Honor Bound. B.J. Daniels

he’d love to see the new Ainsley come back. Had she been sober, he would have gone skinny-dipping with her last night. But then again, had she been sober, it would probably have never crossed her mind.

      On the ride back to the stables, Ainsley had asked, “I’m curious. What do you do when you aren’t playing a cowboy extra?”

      He’d avoided the truth. “I was raised on a ranch, so me and horses are a given. But I promise to tell you anything you want at dinner.” He made an x over his heart with one finger. “Scout’s honor.”

      Ainsley had seemed to relax a little. He knew she was still suffering from a bad hangover. He had no idea how much alcohol Kitzie had put in the drinks, but enough to down an elephant, he was betting. Kitzie. He pushed all thoughts of her away.

      He wished he wouldn’t have to tell Ainsley the truth until he’d found her stalker. That was why as soon as they got back to the stables, he’d set out to find the person who’d left the note on her cabin door last night. He had it narrowed down to the security guard, Lance Roderick. He fit the profile.

      The rest of the crew seemed okay, since, according to Kitzie, almost all of them were from California and had been on the road during the months that someone had been following Ainsley in Montana.

      He wondered again what assignment Kitzie was on but told himself it apparently didn’t have anything to do with Ainsley’s stalker. That was all he had to concern himself with. If Kitzie needed help, she knew where to find him.

      * * *

      THE TRAMP! WHAT HAD happened to the woman he’d adored from afar? From the shadows, he watched Ainsley and the cowboy ride back from wherever they’d been for hours. She laughed at something the long, tall cowboy had said, her laughter coming to him on the breeze.

      He felt bile rise in his throat. She was flirting with the man as if she had no morals at all. Look at how she threw her head back when she laughed. Look at how she touched her hair. Look at how she gazed at the cowboy shyly from under her lashes. How could she behave like this? Wasn’t last night bad enough?

      The thought of her standing naked by the creek filled him with a burning anger. To take off her clothes with a man she didn’t even know? He’d been so disappointed in her, but last night he’d excused her behavior. While staying back in the blackness beyond the campfire, he’d heard her talking about her life passing before her eyes because of the rock slide. He had attributed her lack of decorum to her near accident—one he had caused.

      So he had excused her even when the cowboy had bundled her up and taken her back to her cabin. He had waited outside, counting the minutes. But the cowboy hadn’t come back out. He’d moved closer. Ainsley had been drunk. If that cowboy laid one finger on her...

      But at the cabin window in the back where the bedroom was, he’d heard only Ainsley’s faint snores. He’d stayed there, listening. He’d learned how to move around the place without anyone paying him any attention. No one had been able to see him in the trees behind the cabin, and if the cowboy had tried anything, he would hear it and wake up, should he doze off.

      Nothing had happened. Not that he was happy about the cowboy spending the night in Ainsley’s cabin. What if someone else had seen the cowboy come out of there this morning? Her reputation would be ruined. People would talk. He thought of his mother and shook his head. She would not have approved. She would have demanded that Ainsley be punished.

      The thought made his heart beat faster.

      This morning he’d asked the girls in the kitchen about him. Sawyer Nash was nothing but an extra, some dumb cowboy who had a couple of ride-on parts in this ridiculous commercial.

      Still, he’d been willing to let last night be forgotten if Ainsley came to her senses today. She had seemed to be her old, proper self this morning when he’d watched her with the director. He’d been cheered by that, and forgiving. Whatever she’d done last night, it wasn’t her fault, so he would overlook it.