Midnight Cowboy Read online

  Jack drew a taut breath, his fingers curling into fists. If she expected him to admit he was a liar, she’d be disappointed. Jack Black, down-and-out cowpoke, was far from the first persona he’d taken on in order to get a story. Of course, most times his life hadn’t relied on his dishonesty. “Sometimes lying serves a purpose.”

  She shook her head, her hair shifting across her shoulders. “No matter who gets hurt? Well, I can’t abide lying…or liars.”

  He said nothing.

  Andy stared at his inviting mouth, recalling how wonderful his kiss had made her feel, recalling how disappointed she’d been that he hadn’t kissed her until she’d begged him to stop, recalling how certain she was that he had lied to her. Just how bad was his lie? “Do you have a wife, Jack? A family?”

  The switch of subject was so abrupt, he almost told her he lived with his mother and his sister’s family. “My mother is still alive, and my sister is married, but I’ve never come close.”

  “Really?” An incredibly handsome man like him? “Why is that?”

  With all his heart and to his profound consternation, he wished he could tell her the whole awful truth, wished he could put an end to his obsession once and for all, wished he could get to know this woman whose kiss had haunted his dreams last night. “How about you? You’re not wearing a ring, but then, women don’t always in this day and age. A family, a husband, kids?”

  “No one.” Andy considered mentioning Gram, but the confusion she felt over discovering Gram’s lies had filled her with distrust. “No parents, no kids, no husband.”

  She judged from the uneasy flicker in his eyes that he, too, had been thinking about their kiss and wondering if he’d overstepped his bounds. Feeling a nudge of guilt for betraying Tim, she added, “But I have promised to marry a wonderful guy in Seattle.”

  A shimmer of pain grazed Jack’s chest. Of course she was engaged. A special lady like her. He envied her the happiness ahead. If he ever brought Nightmare Man to justice, he’d seek his own happiness. “Good for you. Don’t let anything stand in your way.”

  Not even me. Especially me. Jack tipped his hat and started to spin away from her when he noticed her arm was bare, her scar exposed for the whole town to see. A shiver crawled the length of his spine, and unintentionally he grasped her left hand and tipped it up to get a better look at her scar.

  Andy gazed up at him, fear in her bright blue eyes. Fear of him. Jack felt like a heel. She was not Leandra Woodworth and nothing awful was going to happen to her. “I—”

  “What is it with the men in this town?” Andy yanked her hand from his. “Haven’t any of you seen a scar before? No. Don’t answer that. I’ve had all the lies I can handle for one day.” She stormed out of the graveyard and left him staring after her, breathing in her gentle flowery scent.

  ANDY DROVE INTO BUTTE for dinner, the long hours alone on the road giving her time to ponder the reasons for Gram’s lies about Montana. It was near midnight when she returned and pulled in to the parking spot of the Motherlode Motel. She was dead tired. All of the rustic cabins were dark, their occupants likely asleep. Alder Gulch closed early.

  The night always held an indefinable spookiness for her, and Andy was glad to arrive quickly and safely inside her cabin. Even its ghastly pink walls were a welcome sight.

  Within minutes she’d changed into the old T-shirt she slept in, removed her contacts, washed her face and brushed her teeth. She rolled the quilt to the foot of the bed, then pulled back the covers and slipped beneath them. She’d be asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Andy reached toward the bedside lamp and froze.

  Something had scuttled from beneath the quilt. Something yellowish brown with two black stripes on its back.

  A scorpion.

  A scream climbed Andy’s throat. The scorpion beelined for her. Terror held her paralyzed. Her gaze riveted on the scorpion’s menacing tail, curled, pulsing, primed to deliver its deadly sting.

  Chapter Five

  The scream tore through Jack’s troubled sleep. He bolted upright in bed, his heart pumping like the legs of a runaway bull. Another scream rent the quiet night. His head jerked toward the sound. Next door. Andy! He flung off the covers, grabbed his jeans and hopped into them as he hurried barefoot across the cold cabin floor and out onto the colder ground.

  Another scream ripped through the quiet and he sprinted to the porch of the cabin next to his and grasped the doorknob. It was locked. “Andrea! Let me in!”

  The door crashed open and she threw herself at him, grasping his neck and scooting her legs up his as if she were shinning up a tree, as if she were trying to get her feet off the floor.

  “What the—”

  “Shut the door!” she cried. “Quick!”

  Catching her to him with one arm, Jack awkwardly seized the knob and slammed the door. The crash rang in the noiseless night. A couple of lights in the cabins beyond Jack’s blinked on, but no one ventured out to inquire as to the cause of the disturbance. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Andy croaked.

  Unconvinced and fearful, Jack hurriedly carried her to his cabin, kicked the door shut behind them and leaned against it, breathing hard. Moonlight cast the room in a golden mist, and for ten long seconds Jack held Andy’s head pressed to his naked shoulder, burying his nose in the sweet fragrance of her velvety hair, one hand pressed against the thin cotton fabric at her back, one cupped beneath her firm bottom, which seemed covered only by something sheer and silken. His heart thumped as rapidly as hers. From sudden fright. From the unknown cause of it. From awareness.

  That realization got him moving across the room. He set Andy on his disheveled bed and reached for the bedside lamp.

  Andy’s breath shuddered from her and she pulled her knees to her chest.

  Dim light spilled into the room. Jack stood over her. “What happened?”

  Andy’s chin was on her knees, and her long dark hair fell forward, hiding her face from his as she spoke. “There was a scorpion in my blankets. If I hadn’t seen it before I turned off the light—”

  She broke off, another shudder rumbling through her.

  “Holy—” Jack sank to the bed facing her and gently embraced her.

  Andy straightened her legs and nestled her cheek against the springy, silken black hair sparsely adorning Jack’s naked chest. He smelled clean and warm and she wanted to climb inside him and let his heat melt the sheet of ice encasing her heart. A scorpion. What a perfectly awful finish to a perfectly awful day.

  Jack’s hands moved soothingly over her back. “I take it you didn’t manage to kill the scorpion?”

  “No. I flipped it off the bed onto the floor, but then I couldn’t find it. I didn’t want to kill it. I just didn’t want it to kill me.” As she spoke, Andy slowly lifted her head and looked at him.

  Jack’s mouth dropped open and goose bumps lifted on his naked flesh. Her eyes. One was all blue, the other was one-quarter blue and three-quarters brown, as beautiful as a gemstone of lapis lazuli. Just likeDear God, Andrea Hart was Leandra Woodworth!

  Andy grabbed a handful of her long hair just above her forehead and tugged it up and away from her face, an unconscious yet sensual gesture. She frowned at him. “I thought I was the one who’d been frightened—but you’re as pale as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  “I guess you could say I have,” he sputtered. “Am. Looking at one now.”

  “I beg your pardon.” She shifted out of his grasp and back against the brass headboard.

  The complete incomprehension in her eyes affirmed Jack’s suspicions that she didn’t know her true identity. And it roused an awful fear in him as he recalled how she’d roamed around town that day with her wrist exposed, parading her distinctive scar for one and all to see. Including Nightmare Man.

  He clenched his jaw. How had that scorpion gotten into her cabin, into her bed?

  “Hello in there.” Andy shattered his grim musings. “I’m waiting for an explanation
here. Why did you call me a ghost?”

  How did he tell her? Where did he start? Hell, would she even believe him? He thought of the trip he’d made into Butte earlier that night, about the background check Wally and he had conducted, and decided she might. Eventually. “Your eyes are very unusual.”

  Her impatience was evident in the tilt of her head. “Gram said my father’s were the same.”

  Jack nodded. Arlo Woodworth had passed his unique eye coloring onto his daughter. “I thought you said you didn’t have any family.”

  “I don’t.” Andy blinked, her emotions logjammed on the subject of her grandmother. “Gram passed away two months ago.”

  Gram. Tonight, Wally and he had checked out the names on the gravestone Andy had been so interested in this afternoon, hours of labor paying off when they’d discovered Arlo Woodworth’s mother’s maiden name had been Leach. Her given name Eloise Ann. The woman who’d disappeared with Lee Lee.

  But even with that link, until he’d looked into her eyes a moment ago, Jack hadn’t dared hope that Andrea Hart was the missing Leandra. The shock running through his system seemed to be dissipating and he realized finding Lee Lee might only have aggravated his problems, since she apparently still did not remember that awful, crucial night. But something had brought her here. “After your grandmother’s death—is that when you learned of your connection with Alder Gulch?”

  “My connection? No. What are you talking about?”

  She looked so vulnerable, Jack wanted to pull her close again, but he figured any move in that direction right now would erase whatever trust he’d earned with her. He rubbed his long fingers down the legs of his jeans. “What brought you to Alder Gulch?”

  “I told you—research for my new book.” Andy glimpsed the ribbon of ebony hair that feathered down Jack’s flat stomach and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. Her mouth watered. She swallowed hard, then forced her gaze to his long, lean fingers, and, even in her agitated confusion, she was aware of how little he wore, how little she wore, how wonderfully comforting nestling against his bare chest felt….

  “So, you just picked this town out of a hat?” Jack’s sage green eyes were dark with a concern she didn’t understand.

  “No. In the past seven weeks I’ve visited seven ghost towns. This one just hit my hot button—” She broke off, her mind finally engaging, churning and connecting, digesting and processing. “Why did you suggest I might have heard of Alder Gulch at the time of Gram’s death?”

  “Well…” Jack braced his arms on his thighs and leaned closer to her, wishing she didn’t smell so sweet, so damned divertingly like a dessert he couldn’t indulge in. No distractions. He had to remember that she held the solution to his obsession locked in her mind, had to remember he might not be able to set it free, had to remember if he did succeed, it could unleash the devil’s wrath on them both.

  At least he’d come into this with his eyes wide open. Andy was naive to the dangers, and Jack hated the unpleasant necessity of stripping her of her innocence. “I have reason to believe your real name is Leandra Woodworth and that you were born and raised in this town until the age of five, when your parents were brutally murdered.”

  She stared openmouthed at him. “Really, Jack. And you accused me of having a big imagination. My parents died in a car crash.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Gram told me.” Even as she said it, Andy felt the old panic come alive and burgeon through her chest and pound against her temples.

  “You know your grandmother lied to you about your past.” Jack’s voice rose an octave. “You discovered it today—at that tombstone.”

  “You’re nuts.” Andy laughed, but she felt no mirth. Yesterday she’d been certain who she was, but now…Gram had lied to her. No doubt there. But murder? Impossible.

  She shook her head at Jack. “I told you earlier that I’d had all the lies I could stand, so where do you get off asking me to believe anything you say when you couldn’t tell the truth if you had to, Jack Sta-Black?”

  Jack’s sigh was loud as he raked his hands through his hair. “My real name is Jack Starett, Jr.—rancher and restaurateur.”

  Andy crossed her arms over her chest. “And you want to know what I’m doing in Alder Gulch?”

  Jack sighed, obviously struggling with himself about something. At length, he said, “I’ve spent the past fifteen years looking for the man who murdered my father. The same man who murdered your parents. I have every reason to believe he resides in this very town. A man you once dubbed ‘Nightmare Man.’“

  Something cold and slimy crawled out of a murky corner deep in Andy’s mind, something as awful and terrifying as a child’s worst dream. Panic pounded at her temples and she gulped for air, gasped for it. “No! No! You’re lying. I’m not Leandra Woodworth.”

  She lurched away from Jack, scrambled off the opposite side of the bed and over to one of the windows, flinging it open for air. Hugging herself, she threw back her head and drew a steadying breath.

  Bright light poked her eyes, and she noticed the moon was as round and full as a supper plate in the sky. Without warning, a voice sounded inside her head, Gram’s voice. “That’s a good old Montana fool’s moon, Lee Lee.”

  “Oh, God!” Andy sobbed. “Oh, Gram! How deep did the lies go?”

  Jack stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, glad that she didn’t resist, sensing she was close to collapse. “You remembered something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nightmare Man’s identity?” Jack held his breath.

  “No. Maybe never. My doctor said I was blocking out what happened to my parents because I couldn’t bear the trauma.”

  “Hysterical amnesia.” Jack’s sigh rang with defeat.

  She spun around in his arms and faced him.

  Jack loosened his stance, but kept his large hands warmly on her shoulders. He seemed unusually tense, and Andy was suddenly cold, chilled to the bone, but this cold was not induced by weather, this cold arose from inside her. “You’re worried if I don’t quit hiding behind my fear and expose him, Nightmare Man will come after me.”

  Jack’s Adam’s apple bobbed as if whatever he had to say was choking him.

  What didn’t he want to tell her? But as she wondered, the scorpion scurrying across the bed at her flashed into Andy’s mind, and she knew. “You think he already has, don’t you?”

  Chapter Six

  “The scorpion, Jack.” The certainty of it wobbled her knees and grabbed her stomach in a knot of fear. “You think he planted it in my bed, don’t you?”

  With tenderness that belied his size, Jack smoothed his hands across her shoulders, down her arms and cupped her elbows, steadying her. His face betrayed his concern. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  Andy shook her head. “No more lies. Not between us. Not even to save my sanity. Agreed?”

  Jack’s scowl fell into place and Andy had the bizarre urge to reach up and massage it away. Several seconds passed, ticked off by the anxious thudding of her heart against her rib cage, the whine of the wind stealing through the open window at her back and the thoughtful flutter of Jack’s dense ebony lashes as he seemed to consider myriad consequences of complete honesty with her.

  Finally he nodded. “My instinct is pretty much the same as your grandmother’s—get you as far away from this town as fast as possible. But I’m not certain that would protect you. Not now. Of course, the scorpion might just have wandered inside of its own accord. I’ll have a better idea after I get a look at it. However, I’m not keen on trying to find it in a cabin with only lamplight as a guide. First thing tomorrow.”

  First thing tomorrow. Andy shuddered, and Jack eased her against him. She circled her arms around him, her hands splaying against his naked back, her cool cheek resting against his warm, strong chest. She sought comfort, reassurance, but he smelled so deliciously clean, like the freshest spring day, every cell in her body seemed alert, tingling with a
wareness.

  The chill inside her lessened and although she sensed the danger of her feelings, her longings, her vulnerable state of undress, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. Only in fiction had she experienced such a heady, sensuous touch. Only in her fantasies had she dreamed a woman’s total arousal. Why hadn’t she experienced this with Tim?

  Guilt wedged itself between Andy and her feelings. Self-consciously she shoved away from Jack. “It’s getting chilly in here.”

  A blush warmed her cheeks at the lie and, not wanting him to notice it, Andy quickly reached for the window. She gazed one last time at the moon, and a lump of desperation tightened her throat. Would she ever remember the horror of her parents’ deaths? She prayed not.

  She latched the window and wheeled around. Jack was standing beside the bed, smoothing the rumpled covers. Andy’s self-consciousness returned in a rush. Except for the pale blue walls and the lack of a desk, this cabin was an exact replica of hers. No couch, no comfortable chairs to sack out on, only one narrow, antique brass bed that didn’t look large enough for Jack.

  “Don’t even offer to sleep in the bathtub,” Jack said, shaking his head. “I’ve never understood the logic in that. Just end up with a crick in your neck and tailbone. I’ll take the floor.”

  “No!” The word jumped out of her. “I can’t let you do that. What if this motel is infested with scorpions? You could get stung. No. We can share the bed. I’ll sleep on top of the covers and you can sleep under them.”

  A lopsided grin tugged at Jack’s sensuous mouth and his sexy gaze swept the length of her. “You’d catch your death in that outfit.”

  Andy tugged ineffectually on the hem of her T-shirt and was immediately sorry as she realized the gesture accentuated her naked breasts beneath.

  “Besides,” Jack added, the sudden huskiness in his voice sending sweet shivers through her, “you’re putting a lot of trust in a man you hardly know.”

  It was true. She hardly knew him. He’d lied to her from the first moment they’d met, and, despite that, she did trust him. Had no choice but to trust him. “I’ll accept your word as a gentleman.”