Maybe she couldn't trust herself to judge a man's character, but she'd grown up on a ranch. She could trust the dog. It wasn't as if she was going to sleep a wink anyway. Might as well be warm inside instead of freezing in her truck.
Why had he done that?
Cord trudged up the porch steps, the girl two paces behind him. Molly.
He should've kicked her off his property, not told her she could stay the night.
But he'd felt sucker punched when he'd spotted her in the cab of that old truck, her face white and pale. Her mad scramble had echoed the panic he'd seen in her eyes. And not just a normal you gave me a fright kind of scared.
Something had happened to her. Probably whatever had caused the shadow of the bruise beneath her jaw. She'd hidden it earlier with the fall of her hair, but tonight he'd seen it as she'd thrown up one hand as if to protect herself from him.
He remembered feeling that frightened. When he was thirteen and the police had come knocking. Then riding with West in the back of the cop car. Not knowing where they were going to end up.
He wasn't a saint by any stretch, but his conscience wouldn't let him leave her to fend for herself tonight.
Hound greeted her on the front porch of the farmhouse, where Cord had left him.
The dog nosed into her leg, and she dropped a scratch behind his ears.
And then Cord couldn't delay any longer. He opened the front door.
She followed him in. He kept his expression blank but he could imagine what she was thinking.
The place was in awful shape, and the glaring overhead lights didn't hide a single flaw.
The front door opened to a short entryway. To the left was the kitchen and nook table, where he'd eaten countless bowls of cereal as a boy. To the right was the small living area, with its plaid couches from the 1980s, the scratched coffee table, the bent and tattered horizontal blinds. And of course, the scraggly fake Christmas tree with half its needles gone and faded ornaments. Behind the living room, a small hallway led to the makeshift mudroom and a set of stairs that lead up to the bedrooms.
He caught her wide-eyed stare at the Christmas tree.
"Pretty fancy, huh?" he asked.
"It's... something."
"It might be older than your truck."
She cracked a smile. "You do know it's the middle of January right?"
"I've only been here a couple of days. My grandma passed away and left me the place." The No Name, and all the work that came with it.
"I'm sorry." She looked chagrined, as if she'd stepped in something painful.
She had, just not the way she meant. He waved off her concern.
"We weren't close." He left it at that.
"There's still a gift under the tree," she said quietly.
"Yup."
He stomped into the kitchen, left her to follow.
The badly wrapped gift was roughly the size of a shirt box and had his name on it. He hadn't had the heart to open it. He didn't know what he'd find inside, but he doubted it would be anything meaningful. More likely, it would be painful. A stab at him, even from the grave. Grandma Mackie had not been a soft woman. She’d never hesitated to call it like she saw it. And she'd believed he was a failure.
No, he wasn't going to open it. He just hadn't had the time to chunk it yet.
When he couldn't stand Molly's curious gaze any longer, he growled, "Spare bedroom's upstairs."
Go to sleep.
Molly sat with her back against the simple wooden headboard. The bedroom couldn't be more than eight by ten and had at one time belonged to a little boy. Cord? Or a brother, maybe?
There was one picture of two little boys stuck to the wall with tape. They must have been all of six and seven and were playing in a mud puddle, covered head to toe. The only white on them was their teeth as they grinned for the camera. A poster of Spider-Man hung on one wall. And horses. Whoever had slept here had been horse crazy. Pictures cut out from magazines and newspapers, the front part of a folder, one of those glossy ones made for school kids, a fold-out poster. All different colors. A palomino, a bay, a black.
It was her kind of a room.
The room wasn't keeping her awake.
It wasn't even the thin walls or that she could hear Cord moving around in the room next door. He'd switched the TV on and then off. There was something comforting about knowing he was close.
So it wasn’t him.
It was as if he'd activated her memory bank when he'd startled her in the truck, and the memories she'd suppressed for the past three days were attacking her from the inside. She couldn't turn them off like he’d switched off the TV.
You can't leave me. You'll never leave me.
A flash of headlights against a brick wall.
The way her head had flung backwards when he'd hit her.
Her own screams.
She shivered under the quilt, blinking the wall clock into focus. Two trembling breaths weren't enough to shake the memories, but at least the panic attack threatening her backed off.
She was going about this all wrong. When she'd been a kid, every time she'd tried to stay awake, she'd fallen asleep. Christmas Eve. The night before they left for family vacation. The night before school started.
Stay awake.
So she counted the beats of the second hand on the wall clock.
3,600. 7,200.
The clock ticked past midnight.
Any rancher worth his salt would be long asleep. The workday started at five.
She'd lost that part of herself at TU. The little girl who’d been born to be a rancher. She'd lost too much.
Cord had let her stay the night.
She had to find a way to convince him to let her stay longer. Maybe she couldn't sleep here, but she was the safest she'd felt since the attack.
The clock ticked away, and she
