerful beam from the flashlight, he checked around the front door, making sure nothing appeared out of place or that the lock didn’t appear tampered with.

He recognized that he was being overly cautious. Nobody could have known that he’d spirit Katie away to his place for the night, but he’d rather err on the side of caution just to be safe.

He unlocked the door and carefully eased it open, all senses on alert. He flipped on the light switch that illuminated the living room. Before going further into the house he went to the small desk, opened the bottom drawer and withdrew the 9 mm.

Armed with the gun, he set aside the flashlight and systematically checked the remainder of the two-bedroom cabin. It took only minutes for him to clear the cabin and to feel secure that nobody had been inside since he’d last been here.

He returned to the truck and opened the driver’s door. “It’s okay. You can come on in.”

She got out of the truck and he followed her across the short expanse of grass and through the front door. It was at that moment he realized what she wore.

The silky, short, pink nightgown was smoke-blackened, but clung to her curves and exposed nearly the full length of her long, shapely legs.

For just a brief moment as he walked behind her and took in the figure beneath the skimpy gown, he felt as if he’d plunged back into the flames that had engulfed the side of the house.

The minute they were inside he closed and locked the door. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and stood in the center of the room as if shell-shocked.

“Why don’t I get you some clean clothes and you can get into the shower? Then you can catch a couple hours of sleep before you have to deal with anything else.” He needed her to get out of that gown and into something, anything, less revealing. He had a feeling that if she stood just right in the light he’d be able to see right through the gauzy material.

She nodded and he went into his bedroom and found her a black T-shirt and a pair of boxers. From the hall linen closet he grabbed a clean towel and washcloth, then returned to the living room to find that she hadn’t moved.