A Dark Lure by Loreth Anne White Page A

waited alongside her truck. He was dressed in a dark-brown leather jacket that looked worn. Vintage. WWII bomber style with a sheepskin ruff and lining. His jeans were faded in places that screamed masculinity. His boots were scuffed.
    He brought to mind paramilitary figures. A guy with authority, one who exuded a command presence.
    Not surprising. This was a man who wrote about alpha men. Extreme risk takers. Conquerors of the world’s tallest peaks and remotest poles. He walked the walk, climbed the mountains, flew the skies. Yet in spite of his apparent machismo, his written words bespoke a sensitive view of the world. A beautiful mind.
    Ace barked from inside the truck as he neared.
    Her pulse quickened, little moth wings of nerves fluttering in her stomach. She wiped her hands on her jeans, thinking of all the negative emotions she’d directed toward him, his rudeness on the phone. Up close, in the flesh, he was even more formidable, more vital than anything in those photographs. A chiseled, tanned echo of his dying father. A mountain of a man.
    “You must be Olivia.” He reached forward to shake her hand. “Cole McDonough.”
    Her spine stiffened instinctively as she held out her hand. His grip was unapologetically firm. Calloused palms. Warm hands. As his gaze met hers, a sharp crackle of electricity shot through her body. His eyes were deep-set under a prominent brow and fringed by heavy lashes. And they were intense. Moody like a thundercloud. His chin was strong, darkly shadowed with stubble, his brown hair tousled. Everything about this man radiated a kind of feral aggression and power, yet there was fatigue in the craggy lines that fanned out from his eyes and bracketed his mouth. His deeply sun-browned skin seemed to belie a paleness, a quiet exhaustion beneath.
    She cleared her throat. “Pleased to meet you,” she lied, firming her own grip, asserting her space, her place on this ranch. “And this is Ace,” she said of her dog, who was now sticking his head out the window and lolling his tongue out in anticipation of a greeting.
    Cole held on to her hand a fraction longer. “How’s my father?”
    She glimpsed real concern in his eyes. It threw her slightly. It messed with her prejudiced animosity toward him.
    “In a great deal of pain,” she said quietly. “But he’s stoic about it. You know he can be . . . ” She paused. “Then again, maybe you don’t.”
    His features darkened. He released her hand. “And I presume you do. After all, you’ve lived here what? A whole three years?”
    She felt something tighten reflexively inside her.
    “Thanks for coming out to meet me,” he said, scanning the surroundings. “Would you mind giving me a ride to the house?” His voice was low toned, velvet over gravel. Her stomach tightened. A voice like that had cost her everything.
    She glanced at the plane, and it struck her, given the ease with which he’d just landed, and those little fat-ass tundra tires: Cole McDonough could have brought this thing down just about anywhere on the ranch. “You didn’t need me to scope out the landing at all, did you? You just called me because you wanted a chauffeur.”
    His lips curved slightly. Irritation sparked in her, and she latched fast onto it. It was a safety mechanism. It was easier to put up walls than deal with her very primal gut reaction to this man.
    “Admittedly it would have been a bit of a walk—I can’t bring this puppy down much closer to the lodge because of the hydro wires and phone lines. More so, I was worried about livestock.”
    “We no longer run cattle,” she said, words clipped. “Just a few horses and chickens left. Since Myron took ill last spring the place has gone downhill. Guests no longer stay in the lodge house. Only the cabins and the campsites open during season. Staff has been cut down to core.”
    His brows rose slightly in interest.
    She glanced at the plane again.
    “It’ll be fine there. I’ll sort it out