The Widow's Protector Read online

  If only she hadn’t believed him when he said he didn’t care about another man’s pregnant bitch.

  Much to her relief, Ben locked her in. She waited until she heard him start down the stairs, then she hurried to unlock the door. Thank God he hadn’t left the key in the keyhole. She unlocked it and then relocked it from the inside, leaving the key in place.

  She could get out now.

  Her first thought was to call the sheriff, but when she picked up the phone beside her bed, she got a dead line.

  Slowly she sat on the bed as her heart ached, her mind whirled and she tried to deal with both anguish and terror.

  Maybe Ryder didn’t give a damn about her. But she gave a damn about him. Was she just going to sit here while he was killed?

  Anger at what he had said burst in her like a dam. But the bottom line was not what kind of man Ryder was. No, it was what kind of woman she was.

  Her thoughts turned to the shotgun on the closet shelf behind a stack of old sweatshirts.

  She fought back the anger and pain and made herself start thinking.

  * * *

  Ryder stepped out in the backyard of the house so he’d be in a puddle of darkness if Ben turned on lights. It would be the only advantage he’d have. Ben had bragged often enough about his tour in the army, truncated though it had been according to Brandy.

  He was up against a formidable enemy, one who had skills he had never had to learn. He thought of the look on Marti’s face when he’d said those ugly words, and he figured it didn’t matter if he died. He’d just tossed away the only good thing he’d known in years.

  He pulled the knife from beneath his shirt and laid it flat against his right thigh, making sure that his side was to the house so Ben wouldn’t see it. God, what had gotten into the man? He had never dreamed Ben’s anger had grown to this extreme. But what bothered him even more was the way Ben seemed to be enjoying this. It was sick beyond belief.

  Then he heard the screen door screech and looked. Ben flicked on the kitchen light just as he was emerging.

  The one thing Ryder wanted to know was whether Marti was okay. But he didn’t dare ask, for fear of letting Ben know that he did care.

  “I’m here,” was all he said.

  “I see you.” But switching on the light had given Ryder, who stood in the darkness, the smallest of temporary advantages. It would take at least a few moments for Ben to readapt to the dark. Small blessings.

  Ben loped easily toward him, knife ready. Ryder waited until the last second before raising his own knife. Ben stopped immediately.

  “Well, well,” he said. “I see you want a fight. You don’t know what to do with that knife.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m not going like an animal to slaughter.”

  “So much the better. I’ll enjoy it more, cutting you before I kill you.”

  Ryder braced himself. This was going to hurt, it was going to be tough, and all he could think about was Marti.

  Focus! The order sounded loud inside his own head, though it never escaped his mouth. He felt his vision widening, taking in everything about Ben, not just his knife.

  To the death, he thought. Never had he wanted anything to come to this.

  Ben launched himself, and almost before Ryder realized it, he felt a stinging in his upper arm that told him he’d been cut.

  In that instant, thought fled. Survival instincts took over and they were good ones.

  He whirled around, returning the cut as Ben came at him again. With his other arm he swung upward at Ben’s jaw at the same instant.

  There was something to be said for having been in a few bar brawls in his youth.

  Ben stumbled and Ryder dropped his knife, choosing to dive at Ben and bring him to the ground.

  That was where he came up against the fact that Ben worked out at a gym. Ben had more power. Trying to pin his arms and especially that knife to the ground was like trying to move a ten-ton boulder with one hand. Again and again he just barely managed to deflect.

  Ben gave a twist of his lower body and Ryder helplessly rolled. Suddenly Ben was above him, and that knife was dangerously close.

  He grabbed Ben’s wrist again and held the weapon away. That was when he felt his first stirring of hope. Ben’s power was greater, but because of the way he’d built that strength, he didn’t have the endurance that Ryder had gained through long days of hard work. He could feel the faintest of tremors begin in the arm he struggled against.

  Sensing a real hope of victory, he pushed as hard as he could, rolling and slamming Ben’s knife hand to the ground.

  The knife skittered away as he rose up to straddle Ben’s chest, locking him in place.

  Now what? Ryder wondered. He glanced toward the knife and debated whether to grab it, realizing that he might only lose control of it and re-arm Ben.

  Rearing back a little, he punched Ben in the jaw again.

  Then a sound froze them both.

  It was the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped.

  * * *

  Marti stood on her back porch, shotgun aimed at both of them. Her knees felt almost weak, but only determination kept her going.

  “I’m a fair shot,” she said. “You two break it up now or I’ll shoot you both.”

  Ryder, still straddling Ben, said, “Can I at least get rid of the knives? I don’t want him grabbing one.”

  Marti hesitated, wondering what the hell she was going to do next. She wondered how long she could keep control of Ben. Regardless of what he’d said, though, she trusted Ryder and didn’t at all trust Ben.

  “Go ahead,” she said coldly. “This thing is loaded with double-aught. It’ll get both of you if one of you does anything stupid.”

  Ryder looked down at Ben, who was bleeding from his mouth. “She will shoot. Don’t try anything.”

  Ben hardly mumbled.

  Ryder rose and kicked both knives away as far as he could send them. Ben was struggling to sit up, but Ryder pushed him back down. He looked at Marti. “I need to tie him up. Can I go to the barn? Can you keep that gun on him?”

  “If he moves a muscle he’s gone. He threatened my baby.”

  That, thought Ryder as he limped toward the barn, heedless of the blood running down his arm, wondering why the hell his leg ached, was the bottom line. Ben had threatened her baby.

  The mama bear was furious.

  * * *

  Ben made the mistake of trying to get to his feet. Marti pointed the shotgun a safe distance away and fired it. Then she pumped it again. “Next time it’s your head.”

  Ben slumped back to the ground.

  Ryder came tearing back with rope and froze as he took in the scene. “Thank God,” was all he said. He immediately went to work hog-tying Ben as tightly as he could.

  Then he sat back on his heels and looked up at Marti. “Now what? We need help. We can’t sit on this guy forever.”

  “I know. The cops are coming. The idiot cut a phone line, but it was the line to my bedroom. He didn’t get the line to the kitchen phone.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It’s an old house. We installed the second line in the bedroom and they put in separate wiring.”

  “Thank God,” Ryder said again. “Do you trust me to take over shotgun duty?”

  She hesitated visibly, thinking about the things he had said. But one thing she knew for sure: Ryder had painted her nursery, helped her in countless ways and had never threatened her, whatever else he might think about her.

  “Do you know how to use it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Because she suddenly felt a strong need to collapse. As soon as she turned over the gun to Ryder, she went inside, tumbled onto the living room chair and began to cry her eyes o
ut.

  The words he had spoken had pierced her heart like acacia thorns. She wondered if the pain would ever go away.

  Chapter 12

  Cops and EMTs arrived. Ben was arrested, and the EMTs checked Marti out and then bandaged Ryder’s arm. The swirl of cops lasted a couple of hours as they gathered evidence and took statements.

  Dawn still hadn’t arrived when they finally departed and the house fell silent again. Ryder hesitated just inside the living room, looking at Marti, his heart squeezing almost violently with the pain he felt. Her face had gone dead and was still streaked with dried tears. He had wounded her, he knew it, and he wondered if he would ever be able to get around it.

  “You need to sleep,” he said finally.

  “I need you to leave.”

  “I will. In the morning. After we talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  He didn’t argue. He simply took the afghan that hung over the back of another chair and spread it over her.

  “Sleep,” he said. “I’ll be gone as soon as I’ve had my say. But later.”

  The way she looked at him should have killed him. Instead it made him head for the kitchen where he’d be out of sight. He made a pot of coffee and sat down, planning to remain awake.

  It was time to get his head straightened out, no matter how much pain it caused him, and he needed to do it fast.

  * * *

  Marti slept from exhaustion. Upset and hurt as she was, she couldn’t fight sleep forever. Her dreams were troubled and scary for the first time in forever, but she slept deeply mostly because her pregnancy demanded it.

  When she awoke, the sun was high and her body ached all over. Probably all the tension she thought because she hadn’t been hurt.

  Last night crashed home vividly, the anguish so deep and painful she thought it would rip her in two.

  Ryder, who had been so kind to her all this time, had said such an awful thing that she wondered if he were as twisted as Ben. How could he be so nice and then so cruel? Maybe he had been partly responsible for his wife’s death. If he made a habit of saying such things, she could well believe it possible.

  But even though she had heard the words with her own ears, she didn’t want to believe them. But how could she not believe them? It sounded so much like a man not to want any part of another man’s child. Hell, her baby’s own father hadn’t been especially interested.

  Why should Ryder care at all?

  No, he didn’t care, and she shouldn’t have allowed herself to be deluded by the kindness he’d shown. Maybe he was essentially a kind man, but he’d always made it clear he was leaving.

  She was the one who had fallen head-first into a fantasy of her own making. He had never promised one damn thing. After all, she was pregnant with another man’s child.

  “Marti?” Ryder’s voice was tentative.

  She looked toward the entry to the living room, and even as her heart felt as if it were sundering, she couldn’t help but eat him up with her eyes. He was a glorious figure of a man, and just the sight of him reminded her of their lovemaking, reminded her she wanted more of it, more of him.

  But not if he could say things like that.

  “I told you to leave.”

  “I said I’d go after we talked. I’m all packed.”

  Surprisingly those words caused another shaft of pain, but she tried not to let it show.

  “I have some crackers for you. Do you feel comfortable enough for coffee or milk?”

  She didn’t feel at all nauseated. “Coffee,” she said finally, reluctantly. Her brain felt as fried as the rest of her, and she figured she needed some caffeine to get through this hellacious morning.

  Ryder set the plate of crackers on her lap and a mug of coffee on the table beside her. Ignoring him, she ate a couple of crackers then sipped coffee. Her stomach remained content. It was the only part of her that seemed to be.

  Ryder then surprised her by kneeling beside her chair. Part of her wanted to reach out to him, but another part wanted to recoil. She froze.

  “The things I said last night to Ben,” he began, “they weren’t true. Not that I killed my wife, not that you didn’t matter to me.”

  “Right. Another man’s pregnant bitch. That just came out of nowhere.”

  “It came out of my desire to convince Ben I didn’t care about you because I was afraid of what he’d do if he thought he could hurt me by hurting you. I didn’t mean one word of it.”

  “You walked away and left me alone with him.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Attack him? He had a knife at your throat. You’d have been dead before I reached him.”

  “And he could have killed me after you walked away.”

  “I know,” he said simply. “I was scared to death, but I couldn’t see any other way of drawing him away from you. I was the one he really wanted. You didn’t matter to him at all if you weren’t a way to hurt me. But I was terrified. Walking away from you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Ever. But I wanted you safely away in your bedroom. I knew you could lock it so he couldn’t get back to you. I thought you could call the cops.”

  She thought it over and hated to feel some of the pain lessening, if only a tiny bit. “You were leaving anyway,” she said finally. “It doesn’t matter. Just go.”

  “It matters to me!” He said the words forcefully. “Damn it, Marti, this time with you hasn’t been a sham. I’m sorry my head’s been so mixed up, but the bottom line was that the only, absolutely only, reason I was going to leave was because I had a promise to keep. And I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go at all. But I couldn’t tell you that until after I got the mess in my head sorted out because you matter too damn much to me to make you promises unless I can keep them. Unless I’ve figured out things enough to be sure of who I am.”

  Her heart lifted a little and she tried to tamp down a rising hope. Hope could only mean pain. “Are you ever going to get your head sorted out?”

  “I did. Last night was remarkably clarifying.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That I would have died to save you. That the only thing I was worried about last night was you and Linda Marie. You want to talk about clear? Last night was a damn epiphany. I didn’t care what that madman did to me as long as you were safe.”

  The little bubble that was trying to lift her heart lifted it a bit higher. “Honestly?”

  “Honestly. I realized that if anything happened to you I might as well be dead. And you want to know something? I didn’t come close to what I felt last night when I lost Brandy. With Brandy, as much as it hurt, there was almost an inevitability to it, as if I’d been losing her for years and knew that at some point I wasn’t going to be able to hang on to her forever. With you…I couldn’t have stood it. I simply could not have survived it.”

  He reached for her hand and she let him. Inside she felt the hurt beginning to ease.

  “Marti, you taught me how to live again. How to laugh again. You taught me I could make a woman happy, at least in little ways. You made me feel good about myself. Do you know how long it’s been since I felt good about myself? Years. I’ve been feeling like an utter failure since Brandy’s sickness took over. Every day was a survival strategy. I couldn’t even get her to smile most of the time. But you’ve made me feel it wasn’t me. I wasn’t her problem. You did a better job of that than all the shrinks we saw.”

  “I don’t want you hanging out with me because of gratitude,” she said slowly.

  “Gratitude! That’s the least of it. Lady, I’m trying to say that I love you, heart, body and soul, and I don’t ever want to be away from you. I want to stay right here and love you and Linda Marie for the rest of my days. I just hope I’ve been half as good for you as you’ve been for me.”

 
Her heart began to feel as light as a balloon. “You really don’t mind another man’s kid?”

  “If you let me, Linda Marie will be mine. She was at the top of my fears last night. You and she were all I cared about and I’d have cut my own throat to protect you.”

  She didn’t have to think about it long. She remembered every single one of the ways he had cared for her and the baby and held it up to statements made in an attempt to prevent a lunatic from hurting her and decided which she believed in.

  “I didn’t want you to leave, either,” she admitted. “But you were so determined to go, and I tried not to get deeply involved with you but…”

  His eyes had begun to shine. “But what?”

  “You really, really want the baby, too?”

  “You can put my name on the birth certificate if you want. As far as I’m concerned, you two are a package and I want you both. Forever.”

  She lifted her arms to him then and he leaned over her, kissing her with gentle passion, laying his hand on her belly as if to cradle the baby, too.

  “I love you,” he murmured against her lips. “God, I never thought I’d love anyone again, and I never dreamed I could love this much.”

  “I love you, too,” she answered, admitting it at last to both herself and him. “Don’t ever leave me.”

  “Never. I’ll be here when we’re both old and gray.”

  Her heart took flight at last, joy filled her until happy tears rolled down her cheeks. What had begun with a near catastrophe had almost ended with another catastrophe, but now they had led her straight to the place she most wanted to be on earth.

  In Ryder’s protective arms.

  * * * * *

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