This Perfect Stranger. Barbara Ankrum

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СКАЧАТЬ as his gaze collided with hers, then he looked back at his coffee.

      She dragged her purse up from the seat and began rifling through it for money. Moody intercepted her again, setting the coffeepot down on the table. “I told you. It’s on me today. You go on home, honey. Put your feet up. You’re pale as a ghost. You could use a rest.”

      Maggie slid an anxious look at Laird and his bunch before sending Moody what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about me. Okay? I’m just a little tired is all. I’ll be fine.”

      “You sure? When you gonna get some help out on your place? Lord knows, you shouldn’t be handling all that on your own.”

      “Soon,” Maggie lied. “Thanks, Moody. For everything.”

      The older woman just smiled. She was nosy, Maggie thought, but she wasn’t dense. She always knew how far to push, and Maggie had just drawn the line. Gathering up her purse she headed toward the door, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the stranger. He’d disappear in a few hours like the cold wind off the Bitterroots.

      And she’d still be spitting into it.

      Cain MacCallister made no pretense of ignoring the fragile-looking beauty named Maggie as she unfolded those long legs of hers from the booth and walked by him without a second glance. More to the point, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Perhaps, he reasoned, it was her resemblance to Annie that had caught him like a sucker punch to the gut. Slender and pale, with that blond, pinned-up hair and swanlike neck of hers, she could’ve been a dancer. Maybe it was the elegant way she held herself as that cow-chaser hassled her.

      Maybe it was the way she smiled—the little flicker of that wide mouth of hers that had nearly stalled his heart. All of which had forced him to reassess the “fragile” description he’d pinned on her. Oh, she was delicate all right. Delicate the way centuries-old bone china was delicate, with a tempered core that belied the translucence.

      Damn, he thought, sipping his cooling coffee. What the hell was wrong with him? He had no business thinking about a woman like her. She was probably married with three kids, a picket fence and a dog. He was in the market for something considerably less permanent.

      But that didn’t stop him from watching her pull away in her beat-up old pickup truck, or from wondering who’d put the sadness he’d glimpsed in her eyes.

      Swivelling a look at the trio of men seated a few tables away, Cain tightened his fist. He’d known plenty of men like them. In lockup, a man got familiar with the lowest common denominator quickly. In the real world, men like Laird got off on using intimidation. Especially on women.

      Cain smiled grimly. He’d give that bastard five minutes behind bars before men much better versed in arm-twisting put him in a place he’d wish he’d never seen. But men like Laird—men with money—rarely found themselves in the black hole. Even if they’d earned a spot there.

      Cain reached into his pocket for the last of his change and tossed it on the table. The waitress who’d filled his cup smiled as she cruised by him again. “Finished? Sure I can’t get you something else?”

      The smell of cinnamon buns had been making him almost sick with hunger for the past ten minutes and if he didn’t get out of here soon, he might just have to ask her for a job as a dishwasher to earn one.

      “Thanks,” he said, managing a smile of his own as he shrugged into his denim jacket. “This is it. Unless you can tell me who might be hiring around here.”

      “You’re looking for work?” she asked with a surprised lift of her brows.

      He nodded curtly. “I’ve got some experience with ranch work. Horses, mostly.”

      Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, looking him up and down for a moment. “Funny, I didn’t take you for a ranch hand.”

      He slid his gloves back on.

      “Horses, huh?” She glanced at Laird. “The Bar ZX is always hiring at this time of year.”

      Laughter erupted from the men’s table as they shared a joke. Cain glanced out the window. “Anywhere else?”

      The woman smiled slowly, then gestured to Cain with a tip of her chin to follow her. “As a matter of fact,” she said softly, walking him to the door, “I just might know of something.”

      Chapter 2

      The sleeting rain started after lunch, but by one-fifteen it had turned into hail—a sharp, biting deluge that rattled against the tin roof of Maggie’s barn. It had scattered the horses in the paddock in a blind panic. Marble-sized balls of ice pummeled the mares, reducing them to quivering masses huddling against the barn.

      One by one, she managed to catch them and lead them into the barn, out of the weather. But Geronimo, a green-broke three-year old gelding, was too frightened to be caught. She’d already missed him three times with her rope as he skidded around the paddock, eyes white with terror.

      The gelding was the most unpredictable of her new horses. With the temperament of a scared bulldog, he’d resisted her every attempt at training. But Maggie knew he’d been mishandled as a young horse and she believed he had real potential as a cutter.

      The heels of her boots slipped in the mud as Maggie threw the lariat. She missed, going down painfully on one knee. Geronimo crashed into the split-rail fencing and shrieked. Struggling to her feet, Maggie hauled back the spooled out rope, cursing the weather and imagining the bruises she’d have on her before she was done.

      Thunder rumbled, shaking the ground and blurring the roar of the hail against the barn. Frigid rain dripped off the brim of her hat and slid down her neck. The stinging hail beat against her slicker-covered back. Instinct warned that she should leave the damned horse where he was. But she knew she didn’t have the heart to do that either. Geronimo had been through enough in his short life to fill a book. She wasn’t about to compound his misery by abandoning him when things got tough. In his state, he could break his neck trying to break out of the paddock.

      “Shh—Geronimo—” she called, approaching him again as he pranced madly back and forth on the north end of the enclosure. She knew he hated the rope, but she couldn’t get close enough to him to grab his halter. “Whoa, boy. Settle down, now. Here we go. That’s it. Let’s just get you outta this weather.”

      Geronimo rolled his eyes in terror as she tossed the loop one more time, this time, miraculously, dropping it over the gelding’s head. Maggie hauled back on the rope feeling the resistance before she’d even gotten it tight.

      The big gelding shuddered for a moment, legs splayed, before he exploded with a high-pitched squeal. Nine-hundred pounds of fury, bone and muscle bore down on her like a shrieking banshee.

      There was no time to react. Nowhere to go. She heard a scream and knew it had come from her.

      Too late, she lunged sideways, diving toward the fence rails, but Geronimo slammed into her with the force of an oncoming locomotive. The impact sent her careening against the railing and slammed the breath from her lungs. Lights exploded in her skull, and the rain and the sky and even the mud beneath her cheek winked in and out like a flickering lightbulb.

      She felt, more than heard, the thunderous pounding of Geronimo’s hooves against the ground nearby. She gasped and coughed. Her lungs burned. The СКАЧАТЬ