She slammed the hood and grimaced at her dirty hands.
Patrick pulled his bandanna out of his pocket and offered it to her before he could stop himself. Even good habits were hard to break. “Don’t let Penny put you in room ten.”
Her chin jerked up and suspicion dimmed the gold flecks in her eyes. “Why?”
“It’s haunted.”
Instead of looking at him like he was a couple of bales short of a trailer load, he noted a spark of interest. “You’re teasing me.”
“No, ma’am. Story is that one of the madam’s customers wanted to take her away from her business. He proposed. She refused. He offed her because she loved her, ah…work more than him and he didn’t want to share.”
Her eyes widened, and then she beamed like he’d just handed her a winning lottery ticket. He staggered back a step. That smile of hers nearly blinded him. Leanna Jensen wasn’t just cute, she was damned dazzling. Put a cork in it, Lander. He tried to shake off the unwanted attraction.
She practically danced with excitement. “Get out of here. A ghost? Really?”
He hesitated to tell her the local legend, fearing she’d misread any effort at conversation as sign of interest, but he couldn’t resist the questions in her eyes. “Folks say that if you make love in room ten your partner won’t be the only one with you.”
Ghost stories creeped him out. He’d never had the desire to investigate the madam’s story or any of the others his mother had told him on those long nights when she’d dragged him out of bed, strapped him into the car and circled the Palace time and time again. Whatever it was she thought she’d see, she’d always gone home disappointed, and he’d always crawled into bed and cowered under the covers, waiting for the nightmares her tales conjured up.
“A haunted whore house.” Leanna’s delighted chuckle drew him back from his bitter childhood memories. The sound, combined with the anticipation lighting her up like a neon sign, made him wonder if she might not be a straitlaced stick-in-the-mud after all. His body responded in a way it shouldn’t, considering he had no intention of following where it urged him to go.
“I love ghost stories.” Her smile widened and mischief made the gold flecks in her eyes sparkle. Pink tinted her cheeks as she peeked at him from beneath her gold-tipped lashes. She lowered her voice. “Have you ever tested the tale? You know, to see if there’s an amorous ghost?”
Too cute. Too young. Into ghosts. And testing his temporary vow of celibacy. Just his luck.
“No.” He took a long stride backward, opened his truck door and put it between them.
In the past year, wily women had shanghaied two of his brothers into marriage, and while Leanna didn’t seem to be the wily type, he wasn’t taking any chances. Brand and Caleb were happy enough, but marriage wasn’t for him. His mother hadn’t had a faithful bone in her body, and as far as he could tell, he was just like her. More’n one woman had tried to put a ring around his finger—a noose around his neck, to his way of thinking—but he wasn’t promising forever to anybody. He’d disappointed enough people in his life.
“Penny can probably tell you more about it. Don’t forget to stop by Pete’s. See you tomorrow.” He climbed into the cab and backed out of the space before he did something stupid like ask her to dinner.
Two
Leanna’s Buick roared like an expensive sports car. It wasn’t a good sign since the station wagon wasn’t moving—unless you counted the slight backward roll.
She pursed her lips and pressed the gas pedal once again. Nothing. The gauges gave no indication of distress, but something was definitely wrong with her car. Taking her foot off the brake, she coasted backward off the road and onto the grassy verge and then turned off the engine. Heat immediately filled the interior, forcing her to roll down the windows while she debated her options.
Arch’s chauffeur had walked her though filling the assorted fluid tanks before she’d left Carlsbad, but that was the extent of her knowledge about the inner workings of a car. She pulled the latch and climbed out to take another look beneath the hood, but to her inexperienced eye everything appeared as it should.
Sweat plastered her clothes to her body within minutes. She nibbled a nail. Her car had to be repaired. One of the most important lessons she’d learned growing up was that you had to have a plan B—a way to escape if a situation became ugly. It was the reason she’d saved a portion of her salary—the portion her mother’s treatment didn’t consume—and bought her own car a few months ago.
She stared into the distance at the heat haze wavering on the asphalt. Barbed-wire fencing stretched along either side of the road, marking dry, empty pastures. She hadn’t passed another car on the six-mile stretch of road between here and the Double C Dude Ranch. If Brooke’s directions were correct she was closer to the gas station and rooming house than the ranch.
As much as she loved to read about knights and heroes, she’d learned the hard way that they rarely walked off the pages of a book.
She secured the vehicle and hiked toward help.
Hot, tired, and sweat-soaked from the skin out, Leanna wasn’t in the mood for bad news.
“Transmission’s shot,” Pete said without losing the toothpick stuck between his teeth. The man was every Hollywood cliché she’d ever seen of a small-town garage mechanic. His overalls were stained and the bill of his ball-cap faced backwards. Every third sentence he spit a stream of tobacco into a paper cup.
She daubed the sweat from her brow with Patrick’s bandanna and tried to ignore the way his scent lingered on the fabric. “How much to repair the car?”
“New parts, fifteen hundred. Rebuilt, eleven. It’ll take me about a week either way.”
Her stomach sank. She’d destroyed all of her credit cards after her mother’s last binge, and she’d emptied her bank account paying in advance for three months’ worth of her mother’s rehab at the new and expensive clinic. Arch’s estate had only allowed her two thousand dollars for the entire Texas trip—a portion of which she’d spent on the way here. “Rebuilt.”
“Cash. Up front.”
She tried not to wince, but she wouldn’t receive a paycheck from the dude ranch until the end of the month. If she paid the mechanic now she wouldn’t be able to afford a room at the Pink Palace. She’d barely be able to buy food. At least working at the dude ranch included most meals.
Regret pulled her gaze back to the plate glass window. Down the road, the elegant lines of a large Victorian house with a resident ghost called to her. “Can I pay you half now and half at the end of the month?”
“Don’t extend credit to strangers—especially the ones with out-of-state tags.”
“I’ll be working at the Double C Dude Ranch.”
“Ask Caleb’s missus for an advance on your salary. She’s a Californian, too.” He made it sound like she’d come from another planet not just another state.
She made it a practice never to owe anybody anything, except Arch, and she was here to clear that debt.
Between the time she’d run away at fifteen and when Arch had found her sleeping in one of his classic cars eight months later, she’d hidden in all kinds of places. It looked like she’d have to again tonight.
She took one last wistful glance at the Palace’s twin-turreted structure and vowed that one day she’d own a home with a deep front porch, window boxes and porch swings. Right now she needed a place to sleep. Reluctantly she counted out the money.
“Could you give me a ride to the Double C?”
Patrick found his father hunched over breakfast before