Water Witch (2 page)

“Mr. Garrett?”

“Sam,” he said. “Call me Sam.”

Max’s unblinking gaze traveled his length from head to foot and back again. Sam Garrett was a big one, she thought. At least six feet four, he was slim-hipped and square-jawed, and his shoulders seemed to fill the door frame. He had a ruddy, weathered complexion which had probably sported a mass of freckles as a kid, and a shock of red hair, thick and unruly, fell across his forehead. Power radiated from him like a generator. Here was a man used to calling all the shots. Under other circumstances she might have found him fascinating. He was some kind of a hunk—and she suspected he knew it—but now, all she could think of was that her only hope was about to go down the tubes.

She met his squint-eyed stare and swallowed. “Where’s the deputy?”

“Gone,” Sam said, still staring at her as if he were about to eat her alive.

Max wrung her hands and swallowed again. “Do you need to go to a hospital? How bad is your leg?”

“My leg?”

“Yes, your leg . . . the window . . . your leg.”

“Oh, my leg,” Sam said as if coming out of a fog. Glancing down, he lifted his foot and bent his knee a couple of times, testing. “It’s just a little bruised, skinned up some maybe.” He looked up and flashed a sexy, lopsided grin. “Angel, to make up for it you could probably kiss it and make it better.”

Her jaw dropped, then her eyes narrowed as fury flashed through her. With clenched fists on her hips and feet planted apart, Max glared at him. “It’ll be a cold day in hell, Mr. Garrett. What do you mean by breaking into my bedroom and scaring the pants off me?”

Sam’s grin widened as his gaze swept her figure, revealed even more clearly with the stance she’d adopted. His gaze rested at the juncture of her legs. “Oh, is that where they went?”

Max drew her brows in a puzzled frown and looked down at herself. Mortification pulled the blood from her face. Dear Lord, she was nearly naked as a jaybird. With all the excitement, she’d forgotten that she was clad only in a short batiste nightshirt.

When he chuckled, she glared at him again.

“Ohhhhh, you . . . you . . .” Turning, she stomped into the bedroom and slammed the door so hard that all thirteen of Mrs. Barton’s bluebonnet paintings rattled on the walls.

Dowser looked up from under the bed, and she could have sworn he grinned. She scowled at him.

Rummaging through her suitcase. Max found a pair of cotton panties and pulled them on. She located a long plaid robe in the closet and donned it, muttering invectives against Sam Garrett as she snapped every snap from throat to hem. When she was done, she grabbed Dowser’s collar and hauled him up.

“Come on, you lily-livered beast. At least you can pretend to be a watchdog. Heel!”

Max reached for the doorknob, knowing it was too much to hope that Sam Garrett might be gone. She was right. He sat sprawled in a chintz-covered chair, his big foot propped on a matching ottoman, his pants leg pulled up to reveal a nasty scrape on his shin. Already it was turning various shades of purple. The moment she saw his leg, Max’s righteous indignation dissolved.

“That looks awful. Let me get the first-aid kit.” Turning to Dowser she commanded, “Sit. Stay.”

She went back into the bedroom for her kit, and when she returned, she found the Doberman and the man watching each other carefully. It was hard to tell which one was more nervous. Biting her lip to keep from giggling, she knelt beside Sam and got antiseptic ointment from the kit.

Sam winced slightly when she applied the cream to the scraped area. “Angel, do you think you could call off the dog? I never did trust big Dobermans.”

Ducking her head to hide her amusement, she said, “He’s well trained. He won’t bother you unless you make any sudden moves. And my name isn’t Angel. It’s Max.”

“Max? What kind of a name is that for a woman?”

“My full name is Angela Maxwell Strahan. My mother’s name was Angela too. I’ve always been called Max. It saved confusion.” She screwed the cap back on the ointment, not bothering to add that her father had told her she wasn’t fit to be called by her mother’s name.

“Tell me, Angela Maxwell Strahan, what are you doing in Buck and Honey Bear’s house?”

“I’m working on a project for Mr. Barton. I’d planned to camp out but he wouldn’t hear of it.” Max taped a couple of gauze pads over the abrasion and replaced the supplies in the kit. “Hell, lil’ lady,” she said, tucking her chin and giving a perfect imitation of Buck Barton’s gravelly bass, “ain’t no sense in that. We’ve got a weekend place on the river up there sittin’ empty as a church on Monday morning. We won’t be usin’ it for a spell. Honey Bear’s draggin’ me off to New York City to get some new duds and to go to some of them high-priced art stores.” Max smiled at the memory of the gruff old wildcatter who was one of the richest men in Houston. “He said to make myself ta home.”

Sam laughed. “That sounds like Buck all right.”

Sitting back on her heels, Max looked up at Sam. “Now you know what I’m doing here. What are you doing here? And why were you trying to break in?”

“I wasn’t breaking in.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Funny, you could have fooled me. Most people use doors.”

Glancing back and forth from the dog to Max, Sam said, “The Bartons’ housekeeper in Houston told me today when I called that my aunt and uncle were in New York for a few days. I was headed for my place down the road, and when I saw the lights on here, I thought maybe some kids were taking advantage of an empty house to have a party. They’ve been known to do that sometimes. I knocked on the damned door for five minutes and nobody answered.”

“Oh,” Max said, feeling foolish. “I thought you were a tree limb.”

“A tree limb?”

“Yes, a tree limb. Banging against the house in the wind. I told Dowser that’s what it was.”

“Dowser?”

She nodded toward the Doberman, still sitting where she had commanded, his shoulders quivering as he eyed the man in the chair.

Sam squirmed. “Has he had his dinner? He looks hungry to me.”

She suppressed a smile. “He’s been fed.” Then taking pity on them both, she rose and commanded, “Dowser, heel.” Both of the two big males seemed relieved when she closed Dowser in the bedroom, but she felt uncomfortable being alone with Sam Garrett. Even with her back to him, she could feel his green-eyed gaze on her.

And she’d noticed that his eyes were an unusual green, as green as the junipers that clung to the rocky hillsides. No, they were more like translucent jade, more the color of the Guadalupe when sunlight shimmered on its surface.

Turning to face him, she discovered she was right. He was gazing at her as if her robe were invisible, as if those Guadalupe green eyes were magnets pulling her toward him. For a moment she could only stand and stare, as mesmerized by the flesh and blood man in the chair as she had been by the monster on the television screen. She could feel the same kind of reactions: a flutter in her stomach, a prickling of her skin, a pulsing in her neck. Somehow he frightened her, which was strange. Men had never frightened Max, only monsters. And Sam Garrett was no monster—he was all man.

After she had stood there staring for what seemed like an eternity, she cleared her throat and glanced anxiously around the room. “Would you like something to drink?” Why had she asked him that? She didn’t want him to stay. She wanted him to go. He made her nervous.

“I’d like that,” he said, his deep voice a rumbling caress. “I don’t think Honey Bear would mind if we raided her brandy.”

When he smiled, a slow, lopsided lift of his lips that crinkled his eyes and deepened the grooves bracketing his mouth, Max felt as if she might dissolve into a puddle on the braided rug. Her fingers fidgeted in the pockets of the plaid robe. She cleared her throat again. “I’ll fix it,” she said, and hurried to the bar beside the huge stone fireplace that stretched across one end of the room.

Sam sucked in a ragged breath and, with his elbow propped against the chair arm, dropped his head into his hand. His fingers massaged his damp forehead. Godamighty, he was sweating. He’d never had a woman affect him so. Those black eyes of hers had about burned him to a crisp. He’d wanted to grab her and kiss those full pink lips and touch her all over. Angela Maxwell Strahan was some kind of woman: full of spit and vinegar and sexy as hell. He had a feeling she’d tackle a tiger and come out with him by the tail.

Yet, for all her gutsiness, there was something else he saw behind those dark eyes. Maybe it was just nervousness. She didn’t know him from Adam, and he had tried to break in the house, had nearly scared the pants off her. Recalling their earlier exchange, he grinned. Yes, she was some kind of woman. And he wanted to see more of her—again. He groaned when he remembered the soft curves visible beneath her thin nightshirt.

“Are you in pain?”

He looked up to see Max standing beside him, frowning. “Just a little,” he said, feeling a twinge of guilt for the lie. His leg was the furthest thing from his mind. Reaching for the snifter she offered, he gave a blatantly theatrical sigh and said, “I may have to stay here overnight so you can nurse me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come off it, Garrett.” Sure, the project was vital to her, but she’d be damned if she’d play games with this overgrown redhead to keep it—no matter how attracted she was to him. Sinking into the sofa that matched the chair he was sprawled in, she tucked her legs under her. “You’ve probably been hurt worse playing football lots of times.”

“Why do you think I played football?”

“Because you’re as big as the side of a house. Didn’t you play football?”

He shook his head. “Do I look crazy? I’m a gentle kind of guy; I didn’t want to get my brains mashed out. I played a little baseball in high school and college.”

“And what do you do now?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing.” He took a sip of brandy and rested the snifter on his stomach. Looking a bit smug, he added, “As of today, I’m retired.”

“Retired? Aren’t you too young to retire?”

“Nope. Too old. I’d planned to retire by the time I was thirty-five. I missed it by a year.”

His comments infuriated Max. Here was this big brute, obviously from a wealthy family, and he could retire. Here she was, she who had worked her buns off for everything she had, struggling to survive. Dammit, life wasn’t fair.

“I suppose now you can spend your time sitting on the front porch rocking and whittling,” she said, doing nothing to hide the caustic bite of her disdain.

“Now there’s an idea,” Sam said, nodding, ignoring her sarcasm. “I may even learn to chew tobacco and spit.” Then he grinned. “Actually, I plan to do some fishing, some more building around my place, raise a few sheep, maybe some chickens. And I intend to devote a lot of time to painting. It’s something I’ve always wanted time for. The scenery around here is perfect for it.”

Max regretted her snide remarks. After all, her troubles weren’t Sam’s fault. “Sounds nice.” Her finger absently traced the rim of her snifter. “So you’re an artist.”

He shrugged, then abruptly changed the direction of their conversation. “What kind of project are you doing for Buck?”

She reached for her purse on the coffee table, pulled out a business card, and handed it to him. She didn’t mention that the ink was barely dry and the cards weren’t paid for yet. “I’m the owner of the Never Miss Drilling Company. I’m here to locate water on Mr. Barton’s hilltop south of Kerrville and drill a well for Mrs. Barton.”

Sam let out a whoop of laughter and Max glared at him. “What’s so damned funny?” she asked, grinding her teeth to keep from kicking his good leg.

“Sweetheart, you don’t look like any water well driller I’ve ever seen. And in any case, there’s no water on that property Honey Bear wants to build a house on. I know. As a favor to my uncle, I had my best drilling crew sink seven or eight holes up there. If there was any good water to be found, they’d have found it. It’s nothing but a pile of rocks with a pretty view. Don’t waste your time and Buck’s money.”

“Do you have a drilling company?”

“No, until today I had a heavy construction company—airports, football stadiums, that kind of thing. But we often had to drill wells to provide our own source of water for construction. My crew was headed by a top-notch man. If he said there was no water, there was no water.”

A terrible sinking feeling crawled in the pit of her stomach. Sam must have been the nephew who, as Buck said, “drilled a bunch of doodlebug holes that were drier than a liar’s lips.” She wouldn’t allow herself to believe that there was no water on the hill. There had to be. Buck Barton had a hunch there was. He hadn’t made millions as an oil wildcatter without good hunches. She had to believe him. She needed that seventy-five thousand dollars.

“I’m a geologist. And a damned good one,” she said. “Don’t worry about Buck’s money. Our deal is: If I don’t hit, he doesn’t pay. If there’s water to be found, I’ll find it.” Plunking her glass down, she stood and glared at Sam Garrett. “Now get yourself and your . . . leg out of here. I’ve got to go to bed. Some of us have to work for a living!”

Elbows to her sides, Max clutched the prongs of a forked willow branch, holding them tightly in her upturned fists. Watching the skyward-pointed tip for any movement, she slowly picked a path over the rough ground. Despite her thick-soled field boots, the jagged rocks and gravel made her search tedious.