He couldn’t help but feel tense, and not just sexually. He’d been looking forward to this night with Lindsay, and to say it hadn’t ended the way he’d hoped would be an understatement. But she was right. They had no future. And Lindsay wasn’t the type of woman to have an affair without a future.
And she was too serious, just as she said.
Not to mention the whole business with her wanting to see his water pumps. Damn, she still didn’t believe that he hadn’t installed bigger pumps to steal her water. She wanted to see it with her own two eyes. Because he was a Milan, no doubt, and Milans never told the truth!
He banged the palm of his hand on the steering wheel. He needed to forget her.
As he drove along the darkened road, he turned on the radio, but the guy who sang—some guy who’d won one of those ubiquitous TV reality shows—strummed a soulful guitar and sang about the cute filly he was pining for. Tony didn’t want to hear it. He shut it off. He had enough of his own problems with his own cute filly. A spirited one, at that.
He had to let out a laugh at the thought of Lindsay knowing he had referred to her as a filly. She’d probably take out her shotgun and fill him with buckshot.
The drive home seemed endless, but by the time he pulled onto the long driveway up to his ranch house, he knew what he had to do. He had to forget everything about Lindsay Calhoun, starting with last Saturday night. From the moment he’d seen her in that red dress all the way to tonight. As sexy, as enticing, as appealing as Lindsay was, she wasn’t the woman for him. They could never be together. She was commitment with a capitalC, and that was one thing he couldn’t—wouldn’t—ever be willing to give.
He entered the house and went up to bed, not even bothering to turn on a light.
She hadn’t bothered to turn on the light.
For some reason, that thought struck her as she woke up. She remembered running up to her room, in the dark, after Tony left, and throwing herself on the bed, sad and uncharacteristically near tears. She thought she’d never sleep tonight, but apparently she had.
She felt beside her and at her feet, but the dogs weren’t in their usual position. Then she remembered. She’d let them out whenshe got home and then forgotten about them. They’d probably gone over to the bunkhouse for the night.
She sat up, glancing at the clock on her bedside table to see it was after three in the morning. A long, sad howl sent chills down her spine and she ran to the window to look out. Another sad howl filled the night.
Moonlight splashed over open spaces and something moved. Chills ran down her spine again as she saw the wolf standing at the edge of a grove of trees. As she watched, it threw back its head and howled again.
She shivered. For the first time since being on the ranch, she felt alone and didn’t like it. She wished she had kept the dogs with her and hoped no one at the bunkhouse turned them out, because she didn’t want them tangling with a wolf. She also hoped no one at the bunkhouse got his gun. The men were good shots. If they wanted to kill the wolf, they would surely succeed. She grabbed her phone to call her foreman, thought about it and decided it would be ridiculous to wake him. When morning came, she would talk to Abe about the four-legged intruder.
Another lonely howl caused a fresh batch of shivers to crawl up her spine. Impulsively, telling herself she shouldn’t, she called the one person she thought of.
She felt silly when Tony answered, and she suddenly wished she hadn’t called him. But she’d awakened him and she had to explain why.
“Sorry, Tony. I know I woke you.”
“Lindsay? Are you okay?” he asked, in a surprisingly clear, alert voice.
“I’m fine, Tony.” Now that she had him on the phone she couldn’t seem to tell him about the wolf. What did she expect him to do about it?
“Okay then, darlin’, what’s on your mind at...3:17 a.m.?”
“I feel really silly now.”
“Lindsay, you didn’t call me in the middle of the night to tell me you feel silly.”
“The wolf/coyote/dog—except it looks like a wolf—is howling near my bedroom. I can see it and the animal sounds hurt.”
“All animals sound hurt when they howl. So? I know you’re a crack shot even with that big .45 you own. Take him out and go back to sleep.”
“A gunshot would wake everyone on the ranch and create an uproar. Anyway, I can’t kill him. Or her. He or she sounds pitiful and eerie, and for the first time since I’ve owned the ranch I don’t like being here alone.”
“I’m coming over.”
“No, Tony. I just wanted to hear your voice. Don’t get up and come over.”
“I can be there in a few minutes.”
“Stay in bed,” she said, hearing another long howl and looking at the animal standing half in the moonlight and half in shadow. “I feel sorry for it. It sounds hurt and lonesome.”
“I’ll be over in a flash. I can really take your mind off the wolf, howls or no howls.”