“You’re drunk. You can’t come to work that way.”
“It’s not the first time, and it’s not gonna be the last.” Rafe removed a pack of cigarettes from the folded cuff of his T-shirt, struck a match on the wooden rail of the fence, and lit one. In his dusky blue shirt, jeans, hat, and boots, he could have modeled for American Cowboy magazine. Except that his arms were thick with hair. And his fingers ... short, stubby fingers pinched the cigarette.
Fear clawed at Ruth, squeezing her in a tight fist of panic.
Wide girth, furry skin, thick hands.
No. It couldn’t be.
She backed up into a bale of hay, the bristly fiber forcing her to stop as it poked into her white linen dress pants. Calm down. Deep breath. Feet solid on the ground. She ignored the sweat beading on her upper lip and brow, swallowed back the fear rising in her throat as she stood strong and stared into the face of the beast.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” she said.
Rafe didn’t seem to hear, though he straightened and squinted toward the corral. “Where the hell are the students? Got to give a god-damned lesson.”
“The students are kids,” Ruth said, trying to tamp down her panic and fury, “and you’re not going near them.”
“Shit. Who’s this bitch?” Rafe swung around and locked a searing gaze on Ruth. “Hey, I know you.” He gave a laugh. “The minister’s daughter. Sorry, darlin’. I didn’t mean to fuck with an angel.”
Chapter 16
Ruth gasped at the crude comment. It was just an expression, wasn’t it? As he loomed closer, pinning her with his lewd grin, she shrank against the wall of the barn and wondered if he could have been her attacker.
Even if he wasn’t the one, the potential for danger was there, setting every nerve in her body on edge. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, imploring her to rush over to the corral, grab her daughter, and blaze a trail out of town.
But she couldn’t run from the question: Did you rape me?
She wanted to ask, to prod Rafe for a confession, but he was too drunk for a reliable answer, eyes rolling shut as he took a heavy drag on the cigarette and then stumbled back, groping in the air for the fence.
Ethan lunged forward and grabbed Rafe by one arm, yanking him back onto his feet. “You’re going back to the bunkhouse. Get some coffee or sleep it off. Whatever you need to do. Just get the hell out of here.”
“Get your hands off me,” Rafe growled. “I can walk just fine.”
“Then go,” Ethan said, pushing him back toward his horse.
Holding her breath, Ruth watched as Rafe stumbled off. After he managed to heave himself into the saddle, he raised his head and trained his simmering gaze on Ruth. Putting two fingers up to his eyes and then pointing out to her, he pinned her with a hateful look. “I’ve got my eyes on you, girl.”
Silence overcame Ruth and Ethan as they watched him gallop off.
“What do you think that meant?” Ruth asked, pressing the back of one hand to her sweaty upper lip.
“He doesn’t know what he’s saying. That’s the whiskey talking.”
Was it? Rafe’s anger had rough edges and muscle, the kind that pummeled another man unconscious in a barroom brawl. And if he directed that fury toward a woman . . . she didn’t want to think of the consequences.
Or the fact that he knew her name. How had he known? Had he been watching her? Or was he her attacker?
She wished she could share her fears with Ethan, fill him in about the trauma that had sent her running from home, but that was not going to happen, especially with her daughter yards away, wondering about her riding lessons.
“Are you okay?” Ethan was noticing her damp skin and lightning nerves.
“I’ll be fine.” She tried to take on a joking tone as her crazed heartbeat began to slow. “You know, being in my profession, I expect to counsel some people who are on the edge. But this town seems to have more than its share of them.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Been that kind of morning?”
“Don’t get me started. Let’s just say that I’m going to start making a list of these characters.”
“Keeping a scorecard?”
“Definitely. My roster of people who have a screw loose.”
“A screw loose? Did you attend the Three Stooges School of Therapy?”
“I’m just saying, we’ve got a disproportionate psycho population in Prairie Creek.”
“That’s a topic for later discussion, which I’d love to have over coffee or a beer sometime,” he said, looking over at the girls. “For now, let’s see if we can salvage a riding lesson.”
*
On Tuesday afternoon, Shiloh swallowed the last of her iced tea and pressed the cold, damp glass to the crook of her elbow. It was hotter than hell in this house.
Beau had to drive over to Jackson for tractor parts, so Shiloh decided to delay her grocery run into town. Neither she nor Beau wanted to leave their younger sister alone for too long now that Addie Donovan had gone missing in the prairie beyond their back acres. If the sorrow of losing her mother wasn’t enough for Morgan, the fear of a kidnapper out there and the discovery of a corpse in the hills bordering the ranch had been a real kick in the ass—for her and for all of them.
Morgan buried her grief and fear in discontent. “There’s nothing to do here,” she complained as she flopped down at the table in a bathrobe, with hair wet from the shower.
“I didn’t hear you saying that this morning when Beau and I were mucking the stalls,” Shiloh pointed out. “Oh, that’s right. You were still in bed.”
“Because I was up late, talking to Ayla.”
“You going to the pool with Ayla today? It’s a scorcher.”
“She has to watch her brothers.”
“What about Sandi?”
“I told you, she’s got summer school every day.”
“Well, if you get dressed, we can go for a ride.”
Morgan took a sip of milk. “Maybe later.”
“Now would be better. You need to get out of here. I’ll get the mail while you get ready.” Leaving Morgan in the kitchen, Shiloh rousted Rambo and headed down the long drive to the mailbox. Her thoughts were on Beau—and decidedly pornographic. Her brain was on a track, recalling every detail of their coupling, his body, her soaring desire, the smell and taste of him . . .
With an effort, she dragged her thoughts back to the present. She and Beau had been piecing together her mother’s fiscal life, and so far the outlook had been better than Shiloh had expected, with just a two-thousand-dollar credit-card debt that would be covered by Faye’s small life insurance policy. When the last of the bills came in, one of the things on her list was to get this smashed-up mailbox replaced. She reached inside and took out a stack of mail that seemed to be mostly junk mail. Hallelujah.