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Authors: Stella Bagwell

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BOOK: The Ranger And The Widow Woman

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Charlie’s eyes roamed her face as his fingers slipped lower. “It should be obvious to you. I’d like to make love to you. For a long, long time.”

Heat suffused her body and turned her face a warm pink. “What’s stopping you?” she asked boldly.

His blue eyes widened just a fraction, and then his hand was suddenly on her breast, circling its roundness, then cupping it in his palm.

“I thought you would,” he said. Then, before she could respond, his head dipped and he was gently biting her nipple through the thin fabric of her robe.

Stunned motionless, Violet couldn’t move away. And then she didn’t want to, as a hot flood of need filled her up and left every muscle in her body lax and helpless to his touch.

His mouth eventually deserted her breast, and she could feel his warm rapid breaths against her as his lips skimmed a trail over the bare skin exposed by her gaping robe. “You would stop me, wouldn’t you? If I lifted you in my arms and carried you to my bed?”

Would she? The way Violet felt at this moment she wasn’t sure she could deny him anything. No man had ever made her feel so heady and reckless, so much a woman. It was a powerful feeling that urged her to forget the logic in her head and lose herself in the magic of his touch. But a part of her knew making love to Charlie was akin to an alcoholic reaching for a bottle. The first drink would never be enough.

“Sam is just outside. He could come in any minute.”

His lips moved across her cheek and hovered over hers. “Is that the only thing stopping you?”

Her knees began to quiver, and she realized her hands were gripping his forearms. “No. I...”

He didn’t let her finish. Suddenly she was crushed against his chest, and his lips were consuming hers. Not with anger, but with white-hot desire.

She was clinging weakly to him by the time he let her breathe again. The first thing she saw when her eyelids fluttered open was the glitter of his mocking smile.

“Now who’s lying?” he asked.

She shoved against his chest. It was like pushing against a six-foot boulder. “Let me go! You don’t want me.
Any
woman would satisfy you. Just so long as you could keep her under your thumb and know she’d stay safely at home while you were out playing with your six-shooter.”

In the short time she’d known him, Violet had never seen his face go so hard and threatening. “What would you know about it?”

The cool softness of his voice left her insides shivering. “Justine said your woman left you. And from all you’ve just told me, I can make my own deductions. Your job comes first, and anything else is just an afterthought.”

“Angela was never
my
woman. And what could you know about my job?”

Her chin lifted a fraction. “Not much. Why don’t you tell me?”

He studied her with icy calmness. “Because I don’t want to,” he said, then turned his back to her and headed out of the room. “Go make breakfast. I’ve got a phone call to make.”

Violet stared after his retreating back as the weight of rejection enveloped her like a heavy, black cloud. The only thing Charlie wanted from her was a plain ole romp in the hay. Nothing more. In his own way he was just as selfish as her father had been, as Brent had been and then, later, Rex. Now Charlie. Was it her lot in life to be used by men?

Doing her best to swallow away the raw tears in her throat, Violet headed to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Violet lifted her head and flexed her aching shoulders. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table for nearly two hours, pouring over the ledger and the checks and receipts Justine had given her nearly two weeks ago.

She liked keeping books for Charlie’s mother. The older woman was so laid-back and undemanding that Violet had to remind herself she was actually working for her. But each night after Sam went to bed and Violet pulled out the ledger, she was haunted by all she’d left behind in Amarillo.

By now Rex had to be enraged over her leaving and taking his grandson with her. He’d probably already sent some of his hired thugs out to search for her. Thank God they hadn’t caught up to her yet.

With a weary sigh, she rubbed her eyes and glanced down at the open pages of debits and credits. Justine’s was a simple bookkeeping system, one that a high school student could easily understand. Rex’s books at the O’Dell Packing Company had been a different story. Everything was on computer file, where hundreds of entries were made during a work week.

There were times Violet wished she wasn’t so good with numbers. Otherwise she might never have picked up on the fact that Rex and his friends had been running stolen cattle through the slaughterhouse.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes as she recalled the moment she’d confronted her father-in-law about her discovery. At first he’d laughed at her accusations. But the moment she’d informed him she was going to contact the law, he’d turned dangerous and threatening.

Furiously, he’d told Violet he wasn’t about to let her take him down over a few measly head of cattle. And he had no intentions of allowing her to leave with Sam. He wanted his grandchild near him and he’d go to any means to see that he kept him. Even blackmail.

The agonizing thought propelled Violet out of her chair, and she walked barefoot over to the screen door leading out to the backyard.

She didn’t know how Rex had found out about her brush with the law back in Georgia, but he had and he wouldn’t hesitate to use it in a custody battle over Sam. True he might not win. But a judge would hardly look at a mother favorably when she’d been caught attempting to hawk stolen goods. Of course she hadn’t known anything her father had given her to take to the pawn shop had been stolen. She’d done it to please him, to help him because he was broke and hungry. Violet’s mistake had been in thinking her father had been hungry for food rather than liquor.

Forcing the humiliating scrape to the back of her mind, she pressed her nose against the screen and gazed out at the summer night. The sun had fallen behind the mountains more than two hours ago, but Charlie still wasn’t home. Since the morning his mother had brought him a message, he’d gradually been away from the cabin more and more every day. She didn’t know what he was doing. And she hadn’t asked. But she wondered. And she missed him. Terribly.

The sound of a truck became a steady hum in the distance, and then she heard it pull to a stop in front of the house. She told herself to stay put. If it was Charlie, she didn’t want to rush to the door and give him the idea she was eager to see him. Since he’d taunted her about making love with him, she’d purposely stayed a safe distance from him and kept her thoughts to herself.

“What are you doing still up?”

She turned around to see him standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen. His jeans and blue chambray shirt were covered with dust, and beneath the brim of his straw hat, she could see lines of exhaustion on his face.

Telling herself he would resent any sort of comfort she might offer him, she jammed her hands down in the pockets on her shorts and moved back to the table where she’d left her bookwork.

“Working on your mother’s ledger.”

He frowned. “She doesn’t expect you to do all that in a few short days. Besides, it’s only for tax purposes. She won’t need it until the middle of August.”

Violet began to gather the papers together and stuff them back into a box. Behind her, Charlie went to the refrigerator and pulled out a soft drink.

“That’s more than six weeks away. I won’t be here the middle of August. And, anyway, I don’t like to leave work undone.” She carried the box and the ledger over to a cabinet and safely stored them away. When she turned back, Charlie had taken a seat at the table. She didn’t know why it felt so good to look at him or why it was unbearable to think of the time she would eventually leave here.

“Speaking of work,” she told him, “this afternoon I finished hanging the last bit of wallpaper in the bathroom.”

With a tired groan, he propped his dusty boots out in front of him. “You should have waited until I could help you. I don’t expect you to do things like that on your own.”

“If I waited on you, things would never get done.”

“Getting in a hurry to leave?”

With each day that passed, leaving was becoming more and more on Violet’s mind. Her car was being repaired, and though she hadn’t done enough work to warrant the cost of repairing her engine, she was considering giving the mechanic a check on her bank account back in Amarillo.

Rex would eventually receive her bank statement in the mail and the canceled check would be a giveaway as to where she’d been staying. But by then she could be long gone. Maybe even all the way to northern California. It might be worth the chance if it would get her and Sam out of this house sooner. Because each day, each hour, that passed told her she and her son were becoming far too entrenched in this Texas Ranger’s life.

“Maybe,” she said quietly.

He studied the bottle of cola in his hand. “What’s the matter? You don’t like the jobs I’ve been giving you?”

She turned her back to him and picked up a cracker from a basket on the counter. The little paint and papering jobs he’d given her to do so far had been next to nothing. It was him and her growing feelings for him that she didn’t like.

“I don’t mind work. I just...feel the need to get back on the road. We need to find a place soon. I want Sam to be settled into a home and neighborhood before he enrolls in kindergarten. Starting school is an important time for a child, I want him to be happy and secure.”

“If you’re so concerned about Sam’s security, why the hell did you run off from Amarillo in the first place?” he growled at her.

His unexpected question shocked Violet and she whirled around to face him.

“Because I...” Her mouth opened, but the words jammed in her throat. She couldn’t tell this man anything! If she told him she’d discovered her father-in-law was a thief and had done nothing to stop it, he would consider her just as guilty as Rex! He’d certainly want to know why she hadn’t gone to the law before now. But she couldn’t tell him. The whole thing was too humiliating, and she doubted he would believe her innocence, anyway.

She swallowed and glanced away from him. “I didn’t like living with my father-in-law,” she said bluntly.

Charlie didn’t say anything as he studied her for long moments. “Did you always live with him or has it been just since your husband died?”

She let out a small sigh. “Brent and I always lived with his father. He had a huge house, and his wife had died years before. When we first married it seemed the sensible thing to do. The house was nice, and Sam had plenty of space to play. Rex didn’t really stick his nose into our business. But things changed after Brent died.” Frowning, she shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It’s not important.”

“It was important enough to make you run.”

Run
. Funny that he should use that particular word, because that’s exactly what she’d done. Run as hard and fast as she could.

She didn’t make any sort of reply. She was afraid to. Something about Charlie brought everything to the surface in Violet, and she knew it wouldn’t take much for her to break down and tell him the whole nasty lot of her past life.

“Did your father-in-law make sexual advances toward you? Is that the part you’re not telling me?” Charlie moved closer.

Her heart cringed. She wanted to believe Charlie was asking because he actually cared, but common sense told her he simply saw her as his job. “What makes you think there’s a part I’m not telling you?”

He snorted. “I’ve known there was another part of you since the first day I met you.”

The certainty in his voice both irked and frightened Violet. Why did the man have to be so intuitive? But moreover, why had he ever brought her home with him in the first place?

She twisted around to find him only inches away. Her heart nearly stopped as she looked into his blue eyes, the male scent of him enveloping her.

“If you thought I was lying to you, why did you ever offer to help me?”

He inched closer until his thighs were very nearly brushing against hers. “I didn’t say you were lying. You’re just holding something back.”

He was too close for comfort in more ways than one. But like always when he was near, she couldn’t seem to tear herself away from him. Physically or mentally.

She drew in a deep breath in hopes it would calm her racing heart. “I told you I didn’t want to live with my father-in-law anymore. He...wasn’t coming on to me or anything like that. It was Sam that I was worried about. Rex wanted to take complete control of him. He wanted him to be his son instead of mine.”

Charlie’s calculating gaze roamed her face. “The man just lost his son. I can see how he’d want to use Sam to replace him.”

Relieved, she nodded. “That’s exactly what was happening.”

“I suppose you told him all this?”

She nodded once again. “It didn’t do any good. Rex is...a bully of a man. He gets what he wants no matter who he has to run over in the process.”

BOOK: The Ranger And The Widow Woman

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