The Black Sheep And the Princess. Donna Kauffman

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СКАЧАТЬ the door, determined to end this little tête-à-tête right now. Before she did something even more reckless than letting him get that close to her. Like inviting him in for a glass of wine.

      “Good night.” She opened the door, forcing herself to do it calmly, naturally, when what she wanted to do was dart inside, slam the door shut, and bolt it into place. Like that would keep him out if he really wanted in. She shivered in renewed awareness. She didn’t want Donovan MacLeod back in her life, much less her cabin.

      She held the door open for Bagel and flushed when Donovan had to shoo the dog in after her. She could feel him standing behind her, staring at her from the shadows. She made the mistake of glancing back. “Tomorrow.”

      He surprised her by grinning. Broadly. With every ounce of black sheep bad boy he still had in him. Which, as it turned out, was quite substantial. “Tomorrow it is. See you then, Kate.”

      “Yeah,” she said faintly as she watched him step off the porch and disappear into the darkness. “See you then.”

      It wasn’t until much later, when she was wrapped in more layers than the night chill warranted, third glass of wine in hand, that it occurred to her that he’d never told her where he was staying.

      And that she’d never heard a car engine start up after he’d disappeared into the night. Nor had there been one parked anywhere around her cabin or on the road in.

      She shivered a little, imagining him still out there, somewhere on the camp property. Watching her, maybe?

      The shiver wasn’t one of fear…It was one of anticipation.

      Donovan MacLeod was back in town.

      And Kate Sutherland still wanted him.

      Chapter 3

      Mac paused next to the stand of pine trees and studied the brush of needles scattered around the base of the trunks. Someone had been through here, and recently judging by the way the needles had been disturbed. There were no clear footprints, unless you knew what to look for. He knew.

      He stepped behind the trees and positioned himself in the same place, facing the same direction that the intruder had—the other intruder, he amended. He hadn’t exactly been invited here, either. At least Kate knew he was on the premises. Perhaps not at that very second, but he doubted she knew anything about the other one. Question was, what did the other intruder know about Kate? Anyone who would go to this much trouble, this far out in the middle of nowhere, had one of two motives. They were either after Kate, or something Kate owned.

      Or maybe both.

      He looked through the trees, along the same sight line as the person who’d stood there before him. From this spot, he could see her cabin, including both sides of the wraparound screened-in porch. He also had a clear line into the cab of her pickup truck. Someone was definitely spying on her.

      He crouched down slightly, but the bows of the tree were closer together there, and his sight line was immediately obstructed. He straightened. A man, then. Or an inordinately tall woman. But his gut told him it was a man. In his experience, women ambushed, and they generally preferred trapping their quarry in as public a place as they could manage. Men hunted. And the fewer people around to contest the hunt, the better.

      He looked over his shoulder and noted the direct path of cover from where he stood, straight through a short stand of woods, to where several yet-to-be remodeled camp cabins still stood. Beyond them, he knew it was only a short hike through another dense stand of trees, then a quick scramble up a rocky slide to where the main road wrapped around the top of the mountain before dipping down the other side toward town.

      He could track it, and would, but he’d seen enough for now. He’d checked the property boundaries on this side of the lake yesterday before parking himself on Kate’s porch with her trusty sidekick. Bagel. Honestly, it was no wonder the dog had defected to his side.

      He’d noted the graffiti on several stands of trees and on one of the service sheds, but this was the first evidence of someone actually watching the cabin itself. It was harder to tell if anything had been vandalized in the cabins as most of them were empty and had just been left to suffer the elements for over a decade with no apparent maintenance.

      He didn’t know why Louisa had shut the place down, or why she’d left it to simply rot rather than sell the property off while it was still in decent shape. That was on his growing list of things to check out. Just as soon as he decided how to handle Kate.

      He looked back at her cabin. The curtains were old, the color long since bleached out from the sun. The screens needed patching in a dozen places, something she’d need to do before the mosquitoes hatched for the season. The steps to the porch sagged in the middle where the cinderblock propping them up had sunk into the ground. The roof needed new shingles. The stovepipe chimney worked, though. A wispy curl of smoke wafted from the top and drifted slowly upward through the trees.

      His stomach growled, and he could already feel the back of his neck tightening up. The result of sleeping in a cramped rental car with no supplies. He’d kill for a cup of coffee and a better-fitting pair of boots. The ones he’d been wearing when he left the city the day before yesterday smelled like that harbor Dumpster. Unfortunately, the little general store he’d stopped in on the drive up hadn’t exactly sported a huge variety of men’s clothing. He could have gone on ahead to Ralston, the town closest to the camp, but it had been hard enough just coming here.

      He shuttered any thoughts of the past away, just as he’d done from the moment he’d crossed the county line. He was here to do a job. Kate Sutherland was just another client. Even if she didn’t know that yet. Rubbing a hand along the back of his neck, he turned away from the cabin and began tracing the trail of evidence back through the woods, past two of the cabins, doing whatever it took to keep his thoughts focused exclusively on the situation here. Trying like hell not to care about how pathetic and rundown the place had gotten. Like it mattered. He hadn’t given Winnimocca a single thought since he’d peeled out of here on the old FXS Low Rider he’d spent two long summers rebuilding.

      And yet, the swiftness with which he moved through the trees and up the side of the mountain belied his own past there. He’d been gone half his own lifetime, yet easily traversed the grounds as if he still did it every day. It shouldn’t have surprised him, shouldn’t have bothered him. It was just a place. But as he dug his way up the last rise to the side of the main road, he admitted to himself that it did.

      He pulled out the new slim satellite phone Finn had gotten for them each to carry and made some notes, used the camera function to snap a few more shots, then added a few more things to the list of equipment he was going to need Finn to ship up to him. The property was expansive and mostly wooded, which would make it a bitch to secure. It wasn’t going to be easy, and it wasn’t going to be cheap, but it could be done. Fortunately for Trinity, money was never the issue.

      What he really wanted to do, though, was dig a little more, find out who the hell was watching her, track those fuckers down, and make the whole problem go away without installing so much as a single surveillance camera. That would also take care of having to talk to Kate again. He wasn’t sure which was the more daunting task, and didn’t want to know.

      Whoever was bothering her wasn’t putting much muscle behind it. Yet. They were using grade school scare tactics designed to discourage rather than harm. Zap Kate’s will by hitting her in the checkbook, forcing her to spend money cleaning up the vandalized property, and slowing down the progress on restoration work.

      If СКАЧАТЬ