CHAPTER FIVE

I T WAS LATE . A HEAVY RAIN HAD BEGUN TO FALL OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS . A noise in the hallway intruded into Jenny's sleep, footsteps and whispering voices. Her eyes cracked open. It took a moment for her to remember she wasn't at home. She was spending the night in the Copper Star.

She did that occasionally when the weather was bad or the saloon had enough customers to stay open till two a.m., as it had tonight. The rowdy crowd had been enjoying the entertainment and spending plenty of money, always good.

Jenny had closed the bar and headed up to a room she'd kept unrented in the old section, knowing tonight would be a long one.

The footsteps continued down the hall, moving almost silently past her room. Her heart rate kicked up as she glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Three-forty-five a. m. Who would be out this late in Jerome when the entire town was closed up?

She remembered Mrs. Friedman talking about the footsteps she had heard in the hall at an ungodly hour. It was certainly an ungodly hour now.

Her heart tripped faster. She strained to hear more. She had heard stories from guests about ghosts making all sorts of noises, footsteps when no one was there, whispered voices of invisible people. She didn't like the idea there could actually be spirits in the building, though half the town believed the stories.

Tossing aside the covers, Jenny grabbed her jeans and yanked them on under her sleep-tee, then crept across the room to the door. She took a deep breath, pulled it open, and peered out into the hall. She didn't really believe in ghosts.

Did she?

The sound of voices reached her. Quietly slipping into the hall, she listened, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. All the rooms were rented tonight except the one she was staying in.

The whispering drifted toward her, raising goose bumps on her skin. A man's voice, then the raw, sexy laughter of a woman, coming from farther down the hall. Jenny summoned her courage and tiptoed toward the sound.

The whispers became clearer when she reached room 7. A man had rented the room, she recalled, dark-haired, medium build, a little silver at his temples. He was only paying for a single, and he had sneaked the woman into his room.

Relief trickled through her, along with a shot of embarrassment. Not a ghost. Nothing to be afraid of. Just a guy trying to get lucky.

Not her, she thought glumly, as she turned and headed back to her own room down the hall. She'd been divorced for two years, separated from Richard for a year before that, and they hadn't really been together well before then. All in all, her marriage had been a complete and utter failure.

Jenny reminded herself she had a new life now. She was a business owner. Whatever it took, she was going to make that business a success.

Slipping quietly back into her room, Jenny closed the door, shucked her jeans, and returned to bed. As she drifted toward sleep, she thought of the man she had spent the evening with, Cain Barrett.

Barrett was as tall as the biker, and at least a hundred-eighty-five, maybe two-hundred pounds. He'd been a match for the big biker, but if trouble had started, it would have been five to one. She liked the way he'd handled himself, not hotheaded, not provocative, but confident. She had a pretty good feeling his subtle threat was real. Cain Barrett didn't look like the type to back down from anything.

She smiled. Not even a ghost.

Her smile slowly faded. Since Mrs. Friedman had checked out, two more guests had complained about hearing voices in the middle of the night. The voices purportedly were actually in their room. One guest said she'd seen an object lift off the dresser and tumble onto the carpet.

Jenny had no idea if any of the stories were true, but both rooms were located in the new wing of the hotel.

You're just being paranoid , she thought. This town is full of stories about ghosts, always has been.

Jenny closed her eyes, but half an hour passed before she finally fell asleep. She forgot about ghosts, big handsome men coming to her aid, and pretty much everything else.

When she opened her eyes, it was morning.

* * *

It was Saturday. Cain had left Jerome early enough to reach the ranch before sunrise. Working with Billy and Quinn, two of the full-time hands, Cain checked on Sultan, a big sorrel gelding with an injured tendon, then headed back to the house for one of Maria's hearty breakfasts.

Billy, Quinn, Sanchez, and Denver sat down with Cain at a long wooden table in a corner of the big open kitchen and dug into platters of bacon, eggs, and toast.

"Pass the bacon," Quinn said. He was late fifties, had worked on the ranch since he was a kid. He had darkly tanned, weathered skin and brown hair turning gray. Quinn knew more about ranching than Cain could learn in the next ten years.

Billy, who'd just turned twenty-two, had worked on the ranch summers and weekends until he'd graduated from high school, then gone to work full-time to help support his mom and little brother. Blond and lanky, Billy was a hard worker and never complained. Sanchez, nearing sixty, was one of the hardest-working men Cain had ever known. Denver Garrison was the latest addition, forty years old, a lean, fit, good-looking man, an expert rider who had trained a number of cutting-horse champions.

The ranch could probably make do with fewer people, but, except for Denver, whom Cain had personally hired, the men were part of the Cross Bar family. Along with Maria, they made a good team.

Cain thought of Jenny and wished he could show her the ranch. But Jenny was skittish. He had a feeling he would need to take things slowly.

He still wasn't sure what there was about her that had snagged his interest so strongly, but since the first time he had seen her in the Copper Star, he'd been intrigued. He hadn't remembered her at first—it had been nearly fifteen years since he'd seen her.

That first day in the saloon, she'd been patching up a kid who'd taken a bad fall out front on his bicycle. The kid was afraid to go home, afraid of what his dad would do when he found out about the ruined bike.

Jenny cleaned the scrapes on the boy's knees and the cut on his hand; then she and one of the guys in the bar had managed to put the bike back together.

Maybe some things never changed—Jenny was still more like the fresh-faced girl she had been in high school than any of the women he usually dated, females who spent most of their time in beauty salons, expensive spas, or shopping for designer clothes. For a while, he'd enjoyed having a beautiful, high-maintenance female on his arm. But at some point over the last few years, the whole scene had begun to bore him.

He'd decided it was time to make some changes. First, he'd bought the ranch, a place where he could escape the pressures of his business; then he'd bought the hotel, a place to give his grandmother her dream. It wasn't long after that he'd begun to feel better, more the person he wanted to be.

Still, something was missing. Cain was determined to find out what it was.

* * *

It was Saturday night. Last night's storm had returned midday and worsened into the evening. Still, the hotels were full, the bars and saloons as busy as they'd been the night before.

The Copper Star would be open late, so Jenny would be spending the night in town again, going home to Cottonwood Sunday morning for a day of badly needed rest.

It was early, not quite nine p.m., the bar crowded with customers. Sometime during the last two hours, she had developed a headache. It didn't happen often, but if she didn't lie down, it was going to get a whole lot worse.

Jenny said good night to Troy, who would be closing up, as he often did, spoke to the servers, Cassie and Molly, and headed upstairs.

Tonight, she'd be staying in a room in the newly remodeled wing of the hotel.

She couldn't put it off any longer. She needed to know if something suspicious was actually happening there.

The hallway was empty, room 8 a little chilly when she opened the door and walked inside. Jenny glanced around as she turned up the heat, proud of the décor in the hotel rooms, especially in the new section. An old-fashioned, queen-size four-poster formed the centerpiece of the room, while a blue-flowered porcelain washbasin and pitcher sat on an oak dresser with ornate brass handles.

With the exception of the four-poster beds, all the rooms were unique, this one done in cream and pale blue—the curtains, the quilt, and the upholstery on the oak rocker next to the round, piecrust table by the window.

Stripping off her plaid western shirt, stretch jeans, and sneakers, typical of the clothes she wore in the bar, she opened her overnight bag and pulled on a pink cotton sleep-tee with I L OVE J EROME and a heart on the front.

Just being away from the loud music, raucous laughter and conversation downstairs helped her headache, which was still pounding in her temples, but wasn't nearly as brutal as it could sometimes get.

There were no TVs in the hotel. People came to Jerome to get away from the pressures of their everyday lives. The tiny town provided the quiet visitors wanted.

Jenny turned back the covers on the bed and slid beneath the cool cotton sheets. She'd been up late last night and, after her encounter with the imaginary ghosts in the hall, hadn't gotten much sleep.

Tonight, she was sleeping in the new section. Jenny prayed none of the ghostly incidents people reported were real.