Cowboy Who Came For Christmas. Lenora Worth
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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.
* * *
ADAN 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.