Cowboy Who Came For Christmas (Harlequin Romance) (2 page)

Nor found until the spring thaw. He’d either be frozen solid under a snowdrift or chewed into pieces by some hungry mountain varmint. Not exactly a noble death.

Too late to worry about that now. He’d have to find a way around these two overly zealous defenders of the universe so he could get back to finding his fugitive. Obviously, if the criminal Adan was searching for had been here, they’d helped him escape while Adan was out cold. Or maybe thrown him into an old well, too. He couldn’t be sure, though. They didn’t seem all that cagey now. More like worried that he’d haul them in.

“I’m sorry,” the pretty one said as she stepped back to look at him. “About the...shotgun and about Bettye hitting you with her cast-iron skillet. She thought you were an intruder, so she was just trying to protect me.”

“We’re tight, me and Sophia,” the older one replied, her thumb hooking toward the pretty one, her eyes squinting inside the crow’s-feet stretching out around her face.

The older lady wore so many layers, it was hard to tell where the coats and scarves ended and her actual skin began. Her gray-streaked braid of hair was woven around her head to match the old gray scarf woven around her neck.

Adan let out another grunt. “You think? Tight like Thelma and Louise. Do you always greet strangers with a gun and a skillet?”

“Only the tall, good-looking ones,” the lady called Bettye said on a chuckle. “Just our way of saying welcome to the neighborhood.”

Adan wondered again if he’d stumbled into an alternative world. But this was Ozark country in Arkansas. Anything could happen. “Well, thanks for the welcome. Don’t I get cookies and coffee, too?”

“Yes,” the one called Sophia replied. She put her hand on his arm. “Can you sit up?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, testy because two spry women had gotten the best of him. “I can sit up and I can stand up.” He tried to do both and saw double.

And he really didn’t need two of either of them.

“Lie back down,” Sophia said. “Rest and I’ll make some dinner. Bettye, you will stay and have dinner with us, right?”

Adan saw something quiet and secretive pass between the women. Were they still aiding and abetting a fugitive?

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Bettye replied. “I’ll keep our guest company while you get dinner going.” Then she turned to Adan and hooted with laughter. “We’ve had ourselves a very exciting night, don’t you think, Mr. Texas Ranger?”

Adan glared at her and willed his eyes to quit showing him two of her. “I couldn’t agree more.”

But once his head quit spinning, he’d be up and out of this bed and then he’d decide what to do with these two enchanting and entertaining petty criminals.

Thinking he could persuade the older one, he said, “I’m just here trying to do my job. And I did try to show you my credentials.”

Bettye gave him a sharp glare. “Just remember, you were the one trespassing.”

CHAPTER TWO

“D
INNER
’
S
READY
. D
O
YOU
feel better now?”

Adan glanced up at Sophia and studied her for signs of betrayal and deceit. But the woman only appeared concerned and certainly worried. She was making nice now that he’d lived.

“I feel fine,” he said, his mood anything but fine and dandy. He was dirty, hungry and frustrated. At this rate, he wouldn’t make it back to Austin in time for New Year’s Eve with his parents and his daughter, Gaylen, let alone Christmas Eve.

How many times had he let that girl down? Being a single dad was hard on a normal day. Being a Texas Ranger didn’t provide for many normal days.

And being accosted by these two just proved that point.

He stood and made it out into the hallway then surveyed the tidy little mountain cabin. It was square and long, with a kitchen-dining area across from a small living room in the front and what looked like a bath between two bedrooms on the back. The furnishings were sturdy and colorful. Old furniture painted in bright primary colors—flowers and leaves, stars and the moon—and a Christmas tree with sparkling little odds and ends of all colors and shapes decorating it. Two entryways, one out the front toward the woodsy view of the Ozarks and the other probably backed up to a bluff overlooking one of the many flowing streams in the foothills that moved down from the mountain peak.

A man could sure hide out in those snow-capped hills. But a man could also freeze to death out there tonight, too.

“Nice place,” he finally said. He ambled toward the round oak table with the mosaic tile top, his pulse tapping at the sore spot on the back of his head. “You live here alone?”

“Who wants to know?” the older woman standing in the kitchen asked, her eyes going into double question marks.

Adan gave Sophia another direct glance. “I’m one of the good guys, so tell her to let up on being so ornery and suspicious. Or I will reconsider how I’m gonna handle being attacked and held hostage.”

“We are not holding you hostage,” Sophia said, motioning to him to sit down. She gave her partner in crime a warning glare. “We overreacted, but we have to be careful. This mountain is off the beaten path, and it’s isolated.”

“And don’t I know that.” He sat down and sniffed the beef-and-vegetable soup cooling in a chipped blue bowl. “How ’bout we start over while we eat.” He waited for the ladies to sit down.

Bettye giggled and pushed at her gray hair and then pointed a finger toward Adan. “A gentleman.”

She sat down with a prim and proper air. Sophia placed biscuits on the table and found her seat. Adan followed suit, his stomach growling in joy. It had been a long day and he’d skipped a meal or two.

He grinned, then grimaced because it hurt to grin. “I’m Adan Harrison. I live in Austin and I’m a Texas Ranger.”

“They grow them Rangers everywhere down in Texas, don’t they?” Bettye asked, her expression full of wrinkles and curiosity. She grabbed a flaky biscuit then shoved the straw basket toward Adan. “Tough lot, all of you.”

“We
are
a proud lot,” Adan admitted. How strange to be sitting here having dinner with the two women who’d tried to do him in. But he wasn’t so dumb that he couldn’t twist things around on them. “And we pride ourselves on getting the job done. So I’ll make a deal with you two lovely ladies. I won’t press charges against either of you. But you need to do something in return for me.”

“And what’s that?” Sophia asked, her blue eyes widening as she set the biscuit basket next to her plate. She put down her spoon and waited as if she were afraid to take her next breath. Guilty? Or scared? Or both?

“You need to tell me if you were harboring a wanted felon. And if you were and you let him escape, you need to come clean. Or I won’t be able to help you later.”

* * *

S
OPHIA
’
S
APPETITE
WENT
as cold as a lone snowflake. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Did he think she’d hide a criminal here? Did he know something about her already? What if he’d come here looking for her? He couldn’t possibly know what had brought her to this mountain over four years ago. Or what she’d done after she’d arrived here.

“Me neither,” Bettye said. “I don’t know anything about anybody.”

She passed the biscuits again, her actions twitchy and nervous. Sophia gave her friend another warning stare.

Bettye took the hint and asked the Ranger, “Want some homemade mayhaw jelly with that biscuit?”

“I’m good, thanks.” Adan kept his eyes on Sophia, making it hard for her to breathe, let alone eat. “So I know your name—or at least your first name—Sophia. Want to give me your whole name?”

“Not particularly,” she replied, her bravado a false front. “I don’t like strangers.”

“Again, I get that,” he said in that wry Texas tone that seemed to be his way of getting people to talk. “I can find out, you know. Run your plates—”

“She ain’t got a car,” Bettye said. Then she put her hand over her mouth. Grabbing her spoon, she took a big gulp of soup. “Mmm. So good.”

Adan gave Sophia another too-close stare. “Did you let him take your vehicle?”

Sophia was caught in a vise. She couldn’t tell this man her worst fears because if she did, she’d have to tell him the rest of the story and she wasn’t ready for that. Not even Bettye knew the whole story. No one ever would.

“I don’t know what you’re implying—”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m stating the facts,” he said, his tone getting dangerously low and growling. “If you two let a known felon escape with your vehicle, then that makes you both accessories. Do you want to take the fall for a man who’d as soon kill you than look at you?”

“I don’t want to take the fall for a man like that,” Bettye said, her eyes glued to Sophia in shock. “I don’t know anything about a felon who’s
that
dangerous.”

Sophia wanted to shout to her friend to stop talking but Bettye wasn’t the most tactful person on earth. Now seventy, Bettye had been through her own horror story, and past events had left her a little dazed and confused.

The Ranger zoomed in on Bettye’s declaration. “Well, do you know
any
criminals? Maybe one who pretended to be the victim and talked y’all into harboring him for a while?”

Bettye glanced over at Sophia, and Adan’s sharp gaze moved between them like a roaming flashlight. “I don’t think I know anybody like that, but—”

“We haven’t been hiding anyone in this cabin,” Sophia interjected, trying to salvage the situation. She could not be hauled off this mountain. This was the one place she felt safe and secure. Or at least she had until he’d shown up.

She stared him down, but it was nearly impossible to intimidate a man who was six feet tall and solid muscle. A man she and Bettye had huffed and puffed and dragged up onto her porch and inside her house.

He didn’t break the staring match but his eyes, so golden brown and burning, seemed to soften and shift. “Look, I understand you were scared when I got here, but I can help you. If you’re in trouble, tell me the truth and I’ll do what I can.”

She jumped up and put her forgotten soup in the sink. “I’m fine. Or at least I was until you arrived here. How’d you even get up the mountain anyway, and why were you on foot?”

“I’m on foot,” he said on a slow, let-me-explain-so-you’ll-understand note, “because my truck slid on some black ice and rammed into a snowdrift and got stuck and I wanted to find either some help to get it out or a shelter to provide me with some warmth until morning.”

“That does make a lot of sense,” Bettye said in a pragmatic tone. “I mean, it ain’t a fit night out there for anybody.”

“Of course it makes sense,” he said, his voice rising with each word. “You have my badge and my gun, so why don’t you just tell me the truth?”

“The truth? You want the truth?” Sophia took in a breath and willed her next lie to sparkle into sounding real. “The truth is that I was visiting my friend here in her cabin. We were making Christmas cookies and didn’t realize how bad the weather had turned. I was on my way home and looking forward to getting all settled in with my soup and a good book and I heard a rustling on my porch. So I got my shotgun and I came around the back way to see who was out there.”

“Were you expecting someone else?”

“No.” Frustration coursed through her like a mountain spring. “I was expecting some peace and quiet and a nice long sleep while the storm passed outside.”

“She likes her private time,” Bettye explained. “Took me a while to understand that.”

“I think she does at that,” Adan said. Then he shoved a spoonful of soup into his mouth and chewed the beef, his eyes still on Sophia. “But tonight, she won’t get any, because I can’t leave here in that storm. And I won’t leave y’all, since this man could show up here or return back here. If that happens, y’all will have more than me to worry about.”

Sophia’s pulse skidded and slid with each snowflake that fell outside her door. What if he did get snowed in and she had to deal with him for a week or so? She’d go mad. The man stared through her with those captivating eyes and made her think he could see all of her secrets. She’d get cabin fever and spill her worst sins to him. Then she might truly go to jail.

* * *

A
DAN
WAITED
,
GIVING
them every opportunity to chime right in. But neither said a word. Sophia busied herself with offering more soup, but something about her demeanor worried him.

“Have you seen any strangers around here recently?”

“Just you, Mr. RangerMan,” Bettye blurted out.

His gut told him that one wasn’t lying about this, but they both had secrets about something. He could give them a description of the criminal to see how they’d react but he didn’t want to give away too much too soon. If they’d been involved with Joe Pritchard, they’d let something slip sooner or later.

“Y’all are sure making this harder than it needs to be.”

Bettye snorted a retort. “I thought Rangers could handle just about any situation.”

“I can,” he said, his frustration mounting with each breath. He watched Sophia for signs of stress or any sign that she might be willing to talk to him. “I would. I’m not worried about the storm. I’m worried about what y’all might be trying to hide.”

“We ain’t got nothing to hide,” Bettye replied. “Not from you, that is.”

He leaned his elbows against the table and gave Sophia a measured look. “Then who are you hiding
from
?”

Sophia’s head snapped up. “We’re living here, trying to mind our own business. And that’s the truth.”

She got up and started clearing the dishes. Adan took that as a sign dinner—and the conversation—was over.

Adan had never had anything like this happen before. He was going to have to walk a line on this one. He couldn’t deal with having these two hauled in because the man he’d tracked to Crescent Mountain was still out there on the loose. And while they’d tried to do bodily injury to Adan, he figured it was more out of fear than any criminal intent.

Still, he’d have to make it a point to be on his best behavior and ever watchful while he was around them. They were hiding something, all right, only he couldn’t be sure they’d been involved with hiding the man he’d come looking for.

But he couldn’t leave two slightly innocent women alone if that man was out there somewhere. So he stood in front of the fire and listened to the sounds of feminine chatter and a few cryptic whispers coming from the kitchen across the room. They had never actually answered his question. After snapping that curt retort, Sophia had busied herself with the dishes. Bettye had offered him homemade fudge and coffee. The rich chocolate was now stuck in his gut and the coffee had him too warm.

Sophia finally approached him. “Bettye needs to go home, but I’m not sure she’ll be able to find the path. I thought I’d walk with her.”

She left things hanging, so he jumped right in. “I’ll walk with both of you and I’ll check her cabin.”

“And what do you plan to do after that?”

He thought he saw a plea there in her interesting dark water-blue eyes. She pushed at her rich auburn curls and stared up at him, waiting again.

“I plan to stay close by until this storm is over. I’ll figure out the rest in the morning.”

“You mean you want to stay here?”

“Do you have any other suggestions?”

She glanced at the fire, looked out the window, stared over at Bettye waiting by the back door. Then she turned back to him. “No, I don’t have any other ideas. Unless you want to stay at Bettye’s place.”

He looked at her then turned to do a quick glance at her friend. “To be honest, I’d be afraid to fall asleep with her in the next room. My head is still throbbing from that darn frying pan.”

The older woman let out a whooping laugh. “My aim is still good.”

Adan rubbed the back of his sore head. “I agree with that, at least.”

He was rewarded with a pretty smile from Sophia, followed by a firm reminder. “I’m the one with the shotgun, though, remember?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” he said, mirroring her grin in hopes of gaining her trust. “But I doubt I’ll sleep no matter where I stay.”

“You can sleep on the sofa,” she finally said. “I have a spare room, but it’s full of my art supplies.”

He nodded on that, saving the information to mull over later. “I won’t be a bother, I promise.”

“I know,” she said with a smile. “I always sleep with my shotgun right by the bed.”

He let out a chuckle and shook his head. “I’ve never met anyone like you two.”

Sophia didn’t give anything away with her Mona Lisa smile. “Let me get my coat and hat. Bettye lives right around the curve so it’s not a long walk, but I don’t want her to fall in the snow. It’s brutal out there tonight.”

He checked the windows, wondering what was hiding in those woods. “We’ll get her home. Think she’ll be safe?”