Only You (20 page)

How many people were in the sedan? She squinted as she studied the car in the rearview mirror. Two men in the front. Was there a third person in the backseat? She felt the front right tire of her car sink into the soft shoulder of the road. Oh no.
No, no, no
. She twisted the steering wheel, too late to pull out of the slow-motion skid.
Please.
She gunned the engine, and for a second she thought she’d gained enough purchase to pull back onto the blacktop, but no. The car slid sideways, closer to the ditch, and lurched to a stop.

With shaking hands, Maggie grabbed her phone and punched in JD’s number. She twisted the car key off, then back on, pumping the gas pedal.
Come on, come on, come on. Shit.
The white sedan pulled up behind her, and both men got out. They looked huge, like dinosaurs.

“Hey.” JD’s voice sounded in her ear. “Are you still coming over?”

“I’m stuck by the side of the road. The car stalled and it won’t start. And there are two men approaching the car. I think they were outside my house yesterday.” Her words ran into each other in her hurry to get it all out.

“Lock your doors.”

“Yes. No,” she wailed as she pounded on the lock with her fist. “The damned things don’t work.”

“I’m on my way. Where are you?”

“Um . . .” She looked out the window at the man standing beside her car. Was that a bulge under his thin all-weather jacket? Did he have a gun? “Just outside of town. I think he has a gun,” she whispered.

The man knocked on her window with his knuckles.

“Put him on the phone.”

“What?”

“Roll down the window and give him your phone. I want to talk to him.” 

Maggie gripped the phone harder. If she gave the stranger her phone, she wouldn’t be able to hear JD, and the sound of his voice had somehow anchored her.

“Maggie, love. Give him the phone so I can tell him if he lays a finger on you I will hound him for the rest of his life and rip him apart limb by limb.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She rolled down the window enough to pass her phone out to the man. He had a scar running along his jaw and curling up behind his ear. Definitely the kind of guy who carried a gun.

“It’s for you,” she said.

“Thank you.” He took the phone and turned his back to her. She caught sight of the second man leaning against her right rear fender. They were acting kind of laid-back for people who might want to kill her.

The guy with the phone spun back toward her and raised his eyebrows as he studied her. After muttering something into the phone, he handed it back to her. “Your boyfriend’s on his way.”

She grabbed the phone and cranked the window up almost all the way. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said.

The man rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I told him I’d wait until he got here.”

Wait for what? To kill them both? Her heart leaped into her throat. Knowing she was acting a little crazy, she scrolled through her numbers and hit Clay’s, left a quick message and hit Jesse’s number. Where was everyone?

“Excuse me,” she said to the man now leaning against her door.

He sighed. “What now? Run out of people to call?”

“I need to get out. I’m going to be sick.” She shoved the door open and swung her legs out of the car in time to throw up on the man’s black hand-tooled cowboy boots. She had time to study the boot’s design as the breakfast she’d so diligently eaten an hour ago splattered everything within a three-foot radius. The man cursed and hopped backward. He was going to kill her for sure now. Those boots looked expensive.

JD’s truck roared down the road toward them, and Maggie immediately felt better. “Sorry.” She tried on her best smile, but couldn’t help noticing that he reached inside his jacket as if he were going for his gun. She grabbed her water bottle and swigged a mouthful of water. She could whip the bottle at him if he took aim.

JD skidded to stop. Clay arrived right on his tail in his half-ton. Jesse came barreling across the field on his horse, looking like the hero in a cowboy Western. The two men from the white sedan both raised their hands, although no one had asked them to.

JD yanked open the passenger side door of Sammie’s car. “Are you okay? Did they touch you?”

Tears clouded her vision. For heaven’s sake, why was she crying now? She scrubbed at the tears. “I’m fine.”

Jesse glanced inside the car and winked at her, then made a face. “What’s that smell?”

Maggie blushed. “I threw up. Sorry.”

“Come.” JD reached inside for her.

She scooted over the console and scrambled out of the car and into JD’s arms. She sighed as she rested her head against his chest, inhaling his freshly laundered T-shirt and the light scent of his soap. He rubbed circles on her back as he eased her closer to him.

“What’s going on here?” His deep voice rumbled through his chest and vibrated through her.

Maggie turned and studied the men from the protection of JD’s embrace. They still looked big and scary to her. “I think he has a gun.” She pointed to the man who had approached her car.

Jesse slipped in behind both men and herded them closer together, as if the men were cattle. Before they had time to react, he robbed the one man of a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. He  shoved the gun into the waistline of his jeans. “Hands on the roof of the car. Spread your legs.”

The men complied, but not without a few curses. “All we did was stop to help the lady when her car broke down,” one of them growled.

Jesse continued to pat them down as if frisking someone was second nature to him. “You’re just a couple of feel-good guys out for a drive, right? What have we got here?” He pulled a badge out of the first man’s back pocket.

“Private investigator Dennis Locke,” Jesse said as he tossed the leather badge on the roof of the car. “At ease, gentlemen. What are you investigating?” The men dropped their hands and stepped away from the car.

“Maggie says they were parked in front of her house yesterday,” JD said. “I suppose you work for Ethan Cooper.”

Maggie stiffened. The morning kept getting weirder and weirder. First, the strange men following her, then Jesse acting like law enforcement, and now JD implying his brother had hired a detective to . . . what? Check on her?

“Never heard of him,” Locke said.

“Ethan hired someone to investigate me?” Maggie asked.

JD had the grace to look embarrassed. “Not you. Your birth parents. I told him not to, but Ethan does what he wants. I’m sorry, Maggie. I thought I had convinced him to leave it alone.”

She ducked out from under his arm and settled her hands on her hips “Why does he want to know who my parents are? Is he checking to see if I’m good enough for you?”

Clay cleared his throat. “Maybe you two should discuss that later. What about these guys?”

“We were hired to  do a background check on Maggie Kennedy.” Locke nodded toward her. “Sorry we frightened you, ma’am.”

Damnation. Maggie bit her lip to hold back her tears. She wanted to blame her weepiness on her hormones, but she was feeling distinctly out of her depth. Had been, really, since she’d arrived in Wyoming. Everything was getting so complicated, and now scary people suddenly seemed interested in her, and she had no idea why.

“Who hired you?” Jesse inquired.

The second man smirked. “Like we’re going to tell you.”

Maggie gasped as Jesse moved with lightning speed and pulled the man’s arm up behind his back. “Maybe you’d like to reconsider your answer.”

“Jesse,” JD warned.

“I’ve got it,” Jesse said without looking away from the man.

Maggie held her breath. They all knew how volatile Jesse could be.

“Calm down,” Locke said to Jesse. “You know how this works. You get a subpoena, we’ll tell you who hired us. I’ll give you this much. A private detective was poking around our client’s life, and our client suspected it had something to do with this lady.” He nodded at Maggie. “He wanted to know who had instigated the investigation and why. I apologize, Ms. Kennedy. Like I said, we didn’t mean to scare you.”

Jesse let go of the second man’s arm.

Jesse handed him his gun. “If you have any questions for Maggie, ask her now. Otherwise I don’t want to see you around Maggie again. Understand? ”

“We’re finished here,” the man with the scarred face said.

Maggie stood with her three friends in a loose circle and watched the dust plume out behind the white sedan as they drove away. After a minute she folded her arms and turned to JD. “I have questions.”

“No kidding. So do I.” JD frowned at Jesse. “Are you a cop?”

Jesse grimaced. “Do I look like one?”

“You sure acted like one,” Clay said.

“I was once, and now I’m not. That’s all you need to know.”

Maggie smiled. “I knew you were a good guy under all that other stuff.”

“Aww, Maggie love.” Jesse smiled. “You ever ditch this guy”—he jerked his thumb toward JD—“I’ll come running.”

JD cleared his throat. “It’s time I took Maggie home.”

“Not until you tell us what that was all about,” Jesse said.

“I’m not sure I know. Ethan and I were talking about Maggie’s biological parents, and Ethan said he had a detective on retainer and thought it be interesting to find out the story behind her parents.” He glanced at her and grimaced. “I said no, but Ethan . . .” He shrugged as if to say,
What are you going to do?

Maggie had a few ideas, like telling Ethan to quit messing around in other people’s lives, hers and Claire’s. Except she suspected he’d acted out of concern for her, and maybe for his brother. But still, it rankled that he had hired someone to dig into her past without her permission.

“Looks like Ethan’s detective may have gotten too close to the truth. You don’t know who your biological parents are, Maggie? I thought all that information could be made available these days,” Clay said.

“It was a private adoption, and part of the deal, I suppose you’d call it, was my adoptive parents could never reveal to me who my biological parents are.”

“Or they don’t know,” JD added.

“I’ve always had the impression they know. I also wondered if they were paid to adopt me and bring me up. It would explain a lot of things.”

JD moved closer to her and caught her hand with his and gave it a squeeze. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t need those people anymore.”

Maggie squeezed back. “You’re right.” She beamed at her friends. “I have such wonderful friends. Thank you so much for coming to my rescue. I feel silly now, but those men looked so menacing at the time.” She blushed. “And my emotions aren’t exactly stable these days.”

“No need to apologize for asking for help, Maggie.” Jesse caught the reins of his horse and swung up on its back in one fluid movement. He grinned down at her. “Any time.” He saluted them and rode off across the pasture.

Clay laughed. “Hard to match that exit. Looks like there’s more to Jesse than he lets us believe.” He glanced at his watch. “Yikes! Gotta scramble. I’ve got day clinic today. Drop by soon.” He kissed her cheek and left.

JD kept her hand in his as they walked to his truck. “Damn near impossible to get a word in edgewise with all those guys hanging around.” He opened the passenger door for her and helped her up into the cab. “What’s with all the kissing?”

Maggie smothered a smile. She liked the idea that JD was jealous. Not that she’d foster the feeling, but she figured it didn’t hurt for him to realize other men found her attractive.

“Kissing?” She widened her eyes.

A corner of his mouth quirked up, and his eyes twinkled with amusement as he put his arm on the roof of the truck and leaned in. She held her breath, his heat and distinct masculine scent filling the cab. She leaned toward his big, solid body as feelings cascaded over her. Passion, yes. Of course. Every time he held her it felt . . . well, it felt right, like that was where she should be. And hot! Oh yeah, lots of heat there.

But underneath those surface reactions, something else was going on. Something deep inside of her, like the unfurling of a wish. She didn’t know what to think about the feeling. It both frightened and exhilarated her. Like most other people, she’d hoped for and dreamed of that someone special to love. But until this very minute, she hadn’t realized what that meant. To love someone, to really love them, you had so much to gain. And everything to lose. How did other people do it? How did people trust another human being with their heart?

JD reached in and tapped the end of her nose with his finger. “Are you okay? You’ve lost all your color.”

She gazed up at the gorgeous man standing in front of her.
Was
she okay? She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. “Of course.”  If not right this second, she soon would be. Because she was strong and smart, and she was going to be someone’s mama. Regardless of what happened with her and JD, she would be okay.

An hour later, JD scrubbed a hand over his head as he looked at his living room. How did Maggie do it? He’d shoved the furniture this way and that way until he frigging hated the stuff. Maggie had walked in, and within minutes, everything was where it should be. Wouldn’t it be something if she could organize his messed-up feelings just as easily?