Winsor, Linda Read Online Free PDF

the country kitchen-family room. Rustic
wooden furniture with plump, masculine plaid cushions provided cozy seating
near the fireplace. A large moose head hung over the stone hearth, flanked by
other furry hunting trophies and a mounted fish frozen in mid jump. With no
clue regarding the nature of their demise, blank expressions seemingly fixed on
Deanna while death-silenced voices called out in warning to her.
    That
imagination of yours is goin' to be the death of you. Deanna could
almost hear the exasperation in the observation her grandmother used to make of
her. The way her heart was fluttering, maybe Grandma was right.
    Looking
away with an involuntary shudder, she took comfort that the only human
representations among them were in faded pictures on the mantel representing a
happier time gone by. Was the snaggle-toothed kid in the oversized cowboy hat
her host per chance?
    Along
a sidewall, a stack of boxes—many still sealed with tape and labeled—suggested
a recent move on someone's part. They reminded her of the ones in the spare
bedroom of her apartment in Great Falls—before someone had torn them apart and emptied
their contents from one end of the room to the other.
    Oh,
Deanna, what have you gotten yourself into? She swallowed the remaining bite
of a pretzel stick and chased it with juice before resting her head against the
back of the sofa. Nearby a voice crackled sharply amid a storm of static,
startling her from her self-pity.
    On
a built-in desk sat a radio or scanner of some sort that fit the rest of these
rustic trappings. As the transmission cleared, Deanna listened to a
conversation of a father on his way home from town—wherever that was—reminding
his son to get his homework done so he could go to a church youth meeting. She
imagined a long ride home on some of the isolated roads she'd been lost on the
last day or so and how comforting it would have been to have someone who cared
to talk to.
    Or
at least someone who would talk back, she thought, remembering her furtive
prayers. Maybe God just wasn't listening anymore, not that He'd ever actually spoken to her when she had been a little more regular in communication with Him.
    A
sound from the hallway where Shep had disappeared drew her attention to where a
different man from the one who'd rescued her emerged from the back of the
house. Now this was a guy befitting those incredible brown eyes that had held
her hostage earlier. Clean-shaven, square-jawed, broad shouldered—Shep could
have stepped off the pages of a rugged wear catalog but for the shirt he'd
thrown on without bothering with the buttons.
    It
occurred to Deanna that he might be showing off his infomercial-perfect abs,
but he'd tugged on his jeans without a belt as well and padded around in his
bare feet. Buffed by hard work and long days in the sun, he didn't seem aware
of his effect on the opposite sex. Deanna had seen enough men to know when one
was putting on a show or just being himself.. . until C. R. The roller coaster
of her frayed emotions took another dip.
    "You
got some spare clothes in your car?" her host asked, a vexed expression
claiming his angular features. "If not I might find something you can
change into, but they won't fit."
    Deanna
shook her head. "I hadn't planned on being gone overnight."
    She
hadn't planned anything. When she came home from the police station, already
frazzled by hours of fruitless interrogation, she found her apartment turned
upside down and inside out. Whoever ransacked the place had left a cryptic note
saying they weren't through with her yet. Deanna shivered, arms crossed over
her chest to disguise her discomfiture.
    "Where's
home then?" He helped himself to bottled fruit juice from the ancient
round-topped fridge. Her grandmother had had a similar model. There was
something oddly comforting about that and the general old-timey feel of the
place.
    "Originally
New York," Deanna told him, distracted as she flashed back to the
nightmarish scene at