LITMIR.BIZ

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herself onto the cushions. Who? What? Why? The questions that had haunted her nights and caused her to lose sleep were still unanswered as they rolled around in her brain.

      “So what does make sense?” he demanded. “Someone followed you from Seattle and on your way to Grand Hope, Montana, forced you off the road. Why?”

      “I told you, I don’t know. Believe me, I’ve been thinking about it.”

      “Think harder.” He frowned and rammed stiff fingers through hair that was still damp. “If it doesn’t have to do with the baby, then what about your job? Did you give someone bad advice and really tick someone off?”

      She shook her head. “I thought about that, too. When I was back in Montana, I got online and searched through the columns for the two months prior to the accident and I couldn’t find anything that would infuriate a person.”

      His head snapped up. “So you are worried?”

      “Of course I’m worried. Who wouldn’t be? But there was nothing in any of the advice I gave that would cause someone to snap.”

      “You think. There are always nutcases.” He set his empty bottle on the counter.

      That much was true, she thought wearily. “But none who have e-mailed me, or called me, or contacted me in any way. I double-checked every communication I received.” He nodded and she realized that he’d probably been privy to that information as well.

      “Well, there’s got to be a reason. We’re just missing it.” He was thinking hard; she could tell by the way he rubbed his chin. “You write magazine articles under a pseudonym.”

      “Nothing controversial.”

      His eyes narrowed. “What about the book you were working on?”

      She hesitated. The manuscript she was writing wasn’t finished and she’d taken great pains to keep it secret while she investigated a payola scam on the rodeo circuit. It was while researching the book that she’d met Sam Donahue, a friend, he’d claimed, of her brothers’. As it turned out he hadn’t been as much a friend as an acquaintance and somehow she’d ended up falling for him, knowing him to be a rogue, realizing that part of his charm was the hint of danger around him, and yet she’d tumbled into bed with him anyway. And ended up pregnant.

      Which had been a blessing in disguise, of course. Without her ill-fated affair with Sam, she never would have had Joshua, and that little guy was the light of her life.

      “What’s in the book that’s so all-fired important?”

      Sighing, she walked to the couch and dropped into the soft cushions. “You know what’s in it for the most part.”

      “A book on cowboys.”

      “Well, a little more than that.” Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes. “It’s about all aspects of rodeos, the good, the bad, the ugly. Especially the ugly. Along with all the rah-rah for a great American West tradition, there’s also the dark side to it all, the seamy underbelly. As I was getting information, I learned about the drugs, animal abuse, cheating, payola, you name it.”

      “And let me guess, most of the information came from good old Sam Donahue.”

      “Some of it,” she admitted, opening an eye and catching Kurt scowling, as if the mere mention of Donahue’s name made Striker see red. “I was going to name names in my book and, I suppose, I could have made a few people nervous. But the thing of it was, no one really knew what I was doing.”

      “Donahue?”

      She shook her head and glanced to the window. “I told him it was a series of articles about small-town celebrations, that rodeos were only a little bit of the slice of Americana I was going to write about. Sam wasn’t all that interested in what I was doing.”

      “Why not?”

      “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, turning her attention to Kurt. The fire was burning softly, casting golden shadows on the cozy rooms. She snapped on a table lamp, hoping to break the feeling of intimacy the flames created. “Maybe it’s because Sam’s an egomaniac and pretty much consumed with his own life.”

      “Sounds charming,” he mocked.

      “I thought so. At first. But it did wear thin fast.”

      Striker lifted an eyebrow and she added, “I’d already realized that it wasn’t going to work out when I suspected I was pregnant.”

      “What did he say about it?”

      “Nothing. He never knew.”

      “You didn’t tell him.”

      “That’s right. Didn’t we go over this before?”

      Striker looked as if he wanted to say something but held his tongue. For that she was grateful. She didn’t need any judgment calls.

      “Besides,” she added with more than a trace of bitterness, “I figure we’re even now. He forgot to mention that he wasn’t really divorced from his last wife when he started dating me.” She wrinkled her nose and felt that same old embarrassment that had been with her from the moment she’d realized Sam had lied, that he’d been married all the time he’d chased after her, swearing that he was divorced.

      Fool that she’d been, she’d fallen for him and believed every word that had tripped over his lying tongue.

      Now a blush stole up her neck and she bit down on her back teeth. She’d always been proud of her innate intelligence, but when it came to men, she’d often been an idiot. She’d chosen poorly, trusted too easily, fallen harder than she should have. From Teddy Sherman, the ranch hand her father had hired when she was seventeen, to a poet and a musician in college, and finally Sam Donahue, the rough-and-tumble cowpoke who’d turned out to be a lying bastard if ever there was one. Well, no more, she told herself even as Kurt Striker, damn him, threatened to break down her defenses.

      He walked to the fire, grabbed a poker and jabbed at the burning logs. Sparks drifted upward through the flue and one of the blackened chunks of oak split with a soft thud.

      Randi watched him and felt that same sense of yearning, a tingle of desire, she’d experienced every time she was around him. She sensed something different in Kurt, a strength of character that had been lacking in the other men she’d found enchanting. They had been dreamers, or, in the case of Donahue, cheats, but she didn’t think either was a part of Striker’s personality. His boots seemed securely planted on the ground rather than drifting into the clouds, and he appeared intensely honest. His eyes were clear, his shoulders straight, his smile, when he offered it, not as sly as it was amused. He appealed to her at a whole new level. Man to woman, face-to-face, not looking down at her, nor elevating her onto a pedestal from which she would inevitably fall.

      “So what do you think about your kid?” he asked suddenly as he straightened and dusted his hands.

      “I’m nuts about him, of course.”

      “Do you really think he’s safe with the Okano woman?”

      “I wouldn’t have left him there if I didn’t.”

      “I’d feel better if he was with you. With me.”

      “No one followed me to Sharon’s. Not many people know we’re friends. She was in my dorm in college and just moved up here last fall. I…I really think he’s safer there. I’ve already driven her nuts calling her. She thinks I’m paranoid and I’m not so sure she’s wrong.”

      “Paranoid isn’t all that bad. Not in this case.” Striker reached into his jacket pocket, flipped open his cell and dialed. A few seconds later he was engrossed in a conversation, ordering someone to watch Sharon Okano’s apartment as well as do some digging on Sam Donahue. “…that’s right. I want to know for certain where he was on the dates that Randi was run off the road and someone attempted to kill her in the hospital…Yeah, I know he had an alibi, but double-check and

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