“In the airport. It’s how I lost my belongings. I don’t even have my wallet or ID.”
“What the hell happened?”
Her stupid response to the question was to flush. “I had to…pee.”
He made a strangled noise in his throat, and she wondered if he really did still have more of that boy she’d known buried inside him than she first guessed. The one who chose horses over swoony, moony-eyed girls who believed him the boyfriend material of the century.
“Go on,” he muttered.
“When I opened the stall door, a man was standing there. He grabbed me around the neck.” She lifted a hand to trail her fingertips over her throat.
“How the hell did you get free?”
“Aikido.”
“Come again?”
“The Japanese martial art.”
“I know what it is. But you know it?”
“I spent some years in Asia studying it. It…came in handy today.” Her throat clogged off more at the knowledge of what might have befallen her if she hadn’t been able to defend herself. “I took the man down and ran for it. I jumped on the plane and came straight to you.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror for the third time in a mile, which set her on edge. A peek at the side mirror showed her they were alone on this stretch of road. He was just being cautious. Doing his job. Using skills she put her faith in.
“Ross, what do I do?”
He let go of the wheel again and rested his hand on the back of hers. Some desperate need to feel the touch of a friend struck, and she twisted her hand up to grip his. He didn’t let her go, and she clung to the warmth and strength emanating from him.
“We’ll figure it out. You’re safe now, Pippa.”
Hearing her name fall from his lips in that rough rumble—rougher in manhood—flipped something inside her. Maybe neither of them had changed. She still held a flicker of a flame for the cowboy.
Now more than a cowboy. He was an entrepreneur, and judging by those layers of muscle stacked on his body, he’d trained to fight.
“Tell me how you got the idea to start your company,” she said.
He looked at her with a crease between his long brows. “Another time, Pippa. Let’s get you to the ranch first.”
He said to the ranch. What she heard was: to the safety of the ranch.
She glanced in the mirror again. Nobody followed, but she had some distance to go to shake the person who wanted her dead.
Chapter Two
Pippa was not the little girl he remembered.
When he last saw her, her teeth had been too big for her face, and his brother might have mentioned her resembling one of the horses at one point. His other brothers and cousins had laughed, but Ross put them in their place with a few threats to make them as toothless as babies if they didn’t shut up.
She also used to be tall, with arms and legs she didn’t seem quite able to control. Now she was even taller—she must be five feet ten—and she’d filled out in all the right areas. Her brown hair was still pulled into a ponytail, just like when they were kids, but it appeared thicker, shinier.
She still wore glasses too, though her hazel eyes no longer appeared owlish from behind the lenses. Instead, the dark frames lent her a studious—and maybe mysterious—air.
One thing he recalled from her visits to Montana was her shyness, and while some of that seemed to have trickled away, he still felt her hesitation when it came to talking to him. He had to pull each word out of the woman.
As he drove, he considered her story. She was never prone to fanciful tales in the past, and that bruise she wore, along with her skittish nature, proved something had happened to her. But death threats against a woman who worked in a lab seemed a little off to him.
His first protocol was to get her to a safe place, and nowhere safer than the Wynton Ranch existed. Between him and his brothers, not to mention his very protective parents and a dozen or so bad-ass ranch hands who’d kick the shit out of trespasser and ask questions later, Pippa was in good hands.
Casting a look at her tense pose, he struggled to find some words to ease her fears. He might be trained to soothe flighty clients—horses too—but knowing this woman changed some dynamic for him.
Almost as if he could easily cross a boundary. Hell, she might as well be a little cousin to him, they’d grown up so close. He’d looked forward to the Hamlins’ visits each fall when the trout started biting.
As he glanced at her again, he took note of her simple white button-down blouse and the hint of pale, freckled flesh above the buttons. Her breasts swelled into way more than the tiny bumps she once sported.
He twisted his gaze away. Okay, so maybe not like a little cousin. A family friend. He’d leave it at that.
She issued a small gasp, and he followed her gaze to the gates of the Wynton Ranch. “You changed the gates!” Her throat had a soft, husky quality heard in woman who smoked and drank. He couldn’t picture her doing either of those things, so the changes must be natural.
He directed his attention to the gates. “Yeah, we installed these a few years ago. Lots of trouble with tourists coming up here and thinking they can just drive down any old road.” He eased the truck up to the closed black iron gates. Two halves created their ranch brand in the center.
As soon as the camera identified his truck as being one of theirs, the locks clicked and the gates slowly swung open, parting the W in the center into a V in a half circle on either side.
Pippa watched the gates as they passed through and twisted in her seat to look out the back at them shutting.
“Things have changed around here.”
His lips twitched. “We finally stepped into the next century. A hundred years of Wyntons working this ranch showed us to work smarter, not harder.”
“I hope not all has changed. I’d hate to see robot cows walking around or something.”
Her statement brought a smile to his face. “We haven’t gone that far. Everything around here is still flesh and blood. But we did step up security.”
As he navigated the long road leading to the spread, he tried to see it through Pippa’s eyes. She hadn’t been here in what? Fifteen years? That’d put her around thirty. Too old for fears of the boogieman, but could her small world of laboratories and experiments keep her sheltered for reality?
Fields lined either side of the road and stretched as far as the eye could see. Clear up to the mountains.
“Where’s the cattle?” she asked and then cleared her throat.
He looked closer at her. Maybe that husky quality derived from something else. He needed to get her to the ranch and examine her more. “They’re wintering over the ridge. Sunny side of the slopes this time o’ year.”
“I guess I’ve never visited the ranch this time of year.”
“No.” As they crested a small rise in the road, the full ranch popped into view. The big house was sided with stained wood and a stone face echoed the three chimneys, also clad in stone. Heavy timbers peaked over the front door, which was black like the gates and roofs of every building on the property.
“A lot of changes,” she breathed.
“Updates.”
“I always thought this place was beautiful, but now it looks like something out of a film set.”