Disarming the Rancher Page 2

  Raleigh threw her leg over the minibike and started the engine. It had been jerry-rigged a long time ago so she wouldn’t need a key since she couldn’t seem to hold onto them. She popped a wheelie on her way out of the shed, and then turned right toward the Firebrand Ranch, her second home.

  From her sideview mirror, she watched Hardy as he ran, trying to keep up. There was no way he could outrun Red Devil. The minibike was black with spray-painted flames on its sides, but the name was also a nod to her fiery red hair and some might say her temper. She called it passion.

  Raleigh shouldn’t ride straight to her neighbor’s barn. Except she did that very thing, cutting off the engine of Red Devil at the tree line. She squatted as the sun hid behind the mesquite trees, ensuring no one saw her.

  This place brought back so many happy memories and she wanted to fly under the radar. Exhausted from the recent event and life on the road in general, she had to remember what she loved about singing in the first place.

  She made it into the barn unseen. It was dimly lit inside. She climbed the round metal staircase to the loft where she’d written her first song. She leaned her head against the wooden beam…

  And then she heard the door creak open downstairs. Her heart jackhammered her ribs and her pulse pounded. She pocketed her cell and stood against the beam, praying no one would find her up there.

  2

  Brax Firebrand muttered a curse. This was the second time he’d misplaced his wallet this week. Don’t even get him started on his keys. He’d lost count. It was a good thing he lived in the kind of town where keys were normally left inside his truck at all times and belonged to a family well known enough for folks to give him whatever he needed with a signature.

  Several of his brothers and cousins had left Firebrand Ranch the minute they’d come of age. Not Brax. Being a Firebrand, living and working the land, was his life.

  It did nothing to help with keeping track of his personal belongings though.

  The barn was the last place he remembered having his wallet, and he hoped it was still there. Ranch hands could be real comedians when they wanted to be and he didn’t want to be on the wrong side of another prank.

  Plus, there was a recent crime that had touched the family. Everyone was a little bit on edge since his brother Adam’s ex-girlfriend had been murdered, leaving him with an infant daughter he never knew existed.

  The barn was as good a place as any to begin the search. Eyes to the floor, there was an open space when he first entered followed by a string of small offices to his left. A row of stables sat to his right. The tack room was around the stables and to the right.

  There was a loft upstairs that…

  A piece of hay drifting down like a feather caught his eye. No one should be in the barn at this hour. If someone was in the loft, Brax needed to give himself an advantage. Anyone who knew him would have called out the minute the barn door opened, which meant the person who was up there didn’t want to be noticed. He walked over to the light switch and dimmed the lights until he could barely see his hand in front of his face. His wallet must have fallen out of his back pocket because he found it next to the stairs.

  An eerie feeling settled over him after recent events. The murderer had been caught but a horrific crime in his own backyard wasn’t something he could erase from his thoughts so easily.

  Brax moved to the metal staircase. He toed off his boots so he could slip up quietly in his socks, a trick he’d learned having eight brothers and nine cousins around, all boys no less. They’d explored and memorized every inch of the barn and much of the land as well, especially anything close to the main house.

  With the stealth of a lion closing in on its prey, Brax made progress toward his target. His eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark, but he didn’t have time to waste.

  At some point, it occurred to him the prowler he was stalking might actually be a barn cat. Still, he was on edge and taking nothing for granted after recent events.

  A noise to his right drew his attention. Something small had been tossed…an acorn?

  He immediately spun left and grabbed the shadow beside him. Before it could register this person was much smaller than him and smelled a whole helluva lot better, he had her back against the wall and his hands pinning her there.

  “It’s Raleigh,” the shaky voice said.

  “Prove it.” He would have known if Raleigh was back in town. His brother had convinced him to go to Austin a time or two to hear her sing but there was no way she was back. She’d be news now that she was a big deal.

  “I swear,” she said, and he recognized her voice this time. “Raleigh Perry,” she continued, irritation laced her voice. There was no fear in her tone now. She was all ire and attitude. “Now, let me go and I’ll prove it.”

  He one-armed her to hold her in place, not completely convinced she was the real deal. He fished his cell out of his pocket and with a flick of his thumb, the flashlight app brightened the darkness. He shined it at her and she immediately squinted and turned her face away.

  “What the heck, Brax?” she managed to say.

  He let go of her and she issued a sharp sigh.

  “You scared me to death. What’s wrong with you?” she said as her chest heaved.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to but I wasn’t exactly expecting anyone to be hiding in the loft, and we’ve had trouble in town recently. Let’s go downstairs and turn on the light so we can see each other when we talk.” He led the way, unsure if she would follow. The one thing he remembered about Raleigh was that she was headstrong.

  He walked over to the switch and flipped the light on. She sat on the bottom step, twiddling a piece of hay in between her fingers.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to trespass,” she started but he waved her off, still in slight disbelief the famous singer was in the barn.

  “Come on, it’s not a big deal,” he said. “You surprised me is all. Plus, I feel like the last time I saw you here, you were like,” he held his hand three feet off the floor, “this tall.”

  Raleigh’s cheeks turned a few shades of red and he couldn’t help but notice that she had grown into a beautiful woman. Although beautiful seemed too generic a term for her. Her long red hair framed an oval face with the creamiest skin dotted with freckles. She resembled a famous redheaded TV star who had a popular show, a show his mother was addicted to. She’d have it on in the kitchen while cooking. And then there was her body with those long runner’s legs of hers. Don’t even get him started on her voice, which was smooth as silk.

  She recovered when she said, “There was a bomb threat at my last concert. Turned out to be real.”

  “That’s wild and scary as hell,” he said, realizing it must be the reason she was hiding in his family’s barn. This had been a second home to her growing up. She was four years younger than him. They’d gotten along about as well as a sister and brother could. If those siblings fought over every little thing. But there was nothing sisterly about the way she was making his heart batter his ribcage. He chalked it up to being surprised. “They caught him, right?”

  “Nope.” She cupped her face in her hands. Then, she looked up and he had an unexpected reaction when their eyes met. A jolt of electricity rocketed through him. He had to remind himself this was little Raleigh. Only his body pointed out the fact she’d grown up. Suddenly the four years between them didn’t seem so shocking.

  “Sounds like a mess,” he admitted.

  “It is,” she said with more than a hint of fear and stress in her voice.

  “I’m guessing the law is involved,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “They must have some idea who would do this. Leads?” He chalked his level of concern up to their shared history, and not the way she seemed to stir his heart.

  “None so far. The threat was called in and, of course, we all thought it was a hoax. These things usually are,” she said like it was another day at the office.

  “How often do you deal with threats?” He couldn’t wrap his mind around how awful that must be.

  “It’s not too bad. Every once in a while you get a fan who’s a little too into me, but you just keep moving forward, you know?” She said the words like he would have an idea what it was like to be a singing sensation.

  He threw his hands up and shrugged.

  “I deal with poachers and the bad ones can be pretty dangerous. But I know what I’m dealing with and they’re on my turf,” he said. “I can’t imagine being on stage and looking out onto a crowd of strangers wondering who might have rigged a bomb underneath.”

  “It’s not the best part about my job. Honestly, I can’t let it get inside my head or it would be game over. And there is so much I love about what I do,” she said. “Besides, as soon as the threat came through, we postponed my performances.”

  “From what my mom says, you’ve made it. Bona fide country star.” His mother had been following Raleigh’s career ever since she left Lone Star Pass for Austin at eighteen.

  Raleigh laughed and it was nice to see her smile. Her face lit up and a dozen campfires lit inside him at the sight.

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly,” she quickly countered.

  “Your fans say otherwise,” he said.

  “I’m a Regional Wonder at best.” She laughed at her own joke and he couldn’t help but do the same. “Remind me not to tell you what that means later.”

  “How long until its safe for you to get back on the road?” His mother would want to know all the details.

  “We’ve canceled the next two weeks’ worth of shows, so we’ll see after that. This guy seems like the real deal. We have to give the feds time to track him down and arrest him. Get him off the streets,” she said. “He threatened me in particular.”
br />   “Jerk,” he spit out. His protective instincts kicked into overdrive. This was Raleigh. They’d practically grown up under the same roof. It was natural for him to be enraged at the thought someone wanted to hurt her and not because he felt a pull of attraction toward her stronger than anything he’d ever experienced.

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  Raleigh had been caught off guard by Brax finding her. But it was good to see him despite the fact he’d annoyed her more than the others growing up, teasing her about her pigtails and freckles.

  “Hey, I’m sorry to hear all this. You’ve worked hard for your success and some random jerk shouldn’t have the ability to take it away from you even for a few weeks.” Brax’s voice washed over her like Amaretto over vanilla ice cream.

  She performed another mental headshake.

  This was Brax Firebrand. The guy who’d teased and tormented her mercilessly growing up, when he bothered to notice her at all.

  She crossed her legs and folded her arms. “You were a real brat when we were kids. You know that, right?”

  He laughed.

  “Yeah? So were you if memory serves. What did we use to call you?” He seemed to be searching his mind. “Oh, right the Red Streak.”

  “I almost blocked that name completely from my thoughts,” she said with a chuckle. “But Red Devil seemed to be your personal favorite.”

  “You had that minibike.” He snapped his fingers a couple of times. “You would steal my bandana and take off on that thing. You were such a squirt.”

  “Me? You guys weren’t any better if memory serves.” Pretending to be offended didn’t last long. She broke into a smile. “Yeah, I was rotten when I wanted to be.”

  “Resilient might be a better word,” he admitted. “Looking back, it couldn’t have been easy to be dumped into a world of eighteen boys.”

  “Made me strong,” she mused. There was a whole lot of truth to that statement. Besides, the Firebrand boys, now men she noted, were respectable people. Not one got into serious trouble with school. Hardworking with a whole lot of testosterone; they were bound to bump heads based on the sheer number of them all living on one property.

  “That’s one way to look at it.” Brax Firebrand was six-feet-one-inch of male hotness. His hair could best be described as dirty brown against eyes so blue they popped. Even as a teenager, he’d been shorter than the others and she’d overheard his cousins teasing him that he was the runt of the family. The other side of the Firebrand family could be real jerks when they wanted to be.

  Raleigh blushed looking at the man he’d become. No runt here. He’d always been good-looking in that rugged outdoorsy way. Most of the time he’d had on a cowboy hat but she still remembered those honest blue eyes.

  Then, there were his arms. A person shouldn’t have so many stacked muscles in one place. Butterflies got loose in her stomach just thinking about his touch when he’d pinned her up against the wall earlier.

  This seemed like a good time to remind herself that Brax Firebrand had been a royal pain growing up. He’d always been quick tempered, as well as quick to make up his mind about something. The word obstinate came to mind. So did bull-headed.

  “Being back here must seem small-time compared to being on the road.” He interrupted her thoughts, his voice sliding over her, causing her arms to goose bump.

  She cleared her throat to ease the dryness. Brax should not be making her mouth feel like she’d just licked a glue stick. Was it getting hot in the barn?

  “Are you kidding? Being here is everything.” She heard her own voice crack.

  He shot her a confused look.

  “I love my career, don’t get me wrong. But this feels like home.” She looked around the barn thinking how it seemed smaller too. Cozy. “Did you know it all started here?”

  “Wait a minute. Here? I had no idea. How is that even possible?” He quirked a brow and it was dangerously sexy.

  Seriously?

  “I wrote my first song up there.” She nodded toward the loft.

  “That’s news to me,” he admitted.

  “Because I can count on one hand how many people know that particular piece of information.” She held up two fingers, one for him and one for her. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to share, except being home caused her to relax. She didn’t realize how tense she’d become on the road even before the bomb situation.

  “Who is the lucky second?” he asked with a damn sparkle in his eyes that made her want to stare at him for days.

  “That would be me.”

  “Well then, I’m honored.” He stood up straighter and his voice changed.

  “Do me a favor,” she said.

  “Depends on what it is,” he countered.

  “Just treat me like you used to. Like nothing’s changed.” She felt her shoulders deflate a little when she said the words.

  “You got it, Red Streak,” he teased.

  Brax could be real annoying when he wanted to be.

  “Good. Thanks,” she said with a smile. She might not love that nickname but it sure was nice to see Brax.

  “Can I ask a question?” He stood there, arms over his chest.

  “Shoot,” she said.

  “Why do you call Austin home?” he asked. “I got the impression you were embarrassed about being from such a small town.”

  “Nope.” She responded without hesitation, catching his gaze. “Some things are sacred, you know? You just don’t want to share them with the world. Plus, I always wanted to protect Nana and her piece of serenity here. Since I have my dad’s last name, we don’t…didn’t match. She could fly under the radar without having reporters or groupies hanging out on her fence, trying to find out what I was like when I was a young girl or if I was about to come home for a visit.”

  “Explains why no one’s ever connected you to the town,” he said after a thoughtful pause. He smiled, like he approved of the decision. For some reason, that small smile made her heart leap with joy. What the heck? She chalked it up to being happy to be home, and back at the barn, and not the fact that being here with Brax had her pulse pounding.

  “Least I could do,” she said.

  “It was nice of you to protect your nana,” he continued. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen someone as proud as she was.” He lowered his head for a few seconds before looking up and catching her gaze. “I was sorry to hear of her passing.”

  “Thank you, Brax.” That frog in her throat feeling returned.

  “Work must have kept you on the road during…”

  His voice trailed off but she knew what he was going to say next.

  “You were at her funeral?” She wasn’t sure why she was so shocked. His mother was a dear friend of Nana’s and it would make sense her sons would attend.

  “Of course,” was all he said.

  “I was too,” she admitted. “But, I had a concert that night in Houston I couldn’t miss. I kept a low profile at the service.”

  “Sorry I missed you. I would have offered my condolences in person,” he said.

  “I appreciate the thought, Brax.” She couldn’t look away despite the twinge of guilt trying to gnaw at her insides for not sticking around that day. “Keeping busy is good for grief.”

  He nodded like he had personal knowledge of the fact.

  “Everyone here okay?” she asked.

  “The Marshall passed away at the end of last month.” He shook his head.

  “I’m so sorry, Brax.” The Marshall kept everyone at arm’s length according to her memory, but the Firebrands were a tight-knit bunch. Losing the patriarch of the family would be hard on them all.

  “It’s only been a couple of weeks and the fighting has already begun,” Brax admitted.

  “Your dad and uncle have never gotten along.” She remembered there being a clear division amongst the two sides. Shame, she thought, because having a big family sure would be nice after growing up an only child.

  “Strange for a pair of brothers to do nothing but argue,” he said.

  “No offense to the Marshall, but that seemed to be the way he liked it,” she admitted.

  “True.” He didn’t argue. The way he tilted his head to the right meant he was thinking hard. “I didn’t realize you noticed those things, but I shouldn’t be surprised. There were plenty of times I caught you sitting in a quiet corner while taking in the whole scene. My family comes with a lot of moving parts. We were a handful running around the house the way we did, but you’d be at the kitchen table soaking it all in.”