Lone Star Legacy by Roxanne Rustand Page A

the more she fascinated him on every level.
    He wanted to find out what made her tick. Why she was so reticent about her past. Hell, he wanted to tease her into going out on a dance floor, just so he could hold her in his arms and find out if she was as soft and sexy as she looked, because even now she had his dormant hormones slowly coming out of hibernation. “Well?”
    Her shoulders sagged. “Then I guess I can help you out.”
    It was the most lukewarm acceptance he’d ever heard, but it was a start.

     
    S HE ’ D SPENT THE REST of the day and evening stewing about her foolish decision, but at around midnight Beth glanced at the clock one last time and finally tried to fall asleep by counting and recounting the reasons that Joel McAllen was a very bad idea.
    He was far too handsome for his own good, and she knew just how much a risk that could be. Twice this afternoon she’d found herself daydreaming about behavior entirely inappropriate for a woman widowed just a year.
    He was a cop, and that presented an even greater risk.
    And with an impressionable young daughter and the tiny apartment the two of them shared, she’d certainly never consider a short-term affair.
    Joel was wrong in every way. So why, after saying yes, had she felt her heart lift?
    An hour later, Sophie’s whimpers awakened her from a troubled sleep. Bleary-eyed, she stumbled into the next bedroom and sat on the edge of Sophie’s bed to rest a gentle hand on the child’s forehead. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
    “Stop!” Sophie cried out, clearly still deep in dreams. “Don’t hurt my daddy!”
    It was the same nightmare she’d had a hundred times over during the past year, and it still didn’t make any sense.
    Beth lifted her daughter into her arms and gently smoothed back the tendrils of hair clinging to Sophie’s damp forehead, then rocked her. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Mommy’s here.”
    Sophie murmured something and burrowed closer, as if seeking shelter from the demons that still plagued her.
    The insurance investigators had said it was an utter miracle that anyone survived the car accident, though Sophie’s damage went beyond the physical. Six months of weekly visits with a children’s counselor had helped, but hadn’t totally eliminated her nightmares about her daddy’s blood. The sirens. The pain of her own injuries. Or the unexplainable and unconfirmed presence of a stranger who scared her still.
    The counselor suggested that the stranger was a fabrication, a focal point for Sophie’s terror over a situation too overwhelming for her to comprehend. The first people on the scene had been a passing highway patrol and then the paramedics, and there hadn’t been any threatening strangers according to those eyewitnesses. But fabrication or not, the night terrors were frequent and awful, and Beth’s heart twisted at the images Sophie had to face in her dreams.
    The phone rang—its harsh tone slicing through the quiet of night.
    Beth settled Sophie back under her covers and ran for the phone. Please, Lord, let this just be a wrong number.
    But even before she picked up the receiver, she knew who it was.
    “So you’re still there. Chose not to run? That’s good to know.” The muffled voice was intense, filled with loathing that sent her heart rate into overdrive. He rattled off a post office box address in South Chicago. “Here’s your last chance—send what I want, to this address. Priority. No signature required. You’ve got ten days, or next time, I won’t just be bringing matches.”
    The line went dead.
    He’d given her a deadline twice before. Once, he didn’t follow through. Several weeks after the second one, there’d been a break-in and a fire at her house.
    Shivering she wrapped her arms around her self. Oh, please, Lord…not again.

CHAPTER SIX

    J OEL EYED THE REMNANTS of wallpaper festooning the living room of Beth’s upstairs apartment and grinned. “Tell me again—how long has this