so Lenora could hear.
“I’m thinking yeah, it’s a problem all right,” Cutter replied, his voice and tone crusty.
Clayton groaned. “What happened?”
“I’m holding a Colt forty-five on a fella who just rode up on a Harley. We’re out here at the end of the road on the cattle guard, and he says he’s gotta see you and Miss Lenora right away. I messed up and let it slip that you were both here.”
Great. Just what they didn’t need. He didn’t want anyone knowing Lenora was there. Of course, that cat was already out of the bag with James, and heck, even Riggs might have suspected her location.
“Who is he?” Clayton hoped like hell it wasn’t Melvin. He wasn’t ready for him and needed to do a current background check.
“Says his name is Quentin Hewitt,” Cutter answered.
Lenora pulled in her breath. “Quentin’s here at the ranch?”
But it wasn’t Cutter who answered.
“I can stop Lynnie from being killed,” another voice said. Quentin’s, no doubt. “So tell your ranch hand to step aside before someone gets hurt. Because I’m not leaving until I talk to both of you.”
Chapter Ten
Lenora dropped back down into the chair and shook her head. This was not a complication that Clayton and she needed, especially after the draining conversation they’d just had with Riggs. Of course, there was no good time for her to chat with Quentin.
“Lynnie?” Quentin called out from the other end of the phone line. “I know you’re there, and we have to talk now. I wouldn’t have come all the way out here if it wasn’t important.”
She didn’t doubt that, but what was important to Quentin might not be safe for Clayton and her. After all, he was a suspect in the attacks.
Well, he was a suspect thanks to another suspect—James.
Both were men from a past that she hoped wasn’t coming back to haunt her. If so, it would also haunt Clayton, and maybe even his family, in the worst possible way.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked Quentin.
“Wasn’t much of a stretch to figure out that you’d come here to him.”
The him said it all. It was a mix of anger, jealousy and other emotions that she didn’t want to identify. Dealing with Quentin under the best of circumstances could feel like trying to cool the fuse of a lit powder keg.
“She didn’t come to me,” Clayton fired back. “I found her about thirty minutes before a pair of gunmen did. Now I’m wondering if you set up that attack and if you’re stupid enough to try another one here at the ranch.”
Quentin didn’t answer right away, but Lenora could practically feel his anger soaring. “I wouldn’t hurt Lynnie. Not ever. And besides, you have your cowboy goon holding a gun on me, so there’s zero chance of me living up to your delusions and hurting her.”
“And I’ll keep holdin’ it on him,” Cutter said, “until I hear different from you, Clayton.”
Clayton certainly didn’t tell his ranch hand to put down the gun, which was smart. Because despite Quentin’s claim of not wanting to hurt Lenora, she had no idea what he had in mind. That gun was a layer of security that she didn’t want to remove.
“What’s so important that you have to tell me?” Lenora pressed.
“If you want to find out, you’ll have to see me.” Quentin’s voice wasn’t as smug as Riggs’s, but it was close.
Both Clayton and she groaned, and he held his hand over the phone so that Quentin wouldn’t be able to hear them. “You think he actually has something important?” Clayton asked.
She had to shake her head again. “It’s possible, but it’s just as possible that he’s using this to see me.”
Clayton’s mouth tightened. “Quentin’s still in love with you?”
“He was never in love with me.” That had become obvious once the relationship had gone on for a while. “More like an obsession. He likes to own and control things. Humans included. For some reason, he especially enjoyed controlling me.”
She saw the question in Clayton’s eyes and didn’t make him ask it. “And I was never in love with him. I thought I was. But it didn’t take long for me to discover that he wasn’t the man he was pretending to be.”
That was likely a reminder for Clayton that she’d been guilty of the same thing. Pretending to be in need of protection when she’d been a deep-cover agent. The irony was that she had indeed needed his protection.
Still did.
But she was afraid protection