The Quiet Seduction. Dixie Browning
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sense of urgency inside him. Almost a sense of wariness.
Like what happened to his vehicle.
And which one of them—the woman or her son—had got him out of his clothes and into these striped pajamas.
Two
At a quarter to midnight, after checking the doors and switching off the outside lights, Ellen glanced toward the stairs, feeling as if she’d just run a three-day marathon. Pete was finally asleep; the stranger had been fed and was now sleeping—safely and normally, she sincerely hoped. When he’d opened his eyes earlier, she’d looked closely and could detect no sign of irregular pupils, but with such dark eyes it was hard to tell.
Nice eyes, really. It wasn’t like her to notice a man’s eyes—or a man’s anything else. But as she’d been the one to get him out of his clothes and into a pair of pajamas…
Well, there were some things no woman who wasn’t blind and totally devoid of hormones could help but notice.
She yawned. She would try to cram eight hours of sleep into what was left of the night, but she knew in advance that it wouldn’t be enough. All too soon the alarm clock would go off and she’d have to get up again, get Pete off to school. After that, unless Booker and Clyde showed up, she would turn out the horses, come back inside and make the beds and put the breakfast dishes in to soak, then go back to the barn and muck out the stalls, clean troughs and do all the other things she paid that worthless pair to do. Even when they went through the motions, she had to follow right behind them to see that things were done properly. It was almost easier to do them herself in the first place, but there were still some jobs that needed a man’s strength.
Absently she picked up a plastic robot and a model airplane and put them on the stairs to go up. Crossing to the fireplace, she wound the mantel clock, touched the framed picture beside it and yawned again.
Lord, she was tired. There weren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all that needed doing, nor enough energy to last, even if she could have found the hours.
She was halfway up the stairs when someone knocked on the front door. “Oh, shoot, what now?” she muttered, glancing at her watch. No matter how tired she was, she could hardly ignore a summons in the middle of the night, not after what had happened only a few hours ago. She’d got off lucky. Others hadn’t been so fortunate. If someone needed her help…
She switched on the security light again and peered out the window. A dark car had pulled up to the front gate, one of those low-slung models with a spoiler on the rear end and decorations all over the body. Long, curling flames, in this case.
Almost everyone she knew drove a truck, but most families also had a car. That detailing, though, was unfamiliar.
“May I help you?” She opened the door only a few inches, keeping her right foot wedged against the bottom so that she could slam it shut if need be. If worse came to worst, Jake’s old .420 gauge shotgun was propped in the corner behind the coatrack. Of course the shells were upstairs in her dresser under her socks and sweaters, but a housebreaker wouldn’t know that.
House-breakers also didn’t go around knocking on front doors.
“Yes’m, that is, we’re looking for a friend of ours. He ain’t been seen since them twisters went through here, and we thought he might’ve run into some trouble.”
If she’d had antennae, they would definitely have been twitching. Not that she had anything in particular against tattoos—it was purely a matter of personal preference—but this man was covered with them. “A friend, you say?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, he’s a real good friend. We been on his tail since—” His silent companion elbowed him, and he stepped back and cleared his throat. “That is, we sure would like to find him, ma’am. You seen any strangers passing through here since the twister cut through?”
Later, Ellen would wonder what on earth had possessed her to lie. It wasn’t her nature at all, but something about this pair set off alarms. She put it down to a cross between a woman’s intuition and a mother’s protective instincts. “Only the men from the power company. They were checking all along here. One of them came by earlier today to be sure my power was back on.”
“Power company, huh? You sure you haven’t seen nobody else?”
“Perhaps if you described your friend?”
“’Bout six feet tall, maybe a few inches taller, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at his companion, who nodded vigorously. “Dark hair, dark eyes—I guess if I was a lady, I might call him good-looking.” His mouth stretched into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. They remained flat and expressionless.
“What’s your friend’s name?”
The two men looked at each other. It was the tattooed man who spoke. “Harrison. J. S. Harrison. Ma’am.”
Ellen tucked the name away to consider later. “And your names?”
A furtive look passed between the two men. “I’m Bill Smith and this here is, uh, Bill Jones.”
Right, Ellen thought. And I’m the president’s mother-in-law. She wouldn’t trust either one of these men to take out her garbage. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you, but if I see anyone fitting that description, I’ll be sure to tell him you’re looking for him.”
The devil she would. The moment she closed the door and shot the bolt, she moved to the window to make sure they left. For several minutes they stood outside their car, heads close together as if they were talking. What if she’d been wrong and they really were friends of her stranger?
J. S. Harrison. That at least sounded plausible. What kind of man was she harboring under her roof? If he was a friend of Smith and Jones, she didn’t want him anywhere on her property.
Finally they got into the car, made a three-point turn and headed back down the lane. At the rate they were driving, if their muffler survived the potholes, she’d be very much surprised. She told herself she was being paranoid, but then, just down the hall, a stranger was sleeping in Jake’s bed. A man she didn’t know from Adam.
A man who didn’t know himself from Adam. Maybe she should have let them in to meet him—at least they might have told him who he was and where he belonged.
And maybe not, she thought, stroking away the goose bumps that suddenly pricked her upper arms.
On impulse, she slipped quietly into the downstairs bedroom and gazed at the sleeping stranger. Who are you? she wondered. Have I just made a serious blunder? Were those two men really your friends?
She didn’t think so. His name might actually be Harrison. Then again, there was no J. in his monogram.
Ellen would be the first to admit that she could be wrong about this whole business. The description they’d given her could fit half the men in Lone Star County. Six feet tall, lean but powerful build, dark hair and eyes. They hadn’t mentioned the shape of his mouth or the way his eyebrows lifted at the inner ends when he was puzzled, but then, men probably wouldn’t even notice such things.
Still, she might have solved all his problems if she’d let them come in and look. Some of his problems, anyway. It certainly wouldn’t have hurt…would it?
That was the trouble, she just didn’t know. She did know this man had been injured saving her son’s life. She owed him more than she could ever repay, and if that meant lying on his behalf, then she would lie until her tongue blistered.
She’d have to tell him about the men, of course, as soon as his knot went down and his headache eased. It would help if she could come up with some logical reason for her reaction. A woman’s intuition? She could just hear him jeering at that. Men always did.
“You sent them away? Because you didn’t like their looks? Are you crazy, or what?”
Okay, so she was crazy. She’d done what she thought