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  Eric agreed. “Trace is a grown man. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Jo shook her head several times. “No, he doesn’t. He’s going after a man I don’t think had a thing to do with this.”

  Sara and Eric shared a look.

  Eric stepped to a box that hung on the back wall near the door, and opened it, taking out a set of keys. “Where do you think he’s heading?”

  Jo shook her head again. “I’m not going to tell you unless you agree to let me go with you.”

  “But the doctor—” Sara began.

  “Will…still be here when we get back.” She downed the rest of the milk, picked up the water bottle that was on the table, and then led the way through the back door to where all the house vehicles were parked. She climbed into the passenger’s side of the truck while Eric took the wheel.

  “The Town and Country Motel in Hansen,” she managed to tell him between coughs.

  “SON OF A BITCH—it sounds like we’ve got our guy,” Sheriff Brody said as he drove to the Town and Country. Beside him, Trace sat checking his handgun. “You’re taking this mighty personal, aren’t you, son?”

  Trace stared at him. “I don’t like it when people who aren’t welcome come onto my property.”

  “You and every Texan out there.” Brody ran the siren and radioed for one of his deputies to meet them at the motel. “Give me the lowdown again.”

  “She was out cold in one of the horse stalls with a pillowcase tied around her head. What more do you want to know?”

  “Did it look like she’d been…messed with?”

  “Messed with how, Sheriff? You mean raped?”

  “That would about sum it up.”

  Trace could barely speak through his tight throat as he remembered the way her shirt had been ripped open, her jeans unfastened. “I think I got there just in time.”

  “And how can you be so sure it’s this guy Southard?” the sheriff asked.

  “Are you telling me it was somebody else?”

  They pulled into the parking lot of the motel, and Trace was out of the car before it drew to a full stop. He went to the office, got the number of Southard’s room and then stalked to unit 5 and kicked at the door. It took three tries, but finally the door swung inward and he burst into the room, his gun out in front of him.

  Southard didn’t appear to be there.

  Then the bathroom door opened and the man in question stared at him as he toweled off his face, apparently just having cleaned up.

  Trace squeezed off a shot, the sound ringing in his ears.

  Chapter Forteen

  “WHAT IN THE HELL are you doing?”

  Jo and Eric had arrived at the motel a little too late. The sound of a gunshot almost deafened her as she jumped out of the truck and charged toward the only open door. Carter lay crumpled on the floor inside, and Trace stood holding the gun he’d just fired.

  Jo pushed Trace toward the open door and out into the night. “What in the hell did you do? Oh, God, what in the hell did you do?”

  She rushed back into the room and knelt down to take an inventory of Carter’s wound. The bullet appeared to have grazed the side of his left leg, but she couldn’t be entirely sure. All she knew was that he was out cold.

  “What are you doing, Jo?” Trace demanded. “I just shot him in the leg, not the head. The son of a bitch tried to rape you.”

  She got back to her feet. “It wasn’t him!”

  Sheriff Brody had relieved Trace of his gun and was sticking the weapon into the tight waist of his uniform. “How can you be so sure, Miss Atchison?”

  “I’m sure because I’m sure, that’s how.”

  Trace stared at her. “Did you know he was still in town?”

  She looked back and forth between Carter and him. “Has somebody called a goddamn doctor?”

  The sheriff nodded toward the deputy speaking on a radio in his squad car outside. “An emergency chopper’s on its way.” He walked over to Carter and toed his leg with his boot. “But if Trace is right, then this son of a bitch deserves to die for what he’s done to those women over the past few months.”

  “It wasn’t him,” she insisted, feeling oddly nauseous and unsteady on her feet.

  Jo parked herself between Carter and the other men. It was then that she saw the gash on Carter’s right arm.

  The world start to shift underneath her.

  “Jo?” Trace said, catching her just before she collapsed to the floor for the second time that night.

  THE SUN WASN’T UP YET when Jo awakened with a start. Where was she? She looked around the blue room with the twin bed and bookcases bearing rodeo trophies and photos, then sprang from the bed and raced to the nearest window. It took her a moment to realize she must be in one of the bedrooms in the main house. Trace’s house. Although she knew this wasn’t his bedroom, because she had been in it before.

  She looked down to find she had a pink nightgown on. Definitely not hers. She hadn’t owned a nightgown since she’d lived at home with her mother, who had made sure to outfit her in full gear of nightgown, robe and slippers no matter how damn hot it got. “A woman should never be seen at less than her best,” Miss Daisy Mae had insisted.

  Jo looked around for her clothes, thankful when she found them folded on a nearby chair. Judging by the light outside, it was just before dawn, but there was no clock around to verify the time. She quickly dressed and went to the door, listening for sounds through the thick wood.

  She closed her eyes, bringing the night before back into focus. She’d been attacked. In the stables. A hood put over her head.

  She shuddered and swallowed hard.

  Trace had shot Carter…

  Then what?

  She couldn’t remember a single thing after that.

  She curved her hand around the door handle and opened the door…only to find herself face-to-face with Trace, who was leaning against the wall just outside.

  “Good morning,” he said, his arms crossed over his impressively wide chest.

  Jo squinted at him and then stepped into the hallway, heading for the stairs. He effectively blocked her way.

  “I need to get out to the stables to saddle up.”

  “It’s Saturday. No one’s going out today.”

  It was Saturday?

  Time and place seemed balled up into an unrecognizable jumble. Jo pushed her hair back from her face and scratched her head, wanting nothing more than a long, hot shower and a strong cup of coffee.

  “The barbecue,” she said.

  Today was the day of the party to celebrate Trace’s brother’s return home. Not only would all ranch personnel who cared to attend be at the event, but everyone from three counties was expected to be there. Rumor had it that no ranch threw a barbecue the way Wildewood and the Armstrong family did.

  “How are you feeling?” Trace asked.

  Jo watched his gaze flick down over her shoulders and breasts to settle on her lower abdomen.

  She grimaced, but prevented herself from touching the area in question.

  Trace cleared his throat. “I thought you might stick around the house this morning,” he said. “The sheriff’s going to stop by in a while to ask you some questions. And the doctor would like to check up on you, as well.”

  “So you want me to do what, exactly? Just lie around and wait for them both?”

  He grinned. “No, I thought you might want to help Alma and Sara out, you know, get ready for the barbecue later.”

  A woman’s job.

  “Can I man the fire pit instead?”

  “Already taken care of.”

  “Fine.” She began to pass him. He stood his ground. Then finally moved so she could get by.

  “Jesus, you’d think I was being held prisoner.”

  Trace caught her arm, his thumb gently caressing her through her shirtsleeve. “No, Jo. You’re here so I can protect you.”

  She squared her shoulders. “Since you’re so sure you caught the right guy, who a
re you protecting me from?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. He thought he was protecting her from herself.

  She pulled her arm from his grasp and continued on down the stairs.

  SARA HARRIS soon-to-be Armstrong was everything Jo was not. As Jo watched her move around the kitchen a couple of hours later, she wasn’t so much painfully aware of the differences as she was curious about them.

  It was said that when you lived a certain way for so long, you were incapable of viewing life any differently. That had certainly applied to her after serving on the front line in the military. And now as she watched Sara compliment Alma’s command of the kitchen, her bulk not slowing her down, Jo realized how different her own outlook must be from Eric’s fiancée.

  Jo understood that Sara wasn’t exactly a Southern belle, as her own mother had endeavored to be, but she was ultrafeminine in addition to being a good businesswoman, running her own Web design company online. A business she could manage from anywhere.

  “Damn stubborn marines,” Sara said under her breath, and then smiled at Jo. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” Jo returned her attention to shredding purple cabbage for the coleslaw. Her best guess was they planned to feed half of Texas, if the accumulating amounts of food were any indication.

  Sara sighed. “It’s just that ever since I arrived yesterday, I can’t help getting the distinct impression that I walked right into the middle of a war zone.”

  Jo smiled. “That wouldn’t be far from the truth.”

  When Jo had come downstairs earlier, Sara had already been up and in the kitchen. She’d poured Jo the cup of coffee she’d been craving, and the two women sat at the table and talked for an hour before Alma arrived and took on the role of drill sergeant.

  Sara had told Jo about her late husband, a marine killed in action, and the friendship that he’d shared with Eric. And about how she’d struck up an online, long-distance friendship with Eric afterward…under an assumed identity. And how that friendship had evolved into much more.

  Now, six months after Eric had uncovered her real identity and staked his claim on her, she was pregnant, and had changed her entire life in order to be with the man she loved.

  Sara had made a face. “If only I didn’t feel like I was as welcome around here as a case of the clap.”

  The bawdy slang coming out of the mouth of the pretty woman had made Jo laugh so hard she’d nearly cried.

  No, there was no getting anything by Sara Harris. And Jo found that she liked her. In a way she hadn’t liked another woman in a long, long time.

  Of course, it might have been different had she actually been around more women.

  “Is the sheriff still out with the guys?” Sara asked.

  Jo leaned back on her heels, trying not to dump any of the mountain of shredded cabbage on the floor. Trace and a few of the ranch hands were tending to the barbecuing of two hogs and a prime slab of grade A Texas beef straight from the ranch itself. “I don’t see him.”

  Jo guessed that she was fishing for information about the conversation Jo had had with the sheriff earlier. But she wasn’t ready to discuss it. Not yet. Everything was too surreal right now to do anything with any kind of objectivity.

  But she had learned that Carter was fine. After having been airlifted to a San Antonio hospital, he’d been treated and released, then taken into custody by the state police. He’d suffered minor grazing along the side of his left leg. An injury that could have been deadly had it been an inch deeper.

  Jo took a deep breath. But it wasn’t that injury she was interested in. It was the gash on his arm. The one that appeared to have been caused by the knife she’d wielded against her attacker the night before.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, JoEllen, but it looks like we’ve got our serial rapist,” Sheriff Brody had said to her this morning.

  It appeared they’d found a pillowcase stashed in the seat of his Harley, and had recovered her pocketknife and sent it to San Antonio, where forensics would run tests to match the blood on the blade to Carter’s.

  “You haven’t disappointed me, Sheriff,” she’d said quietly. “I just…I mean, I was so sure…”

  She’d been positive that Carter couldn’t have been the one to attack her. How could she have been so wrong?

  It was hard to believe that just twelve hours after the attack she was making coleslaw.

  “Ouch.” She lifted her thumb to her mouth.

  “You’re supposed to be shredding cabbage, not your hand,” Alma said. “Move. Go slap a bandage on that thumb. I can’t have you bleeding all over the food.”

  A little while later, Sara was also chased from the kitchen. Alma insisted that she had enough help to finish up, and since Sara was one of the two guests of honor, she shouldn’t have been helping out to begin with.

  So Jo and Sara found themselves sitting on the back porch sipping lemonade, watching the guys supervising the barbecue.

  Sara sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Is there anything sexier than watching a hot guy barbecuing beef?”

  Jo laughed. “Yes. Two hot guys.”

  Sara smiled at her. “So…I’ve got the very strong impression that there’s something going on between you and Trace.”

  Jo stiffened.

  Sara held up her free hand. “Hey, the last thing I want to do is intrude. There was a time not too long ago that I would have denied up and down I had anything but platonic feelings for Eric. I understand if it’s something you don’t want to talk about.”

  Jo gazed at Sara’s belly, marveling at the way she seemed to absently caress the plump flesh as if soothing the baby within.

  “It’s not that,” Jo said. “It’s just…oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about.”

  Sara looked back at the men. Jo followed her gaze, finding Trace sliding a glance in her direction again. “Hmm, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Sara said. “There are at least a million words on that man’s face when he looks at you.”

  Jo slowly sipped her lemonade, trying to pretend that it didn’t take all of her concentration to swallow the simple liquid, even as she noted that what Sara said was true: Trace was talking to her without saying a word every time their gazes met.

  Sara cleared her throat, regaining Jo’s attention. “I guess right now it’s up to you to interpret the words as you will.”

  She put her glass down on the table between them and got to her feet. “But never mind all that now. I think it’s time we found something for you to wear…”

  Chapter Fifteen

  JO HAD NEVER EXPERIENCED such a struggle with another woman. Or gladly sent up the white flag once she saw the results of her suggestions.

  It seemed Eric’s fiancée had an entire wardrobe full of summer dresses tailor-made for Texan barbecues—dresses that she herself couldn’t wear. She insisted that Jo at least indulge a toddling, pregnant woman her wish to live vicariously for one day.

  “Of course, my legs aren’t nearly as long as yours,” Sara had said, tugging on the hem of the dress they’d finally agreed on after at least fifteen wardrobe changes that had left Jo’s cheeks red-hot and her temper up. “And it’s a little tight through the bust…God, I hadn’t thought you were that chesty.” She’d fastened a safety pin on the inside flaps of fabric between the buttons so the front wouldn’t gape. “But I do have to admit that the boots go with it perfectly, no matter how much I wish you’d fit into a pair of my strappy sandals.”

  Now Jo stood just inside the front door to the living room of the main house, fussing with herself, a breath away from running back upstairs and changing into her jeans and plaid shirt. It was more than just the wardrobe change that left her feeling uneasy. If she were to listen to her gut instincts that Carter wasn’t her attacker—no matter the mounting evidence against him—then that meant the real assailant was out there somewhere. Possibly at the barbecue.

  She squared her shoulders and stretched her n
eck. If that was the case, then she needed to have her wits about her. Stop thinking about what she was wearing and concentrate instead on drawing her attacker out of the shadows.

  She looked down at her short red Laredo boots. The purchase had been one of her very few impulse buys six months ago, while celebrating her honorary discharge after six years in the marines.

  Of course, she’d never really planned to wear them outside of her room. The flashy boots went against her image.

  Then again, so did the light cotton, cream-colored dress with tiny purple flowers stamped all over it that cut to a deep V on her chest and had a hem that barely hit midthigh. Part of that longer-leg problem Sara had talked about. Because while the two women might wear the same size, Jo was at least four inches taller than Sara.

  “As well as half the width,” Sara had joked. “At least currently.”

  Jo took a deep breath now and stepped outside onto the front porch, resisting the urge to pull at the dress hem in a vain attempt to lengthen it. She knew that her preference for jeans over dresses had something to do with her discomfort at the moment, but she also recognized that last night’s incident had wreaked havoc on her normally steel-like nerves.

  The summer sun hung like a flaming orange ball in the west, and the ranch was teeming with at least a couple hundred people. A bandstand and makeshift dance floor had been set up in the large yard near the fountain, and a well-known Texas country and western band was playing an upbeat number that a handful of couples gladly line-danced to. Tables with red-and-white-checked cloths stretched one after another as far as the eye could see, each with large flickering lanterns that would become more pronounced as the sun went down. A number of families with younger children had already staked their claim in the open yard with blankets and picnic baskets, getting an early run on prime real estate for the fireworks display later. Stretched across the front of the house was a banner that read in large letters Texas Welcomes Home Eric—An American Hero. And another one stretched the width of the driveway so that arriving guests passed under it.