Winsor, Linda Read Online Free PDF Page B

her apartment in Great Falls. When she called the police
to report the break in, they'd treated her like the criminal, insinuating that
she'd engineered the crime scene to draw attention away from their belief that
she was in cahoots with the late C. R. Majors. And so she'd bolted without so
much as a toothbrush, much less a plan.
    "So
what brings you to Montana?" Shep's query drew her back to the present. As
he raised the drink to his lips, the late afternoon sunlight caught on a flash
of gold lying against his chest. It was a plain cross, strung on a masculine
weight chain.
    "Checking
out a job offer in Great Falls." Although a city in its own right, Great
Falls had felt like a strange place with no longtime friends or even business
associates. It wasn't her fault New York's heart beat in her chest.
    He
chuckled. "Well, you certainly took a wrong turn."
    "So
Pocahontas I'm not. With that zoo of animal heads staring at me, I'm lucky if I
can remember where I am now."
    Instead
of taking offense at her stab at humor, he laughed. "You're just a bit
frahoodled."
    Frahoodled.
That was a new one, but it fit just right. Deanna chuckled with him grateful
for his good nature. "I guess so."
    "So
what brings you into these parts? You're a far cry from Great Falls. Just
touring?"
    "I
was checking for a place to relocate, but I seem to have gotten off
course." She'd sublet a furnished apartment in the city itself for a month
to give her time to search for the right place.
    Right
place. It might as well be on the moon now.
    "Boy,
when you take a wrong turn, you make it a doozy." Shep snatched open the
freezer door. "That's four hours away."
    "I
was just meandering to see what I could see and lost track of time." And
she'd seen a gorgeous red stallion break in front of her car from nowhere in
the middle of nowhere.
    There
was no point in telling Shepard Jones any more than he had to know. All she
needed was another kink in this snarl of a mess.
    The
man took out two frozen steaks and slapped them on a plate. No more modern than
the house itself, the plate was yellowed and cracked with age. Its pattern
reminded Deanna of older, more carefree days when she'd set the table with a
like design at her maternal grandmother's. Gram, who'd baby-sat Deanna while
her parents worked, said the old dinnerware had come as a bonus prize in
laundry powder boxes purchased long before Deanna was even born.
    "Well,
like I said earlier, I don't have anything to fit you, but I put out clean
towels. There's a bathrobe on the back of the bathroom door. I can toss your
things in the washer and dry them while you're cleaning up, if you want."
    She
sighed, grateful that Great Falls had left the discussion. Besides, to one
who'd spent the last three days washing up at rest stops, the idea of a shower
sounded heavenly. Dare she trust in that cross on his chest, that it
represented the man? Or was she grasping at straws?
    "Are
you going to take me into town after supper?" She thought she saw the Jeep
when he carried her into the house, but he'd had the bulk of her attention.
    He
stopped rummaging through a built-in bin of the knotty pine cabinets and let
out a measured breath. "If you insist, Miss Manetti." Taking out two
large potatoes, he straightened. "Miss Esther Lawson has a few guest
cottages on the edge of town. If she's not booked up, you could rent one of
them for the night. I can rouse her up on the radio to see, if that's what you
want."
    Except
that Deanna had no money. As for her credit cards, even if the woman honored
them, was it worth the risk that her pursuers could trace her whereabouts? It
was that way in the movies.
    She
glanced at the radio and searched the jumble of wires and papers on the desk
for sign of more modern communication. "What, you don't have a
phone?" Everyone had a telephone.
    "Not
if I can help it."
    "Not
even a cell phone?"
    Shep
shrugged. "Sorry Ma Bell gets on my nerves."
    Heaven
spare her. "What do you do in an