Course of Action: Out of Harm's WayAny Time, Any Place Read online

  Flicking a look at her eyes, he reached for the tab of the zipper and slowly worked it downward, his breath warm against her face.

  “So you’ve got the uniform,” he conceded, nodding toward the ugly gray dress, with its stiff, starched fabric. “But that doesn’t explain anything, not why you’re out here messing with the horses and certainly not why you pulled a gun on me.”

  “You startled me.”

  “You said something a moment ago, something about someone who was going to kill you if I called the police. Why? What’re you being coerced to do here? And what else have you done for this person already? Who have you killed?”

  Fresh alarm ripped through her. “No one! I swear, I haven’t hurt anybody.” Her eyes stung as she remembered the young manager, with his bobbing Adam’s apple and his blush when she had thanked him. And his was only the latest death she carried on her conscience. “I haven’t hurt anybody here on the ranch. I was, um, I was cleaning the back wing and I—I needed to get away, just for a few minutes.”

  Thanks to Jethro Colton’s obnoxious grown stepson, Trip Lowden, she had. In the three days she had worked here, she’d found that though Trip wasn’t a real Colton, the big blond jerk was all too happy to lord his “position” over the help. But she had bigger worries right now than his constant leering. Namely, convincing this cowboy, with his darker hair and his searing gaze, that she wasn’t lying to him.

  “I had to find someplace quiet,” she explained. “Out here with the animals, I can almost breathe again. I can almost—almost forget....”

  She pinched her lip between her teeth, making one last, desperate effort to keep from totally dissolving. To keep from blurting to a stranger the words that would surely get her killed.

  Grabbing her by the arm, he said, “You’re coming with me. Inside. To find a phone to call the police and let them figure this out.”

  “You can’t.” Tears streamed down her face, and her shaking knees gave way completely. But she didn’t fall, for in one swift and fluid movement, the cowboy wrapped a strong arm around her waist to support her.

  In his blue eyes, she saw a glimmer of compassion. Praying it was more than wishful thinking, she whispered, “You can’t tell anyone...because I’m in hiding.”

  “In hiding from what?” he asked, speaking with a gentleness that stood out in stark contrast against his chiseled features and hard muscles. “I’m Dylan, Dylan Frick, the wrangler here, and I swear I’ll see that you’re kept safe, Hope, no matter who’s been threatening you.”

  “It’s my husband,” she murmured, and once she started, there was nothing she could do to stop more from leaking out, like the air from a punctured balloon. “My ex-husband, I mean. He wants me dead so I can’t testify against him. He’s already tracked me down once. Or his assassins did, Witness Protection or no Witness Protection.”

  Dylan’s tanned face drained of color. “What the—the Witness Protection Program placed you here? At Dead River Ranch?”

  “I’m not in WITSEC any longer. I can’t—can’t trust them anymore, not since my car was blown up. A man was killed—an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time.” More tears welled at the thought of him and all those others hurt by her decision to come forward. The father left to worry about her disappearance, the friends who had meant so much to her. And then there were the other victims, the ones who’d paid the price for her own selfishness and fear.

  “So you ran?” the cowboy asked her.

  She nodded. “I did. To the only place left for me to turn. You see, Amanda Colton was my college roommate.”

  He looked confused. “You two went to veterinary school together?”

  “No, not vet school. It was just for a few months back in our sophomore year....” After winning the Miss New Jersey pageant at nineteen, Hope had had to take off for the remainder of the year. She’d had duties to attend, a bigger competition to prepare for. The memory of those bright lights shimmered, a beautiful illusion from the wreckage of her life. “We were a lot different, but Amanda and I really hit it off. We both loved animals, for one thing.”

  “And she’ll back up this wild story?”

  “She will,” Hope swore. “I’m telling you the truth, Dylan. And Amanda told me it would be okay to come here. She said I could hang out with Prince William anytime I wanted.”

  Hope still thought it was an odd choice for a horse’s name, but she was far too grateful to her friend to say anything about it.

  “Prince William?” Dylan sounded surprised. “That’s not PW you were in there brushing.”

  “Sixth stall down. The chestnut, Amanda told me.”

  “You picked the seventh, with a half-crazy chestnut mare,” he corrected, a chill coming over his voice, “which is why Chica here nearly kicked your head off. And why we’re going to go and find out if you really know Amanda Colton as well as you claim.”

  Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  ISBN-13: 9781460321607

  COURSE OF ACTION

  Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  OUT OF HARM’S WAY

  Copyright © 2013 by Lindsay McKenna

  ANY TIME, ANY PLACE

  Copyright © 2013 by Merline Lovelace

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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