The Widow's Protector Read online

  Sighing at her own silliness, she rose and pulled the curtains closed, then climbed back under the covers and against the pillows.

  Only a few minutes later, Ryder returned with a large tray and an oil lamp. The flashlight beside her bed would have worked, but she’d used it so often since the power went out, she wasn’t sure it would last long, and who wanted to be hunting for batteries in the dark?

  He set the lamp down on her dresser, left the flame adjusted low to a dim, warm glow, then joined her on the bed with the plate of cheese and crackers. From the tray he passed her a tall glass of milk.

  And since he lay atop the blanket, she got an eyeful. A very sexy eyeful. He had the kind of muscles a man got from hard physical labor, and he had a lot of them everywhere. Not bulging or eye-catching but clearly defined powerful muscles.

  “My God,” she said, “you have a six pack. How in the world did you manage that?”

  He shrugged. “Genetics, I guess. As long as I work, it’s there.”

  She couldn’t resist. She put her milk aside and reached out to run her hand over his abdomen. “Some men would kill for this.”

  “I know. I’ve listened to enough of them moan. It’s just the way I’m built.”

  She smiled and withdrew her hand. “Not vain, huh?”

  “What’s to be vain about? Like I said, it’s genetics, and all I have to do is work. No gym necessary. Now if I’d spent thousands of hours and dollars somewhere trying to achieve that, I’d have something to be vain about.”

  An unusual way of looking at it, she thought. Her gaze trailed down his legs—gorgeous legs—and she was quite sure she’d never seen a finer figure of a man.

  “You’re eye candy,” she announced.

  That cracked him up and he almost choked. He grabbed a napkin to cover his mouth until it settled down, then he balled the napkin up and grinned at her. “You’re the eye candy,” he assured her.

  She shook her head.

  “Aww, don’t give me that. You have very nice breasts.”

  “They’re larger because of the pregnancy.”

  “What makes you think I’d like them any less if they were smaller?” He put the plate aside and brushed each nipple once with his thumb. “Saucy, too. Legs that go on for miles. Very nice legs. But mostly I like your smile. You have a smile that lights the place up.”

  The last compliment meant the most. “I like your smile, too,” she agreed. “And I love your laugh. You don’t laugh enough.”

  His smile faded a bit and she wanted to kick herself. “You’re right,” he admitted. “It’s something I need to learn to do again. Soon.”

  “I’m sorry.” She wished she would stop blurting out every thought that popped into her head. For years with Jeff she’d been able to swallow plenty of words, but with Ryder they just came out.

  “No need,” he assured her. “I stopped laughing quite a while ago. Nothing very much seemed funny. However—” he paused to pass her the plate so she could take another piece of cheese and a cracker “—I seem to be finding it a bit easier lately.”

  “Good.” Then she bit the cracker and cheese to shut herself up. A shower of crumbs tumbled down onto her bare breasts. “Darn,” she said through a full mouth.

  “Sheets wash,” he reminded her. “Well, they will once the power comes on again. But there are other methods of cleanup.”

  Before she could guess what he was about, he leaned over her and begin to lick the crumbs away. One of her hands still held the cracker, but the other was free to stroke his soft hair.

  “Hmm,” she said, “this could turn into an X-rated movie.”

  “Would that be so bad?” he asked as he licked another crumb away. “Don’t wiggle, I’ll lose some of them.”

  Her laugh gave way to a sigh. She watched as he lifted his head from time to time to seek another crumb, then licked her skin as if she were a cat.

  “Definitely X-rated,” she mumbled. Only a short time ago that same tongue had been doing some pretty wicked things to her, especially between her legs where not even Jeff had expressed any interest in kissing her. It wasn’t that she didn’t know people did that, it had just never happened to her.

  She definitely wanted to try it again, but she didn’t want to do a thing that would stop the glow that he was building at that moment.

  Then he sat back and winked at her. “Eat another cracker so I can get back to work.”

  “You work too much.”

  “Ah, but we both enjoy some of it.”

  She laughed again and realized she was almost giddy with satisfaction, pleasure and feeling cherished. Almost dizzy with delight. Places long kept locked away were awakening to the possibility of living again, and now she had a metric for knowing what she wanted in a man.

  Ryder.

  Oh, hell. Another thing she couldn’t afford to think about. Some nasty little voice in her head reminded her there would be hell to pay emotionally when he left, but she decided it would be worth the price. This one night alone was worth every bit she would pay for it.

  Well, she had a lot of practice with not thinking about tomorrow. Living in the moment. There had been no other way to deal with Jeff most of the time.

  “Cracker, my lady? Or a tidbit of cheese?”

  She almost skipped the cracker, then remembered the delight caused by the crumbs of the last. She didn’t want to miss that.

  He watched expectantly, then grinned as a couple of crumbs took a tumble. “I think I’m beginning to love crackers,” he remarked. “They might become one of my favorite things to eat in bed.”

  “Until you try to sleep and roll over on them,” she said, pretending to be serious. But seriousness didn’t survive long past the first soft lick of his tongue.

  “Ryder,” she finally moaned.

  “I know, I know,” he said huskily. “Believe me, I know. But I refuse to rush.”

  “You can be so difficult!”

  “I’m working on it,” he agreed.

  Then, slowly, once the last of the crumbs were gone, he took her to the stars again.

  But this time he encouraged her to lead. To touch him however she wanted, let her see the power she had over him with the least caress. She got to see him writhe the way she had writhed, and between the freedom to touch him in any way that occurred to her and his responses, she surfed the cresting wave right alongside him.

  She discovered that a man’s nipples could be almost as sensitive as her own. So she sucked him the way he had sucked her, and heard his moans with satisfaction and deep pleasure.

  Then, wanting to give him what he had given her, she clasped his erection and took him into her mouth. Jeff had liked that, too, but never before had she enjoyed doing it. Ryder’s response to the intimacy, the way he bucked and groaned, was all it took to change her attitude.

  His hand gripped her head, guiding her gently, teaching her the touches he liked best. She’d have been glad to continue forever, but Linda Marie chose that moment to kick a tender place inside her and she gasped.

  At once Ryder stopped her and turned her back onto her side. “What?” he demanded. “Are you okay?”

  “The baby. She just joined the romp.”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “I thought you said it doesn’t hurt.”

  “Usually. Every so often she seems to find a nerve.”

  “Tsk,” he said jokingly, and reached down to pat her belly. “Settle down, girl. You’ll get your turn to be center stage in a few months.”

  Another laugh escaped Marti, but it concealed disappointment. She hadn’t wanted to stop. She had wanted to know exactly what it was like to bring Ryder to orgasm by herself.

  But apparently she hadn’t stopped anything. He rolled her onto her side so they were spooned together, and she
felt his stiffened staff slip between her legs.

  “There are other ways,” he said and slipped his hand down to stroke her sensitive bundle of nerves that was already swelling with hunger.

  “Plenty of other ways,” he murmured again as he began to rock himself against her in time with his stroking fingers.

  Yes, indeed, she thought as she lay exhausted a short time later. There were plenty of other ways.

  Chapter 9

  The morning brought an early summer glory that seemed appropriate after the night just passed. The sky glowed its most brilliant blue, and puffy white cumulus clouds dotted it. Unfortunately, they probably promised a storm later in the day, but Marti didn’t care. She didn’t care much except that the beauty of the day fit her mood.

  She and Ryder worked together making a breakfast that would suit them both. Toast for her, because her stomach insisted that the morning sickness must continue, and eggs and some ham for him.

  While they were cooking, the power turned on again, signaled by lights going on. They flickered a few times, then stabilized. “Hallelujah,” Marti remarked.

  “Darn, now I’m going to have to get used to doing things the easy way again.”

  She laughed. This morning she very much wanted to laugh about everything.

  “I’ll go make sure the generator has turned off. After breakfast. Why don’t we take this outside since it’s so beautiful?”

  She liked that idea but didn’t expect him to move chairs and a card table out onto the porch. Expected or not, that’s exactly what he did. Soon they were seated side by side looking out over a world that, for the first time since the tornado, actually seemed to be full of promise.

  “You need some rocking chairs out here,” he remarked. “And don’t tell me because I know. That’s on the Someday List.”

  “That’s right.”

  “However, for some things someday is today.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m going to paint and paper the nursery. It’s a good day for open windows so you won’t breathe anything you shouldn’t, and if the day stays dry I could be done by dinner tonight.”

  “So fast?”

  “It doesn’t take long. I’ve done a lot of it. Maybe tomorrow I can assemble the crib and the changing table. Or I can finish cutting up those trees, but right now I don’t want to pass up a good chance to paint and paper.”

  She felt again that flicker of guilt that he was doing so much for her, but she really couldn’t argue. She knew she couldn’t do any of it herself, not even the painting, until after the baby was born. Not until she managed to find a job of some sort.

  Or maybe part of what was bothering her was that with each task he completed, she felt his departure loom closer.

  She stole a glance his way and found him looking happier than she’d ever seen him. So maybe she was giving him something, too. A little peace. Certainly some great sex, although she didn’t think that was quid pro quo with him. He certainly hadn’t made her feel as if it was.

  So maybe fixing things was good for him psychologically. She could get that because feeling helpless about so many things had been making her miserable.

  “I can hardly wait to be useful again,” she remarked. “Like painting. I can paint. I ought to be able to help you.”

  “I’m sure you can, but I don’t know about the fumes. It’s latex paint, reasonably benign, but I don’t want to take a chance.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Maybe with the windows open?”

  He thought for a moment. “You got a fan? Maybe if we can keep the air moving enough you can help. And then later I could enjoy washing the paint off you. With hot water even.”

  Her cheeks flamed like the sun, hot and obvious. He laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, that would be the best part,” he agreed. “Assuming you don’t object.”

  “Why in the world would I object?”

  “Because a lady is always allowed to change her mind.”

  Amazingly, her cheeks grew even hotter.

  But he switched subjects then, as if he didn’t want to bring things to a head too soon.

  “I bought some chair railing,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve seen it, I’m sure. It runs about chair height along a wall so you can’t damage the wall.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “In this case, I figure it’s the perfect thing to put along the line between wallpaper and paint. It’ll cover the seam. Sound good to you?”

  “Sounds perfect.” The man thought of everything.

  Then that odd sensation returned, the feeling of being watched. She looked out over the fields again, squinting, trying to see.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Probably hormones or something. Yesterday I felt like someone was watching and now I’m feeling it again. Crazy. There’s no one out there.”

  But he didn’t treat it as if she were crazy. He stood and started scanning the hay fields.

  “Ryder, it’s just a feeling.”

  “Also one of the most reliable weird feelings humans get.”

  “But there’s no reason for anyone to be out there. Maybe it’s just some animal. A cow.”

  “I’d see a cow out there,” he remarked. “Must be something smaller.”

  “Well, let’s not worry about it. Obviously it’s an animal.”

  After a few moments, he settled back down to eat his breakfast, although she sensed there was a new tension in him.

  But it was nothing to worry about, not with Ryder here. If some freak wanted to watch her from a distance, he wasn’t going to do anything while Ryder was around.

  She didn’t want to think about what might happen after Ryder left. And she didn’t want to admit that those fields were starting to look a whole lot less friendly.

  * * *

  Ben lay down in the tall grass or whatever it was, flattening himself. What the hell was going on? Why had Ryder looked out here like he sensed something?

  But he couldn’t possibly know Ben was here. And no one else was around anywhere.

  So maybe he’d been surveying whatever this crop was. Ben didn’t think it was ordinary grass. It looked too cultivated and too uniform. So yeah, that must be what Ryder was doing.

  Just to be safe, though, as soon as the two of them went back indoors, he crawled away and started back to his car. Might be a good day to be away from here. Or to change his vantage point. Come to think of it, he’d beaten a clear trail in that grass. If someone came looking, it would be obvious something had been crawling that way from the road.

  So he changed tacks, choosing a different observation point from which he could watch the house and see if Ryder came out and found the crushed grass.

  The sun rose, the day lengthened and absolutely nothing happened. So Ryder wasn’t suspicious of anything.

  Hell, there was no reason on earth he should be. He’d never expect Ben out here. Even so, he had no reason to be suspicious of Ben. Everything was set for them to meet in Fresno, and he was certain that he’d given Ryder no indication of how much he wanted his vengeance.

  He thought of going to town to get a decent meal, then reminded himself he didn’t want to be seen there again. Getting directions had been one thing, and as long as he never showed up again, the guy he’d talked to probably wouldn’t even remember him.

  Unless he killed that Chastain woman. Hell. He pounded his fist on the ground. He had to make sure to deal with this in a way that no one would remember some stranger had come by asking about Marti Chastain. Of course, if that guy remembered anything about him at all, it was going to be an average-looking guy who hadn’t given his name and had been driving a car with Nevada plates.

  He blew a deep breath and reminde
d himself there would be absolutely no reason for him to be directly linked to this place. No one knew Ben was here. No one.

  He rolled over onto his back, looking up into the endless blue sky with its growing accretion of cottony puffs of cloud and decided he had to make up his mind about some things.

  He might not care about killing that woman to get to Ryder, but the murder of a guy who was a stranger around here would lead the investigation in all sorts of paths that would benefit Ben. Killing the woman, not so much. But how much had Ryder told her about him?

  Probably not a lot, he thought. He hadn’t talked about his feelings or suspicions about Ryder to anyone, and Ryder had a whole lot more to hide. So if Ryder had mentioned him at all, it was probably in vague terms. Even so, if Ben changed his appearance a bit, she’d give a description that wouldn’t fit him, and they’d be looking at Ryder’s life back east for a killer.

  Which was exactly what he wanted. Okay, so the woman was off the table unless he could find no other way. But there would be other ways. Ryder often went out to the barn. Catching him out there would be just the ticket.

  And honestly, he thought virtuously, he really didn’t want to kill the Chastain woman. A life for a life was one thing. Going overboard would be bad karma. Nor did he want to make another woman one of Ryder’s victims. Best to avoid it entirely if he could. So as long as she had no idea who he was, he’d leave her be.

  Deciding that was the best way to go, he made up his mind to get into that barn late tonight or tomorrow night. Catching Ryder alone out there day or night would solve all his problems.

  Tomorrow night, he decided. Miserable as he was crawling around in all this grass, he was enjoying a certain sense of power over Ryder’s life, enjoying the anticipation of his revenge at least as much as he would have anticipated the pleasure of a gourmet meal. Maybe more.

  He couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t killed before. There’d been times he wanted to, but never before had he been goaded the way he had by Brandy’s death.

  It was as if her suicide were her last message, telling him that Ryder had failed her. She wouldn’t have killed herself otherwise, of that he was sure. Ryder must have made her life intolerable and had most likely been responsible for Brandy’s depression.