Running Blind Read online

  THEY WERE IN the middle of the lunch rush—Carlin behind the counter and Kat making the rounds with a pitcher of tea in one hand and a carafe of coffee in the other, because she could handle pouring on the go better than Carlin could—when the cowboy walked in. Carlin couldn’t help but notice him. What warm-blooded woman wouldn’t? He was tall and muscular, and he moved with an iron confidence that said he knew his strength and hadn’t met much that could stop him. She had to call him handsome, though he wasn’t, not really. His face wasn’t perfect and sculpted, it was on the rough and hard side, but she was going on her reaction to him rather than what her eyes saw. She went warm and breathless, and looked away because staring at him was abruptly too much, too dangerous in a way she sensed but couldn’t quite grasp, at least not consciously. He was every inch the heartbreaker cowboy Kat had warned her away from—and damn if he didn’t charge the air when he walked into the place.

  Running Wild is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2012 by Linda Howington and Linda Winstead Jones Excerpt from Shadow Woman by Linda Howard copyright © 2012 by Linda Howington

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Shadow Woman by Linda Howard. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52079-1

  Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi

  Cover photographs: © George Kerrigan

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Recipes

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  Excerpt from Shadow Woman

  Prologue

  LIBBY THOMPSON CROSSED her plump arms and tried to look stern, which wasn’t easy considering the undeniable sadness she felt. “Don’t give me that look, A.Z. Decker. Those puppy-dog eyes haven’t worked on me since you were nine years old.” Not that he’d had puppy-dog eyes even back then, and he certainly didn’t now, but she’d learned a long time ago that the trick to handling him was to never let it show how blasted intimidating he was when he looked pissed and flinty-eyed, the way he did now.

  Zeke glanced down and to the side, where Libby’s bags sat. They were a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs, three different makers, three different colors: red, brown, and black. The bags were all stuffed so full they bulged and threatened to split their zippers wide open. Everything she owned was in those bags.

  “I gave you two weeks’ notice,” she said in her best no-nonsense tone, because if she gave an inch, in no time flat he’d have her talked into staying. She couldn’t let her guard down, not even for a minute. The trick was to remember that he looked at problems as things he could solve if he just didn’t give up, which was great if he was working on your behalf, and not so great if you were on the other side of all that bullheaded determination.

  “I tried to find a replacement,” Zeke growled, glaring at her accusingly, as if his failure was her fault.

  “Really?” She snorted. “You put an ad in the Battle Ridge Weekly.” That was when she’d realized he hadn’t taken her seriously when she’d told him she was leaving, otherwise he’d have placed multiple ads in the newspapers in larger towns. As much as she loved him, that had really ticked her off. If he thought he could bulldoze her the way he did everyone else, then he was about to get his perception of the world rearranged.

  “Two more weeks,” he bargained.

  She blew out a breath of frustration. In her fifty-seven years, she’d faced down a lot, and never let life get her down even when she was widowed at a young age and left with a baby she needed to support. But from the time she’d first come to work here at the Decker ranch, she’d needed every bit of ability she possessed to stay ahead of Zeke. As a toddler he’d been a chubby, charming hellion; as a gap-toothed little boy he’d been a skinny, charming hellion; and since his teenage years he’d been a heartbreaker, with a whole lot of hard-ass thrown into the mix. He always got his way, but this time she simply couldn’t let that happen.

  She’d been working at this ranch house for thirty-odd years, at first part-time and later, after Zeke’s mother remarried and moved to Arizona, full-time. She and Jenny had had their own rooms here, just off the kitchen. She knew this house as if it were her own, knew Zeke as if she’d given birth to him. His sisters had become a big part of her life, too, but they were both older, and Libby hadn’t played as large a part in their lives as she had in Zeke’s. For more than thirty years she’d cooked, she’d cleaned, and she’d blessed him out when he needed it. She’d mothered him, mothered the ranch hands, and spoiled him rotten. And she was on her way out the door.

  She sighed, and her gaze softened a little. “Zeke, I hate to leave you in the lurch, you know I do, but I promised Jenny I’d be there this coming weekend. She’s at her wit’s end, with Tim out of town on business more often than not and those three kids running her ragged, and another one on the way. She’s my daughter, and she needs me.”

  “I need you,” he growled, then his jaw hardened as he finally faced the reality, once and for all, that she was leaving. “Okay. Damn it—okay. I’ll get by.”

  “I know you will.” Libby stepped toward him, patted him on one cheek while she went up on her toes and kissed him on the other. She backed away, and was all business once again. “I think Spencer knows his way around the kitchen; he’ll do until you find a replacement. I left a couple of cookbooks on the kitchen table. The recipe for my beef stew is in the one with the green cover.” He loved her beef stew, always had. She felt more than a little sad that she might never make it for him again, but at least the recipe was there so someone could.

  “Thanks.”

  He didn’t sound very grateful; he still sounded pissed as hell. Well, he could just stay pissed, because she’d made up her mind. Ignoring his sour mood, she continued, “I filled the freezer with stew, a pan of lasagna, and corn bread. There’s a big pot of chicken and dumplings in the refrigerator for tonight. Once that’s all gone, you can either find another housekeeper or you can get your ass busy finding another wife. That’s what you really need.”

  That was a safe gambit, because if there was one subject Zeke av