He was even taller than her—and taller than last time she’d seen him. Broader too, but she recognized that twinkle in his dark green eyes as the same one she’d seen when he teased her after falling off a horse and into a thorn bush that last summer they were together.
In a few long-legged strides, he reached her. She looked up at his face and neither of them moved. Did they embrace? Their mothers and fathers did. But that felt too far from her comfort zone, so she stuck out her hand.
Ross enveloped it in his callused grip. “Pippa, we’re going to get your luggage and then you’re going to stick by my side and do everything I tell you to as we walk to my truck.”
A small shudder ran down her spine. “Okay, but…I don’t have any luggage.”
He glanced down at the computer bag slung across her body and focused on her fingers fastened around the case.
She tried to loosen her grasp and a bit of blood rushed into her fingers after holding on so tight.
Without another word to ask why she’d traveled all the way from Detroit with only the clothes on her back, he took her by the elbow and steered her through the crowd gathering at the baggage claim.
The warmth of his fingers sank through the layers of her top—she’d also left her jacket in the restroom—and offered enough comfort that she was able to draw a full breath into her lungs. They burned at being starved for air. All her medical training taught her shallow breathing came with a big hit of adrenaline, but in the moment, what did that matter?
Now that she could let down her guard a little and put her safety in the hands of Ross Wynton, her adrenaline level dropped too.
She started to shiver, and by the time they hit the exit, her teeth chattered.
He shot her a look, two hard brackets appearing on either side of his tense lips. Wordlessly, he removed his coat, a thick canvas. When he settled it around her shoulders, she inhaled the scent of him and her stomach fluttered at his body heat trapped in the fibers.
As he steered her through the parking lot to a truck bearing the Wynton Ranch logo of a W inside a circle, her legs started to give out.
“Lean on me.” The rough grumble would have filled her adolescent heart with excitement at fifteen, but now it punched her with the realization that she was really here in Montana, running for her life.
He unlocked the door and motioned her in. She managed to settle in the leather seat, aware that he locked her in with a flick of the key fob as he circled to the driver’s door. Why? In case somebody got to her while he walked around?
Her insides heaved, and she folded her hands on her laptop case to still them from shaking. Ross again unlocked the doors to glide into the seat with all the grace of the cowboy sliding into a saddle.
The door locks clicked once more and he started the engine. Her insides jittered. What if he thought her insane? She couldn’t blame him really. The number of times she questioned her sanity while in flight tallied in the double digits.
As he whipped out of the lot headed toward the parking pay station, he remained silent. At the gate, he held up an ID and the security officer waved them through without paying.
Pippa took all this in with her scientist’s mind. Observation was a major step in the process of an experiment, so she took note of the truck interior, the early morning Montana landscape of snow-covered mountains and heavy clouds banked on the horizon. She pulled in the scent of leather, an underlying hint of the ranch she remembered…and the spice of the man at the wheel.
That brought her to observing Ross. From the corner of her eye, she studied his same strong features and the white Stetson their family favored wearing like some kind of ranch family dress code. But his features appeared stronger. His jaw an angled slice of mountain rock brushed with a five o’clock shadow.
If he’d filled out in those areas, his body had doubled her expectations. His muscled chest stretched the black cotton T-shirt, and his biceps fought against the stitches around the sleeves. One had actually popped, and a short thread kept drawing her eye.
“All right. Talk to me, Pippa.” He cast her a look she couldn’t read.
Staring at her white knuckles against the black leather of her bag, she sucked in a stabilizing breath.
Without waiting for her to start speaking, he fired a question at her. “Why don’t you have any luggage?”
“I left it in the bathroom in Detroit. I lost my purse and jacket as well.”
He whipped his head to pierce her in his intense gaze. “Okay, start at the top, with when you decided to call me. What happened?”
She saw why his security company was climbing the ranks as one of the top in the US. He owned a situation—always did. When she fell off the horse into the thorn bush, he’d raced back to help her up, scolded his younger brother Josiah for laughing at her, and proceeded to pick thorns out of her arms.
“I’m not sure if you know but my work involves gene editing.”
“My father mentioned it.”
She nodded. “I work in a lab. Most of the time I’m alone, but I have some assistants working with me on various projects.”
“I’m listening.”
“So it was odd when things started coming up missing in my office.”
“Such as?” He ramped up the speed on the open highway that would lead to the Wynton Ranch.
“My favorite earrings my mother gave me. And a photo of me and my best friend.”
“Could you have misplaced them? Or they fell off your desk and got swept up by cleaning people?”
He didn’t believe her. Hell, she hardly believed her own suspicions.
Shaking her head, she continued, “I received death threats.”
He whipped his head around, his expression masked. “What kind of threats?”
“They’re notes.”
“Do you have them?”
“One, yes.” She started to reach into the zippered pocket of her bag.
“Don’t get it out. I don’t want you to touch it any more than you already have.”
“You believe there may be fingerprints on it?”
“I’ll have my guys run a check.”
“You can do that?”
He sliced a glance at her that reminded her this wasn’t the boy she once knew. Ross was a man of power and skill, and every word he spoke reflected that change.
Folding her fingers around the bag, she stared at the landscape and tried to pick up the pieces of her life. Her neck hurt from her attacker’s stronghold, and it was difficult to swallow.
“Do you have some water?” she rasped.
He removed one big hand from the steering wheel, leaned toward her and reached behind her seat. He withdrew a bottle, cold from the low temps.
She took it and sipped slowly, trying not to choke around the lump lodged in her throat that she knew from many classes in anatomy and health to be swelling.
“Better?” he asked after a minute.
She nodded. “I knew you’d carry water. I remember your family was always prepared for any circumstance.”
“Gotta be in this country. Now. Tell me how you got that bruise on your wrist.”
Startled, she looked down at the purple smudge blossoming across her wrist bone. Her stomach pitched at the memory of the fight in the restroom.
“I was attacked.”
“Jesus Christ. Where?”