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An impatient, even wary expression crossed her face and it dawned on Joseph that he was making her uncomfortable. But then he had to remember he was a stranger to this woman. He couldn’t expect her to behave as though he was an old friend.
“Well, yes, they are. But—” She broke off with a shake of her head then gestured toward the archway. “All right, let’s go.”
She started out of the room in a long stride and Joseph fell into step behind her. As they made their way down a narrow hallway, the scent of her flowery perfume teased him like a gentle ocean breeze.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea which bedroom Mr. Maddox used, would you?”
Her question snapped him out of his dreamy cloud. “I’ve only been as far as the study,” he admitted. “It’s the first door on your right. Why do you want to know about Ray’s bedroom, anyway?”
Pausing in the middle of the hallway, she turned to look at him. “This is probably going to sound silly to you, but I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable about staying in Mr. Maddox’s room.”
“I don’t understand why you’d feel that way. This is your house now.”
As soon as he’d said the words, he wished he could take them back. They sounded insensitive, even rude. And she didn’t deserve that. Not unless she turned out to be a complete fraud.
Seemingly unoffended by his tart remark, she said, “That’s true. But I’m a stranger in this house. I feel it would be more proper for me to stay in a guest room.”
Even though she’d told him she hadn’t been acquainted with Ray Maddox, she seemed to want to respect him and his memory. Joseph had to admire her for that.
“Well, let’s have a look and maybe we can figure out which room was Ray’s.”
Nodding in agreement, she moved on down the passageway and opened a door on the left. Peering inside, she said, “I very much doubt a man used this bedroom. I’ll stay in this one.”
Joseph followed her into the bedroom and placed the cases at the foot of a queen-size bed. When he looked up from the task, he saw the pretty heiress standing in the middle of the room, gazing around with a look of awe on her face. Everything was in white. Even the antique-style furniture.
He said, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but all this stuff looks new to me.”
Clearing her throat, she walked over to a long dresser with a scallop-edged mirror. Lying on the glass top was a matching brush and mirror with silver-engraved backs. The set was the fancy sort, like the one his mother kept for sentimental reasons.
Joseph watched her pick up the brush and rub her fingers across the soft bristles. “I think you might be right. Did a woman live here with Mr. Maddox?”
“Not since his wife died. And that’s been several years ago.”
Tessa shifted her gaze to the bed, which was covered with a fluffy down comforter and pillows edged with lace. “How odd to find a room like this in a widower’s house.”
“Maybe Ray had all this fixed for you,” Joseph suggested.
She looked at him, her lips parted with surprise. “That’s a crazy notion. Ray Maddox didn’t know me.”
“He had some sort of connection to you. And he obviously made plans for you to be here.”
The notion appeared to rattle her. She quickly placed the brush back on the dresser top then, bending her head, she fastened her hands around the front edge of the dresser as though she needed to support herself.
As Joseph watched her, he was assaulted with all sorts of urges, the main one being to put his arm around her shoulders and assure her that whatever was bothering her would eventually right itself. But he’d only met her a few minutes ago. Even if she did need comforting, he had no right to get that personal.
“I’m so confused. I’m not sure what to think anymore.” With her head still bent, she slanted a look at him. “That’s why I have to stay long enough to find answers.”
The notion that she might be here for an extended length of time filled Joseph with far too much pleasure. He tried to ignore the sappy reaction as he walked over to a pair of large windows and made a show of inspecting the locks.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He could feel her walking up behind him and then her lovely scent was floating around him.
“Making sure the locks are secure,” he answered.
“I thought you said this was a crime-free area.”
He allowed the curtain to fall into place before he turned to her. With only two short steps separating them, he could see little details about her face that he’d missed earlier. Like a faint dimple just to the left corner of her lips and the fine baby hairs tickling her temples. Her skin was so smooth it appeared to have no pores and he wondered how it would feel beneath his finger. Like cream on his tongue, he figured.
“A person can never be too safe,” he said. “Have you ever stayed alone before?”
That wasn’t actually his business, either. But he told himself it was his job to make sure she was capable of keeping herself safe.
“Not out like this. But I’m not the timid sort.”
He wanted to tell her only fools were not afraid but stopped himself. Compared to his thirty years, she was very young. Not to mention determined to stand on her own two feet.
“I can assure you, Ms. Parker, my mother would be more than happy for you to stay with us on Three Rivers. We have plenty of room. And she loves company.”
She looked away and Joseph couldn’t help but watch the rise and fall of her breasts as she drew in a deep breath and blew it out.
“Thank you for the invitation, Deputy Hollister, but I’ll be fine. There’s no need for you to be concerned about my safety.
“That’s my job.”
Like hell, Joseph. As a deputy of Yavapai County, you don’t go around inviting women to stay at the family ranch. You’re stepping out of line and you know it.
She said, “You must be a very conscientious lawman.”
No. At this very moment, he was being a fool. But Joseph was hoping like heck she wouldn’t notice.
“The offer has nothing to do with me being a deputy. I’m just being neighborly.”
“Oh.”
The one word caused his gaze to land on her lips. As he stared at the moist curves, something fluttered deep in his gut. In his line of work, he met up with all sorts of women, but he’d never met one who’d made him think things or feel things the way this woman did.
Clearing his throat, he fished a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “If you need anything, my number is on there. And if you decide to visit Three Rivers, it’s easy to find. When you leave the entrance to your property, turn right and follow the road until you reach a fork. Take a left and you’ll see the ranch sign. Someone is always at home.”
She folded her fingers around the card and bestowed him a warm smile. “Once I get settled, I might just do that. And thanks for your help.”
“Sure. So I...better get going and let you get on with unpacking.”
He forced himself to step around her and as he started out of the bedroom, she fell into step beside him.
“I’ll show you to the door,” she told him.
The polite gesture was hardly necessary, especially when he was far more familiar with the house than she was. But he was hardly going to turn down a bit more of her company.
Damn it, somewhere between Wickenburg and the Bar X something must have happened in the workings of his brain, he decided. He wasn’t in the market for a woman. Especially one that would only be around for a few days and then gone.
When they reached the front door, she accompanied him onto the porch and surprised him by offering her hand. Joseph clasped his fingers around hers and marveled at the softness of her skin, the dainty fragility of the small bones.
“It’s been a pleasure, Deputy Hollister.”
A pleasure? It had been an earthquake for Joseph. As he continued to hold her hand, the tremors were still radiating all the way down to his boots.
“Uh, well...maybe we’ll see each other again before you go back to Nevada.”
She gently eased her hand from his. “Yes. Maybe.”
Well, that was that, he thought. “Goodbye, Ms. Parker.”
He left the porch and as he walked out to his vehicle, he resisted the urge to glance back. But when he eventually slid behind the steering wheel, he couldn’t help but notice she was still standing where he’d left her.
When he started the engine, she lifted her hand in farewell. The sight filled him with ridiculous pleasure and before he could turn the SUV around and drive away, his mind was already searching for a reason to see her again.
Chapter Two (#u9d88c8ed-2cca-5710-9ea2-1013ae305042)
Joseph had planned to tell his family about Tessa Parker as soon as he arrived home. But he’d hardly gotten a mile away from the Bar X when he’d been called back to work to help deal with a three-vehicle accident on the highway—a result of loose cattle and drivers blinded by the sinking sun.
By the time the cattle had been rounded up and the vehicles cleared away, it had been well after midnight. When he’d finally gotten home, everyone in the house had already gone to bed.
But this morning as Joseph, and most of the family, sat around the dining table eating breakfast, he wasted no time in relaying the news. Starting with Tessa introducing herself and ending with her promise to stay until she found answers.
“Ray left his property to a complete stranger? I can’t believe it. He wasn’t the fanciful sort. In fact, he was a steadfast rock. That’s why he was sheriff of Yavapai County for twenty years. He was a man everyone could depend on. There has to be more to this situation.”
The statement came from Maureen Hollister, the matriarch of the family. Tall and slender, with dark brown hair slightly threaded with gray and a complexion wrinkled by years of working in the blazing desert sun, she was a picture of beauty and strength. And Joseph had expected his mother to react to the news in just this way.
He said, “I was shocked when she hauled out a handful of legal documents to prove she wasn’t a trespasser.”
Maureen pushed her empty plate forward and picked up her coffee cup.
“I’m glad you happened to be going by the Bar X whenever she arrived, Joe,” his mother said. “Except for Sam, no one ever goes near the place. If I’d spotted a strange vehicle there, I would’ve thought someone was trespassing.”
For the past five years, since Joel, her husband and the father of their six children, had died suddenly, Maureen had accepted the reins of Three Rivers Ranch with a calm yet fierce determination to continue the legacy of the ranch and the Hollister family name. Now at sixty-one, she showed no signs of slowing down.
Joseph took his eyes off his plate to glance down the long dining table to where his mother sat next to her late husband’s chair. Ever since his death, Joel’s spot at the head of the table had remained empty. A fact that everyone in the family tried to ignore.
Across from Joseph, his oldest brother, Blake, was frowning thoughtfully.
“I visited Ray in the hospital a day before he died. Unfortunately he was too sedated to talk,” Blake commented. “Let’s hope he was in his right mind when he made out his will.”
Next to Blake, the middle Hollister son, Holt, spoke up. “I stopped by Ray’s house about a week before he went into the hospital. He was hooked up to oxygen, but he could still talk. That day he appeared to make perfect sense. He told me Sam had driven him around the ranch earlier that morning. He was telling me how happy he was with the way everything looked.”
“Poor man. Seventy was far too young for him to die.”
Joseph glanced to his left, where his sister, Vivian, was sitting at his elbow. At thirty-three, with shoulder-length chestnut hair, she was pretty in a wholesome way. It was just too bad her ex-husband hadn’t appreciated her, or their daughter.
“Any age is too young, Viv,” Joseph told her.
“Yes, but Ray had such a tragic life,” she observed. “What with his wife being disabled and bound to a wheelchair all those years. I always thought he deserved so much more.”
“Ray loved Dottie,” Maureen pointed out. “It broke his heart when she passed away.”
Holt, who was also head horse trainer for Three Rivers, reached for a biscuit. As he tore the bread apart, he said, “Ray was a widower for years and never bothered to marry again. That was the sad part.”
“Sad!” Joseph blurted in disbelief. “You’re a good one to talk, Holt. You’ve gone through women like a stack of laundered shirts. And you’ve never bothered to marry any of them!”
Holt frowned as he slathered the piece of biscuit with blackberry jam. “Well, you sure as hell aren’t married, either, little brother.”
“From the way Joe talked about this Ms. Parker, I’m thinking he’s getting the idea on his mind,” Vivian teased.
Joseph didn’t rise to his sister’s bait. He figured if he protested too loudly the whole family would become suspicious about him and the lovely stranger from Nevada. And that was the last thing he needed.
“As a deputy, I’m supposed to take in details,” he said flatly.
“From the description you gave us, you certainly took in plenty of details about the woman,” Vivian said slyly.
“Except the most important one.” Blake spoke up, “Like why she ended up with Ray’s place.”
Being the eldest son of the family, Blake had always taken his position as manager of the ranch very seriously. But then, Blake had always been the serious-minded one of the Hollister kids. There was rarely any joking going on with him. Whenever he did try to be funny, it was so dry he wound up getting more blank stares than chuckles.
“We’d all like to know that, Blake,” Maureen interjected. “But, frankly, it’s none of our business. And it would look mighty suspicious if Joseph started interrogating her for information.”
“Amen. Thank you, Mom,” Joseph told her.
Holt leaned forward, his gaze encompassing everyone at the table. “As far as I see things, it would be damned awful if we sat around and let someone take wrongful possession of our old friend’s property.”
Joseph tossed down his fork and shoved back his chair. “Holt, you can accuse the woman all you want, but she has legal, binding documents. And, by the way, she lives on the Silver Horn Ranch in Nevada.”
His brother’s jaw went slack. “Are you joking? You mean the ranch I bought Lorna’s Song from?”
“That’s right. She volunteered that piece of information on her own. I didn’t ask for it.”
A sheepish expression stole over Holt’s face. “That ought to be easy enough for you to check out. I guess the woman is legitimate.”
“I’m certain of it,” Joseph said bluntly.
Maureen put down her coffee cup as her gaze traveled over her children. “The way I see it, the questions are about Ray, not Ms. Parker. And we really should keep our noses out of the situation. Still, it would be neighborly of me to stop by and welcome the young woman to the area.”
Blake smirked while Vivian gave their mother a clever smile.
Joseph said, “I got the impression Tessa has plenty of questions, too. Maybe you’d be a help to her, Mom.”
“I have a Cattlemen’s Association meeting in Prescott early this afternoon,” Maureen said. “I might stop by the Bar X on my way out.”
Joseph rose and walked down to the end of the table to drop a kiss on his mother’s cheek. “Thanks, Mom. I’m off to work. Don’t look for me until much later tonight. I’ve got extra duty,” he said.
