Mr. Serious Page 7

  Chapter Eight

  She wasn’t telling him something. Waylon could see it in the way she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. He didn’t know what she was holding back, but one thing he did know was that she was in full panic about Winnie. There was something about that little girl and Christina’s concern for her safety that he couldn’t ignore—or question.

  She would tell him the truth if and when she was ready. He would just have to be patient.

  His thoughts drifted to Winnie. The girl was two. He had divorced Alli three and a half years ago. That put Winnie well outside the range of the possibility of him being the father. At least, probably.

  He tried to recall the last time he’d had relations with Alli, but all he could remember were times while they had still been married. He hated to think about that time in his life too much. Thoughts of what had transpired with Alli only brought heartache.

  Wyatt and Gwen were in the barn with Winnie when they got back to Dunrovin.

  Everything about the ranch was the same—the same weathered red barn and green stock fence around the corrals, the same red and green Christmas lights strung up around the barn, and the same American flag on the flagpole in the middle of the main house’s front yard. It waved reverently, for a minute reminding him of what and whom he’d pledged his life to and why.

  He followed Christina into the barn, watching her hips move and the Wranglers she was wearing stretch over the round curves of her ass. Her long blond hair fell down her back like a lion’s mane, perfectly matching her proclivity for roaring. He didn’t know a lot about astrological signs, but if he had to guess, she was probably a Leo.

  As much as she drove him crazy, it was those same qualities—the tendency to push him away, to keep him guessing and to make the whole room turn with her smile—that made him want her more. She challenged him like no other woman ever had, and it was that mystery, that need to learn more, that made him wonder what it would be like to move back to the ranch—make a go of it here for a while.

  He had planned on reenlisting, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  “Hey, guys!” Gwen said, looking up from the horse she and Winnie were brushing. “How’s it going?”

  Winnie ran up to Christina and threw herself around her aunt’s legs. As he watched, he recalled how Christina had told him she was merely the girl’s guardian. Why had she been so evasive? She had said the father wasn’t William and it wasn’t him, so who could it be? And why wouldn’t she just tell him?

  Winnie let go of Christina and wrapped herself around his legs, then squirmed her way up, using her bandaged arm like a lever to move herself higher until she was snuggled into his arms. “Wy-ant said I can’t wear my crown,” she said in her slightly garbled toddler tongue. She pointed to her head.

  “Why not?” Waylon said, pulling her higher into his arms so she could perch on his hip like a little bird.

  She shrugged and popped her dirty thumb in her mouth.

  “Weren’t you just brushing the horses, kid?” he asked.

  She smiled, not letting her thumb out of the cage of her teeth. “Yep. It was so funny. Lewis was being naughty.” She nodded toward the bay gelding as he shifted his weight from one side to the other.

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let her wear the crown we made. You’re such a killjoy, man,” he said to Wyatt with a laugh.

  “Hey, now, little Miss Winnie, you know Lewis doesn’t like shiny things. It spooks him. We don’t want to scare him with your devil horns, do we?”

  “Devil horns?” Winnie said with an overly exaggerated frown.

  “Oh, I mean your beautiful crown.” Wyatt laughed and pointed at his brother. “He may be good at a lot of things, but your buddy Waylon shouldn’t be put in charge of costumes.”

  Winnie’s frown deepened. “I looked bee-u-tiful.”

  “Of course you did, sweetheart,” Gwen said, walking over and pulling the girl out of Waylon’s arms. “Why don’t you and I go have a little chocolate milk. Sound good?” She gave Wyatt a knowing look as she set Winnie down, and the girl took off toward the house without answering.

  “Thanks, Gwen,” Wyatt said, giving his fiancée a quick smack on the rear end.

  “You need to put Lewis away, okay?” she said.

  Wyatt nodded with a smile. The way he looked at Gwen made something shift in Waylon’s chest. He couldn’t recall ever looking at Alli the way Wyatt looked at Gwen.

  He glanced over at Christina. Maybe there would be a chance he could love someone the same way Wyatt and Gwen loved each other—like it was from the deepest part of their souls.

  Wyatt unclipped Lewis’s rope from the wall and led the horse back to his stall. The horse nickered as Wyatt closed the door. Wyatt walked over to the bucket, took out a few pellets and fed them to the gelding.

  “So...” Wyatt said, “how’d it go up north? Did you guys find anything?”

  Christina gave Waylon an uncomfortable glance and then her gaze fell to the floor.

  “Actually, we ran into a trucker,” Waylon said, telling him about Daryl Bucket and the ride to Mystery that he’d given Alli.

  Wyatt’s face tightened with anger as Waylon spoke.

  “Why the hell would she come back here?” Wyatt asked, but as he looked over at Christina, he shut his mouth tight, like he’d suddenly answered his own question. “Winnie?”

  “He knows she’s Alli’s daughter,” Christina said, but her face was tight. “I think she’s going to try to kidnap her.”

  “She wouldn’t come back here for Winnie. That can’t be it,” Wyatt said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “There’s no other reason, at least no good one, for her to be here,” Waylon said. “We were thinking it would be best if we kept Winnie out of sight for a little while, at least until we have Alli in custody.”

  “I’ll let Gwen know, and I’ll stay with Winnie nonstop until we have Alli behind bars,” Wyatt said. “Alli can’t get an opportunity to get her hands on Winnie. If she does, I hate to think that Winnie’s life would be in danger, but the truth is, I just don’t know. All I know for sure is that if you give people the right motivations, they are capable of just about anything.”

  Waylon couldn’t agree with his brother more. They couldn’t trust his ex. The only people they could trust right now were family. No one could protect the little girl better than the people who loved her the most.

  “I don’t think Alli would hurt Winnie,” Christina said, coming to her sister’s defense.

  “Are you really willing to put Winnie’s life at risk just because you don’t think your sister would do something sinister?” Wyatt asked.

  “You were the one who suggested Winnie stay with Wyatt,” Waylon said, arguing his brother’s point.

  Christina’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s just... I never thought Alli would do something like this.”

  “Don’t worry, Christina. Gwen and I will take good care of our girl. In fact, I’ll go grab them and we’ll get out of here.” Wyatt turned to Waylon. “Make sure to let Mom know we have Winnie when she gets back from the store, or she’ll freak out.”

  “No problem,” Waylon said as Wyatt rushed out of the barn.

  Christina looked over at him, and he could sense her contempt. “My sister isn’t as evil as you are both making her out to be.”

  He could understand why she was upset. If one of his brothers had done something like this, he would love them just as she loved Alli, and just like her, he would be stuck in a place between love of a person and hatred for their actions. Not for the first time since he’d met Christina, he wished he could pull her into his arms and heal her with his kiss.

  * * *

  NOTHING MADE SENSE. Her sister was out of control and acting in a way she never had before, and Christina had no idea what t
o think or do. She wished her sister would just turn herself in. Everything would be so much easier, and at least they would know she was out of harm’s way.

  Lately it seemed like wherever Alli was, trouble followed—and she was the source.

  Christina sighed. Alli was trouble. There was no doubt about it, and as much as she loved her sister, she hated her equally.

  She could feel Waylon looking at her. She glanced over at him and caught his eye. There was something in the way he looked at her that made her body come to life.

  He smiled, and the sensation she was trying so hard to ignore boiled within her. No. It was nothing more than lust that she felt...tense, hungry, desperate lust. If she fell for that feeling, it would be far more dangerous than her sister. It would tear her world to pieces.

  Then again, on the edges of lust was love. But falling in love with the man who promised nothing except his imminent departure was madness.

  Danger and madness. It was the recipe for a disaster.

  “Is there anywhere you think your sister would go?” Waylon asked, rescuing her from her thoughts.

  She shook her head. “All she had was this ranch.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that she went back to Poe? Would he shelter her from the police?”

  “After what she did to Monica? No. Never. He hates her for what she did. He hates this entire ranch and everybody who works here and isn’t afraid to tell everyone about it,” Christina said. “Besides, Poe’s already moved on to greener pastures.”

  “You’re right. But if she’s here in Mystery, she has to be staying somewhere. Somewhere that no one would have noticed her.”

  The thought of someone hiding in the small town of Mystery was nearly laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that, so far, Alli had been able to pull it off. There was no way she could go anywhere without someone knowing her, especially after the news of her role in Bianca’s and Monica’s deaths had hit the papers. She was unwelcome number one.

  Even Christina had found herself getting the cold shoulder from some people within the community, especially those closest to Bianca. It was almost as if they blamed her for being the sister of a murderer—like in some way she could have stopped her sister from going mad.

  Not for the first time, she wondered if she could have.

  If she had just known more about her sister or if she had taken a more active role in her life, maybe she could have stopped things from ever going as far as they had.

  She sighed. Whether or not the community eventually forgot or forgave her—and the scarlet letter she seemed to wear was removed—her mistake in not being able to stop Alli was something that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  “Why don’t we get out of here. Take a break.” Waylon reached over and took her hand. He gave her fingers a light squeeze. “Sometimes I find the answers I’m looking for in moments when I’m not concentrating on the problem.”

  She knew exactly what he meant. She did that all the time—for some reason, her best ideas always seemed to come to her when she was in the shower. Yet she wasn’t about to say that to Waylon. They weren’t quite ready for a shower or talk of one—at least not yet.

  She blushed as she realized her thoughts had devolved into her and Waylon making sweet, sweet love. It wasn’t like she was a teenager who couldn’t control herself, or who let her hormones drive her. She was a grown woman; she should have had far more restraint on her feelings.

  That was what she was feeling—just some animalistic draw to the sexy Waylon Fitzgerald. Some primal instinct for sex. Simple procreative needs. Nothing more.

  A strange calm filled her as she found a tendril of logic in her swarm of illogical feelings.

  She let him lead her out as she stared at their knotted hands. Logic had to be her guide, not the feeling of heat that rose up from their melded touch or the happiness that threatened to overtake her at the mere fact he was touching her—moreover, that he wanted to touch her.

  He must have had so many women interested in him. The thought made an unwelcome flutter of jealousy move through her. She looked up at his brown eyes and the almost imperceptible fine lines at their corners. He ran his thumb over her hand.

  “What?” he asked, his voice raspy with something she recognized but refused to acknowledge even to herself.

  “We’ve gone through all the guesthouses on the ranch from top to bottom.” She tried to talk about something as distanced from feelings as possible. “Now that the main tourist season is over, we’re buttoning up a few of them for the winter. And the rest we are keeping up and running for the fall guests and winter skiers.” She knew she was rambling a bit, but he seemed to have a habit of making her do that.

  His smile grew almost impossibly larger, as if he realized he was making her nervous. “Did she know the schedule of guests and which cabins you guys would be closing down for the season?”

  “Everyone who works here would have had access to that information.”

  “Then it may be a good idea if we start looking around those places. It would be the perfect place to hide. No one coming around. No prying eyes.”

  It didn’t feel quite right, but she didn’t argue. As long as they got out of this place, and she could start ignoring her feelings again, everything would be okay. As it was, she was growing far too close to him for her own comfort.

  Chapter Nine

  The whole thing felt like a wild-goose chase. Other than knowing his ex-wife was somewhere in town—or rather, had been—they had little to go on. Maybe Alli had left again. Maybe she’d just wanted to throw everyone off her scent by taking the car north, then she’d come back and taken off south. It was a good maneuver—the double back. He’d used it in hundreds of his military exercises. His favorite was doubling back and moving in behind the enemy, gaining the high ground. If it was successful, there was almost a guarantee they could overcome their enemy.

  Was that what Alli was doing now? Going for the high ground?

  She had surprised him by coming back. He couldn’t let her surprise him again. They had to be prepared for anything. She wasn’t stupid. She’d never been stupid. He couldn’t underestimate her, not if it meant anyone—especially Winnie—could be put in danger.

  The more Waylon thought about Winnie, the worse he felt for the girl. She was just another of Alli’s victims—another heart that had been left shattered in the woman’s wake.

  He knew all too well how it felt to be left by a parent. He and Colter had been down that road, though Wyatt and Rainier had gone through their own versions of hell when it came to their own biological parents. Some wounds never went away, they simply fell further into the past. And just when a person thought they were gone, those old wounds had a way of rising to the present and even scarring the future.

  He glanced over at Christina as they made their way up the steps to the Sacajawea guest cabin. The place hadn’t changed much since he had last been there. There was a model of a papoose above the door of the cabin, and there was a picture of Sacajawea and her baby on the door. He’d always liked this place; it had an air of the Old West, complete with pictures of bison and framed projectile points on the walls.

  “It doesn’t look like she’s been here, either,” Christina said, pressing her face to the glass and looking inside. “Nothing is out of place, at least as far as I can tell. It looks just like the others.”

  They had been all over the ranch, but there hadn’t been any evidence that anyone, let alone Alli, had been to the cabins in the last week. They were just running in circles, and he hated the feeling of impotence that filled him.

  He sighed, and Christina turned to him. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “At least we’re checking everything we can off the list. And right now, we know that Winnie is taken care of. Gwen and Wyatt won’t let her out of their sight.”


  He looked at her as she pushed a wayward hair out of her face. As she moved, she licked her lips, and the simple action made his body stir to life. Her lips were damp, and as he looked at them, he wondered exactly what it would be like to kiss them. She was so sexy. She was probably the kind of woman who took a kiss slow at first, taking in the moment their lips met like it was an expensive scotch—and everything could be found in the first burning sip. In that moment, a person could taste all the things that had come together to make the kiss what it was and what made it special. It was like that first kiss held the promises of what their relationship could be—both good and bad.

  He couldn’t deny that even just the thought of kissing her was better than any scotch in the world—and probably far more addictive.

  His phone rang. It was his mother. “What’s up?”

  “You need to come home. Where are you?” There was a high and frantic edge to her voice that made all of his senses spark to life.

  “We’re not far. What’s going on?”

  “Is Winnie with you?” his mother asked, not answering his question.

  “Oh,” he said, his stomach sinking as he remembered Wyatt’s request to tell his mother that they had taken her back to their place. “She’s with Wyatt.”

  His mother let out a long sigh. “Thank God she’s all right.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  Christina passed him a questioning glance and moved closer so she could hear his exchange with his mother.

  “I was just worried when I came home and saw the door open and found Winnie’s room destroyed. Did you get whatever you guys were looking for in there?”

  He looked over at Christina. “No one was in her room. Were they?”

  “Gwen went in there to pack her a bag and grab a few things, but she wouldn’t have made a mess, and I was the last one out of the house. I know I locked the doors when we left. I made sure of it.”