to leave her door unlocked at night? Clear Springs might not be much of a metropolis, but just like anywhere else, it had its fair share of crime.
Giving the door a slight nudge, he stepped cautiously inside and found himself in a small entrance hall. On the radio, a whiskey-voiced man was singing about a honky-tonk woman, but Luke hardly noticed. Through the arched doors that led to the living room he caught sight of Rocky, and he could do nothing but stare. This was, he knew, the same woman who’d come sashaying into his clinic earlier that afternoon, dressed to kill and flashing her money around. The expensive business suit, however, had been traded for paint-spattered jeans and a ragtag cotton shirt, her high heels for a pair of tennis shoes that looked as if they’d been through a war. Standing with her back to him, her wild red hair covered with a blue bandanna, she was painting the living room and singing her heart out, while her slim hips kept heart-stopping time to the beat of the music. Feeling like he’d been struck by lightning on a clear day, Luke stood as if turned to stone, while deep inside a hot pulse kept time with every sway of her hips.
Belting out the current number one country hit, Rocky turned to add paint to her dry roller pan—and nearly dropped it, stunned when she saw Luke Greywolf standing in the doorway. She should have laughed—she was a mess, with white paint in her hair and on her clothes and even under her fingernails, and her singing had often been compared to a cat’s screeching. But there was something in his eyes that wasn’t the least bit funny, and suddenly her chest seemed tight and breathing wasn’t nearly as easy as it had been before she spied him in the doorway.
Flustered, she hit the power switch to the radio. “Well, this is a surprise,” she said, too loudly, shattering the sudden silence. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this evening.”
“I knocked,” he said stiffly. “But the radio—”
“Was blaring,” she finished for him, grinning. “I have to crank it up to max when I sing, or I’d have every dog in the neighborhood howling at the moon.”
For a moment, she thought she saw a smile start to curl up the corners of his mouth, and she found herself waiting expectantly, her gaze fastened on his lips. But then his eyes fell to the roller and pan at her feet, the paint on her arms and clothes, and a confused anger hardened his face. Scowling at her, he growled, “Tell me something, lady. Just what the hell kind of game are you playing, anyway?”
Taken aback by the unexpected attack, Rocky blinked. “Game? What are you talking about?”
“This handyman routine,” he retorted, waving at the drop sheets and painting paraphernalia that littered the living room. “I didn’t think you people cut up your own meat, let alone knew how to yield a paintbrush.”
Outraged, Rocky gasped, her brown eyes narrowing dangerously. “Cut up our own meat?”
It was the wrong thing to say. Luke knew it the second the words left his mouth, and he wanted to kick himself. What was it about this woman that knocked him off kilter so easily? He’d never had a problem communicating with women before—he liked them, dammit! But there was something about Rocky Fortune that just seemed to rub him the wrong way.
Heat climbing up his throat, he quickly back-pedaled. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that your family is rolling in dough, and you’re probably not used to doing things for yourself—”
“Like tying my own shoelaces?”
Luke winced at the sweetly purred gibe. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“Not on your life,” she retorted, beginning to enjoy herself. “So what can I do for you, Doc? You didn’t show up here just to insult me.”
She knew, dammit, why he was there—he could see the anticipation dancing in her eyes. And she was going to make him squirm. Amused in spite of himself, he swallowed his pride and admitted, “I’ve given it some thought and realized I may have rejected your offer to lease the airstrip too quickly. I thought maybe we could discuss terms.”
“Terms, huh?” she echoed, grinning. “I think I can manage that.” Whisking off the sheets covering the furniture, she motioned to him to take a seat in an overstuffed chair, then settled opposite him on a faded brocade coach. “Okay, Doc, the ball’s in your court. It’s your serve. Give it your best shot.”
He named a sum that he thought was more than fair, only to have her gasp as if he’d just insulted her. “You’ve got to be kidding! That’s highway robbery. Have you looked at the runway recently? And the hangar?”
She threw out a figure that was half the one he’d named, he countered, and the game began. With a skill Luke couldn’t help but admire, she held her ground and bartered like a horse trader, making no attempt to hide the fact that she was in her element. Later, it would bother him that he’d enjoyed himself so much, but when he rose to leave nearly an hour after he arrived, they had a deal.
Confident that he’d gotten the best of her, he solemnly shook hands with her, then couldn’t resist gigging her as she walked him to the door. “You drive a hard bargain, lady. But I would have taken less, you know.”
Unperturbed, she only grinned. “Really? That’s good to know, Doc. Because I would have paid more.” Her brown eyes sparkling, she laughed and shut the door in his face.
Two
The snow that had been falling all day had finally stopped, but the night was dark as pitch and cold as the devil. Flipping off the clinic lights, Lucas stepped outside and locked the front door, swearing under his breath as the wind seemed to cut right through his clothes. With a sharp jerk, he tugged the zipper of his down jacket as high as it would go, but it didn’t help. Nothing did when the temperature was dropping like a rock toward zero and a twenty-mile-an-hour wind was blowing fit to kill. Leaning into the gale, his shoulders hunched against the cold that snaked down the back of his neck, he hurried toward his Bronco at the far end of the clinic’s small parking lot and quickly climbed inside.
It wasn’t until he stuck the key in the ignition and started the motor and the heater, though, that he allowed himself to even glance toward the hangar that he’d leased to Rocky Fortune a week ago. A hulking shadow in the night on the far side of the runway, it was bathed in light, just as it had been every night that week. And for some gnawing reason that he couldn’t have explained, that irritated the hell out of him.
When he agreed to lease the place to her, he’d told himself the lady wasn’t going to be a problem. Because of the security deposit and first and last months’ rent she’d paid him, Michael Hawk had gotten his operation, and that was all he cared about. If that black pickup of hers was parked in front of the hangar when he got to work in the morning and was still there when he left at night, drawing his eye every time he stepped outside, he’d just learn to ignore it and her.
Yeah, yeah, he thought bitterly. Even on a bad-hair day, Rocky Fortune wasn’t the type of woman a man could easily ignore. And it was damn frustrating! What the hell was she doing in there, anyway? Didn’t she ever go home? And why did he care?
He didn’t, he told himself flatly. Not a lick. She had a lease—the place was hers to do with as she liked. She could move a cot in and sleep there for all he cared, as long as she left him alone. If he was curious, it was just because he couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there. When they struck their deal, he’d warned her the hangar had to be renovated before she could use it, but he had yet to see a work crew there. And he didn’t believe for a second that she was making the necessary improvements herself. Not a Fortune. She might have slapped a couple of coats of paint on the walls of that old house she was renting, but when it came to work, the hard, physical, dirty kind that got under your nails and stained your clothes and skin and left you bone-weary at the end of the day, she’d probably never done a smidgen of it in her spoiled little life.
His hands curling around the steering wheel, he glared at the hanger’s blazing lights and told himself that whatever Rocky was doing, it was none of his business. But when he put the Bronco in gear, he headed for the hangar instead