Page 15 of The Cowboy's Unlikely Love

Colt parked at themovie theater and got out to help Taylor down from the truck. Her phone played a chord as he took hold of her forearm and guided her to the ground.

She grimaced and took her phone from her purse.

“Something wrong?”

“I’ve been getting these crank calls.”

He frowned. “What kind of crank calls. What do they say?” He realized how sharp his voice sounded, and he said, “Sorry, that just worries me. Tell me what’s happening.”

“They call and just breathe on the line and then hang up. It’s like they’re trying to scare me, and it’s working. I changed my settings to ‘Silence Unknown Callers,’ and it sends them to my voicemail. It didn’t ring, so what you heard just now was another crank voicemail coming in.”

It was breezy outside, so he started them toward the entrance. “Do you mind if I listen to it?”

She fiddled with her phone and said, “Here it is.” After several seconds of silence, a man’s voice said, “Bitch, you think you’re so damn smart.” He chuckled harshly. “You’re fixing to find out you’re not.” The line clicked and went dead.

Taylor’s eyes widened, and her hand clutched her mouth.

Colt slipped his arm around her shoulders. “The first thing we need to do is change your phone number. This is pure intimidation, and we can stop it.”

“It sounds like a threat, Colt. Do you think it’s that same guy in the brown truck?”

“There’s no way to know, but I think we need to call the sheriff. This has gone far enough.”

“You’re right.” She clasped his hand. “Colt, do you think we could just go home? My stomach’s twisted in knots.”

“Of course. Come on, let’s go.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and walked her back to the truck, his mind working furiously.

On the way home, they were both quiet. He was thinking about how he might be able to protect her. Lord knew what she was thinking. He had no doubt that she was scared.

She reached across the console, and he took her hand. Poor thing. As if she hadn’t been through enough. Now she was terrified of a stranger on the phone. He squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Her face pale in the late evening light, she nodded. Her lips were pressed together as if to keep them from trembling.

He brought her fingers to his lips. “I’ll find out who it is, and when I do, there’ll be hell to pay.”

The corner of her mouth lifted in a wan smile. “Thank you, Colt. I’m glad I was with you tonight when I got that call. Honestly? It scared the crap out of me.”

He nodded. “I’ll take care of you, Taylor. You can count on that.”

Her eyes darkened with an emotion he couldn’t read. “I hope you can, Colt. But I don’t want you to get hurt. Please be careful. Promise?”

He smiled. “Promise.”

He continued to hold her hand until they pulled up at the old homestead. “Why don’t I come in and wait a while? See if anything happens.”

She let out a long sigh as if she’d been worrying. “I’d appreciate that. Thank you, Colt.”

Once inside, Taylor told her aunt about the voicemail and the crank calls.

While she was doing that, he put in a call to the sheriff’s office. Normally, Steve Cameron, the sheriff, would have been at home at that time of night, but he’d come in for a drunk and disorderly that got out of hand.

When the man came on the line, Colt said, “Steve, Colt Meadows here. Listen, I’m at the old Ardent homestead right now. Shannon Kent lives here now, and her niece, Taylor Benson, has just moved in with her.” He paused. Steve already knew this from Colt’s previous call, but Colt didn’t want the women to know that he’d contacted the sheriff about them previously. Then he went on, “Taylor has been getting ‘heavy breather’ calls, and tonight they just turned threatening.”

“What exactly happened?” the sheriff asked.

“The man left a voicemail calling her a bitch and told her she was fixing to find out that she isn’t as smart as she thinks she is.”

“Huh. You’re right, that sounds threatening. Does she have any idea why this is happening to her?”

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