Chapter Three
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“How was lunch?” Hunter asked when Jo entered the kitchen again later that afternoon. He’d been helping Lena but had come back to the house for a drink, and—if he was honest—in the hopes of finding Jo home. He’d given her space for several hours. Now it was time to mend some fences.
“It was fine.”
She was still keeping her distance—and she didn’t want to look him in the eye. Was that because she was angry? Or because she didn’t want him to read what was on her mind? He thought she was curious about him.
Was she hoping for another kiss?
Thinking about the way she felt in his arms had kept him up half the night. He could use another kiss right about now.
“Hey, look—I shouldn’t have said what I said earlier.” The apology felt awkward. Hunter realized he didn’t make them too often. His wasn’t in the line of work for pleasantries. You made decisions, you carried them out, you moved on.
“No, you were right; I was running from a confrontation.” Jo hesitated near the door. “Thing is, I don’t like confrontations much—not with family.”
“Most people don’t. But the more you hold your ground and face arguments, the more people will listen to you.”
“No one listens to me around here.”
Hunter thought about the respect he’d heard in Connor’s voice about the way she’d handled Grant’s attack. “Is that true?” he asked.
Jo, who had just crossed the room to pull a glass from a cupboard, stopped. “Of course it’s true. You heard Cass bossing me around yesterday.”
“I heard her expressing an opinion. You had a different one. That’s how people communicate.”
“She wasn’t expressing an opinion.” Jo finger-quoted the phrase. “She was telling me what to do.”
“But she’s not your mother. You don’t have to listen to her, right? So is the problem that she’s bossing you around? Or is the problem that you’re letting her?”
“Why don’t you butt out of it?”
Jo was getting angry, and he sounded far more like a dad than a potential boyfriend, which wouldn’t accomplish anything. Hunter decided to change the topic. “Let’s talk about the house. We need to get a move on to get it done before the weather changes.” It was early September. He figured by mid-October it would cool off considerably.
“You’d better believe it.” She pulled the glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. Tabitha wound around her ankles, and she reached down to pet the cat absently.
“Any thoughts about what you want?” It was like walking on eggshells. If she was in his unit, he’d tell her to get over herself and get her mind on the job. He couldn’t do that with Jo. Was he ready for this? he wondered, not for the first time. He was a man who’d spent far too much time with other men, in difficult situations, doing jobs that were far from glamorous. Would he be able to settle down and make Jo a good husband?
“What size house can you get done?” Jo stood up again and Tabitha wandered off.
At least that was a direct question. One he could answer. He gladly shook off his dark thoughts. “Here’s the thing. If you want to build a house, the first thing you’ll run up against is the permitting process. That takes time, and we don’t have time. There’s a way to get around that, though.” He’d looked into home building briefly the night before, spotted the problem immediately and had searched for an answer.
“How?”
“Build small—and in our case, build mobile.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we buy a metal trailer—not the house kind; just a frame with wheels, the kind you use to haul things around. We build your little house on top of the trailer. Park it anywhere you like. If you want to move it to a new location later, we just hitch it up and move it again.”
“That’s going to be small.”
“Maybe not as small as you think. Think of it like an Airstream; big enough to be comfortable, as long as you keep the weight down. I’ve got a lot of ideas.”
“So do I,” she rushed to say.
“I found someone advertising a frame like that online,” he told her. He pulled out his phone and found the ad. “Take a look at this. Here are the dimensions.”
“One hundred and eighty square feet,” she mused.
Hunter couldn’t help noting the dusting of freckles over her fair skin. Sweet. Like she was.
He cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “How about we go outside and find where to put this thing?”
Maybe Hunter had learned his lesson. He was sure treating her better than he had earlier. He was listening to her. She liked that.
Jo followed him outside, noting again his tall stature and the wide spread of his shoulders. His body had felt awfully good pressed against hers last night when they were dancing, and she’d found herself thinking about being close to him in an entirely different way.
That was natural, she told herself. He was a man, she was a woman. Of course they’d think about each other. That didn’t mean she’d let him get past her guard.
“One thing to consider when you’re talking about location is where you have utilities already in place,” Hunter said. “I get that you want to be on your own, but if you build too far away, it’ll be a big spend to hook up your house to new water lines and so on. We should keep it reasonable. It’s only a temporary house, after all.”
“I’m okay being close,” Jo hurried to say. His reasoning made sense. Besides, as much as she wanted to have her own place, last night, lying in bed, she’d begun to picture sleeping alone—away from everyone else. She’d never been afraid of that kind of thing before, but she was a realist. Her family’s problems weren’t over—that was clear. It was obvious the first men who’d tried to grab their land hadn’t been working alone. They’d been hired by someone who wanted a property big enough to hide a drug-running and manufacturing operation. Why that person hadn’t simply bought a property of their own, Jo couldn’t say, but it was clear that first failure had angered him. In revenge, he’d sent Grant Kimball and his friend, Ron Cooper, to extort enough money from her family to recoup his losses from the first debacle.
Now Grant was dead, and Ron had been extradited back to Tennessee, where he had outstanding warrants. Whoever was behind the trouble probably was based there. “They must be trying to establish a pipeline,” Cab had told them. “To open up a new territory. They’ve lost men and money now, and it feels to me that whoever is at the head of this is taking it personally. You all have to watch out.”
Jo pictured Grant again, charging into the kitchen, a pistol in his hand. The way she’d played drugged by Sadie’s sedative tea. Waited for her chance—and nearly panicked when he’d tossed her over his shoulder to carry her off.
The way she’d grabbed the knife from the counter and plunged it into his back.
It hadn’t stopped him—had only bought her and the others time to hide in the carriage house in Alice’s studio.
She’d hoped he’d leave then. But he’d kept coming.
No matter what they did.
Kept coming up the stairs. Attacking them. Waving the gun at them.
Until they’d all scrambled to fight over it on the landing, and she’d taken it from him just as he’d thrown Sadie down the stairs.
So she’d shot him.
She’d shot him—and she’d do it again.
“Jo? Jo? You paying attention?”
“Of course I’m paying attention,” she snapped. “I want the house here.” She stopped only a few dozen paces from the main house along the track toward the outbuildings. “Right here.”
“Here?” Hunter looked from the main house to the empty grass before them. “I thought—” He broke off, shook his head. “Here’s just fine, I guess.”
“It won’t be hard to get utilities here, right?” she demanded. She knew he thought she was being cowardly. She wasn’t; she was being sensible. Why did everyone think she was such a ninny? Sure, it would be nice to park her tiny house in the woods or on a peak with a beautiful view, but neither of those options were practical with a pack of killers out to get them, and she was nothing if not practical.
“No. Shouldn’t be hard at all. I think it’s a great location. And you know what? You can do some landscaping to make it stand apart. We could even put up a little picket fence.”
She looked at him askance. Was he making fun of her?
He must have sensed her question. “Think about it. You could ham it up. Take this tiny little house and make a tiny little yard, a little garden. Like it was—”
“A child’s house?” She balled her hands into fists. He was making fun of her.
“That’s not what I meant at all. Like—a cottage. A witch’s cottage. Something out of a fairy tale. Damn it—” He waved a hand. “I can see it in my head. I don’t know how to describe it.”
Jo could see it in her head, too. She knew she shouldn’t, but she reached out and touched his wrist, needing to be sure their shared vision really was shared. She’d know if he was mocking her. She’d also know if he was picturing something special.
His skin was warm, his wrist wide, muscled and strong. She sensed in him a need to please her. A desire to create something perfect—something beautiful. Something magic—like he thought she was.
Jo swallowed hard, suddenly off balance. “You mean, make it look like it’s meant to be there,” she said in a quieter tone, dropping her hand to her side. “Like it’s always been there.”
“Exactly. Maybe a picket fence is all wrong.”
She understood what he meant to say; they could gear the landscaping around the house to its own size to make it look like it was all intentional and like it belonged.
“That’s a good idea,” she said grudgingly.
“Thanks.”
Max loped up to them from the direction of the house, and Hunter bent down to give the young dog a good rubbing. “Aren’t you handsome?” he asked. Max licked his nose in answer. “I’m jealous of Connor,” Hunter said. “Are you going to breed more puppies soon, Jo? Could I have one?”
“It’ll be about six months before I breed his mother again.” She wrapped her arms across her chest, suddenly uncertain about everything. Who was this man her father had sent? Was he truly as different from the others as he seemed to be?
“Guess I’ll have to be patient. I can still be your uncle, can’t I, Max?”
The dog wriggled under Hunter’s attention, tail wagging furiously.
Jo couldn’t help herself; she bent down and touched Hunter’s wrist again, needing to check that his words matched what was in his heart. She’d learned the hard way—twice—how important that was. This time she felt warmth, care and happiness emanating from him, and her heart softened. The waiting list for her dogs was a mile long, but she didn’t think she’d tell Hunter that.
She’d make sure he got a puppy from the next litter.
“I’ll think about your ideas,” Jo said and continued into the house.
Hunter stayed to play with Max until his phone vibrated in his pocket, then he stood up, pulled it out, nodded in satisfaction when he saw the caller’s name and lifted the phone to his ear.
“Hey, Marlon.” He watched Jo slip into the kitchen.
“I’m still here. Still behaving myself.”
The two sentences were as terse as every communication with Marlon had been lately.
“Glad to hear it.” Hunter knew it was costing his friend to do the mature thing in the situation he found himself in. He wanted out of the Navy badly. His marriage was disintegrating, and Hunter figured it was hell for Marlon to cool his heels waiting for his time to be up. Only another month and a half and he’d be home free. It was Hunter’s job to make sure he didn’t bolt a day sooner.
Marlon grunted, and Hunter knew he was about to hang up. “Heard anything from the home front?” he hurried to ask.
“Yeah. May’s lawyers got in touch yesterday.”
Hunter’s heart fell. His friend was in a world of pain and he wished he could help, but there was little to do except encourage Marlon to safeguard his future. He wished he could shake May, but was it really anyone’s fault when a marriage didn’t pan out? Marlon and May had gotten hitched too young and the passion they’d felt back then hadn’t survived the struggle of starting out and raising kids. Marlon’s son was twelve. His daughter nine. It was killing Marlon that his family was falling apart.
“What’d they say?”
“The paperwork is coming. I should sign it. Not make things harder than they have to be.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Sorry doesn’t help, does it? I need to see her. Talk to her. She’s going to have me on a schedule! A schedule to see my own freaking kids!”
“Settle down. You need to do this right.” Hunter paced first one way, then the other on the dirt track.
“You shouldn’t have stopped me when I tried to—”
“Marlon!” Hunter stood stock still. “You serious about that?” His friend had nearly taken a drastic step some months back. Hunter had left everything behind to help him.
Marlon sighed. “No. I’m not serious. This is just… fucked up. She’s taking my kids, Hunter.”
“She’s not taking them,” Hunter reasoned. “She’s trying to make the best of a bad deal, don’t you think?”
“No. I don’t think. I don’t think she’s thinking at all. Why won’t she fight for us? What about counseling? Isn’t that supposed to fix everything?”
Hunter began to pace again, not bringing up the fact it was Marlon who’d refused to go to counseling last year when May had asked him to. One of their issues, Hunter thought, was that May had refused to do the typical Navy-wife thing. She wouldn’t live on base. Wouldn’t move to be close to Marlon. Instead, she’d stayed in the town in which they’d all grown up, which meant Marlon wasn’t home nearly as often as he could have been. And when things began to go badly, he didn’t have the face time he needed with his wife. He was currently stationed at Coronado, far from Alabama.
“I don’t know, buddy. Hang in there, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll hang in there like the chump I am. Hope you’re satisfied.” Marlon hung up.
He was far from satisfied, Hunter thought as he continued toward the house. Marlon’s mood wasn’t good, and a few months ago, when May had first brought up the divorce, it had been even worse. He was worried for his friend. He knew the man had built his life around his family. Without it to anchor him, he was drifting in a bad direction.
As he approached the back porch, he spotted Brian sitting on the wicker love seat, holding a bottle of beer. “You want one?” Brian offered. When Hunter nodded, he got up and went inside, coming back moments later with an open bottle in his hand. He gave it to Hunter, who took a long drag.
“Tough day?” Brian asked.
“Tough five minutes. The rest went okay.”
“Jo giving you trouble?”
“No. A friend from back home. He’s having a bad time. Don’t know if he can hold it together.”
“That’s too bad. How about you? Are you going to hold it together? What do you think your chances are with Jo?”
“I don’t know.” Hunter thought about the way she’d touched his wrist—twice. It had been such an unexpected gesture, it had left him off-kilter. “Maybe better than I’d guessed.”
“Glad to hear it.” Brian clinked bottles with him. “What surprised me when I came here was how compatible with Cass I turned out to be. I mean, what were the chances? I decided the General got lucky, but then Connor came and fell hard for Sadie. And we know how that turned out. Two for two—a hell of a coincidence. Now you’re here.”
“Now I’m here,” Hunter agreed.
“If things work out for you and Jo, it’s going to be downright uncanny.”
“Uncanny seems to be the word for this place from what you and Connor have said.”
“Have you witnessed anything strange yet?” Brian asked him. He shifted in his seat and lifted the bottle of beer to take a swig.
“Not yet,” Hunter lied. He’d keep Jo’s secret.
“Brace yourself. It’ll happen sooner or later.”
The following day, after a morning spent working with Hunter, who true to form had talked little but whose presence kept her all too aware of him, Jo slipped away and headed into town again on her own to the feed store, more to have some time to herself to consider the predicament she was in than because they needed anything. She wound her way through the store, breathing in the familiar musty scents of the animal kibble, and checked out the price of the supplemental feed they’d need for the horses when the weather got worse. Next she moved on to the aisles where dog food was stored, although she didn’t need any of that, either.
She was staring at the large bags of dog food, and trying to figure out her attraction to Hunter, which defied all reason, when a man she didn’t know pointed to the premium brand she usually bought and said, “Seems overpriced, doesn’t it?” He was heavy and swarthy, with a florid face that hinted at too much alcohol and not nearly enough exercise.
“Sometimes it’s worth it to pay for quality, don’t you think?” Jo answered automatically, still buried in her thoughts.
“The cheaper version gets the job done.”
Jo bit back a sharp retort and edged away before she put her disdain into words. Her dogs were her business—and her passion. She wasn’t going to feed them cut-rate kibble.
The man stuck close as she moved down the aisle. He was about Hunter’s age, she estimated. Thirty-four, thirty-five. Somehow the extra flesh on his bones didn’t make him look any younger, or gentler-looking, though. She found herself pulling away. Wanting to move on.
“You got dogs?”
She stopped herself from rolling her eyes at this conversational salvo. “Yes.” She turned her empty cart toward the front of the store, wishing the man would leave her alone. Instead, he followed her down the aisle.
“I could use some advice.”
“Buy the good food,” she said. “That’s a start.”
“About training. What if I want a guard dog? What breed is best?”
“What do you want to guard?”
He pulled back, then smiled an oily smile that made Jo pick up her pace. “Smarter than you look, aren’t you?”
She bristled. She looked smart.
“I mean, you’re young,” he went on. “No one would blame you for being a little dumb.”
Who the hell was this guy? She grabbed a random chew toy from the end of a rack, wanting to bring something home to amuse Max while Connor was away but wanting to get out of the store as soon as possible. She reached the till and pushed her cart as close to the next customer in line as she dared.
“You didn’t answer my question,” the man said.
“You didn’t answer mine either.” She was relieved when the customer ahead of her finished his transaction and she was able to push her cart forward. “Hi, Penny. How are you today?” she asked the middle-aged woman at the till.
“Fine. You?” Penny scanned the bar code on the chew toy.
“Maybe I’ll see you around,” the man told Jo. “We can talk more then.”
“Maybe.” Jo kept her gaze on Penny. She hoped she never saw the guy again. One thing she’d learned early; you could tell a lot about people based on how they treated their pets. This man was the opposite of Hunter. She could tell without touching him he didn’t give a damn about dogs. Which meant he wouldn’t give a damn about her, either.
She remembered Hunter’s words. That she had to make her own decisions—set her own boundaries. Maybe it was time to set some boundaries right now. “Actually, I doubt it,” she said loudly.
The man stiffened. “Doubt what?”
“That you and I will talk. I don’t want to meet you again and even if I do, I don’t want to have another conversation.”
Several customers nearby watched their exchange with interest, something the man seemed all too aware of. He didn’t answer, but a muscle in his jaw leaped, and Jo had a feeling she’d just made an enemy.
She didn’t care. Anyone so careless about animals was already an enemy.
“Just trying to be friendly,” the man said, but the glint in his eye wasn’t friendly at all.
“Going somewhere?” Hunter asked when he caught up with Jo in the stables later that afternoon. He’d seen her truck pull in and expected her to come to the house where he had ducked in for a word with Lena, but she’d strode right on past toward the outbuildings, with a set to her shoulders that didn’t look happy. Now she was efficiently saddling up a pretty mare.
“Been too long since I took a ride.”
“Can I come along?”
He expected her to say no. Something had riled her, but he wasn’t clear what. She turned on him, but bit back what she’d been about to say. After a moment, she nodded. “Yeah, sure. You can ride Button. He’s pretty laid back.”
Did she think he couldn’t handle anything more than laid back? Hunter didn’t ask that out loud. The gelding looked like a perfectly fine mount despite his name, and he wanted to go on this ride.
Fifteen minutes later they were on their way. It was a crisp, clear fall day with the hint of smoke on the wind. The kind of day that got your blood up and your heart racing with the desire for action and movement. It didn’t take long for the fresh air to clear the cobwebs from his head and make his worries leach away. Obsessing about Marlon’s state of mind wasn’t going to help anything, he decided. All he could do was keep encouraging his friend to make the best of a bad situation.
He tried to let go of his need to control Marlon’s emotions, and concentrate on nothing more than the fresh breeze, the beautiful scenery and the even more beautiful woman riding ahead of him.
Jo led the way along a winding track and Hunter was content to follow, interested to see where she went when her heart was troubled. In his experience people were drawn to places that resonated with their moods—places they’d found solace before. In time, they reached an overlook and Jo dismounted, leaving her mare to crop the spare grasses dotting in between the broken rocky ground. Hunter joined her where she stood looking down over the outspread ranch.
“Beautiful up here,” he said.
She nodded.
“Did something upset you in town?” He wasn’t sure if she would answer, and she took her time, thinking over her words.
“It’s funny,” she said quietly. “Casual cruelty—thoughtless cruelty—bothers me far more than outright anger or violence. When someone gets mad enough to attack, they have a reason, and you can try to understand it, even if you don’t agree. Casual cruelty—the kind someone perpetrates just because they can—makes me feel like clawing off my own skin.”
Hunter put an arm around her waist, not to belittle what she’d said at all, or even to steady her, because Jo was steady, but to show her he was there, and he agreed. He’d seen how destructive humans could be to one another. It was bad enough when men rained that destruction down on their foes. He’d witnessed more deaths than he cared to count on the battlefield, and he’d crouched in a quiet dawn himself, waited for an enemy to rise and step out of his house at first light so he could take him out. Those deaths weren’t pleasant, and he lived with his fair share of demons, but what stuck with him—what kept him up some nights—were the small, callous acts he’d witnessed while waiting for his chance to pull the trigger. A man kicking a mongrel dog. A gravestone pushed over and smashed. A crying child slapped to shut it up.
“Was someone cruel to you?” The thought of it made him want to punish the offender, a hot flash of anger making his fingers clench.
“No. Not to me. Not to anyone. The intent was there, though. Those are the people I hate; the ones full of casual cruelty. The ones just waiting for their chance.”
He pulled her into an embrace, not letting himself think about it or anticipate her pushing him away. He wrapped his arms around her as if he could protect her from everything evil in the world.
He wished he could.
Jo stood tensely inside the cage of his arms, but just when he thought she’d break free, she relaxed instead. Leaned against him for a moment, her head on his chest, like she had the night they’d danced. He lifted a hand to stroke her hair.
He didn’t say a word, and neither did she. As soon as her muscles tensed, he backed away. He never wanted to push her to do something she didn’t want to do.
“Time to go back,” she said, but Hunter noticed she moved more easily now; her anger gone.
He’d done that. He and the ride.
A sense of accomplishment carried him all the way home.
“You’re letting him get too close,” Lena said when she cornered Jo in the barn that night. “I saw you two go off for a ride. That’s how it starts, you know. Soon enough he’ll try to ride you.”
“Shut up.” Jo kept working on the ax she was sharpening. It was long past time to make sure their stock of wood was sufficient to get them through the winter. She had no doubt as soon as they heard her, Brian or Hunter would try to take over the job. The ax had to be sharp enough to ward them off.
“It’s not funny,” Lena said, mistaking her smile. “You know he’s trying to make his stay here permanent.”
“He hasn’t said so.”
“He will. The way he looks at you, he’ll be waving a ring in your face any day now.”
Jo stopped working. “How does he look at me?”
Lena made her face exaggeratedly moony. “Like this.”
“I doubt it’s like that.” Jo got back to work.
“Maybe not that bad, but close.” Lena grew serious. “You said he was too old for you, remember?”
“He is.”
“You said you wanted to be independent.”
“I do.”
“So why is he still here?”
Jo wasn’t sure how to answer that. When she asked herself why she hadn’t bucked him off yet, she kept coming back to his kindness—and that sense of loyalty she always felt when she touched him. The way he treated Max told her he was a good man. The way he treated her made her feel… cared for. Not in a motherly way like Cass cared for her—but in a masculine, cherishing way she’d always hoped a husband would feel for his wife.
Besides, he was building her a house.
Neither Sean nor Grant had a touch of loyalty in them, she thought, growing serious again. She hadn’t thought to consider that when she’d first been with them. That didn’t let her off the hook for making such bad choices, however. She’d felt the warning signals every time she’d touched them—
She’d simply chosen to ignore them.
At the time she’d been restless. Wanting something she’d never had. Wanting to belong, to feel attractive to a man. So she’d taken their words at face value and ignored what her touches revealed about them. How ironic that the minute she turned her back on her longings, Hunter had appeared.
“Just… think long and hard before you let him too close,” Lena said. “For all our sakes.” She left the barn before Jo could ask her what that meant.
She didn’t need to ask, though, did she? She knew what Lena feared—
If Jo finally picked a good man, the General would strengthen his control over the ranch.
If she picked a man like the previous two—
They could all wind up dead.