As the shivers started again, she wrapped her arms tighter around her body. “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted me to do this. Maybe he’s been goading me, hoping I’d take off. And the fact is, he does intimidate me. But I can’t let him get Josh. I just can’t.”
Boone stood there in silence for a long time. Finally he blew out a breath. “I guess you’d better let me help you.”
They were the sweetest words she’d heard in a long while, yet she couldn’t imagine what this cowboy could do. “How?”
“Leave your rental car here and come with me to the Rocking D.”
“Your…your ranch?”
“Not mine. It belongs to a good buddy of mine, Sebastian Daniels, and his new wife Matty. It’s near Canon City, in a pretty little valley. You’ll be safe there while you figure out what you want to do next.”
“Oh, Boone, that’s a wonderful offer.” The idea filled her with such longing she could taste it, but she gathered her strength and pride, wrapping them around her like a cloak. “But I can’t bring my troubles to roost at your friend’s place, especially if he’s a newlywed.”
“You don’t know Sebastian. If he found out I’d left a defenseless woman and a little boy—”
“I’m not defenseless.” She refused to come across as a victim.
“You’re not?”
“I took a self-defense class. I can take care of myself.”
“Well, that’s good,” he said patiently. “That’s real good. But it’s kinda tough taking care of yourself when you have a little shaver to worry about.”
She knew that. She just hadn’t wanted to think about it. “You have a point there,” she admitted reluctantly.
“Anyway, if Sebastian knew I’d left you to fend off some wife-beater by yourself, while taking care of the boy and all, he’d have my hide. Sebastian would want me to bring you to the Rocking D, once he understood the situation.”
She struggled to keep a grip on the pride she’d been clinging to so fiercely. She needed a champion, needed one desperately. Two champions sounded like heaven, but she couldn’t impose like that. “Sounds as if you and your friend are two in a million.”
“Not by a long shot.” He sounded embarrassed. “We’re a couple of ornery cusses, if you must know. Travis, he’s the charming one.”
“Travis?”
“Travis Evans. You’ll meet him, too. In fact, as long as we get out of here at a decent hour in the morning, you’ll get to come to his wedding.”
The conversation had taken on an unreal quality. “Boone, hold on a minute. You’re planning on putting me, with all my problems, smack-dab in the middle of wedding festivities? You can’t do that.”
“Like I said, my friends would have a fit if I did anything different.”
“Some friends you have, Boone.” She was beginning to believe she’d stumbled onto the cowboy equivalent of the Knights of the Round Table. Still, taking advantage of such gallantry wasn’t her style. “Listen, you’re wonderful to offer, but I simply can’t put you or your friends to that kind of trouble.”
“Okay.” His tone was patient. “What’s your alternative?”
Good question. She thought of Mason lurking in the café, coiled like a rattlesnake ready to strike. She could watch for him to leave before she ventured out of the room in the morning, but that would mean being trapped without any way of getting food for Josh. Explaining that problem to Josh without telling him about Mason would be tricky.
She faced the fact that she had no plan unless someone offered to be her ally. Boone had offered. “I guess my biggest problem is how to get food to Josh if the road doesn’t open right away in the morning,” she said.
“I can help you with that.”
“I would appreciate it.” She was embarrassed by how constrained her position was. She tried for an attitude of independence and self-reliance. “Once Mason leaves, Josh and I can be on our way. Kind as your gesture is, we really wouldn’t need to go with you.”
He sighed. “Shelby, I’ve seen the guy. He’s a tough customer, and he won’t stay fooled forever. Sooner or later, he’ll catch on and come back looking for you. When he does, your self-defense courses aren’t going to do you much good. If you really want to keep Josh out of his hands, you need help.”
She knew he was right. Damn it, he was so right. She’d been foolish to think she could protect Josh by herself. Reckless and foolish. Humbled by her monumental ability to miscalculate, she finally understood that her pride could endanger Josh. Because she loved him far more than her stupid pride, she had no choice but to be indebted to Boone and his friends. “Okay,” she said softly. “But I’ll find a way to make it up to you. I’ll—”
“No need,” he said. “Don’t even worry about it.”
Of course she would. The debt already sat heavy in her chest. But Josh was more important than her own comfort zone right now. “What about my rental car?” she asked.
“You can call the office in Santa Fe and tell them you were afraid to drive it over the pass. That makes sense. You shouldn’t drive it over the pass, at least not for a day or two. But you can say you found other transportation. They might charge you something extra if they have to come get it, but—”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Okay, then it’s settled.” He turned toward the door. “I’ll come over here in the morning when I’m sure Mason’s gone.”
“Wait a minute.” She’d been so caught up in her own problems that she hadn’t thought about how Boone had engineered this visit to her room. “Mason’s in the café, right?”
“Right.”
“When you left, where did he think you were going?”
“To my room.”
She gazed at him standing by the door. “But you don’t have a room.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“You can’t go back in the café now, can you?”
“No, but I’ll be okay in my truck.”
His willingness to sacrifice himself for someone he’d just met left her speechless. Finally she recovered enough to stop him before he opened the door. “You will not sleep in the truck, Boone. Share the bed with Josh. He doesn’t take up much room. It’s the least—”
“Not in this lifetime.”
The steel in his words told her it was useless to argue the point. “Okay, then take the chair, or the floor. But you are not going out to that truck. If you do, then the deal’s off. I won’t go with you to the Rocking D.”
“But…you don’t know me.”
She smiled at that. “Yes, I do. Stay with Josh and me for the rest of the night, Boone. I feel rotten enough about the trouble I’m causing you. Let me at least offer you shelter from this storm.”
“You shouldn’t feel bad. You’re not the one causing the problem. Fowler is.”
“Well, I do feel bad, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink knowing I sent you out to stay in your truck tonight.”
He hesitated. “Well—”
“You’ll be doing me a big favor.” She pressed her advantage. His only weakness