“You pay for that money,” she whispered, facing up to her mistake yet again. Even when you honestly believed you loved the guy, you wound up paying for the luxury…sometimes with your body, sometimes with your soul. She’d paid with a little of both.
At last she sighed and climbed out of her car, thinking of crawling into bed and just forgetting everything for a few hours. All the stress, all the worry, even some of the self-loathing she still felt.
Oh, she’d been stupid and naive to begin with, but later, as the emotional abuse mounted, her excuses had grown thinner. She didn’t like herself for that.
She was walking toward the elevator when a voice called out, “Mrs. Devereaux?”
At once a shudder of distaste ran down her spine. Thinking it was one of the security guards, she turned. “I prefer Ms. Scanlon now.”
The man stood only a foot away, dressed Miami casual, smiling. “I thought I recognized you. My sister-in-law goes to see your husband. Anyway, you dropped something when you got out of the car.”
She looked at the hand he held out, trying to see what it was, caught a blur from the corner of her eye, then the world exploded in blackness and stars as her head seemed to split open.
I’m going to die.
And then she thought nothing at all.
Coming home from roundup at a local ranch in Conard County, Hank Jackson expected to unload his gear, step into the cool quiet of his house, and maybe have a shot of bourbon to ease the pain he lived with constantly.
It seemed that no matter how well the docs put smashed bones back together, the bones always remembered the insult. Then they couldn’t make up their minds if they hated activity or inactivity more.
Regardless, more than a week on the range of riding, camping, roping and herding had left his body feeling a little older than its thirty-four years, and he was looking for a hot bath and a shot, not necessarily in that order.
Except as he was tugging his saddle out of the back of his pickup, he noticed the house next door. He owned that place, too, a decision made on the spur of the moment because he preferred being busy to having too much time on his hands to think, and that house would keep an entire crew of repairmen busy for quite a while.
But since he had left nine days ago, things had changed, signaled by curtains in the windows.
Crap. He froze, saddle still resting on the truck bed, and looked again. He should never have let Ben Patterson persuade him to list the place for rent a few weeks ago. There was still a ton of work that needed to be done, as he’d told Ben. Then he’d allowed himself to be talked into listing it because it would propel him to get the work done faster.
Hell.
He’d never expected that anyone would take it in that condition, not even at the ridiculously low rent.
Sighing, he shifted his weight onto the hip that hurt marginally less and tried to decide if he could ignore his new tenant until tomorrow. Or was he honor-bound to get the heck over there right now and tell him all about the things that weren’t working right and a few things that might not be safe?
Ben might not have remembered all the details. And what if there was a family in there?
Cussing under his breath, he left his saddle and headed next door, leaving his own grassy yard behind for the weedy patch of dirt that belonged to the other house. Yet another thing he’d been planning to take care of this week or next.
Climbing the two steps to the small, covered porch elicited another cuss word that only he could hear. The doorbell didn’t work, so he rapped sharply on the front door, a solid oak door in dire need of painting. Oh, hell, why kid himself? It needed a blow-torch first, and looking at it he was quite certain some of the underlying layers of paint were lead-based. He’d better not find any kids living here, because, if he did, Ben would get more than a few choice words.
His first knock went unanswered. He rapped again, more loudly, saw one of the new curtains twitch, and finally the front door opened a crack.
He found himself looking into one blue eye through that crack.
“Yes?” said a quiet, tense voice.
“Hank Jackson,” he said. “I’m your landlord.”
“Oh.” Then, “Oh! The agent mentioned you.”
And the door didn’t open even a hair wider. “Lady, I don’t know if Ben bothered to tell you, but there are some things about this house that aren’t safe.”
“I know that.”
“But do you know them all? Just tell me you don’t have any kids.”
“No. No kids.”
This wasn’t getting them very far. Part of him just wanted to turn around, walk away, find that hot bath and that shot of bourbon. But in good conscience he couldn’t do that without at least making an attempt.
“I need to show you the things that are wrong. I need to tell you the work I’m going to be doing in the next week or so. Ben did tell you I’d be working on the place?”
“It can wait. I’ll only be here a short while.”
“Some of it can’t wait.” Damn, she was bringing out his stubborn streak. “Look, I don’t bite, but I may have to break your rental agreement if we don’t come to some kind of terms about the things I need to do here.”
The door opened a little wider and he was astonished to see the kind of blond, blue-eyed beauty that should be in the movies. And she looked nervous. Why the heck should she look nervous? Nobody in Conard County looked nervous about someone knocking on the door.
He almost sighed. Instead, he fought for some courtesy. “It’s important,” he said. “I didn’t expect the place to get rented in its current condition, and I’m not sure Ben gave you all the warnings.”
At last she nodded, opened the door all the way, and let him step in. He smothered a wince as his hip reminded him that not all was well south of the border, especially after a week in the saddle.
“The place is good enough for me,” she said tentatively. “I’ll only be here a short time.”
“Yeah, but I’d like you to leave on your feet, not on a stretcher.”
At that he was relieved to see the faintest of smiles lift the corners of her perfect mouth. Beauty came in all varieties, but this woman had the kind that usually implied heaps of plastic surgery. Exactly the kind that didn’t appeal a whole lot to him. Usually.
“The place isn’t exactly a death trap,” he said, forcing himself to pay attention to business and not to another area south of the border that was choosing a bad time to sit up and take notice. “But there’s some rotten flooring I need to warn you about, and a couple of iffy electrical circuits. And the stove doesn’t work right, but I have a replacement coming soon.”
“Okay.”
He held out his hand. “Hank Jackson.”
“Kelly Scanlon.” Her handshake was firm. Okay, so she hadn’t come by that perfect figure by unnatural means. She must work out.
“Nice to meet you,” he managed to say as if he meant it, although he was thinking of at least a half-dozen ways he’d like to give Ben a hard time.
“If the house is so bad, why