Tough Enough; The Cowboy\The Cougar\Murder at Last Chance Ranch

by Jayne Ann Krentz; Lindsay McKenna; B.J. Daniels

• ISBN13: 9780373776603
• ISBN10: 0373776608
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-20
• Publisher: HQN Books

Summary

In these timeless romances from bestselling authors Jayne Ann Krentz, Lindsay McKenna and B.J. Daniels, three women will discover that the West has never been so wild... The Cowboy After their disastrous parting, Margaret Lark thought she was through with Rafe Cassidy. So when he shows up on her doorstep a year later with a shocking proposal, Margaret has no choice but to put her heart on the line again--even if it means winning back the cowboy who stole it in the first place. The Cougar Jim Cunningham's Arizona ranching family has been feuding with Rachel Donovan's for over a century--but forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest to this handsome cowboy. Jim wants desperately to mend the rift between the families--and to find out if Rachel is the woman he has always wanted. Murder at Last Chance Ranch Teddi MacLane's no-account, soon-to-be-ex-husband hasjust turned up dead--in Teddi's house, just days after she threatened to kill him. Now Teddi needs the help of her high school sweetheart, Sheriff Jake Rawlins, to clear her name...and to mend her heart.

Excerpts

"How did you get in here, Rafe?" Not the brightest of questions under the circumstances, but the only coherent one Margaret could come up with in that moment. She was so stunned, she could barely think at all.

"Your neighbor across the hall took pity on me when she found out I'd come all this way just to see you and you weren't here. It seems the two of you exchanged keys in case one of you got locked out. She let me in."

"It looks like I'd better start leaving my spare key with one of the other neighbors. Someone who has a little more common sense."

"Come on in and close the door, Maggie. We have a lot to talk about."

"You're wrong, Rafe. We have nothing to talk about." She stood where she was, refusing to leave the uncertain safety of the lighted hall.

"Are you afraid of me, Maggie?" Rafe's voice was cut glass and black velvet in the darkness. There was a soft, Southwestern drawl in it that only served to heighten the sense of danger. It was the voice of a gun-fighter inviting some hapless soul to his doom in front of the saloon at high noon.

Margaret said nothing. She'd already been involved in one showdown with Rafe and she'd lost.

Rafe's smile grew slightly more menacing as he reached out and flicked on the light beside his chair. It gleamed off his dark brown hair and threw the harsh, aggressive lines of his face into stark relief. His gray, Western-cut jacket was slung over a convenient chair and his long-sleeved white shirt was open at the throat. Silver and turquoise gleamed in the elaborate buckle of the leather belt that circled his lean waist.

"There's no need to be afraid of me, Maggie. Not now."

The not so subtle taunt had the effect Margaret knew Rafe intended it to have. She moved slowly into the foyer and closed the door behind her. For an instant she was angry with herself for obeying him. Then she reminded herself that this was her apartment.

"I suppose there's not much point in telling you I don't want you here?" she asked as she tossed her small golden purse down onto a white lacquer table.

"You can kick me out later. After we've talked. Why don't you pour yourself a brandy for your nerves and we'll continue this conversation in a civilized manner."

She glanced at the glass he held in one hand and realized he'd found her Scotch. The bottle had been left over from last year. No one she knew drank Scotch except Rafe Cassidy and her father. "You were never particularly civilized."

"I've changed."

"I doubt it."

"Pour the brandy, Maggie, love," he advised a little too gently.

She thought about refusing and knew it wouldn't do much good. Short of calling the police there was no way to get Rafe out of her apartment until he was ready to leave. Pouring brandy would at least give her something to do with her hands. Perhaps the liquor would stop the tiny shivers that seemed to be coursing through her.

Rafe's hard mouth twisted with faint satisfaction as he realized she was going to follow orders. With laconic grace he took his booted feet off the coffee table, got up and followed her into the gray and white kitchen.

"I never did like this picture," he said idly as he passed the framed painting on the wall. "Always looked like recycled junk stuck in paint to me."

"Our taste in art was one of several areas in which we had no common ground, wasn't it, Rafe?"

"Oh, we had a lot in common, Maggie. Especially in the middle of the night." He stood lounging in the doorway as she rummaged in the cupboard for a glass. She could feel his golden-brown eyes on her, the eyes that had always made her think of one of the larger species of hunting cat.

"Then again, the middle of the night was about the only time you had available to devote to our relationship," she reminded him bitterly. "And I recall a lot of nights when I didn't even get that much time. There were plenty of nights when I awoke and discovered you were out in the living room going through more papers, working on more ways to take some poor unsuspecting company by surprise."

"So maybe I worked a little too much in those days."

"That's putting it mildly, Rafe. You're obsessed with Cassidy and Company. A mere woman never stood a chance of competing."

"Things are different now. You look good, Maggie. Real good."

Her hand shook a little at the controlled hunger in his voice. The brandy bottle clinked awkwardly on the rim of the glass. "You look very much the same, Rafe." Overwhelming, fierce, dangerous. Still a cowboy.

He shrugged. "It's only been a little over a year."

"Not nearly long enough."

"You're wrong. It's been too damn long. But we'll get to that in a minute." He picked up her brandy glass as soon as she finished pouring and handed it to her with mock gallantry. His big hand brushed against her fingers in a deliberate movement designed to force physical contact.

Margaret snatched her glass out of his hand and turned her back on him. She led the way into the living room. Beyond the wide expanse of windows the lights of Seattle glimmered in the night. Normally she found the view relaxing but tonight it offered no comfort.

She sat down in one of the white leather chairs. It was something of a relief not to have to support her own weight any longer. She felt weak. "Don't play games with me, Rafe. You played enough of them a year ago. Just say whatever it is you feel you have to say and then get out."

Rafe's eyes raked her face as he sat down across from her. He gave her his thin smile. It was the only sort of smile he had. "Let's not get into the subject of who was playing games a year ago. It's a matter of opinion."

"Not opinion. Fact. And as far as I'm concerned, the facts are very clear."

He shook his head, refusing to be drawn. "We can sort it all out some other time, if ever. Personally, I think it's best to just forget most of what happened a year ago."

"Easy for you to say. It wasn't your career and your professional reputation that were ruined."

Rafe's eyes darkened. "You could have weathered the storm. You chose to walk away from your career and take up writing full-time."

Margaret allowed herself a small, negligent shrug. "You may be right. As it happens I had a better career to walk to. Best professional move I could have made. I love my writing and I can assure you I don't miss the business jungle one bit. I wouldn't go back for anything." Her writing, which had been part-time until last year, had become full-time after the disaster and she didn't regret it for a moment.

"You dropped out of sight. Found a new apartment. Took your listing out of the phone book." Rafe leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankles once more on the coffee table. He sipped reflectively at his Scotch. "Took me a while to find you when I started looking. Your publisher refused to give out your address and your father was not what you'd call cooperative."

"I should hope not. I told him I never wanted to see you again as long as I lived. I assumed the feeling was mutual."

"It was. For a while."

"When did you start looking for me?"

"A few months ago."

"Why?" she demanded bluntly.

"I thought I made that clear. I want you back."

Her stomach tightened and her pulse thrummed as it went into a primitive fightor-flight rhythm. "No. Never. You don't want me, Rafe. You never wanted me. You just used me."

His fingers clenched the glass but his face betrayed no change of expression. "That's a lie, Maggie, love. Our relationship had nothing to do with what happened between Cassidy and Company and Moorcroft's firm."

"The hell it didn't. You used me to get inside information. Worse, you wanted to taunt Jack Moorcroft with the news that you were sleeping with his trusted manager, didn't you? Don't bother to deny it, Rafe, because we both know it's the truth. You told me so yourself, remember?"

Rafe's jaw tightened. "I was mad as hell that morning when I found you warning Moorcroft about my plans. As far as I was concerned, you'd betrayed me."

The injustice of that seared her soul. "I worked for Jack Moorcroft and I discovered you were after the company he was trying to buy out; that you'd used me to help you try to outmaneuver him. What did you expect me to do?"

"I expected you to stay out of it. It had nothing to do with you."

"I was just your pawn in the game, is that it? Did you think I'd be content with that kind of role?"

Rafe drew a deep breath, obviously fighting for his self-control. "I've thought about it a lot during the past year. Every damn day, as a matter of fact, although I told myself at the time that I wasn't going to waste a minute looking for excuses for you. It took me months to calm down enough to start assessing the mess from your point of view."

"Since when did you ever bother to examine anything from my point of view?"

"Take it easy, Maggie, love. I realize now that you felt you had some legitimate reason to do what you did. Yes, sir, I've given it a lot of thought and the way I see it, the whole thing was basically a problem of confused loyalties. You were mixed up, that's all." His mouth curved ruefully. "And a multimillion-dollar deal went down the drain because of it, but I'm willing to let bygones be bygones."

"Oh, gee, thanks. Very magnanimous of you. Rafe, let's get one thing straight. I never asked you to make excuses for me. I don't want you making excuses for me. I don't need your forgiveness because I didn't do anything wrong."

"I'm trying to explain that I don't feel the same way about what happened as I did last year," he said, his voice edged with impatience.

"If you're feeling a twinge or two of guilt about the way you used me and the way you treated me afterward, I hereby absolve you. Believe me, if I were in the same situation again, I'd act exactly the same way. I'd still warn Moorcroft. There. Does that make you feel justified in treating me the way you did?"

He stared at her, his leonine eyes brilliant with some undefined emotion. "You weren't his mistress, were you? Not before or afterward."

She wanted to strike him. It took everything she had to maintain her self-control. "Why should I confirm or deny that?"

"Moorcroft said you'd been sleeping with him up until he realized I was interested in you. He saw a golden opportunity and decided to take advantage of it. He told you to go to me, let me seduce you, see what you could learn."

Margaret shuddered. "You and Moorcroft are both outright bastards."

"He lied to me that morning, didn't he? You were never his."

"I was never any man's."

"You were mine for a while." Rafe took another swallow of his Scotch. "And you're going to be mine again."

"Not a chance. Never in a million years. Not if you were the last man on earth."

Rafe ignored each carefully enunciated word. He frowned thoughtfully as he stared into the darkness. "From what I can tell, you never even saw Moor-croft again after you handed in your resignation. Why was that, Maggie? Did he kick you out because you'd become a liability? Was that it? He didn't want you working for him once the scandal broke? Did he force you to resign?"

"Wouldn't you have asked for my resignation in the same circumstances? If you found out one of your top management people was sleeping with your chief competitor, wouldn't you have demanded she leave?"

"Hell, yes. Everyone who works for me knows that in exchange for a paycheck the one thing I demand is loyalty."

Margaret sighed. "Well, at least you're honest about it. As it happens, Jack didn't have to ask me to turn in my resignation. I was very anxious to go by then. I'd been planning to quit my job in another couple of years to pursue my writing full-time, anyway. The scandal last year just speeded up the process a bit."

Rafe swore softly. "I didn't come here to argue with you. I've told you, as far as I'm concerned, the past is behind us and it's going to stay there."

"Why did you come here? You still haven't made your reasons clear. I'm out of the business world these days, Rafe. I have no secrets to spill that might help you force some company into an unwilling merger or enable you to buy out some poor firm that's gotten itself into a financial mess. I can't help you in any way."

"Stop making it sound as if I only used you for inside information," Rafe said through gritted teeth.

"You knew who I was before you approached me at that charity function where we met, didn't you?"

"So what? That doesn't mean I plotted to use you."

"Oh, come on, now, Rafe. I'm not a complete fool. Do you swear it never crossed your mind that it might be useful to talk to someone who was as close to Jack Moorcroft as I was? Wasn't that why you introduced yourself in the first place?"

"What the hell does it matter why I approached you that first time? Within five minutes of meeting you I knew that what we were going to have together had nothing to do with business. I asked you to marry me, damn it."