Her Sanctuary Read online

  The irony might have amused him if his uncle, second-in-command of the Bilotti crime-family, hadn’t put a contract on his life for a cool five million. Right now Andrew was glad of the protection.

  He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

  His life was ruined because Juliette had opened her big fat mouth, and to think he’d once wanted to marry the bitch. Blowing smoke from his cigarette, he narrowed his gaze at his lawyer. The man treated him like a recalcitrant schoolboy rather than a millionaire businessman with mob connections.

  “I’ve already told you, Andrew,” Larry Frazier repeated slowly, like he worked for a dim-witted child. “Juliette Morgan has disappeared without a trace. The FBI has said so, and so have your own sources,” the calm tones continued. “Let’s move on here, Andrew, we’ve a lot of ground to cover.”

  “You seem to forget that you work for me, Larry.” Andrew’s temper flashed to mercury and he stabbed his finger into his chest like a knife. “I am telling you to find out where that bitch is hiding.”

  He’d grown up with stone-killers for best friends and gangsters for family. The strong ruled, and the weak bent over and took what was coming to them. His birdlike lawyer needed to know that.

  “My job is not that of a lackey, Mr. DeLattio, nor that of an accessory.” Larry sat back primly in the hard, plastic chair.

  Andrew watched the lawyer shuffle his papers with offended efficiency. As if Larry had any real power. As if he could threaten him. Andrew leaned forward, almost amused. The old man was dynamite in the courtroom, but he still didn’t get it. Andrew would never get near a courtroom.

  Placing his hand over the lawyer’s arthritic one, he spoke in a low conversational voice, like an old, trusted friend. “How is Dorothy, Larry? How’re the grandkids?”

  Larry’s movements stilled, his watery blue eyes slowly rising toward his client.

  “My wife and grandchildren are fine, thank you, Mr. DeLattio,” Larry said. Subtly he tried to break the grip that stayed his hand.

  Andrew smiled with genuine amusement.

  “I’ve seen pictures of your girls, Larry,” Andrew said. “They look real cute. Your wife is a little old for my taste, you understand...no offense.”

  Larry’s eyes locked onto his, but wavered quickly before they skated away. The old man’s hand crumbled beneath his fist. Fingers crushed bone releasing a wave of satisfaction that made Andrew’s heart pound and the cigarette in his other hand tremble.

  “You have to take real good care of your family, Larry, especially those cute little girls. Something could happen, something really bad.” Andrew’s gaze shot into Larry like a nail-gun. He hadn’t enjoyed himself this much in months.

  He took a drag on the cigarette as the old man’s joints cracked under his grip. Larry’s skin was parchment thin, and felt like it might split if Andrew pressed too hard.

  Control was the key.

  Larry’s gaze faltered. Words locked behind a mouth that opened and shut quickly. Larry had reviewed all the evidence the FBI had on him and knew what he was capable of. Well, some of it.

  Andrew kept his promises, something Juliette Morgan was going to find out. He’d promised to slit her throat.

  Larry nodded, his fear palpable, which pleased Andrew more than anything had in a long time.

  “I’ll do what I can to find out Ms. Morgan’s whereabouts, Mr. DeLattio. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I have to go. I have a court appearance at one.” The words were stuttered, voice high-pitched.

  Andrew released Larry’s hand. He watched the other man nurse his sore bones against his chest.

  “We still have some time left, Larry.” Andrew laughed, easy now he’d flexed his muscles, used his power. “We have to go through a couple of things first.” He crushed out the cigarette and kicked back in his chair. There was one set of business associates that he hadn’t given up, nor would he.

  “I want complete immunity from prosecution before I say another word to the F—B—I.” The letters were stretched out mockingly. “Signed by a Federal Judge.” Andrew smiled like a shark, showing plenty of teeth. “For all the crimes I’ve committed, prior to today.”

  ****

  “What’s she like?” Ryan caught up with Nat long enough to ask.

  Only a full-blown inquisition would satisfy his brother, so Nat hastily finished getting ready. After an early morning visit to the hospital, he’d gotten a late start. His mama was fine, but now he had cattle to check before dark and the twins were like a couple of dynamos when it came to nosing around for gossip. He’d already had a bellyful from Sas.

  Nat kept right on saddling Winter, his white Morgan, and Morven, a quiet bay mare, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “She’s okay.”

  “Okay hot or okay ugly?” Ryan asked, rubbing Winter’s thick snowy mane and peering up at him from under the rim of an old felt hat.

  Nat tipped his hat low enough to cover his eyes and prepared to mount up. “Plain, mousy,” he lied straight-faced, “not your type.”

  Ryan looked disappointed and kicked a stone that skittered along the frozen yard.

  “Looking for an easy lay, Ry?” Nat tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Since Becky had died, Ryan had backfilled the emptiness with beer and sex. While it wasn’t for him to judge, some days he figured his little brother needed a good kick up the ass, for his daughter’s sake if nothing else.

  “Hell,” Ryan said, pushing his hat to the back of his dark head. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  Nat swung onto Winter’s back with an easy stride. “Yeah,” he grunted, “like you don’t get enough.”

  His gut tightened at the thought of Ryan getting it on with Eliza Reed and he didn’t know why. No way was he jealous.

  “Look somewhere else, Sunshine,” Nat told him. He took a deep breath and tried to let go of the tension he couldn’t shake. “Hitting on the customers is bad for business.”

  That sounded reasonable. He let the idea sink in while he checked out the sky. Snow was on the way and he had to get moving.

  Eliza Reed bothered him. He didn’t have time to start chasing around after some city girl and that bothered him too. He wasn’t a monk, so when had life gotten so freaking grim?

  About three years ago—chasing around with some other city girl.

  Damn.

  “She’s bad-tempered,” Nat said, letting a hint of a smile escape. He tapped a finger against the side of his skull. “Maybe a little crazy.”

  Ryan squinted up at him, as if the snow was too bright, hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. “Why’s she still here then?”

  “We need the money.” Nat’s sigh was big enough to make the horse flick back its ears. “Last night, she claimed she thought I was a bear.” Nat paused for a moment, adjusted the reins and rubbed a fleck of mud from Winter’s withers.

  “A bear?” Ryan’s attention locked onto him.

  “Yep,” Nat looked over toward the house and nearly groaned as Sas escorted Mizz Eliza Reed out onto the porch. Nat sighed. “Or a wolf.”

  With the exception of her woolly hat and boots, Mizz Reed was decked out in his clothes, reminding him he’d forgotten to take her bags up to her room last night. Instead he’d stuffed everything back in the cargo hold of the Jeep. Not that it mattered, her figure filled out his old denims better than he’d ever done. His heartbeat kicked up a notch and nerves that hadn’t twitched for years, started to dance. Her body was curvy, but lean, dark hair pulled back from her face emphasized her bone structure and she was as leggy and sleek as a cat.

  Hell, she looked good enough to eat.

  Sas handed their guest a pair of riding gloves and waved him over.

  It looked like he had no choice but to spend some quality time with Eliza Reed. The ranch hands were out fixing fence-lines down by the reservoir and Sas was on duty at the hospital in a couple of hours. After the conversation he’d just had with Ryan, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let him entertain
their visitor.

  Nat turned Winter with pressure from his calf muscles and led Morven out of the paddock toward the main house.

  “A wolf, huh?” Ryan’s tone was dubious. Climbing onto the bottom rung of the paddock gate, Ryan swung on it as it closed shut. Finally he laughed and shouted at Nat’s back. “So you’re a wolf, and she’s plain and mousy? I’m just trying to figure out which of you is more short-sighted.”

  ****

  “Can I ride?” Elizabeth muttered as her eyes shot darts into Nat Sullivan’s broad back.

  He’d stared down at her from that beautiful, gray horse and issued a challenge she’d just had to accept. She’d sent him a look designed to quell any more stupid questions.

  ‘Of course I can ride,’ the look had said, ‘do I look like a dummy?’

  She sniffed. Dug a tissue from deep in her pocket and blew her nose. She was an idiot. A teenager having weekly English-style riding lessons on well-trained hacks, in heated indoor arenas in Ireland, was a far cry from riding western through the frozen wilderness of Montana. She stuffed the tissue back in her pocket and kicked the horse on.

  The mountain air was reminiscent of Christmas, cold and fresh, a hint of crushed pine with a heavy twist of horse and leather. Snow fell lightly. Large cotton-puffs sank slowly down to earth, like down-feathers after a pillow fight.

  It was beautiful, but didn’t change the fact she was miserable.

  Despite the gloves Sarah Sullivan had given her, her hands were numb and she couldn’t feel the reins with her fingers. Luckily, Morven followed Nat’s stallion like the biddable mare she was.

  No match for the weather, Elizabeth’s trousers were damp where the snow had melted against the mare’s dark coat, and her thighs were rubbed red-raw. The tip of her nose was frozen, lips chapped and cracked. And her butt ached, not just a small ache, but deep spasms in muscles that had been awakened after more than a decade of dormancy.

  “Can I ride, huh?”

  “Say something?” Nat reined his horse aside and took a long look at her. The hot, vivid, wild-fire of his eyes pierced her like a knife.

  Elizabeth managed to hold his gaze and shook her head. Unfortunately, despite the bruises, Nat Sullivan had a handsome face. In fact, the yellow and purple wounds made him better looking, less perfect, more human, sexier. She held back a shudder. Noticed the way weak sunlight stroked the dark blond hair that showed below his cowboy hat, highlighting flaxen streaks. His jaw looked carved out of stone. Strong sculpted cheekbones. Deep grooves bracketing a sensual mouth.

  And for some reason when he frowned at her the way he was doing now, she simply couldn’t put a coherent sentence together. She didn’t know if it was fear or exhaustion that affected her, so she kept her mouth shut. Elizabeth willed her lips to curl upwards, but they were frozen in place and might crack if she tried too hard. Frozen, inside and out.

  “Just one more pasture to check, then we can head back. Can’t afford to leave any sick animals out in this weather,” Nat said.

  She nodded, wishing desperately she hadn’t come. The man seemed impervious to the cold, but then he wore chaps and a thick sheepskin coat.

  She tried to concentrate on the scenery. The Flathead Range stretched as far as the eye could see, over the Continental Divide and into the eastern Rockies. Magnificent; nature at its most beautiful and most unforgiving. Big pines and Douglas firs were draped with heavy stoles of snow, their lower branches bowed sharply under their burden. The whole world was silent. A hard silence that amplified any noise they made, like wearing high-heels in church.

  Not a creature stirred, not a soul moved.

  Except them.

  The horses kicked up plumes of white snow as they carefully picked their way through the trees. Morven’s breath came out with small puffs of steam that condensed and drifted away on the breeze. Elizabeth sniffed and wiped her nose, listening to her saddle creak, a gentle rhythmic sound that reminded her of those early riding lessons and lost childhood dreams.

  The world was monochrome, the sky pewter, the jagged mountains a deeper shade of slate. She had no idea where she was or how far they’d ridden. They’d been out for hours and she was completely disoriented with a man who amounted to a total stranger.

  Under normal circumstances she could take care of herself.

  But she’d learned to expect the unexpected.

  Numb fingers gathered the reins in one hand and she rapidly opened and closed the other hand to try and warm it. She switched hands, determined not to succumb to the harshness of the elements.

  Her gun was still in the Jeep.

  Dumb.

  Not that Nat Sullivan seemed like a threat—not the way DeLattio had from the first moment she’d felt him watching her. Like a cat watched a mouse before it dug in its claws. Her heartbeat accelerated. Breath tightened in her throat as images burned her mind, unable to shut them down. Christmas lights. Music. Champagne. Whirling darkness until she’d woken up tied to her own bed.

  She jerked as Nat pulled to a halt at the edge of a pasture. Cattle huddled together beneath a sturdy wooden shelter, tucked into the far edge of the meadow. They munched down on bags of hay that had been strung out for them.

  “Stay put,” Nat said, nodded towards a thick belt of yellow pine, “it’ll be more sheltered here.”

  “I’m okay,” Elizabeth said and smiled to try to prove it.

  Nat looked at her as if for the first time. His eyes pinned her where she sat, stripped away the layers of expression and flesh, bone and bitter determination.

  She licked her lips, swallowed and looked away, suddenly scared by what he might see. A moment later she heard him head off. He turned the gray, opened the gate without dismounting, and cantered across the pasture. Morven nosed around the thicket that edged the fence-line, looking for anything edible to chew. Embarrassment and awkwardness forced doubts through her mind, but nothing she wasn’t used to. The poor little rich girl, always left behind for the holidays because her family was dead.

  At least working for the FBI had given her a reason to live. A purpose.

  Determined to cut off self-pity before it overwhelmed her, she watched Nat Sullivan. Noted the graceful way he rode the gray, making even a trot look smooth. The gentle touches of reins against the horse’s neck, subtle shifts of his long legs that guided the horse around obstacles and those big broad shoulders that looked big enough to carry the world.

  He was handsome. But Andrew DeLattio had been handsome too.

  She lifted her chin against the frigid wind, ignored the hair that danced across her cheeks. It would have bothered most people, but she welcomed the veil.

  Nat Sullivan probably thought she was a bad-tempered bitch; she’d been so surly.

  An old tin bath sat just outside the shelter and she watched Nat smash the ice in the trough. Then he dismounted and went inside, disappearing from view.

  Shivers started, wracked her body. She curled up as tight as she could over the pommel and tucked her hands under her armpits in an effort to maintain warmth. Huddling into her jacket, she tried to imagine a desert island where the sun was hot enough to feel the UV burn.

  Time drifted.

  She wrenched her head up as the grind of the gate warned her Nat was back. He looked at her from beneath the rim of his snow-covered cowboy hat.

  “Everything okay?” His blue eyes assessed her and seemed to find her wanting.

  Elizabeth straightened her spine. Felt each vertebrae realign.

  “Fine,” she lied.

  Nat snorted. One side of his mouth kicked up into a wry smile and Elizabeth realized he knew exactly how ‘okay’ she was feeling.

  The sonofabitch was waiting for her to crack. Her eyes narrowed into twin beads of wrath.

  Nat leaned over the horn of his ornately carved saddle, his voice soft and warm. “Just one more field to check—”

  “What?” The word cannonballed out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  He laughed an
d she watched open-mouthed as he tried to hide it, to turn it into a cough behind his leather-clad fist.

  “Sorry, just kidding, couldn’t resist.” His mouth turned rueful, blue eyes softened. “You look colder than an ice-cube in the Arctic. You should have said something—I’d have taken you home.”

  Angry heat spiked through her system and Elizabeth didn’t know whether to hit him or thank him.

  “We’re heading back. Got about a ten minute ride back to the ranch house from here.”

  “What?” Elizabeth repeated, stupidly.

  “Ten minute ride,” he said. Looking at her closely, not missing a thing. “Think you can make it?”

  Elizabeth nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Sometimes she thought if she opened her mouth and started talking, she wouldn’t be able to stop until all the blackness and bitterness spilled out like tar. She kicked-on the horse after Nat, who already led the way.

  Ten minutes. She just had to survive another ten minutes. Morven brushed past a branch that whipped back and dumped its load of snow straight into her lap.

  Damn.

  Frantically she brushed at the snow, stood up in the stirrups, holding onto the raised pommel. She did not want a frozen crotch.

  Next thing she knew she lay flat on her back on the ground, looking up at the snowflakes that drifted out of the gray sky. Great white dots that got bigger and bigger, brighter and whiter as they got closer.

  For a blessed moment she could hear nothing, feel nothing, taste nothing.

  Then her head reeled and white pain exploded inside her brain. Iron flooded her mouth. Her eyes were blinded and dazzled. She wanted to retch, but she couldn’t move.

  She’d ridden straight into the branch of a huge cedar. Her vision cleared slowly, dot by dot. She watched suspended from reality as Nat turned back towards her, a look of resigned panic on his face. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t make out what he said over the ringing in her ears.

  He bent over her, gently kneading her limbs. His lips moved soundlessly as she waited for the fear to overtake her, to strangle reason and paralyze her with dread. She couldn’t explain the cheated feeling that seeped through her when it didn’t happen.