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“I will,” Jessy promised.
“I’ll walk you to your truck.” Unhurried, Laredo set his empty coffee cup down before following her outside.
Jessy headed straight for her pickup without pausing, yet all the while conscious of Laredo ranging alongside of her. She tried to ignore the faint sizzle of tension she felt.
“Did you want something?” she asked when Laredo failed to break the silence.
“Not really.” He kept his gaze to the front. “Although I am curious about something—am I wrong, or has Markham spent more time at the Triple C than usual?”
“Between the feedlot and Sally’s funeral, he probably has,” Jessy admitted. “Why?”
“Because I think he’s leading up to something.”
Jessy suspected she knew exactly what he thought. “Are you back to that crazy notion that Monte is interested in me?”
“Maybe not you in particular, but in a rich widow with a ranch almost as big as some eastern states. It’s bound to be a tempting package for a man with ambition.”
“What makes you think he’s ambitious?” Reaching the truck, she opened the door and planted a foot on the running board.
Laredo caught hold of the door. “The cattle in the feedlot. He indicated to you that some of his English friends wanted to get into the cattle business. But he brought a man by the feedlot the other day who was supposedly one of the investors. The man was a Texan.”
Jessy didn’t see what that proved. “So?”
“So, I don’t think he put the deal together as a favor. He did it to make money.”
“And we leased the feedlot to make money. That isn’t a crime. It’s business.” Jessy maintained her own grip on the door, her hand inches from his.
“But you are up-front about your reason. Markham likes to pass himself off as a gentleman rancher, someone who isn’t in it for the money. It makes me wonder if he isn’t hard up for cash. How is he at paying his bills? Have you heard any talk?”
“No, but I probably wouldn’t, though. It isn’t something people would talk about to a Calder. If somebody’s slow about paying their bills, word would go through Blue Moon pretty fast. One of the hands might have heard something. I’ll ask around.”
“Better not. They would wonder why you’re asking. Let me nose around Blue Moon instead.”
“You’re a stranger. They may not tell you.”
Laredo grinned crookedly. “It depends on how convincing my story is.”
“You are good at feeding people stories, aren’t you?” The thought made Jessy oddly angry.
Suddenly he was no longer smiling as his gaze pinned her with a new intensity. “I haven’t fed you any. Or Chase.”
She flashed back to his statement in the barn when he admitted he was attracted to her. She felt a mixed rush of heat and uneasiness.
His expression hardened with a kind of anger. “Don’t worry, Jessy. I have no intention of pursuing it.”
It never occurred to her to be coy and pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. She told herself she was glad there would be no repeat of that scene in the barn, but she had trouble believing it. As fleeting as the kiss had been, she remembered how alive she had felt inside after so many months of feeling dead and empty.
“Good,” Jessy lied and turned to slide behind the wheel.
But she got no farther than that as Laredo grabbed her and hauled her against him, blue eyes blazing. “Just what the hell is so good about it,” he challenged, then gave her no opportunity to answer. “There isn’t one damn thing about it that’s good. But it’s necessary. Do you know why?”
Jessy shook her head, made mute by the ferocity of the emotion she saw in his face, a staggering combination of raw yearning and need.
Jaws clenched, he ground out the answer to his question. “Because the hell of having you and walking away would be worse than the hell of never having you at all.” He held her an instant longer, fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arms. Then he was shoving her away from him. “Now get going.”
It wasn’t fear but wisdom that kept Jessy silent. She knew that if she was going to say anything to him at all, she had better know exactly what it was she wanted from him—whether it was to be left alone or to feel the heat of the passion he had let her see. It wasn’t a decision she was ready to make yet.
Without a word, she climbed into the pickup and pul
