Mistaken Identity Page 9

  “Then she thought wrong. What did she tell you about the guy?”

  Lauren exhausted her meager store of information long before it satisfied her inquisitor. He spent the rest of the morning alternately grilling her and willing David Jannisek to call. By eleven, she had a headache that wouldn’t quit. By noon, Marsh had taken to prowling the cabin like a caged lion.

  Watching him, she itched for a pencil and her sketchbooks. The animal allegory wasn’t all that far off. She’d position him against a natural backdrop, she decided. Facing a cougar, high atop a mountain ledge. Or a panther snarling out his dominance over his jungle territory. The hunter and the hunted.

  The concept fit him, but didn’t exactly make her feel any more comfortable with the situation. As much to keep busy as anything else, Lauren insisted on taking her turn in the kitchen preparing lunch.

  After a meal of sandwiches and sliced tomatoes, the afternoon dragged endlessly. A quick call to Josh didn’t help matters. The museum director was not happy about the canceled meeting, and, no, he hadn’t finished the color screens for the Breckinridge note cards. Discouraged, Lauren left him Marsh’s cell phone number.

  Several times during the long afternoon, she thought about calling Becky. She wanted to make sure her sister had arrived safely at Aunt Jane’s. She also wanted to talk to her about David Jannisek.

  The reports she’d read earlier had shaken her. Hearing from Marsh that the handsome hotelier had involved her sister in his troubles with the mob was bad enough. Seeing it in print left Lauren with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t realized Becky had become so involved with the man, or that they’d spent a vacation together in Palm Springs. Doubts plagued her more and more. With Marsh growing more tense with each hour the phone didn’t ring, Lauren wondered again if she’d done the right thing by trying to shield her sister.

  Her doubts came crashing up against hard reality a little after four o’clock. Edgy and taut, Marsh announced he was going to haul in some firewood. Stuffing a pair of canvas work gloves into his hip pocket, he grabbed the leather sling beside the fireplace.

  Lauren snatched up her borrowed jacket and followed. She needed exercise and fresh air as much as a break from the mounting tension. She’d just stepped onto the porch when the unmistakable crack of rifle fire shattered the stillness.

  Marsh spun in the direction of the shot.

  Lauren screamed and threw herself off the porch steps in a clumsy swan dive. Her right shoulder hit Marsh in the back, taking him down a half second before another sharp crack split the air.

  Chapter 8

  The flying tackle hit Marsh square in the back. Survival skills pounded into him by four brawny brothers and his long years in the field had him twisting in midair.

  He landed on his back with a thud that rattled his bones. Lauren came down on top of him, all flying hair and sharp elbows. One of her knees gouged into his hip. The other slammed into his thigh. He protected himself—barely—with another sharp twist to the side.

  “What in the hell…?”

  “Stay down!” Frantic, she dragged on his vest to keep him flat to the ground. “Didn’t you hear those shots?”

  “I heard them.” He grabbed at her scrabbling hands. “Lauren, I heard them! It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” She burrowed her face into his shoulder. “Someone’s shooting at us!”

  “Not at us. At the sky.”

  He wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She remained planted facedown in his vest. Her body stretched taut and trembling atop his. Marsh felt the electric contact from his neck to his knees. A distant part of his mind noted how perfectly her hips fit against his. A not-so-distant part focused on the way her breasts flattened on his chest. Sternly repressing the response her squirming body roused in his, he shifted to one side.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured again, calming her with the same soothing voice he’d use on a spooked mare. “That was one of the good guys. The bad guys wouldn’t announce themselves.”

  Or miss two easy targets. Marsh kept that particular observation to himself as she dragged her head up a mere millimeter.

  “What do you mean, ‘announce themselves’?”

  The utter confusion on her face had him biting back a smile. “How would I know to deactivate the perimeter alarms unless a visitor lets me know he’s coming?”

  “For Pete’s sake, tell them to just call next time!”

  Thoroughly indignant, she pushed up with both hands. The small movement separated their chests—and canted her hips into his.

  With her body fitted so intimately against his, Marsh couldn’t have told anyone a damned thing at that moment. As it was, he could barely move enough to dig a hand into his back pocket. A quick press deactivated the electronic sensors.

  “What did you think you were doing, anyway?” he got out through gritted teeth, as she rolled off him.

  “I didn’t think,” she admitted. Still shaken, she rose up on her knees and shoved her hair out of her eyes. “I heard the shot and just sort of…reacted.”

  Like last night, when she’d snatched a lid off a garbage can and prepared to do battle with a supposed housebreaker. Or when she’d come up out of a tangle of blankets after tumbling off the bunk, scared to death but ready to protect herself against an unseen foe.

  Admiration rippled through Marsh, layering right on top of the heat she’d ignited in his belly. The woman had guts. A mouth made for kissing, a body right out of a man’s most private fantasies, a fierce loyalty to her flaky sister, and guts. The combination left him sweating.

  “Yeah, well, reacting is my job,” he reminded her, pushing up on one elbow. “If someone had been shooting at us, you wouldn’t have helped matters by landing on top of me and impeding my movements.”

  “Well, excuse me for trying to save your life.”

  “If anything comes down that doesn’t sound or feel right, just take cover, okay, and let me handle the situation.”

  Her face set into stubborn lines, but before she could argue, the crunch of iron-shod hooves sounded on the path behind them, followed a moment later by a raspy, smoke-roughened voice.

  “That you, boy?”

  Marsh bit back a groan. He’d recognize that froggy croak anywhere.

  “Yeah, Shad, it’s me.”

  “What the hell you doin’ on your butt in the dirt?”

  “Just admiring the view.”

  Rolling to his feet, he reached down a hand to help Lauren up. Over her head, he shot a warning look at the grizzled cowboy leaning on his saddle horn. The old man ignored it.

  “I see what you mean, boy.” A grin split his whisker-fuzzed cheeks. “She’s a durned sight prettier than that hoity-toity, yellow-haired stockbroker you brought up here last time.”

  All too conscious of the stare Lauren turned on him, Marsh aimed another warning at their visitor. “This is business, Shad. DEA business.”

  The barb bounced right off the leathery hide of the man who’d hooted with laughter every time one of the Henderson boys had gone flying off a half-broke bronc, and then dusted them off and put them right back in the saddle.

  “If you say so, boy.” Unperturbed, he fired a stream of tobacco juice into the grass and swung off his horse. “You gonna introduce me to your DEA business, or just stand there like a wart on a hog?”

  “Lauren Smith. Shadrach McCoy.”

  “Shadrach?” she echoed. “Like in Shadrach, Meshach and…?”

  “Abednego,” the old man finished, chuckling. “Pleased to meet a woman who knows her Old Testament, Ms. Smith.”

  To Marsh’s astonishment, the foreman took the hand she extended and bowed over it with knob-kneed grace.

  Lauren was utterly charmed. Her face lit up in a wide, warm smile. “Thank you, Mr. McCoy.”

  “Call me Shad, ma’am. Everyone does.”

  “Shad.”

  The syrupy exchange put a little burr under Marsh’s skin. Shad was more than twice his age and
three times as ornery, yet with a few short phrases he’d raised a smile from Lauren that could melt the snows on the peaks. She certainly hadn’t turned one like that on Marsh.

  “What brings you up here?” he asked the foreman.

  The question came out sounding brusque, even to his own ears. One of Shad’s shaggy gray brows shot up, and then arrowed down almost to the bridge of his nose.

  “Just came up to make sure the boys had hauled in the supplies and fuel you asked for.”

  “They did. We’re set.”

  “Y’are, huh?” His raisin-black eyes shifted. “What about you, ma’am? You need anything?”

  Lauren could think of a hundred things she needed. An appointment with a shrink to have her head examined for driving off with a complete stranger headed the list. Comfortable underwear ran a close second. She couldn’t ask Shadrach McCoy to supply either, however.

  “No. Thank you, I’m fine.”

  “Y’are, huh?”

  His bushy brows went to work again. Up, down, up. Whatever he saw in her face put a twinkle in his eye, but his expression was bland when he turned back to Marsh.

  “Well, I’ll let you get back to admirin’ the view.”

  He reached for the reins. Leather creaked as he swung into the saddle.

  “But you might want to move your admirin’ inside, boy. Be a shame if a pocket gopher ran up your pant leg, like the one…”

  “Shad…”

  “…that scooted up your jeans when you were wrasslin’ with your brothers,” he continued amiably, ignoring the growled warning. “Chewed a good-sized bite outa your behind, as I recall.”

  With a tip of his hat, he kneed his mount around.

  Lauren took one look at Marsh’s face and swallowed a giggle. Red singed his cheeks. Evidently losing a chunk of his behind to a gopher didn’t square with his tough guy image.

  “Have you known him long?”

  “Shad?” He followed the grizzled veteran’s progress through the pines with a combination of wry resignation and undisguised affection. “All my life. I grew up around these parts.”

  So he was a native of this rugged country. That explained the black Stetson and his familiarity with an iron skillet. It didn’t, however, explain the hoity-toity stockbroker.

  Was she the one who’d burned him? The one whose memory raised that bleak look in his eyes when Lauren joked about finding a paragon of trust and hanging on to her with both hands? She couldn’t imagine Marsh Henderson letting go of a woman without a fight. Couldn’t imagine any woman wanting him to.

  The thought shocked her. So did the inescapable fact that the man now fascinated her almost as much as his grim determination to track down a mob boss unnerved her. She’d never been attracted to tough, muscled cowboy-cop types before. Her former husband was an ad exec. The few men she’d dated since her divorce shared her passion for visual, not martial, arts.

  Yet Lauren had the sinking feeling that the more she learned about the man behind the blue and gold shield, the more she’d want to know. Like what had happened to the stockbroker. And just where the gopher had done his dastardly deed.

  With that impossible, irrepressible thought swirling around in her head, she accompanied Marsh while he resumed his interrupted task of hauling in firewood. Someone—no doubt the ranch hands Shad had mentioned—had cut, split, and stacked several cords of wood between two tall pines at the back of the cabin. When Marsh spread the two-handled sling beside the stack, Lauren moved to help him.

  “I’ll do it,” he told her, reaching into his back pocket. “You need gloves to handle this stuff.”

  While he tugged on the canvas work gloves, she fingered an orangy furrow in the dark-colored bark.

  “What is it?”

  “Ponderosa pine. Some call it yellow pine.”

  He tossed two hefty logs on the sling, swung back for two more with a natural rhythm that said he’d performed this task before. Lauren found herself intrigued by the smooth coordination of man and muscle.

  “The Anasazi who used to live in these parts used the bark to make small, hot cook fires,” he added conversationally. “The fires gave off no smoke and cooled rapidly, so they could disperse the ashes and leave no trace of their presence.”

  “Unlike modern man, who leaves his mark everywhere. I saw the stands of new growth this morning where loggers have harvested the forest.”

  “Most of the ranchers around here derive a good part of their income from timber leases,” he said with a shrug that made no apologies to environ-mentalists. “The federal and state forestry folks control the harvesting, but the ponderosa is in high demand for its clear wood for frames, moldings and cabinetry.”

  “It smells like…” She scratched a nail along the bark, trying to identify the elusive scent.

  “Vanilla,” he supplied with a grin. “On hot days, you could walk through these woods and swear you were in an ice-cream shop.”

  He was right. Even now, with the fall nipping at the air, a sweet aroma mingled with the earthy mix of bark and pine.

  “I used to suck on the stuff as a kid.” He transferred more logs to the sling, and then broke off a little twig sprouting from a knothole. “Here, take a lick.”

  She shook her head in smiling refusal. “No, thanks. Wood isn’t on my diet.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “I don’t want to know what I’m missing. I bet there are worms crawling around in that.”

  “Coward.”

  Long afterward, Lauren would blame the idiocy that came next on the laughter glinting in his blue eyes. And the trickle of sweat that traced a silver streak from just under his jaw down his neck. And his nearness, which shrank to minuscule proportions when he propped a boot on a log and tempted her with the same teasing persuasion Eve must have used on Adam.

  “I’ll take the first taste. Then you try it.”

  “Oh, yech! You’re not really going to lick that, are you?”

  He was, and he did. After a serious swipe, he smacked his lips. “Mmm, delicious.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” she said on a hiccup of laughter.

  “You don’t have to.” He leaned forward another inch or two. “Here, you can taste it on me.”

  He made the offer with such casual nonchalance that Lauren hesitated only for a second or two before tipping her head toward his. She’d only take a taste—just brush her lips against his.

  The problem became apparent the moment her mouth met his. One taste wasn’t enough. For either of them. She drew back, startled by the electricity generated by the brief contact. From the sudden, slashing frown on Marsh’s face, he had experienced the same power burst she did.

  He muttered something, some indistinct reference to a plan. Then his arm slid around her waist, his head bent, and his mouth came down on hers.

  Lauren had never believed Becky’s nonsense about bells clanging and whistles sounding and rockets going off every time she fell in love. Lauren herself had certainly never heard much more than a tinkle or two, even during those first, heady months of her courtship and marriage.

  Marsh’s kiss came darned close to making a believer out of her. Her ears buzzed, not from whistles or bells or rockets, but from the little bursts of pleasure that exploded inside her.

  This was crazy. She’d met the man less than twenty-four hours ago. She still didn’t quite trust him. Yet she arched into him, cursing the layers of suede and flannel and denim that separated them. Within seconds, pleasure spiraled into greed. Within moments, greed galloped into hunger.

  A lifetime later, one of them—she couldn’t say who—ended the shattering kiss. Her heart hammering under her borrowed jacket, Lauren was the first to break the taut silence.

  “You’re…” She swallowed, and then swiped her tongue along her lower lip. “…you’re right. It does taste like vanilla.”

  With a silent curse, Marsh dragged his gaze from her glistening lips. Dammit, making love to the woman w
as not part of his plan! It would only complicate matters, not to mention take the edge off his concentration. Hell, he’d hardly slept last night as it was.

  He couldn’t believe he’d given in to the insane impulse to drag her up against him and kiss her like that. He’d intended to make it light, keep the game going between them, put her at ease with that silliness about the tree bark. Instead, he’d come within half a heartbeat of backing her against the woodpile, unpeeling that jacket, and taking up where his fantasies had left off last night. No wonder her brown eyes now regarded him with that combination of confusion and wariness.

  He felt every bit as wary, but not confused. The tight, hot spark Lauren ignited in him left no room for confusion. He wanted her. The want had been building in him all day. Correction, all day and what had been left of last night after he’d charged into the bunk room and found her tangled up in blankets, half a T-shirt and a couple of strings.

  He’d kept himself under control, though, until she took her swan dive off the porch and landed on top of him. Marsh had felt her on every square inch of his body. Could still feel her. He had to pull rein, and fast.

  Mustering as much nonchalance as he could given the fact that he ached in ways he hadn’t ached in longer than he could remember, he summoned a grin.

  “Just don’t confuse the ponderosa with the Douglas fir. They’re both long and tall and red-barked, but the Douglas resin could take the enamel off your teeth.”

  She nodded, her eyes still wary. “I’ll remember that the next time someone offers me a bite of tree.”

  Her guarded expression said she wasn’t any happier about what had just happened than he was. Good! He wanted her to keep up her guard, just as he intended to.

  Convinced he’d put matters back on the right track with his show of nonchalance, Marsh stripped off the gloves and stuffed them in his back pocket.

  “How do steaks grilled over an open flame sound for supper?”

  “Great,” she replied, easing into the same neutral tone, “as long as you do the grilling. I’ve never cooked over open flames before.”

  “Nothing to it.” Gathering the handles of the carrier in one fist, he hefted the heavy load. “The trick is to let them sear, but not burn.”