The Devil You Know

He realized that, with his sister married to the deputy, he knew a lot about the Dalton family. Their ancestors had been on the ranch for well over a hundred years. First Family of Idaho and all that. One cousin was married to a senator’s daughter. The senator was running for governor and would likely be elected in November.

For himself, he knew his family history only to his parents. All the grandparents had died before or shortly after his birth. Where their people had come from, he hadn’t a clue, except they were European for the most part with a little Hispanic and possibly Native American brought in from his mother’s grandmother.

Giving himself a mental shake, he wondered what the heck was wrong with him today. A glance at Roni gave him a hint. Each time he came into contact with her he ended up frustrated and angry.

Because he wanted her.

“What is it?” she suddenly asked.

“What is what?” he countered.

“Heavy sigh. Grim face. I know you aren’t involved with a woman. So, did someone just shoot your dog?”

“How do you know I’m not involved with a woman?” he demanded, irked at her certainty.

“Honey said you didn’t allow anyone to get too close. Your sister worries about your being all alone in the cold, cruel world.”

“My sister should take care of herself and not worry about me,” he muttered.

Roni smiled. “Then you know she’s expecting.”

The news stunned him.

She studied him. “You didn’t know. Well, no one told me it was a secret. She announced it last Sunday when we had dinner at the ranch. If you visited more often, then you would catch up on the news.”

A baby. His little sister. He’d looked after her since she was three years old. It felt odd that she was now involved in a major life change with no input from him.

Roni continued, her eyes dreamy the way women’s went when talking about babies and all that. “With Beau having a son, then Travis and Alison having their baby in March and now Zack and Honey expecting, Uncle Nick is in heaven. He’s hot after the rest of us to settle down and start families.”

Other than his sister’s nuptials, Adam had avoided the rash of Dalton marriages the past year by dint of his work. Roni’s two brothers had married only a few months ago.

“Must be something in the water,” he said, irritated by this whole conversation.

The youngest Dalton orphan laughed in delight. “That’s what I told Uncle Nick. I said I was bringing my own bottled water with me to the ranch in the future.”

“Good thinking,” Adam told her sardonically.

She gave him a shrewd glance. “Uncle Nick said if I got pregnant without being married the man would answer to him.”

“And to your brothers and cousins.”

“Yes. They all agreed they would straighten things out for me.”

Her laughter became a sigh as she lapsed into introspection. Women made him nervous when they talked of babies and marriage. He had no time for it, and he always made that clear at the beginning of a relationship.

Relationship? Other than one six-month, on-again, off-again entanglement, at the end of which he’d been accused of indifference, he hadn’t seen a woman socially for…mmm, two years?

Yep, it had been at least that long. Once he’d started working on the police corruption case in LA, he’d been in deep cover. He hadn’t even communicated with his sister except under the most secret of coded messages.

Even that precaution had failed.

The thugs had sent hit men looking for her in order to flush him out. She could have been killed—

He put a halt to his morbid thoughts. All had ended well with the case wrapped up, the hit men and the bad cops behind bars and his life in the open again. Investigating corporate crime was mostly an office job, nine to five and weekends free.

Free.

That suited him just fine and that was the way he intended to stay. Women always wanted more—more time, more commitment, more of everything. He’d learned to keep things on a light note.

“Anyway,” he said, eager to finish the conversation and get out of the cozy bungalow, “I just wanted to let you know I’m too busy to be involved with you in any capacity.”

There, that should make things clear to her.

Her dark, delicately arched eyebrows rose as she gave him a lofty perusal.

“Get over yourself,” she advised.

Chapter Two

T he following Friday Roni surveyed the outfits she’d selected, decided they would have to do, and closed her suitcase. If she hadn’t accepted Scott’s invitation a month ago to spend a leisurely weekend at the Masterson family estate, she would have preferred to stay home.

Ah well, it might do her good to get out of the house and away from the city for the weekend. After months of near total absorption, she’d finished her part of the current project and turned over the files to her boss that morning.

Reaching a goal usually gave her a lift, but not this time. She was drained mentally and physically, having driven herself to exhaustion the past week to bring the software learning program in on time.

Hearing the doorbell, she quickly slipped into a denim jacket, glanced around to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything, then grabbed her suitcase and headed for the door.

“Hello. I hope we’re ahead of the traffic,” she said to the handsome young scion of one of the richest families in the area.

“I’m afraid not. It’s already backed up on the freeway. I drove the back streets to get here. It was faster.” Scott Masterson smiled, took the luggage and held the screen door while she secured the dead bolt. “Ready?” he said when she turned to him.

“Ready.”

His car was a top-of-the-line model. Leather seats. Heated, of course. If she could figure out the buttons on the side of the seat, she thought she could probably get a massage, too. Scott caught her amused smile and smiled back.

He was the country club-tennis set type, with dark hair and eyes, a lean profile, great teeth and smile, charming and polite…everything a maiden’s heart could wish for.

Another image came to mind—a stern, forbidding face that somehow had the ability to rock her heart. Adam had appealed to her from the first moment they’d met nearly a year ago. Her cousin Zack had been shot while working on a case with the elusive FBI agent.

She’d also known from the first that Adam was bad news as far as she was concerned. The sparks had been there between them, but he’d stayed aloof. And, as his sister had once said, Adam was like a will-o’-the-wisp, a here today, gone tomorrow type of guy.

The type to break a girl’s heart into pieces.

One couldn’t say he didn’t play fair. He’d warned her there would be no involvement of any kind. He was dedicated to his job. Because of its inherent danger, Adam hadn’t allowed close relationships. But that was then, and this was now. Now, he worked in the fraud division, and he’d moved to her territory. Not that this necessarily meant anything, but it was something to think about.

Her attitude lightened as the miles peeled away beneath the tires. The country road ran alongside the Boise River, first on one bank, then across a bridge and on the other side for a while, leisurely tracing the meander of the rushing water farther into the country.

Shortly before five o’clock, Scott turned onto a gravel driveway. The roadside was lush with native trees and flowering shrubs that opened suddenly to allow a view of rolling meadows dotted with cattle, then a lawn and a neotraditional-style house—white, two stories, balcony over a broad, welcoming front porch—nestled into a gentle hill.

“Lovely,” she said.

“It’s home,” he said modestly.

She noted the affection in his tone. He’d grown up here and it obviously meant as much to him as the ranch did to her. Her eyes went misty, surprising her. She wasn’t the sentimental sort.

Growing up with five boisterous boys hadn’t left much time for sentiment, she mused wryly as Scott hit a button, waited for the garage door to open, then pulled into the space. She’d learned early in life not to cry. Tears were wasted on men.

Blinking the odd moment of emotion away, she saw that the Masterson garage was neater than her house. In fact, there was nothing but cars in it. No lawn equipment or trash barrels or half-used paint cans.

Yeah, but they have servants, she concluded, excusing her penchant for clutter and familiar things around her.

“This way,” Scott said, carrying his weekend case and her larger piece of luggage. He probably had a closet full of clothes here as well as in his condo in town.

They went into a family room or den, then up a flight of steps. His room was next to hers, he told her, indicating a door as he set his case down in front of it. He led the way into the next bedroom. She glanced around while he placed her case on a rack in the spacious closet.

“This is truly lovely,” she said.

The room was très chic, done in shades of beige and gold. From the off-white, cream and beige tumbled marble tiles in the bathroom to the solid marble panels surrounding the fireplace, from the light beige carpet to the deeper toned satin comforter shot with gold that covered the bed, it was a study in peaceful luxury.

Pillows were heaped on the bed, the smallest covered in gold satin with velvet ribbons, the middle ones in tan, beige and gold stripes and the largest ones covered in pillow shams of golden-brown suede cloth.

Two padded chairs formed an intimate grouping before the fireplace, which was filled with greenery and pinecones and had a many-branched candelabra on the hearth.

A writing table and chair were placed before two tall windows. From the vantage point of the second floor, she could see the tennis courts where a man and woman played against each other with zealous intent to win.

She noted the man had brown hair with golden streaks. The woman was all blond, but Roni thought that was with the help of a good hair stylist. Judging from the similarity in facial features, the woman was Scott’s sister. The man’s back was to her, so she couldn’t identify him. She turned to her host.

“I feel as if I’m in a very exclusive spa,” she told Scott after he made sure she had everything she needed.

He grimaced. “My stepmother had all the rooms updated a couple of years ago. It was too Victorian, she said.”

His mother had died of breast cancer a few years ago. His father had remarried eight months later. A rush of sympathy made her smile perhaps too warmly. Before she realized what was happening, he’d bent close and kissed her.

“Cocktails at six in the library,” he murmured in a definitely husky voice.

After he left, she ran her fingers over her mouth as if wiping the kiss away. She and Scott had hit it off right away when she did some consulting work for CTC-Cascade TelCom, a telecommunications company his grandfather had started—but she wasn’t ready for serious involvement.

And his gaze had been very serious.

That worried her. Uncle Nick had lectured them about hurting other people’s feelings or letting things go too far when friendship was all you had in mind. He was big on honesty and all that.

Drifting to the double set of windows, she gazed out at the idyllic scene. The sun was going down and the house shaded the two tennis courts. The man served a high-speed ace, which the woman wasn’t able to return. She shook her racket at him.

Although she couldn’t hear it, Roni could tell the man was laughing. Then the woman was, too. They walked off the court and, chatting animatedly, came toward the house.

Roni’s heart gave a lurch she felt throughout her body. It couldn’t be! It just couldn’t be!

When he looked up as the couple climbed the steps onto the patio, she quickly stepped back from the window.

You can run, but you can’t hide.

Her uncle’s cautionary advice rang through her head as she glanced around the room as if looking for a bolt-hole to crawl into. While Uncle Nick meant a person couldn’t hide from his or her own conscience, Roni only wanted to hide from the man she would surely have to face when the family gathered for cocktails.

What would Adam think upon seeing her?

And why the heck was she feeling guilty about it? She hadn’t followed him. In fact, if she’d known he was to be here, she would have gone to the ranch or somewhere equally far from this luxurious country estate.

Well, there was only one way to deal with a vindictive fate—meet it head-on and with your best foot forward.

Going to the closet, she removed the long black skirt and black jersey top with brilliant orange and gold poppies embroidered around the neckline. She added fire-coral earrings and tied her hair at the back of her neck with a thin, black ribbon.

She was more careful than usual in putting on makeup. She also decided on the sandals with the two-inch heels rather than the embroidered slippers she had planned to wear for the “at-home” evening. When she put her best foot forward, she wanted to appear as tall as possible.

“Roni, this is my stepmother, Danielle. You’ve met my father,” Scott said, escorting her to the older couple who stood beside a mobile tea cart in the library. “Dad, you remember Roni Dalton, don’t you? She was the consultant who wrote the computer program for the company orientation project that was such a success.”

Charles Masterson shook hands with her. “Of course I remember. Nice to see you again.”

It had been almost three months since she’d completed that task. During the interim she’d seen Scott four or five times for dinner, but not during the past month due to work. After refusing other invitations, she hadn’t had the heart to say no to this weekend. Now more than ever she wished she had.

“A computer consultant,” Danielle Masterson said. “How interesting. I took several computer courses while studying for my accounting degree and found them fascinating.”

Roni managed to keep her mouth from gaping at this statement. She had assumed the woman had been Mr. Masterson’s assistant or secretary or something like that.

The woman gave a little laugh. “Did you think I was a social butterfly? I was a financial officer at the company for a year before Charles and I married. That’s how we met.”

“I see,” Roni said, wondering if the woman had gotten her claws into Charles while he was deep in grief over his wife’s tragic death.

Maybe she was being unfair. Danielle could obviously make her own way in the world without snagging a rich husband. Although extra money always came in handy, she thought with a cynical attitude new to her.

After she and Scott were supplied with glasses of white and red wine respectively, they moved on.

“This is my sister, Geena,” Scott continued, directing her attention to the other couple in the room. “And her guest, Adam Smith.”

Roni had spotted him as soon as they entered the library. The smile remained on his mouth, but the look she got from those cool gray eyes told her he wasn’t pleased.

She mentally shrugged. He hadn’t informed her of his social calendar, so how was she to know he would be here? And why was he?

His sister worried about his love life, or lack thereof, and Roni had flirted outrageously with him over the past year. He’d watched her every maneuver with sardonic amusement and great detachment. Most of the time. There had been that one kiss…

Anyway, she knew he wasn’t the kind to get emotionally involved. Unless he’d really fallen for the fair Geena?

The thought was so painful, she had to press a hand against her tummy to stop the tumult. Last Christmas, he’d made it clear by his indifference that he wasn’t, and never would be, interested in her. Her New Year’s resolution had been to enjoy life and stop daydreaming about one stubborn FBI agent who traveled fast, far and alone.

However, March had come and with it, the kiss, which had burned clear down to her soul and filled her with such dreams, such longing. Her resolve to forget him had gone up in smoke.

He’d left the ranch and she hadn’t heard from him until their encounter last Friday. If not for that, she wouldn’t have known he was in town.

So be it. Since he was using his real name, she wouldn’t have to guard her tongue every moment of the weekend, assuming he was staying until Sunday as she was. Now she waited to see if he acknowledged they knew each other or if they were going to pretend to be strangers.

“Roni and I are old friends,” Adam said with casual ease. “In fact, we’re almost relatives. My sister is married to her cousin.” His smile was all innocent warmth.

“I’m glad to meet you,” Roni said to Geena.

She almost laughed at her own earlier vanity in trying to appear taller, as if that might make her more commanding or something. The lovely Geena, wearing three-inch heels, was on level with Adam’s six-foot height. Scott was an inch taller than the other two.

As with her family—all the Dalton males tended to be tall and lean—she felt like the odd man, uh, person, out. However, she had learned long ago not to be intimidated by size or any other facet of human differences.

“It is a small world,” Geena commented when the group was seated in a pleasant arrangement before the library fireplace. “Adam didn’t mention relatives in the city.”

“My sister and her husband live in the Hells Canyon area north of here,” Adam said.

“So you’ve known Roni a long time?” the other woman asked.

“Only about a year, actually.”

Geena turned to Roni. “Is your brother in finance?”

“He’s a deputy sheriff. And he raises and trains cutting horses. Prize cutting horses,” she added for no good reason except she wanted this high-class female to know they had some good bloodlines, too, even if it was in the stock they raised.

Again, laughter nearly escaped her before she could sternly clamp down on herself. Geena probably wouldn’t be amused at the comparison.

When Adam gave her a narrow-eyed scrutiny, Roni returned it with a wide-eyed innocence, her smile as sweet as molasses taffy. He lofted one thick dark eyebrow sardonically, then turned the conversation to a business topic with Mr. Masterson.

At seven o’clock, they went into the dining room for a dinner that lasted until eight-thirty. The talk around the table ranged from the stock market to politics and the campaigns that were already being waged for elections that were months, or even years, away. Roni mostly listened.

Adam mentioned that another Dalton cousin was married to a woman whose father was running for governor. Drawn into the conversation, she reported that his campaign seemed to be going well and he was ahead in the polls.

After dinner, the two older couples played bridge while she and Scott selected CDs of soft music and chatted quietly. By eleven o’clock she could hardly keep her eyes open.

“We’d better call it a night before Cinderella turns into a pumpkin,” Adam said in amusement as she tried to hide another yawn. “The Daltons are an ‘early to bed, early to rise’ family. I learned that on my first visit to the ranch when Roni woke me up at six in the morning for breakfast. I had agreed to ride out with them on a roundup and a picnic in the mountains for some weird reason I can’t recall.”

That brought chuckles from the group as the family gazed from Adam to her.

“Scott, show Roni the breakfast room,” the stepmother told him. She smiled cordially at Roni. “I’ll tell the housekeeper to be sure the coffee is ready by six. Is there anything special you would like to eat?”

“No, cereal or toast is fine,” Roni replied.

Geena’s smile wasn’t quite as friendly when Roni bid them good-night and left the room with Scott at her side. After guiding her to the breakfast room, he led the way up the stairs. She ducked inside her bedroom before he could give her a kiss.

Alone, she dropped the good-natured pose. Curving her fingers into claws, she gave a throaty growl at her image in the mirror over the fireplace, then spoiled the effect by sticking her tongue out at herself.

Fighting a vague sense of despair, she smiled ruefully at her childish display and prepared for bed. Once settled for the night with the lamp off, she found her eyes refused to close or her mind to stop going around and around with fragments of thought. She hoped the weekend would go by fast. Or that Adam would have to leave in the morning.

Next she wondered where he was sleeping…and if he was alone in the bed.

“Arggghhh,” she groaned and pulled the pillow over her head as if that would block out the hateful images that sprang into her mental vision.

In the morning, Roni polished off an English muffin with strawberry preserves, drank the last swallow of milk and wondered what she should do with her dishes.

Adam strolled in, wearing khaki slacks and a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up on his forearms. “I thought you would be up.”

“Yes. I nearly always wake when the sun comes up.”

He nodded as he went to the buffet and looked over the selection of hot and cold foods. Scrambled eggs and bacon were kept warm in a silver double boiler, a smaller version of those she’d seen at hotel buffets. The heat came from a tiny can of fuel of a type she’d used while camping.

The memory of another morning rushed into her mind like the rays of the rising sun that warmed the earth…

She and Adam had leaned on the fence and watched the horses munch hay from a rolled bale. A cool breeze blew down the valley from He-Devil peak. Most of the snow was gone from the pasture due to an unusually warm winter. With the coming of March, the storm pattern had changed, and snow was predicted by Monday, which was only two days away.

“You’d better head south,” she’d told him, “before the storm gets here. The county roads will be closed if we get a heavy snow.”

“Anxious to get rid of me?” he’d drawled.

She’d hated the amusement in his eyes, the way he had of treating her like a child when she was twentysix and had been making her own way since graduating from high school.

While Uncle Nick had helped so she hadn’t had to go into debt, she’d earned most of her way through college via a work-study program at the education company where she was now employed. She hadn’t felt truly young and carefree in years, maybe not since her father had died the winter before she’d turned four.

“Yes,” she’d answered. “You bother me in ways I don’t like. Because I seem to have no control over myself when you’re near.”

He sucked in a strangled breath.

She smiled wryly. “That got a reaction out of you.”

Suddenly he was close, too close for her comfort range. “Was that all you wanted—to get a reaction from me?” he demanded with an intensity she’d rarely seen in him.

He’d always kept them on a maddening level of casual amusement, as if he silently laughed at the attraction she was sure existed between them.

“No,” she said honestly. “No, I want more.”

She held her ground with an effort, refusing to look away from the gaze that was no longer cool, no longer amused. A tremor shook her as he came closer.

“Be careful what you wish for,” he warned, his voice soft, the tone harsh.

Once she’d wished her mother was alive, that her father would miraculously reappear, that Aunt Milly and Tink would come home, that the other orphans wouldn’t move on to high school and college and leave her behind…so many things she’d wished for. None had ever come true.

“I gave up on wishes long ago,” she said and heard the echo of sadness in the words. “Except maybe for this.”

Then she did a foolish thing. She kissed him.

His arms swept around her and lifted her off her feet. Raising her legs, she wrapped them around his strong masculine frame while her arms encircled his shoulders. She held on as a storm of passion swept over them, through them, as strong in him as it was in her.

It was wonderful and frightening, fulfilling and yet not enough, too many things for her to think about. She quit trying and simply let the hunger take her.