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With the rutted lane twisting before her, Dallas sagged against the seat and allowed her mind to wander back over the chaos of the last nearly forty-eight hours. When she threw in the pressure of final exams, she could easily see why she felt so dull and drained. She also knew the worst wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
She doubted, though, that Quint really believed that.
Quint. There was a big, hollow ache in her chest at the mere thought of him. Unconsciously she touched a fingertip to her lips, recalling the crush of his mouth on them, the anger that had been in it, along with the heat and the need. The memory of it stirred through her, livening her own desires.
Dallas sternly reminded herself that she could not become emotionally involved with Quint. Nothing could come from it but heartache. And her life was complicated enough right now, thanks to the threat Boone had made against her grandfather.
“Dear God,” she murmured, a tightness gripping her throat, “I can’t help it. I hate the Rutledges. I hate them.”
Light bloomed in the darkness, spilling from the tall security light in the ranch yard, as Dallas rounded the last curve. The yellow gleam of the porch light beckoned her from the ranch house. With a deepening weariness of body and spirit, Dallas automatically set her sights on it.
Seconds after the truck rolled into the ranch yard, a muffled boom shattered the stillness. Certain it was made by a shotgun, she slammed on the brakes, alarm shooting through her as she jerked her head toward the barn that had almost simultaneously erupted with the panicked squawking of chickens.
In a flash, Dallas whipped the pickup toward the barn and tromped on the accelerator, the truck’s fast-spinning tires spitting gravel. She barely gave it time to come to a full stop near the door before she charged out of it, leaving the lights on and the engine running.
“Empty, is that you?” Dallas yelled as two chickens fought to get through the partially opened barn door, wings flapping. “Are you all right?”
Before she reached the opening, Quint stepped out, hatless and holding the shotgun at his side, the muzzle pointed at the ground.
“It’s only me,” he said. “Sorry if I gave you a scare.”
“You did. I was sure—” Her initial wave of relief was replaced with a new concern. “What were you shooting?”
“A raccoon,” Quint replied and held up the lifeless body of a big male. “I heard the chickens making a racket and thought I’d better check it out in case the intruder was the two-footed kind. I’m glad it wasn’t.”
“So am I,” Dallas murmured, feeling a bit like a yo-yo on its downward spin as she absently watched him lay the dead animal on a pile of wood next to the barn.
“I’ll bury him in the morning—which isn’t far away,” Quint added, moving within range of the yard light when he turned toward her. The barn’s shadows no longer concealed his slightly tousled hair. His denim jacket hung partially open, exposing a narrow wedge of chest hairs and a strip of tautly muscled flesh. Her heart started thumping crazily.
With an effort, Dallas dragged her gaze up to his face and was immediately mesmerized by the soft light in his eyes. More than four feet separated them, but it seemed slight, something easily spanned. And with each passing second of silence, the sense of intimacy swirling between them thickened.
Dallas tried to think of something to say and break the spell of it, but her mind was blank, and her feet were rooted to the spot.
“How did your test go?” The gentleness of his voice was like a caress.
“Fine, I guess—I hope,” she corrected hastily and struggled to focus her thoughts.
A slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “If you’re like me, by the time I finished the last exam, I was too tired to care how I did. That lasted about as long as it took for the results to be posted.”
“I’m beat, that’s for sure.” Dallas was quick to seize the excuse he offered. “I’d better call it a night before I fall over.”
She turned away, eager to escape from him while she could still deny that she felt anything more than a physical attraction. She climbed into the cab of the pickup and deliberately didn’t offer him a ride to the house. The last thing Dallas wanted was to spend any more time alone with Quint, especially tonight.
For once, luck was on her side, and she reached the privacy of her bedroom as Quint walked into the living room to lock the shotgun back in its cabinet.
A midnight-blue Ferrari rolled to a stop in front of the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. On a nearby street corner, a group of Dickens’s costumed carolers broke into a rousing rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Boone Rutledge took no notice of them as he climbed out of the Ferrari and tossed the keys to the doorman at the curb.
“I shouldn’t be more than five minutes. Keep it handy,” he ordered and strode to the door.
He paused a few feet inside the hotel lobby for a quick scan of its occupants, totally ignoring the sweeps of evergreen boughs twinkling with Christmas lights. Within seconds, Boone spotted his father, dressed in an impeccably tailored black tuxedo with a white tie, gliding across the marbled lobby in his wheelchair, bound for the bank of elevators. As always, Harold Barnett accompanied him, walking directly behind the wheelchair.
Boone quickly crossed the lobby to intercept them. Both men stopped when they observed his approach, and Max angled his chair toward him and raked his glance over the suit Boone wore.
“Formal dress is required for tonight’s dinner,” Max curtly informed him.
“I have other plans this evening. I told you that this morning,” Boone reminded him with cool stiffness.
“In Little Mexico, I suppose,” Max replied with a small curl of contempt. “So why did you bother to come here at all?”
