Read Online Texas Lawman by Ginger Chambers - Free Book Online

out onto the backyard.
    How many times over the years had she sat there watching and waiting—restlessly—for something to happen? Gazing at the pasture that the night had turned into a moonscape but for the barbed-wire fence?
    She pulled the curtain aside to relive another memory, one that had to do with Rio and their secret meetings. Rio had carried an old silver Mexican coin as a good-luck piece. It was drilled through and set in a metal loop, which he then clipped to his key ring. When he wanted to see her—when he knew he could snatch some free time from his ranch duties—he’d hang the silver coin from a loosened nail on the exterior window frame. When Jodie saw it, she’d collect it and bring it to their meeting place.
    She smiled. How utterly romantic she’d thought the whole process at seventeen. Then she looked for the loosened nail to see if it was still there.
    And saw a silver coin dangling from a metal loop!

CHAPTER FIVE
    JODIE’S BREATH whooshed from her lungs. A coin? A silver coin? Had she become so wrapped up in her teenage memories that she’d started to hallucinate?
    She shut her eyes, hoping that when she opened them the coin wouldn’t still be there. But it was.
    Was it Rio’s coin? But how?
    Her fingers trembled as she pushed the window open wider and brought the coin inside. They trembled even more as she examined it, because there was no mistaking. It was his! She’d spent hours when she was seventeen memorizing its every line.
    Her first reaction was to fling it away.
    The coin bounced and skidded across the hardwood floor before coming to rest on her bedside rug.
    How dare he! How dare— She might defend him to the others, but not to herself. What on earth would make him think that she—she! —would be willing to meet with him?
    Jodie shook her head. She didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it. He’d never come here! But if he did, if he had, wouldn’t it mean he was desperate?
    Her mind whirled. What should she do? Call Tate? Tell Rafe? If Rio
    had done what he was suspected of doing, he didn’t deserve. She crawled over to the rug, reclaimed the coin and sat with it, her back against the side of the bed. She’d defended him before her family, protested for his innocence. Avthe first provocation was she going to jettison everything she’d instinctually felt and said? Or was she going to give him a chance—one chance—to tell the truth?
    She waited a half hour to make sure everyone was asleep, then, dressed in jeans and a light jacket, she slipped outside, across the gravel drive, through the courtyard and onto the path that led to the business heart of the ranch. The ranch office, the bunkhouse, the workshops and a large tack room all faced each other around a small clearing. Her goal was the storage room to the rear of the bunkhouse. It was there she and Rio used to meet.
    Her heart beat rapidly as she paused outside the door. Not from any lingering attachment to Rio, but because she wasn’t sure—if it was him—how deeply she wanted to get involved.
    She rapped lightly on the wooden door. It jerked open and she was pulled inside. The windowless storage room, used mostly to secure the camp-cooking gear for the twice-yearly roundups, was in full darkness. Jo-die couldn’t see a thing, but she was highly aware that the grip on her wrist—hard and tight and urgentmbelonged to a hunted man.
    “Rio?” she asked, her voice low. “Is that”
    “Shh!” he hissed as the flint of a cigarette lighter scraped a low flame into life.
    A moment passed before Jodie’s eyes adjusted well enough to see in the flickering light. He hadn’t changed
     
    that much. His face still had a boyish quality, even when sporting a mustache.
    “Satisfied?” he grunted. ,
    At her jerky nod the lighter flicked shut, plunging them back into darkness.
    He reached past her for the door, peered out, then drew her after him as he crossed to the barn in a low crouch. Once inside, he pulled her